00:00:00 Speaker 1: Yeah, my name is Clay and 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, Corey, go ahead and put that bear fat in all of it. Yep, let's uh, we just need to keep it stirring. So we are. We're in Montana and we've got a we've got a fire going. We're on the side of the creek here. We just put about seven pounds of fresh Montana spring color phase bear fat into a Dutch oven and maybe the most apropos bear grease render of all time. We're gonna render bear grease while we are talking. So welcome to the bear Grease Render. Everybody. Like I said, We're in Montana and I'm joined by two special guests. I have to my left, Bear John nwcom my son. Hello, how's it going bear, pretty kid? Pretty good? Bears got a story to tell us here a little bit. And then Corey Hawkins of Meat Eater Corey, good to have you, Man, thanks for having me. We are we're creekside. We've been bear hunting in Montana, and so for for anybody that this would be their first bear grease render, the bear grease render is when we we generally talk about the previous week's podcast. On this episode, this is in the field Burghery Surrender, which is a little bit different. We're gonna talk about the adventures that we've had over the last five days. This is the fifth day of our Western Spring bear Hunt. Corey. You've been doing this for a long time though, right, Yeah, sure have up in these parts anyway. Bear this is your first spring bear hunt, Western spring bear hunt. What are your impressions so far? Man, Um, I like it. I mean it's a lot different than hunting back in Arkansas. I mean, like everything's bigger, so, like you're the hunting is just way different. Yeah, big mountains, big big mountains. We're gonna talk some about our last Genuine Outlaw series. We're gonna talk about that, but we're also going to talk about that on the next render. But I want to dive into our hunt this week, Corey. This is my seventh Montana Spring bear hunt, and I think nine years. I think it's my seventh hunt. No, No, seventh hunt in eight years, because once I came twice last year, I came twice to Montana. Um, so I'm counting that is two different hunts. Man. You've got it back in here for a long time, that's right. Tell me what you used to do before you work for meat Eater, and then I want to hear what you do for meat Eater. Well, I guided back here for eight years. Uh, fisherman in the summer, I should say spring bear hunters, and then fisherman all summer, and then come September we do eight weeks of archery and then rifle elk hunters too. Guided back here for a while, and then moved down to Bozeman and guided fisherman and hunters down around Bozeman for about seven years after that. So I've been guiding for about fifteen years until I started for meat Eater. You started for meat to your year and a half ago? Correct? And now, Bart, did you know that Corey guided for a big fancy elk outfit in Montana. In you guided, I mean like over thirty successful elk hunts for hunters, Is that right? Yeah, what years would that have been. Really, did you tell the name of that place or no? It's the c A Ranch, Yeah, Climbing Arrow Ranch. It just sold to its some new owners, So the history of it has changed quite a bit just in the last year. It's not a secret place anymore. It's it's a well known ranch for both its history and the elk hunting. Guys like Will Primos, who's been on the show, has hunted there. Yeah, so we're bear, we're up here talking and and Corey had heard Will Primos on this podcast and he was like, yeah, I know Wilbur Primos. I guided him for elk old Wilbur. Yeah, isn't that cool? Now you were guiding back into you were doing horse trips, mule trips back into some pretty wild places. M So you've been around equine and mules a lot my whole life. Yeah. I grew up with him. My parents had a couple of horses, more show horsing. They'd throw my little cute, blonde hair, blue eyed kid on a on a bay horse and ride me around and we'd win some blue ribbons just for showing. And then they my parents did some trips back in here on horseback, so I grew up with them, and then they got a little expensive as I got older, so we got rid of horses. But then when I started working back here, started using horses and mules packing on them. So our hunt this week, we're just on foot. We Uh, I didn't the last I think twice I brought mules for spring bear hunting into Montana. Um, but this year we're just on foot. And uh, we've walked. How much do you think we've walked over the last four days, Corey, I'd say we've we've averaged about ten miles a day, so over forty miles fifty miles. Yeah, we've covered We've covered some ground. Bear, were you a little bit more out after day through? Yes? I gotta say though, these Arkansas boys do pretty well in the Montana Mountains. I will say, well, bears getting big enough now where he can outwalk and out hunt me, that's for sure. But I can see that it took him a while to get there, but he's there now. We've got this, Uh, we've got a big Dutch oven that's just full of very fat. We're gonna have to get this fire hotter um, that's for sure. Yeah, move that, So we gotta great over the fire, and we really want to get that fire right up under that pot. It's gotta be pretty dr and hot to render it down, Okay, we gotta we gotta tell. So the the way that we're hunting these bears up here is that there's a lot of heavily forested area, not a lot of openings, but there's a lot of logging activity, and so we're walking roads. So these roads green up before everything else. And it's no secret about how in the Northwest people hunt bears. In the spring, there's there's no berries, the berries haven't ripened yet, there's no hard mask because hard mask grow was all summer and then as ready in the fall. Pretty much what these bears have to eat is insects that are coming out, and then green vegetation and then anything that could catch as far as meat, like they might catch an elk calf for a moose calf or find winter kill carrying type of stuff. That means though, that these roads create openings in the timber where green grass grows, vegetation grows. There's these clear cuts wherever the sun can reach the forest floor, there's gonna be green stuff and man, there's no rhyme or reason. Well, there is rhyme or reason, but you're basically just trying to cover as much possible ground as as you can find bear sign and then hunt in those areas. And bear sign would be bear scat along roads. You might see bears from a long ways if in places there's small openings where you can see stuff. But this week we've had, we've it's been pretty wild because we've seen Corey. How many bears have we seen? Thirteen? I believe, well in fourteen if you count the one that I was thirty yards from but couldn't see last night, and so, okay, fourteen bears. And give me the breakdown on the species of bears. You're getting smoked Corey's getting smoked out. Well, we've seen three grizzlies from camp four five grizzlies, and the rest were black bears. So five grizzlies and then so uh so nine black bears, five grizz nine black bears. Um, So let's start off by telling what happened on day two with the incident, as we'll call it. All right, bear, I need some input from you on this. So it had been raining, it had been raining, and it was cold. Temperatures have been fairly cold up here, which I like for bear hunting in the spring. M hm. And it's been raining, and right at last light, we've we've found a road that we liked, Corey liked and we decided to walk it. We started walking it and we found small amount of small what we believed to be a small black bear based upon the the gauge of the bear scat and the size of it, it looked like a small black bear. But then as we're walking, we're probably a mile from the truck, and we started seeing some big grizz tracks. And I mean, if you can tell a grizz track from a black bear track by its architecture, you know, uh, black bear, you're typically not gonna be able to see the claws and it's kind of rounder and just typically smaller a grizz it's gonna be much bigger. You're gonna be able to see the claws. And this track was just evidently grizz. Did you think so bear? I mean, it's like twice as big as a black bear track. I think we guessed it was about seven inches wide seven path, which okay when you're gauging bear tracks, and we got We tested this theory. I've done it a hundred times. We tested it again. Pretty much the width of the bear track add one inch to it, and that typically gives you the square of the bear. So if it's a four inch track, you go four plus one equals five and so that means it's a five ft square bear. So if you have a seven inch track, that's typically an eight foot bear. It doesn't always play out just like that, but it's get you in the ballpark. And the square of a bear, my goodness, was just digging ourselves a hole of having to explain stuff. Um, bear, how do you square bear? Do you know? You measure from claw to claw, like the wingspan of the front arms a bear. That's the high bear stretched out on the ground, and then from tip of the nose to the base of the tail. I don't up together divided by two and that gives you the square. So like a six ft square bear would be like a really solid good bear. Like there wouldn't be very many sALS that would square six ft, even though it's possible, Um, a seven foot bear would be a giant. I have seen with my own eyeballs in all the Canadian bear camps and all the bears I've seen and help people skin, I've seen one true seven footbear, and so everybody and their brother that you know, I don't know. I've seen a lot of bears, and I've only seen one that was a true seven ft square bear. That's just that's just the way it was, Like Andy Brown said, that's just the way it happened. I loved it when Andy Brown said that on about Louis Dell and Charlie turn their dogs out in October one. He just said, Clay, that's just the way it happened. I've only seen one seven footbear. Um. So there we are walking the road hour before dark, it's raining. We see grizz tracks, we start seeing a little bit of grizz scat, and we see black bear scat, which is because typically the griz push out the black bear. That's the theory anyway. Yeah, they don't like to hang out together as far as I've noticed. Yeah, and we get to the end of this road and we're sitting there trying to decide what to do and Bear newkem here's a stick pop way out in the woods. Probably seventy five yards away, and he says, hey, did y'all hear that? We stop, and sure enough, pop, we hear another stick pop, and Corey says, that's for sure an animal. You know, when you hear a twig snap, you know, maybe a log fell, or you know, just something a squirrel drop a pine cone or something, you know, you never know. And it was two distinct crack and then twenty seconds later crack, and we're like, there's an animal there. And then we keep listening and we're keyed up on it now and we hear it's scratching. Kind of what was it doing, like digging or something. It sounded like a dig sir, something with claws was scratching or digging. Yeah, so it was right away with all the bear sign thinking. So Corey goes, that's for sure a bear. But it's in such thick timber, we don't know, we can't see it. Well, I have my Phelps Predator call with me, and so I go, hey, let's let's predator call that thing and see if he'll come in. And what was cool is that the whole week Corey had asked me if I had ever been successful predator calling a bear, and I've not done it a ton, but I told him that one time in British Columbia, we called up a bear that was probably three yards away by blowing on a a rabbit squealer and watched it come across the clear cut like in the bow range. It was a small bear and um. And then another time in British Columbia, on a different hunt, we had a sow out in a field bear John Newcomb, and the sow was feeding in grasses. Bear we didn't want to kill, We're just messing around. We are probably eight yards from her, and we go to whaling on a predator call and we were thinking she's gonna lift up her head from that grass and just come busting into us. She literally didn't even lift her head. And I'm not exaggerating. She didn't even acknowledge us. And we're yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, just whaling on this thing. It's like didn't affect her at all. And then one time in Washington, we probably made five or six sets of blowing her predator call for bear, so you know, mixed success. Well, I get about five yards behind bear and kind of tuck him up by a little spruce Corey gets up on a bank behind some trees. We've got two guns, were in grizz country, and so I pull out my bear spray, take the take the safety off, and have bear spray because we're in a tight quarters. You can see like ten yards in direction, and we got a bear out here. We're about to blow on her. Predator call. It sounds like a good idea. Man that fast looking good? Holy cow at that? Oh my lands, Wow, it's looking really good. So bear's ready, Corey's ready. We got two guns and bear spray and I started. Probably twenty seconds. I make eye contact with Corey and I can tell he's watching a bear. And what happened. There was a little black bear, maybe a four foot black bear, just bounding across the logs right for the call, and from what we could hear here scratching, Well that must have been what was scratching. Twenty seconds of calling. That bear was on us in ten seconds and bounded to the edge of the little opening we had and then just hit How close was it bear? He's probably like ten yards from me, and bear has his gun up and pretty much you feit stepped in the opening. I don't think we would have gauged much. We probably wouldn't. He probably would have just shot it. And so you got your gun up. Bears come running in and now you what did you tell me after that? You said it's kind of you said, it's kind of unnerving. Yeah, I mean, like because you're right behind me, and so like the bears, I mean, he's coming for the predator call. He's wanted to eat something. And it sounds like, I mean, you can't tell how big he is. You just hear brush cracking. So I don't know if it could have been a grizz I don't know if eight foot grizzlies about to bust out of the brush tan yards in front of me or black bear. So and so here come, here comes a brush crashing. Corey goes, there's a bear. I can't see the bear, and okay, do you take it from here? Corey. Once, once I could see it bounding and I could tell what it was. I whispered black bear, black bear, and both bear. John and I raise our guns up. We both had tags both ready to fill it. And the bear just came to the edge and stopped like it hit a brick wall. It must have winded us or seen us standing there, came to that brick wall, stopped and just turned and bounded the same speed away as it did coming in, and took five steps into the woods, and out of nowhere a big silver back grizzly bear, chasing right to left, chases that little black bear right up into a tree forty yards away from us. I mean, the whole scene was twenty thirty yards into the woods, but it chases the black bear how high into the tree that's up a tree. That little black bear was scared to death and so were we. So this little black bear comes bound in and I whispered black bear, black bear, black bear. When it stopped and turned around, and I knew we couldn't get a shot. Two seconds later, grizzly, grizzly, grizzly, grizzly. It was intense and just Clay and iron bear. We've just started screaming, hey bear, hey bear, get out of here. Bear. It was it went from all right, we're gonna get a shot here too, we need to protect our lives. It felt like, I mean, the way it was running across the woods like that, and it was the wildest thing, because all you know, you always feel like if there's black bear around, there's not a grizz around, and it is it is an incredible mystery. Why this grizz in that black bear were within no way, They couldn't have been more than a hundred yards apart because they I mean, we didn't call for thirty seconds. The woods are that thick though, they could easily be coming down parallel to each other right without knowing each other. It was wet, there was no wind. The scent kind of stays around you. It's possible they didn't know each other were there. And so I mean just a I mean, Corey just said it, but basically, this bear comes running the end, we're about to shoot it. Corey says, black bear, black bears the word, just like about to shoot the bears, thinking about it, and then he goes grizz, Grizz, grizz, And at that point we all bear clicks the safety office gun. I start yelling, hey bear, hey bear, Hey bear, hey bear, and kind of step out where I can see good and the black bear shoots thirty feet up a tree, probably fifty yards from us, and I look out and I see the grizz turn and just make eye contact with me. Out there at about I felt like it was a bowshot away, you know, forty yards, those beady little eyes just looking through the dark timber at you. It was such a wild scene because there's this grizz standing there and there's a black bear in the tree right above it, and bears trying to shoot the black bear. Bears like shoot it, shoot shoot it. And I absolutely would have let him shoot it. But I was thinking, is this smart to shoot a black bear? Because we're gonna have to skin this black bear back here? That was my thought. Why we know for a fact that there's a grizz right there the bear, the black bear would have landed on the grizzly bear literally, and so bear has his gun up and he's saying, Dad, I got my crosshairs on that black bear. You wanted to shoot it bad you? And then but we're yelling at the grizzly bear. So we're hey bear, hey bear, hey bear, And so the black bear is flipping out. He ran up the tree because the grizz chasing tree, and now there's three humans yelling at him, and so I mean, just no, sooner than all this have you know, we're talking, we've been talking about this for ten minutes. This happened in the span of twenty five seconds. Absolute chaos and anyway, the bears coming down the tree, and the bear gets halfway down the tree and stops, and bear says again, Dad, I can shoot, I can shoot, and I go wa wa wa wait wait wait wait wait, I just I don't. I just wasn't sure enough, you know. And if you're not a don't do it. And we weren't. It was just too much chaos to know what to do. Like, yeah, I think we made the right decision. That was day two, so we weren't. If it was day five, maybe you know, but day two, just take it, take your time, and we weren't sure. So that so that was a wild wild experience. Now, Corey, guiding one time you had to shoot at you know, to scare a griz. Tell me that story. Yeah, I had an archery hunter um that I was guiding, and we parked our horses and walked up this ridge, got onto a little bench and the same similar thing. Heard an animal cracking in the woods. But we're elk hunting, so assuming it was an elk, I mean, that was what we were after, and very elk heavy zone. And we got set up without even calling or anything, without seeing anything. We just got set up to try and call this whatever it was in hoping it was a lone bull, elk or something that's September. And I set my climing up behind a bush ten ft bush, a big alder bush, and I backed up about fifty yards and gave one little cow calf squeal, and whatever it was was walking towards us. You could just hear it a couple of cracks here, like it kind of sounded like a hoof. I was. I was just thinking, Okay, here we go, here's an elk coming in. Client was hoping for a big bull, but I was assuming he was going to shoot anything, Like maybe it's just a cow coming into the calf call whatever. Twenty seconds later, a giant grizzly bear stands over the top of this bush. Now that bush might have been nine ft tall. I might be over exaggerating, maybe eight ft tall, but that bear stood a foot over the top of that bush. Now Montana black grizzly bear, excuse me, don't get that big. But in the moment it was a giant. That bear stands up on two legs and is looking for whatever is making that noise. Now that bears on the other side of the USh from my hunter, and now my hunters on I think a knee or two knees waiting for an elk to step out from either side. He has no idea. This bush is so thick that he has no idea that there's a bear standing five yards on the other side of the bush, over the top, and it's looking around. And when I see that the bear, I pull out my forty four revolver and fired off in the air and just start screaming. And the bear gets down like it turned on two feet, took off and went up the hill, but not out of sight, just up and stopped like it scared it, but it didn't leave. That was a close call for sure. I mean, I think if he would have saw my hunter and caught him off guard like that, who knows what it was a big board presley bear. Who knows what the bear would have done. Uh, scared the bejesus out of that hunter, though. When I when he's quiet, just sitting there, and all of a sudden, a forty four mag goes off fifty yards and it scared him a little bit. Yeah, I bet it did. But you probably saved him at minimum from a very very close call and and maybe even from getting whooped on by it is could have could have happened. It was a close call, no doubt. Um. We were talking earlier about black bears and grizzly and you know, the grizzlies are typically the ones that you hear about being dangerous, and and certainly I would say that that's true. I mean, they are the ones that are dangerous. Um, but you you were telling me a story just randomly this morning about a black bear that attacked a guy. Tell me that story, Cory. Well, Corey's got some good stories, and you spend eight years guiding, you have a lot of good stories. Um. We're floating, floating our rafts down the river that I was guiding on and there was a single gentleman just on the river bank. I couldn't tell if he was trying a shoe or tying a fly on the end of his fly line. I was just sitting there up against a big boulder. And as we come up to him, we're saying, Hey, how's it going. How long are you gonna be out here? You can't back in the wood. I mean, you're way away from civilization. Yeah, we're pretty far in there. Um and chit chatting. But as the boat goes around this rock and this gentleman, as we're floating downstream by him, I see a little black bear five and a half maybe six ft black bear sniffing that rock like he can smell something funny. And I go, black bear, black bear, like, sir, get up, there's something sniffing right behind you. And he gets up and the bear scurries off, runs up into the woods. Didn't think much about it. There's just another another bear a little too close to human. But it freaked him out for sure. Come to here a week later, that gentleman got drug out of his tent by a black bear. Whether he had a Snickers bar in his tent or his toothpaste or whatever that bear. Now, I don't know if it was the same black bear or not, but that person got drug out of his tent and got beat up pretty bad. If I remember right, life flight had to fly in and a black bear. And when you told me that story, I mean, it makes sense to me that it was I mean, it had to have been the same bear. I mean, if it was that curious that maybe it's possible. It's very ironic regardless, Well, we were what we were talking about was what's more dangerous a black bearing or a grizzing And I mean, the obvious answer is grizzly, but they're they're definitely more grizzly fatalities. But there are quite a few black bear attacks. But black bears aren't much much much larger geographic area, I mean exponentially larger than where grizz are. So it's not really comparing apples to apples, you know, but bear, what's the closest bear encounter you've had? Probably that the the one we just said. Have you ever been bear baiting with me? When we've had bears? Get? I mean, I've remember one time whenever I was probably like ten, we were going in on a bait and there was already bear there m hm. And I actually remember twice that happened, and once where we were baiting and there was kind of a bear just like probably fifty yards away from us. It's kind of circling in Oklahoma. Do you remember the one time we had a bear? You were just a little boy and there was a little bear at a bait, and uh, I kind of halfway remember saying, hey, bear, see if you can see how close you can get to that bear. And you started stalking, and I mean you were just a little kid, and uh, you kind of got a little ways away from me, and all of a sudden, I was like, this is a really bad idea, and I called you back, and then I I went in and stalked up pretty close. It was when we first started baiting bears. Pretty you were guiding. Yeah, yeah, I think I kind of remember that I sent you in and it was such a small bear. I was like, it was just kind of funny. And then and then the bear didn't wasn't afraid, and then I moved in and got about five yards from it. And then I remember having the initial thought, first time I ever thought it of that that's like a hundred and twenty five pound raccoon and I have incredible respect for a raccoon. And I was like, oh, I get it now. There was a time when I was like, I remember having a philosophy at one time in my life Corey that a hundred and fifty pound tough man ought to be able to combat a hundred and fifty pounds bear. I was like, bear muscle. Muscle is muscle, So if it's a hundred fifty pound bear, other than he's got claws and teeth, you should be good. And then I've recanted that sense. I think bear muscle is more legit than human muscle. Now I realize how stupid that was. Punch him in the nose. Punch them in the nose. It's like hitting a man in his groin. I've heard, I haven't had two yet, but if you punch them in the nose, it hurts him. Yeah, that's their weak spot. M Well, okay, so that was the exciting part of day two. The exciting part of day three was we we decided to walk back into an area that was just kind of walking only, and we've we we left the truck around one o'clock. Would you say, guys, one o'clock. We leave the truck pretty early, and we start finding quite a bit of grizz sign and griff sign. It's just gonna be like huge piles of bear scat that are just way bigger than you know, a black bear would have. It's usually pretty obvious. It's like the size of a horse horsecat. Yeah, and so we started seeing some grizz sign We continued to do a little predator colling. We were kind of encouraged by our success with presuted Colin, so we had a pretty good system where I would have the bear a spray out and I would be turned around behind these guys and they had two rifles. And we started predator calling in bigger, more open areas where you could see something coming. And we we probably predator called four or five more sets and and never had any success. Even though we did. Predator called at a sou and cubs that we saw, and they moved towards us slightly, but they wouldn't commit to coming in. We could see him a long ways off, so on this day, I'm getting ahead of myself, but we we would later in the day see a sow with cubs, black bear, black bear predator call at him. The sal just got real nervous and got pacing around, and she'd trot forty yards closer to us and then stop and the cubs would run up to her, and then she'd kind of run back, and you could tell us she was just kind of confused, and she was out there about two yards from us and never would commit but m and we just wanted to see what she would do. But prior to that, we're coming around. We started seeing some bear scat in the road, and then what happened bear? We come around a corner and we look up and what do we see. It's like a almost completely blonde Hold on, hold on, you're missing one the grizz Oh, I don't want you to cut to the chase yet. Before we saw the sow and two cubs. We've seen a lot of bears this week. We saw a grizzly bear probably eighty nine yards away. We kind of come up over a little rise. There's a grizzly eighty nine yards away, just in the wide open, and we watch it for a little while, and finally it kind of moves off and we we let it. After we watched it for a minute, we kind of let it know that we were there, just kind of made our presence known, just kind of waved our hands a little bit. Yeah, it didn't take much. She saw took off, took off, and that's when we hunted on up, saw the black bear, sound cubs, and then we split up for the first time in the hunt. Corey kept going down the road, and Bear and I dropped off the mountain to a lower road that we'd found on on X. We knew there was a road route below us, and we've been split up. It took us probably thirty minutes forty five minutes at most to get down to the road, and we're making our way back to the truck. And now it's about seven o'clock and Bear and I are coming down this road and this road corey just beautiful green grass, which is perfect. And it was in a cut, so both sides of the road had, for whatever reason, they had been cut by the Forest Service. So there was just like big openings, which is great, and around the big openings was big dark timber. And you know, it's getting the last two hours of daylight, just prime time, and you're just slipping along, just just trying to see a bear before it sees you, and you're thinking it's gonna be a hundred and fifty yards away or or ninety yards away. Bear and I are just moving down through their slow and Bear was I pumped about that? I mean, just was I Like, what did I say? You were saying that this is where we're gonna kill a bear? Ye? Now, I say that like every day we go hunting, but this one was like this one, I was a little amped up more than usual, Right, yep, could you tell. So we're walking down this road and I'm this is bears first spring bear hunts, so so I'm trying to just tell him how how good this scenario is that we found ourselves in and uh, yeah, man, the bear fat is looking incredible liquid gold here. So what we've done is we've yeah, we're gonna get back to the hunt. We gotta we gotta talk about this for a minute. We've pulled the heat off of this fat and there's there's still what I would call the cracklings. Did you see one? It's pretty just like chicken. Tastes like chicken. Yeah, it's hot, but yeah, um it's like a pork, I would say. The oil is light like, kind of amber colored, and the cracklings there's a we'll get a little bit more liquid oil out of that. The finer that you can cut your bare fat, put it on low heat. The finer that you can cut it, the more yield of liquid bear grease, bare oil you'll get from it. All we did was we cubed up. We cubed up about five to seven pounds of bear fat, put it in the Dutch oven and put good heat on it. And Corey has been stirring at this whole time, and so it's now probably eight liquid solid and the little cracklings eventually get down to where they won't render out in to liquid oil anymore. The best way though, to do it, to get the most yield of liquid oil and burgrease is to grind it um. But in this scenario we had to We had to just dice it up into like one inch cubes and then just keep it stirring, keep it on good heat. And what we'll do now is we're gonna let it cool down for a while and we're gonna run it through a dish towel as a filter to filter out any just any particles that were in there. You know, some of our meat in the field, you know, there might have been a something on it. We're gonna filter it through a dish towel and pour it into some jars that we have, and so we'll get some fantastic oil. But we're gonna kind of let it. We'll let it take a little bit of heat, but we're gonna let it cool down. So there we were Bear John. We're walking down the road. It's prime time. We're looking out to our left at big snow covered mountains, walking through a road of emerald green. It was like a bear hunter's dream. It's like it being November five and you're setting over a bunch of good sign and in your white tailed tree stand and if you just feel like it's about to happen. I really felt like it's about to happen. Well, what happens there? What happened? Well? So we so we're walking down this road and there's kind of like this little rise in the road where it kind of goes up and then drops down, and there's like a little brush pile almost to the left of the road right even with like the peak of the rise, so we can't really see anything in that area, like because the brush is covering it. And then there's the rise, so we can't see over that. So we come up right to the top of this this little rise and you like dug down and you're like Bear, So I like kind of see it, and I can see that it's like blonde. It's real confusing hunting with somebody named Bear yes, especially when there's a grizz and a black bear running that yet bear bear, No, bear, bear, bear, No, seriously, one time, one time, Corey and I keep interrupting this story. We'll get there. We gotta draw this out, man, you can't just spill the beans this quick. No. One time, while we were hunting this week, all three of us are walking, We're all just scoping out the woods. It was quiet, and I was trying to say something to bear John Newcomb, and I said bear, and I remember Corey jerked his head like he thought I was saying bear, there's a bear? You did. There's a slight difference between uh, there's a bear and bear, I mean, almost indiscernible. But I was like, no, I'm just trying to get him. So okay, there we were yep, and so so I say yeah, like saying that there's a bear, and so what I was saying, yeah, And so I see the bear like right as right as you go down, like I see you go down, because you're looking over here, and I see a bear like probably thirty five yards from us. And at first, like I could tell it was like black bear shaped, but it looked like a grizzly like I was thinking. I was thinking, like, oh man, it's just another grizzly, which would have been cool, but you know, we're trying to get a black bear and we've seen a lot of grizzlies at this point in the hunt. Yeah, you had just seen one an hour before. Blonde grizzly Yeah, I mean almost the same color as the one that we saw, a grizzled grizzly bear. So we kind of like peek back up and you look at it and you're like, that's a black bear, and you tell me to look at it, and I look at it, and I mean, it's definitely a black confirmation from him, because you know, to hunt Montana you have to take a bear I D Digital Bear I D test where they show you pictures of color face bear and grizzly bears and it says, is this a grizzly bear, is this a brown bear? Is this man? It's it would be hard to describe, like unless you when you when you see him, you know, and you know bear hunters know it would be hard to mess up. But at the same time, this bright blonde bear, like I did a double take, just like God is that is that a black bear? And I wanted and bear was going to be the one to pull the trigger, so I wanted him to be confident too, and I trusted his judgment and I said, are you sure that's a black bear? And he said, oh yeah, what what what distinguishing characteristics? Um, it was just small. It was more round, just like it's body. Just second general, it had a little bigger ears, a little closer together. Um that's really all. I mean. It just looked like its face like if you if you couldn't have seen its head, you'd have thought it it would have it would have been hard to tell what it was. It's hand to me, its head was slightly darker than its body, yeah, and darker legs, a little darker legs. And so once we bleach blonde on the top, I mean like beautiful, I mean just glowing in the sun. I mean it was incredible. Yeah, And so I get the gun up. There's kind of some like weeds in front of it. How far is the bear? Probably less than thirty five probably, Like I mean, we could it was a both shot. Yeah, And there's some weeds in front of it, and I mean I probably could have shot through the weeds and when he killed it, but I was not gonna risk that, so I kind of like walked to the ride a little and you were telling me to shoot, but there were weeds. Yeah that there were weeds, and so then it took a big step and it was clear. So just freehanded, just freehanded, you know, yep, shot it jumped up, probably ran fifteen yards and died right next to this little brush pile. And yeah, we walked over to it and it had a big like diamond crest on it, like it was like the shape of a diamond, like a white white crest, but there was nothing in the middle, so it was just like it was. It was the color phase blond brown in the middle. Yeah. Yeah, and for real, I'm not just saying this, it is. It's the prettiest black wear I have ever seen. Me too, we I was shocked. But I mean when we walked up to it, and we knew what color it was because we saw it when we shot it. But then I walked up to it and Bear picks up that front leg and it's got this not just a small diamond, not like a six inch diamond. I'm talking like a fourteen inch diamond that goes like way down in between his front legs and way up on his chest. Just this big white spot. You'll see it on my Instagram. I'll post on the Clay Nukelem Instagram. Um a picture of the bear. I mean, just beautiful bear. Um. I've never killed a blonde bear. I've killed multiple color phrase bears, but chocolate, cinnamash, cinnamon ish, but never cineamash. Never a blonde bear. And uh, and then okay, I'll say this. Typically in the West, you can almost take this to the bank. Typically in the West, if you see a bright blond black bear, usually it's a sow. I don't know why, I can't describe it, but usually the soals are the ones that are gonna be super light, that bleach blonde blonde color. So when I saw the bear, I actually thought it was probably a sow. But we looked it over and could see it so good, and it was kind of in the wide open, so, I mean, we knew if it was a sou. I didn't have cubs. And when we got up to it, I said, lift that thing's legs up, and sure enough, it was a bore and it was a It was a good one. Man. We we squared it out back at camp and it was six ft three wingspan and then five ft eight nose to tail. Yep, so it ended up square and just under six ft. So if you divided those two numbers, ended up squaring five ft ten and a half is what we decided. That's a where Western bear hunters dream bear right there it is for up here. That's a great I mean, if it had been a solid black bear, we'd have been thrilled even at the size of it. So the fact that it was a colored bear like that was just off the charts, man, off the charts. It's a rare, rare bear. And we thought that like whenever I asked you, like what you'd think it would square at first, Like when we just first walked up to it, you said, like, it'll probably be like a little bit about five ft. Once we started dragging it out and started skinning it, you said like maybe five and a half and then one so we had it like stretched out in the back of the truck. Then yeah, just just like bigger usually they get smaller. Well, yeah, when so bear and I decide, So we're now in grizz Country. Deluxe and we've got a bear on the ground, and so we knew we needed to work quick. And it was it kind of was in a It fell in a little bit of a brushy spot. So I said, hey, let's drag this thing into that wide open right out there, or we'll skin it. And so he and I start dragging the thing, and it was all we wanted to drag. And that's when I thought, Man, this dude maybe bigger, a little bit bigger than I think. You know. I would guess the bear weight in the two pound range, you know, and for a Western bear, that's a fantastic bears a damn weight. A lot of bears. Corey and Man, I could make jokes all day. We've I've written articles about it about how typically people are at least thirty off on their estimation of weight. Uh, if somebody says it's two hundred, it's probably that. That's just my assessment of of of watching the world. Rarely is anybody under that um And and honestly, the bear, the bear was I'd say from one now counting the thirty percent, I'm hoping that's not thirty off. But well, those packs were sure heavy with all the meat the hide and the head. You guys were coming out heavy, so Corey was separated from us, and so we we go to breaking down the bear immediately. I mean, we take a few cell phone picks and we we know it's getting dark, and we're four miles from the truck, four miles from the truck, and I'll all of a sudden, I'm thinking, you know, we gotta be watching for Gris. So I pull out my bear spray, keep the lid off, the safety off. We go to skin in the bear and we get it broke down, and probably forty five minutes or so, and um get it in our packs and off we go to meet you and meet up with you. Anyway, incredible hunt. And since that time, Corey and I have hunted a little bit, well, we've we've hunded a fair bit since that time, but um, I have hadn't killed one since. So it's gotten a little warm, so are our time frames a little bit narrower. It was wet and cold for the first three days, and now it's been warm and dry, so it's been, in my opinion, a little harder to harder to find him when it's warm and dry like it is. So we've done well this week. Yeah, I seen a lot of bears. Yeah. Well, okay, I want to talk about the Genuine Outlaws episode number two, but I don't want to go into much of it, guys, I want to just I just want to touch on it. Um. I know both of you guys have listened to it, and this is this is a barg rease render in the field where we're literally rendering bargrease. And I want to talk about this podcast with the with the render crew from back in Arkansas too. But Corey, you listen to it. What was your what do you think? Man? Intriguing subject number one? I mean and and brave subject. Nobody's really talked about this sort of thing. You know, there's movies and books of outlaws and bad guys. Nobody's really dove in and and uh, operated on it like you are in the hunting space. So yeah, well in the hunting hunting space. Yeah, exactly, Outlaws, poachers, what have you. So it's been an intriguing topic and I love that you're diving into it like you are. Yeah, you know that it was We talked about this extensively, but in the in the past, renders and even on the podcast, But I kind of want to be true to the culture of of of hunting of rural America. And I'm telling you, people where I grew up wanted to talk about Louis Dell and Charlie Edwards, and so did I, And so here I have this podcast where we talk about all things hunting, and I'm diving into these little nuances inside of hunting and and and just trying to figure out what kind of what makes us tick and what what what's special? And what is is what what what is the culture of hunting? And obviously poaching and outlawn is a negative thing in any context, but I was just really really had questions of why these guys kind of held the positions that they did inside of our community and why we were so intrigued by and uh. I still don't have all the answer for that, but you may never find the answers. But they were definitely a interesting oh super interesting brothers Bear. What do you think, man Um? Yeah? I thought it was interested too. I remember, like you and Papa talking about him, like just how they a lot of those stories that were on the podcast, I remember hearing from you and Papaul, But yeah, I thought it was interesting they had to be like really good hunters, I feel like, because I mean, like we hunt in that area all the time, and like the fact that they could kill more turkeys than we're legal. To me, I mean, I know there were more turkeys back then, but still to me, seems like you would have to be a really good hunter. We can hardly kill one. Yeah, man, if we were trying to be outlaws, we'd have a hard time. We were like, dog got it, I can't kill over my limit for anything. H Uh, Poachers, We need to make a movie called Poacher Has Gone Bad where a couple of guys go out and inspired by the Burglaries Genuine Outlaws podcast series, they're like, dog gone up. Man, we're gonna be poachers and they go out and they can't kill a thing. They're like, try to break every game wall. This is a joke, people, This is a joke. Um bear, did listen to this make you want to be an outlaw? Okay? Good? Just checking, just checking, man, my dad, if Gary nucom were here, he's guests on the render often he kept a he did a good job with me in I mean just he he exposed us to that stuff. And I said at the beginning of the podcast that Dad, he instilled me with a value system that I mean I've not always upheld to. I mean, but I knew breaking game laws wasn't the thing to do or something I was interested in going out and doing on purpose. And but at the same time, he exposed me to all this stuff, and um, I think it was really value to me to see him and he really did. Man, he was He was influential to me in a lot of ways when it came to people, because he dealt with so many people and when he came home, those are the stories he would tell about the people he had met. And I just I don't know. I I probably just was sitting there as a kid, not saying much not He probably didn't even know that I was being impacted by a lot of that stuff. But that's the beauty of kind of father and son relationship, you know. But what else do you think, Corey, anything else? What else stood out to you? This is kind of like an abbreviated an abbreviated render. As we talked about the genuine Outlaw series, I mean, who was a Neil took the words right out of my mouth. Just describing them similar to Robin Hood, how they were poaching all these animals, but they didn't waste the thing, and they were giving them to the needy, the less able who couldn't get out and hunt, you know, like helping people out at the same time breaking laws, being unethical if you were to describe it, but but helping people out at the same time. Yeah, I mean I could see those two being like Robin Hood and Little John walking through the forest shooting turkeys and deer, golly wood a day, beautiful rhyme. You know when I said all that, it wasn't to justify what they did, because it doesn't justify what they did is just interesting and and just it's just interesting and in there ethics when it came to wasting meat, I would say they had very high standards, especially for the time when it came to wasting meat. And does that mean I'm trying to say it was okay for you them to coach, No, I'm just saying it was interesting. Well, you wish ethical hunters had that same drive to utilize the entire animal. There's many people who only get one deer tag, one elk tag, but they don't take all the meat. They don't cook up those deer elk shanks. You know, they don't know about it. They don't. And it sounds like these guys, even though they were breaking laws, they were somehow on the bright side of things at the same time. There was a dark side and a bright side. Well, and then I was really, uh, I'll tell you what, We're going back to the render pot. Let's go ahead and take that off of their court, and let's just put the Dutch oven live on it so it doesn't get ash in it. I think we're so we've rendered it down. It's probably over liquid. We're just gonna let it cool in this pot before we poured into our jars. But I'm gonna guess we've got over a gallon. Would you say we've got to? Do you think it's probably a gallon? I mean, and pouring a gallon milk jug in there, Yeah, that's a gallon. Yeah. So no, I I was interested in I asked. I asked Stony. I said, I said, hey, Stony, do y'all have some deer heads from your uncle and dad. I envisioned them just having a barn just full of deer horns, and uh, and to be honest with that. I wasn't gonna put that on the podcast. I wanted to go see him. I mean, these guys were deer hunters too, I mean their whole life. I mean, like serious deer hunters and says, oh no, they didn't keep any horns, and and I was like, what didn't keep any horns? I mean, when you hear poacher, you think, oh, somebody that's wanting to shoot the biggest buck and you know, brag on what a big buck he killed. Around here people anywhere, I guess you they shoot animals and you just see a decapitated critter because that's where they were after, was the trophy. And and does that make it right to poach? No? And then the one time that they turned somebody in, and that would have been funny, like in our community, like if you would have heard Loudell and Charlie turned in somebody the game and fish, I mean, people would have laughed at that. You know that these guys were turning someone in. But the one time they turned somebody in was when they found behind a deer camp, they found like four deer that just the backstraps and horns have been taken, and they were like, Nah, that's it isn't gonna fly. They call it game of fish. Does that make it right? Bear? It just makes it what interesting? Yep, that's what it does. It just makes it's just interesting. And I always like it when um when when I don't, I just feel like just everybody's got a story, and there's value inside of just about any story and just about any person's life. And I like it when we kind of can can see interesting stuff inside of maybe someone that the world had labeled as a negative person. And we're gonna dive into this a lot deeper. Man, do you all have any closing thoughts on the Outlaw podcast? Corey, let's just start their Outlaw podcast closing thoughts. I hope you dive in and dissect if there's another duo of outlaws or do you want some more? I want some more? You're going on the record. I know this was kind of just like a a tippy toe step into this subject, and I hope there's more offended by this, because no, man, it may have been just like Crystal Clear like I was. I was obviously I was confident enough to do it, but I and I have taken a little bit of heat because it is controversial. It's controversial to paint someone who's clearly an outlaw in any kind of positive light. And I absolutely I mean we talked about their whole lives and so. But you want some more of it? Okay? Bear? What what? What do you think about the Burgers podcast? You're a fan or you just kind of like it's the dad talking. I like it? You like it? How much do you listen to the Barger's podcast? Honestly? Um, well, since I started driving on my own, I've been listening to it because I thought you were gonna say more and I was gonna be really proud. Oh yeah, no, because whenever I'm in the car with you, when you're driving me places, you know, we always listened to them. But whenever it's just me, I I listened to him to edit them. Corey Bear, how often do you listen to the Meat Eater podcast? Probably never? Oh, well, that means areas must be a little better no offense. Well, hey, great week, what a week? Great week, Gris Encounters, Bear Encounters killed the beautiful bear ate some great food. We're hunting in cories. This is this is Corey's place, and man, thanks a ton for having us up here. My pleasure. Thanks for coming all the way up here. Hey tell us, I never got to what you do for meat Eater, now you have you. You were the what I was the communications coordinator answer and all the incoming emails to meat Eater at the meat eater dot com. But I just got promoted to the hunt and fish coordinator. Yeah, which I'm fresh at this role. Yeah, I'm excited to work. I'll be able to work a lot closer to the crew Clay Steve Johnnie. Yeah, Yeah, I'm excited. Excellent. Well, we got some bear fat to pour into some jars and the next bar Grease podcast. I'm very excited about it. It's it's more outlaw stuff, but it's more us dissecting the American intrigue with outlaws, not just American, the human nature's intrigue with outlaws and kind of dissecting it. I think it's gonna help for me to make sense of some of this. Yeah, I'm gonna need some of that too, because that's what's intriguing. Like, I didn't realize it was an intriguing subject, But being able to delve into that will make it. And I may or may not have interviewed the director of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission about poaching in Arkansas. Cool. You have to see if I did or not. Maybe that's just a bluff. You think it's a think I'm bluff and bear. Doubt it a bluff and bear. Get it, bluff and bear. We've been bluffed out maybe once or twice this week. Keep the wild places wild because that's where the bears live. Amen.