00:00:12 Speaker 1: Welcome back to another episode of Cutting the Distance Podcast. I'm Dirk Durham. With spring Bear season right around the corner and folks getting ready to set their baits. I thought now would be a great time to air this episode. I recorded this podcast last year in the spring of twenty twenty two, in the great state of Wyoming with my good buddies Cody Wilson and Phelps Game Calls business manager Corey Paulson. Now, we recorded this episode without any fancy podcasting gear. I'm gonna admit it was with my iPhone, so it may sound a little different than normal. So let's dive right into the conversation. All right, with another episode of Cutting the Distance Podcast. This week, I'm the host, Dirk Durham, and I've got a cool couple of cool cats here. We're in the crazy Wyoming back country. We're in a little camper out here, nice and cozy, sitting around a camper table. And on the left, I got Corey Paulson, who is the business manager at Phelps Game Calls. And on my right we got Whiskey Wilson. We got a good buddy, Cody Wilson. Cody advised to come over and do a bear hunt this spring. And Corey kind of planted the seed or something with him at the Western Honting expol last last winter. And here we are, So how'd you do that? Did you like our wrestling him or something or make a bed or what? How did he lose and make him bring us to Wyoming. 00:01:47 Speaker 2: I'm a firm believer, and I'm more lucky than good in most cases. So I just kind of looked out that Cody lives in this fantastic place with bears that you can bait, and with the fact that Washington State, my home state, has eliminated the spring bear hunt, I I saw the opportunity with the coach Cody, and I just, you know, was one of those folks that realizes that there's only so many places you can hunt spring bears, and knowing that Cody lives here in in Wyoming, I just started asking questions and lo and behold, he's an expert at this spring bear hunting game. 00:02:25 Speaker 3: Right on. 00:02:25 Speaker 1: Well, let me give you a little background on Cody. He's a kind of an all around hunter. You know, he's an excellent elk caller, elk hunter, he's a he's a guide, he guides hunters in the fall. Sometimes guys goes out with a lot of friends hunting. He works in the natural gas fields and just a hell of a good guy. Helps out with Phelps in the in the booth a lot of times in the trade shows. He's a good hand, just really good friend. He's been with Jason a few times elk hunting and uh, anyway, it's a pleasure to come over here and. 00:02:56 Speaker 4: Be hosted by you man. Yeah, no, it's been super awesome. I'm glad you guys came. I'm no expert, but it's just fun to get out in the spring and go chase bears. 00:03:06 Speaker 1: So yeah, So Cody, he's been baiting bears for a lot of years and this this spring he's been working hard baiting bears. You know, it's funny. We've been having kind of a talk back and forth that you know, you talk about all sorts of stuff, and and I think there's kind of a sentiment amongst some hunters that, oh, you guys shot a bearer over bait. Oh that was that's way too easy. Why don't you do something that's hard. Why don't you that's kind of like the lazy man's way, And you know, I feel like that perspective is a little bit narrow minded. You know, maybe they see on hunting videos, maybe they just see a bear coming into bait and somebody's you know, shooting it or whatever, and they just don't see all the work that goes on behind the scenes. But Cody was telling us about we kind of pried it out of him. I don't think you really want to tell us how much work you put into this, where I actually feel pretty bad. He's worked his ass off putting baits out out, starting super early, you know, just as soon as he could. And man, you gotta tell us about that. You tell everybody about that. I mean, it's it's a pretty interesting, interesting perspective, which I wouldn't call the least bit lazy. 00:04:17 Speaker 4: Yeah, So it it all starts in the spring, usually March. You know, I'm gearing up checking snowmobiles, making sure they're running stuff like that. So, like, this winter has been really tough. Everybody knows that we've had a lot of snowfall, very high snowpack, so getting into some of these baits and some of the places that I go is hadn't been very accessible this year. So snowmobiles kind of the route that I took to get these baits in to get bait in them, but it all starts in March and lo and behold. Some of these areas don't let you use anything processed, so you're only real route of baiting bears is either dead calves from ranchers or cows or horses stuff like that. You can't use wild game, so all that stuff's out. So really you just got to have beef is mostly what it is, or horses or stuff like that. You can use beavers, you know, stuff like that, but you can't I can't go pick up dead antelope or deer. 00:05:25 Speaker 1: Any of that. But now a lot of people back home where I'm from, they'll they'll raid the bread story, you know, they'll get a lot of you know, out of date bread, candy, et cetera, and and lots of dog food or whatever. But your buddy Dan was saying that his bears are picky on his bait. They don't like dog food, they don't eat it. 00:05:46 Speaker 4: Yeah, so his his baits over on the other side of the mountains where you can use processed food. And yeah, his bears in the past at least five years, you know, we tried some. 00:06:00 Speaker 5: Dog food stuff like that, but they. 00:06:02 Speaker 4: Just they just don't like it, like they'll leave it alone for weeks if we don't change it. 00:06:08 Speaker 5: So we ran into that. 00:06:11 Speaker 1: So yeah, even dog foods considered a processed food. Yeah, wow, that's that's crazy, and it's every state's so weird. You know, they have their their own little set of rules and all these little nuanced things that that you that you can and can't do. Like an Idaho, you can you can pile bait right on the ground or in a barrel. And if you use a barrel, has to be a steel barrel. But here you can use a plastic barrel. Yeah, you can use any kind of barrel. It just can't be over fifty five gallons. And anything that you throw in, well, any bait that you're going to use has to be in the barrel. It can't be on the ground. Yeah, So back to writing your snowmobile in. He was telling us he's going out there after work in the dark, whatever, you know, whenever he's got the time to get, you know, to rebait. And he's got these these he's got these cave frozen fricken calves. He's got them stockpiled at his house, and like so ranchers, they have these calves that don't make it. They die. So he goes over and grabs them, and he's been stacking them up and he's placed there and you know in Wyoming it's cold and frozen and whatever. But uh as time goes well and things thaw out, he's he's running these these calves in, you know, whenever he can to get get them into the bait barrel. And I mean it's not easy, Like he's a kind of described like what you have to go through to get those those calves in the barrel. Yeah. 00:07:37 Speaker 4: So I would all these calves that I had stockpiled, I would pull two or three out, throw them in the back of my truck, jump snowmobile on go up there, and I would use just in like a these ice fishermen use these big deep sleds. So I would take one of them and I would just tie it onto the back of my sled on the bumper and i'd throw it tours for a calve in and i'd take off up the mountain. 00:08:02 Speaker 1: Well, you say sled, you mean snowmobile. You're you're riding a snowmobile. But you're pulling, the pulling the sled. Got it? Gotcha? 00:08:10 Speaker 4: And the problem with the snow this time of year, you know, it just goes to ship and the bottom falls. 00:08:16 Speaker 5: Out of it. 00:08:18 Speaker 4: It's hard on top, but once the sun hits it, like as soon as you break through, it's just like sugar and it it's just a wreck, just real rotten. Yeah, it's just terrible. Yeah, So running calves in there, you know, you get in a hairy spot and give her a little too much stroddle and lo and behold the sled sideways and the slede you're pulling, it's tipped over, upside down, and now you've got to go back and reload three calves that are not very pleasant to handle. So I don't know how many times I dump calves out of the sled I'm pulling and then have to go back and pull them back up to the sled and throw them back in. 00:08:56 Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just a tour. Yeah, that doesn't sound easy at all. So that's early in the season. Now as time goes by, you know, things are warming up spring, springtime is sprung, and your calves. See you said you would grab a hold of a leg and sometimes things are starting to get tenderized. They don't stay together real good. Yeah. 00:09:18 Speaker 4: No, you grab a hold of a calf leg to pull it back up to the ladder or whatever, and it just strip all the hide right off of it, so there's nothing but bear skin. 00:09:28 Speaker 5: They get kind of nasty. 00:09:30 Speaker 1: It doesn't sound like that kind of bait. Baitings for the faint of heart. So yeah, it's funny. You know, people they I think a lot of times just on social and on videos, they see all the the reward they see the bears come in seem to see somebody take one. But man, it's a lot of work just getting the bait up there and then now now like keeping bears on it. So you know, bears have other things on their mind. They have they have other food to eat, you know, whether green grass, whatever they've got. They've got mating on their mind. You know, maybe they find a girlfriend, they smell a hot soal and they take off and never to be seen again. So you know, the bears just don't live right there on the bait, you know, live in hand in mouth like like they're on some kind of welfare check or something. They kind of come and go and sometimes you get one, they'll be consistent or especially big bears. It seems like big bears are not consistently just living on a bait. It's kind of hard to catch those in the daylight hours. 00:10:29 Speaker 5: Is that kind of what you found? Yeah, for sure. 00:10:33 Speaker 4: You know, breeding seasons going on in the spring, so you know bears are not just eating all the time or hanging out or de bait. They'll go off find a sow try. 00:10:42 Speaker 5: And breed her. 00:10:44 Speaker 4: But like big bears, you know, if they do hang out on a bait, usually they're they're pretty seasoned and smart. I mean, they got big for a reason. And a lot of them bears they'll be nocturnal feeders like you won't. You'll see them once or twice on camera in the day, but you go to aunt them bears and they don't show up till after dark. 00:11:05 Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I've heard. I hear that cement from a lot of a lot of guys. They're putting bait out and a lot of younger bears. You know, you might catch them in the daytime, but but you know, we've been here for what is this day five? Yeah, we've been doing this for five days and we've only caught one bear on the bait. You know, Corey, he was you know, blessed to shoot a really nice bear. But it's not easy. I mean, you don't just sit there and watch the bears eat like it's Jellystone National Park bears eating garbage or something. I mean, I mean, these bears are smart. You know, they have other things to eat besides this. And you know, also you got a lot of it right now. We've got calves dropping, calf help dropping, mule deer, fawns will be dropping anytime too, So you know, they have some other things that they're probably a lot more appetizing than an old, nasty calf that died a couple of months ago. They're probably looking at those fresh that fresh food and thinking, yeah, that's probably a better option. So yeah, it's not a slam dunk by any means. 00:12:10 Speaker 5: Do you think, no, it's it's not. 00:12:13 Speaker 4: You know, there's a lot of videos out people watch stuff on YouTube where it's all kill shots, or it can be a little deceiving, you know, if you're trying to do this stuff on your own, because what they're showing you on YouTube is usually a highly populated bear. Are you like Alaska or Canada hunts like that. But in the States, I mean there's a lot of country out there, a lot of real estate, and the bears are spread out. You know, we don't have the bear population that they do in Canada or Alaska. But yeah, now let's switch gears here a little bit about back to what we're. 00:12:56 Speaker 1: Putting on the bait. So one of the baits we rebated Old Dan's bait over there. We've been checking it out too, and there's been some bears on it off and on. But we thought we would probably maybe kind of get the bears coming on it again by doing a bear doing some bear crack. You were basically a backcountry meth cook. You you were cooking. You were cooking some some stuff and I might even sampled it a little bit. I mean it tasted good. I mean I can I can see why a bear would like it. Yeah, I'm probably not going to taste the calves, but this was the bear crack was delicious. So yeah, tell our listeners about your process there was to cook up this bear crack and and what do you think bears like it? 00:13:44 Speaker 4: Yeah, It's just a mixture of sweets, really, is all it is. And the reason I like cooking at debit is to get that scent out there. I wanted to walk, you know, wave out through the trees and get that scent out there so then bears smell it. 00:13:59 Speaker 5: But it's really all it is is. 00:14:04 Speaker 4: I just take some syrup, a gallon of that marshmallows yellow mix and just mix it all together and get it boiling hot to where them marshmallows just melt into that syrup and the jello mix and just it kind of makes like a malt. 00:14:23 Speaker 5: And then I just dump it all over the bait. 00:14:25 Speaker 4: But I like to get it boiling to where that sin is just wafing out through the trees. 00:14:30 Speaker 1: It kind of boils over the sides too, and it gets on the coals and hot coals, and yeah, that really makes a lot of smell too. Yeah. 00:14:36 Speaker 5: Absolutely. 00:14:37 Speaker 4: I mean dumping a little on the ground, or if it spills out of the pod or out of the tin or whatever, not a big deal. It's just adding sin. Yeah, it smelled really good. 00:14:48 Speaker 1: And now I know some people kind of get they get extravagant with that stuff, whether they're I mean, they might even fry bacon right there. They fry up a bunch of bacon, got their bacon grease, or maybe they get some old secondhand friar grease from the local local, uh convenience store or whatever. Get that stuff cooking and pour some of that oil on the on the coals when they're done to just to stink it up. But we did. We were more trying to peel to the sweet side. And uh well, also what was our secret? So we had some lucky charms, some lucky charms, well I think it was the bag version. Yeah, it was like the generic version lucky charms, same concept, just throwing some sweet stuff in there. 00:15:31 Speaker 4: Some donuts. Gotta have some donuts jelly filled, jelly them. 00:15:36 Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I liked them too. We didn't buy that like the day olds. They didn't have any of those. We didn't. They didn't have any like old nasty ones for that's been sitting around there, go to throw out. We had to buy the fresh ones. And and I'm like, hey, Cody, get me that one. I want that, the raspberry jelly one right there. So Cory and I both which one did you get? I didn't know. And then we got some fancy ones with sprinkles and stuff. I didn't know. He's bearssed. I mean they're living, right, I. 00:16:03 Speaker 5: Mean they get the good stuff. 00:16:05 Speaker 3: Yeah, so fast forward like we did. 00:16:21 Speaker 1: That made all this effort in the later afternoon, you know. So then we went down to the truck. It took one. So we would always enter enter the bait area a certain way, and then the area you want to set up to stand and kind of watch from, we enter it from a different way. Tell us about that. Why do you do that? Yeah? 00:16:40 Speaker 4: So the big thing is there wherever I'm gonna sit and haunt the bait from. I don't want my scent going from where I'm hunting from to the bait. Now, I bait it a certain way, and I bait it that way the same time every time. So every time I'm going to the barrel, I go in that way just so they know that, all right, I'm coming from here every time. And now when I hunt it, I hunt it from the opposite direction where the wind's good. And I never walked from where I hunt it to the barrel. 00:17:12 Speaker 1: Yeah. That way they don't connect the dots, you know, exactly. And bears are smart, they are, They're very intelligent. They can live twenty plus years. Yeah, and they catch on demand and their little little tricks and little little things they do. So that's a good tip. So okay, we set up the bear crack, we burn it. I had a little bit of it. It was delicious. I wanted more, but you guys were looking at me kind of funny. I'm like, okay, I'm only gonna eat one marshmallow, but damn what I want to do over two or three of them? They were good. It was super good. So anyway, we let the fire burn out. We poured out all the crack, walked back down to the truck, hung out the truck shot the breeze for a while for a couple hours, and it's like, okay, now the winds have stabilized, so we'll sneak in that back door. They weigh and go set up and kind of watch the bait, and uh, what happened? I mean rain, I mean we have We've had so much rain this week. Wilding is rainy and wet. I mean there's water running everywhere. There's the creeks are like bulging at there. Seems pretty uncommon for what you guys normally see. 00:18:17 Speaker 4: Yeah, typically, I mean this time of year, you know, we don't have water running down the trails you're hiking, and it's been just a hell of a winter and this spring. I mean, hell, you guys have seen it. Oh yeah, the rain has been every day. Yeah, we haven't had a day that there's not been rain. 00:18:39 Speaker 1: Yeah, and a lot of it. So yeah, and like you said that, you're walking up a trail and it looks literally like a creek, yeah, running down it's crazy. So I should that should be for some good horn growth this year, and you know, yeah, it'll definitely help this summer, help all those animals that had a tough winter this this last winter and maybe get back on the feet. But anyway, so we set up there in the rain, watched till dark. Didn't see Jack squat, so you know, he would think like, oh, yeah, you know, this should be a slam dunk. Bears from miles away would be coming over here to eat these donuts. But it's not really the case. You know, they didn't they didn't find it right away. Or maybe maybe it's just too close to the time that, you know, too close to dark that we did that little burn, because maybe there was a bear close by and he just watched. You know, I think bears kind of watch sit back and kind of watch what we do sometimes. Tell Corey tell us about your hunt and the bear you shot, and how it all kind of played out as far as like Cody checking the bait and then how soon the bear the bear came in. 00:19:50 Speaker 2: Yeah, well, as far as the bait goes, it was pretty impressive. We we came in and Cody piked in a fresh quarter from a from beef cow a front shoulder correct which weighed how much I mean, I mean it was probably over one hundred pounds, Cody one hundred and fifty pounds. I mean it was a lot. 00:20:15 Speaker 4: Off a bowl that was seven or eight years old, So it. 00:20:19 Speaker 1: Was not like that seems pretty easy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but not We're gonna check the slam dunk fox again. Yeah, I mean, like it's the lazy man's way to hunt bears, all right, exactly, get that straight doughnuts in in front quarters of mootcous Yeah right, so he had that freshened up. 00:20:38 Speaker 2: One of the things that would you know, Cody kind of pointed out to us was these holes that the bears, you know, can access that bait. You know, over time, you know, they can get kind of get haullowed out a little bit. So having a bigger quarter like that, you know, it makes a little harder. You know, they're gonna stick around a little longer, so. 00:20:54 Speaker 1: It's kind of wedged in there. 00:20:55 Speaker 2: Yeah, and you can see that, and it's i mean conventional thought. You would think, you know, a bear, you know, they're these massive animals. They can do all sorts of damage and get whatever they want. And but it does cause that problem. And ideally we're trying to get that bear to stay around. So Cody had that set up. We were able to also, you know, stuff some sticks in that hole, so you can, you know, if something came around, you can you can get you know, from a distance route. We can get what about one hundred and fifty yards from that bait ish. 00:21:23 Speaker 4: Yeah, we just sit back at one hundred and fifty, just throw the binos up, look at the bait and if them sticks are all pulled out or where he's eating from, I mean, you know it's been hit. 00:21:33 Speaker 2: So and that was exactly the case. So we the morning that we went in kind of mid morning. We haven't been hunting these bears bright and early. That's just not their their operating Cody's been able to observe and use some trailt cameras to to get a lot of information. So we're using that information for this hunt. And and and based off that, you know, if you can you see that bait has been freshly hit, knowing that we had put that in there, then. 00:21:59 Speaker 1: That bear more than likely is hanging around. 00:22:02 Speaker 2: And so so Cody and I took a quick run in no packs or anything, just just our rifles, just my rifle, and I got all set up in a nice comfortable shot and he's like, hey, we're well, well, uh, I'm gonna go grab you know, go back to the truck. We'll get Dirk and you know, you're you'll be ready in case a bear comes in. I would say, you know, five minutes or less. 00:22:24 Speaker 1: You know. 00:22:24 Speaker 2: Then I, after Cody had left me, I saw the bear, you know, coming in from the right side in this opening, towards the bait, and and just observed him. You know, like I knew I had plenty of time. You know, you get excited because that's just normal. We're human. That's what we love about hunting is getting excited. So that bear went right to the bait. And then there's a nice down log, and I was able to, you know, just watch him through my scope, and he was walking on the log kind of towards me. 00:22:50 Speaker 1: Didn't go right to the bait, didn't go to the to the. 00:22:53 Speaker 2: That quarter that had already been hanging out that he'd been chewing on, and and I realized, you know, he was probably gonna steff up that law. So I was I was ready for the shot. And mentally, you know, you you always think, you know, where where am I going to aim? 00:23:05 Speaker 1: Right? 00:23:06 Speaker 2: That was my thought process, and we talk about it quite a bit because you know it's uh, bears are a little different, you know, you want to have a different thought uh thought process. You know, their their lungs are in a different spot than a than an elk. Because we're we're all hardcore el hunter, so we always compare things to where you'd aim for an elk. 00:23:23 Speaker 1: So their lungs are a little further back. 00:23:26 Speaker 2: So we've talked you know, kind of like middle middle, and then we've also talked you know, maybe about you know, a hand hand, you know the size of your hand behind the shoulder, you know, a couple of different thought processes there. But that was my thought process, was was middle middle, and as he came off that log, you know, I I uh, you know, squeezed off the shot and it felt like a really good shot. 00:23:46 Speaker 1: I had a really good rest. 00:23:47 Speaker 2: You know, I'm shooting a three hundred meg so obviously plenty rifle for for a bear that they don't need a whole lot. And uh, obviously I could tell that he had been hit, you know, didn't know exactly where, but if everything felt good at that time. 00:24:01 Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, when you guys first got there, did you go over the bait at all? No? 00:24:07 Speaker 4: No, I just we walked to my blind and then I just threw my biose up and I was like, yeah, it's been hit, you know. 00:24:13 Speaker 1: Okay, that bear came from the right, so probably from uphill above the bear the bait. 00:24:19 Speaker 4: Yeah, And I had that bear has been on the camera, and I had him on the camera at noon, so I you know, I knew that the time of day it was when we got there, and it was freshly hit. Like I highly suspected that that bear was still there. So yeah, like he's close, right. 00:24:42 Speaker 1: I think they kind of fill their belly and then go and bed down close and maybe even bed to where they can watch that bait and in case another bear comes in, they want to chase them off. Like if a little a little bear comes in, they could chase them off or whatever, kind of defend yep or maybe watch for the their buddy Cody that brings good Eastern drops him off to him. 00:25:00 Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, that's awesome. 00:25:03 Speaker 1: Well, we're still trying to find a bear for me, you know, since it's so easy and and you know everybody can do it. You know, we've been backing more bait in and and uh and it. We just haven't had any luck for me yet, which is okay. But the weather's been kind of weird, and I'll say rainy weather has not been a big producer for for bears. For me, I feel like, you know, nicer, clearer days. Bears seem to be moving around a little better. They don't like they're kind of like me. I don't like hunting in the rain, and they don't like hanging out in the rain either. 00:25:35 Speaker 4: So yeah, I mean, on top of that, it pushes all the scent down that your barrels putting off stuff like that. 00:25:42 Speaker 1: But the rain definitely doesn't help, right, Yeah, exactly. So tomorrow we're gonna get up We're gonna go check Cody's bait, the one that's got the the beef in it. I'm gonna go check and see if the bears have been back. They hadn't. We checked it this morning. We hadn't seen anymore sign there from after Corey got his bear. We put our scent all over there and when we were getting Cory's bear out of there. So we'll go check it and see if any more bears have gotten in there. We rebated it, and then we're gonna go back over the other side of the mountain where Dan's mate is and we're gonna check it again. We're gonna do another another some more meth cooking, crack cooking, whatever you want to call it, backcountry crack. We're gonna cook in it some more of that, maybe pick up some more donuts and lucky charms and the bait that sucker again, see if we can get another bear to come in come back in when we're there. 00:26:40 Speaker 5: It was hit. 00:26:41 Speaker 4: So yeah, we walked into Knight and sat it and there'd been a bear there, same type of deal. I shoved a but sticks in the barrel, so you know, they got to pull all them sticks out to get to the feed, you know, a six inch hole in the barrel whatever. 00:26:59 Speaker 5: I just feel it full of sticks. 00:27:00 Speaker 4: And then when we walk up to haunt it, I can just glass and look. 00:27:03 Speaker 5: At the barrel and be like, oh, yeah, it's been hit. So there's been a bear there. 00:27:08 Speaker 4: I just we didn't go to the barrel tonight because we knew is have the bear crack on it full of feed, Like, let's just go haunt it. 00:27:18 Speaker 1: Yep. Yeah. So sometime between wet when we watched that that bait the last time and then tonight that bear hit it. So we'll try to beat in tomorrow and kind of see how it goes and see what happens. So as far as a recap, I think, and you know, I get this sentiment from a lot of you know, successful bear baiter type hunter guys that it's not super easy. It's definitely not the lazy man's way. You got to put a lot of time and effort into baiting your bear baiting your bears because you know, if you run out of bait, the bears eat it all, they're gonna lose interest and leave. So you got to keep that thing full. You have to make the time to get up there, and a lot of times it's pretty physical. You know, we're not like hunting, you know, one hundred yards off the road or you know the minimum legal distance. I mean we're hiking a bit, you know, enough to where if you're hauling any amount of bait in there, you know, it does take a lot of efforts. So I think it's super fun to bait bears. It's just going to take you some effort. Also, best practices figure out what your bears like to eat. If they don't like if they don't like doug food or they're not liking something, don't keep trying to feed them that. Just experiment till you find something they like. Be consistent, make sure you keep the the bait full, and then like be secretive too, Like don't don't go direct from the bait over to where you're gonna sit and watch back out the same way you came in to the bait, and then use a different a different approach to where you're going to watch from. Because bears are smart, they'll pattern you, just like tails or elk or anything. I mean, they're animals, are they're smart. They figure they figure us out pretty easy. So any other closing thoughts that you could put into Capstone this out Bud. 00:29:11 Speaker 4: Yeah, go do it if you've got the opportunity, and you can bait bears wherever you're at. Springtime super fun, super fun to get out, especially after the long winter. It's everybody wants to get out. Calvin Fevers like, I want to go do some but yeah, it's super fun. Like Dirk said, them bears are super smart, so you know, use some of them tips and tactics. And I've had bears like a big part of the reason I don't bait it the same way and hunt it the same way as because you know, I've baited baits and walked out and I've had bears literally followed my tracks all the way back to the road, so they're looking, you know, Yeah, there's they smell you, they know you're there, and nerd tracking you back to see where you go. 00:30:05 Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, they're trying to figure you out. Yeah, exactly. Curious. Yep. How about you, Corey, what what's your thoughts on how things went this week and and baiting bears in general. 00:30:19 Speaker 2: I think it's just it's a really useful tool. I think all of us, you know, we just love to hunt but also we want to get a nice quality animal. I think hunting over bait gives you that opportunity, you know, you yeah, you can see and observe those animals. The interesting thing, you know, when I was this hunt specifically, you know, I was able to kind of watch this bear through my scope and I had a little white patch on him, which you know, Cody hadn't even seen yet on his observing, you know, so at least with that bait there, you know, I was able to see some some little tidbits of things that weren't you know, already known. So the bait was you know, allowing that animal to stay around. But you know, overall, you know, that's you know, just kind of my thought process. But I say also, you know, having good friends along, you know, the days kind of get long. Here you're sitting for a long time, having people that have really like minded attitude, They're hard working, you know, be able to kind of pick up your spirits and and just kind of pull you through. You know, when some of these sets are aren't fruitful because you just never know when it can switch, you know, And and and it happened real quick for us, and and so having having good folks along is a big part of that too, So we really appreciate everything Cody has done for us, and and uh, it's been pretty awesome. And and learning all his tactics too, it's just really eye opening and learning that process as well. 00:31:42 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I agree. You know, we've had just the best time at bear Camp. You know, we've we've it's I mean, it's not one of those where you have to get up at like three o'clock in the morning and you know, hike all day. And I can see why some people like maybe poo poo on on baiting bears. You know, they're are like, well, guys, you guys aren't like, you're not rough in it. You're you guys are standing a camp or you're not backpacked in you're not hiking miles and miles and miles every day. I mean, And that's another way to do it. And that's a freaking fun way to do it too. This is just a little different way. But man, we've had the best time. We've we've laughed, we had so many laughs and good conversations. We've had good food, you know, Cody's cooked for us, and and yeah, it's just been a blast and uh, as far as just baits in general too. Like another thing you know I'd like to touch on is is with a bait. You know, let's says out comes in and you get to observe for a while and pretty soon okay, now she's got cubs and he becomes evident. You know it's gonna gonna hold her, you know, hold that bears attention a little longer to where maybe you see that she has cubs, and that way you don't you don't want to take a South cubs in Wyoming, it's it's illegal it is to take a South cubs. So sometimes you know, when you're out you know, glassing or you know spot in stock or just insideale bear hunting, maybe you don't always see those little guys. You know, they're pretty they can be pretty small, and there could be some brush there you don't see them. They're really hard to I've had that happen before where I just I just didn't see the cub until later on. It's just, you know, so you have to really be careful when you're not when you're not at a bait, I mean, you have to be careful either way, but I feel like at a bait and it's kind of like dogs hunting. With dogs too, you can really be sure of your target to make sure you make the right decision. 00:33:38 Speaker 4: Well, and sometimes them sows wy'll they'll run cubs up trees until they know it's safe or whatever, so you may not even see the cubs till five or ten minutes after you know, so you really, you know, if you suspect it's a sell. I usually encourage people to wait. You know, we'd rather take bores and not shoot, but I encourage people to wait because you never know. Maybe she ran them up a tree and they're just hanging out up a tree, and then she's not gonna let them come down until it's safe. 00:34:13 Speaker 1: Right. Well, man, I can't thank you enough for this, for having us over, you know, bear hunting. I know you busted your tail a lot to make sure there's some baits here, and but it sounds like that's something you do every year anyway, and you love it, and we're just thank you for the opportunity to come and do it, and thanks everybody for listening. We're gonna try to get some more bat baiting podcasts in the cooker here coming up, so stay tuned and we'll see you in the next episode, and the big time