00:00:05 Speaker 1: Welcome to this country Life. I'm your host, Brent Reeves from coon hunting to trotlining and just in general country living. I want you to stay a while as I share my experiences in life lessons. This Country Life is presented by Case Knives from the Store More Studio on Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you the best outdoor podcast the airways have to offer. All right, friends, grab a chair or drop that tailgate. I've got some stories to share. Cinnamon bears and chocolate gravy. Good night, nurse. We got a lot to talk about this week. I left y'all hanging just when the action was getting good. The wait is over, the fishing to go bear hunt, Meet me at the fire and let's get started. Last week I told you the story of the struggle of getting me in all my plunder across the border into tim Hortonland. It wasn't really all that hard, and it could have been a lot worse had it not been for a couple of employees of the airline everyone up north seems to love to hate. They took an unsolicited interest in yours, truly, like them or not. The unnamed lady in Toronto and Joscelyn and Saskatoon sought me out in an effort to offer assistance after I'm sure seeing a look of despair on my face. If you miss that one, go back and listen. We'll wait for you right here. We ain't waiting on nobody. They'll catch you up. So now that the slackers are out of here, let's get into camp, meet the rest of the cast, and start chasing bears. I introduced you to Nick Goss last week. Nixa a young man and a professional lineman who builds the big power transmission lines that push electricity through the endless miles of Saskatchewan, the big suspension towers that supply power to the bubbs around the rinks where all the little hockey players practiced really hard to come in second place at the Olympics. He met us back in Stony Rapids and flew with us. Waiting there to help get our gear unloaded was Spencer Richards. Spence is a native of Nova Scotia and a wildlife by alogists working on his master's degree. Spence is smarter than a lot of folks. I know. He's quite reserved, and his muscles have muscles. I thought I was gonna have to take steroids just to watch him in the kitchen. He would serve as our chef in camp and was a college football teammate of our host and lead guide, Dante Tobaku. The three of them ranged in age from twenty five to twenty seven, and I'll admit when we pulled into the dock and started unloading our stuff, I had mixed thoughts about the kind of week we'd be having. I was in the guiding business for a long time with my brother Tim Hunting camp atmosphere usually coincides with the folks that run it, with the COVID era of college sports, giving these boys some extra rounds of college life. I dreaded the thought of that lifestyle all over again. I wasn't worried about Dave Gardner and I. We were there to do a job. Turned out I didn't need to worry about anything. Dante Tobaccu's father was a Romanian immigrant who met Dante's mother in the Land of the Living Skies thirty years ago. And while Dante's only been present on this spending or we all called home for the last twenty five years, the last decade he's been guiding in one fashion or another, with each passing year being more in depth as he deald further and further into the business and the lifestyle. Dante played quarterback at a Kadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, quite possibly the greatest college town name in the Milky Way. Why their mascot is in a wolf is a complete mystery to me. But during the off season Dante came back to Saskatchewan to guide fishermen and hunters. A few years ago he partnered with Patrick Babcock and has been operating this part owner of Pilot's Lodge. We were in what I affectionately referred to as Fort Fondelock, the remote cabin and area I had just flown into. That's part of the bigger concern headquartered over at Cree River. The log cabin was built in the sixties, seemingly with plans drawn up by Dick prinike And that would be our headquarter. And if you don't know who mister Prinikey is, do yourself a favor and look him up. Anyway, the main cabin housed the kitchen in the rooms for Dante, Nick and Spence. David I would share an a frame bunkhouse with separate rooms for each of us. Dave's entry door faced the long cabin mine faced the river. On the east side of the a frame was a tool and equipment shed. Adjacent to that was a metal building that sat on a concrete foundation. Concrete that was flown in a few bags at a time until the requisite number was obtained. Inside there, bar bait was stored, secured with a heavy metal door hinged across the top that took two folks to safely open and tie it off, or an ATV winch. If you were there alone, And if you were there alone, you were most assuredly by yourself as far as humanity went. The closest community of people were forty one miles away by air. I think that's like six hundred kilometers or something, not really sure. But by yourself as far as nature went, No, sir, you were in the very hub of activity. Underneath the doorframe, where it sealed against the concrete foundation of the bait shed, was an eight inch trench dug out by bears trying to get into the bait cache of oats and Greece. How do I know that bears did that? I saw him do it. The second morning I was there. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's let's take it back to the walk around. North and east of the main lodge was the privy or the outhouse. Now we'd call that a two holder where I grew up, and a plywood wall separated each seat. It was more than reasonably comfortable to tend to one's business there. One side had a door for the more modest guest, while the other offered a more scenic view of Saskatchewan as that portion that had been repurposed for a casting deck in one of the boats tied up along the dock. The absolute can do spirit of true Canadian outdoors men and women always brings a smile to my face and warms my heart as they thrive among the elements, making do with what they have and using only what they need. It is a common thread between all of the Canadian provinces and the people I've been blessed to meet and interact with. On the west side of the log cabin was a shower room. West of it was another bunkhouse. So that's it. That was it. That was the whole camp. An easy football pass from one end to the other, sitting on the north side of the Fonderlaut River, less than seventy miles from the southern border of the Northwest Territories. Dave and I got unpacked and we made a plan to actually start hunting that afternoon. Dante said we had plenty of time and the bait site he wanted to try first was less than thirty minutes away up river by boat. We wanted to grab a bite to eat. I needed to shoot my boat, and Dave had to get his cameras operational time was not of the essence. We were in no real hurry to get going for the evening hunt, even though it would be after two PM when we decided to load up and hit up river. It's late June and northern Saskatchewan where it never gets dark enough that you can't see how to get around in the darkest portion of the night. You wouldn't need a flashlight and open terrain to tell man from beasts. My boat seemed to be dialed in. I shot two groups in camp the same distance I'd be shooting at that bait. Both groups were where I was aiming, and Canada may have temporarily misplaced the case with my boat, but they hadn't allowed any misfortune to bother the sights. The weather was warmer than I expected, and at times the mosquitoes were worse than I remembered. I deal with mosquitos in Arkansas. As a matter of fact, the worst experience I've ever had with mosquitoes was an hour away from my house on the White River levee on an August coon hunt a few years ago. I have never seen them worse than they were then. The dogs and us were absolutely covered if we stood still on the levee for any period of time, so we kept on the move, and they weren't nearly as bad down in the bottoms away from the high ground here, though they seemed to be worse in different spots. Thermo cells did a great job of keeping them at bay when we were out on the bait, and if the wind picked up enough to make those less effective and blue mosquitoes away, so it worked out. The only time I really ever noticed them is when the thermo cells weren't running and the wind wasn't blowing. But inside was a different story. I burnt a cord of mosquito cours the week I was there. Normally i'd get back to camp, and about an hour before I take a short piece of coal and let it fog up my room like a cheech and chong van while I sat in the cabin with the rest of my contemporaries. By the time I retired for the evening, the coal was burnt out, and so were the mosquitoes. The floor was littered with enemy combatants, the likes of which I took great pleasure in sweeping out the door each morning, along with any sand I attracted him. The evening before our first evening hunt started a little after six when a young black bear walked into the bait. He was totally aware of our presence and absolutely unconcerned with us being there. He took up position at the barrel and began to feed. Here's the deal of hunting bears over bait. I'll say it here and will not entertain any discussion to the contrary. Anyone can argue against it all they want, and I, along with members of my family, served the nation where you have the freedom to oppose it. I have zero concern over any opinion saying it's unethical or cheating on any chance. Meeting with this bear on a spotting stalk where time is on their side, and decisions have to be fast as whether you shoot or don't shoot. I'd have probably started flinging arrows at him. Having him stationary at the barrel and being able to really look him over good allowed us the opportunity to judge his age, the size, and form an overall opinion that this bear had some growing to do. So we just sat and watched him. Even at twenty yards, using binoculars really gives you a good look. You just wouldn't get any other way other than walking up to him while he stuff just galloped full of oats and cooking on the latter of which he'd more than likely take a fence at. But giving him the once over with the buyos revealed huge bite marks and puncture wounds. Some were very fresh and and what can only be described as looking like gorilla glue. It was nasty and brutal. He had puncture wounds on his head and his throat, his chest, and his shoulders. Stark reminder that regardless of the perception of black bears being in contrast to grizzlies, which in most cases they undoubtedly are, they could still open up a can of who flung the chunk when they want to. And there was another bear out there somewhere that had opened one up on him, and that's the one I wanted to see. It wasn't long before Bear number two showed up, another black colored bear, about the same size as the chewed up one, but way more timid. He didn't have a mark on him, but he wouldn't commit to the bait while the battlescarred bear was there, and he showed no signs of leaving. As a matter of fact, he got in so relaxed that a couple of times he went to sleep. Bar number two slipped around behind us and out of sight in the bushes and was whining a kind of low key moaning. I never deciphered if it was directed at us or the snooze and bear that was laying on the groceries. He eventually he ambled his way out from behind us and back toward the barrel, bypassing it and the napping bear to disappeared for a while down the ridge toward the water. The bait was located at the back of an unnamed bay off the fond of Lock River, thirty yards from where we parked a boat and fifteen feet above it, in the elevation where the gentle slope wouldn't peak until reaching another thirty feet higher one hundred yards beyond where we sat. Our blind was makeshift and built from dead limbs and fresh cut jack pines, piled and stacked around like a fortification. There was no roof, and we were subject to whatever fell upon us, just as the as the bears were. As far as the piled up limbs went, they were mostly there for esthetics and peace of mind. The bears one hundred percent, No, you're there, and a wastehil pile of bramas ain't going to keep them out if they want to get in there and rummage through your plunder. I tell people who asked me for advice about hunting bears from the ground that the best thing to do is to not look like you taste good, or at least not as good as anyone sitting with you. That's worked for me so far. Those two bears hung around, rambled back and forth, and eventually moved away. By now, light was fading a little and the sun was dipping behind the ridge to our southwest, and it looked more like it was really cloudy than actually getting dark. I checked my watch. It was ten PM. We loaded up gear and called it a night. We were a day ahead on gathering content. The hunting wasn't officially scheduled to start until the next day, but because of a smooth transition flight from Saska to Too Stony Rapids and then a floatplane hop that got us in camp plenty early enough, Dante said we could go. Dave and I were there to hunt and tell a story. So we went to work. Supper was ready when we got back, and that's the way it would play out the following days. We'd go out, sit and look at bears, just waiting on the one that would stand out as the one I wanted to take home with me. Another part of the daily routine was looking both ways before stepping outside. Every morning. There wasn't a day that went by that I didn't either wake up to a bear in camp or see one out the window before the coffee got ready. And by outside the window, I mean right outside the window. They've got drone footage of the barris in camp. It's a statement for what Dante and the folks at Pilot's Lodge have done for the game in that area, which is mostly leaving it alone, hunting it with very minimal pressure, making as little impact on the land as possible. Now before anyone gets their drawers in the not thinking okay, here comes Brent's commercial for Pilot's Lodge. Since they let him come up there and hunt for free. Well, number one, you ought to know better than that, but now, and number two, that ain't the way we do things here. I paid what everybody pays to hunt there. I don't owe them anything for us filming there. If it had been a bad time, I'd be telling them that story instead of this one. But it wasn't a bad time. We made a team. From the beginning. Supper conversations were about hunting and strategy, for sure, but that was only part of it. I learned about Spencer and his family and the work he has left to do on his master's degree, along with the research he's done in connection with salmon that he calls salmon. There's an l plainly end of spelling there, Spence, So I hope that's not a question your master's degree test. Anyway, he should be a guest on Steve's podcast with the facts and the figures and the interesting stuff. He was spitting out at the supper table, Spence learned some stuff about Dave and I. One story was when New York State born Dave Gardner was down in Arkansas filming a squirrel hunt with me and Clay. We went to a cafe for breakfast one morning and Dave saw biscuits and chocolate gravy on the menu. Chocolate gravy is as southern as it gets. If you're unfamiliar, that's a whole other podcast for another day, so just relax. Anyway. I showed them the picks of Dave's face as he tested his first biscuit in chocolate gravy, and according to Dave, it was a life altering event and all for the better. I tell you that story to tell you this. One one evening, after coming in from hunting, Spence had looked up a recipe for biscuits and one for chocolate gravy and had them waiting for us when we got there. Now, how cool is that Not only had he been paying attention, but he nailed the chocolate gravy recipe. His biscuits were good enough, but the gravy was what made the effort shine like a diamond. And the coons behind. Then there was Nick, an accomplished fly fisherman and fishing guide himself with a little girl of wife back home in southern Saskatchewan, counting the minutes until he got back to him. I never saw him when he wasn't smiling or looking for something to work on, clean up, cook or improve. He showed legitimate concern for the success of our hunt and reminded me of my brother Tim, easy going with a big laugh and telling one story after another about guiding and dealing with people. The concerns I had upon a rival was short lived. Each of these guys had roles to play, and they played them very well. It made it very easy for Dave and I to do our work, which was to tell the story while waiting for a good bear and allowed the story to play out on camera, and then try to bring a bear back to Arkansas. We sat at another bait further upriver, but something always brought us back to the unnamed Bay. It was our third sit that the action peaked for us. It was two hours before we'd really expected to see anything when Dave heard a bear from over four hundred yards away across the opposit side of the bay. Slashing through the water. We watched through by nos as he slowly but steadily made his way purposefully in iron direction, crossing the swimming streams, hugging the edge of the bay as he closed in on where we sat. It was the one that had been there on day one that wouldn't commit. He repeated the same thing this time as well. Heventually moved off. A short time later, the first bearer we'd seen their return. His wounds didn't look any better or worse, but he also didn't appear to have any fresh ones. He only stayed a fraction of the time that he had the first time when we saw him come, before leaving at a steady pace with plenty of food left. Now the bear hunters listening are probably thinking, oh, some bickers coming for him to abandon his post like that. I was thinking the same thing, and we were both right. The bears in the northern Saskatchewan do not carry the weight normally. The bears in the south do. They have the frames, but they're more lean. As a rule, they make up for poundage with bigger skulls. That's not unusual for a two hundred pound bear there to have a twenty inch skull or better. There's just not a ton of calorie rich food sources for them to choose from up there. That's what makes the baits such a good source to choose animals in or past their prime to take off the landscape. Killing bears comes with a cost and responsibility that would be validated about twenty minutes later, after I looked up to see a mature, cinnamon colored bear approaching the bait from the direction that the last bear had left. That bear walked from behind the bait, passed the barrel and stopped a few yards between it and where we sat. He could see us sitting there and could smell the bait bucket if we'd sat less than ten yards away to our back right. I came to full draw as he walked to our left, and at less than fifteen yards he stopped. Dave whispered that there was a tree between the camera and the bear. Now, if I had shot, it would have defeated one of the purposes that we were there. The story that we were telling was how I had transitioned from behind the camera to be in in front of it, and then when Dave told me not to shoot because he couldn't see it. I knew the position, and he was in I'd been there before. I let my bowt down and watched that bear disappear to my left and the bushes where the barrel on the first day had gone and stopped and stayed behind us. Well, this bear didn't do that. I could see the tops of the small jack beares and willis shaking as he made his way through them on a course that would have him come out within a few feet of where we sat. He didn't stop, he never even slowed down. He kept the same face as he had when he entered, and he walked behind us within fifteen feet and stopped at the bait bucket, where he promptly stuck his face inside to clean up what was left. And there we all sat Dante. To my immediate right beside him was Dave, and fifteen feet behind Dave was a wild Northern Saskatchewan cinnamon colored bear running the search warrant on what was left of the bait for his next trick. He got up and walked down to the boat, climbing inside and messing with bags of oats he had stashed in the back. From there, he made his way back up to the bait barrel. I came to full draw and at twenty yards a liver shot. The prettiest color face barrier I'd ever seen in the wild. Now, I was less than excited about the shot placement. That I torqued the bow by squeezing the grip. I don't know. I didn't know. All I knew was that I didn't gut shoot him. Now, that's a very distinctive pop, and this shot didn't have that. It was one hundred percent liver shot. That was confirmed thirty minutes later when we went over and looked at the air, dark livery blood, and zero gut smell. The blood trail started not far from the bait, and it was considerable for about sixty yards and then it stopped completely. It was like you'd cut the faucet off. It's not uncommon occurrence. When the raw goes in and comes out on the same plane. You know, can seal off the exterior holes, and long thick hair can soap up what's coming out, and unless the bear rubs up against something, there could be little to no blood to see. For thirty minutes. We started over and over trailing the blood looking for clues, but lost it. Each time at the same spot. We walked out to the corner of the bay on a path the bears had been used coming to and leaving that bait site, but there was nothing but tracks, no blood. We decided to go back and pack up our stuff and come back later in the morning. Now, in my mind, I was gonna make the argument when we got back to camp to just wait a while and bring Spence and Nick back with us and start over. I would never get to plead my case, because once we got back to the ridge where the bait was, Dave looked across the corner of the bay less than fifty yards from where we'd stopped, and saw over the tall grass where we'd been unable to see, and there he saw my bear laying face down on the trail. He'd gone less than two hundred yards. In my urging, we walked over and Dante followed him up with a shot from his rifle, and that then, I do not apologize for killing animals. My regret lies not in the taking of life. It lies in the way it all came about. And I don't have to preach the folks hear about the value and the necessity of conservation stewardship and how regulated scientific based management is and how it works. It was my improper sight alignment that turned what should have been a short window between impact and death of only a minute or two to almost forty five. I don't know what else to say about it, other than I will continue to shoot and practice the safeguard from similar events in the future. Now we ain't even talked about the fishing, and guess what, we ain't gonna have time too this week. I'm I have to tell you about that on the next episode, A law with some fishing that I'll be doing closer to home. Matter of fact, I'm leaving here when I get done with this to head down to Louisiana the World Championship Squirrel cook Off. It's happening September the twelfth at the JB. And John L. Hunt Family Ozark Highland's Nature Center in Springdale, Arkansas. I'm going to be there, My whole family's going to be there, and Lake Pickle's going to be there, the professor at the Backwoods University. Also going on right now is the Auction House of Oddities. Media does this every year and we raise money for the Land Access Initiative. One of the items is this bowl right here, so Matthews Verdict's bow. It's got a dialed archery side on it. It comes with the quiver. There's lots of life left in this bow, and I used it to take the life out of that bear hanging on the wall back there, among some other critters. It's a good call, lots of fun. Next week, don't forget. I'll be back. We're gonna be talking about the fishing that went on that I hadn't told you about, and we don't fixing them. We'll do so until next week. This is the Brett Reeves signing off. Y'll be careful.