Bear Grease - Ep. 146: Alaska Stories (Part 2)

Episode Date: September 20, 2023

Austin Manelick, of Mission Alaska, shares about getting charged by a sow grizzly with cubs while guiding a sheep hunt in Alaska - and the greenhorn packer who saved their lives. Janis Putelis & Garret “Dirt Myth” Smith retell the iconic "meat tree" story - an encounter with a Kodiak brown bear while hunting Roosevelt moose on Afognak Island with Steve Rinella and Remi Warren. Caleb Martin, of the Alaska Outdoors podcast, tells about how he destroyed his knee on the hike out from a solo mountain goat hunt and his perseverance to get to the plane after the accident. Steve Rinella tells a story about his lifelong friend, their shared adventures growing up, his fish shack in Alaska, and the preciousness of life. Connect with Clay and MeatEater Clay on Instagram MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube Shop Bear Grease MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. First Lights fieldware collection is made for the work that happens long before opening day and continues when the season ends. Products built for early mornings, full days in real use. Hard wearing where they need to be versatile where it matters. No shortcuts. Just gear designed for the work that earns the season.

Built to perform, built to last. Check out. First Light's new field. Worldware gear at firstlight.com. My body went forward and my left leg stayed where it was. And I just hear this pop in my left leg. And all of a sudden I'm laying there and I instantly knew something bad just happened to my leg. We're on the second episode of our Alaska Story series.

These harrowing tales of adventure are hard to beat in terms of excitement and entertainment. As we listen to these, we get a sense, albeit from a safe distance, some fragment of what the storyteller felt in the climax moment of their experience. We always learn practical things from these stories, but stories of crisis, fear, and adventure are internal trial test runs for us. Do you find yourself imagining how you would have responded in a similar situation? And what would life be without difficulty? We spend our lives trying to avoid it But trials and tribulations consume the human communication experience We spend an incredible amount of time thinking about crisis

We talk about it, we write about it, we make movies about it And constantly fetishize our responses to crisis We've got four wild Alaskan stories on this episode About big mountains, big bears, and a more internal struggle The very last story on the last story on, on this series told by Steve Ronella is one he's never told publicly, but we decided to include it

in hopes that it might make a difference in somebody's life. I really doubt that you're going to want to miss this one. There was just time frozen and me knowing that my time had come, and I had lived a good life, and I was at peace with it. My name is Clay Newcomb, and this is the Bear Grease podcast,

where we'll explore things forgotten, but relevant. Search for insight in unlikely places and where we'll tell the story of Americans who live their lives close to the land. Presented by FHF Gear, American-made, purpose-built, hunting and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the places we explore. Henry Gannett became the chief geographer for the United States Geological Survey in 1882 and is considered the father of map-making in America. In 1901, he said this about Alaska. If you are old, go by all means. But if you are young, stay away until you grow older. The scenery of Alaska is so much grander than anything else of the kind in the world that,

once beheld, all other scenery becomes flat and insipid. It is not well to dull one's capacity for such enjoyment by seeing the finest first. I've been enamored with Alaska for a long time. These stories continue to paint for me the unique challenges of hunting America's last frontier. Our first story is told by Alaskan guide, Austin Manilic, about a doll sheep hunt in Alaska's high country. Meet Austin. So I'm Austin Manelik, born and raised Alaskan.

35 years of living up here and do some assistant guiding currently and kind of like a Swiss army knife of many things in the hunting industry. So trying to figure it out and making a living at the Alaska lifestyle. Eventually, I guess kind of got there, which brought me into assistant guiding and spending the amount of time that I wanted to, a field still. After start my family, getting married, and then pretty soon they're after having children, and then the bills start coming that you don't see, the mortgage, a truck payment, saving up to buy a boat and, you know, fueling the addiction, is, you know, boat is bust out another thousand is what it stands for. So when you kick off a guided hunt in Alaska as an

assistant guide, which I am currently, working towards my registration. guide license. You just, you don't know what you're getting into with, with someone that's a flatlander from Michigan, you know, or wherever they may come from, or like a very accomplished hunter from Washington. You just never know what you're getting into. So when you start these hunts off, you can suss someone out pretty good within the first 10 minutes. This is the kickoff of the Alaska season for sheep hunters. And I linked up with a registered guide, and he flew me out. Then he flew back, picked up the client, and dropped him off, and then he dropped a Packer, a very young, green behind the ears, Packer, 20-year-old kid.

That is the big kickoff, the big show. It's sheep season, for sure. I love doll sheep. Man, I love smelling the perfume, the cologne of a doll ram. just anyone you can put in your hands is just it's something magical my spirit animal really the most handsome creature and in my opinion in the world the white tuxedo with the gold bow ties you know they're just cool so we got there i had not been to this area however the packer had he had been there the year before and it was kind of the running joke when i sat the packer down i said

tell me about everything you know about all these sheep, the sheep that were missed, the sheep that were spooked, I need to know everything. Because you can only get, when you're flying in to a place, like you can't wrap your mind around these giant mountains. Even with the best aerial mapping, it's just really tough. And then making a decision can cost you the entire hunt. Because if you're going to do a big loop, it can be three days, it can be five days, it could be the end of the hunt before it began. And he said, man, I feel like I am being interviewed on 48 hours, like a murder suspect. I'm like, hey, buddy, you are.

You know, we all hit it off. I knew it was going to be a great adventure. And the year previous, he hiked up this ridge to get a look into this drainage after a sheep got spooked and he found the ram. And he was coming down the mountain. And the previous hunter and the guide were screaming. And I believe they shot their rifle in the air. And he looked up.

He's like, what's going on? He couldn't see. But a bear was chasing him down the drainage. And then he disappeared into the broccoli, the dog here down low. And he popped out. He's like, what was going on? They're like, oh, my gosh, you're alive. You had a grizzly on your tail.

He's like, really? He had no clue. So, you know, we're halfway through now about. And we've had some rough weather. At this stage, we're like a real cohesive unit. We've all shared our stories. The Packer told us a story about, you know, that bear charged me the year before, and got this 9mm.

And my dad made me these custom loads before I left. He said, you were going to carry a handgun. And I'm carrying this handgun. And, you know, for this reason. And he got a whole thing. that didn't really fit that great like it fit in there but it was it was falling out at any rate we did the bigger loop we come around the corner we find a ram we do a critical stock got in and um he missed um the client missed and that was a bummer and the sheep went up and over

and said hey no sweat we still got time we're gonna find him we'll find another one don't worry you clean miss i phone scoped it i could see everything it's all right so we wake up We have the coffee and are we still really in this? I was like, man, we got to hike out of here. This is going to be tough to get out of here. So we bailed off this big shale slide. We were at the back of this basin about 6,000 feet, maybe a little bit less. We drop down about 1,000 feet down into this basin on a shale slide where you can just run down the shale.

And basically it's, hey, you need to just stay, just wait until I get down. I'm going to get out of the way. And then you come down to me. and then the packerel come down so we don't kick rocks they don't roll into each other and you get hurt coming down. So we did the mountain

glissade down and we don't have any water left and like yeah we'll be down in 10 minutes. So we get down. I'm like, oh, look at that. This is beautiful. We're looking at this. We're still up really up high.

Above 4,250 feet at least. Not a tree in sight for, I don't know, probably 5 to 10 miles. Like not even a short. shrub. And so we're in this kind of broken, rocky terrain with these boulders that are the size of footballs to beach ball size. And there's just a little pocket of water where I'm kind of down and they're sitting up, maybe five yards away, maybe less. And, you know, there's a little rise about 50 yards from us, but we can see this whole valley. But where I'm at, I'm down in a hole.

but all I can see around me is shale and my client, the packer. The packer, when he was coming down, going back to his handgun and his case, his handgun fell out. I made sure I'm like, hey, don't keep one in there. No one ever keeps any rifle chambered. I'm like, I will let you know when to chamber around. And so on a sheep hunt, you're hiking around the mountains and usually don't ever run into gris. And your rifle is usually on your pack because if you've got it out and you slip and fall,

you drop your rifle, it's going to drop your rifle. it's going to maybe bump the scope, maybe not. So, rifles are in, okay, and I usually don't carry a handgun hunting sheep. And that has since changed after this moment that's coming up. I'm filtering this water out of a diesel. It's a diesel filter. This, you know, diesel filters, like 10 microns or something like that. So it takes a while.

We're sitting there and talking and thinking, you know, the hunt's kind of done. We're talking loud. And I'm looking up at them. And the Packer has his entire handgun apart. and they're talking back and forth and he's telling us the story of his dad custom rounds again for like the third time we're like oh okay cool right on

and oh I got 15 rounds in this mag and magazine I've got another 15 and this one oh okay cool you know and he puts it all back together a couple cosmetic scratches no big deal so slides the action forward puts the magazine back in and like right when I heard that noise and he just kind of looks at us and says like

he says, uh, bears guys, bears. And that's kind of where I'm like, hey, sheep boys, sheep. Or like, hey, there's caribou over there. Or, you know, nothing threatening over here. Just kind of like, we're noticing something and be aware. He said it like that. And I'm like, oh, sweet, my client, he has a gris tag. This could change the whole hunt as well.

So I put down the water. I kind of trot up to him and keeping my head low. And I'm, you know, maybe five yards, maybe away from, and I get, up to the rise and I look to my left. It's a sow gris with three two-year-old cubs. I look and as I made eye contact with that bear, full-blown charge, and I have seen charges, I've seen bluff charges and no one to shoot, no one to hold them, no one to fold them. This bear is coming for our lives. I grabbed my pack screaming

Hey hey bear bear no no Hey It's just scream Like I don't know what came out of my mouth Other than the loudest noise I could possibly make I grabbed my pack By the time that I had done that and screaming I couldn't turn over my rifle

And jack around in And shoot It was right there I mean Two, three steps I mean, like, I could have stepped once and touched it with my rifle and tip of the nose. And I had actually, I got the gun out and I grabbed a rock. I don't know.

Your mind is just going. I grabbed a rock because I was going to throw that, maybe a, like, a diversion or hitter or something as I'm screaming. And then maybe get one jacked in as I'm getting chewed on and hopefully someone helps me. But as I did that, what I heard was. was three gunshots. You know, in that moment, your mind isn't thinking, am I going to die?

Is someone going to die? Are we all going to die? You are just like faced with this. The realization, something bad, death, mauling, something is going to happen. And I'm going through these motions of like, you can play it out of your mind,

you can think about it all you want. But in that moment, It's just absolute adrenaline, shark eye, life death, face on. This is the moment. And so in that moment, the Packer, he shot eight times, and we know that because he counted how many he had left. I heard three shots. It happened that fast. And all I saw around this bear was basically like a halo.

And those cubs, those cubs, they all stayed right there on that far knob. you know, 40-ish yards away. They stayed there watching. And when he shot, he shot at a complete halo. It looked like around this bear. All I saw was rocks flying around this bear, at its feet, under its stomach,

over its back, over its head. And I'm like, oh, yeah, I only heard three shots, but I saw a lot of chaos going around that bear. I started screaming because she had turned and took off running back towards her cup. and I know exactly how close that bear was when she turned and like made semi-circle of poop that some of it may have splashed on her onto her packs like it was a boot length away so she had spun and done that and just took off getting into this this bear encounter this packer

saved my life and his life and the client's life it's just no way around it he he he saved our bacon. So like we've back up, got one jacked in. I'm like, everybody calm down. We're just going to stay right here and we're going to wait. So we waited until our nerves were calm. This is what we're going to do. I need to track and make sure this thing is not wounded, not injured whatsoever

and make sure that we don't have to call the authorities and go through with this process because it's very serious. You know, shooting a sow with cubs or shooting a bear with a tag. All wildlife in Alaska is taking incredibly seriously and the wildlife troopers don't play. They have all the beans in the world to get out there and save you A, you know, they'll be the first responders and they'll save hunters all the time, but to check you in places you didn't think you were going to be checked. So it's, you really, really have to play by the rules, exactly by the

rules, even if your life depends on it. So bear wasn't wounded, bear lived, bear got spooked, We went down the drainage and wouldn't you know it on our way out? I looked up and I said, there's the ram that we've been circling. He came back down. There he is. And we snuck over there and shot that ram about six hours later. I said, dude, like it or not, I told you, we are still in this ballgame. anytime you step foot in the wilds of Alaska, you're in the ball game. The timing of that Packer pulling out his gun and having it loaded and in his hand was uncanny.

I've never been charged by a grizzly, but I know it's something that can never be forgotten. Everyone talks about how fast it happens. Everybody talks about that. This story could have ended much different than it did if it hadn't been for that Packer and as 9mm. Austin runs a brand called Mission Alaska, and you can check him out online and see what he's up to. Good story, Austin. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps game calls

and building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called prime cuts. Now, I'm going to tell you, I love mine because it's easy to use. I'm not going to go, I'm not going to win a turkey calling contest. It's just not going to happen. But when I run this call, I get the sounds that gobblers are looking for. I have a great turkey hunting track record. If you go listen to real turkeys out in the woods, they're not going to win calling contests, right?

That's who I listen to. I can make those sounds on my cut. I also hunt with Phelps's cut, and I hunt with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts. Check out Prime Cuts at Phelpsgamecalls.com. I think you'll be glad you did, and you'll find out that the Steve Ronella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning

callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. Our next story is one perhaps that you've heard if you've been in the meat eater orbit for very long. Do you remember Steve and Janice's meat tree story? It's so good it's worth telling over and over, but I have never heard Garrett Smith, or Dirt Myth, as we call him. I've never heard his full side of the story, and he plays a unique role in this story. I asked Janice and Garrett to tag team on this one. So here is their version of the meat tree. All right, Mr. Newcomb.

Here comes the bear story from Garrett William Smith, aka Dirt Myth, aka Dirt. Steve drew a tag for a Roosevelt elk, bull elk on a Fognack Island, Alaska, short flight from Codiac. I was brought on as cinematographer, document the hunt. Remy Warren was an additional hunter. Janus Patelis, Yanni, Chimani, the Eagle, Latvin Eagle,

was along as hunter, producer, storyteller, and Chris Gill was a second cinematographer, and then my buddy Patrick O'Connell was along as production assistant. We landed in this float plane on this lake, on a secluded island surrounded by the wild ocean. We set up our camp, which includes setting up a bear fence.

We were forewarned that interaction with the Codiac Brown Bear was likely, if not eminent. And plane takes off, and as the drum of that motor slightens more and more and eventually disappears, you do have a moment of realizing

that you're in a spot much bigger than your heart yourself and without speaking to it there's a feeling of of clannishness that you're glad you're there with friends and and co-workers that you know have proven themselves tried and true in the field in similar situations Remy had done this hunt before I'd suffered greatly had success but it's just it's it's it's a it's an island in the landscape that truly defines and tests any hard man or woman on their ability to persevere through weather and extremely dense vegetation. Wet, wet, wet, wet, an abundance of Roosevelt elk, which are amazing, and an abundance of

Kodiak brown bears, which are amazing. A fog nag is a, it's a wild place, maybe one of the wildest places I've been. It's got a Jurassic Park kind of a feel to it. Everything's big. The elk are giant. The Golden Eagles we saw a giant, sock-eye salmon that we caught were giant. I think it seemed to be big there. It's also very wet. It never stopped raining.

And I remember walking across hillsides and remarking that it just felt as though you were constantly crossing a stream. Like not only were you stepping in water, marshy grass water, but that it was always moving. We had a camp in a valley and we had to eventually find the elk,

we had to climb over a pretty big ridge. It took us at least an hour to summit and then go down the other side of the ridge into a long drainage. And that's where we found these elk. You could actually see the ocean from where we found the elk. Well, Steve eventually harvests an elk.

Steve has a shot and takes down this Roosevelt elk. I had a clean shot and it died down in this creek. It has one of its antlers broken off from fighting, but massive body down in this really steep creek bed in the water, which is a pain of the butt. So Remy and Steve and the crew start butchering. The elk is totally dressed and bagged. It's dark.

So it's too much meat to pack all the way back to camp, but in the daylight we had either pinned or just remembered there was a taller tree in the landscape that kind of stuck out amongst all the dense vegetation. And we start working towards that with half of the elk between the six of us, just to give you a... And we're all strong dudes, all very familiar with having heavy packs with meat loaded into them. So we pack half of that elk up to this tree and hang it.

Now, when you draw this Roosevelt elk tag in the state of Alaska, you get a letter from the Alaska game and fish that says this is an extremely tough hunt. And by the way, if you kill, it is almost guaranteed that a brown bear will claim your kill. So get your meat away from the carcass and take the rest of the proper precautions that you need to take to take care of that. So we were expecting to have not altercations necessarily, but encounters. with brown bears, especially once we had an elk down. What's interesting is that up until that point, which I'm guessing was four or five days into the hunt,

we had not seen a brown bear yet. It takes us a long time to pack this elk out. Six of us pack half of this huge elk out, and we don't get back to camp until I think three or four o'clock in the morning. And because we had had such a long day and then late night, We decided to stay around camp and kind of do a little R&R and dry our gear out. Life is good. Remy's still got a tag.

We still have half an elk hanging in a tree six hours away from camp on a kind of a death hike. So the next day, wake up early. We decided the next day we'll get up first thing. That's an early going there and get the rest of the elk. So we hike over the ridge down the Long Valley towards where we had left this. the other half of the meat and a tree. And we get about 400, 500 yards from this, now we can call it the meat tree with the meat tanging.

We're across a small creek or across the bottom of the drainage, looking from one side across this creek and looking up at this hillside where the meat tree is and we sit there for a solid 30 minutes in glass. With binoculars, we survey the tree in the surrounding area to see if we can find a bear. Nothing seems to be there, nothing seems to be stirring. So we head on in there.

We come in there taking the necessary precautions like you do in bear country, especially when you're approaching a tree that has meat hanging in it, which is we have bear sprays drawn, we're making a lot of noise, a lot of hooting, a lot of hollering, and so forth. We pretty much march right up to the tree. We get there. We inspect the location for Bear sign. bear sign. And it seems as though a bear has not been there. Miraculously, not shown up after

half of an elk's been hanging in a tree. Yeah, we're thinking, all right, half of this day is done. Let's eat some lunch, throw this meat in our backs, get back to camp so we can continue to hunt for Remy's tag. Sit down in a semi-circle. I mean, it's already been a big push just getting to that tree. Everyone takes off their packs and we're just, you know, we're brothers in arms. We're joking and Pat's making these bomber sandwiches and a couple reasons that sandwiches are funny. But the biggest one is, as the sandwiches get passed out, I notice that Steve's sandwiches just a little bit bigger than mine. And I remarked to him, hey, what's the deal? How come my sandwich isn't as big as yours? He says, if you want a bigger sandwich, you need to just go get your own

show. That's the last thing he said before. Patrick O'Connell, who was boiling water on a stove. And I can still remember the sound of that stove hissed in that pot started to just shake a little bit as the water was starting to boil. Pat says, hey, did anybody hear that? As soon as he said, do you guys hear that? We all looked the direction. We all had heard something. Pat was the first to mention. And it wasn't something that was lingering, and then it was like there was a sound that Pat reacted to and looked. And we all look over and there's a Kodiak brown bear running faster than anything I've

ever seen run towards our group. In that moment, everyone seems to get tunnel vision. Later interviewing everybody, no one else can remember what anyone else did, their movements, their positioning, which is interesting. Everybody went to tunnel vision. But we were sitting in sort of a half circle. Steve was actually laying down on his side, sort of propped up like Jane Fonda doing her exercises,

eating his sandwich. And the rest of us were in sort of a half circle around him. Well, here comes this bear. And in that moment, all I can really remember is as the bear is coming towards us, it doesn't really look like a bear. There's a brown mass. The edges of the brown mass are fluffy. They're almost glowing as the sunlight sort of touches the tips of the bear's fur.

The fur itself sort of has a jiggly, yellow-rolling characteristic to it as the muscles underneath it move and the fur and the fat move across it and almost waves. The center of this brown mass has white teeth and small yellow eyes. I had never, I got to speak for myself. I had never been in a situation like that where a predator or a life form of such obviously superior strength, covering a distance so fast that all this thought process happens afterwards. We see it. All of a sudden, it's in our group under the meat tree.

My lizard brain reaction was flight. I'm not ashamed at all. I mean, it wasn't a choice. you know, fight or flight. I remember the freeze frame of that bear's shoulders and size and speed, and I'm not surprised at all, that I basically rolled, like spun around and separated myself from the rushing onslaught by a tree, by the meat tree. We knew that we'd have, like I said, interactions with bears.

Before sitting down, or as I sat down to have my sandwich, I had specifically taken my pistol which was in a holster on my backpack and I had taken it out of the holster and set it down next to me I also knew that I had bear spray on my belt in a bear spray holster for whatever reason I had also two trekking poles that were laid there next to me but in the moment that the bear is bearing down on us my brain does not go to the pistol nor does it go to the bear spray instead I find myself on two feet staying there like Pete Alonzo clutching two trekking poles.

And as the bear's head is within striking distance, I swing at the bear's face. The next five minutes of the story actually takes about two seconds to transpire. But in that moment, I thought, well, it's going to roll me over. I might as well go down swinging. When I swing and I feel that I connect, I'm surprised. Then I'm 10 times more surprised when the last thing that I thought would happen was that the bear somehow reacts to this getting touched by my trekking poles. The bear spins almost 180 degrees and turns out of there and leaves our little area. Now from stories told to me, Patrick never got off his butt next to the stove.

Watch the whole thing from there. Chris Gill, one of our photographers, stood up, immediately tripped backwards. and was staring at the sky as the bear came in and out. Remy Warren made a football-type juke move to go one way and then the other way to get out of the bear's way. Stephen Ronella never got up, maybe had the bear step on his foot because later his ankle became very sore.

I'm bewildered. I'm standing there. I don't know what's happened. But as the bear is leaving, it almost looks as though it's leaving with one of our crew Janus grabbed a trek and pulled and batted it in the face

Steve could smell its breath I mean everyone had their own moment in time with this massive brown bear and then immediately also this is all in a matter of seconds immediately realized these crew members that I respect

and love and one to protect are having an interaction with this massive bear and maybe there's something I can do. So I peek around the bottom, the downhill side of the tree. And when Yanni had smacked it in the face, you know, by chance or because of that, well, it decided to get out of there below the meat tree, the downhill side as I was peeking around. Garrett Smith, somehow as he's moving around the tree, he trips backwards like a imagine your heels tripping as opposed your toes tripping. And he falls to fall in his butt and actually lands on the top of the bear. And that sucker clip me with its massive shoulder and flip me onto its

back. I mean, nothing compares to that first moment of back to back. The speed of which I found myself riding a codiac brown bear down a mountainside it was my brain was not able to process that this actually was happening I mean when you put yourself

when you choose a lifestyle to test your strength and will against nature often there's always a part of you that knows at any point a factor outside of your control can happen and you just hope that you can cope with it

and deal with it in a way that he allows you to survive. Well, when I got knocked onto that bear's back, and it only was able to happen because the hillside was steep enough. I was far enough uphill, and in that matter, had gained the height that its shoulder clipped me on my hip and knocked me onto its back. And instantly, feeling its shoulder muscles and its hide,

I instantly knew I was dead. It was very calming. And, you know, like in any accident, time stills and slows down. I was totally cognizant and aware that I was riding a brown bear in Alaska and that the outcome was being, you know, dropped into the brush and mauled. There was no, there was no mentality that, you know, maybe I could night. fit or maybe I could flee from it or maybe all of it would end up okay. There was just time frozen and me knowing that my time had come and I had lived a good life and I was at peace with it.

The rest of the crews see this happen and think it has me in its in its jaws. You know, maybe 50 feet later, I mean a couple seconds later, I fall off this bear and and, and, and And then, you know, assume that that's when it's going to turn in my life. And just slamming into an altar and I'm okay. I, like, get on my knees or something. I'm telling this I have goosebumps, and often I do, because it's so vivid in my memory. And I see the rest of the crew running towards me,

ready to get their brother. I run back to them. Everyone's okay. Everyone's in shock, but reacting in a very logical way. way. Like I said, it happened in two seconds. There are sandwich fixings and parts and pieces spread out all over underneath the meat tree now. Nobody goes to pick those up. And everybody's pretty shook up and there's a lot of yelling going on and a lot of people, you're taught to yell, hey, bear when you're in bear country to keep the bears away or to let them, let bears know

you're around. In that situation, when someone yells, hey, bear, everybody starts pointing bear spray and guns in the direction wherever the person is looking that just yelled, hey, bear. So we immediately made a rule that no one could yell, hey, bear anymore, unless they actually saw a bear. But we pretty much circled up, collected our gear, and Steve actually climbed into the meat tree and handed down the second half of the elk, which we then loaded onto our backpacks. And then we moved as what you would see a army platoon and an old army movie moved through the jungle

where there's sort of everybody, you know, pointed in a different direction and sort of you're making a circle and you got eyes in every direction. And we moved as this sort of group down away from the meat tree, crossed back across the creek and got out into a big meadow where you could see easily 100 yards in every direction, which is where we probably should have been having our sandwiches and tea in the first place. I can remember that when my wife said when I called her maybe three or four days after the event,

and before I could even start telling her what had happened, she could sense in my voice that I had experienced something of great magnitude. It's still hard to imagine dirt being carried on the back of that bear that far. I've been fortunate enough to spend a lot of time in the field with dirt over the last couple of years, and he's a uniquely genuine person. I'd say it would be impossible to not like him, especially when you see his work ethic and his continual upbeat attitude. In old Janus, I can't say enough good things about Janus either.

Thanks for the story, guys. I'm glad that you're alive. Our next story is told by another Alaskan guide. His name is Caleb Martin. He's going to be taking us high into goat country. Meet Caleb. My name is Caleb Martin. I'm a lifelong Alassan, born and raised, avid bow hunter. I've shot 13 mountain goats with a bow now.

I'm a big game hunting guide. I guide Alaska mountain goat, dull sheep, and Codiac Brown. I average around 100 to 110 days in the field and solo hunt 90 plus percent of the time. So this year I found out in February that I drew a mountain goat tag in an area somewhat close by to an area I'd been before, but it was kind of the next unit over. Big, steep country, wet, you know, mountain goats, you know, they thrive in the southern coastline in Alaska and southeast coastline because it's really wet, steep terrain. they can get away from predators, they can regulate their body temperature, and it's got great feed for him.

So I booked a flight earlier in there with an air service I'd used in the past, and he could fly me in there, but he was going to fly me in late in the evening, because from his experience, he had found out evening flights in that area, he can normally sneak in between storms, and that's exactly what happened. It worked out pretty well. August 6th, I'm touching down, 8 o'clock in the evening, fairly undefixtable. event full flight. We saw some goats on the way in, but not in my unit. Landed and set up temporary camp for the evening. And so the next day, August 7th, it was drizzly raining on and off, but got into some goats being so early in the season in August. Typically, people hunt goats more later in the year, but with my busy guiding schedule this year, I only had the beginning of August

to hunt this tag. But the consequence of that is that the ghosts this time of the year are much higher on the mountain. And so, you know, the goats that I did spot that day, I spotted a couple of good herds and a couple of billies. But they were in really far off reaches. And it was kind of starting to set in that, you know, this is going to be a kind of above-average goat hunt.

I've hunted a lot on Codiak. And those areas, you know, the tallest peak, you know, you're maxing out of like 4,000. But here, you know, it is you're looking at five, six thousand feet, super steep faces, really thick brush. Everything's still live, still green. So the vegetation's super thick. Salmon berries are just getting started. And it was just kind of starting to be like, okay, this is going to be a grinder, especially solo packing out an entire goat. You know, you're looking at packing out between 120 and 150 pounds, depending on what you'd carry with you.

So when I go into these kind of hunts, I like to carry a lot of different safety gear, and I've learned over 13 different hunts that carrying, rock climbing, and repelling gear can come in extremely handy. So I carry a black diamond rock climbing harness, a device to repel down with me, and on this particular hunt I carried about a hundred-yard climbing rope with me. On the eighth, I started making my way up the mountain. And man, it was beautiful. I just kind of lingered and worked my way up. And it actually ended up taking me about eight hours to get up to the sub alpine level where I'd seen goats, but not so high to be up in kind of their natural walking paths in that area.

And finally I make it up there at the end of the day. And now I'm about 2,000, 2,500 feet of elevation. And get up there, find a flat spot for the evening with a little trickle of water next to it and threw up tent for the evening. evening and called it good and just crashed. And so I slept that night and I woke up the next morning after, you know, making some coffee from a little trickle of mountain water. And it rained, started raining sometime in the middle of the night, rained all through the next night. August 9th, I unzip the tent and it's just socked in, can't see 10 feet. So some days, like August 9th, it was a tent day. I just spent 24 hours in a tent reading books on my

phone looking through my pictures and my videos that I took and just trying to stay in my little cocoon and not spread scent over or bump into any animals and it was kind of funny I ends up the tent twice that day and at one point I had a pretty decent black bear at about 200 yards and then another instance I actually saw a billy on the other side of the valley while the forecast wasn't too hopeful you know everything was going extremely well I was having a very good experience. August 10th came around. I unzipped the tent door and it's still kind of foggy,

but I look right where that black bear was the day before, there's a billy standing right there, 200 yards outside of the tent and the wide open, straight from my tent door straight out. I zip the tent up a little bit more and I just watch him for a bit. And then after a little while, he kind of goes up and the rocks and beds down. So I try to make as little as movement as

possible and unzip the tent and grab my gear and slip up into the rocks to try to get out of view. At one point, I thought I could come up level with the goat and make about a 70-yard shot straight across, but it might be able to see me and the wind was a little finicky and I was like, whoa, just be patient. Why are you rushing? It's opening morning. You got to go. It's bedded. You know, just take the long way around. And it just worked out textbook. You know, it came all the way around out of view, came over the top, I knew kind of where I'd want to shoot from, and knew it would be a close shot. And so I just started looking around, and sure enough, I peek over to my left, and there there's the top of a goat's back right there. So I range find it, 31 yards, and I could tell the

direction of the goat is coming. And as soon as the top of its back breaks the ridge, I come to full draw, it takes two more steps, and it's given me a perfect broadside shot, and it's looking away from me and I just give it a nice double lung clean break, 31 yards, pass through. The goat turns, spins, goes about 20 yards and falls over. And it's like 10 o'clock in the morning, opening morning, got a goat down, solo with my bow. You know, it rains trickling down, but it's not bad. That just happened. So that evening, the pilot texted me after he got done with his bear tours for the day and said,

hey, I could get you at 1 o'clock. Can you make that? And I'm like, man, it's only a mile. It's straight downhill, but it's a mile. It was like, no problem. And I even start looking at photos thinking, man, the route I went up was okay. But I remember I seen a couple ridges that now that I'm up top, maybe I could cut over a little bit and make an even better route down. So wake up this morning, I'm like, I don't even eat breakfast or coffee this morning. I just get in a got-to-go mode. Suck it down tight. Everything's on there because I'm going to have to beat some brush. I'm going to have to go down some cliffs, some rocky stuff. And I'm going down this other area and I could tell right off the bat like, man, maybe I should have stick to the route I was familiar

with. And that's always a little bit of a gamble there too. So I start going down through the brush and it's getting steeper and steeper. So I'm coming down through these alders. I got one trekking pole in my hand. I got a full goat, all the hide, all the meat, and all my spike camp in gear, and then all my cambering gear on top of it. And I'm just pushing through this brush

and keeps catching my pack, catching my pack, and I pushed through at one point. Well, my pack was getting caught, and when I pushed through, my body went forward, and my left leg stayed. where it was. And I just hear this pop in my left leg and I'm just down on the ground on my face. I got all my load and packing gear and everything on top of me and my left leg is screaming.

And all of a sudden I'm laying there and I instantly knew something bad just happened to my leg. You know, immediately I go back to that internal dialogue. Okay, I'm on a steep mountainside. I'm really high up. I'm solo. I'm 50 miles into the wilderness by airplane. You got one leg. What can you do? But I sat down on my butt, got my whole pack and everything on, and I just start scooting from one alder bush to the other, a little bit out of time.

I just get in this, okay, you got to move. You can't stay here. You got to move. And I start scooting down, scooting down, going from alder bush, alder bush, and I'm just on my butt plowing through salmon berries that are four foot tall. and at one point I come out of this thick shrubbery and it's just this open face and there's no alders, it's just wide open

and there's a little trickle water, little waterfall going down the middle of it and it's straight down. I'm at the top of it and there's, I can't climb back up. I got 100 plus pounds on my back. I got nothing to grab onto and I'm thinking I can't move. I need to get rid of my pack or I'm going to fall down this face.

and so I had to cut my pack loose and it was unnerving and terrifying you know you have like at the moment you know I'm kind of thinking man I've spent all year shooting my bow preparing now my $2,000 bow I'm about to let rip down to this mountain but you got to come to terms with yourself

like Caleb it's you or the gear you're about to fall like make a decision and I let that pack roll and it just starts going end over end over and I'm just watching stuff fly. You know, it's going through the trees, but I'm watching it because the bottom line is it still got my tent and my sleeping bag. I'm hurt, but worst case scenario, I can get in my sleeping bag,

I can get my tent, I have a super bright orange tent for this exact reason, and somebody could come find me if they need to, and I will survive. But I watch it roll all the way down, and then I'm able to maneuver and scoot on my butt, get down this waterfall, and finally get down to my pack. Now I'm on kind of this plateau that's about 100 yards across before it drops down again. And so I'm like, okay, I can't scoot on my butt across here. I need to find out can I put weight on my leg?

And if I can't put weight on my leg, now it's time to determine, do I need to get rescued or can I make this happen? Yes or no. And first, I stand up without the pack. I put weight on the inside of my leg. I mean, talk about a terrifying experience I've never felt before, worried that my leg's going to collapse, my bones going to stick out the side of my shin or something, right? And I stand up and everything's pretty good. And then I take about two steps and I put weight on the outside of my leg and bam, I'm just dropped instantly right on my face.

And at that point, I was thinking about ditching my gear, ditching my goat, ditching my goat meat. So that's not an easy decision Just be like Should I ditch everything and go for it? So I'm like Okay, well let me just see what's going on I put my whole pack on And I kind of hobbled a little bit

Six inches It's like, okay, so you can move forward So I just started doing that I took my knife And I cut a couple piece of alders As crutches, as little trekking pulls And I can move six inches at a time And it's like, yeah, I can't move fast

but I can move. And then I also was like, man, you got a repelling harness and climbing rope. So if you get into a hairy situation, rope up, and then you won't at least fall off the mountain. And so I start pushing forward and get down back into some cliff faces. And I come to an area and I'm like, okay, I could repel from this point to this point below me. I could re-anchor up, work my way down a creek bed about a quarter mile,

and make it back to the lake and I'm home free. And so roll my pack over and I realized in that moment that my rope was gone. It was somewhere on the mountain above me and I had no idea and I did not even realize that I lost it when I cut my pack loose. And it took me another five hours to get down there from that point. So I finally made it off soaking wet my rain gear and everything. is just completely shredded, but came off the mountain, missing a lot of gear, but had all my meat, had my hide, had my goat, got to the landing strip 10 minutes before the pilot landed.

So I got back to the orthopedic surgeon, and the basic diagnose was at a full thickness rupture of the ACL. I had a tear in my PCL, a moderate grade sprain in my LCL and my MCL. I had a fracture in one of my bones in my knee and my entire knee was fluid from the trauma of not only falling but repeatedly falling down the mountain. That sounded painful and stressful. It's hard to imagine what it would feel like to have that happen to you, that far back and that alone. That goat hunting is not for the faint of heart. And this just happened in August of 2023. So we hope that you're healing up strong, Caleb.

He hosts a podcast called the Alaska Outdoors podcast that you can find online if you want to learn more about what he's up to. On Blood Trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is over. They just get darker. I've seen something in the road. I instantly thought it was a sleeping bag and there was a pool of blood. Oh my God, he doesn't have a hit. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors, where the terrain is unforgiving, the evidence is scarce. and the truth gets buried under brush and silence.

Indications were he should be right there, but he wasn't. This season, we're going deeper, from cold case files to whispered suspicions, from remote mountains to frozen backwoods. Each story begins in the wilderness and ends in darkness. Because out here, there are no witnesses, no cameras, just fragments, and the people left behind trying to piece them back together. He's not an honest person. He's incapable of being honest. Somebody somewhere knows something.

I'm Jordan Sillers. Season 2 of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, IHeart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Our final storyteller is none other than Meat Eat Eater's Own, Stephen Ronella. I'm grateful that he told this story. And I think you'll come to understand why he hasn't told it at length before. I'd advise parents to listen to this one first before you decide if it's age appropriate for your kids. Here's Steve. I spend about, you know, usually add it up a month or so in Alaska every year.

Most of the time I spend at Alaska, the biggest block of time I spend in Alaska is when I spend two weeks every summer at a fish shack we have on an island in southeast Alaska. and that's largely where this story takes place. This is a story I've never told publicly, and I hesitate to do it now almost. The problem for me is as a writer and someone who does TV, so many of the stories I have, I use them as quick as I make them, but this story never really fits in, it just doesn't fit in any place.

It has to do with a guy I grew up with a friend of my name Eric Kern. We went to school together. So different elementary schools because we were a little bit far apart. But then they put us in the same, you know, junior high. We went to high school together. I have just all these memories with him as kids, like details, you know, weird details. I remember one time me and him were sitting along the Piermarchette River in Michigan with our girlfriends.

and we kind of thought it was raining in a weird way a little bit. And then we realized we were sitting, had a campfire underneath a couple trees that were just loaded with turkeys. And there was so many droppings hitting the ground that it made it seem like a weird light rain shower coming through. And I remember that his mom bought this heater for their house that burned cherry pits. she would buy these big truckloads of cherry pits and he'd have to go out in his driveway and rake them around in the sun until they got all dried out and she could use them to burn and one of the bigger decisions in my life he was really involved in

so when we got out of high school of course we went to regular college we both went to regular college in Michigan and then he split and he he came out to Montana to do a PhD program and it took me like I think it took me an extra semester yeah it took me an extra semester to finish college because I kind of bumped around a lot to different schools and when I decided to go to graduate school I got accepted with a full ride at Colorado State but then I got accepted just regular accepted to a graduate program in Montana and you know all logic would say that you'd go to the place you didn't have to pay to go but Eric came home

and he was in Montana and he really wanted me to go to Montana and me and him were down in this bar I'm sure it's not there anymore called Bo Nickies and sitting in Bo Nickies man if it was there I could show you exactly where we were sitting and he convinced me based on hunting and fishing information

he convinced me to go to Montana for graduate school and that changed my life I met all these writers and became a writer and had things happen to me that wouldn't have happened otherwise. It would have been a completely different path if we hadn't had that conversation in that bar. As we got older, you know, I was the best man in his wedding.

He stood in my wedding. You know, we got older yet. We had children. Eric had a daughter. We lived near each other. I would oftentimes, you know, stay at his house for extended periods of time. he would come up to my fish shack every summer

and it was just a annual tradition and we just kind of fell into this habit of just being friends and not thinking about it much Eric eventually had this horrible tragedy and one of the reasons I don't like to talk about this is because Eric survived he survived by his wife

who's a very very dear friend of mine and they lost their daughter in a automobile accident and it was she didn't die immediately it was just it was the most brutal thing i've ever witnessed and we spent time down there with them my wife and i spent time i spent time down there with them and in a hospital down in denver it was just the most horrible thing i've witnessed and eric's wife was just like so you know resilient and ultimately but it was it was terrible on eric and about a year maybe a year after this

we're up at our fish shack like we would do every summer he would come up we'd fish halibut and I have all these pictures of him over the years holding different halibut and stuff and one summer a couple years prior to this he and I had been out fishing with some other guys and we were two different boats and we're coming back in pretty rough seas and we finally made

it into sheltered water and the waves are so bad we couldn't see the boat behind us and so we're just kind of hanging out in this little sheltered channel waiting to find out what happened to the boat behind us and make sure they're all right and I took a moochin rod so like a big 10 foot

very light action salmon rod and had this little teeny bucktail jig and I decided to drop it down and see if I could jig up a little rockfish in this little channel and hooked into this pretty nice halib about a 40 pound halibut we had such a riot laying in that hell

on that little jig on that moochin rod and it shredded this little bucktail jig the only thing left was like the lead head and some thread and I came back and stuck that bucktail jig in a two by four doorframe and it lived there and it was there

that some were following the death of Eric's daughter and the weirdest thing man is at that time we had this at our fish shack, we had this propane refrigerator. And it was old. And it was always given us problems.

And we had a carbon monoxide detector that sat next to that that sat next to that fridge because it was always given us problems with the combustion element on there. And Eric was up and our carbon monoxide detector goes off by the fridge.

And me and my brother Danny get down there and we look around and we figure out the problem. I don't want to go into a bunch of details, but this little apparatus had become like kind of discombobulated so it wasn't burning efficiently. Got it fixed. The carbon monoxide detector was still fine. Left it there next to the fridge,

the carbon dioxide detector never went off. But Eric, he refused to sleep inside of that fish shack for the rest of that trip. Was so concerned about carbon monoxide poisoning that he would not sleep inside of that. fish shack okay he in other words he wanted to hang on to life with such tenacity that he wouldn't sleep in there meanwhile I'm in there with my kids okay and if you want to talk about holding on to life with tenacity I hold on to my children's lives with great

tenacity. And had I thought there was any issue being in that shack, I would never have allowed that my kid to be in there. But I knew it was fine. The detector was fine. But that, that always sticks in my head, man, that he wouldn't sleep in there. He slept outside. But then he goes home and there's like so many details of this I'd give, but I don't want to give. Just like, I already feel like I'm violating some level of respect just talking about it. There's So many details I'd give, but he goes home and takes his own life. And like that little detail about that carbon dioxide deal just always will stick in my head. So the last place I saw him was there at the shack, Fish and Halibut.

And we really have any kind of decorations in our shack, but we keep a big picture of Eric in the shack. So every time I go to Alaska, most every time I go to Alaska, and I walk into that shack, he's there. And so many of our friends from those years that knew him well hang out there. And it's like that single picture has turned, like the single picture in the shack almost makes the shack like a, I don't know, man, like a mausoleum. it's not overpowering but it's just there and I always have this tight association with

you know that shack with Alaska with him having seen him there and it's just and that setting sticks in my mind well I'll tell you something that we wrote below the picture there's this Rudyard Kipling poem and the poem I memorized the poem when I've always liked it it goes

what of the hunting hunter bold brother the watch was long and cold what of the quarry he went to kill brother he crops in the jungle still

where is the power that made your pride brother it ebbs from my flank inside where is the haste that ye hurry by brother I go to my lair to die

And so on the bottom of the picture, we wrote, Where is the haste that you hurry by? And if there's a thing I think about, man, like if there's a useful part of this, if there's a justification for kind of sharing this, it's that you really don't know what's going on with the people around you. and if there's people you're concerned about,

you have to pay attention and you have to be more than a detective, right? He wouldn't sleep in a room because a carbon monoxide detector went off in that room. How do you know what's going on with people? A friend of mine lost a buddy of his to suicide and he, uh,

he, uh, he, He was telling me one day that now when he asks people how they're doing, and they go, good. He said, and I always follow up with, but how are you really doing? And I think that that's important. And I don't always take that advice. But the thing is, when I go to Alaska and I walk into our shack, I'm reminded of that all the time. And perhaps hearing about this, you know, will maybe change something someone does. I'll tell you that

it's the last thing I'll say about it. As folks have pieced together, the chronology of events, I can tell you that, I feel that if someone had called him that morning, you know, and said like, how you doing? I feel like he'd still be here. Suicide isn't something that's fun to talk about.

And honestly, I never thought it would come up on this podcast. But it's incredibly relevant to this day and age. And it wouldn't take long to find the staggering statistics of the people who take their own lives each year. The reasons are too varied and too complex to address right now. But what Steve emphasized is well taken in that as friends, we need to work to be more aware. We need to probe for deeper answers. And we need to stay close to the people that we call our friends. Or maybe the tables are turned and you're the person that's in crisis listening right now. And in that case, I want to tell you that you are

valuable enough and that your life is meaningful enough that if you're hiding some deep stuff, find a way to share it with someone you trust. I personally find incredible hope in the midst of trying times, of which me and my family have had our fair share. And that hope for me, I find in a personal connection with God. For me, that is very real, very functional, very powerful, and available to all. I can't thank you enough for listening to Bear Grease. We've all got a lot to be thankful for this fall, and I wish you the best in your hunting. Good luck if you're out there.

Elk hunting, white tail hunting, bear hunting, squirrel hunting, grouse hunting, whatever you're doing, be careful out there, be aware. and celebrate the fact that we get to do what we do. Be sure to check out First Light's new White Tail gear. They've got a whole line of stuff that's made for whitetail deer hunters in the south at Firstlight.com. Check it out. And I love it. I hope you guys all have a great week.

And I look forward talking to all those folks on the render next week. On Blood Trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is over. They just get darker. I've seen something in the road. I instantly thought it was a sleeping bag and there was a full of blood. Oh my God, he doesn't have a hit. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors. Where the terrain is unforgiving, the evidence is scarce,

and the truth gets buried under brush and silence. Indications were he should be right there, but he wasn't. This season, we're going deeper. From cold case files to whispered suspicions, from remote mountains to frozen back. woods. Each story begins in the wilderness and ends in darkness. Because out here, there are no witnesses, no cameras, just fragments and the people left behind trying to piece them back together. He's not an honest person. He's incapable of being honest. Somebody somewhere knows something.

I'm Jordan Sillers. Season two of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, iHeart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast Guaranteed human