Bear Grease - Ep. 172: BEAR GREASE [RENDER] - Glaciers, Wolves and Black Panthers

Episode Date: December 20, 2023

On this episode, Clay Newcomb is joined by Brent Reaves, Gary “Believer” Newcomb, Josh “Landbridge” Spielmaker, Kolby Morehead of Bear Hunting Magazine, Dr. Misty Newcomb, and Bear John Newcomb. Juju, Clay’s mother, also drops in to deliver cookies and a Christmas greeting. Brent tells about being at the MeatEater Live event in Kansas City. Clay talks about his and Steve Rinella’s new audio original, “MeatEater's American History: The Long Hunters (1761-1775).” Bear John tells his wild story of shooting—with a traditional bow—a bobcat with a squirrel in its mouth. Clay tells about his wolf trapping trip to Alaska and his sublime experience being in the presence of a glacier. Lastly, the team relives and discusses the impact of the first episode of Bear Grease, “The Myth of the Southern Mountain Lion.” Preorder MeatEater's new Audio Original "MeatEater's American History: The Long Hunters (1761-1775)" today. 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 name is Clay Newcomb, and this is a production of the Bear Grease podcast called the Bear Grease Render, where we render down, dive deeper, and look behind the scenes of the actual Bear Grease podcast. Presented by FHF Gear, American Made, Purpose Built, Hunting and Fishing Gear that's designed to be as rugged as the places we explore. Brent, I appreciate the, you got your hunter-or orange wedding ring on today.

I am. That way you don't get shot walking through the woods. Welcome to the Bear Grease Render. This is a, this is our Christmas episode. Oh. Did you guys know it? I did. Of course my presents.

This is, this is the Christmas episode. It's great to have everybody. We've got a great group of people today. We're actually going to have, there is one very special guest, surprise guest. surprise Christmas guest that's going to be coming in here in just a minute Oh And here she comes now

Jujoo Nukum Hey Juju Is this making an official tradition Since it's the second year in a row Your headset This is my mother, Juju Nukum She just has a small Christmas message for all of us

She's brought... What have you brought us, Juju? The Christmas cookies I bring every year Except I do have to admit I had a little help this year. Okay. My sister Cindy told me how good the Sam's

decorated Christmas cookies were. And I had a busy, busy week, but I didn't want to forget that it's Christmas and we got to celebrate a little bit with cookies. So the next best thing was nothing. Okay, so we have a beautiful plate.

Brent, why don't you describe these cookies? We've got white and green tree-shaped cookies that are decorated with icing and little sprinkles. I liked how my mom brought those in a plastic box, took them in my house, and then put them on a Christmas plate and put cellophane over it. It just looks better. It just looks better. Okay, Juju, your Christmas message, what would you like to say to the bear grease people?

I just want to say, I can't believe it's been a year. I remember last year, Bailey was with us. And she gave such a sweet little message. I was hoping she'd be here today. I just want to wish everybody Merry Christmas. And just I love reading y'all's comments to Clay. She is very protective of me. No, she's not.

What I especially love is when you mention your kids and how you're happy that Clay can do a podcast that the kids can listen to. And I just think that is super. So Merry Christmas. I hope y'all have a great Christmas to celebrate with your families. Thank you, Juj. Thank you. Excellent. She reminded me

This is a review that I saw today We saw of iTunes Yeah, we need to pray for this guy Because apparently he died in the middle of it It says, both shows are great I hope country life Sticks around I

Dot, that's it But he gave us five stars before he did That's it All right, well Thanks, Juju Thank you, Juju Thank you Juju Hey, pass those around

Pass the cookies around Green. Okay, so we have Brent Reeves here from This Country Life podcast. Brent, I'm going to come back to you and I want to talk about the Meteor Live shows that you were just on. Cool. Here you were a big hit. We have a very special guest. He's been on here a couple times.

Probably the greatest hunter I know. Yeah, me too. My favorite Newcomb hunter right here. You know how I describe when I'm trying to tell people about bear, I'm like, if you turn me and Bear loose in the same, same woods with a bow and said, you know, the guy who kills a deer first wins a car. Right. Like, you're walking home. I mean, I'd probably be walking home.

Yep. Yeah. I was at school the other day talking to bear, and he was like. Did you, hold on. Did you hear that beep? Yes. People have accused me of that being a microwave going on. He's heating up a burrito.

No, that's not a microwave. For some reason, my, my computer beeps. So carry on though, Josh. I was talking about the other day. And he's got one tag left, right, Bear? Yep. One do-tag. One dot tag. And he said, I'm going to take it with a traditional bow. A self-bow.

And he found a good spot. But he concocted this scenario that I thought, that will never work. You know, I tried to be supportive, but I was like, that'll never work. He comes back next day. Well, that's why he's here. Later, he's going to tell us what happened. So what's the title of this of this method? The scent pouch.

Sent bundle. The scent bundle. The scent bundle. Bear has a new strategy we're going to talk about. Have you heard this? Have you heard this? No. I mean, it's fabulous.

Yeah. So Bear John's here. Two Bear John's left. Colby Moorhead, Bear Honey magazine. The man. Yep. Thank you. Thank you.

Welcome. You've been on here several times. Yep. So Colby, so for eight years before I worked for meat eater, I owned and operated, Bear Honey magazine, the world's only print Bear Honey magazine, been in print for over 23 years. Colby worked with me for

several years and pretty much was running the magazine for me. And then when I went to Meat Eater, Colby now owns just miraculously, just like, bam, we don't even know how it happened. But Colby now owns and operates Bear Honey Magazine.

Yes, sir. Which is, which we gave a little plug last week for full cry. Oh, yeah. So now This week, it's Bear Honey Magazine. I like it. And you need to subscribe to Bear Honey magazine. It's just got all types of bear hunting across the country, outfitters, all kind of stuff. It's great.

Digging into the cool stuff. Good to be here. Yep. To Colby's left. Josh Lambridge, Spillmaker, great to see it. Josh is the fashionist of the Bear Grease podcast. I wish it was me. I mean, you're wearing like a howler shirt with the little...

Got some embroidery on the shoulder. Yeah, little embroidery. I mean, you just always look cool. well I mean you are wearing muck boots though. Muck boots covered in deer brains yeah okay well you're looking good Josh you're looking good to Josh's left Gary Believer Newcomb

which it's very important that's usually here but it's very important that he's here today because on this episode of the render which if you're new to this you know the render is when we talk about the podcast that just came out and we did something this week that we have never done in the

history of bear Greece is we Yeah, you basically took a vacation. We re-ran a classic, Josh. That's what it's called.

Reran a classic. Of last week or week before. So we're going to talk about the ripples, the ripples in the world that happened when episode one of

Bear Greas hit the planet. So Brent, you went to the live show? Kansas City. How was it? The Green Room. there, a lot better than this one. Wow.

This one's got Christmas cookies. When they said, you will go back here, I was talking with Chester, and Chester's like, Chester Floyd's, like, come back here, man, the green room's back here. We're going to chill back here before the show and everything,

and there's coffee, tea, cookies, an assortment of nuts. What's one of them, what's that crazy tray name that's got chakudery? Yeah, I'm scared to say that. Anyway, that thing's on there. Okay.

You come up here to the world headquarters. If you're thirsty, you better have brought some water with you. Or Misty will make coffee and bring it out here. How did this turn into it? You need a coffee pot. A coffee pot is what we need out here is what I'm saying. It's three years, man. Well, let me give you some advice.

Thank you. This is the first time anybody's ever even suggested it. Have you not seen the suggestion box? No. I haven't. Okay. But that's it. Other than all the negative things that are happening here, how was the live show?

Oh, the live show was great. It was wonderful. Stuck on the green room. I'm still in the green room. It was good, man. It was so much fun. You know, and we get to talk to people occasionally, you know, through social media that listen to the show, but to be able to look at them in the eyeballs and,

and talk to them. It was just, it was a lot of fun. How many people you think were there? Oh, wow. Huge auditorium. Yes,

big. It was, I want to think the seating capacity was like 2,300. And when I, it wasn't a 100% sellout, but it was like individual seats here and scattered out.

It was maybe 10 seats left out of that thing. Wow. It was really, it was a lot of fun. And they had you tell the story Brent told me He was like right before the show Rinella was like

Hey Brent Why don't you tell that story about that That crackhead that was painting the red car in his garage And Brent was like What? I mean like if everything That Steve has ever heard Come out of Brent's mouth

Or heard about Brent Or I don't even know if he heard you tell that story Yeah I think I told that To him on the first time I was on his podcast Okay And yeah, and Britt was like, okay. That's the story that you want to hear. So why don't you tell that one to us?

He digs it. That was, you mean to tell it now? Just like, tell it. Here's a condensed version of. Yeah, yeah, yeah. U.S. Marshals had a warrant for a guy. And a big methamphetamine distributor, and they had tracked him down to a rural farmhouse in Bradley County.

And they contacted us. Our team goes down there. We split up, hit the house. And it's like, I just. can't remember it's like one or two o'clock in the morning and we split up to two teams one hits the house one hits a garage that there was a light on and that was one that I went on and we went in and we opened the door expecting the guy to be in there cooking meth you know so we're all masked up and got all the safety equipment on and we hit the door and open it up and that guy's

sitting there on a bucket with a paint bro a phone paint bro painting his car it's like like at 2 a.m. in the morning. Yeah, he's got paint all over him, and he's been painting this one fender. Like, I mean, and I told him there it was like had 40 coats, like more coats of paint on it than the Batmobile, and he's just back and forth, just empty cans of paint all around him. And he had been up for like nine days straight. Oh, my God. Painting that fender. Painting that fender.

He's doing a heck of a job. Wow. Rational thing isn't something you generally do after being awake for another day. That's the story that he wanted to hear, and I told one about a canned ham that everybody really enjoyed. Tell us that one. My mother-in-law, after my third or fourth episode came out, she sent me a text. My mother-in-law is the absolute. She is like Ju-Ju Part 2.

I mean, she is just the sweetest thing ever. But she has no clue about hunting, fishing, anything outdoors. But she loves that I love it. And she sent me this text message and said, Brian, I loved to listen to your episode. It's so good. She said, I can just see all the things and hear about the stuff that my dad used to talk about when he was doing all the stuff that you're doing. She said, I just got a question about one of the commercials.

She said, where can we get some of those hams? And I thought, hams? We don't advertise hams. And I sent her a text back. I said, I don't know what you're talking about, Mama. This is my mother-in-law, but we all call her mama. And she said, oh, yeah. You're boss.

Your boss, Steve, he never goes hunting unless he's taking those canned hams with him. And we want to. He's even got a traitor. He puts his canned ham. We want to get some of those. He even gets on top of them in glasses sometimes. So I did a screenshot of a can-am and sent to us that this is what he's talking about, mom.

She's like, oh, well, I was just wanting to support your company. Can-am. Can-ham. Those canned hams are great. That's funny. That's funny. Well, I think that since this is a podcast about mountain lines, and Colby, you brought up an interesting point.

I did. Tell me. You know, I was just excited to come to this one because it's almost like the first render. This episode never had a render. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. So when Bear Greene, this is kind of a time when we're like opening up the back pages of the Bear Grays podcast.

When we started Bear Greece, we didn't have a render. It just came out every two weeks. If you remember, the first, like, six or... Yeah, how many episodes were it? I think episode seven was the first render. Yeah, so for like 14 weeks, it was just an episode every two weeks. Boring. And then, yeah, yeah.

And then we had the first render, which was kind of an experiment, because I had, like, I was like, I don't know if these guys are entertaining or not. And I invited some of you here to come to it. Who was on the first render? I don't even remember. Shoot, I know Malachi Nichols was on there. That's right. I think Dan Rup was on there.

Dr. Daniel was on there for, I think, the first one. Maybe not. Maybe he was later. But anyway, the renders become an important part. So Colby said a lot of this podcast has been living rent-free in his head. It's true. And he's got a lot he wants to say. That's true.

But I thought this would be a great time for Bear to tell his story. So Josh, because Bear's story involves a cat. Yes. A feline, a wild cat. So what did Bear tell you at school the other day? Well, I asked him. I said, you got one tag left? Yeah, you're going to take it with a tradboat.

Yeah. And he said, I found a great spot. But the wind keeps, the way the wind comes down this creek, he's like, I get winded. And he's like, I've got. this idea and he lays this idea out to me and I'm thinking has anyone ever thought of doing this I mean like I felt like I was talking to a Native American who was like what's you doing sign language to you know smoke signals can we get more stereotypical here but I was like I was like I mean it's definitely not something you've ever seen on any hunting channel show or you know something that

people talk about. So what did you do, Bear? Yeah. I don't want to ruin his story. Because he went through it real quick and I was going through it in my head, but I want him to relay the details. Okay, pretty much I'm sitting out a spot where there's a riverbed right behind me. And it's just a river bed that meets up to the main river. Main river's flowing real fast, sucks all the wind south. Okay. And including in this little riverbed that's right behind me, all the wind there gets sucked south. So even if it's north wind, the wind's going to go south right here. and I know where three deer are bedded because I watched him do it.

He said, Dad, I walked almost 20 miles yesterday. I only found three deer. And I was like, it was just kind of a weird statement. And he's like, I literally know where these three deer sleep. He's like,

I bumped him out of the same spot. How many times? Three times. I mean, like, he's like, when he's saying, I know where three deer are. He's like, no, no, no.

I literally know where three deer sleep. They sleep right by that rock every day. Go ahead. Not really hard to find. So yeah, pretty much I watched them bed down one time and they winded me. Came in another time. Now, are you hunting out of a stand? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I was hanging a stand and I watched them go in there and bed down and then they winded me. And I went in there two more times at like midday or like early morning and they'd win me. So they were bedding in the same spot, which usually they don't. And every time they'd come out of their bed, they want to go north, but they smell me. Because the creeks carrying your scent down. even if the prevailing wind is favorable. Yep.

And so pretty much my idea was to get like a bundle of like clothes, boots, make it, you know, stuff that smells like me, go stick it where my stand is, and they come around the backside and hunt in that riverbed. Because every time they'd spook, they'd go to the same, they'd run and they'd cross the river in the same spot. And so pretty much that's... So how did you execute that?

Okay, so there's a, there's a, like a trail that goes. And this is before school. Like this isn't like something he was doing. Like he did this before he came to school. Right. So there's like a trail that kind of goes around like the backside of where these do's bed. And so pretty much I woke up real early, crossed the river, go around the trail.

And I just creep in this riverbed right to my stand and I just lay all my clothes there. And you're assuming the three doze that you know that you have named are not in there right now. They're out doing what they're doing. Well, I mean, that's kind of the idea. I think they're in there. But why wouldn't they... Because they would have winded you. They don't win me until they get out in the riverbed.

They get out of their bed first. They bed a little ways into the woods, and the wind isn't hitting them right there. And so pretty much I came in on this trail, set my... What did you put out there? Did you put some of my stuff? There's all my stuff. Dad used to get bad at me for, like, abusing his gear. Like just using it like it was my own

You too, Josh And I'm wondering what bear left out in the woods He's probably like, yeah I took your good first light You know, your first light puffy And your good boots No, I put my muck boots A pair of socks

Used Yeah This one of my big first light jackets Hunter's orange That was covered in deer blood Okay You know, it smelled like me And I crept around the back side

While I was creeping around the backside I spook probably 15 turkeys up above me. And they all spook towards the way that I was going. And so I get back around, I get in the main river, creep up. It's still dark. Yeah, still dark. And I get to a spot where basically like you envision just like a riverbed and it drops where the water usually flows.

And there's about a three foot drop. And then there's some weeds growing there. And pretty much that's the only place I can hunt where I can shoot where the deer are going to be. because they, you know, the riverbed's like 30 yards wide. I can only shoot like 20. Yeah, it's bone dry. And remind me of bone dry riverbed.

Okay, carry on. And, you know, the main river's 60 yards behind me. And pretty much I sneak in there. And I'm about like 90 yards from where these deer would usually pop out. And I get there and I'm just sitting on my knees. It's real cold. And I sit there for probably 30 minutes. minutes and I look up and there's a bobcat with a squirrel in its mouth. At first I couldn't really

tell what it was. I thought it was a coyote because I was in there a couple days before and saw a coyote tried to shoot it in that same riverbed. So at first I kind of thought it was a coyote, saw how to squirrel in its mouth. But it got closer it got, the more I realized it was a bobcat. And so I knew I couldn't really move because it was like 30 yards facing me. I'm on the ground. And you've yet to say that you're shooting an Osage self-bow made by David Albright. One of our, David's really, we consider him family. It's my brother's father-in-law, David Albright. And a self-bow is the most primitive of archery gear.

I mean, it's essentially a bow carved out of one piece of wood. Most modern bow, most modern, even traditional bows are laminates. They're recurves, long bows that are made from laminated wood and different synthetics sometimes that make them more durable. A self-bow is the most primitive style, so it shoots slow. They're a little harder to aim because the shelf of the bow is kind of out further.

Self-bow is like hyper-primitive, difficult. Yep, and pretty much... So you're on the ground in the creek with your self-bow. Yeah, and so I already had my bow up. And here comes a bobcat with a squirrel in its mouth. Yep, and he just comes straight towards me slightly to my left. Was he just like trotting a little? long?

Yeah. Is he walking slow or trotting? Trotting. What was the squirrel's tail doing? No idea. Kind of like this? Squirrel's dead, so I don't know. It looked like a squirrel.

Yeah, it was. And he comes, and he gets about five yards from me. And at that point, he's between me and the weeds. And I was able to move a little bit. And so I moved my bow to where he's going to be. And he comes down and he's standing right on this slope, right, you know, where the drop. is and he's probably three yards from me. I mean, he's probably from me to that computer behind you. Wow. And there's some weeds between me and him. And at this point, I'd already drawn back.

And he looked at me once he got there. And I was just like, oh, wow. You got a mouthful of squirrel. He thought he'd beat the day, man. And I just knew that was... I knew that was the only shot I was going to get. And so I shoot and I either shot high or hit the weeds and it just skipped right over his back. And he pitched the squirrel and ran like 10 yards behind me and just stopped there looking at me, broadside. And I guess he just didn't want to leave his squirrel or he was curious or something. And so I just stood there and I have a back quiver on. And I just reach back and pull out my other arrow and just draw back and I shoot and it kind of ducks and turns.

and I just hit it right in the back of the head, and it just drops right there. Well, congratulations, young man. And so I go get the cat, get the squirrel, and no more than seven or eight minutes later, I just hear some cracking coming from out in front of me. And so I'm down to my last arrow. And I see a dough coming down. The dough in two phones. Does it look like it's been scared by some dirty socks?

I mean, it was moving quick. It's moving, if you were writing this, you would say, the dough moved at the pace as if she'd been sent bumped by a pair of dirty socks. Well, all I can say is that I saw them go north three times in the morning, and this time they were going south. So, I mean, I don't know. They weren't like really spooked and I didn't hear a little store. Yeah, they weren't running.

No, no, they were pretty calm. So, I don't know. If you're using a magic eight ball, would say sign the point of guess. I actually really appreciate that you're not giving full credit because I think that, especially when it comes to scent, hunters completely make like real significant judgments of what an animal does, like real definitive judgments. Like the animals smelled me and did this or they didn't smell me and they did that when it's really kind of, are you sure that's the way to happen? So I appreciate that because when Bear told me who's like, I'm not sure that my scent. bundle pushed him this way, but...

That's just because he didn't want to get in trouble. Yeah, I think it's a little different. We all know what to have about this whole second. Yeah. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps game calls in 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' 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 Rinella

cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. So, but they came. So here comes these deer. It's the dough and two fons. So you kept hunting. You gathered up the bobcat and the squirrel. Yep.

Just like had them sitting right beside you. Yep. Yeah, actually, whenever I was lifting. My bow got stuck on the arrow that was in the bobcat's head. And so you're going to continue to hunt. Yep. Okay. And pretty much the big dough.

walks out, 18 yards. And I have a short, wide broadhead on. That's real light. It's like a 100-gram broadhead. So when you're shooting a traditional bow, usually have a specialized heavy head, especially a self-bow that's not shooting as hard. We didn't really have much time to get him ready for this.

And so he just had like standard-looking broadhead. And the first two broadheads, both the ones that I shot the bobcat would have been perfect. Oh, okay. It was just kind of my backup broadhead. Yeah. But I didn't think very much of it. And pretty much the dough walked out at 18 yards. I shot and just hit her right behind the shoulder.

And my arrow bounced off. Literally, like, did not get any penetration. No. I mean, like, it had, like, hair on it, but it just, I mean, it was just laying right there. And they all just rained back into the woods. And the d'O. Ow! Ran across the river.

and those were the only three deer I could find, so I pretty much figured my hunt was over. Wow. It was pretty hot. Is your scent bundle still out there? What do you think of that, Dad? Oh, man, that's awesome. That's me.

Yeah, Bear called me on that. He said, had a pretty cool hunt. I thought I better tell you, and I thought, oh, yeah, that little sucker, it's just crazy what he did that morning. Yeah, I found Bobcats. Bobcats were highly elusive to me as a bow hunter for years. I didn't kill one until I was an adult.

I missed five bobcats before I ever killed. I think I've killed two now with a bow. They're hard to kill. And to kill one on the ground at like point, well, to get a shot off even at like point blank range. Two shots off. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's pretty cool. Pretty cool.

No, I was going to say, remind me of the dry creek bed. Well, first of all, when you sent me the picture, I was in Alaska. No, no. Where was I? Yeah, I was in Alaska. and he said, I killed a bobcat when I shot it had a squirrel in his mouth

and I was just like, oh, cool. And I see the picture and I looked at that picture for two days while I was in Alaska before I finally zoomed in and I was like, oh, there's a squirrel. I didn't see the squirrel either. Oh, really?

The squirrel looked just like a rock. Did you see it? Immediately when you sent it to me, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so he took the picture with the squirrel laid there. But somebody, you know, I put that on my Instagram and you know like 99% of the people were just like wow that's cool and somebody was like

if he shot that squirrel crossing a creek or if he shot that bobcat crossing the creek why aren't the bobcat's feet wet he was like he was wearing his rubber boots he thought like like we were trying to pull one over on the world oh gosh and i almost responded back to him but i didn't and i was going to say my brother have you ever seen a bobcat cross a Ozark stream, they don't get their feet wet. Rock to rock. I mean, anyway. But good hunt, good hunt, good hunt, for sure.

You know, I asked Bear kind of the city boy that I am at heart, what are you going to do with that squirrel? I mean, it's killed by a bobcat, his teeth is penetrated to meat. And, you know, I'm, he said, well, I guess I'll take it home, put it in a freezer. No question. What did you do with it, Bear? Well, I ended up, I cut a backstrap out of the bobcat And cut, you know, the legs off the squirrel and ate them for dinner

You ate the bobcat? A piece of it, yeah. Was it good? It was actually pretty good. I mean, it wasn't anything special, but like, it smelled terrible when I skinned it. So I thought it would be nasty, but it just tasted like meat. Like pork? Cat meat is pretty good.

Some of the best meat I've ever had was Mountain Lion that you gave me. Mountain Line, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Here's something that the bearer grease world can do for me, for meat eater, for Steve Ronella. Welcome, Ms. Newcomb. Have a seat. Dr. Ms. Newcomb has just joined us.

Let's give her a round of applause. Here's something that the bear grease world could do for me. On January the 9th, the audio original, The Long Hunters. How are you, Dr. Newcomb? Good to be here. Great to have you. Bear just told Oh, I missed it.

Let me fill you in. Juju came in and gave a Christmas message to all of Bear Greece and brought us cookies. Bear just told us about his bobcat squirrel, deer hunt. It was really great. Brent told us about how he had a great time in Kansas City, probably even better than coming here. He had a better time.

He had a better time there than with us, his people. Wow. No, that's not true. It kind of hurts. You can't. And now we're talking about... But now that I'm here, I'm sure all that's going to do. Now we're talking about the long...

January 9th. Meat eater, Meat eater, American History, the Longhunter's 1761 to 1775. Audio original, me and Steve Ronella. You can pre-order it now. But here's the deal. We have pretty big plans to make more of these. And if we sell a bunch of these, we're going to be, they're going to want us to do more. And so you can pre-order this and you listen to it like

an audiobook. It's going to be five to six hours. And I'm telling you, there has never, this data has never been gathered and put in one place. It was, there was a lot of questions. The way Steve described it as the historical authors that wrote about the time periods with the long hunters and even modern historical authors are often not hunters and they don't focus on the things that hunters and and really people that are living close to the land are interested in. And he had all kind of questions about a lot of different stuff. And Randall Williams, Steve, and I, we developed this book. Randall Williams did a lot of the research.

And I just can't imagine someone that likes any kind of American history and deer hunting to not, for this not to be like essential reading, Well, I would say reading material, but it's an audio original listening material. So go and you can pre-order it now. Where do you go to pre-order it? That's a great question, Doug. It's easy to find. It's on the Penguin Random House, Audible.

It's on Audible. It's on Audible. Yeah, Audible. Yeah. So anyway, do that. It'll be doing a favor to the bearer grease world. So do that. Are there options to, like, bootleg it so I have to pay for it?

but you still get credit for it? If you bootlegged it, I'd just let somebody know, you know, just like a penguin rat, at me, need it? Okay, got it. Just so they can, like, put a little tally mark on it. You know, tally marks, that makes me think of something. I learned just this week that the Native Americans used a bear femur to keep track of different things. In the archaeological record, they would take a big bear femur and make tally marks on bear femurs.

Like notches. You're talking about it? Yeah, yeah. Making notches for stuff. Talley marks. Okay, that was just a little aside. Episode one of Bear Grease. I noted a few things about it.

Brent Reeves was actually the first voice ever heard on the Bear Gris podcast. That's not true. It was second to yours. Are you sure? Were you not the cold open? I was in the cold open. Oh, but I said, how certain are you? Oh, that's right.

The cold open, episode one. First interview. Well, it was the cold open, though. Yeah. Yeah, and then it was Brent Reeves. 100%. And then I did my little open. Oh, burritos ready.

It ain't coffee. And then it was dad talking about how he had just bought the propaganda. And you know who it wasn't? How many mountain lines have you seen? Does it matter? Oh, it matters. Of course it matters. Well, if you've seen a mountain line.

It was in a mountain line episode. If you'd lied like these guys and said that you'd seen a mountain line. I could have been on. You could have been on. It's kind of died out a little bit, but there used to be a lot of animosity coming from O'Lambridge over there about not being interviewed, that everybody had been interviewed except for him. Yeah. I think it's because I'm not a subject matter expert on anything. I'm just a dude.

I don't even know how I got this job. He's just a dude. cheap cheap yeah yeah yeah um collie anything stand out to you in the episode you know one of the things that has lived in my brain pretty rent-free has been scott brown's story about being at walmart selling that license like i think about that regularly like i'll see something on my trail cam and i'm like man i think that might be man i don't know you're like i don't want to be that guy i just wondered and i listened to it again on the way up here and i was thinking well i was thinking well maybe Scott don't know what a mountain line looks like.

Maybe those other guys did. Yeah. You were casting some out on that. Well, I'm just saying there was five witnesses against him. Man, when I heard, so I hadn't listened to this episode in a long time. And when I heard Scott's story, it almost made my blood boil just a little bit to think about. I mean, if I had been in that little covey of guys back there, you know, Scott, I mean, Scott kind of fed the, the monster. a little bit.

Well, he's also working. He's in business back there. Yeah, his job isn't to debate. His job isn't to debate. No. Because people, oh, my gosh, you will offend somebody if you correct them when it comes to something they think they've seen. But I think I would have just been like, oh, that's not a mountain line.

That's a bobcat. We all know it. See you all later. Scott, Brian. If you do, Scott. Please buy my audible book. Yeah. Check out the long owner.

And britos are ready. If you knew Scott Brown, I mean, this guy, he's the real deal. Outdoorsman Deluxe. His dad, Outdoorsman Deluxe. And I think Andy's dad was, I mean, he goes back way back. Yeah. And, hey, he's a killing dude. He knows the outdoors.

I'd trust him anywhere. He knows what a mountain line looks like. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Maybe just by photo, but he, you know, he's a, he's a, he's a, he's a, he's a, he's a, real deal. So this episode, though, I remember when we first did it, I told you in the little preamble that I was commissioned to make three episodes in the first two. The first two that I made, one was with James Lawrence, and the other one was about dogs,

and then the third one was the Mountain Line episode. And we ended up, but the Mountain Line episode was the third one. and I remember thinking when we had those three and we had to start that we were, it was like a gamble to put that one first because we'd probably never make another one that was anywhere close to that good. Like I thought the Bearers podcast was going to be like,

man, they had one good episode. It was all, they peaked early. Yeah, I mean, for real. And I remember telling my boss at the time who was Ben O'Brien. And I said, man, I think we got to swing for the fence because we thought about putting it later

like starting a little bit low and to me the James Lawrence episode ended up being as good as any we've ever done like I revamped it I did those two we all listened to it it was like a four out of ten and then I went back and

rebuilt the whole James Lawrence episode and like put in it just so to me that one was like redeemed but I remember just thinking just basing off the critical review of of the mountain line one? Well, I just didn't think there was that many intriguing stories like that that would draw people in.

And I think we've learned that that's wrong. I mean, there's, you know, I mean, just with all the topics, like you think about all the topics we've covered in the last almost three years. I mean, from these historical figures to some of these living guys to, I hear a lot of people talk about the Tex-Dermy Roadshow when Brent and I drove around. Do you remember that, Brent? Yeah, oh yeah. I still get messages about that. Yeah. But it was so, it's interesting to go back. But I truly get more interaction around that than anything of, to this day, people send, I mean, for real, I'm not joking. Look at this. I'm pulling up my.

You're telling Noah about the flood now, because here's the ones that I get that have a Black Panther in them is like, will you show this to clay? Yeah, exactly. He's ignoring my text. No, I got, I just, since this podcast started, somebody sent me a Black Panther image. I'm serious. Look at the time on that. That came, that came just today. Well, let me tell you, we, that very photograph right there, Steve and Yonis and I talked about that on a podcast we did in Kansas City.

That picture, right there. That picture's been around a long time. Well, and this guy says it's from Georgia. Yep. And his line here would fall into category number one. of my automated response. Sir, you are looking at an animal that is not from North America.

I mean, that's a real Black Panther, but that is not from North America. A wild North American cat. Says to you. Well, wait a minute. Did I just totally interrupt you while you were going to talk about

what stood out to you? You know, I thought it went a really good direction. Okay, okay. I will say the most surprising thing when listening to it again was I was surprised that you knew a quote from Dumb and Dumber. I was like, Clay's never watched that movie. I don't know many pop culture. I'm not sure that we're going to call a movie that's 20-something years old pop culture.

It's what all the kids are watching, Misty. Well, the old kids. Yeah, the kids your age. Mm-hmm. You actually got the quote a little bit out of context. It was like, well, I'm not sure that Clay has watched Dumb and Dumber. Yeah, I wasn't convinced, too. Dad, do you, what, so that podcast dubbed you as the believer, Black Panther believer,

what stood out to you if you heard it again? I mean, like, I don't know, after three years of being the believer, yeah, where do you stand? Well, I tell you, I hate to say this. I mean, you talk to some pretty credible people, but they're full of hogwash. You know, I mean, that's garbage. I don't know where these guys went to school. the game and I love you know the guys working there

I mean they know what they're doing but they got the black panther all munked up so I keep the same stance you know I don't believe it I know it I mean it's for real okay and Ollie what's the name of her town Buck snored Buck snored

Ann Ollie down in Bucknort yeah I mean you could hear them at night without a doubt yeah and you can tell the difference between the black one than the regular colored one just by their sound. Y'all remember the early podcast. There was no question. So anyway, no, it was very good.

I enjoyed it probably more this time than the first. Yeah. I found it shocking that they would get only one verification on 150 reported sightings. It's kind of interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, Josh, what do you think? Not necessarily about the podcast, but just about going back and listening to the first episode of Bear Race. You know, I'm a big fan of reruns.

Yeah. Yeah, I'd like to watch things and listen to things over again because I feel like my attention span is a little weak sometimes. And so going back, I pick up on things that I missed before. I all credit due to Myron Means, brilliant guy, he's been on here, fantastic guy. There's got to be more mountain lions out there than one. we're seeing. I just have, I just believe it. I'm going to defend him. I don't, I don't, well, I've known Brent to lie. I got a vaccination. Not all the time. Yeah. So I, he says he's seen two. Yeah. I believe he's seen at least one. Okay. So, yeah. I've seen two with witnesses both times.

Mm-hmm. They had four witnesses, the first, three other witnesses besides myself the first time. But a lot of, were coon hunters. Yeah. No, that was they weren't vaccinated. The second one, the second one was a coon hunter. The first time was broad daylight with three other guys in the cab of the truck. Mm-hmm. And it was, I mean, it was plain.

Where did you see sad? Ashley County. Ashley County outside between Hamburg and Fountain Hill. That narrows it down. It does. Bear, have you ever seen the outline? Bears lost his headset. but never saw a mountain long?

No. I think that I would believe it if Bear had seen it. Yeah. Because I think anyone that's out in the woods as much as Bear is, bear sees the craziest stuff. Like constantly seeing crazy stuff. Constantly bringing home videos of like... What are you saying?

I'm just saying, I'm just saying, I would only believe it if bear saw it. You would believe it if bear saw it? Oh, here we go. What's your rebuttal bear? Well, I was talking with one of my buddies yesterday. and you know like like sometimes whenever I hunt on like ATV trails

you know if like ATV is coming down and I don't want them to see my spot like if I'm like all my way into a spot I hit the side of the road and hide behind a tree and they have no clue that there was a dude within 10 feet of them yeah and so I feel like I've probably

I feel like a lot of people have probably walked right under I mean we got a believer on our hand. I mean, I don't say how do you, what about the fact

that there's not any here? How would you, how would this fit into your argument? There's just, we've got plenty of verified. Credible. Yeah.

Witnesses. Credible, ish. Credible, credible,ish. I mean, yeah. You would think you'd see

like a track or something though in a puddle, but. 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. backwards. 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. Man, I find that this statistic can be verified and is 100% accurate. 98% of American hunting license holders, America's hunters, cannot tell the difference between a canine and a feline track.

I was just thinking the same thing. I don't know if I saw it in the woods if I would be able to differentiate. I have gotten so many pictures of big old. Tracks. Canine track. Somebody else sent it to me and be like, is this, is this a mountain line? And I mean, it's a canine track. And it's, uh, and it's kind of hard to tell. And I have actually had to study it quite a bit.

The people, the 2% of people that do know, I was, y'all, y'all just took me at my word at the solidity and certainty of my statistics. I appreciate that. I just kind of made that up. We're used to. Is the, is the hound hunters that are, that are pursuing lions. Like they can tell. They can tell driving down the road at 30 miles per hour tracking the snow that if it's a cat or if it's a bear or if it's a dog.

Is there a distinguishing feature that? 100%. What is it? Well, the cat track is much more oval and you can, it's almost like you could place, this isn't the best description, but you could like place a stick in between the pad and the toes. And it would be like more of a straight line. A canine has four toes that are going to be on this pad, and they're going to be the way they're... In a mark.

Yeah, there's kind of like too low and then too high. And then a cat pad has the three lobes on the pad of the foot. Would you say that's about right, Brad? And a canine always is going to have claws. A cat is never, basically never going to see a claw mark in the. the track. And the other thing that I think would surprise in most people is that a pretty darn

good-sized mountain line track is small. I mean, and I'm not an experienced mountain mountain hunter, but I have line hunted a couple times. And that cat hanging on the wall right there was a male weighed 112 pounds, was killed in Panhandle of Idaho when it was two degrees. Killed with a traditional boat.

He's going to a hide that shot it out of tree. On the wall, Mac. And when I saw that track in the snow, with my friend Leon Brown in Idaho. It was, heck, it was pretty small, I thought. And I mean, that's not a big cat. I mean, a big one weighs 140 pounds.

I mean, that's a monster. But that was an adult male cat, younger side of adult. And, I mean, that track wasn't as big as a Coke can, I bet. Really? Yeah. I mean, so, I think a mountain line track is much,

smaller than what you would think. Okay. So that's just my input. I've never seen a mountain line. I can't wait till the day. In Arkansas. In Arkansas. Yeah.

Excuse me. In Arkansas. How many cats have you seen with your eyes? That's a good question. I've seen that one. And one time in British Columbia, a cat jumped out in the road while we were driving down the road, bear hunting and just loped down the road in front of us for about 30 yards.

and then darted off. Yeah. Exactly, same scenario as Brent. What are you pointing at, Brent? The squirrel I'm waiting on the bobcat. Oh. I think I've only seen, those are the only two I can remember. Yeah, and that's a lot of beating around out west too.

So one was in Idaho and one was in British Columbia? One was British Columbia and then one was Idaho. That's right. Yep. Yep. I've now seen some wolves up close. I just got back from Alaska. there's going to be some more on this coming out we filmed we filmed our

alaskan trip and so there's sometime the next year on the media your YouTube channel there's going to be uh us trapping wolves in Alaska it was that's pretty cool man it was it was an incredible trip I hadn't told that about it it was that part of Alaska was in southeast Alaska it was the most spectacular natural beauty of any place of ever been. We were on the ocean, so we were at sea level, down low, but they're big snow-capped mountains, basically in every direction. But there was a lot of glacier activity where we were at. I was reading today about the idea of wilderness, and there's a term that's called sublime,

which has been watered down by modern culture to kind of take away its meaning. But the word, the old nature writers, the original nature writers that kind of forged and articulated the ideas around American wilderness used the word sublime to describe interactions with raw pieces of nature. And sublime, it almost has the feeling of like,

a supernatural experiment experience like an i think like euphoric like a like an oh the way they described was like an overlap of the natural and spiritual world coming together when josh when i was in alaska there we went to a glacier that met the ocean which is pretty cool some glaciers don't this glacier i mean you could have rode a boat right up to it and we did right when i saw it we were, I believe we were over two miles away. We kind of came around this bend and we had been seeing, like when you get like four miles from this glacier, you're just out in the ocean and you start seeing chunks of ice. You know, if you didn't know any better, you'd just be like, what is that? You could drive over there and there'd be a chunk of ice about as big as an ice chest

floating, just a clear chunk of ice. You'd be like, wow, that's wild. You go another quarter of mile and there's a chunk of ice as big as a black bear floating oh wow look at that you go another 300 yards around the bin and there's the ice chest as big as ice piece of ice as big as a Volkswagen floating you go you go around the corner again and there's 200 blocks of ice that are big chunks like a giraffe like a giraffe yeah yeah and then, you know, basically there's like chunks of this glacier falling into the ocean and then melting as they move out. The closer you get to the glacier, the bigger the icebergs get. When you got two miles away, you could see this glacier.

It glowed blue. And, Dad, I have never had an experience like this before. It was not concocted. I wasn't expecting it. But I, like the hair on the back of my neck stood up when I saw that glacier. and I mean for real my this is not a figure of speech like you know people say my mouth dropped open

yeah like I kind of came to awareness after a few minutes of looking at this glacier from two miles away and I my mouth was open I was just like holy cow and it was a sublime experience and as soon as you ran in the corner and you can see the glacier

the air temperature dropped you know probably seven or eight degrees started getting cold and then you come up on a glacier that's like as big as your house and we floated around it and the deep the ice that was the densest was was blue it glowed blue like a like a stained glass window and and and when we when we got up to it I mean it's hard to describe it almost it felt to me like a portal to another realm. Because you, it's just, it was.

I mean, it was just like, and when we got, when we got within sight of it, I asked David Bennett, who was the guy I was trapping with, this incredible guy, Stiking God serves. He, uh, I asked him, I said, well, we see this thing, cav. You know, that's what they call when chunks of ice fall off of the glacier into the ocean. And he was like, oh yeah. I mean, I didn't know if there's something that happened like,

once every two weeks or if it happened like all the time. And we're within side of the glacier. I say, Willett Cab and he goes, oh yeah, I turn around and we're now over a mile away from it. And I hear what sounds like thunder. I mean, I actually looked up because it was puzzling to me the sound I heard. I thought it was thunder. And all of a sudden I see like in slow motion this huge chunk of ice fall off.

And it just looks like slow motion. chunk of ice about as big as my house. Wow. And I saw it hit the water and just, that wasn't the thunder. The thunder was it cracking off, the noise it made when it cracked and fell. And then it hit the water and you see the ocean just explode.

And then like three minutes later, the boat goes, you know, like the wave comes out. And I was like, holy cow, we are going to see this same calf. And on the way to it, I saw three huge chunk of,

of ice fall off. And so I thought, man, we're just going to get, like, right up on this glacier and just watch a show. And we got there, and by the time you get up to it, there's so much ice, you're just breaking ice, basically. They're, like, parting. It's like a slushy, you know, on the top of the ground with big chunks of ice, small chunks.

Right. Chunks as big as your house. Chunks is... And we stayed in front of that glacier for probably 40 minutes, just kind of floating around within like two, 300 yards of it, like as close as you wanted to get. Right. And I never saw another big piece fall off. Really?

Yeah, it was just like totally erratic. Interesting. That blue was the most, is the bluest thing I've ever seen. Misty sent me the picture. It was absolutely incredible. Yeah. Did you, and I forgot to ask you, did y'all get any of that ice and melted and drink it? No.

No. We talked about it. Dave Bennett's told me that there was a time period, maybe in the 80s when they were selling glacier ice to rich folks to put in their drinks because it didn't melt us quick because it was denser. And those icebergs had rocks in the ice.

It would be like clear ice, like as big as your house. You couldn't see all the way through it just because it was like... You have ice on the rocks. Well, there was rocks. It trenches out, though. There would be like... When that glacier moves.

It would be like rocks inside the ice. I just wonder what it tasted like. I did suck on one piece. Did it taste like water? It tastes like regular water. Tastes like regular water. Did it taste like an extinct disease or... Mastodon?

An extinct Mastodon. COVID part one. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. What were you going to say, Misty? Nothing. Did you hear about that? I just reminded me of that...

chunk of that glacier that broke off in Greenland? Do you hear about that? There's a chunk of a glacier that broke off of a fjord in Greenland that is 50 miles long and 12 miles wide. It's a drift now. They say that it melting will literally cause the ocean level to rise. Just from that one chunk of that glacier. It's so big.

Wow. That's incredible. The glaciers are melting. I asked David, that's an interesting statement. And if you say that and want to sound intelligent, you have to put a little context around it. The glaciers have been melting for 10,000 years. I mean, that's the way, you know,

so you can't just say the glaciers are melting and it be like some statement of alarm. Like the glaciers have been melting for 10,000 years. That is fact. You know, what they're saying is that the glaciers are melting faster than we've ever seen them in recorded history, you know, which I, I don't know if that's true or not.

I assume it is. David Bennett's told me that he has seen that glacier retreat about a half a mile in his lifetime. Wow. That feels like a lot. Yeah, it does. But when you consider that like 20 miles away where he lives, well, however many miles away he lives, there was a time when there was like a mile and a half of ice ice. pack over the place he lives that was connected to this glacier.

Do you see what I'm saying? I mean, it's like an unfathomable amount of ice has melted in the last 10,000 years. But yeah, I agree. So it's just interesting. A lot of people have asked me, were they melting? I was like, yeah. Saw it with my own ice. They even took part in it by it.

I did take a chunk of ice at a different glacier brunt. We saw, too. I had a little chunk of ice Put in my mouth What kind of boat were you in? Well, we stayed on a 42-foot fishing boat called the Sandpiper Which was his crabbing boat

David is a commercial crabber And he's been involved in commercial They call it commercial fishing But commercial crabbing Since he was 12 years old We stayed on that boat Inside of that boat It's kind of like a camper

It would be almost identical to a camper. There's a kitchen, there's a bathroom, there's a kitchen table, there's bunk beds. But we had a skiff, which was a heavy-duty aluminum boat made of quarter-inch aluminum with a 200-inch, 200-horse motor on the back of it that we used to scoot around. So our base camp was the sandpiper. We stayed on there. That was incredible. Six days on the ocean up there.

It really was incredible. It truly was. I knew David from Bear Hunting Magazine. David was a longtime Bear Honey Magazine outfitter. And he sells spring bear hunts and some of that real good hunting up there. Yeah, solid guy. Yeah, he's a great guy. So how many wolves did you get?

We tracked four wolves. It was very, very unique. If you look at Clay's Instagram, he's holding one of them up, and he says this is a 90-pound wolf. And it looks. It looks enormous. It looks like it's, I mean, like if that wolf is 90 pounds, Clay's about 95. Photographs are always deceptive because scale means everything. Kind of going full circle.

Let's bring this back to the mountain lines. Like if you have a tan cat, a tan house cat, Nana's tan cat house cat, like five feet from your trail camera, he's going to look big as opposed to Nana's cat 30 feet away. I got the cure for all of that. We talked about that. Steve and I and Yannison, Spencer, and everybody on the podcast, we talked about this the other day. After it was over with, I had this idea. It's like you get an argument with somebody,

and you're leaving and you drive it down the road, and like, golly, I should have told him this. This would have really got its goat. But I saw a thing. I was watching something on National Geographic, and there was a guy in this shark tank, in his shark cage, and they're trying to figure out how big these. sharks are swimming out in front of them because there's nothing nothing there to judge you know the shark against

so he had a laser made underwater and it shoots out a beam of light or you know two dots that are one foot apart or a meter I think is what they use but a meter apart we don't even know how far that is yeah I mean we fought a war to keep from doing that so anyway you get a you get he was shouting out there taking photographs of these sharks with those two points on there then they can take the photograph and say okay that shark is however many long he's 15 feet long so game camera you need those two little lights on there okay it shoots a beam out at a predetermined distance apart and if that regardless of where that animal is when it hits him you'll be able to measure it out I see

You see what I'm saying Yeah And that If the lasers were Exactly aligned The distance wouldn't Like get wider Get narrower

With perfectly parallel Yeah they'd have to be Perfectly parallel That's what it was And that's what this guy has designed That's good idea Brett That's gonna be on I'm glad he brought that up

That's gonna be on Our new trail camera The Bear Grease Trail camera In first light specter Yeah Yeah yeah No I was just saying The scale means a lot with those wolves.

I agreed with it. And that's the reason I put that they weighed 90 pounds because... Somebody would have thought, that's a 130-pound wolf. That's a 130-pound wolf. If you'd have seen them in person, you would have been like, yeah, that's probably about a 90-pound wolf. But when you're holding it up... I can assure you I would not have it.

When you're holding it up, that wolf is like closer to the camera than you. And they just look bigger than they were. I wish you would have held it more like a baby. Yeah. Rocking it. Yeah. No, it was interesting putting a wolf up. It did not escape me that a wolf is a controversial animal to kill.

Not at all. And inside the film that we make when we actually show people how we were trapping these wolves, we're going to handle it really with a lot of humility and really tell the story. But man, here's the deal. People that live in wolf country, that carry anything about wildlife, vast majority of them are like all for...

They don't necessarily hate wolves. They're all for managing wolves. Managing. People that have little, functional connection to wolves, like me, love the idea of wolves are typically, want to

ceremonialize them, you know, want to... And want them protected. Man, the people that love wildlife, life usually want them managed. And I think they should be managed

just like any other game animal. I want wolves on the landscape in Alaska. And of all people, David Bennett says too, David, David wolf traps in the areas that he moose and deer hunts. And like I said in my post,

it's not, I mean, like we know, we didn't try to paint the picture like we're changing the world by trapping a few wolves. But David says that he can,

on a micro scale positively impact deer and moose numbers in the places he hunts by trapping. Yeah, same thing with Coons. Yep. Coons and turkeys. Yeah. And I had somebody on the gram be like, prove to me that taking those wolves out is helping deer numbers.

And I didn't want to embarrass the guy. I'm a nice man. I like to show people some dignity, so I didn't even respond. Wolves, the statistic if you looked it up, it will say that a wolf eats seven pounds of meat per day. Now, granted, that's an average. They probably don't eat that every day, but when you average it out, like, they're eating a lot of meat. That's a lot of meat.

Let's do the math real quick. Let me help you on this. Let's do the math real quick of how many deer we literally. Let's do that. Let's do that wolf. What was the estimated age on that wolf? Uh, I, it was an adult male. So it's like, if it was like a dog, I would say it was at least a three or four year old.

It may have been an eight year old. Let's just say three. So three years. Times three six. Well, we would, we would be, we would be doing math on the years that he was going to continue to live. Let's say he lived another three years. You're already, you're already to my answer. How many is he going to eat next year?

Exactly. Well, that's what I'm saying. So three years times 365. That's a, a. 1,095 days, let's just say times 5 pounds of meat per day. That's 5,400 pounds of meat. Okay, do it for one year.

Do it for one year. Okay, so 365 times, and I'm just going to say 5 pounds of meat per day, times 5. That's 1,800 pounds. So that wolf is going to eat several. A ton. Big game animals himself. Yeah.

I mean, so, like, if you take a, wolf off the landscape. I mean, I don't see, you know, a lot of times solutions like that, it's the narrative and the talking points for predator hunters that want, or any kind of person that's wanting to justify something they want to do. I'm going to be like, sometimes... Save the caribout.

Somebody play Sarah McLaughlin. Yeah. I don't want to simplify the narrative, because it's easy to be like, oh, you know, save deer, kill a wolf. Like, it's really probably not quite that simple. But, it is.

Like, wolves don't have any other option. They got to eat meat. And they have the right to. And we love wolves on the landscape. But as David says, you just got to manage them. Yeah. David, David said, I like corn, but I want to eat it and harvest it too. It was funny when he said it.

I thought it would punch a little harder. It's true. You didn't give us a chance. I know. I started telling it and I was like, this isn't going to be that funny. So I just sutured it up real quick. I needed more time to process. You're supposed to do the old Johnny Carson.

Ooh, Bamo. You do one of those. So, yeah, I wanted to talk just a little bit about Alaska. So people will be able to see that. And that'll be after they buy the Longhunter's audio original book. Right. So that would be great. January night.

Well, they can order it now, Colby. Oh, yeah. And you could order it as a Christmas gift and then do a little I-O-U. Those are the best. Yeah, a little slip of paper that says, I've ordered you. American, meters of American history, Longhunter's 171 to 1775.

Works for magazines. Cassette, eight-track. Yeah, you can do that with Bear Honey Magazine. Bear Honey Magazine Christmas gift. Yeah, get the package. Yep, deliver it to your door. Three-year subscription and a hat. Mm-hmm.

Anybody else have any, just like, what would be a really just significant analysis of the replay of this Bear Grays classic. Dr. Black, Dr. Back didn't believe me, and he's still wrong. Next. I think you should have played back to back with this replay when James Lawrence and Gerald just kind of spontaneously started talking about seeing Black Panther's American. Yeah, that was at Bear Camp.

Yeah, we were at Bear Camp and then y'all did that podcast. and they just, I mean, they had clearly not heard the podcast. Yeah. And they just started talking about. I don't think James and Gerald listen to many podcasts. I get the feeling. Well, anyway, it was pretty awesome because, like, they just walked right into the story telling these stories about, I mean, and they had tales and they had colors. And it was really funny.

And you're just sitting there having to be quiet. And I thought that was a, and you said. I was like Scott Brown. I, yeah. You were Scott Brown. I wish you would have played. The two side by side. That's right.

That was good. I forgot about that. Colby closing comments. Yeah, I was just saying, give him your headset. I want to hear from that. My, uh,

my mom swears up and down. She saw a Black Panther in New Boston. Really? Yeah, by the prison. Really? And then, uh,

she's always talked about it. And then it came up again after this podcast, and I just, I couldn't break her heart. You just let it go. I just let it go. What is it? I let,

I let it go the other day with a guy that, that I was talking to and he wasn't informed to the podcast he hadn't listed anything and he said Clay I want to show you this picture look at this and he thought it was a Black Panther

I mean and he's like straight up and I just didn't have time I didn't have time I was just like I'll be darn you think that's a Black Panther I don't know I mean I just kind of but I just didn't have time

you know what I mean it was like listen here come here he was an older gentleman I'm going to be like, have a seat. I got something I want to talk to you about. They're not real. So your mom.

Yeah. And as far as the Barreys Hall of Fame, as far as episodes, I think that's the first one. Really? You're saying you liked it the best? I just think that all the ripples that worked its way, it was really like identifying, like, the trajectory of it. There was some things I would have done different in the sequence of storytelling. That's what I heard. When I heard it, I was delightfully, I'm really.

nervous about going back and listening to old stuff, even like from three weeks ago. For real, man. Because I hear stuff and I wish I did it different. The podcast is good. I should have told Scott's stuff way up closer to the front. And now I don't have as long of interview. Like I talked to Myron for like 30 minutes, kind of like nonstop almost. Like we pretty much don't do that anymore. I feel like you don't talk as much like inside of the interviews. You give the sound butts to the people I need more you know

you're right I do I try to I ask people a question but then I trim out my question and I it's all about an efficient listen yeah because I mean I think you cover two hours worth of content and one hour's worth of media when you listen to a good bear grease

and it's and that's one way I've made it more efficient is that all context with the yeah so good point good point Josh the older I get the more I believe what I think I believe. So I'm all for confirmation bias.

You're just for it. Yeah, I'm 100% support. Big fan confirmation bias. Yeah. I mean, I want to believe what I want to believe. Hey, Bear. Why not? So my dad, I grew up with a dad who believed in Black Panthers.

You grew up with a dad. You're a skeptic. That didn't. Well, I'll be honest. I think before the first time I actually listened to the podcast, I thought, that like you could see a black panther oh you did yeah i think it's because i spent too much time around too much time the believer too much time around the believer well any other comments misty gary just uh i enjoyed it more the second time

i think there's a lot of mountain lines around we just don't see them but it was i was surprised when he said they're not as secretive as we uh yeah that was very good point yeah i couldn't believe that because i hunted a remote area for a long time and i used to envision mountain lines up in trees i don't know if i'd read a book or what but i thought you know back as far back as i am i could be lunch for one of these guys you know and you know i thought about so much it's almost like i saw a mountain line but i didn't you know i mean It's like I was aware that there were mountain lines in that area. Living rent free in your head.

Yeah. Yeah, I thought they were anyway. But, yeah. I just, I agree with Josh. I'm just thinking about what he said. I don't feel like I have a strong enough opinion about mountain lions specifically. But, yeah, I'm for confirmation bias. Life with confirmation bias is just a little more fun than reality.

Well, I just think, I think that, no, that's not what I'm saying. I just think that some of what, it's kind of taking. what Bear John said too. You know, there's times where he's, if you were to say, was Bear in the woods by you? Or, you know, was he hiding in the woods? Was a lion in the woods? No, Bear was talking about, like,

there are people that have walked right by him that don't know he's been right there. And if you ask those people, they would say, absolutely not. And they would be wrong. Right. They'd be wrong. I see the point.

And I'm just saying, if you could say it more efficiently than me, I'm kind of, I can tell, like, Clay's struggling a little bit. No, that's it. And I'm not saying, I've never said there's a breeding population of mountain lines in Arkansas. I happen to be at a place, two different places, as the crow flies 80 miles apart, where I saw with my own eyeballs two mountain lines, neither one were black. That's all I'm saying. But eventually there will be a breeding population.

I mean, even just with what Myron said. I would think so, yeah. And you've got to be open to that. All these skeptics have to be open to, I mean, someone is going to say one day, I saw this and you're going to have to believe them. It's going to be true. Yeah. And if you can be just as blind by your skepticism as you can by your belief. Boom.

There it is. That was good. You can be just as blind by your skepticism as those who are blinded by their own confirmation bias living outside of reality. Yeah. No, I'm all for it, man. I want there to be a breeding population of mountain lions in Arkansas. And I think there will be as long as deer populations remain stable. I mean, you know, there was, you talked to so many guys that were like, man, when I was a kid, there were no deer here.

There were no turkeys here. And today there's a ton of deer, ton of turkeys. There were no elk. Now there's elk. I mean, in our lifetime, there could be mountain lines all over the east. Well, thank you guys so much. Merry Christmas. I wish you could have some of these cookies that

Juju bought at Sam's. I would actually like one of those things. They're very good. Did she really buy them on a plate? She did. Yeah, and put them on a plate and covered on the plate. That was the first thing she told us. Juju.

It was like too much information. Juju just, you know. It's okay. We don't care. God bless. We don't care. Well, all right. Have a Merry Christmas, everybody.

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