Bear Grease - Ep. 196: BEAR GREASE [RENDER] - Live from the Black Bear Bonanza

Episode Date: March 13, 2024

This podcast was recorded live at the Black Bear Bonanza in Bentonville, Arkansas. The crew talks about some of the most recent bear research in the state, then ends with a recap on the American Wilderness series. Clay is joined by AGFC biologist Myron Means, BHA CEO Patrick Berry, James Brandenburg, Bernie Barringer, Brent Reaves, and Misty Newcomb. Andrew Wills of Hawken Horse ends with the debut of his and Clay’s new song, "Arkansas Mule." 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 and 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. We've got some big news that Meat Eater, we're going on another live tour from April 23rd through May the 5th.

Me and Steve Ronella and the team are going to be all over the country. We're going to be in Mesa, Arizona, San Diego, California, Anaheim, California, Sacramento, California, Salt Lake City, Utah, Boise, Idaho, Missoula, Spokane, Portland, Tacoma. I know we need to come to the south. It's going to happen one day, folks. But right now, our live tour tickets are on sale. I'll be there. Steve will be there. A bunch of the team will be there.

It's going to be a lot of fun. Get your tickets today at themeatheater.com slash events. Themeetor.com slash events live tour tickets. We're hitting the American West. How's everybody doing? Great to see everybody. Hey, thank you guys. so much for coming out today. This is a big deal. Big deal for me, big deal for everybody that

loves Arkansas Bears. And it just means a lot to me that y'all, y'all came out today. These guys at BHA do a ton of work, they really do. I don't do anything. I just show up. So you don't have to thank me for anything. But these BHA guys that you've seen James Brandenberg being the head of them here in Arkansas doing a great job. Miron Means. is going to open us up with a banjo tune. Hey, you guys may have been out here just a minute ago. This is the world's greatest bear biologist right here. He plays a banjo.

So Myron, open us up with a banjo tune, and then we'll get started. We'll do. I'm going to dance. No, I'm not. I don't know which one will train work. I'm working. All right, this is called Cripple Creek. usually this is about the first banjo songs most banjo players learn and it goes kind of like

this y'all help me out help me keep rhythm come on i'd recognize taylor swift anywhere that was excellent well welcome to the bear grease render podcast this is our this is our live podcast so this will go out to the world here in a couple weeks um what we so this podcast so this podcast is the we have the bear grease podcast which is our documentary style podcast

and then this one is where we gather up a group of folks and we typically would talk about the last documentary style

bear grease podcast y'all familiar with the bear grease podcast y'all know what I'm talking about okay just check it I wasn't sure wasn't sure

so this and this is a little bit different because we got all you guys here we got a group of people I can't wait to introduce you to, but usually we would spend a little more time talking about the wilderness podcast. Say hi to Brent's Instagram following there.

Both of them. First of all, I got to get things started off right. If you listen to the Bear Gries Render, you know that a couple of months ago, I was petitioning the world for a banjo player to come to the renter. podcast and just stand there and wait for like fun one-liners, you know, kind of like a side man. You want me go get it?

Well, I want you to come to, I want the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission to finance you to come to every render and play your banjo. That's what I want. I'm going to work with your boss on that. I think, I think Director Booth is here. Maybe Director Booth is here. I'm not sure. It's possible that he's here.

No. Let me, I want to introduce to. a few people that are in the audience. First of all, my wife, Misty, who's on the stage here. But my son, Bear Newcomb is in the back. Bear, wave your hand. That's Bear. My daughter, River, is here.

Where's River at? There's River Newcomb. My mom and dad, Gary, the believer, Newcomb and Jujoo are here. Where are they at? There they are. There's mom and dad back. there. Let's see, who else was I going to introduce? Yeah, where's Director Booth at, Austin Booth and his wife? Are they here? Oh, they're gone. He's, he gone, he gone. Never mind. They were wrangling

their entire family, which a lot of people here are doing as well. I was glad he came for the time that he did. Now I'm going to really embarrass somebody. If you've been listening to Bear, I hope he's here, I think he's here. If you listen to the Bear Grub, he's podcast, podcast in the last couple episodes. You heard our Donnie Baker episode. Did you guys listen to the Donnie Baker story? Yeah, yeah. Incredible, really was an incredible story.

Donnie's here. Donnie, where's Donnie Baker at? There's Donnie Baker. Donnie, I'm sorry, man. Misty was like, you should tell him that you're going to do that. And I was like, nah. But that's Donnie Baker, man. everybody I've been I've traveled quite a bit since that podcast and that's all people want to talk to me about is

is that story so it's good to have Donnie here good to see you man yeah and uh you guys have met i hope you went by the bear hunting magazine booth back here uh Colby moorhead owner Bear Honey magazine is Colby in here Colby moorhead? Colby Moorhead he may still be at his booth but uh i don't i don't work with bear honey magazine anymore i mean i owned and operated the business and colby was working for me and he he now owns it and runs it and doing a great job and they do a lot helping to put all this on too so i wanted to introduce colby but he's not here either there's director booth where are these people at who knows um let me introduce you to my to my guests.

On the far right here, this is Bernie Bairinger, came all the way from Minnesota. Bernie, Bernie, when I, back years and years ago, when I, I wasn't even in the outdoor industry. This is the embarrassing story I'm going to tell about you. No, no. I applied to be the editor of Bear Hunting Magazine, which I laughed at the,

literally when I had the thought in about 2000, 10 maybe. When I was the editor. Well, you weren't yet. Hold on. That's the punchline of the joke. All right. Okay.

I wasn't even in the outdoor industry. And I saw that Bear Honey magazine needed an editor. I was completely unqualified. And I applied to be the editor. And Jeff Folsom called me and interviewed me on the phone. And, I mean, I gave him both barrels full about what I would do if I was the editor. And, I mean, it was basically compensating for having to be. no experience with just passion.

And he also interviewed another guy named Bernie Berenger. Bernie got the job. Bernie got the job. And so, and then as things went on, I ended up owning the magazine. And then Bernie worked for me. He demoted me into a columnist from the editor when he bought it. Yeah. Now, Bernie is a truly a macro scale bear hunt.

hunting expert. Hunted all over the country, is an outfitter in Minnesota, and just a knowledgeable bear guy. He wanted to come down today. I wanted to have Bernie on the podcast. So thanks for coming. Brent Reeves. Everybody knows Brent Reeves.

This Country Life podcast. Last year at this time, you were doing this, right? Yep. You just started. No, it was actually fixing to come out October or April 21st. Okay. So last year at this time. We couldn't even talk about it.

Yeah, his podcast hadn't even started. And, man, Brent, y'all know Jerry Clower. We did a series on Jerry Clower. Jerry Clower became famous when he was 57 years old. Jerry Clower was a fertilizer salesman. Brent is kind of like that in a way. Fertilize? He's still an undercover agent, I'm pretty sure.

But, no, just Brent does a phenomenal job at what he does. There's very few people that are as good at their craft as what Brent does with his podcast. This is my wife, Misty Newcomb, who needs no introduction. No, man, so much of any amount of, I want to say intellectual power, but that word sounds pretty big and fancy. But if there is any of that in Bear Greas, a lot of it comes from Dr. Newcomb here, who constantly talk with about everything that's going on. So thank you for being here. Happy to be here. To my left, Myron means known Myron for a long time. And Myron's the large carnivore. That's right. How long have we known each other? Well, we've known each

other long enough that when you call me up at the office one day and you said, hey, Myron, I want to do a podcast. And I said, a what? That's how long we've known each other. Before people do what podcasts were. Yeah. That's right. That's right. Now, Meyer's been working

for the game of fish for a long, long time. I've been working specifically with bears for 15 years. 17 years. And he does an incredible job.

So it's great to have you here. We may overlap a little bit with some of the things he talked about earlier, but we're going to talk a lot about Arkansas Bears. To his left, James Brannberg,

who is the head of the Arkansas. saw Backcountry Hunters and Anglers Association in the Chapter. Yep. And James is from Northwest Arkansas. Yep. Killed a bear before. Yep. Previously was, you know, uninitiated in that stuff.

Yeah. Yeah, it kind of went from zero to competent in the bear world on public land. Semi, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's good to have you, man. Thank you. Thank you.

And to your left is Patrick Barry, who's the new seat president's CEO. CEO of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers. Yeah. Thanks for having me on. Where do you live, Patrick? I live in the middle of nowhere in rural Vermont. In Vermont? Yes, sir.

I'll be darned. Well, so Backcountry Hunters and Anglers is a national organization. And so how long have you been president and CEO? I just finally learned how to use my computer. So I'm making progress. I've only been on for a little over two months. Okay, you're right at the beginning. Well, great.

Well, great to have you. We're going to do two things today. We're going to talk about Arkansas Bears, but we're also going to talk about wilderness. We've been the last three episodes, which Brent thinks were extremely boring of bear grease. We're about American wilderness. And Brent is dead wrong, man. This is the best stuff we've ever done in our lives. We're going to talk about wilderness at the, at the,

last part of this. But I want to talk about bears at first. Myron, give me a, what kind of research is going on right now in the state for bears? Well, we have a lot of it is like spatial habitat use research that we're doing. We have the GPS project going on down in south central Arkansas. And if you're familiar with the bear zones as bear zone three and four and uh summer of 2021 we started putting GPS collars on those females down there to try and get an idea of uh home range size habitat use seasonal habitat use and everything like that and that was really kind of coming on the hills of finishing a population study that we were doing with uva monicello down there and it's basically trying to gather all the information that we could about the Gulf Coastal Plain population

because we knew relatively nothing about it. And it is a young population. It's a small population. It's a young population. Probably no more than 500 bears across all of it. But it's a growing population. We also have, we've had the mange research kind of ongoing now for five years, looking at collecting samples, working with Squiddah, South,

South Southern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study Group in Georgia. And, you know, us and a lot of eastern states are trying to find out what the cause of Mange is. So is Mange a pretty big deal here? It's not a big deal here, but in certain states like Pennsylvania and some of the northeast states, it's a very big deal. Well, I mean, Wisconsin. Yeah, Wisconsin too. Pennsylvania has some areas of the state that have as high as a 30% prevalence rate. Does that mean 30% of them?

are showing the signs of heavy mane and it's sarcoptic mange yes it is sarcopic mange and so we're looking at that we just started this year on a on a denning chronology study of our what I call our mountain bears those arts and the Washington Warwickton bears and we're replacing the old VHF collars with bright shiny GPS collars which come with the bright shiny price tag but we're looking to trying to determine you know, the denning timing or the denning chronology of those mountain populations to get a better understanding of, you know, what's going on in the fall, especially with our females. I mean, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to have a bear season when a lot of the bears are in the den,

right? Right. So it is relative to the hunting and our harvest strategies and everything, the seasons that we set and the frameworks. And those are really kind of the big ones right now, but, you know, some of the other kind of underlying research that we're doing is the bear hunter survey that our social science division is doing and all that with, you know, with successful bear hunters looking at the social science portion of our customer base. What kind of questions are you asking people? I probably took the survey, but you probably did. A lot of the questions are geared around, you know, age dynamics. I think the average age of bear hunters today is 48. 48.

Some other questions about how did you learn about bear hunting? Did you learn about it through podcasts or television or newspaper or game and fish employees or whatever? Some of the other questions are, you know, what do you use bear for if you have harvested a bear? Why is that information important to y'all? Well, it just kind of falls into the, you know, just getting to know your, customer base. Why did y'all just ask me?

Well, you are the customer base. But, you know, I mean, that's just an area. A lot of natural resource agencies are kind of using social science to not necessarily drive their harvest strategies or hunting seasons, but certainly maybe amplify how you may adjust something one way or another. And, you know, it's a valuable part of knowing who your customer base is and why they're hunting bears. How long they've been hunting bears, you know.

Have you been hunting two or three years? Have you been hunting 15 years and all that? So it's just getting to know the customer better. Now, do we know how many bear hunters are in Arkansas now? Is there a way? Every state's different in the way that they assign licenses. A lot of states you would buy a bear tag. In Arkansas, if you're an Arkansas resident,

you get an Arkansas sportsman's combo license. That's right. You get a bear tag. But this year, didn't you have to get a free, like, bear hunter? Right. We changed over our entire license system this past year. And there were some growing pains with it, but we'll eventually get all the kinks worked out.

And one of the unique things about this new license system is if you intended to hunt or harvest a bear, you had to obtain a, quote, bear permit. The bear permit was free to residence, which means if you had to be a bear. a hunting license, all you had to do is go on the, on the, on your profile on your page and just click the box that gave you a free bear permit. Non-residents had to purchase that was $300 for a non-resident bear permit.

But for the first time in our management history, game and fish, I, bear program coordinator, is able to determine with a reasonable accuracy how many bear hunters we have in the state. You know that number? Don't say it. Do you know that number? Well, I know an approximate. Could you say it if I wanted you to? Mm-hmm.

Okay. How many bear hunters do you think are in Arkansas? If you go over, you're out. It's like the price is right. Now, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Okay. There's the caveat. Okay.

This included, the number that I got included resident bear permit holders and non-resident bear permit holders. Okay. Just everybody that's hunting bear in Arkansas. Everybody that's hunting bear in Arkansas. Okay. If you go over, you're out, closest, closest to the number, The price is right. $2,800.

Okay, good, bear, or bear, brim, whatever. It's like my son. Wait, is he out or in? Well, we don't know. We don't know the number. 2800, just remember your number. How many bear hunters in Arkansas

plus non-residents? 2,01. Oh, price is right. 638. Okay, remember your number. Okay, I'm going last. Oh, that's not fair. It's not.

Go ahead. you get if you're bob barker you get to do what you want right if you say 2799 I'm on you bear hunters in Arkansas now this is statewide direct and indirect bear hunters yeah yeah yeah yeah what's yell out your number is it oh she says higher higher higher more than more than 5000 more than 10000 I think they're really optimistic. I'm going to go for 10,000. Oh, he's, um, Patrick. Now, my, my, uh, my question, though, for myron is, Oh, you don't get a question. Come on, man. I got a question now, too.

All right. All right. All right. I'll go with. Like, if this was, if this is a friend. I'm going to assume. Okay. We'll give you one question. Are these folks that aren't saying that they're taking an opportunity to bear hunt, but like, this is their thing. This is what they do. It's, it's just a legal requirement to hunt a bear. you got to have a free permit. If I was going, go ahead, Myrne. If you intend to hunt or harvest a bear, either directly bear hunt or incidental harvest of a bear,

if your deer hunting and the bear walks by, you can shoot it if the season's up. So that counts. That you bet. All right. So before you said that, if this were the price is right, I would have said $1. That would have been a good move, maybe.

Right? But since you're going last, I can't do that anyway. I would say I'd say 8500 8500 that's a fair guess his BHA guys are optimistic down here yeah but the

opportunistic part is the part yeah that's a tricky one that's a tricky one what was yours 28 I can't remember but I think I might What was that? What was that? 2801

208 no I actually think I'm going to say 4,000 what is the number over 25,000 Oh my goodness Wow Wow

So I should have listened to the crowd though Yeah Oh that They knew That's okay that's Wow 25,000 people bought Over 25,000

Wow that's surprising to me man Yeah 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 gonna 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 Phelps gamecalls.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.

Can we say how many bears we had harvested in Arkansas last year? Yeah, 765. Record harvest year for Arkansas. Record harvest year in 2023. Yep. And is that what we want? For the 43rd consecutive bear season. And yeah, I mean, we're actually getting up there and harvesting the number of bears we need to.

I mean, that's why we've liberalized the season a little bit more the last couple of years and brought it earlier. And that's about where we need to be. We need to be somewhere between 550 and 800 bears probably. Wow. But, I mean, if we got time to dig into it, there's a couple of other things. I'd really like to mention about it. Yeah. In the bear world, bear management, you know, sustainable harvest.

rates often falls on the female component of a population. You can only harvest so many females in a population and those practices be sustainable. Well, with bears, the magic number is around 46% of the female component of a harvest. You start harvesting over 46% in a given year, and if that is sustained long term, it's not sustainable. Is that a very? sense, son? It does, Dad. Okay. So if the harvest is over 46% sow, the long-term trajectory of your population is going to be

decreasing. That's correct. 46% sow. Okay. And that's just kind of the rule of thumb. You know, Arkansas may be a couple percent here and there otherwise, but just across the board because reproductive rates are pretty general across the board with bears and everything else.

So with this past year, even though knowing. we were going to harvest more bears and get up there where we want. Our female harvest rate was 48% this year. And in the past, when we've had earlier openers, you know, I've talked about years and years ago, you know, that we saw the same thing. So we expected that as an agency. We expected to have elevated harvest rates of females.

And not to be one to run around, say, chicken little disguise falling, but, you know, something 48, 49, 50% female harvest rates, isn't really sustainable, not only in Arkansas's bear population, but any bear population. Do you understand, son? I do, that. And so, you know, part of having a season earlier opener, the earlier opener and all that stuff, you know, it does come with some downsides to liberalizing those seasons, and one of the downsides, we knew we were going to have elevated female harvest rates.

So, you know, we'll kind of see how it fairs out, you know. I'm sure, you know, through different podcasts and a rigorous education campaign, you know, I'm sure we can kind of convince people that, yeah, we need to be off of that. Let me give a little spiel about. So the earlier season dates, for those of you who hunt bears, whether you're hunting in national forest or you're hunting overbate on private land, earlier season dates, greatly increase your chance, first of all, of killing the bear. but what I always say, number two,

is it increases your chance of killing the target bear. I mean, if you've baited bears at all, you know that in early September, I mean, you've got your big males coming in during the daylight doing stuff that just makes you think you're going to have, that bear's going to be standing there on opening day. The closer you get to October,

every single day, particularly the big bears, start to fall off the baits, And a lot of times, you know, if we have the later season date means it's just more difficult to harvest a bear. So the game and fish has done us the hunters, the hunter, at least inside of the hunter opportunity side of management. They've done us a big solid by moving the season back to the third Saturday in October or September, excuse me. Well, it's actually calculated the fourth Saturday back up 10 days. Fourth Saturday back up 10 days.

Okay, so any given year that could be from like the 13th through the 20th, basically. The difference between a 13th opener and a 20th opener is... Miles apart. Incredible. It's hard to understand, but it's miles. So here's the charge that I want to give people that are hunting bears in the state is that if we can self-regulate not shooting sows, we win, because that overall cell harvest number goes down and we can keep our earlier season date. And so the impetus really falls on the hunters to self-regulate and try to avoid shooting juveniles and females

and target these older age class males or just males in general. And if we can do that, Meyer and I were doing the math earlier. The difference between 48% and 43% is probably, less than 50 animals. So that's the way I'm talking to Myron about it. It's like, hey, if we, and he's thinking about it too, you know, if we could have people by their own choice not shoot 50 sows in the state, we get to keep our season opener.

But if we keep bumping up towards that 50% sow harvest, they're going to have no choice to protect the resource to bump the season way back, which makes it way harder. And it's, it's, and so anyway, man, I've been preaching this for, so long and it's hard not to shoot a sal and there's nothing wrong i mean we we realize salas are going to be harvested and that's a component of the management absolutely but if if you're sitting in a if you've got six bears coming to your bait you know what these bears are i mean you might have to eat a tag one year because maybe your males for whatever peeled off and there's that one big female that's been

coming in and that's what we're asking people to do it's like hey do your best to not shoot a sow and obviously we can't we can't shoot salas with cubs which that you want to talk about that i mean i can it's uh you know it's it's uh one of the big deal about gaming fish i mean a lot of people think we just will and illythell regulations out there and you know when you start talking about harvesting females or harvesting sows with cubs you know present or something like that i mean really that kind of boils down to an ethics rule it's really not enforceable and it's kind of falls more on the ethics side of something rather than it does, you know, an enforceable legal side of something. And, you know, I mean, gaming fish, I can speak for our director and

our directorate and all of our commission. We just, we're not in the business to regulate ethics. However, I can tell you that, you know, something would have to happen if we had two or three or four years of, you know, female harvest rates in the upper 50s. One, you know, you. You know, just one of the things that's an easy identifier is if you have a sow with cubs coming to a bait site. And even though those cubs have been with her all year and the likelihood of them going ahead and surviving is probably pretty good at that point. But still, I mean, you know, I tell people all the time, you know, the reason why those cubs go into that den cycle again with the mother when they're quote a year old in a month or two from archery season, you know, that's just kind of the way Mother Nature designed it. And there's no doubt there's an added measure of knowledge and everything else that comes with that. So, you know, if it boils down to, hey, you know, don't harvest a sow with cubs.

If that makes a one or two or three percent difference overall statewide, you know, that's the thing. It can help. If you knowingly have a sow, you know, I mean, like Clay said, there's nothing wrong with harvesting sows. It's going to happen. And it's fair game. just can't keep it in the back of your mind that, you know, unless the public makes that change, you know, gaming fish charged with protecting the resource, we'll have to do something different at some point in the future. Whether that means institute regulations like not allowing a sow with cubs to be harvested,

or bumping the season back another week, you know, to try and ensure more males are harvested. It's just, you know, that's the charge of the resource. Yeah. I think people can get behind that. Oh, yeah. I think so. Hey, what's a little change is a subject here, but let's talk about eating bear for a second. Can we do that?

Yeah. Can we go from Harvesting Bear to Eat and Bear? Bernie, what's your favorite way to cook a bear? I make a breakfast sausage. It's a killer. breakfast sausage. Yeah. And I take the bear meat and grind it with 25% bacon ends and pieces.

And then I put a... What brand bacon ends? You don't get that Barr S stuff, do you? I don't care. I don't know what I'm talking about. I don't think we have Barr S in Minnesota. We're a little bit higher class than, yeah. Ooh.

Yeah, yeah. Easy Yankee Man. Yeah, right, right. They'll throw me out of here, man. Yeah, I like Arkansas. It's pretty country here. So 25% bacon ends and pieces, and then a seasoning that's, it's Cabela's German breakfast sausage seasoning.

And it's like, I don't know if you're familiar with Johnsonville sausages, breakfast sausage. It's at least that good or maybe better. Hey, let me ask you a question. So in the deer hunting world, elk hunting, any kind of ungulate, you know, usually the big males are not going to taste as good as female, like a big buck's not going to taste as good as a dough. Have you found that a big old male bear would taste different than a young bear? Not really. The difference that you will notice in bears is what they've been eating.

And if you take really good care of the meat when you first get it, get it cooled off quickly, that's the difference. I've shot 500-pound bears and 105-pound bears, and there's not much difference. That's what I was going to, I hadn't talked to him about that. That's been my experience, which is not intuitive. Mine too. I mean, man, you kill a 500-pound bear. It's going to be, in my opinion, what I've seen, the meat is just as good as if you'd kill the young one.

You wouldn't think that. It wouldn't be the same way with hogs. Wouldn't be the same way with elk or deer. But, Brant, what's your favorite way to cook a bear? Chili. Chilly? Bear chili. Yeah.

My little girl, Bailey, would rather eat bear chili than ice cream. Well, maybe not. ice cream, but. Bear flavored ice cream. But that bear chili, that's a big thing. Bear chili? Yep. Anything special?

Just. Yeah, towns and chili seasoning in it. Where's them folks at? Where's my man with the towns and spice? They're around. Big cabal. Which fair way to eat bare, Misty loves cooking bear? I do love cooking bear.

And my favorite way to cook bear is any way that you cook it and it can be ready in about 30 minutes. And so, and that's actually. She gets really hungry easy. kind of hard to do. It's hungry. And if we've got a family, we've got four kids that have been raised on bear meat. And for us, it really, we both have always worked. And so I can give about 30 minutes a day to get dinner on the table.

And that's kind of hard with wild game. So we've figured out a couple ways to do it. One is carnitas in a slow cooker. And that's about, so clay and bear and river, when they harvest their bears, they have to cube a whole bunch of it for me. And they're very good at doing that. And so I'd love to cook it, put it in a slow cooker. and have it ready when I get home.

If it's a special day, like a Saturday or a Sunday, and I've got more than 30 minutes, we love bear meatloaf. We love to... Bear meatloaf is good. You put onions, peppers, jalapinos, all that good stuff in a food processor, so it's really, really fine. Mix it all together really well. Hey, tell them about the research you were doing about the nutrient content of bear meat.

Well, of meat, of wild game. Just wild, okay. It wasn't just bear. It wasn't just bear. And I've just been researching a wild game because, you know, there's a lot of people out there who are, you know, there's some anti-meat people in this world. And it's really an uneducated stance to take because we pretty much all of the world's B-12, which you've got to have to have energy and to have, you know, to be healthy comes from meat. And so we really need to eat meat. And there's no amount, you can get some of the vitamins that you need from vegetables that meat provides.

but you would have to eat so many of those vegetables to get it, and not all of it is immediately available. And so one of the things you hear a lot about meat is that it's bad for your heart, that it'll result in heart disease. And that's only, they've done these lipid analysis on wild game, and it turns out that God made our bodies to consume wild game. And there is an exactly perfect ratio inside of wild game and grass-fed meat for your body that it actually does not result in heart disease, and it does actually help you

manage all of the cardiovascular disease, arthritis, all of those things. Yeah, I mean, I'm preaching to the choir, but these are things I think that need to be on our tongues and just we have an understanding of it. I mean, the wild game is the most incredible meat on planet Earth from every angle, from the environmental angle to the sustainable angle, to human health angle to social, the social angle, incredible. Okay, we're going to go around. We'll make it quick. To me, there's a big five for bear meat.

Burgers, spaghetti, taco meat, meatloaf, and what am I missing? Ice cream. Ice cream? The big five. Ransping nachos is what Clay makes. Chili, you've missed chili. I missed what now? Chili.

Chili. Yeah. Big five. Man, bear meat. Yeah, bear meat's incredible. Meyer, what's your favorite way to cook it? Bear tips over rice. Really?

No doubt about it. Really? How do you do it? Usually just separate out a nice big muscle chunk. Put it in a crock pot. A couple of cans of cream of mushroom soup. Let it cook for six, seven hours. Put it over rice.

That sounds good. Plenty of pepper, a little bit of salt. is dinner. What about you, James? I like it any way I've had it. Every single way I've had it. I couldn't tell you a favorite. I love it all. Right. Patrick, have you eaten much bear? Oh, yeah. So every, for a couple years, every fall, we would have the Patrick killed it game feast. Oh, wow. It was awesome because I, you know, I live in a community, even if they don't hunt like they're all about wild game. And so, you know, in the fall, you know, I'd have, you know, a bunch of, you know, ducks and geese and grouse and woodcock where i live we had a fall turkey season plenty of deer

meat to go around but my uh one of my buddies would always get a bear every year and i am such a lazy cook i would give out while the wild game to all my friends that would come to the patrick killed it game feast so that i didn't have to worry about cooking that you know my only rule for everybody was like any wild game is i'm i try to grill everything as soon as you overcook it in general You're done. You're done. You've got to be able to deal with, you know, not overcooking it no matter what you think your preference is. I'll invite you to the Patrick Killed at Game Feast next time. I wish I had a Clay killed at Feast. We don't. I think you need to start that. Yeah, yeah.

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 bed 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 dark. 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.

Bernie. So Bernie's hunted bears all over North America. You've never hunted our country. I was mad at you because you got the job over me, so I never invited you down here. Well, are you still mad at me? I want to bring that up now. I definitely want to hunt Arkansas. I got a long list of places I've hunted, and it's pretty, pretty bad that this ain't one of them. Well, my question to you, though, is... I hear your son's probably a really good guide, bear.

Will you take me hunting here? What do you say? What do he say? Oh, he gives a thumbs up. All right. You can have to find a new spot. Bernie's not sitting in my spot. I'm teasing, Bernie.

Take me where you took Colby. Yeah. Where's your favorite place to bear hunt in all that? I mean, Bernie's hunted probably all the Canadian provinces just about. Except for a couple of eastern ones. Yeah. Wow. You know, can I give you like three?

Sure. Okay. So my favorite DIY hunt where I just went and hunted on my own was in Wyoming. and really, really cool, really fun. Chocolate, all the bears are brown. I got like nine bears on baits. They're all brown, no black ones. That was pretty cool.

So you were doing a, you were baiting bears in a wild on public land? Yeah, on a four-wheeler and public land. In the mountains, a beautiful country. It was really fun. I killed a really nice bear. I did that in Idaho too, which was pretty cool. But, man, I love Maine. Maine is a fun place to hunt bears.

boy I'll tell you what where's Todd Todd Wogamooh Todd yeah Todd yeah you're gonna love what I'm about to say if you said you can only hunt one place for the rest of your life it would be a spring bear hunt in the Baldi Mountain

yeah there you go Manitoba yeah yeah the duck mountains baldy mountain outfitters he's here I've killed some nice bears with him but the duck mountains of Manitoba they got it all They got big bears, they got lots of bears, they got color phase, they got it all. And you're not just saying that because Todd's our friend. I mean, for real, I've hunted there.

I mean, that part of Manitoba is special. It is. And there's a lot of other great places in Canada, too, but that's a cool place to hunt them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I'm going there in June. Okay. Todd, I owe you a bow, and I forgot it.

Bear forgot it. I told Todd I was going to give him a You know the bow I don't know if you guys saw it But on the meat eater episode The bow that I used in Alaska On the wakeboard Yeah

The boogie board bear Well Todd that's your bow I told Todd's my friend I told him I was going to give him a bow I forgot to bring it Todd I guess we're kind of having a private conversation here I'll get it to you Don't worry

Just to clear bear's name He had nothing to do with that Bear should have known that I needed that bow here. I blamed Bear Newcomb for this. He drove all the way down here just for that, Clay. Just to get scolded. Brent, where's your favorite place to bear hunt?

You want me to say that loud? No. I want GPS coordinates. State. Oh, well, it had to be here. I mean, you have such a connection with the land here, even though I didn't grow up in western Arkansas, where I've killed all things.

three of the bears that I've killed is over there. I have such a connection with this state and what's going on here and seeing bears now where I grew up. I cannot wait to kill a bear legally

and where I grew up. Yeah. And the efforts that Myron and all the folks that the gaming fish are doing down there and they did those collaring projects last summer, wasn't it my own? It's the last summer. I'm anxious to see where it goes because the first exposure I ever had with a bear

I was about 10 years old. It was in 1976 in Cleveland County, Arkansas, and I was cowl hunting with my dad, and the dogs had bade what we thought was a coyote out in the middle of this beanfield. And dad said, we've got to go out there and get the dogs off and let this coyote go. And I said, can I go?

He said, no, it's real muddy. It's kind of thick right there, so you just stay here at the truck. and he was out there about five minutes and he come running back for another light and I said can I go with you this time he said no it's a bear stay here and I'm like okay I'll stay here but that was the first introduction I'd had with a with a bear in that part of the world and then now 40 years later there people are seeing them there in that same place it's pretty cool that's cool you know when you look at a years ago 15 going on 20 years ago that I turned my focus to bears in Arkansas and really started learning about bears. I remember the first time I saw a map of North America that showed where we had bears. Okay. So imagine a map of North America and Canada that had colored sections that showed where bears were.

Well, from the Appalachian Mountains to the east, from Florida to Maine, you know, there's this big swath on the east coast that had bears. in the west from the Rocky Mountains, west into California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, all the way up into Canada, Washington, all this western U.S., and then the swath covers all of Canada and all of Alaska. Okay, so if you're following me, there's a giant hole with no bears, hold with me,

between the Appalachians and the Rocky Mountains. except for this one little spot about that big, on a map about that big, that was Arkansas. Yep. And I remember 15 years ago in the literature 20, whenever it was, when I was at the University of Arkansas between 2001 and 2005 when I was seeing these maps,

there was this little population of bears that was right here where we lived. And at the time I was like, that is incredibly cool, that of all this landscape that's absent of bears, we have this population. And today, that population of bears that was, you know, we could talk this whole time about the reintroduction of bears into Arkansas,

you know, between 1954 and 1964, 254 bears were brought in from different places, released in three locations in Arkansas, and became the most successful reintroduction of large carnivores in the world, has spread out and now covers, southern Missouri. Missouri now has a bear season. Eastern Oklahoma, Oklahoma now is a bear season. North Louisiana, they're going to have their first official bear hunt this year,

which is major. Brent and I two days ago were in Mississippi on a Bear Den study in southwest Mississippi, and basically that little spot that 15 years ago basically covered the Washtaws and Ozarks is now spreading out. And I'm telling you, in today's world, where all we hear about is ecological crisis on every front. It's a major deal that black bears are expanding like they are. And it all started right here, right here in Arkansas.

Let's hear it for us. Yeah, yeah. No, it's incredible. It's incredible. And one day I'm going to go into more, we'll have a whole render up here about this. But, I mean, the incredible cultural history that Arkansas has with bears is unreal. I mean, you know, we were once known as the bear state. That's right.

And when you really dig down into that, you see all the wild stuff that happened here. But it's such a, and that's what this event is about, is really a celebration of a wild beast. That wild beast, though, is only here because of wild habitat, wild lands. And when you, the reason that little population of bears was here is because this is the wildest country in any direction for a long long, ways. By wildest country, I mean just most amount of public land, most amounted unfragmented sections of timber. And I'm going to use the quotes wilderness, not federal wilderness. But I mean, what we have here is cool. Don't tell anybody. Nobody's listening. Yeah, cut that out.

Yeah, nobody's listening to do it. Cut that out. But James, this would be a great moment for you to tell me what you were going to tell me. So does everybody here loves bears, right? That's what I hear. We want to have some more bears, and we want to help the Game of Fish Commission do what they're doing. Yep. With the Bears?

Yes. Okay. All right. So as a thank you to you all for being here today, the Arkansas chapter of backcountry hunters and anglers is going to donate $5,000 to the Game and Fish Commission today. All right. And Byron

Not just the game and fish Right the bear program The bear program Yeah specifically I was getting there And so Myron is going to put that to work On some of the things that they were talking about And he's been talking about with his research studies

So You know In order to put a collar on a bear What do you got to do first? Got to catch it Got to catch that bear So Myron and I were talking

And he's He needs some equipment to help with that. And because of the generosity of the people here, they have bought their tickets to be here. They're participating in our raffles. They're just, they're just here supporting conservation. And what we do as an organization, Patrick, is we turn around and do good work with the resources that people trust to us, their time and their treasure. And so we're going to, we're going to trust some of that to Myron. You don't have a big check. You don't have a big check with a bear on it. You know how much a big check costs? We're giving that to the bears, Clay.

That's right. That's right. Do you know what you're going to do with that money? Oh yeah. What are you going to do with it? Well, lately what we've, the last couple of years, what we've been doing is we've been taking, of course, we've got a new mouse trap, you know, that we've kind of developed over the years, and it's a pipe snare that we're using. But we also use live catch traps. And I'm sure Most of you are probably familiar with the big culvert style live catch trailer. Right, that's on a trailer. Well, we also have big, basically, it looks like a great big giant have a heart trap. It's like a four by four by seven and a half or so live catch traps.

Well, last couple of years, we have developed a way to put some of the Hawkeye cameras or some of the live feed cameras and put a release illinoid on them to where we can close the gate on those traps on target animals. He'd say, well, why is that such a big deal? Well, you know, when you put the trap in a place where you know there's a female, but all you can catch are males, you don't really care about catching males. You don't want to catch a female and a yearling in the trap. You want to catch the whole family.

And really, it's allowed us to do that. I mean, I've caught whole family groups in the trap. So you're watching. I'm watching. When a female goes in there, a target female, or the target female, and one or two, or three of her cubs or yearlings that are with her, I know exactly when I can drop that door, and it's not a miss. And it has revolutionized how we trap bears. And I'm telling you, it truly has revolutionized. So you have an app on your phone that gives you a notification.

Yep. when you have it's a motion-activated camera system and we have a silenoid that can release the gate are you the one that has it on your app or don't you have people that do that for you well we have a network of biologist that will help us you have people do you need people do you need more people in the middle of the night is it like beep beep beep and your wife's like oh myron wake up your bear traps well i mean we have a network of people and usually it involves you know a text from this person and that person and that person, bear, bear, bear, bear. And so you're trying to get on there

and you're trying to watch it, you know, and everything else. Bears only come in the traps between nine and five, right? Yeah. Working hours on weekdays. That's when they never come into the trap. But, yeah, I mean, stuff like that. But, you know, I mean, that technology comes at a price. I mean, one of those camera systems is about $2,500.

Okay. And even though, you know, we have money and we use it, hey, anytime we can, you know, get more money, for stuff like that. It's great. It's greatly appreciated. And this is a chance for people to directly influence conservation work right here in Arkansas by supporting things like this coming out with their families. And we're appreciative that they have chosen to spend time with us.

And we want to take that and invest that in the things that we love in our wild places. That's great. Another thing that the Arkansas bear program is pioneering. is this new drug. You want to talk about that for a second? I can't talk about it for a second. You know, we started a couple of years ago. The one drug combination that we have been using for the last couple of years is called

Bam. That's the acronym. And this is what, when they do their den studies. So how many bears, females do you have collared right now? About 60. So there's 60 females that are collared right now that they have a circuit of going in every year and checking for cubs and they're able to analyze, you know, what's going on with reproduction.

Right. So every one of those bears, they've got to tranquilize to be able to work the cubs. That's right. They don't just give up their cubs willing to. They're just like, hey, check these guys out. But, you know, we've moved to a new drug that basically had a reversal a couple of years ago, and it is a great drug for bears, and it's scheduled to use four bears. But it has a drawback.

During the wintertime, when females are in a dense cycle, they lower their respiratory rates, metabolic rates, and all those physiological processes to the point that an average female may, in a den cycle, may have four breasts a minute. Well, if you give them a drug that suppresses that even further to have two breasts a minute, they're not going to be able to maintain blood oxygen levels and everything else like that while they're under anesthesia. So we kind of started a little pilot project a couple of years ago with some beta testers for the pharmacy, and they developed a new drug instead of bam butorphinol asoprone and metatomidine it's nam or now meda-eight now befine asaproon and metatomidine it's basically the same drugs remember that yeah it's bala

bam nam before it was bam now it's nam so so uh bear jokes but i mean the great guy jokes uh but the great thing about this new drug is that it does not suppress respiration rates as much during a den cycle, which is a key feature of why this drug is so good, especially in the denning scenario. And, you know, if we get it approved, we're kind of the tip of the spear. So you're the only organization using it for bears right now in the country? Well, there's other organizations using it for bears, but, I mean, they're kind of doing it under the cloak of darkness, so to speak.

I'm not going to throw any of them under the bus. but if we do get it approved for bears for on-label use, then, you know, all the bear researchers in the country will be able to use this drug, which is a much better drug in a den cycle. That's good. I like it. I like it.

Bear stuff. Tip of the spear. Tip of the spear. Tip of the spear. You know, I was going to mention something also. You know, you mentioned 20 years ago when you were looking at maps, and I'm going to make this real quick. looking back at bear conservation history in Arkansas.

You talked about the reintroduction effort. Let's say 1960. Fast forward 20 years from that, 1980. What was the significance of that? It's first bear season. First modern day bear season in Arkansas. Fast forward 20 years from that, what do you have? First, legalized bear baiting on private land.

That's right. Fast forward 20 years from that, what do you have? We move the season back so we can kill big boars? I think statewide. Gulf Coastal plane. Sorry, guys. I was thinking big bears.

I mean, yeah, basically we, you know, we reopened the bear season and basically four-fifth of the bear state. That's nice. So if you look at the conservation, you know, it's kind of 20-year milestones in the conservation store. Yeah, that's really interesting. You've been here since the beginning. 1960, you were working, right?

What's going to happen? Iron is 87. 20 years from now, what's the next step? Yeah, good question, Bernie. That is a good question. Hopefully, robust, healthy bear populations. Do you think the bear population is going to expand into, I mean, so the bears are in the Gulf Coastal Plain right now, 500. We know the Ozarks and Wash Taw are maybe not saturated, but close to the carrying capacity of the land.

Yeah. Are there going to be as many bears down the Gulf Coastal Plains? as there are in the wash stalls or what's going to happen? I don't know if those densities will ever mirror the mountain densities, you know, but I certainly think there is a lot of room for bears for that population to grow. Now, whether or not they're going to, you know, disperse from the washhtaws into the Gulf Coastal Plain, from Felsenthal area up into the northwest portion of the Gulf Coastal Plain,

where they're going to come from, I mean, it's probably a mixed bag of everything. But I have no doubt that population will continue to grow with good conservation strategies. And, you know, I think you hit it right. I think our mountain populations are probably at our peak densities, certainly what we can carry statewide sociological caring capacity, which is a lot different than ecological caring capacity. Y'all know what that means? Is everybody son? No, explain it.

Okay. Well, social carrying capacity is what the people of a certain region are willing to tolerate. That's right. How many times a year are they willing to have a bear come up and eat out of their bird feeders and mess with their trash cans versus what the land could hold? And almost always the social carrying capacity is less than the land's carrying capacity. And that's where management organizations come in and they manage bears typically for social carrying capacity. That's right. because they've got to manage this resource based upon the best good of the animals, but also people.

That's right. And it's up to gaming fish and D&Rs to really find that balance in between. I mean, certainly Arkansas could sustain a whole lot more bears than we have now. But, you know, when Mother Nature doesn't provide and all those bears go to bird feeders and dog food and cat food on someone's porch, that's when the public doesn't really become I'm so excited about having bears everywhere. And so, you know, that's been the charge of gaming fish for the 60-year conservation story is to find that balance. Yeah.

Interesting. So interesting. 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 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 Felps. Game Calls.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. We've been going an hour. For the integrity of this institution of Bear Greece, we have to talk about wilderness.

We always do this. If you listen to the renter, you know this, right? We like talk about something for a while, and then we stop and then we talk about what we've been talking about. Maybe I'm the only person in the world that's interested in the wilderness. That's not true, is it? No, we did a three-part series. I kind of joke that it was boring.

It was my buddy Steve Ronella told me that, which, yeah, kind of stuck me hard. Steve said it was boring? More or less. More or less. He doesn't he the featured guest? He was on it. Yeah, I was like, well, it's your fault. No, we did a three-part series on American Wilderness.

And if you listen to it, you're going to be up to speed. If you're not, if you didn't, you're going to have to catch up. But basically, man, in modern times, in the time we live in, wilderness is an incredible, it's an incredible word, but it's an incredible concept that's going to become more and more important. And basically, we talked about how there's two things when you say, wilderness. There's the idea of wilderness, and then there's the reality of wilderness, which is actually federally regulated wilderness with a capital W, which is the most regulated land designation from our federal government. The idea of wilderness would be that you could have a

feeling of wilderness anywhere. You could go down here to the creek across the highway here and be in a wooded setting and have a wilderness feeling, you know, being in a, in a landscape that's dominated by natural systems without the marks of man on it, right? So that could happen anywhere. That could happen on national forests. That could happen on your private land. That could happen anywhere. Federally regulated wilderness is, there are 111 million acres of federal wilderness in America.

Roughly 17% of America is federally regulated wilderness, which is a huge chunk of land. What did I say? Is I say 17%? Not 7%. 5%. Not 17%. Where'd that come from? I don't know.

5%. Excuse me, pardon me. 5% of America is federally regulated public land with a capital W. And in this last episode, we talked about two things. I talked with Steve Ronella about the personal impacts of being in wild places. All of us have inherited this really a cultural inheritance of a particular way that we view wild places. Like if you went to anywhere in Asia or anywhere in Africa or even Europe and you set people down and you talk to them about wild spaces unaltered by man, a person would have a

sensing, a way they would handle it, a way that they would intellectually think about it, the way that they would value it, that would be a product of them being in a culture. Here in America, and the whole series talked about this, but so much of our national heritage, came from this idea of this place being forged out of a wilderness. And we talked about all the pitfalls of that. Oh, it's an incredible series. For real. Boring as it may be to some people, Brent.

But we dove into some really wild stuff. So the great, I'm giving like a summary. Is this okay? I thought it was kind of inspiration. Okay, inspiration. Oh, I thought it was inspiration too. Where's that banjo? We need to play the banjo.

Okay, yeah, if you get hired on to come play, this is when you start playing. This is when I start playing. When you hear me kind of get going. No, so the early American wilderness prophets, all these guys, Mirro, Thoreau, all these guys, they believed that wilderness impacted the deep fiber of a man. Like Thoreau said that that wild places were the nourishment, the intellectual nourishment of civilized men, which is an interesting thought. Like, think about for yourself. You guys are hunters, ladies are hunters.

Like what happens to you when you're in a wild place? Like, why do you go there? Why do you sacrifice to be there? When you could be in the comfort of your own home, you could be having all this, the things we live in most of the time. What really happens when you're in a wild place? That's something to think about. Thoreau believed that it that it impacted him far beyond. I'm not a fan of Thoreau necessarily.

Neither is Steve Ronella, if you heard our little spat about it. But we talked about that. I'm not necessarily interested in that as much. The second part that we talked about on this last episode was the criticisms of federal wilderness, which was interesting. There's an idea that federal wilderness is an elitist idea because federal wilderness can't drive a four-wheeler, can't drive a wheeled vehicle, It's ridiculous.

You can't take a hang glider. I always thought it was a hand glider. It's not a hand glider. Can't take one of those in the wilderness. It says on the sign. Our government spent that much money on the signs to keep people with a hang glider. It's a big problem. I always thought that was funny.

But it's the most restricted amount of land. And all you can do is walk in there or ride horses and mules, essentially. I mean, that's the only options. Yeah. And so there's a, there's a, some people would say that that land is then only for the people who can physically go in there, which is true. And they would say, well, that's not making it accessible to everybody else, which, we talked about that.

We also talked about primarily the management strategies. I had a good friend of mine named Adam Keith, real sharp guy. I thought he gave a really compelling argument. He's a land manager. And he said, Clay, when I hear somebody say federal wilderness, he said, I think of unmanaged land. He said, I'm all for wilderness, wild places, places that are untouched by man, but those federal wildernesses that don't get fire, that don't get any kind of management at all,

he's like they're wastelands like for for flora and fauna both invasives are taken over these wildernesses so there's this kind of irony that wildernesses often have a much more heavy invasive load than and this isn't across the board but in a lot of our eastern wildernesses they have more invasive loads in the wilderness than places that are managed like national forest so So, James. Yeah, Clay. What'd you think? Well, that was a quick review. That was a quick review. Been better with banjo music in the back. You know, there's a couple of things that really stood out to me.

And so when I look out here and see all these folks, and I wish that the people who are listening to this on their phones or whatever could see the cross-section that we have out here. But I see a lot of people who like wild places. And for me, the thing that stood out was right at the end when Hal was talking about, you know, trusting the federal government or not. And he made this point, and it was in order for us to have those, if we want those places managed differently, we're going to have to ask the federal government to do that or trust them to do that or whatever. And so the thing that struck me,

and I went back to Roderick Nash's book, and I looked this up. So the first wilderness with a capital Bill was introduced in 1939, and it took until 1964 for that to finally get passed. Now, that's 25 years. There's a lot of people in this room who are not 25 years old yet. And what we, backcountry hunters and anglers, you know, we try to inspire people to get involved in the outdoors and get involved in how we think. about the outdoors and how we engage with the outdoors. And some of that, frankly, it kind of, it's not fun, but it's asking the federal government to do stuff for us on our public lands. And so the takeaway for me, and then I'll quit talking, is if we want something done differently,

we, the people here have to do it. We have to ask for it. And we've been involved in things here in Arkansas where we asked for things to be done as our particular BHA chapter, and we were able to be successful with that. For people to think that their voice doesn't matter, I promise you it matters.

It might take a lot of us, but it matters. So that's what I took away from it. I was standing up and saluting at the end. If we got problems with it, then it's our problem. The system could work. Yes. If we did it, yeah. Yep.

Yeah, that makes sense. That's good. Did you think the series was good? I loved it. You just tell me that because we're here in front of 1,000 people? I love wild places. And I fell in love with Arkansas when I started going to the wild places. And I bet you for any people in here who are from Arkansas,

would probably say the same thing. Like our wild places are unique and we need to keep those wild places wild. Yeah. Patrick, what's it out to you? Well, I do want to underscore what you're saying. about the series because if you thought you had an idea of what wilderness is or isn't, it will be very clear after they listen to it. And it'll just enlighten all of us, I think, in a lot of ways about what it is, what it isn't.

I mean, you know, I know on a personal level, like, for example, I have a rule that, I don't know if anybody else has it, but like, if I can see turkeys anywhere from a road, I am not hunting there because that means everybody else can see them. and I want to get as far away as possible and have my own experience. And by extension, that's kind of everything that I love to do would sort of be in those wild places, just as James said, is a magical thing, right? I think what's important with the discussion is the distinction between that feeling of being in a wild place in wilderness. Because you don't have to live next to a Big W federally designated wilderness area, have that experience.

there could be a town forest or a state wildlife management area or some other place where you're in the middle of it and you feel like you are a million miles away from civilization. And what was really well explained in that third episode to me was how we kind of miss the mark on the wilderness designation in parts of the country, especially in the Midwest, in the east. because the whole forests have changed. There aren't the same critters on the landscape, how they interact with one another. There aren't even the same things that grow on the landscape anymore. It's not just invasives, it's just how the trees and plants have changed over time.

And to have this idea that we can just shut them off from everything, and it'll go back to what it was like post-ice age. Yeah. It's just, it's a fantasy. it would be like going into your cell phone store where they have the latest gadgets of like iPhones and Samsung whatever's and saying I would like a rotary phone.

That's a good analogy. Right, which it is, you know, I don't even know if those things work anymore through modern phone lines, but it's just not relevant. I know actually I called them on it. Yeah. It's just some of our ideas are coming from a good,

well-meaning place, but they've just missed the mark on how practical they are for certain places in the country that we will never be able to go back to what was before. And that's one of the arguments of designating an area in wilderness. And I can tell you quickly from personal experience that one of my favorite places to go grouse and woodcock hunting up in the mountains was an area that had been managed over time. I mean, it was up in the mountains. And what I loved about it is that I got away from everybody and everything. It has since been designated as a wilderness area, which would be fine if, like, your third episode.

They don't have management there anymore. No fire. It's not the same place anymore. And I've gone back there years later, and it's done. Wow. There's no, the limiting factor on the biodiversity or the number and type of critters that are still on the landscape, it's just not the same.

And it never will be because we can't go back to where we were. You know, so if you listen to the whole series, you would hear that I'm very pro-wilderness. I mean, I think the wilderness designation, and I think we all are on here, we're just trying to be open about the criticisms to it. The whole series, I mean, the way America has handled wilderness has been monumental globally

for how other countries have done it. were the first place to have federally designated wilderness. I mean, so it's an ingenious plan, an ingenious idea that I'm, that we're four. And I know Patrick is four, too, but we're talking to, I don't want anybody to get the wrong idea that we're saying wilderness is bad. No, we're just saying the, the wilderness model has been, don't touch it. And, you know, I hear what you said is such a great example. I don't know that I trust, what I said on the last part of the podcast was I said,

yeah, these wildernesses would do better if they had management, but I don't know that I trust the people opening the gate necessarily. Well, not the people. Just, you know, if you open up the ability for that to be changed. Will it go too far? Yeah. And that's the problem just with any institution is like, would it be better to just keep it as is and it be a sacrifice?

Well, Clay, the thing is with that, if we don't get involved in it, and ask for it, it might just get changed without our input. So that's why we, I mean, I heard you say in this on a different podcast here recently. If we don't tell our story,

somebody else's going to tell it the way they want to tell it. And if we don't ask for management the way we'd like to see it, somebody else is going to ask for it and it might be like, you can't even go in there. Not only can you not ride a bike in there,

but you can't walk, you know? So that's why we have to be involved. You know, it doesn't take every single person here to be involved. It would be great if every person was involved. But it takes dedicated groups who do want that kind of stuff, conservation organizations like ours and other good ones that do that work, to be involved and then people have to pay attention when it's time. And that's what we need.

That's my stump speech. Just to add to that too. I mean, and I really appreciate you making the point that, look, We all care about wild places, right? And, you know, I know Aldo Leopold gets over quoted, but like this is really stuck with me. You know, he said, wilderness is the raw artifact out of which mankind has hammered civilization. There's not a whole lot of raw artifact that's left in a lot of places in the country. And so it's incredibly appropriate to cherish wilderness and wild places.

And even wilderness designations where you still have that raw artifact or that opportunity where it can be what it once was. And so this is where pragmatic people have to have a conversation about where it's appropriate and where it's not. And that this, you can't just plunk down some management prescription, which could be zero management, because it sounds like the right thing to do, and you love the concept of it, even though like, that's probably not the best place for it, even if it's very appropriate over here in these states of this region of the country. And what Adam's point was so well-text. is you can't manage these big giant wilderness areas.

I mean, there's wilderness areas that are millions of acres in the West compared to some of these smaller wildernesses that we have in the East. It's just not managed to the same. Misty, what did you think? I thought it was really good and very, very exciting. I couldn't disagree with Steve Ronella Moore. No, I thought it was a very interesting. And I think it's important to just realize kind of what James was saying,

it takes like 25 years to make change happen and to sustain change. And it's really important to me when you think about wilderness and what I kept thinking as I was listening to that podcast was how important it is to get our kids out in the wild places. You can't outsource your values. You can't just assume that they're going to get this, that they're going to appreciate the wilderness areas just because you do. You have to get them out there and you have to talk to them about the value of this

so that 25 years from now they can fight the battles that need to be fought when maybe we're too old to. Mm-hmm. Yeah. We probably won't be too old to in 25 years. Hope not. Hope not. No, there's never been, you know, the revolution in the world that came with social media, which expanded the networks of people to be able to communicate at exponential level

that has never happened before in human history. Like, what we're doing right now is like this total experiment with people being able to connect and communicate the way that they do. And there's never been, I believe this with all my heart, there's never been a more powerful time for sportsmen and women, conservation-minded people, to stand up and tell the narrative of our culture, the way we do things.

And that's what I hear a lot of these guys saying, whether it's being involved politically in different ways, or just even inside of your own groups, just of influence in your life, just being, telling our story. It's powerful. And I mean, that's what I try to do on Bear Grease

is just like tell our story, interpret our way of thinking to the world. And, golly. Man, time is such a deceptive thing because we wake up and we just, we're born and we come into consciousness and become adults. And we think this is just the way

it's always been, but we live in unprecedented times when it comes to so many things. I mean, you know, expansion of human population in the earth. The urban sprawl, like if we're talking about landscape level stuff. And holy cow is our wild places, wild places will be the most scarce resource on the earth. I mean, in a way it already is. But, I mean, and the way the system works right now is such a unique thing in the world, but the hunters are the ones who have a lot of say right now in wild lands and how they're managed. That's the way it's been.

And we can't take that for granted. And anyway, I'm just kind of amazed the more I learn about how unique this American hunting. hunting culture that we all grew up in that just seems like it's normal it's not normal this is not normal this is this is this is wild we can't take it for granted that's that's why i'm so passionate about knowledge and history like you you have no you have no right to have an opinion about what something's gonna how something's going to turn out if you don't know history of what happened before i mean you don't really have an intelligent position to have a really strong opinion i mean that's what that's why the stories that I like to learn.

And most of the stuff we do on Bear Greece, I'm learning. I mean, it's a process of learning, but we're talking about history. And we're learning about wild landscapes and animals, but we're also dealing a lot with the social aspects of life, I mean, which are equally as important. Like if you want to be in control of wild lands, you also got to know how to deal with people, you know. And is that true?

Absolutely. I mean, you know, Myron will tell you that probably biggest part of your job is dealing with people, not bears. It's not wildlife management, it's people management. Yeah. And I mean, so as a, as a, and I like to use this word. I don't know if it's politically correct or not, but, I mean, I think the hunters in America are a people group. Let's go, do it. Let's go.

A people, I mean, we're like a people group. We're like a tribe. And hunting doesn't totally define us. Like, I'm not totally defined by hunting. I mean, it's a part of my life that's visible. There are other things that define me much more than this. But at a pretty high level, as a hunter, that's my identity, something I grab onto. Not the most important thing.

My most important thing would be my faith in my family, which I put action behind making that be true. But down there ways on external kind of earthly stuff, being a hunter is, is, it's like, it is part of my identity. And every generation, I mean, we're being swamped by the world really trying to squeeze this out of this culture. And what I'm trying to do, what so many of us in this room are trying to do, what we're trying to do at Meat Eater, I feel like, is we're trying to carve out a cultural space. I like to say we're asking America for a cultural tenure.

Like a tenure means that you're granted this place in the culture that never goes away. For the American backwoodsmen, the hunter, to be able to hunt, to be able to have some jurisdiction over wild lands, to be able to go and harvest wild game for our families, to be able to take our children into wild places. and man, that means the world to me. And I want that my sons and daughters have already had that opportunity and will continue, but their kids and their kids' kids, you know, what's going to happen 20 years from now, 40 years from now, 60 years from now. And we just can't take it for granted.

Do you guys agree with that? We've got to be educated. And that's part of what education of even just learning about bears, learning the cultural significance. If you got bears in your yard, if you're, killed a bear in Arkansas, man, that's a pretty major thing. And to not take that for granted, I think that's the thing I'm most passionate about. It's just, I'm grateful for what we, for what we have in so many ways. And so what we do here at Black Bear Bananza,

celebrate the Black Bears, you know, I've heard you say the icon of North American wilderness. Yep, that's right. And, you know, we're thankful to have. have all of y'all here to celebrate it with us, all of y'all out here in the crowd to celebrate with us, Patrick here. This is incredibly meaningful, not just for us personally, but it's meaningful for conservation to see all of you all come here and support it and bring. We've got a little guy asleep here in the front row. You know, we've got the little ones down here. We have people in wheelchairs who, you know, made an extra effort to get here. We have men and women.

It's amazing to see all this and see y'all's commitment to helping us celebrate bears, celebrate wild places. And I think what did you say on the podcast that, or somebody said it, that wilderness made Americans. Right. Right. And so that's what we're celebrating. Yeah, man. It's fantastic. That's great.

Well, thank you guys so much. Hey, we're going to close. Andrew, Andrew, come on up. All right, we're going to close out the Barry Shrender. This is my buddy, Andrew Wills. He's going to sing a song that he wrote. I had a little bit to do with it. Andrew's also known as Hawk and Horse.

He came all the way from Nashville, Tennessee. You guys, Andrews's been on the podcast before. And he sent me this song the other day, and I was like, Dude, you got to come to Arkansas and sing it. So I guess never sang publicly before, is that right? Love to be true. Yeah, this is Hawking Horse. All right, buddy.

Well, you need me to dance up here probably? No. That'd be good? A little dancing. Don't get too far away from your stuff back here. You'll jerk it right out of there. Clay's going to do anything. Andrew is a, Andrew is a,

professional songwriter in Nashville, Tennessee, a little town called Nashville, Tennessee. And he's a big bear grease man. Literally, literally a big bear grease man. Can I say something, Clay? Yeah, go ahead. Just keep talking while Andrew's getting set up. Patrick, them turkeys is next to the road. Can you tell me where that's at?

Yeah. Brent likes those close to the road. I'll tell you what, I'll call you up on your rotary phone and we'll talk about it. There you go. Drop them a rotary hand. He'll send you the GPS core. Yeah, I'll send you the GPS coordinates. Just holler at Sarah and say, give me a brant's ass.

Andrew, give us a little background on this song. Yeah, so this is a song. Clay texted me one day and he says, I have a song idea. And I was like, what is it? And when he told me an idea, my instant thought was, that is the most Clay Newcomb's song idea I've ever heard. And he gives me a little too much credit. He had quite a few lines that he forgot.

He even wrote. So we're pretty 50-50 on this one. But I don't know if there's anything else you want to mention about it. I mean, we just wrote it. It's pretty new. It's a lighthearted. I told Andrew, I said, anytime I hear a song that has Arkansas in it, I just, I'm like, I mean, like Tennessee Stud.

You remember a song Tennessee Stud when he came through Arkansas? You know, he had to fight this girl's dad from Arkansas. He didn't whip her or her, Paul. I promise you. Yeah, yeah. Or her brother. Whoever it was. Any song other than some, there's, yeah.

Anyway, he wrote a song that has the word Arkansas in it and the word mule in it. Arkansas mule. That's the name of the song. I said, that's pretty Clay Newcomb sounding. And it's kind of a cowboy song, right? I mean, yeah. I'm not a cowboy, but I like cowboys. Anyway, this is called Arkansas Miel,

and I've got the lyrics because we just wrote this, so, and it goes like this. They said he killed a man in West Fork. He had no choice but the run. They'd hang him in the gallows before the setting of the evening sun. He was an innocent man, but he got framed out of the truth.

So he threw a saddle bag on the back of that Arkansas buckskin news. All right. She was tall and strong, laying and long, sturdy as an iron tool. There ain't a horse alive that would draw his eye from that Arkansas buckskin news. That's right. We could have you playing banjo on this. In the heat of a nozart night, they forded the river white. in the

flow and steer up deep Under the glow of the moonlight Headed east into the bluffs Where the Bears suckle they're young Made her walk backwards On her track And then Hooked it south

She was tall and strong And long Flashy as she was cool There ain't a horse alive That could draw his eye from that Arkansas buckskin mu. Right. This would be a great place for a banjo solo.

Sounds good, sounds good. Y'all like this song? Month of May, they were cutting hay on the banks of the foosh lafay. And they waved him down for a bite of chow. And I sit around the flame. And that's when he heard the welcome word that his name had been clear. And then he turned and grinned at his old friend and gave her a scratch behind the ear. She's a tall and strong, lean alone, faithful.

There ain't a horse alive that could draw his eye from that Arkansas buckskin mule. Yeah. A horse alive that he'd trade her by for that Arkansas buckskin mule. All right. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Andrew. Hawking Horse.

Thanks, buddy. That was awesome. Great. Awesome. Awesome. Thank you guys so much. 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 Rinella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning calls. who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action.

This is an I-Heart podcast, guaranteed human.