Bear Grease - Ep. 212: BEAR GREASE [RENDER] - New Pup, Clays Unconventional Farrier Skills, and Mississippi Bears

Episode Date: May 8, 2024

Fresh back from the MeatEater Live Tour, Clay Newcomb is joined by the Render Crew and Anthony Ballard, Bear Program Leader for the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks. He discusses the history, research, current status and developments of the black bear population in the state of Mississippi. Bear Newcomb talks about his new Mountain Feist puppy, Osage. Misty Newcomb shares about her new website, thenewcombfarm.com.  Josh "Landbridge" Spielmaker and his wife, Kristie Spielmaker, tell about their experience attending the MeatEater Live Tour in Anaheim, California. 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. Bear, pick up that dog.

Just let Bear have it. I don't think she's going to let me have it. Tell us about your dog, Bear. This is O. Sage. I'm calling her Sage. She's a tree and feist. I got her yesterday. So this little dog is probably like 10 pounds, nine weeks old. It's a small dog. Yep. Max, max weight might be a 28. the 30-pound dog.

But he said that she's going to be between 20 and 30 pounds. I like Tess and Tim. So what do you plan to do with this five spare? Squirrel hunt. Squirrel hunt. Yep. How are you going to train it? Well, I'm going to let her run loose for...

This is a test. Yeah. Gotcha. There is a right-in-wrong answer bear. Don't think for a minute that I don't know what you should be doing. But go ahead. Well, I'm going to let her run loose for the first six months just out in the yard where there's squirrels. And then I'll just start taking her out in the woods with tests.

and Tim and kind of trying to hone in her instinct to specifically squirrels. Because, I mean, I think, you know, she'll naturally want to go after stuff. Man, Anthony, we've had incredible, we've been incredibly surprised with these feasts. You know, these two that we have out here are the first two that we've had. And Tim, one of the ones out there, is like probably the smartest dog I've owned in terms of just human relatability and intelligence. So they're fun little dogs. Are they those that just have to be doing something all the time?

They have to be engaged all the time. Oh, yeah, they're high energy. Yeah. High energy. Tim is middle-aged right now. He's coming on five years old. Yeah. And he's, you know, he's getting a little bit grumpy, a little bit older.

I mean, you can tell he's kind of irritated with life a lot. and this edition has not been he's not impressed you know he's not mean but he's definitely not improved this quality in life and he just kind of like stares at it when it comes near it he kind of

what is this about is this going to last? Yeah how long? Well it's a good name Osage I like it I like it especially with the new bow building stuff you've been doing

it's a natural name that's good well welcome to the Bear Gris render we have a I'm very excited today we've got Josh Spillmaker with us Josh's wife, Christy with us.

Hello, hello. Christy. Christy's like the commentator you bring in for like real, like when you need the heat. Yep. You know, when you need like the interrogation. I got it. Christy's there. Bear John Newcom's here.

Good see you, Bear. Yep. Dr. Misty Newcom's here. Guest of honor. Anthony Ballard, who is the bear. What's your official title down in Mississippi? Black Bear Program Leader. Black Bear Program Leader for the Mississippi.

Department of wildlife and fisheries, yeah. Wildlife and fisheries, yeah. Wildlife fisheries and parks, MDWFB. That's a mouthful. Yeah, I couldn't think of anything else to add to it. I guess they stopped there. Yeah. Well, man, it's, so Anthony and I have a day of history together. I was down in Mississippi back in early March and went on a bear den study with him down in Mississippi. Yep. So we're going to talk a ton about Mississippi Bears later. Okay. But first, I'm I just got back from the live tour. He just flew in and boy, are his arms tired. Yeah, yeah, yeah, from all the music playing.

Man, so Josh and Christi, y'all came to the Anaheim show. We did. Which, not to... Oh, careful now. I know. You didn't like it, right? Well, of all the shows, that was the... No offense, Anaheimahe folks. It was the smallest crowd, and the venue was kind of like, to me, it was like a...

cafeteria. I felt like I was playing in like a cafeteria. Like a school cafeteria. The cafeteria? Yeah. Like in elementary. Yeah. Yeah.

I thought it was like people had those little separated plates and they were like janitors walking around. No, there wasn't. No, it was a great venue. It was like a nice venue, but it was modern. Probably seven of 10 venues that we went to were these like old theaters. The last one we played in Tacoma two nights ago was. a theater that had been built in 1915.

Oh, just ornate. It looked like, I don't even know how to describe it, but, you know, the architectural style of that time for these theaters,

and they were built, the theater held 1,200 people, but it was like super compact. Baccony was like right on the stage, and they had these little boxes, uh, boxes, you know,

right here. And, uh, I roasted some of those guys. I'll tell you about that. Um, but, uh,

most of, most of the theaters were like that. The one that you got, so Josh Christie came to Anaheim, California. Yeah. Josh played, Josh played the mandolin with Phil and I. I did.

It was great. Yeah. And so, did you have a good time? Wild response. Oh, man. I had so much fun. I just,

I don't, you know, we get to go to like the, oh goodness, what is it when we have it here, the black bear. Banana. Bonanza.

It's just fun to get to spend a day with like-minded people. You know, Big bear hunters like you? Yeah, like me. Big bear hunters like me. No, I mean, I just love it. And I think I was entertained from start to finish.

The music was great, lots of fun. And then just the stories and the way the whole team talked and told stories. I just thought it went by really fast. I love the people, too, because, you know, you're in Anaheim, California, which is basically L.A. I hope I'm not offending anybody from Anaheim. But it's basically L.A. Greater L.A. And it's, you know, you know, you know,

don't expect that there's going to be people who are the demographic of what meat eater is reaching out to. But, I mean, seeing some of the folks that were there, I mean, guys that you would not expect to be into deer hunting, I mean, it was, it was awesome, man. It was really, really, really cool. The response that people had, people doing their best owl hoots. Yeah. It was, no offense, but it was pretty rough. It was pretty rough. Anthony, you would be proud of your state. I should be a representative.

I should be on the marketing team for Mississippi State, whatever. There you go. Because everywhere I went, we had an al-hooting contest. We gave away a genuine koon-skinned hat at each one. It got stronger the more I did it. Like I told it the story more, but I said, I would hoot for the people. And I would say, okay, these are the things. I'm looking for in a hoot, cadence, natural tone, volume, and trill at the end.

Right. And I said, I'm going to hoot for you just to kind of give you something to go off of. And I said, if this contest were going on in Mississippi, and I was in a room of, you know, 800 people. And I said, stand up if you want to al-Hoot. You know, and obviously you would only stand up if you thought you had a chance. I told them, I was like, I wouldn't stand up in Mississippi. It is, yeah. Are you a barred Al Hooter?

Yeah. I got asked to when we did the Den Check, actually. Oh, yeah. I asked you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We heard one. And how was it, Clay? It was pretty good.

He's no Lake Pickle. Look, I'll tell you this. Mine is just good enough not to get ruthlessly ridiculed by the people that I work and hunt with. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's barely over the threshold. There are some very convincing Al Hooters in Mississippi. Wow.

Yeah, yeah. So the Al-Hooten was a lot of fun. Oh, let me tell you about my best. So as the live tour went on, I didn't realize it, but I have a great skill at roasting people for their Al-Hood. So as a live tour went on, he got increasingly being. Oh, yeah, I got increasingly emboldened by the team mainly. And no, there was the final night in Tacoma. there was a so there's these people that are in the balconies.

I hope this guy's listening because it really wasn't personal. I was going to do, if he'd have been the best Al Hooter in the room, I would have done this to him. But early on in the deal, I asked the people from the stage like, hey, how'd y'all get those fancy seats up there? And one of the guys did his fingers like this, his index finger and his, there's a pointer finger and his thumb, like money. Like he paid for these seats. And I was like, oh, I see what's going. on when we did the al-houtin one of those guys not that guy but a guy by him stood up to al-hut and i was like oh okay go ahead called on him and he al-hoots and like i said i said bro you may have enough

money to buy a really good seat but you ain't got enough money to buy a chance of coming down here because that's terrible you know said something like that it wasn't quite that hard and all right everybody just like erupted you know but i totally roasted him sorry but buddy. If you're out there, I didn't really mean it. You just happened to be the guy. So Al-Hooten was a tough one. Some person out there is with a complex of clay just being like, oh, that's cute.

Go ahead and sit down. Everyone else keeps standing. Yeah. Yeah. Well, as the first night that I actually like roasted some people, I came back to the team and I was like, man, I kind of felt bad. I hope those people aren't, their feelings aren't hurt, like being publicly humiliated. And they were like, keep doing it. Keep doing it.

Don't stop. So in the VIP line beforehand, when I would meet really nice people that I liked, I would be like, hey, are you going to Al Hout? And a couple of them would be like, yeah, I was thinking about it. I was like, I'm probably going to be real mean to you. Just be ready. I don't mean it. But honestly, though, I mean, like, if you're going to stand up, you put yourself out there,

I mean, you've got to be ready for it. Yeah, that's right. You're going to open yourself up a little bit. People got the vibe. It wasn't mean. It was a lot of fun. It was a ton of fun. Especially for Clay.

Not as much for the other. On average, it was very fun. Anyone on stage was having a great time. By the end of the tour, Ryan Callahan just jumped up and was like right beside me being like, he would be like, sit down. You're fired. You're fired. Yeah, it was great. It was great.

But probably the most, the most, the best thing that happened on the entire. live tour. Oh. Was I was approached by a professional ferrier. Oh, on tour. In Tacoma, Washington. Okay. And he comes up to me and he says, Clay,

I'm a professional fairer, been a fairer for 25 years. And he said, I've, it's come to my attention that how much public ridicule that you get. I thought it was going to be like, you need help. By ferriers when you show your mule trimming

stuff online. And he said, Now, Clay, I'm really critical of failures and I have some input for you. And I was like, here we go. Clay's turn to get roasted. Yeah, Clay's turn to get roasted. Clay's turn to get roasted. And he said, now, I'm not just saying this because I'm standing here looking at you. I mean, convincing little preamble that he was about to give it to me straight.

And he said, mark this down all of you people out there. He said, your methods are unconventional. but you actually do a really good job of trimming mule feet. Oh. Okay. Okay. And so the unconventional methods was a little bit of a like, you know, you're not doing it exactly right. Right.

But the end product. So if you were to weigh your skill between being a ferrier or operating a dozer. That's what I was about to say. What, where would you feel like the strength would lie? Equal. It actually... Unconventional method. I was going to say...

Clay's been home less than 24 hours. I've heard that twice now. I've already heard that story twice. It's like the bulldozer. He doesn't know what kind of monster he's unleashed. The guy, he said, Clay, I have a gift for you. And they wouldn't let him bring it in the theater.

These theaters, they're like frisking people, like wanding them, you know, making sure they don't have guns and stuff. And people brought guns to the shows. I'm in the back door. Yeah. Not when you come in the back door. So he was like, he was like, I got some stuff I want to give you. And I was like, meet me at the bus after the tour.

And so we met out. And he gave me two hoof knives, a very nice set of refurbished professional nippers. Okay. He was pretty disappointed with my nippers. Okay. So he gave me some nippers. And then he gave me a brand new rasp. Oh, man.

I forbade Bear Nukham from ever touching that rass. And Bear Nukum. I don't know what it is about Bear, but if there's a rasp around, the boy is just like, so Bear, stay away from my rasp, okay? I just bought a new one for making bows, so you can stay away from that one, too. Whoa, there we go.

Territorium. So anyway, that was probably the best thing that happened on the live tour. It was, you got some affirmation of your... Aside from launching my career as a traveling musician, I mean, after like a week, I felt like Merle Haggard. I mean, I woke up and I thought about the music. Just the passion overtook me. Wow.

I just woke up. I was Merle Haggard on that tour. So, anyway, I'm waiting for the calls to come in. you know show opener play newcom i thought the music was great oh it was fun i mean not just because i was playing with you when i was there well but i thought the music was great we played we ended up playing a with with some real professional musicians oh who oddly uh yeah so it's the band typhoon so steve likes the band typhoon which i i'd never heard of them uh they're from portland okay oh i got lots of stories.

And Steve messaged them like the day of the show and it was like, hey, do you all want to come play music with Clay and Phil and Marco? And they were able to Marco start playing with you? Yeah, Marco started playing the drum. I love it. And so anyway, this professional, these professional

musicians came. And they practiced one time. We played through the song two times and then they got on stage with us. And word on the street. And word on the street. She didn't say it to my face, but I don't blame her.

I don't blame her at all. I kind of, so the fiddle player, wonderful, very sweet lady, incredible musician. She was supposed to, I was supposed to kind of like lead. And there's some like chord changes, kind of like freestyle, and she's going to fiddle. And I messed her up. Oh, no. I messed her up. So her part, like.

Didn't shine quite the way it should. She told, Shannon, if you're listening to this, don't be embarrassed. This is great. I loved what you said. She told Steve that my literally the same day as the ferrier, she said, Clay's a little hard to follow. His methods are unconventional. Literally, literally, because I told that to Steve Ronella about my mule trimming. And he said, she said the same thing about your music.

Seems to be a trend emerging. It needs to be a T-shirt, like unconventional but effective. Exactly. That's good. That's good. Exactly. I can echo that. Having played with Clay a lot, I can echo.

He's unconventional. You know what? Me and Merle may have been a little unconventional. Yeah. You and Murrell. 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 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 have. 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 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. Okay, enough about the live tour. You have a new website. I have a new website, yes.

Thenewcomfarm.com. It was just stumbling around on the internet yesterday and came across it. And you just came across it. Yeah. What are the chances? Yeah, what are the chances? So what is your way? excited about. Well, so for

a long time, we've had this Instagram that was just sort of an overflow of like the hobbies that I have, gardening, cooking, things like that. But that's not a lot of people know me from that Instagram page, and there's like a whole lot of Misty that's not

included in there. In fact, I would say that that Instagram page got really popular during my, while I was writing my dissertation because it was a welcome way to procrastinate. Yeah. From writing the dissertation, so it was probably really hopping during that time. But, you know, over the last couple of months, I graduated about a year ago now and finished school, and I've had a little more

time to do some of the things that I love. And... Getting your PhD, not high school. Yeah, no, I did not graduate high school a year ago. You did graduate high school. I did graduate high school, but I graduated college with a PhD a year ago. And so since that time, I've been able to do, like, writing for pleasure, reading for pleasure instead of just, you know, on assignment. And that has... When you're, when you're coon hunt and you're not in a competition hunt, they call it pleasure hunting.

Okay, yeah, so I'm pleasure writing. Yeah. Yeah, got it. And so anyway, so I get asked questions all the time. I've been writing, having a lot of phone with that, and decided to put together some of, like, all of these things. This is misty unfiltered. Oh, wow.

Oh, I like it. Sketchy. Social commentary. So the... So there's like three parts of it. There's perspectives. social commentary. Those are like deep dives.

It's not something you read on a weeknight. It's something you, like, on the weekend when you've got some time, they're 10 to 15 minute reads. Yeah. They're deep dives into research on different topics that I think impact families, which is the main thing that I've spent my life doing. What are the three things that are on the website? So that's the first one.

Family home career. Yeah. Yeah. Would you say it's geared more towards women? I think that women, well, I mean, I wouldn't. Not necessarily. I wouldn't say that. Yeah, I wouldn't say that.

I think if you're into, it's geared towards, I would say it's geared more towards people raised in a family. It's definitely geared towards people who are like in the thick of raising kids. And some of the topics that you would have on here that you have, right now, you have an article on why boys are underperforming in school, which is like really interesting. I mean, like, a lot of research-based stuff about school system or about education systems. and the way, yeah, very interesting. Yeah, we noticed a while back at the school, I'm the superintendent of, we have, like, Bayer's about to graduate.

And his class, I think your class is, is it 70% male? The class before you was 75%? Shep's class was 90% male. So we were trying to figure out, why are all these boys coming to our school? Like, why is? And part of the reason was because some of the different things that we were doing at the school,

you know, boys were able to be a little bit more successful. And overall, they're not doing great. And so that's really a reflection of just kind of the trial and error of the last 12 years trying to figure out how to get these guys through the school system. But we've got a bunch of girls right behind them now. So you've got an article here about meat. Yeah. So it's not just about like social issues, but it's a meat's kind of a controversial topic right now.

A lot of people are talking about, you know, that it's, on the planet and it's not good for you and that's not true. Got some book reviews on here. Got some book reviews. Yeah. So there's three types of articles. There's the perspectives, which are the deep dives. There's short form stuff for just families trying to get through the week.

If you look, there's a section called Home and Garden. It may eventually be split up into two sections, but it's assuming that most families don't have time to every day read a long article, but also might want some helpful constructive tips for doing things like we've done it. like with eating kind of healthy and wholesome, it kind of takes a little bit of time. The Big Five. You can read about that in the article or listen on Clay's podcast about the Big Five. But if you're trying to do that, it's hard. And it's especially hard if you have a job and you don't like devote your life to milling your own wheat. Because, you know, some people do, but not every, we didn't. And so it's just kind of like practical tips.

And that's usually like punchy lists. That's mainly what you'll find in that section. Is there a section on there for me? Would you like to co-author some stuff, Clay? Okay, give me some examples of things. A bulldozer section. A bulldozer section. Farrier. Yeah.

I feel like that's relevant to most people raising a family. Well, so that's the Newcomform.com. The Newcomform. That's good. I like it. Yeah. Barry, you finished up your auction bow? Yep.

I've got a few little details left, but I'm right now shooting it and... Breaking it in. Yeah. Just making sure it's good. What's it made of? It's made of hophorn beam, which is like a... You know that wood, Anthony? They have that down in Mississippi?

They do, yeah. Pretty common. Yeah, I've never even heard of it until I got this stave, but hophorn beam and it's got water buffalo horn tip overlays, so like where the string wraps around the knocks. Are those native to Arkansas? Bear had to travel to Australia. Yep.

Oh, nice. It's got Coon Hyde, Arrowrest, on it, beaver silencers, wide oak candle. It's 45 pounds at 28 inches. It's a good looking bow. So we're going to ship that out real soon to the auction winner. It wasn't finished.

He started it right when we put it up for auction. Yep. So guys are going to get that bow. One of the common woods that was used back by the Native Americans was Osage Orange. Yeah. That's where the little puppy dogs named after. Very nice. Yeah.

Now, do you all have Osage down in South Mississippi? Most of the state, yeah. Really? Okay. Yeah. We have it here, too, but it's kind of on the, it feels like it's on the edge of its range because there's directions you can go from here where there's not a lot of it. But yeah, yeah, we have some Osage orange.

Bear John is also about to graduate high school. He's a week away from graduating, and he has spent the last quarter of his school experience a little bit, has been a little non-traditional. Bear saved up when you, at the beginning of the year, when they published the parent handbooks and the student handbooks, and they say, you know, if you miss more than this amount, you will be reported truant. What Bear did is he said,

okay, so that's the amount I can miss for turkey season. He's got an Excel spreadsheet where he's tracking his thoughts. And he comes out of the woods for like, you know, this is the time of year where there's a lot of senior banquets or presentations or things. like that. So he has spent the last month basically living in the woods coming out for class. You know, he's got a lighter schedule and he's taking some community college classes as well. So he'll come out and do his online classes for a little bit and then retreat back into the woods, come out for a presentation.

I think that's how John the Baptist said it too. Do you recommend this? Skate hat. Speaking of which, let's come back to cicadas here. Well, I know. They're coming out. Yeah, it's all the raves. Cicadas.

But they're, you could call that dog. People are cooking with cicadas. Have you heard this? I read an article yesterday. In New York Times? Yes, definitely not something I'm interested in. They say it's related to a shrimp. They say you cook it like you can cook.

John the Baptist had it figured out the whole time. He did, man. He knew what was up. I've had a cricket bar before. Like a energy bar made out of crickets. It's like a cricket bar like all these crickets sitting around drinking. Yeah.

No. Oh, it wasn't great. But anyway, so Bears had a, he said a pretty adventurous, brought home a turkey. Yep. A big turkey.

Yep. Big one. Anthony, how long have you been the Bear Program coordinator down there? No. Leader. Leader.

Tomato tomato. So I joined the agency in 2015 and then went over to the bear stuff back in the early parts of 2003 and so it's been just over a year now. Did you go to school in Mississippi? I did. Yeah. Mississippi State University.

I knew you went to Mississippi State. And then I've learned, I've learned a little bit about being in Mississippi, about the nuanced difference between Mississippi State and Mississippi. What's the school up north? So it's probably one of the most bitter rivalries in the southeastern United States. Yeah. Top five in the country probably. Yeah.

So it's one of those that's, it's, it's, uh, Well, we had a football coach that actually wouldn't. He just called the school up north. Wow. Yeah, it's University of Mississippi. No. Ole Miss. Ole Miss.

That's what I was. Very clear cut. Yeah. That's what I was reaching for. You're either one or the other. Yeah. Yeah. We had a coach go to Ole Miss.

I, uh, yeah, I won't name any names, but somebody gave me, like, that gave me a lot of insight and how you could pick out of a room who went to Mississippi State. and who went to Old Miss. Oh. Yeah. Well, I mean, in the wildlife department, you know, in that profession, you know, Mississippi State has one of the most respected wildlife programs. It's an ag engineering.

And then there's wildlife kind of mixed in with that. And so, you know, if you're going to be, basically the kind of the stereotype is, if you're going to be, you know, a doctor or lawyer, you know, golf player, that kind of thing, good old miss. And then if you're going to be, you know, one of those that's a farmer, engineer, hunter, agriculture, that kind of crowd, that's more of a Mississippi State thing. Go to Mississippi State. Yeah.

I want to know that on the Bear Greas podcast that we are equal opportunity. Equal opportunity, Mississippi College. Yeah. Nothing against Ole Miss. But you went to Mississippi State. I did. So you got a degree in wildlife biology then? Yeah, wildlife and fisheries science.

And then went to University of Louisiana at Monroe from a master's. Okay. What did you study in your master's? Cicadas? No. I actually studied wild hogs. We were doing a research project in southeastern Louisiana, like kind of southwest of Homa and Teribone Parish. And so we did some aerial transects down there and looked at some remote sensing stuff. And so when I first got hired on, that was the position that I went into was as the nuisance species biologist. So I did wildhog work there for, you know, essentially my whole career, except for this last year. And then our bear guy retired in, November of 22, and then I was able to come back over, or come over to the bear program after that. Let me go back to your master's on hogs. What would the abstract on an academic paper that you'd have written about hogs say about your research? Like, what did you learn? So essentially what the main

reason for the project was, was to look at, number one, was it feasible to run aerial transects? And then what's that? I don't know what that means. Okay, so basically we got in a helicopter and flew straight lines in a grid pattern across the, you know, the study area. And we had on-board avionics that would actually trace out the hog damage into a polygon. And then, of course, with that polygon, then you could calculate the area and then extrapolate what the hog damage might be over that entire study. Wow. So you're just taking a sampling of hog damage and then extrapolating it out to try to

understand how much damage hogs are doing. Yeah. Kind of based on like habitat that was similar. Yeah, and then we would also, we kind of took that a step further and also looked at remote sensing. So there's a lot of remote sensing software out there. You can get satellite imagery and then you're essentially training that program to pick out what you deem as in this case, hog damage or it could be any feature. Oh. And then it takes those values and based on what you've taught it, it will spit out an estimation of how much hog damage is in that area and then you compare the two.

And so kind of synopsis of it was the remote sensing part of it. There was too much, you couldn't account for the texture in the ground. So you could account for the colors and the shading and that kind of stuff. But it would often get it, you know, confused with things like mudflats. So, you know, from satellite imagery, what's the difference between a mudflat and, you know, disturbed soil from hogs? There's not much other than the texturing. And so, you know, clouds, shadows from clouds and that kind of thing would interfere. So it was kind of an imperfect thing, and, you know, there's some possibility.

So it didn't work great? It didn't work great. So the remote sensing would always overestimate the amount of damage there simply because it would factor in all that other stuff and add it to, you know, and kind of artificially inflate that number. But the other transsection, what'd you call it? Yeah, the transects. That was better? It was better, yeah. Because, you know, essentially if you run your transects correctly, you're going to get a pretty good sample.

of, you know, a pretty good representation of what that study area looks like. And then you can take that and, you know, of course, nothing's perfect, but you're going to get a pretty good idea. Well, this really makes me think of when we shift to bears, the study Steve Ronella talked about on the live tour of how you can correlate Bigfoot sightings and black bear populations. And I'd be interested in how that works in Mississippi. Yeah, Josh not. We were talking about that. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. apparently there's some real research about correlating what people in a region think about Bigfoot and extrapolating that into their black bear populations. And there's some pretty strong correlations. And basically it has to do with habitat, like wherever you can't see very far. Where a bear wants to be, a Sasquatch wants to be. Yeah. Yeah.

Pretty interesting study. So you've been the bear lead for just like less than two years. Yep. Right on. Yeah, pretty new. So describe, do you think most people would be surprised to learn that there are bears in Mississippi? Most people are, well, I say most. A lot of people are still surprised to learn that.

Like in Mississippi. In Mississippi, yeah. Yeah. And that was one thing that really struck me whenever I first kind of took the program over. And, you know, people don't realize we've been doing bear research in Mississippi for 20 years now. The bear program kind of went from the museum where it was that deals with a lot of the kind of endangered species and, you know, reptiles, amphibals. pivians, that kind of thing. And then when it went over to wildlife in 2002, and it was under the wildlife and fisheries umbrella, you know, we continued that research on. And we've been doing

research, collaring, and genetic analysis and all that for 20 years in the state. And I would say a pretty good majority, not a majority, but pretty good percentage of the population, don't know that we have black bears in the state at all. Right. So the, the big story of Mississippi Bears, which a lot of people that would have listened to our whole Collier series, we did about two Septembers ago. Yeah. You know, in the late 1800s, much of the Mississippi Delta would have been a wilderness in a way until the railroads came in, big swamps, and naturally very productive bear habitat.

I mean, some of the, as productive as anywhere in the country, really, would have been the southeastern part of the United States. If you're going to take the president of the United States hunting somewhere, it better be a pretty good spot. Yeah. That kind of speaks to the quality of hunting probably more than anything else. Yeah. That was the spot that was selected right there in Mississippi.

Yeah. And so, so Barry Grays folks would remember the whole call your story. And where I went with Anthony to on a den study back in March was, I don't know, I can't remember the exact location, but it was within 20, 30 miles. of where Holton, Theodore Roosevelt with a hunted bear in 1902, I think. 1902, yep, just up the road. Probably, yeah, you're right,

probably 15 miles or so. And then after he left, after Roosevelt left, the bear story turns pretty bleak, pretty bleak because bears were basically extirpated from the state. Do you have a sense of, Were there ever zero bears in Mississippi? They were never completely extirpated, no. Okay.

And so that's one kind of misnomer that's out there. People think that they were none, and then they were restocked, and now there's bears. And now it did get down very low. I think the lowest estimation was somewhere around a dozen. Like it was extremely low. Wow. But it was never zero. Where were those bears at?

Right there along the river. On the river. Yeah. So, yeah. So the Mississippi River corridor, and we've. you know, done a lot of stuff on it.

It's like a pretty wild corridor right along the river because you can't build on the river because of flooding. So they have now, you know, since the turn of the century,

there's been levees. But inside the levees, you basically can't build so it's maintained quite a bit of its wildness. Though it's, I mean, it's not like

there's not people in there. There are. But that's where the Bears held strong was like right on the Mississippi River. Yeah, the bachelor land. Batcherland.

So in the genetic studies of bears in Mississippi, are you able to, like, what have they learned about the genetics? Because are the bears, well, I could put words on the table, but I want to hear you, where do they come from? So, like I said, we had that small remnant population, and when you have any small population like that with few individuals, you also have very few, or very, a small amount of genetic diversity. Right. And that can be a problem in, you know, reproduction. You can have inbreeding. You can have all kinds of, you know, maladies and reproductive problems as a result. Yeah.

And so what Arkansas and Louisiana did back in those times to supplement the Louisiana black bear population was to bring in American black bears from Minnesota. And so when that restocking effort occurred there, it was not only to bolster the numbers, but it was also to increase genetic diversity. You know, they did the same thing with white-tailed deer in the state. I think there was Mexico, Wisconsin, several other states that they, or locations that they brought animals in to make sure that they weren't bringing in, make sure they were bringing the most diverse genetics in to supplement that population as they could to try to avoid those problems. Did climate have an impact on bringing the bears from where did you say Minnesota? Yeah.

I don't know. So there were some places where the introductions went really well, and the bears seemed to thrive, and you can still see those genetic influences. And there are some that it was pretty much a failure. Really? Yeah. Now, did Mississippi ever bring in any bears, though?

Mississippi tried one time. It was either 34 or 35. And it was, the notes that I have said it was marked as a failure. Apparently there was a pretty few, five or less that were actually brought in. Where did they get them? I would assume it was somewhere up north, but I don't know that for sure. Yeah. So in the 30s.

So the Arkansas story was in between like 54 and the early 60s they brought in these 254 bears. So you're saying that reintroduction is what is now influenced Mississippi. Yes. Those bears are crossing the river. Right. So essentially like the big population sources that you have that our state has seen an influx of, the White River refuge around, right there in kind of southeast Arkansas. Yeah.

You've got Tensal National Wildlife Refuge, which is a super dense population there and those surrounding areas. And then parts of southwest Mississippi, just across the state line, like Tunica Hills, WMA, that area, a chaffalai basin. And then you also have a small population in Mobile, in the Mobile basin in Alabama. And so a lot of our southeastern or southeast Mississippi bears have kind of influx. So there's bears coming from the east coming into Mississippi. Not to the extent from the west because that population is not growing nearly as fast

and it's not as big of a population source, but there is some influx there, yeah. Did they ever reintroduce bears into Louisiana? Or is that all from migration of this core? So what's cool to me is that the, well, when you look at habitat, that the public lands and stuff here in Arkansas have been this harbor for our bears. And essentially they turned them loose and this stronghold is now, you know, bears going into southern Missouri, which now has a bear season in southern Missouri. They're coming into eastern Oklahoma, which now has a bear season.

Is that where Louisiana got their bears? Is from migration of our bears south? Or did they bring them in? I think they did also bring them in. but I don't think Louisiana got down to the same level that we did as far as like their lowest point of their population. So they always had some bears? Yeah. So I think they were able to bolster that, but they didn't get nearly to the point that we did to have to supplement.

And Mississippi doesn't have a bear season. No. No, they're still a state protected species right now. And how long has it been since they've had a season? So I know the agency, the Mississippi Wildlife Fisheries and Parks, then the Mississippi Game and Fish Commission, was actually formed in 1932. And so I would imagine it was sometime. So it's been, gosh, nearly a hundred years since.

Yeah, the season. 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 full of blood. Oh, my God, he doesn't have a hit. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the,

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. So how many, I asked you this before, but how many

bears do you think are in Mississippi? At any given time. I knew it was going to happen. Yeah, I'll just hate questions like that. Myron means, if I could tie Myron Means hands behind his back on a chair. Name rank and serial number and that's it. And like poke him in the chest, how many bears are in Arkansas?

He'd be like, well, I don't know. Quit messing around with me. How many bears are in Arkansas? Just say a number. Yeah. The problem with Mississippi is we have an est, that is about 15 years old. That's the most current population estimate that we have.

And so... After he says all this, I'll tell you how many bears you're almost. Go ahead. I'm waiting. I'm excited about this. Nobody wants to know more than me. And I cannot tell you how... Keep the info coming.

I'll let you know. I cannot tell you how much I'm looking forward to actually having an estimate. Because when you talk to people, regardless of how versed they are in the subject, that's what they want to know. How many bears do we have? But so that's our old estimation. And the new estimation that we're going to have, I'm hoping, is going to be in the next year, year and a half.

We've got a real, we're collecting a lot of genetics, and we've got a lot of collars out right now. We're trapping a lot of bears. And that's a multi-state project, too. And so we'll have a pretty good idea of like a good, solid, reliable number. And then, you know, another question that people have, and maybe jumping the gun a little bit,

but, you know, Will Mississippi. He's evading the question. He's really good. He's kind of move on. Can I ask you? Snash me right back. Remember what you were going to say about the next thing you wanted to talk about. So the population study that's going on right now, describe how that works.

So there's been different sections of the state that have been chosen to do bare hair snares. So essentially what that is is you've got a couple strands of bar wire wire. usually around trees and you know and in the study area bait in the middle some kind of you know scent attractin or some type of you know donuts are used pretty commonly and the idea is to get the bear to navigate that barbed wire into the baited area and snag a small piece of hair as he or she does it so that we can then get that genetic information and then once you do that on a landscape wide level you start to get an idea of what the density might be you start to get an idea of you know what type of genetic influences that that bear has had.

So, you know, what areas that that bear might have come from as far as a source population? Yeah. And you can really start to put the puzzle pieces together of, you know, what that population looks like. So from from hair collected and an understanding of where all this stuff came from, you can like triangulate and come to get a number of like, okay, we've got this much habitat. We had this many hair snares. This is what the genetics say. And you can, like, using some of these data points, come up with an estimate. Yeah.

Some of the wizardry when you get really into the weeds like that, we rely on Mississippi State University. That's been kind of a... Let them know if they need any help with that. I'd be glad to have it. Yeah, I'll call them. But anyway, MSU, we've worked with them for years and years on studying every critter. there is in Mississippi. And, you know, when it comes to actually building the models and analyzing the data and really to a larger extent collecting the data as well, we've always had a

really good relationship with them. And so like when it comes to the brack, like the nuts and bolts of it, that's, that's their department. So yeah, I can't get too far into the weeds because I'll start talking over my head. Awesome. Clay's unconventional, but it works. Yeah, that's right. Now, the old, the 15-year-old, just to give a, just the baseline numbers, the 15-year-old estimate is like a couple hundred bears. 150 to 300 is the old estimate. 150 to 300 bears.

Yeah. What's the estimate in Arkansas? Between 6,000 and 7,000. Oh, wow. Oh, wow. Yeah. Okay, that's a huge difference. So do you think that the estimate is higher or lower?

I think it's way higher now. Do you think it's close to Arkansas's? No, I don't think it's close to Arkansas. It's all based on habitat, just like the amount. of suitable bear habitat. So there's places that are just going to have like the carrying capacity

is just going to be less. And is ours, do we have so much more habitat because of the mountains? Well, because I don't think Mississippi would be any less hilly rural than we would be.

I mean, it's not about rural. It's about, I mean, bears typically, well, like, where these bears are is like ag land. Like there's huge chunks

of the map that are monoculture, just, ag, which is basically not good bear habitat. I mean, they might munch on the fringes of some soybean fields or something, but it is not going to hold bears. So when you looked at aerial maps and you see these corridors along rivers and these big blocks that are, am I, am I right? Yeah, these big blocks of timber basically is what a bear needs. Yeah, that's what you're looking for.

And a lot of those blocks of timber in the Delta and along the Mississippi River have, that's why they've been such a stronghold. is because they've got everything that a bear wants and they're, you know, as similar as what that ideal habitat was 100 years ago. Yeah. You've still got a lot of old growth timber. You still got a lot of trees for denning and all that. Well, yeah, that dent study you guys did,

the sow was in a tree. Yeah. Up in a hollowed tree. But before I want to talk specifically about that, before we do, though, talking about bear numbers. Man, so we were in California just this last week, California just came out with a new study, and they think that there are between 65 and 75,000 bears in California. Oh, my goodness.

I mean, are you protected in California? Can you hunt bears? You can hunt bears, but they've basically gutted the management mechanisms in California. You know, seven and eight years ago, they banned hunting with hounds. They used to have a spring season. They banned that. You know, the political climate out there, obviously. is not pro wildlife management through hunting.

But... Is that a concern? Oh, massive. Okay. It's eroding the foundations of the North American model of wildlife conservation. I mean, for people to basically be like, hey, we don't want to manage them in that way. And so, anyway, but just to put it in perspective, you know, it feels like a lot of bears. You know, like, I mean, to say there's, you know, maybe five or six hundred,

Bears in Mississippi sounds incredible. It's like awesome. They're coming back. This is a massive success. And then they go, whoa, there's 6,500 bears in Arkansas. Holy smokes. That's incredible. And then California. So is that the, would you, is that the most bear dense state? I think they would, I mean, I'm pretty sure that California has more black bears than they state in the country. Wow. Now, the state of Maine, they believe has between like, last I'll, it's been a couple of years. years. Yeah, Maine was the other one that I wondered about. Like 30 and 40,000 bears in Maine.

You know, like Montana has like 25,000 bears. Washington State's going to have around 30,000 bears. The Canadian provinces, all the Canadian provinces have just like incredible bear numbers. So there's roughly some people, I've heard it said a million, but actually in the research, they say there's between 750,000 and 917. thousand bears in North America. North America. But I I mean, you know,

knowing what I know, I think they're a little low. You know. I want to just become the guy that just makes up numbers. Yeah. That's great. I think you're there. I think you're good. When you start adding up all the little pieces, you see how you get close to a million bears.

Yeah, yeah. You know, in the state. Alaska, you know what? Alaska may have more black bears than California. I think they say there may be 100,000. thousand black bears in Alaska. Yeah, that would make sense. And it's just sheer volume of laying out. And so the numbers you're talking about are all black bears. Black bears, just black bears.

Okay. Yeah, because you can't, you can't hunt brown bears. California is the bear state. In Alaska, you can. Well, but not in California, right. The golden bear state. California, the state animal of California is a grizzly bear. Okay.

But then there's no grizzly bears there. That tracks. Yeah, they extrap. All right. Yeah. Yeah, sad story. No, man, the whole, I may be working on a little project about this,

but the story of Black Bear in North America is fascinating. It is. And a massive success. And I think a story like Mississippi is a pinnacle. It's like a crown jewel of the story. Yeah, I agree. Because, I mean, though it's a small population, it's significant, you know? Very much so.

Yeah. And, I mean, you know, I'm truly humbled to be in the position. that I'm in now because it's pretty likely that you know during my career if I if I work all the way to retirement that I'll oversee the implementation of the first bear's hunting season in Mississippi since the days of Teddy Roosevelt you know it's just if that's not the conservation dream I don't know what it is yeah and there's a lot of people that don't like the idea of bear hunting it's one of those that's kind of you've got people that don't like hunting and then you've got people that don't like bear hunting and that's not always always ways the same people I've come to find out but um you know I tell people it's it's the same you're talking about the North American wildlife model the white tail deer the eastern wild turkey the American alligator more recently in Mississippi all of those and and then you know what we hope to be the black bear too all of those have followed that same trajectory through conservation dollars through regulations through the the money that the American hunter has put into the system

to bring a species from the brink of extinction up until something that's so ubiquitous that we don't even consider it anymore. Like when you even think about a white-tailed deer as being a conservation success story, and it is. It's a huge one of them are. That's awesome.

Yeah, it's interesting to think about, it's such a hard cell to think about what you're doing and bringing this bear back, and how a hunting season would actually be a sign that it was a massive success. Exactly. And how do you think people will respond in Mississippi? I mean, you know, who knows how many years down the road?

It's a pretty long ways out, I would guess. But if there was a limited season there, kind of like they're doing in Louisiana, where, you know, there's like this fall, this, again, massive conservation success. This year, first year in Louisiana, they're going to have a very limited season. They're going to kill like 10 bears. Am I right? Is 10? Yeah.

And it's what we saw, we talked a little bit about this, but what I observed anecdotally in Arkansas, having gone through Arkansas's transition to having a bear season that really gave people a chance. In 2001, we allowed baiting on private land. for archery hunting. And essentially, that was kind of the start of Arkansas's bear hunting really being accessible to people. Though our season started in 1980, officially, for 20 years, it was pretty hard to kill a bear, and few people did.

And fewer people did it on purpose. But what I saw when people started hunting them is that it took some time, but all of a sudden, they started having real value because the people had. had had a say and had an incentive to want bears to drive. But at first, people didn't really know how to handle it. Like, people didn't know that bear meat was good. Like, cultural memory is pretty finicky. Like, for basically, for 80 years, we essentially didn't have very many bears in this state.

And my dad, my grandfather, and my great-grandfather had no bear hunting in their cultural memory. And so when we showed up and all of a sudden started killing bears, it was like, what do you do with this? Why is this valuable? This is, uh, you know, this is not something we're used to. And then it takes like a generation, like bears grown up knowing nothing but that bears are like the crown jewel of this place, you know. And so it's just, it's really interesting. Because, you know, like going to Mississippi and seeing the deep, rich history that you guys have in bear hunting and then the idea that there would be this like 100 year absence of that and then reintroducing it what do you think's going to what's it going to be like well so the good thing

about Mississippi is there's a really strong hunting culture yeah there there always has been and like as far as the social and kind of political climate I don't think we would have the same problems that a California for instance or a Florida would have yeah trying to implement a season and so from from that perspective you know I feel pretty good about it and And there seems to be kind of two attitudes about black bears in Mississippi. If people have formed an opinion, it usually falls into one of the two, one of two categories. It's either, oh my gosh, bears are awesome. We want them everywhere.

We want to see them thrive. We love bears. As a just categorically, we love bears. Or it's we categorically hate bears because they tear up my feeders. They eat the seats off my four-wheelers and they get enough stuff and they tear everything up and we don't like them. They're no good for anything. Yeah. And, you know, what I'm trying to do, and I think we're in a kind of a unique spot to do it, is there's a large majority of people out there in Mississippi that, A, may not even know we have black bears in the state, but B, don't really have a solid opinion formed about what having black bears means and, like, an attitude toward the animal itself.

Right, right. And so I think, you know, a lot of other animals, people have their opinions about them, and that's pretty much it. but in this, I think we have kind of a unique opportunity where we can preemptively, you know, put out some education there and tell people, look, you know, they're not the cartoon characters that you've seen on the Disney movies and they're also not the, you know, mindless things that are going to eat your kids and dogs. They're right there in between. Here's how you live with bears.

Here's some educational things. And here's how we're going to transition into this because, you know, people won't, we want people to understand kind of how to make those adjustments before it actually ends up right there in their, you know, on their back porch. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's, I like what you're saying is you're already kind of, you're training the people in a way to understand how to have them.

Yeah. You know, when I first started bear hunting, there really was a vermin mentality. before you give people access to an animal, it's a vermin mentality. Because it's like, what good does a bear do me? And I think that's a lot of the sentiment down there with some of the big landowners is,

there's some areas that have a lot of bears in Mississippi. Oh, yeah. Like where guys are seeing bears like almost every time they go deer hunting. Am I right? Yep. I mean, not everywhere, but there are camps down there where it's just like, oh gosh, well, of course, I'm going to see a bear.

Right. And where there's no reason for that landowner to, to, no incentive for him to want that bear there, you know, where if you could every couple years, take one, have,

have some bear meat and some bear fat and a bear rug. And all of a sudden there's this cultural value added to the animal. Yeah. You know. Well, and going back to that vermin mentality, there's also a pretty strong contingency of people, I think,

if we could only get a bear season, then all these nuisance problems would go away. Like all this would just be solved because we've got a season now. And, you know, the fact of the matter is that that's not the reason that season is going into place to begin with. The reason for that is to provide opportunity to the landowner. And it's to provide a mechanism for us to accomplish the goals of managing that species. And, you know, is it possible that it's going to reduce conflict in certain areas? Sure. but that's not the reason that we're putting this all together.

And so I think a lot of people kind of get that, you know, conflated in their minds as like, okay, if we could only get to this point, then all these problems are going to go away. And like I said, that's why this education is so important is because, you know, this is, as long as we're going to have bears,

you're going to have to know about how to live with them. Yeah. So this week is, it's Bear Week in Mississippi. Oh, wow. So you're, are you all, what, are you doing, anything or is it just kind of like you're just talking about it on online social media yeah so it was

it was kind of organic it came about last year for the first time and you know we're we're told in our bureau you know if you've got stuff pictures videos anything like that that you can send to our social media people you know they'll put that stuff out there they're really good at just you know creating things out of the content that we give them and yesterday excuse me last year right after a den season was over we had a lot of content that And we had, you know, pictures, videos and that kind of stuff. And the comment was made, hey, we've got a whole, we've got enough stuff here to do an entire week. It's like, well, why don't we just do an entire week?

And so bare week was kind of formed, you know, organically. We threw everything together and put it out. It was a really big success. This year we were able to kind of, you know, steer that in a more organized direction and actually add some structure to it and, you know, figure out kind of the direction we wanted it to take. And essentially what it is is, you know, highlighting the research that we're going to make. we're doing in the state, some general knowledge about black bears, and really overall just to, you know, to raise awareness of people. It's on Facebook and Instagram. It's on Mississippi Wildlife and Fisheries. Facebook page. What's your main Facebook page that you created? So the Facebook

page that I created, that was on the end of Bear Week last year. So that was April the second, I think, was the, when the group was created. It's called Mississippi Black Bears. Mississippi Blackbears. Mississippi Black Bear. Yeah. It's got a blue background and then a yellow, picture of a bear crossing sign. It's really neat. He posts all the time like real-time stuff when he's out catching bears and when people send him pictures of bears and different stuff. So he's done a good job with that. Yeah. So the official thing that we tell people to report sightings is MDWFP.com, go to the Black Bear program page, and there's an option there to report a black bear sighting. It asks for a lot of information. Some people that are not as computer savvy

or don't want to go through that, you know, find it to be a hassle. The thought was, well, if there's a Facebook page, you know, everybody wants you to see their game camera pictures. And so the thought was that they could just pluck it off their phone, put it on the Facebook, and that may be a siding that we don't capture otherwise. And so it was to kind of capture, you know, the stuff that was falling through the cracks that people didn't want to actually report via the website. Yeah. And as it progressed, it turned more into, it did service that as a mechanism, and still does. But I also found more and more utility with it because at the time we were moving

into southwest Mississippi to try to do a lot of trapping in collar. And we had 10 plus collars to put out last year. And, you know, in the Delta, kind of that bread basket area, we had a lot of contacts. We had a lot of people that we've always worked with. And then once we moved outside of that, we were kind of starting from scratch again. And so that social media platform was able to fill the gaps and when people would, you know, put a siting on there, again, most of the time it's game camera pictures so I can look at the time and date. I can contact that person via messenger and I gained access to probably 95% of the properties that I was on over the past summer through the Facebook page. And so it's, and then, you know, as it's progressed, I've also

put out some stuff about our research. Here's some bears that we're collaring. Here's some stuff that we're doing and then kind of a continuation of that, you know, with Bear Week. We're also sharing all that content on there as well. 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 going to tell you, I love mine because it's easy to use. I'm not going to go, I'm not going to win a turkey calling contest.

It's just not going to happen. But when I run this call, I get the sounds that gobblers are looking for. I have a great turkey hunting track record. If you go listen to real turkeys out in the woods, they're not going to win calling contests, right? That's who I listen to. I can make those sounds on my cut. I also hunt with Phelps's cut,

and I hunt with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts. Check out Prime Cuts at Phelpsgamecalls.com. I think you'll be glad you did, and you'll find out that the Steve Ronella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning call who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. So I want to talk about bears and trees. That's a unique thing for the flood prone regions of the southeast.

Is that you guys bears, and the reason I'm saying this is I put a video up on my Instagram. I think it got a million views, didn't it? I think so, yeah. I think Brent's got like a million and a half. If yours got a million, and there have been several others that were really big. Yeah. So basically, Christy, the bears, the bears and the- I'm glad you get to be this person this week. And Misty. The flood-prone regions, these bears are dinning in these ancient cypress trees

that have big cavities. So when I was with Anthony, how tall are these trees? Give me some context. The one that we did when Clay and Brent came out was about 50s. 50 feet. Wow. Oh my gosh. Are you kidding me? And how big is a cavity? Like when you... It depends. So as the tree grows, they'll have certain spots that kind of rot out, maybe a branch that broke off or whatever, and it leaves a, you know, a void there. And so the tree is alive and well, but those cavities start to form. And, you know, sometimes it's just kind of a shallow depression that's really not much to it. Sometimes that cavity will go all the way through the trunk of the tree and the bear will literally be on the ground inside the tree. But he's accessing a hole. Way up high. Right. So, yeah, on some.

Some of them you'll have to climb 40 feet to get to the cavity opening and then climb 40 feet all the way back down to get to the bear inside the tree. Wow. And you're doing that. Yeah. Well, you're going to get into the cavity of a tree with a bear. So the bear, the one that I went with him on, so they have to repel. And they're using the techniques that like an arborist would use.

They were going to cut down a tree. So they like throw their ropes up. and then Anthony's got this little, these little climber, I don't know, these little mechanisms. Foot ascenders. Put ascenders.

And so, you know, he climbs 50 foot up this tree. Wow. And the one I saw, the hole was about, I don't know, twice as big as a 55-gallon drum.

Yeah. Maybe not quite that way. One and a half to two times, yeah. And this tree just kind of like comes up and just has this like open hole at the top, like a, almost like a, just, I don't know, you could have stood.

Like it's a cylinder. Yeah, you could have just stood in it and you'd have got rain on your head. And that bear was just dinned up, like, right in that hole. And so Anthony was peeking over looking at this bear and tell us about that one. So the thing that made that cavity, like every cavity is different. And so sometimes you're, you, whenever you first look over that cavity, you have no idea how far down that bear is. And so in this particular case, when you look over it,

the ledge, that bear is right there. And you are like, from me to Christy to the bear. And so. And 50 feet in the air. And 50 feet. Hanging off the right. Tied to a tree. Yeah, you're probably not as good at climbing up as the bear. You carry a pocket knife with you so you can just cut yourself with us.

The other Jerry Clower just shoot up in here amongst us. But, and the problem with that tree was the way it was shaped, I couldn't get, like I like to get up above the cavity because that way I can see the bear better. I can take a shot better. And the way that tree was shaped, I couldn't. And so I was basically right there even. And so as I would peek over, we're basically face to face.

And that was one. And they're pretty docile right now. Like what? Tell me with that. For those of us who don't. It doesn't feel that way when you're 50 feet. There's a range of docile. Okay.

Yeah. Being subjective. Okay. This particular female, this is the second time that she's been in this same tree. She did in the same exact tree last year. And she is not dazile. She was very upset that we were there. So one of the first things that I do is I'll screw in the tree spikes to have a platform to stand on so I can kind of move around and take a shot.

The shot means he's trying to put a dart in her. Right. We dart to anesthetize. Oh, gotcha. So first we have to figure out where the buried dens. then we have to figure out how to get into the den. Then we have to figure out if the sow that is supposed to have cubs actually does have cubs. And so all that process happens over the span of a few weeks.

But in this particular situation, like whenever I started screwing that first tree spike in, she started huffing and popping her jaws. And it's like she knew I was there, no doubt. Okay. And she had, so by the first, she's like, we've met before. You again. Yeah. You again.

So whenever I first peeked over the ledge right there where she was in view, she had already backed up and she was facing the back of the cavity, or excuse me, her back to the, her facing me, ears laid back. And as I would peek over, she would swat at me and she would hit the side of the tree in between me. We're on the ground watching this and he's like hanging off this tree and he'll kind of like lean around. And then he'd go, like, jump back. Did she have cubs? She didn't have cubs now.

You'd hear the bear, like, you'd hear the bear hit the tree. Wow. Yeah, it was pretty intense. It was going to, I was filming that. I was out of the tree? No, so assuming that she had had cubs, and we had darted her and actually anesthetizer, the next step would have been to get my little workup kit up into the tree. So I'll screw in some kind of pulley.

The folks on the ground will pull that up. I start them on supplemental oxygen. in the tree. I'll monitor vitals inside the tree and then we take the, like I said, assuming she had a litter of cubs, we have taken those, there's little bags that we put them in and lower them down and the workup

on the cubs, the measurements, we put pit tags in, take other measurements, weight and that sort of thing, general help, age and sex, count the cubs, that kind of thing. And after all that's done, all that data is collected, then they'll get her back, get the cubs back up the tree and then we'll put them back in the

thing, back in the den, and then we'll give them the reversal drug. Wow. Quickly tell me the story about the cub, the orphaned cub. So when you have some type of problems with abandonment, it's generally that first litter that the sow has. We knew that she was three years old. because she was actually caught for the first time when she was a yearling. So we knew how old she was.

I didn't know for sure whether she was going to have cubs or not. And this is a second bear. So we went to this first tree, didn't have a cub, this mean bear. And then we went to this other, this is a different sow. Yeah, different sale. And we had, the day before that, we had actually done the den check itself. So we had gotten everything went super well. we had gotten the cub did all of our stuff put her back everything was good we had gotten back to the camp

about an hour later and we had set up a cell camera on the tree to look at when the sow comes down like look at emergency states from from our dens and we saw that the sow had gotten out and left and to make a long story short she never did actually come back into the den uh into that den tree and she had she had one cub she had a single cub yeah and it was kind of one of those things where, you know, you don't want to intervene too early, but you also don't want to let it wait too long and the cub gets dehydrated and there's, in a lot of other problems that could have arisen. And basically the position that we were in right after y'all left was we had a big storm coming in Friday morning.

And you know how hard it was to get back there in, quote unquote, dry weather. And it was about to be impossible. So it was either take the cub then or have to wait. potentially another week. As I began to understand it, so when you're doing these den studies, collard sows, and this is something that's very,

very understood across the country, because almost every state that has bears is going to have some animals collared and do some type of den study, some percentage of females don't respond well to people coming in and messing with them. It's usually the young ones.

Well, and normally, you know, we have a lot of ground dens, and they have a lot more chance, obviously, of, you know, getting out of the den and, escaping whenever people come to do the checks and they'll come right back. I mean, there's, you know. So most of the time it's a non-issue.

Like intruding on a sow, tranquilizing her, checking her cubs, and then she wakes up and smells humans and knows something bad, you know, something happened. That, you know, high percentage of sales don't care. Well, I put it this way. This one did. In the 20 years that we've done bear research in Mississippi and all the dozens or hundreds of den checks that have been performed, I think there's been two other situations of abandonment

in that whole amount of time. So it is extremely rare for that to happen. Right, right. And so once we were able to make the decision of like, hey, you know, we need to go ahead and get this, this cub, the standard procedure that we have is if we have another sow that has cubs, we put them with that,

we add the orphan sow to that litter. And, you know, almost vast, vast, vast majority of the time, there's no problem. She'll take them and raise them as her own. Interesting. And so that's what you did. That's what we did.

So that was on Friday, excuse me, that was on Thursday night that we went back and got the cub. Fett gave it a puppy formula, actually, you know, to keep, keep her hydrated.

So what happens, we just went and messed with this mean bear in the morning. And then by that afternoon, Anthony and his team had been watching on cell camera whether this sow had come back. And she hadn't. And so, like, all day, it's like, I heard him talking. You know, it'd be like, man, that sow still isn't back from the den study the day before.

And it was like, man, what do we do? What do we do? And all day, Anthony was fretting over, you know, should we go? You know, is she going to come? And then there's a time stamp on how long a cub will survive without a nursing cub. You know, we'll survive without milk. They'll, you know, dehydrate and whatnot. And so that afternoon, me and Brent, we went back with them to see if the sow was there.

And she wasn't. And, but we heard the cub crying up in the tree. Just, you know. And not only that, but, you know, with that big storm that came through, that cub would have gotten rained on inside where that den was. And possibly could have gotten hypothermic as well. Yeah, yeah. So that was another reason why we made the decision to go ahead and get her. And so you took her that night.

Keper, kept the, is a little male cub, kept him overnight. Was it a female? I was thinking it was a male. Okay. Yeah. But anyway, so kept her overnight. And then Saturday was when we went down to Wilkinson County, which is southwest Mississippi, Woodville area. And we had a sow down there that had three cubs come to find out.

I knew she had either two or three. And so darted her. Everything went well with that. Introduced the fourth cub. And I recently got a picture from the landowner with the sow. all four cubs. Wow. Man, that's so great.

That's super cool. That's cool. Can you imagine that bear waking up? Where'd you come from? It would be like waking up in my house. One, two, three, wait. And walking into my house and being like having a new kid. Yeah.

Wait a minute. Okay. Who are you? Whatever. She probably didn't go back to sleep after that just in case. She probably didn't go back to sleep after that just in case. Right, right. Oh, that's so cool.

And so did y'all lip tattoo that little guy? No, we've kind of moved away from lip tattoos. Okay. But we do put in pit tags, which is, it's about the size of a grain of rice. It's essentially like a microchip that you would put in dogs and cats. And we do that to every bear that we have a container. Yeah, it's injected under the skin. And it doesn't have a battery.

It's just like a scanable barcode almost. Oh, so it just lasts good forever. Yeah, so as long as it's under the skin. I've got one of those in bear. Yeah. We didn't know that. We need one of us. Yeah, we need one of those.

Fun fact. But any bear that we get back in hand, that's one of the first things that we'll do is scan them for that pit tag. And then that way, if we can get that number, then we have a catalog where we can look back and see how many times we've captured that bear. You know, possibly if it's as a cub,

we have a known age. And, you know, we've got a good profile of the history of the bear. It'd be really interesting to follow that bear's life. Yeah, absolutely. You've saved, essentially saved its life. Yeah. What's the bear's name? See, I hesitate to name the bears.

Okay, got you. And that kind of goes back to... You did, though. Come on. I didn't. No, no, that was... While we were there, there was a lot of potential names being tossed around, but no, no, I got you. No, the name that was put out there was Opie. Oh, how cute.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was like, we'll put it in quotes. Opie. Yeah. I like that name. Me too. We had a Coon dog named Opie once. Terrible dog.

Every morning I woke up and I'd bring new treasures. Once there was a dead bird. Once there was a rock. Never a coon. Never a coon. Yeah. Yeah. But kind of going back to the hunting thing,

what I've tried to do was kind of keep it very scientific as far as referring to those bears. Because, you know, people wouldn't really mind. if F-34 got harvested in a hunt. But if Opie got shot... Oh, yeah. Scratch that from the records. It's like that bear, yeah. And so that's one thing that I've kind of tried to change

because the naming bears has been really common, especially in a state where, you know, you can... There's not a whole lot that you're working with. Yeah, you can identify them. But that's one thing that I'm kind of trying to move away from. Yeah, that's a good idea. What are, as we close down here, what are you trap bears a lot? You've been trapping a lot of bears.

What's the biggest one you've trapped? The biggest one over this past year was 384. 384, 384, big male. We called one 384 and it called 381. So that was, they were both one in Wilkinson, excuse me, one in Franklin County and one in Claiborne County. Do you think there's some big 500 pounders out there? Yeah. So a little foreshadowing in bear, we do have a.

we do have a on Thursday on it thick Thursday and we're going to have a fat bear like competition I guess

people can post their bears in Mississippi you know which one they think's the biggest and then we'll select a winner

at the end of the week that's all that's fine so yeah there's I've gotten pictures of some of the delta that I have no doubt or in the upper 400s

at least yeah yeah our biggest on record's 468 that was in Wilkinson County really Wow. Begans.

Biggins. Well, that's really, that's awesome, man. Anything else we hadn't talked about that you want to talk about, Mississippi Bears? We cover a lot of it. Yeah, we covered a lot of it. Well, you're welcome to come back up here anytime, man. You could just join in on a render. I love to, man.

Man, I love seeing passionate people inside of positions like you're in that really love the resource that are working hard and and looking long term down the road. So, man, you're in a great position. And I think you're doing a great job. So that's awesome, man. Well, I appreciate the invitation and the platform to kind of get our story out there. And, you know, public awareness, you know, we have a tracking thing on our website where, you know, it's graphed by year of how many bear reports we had, you know, over that year.

And, 2003, there was a 300% increase in the amount of bear reports that we got in the state, not because there was a 300% increase in bears, but because there were that many more people that were more aware

and knew what to do with that information. So it's a huge, like this right here is a huge step for raising that awareness and kind of bringing some knowledge about our program. Yeah. Incredible.

Any other questions from the team? No, I loved it. Yeah. Also, thanks for the swag. Yeah, we got some cool shirts. Excellent. Well, I'm excited about the next bear grease that's coming up. It's going to be good.

Not going to foreshadow an ounce other than just. It is going to be very good. Wow, we're all in on this. Thank you, Anthony. Thanks for coming up here. And, yeah, we'll be hearing more about Mississippi Bears. Cool. Enjoy it.

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 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 and but he wasn't. This season, we're going deeper. From cold case, to whispered suspicions, from remote mountains to frozen backwoods.

Each story begins in the wilderness and ends in darkness. Because out here, there are no witnesses, no cameras, just fragments, and the people left behind trying to piece them back together. He's not an honest person. He's incapable of being honest. Somebody somewhere knows something. I'm Jordan Sillers. Season two of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple.

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