Bear Grease - Ep. 219: This Country Life - Canadian Chocolate

Episode Date: May 31, 2024

Brent's back from the Canadian bush of Manitoba and he brought a big color phase bear with him. Hear the tale of that hunt and get a teasing glimpse into a family that lives their lives close to nature. More on those folks in a future episode. Right now we're bear hunting and the bear hunting is good! All that plus a listener-submitted story showcasing the teamwork of three generations of turkey hunters on MeatEater's "This Country Life" podcast. Connect with Brent and MeatEater MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube Shop Bear Grease MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

First Lights fieldwear collection is made for the work that happens long before opening day and continues when the season ends. Products built for early mornings, full days in real use. Hard wearing where they need to be versatile where it matters. No shortcuts. Just gear designed for the work that earns the season. Built to perform, built to last. Check out. First Light's new fieldwear gear at firstlight.com.

Welcome to This Country Life. I'm your host, Brent Reeves. From Coon Hunting to Trotlining and just general country living, I want you to stay a while as I share my stories and country skills that will help you beat the system. This Country Life is proudly presented as part of Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you the best outdoor podcast the Airways have to offer. All right, friends, pull you up a chair or drop that tailgate. I think I've got a thing or two to teach you.

Canadian chocolate. I love it when a plan comes together. It's even better when it comes together early. Relieving the pressure and allowing the opportunity to relax and just enjoy the time allotted with new friends. We're in the land of bears, parochies, and the kindest folks you'll ever meet. And I'm going to tell you all about them. But first, I'm going to tell you a story. This story was sent in by Ryan Probst, who rambles around in Nelson County, Virginia.

It's about three generations and shows how even the youngest hunter in the group can sometimes add the most. In Ryan's words and my voice, here we go. On May 25th, 2020, my dad, Freddie and I decided to take my three-year-old son Landon, Kirkham. Now, we were heading to a place I had permission to hunt that was beautiful in Nelson County, Virginia. We pulled up to a little meta just through the gate at the bottom. of the property, it was such a pretty place with a nice little cabin, a pond, and a couple acre field at the base of a steep mountain. Now, we ended up getting there an hour or so after daylight, because my wife says it's never

good to wake asleep from toddler, and I tend to agree with her. Now, Landon at the time is completely obsessed with four-wheeler, so the first thing he does when we get out of the truck is run back to the trailer and climb up on the back of the 18th. I figured if the turkeys weren't doing much, we could always spend a morning in the mounds just riding around, maybe a little fishing or another one of his favorite hobbies, which was catching lizards and snakes. Now, I'd given him a box call that I'd gotten from a National Wild Turkey Federation banquet a couple weeks ago prior to the hunt just to let him play with.

He was actually pretty good with it. As soon as we got there, he was sitting on that four-wheeler messing with that box call. and not doing bad with it while me and my dad were putting on all our gear. Suddenly, way off in the distance, I thought I heard a gobble. I froze, and I told Landon, do that again. He did, and sure enough, several hundred yards away, one hammered. I quickly realized we were a pickle. We were on the edge of a metal with a truck, a trailer, a four-wheeler,

and three people that looked nothing like a flock of hens. I knew I had best get to the other edge of that field before that turkey did, where he would see what was going down. And as I was thinking that, my dad said, boy, you better get to the edge before he does. And with that, I told them to stay there for landing to keep doing what he was doing. I quickly made my way across the field while putting my mask and my gloves on. The whole time he was gobbling and getting closer. I was in a race.

I made it to an old dilavidated fence row, 15 yards from the edge of the tree line, and hopped into what I soon found out was a big old briar patch. I loaded my shotgun, set it up on my knee, and within 20 seconds, here he came, stretching his neck up over that ridge. I settled the beat on his head and hit him with some rimming to Nitro No. 4s, and he hit the ground.

I stood up in a state of distraging. belief, not believing what had just happened. I turned around to see my son and my dad walking through that field headed my way. What a beautiful sight. We all walked up to that old gobbler together, which was and still is my biggest to date, a 25 pound stood. My dad and I were speechless and overcome with joy. We were high-fiving and hugging and telling Landon what a huge deal this was and that he had called him in all by itself. Neither my dad nor I ever touched a call that morning. Landon walked up to that turkey. He bent down and he steaded it for a few seconds and then he stood up and said, can we ride the four-wheeler now? I told him we sure can, buddy. That was the day

I'll never forget and one I'll always be thankful for. What a blessing to share that moment with my son and my dad. Well, we appreciate you sharing that story with us, and according to Ryan, that's just how that happened. If you haven't noticed that I was blessed to bring home a big color-faced black bear from Canada recently, I applaud your ability to stay off your phone and sparse out your time on social media. Now, if you did catch one of the six million pictures I and others posted about it, here's

the story of that hunt. and some context on that grand adventure I recently participated in. Better yet, the grand adventure in which I recently participated. Thanks to Miss Mary Culp, my 12th grade English teacher. She taught both my older brothers, too. She was diminutive in stature, but an absolute giant in teaching me the correct way to write a story. She'd be looking to me over her glasses right now by ending a sentence with a preposition.

I owe her a lot, and I find myself seeking her approval even now when I sit down to write these stories, even though she's long passed away. Thanks, Miss Cupp, you're still teaching me. Also, hang on, because you know I write like I talk, so I hope you're grading on the curve up there. Anyway, last week, my buddy, David McDaniels, and my new friend, Logan Ingram, and yours truly lit out for the riding mountains of central Manitoba to home with Craig, and Melanie McCarthy at their outfit and concern called North Mountain Adventures. 21 hours of driving later, I was introduced to Hayden and Kirsten, the McCarthy Youngens, both of which were eager to meet and talk to us, and I was impressed with their manners how they conducted themselves and around adults and people they'd only just met.

I'll tell you more about them in a later episode. Suffice it to say, these kids were an accurate barometer of how the week would play out and how this family lives their lives close to the Canadian wilderness, respectful, reverent, and with humility. And I felt at home immediately. I also felt excited because I loved to hunt bears. I love to talk about bears. I love to eat bears. I love everything about bears and these folks are in the bear business. This wasn't my first trip to the land of maple leaves and hockey pucks. It was my first trip to the land of maple leaves and hockey pucks. It was my fourth trip north of the border, but my first to Manitoba. That place looked like home to me.

Saskatchewan and British Columbia, they're beautiful in their own way, but I was drawn to this land with a subtle familiarness. It was big country that was, for the most part, flat as a flitter, and broken up by wooded streams, rivers, and rope crop farms. It reminded me of the Arkansas Delta, dirt that looked like plowed, dark chocolate, and you just knew it would be cool to the touch, even on the hottest days. Cattail ringed potholes dotted the landscape and mallard ducks and Canada geeks,

blue-winged teal, sandhill cranes were a daily attraction as we made our way to and from camp. Coyotes, turkeys, coons, big coons, like 40-plus pound coons lived there. How I'd love to cut old wailing loose in them bottoms and see how quick he could put one of those fat rascals up a tree. They've got swamps, too, big beaver ponds, an absolute trapper's paradise. More on that in a later episode, too. Right now, my focus was bears. Might as well get this part over with. There'll be some folks who don't like a baited bear hunt, and that's 100% fine with me.

But I have no interest in hearing these opinions. Send them to somebody else. Baiting bears is a tool that allows the hunter to confirm the maturity and sex of the bears, so the young ones or the sows with cubs aren't targeted. There are a million more folks, more articulate than I am, that have presented that argument from day one. I'm not going to repeat it here. It's legal, it's ethical, and it's nowhere near automatic.

Also, my primary reason for hunting a bear is to kill him and take him home to eat and render his fat for cooking healthier, organic meals that I provide for my family. Any advantage. can give myself an accomplishing that task is welcome. Now, it's enough of that. On Blood Trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is over. They just get darker.

I've seen something in the road. I instantly thought it was a sleeping bag. And there was a full of blood. Oh, my God, he doesn't have a hit. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors, where the terrain is unforgiving, the evidence is scarce, and the truth gets buried under brush and silence. Indications were he should be right there, but he wasn't.

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

I'm Jordan Sillers. Season 2 of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, Iheart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Bears hit baits around the clock, but the best time to get set up for them is in the early afternoon. Time is most dependent on where you are as far as the latitude goes on the spinning orb of ours, and 3.30 p.m. seemed to work for me for leaving the cabin. I'd be sitting and ready to roll with a fresh dose of beaver meat and grain at the bait by 4.15 on the first afternoon. Shooting light would be over a little after 10 p.m. That still makes for quite a long sit.

Six hours in a tree is a pretty good pull, and if you're hunting bears, the big ones normally don't get there to the last 15 or 20 minutes of light. They're like big bucks in the gold nocturnal. The reason the last hour of daylight hunting is usually known as the golden hour. Now, when you're bear hunting, you can narrow it down even further to the golden 20 minutes, or less. The name riding mountain is believed to be derived from a Cree Indian name, meaning hill of the buffalo chase. Now, how cool is that? I love learning about the history of any place I'm fortunate enough to be at.

able to hunt. My mind wanders to earlier times, and I try to imagine what it must have looked like to those folks who called this place home and how important hunting and trapping was to their survival. Connection to the land is important to me, and I don't take any place for granted. We owe it to those who roam there first to keep their memories alive by being good stewards of the land, especially when we're only visiting. Like my friend Doug Durand says, it's not ours. It's It's just our turn. Now, the bear started in early that evening, 6.15, two hours after I'd settled in, I was looking at some prime examples of Ursus Americana.

They were in just about every direction I looked. Setting on the bait is also a great way to observe bear behavior and how they interact with each other. The sounds emitted by them are incredible, varied and somewhat intimidating at times. Now, I didn't witness any show enough knocked down. dragouts, but the boys did get a little grumpy about sharing at times. And contrary to what you might think, the biggest bear ain't always in charge. All through the afternoon and evening, I watched one particular color-faced bear.

Chocolate colored bear run others away from the barrel with bluff charges, popping his jaws and woofing him. He reminded me of a fellow with a Napoleon complex. He was making up for his lack of self. by being the toughest kid on the block and at work. Most of the time, occasionally a larger bearer would stroll in and the class bully would retreat without making a sound

or offering any resistance. This let me know that they'd already established who was a boss between the two of them long before they met in front of me that evening. I've witnessed bear fights before real ones. They escalate quickly and are extremely violent. Those played out in front of me in another part of Canada on multiple occasions, and I was sitting on the ground with them as it

happened, hoping they just ignored me when it was all over. You know how it is. The guy that loses is is embarrassed and mad and looks around at the gawking crowd yelling, what are you looking at? At the first guy he knows he can whoop. I didn't want to be that guy he picked out and challenged. Admittedly, the crowd I was sitting in watching the pugilistic endeavor was pretty thin, consisting only of me and Clay I cheated turkey calling contest, nuke them. But then as abruptly as they start, they're usually over.

They know who won and each goes about their business as if nothing really happened. Kind of like a major league baseball when a good hitter hits Homer off a good pitcher. The hitter runs the bases, goes back to the dugout without showboating, or he can rest assured if he does next time he steps in the box.

The opposing pitcher is going to put a heater in his ear. Sometimes you eat the bear, sometimes the bear eats you. Can't remember where I heard that, but it was probably at a bear bait said by bear. Probably the same bear that said if attacked by a bear, you should lay down and play dead. That's just so you'll have some practice when it happens for real a few minutes later. But from where I sat, the bait was less than 20 yards away in an opening no bigger than a 15 by 15 room. The aspen and maple trees along with the bushes that grow there are thick and lush with new spring leaves.

It's pretty close quarters and for good reason. Big bears feel more secure in tight spaces. They have avenues of escape and they can slip in undetected by other bears that may be bigger than them. There's always someone bigger and better. The big ones know this, and they get to be old bears because of it. Bears don't like to find them. fight and they only do it when threatening when it's absolutely necessary. They know that

injury is weakness and weakness is hunger and death in nature. If they can posture well enough to get their bluff in on whatever is causing the problem, they'll let it go with that. The trails coming into the bay were virtually indistinguishable from the rest of the woods. They were more like open top tunnels and passageways with the only opening to fully see in size of the bears being at the barrel itself. You could get glimpses of them through holes in the bushes as they approach, but taking a shot anywhere other than that the bait was out of the question with the bow, and that's what I like to hunt with.

I'd already determined that none of the bears that were hitting the bait were bigger than the bears I had at home, so they were all getting a pass on opening day. I pictured in my mind having a slingshot and drilling that chocolate in his ham with a rock just to let some of the others have a bite when through an opening, up the hill, I saw two bears. First, I thought they were fighting. Turns out that fighting was the last thing they had on their mind. That couple was out on the date,

which coincides with this time of year when Sal's come in heat. The receptive sow can be better than bait any day. The dominant boar in the area will check her out if he's close. I had two things going for me there, a sow coming in season, and a bear bait with six or seven different bears that had been using it on and off all evening. I started calling the color bear Chaco Taco. Now, I'm not a wild animal namer. I've never given a buck of name that I was after.

I think it's dumb. I think deer should be called deer because that's what they are. I only care about knowing the name of someone if I'm going to hold a conversation with them or avoid. Here's an example. I'd like to meet Frank. He seems like someone I'd like to know. Or, oh Lord, here comes Frank. Let's get out of here.

He is not someone I'd like to know. But this bear was a regular at the bait and comical in his defense of what he thought was his. He'd been there all evening. He was the first in and would grab a chunk of frozen beaver and walk out in the woods to gnaw on it. Or as Miss Cope would say, out into the woods he'd walk with a frozen beaver on which to gnaw. Oh my gosh, I wish I could hear her say that.

I love you, Miss Culp. Chaco Tacco had ventured out from the bait for the upteenth time and had been replaced by a bigger bear who fancied himself a snackerel of beaver and a dip of grease-soaked oats. Still not what I was after, though. My eyes drifted back up the hill toward where I'd last seen the happy couple. It was getting darker now and was actually prime time for the big boys to show up. Then the bear at the bait got up and left like he'd been caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

Movement straight out in front of me had me looking over the top and past the bait barrel to a trail that Berris had been using earlier in the day. My good friend and cameraman David McDaniels was positioned behind me filming the hunt. In the video, you can see me motioned to David that I'd seen something there and I picked up my bow and attached my release to the stream. I was straining to see through the woods 40 yards away, and I was alerted to the presence of a different bear at the bay when I heard David whispered. That's a big chocolate bear right in front of me, friend. I didn't have to do anything other than lower my gaze and magically there he was. How in the world did that joker get there without me seeing or hearing it? I don't know how they move across the landscape as silently as they do,

but they move like poetry in perfect rhythm with the environment and float through the world. woods like dust dances in the rays of sunshine through a window. I waited and I watched what seemed like forever. Then he took the final step I needed him to take to stand clear in the open. I could only see two-thirds of him, but it was the part that held his vitals. I leaned over just a little bit and I picked out a small spot and was surprised when the arrow jumped off my strain. I followed the arrow's path and saw it disappear right where I was aiming. Moments later, I heard him crash. Shortly after that, I heard his death moan.

Now, I have to tell you, the death moan is not something I enjoy here. Half the bears I've taken have done it. To me, it's raw and emotional and maybe a little sad. I'm not ashamed to admit that the first time I heard it brought tears to my eyes. I also think that that's a good thing. Hunting is a raw emotional act and were driven in statured. to hunt and gather for our families. Taking the life of an animal is not taken lightly and shouldn't be.

Quite the opposite. That 440-pound Manitoba black bear will feed my family for months. Good, healthy protein. The grease rendered from his fat will be cooked for many months as well, and his hide and skull will hang in my home with reverence. His memory will live within me for as long as I do. The beast is dead long live the beast. I would be remiss if not taking the opportunity to talk about the outfitters.

I'd heard about him ever since David came back from his hunt with him last year. He went on and on about how gracious they were and just how rock-solid of a family they are. David brought home a nice bear from there last year, and I didn't know, but I thought maybe his judgment was biased by his successful trip. That dude wouldn't shut up about him. but David's a pretty good judge of character if you take me out of the mix so I booked a hunt along with several other folks in his circle and from day one it was like rolling into the family hunting camp

and seeing folks you only see that time of year I knew from the moment I met him that he was right and they were good folks Craig and Mel treated us all like Ken I tagged that on the first day and spent a lot of time with all the McCarthy's from Craig and Mel to their son Hayden and daughter Kirsten, along with Derek Lammy and Ashnor Shapo, also known as Ash, and if that ain't a classic Canadian Bush name, I don't know what is. They were good, honest, hardworking folks who are led by faith and are shining examples of a family working together for a common goal. They could have been raising

chickens and farming like I grew up doing, or making cabinets in the family. shop. It could have been anything. The job didn't matter. What mattered is that they all did it together and supported one another a long way. In this case, it just so happened to be bear hunting, and they do it well. That's something special and something I was proud to witness for myself. Check them out at North Mountain Adventures in Oka River, Manitoba, Canada. That hunt will be on their YouTube channel next year, but go subscribe to their channel now to see some great content that's already up. Now, I'm going to leave you with this.

It's the first stanza of a poem that reminds me of the McCarthy's, every last one of them, including Derek and Ag, as I watched them going about their chores and required task of guiding, entertaining, caring for harvest a game. It reminded me of this poem, and it was written by Robert W. Service, and it's titled A Busy Man. Here's the first stanza. This crowded life of God's good giving,

no man has relished more than I. I've been so gall-darned busy living. I've never had the time to die. So busy fishing, hunting, roving, up on my toes and fighting fit. So busy singing, laughing, loving, I've never had the time to quit. Until next week, this is Brent Reeve,

signing off. Y'all be careful, eh? First Lights fieldwear 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 fieldwear gear at firstlight.