Bear Grease - Ep. 254: Render - "Akern Rain" at Bear Camp

Episode Date: September 25, 2024

On this episode of the Bear Grease Render, join host Clay Newcomb and Render regulars Brent Reaves, Bear Newcomb, and Josh "Landbridge" Spielmaker, along with wildlife biologist Spencer Daniels and Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks Bear Biologist Anthony Ballard live from Bear Camp as the "akerns" rain down.  Listen in as they discuss the highs and lows of the week's bear hunt as well as their favorite Bear Grease Podcast deer stories. If you have comments on the show, send us a note to [e-mail] Connect with Clay and MeatEater Clay on Instagram MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Youtube Clips MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Shop Bear Grease MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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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. Welcome to the Bear Greas Render.

We are, we're on assignment. On assignment from really the good Lord, but also. Mother Nature, meat eater, Gary Newcomb, Gerald Brewer, we're on assignment. Yeah. We're at our bear camp. And we've completed the Bear Camp for this year. Bear season's still going. They should close the bear season after our Bear Camp is done.

Yeah. It should just be like, hey, are y'all done? Yep, okay, season's over. Shut it down. That's not a good idea. We kind of did it before we started. What's that? I said they kind of shut it down before we started.

Mother Nature. We're going to, so it's great to be out in the wild today. We're at our camp here in Arkansas. I have a great group of people here with me. Josh Lambridge, Spillmaker. Hello? Brent Reeves. Bear John Newcomb.

Here. And we've got, you've been on the podcast before, but this is Anthony Ballard from Mississippi. In a different capacity. Yeah. Well, but you're still the bear biologist for Mississippi. As far as I know. Spencer, if it's not Spencer, we've got to get y'all mixed up. Who's the expert?

There's some, I wonder about the intentionality of that. Yeah. There's been some stories. I'm just an intern anyway. Yeah. Well, it's mostly your mom. Yeah, that's true. added to some confusion.

Oh, we got to tell that story. That's a great story. Okay, so this is Anthony Ballard. He does work for the Mississippi Department of, how do they say? What's there? MDWFP, Mississippi Department of Wildlife Fisheries and Parks. It's a bad one. The acronym is too much to say.

It is. Yeah. When I'm on the phone, I just say wildlife and fisheries because it's just. That's what you're mainly interested in. It's cumbersome. And then we have Spencer Daniels. Spencer Daniels, the intern. Yep, the intern.

I'm a graduate student at Mississippi State on the Bear Project. Me and Anthony worked together a lot. And, yeah, just getting my master's there and kind of working on Bear stuff while I do my thesis. Yeah. So the other morning, we were up real early, and Spencer wasn't up as early as us. He didn't have to go as far,

so they were sleeping in an extra hour. And we were, like, creeping around downstairs, you know, like making sandwiches in the dark and being real quiet. And I said, Anthony, I said, is Spencer the only one asleep up there? And he was like, yeah. And I was like, he's just an intern.

I flipped on the lights. And about 10 minutes later, he comes walking down and he goes, yeah, I was just, he heard me. You apologized if you woke me up. And I said, don't worry about it. I'm just an intern. Okay, so tell the story about your mother

meeting someone in the airport. Yeah, a little background first. Brent put out a video when y'all came down to do den checks with us, and he kind of introduced the video saying, y'all are down here with bear biologist Spencer Daniels and Anthony Ballard. And we joked about it for a while because technically I'm not a bear biologist. I'm a wildlife biologist that researches bears for my graduate stuff right now. You know, every now and then I'd say something and say,

trust me, I'm a bear biologist, that kind of thing. But that's kind of the setup for it. My parents went on their anniversary trip up to Mackinall Island, and they stopped over in Michigan. I forget the name of the airport, but they stopped over there. And my mom's at the counter, and she hears this voice that she recognized. And she turns around, and there's Steve Ronella standing there talking on the phone. And she, like, freaks out and goes and calls.

So your mom would have recognized Steve Rennel. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We watched Meat Eater and all that stuff at the house. Yeah. Pretty much household names. Yeah. Anyway, she goes and grabs my dad and is like, there's Steve Ronella right over there. You know, they wait around, wait around for him to get off the phone.

And he starts to pack up like they're about to walk out and hangs up the phone about the same time. And so she just stops him and says, Steve, he kind of turns and looks at her and is like, excuse me? Like there's some strange lady just trying to stop Steve Ronell at the airport, but eventually she's just like, I'm sorry. You know, she does the proud mom thing, talks about me. and eventually she gets around to saying he's the bear biologist in Mississippi. So Steve Ronell apparently thinks of the bear biologist in Mississippi. And your mom does. Yeah, apparently.

Didn't she tell him that you were coming and hunting with us? Yeah, they kind of mentioned that, and that's when he kind of, you know, he was cool with him, hung out and took some pictures and stuff. Oh, cool. Next time I see Steve, he'll be like, hey, I saw you were with that. Bear biologist, that main bear ballist out of Mississippi, he'll be like Anthony and he'd be, who's Anthony? Well, my mom swears that his follow-up question was,

how long has he been in that position? But my dad said he never did, so I don't know. I can't get that straight. That's funny. That's funny. Well, you guys have been bear hunting with us, and this was your, well, okay, we're gonna, on the Bear Greas render, if you're new,

we talk about the past week's podcast. Every two weeks, we come out with what we really call the Bear Grease podcast, which is a documentary style podcast. Then the renders, and we just gather up a bunch of folks, and we talk about that. This is going to be a little bit different. We're going to end this week's episode with talking about Bear Camp. Is that okay with y'all? Yep.

Does it make sense? I'm in. Because I think if we get to talking about Bear Camp, we're not going to want to come back to deer stories. Yeah. So this last week, we did our annual Deer Stories episodes, which is one of my favorites. I hear a lot of people say that it's some of their favorite podcasts of the year because it's a collection of stories. This episode, I think, had five stories. Usually we have six or seven.

All of them were kind of longer this time. Right. And we're doing another interesting thing is, a week from now will be meat eater's whitetail week. Yep. There's going to be a ton of sales on first light,

all the deer hunting gear, Phelps game calls. You can get your Acren Pro 2 grunner. So there's a lot of sales and stuff. That's connected to whitetail week. But that's not what we're really talking about. We're talking about deer stories. There were multiple really good ones.

What was y'all's favorite story? favorite yeah it's like the elephant in the room everybody's got everybody's got the going to have the same favorite and i think we should talk about that one last before we okay what was your second favorite story i like lakes lake pickle story yeah really yeah the you know i'm crazy about nostalgia and history and family legacy and all that kind of stuff and story i'm taking that deer on his grandfather's land i think he was a grandfather's Daddy Doyle. Yeah.

I think that really resonated with me because everything, you know, from pocket knives to shotguns to even lineage of dogs in my family has always been so important. And I really identified with how Lake felt and the way he described the feeling of taking that deer and how proud his grandfather and grandmother would have been of him. It was, I really liked it. Yeah. He did a good job telling the story, too. Yeah, very good. Yeah. Lake Pickle, okay.

I really, I really like Lakes, too. I think, first of all, Lake's a great storyteller. Don't get Lake too much credit. Sorry. He don't listen. Like, we don't even like you. He didn't listen. I mean, it's okay.

Lake Pickle lucked into a decent story. Okay. Looked into a decent buck and a decent story. I love. Did you know Anthony lives within walking distance of Lake Pickle? Right around the corner. Yep. Rough neighborhood.

I like that. Oh, kidding. I love the unusual. thing of him walking through the grass and gruntin. Yeah, that was good. I never thought to even try that if I was in that situation. It worked. Yeah, a good call and sequence.

What I hear? That's a crow. It's a crow. No, it's like coming in and out. Oh. That's all right. What was your favorite story? The second favorite story.

Was it Lakes? For real. Yeah. I like Lakes story. You guys didn't like Lake story. the bear story? That was my favorite. Just because they had a bear in it.

I mean, I love a deer story. Here's what I, yeah, here's what every time, every time you ask somebody what their favorite story is, or second favorite story, and if they don't say the one you think,

you chastised. Yeah. So you either tell us what you want us to say, or quit asking us questions. Can we have a script? What's your favorite story? You could just have a little bit of thick skin. Defend yourself.

That's not an option. What's your second favorite story? My second favorite story, by far, would have been Mitch Sykes story, him shooting the bear. Mitch, it's pretty interesting because I would have known Mitch pretty much my whole life. We just grew up together in a small town, but he was six years older than me, so it's not like I really even knew him, knew him, just knew of him and his family. I went to school with his little brother. and actually hunted with Mitch one time, like one hunt up in Northwest Arkansas,

and he killed a buck and we drug it out together. But Mitch is friends with a lot of people that I'm friends with and our world's just kind of overlap, but I haven't talked to Mitch in 20 years. Oh, really? Yeah, and I heard about his bear story years ago from my friend Scott Brown. And Scott Brown, he told me just like,

he just told this story with just like precision about what happened to Mitch he told me that story years ago I have since told Mitch's story many times even publicly about Mitch getting charged by that bear and so when I actually sat down with Mitch Is he getting royalties from this?

Well when I actually sat down with Mitch and was like hey tell me that story about that bear I thought that I was like there's no way that I got this story right. So did you? Well, I was a little nervous because I just was like, I've told this story with such confidence for so many years.

And I'm telling you, I could have told that story. He was like mouth on the words as Mitch was telling us right. Scott Brown, if it was a story of, you know, a game of telephone, you would have been surprised at how accurate it was. Because Scott told me he was like, Mitch came down a little holler and did a 90-degree turn and came up to his stand, and that bear walked every step the way he did. That's the story I told.

Bear comes up. Bear runs up the tree one time, comes back down, and the second time he comes up, he was coming around the platform of the tree stand when Mitch shot it in the face with his bow. I mean, that's the story I told, and that's exactly what Mitch said happened. And Mitch is such a credible guy. He works for Farm Bureau. He's a Farm Bureau insurance agent. And, I mean, a really good hunter.

I mean, just a good hunter. And yeah, he said in that story, he was afraid to even tell people what happened because he didn't think they would believe him. Because it was highly unusual. What do you think that bear was doing? I mean, like, was it just straight up trying to get him? I mean, it was, predatory attacks on humans in North America is increasing, like, period. This happened 15 years ago.

I don't... That bear acted like what happens when a bear attacks someone and eats them. Like trailing them up. Mm-hmm. And like purposely trying to find them. Is it a big bear? No, he said it was like a 150 to 200-pound bear.

Huh. And... Still wouldn't want to fight one on a tree stand. Oh, especially in a tree stand. Yeah. And... No, I mean, the likelihood... the likelihood of that bear, like, climbing up in that tree and pulling him out.

I mean, it's so low, but, I mean... It had to happen once. It was four feet from him. It was four feet from him when he shot it. No. And... That's close enough. Yeah.

So, I mean, you know, I don't know. It was wild. The thing about, you know, black bears are extremely docile and, like, not wanting to hurt you in general. But the black bears, black bear range is so widespread there's so many bears there's so much human overlap that you just get that anomaly bear that for whatever reason is aggressive towards people and there's more and more

people across the country getting messed up by black bears yep but uh it's still you'd still have a better chance to getting struck by lightning but uh anyway and then he kills the buck which i thought was cool and it was a real nice buck i'm going to post a picture of the of the of the of the buck The target book he was in there. The one that he killed. So that was my second favorite. That's ridiculous. That really hurts my feelings.

Lake Pickles story wasn't your second favorite. That really hurts my feelings. Is it at least your third favorite? Lakes? Yeah. Let me think about that. Miles Malone. Miles Malone's story is pretty good too.

What stories were there? There was the story of Juju and the Bar and the Mule. Lake Pickle, Miles Malone, Mitch, and Med Palmers, yeah, so there was five. Yeah, lakes would have been, I like Miles story too, though. You've got to give Miles some credit. Acre limb falling in front of a camera. He's a hard, he's a hard deer hunting that guy. Yeah.

What was your favorite, Anthony? I probably like lakes too, because, sorry. Don't be sorry. Make your case. All right, dang it. Here's the reason. Lake is my good friend. I'm giving Lake a hard time.

It was a great story. So the reason, I guess the reason that it resonates with me was a lot of, you know, I was like cussing you in my mind, Brent, because you were taking all my answer from a little ago. But, you know, like those stories that resonate that tell stories about your grandparents or, you know, historic land that you've always hunted and have that, you know, history established where the woods are literally just full of memories and stories of particularly your formative years coming through. I mean, that's, that kind of stuff is what roots people, you know, and it's when somebody tells a story like that, and you can have so many parallels to your own upbringing and, you know, like you said, Blake and I grew up in similar areas, you know, hunted similar areas probably had a fairly, similar childhood and that sort of thing. It's something that just kind of,

you just kind of fall right into it and follow it. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. Hey, cheers to Lake Pickle. I'm changing my legs. We're story shaming Spencer over there. All right, Spencer followed up. That was great.

That was great. Yeah, which was your favorite, Spencer? It was probably the one with the bear. I forget what was the guy's name? Mitch. Mitch. Yeah, I like Mitch.

That was pretty intense story. Yeah. And that bear stalking, basically. Yeah. Which is not common at all like you said. Yeah. That was pretty cool. Yeah.

You know, you guys study bears. We probably talk about this in the bear camp. But how on, do y'all get any reports of that through the year that are credible? Any documented attacks in modern times of bears in Mississippi? No documented attacks. There have been a couple of incidents. where it was a self-defense type situation, and as far as we know, they were found to have been credible.

But, you know, most of the kills that we've had, they've been pretty low amount, and they've all, by and large, have been illegal kills. So I just saw a bear and shot it for some reason. But there was one particularly in the Delta, north of Vicksburg, that was deemed to be a pretty credible self-defense situation. Serious attack. Yeah.

And it was kind of the same version of the bear charged in the tree stand, except the guy was on the ground. And he was making his way to a stand. And as the story goes, the first was a warning shot kind of over the bear's head. And rather than turning and going away, the bear just hit another gear towards him. And he racked another round and killed it, like, as it was coming towards him. Wow. Interesting.

You shoot him right? Head on? Yeah. Wow. Yeah, and that's, I mean, like, you know, our law enforcement guys are great, and those things are investigated just like a murder scene would be. And so you're bringing into account every single thing, you know, how the projectile traveled, where were the tracks, where was the bear, like all that stuff is put together.

And so, like I said, as far as we know, it was, you know, it was legit, like he said, it happened. You know, in the community I grew up in, there's a handful of legitimate stories. of people being really spooked by bears. You know, dad always talks about a guy named Truman Richmond, who was out in the mountains and got a real good woodsman, real good woodsman. Is it legal to dig ginseng? Yeah.

Can you dig ginseng? Yeah. You sure? Check him before he tells us to. This happened like 40 years of. go. So anyway, he was digging jinsic. In Tennessee.

Charged by a bear, and this was like a real woodsman, and he thought the bear was going to get him. I don't know the whole story. Anywhere there's bears, there's going to be stories of, like, close encounters, you know. But let's talk about Med Palmer's story. So

this was Miles Malone is the one who connected this to Med Palmer, M-E-D. Palmer and he's a surgeon yeah just kidding he meds a lot of things a surgeon tell us about meds um that was i mean obviously that's the the favorite and talking about having connections i mean since i came to work with wildlife and fisheries in 2015 i've known med and he's on capy county wildlife management area which is only an hour from where i usually work most of the time and

You know, I knew Gunner. I knew Med. Hadn't hunted much with them. But, I mean, just one of those guys where, you know, if you run into them on the WMA, you better carve out 20 or 30 minutes because you're going to be talking for a little while. And just the most personable down-to-earth guy you'd ever want to know. And so, you know, that whole story, I watched it unfold firsthand, you know, and was one of the ones that were, you know, helping with the process, sending text messages,

you know, the whole thing was like navigating that. I mean, it was almost a family thing, what it felt like in wildlife and fisheries. It's not a huge agency compared to a lot of other state organizations. And so, you know, when something like that happens, it hit everybody, man. Like there was nobody in the agency that was not affected by that story. And so it was to hear him tell it, you know, in somewhere like this, and they would actually do it justice and more people could hear it is just, it's a really cool thing, really personal.

And that, a lot of people told me that they remembered that even on like national news when it happened. Yeah. And I didn't realize it, but I had heard people. refer to these, you know, these boys that got killed on the river, duck hunting. Like that was in my mind that in recent years some boys got killed on the river. Well, I didn't know that we were going to, I didn't know where this story was leading. We just heard for miles, hey, this guy met Palmer, he lost his son on the river, and he ended up killing a deer that that boy was after.

And where I'm like, well, would he tell us that story? on the podcast and Miles was like I bet he would. And so anyway it all finally painted the big picture of what happened and even my mom knew about that. She was like I heard about I watched that on the news. Yeah I remember he's he's also got

if you ever get a chance to have him again he's also got a turkey story that's very similar. We got it. Okay. Foreshadowing. Awesome. Yeah. Yeah well I mean it's hard to it's hard to even talk about the story because you kind of just want to let Med tell it,

but I mean, if you hadn't listened to it, you know, he lost his son. And another boy that we didn't really even bring up, I just, I don't know the story with that family, but these two boys were on the river. They never recovered, never recovered the boys. And then Med goes, and a month later, goes hunting one time and kills this buck

that his son Gunner had been after. It was a powerful story. It was very much. People were messaging me all day on Wednesday of last week telling me that they were like pulling over on the side of the road crying, walking into work crying at the gym crying. Driving to Bear Camp crying. Yeah. Yep.

Yep. Can't confirm. Yeah. So what a powerful story. That's just the story you just can't help but put yourself in the position. of and it's just like you got to have some serious grace from God to be able to walk through that and I feel like I feel like med did a great job exemplifying how you should walk through it you know what I mean he wasn't angry he wasn't he wasn't just tore up to the point where he was debilitated but he

you know obviously that's a that's a heavy load to carry but he he did what he had to do and I think I think the fact that he spent so long searching on the river, you know, he told us behind the scenes that he put 4,700 miles on his boat looking for, looking for Gunner. Wow. Yeah. And he still goes to the river to this day. He still goes. Yeah. Really?

Yep. So I think he just, it was a good example because he just, yeah, I think he didn't carry. bitterness, but he just, he found ways, good ways to be able to walk through it and to, and to kind of move past it. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps game calls in building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called prime cuts.

Now, I'm going to tell you, I love mine because it's easy to use. I'm not going to go, I'm not going to win a turkey calling contest. It's just not going to happen. But when I run this call, I get the sounds that gobble. are looking for. I have a great turkey hunting track record. If you go listen to real turkeys out in the woods, they're not going to win calling contests, right? That's who I listen to. I can make those sounds on my cut. I also hunt with Phelps's cut, and I hunt with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts. Check out Prime Cuts at Phelpsgamecalls.com. I think you'll be glad you did,

and you'll find out that the Steve Rinella cut is an easy-to-use cut. for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. I appreciate it. You know, as he was telling the story, it was clear that he didn't go, he didn't give us the full version of the, of, of, of, of, of, of gunner. I mean, like, it was, he was telling us a deer story that included that. So, I mean, it was like, it was a very condensed. version but

I appreciated how he he knew he had to take on the grief of it head on yeah he was like I needed to go I needed to go to our land and walk past those stands I needed to be myself I knew it was going to be hard

like he he just kind of like took it on like it was a job yeah he didn't avoid it yeah he was just like this is what I got to do and I mean I can only imagine you know what that's all I can can do is imagine what that would be like but i do think that there are versions of that story where where someone is is just debilitated maybe forever and i didn't get that sense from him i mean like

he's he's he's he's he's still he's strong and and just seems to be i mean i didn't know him before yeah but a minute but he seems to be doing good yeah i mean there's a lot of um a lot of people that would in that situation would just stop hunting or or stop hunting or stop stop being outdoors or like just avoid those things like you're saying just just shut that part of your life off right just you know avoid it all together yeah and he doesn't do that i mean he's still and another thing that that he wouldn't tell you that i will is there are some people that are just put on this earth to kill stuff and med is one of those dudes he is you could put a turkey on the surface of mars one turkey and he would go up there and he would find it and kill it i mean he is just an absolute my friend uh keith pokes on me a message after he listened.

He said, if you have the opportunity to go hunting with Med Palmer, he said, you better jump on it. He said, because you're going to learn some stuff. Yes. You will learn things about turkeys that you never knew. But anyway, said all that to say, just in casual conversation, I talked to him, you know, in the years following that, like, hey, are you still going hunting? Are you doing this and that?

And during turkey season, there were several times. that, you know, I would talk to him. He'd say, yeah, I've had, I've had five or I've had seven turkeys within shooting range and just didn't pull the trigger, you know, or sometimes that he did or, you know, he would take another youth, another kid, you know, I've got this, I got this so-and-so hunt with this organization and, you know, we went out and this kid killed a turkey. I called it up for him. And so, like, he's still very much involved in the outdoor world and even with other other

kids and helping like that's one of his favorite things to do is still helping youth fulfill those dreams for themselves yeah he does a lot with wounded veterans too yeah what'd you think of the story bear well well you didn't hear it yeah no i didn't i didn't hear it oh okay so i was actually we should make him listen to it right now in front of us just watch him yeah just watch him tear up what what was bear you leave and you don't come back and i forgot that you hadn't heard it yeah well i was wondering what story you all we're talking about when you were first describing it it was pretty confusing well it'll go down in the archives man that's what's so for me that what's so fun about doing what we're doing is that you're collecting you're collecting people's kind of most

precious valuable memories and stories and they come in all kind of different versions you know and sometimes the focus is an animal sometimes the focus is a person sometimes a focus is something you know life-changing that happened inside of it but but to me med's story told on bear grease will go down as a is one that I won't forget yeah there's a handful of stories that I could just if I met somebody if I met Spencer's mom in the airport I might be like and She'd be like, what do you do, young man? And I go, well, I have a podcast and we tell stories like, and I would, Med Palmer's story might be on there.

And she'd go, are you the lead bear biologist in Arkansas? Well, we're going to have another Dear Stories episode coming up. So we've got one more. It's going to be great. And we're going to get to Osceola. We interviewed Sterling Harjo, and we were going to follow it directly with the Osceola series. But it's going to come later on October. Yep.

So, well, so we've had a good bear camp. It's been tough. Who wants to start talking about bear camp? Not me. Anthony, why don't you tell us about your bear hunt? Well, first you need to put some context to it. Okay. You know, this is the one thing.

We all look, not the one thing, but this hunt, this camp right here is something I would give up just about anything to be here every year. And it's usually, you know, pretty sporty on the first opening day when everybody gets here. We come from all points of the compass to get here. Then we got here, and it's raining acres like a hailstorm, and everybody immediately thinks. oh this may be pretty tough yeah i'll let you take it from so well we're in in arkansas we can hunt over bait on private land so we've got we've got places that we've been baiting and and typically the the success of the hunt is really in a high correlation to the amount of acorns that are falling so a bear just period a bear would rather eat an acre as he would anything that you can put

out. So as the acorns start to fall, the bear activity on your baits just decreases. But usually the season opener is at a time when, you know, some of your bears are leaving, but there's still some hanging around. And it's always this fight with the calendar. And every day, you go further into the fall, you know, bears are more and more keying in on natural food sources and really more and more moving into their fall ranges. You know, bears have these big huge ranges. Anthony could tell me, tell more about it than I could. But in general, you know, a bear has a huge range.

You know, let's say it's 15 square miles for a bore or something. And he'll focus on different parts of that range at different parts of the year. But their fall ranges are typically pretty standard. And that's just where they want to be. Now, if your bear bait is inside of that area in a secure location that he feels comfortable in the daylight and he wants to be there anyway, that's money. But usually, that's not the case. Usually on the private land that we're able to gain access to to bait, usually you're on the fringe of like core bare ranges. And the odd property is, you know, like just where you want it.

But anyway, we had quite a few bears. Like if I just showed you pictures, if I showed Spencer's mom the videos of the bears that we had on camera, she would be impressed. I mean, like, we had some, no shortage of, like, big bears. But they just, they just come in at night. They're sporadic. And by opening day, I mean, we were, what was it like?

Tell you what was it like community because I had I communicated with Anthony every day for three weeks like sending in bear pictures. Well, and that was one thing that kind of you know, I kind of said on the on the front end that I want to I'm really excited about this experience to learn more. And if I kill a bear, that'll be icing on the cake. And I really didn't mean that. And I still do. But to kind of to kind of place myself in the the hunting aspect to something that I really haven't been able to do because obviously I'm from a state. that doesn't allow it, and I've never been outside. He's never been outside the state of the Mississippi.

Not outdoors. Yeah, I don't get out much at all. But anyway, so that's why I've never met Stephen Nell at an airport. But anyway, so to kind of see how everything led up, you said that it's very dependent on acre and fall, obviously. But just to see the difference in the Bears' actually. activities in, you know, a 48-hour period and that just precipitous drop in traffic and activity around that bait site in that one short little period. Because like you said, as you

were sending pictures, one after the other, I was like, it's just a matter of shopping for which bear I want and shooting. And that's what a lot of people think when you're, you know, hunting over bait. You know, the argument is even made that it's not ethical and that it's cheating because You're just, and this process really opened my eyes to like, look, that bear is wired to utilize what we call pulse resources. So it's hard mass in the fall. It's a lot of berries and other soft mass in the spring. And when those resources come available, they are on them and they are on them until they're gone, hot and heavy. And if they don't have to come to your bait to supplement that, they're not going to.

and so that's you know it's one of those things like you kind of know in the back of your mind but to actually see it firsthand was a really eye-opening experience for me he saw it firsthand yeah yeah setting in a bear stand from 14 hours

not seeing a bear yeah daylight to dark I think we I think we hunted all but about two or three hours of daylight both the first two days right so upwards of you know 30 hours in the stand and either saw the same yearling twice or saw two different yearlings in all that time put together.

In a spot where some big bears were using. Yeah, yeah. That was a good spot. I mean, really, that spot I would hunt in a year and feel confident. Because it is raining acorns here. Yes, it is. So the interesting thing about this is I have a philosophy that, when you invite people to bear camp that you should or to anything you should just like kind of communicate where they stand in the in the in the in the in the in the high chain yeah and so i told i sent word to spencer through brent now you this is like me telling mitch sike's story you know my story was like hyper communicated or it was accurate with precision so when i was going to invite anthony and and i i i

I only had what I felt like was two good spots. And so Bear was going to hunt one, Anthony was going to hunt one. And I said, well, Brent and I collaborated and we were like, let's invite Spencer. And I said, okay. I said, but you just tell him that he's getting the third best spot, and the third best spot isn't always that great. Was that communicated to you? A little bit.

A little bit. Did you know you were going to kind of get gar-holed a little bit? I wouldn't say that was my impression, but I knew I had the third best spot. Okay, so you knew it. Brent did a good job. He was diplomatic. You know, this counts nothing towards how we love you, Spencer. It's just the look of the draw.

I know where I stand. I know how rank works. We could have, like, drew up on a whiteboard, like daylight before daylight at Upton Day and had like bear place number one, number two, number three. And I'm like, okay, now we're going to draw straws to see who. who gets to go. And I like rig it to where they all get it. Sorry, Spencer.

It looks like you're going to garhole number three. But what the heck happened at garhole number three? Hey, man. Well, I mean, it turned out. So the first day we, I mean, I didn't go out, you know, at the crack of dawn like these two because we checked the cameras. We decided to check the cameras the next morning and just see how it looked. Because otherwise I was just going to go still hunt the mountains, you know,

because I haven't had a chance to do that. That would have been nice. But we checked the cameras, and there was one big Sal. She was coming in at night. Not looking too good on that, but there were a couple of yearlings and kind of a bigger small bear.

I guess I'll put it that way. But it looked okay, and since it was already late in the first day, I decided I'll go up there that afternoon and see how it felt. And at about 4 o'clock, a bigger bear, well, bigger, smaller bear came in. And I spent forever arguing with myself whether or not I wanted to shoot it.

And it gave me broadside about five or six times. And I just, you know, I had three hours left on the first day. I was like, I'm not going to shoot this bear. So I didn't shoot, came back in. Those are acres falling on the tin. That's like the beep. Sounds like we're being shot at. Yeah.

Yeah. And we talked about it that night. And I was like, they're still not really coming in in the morning. morning so I'm gonna we'll check the cameras early than the next day and we did and he came back at like 7 30 that morning while I wasn't out there so I was you know kicking myself for that because once we looked at the camera pictures it actually looked bigger than I thought so you you were being conservative and you were like when you saw it you thought that's not a bear I want to shoot we go back review the pictures and they were like hey that's actually a decent bear yeah and look like a bore

yeah and that's typically what we're trying to shoot right and so So he went back. After looking at the pictures, I was like, you know what, I will try to kill that bear. Upon further review. Yeah. But it had come in that morning, like I said, I didn't go out like these guys again. But I wound up getting in the stand about 930 or so. And sat all day, saw a yearling, you know, didn't shoot anything.

And the final day, I went out all day. That was my plan was to go out all day and hope he came back in. And he came in at 7.14. I smacked him, like maybe minutes. and a half, two minutes after he showed up. So the gar hole produced. It worked out. It reminds me of a saying one of the old guys at Deer Camp has told me one time.

It says you can be the best hunter in the world. You can know all the things to know. You can have all the tracking experience and all the knowledge you ever want to have, but you can't compete with dumb luck. What about dumb luck? It's just called luck. That's a quote. That's not a...

It's fair. It wasn't necessarily directed at you, but even though it was told right after your story. It was coincidence. Just random thought. Yeah, yeah. Just interns in there. They're thinking about things, yeah. Well, so we, it was cool getting to see you kill a bear, first bear.

And we process that bear. I want to talk about the gallbladder on that thing. So, you know. Not it. Yeah, like how much you got for it on the black market? Yeah, I'm trying to get a job. No, we, I actually have never really intentionally looked for a gallbladder in a bear. And for those who wouldn't know, gallbladders are sold on the black market for a lot of money,

and it's highly illegal to sell them. In some places, it's illegal to have them in possession. you know, like to keep them. Post-mortem. Yeah. And so, anyway, when we were gutting the bear, we were just, we found it. And I had never messed with it before, or never even really looked at one. But I've been reading quite a bit about the gallbladder trade in Asia.

And there's a couple of ways that they do it. They kill wild bears. There are Asiatic black bears that span from Afghanistan. to Japan and kind of this like crescent moon shaped like thousand mile long range and it's there's a lot of asiatic bears and moon bears you know there's these different versions of ursids that are in Asia and they'll kill wild bears and then just extract the gallbladder but more so they have bile farms in those places where they they'll have and I'm pretty sure today it's it's illegal in every country in the world to have a bare bile farm, but it's so deeply entrenched

in some of the cultures that it's not as enforced, and it's kind of like a blind eyes turned to it, because it's not like something that popped up in the 80s in there doing. This is stuff that's been going on for thousands of years, just like deeply entrenched into these cultures, you know, and basically they'll have, you know, like, like dog kennels and it's bears and they have like catheters basically on them getting bear bile out and and they sell it on the black market for all kind of you know it just you name it bear bile cure it you know and uh and it's possible that there is some medicinal was it you smithers that was telling you yeah so anthony i went to eastern black bear workshop uh 2023 and dave garcellus did a talk on this and

And there's kind of some, I don't know if I'd call it argument, but kind of a gray area on the ethics of it because there actually is some legitimate medicinal value to it. And it helps some people out that wouldn't otherwise have access to it. And, you know, I think there's, he mentioned that there's actually some farms where they let them, you know, they're basically in a zoo, but they're not locked up all the time. So it's a little bit better than just being in a dog kennel the whole time and they'll actually train them to walk in and they have the catholic. and they kind of get up. Wow. I don't know, that's kind of up to your own interpretation, whether that's ethical or not. Interesting.

Yeah. It's kind of that moral dilemma because, you know, on one hand, you've got bears in captivity. They're basically being farmed for the sole purpose of extracting this bile. But then on the other hand, it could be argued that those bowel farms are one of the reasons why the wild population hasn't had such of a hit because the demand hasn't really gone anywhere. It hasn't really changed that much. The question is, where is it being sourced from? And so it's kind of one of those, like, lesser of two evils thing where you could sort of make an argument for either one. I'm not informed enough to really, you know, go much further than that.

But that was kind of the point of Dave's presentation that we saw was like, you know, is it really the evil that people make it out to be or is it actually, you know, the lesser of two evils because there's not really a great option either way. Right. And man, something like that that's so steeped in the culture is interesting to me because, I mean, America, you know, we've had an official country here since 1776, and we feel like we've been here, you know, we just have this, like, deep-rooted culture. Man, some of those places over there, like, perhaps the country name has changed in different things, but, I mean, those cultures are going back thousands of years.

And I'm not suggesting that Bear Bile is something that should be, should be, I'm not even, I'm not informed on it enough either. It's just interesting. And yesterday... You just sold one. You don't know anything else really right. Negative. But yesterday we pulled this...

It felt like you're holding a small water balloon. Yeah. It was just this thin, thin skin, kind of greenish, bluish, grayish. And we poke just the tiniest hole in it. And you'd just kind of squeeze it, and it would shoot out this, like... Kind of glowing liquid. Like neon. Yeah.

Yeah, like almost like neon colored oil. I got some in my coffee. I can see you in the dark now. Get you get one in the morning. No, anyway. Yeah, you don't want to mess around with gallbladder. I mean, the feds will be at your door knocking on your door at 3 a.m. So Clay Newcomb is not messing around with gallbliders.

But you do have to gut a bear, so you do have to check them out. but pretty interesting. So anyway, great bear, Spencer. Thanks, man. 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, 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. 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, I Heart,

YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. The other bear hunter amongst us, will tell us about your hunt, bear. Well, I was hunting out of the bear pit, which is where you killed. The bear, two years ago with a stone point, and I was hunting out of it with the self-bow that I made,

the copperhead. Mm-hmm. And yeah, it was the same deal. We had a lot of bears coming in, and then it just started raining acorns, and they all kind of just disappeared. Bears said acres were falling out of trees and bouncing into the bear pit. They were literally white oak acorns bouncing into the pit. Whenever the wind would come through, it sounded like a hail storm.

I mean, it was just covered in acres. But, yeah, so pretty much all the bears, maybe, I mean, a week before season, almost all the big bears were nocturnal or just not there. And then just like the day before season, there wasn't even a bear in there in the daylight. Yeah. So we went in there, and there was a big sow that we've been keeping track of for the last, what, three or four years.

And she just has like a real blonde face, so she's real recognizable, never had cubs. But she was big and old. And she was coming in there pretty consistent. consistently and then there were just some other smaller bears but we went in there the first day right at daylight we sat until four didn't see anything and i was kind of sitting on this like little i had to dig the front of the pit out because my bow's 10 inches longer we had to do a we had to do a remodel on the bear pit yeah we dug it about probably eight inches deeper yeah

because his bow was longer than mine so he granite countertops and shiplap sit-in yeah yeah We redid the roof. Very tasty. But yeah, and so there's kind of like this ledge, and I was just sitting on that ledge, like a bench all day. And so I was sitting, you know, like this. And I just see a bearhead just stick out, like literally six feet from me. We measured it after it was 73 inches, like roughly.

I used my bow kind of to measure it. And this bear just walks right out. in front. So when you're in the bear pit, all you can see, your world becomes very triangular. You're sitting there for like 14 hours and you're looking at this triangle window. So everything around you is black and then the daylight is like right in front of you. And it's insulated too with dirt and logs and moss and leaves that makes the roof. So you can't hear a thing other than what's in front of you.

And so bears typically come in from. behind you so they just appear just like just right there you know yeah and I mean this one just like straight up just appeared there was no warning at all it was just there was a bear I mean it appeared so quick my heart rate didn't even go up

it was just like oh dang there's a big bear shooter bear I mean I could I could have poked it with my bow and uh it stood there probably six foot from us we've got this on a multery trail cam video yeah it's a cool video and so

Lauren Moulton, I happen to be interrupting you a lot. I'm sorry for that. Lauren Moulton, cameraman from Medita was in the blind with Bear filming. But this happened so quick, and then the bear just like looked at them. They couldn't turn the camera on. But we did capture this moment on the Maltry video, had it on video mode out there. Yeah. And it was tough.

You want me to finish the story? No. At this point, we'd sat like 10 hours, so we were kind of just like numb to everything. that was around because we've been looking at the same thing for 10 hours. When you close your eyes, do you see a triangle hold of life? Yeah, I did. I've been dreaming about it. Yeah, that's all I can see now.

But, so yeah, we were just kind of, it's hard to just stay alert for 14 hours. But this bear just pops out six foot from us. And it stands there and kind of just like looks around and looks right into the bear pit and just like looks right at me. and I'm still sitting the exact same way I was before because it was so close I couldn't move. That bear thought that it was Bear's kindergarten picture. Yeah, exactly.

And so I was just sitting there like this, just looking that bear right in the eyes, and it sees two dudes in there, and it's like, what on earth? And it took off. It went out of like 20 yards and sat down, but it took off. We couldn't get a shot at it. And we sit for another hour,

and then we hear something this time real loud. It sounded like breathing, so I get on my knees, get ready. And sure enough, just like a bear head just sticks out on the left side, but immediately it's looking in. So it must have smelled us or it knew we were there somehow. Just wanted to take a peek. Yeah, it just didn't come around. You know, the big one came around and looked around,

then looked in the bear pit. This one immediately just turned its head straight into the pit. Saw us, and it was two just yearlings, and there was another one back behind it. And they saw us and took off. So that was pretty discouraging, just having two bears come in and not be able to. Spook. Yeah. They just, you know, the second one just knew we were there.

The big one, the shooter, just looked right in, saw us and took off. We sat for the rest of the day. Didn't see anything. Let's talk about the strategy of the bear pit because a lot of people have asked me, like, why did we do that? Uh-huh. The sole purpose of the bear pit was to get a five to eight-yard. shot at a bear from the ground because shooting primitive equipment like the year I built it I was shooting a stone point out of a traditional bow and I did not want to shoot out of a tree stand because

I knew I was going to probably not get an exit wound and I didn't want to and I knew it had to be close I wasn't going to shoot it at 30 yards right so I knew I was going to be shooting straight down at some bear and I didn't want an entry hole way up here and it'd be hard to track so I just was thinking how could I shoot a bear at like I really honestly wanted to shoot it at five yards with a bow, and that's all I could think of was a pit. And I also felt like it could help with scent if the wind was blowing into the pit,

and we covered the pit with dirt. And I think it helps. It's not foolproof, obviously, because there's some holes. And, I mean, the wind can swirl and roll out. But, like, for instance, with that, the bear that I killed and the bear, the big one that came in on you, that first. day. It worked. They didn't smell us. They just got right in front and saw you. Yeah. And that was another thing I was going to add about the difference between the two locations. We were in a ladder

stand. And so, you know, you're up off the ground and the wind never stayed out of the same direction. It swirled the entire time. It would be in your face one minute and be at your back the next. And I think that made a difference too because the yearlings that we saw, they didn't actually even come into the bait, and they came from directly downwind from us. And so I have no doubt in my mind that, like I said, either the same bear or those two different bears smelled us before they even got to the bait. Yeah. And so, you know, that little thing might have been the difference between the bear smelling you possibly too late

after you've already gotten a shot or smelling you on the front end and you never knew it was there. That's how, that's the reason that big bears, it's hard to kill really big bears on bait. There is no shortage of people really anywhere you can bait bears, but, you know, I'm talking about Arkansas. Everybody's got pictures of big bears. You talk to anybody, and they're like, man, you ought to see this bear. And they show you some picture of a 400 to 500 pound bear, and they're like, we can't kill him. And it's because of that very reason is that those bears know, they know the game 100%. And so they, you just never see.

them. I mean, they come in downwind, they smell you, they don't come into the bait while you're there. Now, the anomaly of that is, first of all, younger bears will sometimes come in even if they smell you, number one. Number two, some percentage of bears. I don't know, I don't know

if it's in a month, four days out of the month, that big giant bear just would ignore his nose and come in anyway, or if it's bears, or if it's like one out of eight bears,

no matter if he's 500 pounds or 300 pounds, just ignores his nose and comes in. Because that's what I kept telling Anthony, he was telling me the wind was swirling. I was like, man, sometimes you'll see a big one out there at 50, 60 yards smelling you, and he'll sit there and eventually, like, right at dark, he'll just come in anyway.

You know, but most of them don't do that. So, you know, you're trying to catch that anomaly, you know. So the wind is tough. Yeah. And so the second day, we go in right at dark, or right at daylight. Plan was sit till dark. And we were actually, we were making bets on when we were going to see our first bear. And the first guess, Lauren's guess, was 8 a.m.

And we didn't see a bear pretty much all day. And so like, you know, we kept getting along. We're like, okay, maybe noon. Yeah, at 8 a.m. Maybe 3. Like, well, okay, well, when's it going to come in now? You're like, 11. 11 is the time.

And anyway, so we do that all day. Don't see anything. And then, you know, obviously my final bet was one's going to come in right at dark. Pretty safe bet. Yeah. Because that's the better of prayer. That was the only time slot available. Exactly.

And so the last hour of daylight, I was just sitting on my knees ready to, ready to shoot just because I could. I couldn't do that for all 14 hours, but whenever I had like a deadline, I knew I could do it for at least an hour. Forgive me for interrupting. The trouble with sitting in that blind is you can't hear or see anything

and the bear just appears. And the bear that I killed, I was, I learned that you just had to, like almost be in shooting position, just ready, you know, during prime time. Even when there was nothing that you knew, Nothing was even out there. And it's taxing because you're just like,

because, you know, if your boat, there's a little hanger in there. If you, like, hang your bow and have all kind of relaxed. And then when he steps out at five feet, I mean, you got to grab your bow, get situated, turn, and shoot. It's like too late. So Bear did what he should have done. Just, like, be ready.

Yeah. So for the last hour, I was just sitting there on my knees with my bow. And at seven, I think it was like, 723 so that would have been like 15 minutes until it was totally dark it uh for like 20 minutes i look out in front and i just see a black blob moving towards us so we kind of got lucky that it came out of the front as opposed to just popping out right in front yeah yeah yeah and so i got ready i got situated and as it gets closer i could see it's that big sow and uh she comes around kind of on the right side, which wasn't ideal because, you know, we were trying to get it on camera

and the right side was kind of a blind spot where I could see, but Lauren couldn't. And she goes and sniffs a GoPro that we had, and she kind of like sticks her left arm in front and was just like perfect shot. But she was just so calm. She didn't even look in the pit, even though she'd seen two dudes in there the day before. She just, she was like, that's probably gone. She just kind of sniffed the GoPro. But she was so calm. I figured she was just going to walk right in. We were going to get a good.

You know, everything was going to be just broadside all in the center, you know. But about the time I passed up that shot, she turns and looks in the pit and sees us and turns just totally away from us. Her butt's facing me. And at this point, I'm, you know, in position. and I draw back and she's walking away at this point and I just kind of whistle at her. I just kind of do something like that. And she stops out there at maybe like 10 yards

and quarters, you know, she was facing totally away from me and she turned and looked back. And in my mind I felt like she was a lot more, it's like a lot, Lot's wife. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Welcome back at Sodom and Gamora.

And I felt like she was a lot more... What's that? I said, that can get you too. I felt like she was a lot more broadside than she really was. But, you know, I was at full draw, and, I mean, it was just, like, split second that I had to make a decision to shoot or not. And so I shot her at, like, 10 yards.

And I couldn't really tell where my arrow hit. I could just... I saw it sticking out, you know, more than I would have liked it to have been sticking out. And I thought it might have been a little low. And so it ran off, went like 40 yards out there and stopped. And I thought she was about to tip over. You know, if I made a good shot,

it seems like usually on a bear, if you just double on them, they don't go far. And she stops there at 40 yards and then takes off again. And I felt sick because I kind of figured I made a bad shot on her. And we watched the video, and it was just, it was too hard to really tell. But what I could tell is that she was definitely quartering. It was a lot steeper angle than I thought. And it probably, like, if I did it again, I probably wouldn't have taken the shot.

Just it was in that moment, everything just felt a little better. And I was, I was at full draw. And I was 14 hours. Yeah, waiting for that split second. And it was like literally, it was a split second of either you shoot or she gets away. and I shot. And anyway, so I was not feeling good about it at all. And I actually, I thought I might have just hit her, like right in the back of the leg.

And at such a steep angle, like, two inches off is a totally different shot. And so it looked like I just hit her maybe right in the back of the leg or just barely clipped her. And so I thought I really. thought that when he called me and he said I shot the bear I don't think it's a great shot and you know the luxury of having a camera in the in the stand with you filming the shot was big and he he was actually able to send me a video of the shot and I I didn't think it was a mortal hit I thought he just kind of like hit it in the hit it in the leg to be honest with you and uh and I I said well hey y'all just stay in the peasant

pit and it was dark by now and I said I'll ride izzie up there and you know that'll be 40 it'll take me an hour to get there and we'll see I felt like we were just going to kind of do some due diligence and be like this bear's not hurt yeah and whenever I went and looked like right where I shot her immediately there's blood but I tracked it for maybe 15 yards and it like in that 15 yards started out real hot but like immediately started to kind of taper off yeah it's like looking for little spots and i was just like it's that's it yeah she's got a arrow in her leg and i was that was that was that's never the feeling you want to have after shot and so we sat in the bear pit waited for you'd get up there on easy and we start tracking it and there's pretty consistent

blood but it kind of still doesn't look great just looks like a like a flesh wound. Yeah, we just keep waiting for it to to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, it doesn't. It just keeps getting, it doesn't really get better, but it just stays really solid. And, and, and we, we, we tracked the bear for, I'd say 250 yards. Yeah. And it, it, it, the bear, anytime you're tracking an animal, man, and the animal's trending

downwards, you know, if you're in hilly and mountainous terrain. I kept waiting for that bear to turn and go up, because that's just, that's the place, that's, that's the place that's where they want to go in that area is up and uh and it just kept kind of trending down and i was like huh the spare just kind of keeps going down and uh and we found the arrow found the arrow about a hundred yards and it got maybe a foot of penetration and but it was a pretty it was a good arrow set up real heavy broadhead real sharp broadhead thanks to anthony sharpening it but it uh yeah it got like a foot of penetration and the air The arrow didn't break somehow, but...

So it kind of started to... Like at that point, I was like, there's no way I killed the bear. But then whenever we found the arrow and the blood just kept staying consistent. Started thinking maybe it, you know, we might walk up on it. Yeah, and anyway, we trailed that bear

walking full speed. I mean, we never even stopped. There was that much blood. But, and so, you know, I was optimistic What point did after from did you start feeling a little better about it? Well, after you found the error or you didn't? We never felt better about it.

I just kept thinking this is about to end. Yeah, with every step. Yeah. And then finally, bear looks up and he goes, there's the bear. And I actually, I actually, it's silly, but I had my knife out because I didn't bring my pistol or bear spray or anything. and I told him, I said, this bear could be alive, you know. I told him to get his bow. He had his bow unstrung, and I said, dude, stringing that bow.

And anyway, there's dead. Yeah, yeah. And it actually was a great shot for the steep angle that it was. He hit it like in the one spot you would have killed. He just tucked it, I mean, just right behind the shoulder. And it was a little far forward to actually get the heart. but the era went up in and got a major artery up in, you know, north of the heart, basically. Yeah.

And, I mean, it ended up being a very difficult shot. It just kind of threaded the needle. So good job. I told him you really shouldn't be shooting that stuff that steep cordering. Yeah, definitely. I definitely would not take that shot again. And I'll say, like, of all the animals that I've ever made, made a bad shot on, I think that might have been like the first time I've ever gotten

the benefit of the doubt. Yeah. Well, we were, your mother, your grandmother, me, we were all praying that it would happen. Yeah, for sure. Well, it was, and then we got the bear out. We, uh, you want to get that, is that thing beeping? We have, we have an in-reach message. I'll tell you what, whatever the message is, we'll share it with you.

So we, that animal had an incredible amount of fat. So we harvested all the fat, all the meat, carried it out. And yesterday we spent most of the day rendering bear grease. And we got, how many jars? 24. 24 pints. Look at that. All right.

I bet an acre and hit it. It's all good. Is that your truck, Josh? That'll be a brief pause. It's from Misty. We'll be back after these messages. She's going to send you a text. Oh.

when she gets out here. Okay, great. That was the message. So we rendered 24 pints of bear grease. What did you guys think of the bear grease rendering? It was very interesting. Yeah. Really interesting.

It was funny telling the camera, well, looks like bear killed a bear in the bear pit. But it was cool. I mean, I was like, and that was one of the things that I wanted to do here was to see a bear killed mine or somebody else's and just see the process from from that point of that perspective, you know, just to to make me a better rounded biologist. And, you know, at some point, that's what we hope happens as we have a bear season in Mississippi. And so, you know, if I've equipped myself to know what that process is like and have learned about it, then that's going to make me able to make better decisions, you know, down the road. So being a part of the process and seeing

specifically the rendering and then, you know, the different cuts that you made, the different cuts of meat, and like the whole process was, that's exactly what I set out to do. It was not as difficult as I anticipated either, watching y'all render that. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's really simple. Yeah, definitely going to have to kill a fat bear next time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, Anthony, we indoctrinated you on the way of the unsuccessful bear hunter, so now you'll be able to identify.

They'll make me appreciate it next time. Yeah. Well, no, this really is. We forgot about Spencer's real story. Oh, yeah. We're going to talk about that? Yeah. I've been waiting.

The story. The first night. The first night of him sent out. Oh, shoot. I forgot about that lie. Tell us, you make it, make it, we're running low on time here. But this, yeah, We should have started with this.

I'm sorry. I keep, I was just keep, I just kept waiting. Yeah, so the, I talked about the first day. I went out there late, I think it was like noon 30 or so. And I saw the bear I wanted, didn't want that day, but later wanted at four. And then it gets around the last. The bar was about to close.

He's like, all right. It gets around the last light, and I'm thinking maybe something else would come in, so I'm getting ready. And, you know, I'm sitting there standing up with my, bow and it's I'm looking to the right of the stand just in case something comes from somewhere else than where I saw that bear from and it kind of catch something out of the corner of my eye and it's just like you know a half second of trying to register what it was it's like oh

deer's walking in I don't go watch this deer and I look up and there's just kind of this tan figure walking real smooth not slow but not fast kind of across this this game trail about 40 yards from to stand and I get to looking closer and it's like got this long swooping tail behind it and it was a mountain line just crossing up there on the hill. Brent loves to tell. I'll let you tell the next point. Oh man, this is a classic. Our host, Gerald Brewer was here.

Josh was here messing around and me and me and Spencer, everybody else was out hunting. They walked away and Spencer said, I took video of that bear. He said, I want to show it to you. And he's standing behind me and I was sitting there holding him. with my phone or his phone and I'm sitting there holding and looking at this bear and I'm like, yeah, you know, that's a pretty good bear. And

out of the blue, Spencer behind me says, y'all, y'all have mountain lines here. And I, you know, I'm like, yeah, you know, they're around and I thought, what an odd question? I thought, no, why would he

asked me that when I'm looking at this bear? And I turned around and looked at him and his eyeballs are this big around. He said, I just saw one ten minutes. I'm like, oh, you can't tell me. So, I mean, he is a wildlife biologist. I mean, I knew what I'd seen. Yeah.

But if he told me no, what percentage would it have dropped if he told you we didn't. It wouldn't have changed what I thought. But I didn't change what you said. I'm a fairly new biologist, and you know, reputation can ruin it. Yeah, yeah. I don't know if this is good or bad. Yeah, I can't believe I didn't bring this up at.

first. You should remind me. This should have been the first thing we talked about. I hadn't been able to forget it. I don't know how you could. I don't know. Well, it's, yeah, no, no, in all seriousness, I, 100% believe you.

I'm glad you changed your mind. I still think you're a liar. But, uh... It wasn't black. Yeah. Wasn't a black panther. No. So I told James Lawrence your story.

And he said, uh, he said, and James, he's in his late 70s and he's seen two and he saw one like this summer right over in the community. Oh, really? Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, well, he hadn't even told me. He said that. He said, I hadn't told me any people this, but I saw one. Because I know you wouldn't believe me. Yeah, probably. So I didn't want to be scrutinized by you, Clay. But, oh, it didn't surprise him at all. He was like, oh, yeah, I saw one. I mean, go in any rural community and ask somebody if they've seen them outline and you're going to find somebody that says that. So that's not all.

always the way to determine if a story is true. But I think they're here. I mean, if he's had a song written about him, that's got to lend a little credibility to a story. Yeah, James Florence. Yeah, he is absolutely. Backwoodsman. Yeah.

Well, it's great to host you guys. It really has been a lot of ton of fun. I can't tell you how much. I appreciate it. Even if you did garhole, man, it was happening. Garhole you every time. It's happily garholed. Yep. Well, anything else, guys?

Nope. Close her down. Well, keep the wild place as wild. That's where the bearers live. And the Pumas. And the Pumas. Puma Point. Live from Puma Point. 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... Yeah. 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.

This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.