Bear Grease - Ep. 255: This Country Life - Bear Camp

Episode Date: September 27, 2024

It’s the first big hunt of Arkansas’s fall season for Brent and the bear camp faithful. They’re struggling with dry conditions, dropping acorns, and the Arkansas heat that just won’t go away. They managed to “scratch a few out” as Brent would say, but the biggest trophy carried home had nothing to do with a bear. It’s time to head to the bear camp on this week’s episode of MeatEater’s “This Country Life” podcast.  Subscribe to the MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Connect with Brent and MeatEater MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Youtube Clips MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Shop This Country Life Merch 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 trot lining and just general country living, I want you to stay a while as I share my experiences and life lessons. This country life is presented by Case Knives on Meat Eat Eater's Podcast Network, bringing you the best outdoor podcasts that Airways have to offer. All right, friends, grab a chair or drop that tailgate. I've got some stories to share. Bear Camp.

I'm working on more years at our Arkansas bear camp than you can count on both hands, and if you judge this one by the quality of the bear is taken, it wouldn't be close to the top ten. If you judge it by what I took home, it's far and above number one. I'm going to tell you all about it, but first, I'm going to tell you a story. This week we're doing a listener's story that caught my attention on three levels. One, it was sent in by a lady, we need more of them in the outdoors, two, at the time it happened, she was a new hunter, and three, it has a good lesson. It was sent in by the pride of Arcade, New York, Amelia Martina.

Arcade is also the home of Daniel Frederick Bakeman, who died in 1869 at the ripe old age of 109. Daniel was the last survivor receiving a veteran's pension for service in the American Revolutionary War. But we ain't talking about old Daniel Bakeman. It's Amelia's time to shine. So in my voice and Amelia's words, here we go. My name is Amelia Martina, and I'm not at the best at telling stories. We love listening to yours. My husband has been listening to the Meat Eater podcast for quite some time,

we look forward to doing trivia and listening to this country life. My son will stop whatever he's doing to listen to your stories. However, now I have a story for you, so here it is. I hope you enjoy it. Now, I was never a hunter, and even though I am the oldest grandchild, I was the last of the seven that my grandpa ever thought would become one. The men always went out every November on opening day of whitetail season, hoping to get a deer.

All the while the women stayed at home making chili and desserts for when they came home at lunch and before heading back out for the afternoon hunt. However, I loved being into woods when I was a kid, making forts and taking walks to find new secret spots. It's always a fun time. When I got married, my husband joined the men and tradition continued. I was able to go out with him and join the experience. but shooting with my camera instead of a firearm.

I enjoyed hunting more than I realized, so I took the proper courses to get my hunting license, and the next year I was able to join in. So for the past five years, my husband and I have gone to my grandpa's property out in the tiny town of Granger, New York, for our hunting tradition. We pack our supplies and drive over to the family cabin

the night before to spend the night. Now upon arrival, my grandpa always greets us making a big deal out of coming over and he gives us the, I just know that you're going to get one speech. He shares stories that we've all heard before, but we never tire of hearing. And then go to bed only to wake up before the sun to get to our blind that we set up months before. Making sure that there are hand warmers for us and chilly in the crock pot and grandpa says, All right, very good. Let's go. He pats us on the back and we head out into the dark, making our way through the woods,

and moonlight lighting our snow-covered path as we make it down to our blind and snuggle in and wait. Disappointed by the lack of activity, we decide to pack it up as the last of the sun led us back to the cabin. Telling my grandpa that we'd be back in a couple days to try it again. Keeping our promise, we return with determination, ready for a day in the woods. We decided to try another blind that my grandpa had set up. Letting us know his heater is in there so we can be warm, he wishes us good luck in a way we went. Finding the blind at the far end of the property, we slide into our folding camp chairs and wait for the birds to start singing their morning song.

All snuggled into my husband's oversized winter camo on fighting. heavy eyelids in the quiet of the forest as I heard my husband whisper, Don't move. Unaware what he saw, I slowly turned my head to see where his rifle was pointing, and I saw nothing, and I heard nothing. Then as if she appeared out of the thick brush I saw her, lumbering through the woods, but quiet as can be not 30 yards in front of as she turns and stops. A 250-pound beautiful black bear just standing there.

Holding my breath and bracing for the crack of the rifle, I waited. But the only noise I heard was my husband's disappointing size. We saw two cubs running to catch up to their mom. In all of what we saw and shocked by incredibly ghost-like three bears can be in the woods, we just sat and stared. We watched as they vanished into the woods as quietly as they came in, and as our heart rates came back down, and we were sure that mom and babies were far enough away,

we ventured out to see where they could have gone, following tracks as far as we could until we headed back to the cabin, excited by our encounter. My grandpa wasn't there, but we left him a note about the adventure and headed home not caring much that we didn't get a deer that year. Next year would be a whole new adventure to which I did get my first deer. A big, beautiful dough. But that's another story.

And according to Amelia Martina of Arcade New York, that's just how that happened. Well, Amelia, I think you are a good storyteller, and I appreciate you sharing that with the rest of us. Your narrative describes a hunter's relationship with the game we're entrusted to look after by learning the rules, the regulations, and the moral obligations we follow when deciding to legally kill an animal or let it go depending upon the circumstances of each encounter. Now, that's a lesson for us all, and I appreciate you sharing it. Like Amelia's new tradition that she's sharing with her family in western New York,

I've been privileged to share one with a group of folks here in Arkansas that I was initiated in about a dozen years ago, something we just called Bear Camp. It started out for me as a job and assignment to film a hairy little hillbilly that looked more like Harry Potter stunt double with his crazy round glasses than a bear hunting magazine publisher from Northwest Arkansas. When I thought of a bear hunter, although I didn't know any, I thought a Will Gears character, Bearclaw Chris Lap in the greatest movie ever made, Jeremiah Johnson. A bearded buckskin and fur-wearing gruff old codger with a bear-claw necklace whose life experiences were written all over his weathered face and the knowledge of bears and their habits were second nature to his own.

Now, except for the fur-trimmed of buckskin clothes, the gruff demeanor and the weather-worn face from decades of hard mountain living, I'd say the rest of it was pretty much on point for my friend Clay Newcomb. He hired me to film him hunting a bear in Oklahoma. And when I say hired, I mean, I offered to film him for whatever he could afford to pay me just for the experience. And he gladly accepted. During our monetary negotiations on the phone, he quoted me a price of zero dollars. And I gladly accepted. He was grinding it out and burning the candle at both ends, trying to make it in the outdoor media business, a place I was looking to find my spot in as well.

Something told me I was going to have a good time on this gig, and if I didn't, all it was going to cost me was a few days in my time, and I might get to see a bear in the meantime, something I'd never seen in the wild. We hunted hard for three days, never saw a hare or even a track, not one. And just like that, bear season was over. Acres were dropping from the trees before the season opened, and when that happens, there is no use sitting at a bear bait site because they ain't coming. Bears will climb over a mountain of donuts to eat one white oak acre.

They know what's good for them and there's no substitute. They're hardwired for natural mass, and that's what they're thinking about while they're killing time at a bait site. That was 12 years and a whole bunch of bears ago. And I could even begin to say how many we've looked at sitting side by side, either in a stand or on the ground. Now, the ground was a new one. and I'll admit. I thought it was really odd to hunt a bear from the ground. I knew they had better noses than deer,

and to hunt a deer from the ground took a lot of wind direction and stand placement and thought and preparation. The deer can get a whiff of you and boom, they're gone. Turns out a lot of times a bear just don't care. That has allowed us to see a lot of crazy bear behavior all over the U.S. and especially in remote areas of Canada. I was hooked from the first time we hunted together, even though we didn't see a bear. Just the thought of it intrigued me enough to commit to any time Clay needed a cameraman, I told him to call me.

And he did. Sometimes with a month or two warning and sometimes it was, hey, can you leave in two days for a week of bear hunting? My answer was always yes. I had become just as committed to his mission of creating interesting and professional. professional and unique content about bears and bear hunting. I was only betting my time, but Clay, he was betting his future. On Blood Trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is over. They just get darker.

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

This season, we're going deeper. From cold case files to whispered suspicions, from remote mountains to frozen backwards. Each story begins in the wilderness and ends in darkness. Because out here, there are no witnesses, no cameras, just fragments and the people left behind trying to piece them back together. He's not an honest person. He's incapable of being honest. Somebody somewhere knows something. I'm Jordan Sillers. Season 2 of Blood Trails premieres April 16th.

Follow now on Apple, Iheart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. And that's the way it would go from then on. I'd go before season to document the task of baiting the sites, packing bait into a wilderness along with my camera gear. I met a handful of people who were trusted to be in the inner circle, none of which had a bigger standing than James Lawrence. James is a man that most of you know through Clay's storytelling, films, and podcasts. I was fortunate enough to be there and to get to know this man who became my friend because of the mutual respect we had for wild things that we all love and the genuine good time that we all have together.

James and his neighbors and Clay's parents, his wife Misty and their children were always at Bear Camp and regardless of our success or failures, the whole pack of them was betting on us. It was truly a family event that I'd been invited to join. Now, what it started out is the job turned into something bigger. The contact didn't start and stop at Bear Season anymore. He carried all throughout the year. I saw the mission that Clay was on and I wanted to be a permanent part of it, But I also learned that this wasn't like a deer hunt, and I don't mean that degradingly towards deer hunters either.

The difference between deer hunting and bear hunting was significant in the eyes of the Newcoms and the Lawrence's, and that relevance was transferred to me. Now, obviously, I thought it was cool to see a bear in my home state, and at that time, when I was first introduced to that world, there were way more hunters who hadn't seen a bear in the wild than those that had. I'd grown up deer hunting and seeing deer daily on our farm. Seeing and shooting a deer was like going to the mailbox. It was a commonality that we all shared where I grew up. We coexisted on the same ground and really only got excited by the big ones,

the bucks that we'd hunt during the season. The big ones that we longed to have a shot at were what excited us, not the endless parade of doze and yearlings and small bucks that we'd grown accustomed to seeing. We took it for granted, really. And when you do that, you become complacent. Now, complacency breeds inattentiveness, and that's how things slip through the cracks. By only focusing on what you're after a few weeks before the onset of the season,

you're not seeing the big picture. To me, that creates an interest that's only driven by harvest and not a true appreciation for the animal we're chasing. James and Clay both studied bears. year round and if I wanted to be able to join the conversation, I'd better learn to do the same. I studied game camera pictures and read a ton of articles, a lot of them written by Clay himself, and I asked James questions and tried to soak in as much knowledge about bears that I could when I was with him.

The main thing I did was listen and tried to apply the things I'd learned to the things I was seeing whenever Clay and I were on a hunt somewhere, him with a bow, me with a camera. I saw how the both of them revered bears for what they are. A complex animal that roams the landscape, thriving in unfractured expanses of wilderness, ghostly appearing and disappearing seemingly it will. I don't know how many bears I filmed with clay or a camp that someone else had taken when we all gathered to skin it

and rendered down the fat, all of which they shared with me. And then one day, two days after we'd all left the camp for home with everyone who'd hunted taking bears, I got a call from James. Brent, you know that bait we thought was dead up on the hill? Yes, sir. Well, there's a bear hitting it pretty hard, and we want you to come back over. Okay, James, who am I going to be filming?

James kind of laughed, and he said, well, I think Clay might be filming you. I could hear the excitement and pleasure in his voice as he offers. for me my first opportunity to take a bear myself. I didn't know what to say, but less than 24 hours later, I was sitting on that bait and Clay filmed me to kill a bear with only moments to spare legal shooting line. As a matter of fact, we'd already shot the end sequence of the hunt and was in the process of packing up when a bear walked out less than 15 yards.

That's when I knew I'd been accepted into the bear camp family, an extension of the Newcomb and Lawrence family that I do not take for granted. I've had conversations with Clay about gifting bears to hunters, and I took all my kids deer hunting at the first notion they expressed an interest in it, and Clay did the same, but he wouldn't allow them to take a bear until they had a true appreciation and understanding of how important it was to do so. They had to look at it like he and James did, and how they both taught me to. It wasn't a process of paying dues or completing a course of study.

It was an overall understanding of every facet of bear hunting, most notably the conservation aspect and the role hunters play in the stewardship of bears. My observations as a parent tell me that's how my father raised me, and I've tried to raise my children the same way, teaching them the totality of how life ebbs and flows with sadness, joy, failure and success, all of which you can experience on a one-day bear hunt. I know I've seen it. Now, this year, as those of you who listened to last week's episode, I already know my bear hunting plans were changed at the last minute by a set of unfortunate circumstances.

Disappointed? Of course I was. Sad? Not even a little bit. I was only going to skip bear camp this year if I had a big bear coming into my bait that was three and a half hours away. Now, the bates at Bear Camp were pretty lean this year, and we'd invited the bear biologists for the state of Mississippi, Anthony Ballard, and a graduate student working on his master's degree in wildlife biology, Spencer Daniels. Clay and I met him on a Bear Dent study they'd invited us to last March in the Mississippi River Delta. As soon as we all got in the camp, the positive flow switched to a negative ebb.

Big bears that had been hitting the baits began tapering off and going nocturnal. The number of acres that were hitting the deck all over the mountains weren't helping either. That was keeping all the bears busy and only trickling in right after daylight and right before dark. Opening day wasn't going to be what it had been in the past few years. James and I talked and I don't think we'd ever had an opening day where someone didn't get one since I'd started coming and yet here we were. bearless on opening day. Now that wouldn't remain as two out of three did take bears on the evening of day two in the morning of day three.

Significant accomplishments considering the conditions and all the factors we had working against us, but still, not the best part of this year's camp. Not for me anyway. I've known James for years now. We shared a dangerous expedition into the wilderness of northern Saskatchewskiy. chasing bears with clay and a couple other close friends one year that truly tested our resolve. James and I were in a boat together with a guide in the weather we endured crossing a massive lake was unlike anything I had ever seen. The waves were three to four feet and unrelenting. The five and a half hour boat ride was horrendous and there were several times I wished I wasn't there.

I was scared and I'm not ashamed to admit it now. I have no doubt that you could have looked at my face then and known yourself firsthand. But James never said a word, changed expressions, or exhibited anything other than a glare of contempt as the next set of waves battered the boat we were trying to stay inside of. He was riding the storm out. Just like he'd ridden the storms out before when he'd gotten sick with a sickness that takes a lot of folks out. But it didn't get James. And on that trip, James didn't get a bear when all the other hunters in camp did. A few months later, I was back at our Arkansas bear camp with James and Clay

and had the pleasure of filming James hunting on the land he'd grown up on in the Washington mountains. On the way over to our spot on opening day, I turned my camera on and started recording James without him knowing. Best way to keep someone for being camera shot and measured in their responses if they they're reserved and the quiet type, all of which James Lawrence is. It's one of the best interviews I've ever filmed. It was real and heartfelt and you could see the emotion in James' face

as he talked about his grandmother and the place we were going to hunt and what it meant to him and his family's legacy in the mountains. I didn't want the ride from his home to where we were hunting to end, but it did. And in short order, we were in a tree. him with his bow and me with that camera. James killed a big bear that afternoon, and we struggled to get it loaded in his truck, but eventually we did.

And the look in his eyes and the smile on his face that afternoon after I hugged his neck and thanked him for allowing me to share that moment with him while we stood over that bear is one that I will never forget. I'd never seen that look from James before. I'm positive that was the day I understood how James felt about bear hunting and the deep-rooted connection he had with the land and that he'd officially adopted me into his own. It was beautiful.

I saw that same expression last week when I watched James give someone who meant a lot to him and the item that meant a lot to him, something that he was proud to give to that person he loved and respected. The next day, he and I sat at Bear Camp and just visited for a while, and when he got ready to leave to go feed his cows, I walked him to his truck. Just James and me.

He told me as he limped toward his truck the years and the miles showing more evident now than ever on that tough old mountain man that he lived for these days each September. He told me he enjoyed getting ready for Bear Camp more than Bear Camp itself, as if the activity and the anticipation of all of us being together was as exciting as the event. He put his hand on my shoulder. I thought to brace himself as he struggled. just a bit to get into his truck, but when he didn't reach for the door, I looked at him,

and he was looking at me, right in the eyes. I saw that same old look we'd shared as we stood over that bear. He'd killed all those years ago, and the same look he had when I saw him give that gift the day before. He smiled at me, and he said, I love you, bud. Bear Camp, the least important thing we do there. is hunt bears. Call it bear camp, deer camp,

or coffee with your friends and family, whatever you want to. But find a circle of folks, start one yourself, where people can be together. Folks you want to share your life with, it'll bless you beyond anything you could ever hold in your hands.

Biggest trophies, you'll take home in your heart, I promise. Thank y'all so much for listening to me and old Claibault here on the Bear Grease channel. I'm glad you're in this circle. And you can help make it bigger by sharing it with other folks you think might like it. And knocking us out a review if you have time. We'd sure appreciate it.

Until next week, this is Brent Reeves. Signing off. Y'all be careful. First Lights Fieldware collection is made for the work that happens long before opening day and continues when the season ends. Products built for early mornings, full days, and real youth. 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.