Bear Grease - Ep. 373: This Country Life - Bears, Bait, and Broken Hearts

Episode Date: October 3, 2025

It's time to head to bear camp in Arkansas and Brent's hopes are high along with the temperatures. He and the regular cast of characters have repositioned themselves in a different part of Arkansas this year; the Ozark Mountains. We think you'll enjoy this one as Brent shows how a lesson he learned from his early days in law enforcement, applied to this bear hunt in the mountains of his native state. Shop This Country Life Merch Connect with Brent and MeatEater MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Youtube Clips Subscribe to the MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Shop This Country Life Merch Shop Bear Grease MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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First Light's new fieldwear gear at firstlight.com. Welcome to this country life. I'm your host, Brent Reeves. From Coon Hunting to Trotlining and Just General Country Living, I want you to stay a while as I share my experiences and life lessons. This Country Life is presented by Case Knives from the Storemore Studio on Meat Eat Eaters 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.

Bears bait and broken hearts. It's that time of year again for me. Time to get busy prepping for the upcoming hunting season, and there's no better way for me and a bunch of my friends to start it off than bear season. I got a lot to cover, so let's get to it. Arkansas bear camp 20 and 25 started in the blistering heat one month before opening day. We'd move the whole kit and caboodle. north from the Wachita Mountains to the Ozarks.

We're trying a new area where we have more options making the bear hunting better, if only by giving us more places to choose from. Now, as the crow flies, we weren't moving about 125 miles northwest from our old stomping grounds, the place where we'd been doing bear camp since I'd begun attending over 10 years ago. As you all know, I was Claybow's cameraman. for several seasons back in the old bear hunting magazine days until being invited to join the inner circle of the camp and get a bear myself.

Now since then, I've taken multiple bears here in what was once known as the bear state and an even larger specimen with my friends Craig and Melanie McCarthy in Manitoba last year. That bear meat is G-O-N-E, and I need to get that spot refilled in the freezer So the plan this year was to fill it with a bear from the Ozarks. The mountains most everyone thinks about when they think about mountains in Arkansas.

Trouble was, I didn't have a place to do that. I needed to find someone with a piece of private land in a good area to set up a barrel. And as luck would have it, I didn't have to go far from my front door to find them. I'll keep his name to myself but a simple phone called to him for help. and securing a lead on any place up there turned into an offer to hunt on his. The amount of generosity I'm afforded on a regular basis continues to astound me. Some conversations these days say that times have changed and that permission to hunt is the thing of the past.

Well, I have found that not to be the case. Not all the time anyway. But with permission granted and the on-x layout of the land sent to me by the landowner, I was off to find a spot to place my bait barrel. I had hundreds of acres to ramble around on and I had plenty of choices of prime-looking spots to drop a barrel and some bait. So on the day it was legal to start baiting for bears in Arkansas, I picked out a spot where I'd seen an old bait station

from the property's previous owner. Kind of a, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, the decision. The old barrel was still there, and it even had to be a bit of a place. had teeth marks from where bears had been chewing on the opening where they accessed the bait. As far as I knew, I was in the chips. So I, along with help from the landowner, took my new bait barrel to the site, got it prepped, filled with goodies, and posted up a moldry camera to keep tabs on what was taking place at the newest dining facility in North Arkansas, the Reeves Bear Buffet.

Now, bears obviously have to find the victors before I'd start getting pictures of them, and sometimes that can take a while. So I put out all the goodies that bears like to eat and the smell goods that would put a dunkin' donuts to shame. The scent was overpoweringly sweet, and I doubt Wilfred Brimley could have been on the same 40 acres with it and not lost a tow or two. All I had to do now was weight.

I've learned to be a patient man about most things, and my job as a policeman. Time wasn't always on my side. I had to react and respond quickly to matters of life and death and public safety. Anything outside of incoming gunfire was often better to give a little time to settle down before I got there. It reminds me of a time when I was a deputy sheriff and I was dispatched to a disturbance on the other end of the county. Common sense would have you ask why they didn't just send a deputy that was patrolling that part of the county. Well, because sometimes in a three deputy department, there was only one of us answering calls

and serving papers and working court and transporting prisoners and all the other duties the job requires. This was one of those days. The dispatcher called my unit number on the radio after receiving the 911 call reporting a fight in progress in the front yard of a residence over 20 miles away. the exact opposite end of the county where I was. Only about two-thirds of the route was on pavement. The last part was on gravel,

and the whole way down there was one winding up-kept rough road from start to finish. If I was going to do my best at stopping folks from hurting one another, I better get my tail in the wind and pronto. The third of the way down, the dispatcher called and said that they'd received another call and they'd stopped fighting and rasseling, and now each of them had a knife, and they were doing laps around the outside of the house chasing one another. Now, in my head, I'm seeing a sword fight taking place in the front yard. Good night, nurse.

I grabbed another gear in that old Crown Victoria that she forgot she had, and I was letting the calf suck on every straightaway I came to. Two-thirds of the way down, the dispatcher called me again, and this is what she said. They now have firearms and are shooting at each other. That escalated quickly, and it put a new spin on my planning. Slow down a little. And after a couple miles of lucid thought,

I called the dispatcher and asked her if she still had the reporting party on the phone. She informed me that they'd hung up. I asked her if she had a callback number for whoever was reporting the escalating violence that I was driving towards by myself. She said she did, so I asked her to call them back and contact me when she got them on the line. In short order, my dispatcher, who, while always being very professional, I could hear the anxiousness and the worry in her voice when she said, I have the reporting party on the phone. I said, good, keep them on the line, don't let them hang up, and just have them let me know the minute the folks out in the front yard run out of bullets.

Now, that made her laugh. And I continued to the house at a little slower speed, but still in an appropriate pace for the nature of the call. And like most calls, it was all over by the time I got there. Some folks went to jail, and I got to go home alive and unscathed. But back to the bears and waiting. I'd learned to do that quite well. And a week went by with zero. pictures of ursus Americannis.

Meanwhile, my campmates were getting pictures of not just bears, but big bears. Big, fat black bears were making fools of themselves at everyone else's bait but mine. It was a regular donut jubilee taking place on a mountain 17 miles from my own. For the love of humanity, my patience had played out. It was time for a bold move. I've got to relocate a camera, a barrel, and 350 pounds of snacks. With some help from my partner, Michael Meeks, we spent the day moving that bait from one side of the property to the other. That was late in the evening of August to 26 when we completed the move.

A week went by with everyone else still getting pictures of bears that I had just about given in when six days later, at 518 in the morning, the first bear picture came. in from the barrel that we'd moved. It was a young bore, one that I wouldn't shoot even on a bad year. I guessed him to be close to 175, not over 200 pounds, which is still a respectable bear in a lot of places, but I've killed bigger bears, and I want that trend going forever upward. It's not about numbers for me anymore. I'm really anxious to see that bear again next year to see what he turns into. If a, you know, unless a bigger A bear sends him down the road between now and them, but regardless, I finally had a bear hitting the bait, and if there's one thing that I learned about bears, they all appreciate a free meal.

Bears bring more bears, and in a few days, my bear bait had doubled its customer base. The second offering of walking bear chili came in the form of what I'm positive is a mature sow. She didn't have a cub and would have been a fine bear to put a tag on. She was bumping 250 to 300 pounds but was also getting over a case of the mange. A condition I had diagnosed, well, as good as you could from a game camera photo by my friend and our resident Arkansas Game and Fish Commission bear program coordinator Spencer Daniels. Her face and muzzle were dark as was that of the young boar. He may have even been her cub from two years ago.

I mean, who knows? Anyway, some of that hair was still missing in the edges of her ears. It was thin around her face, and she had a spot about the size of a basketball on her left rear fender. That hair had grown back somewhat, but it was considerably shorter than that around it. Spencer told me that it wasn't uncommon for a bear to get over the mange. That's good to know.

But only time would tell if, I would have a bear worth taking a poke at because she wasn't it. I was back to waiting. 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 gobblers are looking for. I have a great turkey hunting track record. If you go listen to real turkeys out in the woods, they're not going to win calling contests, right? That's who I listen to. I can make those sounds on my cut. I also hunt with Phelps's cut, and I hunt with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts.

Check out Prime Cuts at Phelpsgamecalls.com. I think you'll be glad you did, and you'll find out that the Steve Ronella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning calls. who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. We rebated twice before the season opened, and each time after leaving it was only a couple of hours before the bears showed back on camera the same too.

They weren't staying very far away, apparently, and after the first restocking, a mature boar rolled in and joined the feast. This was the bear I was looking for, but like a lot of big bears, he was showing up mostly at night while over on the other mountain, it was still bear square dances taking place in the daylight a week before the season opened. That may have been a slight exaggeration, but that's what it felt like.

Then it was go time. My gear was packed, my bow was checked by my friends at the Neshoba archery shop and tumbling shoals, and yours truly was ready to head to bear camp with two non-shooter bears coming. in and one big bear clocking in on the midnight shift. That bear had been in once during the daylight when he started appearing on camera, and that was for an early morning snack right after daylight. By supper time on the day I got to camp, Clay, Lake Pickle, Bear John, cameraman Drew Steckline, Lauren Moulton, along with Jordan Blissitt, Misty, and James Lawrence

were joining me at the table for a meal prepared by John. Josh Spielmaker. All the usual suspects were there, and with everyone's eyeballs on cell camera feed, suddenly I had the most active bait going, which didn't bode well for an action-packed hunt for everyone else. The big bears were still hitting their baits, but the big boys had switched over to nighttime or had just stopped altogether. And that's how it goes in bear baiting when you're competing against White Oak Acres.

the minute, and I mean the minute they start dropping, bears will forget all about the Twinkies and start gorging themselves on acres. It is one of the coolest things to witness and the saddest things to experience. Bears will be duking it out and running all over each other to get to the goodies out of the barrels, and then when that old familiar sound of white oak eggs start hitting the planet, baiting time is over. Bears will even climb trees and shake them out if they ain't falling to suit them. They're on a mission to put some pounds on before winter,

and they're not going to wait on gravity to set the table for them. We sacked out that night and we're all up early the next day, sharing the coffee pot and strategizing on when to head to our spots. Everyone in camp except for me and Bear were hunting relatively close to the camp. Bear was off on his own, leaving the night before to live and hunt. like Jeremiah Johnson, and I was driving an hour from camp to my bait barrel that was serving groceries like Howard Johnson. Anyway, the hunt was at hand, and I felt confident I was going to at least see a bear.

The spot that I'd picked, I had obviously never hunted, so I didn't have a clue how the bears were going to approach the bait. I tried to figure what the prevailing winds are this time of year and solely based my stand placement off of that. I was accessing the tree from a ladder stand that was already there. That had been my plan all along. It was a 15-foot ladder stand that the bears in the area would already be used to in climbing. It was way easier than hanging sticks. My thought had been to make as little different noises as possible on the day I hunted.

I could have pre-hung everything, but then you run the risk of curious bears sniffing out something new and using it for a chew toy. So I brought my saddle and my platform and would just use the seat of the ladder stand to set up on the back side of the tree. The way I assumed from a lot of the game cam pictures was the way the bears were walking up to the bait. My setup would have me hitting to their approach by the tree I was standing in, and when they commenced to stuffing their jaws full of fatty goodness, they'd be standing broadside for an 18-yard shot. My bait was a mile from where I parked my tree. truck, so I drove my can't am to within 250 yards and bailed out with everything I was going

to possibly need to set the first evening of the hunt. I told her enough water with me in my backpack to take a bath with. And after I climbed a tree, I sat my platform and settled into my saddle, I looked at my watch. It was 12.30 p.m. and the temperature was a cool, 97 degrees. I was early, too early, and after slugging the first bottle down like a starving herford calf, I started to doubt I'd brought enough water. It'd be three hours before the action started and just moments before it did. I looked around at my setup, how I was positioned in relation to the bait, and I thought to myself, Brent, for someone that has never hunted this spot, you must be some kind of

bear hunting genius to have situated yourself. in the best possible spot to kill a bear unless he comes from behind me to the left or the right i didn't think that would be the case though all the evidence i had a bear's approach and was right out in front of me no i had them pegged i just needed one to show up when the wind did blow it was swirling all around for the most part it didn't budge and due to the lack of rain over the last few weeks, the leaves sounded like corn flakes when you walked on them. Crunch, crunch, crunch. Like the sound, I was hearing behind me right now. I looked over my left shoulder in time to see a bear at 30 yards clear in the grass, the bushes, and the saplings that was defining a well-worn path

that suddenly popped out to me in view and was easier to follow back into the woods than the ruts on the Oregon trail high in the world, did I miss that? No worries. It's just boo-boo. The young bear I'd seen many times on my game camera. I recognized his dark muzzle immediately and his big old ears. Since he had hair on his face, I knew it wasn't the sow. I'd seen a jillion pictures of both of them before that day, and even though I knew it

wasn't the bear I was going to shoot, I couldn't help but get excited. I was resting my arms on the bridge of my saddle and looking over the way. my left shoulders. The bear stopped just standing there and looking toward the barrel. I glanced at my watch. It had my heart rate bumping 110 beats a minute. Booboo smelled a rat, and after a minute or so, he did in a bowed face and slipped back down the bear trail that he'd walked up on.

3.30 on the first afternoon, and I had already seen a bear. That's good. I settled back in and stared out across the area to my front, where I'd assumed the bears would have come from, but now after the first one came in, I kept a more vigilant watch on that trail and the one that was directly behind me to the right side. The one that I'd noticed when I first climbed up and thought, you know, that would be a great way for a bear to come in and me never know he was there until he was there. At 5.20, almost two hours after Boo Boo Boo showed up and left, I heard crunch, crunch, crunch on the trail right behind.

me on the right. I twisted around so hard that I started to get a cramp between my shoulder blades and my neck felt like it had a kidney stone in it. I was straining to see what was making the racket and realized I was looking over it. There behind me in the absolute worst place a bear could be standing stood the big bore I'd only had one picture of in the daylight. He stood there for several minutes, less than 25 yards away. His nose was one. He was working the air like whalen does hunting a coon, but this critter was hunting me. He swung his head back and forth, raising his nose to the wind that was blowing from where he stood past me toward the bait. He might be catching a whiff of me, but the breeze had picked up

enough that he was having trouble figuring out where I was. Patience and becoming one with that tree was the only thing that was going to give me any kind of chance with that bear. I eased my left hand over to my bow that was hanging on the side of the tree. I slipped my hand right through the wrist strap and took it off the hanger, attached my release to the string loop, never taking my eyes off that bear. There was absolutely no way I could turn and shoot. The tree limbs were forming a canopy of maple and oak leaves above where he stood, giving me only holes between the groups of leaves to see him.

He was facing toward me anyway. He started eased and forward coming closer up the trail that would lead him right beside my tree into the barrel that sat less than 20 yards away. The wind was perfect. By the time he got to the bait and could smell me, I'd have already slung an arrow through him. I just had to wait a few more seconds. He got to my tree swinging his head back and forth and stopped right beside me. Then he stepped off the trail to his and mile left and took a couple steps, putting him directly beneath him. me. I looked down between my feet and saw him standing there, panting and breathing in all he could

muster, trying to find the human that he could almost smell. The wind swirled the tiniest bit, and he stepped out from under the tree to my left, walked a few steps and stopped, facing away at ten yards. He was a big rascal, and he had walked exactly where I needed him to walk. What had started is getting caught from behind had switched to me having him in my sights within pocket-knife stabbing range. He took another step, and I drew my bow, settling my sights on the middle of his back, waiting for him to either turn right toward the barrel or hang a left and head back down the mountain. Either way, I was fixing to let all the air out of him. I watched him at full draw for a few seconds when the wind stopped,

and the thermals pulled my scent down right on top of him. and he turned to the left to leave, but it was too late. I had him dead to rights at 12 yards. He stopped, and I was surprised when the arrow left the string. That's how smooth the shot was. What happened next happened in the time it takes to blink. The arrow struck the ground below and behind his left front leg, and the back half of that arrow slapped him across the side like a grandma with the act right stick.

The bear hopped over to the right, looked around, trotted off down Boo Boo's trail, disappearing from view. The crunch, crunch, crunch of the sound of walked on corn flakes fading in the distance as I stood there looking like a monkey hanging on the side of the tree. What happened? How did I miss a 350-pound bear at 12 yards? Why is that limb vibrating like a paint-checker at Home Depot right between where the bear was standing and where I am? For the love of Pete, my arrow hit the dad-gum limb. It was so subtle that I didn't even hear it. I can only assume it was my fletching that grazed it as it raced by it at 300 feet a second,

touching it just enough to throw it off course. 30 minutes later, Boo-boo and the main gentleman, sow showed back up. I was still crying, so they slept back down the mountain to let me mourn in peace. And that, in effect, killed my bait barrel for

everyone except boo-boo. The acre and drop picked up and everyone's bait more or less dried up. Bear season was a roller coaster of low expectations and in high adrenaline surprises and a kick to the nether regions when everything was shaping up to work out.

when it didn't. And that's why it's so much fun. It was a hunt I wanted to forget, but I couldn't wait to tell everyone back at camp about how it had all taken place. That was my bear hunt in Arkansas. My first hunt of fall, and I am ready to go. I hope y'all have a safe hunt.

Remember if you're in a tree to wear your safety belts. And by now, I'm sure you've all heard about the meat eater Christmas tour. Tickets are on safe. but going fast. So if you're wanting to come out and see us, you might want to check on them pretty quick. That's at the meat eater.com forward slash tour and get all the info.

Whiteale week is September the 29th through October the 5th. If you're in the need or you want some new stuff, some new clothes and gear, check out the website, the meat eater.com, and they'll have all the info on there. So until next week, this is Brent Reeves. Signing off. I'll be careful.

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 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.