Bear Grease - Ep. 377: Render - Bear Attack, Fred Bear, Ishi

Episode Date: October 15, 2025

On this episode of the Bear Grease Render, host Clay Newcomb along with Bear Newcomb and Josh “Landbridge” Spielmaker are joined by Ishi series guest and tradition archery expert Gene Hopkins. Gene talks about his impressive collection of archery history, his work with the Pope and Young Club, and his personal connection to Fred Bear. Clay also shares his firsthand knowledge of the recent tragic black bear attacks in Arkansas. 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.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. First Lights fieldware collection is made for the work that happens long before opening day and continues when the season ends. Products built for early mornings, full days 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 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. I'm very excited about today. We have a very, very distinguished guest in our midst.

I'll say. I'll say. That has been on the last two episodes of Bear Grease, Gene Hopkins. It's such a pleasure. Thank you for coming to Arkansas. Well, it's my pleasure. I appreciate you guys invited me. This is exciting for me.

Yes. Well, so to fill you in, if you haven't been paying attention, we did an original episode on each. Ishi, which that's what we're going to talk about extensively in this episode. We're going to cover some kind of housekeeping stuff up front, but just to let you know where we're going with this, we did an episode, well, we've now done two episodes. We did episode one on Ishi, which was basically his history and life before coming into Orville, California in 1911, his history with what we know of the Yahi and just fascinating story, going to get into it. Then we interrupted the series, which we've never done before. Forgive us.

We put out an episode where I interviewed Ted Cople, which was just an interesting episode, and we dropped it. And then now we've come back to do the final episode with Gene that came out on the Bear Grays feed, issue two, basically. So we're going to talk about all that. Awesome episode, by the way. yes agreed no doubt when i first started bear grease five years ago jean i was telling him this earlier i had to write out 26 potential topics for this podcast because we do a bear grease proper our

documentary style episode every two weeks and media was like okay well what are you going to talk about make a year's schedule right and uh ishi was on that original list but it's taking me five years to get to it. Well, I hope the weight was worth it. Oh, man. I think it's perfect timing and, yeah, we're going to get into all of it. Before we do, there's three things. I want to talk about the Meteeter Live Tour that's coming up, the Christmas

Live Tour. You got your tickets? I got a whole table, man. Did you? I did. Excellent. Yeah. And I haven't decided who the other pair of people I'm going to invite it.

Oh, wow. You might bring a. You can bring in a bear grease listener. The Fayetteville show is sold out. Exactly. Except for the two tickets I've got. There's six shows. There's a show in Birmingham, Nashville, Tennessee, Memphis, Tennessee,

Fayetteville, Arkansas, Dallas, Texas, and Austin, Texas, six cities, six nights in December, the 17th through the 22nd, I believe. And I'm so proud of Fayetteville, Arkansas. is the smallest city on the tour, right? I mean, all those other cities are huge, big metropolises. And Meat Eater came to us three and said, do you think it would work in Fayetteville? And what did we say?

We said, buddy, speaking to Meat Eater as if it were a man, buddy, you better believe that the people in Arkansas are going to show up for Meat Eater Live sold out. rent Razorback Stadium because we're going to fill it up sold out in three days sold out three days yeah it was before they they even actually went on regular sale it was like pre-sale it was like the pre-release yeah and so all the other shows the other shows are filling up quick but meeting your live tour i had a lot of people ask me what the live tour is it's like a it's like a two-hour variety show that's a great description yeah it's it'll be steve rindex preteleis randallis randallis randall williams and myself

every city will have a couple of local guests who will be there, like surprise guests that we're not going to tell you who they are. But people that when you see them, you'll be like, whoa, they're going to be there. And like there's going to be music, trivia, storytelling, crowd participation, a lot going on. And so it's really fun. I mean, even if you had non-hunting family, I would be very shocked if you would bring them to this. wouldn't be entertained. Yes, I would agree.

I mean, just a lot of fun. So, so excited. But, so you better get your tickets for the rest of the shows if you're going to go because they're probably going to sell out. And if you're trying to get into the Fayetteville show, sorry. I mean, I got- Petition Josh. That's right.

That's right. I'll let you at his table. Auction. I'll be auctioning this. You should, what if we left one spot for that table and we could have people right in why they wanted to be there? It's not a bad idea. You know what?

I want to say this, too. I don't take it for granted that we can have a live show and sell out. Like, it's really, it means a lot to us that people are willing and want to come and see us. So I don't take it for granted that people are, you know, are willing to do that. So thanks everybody. Thanks for selling out. And thanks for showing up in Arkansas. Yeah.

So that's number one. Number two, man, if you need a good deer call, this is a blatant sales pitch. Get ready. And it just so happens to be deer season. Yeah. This Phelps Acron Grunner made in burnt Osage Orange. The burnt Osage Orins, I'm a little jealous of that one. You probably like that wood, don't you mean?

I like that wood, yes. Odark. So this is, we call it the Acron Grunner, and it's an inhale, exhale, grunt, bleep. You can flip it, and it's the opposite. Then it's a blow for the bull. bleed inhale for the grunt. But I wanted Jason Phelps to make a call that, a single call with a bleat and a grunt. It's a great idea. Because, man, I use a bleat as much as I use a grunt.

And I've called in a lot of deer with a doe bleat, including, this is the deer hunter's call. That's what I call it, the deer hunter's call. Because I kill a lot of doe deer by calling them in with a dough bleat. I mean, you know, dough out there at 40 yards, she's not coming to your buck grunt, but it's a deer that you want to take. Right. Man, during the early season especially, a doe deer will respond to a dough bleed. Pretty, pretty good.

What do you think, Bear? I agree. All hype, all commercialization and hype? I don't think so. Pretty good call. I think so. And I was just looking at this one, these Bodark trees have some pretty nice growth rings on them, too. So it's a pretty good Bodark?

Pretty good Bodark. Could have made a good bow, huh? Yeah. Well, okay, look, you see. Shame to cut them up in the calls. Yeah, right there. He's got some thin rings, but up here, those are prime rings. Now, thin rings would be better, though, right?

Tider growth, hard years. They're just a lot tougher to work with. Really small rings. If you, like, hit them on a tree stand or rock or something, they violate a lot easier. Violate. Wow, that's a big word. Yeah, that's a big word. Yeah, man.

because then it blows up the whole bow if the rings are tight yeah I mean like what you're telling me is there a metaphor you know we find in life a lot of times trees are used as metaphors for life Jesus did it he said the kingdom of God is like a like a mustard seed that grows in the biggest tree

and the birds can so you're telling me I would have thought that the tight rings meant hard years which meant growth of character in tight rings well you were wrong you follow me well you were wrong the bowyer over here he knows what he's talking

I mean, I've made some bows with tight rings and they're great bows, but if it's got a thick ring, it's just more security. Okay. Easier to stay within the ring while you're making the bow, eh? Yep. Exactly. That's probably part of it. Yeah.

Okay. Third thing, and then we're going to start talking about Ishi and Gene, who's like the most interesting man in the world. Yes. I don't always talk about those. My grandkids think of you. Your grandkids. Well, we do too.

So this is like super serious. In Arkansas this week, there was another black bear fatality. If you're paying attention on the national, it's been in New York Times. BBC. Did the BBC report on it? It's been in all the major headlines and all the news outlets have covered it, media covered it. But there was a second bear fatality in less than 30 days in Arkansas.

in recorded history, recorded history, what I would call modern history. There's not been a black bear fertility in Arkansas since 1800s.

There was some after that, but usually they were induced inside of a hunting situation with dog, I mean like Erskine was killed. Bears, the dog was,

dogs were bay and a bear guy killed, you know, 1843, you know. A man, September 3rd, there was a man

just south of us about an hour near the Mulberry River on a tractor grading his gravel road on a on a I think was a new holland tractor and uh no connection between bear attacks and new a little a little bear i mean 80 pounds 80 pound bear comes up he films the bear and he's like talking to the bear and next you know he this bear's kind of like catwalking like getting real close. And basically he stops filming and the next thing the bear jumps on the tractor, pulls him off the tractor and basically gives injuries to the guy that caused him to pass away several weeks later after being in ICU.

So that was just wild. And it felt like just lightning struck and it was this one-off thing. Right. That's so unusual. It's so unusual. And then last Thursday, A man was discovered at a campsite in the Ozarks, a very popular place called Sam's Throne, which is National Forest, a place where rock climbers climb, some big sheer face bluffs, and just a big national forest campground. And a man had from Missouri, 60-year-old man, they released his name today.

Oh, did they? Yeah, or yesterday. His name was Max Thomas. And he had sent a picture. to his wife on Tuesday of a bear in his camp. And it just been like, wow, this is interesting. Bair in the camp. Not threatened.

Just had despair. Basically, he goes radio silent. And on Thursday, they call the sheriff and say, hey, we do a welfare check. My husband hasn't, can't get him. Haven't talked to him since Tuesday. They go and basically there's signs. of distress in the camp and they follow they basically find the man a hundred and ninety four

feet away appeared to have been mauled by a black bear and and they put that two together by the pictures and then by evidence there and in a unique circumstances i can't really talk about fully, Bear Newcomb and I were that night called to go to the scene. This is like an hour from us. Yeah. Hour and a half from us. Yeah, yeah. And so Bear and I went there that night and we helped round up guys that had some dogs that would tree a bear.

You know, and they free cast dogs, but this track was potentially a couple of days. old by now didn't get the bear game and fish comes in game and fish authorized the use of dogs it's not legal to run bear with dogs right so game and fish director along with the bear coordinator and other people

authorized the use and um Glenn Wheeler the sheriff of newton county he he was on the scene unique guy a hunter kind of had some a little bit of background

and uh aside just law enforcement, but being around bears and whatnot. Anyway, the gaming fish puts up traps and bucket snare traps and big tube traps puts up sail cameras all over the place. They shut down the campground. And basically, the best bet is to wait for the bear to come back. But we all suspected that the bear would not go in the trap. because we've been baiting bears in Arkansas here, Gene,

and it got to where you couldn't hardly take a bear over bait just because they were eating acorns. I mean, mass crop, just a bumper crop. Right. They love those acorns and the protein. Yes, they do. And so basically we were, the houndsmen were on call, the guys that had these dogs.

And on Sunday, Gamin Fish got a picture, and the bear just walked right past all the traps. Just didn't even go in them. And the houndsmen were called. And within two hours, dogs were on the ground. And within an hour of the dogs being on the ground, essentially, they treat despair. And so the question that remains, and this has been, I'm not saying anything that has not been put out by the media. Right.

we don't know 100% that the bear that was killed by game fish in these houndsmen we don't know if that was the bear but it was a we know for sure that it was a juvenile male that was in the camp with this guy and we know that this was the only and the first bear that showed back up at the spot and it was a juvenile male. there's it's hard you know the markings on the bear or it's hard to say i mean the bear had a tan muzzle the bear that was killed had a tan muzzle so it's it's difficult to but there were no other distinguishing characteristics that just well the test will come back that's right so they've they've the DNA test will come back we'll know for certain if it was right or not but you know a lot of people, I would imagine this year in the state, there's going to be a lot of bear encounters that have always happened, and people are probably going to overreact a little bit to them. I think it's already happened.

Right. Even this week, there's been reports of a bear that was kind of terrorizing people at a camp, which, to my knowledge, with the information I have right now, which this is being recorded before this you're hearing this right but right now this morning there was a news report of a bear terrorizing some campers and i in the in the area yeah yesterday for real yes in franklin county these hikers on the ozark islands trail reported a bear giving them a lot of trouble the the real story and what is in the sound bite right is to my understanding right now today,

it's quite a bit different, and it probably was fairly normal bear behavior, and no one was hurt, no one was attacked, no doubt it was a little bit scary for someone. Sure. But to my knowledge, it would not have been that abnormal.

I mean, like, basically a bear came into the camp. People are hypersensitized right now. Right. They are. They are. And so I think a lot of that's going to happen this year, maybe all over Bear Country.

Yeah. And, you know, here's the bottom line is if you have a bear, a casually dealing with you that is hanging around, you need to get the heck out of there and you need to do everything you can to get that bear out of there. Yep. Like, it's not abnormal to see a bear cruise past your camp. I mean, sometimes they're pretty nonchalant, especially when there's food involved. And that doesn't mean that that bear is a super threat. But, man, with the current circumstance, if I saw a bear that was casual with its encounters with humans, I mean, you need to run that bear off. You don't need to casually handle it.

Don't be standing there taking pictures of him. I mean, that's the truth anywhere. That's the truth anywhere in bear countries. You just can't be laxadaisical. 90, you know, 99,000 out of 100,000 times that bear is not going to do anything with you, but for whatever reasons has happened twice in the last month here. So anyway. Well, our condolences to the family.

No doubt. Terrible tragic into these guys. Yeah. No doubt. Common sense in the bear woods. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Man, I don't know. I'd probably be carrying some pepper spray these days too. Yeah. Wouldn't hurt. You know, it's kind of changed the way Bear and I think about black bears. Yeah. I mean, we've kind of built a ideology of just casual, you know, just like, hey, these bears aren't going to hurt you. You got a better chance of getting, you know, hurt on the highway or an engagement with a human is probably more dangerous than any bear encounter.

ever have. But there's something about being arms reach from an attack like this that makes you kind of just go, golly, you'd hope you're just prepared. But I just want to say it over and over again. Man, bears are expanding their range all across the country. Bear and humans are overlapping more and more and more. And there's nothing to be afraid of. That's something to be celebrated, in my opinion, in the vast majority of Americans' opinion.

But you just can't be casual with them. You can't be casual. You can't let them just come in your camp and... Don't feed them. Don't feed them. Again, common sense. Yeah. That's right.

That's right. Barry you have anything to add? Yeah, I mean, like you said, it was definitely pretty wild to be that close to a bear attack. Like the first one happened, and I mean, it was pretty wild, but it didn't really, it didn't really change any way that I would have gone about in. bear in bear country but seeing the second one and actually being there was like definitely extremely eye-opening yeah to what they could what they could do it definitely like we were in the bear woods yesterday bear hunting and i was definitely a lot more like i was considering what what could happen a lot more yeah and just being a lot more cautious about like you know getting really

close to bears and especially small bears. Yeah, that's probably the biggest takeaway, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah, because both bears were juvenile males. Yeah. 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 Rinellilli cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action.

On average, over the last hundred years, there's been one black bear fatality in North America per year, on average. Some years there's been in North America. North America. Wow. Average, one per year. But that means some years there's none. Right.

Some years there's three. Right. Maybe four. But on average. one. If you're killed by a black bear, there is upwards of a 90 degree chance that it was a juvenile male that killed you. This is where the statistics get interesting. There's a, but if you're just attacked, like if you just come away with some bites and some scratches, it's like 13 times higher a risk that that would be a sow with cubs. I've talked to a lot of people who said, oh, probably

a sow with cubs and i went no assow with cubs her objective inside of an attack would be to defend her cubs just enough so they could get away like she doesn't want to eat you there's a big huge distinction between a sow with cubs defending her territory in a close range encounter

and the very rare rare rare rare thing that is called a predatory attack when a bear sets his sights on you and his intent is to kill you. That's, it's, it's a thing.

So does that make sense? So if you're, if you're dead, it was probably a juvenile male that did it. Right. If you were attacked and not killed, it was most likely a sow with cubs, upwards of like 13 times higher chance.

So there's over 10 to, like 10 to 15 people per year that get attacked by black bears, but survive. The vast, majority of those are Sous with Cubs. Does that make sense? Yep. Yeah.

So the stats are different. Now, Grizzlies is a whole different story. Like, completely different story that we're not even talking about here, but, you know, on average, two people per year get killed by Grizzlies in North America. And when you consider how many fewer grizzlies there are in the smaller range, you extrapolate that out. Black bears are, you know, all over the place. from Maine to Old Mexico, from Florida to Alaska,

everywhere in between except the Great Plains states, essentially. And we have one bear kill per year. Grizzlies are essentially in the greater Yellowstone ecosystem and then in Canada up to Alaska. I mean, the range is dramatically smaller and there's two kills per year and the attacks are much more. There was a guy attacked, an Elk Hunter attacked, pretty critically this week.

So Gris is a different story. we're talking about black bears but and that's why and this is kind of in the weeds but that's why it helps to understand what you're doing if you are attacked by a sow with cubs your best bet is to cover your head and neck get in the ball and act like you're dead because all she wants to do is extinguish the threat threat's over yep she will leave you alone and go to her cubs chuckle her cubs out of the tree And get out of there. If it is a predatory animal, predatory meaning stalking, direct eye contact, persistence in, like, won't leave.

If that bear attacks you, you better fight for your life because he is trying to kill you. Right. The majority of bear attacks have wounds on the forearms. arms where people put up their arm to protect themselves and they get bit on the arm and they have lacerations and bites all over the face. A black bear goes for your face. Yeah. It's interesting. Like they they so they don't they don't really kill with the precision of like a big cat. Right. A big cat would go for the throat and I mean big cat fat fatalities and and humans is just like incredibly rare.

It does happen. But a black bear is more of just like a mauling. Right. But they do target on the head. And you think about it when a black, I don't know if you've ever seen black bears fight, but when two male black bears fight, they target the head of the other male.

And like they grab each other's ears and they put their arms up, almost like they're boxing and fight. And so, I mean, A lot of interesting parallels, but as dark as all that is, Black bears and humans, this conflict didn't go in away. And the more we kind of educate people. But a lot of people have asked me, like, well, do you run or do you yell?

Man, if a bear came into my camp, just casually strolled by my camp, and I'm sitting there camping with my food and everything, I would yell and scream and throw stuff. and stomp around. And, I mean, if you can, leave. At best, put your food up way away from your camp. I mean, that's standard procedure. It's to store your food away from your camp

because they really don't want you. They want your food. They're attracted to the camp to the food. So that's my take on the situation. and just, yeah, true condolences to the family there in Missouri. Just super sad situation. Yeah. Yeah.

And one more thing that I learned just from the two is that if you're not armed in a black bear wants to kill you, it's probably going to kill you. Like that's the thing that I learned was like there's no reason to necessarily be afraid of them. But like if it's wanting to kill you, it's like you're not going to fight it off. Like these were like 80 pound bears. Yeah. And they just, I mean, there's like no way you're going to fight one off unless you're armed.

That is a good point because I talked to a buddy of mine this week. He's a big guy, like probably 230 pounds. And we had this conversation about like, oh, if a hundred pound bear got on you, you could just fend it off like you would a dog. A hundred pounds of bear muscle. is way stronger than 100 pounds of human muscle. And their reflexes so fast, the claws and the teeth, we're no match. I think that's the thing.

Like if a bear hits you in the face with claws, I mean, you're done. Like, even if, like, it takes your vision or something like that, it's like you have no defense against that. Yeah. And if you've ever seen bears fight, which you probably have sitting on bear baits in Canada, like I have. Yeah. Man. Golly. They're wicked.

You wouldn't want to be there. You wouldn't want to be on the other end of them just really wanting to tear into you. And back to what you said about them going for the face, a lot of times you'll see an old bear. This face is all scarred up from the fights. You know, when they're fighting each other, they're going for the head. They're trying to rip each of the head off. They bite, they claw, and the muzzles are all scarred. Yeah.

You can see an old boar bear. He's been in some battles. and those scars all show on its muzzle. Yeah. And ears. Yeah. Ears will be tore up. Right. Right.

You know where they're biting at each other. It just makes me reevaluate that whole video where you and Brent were in the stand and that bear comes in the blind. Like that could have turned south in a hurry. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's true. Well, that was a, that was a kind of a dark introduction to a wonderful topic.

The story of Ishi, to me, is one of the great stories of this continent. I agree. No matter what angle you come from, if you come at it like we from the angle of bow hunting, you know, our archery and bow hunting history, or if you just come at it from an angle of, you know, anthropology and the history of Native Americans in our country, in our country, the evolution of man, you know, the treatment of how we treat each other, no matter what angle you come at this story from. It's just fascinating. Yes.

Gene, give us a little introduction. People would have heard me talk about you some on the podcast, but you have a long history in bow hunting, but I can say this, and you could too if you weren't so humble. You have one of, if not the premier collection of bow hunting artifacts in the country. Yeah, I do. You know, take away the humble part. part of it, but I'm fascinated with history, you know, and I've always been a history buff in school. You know, history was my favorite topic.

But then I love hunting with a bow and arrow. So to be able to put the history of hunting with a bow and arrow together, you know, how much better can it be? So I've always been a collector, you know, a saver. When I was young, I was, I collected coins, and I collected stamps and, you know, I collected vintage firearms. But I started saving old archery equipment just because, you know, as bullhunters, we do that. We throw our old broadheads in a drawer, and pretty soon you've got a drawer full of 19 different broadheads. And then you move from saving to collecting.

But I really don't think of it as collecting anymore. I think of it as caretaking. You know, what I'm doing is preserving. What I hope I'm doing is preserving the items, but not just the items, but the story of the items and the story of the people who use those items. I'm caretaking that for my generation. And there will be a time when I'm looking for somebody like Bear, you know, who's the next caretaker? And that's me, our duty. That's what we owe those people who came before us, you know, the pioneers of Fred Bears and the Glenn St. Charles.

We owe that to them to keep their story alive, all the work they did for us and all the sacrifices they made for us to keep that story alive and keep their spirit alive by keeping their story alive. Will you tell me what is in your museum? Give me a rundown. A lot of people will collect something or save something that is most interesting to them. I have a really good friend in Michigan, John Cabesa, and John focuses on the history of bow hunting in Michigan. Other people will collect just simply Fred Bear items or Ben Pearson items and things, you know, from the history of those people or those companies. For me, it's the history of the pioneers of our sport. So when I quantify that, what I'm saying is, you know, pre-1950.

In 1950, our sport was off the ground pretty good through the efforts of Fred Bear and Glenn St. Charles and Howard Hill and Roy Case and a lot of different people. But prior to 1950, our sport was going through some really difficult times. You know, we had been, as the Bowen Arrow had been largely forgotten. Even the Native Americans had forgotten about the bow and arrow when the gun came along. If you wanted to go hunting, you went hunting to survive. You went hunting to feed your family. So you wouldn't take a bow and arrow. You'd take a rifle or a shotgun.

Well, in the late 1800s, a couple of brothers, the Thompson brothers from Crawfordsville, Indiana, wrote a book called The Witchery of Archery. And it was right after the Civil War. And right after the Civil War, for the first time in our country's history, people are starting to have a little bit of free time. And they're starting to have a little bit of free spending money. So you see a lot of sports growing at that time. You see badminton.

You see tennis. You see bicycling. And things like that start to appear as sports. And we're starting to look for things to do with that spare time and that spare money. So when they wrote that book, The Witchery of Archery was published in 1878. People around the country are reading this book and they're reading the magazine articles that these guys are writing. And they're saying, that sounds like fun. You know, bow and arrow.

I'd forgotten about that. Let's go find us a bow and arrow. Let's go out and shoot. And at that time, not a lot of people were hunting with a bow and arrow. The Thompson brothers were. A few others were. But target archery started to become a big deal. And the National Archery Association was formed in 1879 through the efforts of the Thompson brothers

and the exposure they gave to our sport. So now we start to see a lot of clubs springing up around the country of shooting targets with a bow and arrow. Well, that kind of tailed off a little bit. you know, around 1900 or so. And then the story of Ishi comes along. 1911, Ishi comes down, meets Pope. You've heard all this, you know, in the two podcasts we did before. And then Pope writes this book, Hunting with a Bowen Arrow,

and he publishes this in 1923. Now, this book really ignites a revolution of fire of people that want to go out and hunt with a bow and arrow. I told briefly the story of Doug Easton in the earlier podcast. You know, Doug was out as a teenager hunting small game, habits with the shotgun. And they come back to the car for a break and one of the shotguns falls over, discharges, and part of the shot hit Doug in the legs.

Well, Doug spends a year in the hospital recovering from the wounds. And during that time, somebody brings him one of Pope's books about hunting with a bow and arrow. And he read the book. And all that time and all the different operations he had in the hospital, he reads this book and it fires him up about archery. So, you know, that's what got Doug Easton into archery. And he started shortly after that. In the 1920s, he started Easton Archery Company. So story after story after story of people that are coming from that, let's say, that point of Ishi being the spark that ignited the fire.

And then Pope and Young and Compton starting that fire and carrying that fire to the next generation. And that's why we're here today. If that hadn't happened, if Ishi hadn't been the spark, if Pope hadn't looked down his window that day, saw Ishi shooting the bow out there on the grounds of the University of California. Pope hadn't walked down to his office and went down to Ishi and what are you doing? I'm shooting a bow. That looks like fun. Pope grew up in Texas and there were a lot of natives, Americans still around and they were still

shooting a bows. But, you know, it wasn't, it was fun. It was a game to them. Right. So he had been exposed to a bow and arrow, but that day when he saw Ishi out there on the lawn shooting the bows. When he went out and he said, you know what, I want to do this. I want to become an archer. And eventually then that translated or transformed into I want to become a bow hunter. And I think what made the Ishi story and Pope that be such a lightning strike is because of

the nature of who Ishi was completely disconnected from Western civilization. And if you listen to the first episode, you would have seen Ishi's like 50 years old. Yeah. Been in hiding. his entire life, his people were incredibly primitive. Surprisingly primitive. Like when you understand the history of Native Americans across the country, you see this like slow role of either extermination, removal to reservations, or assimilation, essentially. Right. I mean, and so there were Native Americans, presumably, that were still shooting bows and whatnot

during that time. But with Ishi, he stepped out of the woods, and that had been the primary tool for his entire life to gather protein. That's the only thing he knew was the Bowling Arrow. Yeah. I want to ask you a question. Do you think me and Bear had this conversation yesterday? Ishi is this one guy out of that entire civilization that was, you know, became the epicenter

of archery. do my question is how good was ishi because imagine us picking a bow hunter out of all the people that we know and that guy being the single touch point for archery and like i wonder if people in his company in his tribe i mean even for generations before would have been like one one extreme would have been like, Ishi was the best Archer, Bowhunter, Bowyer, Flintnapper of all time. Thank goodness that he was the one that made it through to talk to Saxon Pope. Or do you think they would be like, Ishi? You're kidding me, right?

That guy wasn't. That guy was like way down low. You should have had this guy. How good do you think Ishi was? Okay, I'm going to break that into two. As far as Flintnapping goes, I think he must have been one of the best. Really? You look at his points.

And I wish, you know, at some point I want you to look at the point that I've got of his. Yeah, I'd love to see it. And you see the skill that's in that, and to be able to make a point that precise. And that, you know, how it is, how hard it is to make one thin and still keep that integrity of the point. And, you know, it's this long. And it's so narrow and it's so finely made. But could that have been, like, baseline competency, though? I mean, do you think, like, everybody was that good?

I've got some other points that came from that area. Okay. And they're, you know, most of those are obsidian points. And he, if she liked to make points from glass. And even before the 1911, before the capture, he would, when they were raiding the stock cabins, and they were raiding the settlers' cabins, they would sometimes steal the plates, and they would go to the trash pile and get the broken plates. And they would make points from that.

Or they would get the, you know, the old insulators from railroads. Or, you know, they would get the milk of magnesium. bottles, that would be a favorite for them. And they would make it out of glass because glass was easier to work than obsidian. And obsidian is a volcanic glass, but not all obsidian is pure obsidian. There's a lot of abnormalities in the obsidian, but you take a glass plate or a bottle or something like that. It's pretty pure.

So it was easier to make a more precise point. So it's maybe not a fair comparison, but some of the points that I've got that are also from that area. They were, you know, a lot of people call them the Mill Creeks, you know, the Yahi, also known as the Mill Creek Indians, because they came from the Mill Creek area. And those points are still fairly well made, you know, but they're not issue quality.

Maybe that's because issue was really, really good at what he did. Yeah. And maybe it's because of the media he worked in, you know, in the glass, the bottles and the plates and things, was easier to work than obsidian. Regardless, it's got a point. to the high level of skill that that society had. Absolutely.

You just think of the chances of just picking one guy out of that stream of people for generations and him being as competent as he was. Right. Pretty unique. You know, as far as this hunting and shooting ability, there's a lot of documentation that Pope wrote about and some of the others wrote about his shooting skills were good, but they weren't, you know, he wasn't going to be an Olympic caliber archer, but that's not what he trained for and that's not what you know he was about getting the animal close

because when you lose to narrow at an animal in his culture you know that was dinner and if i if this doesn't work if i don't hit him or i don't kill him or i don't find him i'm not eating tonight well they're so their focus and they're all their effort was putting getting the animal close so i don't care about shooting 30 yards you know we go out and we shoot 30 yards 40 yards sometimes for fun. He didn't care about that. So, you know, Pope and especially young, were much better shots. Hmm.

Okay. Did Ishi have a floating anchor? His, if you look at him, he would anchor more into here. And his style, he didn't put his fingers around the string like we do, two fingers under, three fingers under. He would pinch the string and bring it back, and it was more like this. What was the weight of the bows that he was making? I would guess I've never seen an issue bow, but I would guess the bows are probably, you know, going to be 40 pound, you know, they're not heavy.

And he's pinching that string. Yeah. I guess whatever you train yourself to do with your hands, your hands. You know, his hands and his feet were so, yeah, stories of his feet, you know, they gave him shoes when they caught him in the stockyard, they gave him some clothing and they gave him some shoes, and he wouldn't wear the shoes. they weren't comfortable to him but his feet were so calloused and so rough that he didn't need the shoes and so yeah

if you've done this all your life if you walked over rocks all your life if you've drawn the bow this way all your life you know you're just like playing a guitar you're going to have calluses you know and your body's going to adapt to that there show me your fingers I've been shooting

with two fingers for maybe like eight months and the two fingers that I pulled back with are like significantly bigger than it. Of course. He's been shooting without a finger tab. Yeah. So it's just been great, which if you don't know traditional archery, that's pretty, most

people, I don't do that. Pretty hardcore. I shoot three fingers under, which isn't necessarily that popular either, but I use a finger tab. It's, if I pull back a traditional bow much over 40 pounds with bare fingers, it hurts my fingers. Yeah. The bear the other day was like, hey, dad, look at my hands.

And his fingers are like notably bigger on the two that he's been working. So, I mean, you start to see. Yeah. You do that your whole life. There's an illustration, one of the books that Gene has, of issues, Bohan, too. And the way he held it. It's weird how he used his fingers for a rest. I can't even.

Oh, you're talking about the bow hand, not the string hand. Yeah, the way he did it was. He would somehow, I can't even try to recreate it here. but he would use his hand. He didn't have a shelf on his bow. He didn't have a rest on his bow. The arrow would lay on his fist. Yeah, but he tucked his thumb.

It was like a weird... His thumb was the shelf? Yeah. Like, yeah, I've seen it. It's odd. 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 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 Felps. Game Calls.com. I think you'll be glad you did, and you'll find out that the Steve Ronella cut is an easy-to-use cut

for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. Man, yeah, they must have been getting stuff close. Yeah, and that was the whole point. You know, and deer were, I got to say, you know, we both hunted a lot, and sometimes you get into an area

where the animals haven't been hunted as often or as hard, and they're not as wary. So, you know, I'm thinking, you know, they're not the white tail in California at that time period. We're probably not as wary as the white tail we have today, which see people every day, have arrows shot at them every week. So, you know, it might have been a little different game to get animals closer to them. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

So you're in your museum, though, you've got like 2,300, over 2,000 bows and stone point. Yeah, and I focus, again back to that. Yeah, we get a little rabbit hole now and then, but they're come back out of the rabbit hole now. What I like are the pre-1950, and that's the era where, you know, I call it the pioneering era from 1870s to 1950. This is when people are starting to really get into the sport for the first time. Yeah. You know, we don't have books to read. We don't have magazines.

We don't have videos. And we're going out and we're shooting a bow and arrow, but it looks like fun. It sounds like fun. It is fun. But I don't know what I'm doing. how does an arrow work? What kind of broadhead should I be using? They didn't know that a broadhead had to be razor sharp, surgical sharp.

They didn't know that, you know, all the things that we take for granted today about hunting with a bow and arrow, they were learning. They were discovering. And even when I started, I started, my first year bow hunting for deer was 1970. And a lot of the things I was taught in 1970 aren't true. I was taught that you wanted to get an arrow in a deer and you wanted the arrow to stay in a deer. because when he ran, you wanted it to cut, you know, cut him more as he was running. Well, after that, we learned that we need to get blood on the ground.

And to get blood on the ground, you need an exit wound. And that's where, you know, especially shooting from a tree stand, the entrance wound's going to be high, the exit wound's going to be low, and your blood trail is going to come from down here. So we want complete pass-through to be able to get that blood on the ground. Well, for that to happen, we want that arrow to pass through the animal as quickly in, effortlessly as possible. We don't want the arrow to stay in the animal because we're not going to get a blood trail. Yeah.

So they were learning all this stuff. They were writing the books. And that's the period I like. That's the period I like to focus on. So when I'm looking for things in my collection, I'm not looking for, you know, a 1970 barricodeac. They're great bows. I'm looking for something that was a woodbow that was made by somebody with a spoke shave and a drawknife. over their workbench and their blood, sweat, and tears are still, their DNA are still on that wood.

You know, and that's the kind of stuff I like in my collection. Yeah. Yeah. In 70 years, we'll be buying bears, classic bows and putting them in a museum. He's got to sign it, though. Yeah, I need a brand. So I want to ask you two to give us some place to start. What stood out to you, Josh, in this second episode?

Man, it's such a powerful story, and I think that there's a lot of things that us in modern society could pull from the life of Ishi after his emergence. And I think I'm drawn to the character of Ishi. Yeah. And I have great appreciation because the injustices that were done to his people and to him. And he was an eyewitness to all of that. Exactly. were incalculable to us. Like we can't even be compared.

Like, we don't understand that. But to take this man from a jail cell in Oroville to Berkeley and for his, I don't want to say assimilation, because I don't know that Ishi assimilated, but his adaptation to life inside of modern society was incredible. and the way that he was able to, I can't imagine that Ishi ever forgot about his family or how he lived, but how he didn't carry that. I don't know another way to say it. Then he walked through a fire, came out and didn't smell like smoke. And he was able to live his life joyful, build strong relationships with people that he cared about, live a life in a life. world that was completely unimaginable to him previously. I think it's just commendable for a human being. And that is really what impacted me when I hear his story.

Gene said it a couple of times just about the character of Ishi. The character of the man was incredible. Yeah. You know, he comes out of hiding in 1911. and he's seen his whole family, his whole culture, his whole tribe killed, before his eyes. These are things he's eyewitness to. And he comes out of that in 1911, comes down into that stockyard. And within a matter of two months, he's at the University of California, and they're opening the anthropology wing.

And of course, issue is going to be a focus of the new anthropology wing. They're opening. And so they have all these dignitaries. coming from all over the country to come to the opening. They would have come anyhow, but they're coming really now, especially I want to see the issue while I'm here. So he's got to transform from this Stone Age man to this man who's going to be welcoming dignitaries

at the university opening of their new anthropology department in just a matter of two months. So he's in good clothing, and he's taught enough English to be. be able to welcome those people. And when he welcomes those people, in his culture, in his mind, he has to give them the respect to say their name. So that was something that he was doing on his own.

He was doing that on his own. He wasn't coached to do that. That was part of his culture. That was part of his respect, you know, for other people. So when he would be introduced to somebody, he would, hello, Mr. You know. He would repeat their name on purpose because that was. was his way of showing respect to people who have killed his tribe, his family, just a matter of

years before that. That was a sign of his culture, you know? You know, it's interesting because it was said, and Krober said it in her book, but about how he wouldn't say his name because there was no one, no one. No one left alive to give me a name. Yes. That was the story he gave. Of course, he had a name.

You know, that was the story he gave them. But of course he had a name. Yes. He just, in his culture, you weren't allowed to say your own name. Right. Well, it's interesting that he was doing what, like by him saying your name, it kind of validates that. Yeah. Like, I'm not going to say my name, but I will say yours.

It's very important for me to know your name. Yes. But it's not so important for me to be speaking my name. So it was, you know, again, back to the culture of that society, it was not all about me. It was about you. it was about us. You know, that, that statement right there and the stuff about the name, I just, my brain just spins when I try to understand what it would be like to not have this Western

ideology of this individualistic society. Right. It's so deep in us. Something to take away from that. It's so deep inside of us, this idea of exceptional, like personal, exceptional, like personal, exceptionalism, me, look what I've done. Right. I mean, even the, we've talked about it in other things, but we did a, we did a series on

Tecumse of the Shawnee leader. And I talked to Ben Barnes, the chief of the Shawnee today, a modern chief. And he says that in their language, even the structure of language and where they put nouns is different than English. English emphasizes who, what? Yeah. Who did it? Yeah.

Like if I'd say something, I say, I could. the soup, emphasis on ah, and in the Shawnee language, the emphasis would not be on you, me, or who did it? The soup was cooked. Yeah. And, you know, the point is,

we are... It's foreign to us. Yeah. But it's, there's something to be learned from that, right? I think there's a good moral lesson there for us. Yeah. And I think another interesting story, you know, in that time period there where he's, again, he's just come out of the Stone Age culture and how

He's living in, you know, the University of California and meeting all these dignitaries from all over the world. And he would be invited to go into these different rooms, different meetings and such. And when he walked into the room, one of the things he would always say to people as he walked in. And he was trying, again, to speak English, you know. He was trying to assimilate, you know, into this new world. And when he walked into the room, he would say, everybody happy? and it was really important for him. It was really important for him to know that everybody in the room was feeling good.

Are you happy? You know, have everybody happy? You can just imagine his, you know, accent, you know, saying that. And I think that's just another aspect of who he was as a man. But I think he was as a man probably as he was the culture. Yeah, yeah. I'm just imagining him walking into his camp on Mill Creek with his mother and his sister or cousin.

Yeah. And that was part of their culture. It was part of their culture. It would have been. And that's what's so unique about Ishii that will never, at least on this continent, never have another opportunity to, is to deal with somebody that was that isolated from Western society. Yeah. And to draw these conclusions about who they were.

Here's the questions that I have, though, like talking about how happy Ishi was. It's possible a critic today could be like, well, was he really happy? Was that just a face? Well, and we all know that humans were supposed to not just tell every, we live in a restraint as powerful. Like, if I'm unhappy right now, like, you don't have to know about it. I mean, so, like, I wonder how traumatic, how much of his front of being happy and cordial. I think there was real. Here's what I think, and I feel pretty confident in this.

When the door was closed, he had to shed tears. He had to. But when the door was open, that was the real issue. You know, the inside of issue was a happy person. The inside of issue was an optimist. When the door was closed, the memories had to come back. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, it's wild that he didn't hold any, or at least it doesn't seem like he held any bitterness towards the people that wiped out his whole culture. Yeah. I think that bitterness, though, is an artifact of our modern society. I really do. Like, I don't think he would have known that he had permission. And I don't know, not permission from a person. That's not what I mean, but like, bitterness.

I don't know, I just don't, I think there's something, inside of there's something about knowledge and the communication and the the all the biases that we have about other people or other social classes of people or people from wherever that like you kind of like you know I'm gonna feel like you can I'm gonna just hit me as you said that just hit me the world today is filled so full of hate and I wonder if hate was a concept that he even had you know and maybe that was the difference well that's an interesting thought yeah Just, you know, everything this happened over the last few weeks, months, and even years, you know, hate is a big part of our culture today. Wow.

See, if we didn't have hate, maybe that's what's separated it. Well, and the fact that we could imagine a culture that didn't have hate. Yeah. Because, you know, you think about, you would think Ishi with this little tight group of people that had been exterminated, that his family would have been sitting up on that mountain looking down there saying, those evil people are trying to kill us. We've got a, and maybe they weren't. You know, and I've got a bookshelf full of books on Ishi. You know, Krober's book is one, and that's the most well-known, but there's a lot of books. I brought several here today.

Every book that I've read about Issue over the years, nothing in there ever makes you believe there was animosity. You know, hate or animosity, whichever word you want to use. Nothing in there ever leads me to believe that he or his family members ever had any of that feeling. even while they were all alive. That's an odd place to be, though, when you know that these people are after you to kill you, the surveyors that stole all their gear and supplies, which is just, it's just hard to imagine. It's also, I also know that historical revision is really complicated for us today to be like, oh, those, you know, barbarians, how could they do that?

I mean, you know, in their time, I don't know, for some reason they felt the liberty to take that stuff from them. How could you do that? You know, I mean, this old lady is obviously on her deathbed laying there in the camp and she's under the covers and you steal everything. You steal everything except the bed and the covers that she's got. You take everything that they need to make food to get food, to gather food, the baskets to carry the food. They take it all as souvenirs and leave the lady laying there. I mean, what kind of person does that take? Yeah.

That's one of the wild stories. That's one of the ones that makes me just cringe, you know. Yeah. I just, you know, human nature can sometimes, maybe there's evil in us that is buried deep. And most of us keep that buried deep. And sometimes it comes to the surface, and that came to the surface. I think that would be a result of generations of not viewing those people. people as humans.

Right. I mean, it's just like, and there had been, that was at the tail end of literally a century plus long, I mean, centuries plus long genocide. Yeah. So it's like these people were sub-human. Right. I think that's the only way that you could justify that. You know, you could do it in your mind. How could you sleep?

You know, the story of Kingsley's Cave, which we talked about in the podcast, is one of the last last massacres, you know, mass massacres of the yahi. And there were about 33 Yahi in this cave. They had been chased by these people, these four vigilantes. And 33 of the last remaining yahi is going to this cave. And these men walk in there with their rifles and just start shooting. You know, these people in a cave backed up against the wall. And they just, men, women, and children.

and they just start shooting with and one of them had a 56 caliber sharps rifle and he's just blasting away with this repeater sharps and he puts the rifle down and picks his pistol up to finish the job and you know what he said afterwards i put the rifle down and picked up the pistol because the rifle was was tearing them up too bad especially the little ones brutal oh my gosh i mean that makes me cringe sitting here today. The brutality of it. Wow. Incredible. But, you know, I'll go back to the, you know, talk about the good things about Ishi. I think, again, the things we can learn from Ishi, you know, the optimist in him. You know, when they went on the 1940 expedition back up into Yahi country, he didn't want to go. Because there were too many, I think. You said 1940, 1914.

Yeah, got you. 1914. He takes Pope and Waterman and Krober and Pope's son, Saxton, Jr. Well, they planned this trip without him really being involved. And then they go to him and say, hey, you know, Ishi, we're going to go back up into where you came from. And we're going to do a little expedition back up in there to see all these stories you tell us. We want to go see it. issues like, you know, I don't really want to go.

I mean, you know, and I can imagine what's going on in his mind. There's a lot of ghosts up there that, you know, all those memories that I don't want to relive. He didn't say that, but I got to think that's what he's thinking. You know, he didn't want to go. One person that I read speculated that he didn't want to go because he thought they were going to take him back up there and release him, you know, that they're going to put him back into the wild. Well, no, that's not what they were going to do. They wanted to truly go learn more about him and his culture by going into where he lived and where he hid during those 40 years of concealment. So they go up into there and they finally convince him to go up into there.

And we talked about that in the podcast. You know, they had to make sure that all the equipment they took was stored in a room where it wasn't near the bones and all the things in the museum because the spirits would have been not favorable on the trip. if that had happened. So they put everything in boxes and they shielded it all, you know, and convinced him that the spirits can't get into these boxes. And they go up into the... Ishi knew that was hogwash. Well, he might have.

But he was just like, whatever. But when he got there, once he got there, it was like, you could, you know, the relief over him to be back home. You know, it feels good to be home. It always feels good to be home, right? that I don't want to go to I'm home feeling that he must have had and he took him around to all the places that he grew up

and he you know where the stories he had been telling them about killing the bear when he was a young man he killed a bear and you talk I like the way you said it in the podcast you know the ceremonial disposal yes of the carcass was you know he did that and all these years later he's able to walk them back and go to that spot and dig those bones up. This is where I killed the bear. Wow. Wow.

And he took them swimming in the holes where he swam as a young man. You know, he took them back to the grizzly bear's hiding place where he was with the last four when the surveying party found them in 1908. He recreated that whole experience for them on that trip. And that trip lasted like six weeks. And it was, you know. Can you imagine that trip, like when my buddy, Steve Ronella, always talks about if he could go in a time machine, you know, he'd go back with like the Pleistocene hunters

and seeing him kill mammoths and stuff. That trip right there would be high on the list. That'd be on my bucket list. Of the time machine trip to imagine going back there with him. 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 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 Felts. Game Calls.com. I think you'll be glad you did, and you'll find out that the Steve Ronella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action.

The question that I have about that trip, and again, it's going back, trying to get into the head of Ishi, but would he have wanted to go back? And if he could, I mean, like, go back and live? Like, because you think about... No, he did. And they, you know, the books talk about that.

And his feelings were, no, that's the old me, the new me is here. I'm happy now. I'm happy at the university. I'm happy with my job. I'm happy with the. Do you think that's true? Because there could, and again, I'm playing a little bit of devil's advocate, but just kind of trying to answer some quick, you know, historical revision.

You go back and you say, was the guy really happy? Or was he just appeasing his captors? How much agency did he actually have? There's got to be truth to both of that. I think, again, the stories and the memories must have been overwhelming. Right. And as a person, you, me, all of us would be the same way. If we'd witness the genocide of her people, of our family, I don't know that.

I want to go back there. It's too painful. Right. But on the other hand, if I pushed those out of my mind, you know, that was home. That was where I came from. That's me. So I think that's where he transformed. You know, when they first approached him, he was like, no.

Oh, not going, not going to do it. And then he was like once he got there. I also know that we, it's a very difficult thing to not over romanticize like his life living off the land too. I mean, I think it's possible that he would have come into civilization to California. And he would have been like, oh, I can eat three times a day. Yeah. I don't have to go and hunt. Right.

This bed's pretty comfortable. Yeah. These people are pretty nice. You know, in our mind, in modern civilization, like now we have this romantic thing, like we're trying to go back. You know, we're like, oh, man, if he could have just roamed the woods. Yeah. Man, he sounds like, by all accounts, he came back in, he came into this place and was just like,

this is the way I want to live. I mean, and that's probably not fair to say that completely. You know, the relief of not having to worry, not just about being able to sustain my life through hunting and fishing and gathering, but the relief of not being shot at every day, you know, or fear being shot at every day. It must have been, I can finally sleep. I can finally relax. I can finally rest. Yeah. It's probably not just the creature comforts that he had, but it was the life that he had.

Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Man, wouldn't it have been incredible if he would have lived 25 years? Yeah, the more we could have learned from them. That's the saddest part of the deal. I mean, people should probably learn if they listen to Bear Greece and it's an old story. There's going to be some tragic death inside of it.

Almost all these stories end in a tragic way. But, I mean, now the fact that he was here for five years is, I mean, I'm grateful for that. I mean, he could have come in and died of tuberculosis. in six months. Or he could, you know, maybe he would have came in and not been associated with Krober and Waterman and Pope. You know, everything just came together. You know, it could have been scripted any better for those people, you know,

Edwin-Supier, the linguist, Krober and Waterman, the anthropologists, Pope the doctor, to have all come into the story. And all of them been the people they were, they really helped, you know, that story flower. You know, Ishi could have been captured, taken somewhere, and the story would have been over. Yeah. Without those people. Yeah. What I've found most interesting about the podcast and just, like, listening to the whole story was, like, how Ishi was kind of this, like, bottleneck of knowledge.

Like, all the knowledge from, like, thousands of years got passed through one man. Yeah. And you just wonder how much. that was lost. Like, whenever you look at like, Arkansas Blackbears, they had this major population bottleneck. And so now, like, the genetic diversity is still recovering. It's the same way with all that knowledge, it kind of came down to this really tight bottleneck where it was justishi. And then now it's kind of back on the, you know, like the knowledge is kind of being spread. But I'm sure a lot of it is kind of being rediscovered. I'm sure, like, you just have to

imagine how much of it would have been lost. Yeah. Like how much we don't know. I mean, like the fact that easy could go kill a deer in three days is like, you know, with a primitive weapon. Like I tried all season last year to do that and couldn't do it. So it's like, it just makes you wonder how much did the generations of knowledge, how much of that got lost.

Oh. Yeah, we had this conversation yesterday about they go up there and in three days kill a deer with a primitive bow. It's like, that's pretty hard. I challenge anybody in the country. Go out with a primitive bow. And there's guys that do it and can and have and we've done it. But just on the spot to just go kill a deer with a bow.

One of the back, I'm going to back up a little bit. You know, you asked me earlier about some of the things in my collection. One of the things in my collection is a quiver, a back quiver. No, it's a belt quiver of Saxon popes. It was came from the Pope's first. family directly. And it's made of white-tailed deer hide. Pope wouldn't have gone and bought a white-tailed deer hide and made a quiver from it. Pope killed that deer. Probably Pope killed that deer. Could have been issue. Probably Pope killed that deer and made that quiver out of the hide from the deer he

killed, you know, because issue was there to teach him how to do that. And he didn't kill that many white-tailed deer, you know. So it had to be one of the few white-tailed deer he killed in this time period. He died in 1926. And that story of him going up into the mountains with issue was 1914, so a very short period of time there. And, you know, he killed, I don't know, I don't remember now exactly a half a dozen deer during that time. One of those deer is that quiver. It is. It has to be. Yeah. That's interesting. Yeah. I mean, you know, that you can touch the history. You know, when you hold that in your hands, like holding that issue point or holding that quiver or the bow that Pope killed the lions with over in Africa, when you hold that in your hand, you know, you're holding the history of that bow, but you're also holding the history of that man, the man that made that bow, the man that used that bow. And that to me is what collecting is all about.

It's not, my collection isn't worth a nickel. You couldn't buy my collection. people have tried. It's not money. It's history. It's people. It's stories. And that's what makes it valuable. So interesting.

What were the things that you said you wanted to you said there were a few things you wanted to clear up? Well, you know, yeah, I think going back and you set the plate for us here when you talked about earlier in this taping, you talked about the character of the man. And that's

one of the things I didn't think I did a good enough job with in the two podcasts earlier. We talked a lot about the events and we talked a lot about the stories, but we didn't talk enough about the character of the man. So we've talked a little bit about that today, and I think that's one of the main things I wanted to cover. But, you know, what kind of soul it takes to go through what he went through and come out of it an optimist? and, you know, walk into a room, everybody happy.

You know, when he left that trip in 1914, when they finished the trip, then they come back to the train station, and they're going now back to Oroville. There's a crowd at the train station waiting to see Ishi leave. They're the hometown, he's the hometown hero, right? How ironic is that? Yeah, just years before you're trying to wipe out the whole culture. and now he's the hometown hero. Yeah.

Well, there's a crowd of people at the train station to see as she leave, and that surprises as she, and it kind of must make him feel good. So he's on the train, and he lowers the window, and he sticks his head out the train window, and he said, ladies and gentlemen, goodbye. Really? Wow. I mean, that's the kind of man he was, you know. Ladies and gentlemen, goodbye.

My fans. Wow. But, you know, he came from to really emphasize that point. In 1894, while he was still in concealment, there was one of the ranchers who had been, his cabin had been raided, most certainly by the issue, or by the Ahi over the years, had gotten tired of being raided, things being stolen from his cabin. so I'll get those rascals. So he put a sack of flour out on the table, and he wasn't there. He used the cabin only temporarily or part-time. He puts a sack of flour on the table, and he poisons the sack of flour with rat poison.

And he puts a sign on the sack of flour that says poison. Now, his logic was, if white man comes in, white man can read, and he won't take the flour because he knows it's poison. But if those rascal Yahi come in here, they won't be able to read, they'll take the flour and it'll kill them. So that's the kind of life that he lived for 40 years in concealment, people trying to kill him, not just shoot him, but poison, you know, vermin, rat poison. Wow. And he comes out of that, everybody happy? How do you do that? Yeah.

I mean, it's just, it's such the story. that shows the humanity of all people. Yeah. You know, all the differences that we have and that we see that are external between men, I mean, from different cultures, different times, the way we do things, the way we think about God, the way we think about our families, man, there's really not that much difference in all of us. You know, there shouldn't be. And the fact that this was notable to me, how quickly.

Ishi understood in a functional way, the modern world. Within a matter of days. Just showed, like, there's no gap in his intelligence. You could have taught Ishi how to fly an airplane. Yep. He could have been a pilot in six months and flown a plane if he'd have been live today. Obviously an intelligent man. It was not an intelligence issue, which I think sometimes there's this gap in our ability to think about these primitive cultures as, well, they must have been.

been, you know, not intelligent. Not so. I mean, they were, he, she could have had a IQ off the charts. I'm not saying he did, but he could have. And there were people that did that were just brilliant. And, you know, it's just so interesting. For his family and his, you know, other tribe members who have lived 40 years up there in concealment.

And for many of those years, people believe they were extinct because they were so good at covering their trail. And they walked from rock to rock, careful not to eat. even make a footprint anywhere, not bend a branch, not break a branch, not leave any trace behind. I mean, that's a sign of intelligence there, you know, in its own way. How could you be able to, you know, think strategically like that for so many years? Yeah. Hey, I want to do something, and I want to do it while Gene's here.

And it's going to surprise you all because y'all didn't know I was going to do this. Okay. we have we have a thing gene that's called the bear grease hall of fame where we we we take this actually quite serious it started a little bit as a kind of a funny thing right but these are all people that we've done stories on not all of them i mean we've done hundreds of stories but there's like 12 let's see one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven there are eleven people in the hall of fame some of our hall of famers would be daniel boone George McJunkin. Roy Clark. Now, Roy Clark is a plot man. Oh, okay. This is not the singer Roy Clark.

Yeah. Tecumps is there. Davy Crockett. Holt Collier. Some of these other guys are living guys. But we typically, before we do a Hall of Fame induction for a person, we usually take a long time to think about it and talk about it. Yep. You all know what I'm about to do? I do.

I do. I want to make a motion to nominate Ishi to be in the Bear Grease Hall of Fame. Absolutely. I will second that. I agree. Can we get a raise of hands all in favor of Ishi being in the Hall of Fame? Absolutely. Okay.

Without a doubt. Never before have we so quickly put someone. But when these stories started happening, I was like, Ishi's in the Hall of Fame. Yeah. Yeah. So we'll get a little plaque made. Yep. and he'll be the 13th inductee into the Bear Grays Hall fame.

Excellent. Yeah. And the guys that we put in there, there's some level of character that's in those, in every one of these people that stands out to us. It's not just accomplishment base. Yeah. It's not just accomplishment base, but there's a component of character. And that's, it's interesting. that's what you emphasized

and that to me that's what stands out about issue maybe it's the most it's the part of it that you wouldn't think would be most interesting but probably is

yeah is how he he could have been just another story I think if he hadn't been the person he was you know and the character of the man

I think is what separates him yeah it makes him such a unique part of that story yeah well Wait, before we close down and we're in no hurry, I want to talk to you about Fred Bear.

All right. Another one of my heroes. If you don't know Fred Bear is, I would imagine most people who listen to this podcast would, but Fred Bear is considered the father of modern bow hunting. But to meet somebody that actually knew Fred Bear is pretty unique. But tell me how you knew Fred and just kind of your impression. of him. Well, you know, I've been a bow hunter all my life. You know, again, I told you earlier, my first big game animals were grasshoppers when I was six years old out in the cow pasture. So I've always

been infatuated with a bow and arrow. Growing up, turning on the TV and watching the American sportsman, Fred Bear, Glenn St. Charles, hunting British Columbia for grizzly bears. The highlight of my life, you know, as a young person. And then I started a retail business, an archery, retail business back in Columbus, Indiana, late 70s. And I was a bear dealer. So as a bear dealer, right, you get to go to shows. You get to go to, you know, at that time the shot show. There wasn't an archery trade show at that time.

So going to the shot show and I got to be introduced to Fred as a dealer. And Fred was such a humble man, you know, if you're a dealer, you're at the top of the pyramid in Fred's mind. because, you know, you're the one out there, you're the foot soldier out there, bringing our sport to the people. You're the top of the pyramid. And that's the way Fred treated you. So as a dealer, I got to meet him several times,

going to shows several times. But then, you know, after a while, you kind of get to know each other. Then it becomes more of a, you know, we weren't hunting buddies or anything like that, but, you know, we got to spend time and talk and build a friendship. But such a humble man.

And every story you hear about Fred, you would think maybe somebody of that stature with all those accomplishments that Fred had would have an ego. Fred had nothing close to an ego. And that's just he would walk up to you, shake your hand, and he wanted to know about you. You know, what's your story?

How are you doing? And that was Fred Bear. And I think without Fred, there were a lot of people making archery equipment back in the 30s. You know, he started, go back to Ishi. Ishi brought Pope into archery. Pope brought Compton, Will Compton, and Art Young into archery. Art Young brought Fred Bear into archery.

Fred Bear brought me into archery. So I look at it like a family tree. You know, Fred was, you know, Uncle Fred to a lot of us. And I think his story is worthy of a deep dive. Yeah, I've said it before. Fred Bear, we've got to do a bear grease at some point on Fred Bear. I mean, he deserves definitely to look. You said something, and I want to talk about this,

you said that Fred was the best marketer of archery, maybe of all time. Yep. And that could be taken as, oh, Fred was just a good businessman and charismatic, but you kind of looked at it, and I would, too, as that marketing ability was actually really powerful, not just for the sport of archery, but for getting people on the bandwagon of modern hunting and conservation. So like it took somebody that was really good at marketing,

and this is relevant today, and this is kind of where I'm going, it took somebody like a Fred Bear. Like we're all here today, maybe in large part, because of a Fred Bear that marketed this to the world. Right. And it wasn't just, you said this, but it wasn't just, you said it on the podcast. It wasn't just about making good archery equipment. He knew it had to be marketed.

Well, you go back, you know, he started Bear Products Company in 1933 in Detroit. And at that time, archery and bow hunting in particular was not a very big sport. You know, there might have been a few hundred people across the whole country that were hunting with the bow and arrow. But he saw it, his love for the sport, he saw it as something that he could bring to the masses and he could grow this. So it wasn't necessarily just to grow bear archery. It was to grow the sport. And that's why all the patents that Fred ever put, he got a lot of patents on archery equipment. He never enforced any of them.

He patented the Boe Quiver. Can you imagine how much royalties he could have made off of enforcing the patent on the Boke River? But it was more important for him to see that be used. to grow the sport than it was to make a dollar. And again, I think that goes back to character. You know, the character of the man, he cared about building the sport. That was what was important to him. And that's bear archery will grow, but only because we're building a sport for it.

Right. Okay. The reason that's relevant today is that there's a group of people, it's a very small minority of people that would say that modern hunting is. is overcommercialized and is being marketed just for the sake of companies making money, which there are plenty of companies that make money. Meat eater makes money. Bear archery makes money today.

Matthew's archery. I mean, companies do make money. That's what they're in business for. But their criticism is that we're promoting the sport of hunting for the sole purpose of making money. And there's a whole bunch more people in hunting today because of, influencers and outdoor media than there would have been. And I heard you say something before this. You said, oh, there's always been those guys.

I mean, basically the opinion of these folks is that we should hunt and not talk about it. And in short, what I would say is that if we hunted and didn't talk about it, a generation from now, this whole thing would be dead. It would be gone. Is that, do you believe that to be true? Absolutely true. I've been an active member of Pope and Young. I'm a senior member of Pope and Young. And Fred was a big part of Pope and Young.

And Fred was Bear Archery. You know, he was in the business. He was one of, some people will say, you know, that the commercialization of our sport has ruined our sport. Well, if that was true, Fred Bear would have been one of the first guys commercializing our sport. He didn't ruin our sport. He built our sport. So are you commercializing the sport? for the sacrifice of the sport?

Are you commercializing to build the sport? Yeah, I'm going to make a few dollars. Like I said, Fred made money with Bear Archery Company, and that was his livelihood from 1933 until he passed away in 1988. But he didn't do it at the sacrifice of archery. He did it at the benefit of archery. And another quote I want to give here, and we talked about this earlier too.

One of the people that crossed paths with in my life was the guy that started Muzzy Archery Company, John and John and I got to be friends over the years and John said something to me one day at a show and he said there's you know there's some people who want to be something in archery and there's some there's other people who want to do something for archery and I thought I sat down and I thought well that's really deep you know and I think that's where we're at are you doing what you're doing because you want to do something for archery right are you doing it because you want to be somebody in archery are you trying to be another fred bear than never be another fred bear? Quit trying. It's not going to happen. You're just making a fool of yourself. But if you're trying to do something for archery, hats off to you. Yeah.

And I think that's a powerful distinction because we have something today that we've never had before, which is social media influencers, which is a whole different category of marketing that the world's never seen before. And so you could make the argument that there's a lot of people in hunting, not just bow hunting, but there are a lot of people in hunting. that are trying to make a name for themselves. And you could, you know. You can smell those people right away. Well, I think you're right. And I think there's people that would probably get some of them wrong, too. You know, I mean, because I would, it's possible there would be, yeah, there's a lot of criticism of influencers.

But my point about the hunting stuff is, is that our. culture, I mean, in bicycling and ATV stuff and the equine world and the mule world, in sewing and knitting, there are influencers in homemaking and cooking. I mean, our culture has now social media influencers. Why wouldn't hunting have social media influencers as well? But the motivation of them is everything. And they're bad apples. There are.

But I just was thinking about, I'm connecting all this kind of, I'm kind of including you in a conversation you maybe hadn't been in before. But like, those guys would criticize Fred Baer. If you think commercialization of our sport is bad, then you're criticizing people like Fred Bear and Ben Pearson. Right. And you're wrong. Yeah. You know, they commercialized our sport for the sake of our sport. Right.

Not for the sake of their personal image or to be somebody important. Right. They didn't cross their mind. Yeah. Yeah. It was just a byproduct of them building our sport. Yeah. Yeah, that's really interesting.

Any closing thoughts, Josh or Bear? I don't think so. Man, that's been great. I really enjoyed this series. I enjoyed getting to spend time with Gene. Yes. There's a wealth of knowledge in that guy right there. Yeah.

Yeah, I can't thank you enough for coming to Arkansas and being willing to share your story. Anything we could ever do for you that would be beneficial. I mean, we'd do it. I just thank you for... I just keep doing what you're doing. You know, I'm bringing the stories and bringing, you know, sharing the history of our sport and keeping the spirit alive with those people that came before us. I think that's what motivates me.

So thank you for helping with that. Yeah. Well, all right. Keep the wild place is wild because that's where the bears live. 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.

was a sleeping bag, and there was a full of blood. Oh, my God, he doesn't have a hit. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors. Where the terrain is unforgiving, the evidence is scarce, and the truth gets buried under brush and silence. Indications were he should be right there, but he wasn't. This season, we're going deeper. From cold case files to whispered suspicions, from remote mountains to frozen backwoods. Each story begins in the wilderness and ends in darkness.

Because out here, there are no witnesses, no cameras, just fragments and the people left behind trying to piece them back together. He's not an honest person. He's incapable of being honest. Somebody somewhere knows something. I'm Jordan Sillers. Season 2 of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, IHeart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an I-Heart podcast Guaranteed Human