Bear Grease - Ep. 45: Bear Grease [Render] - LIVE at the Bonanza

Episode Date: March 16, 2022

On this episode Clay and the gang are LIVE, for the first, from the Black Bear Bonanza in Northwest Arkansas. Clay, Misty and Brent Reaves are joined by James Brandenburg, longtime friend of the show, Myorn Means, Arkansas's Large Carnivore Biologist, and Moe Shepherd, a mountain man and real-deal woodsman. The crew gather to discuss in depth the history of black bears in Arkansas, hunting bears on public land, and the purpose of baiting bears as a management tool. You're not gonna want to miss Moe's close encounter with a mama bear and her cubs. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee 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 and real use. Hard wearing where they need to be versatile where it matters. No shortcuts. Just gear designed for the work that earns the season.

Built to perform, built to last. Check out. First Light's new 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. All right, man, this is like groundbreaking stuff.

This has never happened before in the Bear Grease podcast world doing a live podcast. So we're in just outside of Bentonville, Arkansas, at the Black Bear Bananas. So for all the people that are here live, we're going to be, we're going to be, yeah, there we go. We got a pretty good crowd here. way, way more people than we thought we'd have. Yeah. Some of y'all got to leave. We love you all.

Yeah. So we, this podcast will go out on the Bear Grease platform here in a couple weeks, assuming that these guys don't just say, like, ridiculous stuff that makes me just, like, cancel the whole thing. So maybe you guys just get to hear it all on your own. I don't know. this has been so much fun this is this event has been in the making for several years yes yeah we were we were just about to pull the trigger on it two years ago and uh i know most of you hillbillies don't get out much but there was a global pandemic we didn't hear about it much here but there

was a global pandemic that uh kind of shut the world down and i think the event was planned for march it was the end of march 2020 so it was yeah and where were you then. Yeah. Yeah. So we have this like identical event plan. Myron was going to come and we were going to have a live recording of what at that time was Bear Hunting Magazine podcast.

So maybe I think it's better. I think we're all probably better than we were two years ago. Hopefully. Yeah. Yeah. I want to introduce my guests and each one of them are here for very particular reason. And that reason will become clear. here maybe as we go further.

This is James Brandenburg. James is the lead man for the Arkansas chapter of the backcountry hunters and anglers. Yep. Hello. James. James has been emceeing today. And James was on the Bear Hunting Magazine podcast with me several times. And he always did, I like talking at James.

I don't know how much that he says that it's like really profound. But I find when I'm within arm's reach of the guy that I like talking at him. So that's a big compliment, James. I feel like that basically what I am is just there as a wall for you to bounce things off of. Yeah. And you solve most of your own problems without me intervening. If I'm being honest with you, the first time we said guard the gate in the context of guarding the gate in predator hunting, being the gate for the anti-hunting community to step into our space as North American hunters. was when I was talking to James.

And it was only after that that I was like, we got to guard the gate, guard the gate. And then since that time, you know, we've talked more and more on that and built this idea that I think is catched on in the country, is that we have an incredible, incredible thing in North America that nobody else has, which is this opportunity to hunt wildlife, to hunt on public lands. and we have the most successful wildlife management system of anywhere on planet Earth and the history of planet Earth. And the way that those who would be against us for whatever reason, the platform that they often target to enter into our beautiful space that works so well is through predator hunting and sometimes through bear hunting. And so I feel like our job is to tell the story of the bear hunter, give context to it. You know, why would somebody want to shoot a bear? We like bears. And, you know, our message is we love bears more than anybody.

We want bears to thrive more than anybody does. There's nobody on planet Earth that wants there to be more bears in Arkansas than me and Myron Means and a bunch of you guys. And that's the truth. And it's a difficult cell. It's a multi-step cell to convince someone with no. history, no connection to hunting to say, killing a bear is actually a good thing for the big picture. I mean, that's a multi-step cell. It's like, well, yeah, we are taking one individual out,

but, you know, for the habitat that we have, that animal needs to be taken out, and there's selective measures, and the gaming fish is monitoring, you know, multi-step cell. It's a very easy cell for someone with no even emotional connection to hunting like most of us here would have. historical connection, to go, man-killing bear equals bad, done deal. So here in Arkansas, thank goodness we do not have that problem. And we're here today because we plan on never having that problem here. But we live in such a world that is so interconnected. In my work with Bear Honey magazine, I was introduced to a world I was absolutely unfamiliar with, which is a world that is, Well, just that the hunting community is under attack another places.

20 years ago growing up in Arkansas, if you told me that, I would have said, man, you're just crying wolf. I mean, who's coming to Arkansas telling us we can't hunt? And you guys know that the world's changing quickly. And what we can do now is build a foundation of understanding, a context, knowledge base. And we're not mad at anybody. The people that might be against us, we're not against them. We're not trying to be ugly and stomp our feet. We're trying to be the smart, wise guys by wise guy.

Brent's kind of a wise guy in the negative way. Now, the guy with the most knowledge, the guy with the most wisdom, the guy with the most understanding of the big picture, I think wins inside of this. So that's what we're trying to do is just educate people on why we're doing what we're doing. So James Brandenberg was there when we talked about that. That was introduction number one. That's a classic introduction there. We may not make it very far.

Did you see how that went? I just kept quiet and he let him talk. What do you? You wasn't lying. You just bouncing off. You guys are welcome. I will not go in sequential order here. To my left, this is Myron Means.

Myron Means is, I've known Myron since 2008 or 9 or somewhere. Somewhere a while. Myron is the large carnivore lead, large carnivore biologist for the state of Arkansas. Is that the way you'd say it? only. The only, one and only. He leads his cell. Yeah, I have a small to medium-sized personnel staff of me, myself, and I.

Yeah. So Myron's worked with the Game and Fish, his whole career out of college. 25 years with the agency this year. Yeah. 27 years working with Black Bears in Arkansas. Yeah. So Myron is the resource for knowledge about Arkansas Bears. And I'm going to get Myron.

a little bit to give us the story of Arkansas Bears because if you're here today, no matter if you're from Oklahoma or Missouri, you need to know the story of how Bears got here. This is my wife, Misty Newcomb. Misty is a classic on the Bear Grease Render because she keeps us in line. And I get more comment. She keeps me in line. I get more comments about Misty being on the render, and so I just keep bringing her on.

Not because the comments, but because I like her. I hear there was confusion today that someone tried to sell themselves as me. Yeah. Is that someone trying to steal my identity today? I got the beard. That's how you tell us a fart.

Britt and I, we often get mistaken for one another. I don't ever mistake them for one another. Good thing. It's a good deal. Brent Reeves. Everybody would know Brent Reeves from the Bear Grish Render. And Brent and I have been friends for a long time.

And we've bear hunted a lot together in different places. And Brent is here for the Southern Wit and Charm. So if you have a little meter and you're taking notes, that's the only reason I keep them around. Brent says stuff to me every single time I'm around him that I say, did you just make that up or did somebody tell you that? What I have noticed is the stories are often in. consistent though because sometimes he's like my dad told me that and the next time it would be like

my uncle told me that and the next time I'd be like I made that up so I don't know it's hard to know the truth I lie a lot I keep around though but I'm a great friend of mine that's how you tell the difference and then final and definitely not least on the end here is my friend Mo shepherd and Mo is here for a very specific reason I've got a story I want him to tell you later but But Mo is like a mountain man. If I think about Arkansas guys that are just woodsmen, just real deal woodsmen, Mo is one of the most accomplished big woods mountain hunters that I know. And he and I have corresponded a lot with bear hunting.

When I was really trying to learn how to bear hunt in national forest without the use of bait, which we can talk about a little bit today, me and Mo, I mean, Mo was a resource for me because he spent his whole life in the mountains and killed bears on purpose in national forest, you know, not an incidental deer kill. Some of them were incident. I think he got lucky on, you know, probably a third of them. That's your opinion. No, but I just have a lot of respect for Moe as a woodsman.

But, hey, okay, I got a little ahead of myself here, which I tend to do sometimes. Do you know what the bearish render is? We got a lot of nodding heads. So the Bear Grease podcast is our documentary style podcast that is not like this. It's where we have, you know, we have specific topics, if you hadn't heard it, specific topics. And we really dive in deep and it's a well put together like polished podcast. This, I'll tell you the truth. A lot of it's because we couldn't do that every single week.

It was just too much work. We had to figure out a way to do something else. So we put together an eclectic group every week on the off weeks. typically talk about what the podcast topic was about the week before. So y'all understand the format. That's what we're not going to do that this week because this is a special one. We're going to talk about bears. Myron, why don't you give us a rundown of just bears in Arkansas and kind of just a historical look, you know?

How much time we have left? You know, that's good. I know you could talk for an hour about. to make this real abbreviated and real quick. Yeah. I'm sure most of you know that Arkansas at one time, we used to unofficially be known as the bear state. Bring it back.

Yeah, bring it back. Before we were the natural state or the land of opportunity at the time of settlement, we were called the bear state. And it was thought at the time of settlement in Arkansas that we may have had as many as 50,000 black bears in the state. And, of course, the landscape was completely different than it is now. I mean, we had vast expanses of bottomland hardwood, mature forest, upland, hardwood, pine mix, and it was just a different ecosystem than it is today.

At the time of settlement, very briefly, bears had one very sought-after commodity that was plentiful in Arkansas. And that's that right there. He's holding up a jar of bear grease. Bear oil. And we all know kind of what happened with the demise of the whales. You know, the wells were sought and hunted for their blubber to render down the fat for oils. Well, the same thing happened with bear. Their oil or their fat was highly coveted at market hunting-wise. So what better place to get oil, bear fat, than in the bear state, right? And so at the time of settlement through settlement into Arkansas, it became a, you know, a really sought-after commodity.

Bears were market hunted, you know, unceasingly or without any regulation or anything. And so they were almost extirpated from the state completely. In fact, by 1951, a man named Trust and Holder did a land survey of the state of Arkansas and found that the only remaining population that he had evidence of was in the lower white river drainage, scrubgrass bayou, and it was thought that we may have had as many as 50 bears left in the entire state. Now, if you're a big Clay Newcomb podcast fan, and if you've listened to his podcast with Orie Province, some of those really old timers that lived in the wash tawes or the Ozarks,

they'll tell you, hey, when I was a good. kid back in the 30s or 40s we saw a bear. So is it likely that there were some remnants of the mountain bear population still out there? Sure. But in 1958, game and fish embarked what is still to this day a historical reintroduction effort in over a 10-year period they reintroduced 254 bears from Minnesota and Manitoba, Canada into the Ozarks and Warshotals of the state. horse were grown back up at that time, and it was really perfect bear habitat. And there wasn't a season on at that time. Can I interject something?

I think this is a compelling part of the story that gives it a little more context, is that from the time of white European settlement of this part of the world, which would have been, you know, in the early 1800s, the first people were getting here pretty much and starting to settle. by the turn of the century by 1900 and on a little bit further almost all of Arkansas would have been cut for timber to build the eastern U.S. I mean they were sending timber from here and marketing back, especially after the railroads. They would have done that.

But basically by the 1950s and 60s, well, go back, the national forest, what am I looking for? The federal government protection of National Forest started with Teddy Roosevelt. I want to say in the teens, when was it? Early 1900s, before 1910. Before 1908. 1908. Teddy Roosevelt set up the Forest Service.

And so they started protecting these big blocks of what became public land. Yep. And so for 60 years, the timber was able to regrow. So in the 50s and 60s, for the first. time a bunch of our habitat all of a sudden had this big timber and was good for bear habitat. So it was like the right time, habitat was right, everything was right. And so that's why it was the success. That's exactly right. And, you know, the forest were coming back. Bears were protected. So it was, I mean, it was just excellent bear habitat. And, you know, bears have proven one thing

not only here in Arkansas, but about anywhere else, but giving the opportunity and the right kind of habitat and circumstances, their populations will flourish. And so the population flourished and it actually flourished to the point that by 1980, gaming fish reopened bear season in the state. And we've had a bear season this last year marked the 41st modern day bear season. If you'll look at our bear harvest since 1980, it's just been a steady increase all the way up. We think we probably have around 6,000 bears in the state. now, you know, give or take a few hundred or maybe even a thousand. But I mean, probably one of

the most unique things about bears in Arkansas is we seem to be looping through these 20-year cycles. You know, the bears were reintroduced back around 1960, give or take a few years. By 1980, 20 years later, we're able to reopen bear season in the state. And from 1980 to 2000, You know, our bear population had increased in such a way that we were not harvesting the number of bears we needed incidentally. So what do we do in 2001 to increase harvest rates? We added baiting to the regiment. Opened up bear. To our harvest strategy or to our regulation strategies.

And then so here we are 20 years later in the same bear population. And what are we talking about now? reintroducing a bear season to the Gulf Coastal Plain of Arkansas. That's a big deal. That is a big deal. That is a big deal. And so, I mean, it's just a good testament to great conservation efforts by game and fish. And, you know, land use patterns change.

Everything changes, you know, over time. But it's something that I've certainly feel privileged to be a part of to be. being a state that has done this so successfully, reintroduced bears so successfully. You may have said it, but in the biological community, the reintroduction, which a reintroduction is different than a, that is a specific terminology to describe taking adult wild animals and relocating them and turning them loose. But it's considered the most successful reintroduction of large carnivores in the world. That's right.

That's right. It still stands. I mean, no other natural resource agency anywhere in the world has done what Arkansas has done so successfully with a large carnivore. That's something to be proud of. It is. It is. I mean, it really is.

And to put it into context, too, when you look at a, you can type in your phone for like a heat map of North America for where our bear populations are, and you'll, you'll see a bunch of red in the eastern United States. I mean, one of the strongholds of the black bear is in the east. You know, the southern Appalachians all the way up in the, up in the Maine, into Canada, all the way down to Florida. I mean, the eastern U.S. has some incredible bear populations more than us. I mean, you go into West Virginia, North Carolina, Virginia.

Man, they have some incredible bear populations. Okay. So imagine all these bears here. and then all of Canada is just, Canada is bear central. I mean, Canada is the wilderness that they actually have in Canada is just remarkable in terms of actual definition of wilderness being places where people and civilization and roads are not. So Canada still has very much a strong bear population.

And then it loops into the Rocky Mountain West. And remember, I'm painting a picture of a heat map. The Rocky Mountain West all the way down to old Mexico has black, bears. All the western states, a lot of them have pretty good bear populations, very good bear populations in the northwest, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana. So there's a big hole in our map, though, in the central U.S. from about middle Kentucky over to the Rocky Mountains, and the Great Lakes have bears too. So from like Michigan down, the whole mid-south and south, no bears, except for this one little red dot about that big, which is the Arkansas bear population.

So, I mean, think about that. I mean, when you're looking at this as a continental resource, it's pretty wild that we've got bears here. And now, and what Myron could tell you better than me, is that from the reintroduction of those 254 bears, now these bears are moving into Missouri, such that Missouri has had their first bear seeds. and we're going to talk, I believe Laura Conley will be here later. She will be. She will be. They're going into Missouri.

They've moved over into Oklahoma just this week. Did you hear about the legislation where in Louisiana they're proposing the bear season in northern Louisiana? I kind of got wind of that a few months ago talking to Louisiana's bear biologist, but she thought it might be coming. Well, they put it out as an official proposal. But, I mean, that's massive conservation success. in 2022 when we live in such an urbanized world. And whatever is, this is what I always say, whatever is happening ecologically in North America,

for some wild reason, has been beneficial to black bears. I mean, and so to me, it's kind of, it's kind of poetic in a sense that, you know, the American frontier truly was fueled by bear meat and bear grease. That is not hyperbolic. I mean, people used to not eat deer meat, just keep their hides, and they killed bears for their meat and for their hide. Well, they used their hides too, but for their oil.

I mean, so this bear was so important. And then there was a time when the bears were extirpated. Just like, you know, Arkansas is a great, a small microcosm of what happened in bigger places, too. The bears were gone. People forgot. I mean, literally in Arkansas, people forgot. I mean, it's like bears weren't here, basically. in a functional way for 70 years, 60 years.

And then all of a sudden, in the 80s, it was like, holy cow, we got bears. And then while Myron walked through from us having a bear season in 1980 until 2001, and I'm about to make a claim here that if somebody can dispute me, they will, I'll give them a jar of bear grease. So during that period of time, Arkansas was probably killing less than 150 bears a year, maybe.

There was no baiting. So from 1980. Probably around in there, yeah. I think I saw some. Harvest was, yeah, it was just pretty anemic, yeah. I mean, because most people had to do it. It was most of the harvest at that time was incidental to deer hunting. Deer season and bear seasons ran concurrent.

And so, you know, most people didn't actively hunt bears. They were out deer hunting and, oh, I'll see a bear. I'll shoot a bear. So bear season's open. So really up until 2001, I, I don't. I would say the majority of the bear harvest was incidental to deer hunting. And that's exactly my point is that guys, there were some, but there weren't a lot of people really targeting bears.

2001, they decided, I'm building to a point here that I want everybody to hear, is that in 2001, they said we have so many bears in Arkansas, we need an effective way to manage these bears. Because to take out, typically in bear management, to take out 10% of a bear population per year is going to equate to that population remaining stable for the most part. And Myron could tell us a word about that. In general, that would be a true statement. And so they said, we cannot harvest the number of bears that we need for the habitat that we have using incidental deer harvest to kill these bears.

Did you ever kill a bear in the 90s? Yeah, 1990, I killed my first bear. 1990. Did you do it on purpose? Yeah, I was bear hunting. See, there weren't many for real I thought you'd kill them early Were you in that?

Did you hunt the first? A hundred first year in 1980. Wow. Yeah. Amazing. And I hunted each year. I hunted each year up until 1990 and I killed my first bear in 1990. I'm curious to see how many here did hunt bear prior to 2000 in Arkansas.

Wow. One. Me. Yeah. Borrow long. That's why you're up here. Well, okay. So what they had to do, and it was a management decision that the game and fish did, is they said,

we're going to manage our bears with bow hunters. And I'm putting words kind of in the, I mean, this is what I've heard. We're going to manage bears with bow hunters on private land over bait. And that was an extremely critical and, I think, brilliant move for the state because all of a sudden it opened up a real possibility for people to tap into this resource. I mean, it kind of opened the floodgates for hunters to really be able to kill one. It really did. It allowed people to kind of target bear, so to speak. And after that point, you know, once people learned how to bake bears and how to go about it,

you know, there was a learning curve associated with it. But after a few years when the culture became not acceptable, but when people started learning how to do it, that's when you saw our harvest in the state really take off. This is a principle, too, inside of wildlife. and I saw this as a kid growing up in a part of Arkansas that was a really good bear area, is that because it was really difficult to target bears, they held little value, I would say. I mean, for real, like cultural value, like my dad would tell you, I mean, it was kind of like, man, you don't want a bear anywhere around where you're hunting.

They'll tear up your deer stands. They'll tear up your deer feeders. They're trouble. And I saw people killing bears and just kind of like, yeah, just, I mean, almost like a trash animal. Yeah. That was. Kind of a vermin mentality. And that is not a blanket statement.

There were people that were killing them and loving them like Mo. But in general, I stand by that, that there wasn't a great incentive for someone to be a bear hunter because it was so difficult. And when they liberalized that season, all of a sudden, we started hunting and we were like, holy cow, we can actually go kill a bear. Absolutely. And we learned how to bear hunt. We learned about bear meat. We learned how to, you know, we're still learning just kind of this, this, how you know, how you need. this wildlife commodity is. But I refuse to let anybody tell me that bait and bears is a negative

thing. And you shouldn't either. It's a management tool for game agencies to harvest the number of bears that they need to. And I'm on the national platform a little bit, so people sometimes give me a hard time. And I absolutely will run someone into the ground if they say that hunting a bear over bait isn't hard, isn't fair chase, or is a lazy man's way to hunt? And I'm preaching to all y'all, hunting bears over bait is good. And don't ever let anybody come in this state and say that it's not. And that, and that's what they're doing. I mean, it sounds like I'm preaching to a choir that's like, we already know, we're in the church. But man, in Maine, the Humane Society of the United States comes in and says, man, baiting bears is, you know, they come up with all the reasons why

that you shouldn't do it. And so there is a time when we may have to be like, well, if we build it strong enough, they won't ever happen here. But my point is from the day the first bear ever killed overbate, I was like, this is a real deal. This is cool. And you don't have to have access to private land

and hunt over bait to kill a bear in Arkansas. And we've proved that. And guys like James has proved that. So definitely somebody that has private land in Arkansas and some of the key bear areas. Yeah, you got a leg up on us. And I mean, I'm one of those guys. I just, you know, there's some guys that were born in Stuttgart and have access to world's best duck hunting. There's some guys that were born in Iowa and have the world's best white-tail deer hunting.

And then, you know, so because I do hear that sometimes like guys are like, well, private land guys get all the bears. And it's like, man, it's just either. find private land that you can hunt, which you can do, or learn to hunt them in national forest, which you're hearing me preach about hunting bears over bait and how much I absolutely love it because you can be selective. And we can preach that because we are selective. I hadn't killed a bear over bait in Arkansas since 2006.

Last year I killed the first bear over bait since 2006 in Arkansas. It's because I'm waiting on a 500-pound bear in a big male. That's the truth. and if we're if we use the system right and as bear hunters we actually use baiting as a method to be selective and mire and i have talked about this a lot yeah letting the juveniles and females go and actually being selective we can we can do a whole lot more than if we have a harvest with a bunch of sows but i said all that to say um hunting a bear in the national forest on purpose hunting them like deer is by far the hardest hunt that I do in North America.

Really? I love it. And that's what Mo is so good at and has done over the years. I've taught him a lot of what he knows. Wait a minute. The story has changed. I think that story changed since earlier. When did he say his first Barry?

I mean, I was just a kid. I was in diapers. No. So, and I know there would be a mixed group of people here. some people that have access will be really interested in baiting bears than another group that might be interested in hunting bears and in big national forests but myron do you have anything to add to that i kind of want to talk to mo about hunting bears and no just that i mean you know in the in the in the world of natural resource agencies you know i mean if you're a craftsman or a tradesman or something you just

have a bag of tools and uh you have you know uh baiting is just a it's a management tool you know for us to get the objectives that we want out of our bear harvest you know if uh if something happened by the wayside i mean we'd have to have a on baiting we'd hey we'd certainly have to have another tool in the bag that we could use to offer up the same type of harvest numbers that we have today yeah so it's a tool yeah it's a tool i can add to that what you'd said earlier about the bears in the 80s through the early seasons and even into the 90s up until they started baiting I don't know how many people, friends, family, people that I didn't even really know would come to me when they knew I was bear hunting, you know, just after bears. Of course, I loved a deer hunt too, but I would take specific days.

I'd just bear hunt during the season. They said, why are you wasting time after them bears? That's what Gary Deerhunt. Tell me. Same thing Gary Newcomb told me. But I've heard that from a lot of different people and different styles of people and everything. You know, why are you wasting time hunting bear when you could be deer hunting? I say, because I'm intrigued by it, you know.

and a lot of those people, when I got my first in 1990, I rubbed it in on them. I mean, there's no doubt in my mind that baiting has spawned a, quote, bear hunting culture in Arkansas. No doubt about it. No doubt. And we do have a bear hunting culture in the state and it's thriving. 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 4. Phelps game calls.com. I think you'll be glad you did. And you'll find out that the Steve Rinella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. I want Mo to tell us a story of, you know, as a bear hunter, people that don't know a lot about bear hunting and they hear you bear hunt, they're like, have you ever been attacked by a bear? Have you ever been in a sticky situation?

And the truth of it is... Many and many times. We're talking about bears, Brent. Oh, no, that is not too bad. Really, in Arkansas, our bears, I mean, it would be, if you said, Clay, I'll give you $50,000 if you can go out in the next 10 days and have a bear attack you, I don't think I could do it. I mean, like, you have to, our bears typically are not aggressive and very few. incidents of human bear direct conflict.

Am I right, Myron? Correct. I mean, it happens occasionally. But this story is one of the closest that I've heard from around these parts. But, Mo, tell us your story getting kind of scared by a bird. Just a short version of it. Whatever version you got. To make a long story short, I left my house one day.

At the time I was living out in the middle of National Forest Land. So I could just hunt from my house. It was early bow season, and I just took off late morning. I didn't even get up early to go that day. I was just going to do scouting mainly for deer or bear. It was early, and I grabbed one of my recurved bows, and I took off from the house, and I were so into my slip hunt, slipping around looking for sign. I come up on a little bench there where there's a lot of pop-all bushes.

People from Marks don't know what they are and what they look like. They're real thick. They're not very big, and you can't see very far in them when they got green leaves on them. Anyway, I've seen some deer scat there, and I thought, well, this might be a good place to come back and bring a stand and deer hunt, you know. Where was that spot? That's kind of a secret. I don't like to get those out. Hey, do y'all remember Mo was on my secret podcast that I did?

Did y'all hear that? He keeps secrets. He ain't telling nobody. Nothing. Anyway, I don't even know if this is true. You don't need to know. Anyway, I was going through it, and I thought, this might be a good place to come back and bow hunt, you know,

and bring a stand. And at about that time, some movement caught my eyes, not very far from me. And I kind of looked in front of me over through the pop-bar bushes, and I saw a small bear cub. I thought, well, there was a little bear cub. That's pretty cool. Where's mama? How big was it?

The cub was just, had been born that during the winter. That year it was probably 20 pounds or something other, maybe 25. They're not very big about like a small dog. and I thought where's my man had probably handled that cub before Byron's handled about every cub in Arkansas especially in that secret spot up her I know he's been up there before

but anyway I thought well mama's around here somewhere I need to find where she's at because I need to if she shows up I need to let her know I'm here and just ease my way out of here because I'd run across thousands of cubs numerous times

over the years and I was slunking for her and about that time I seen movement where this can come from this small bear and there's another cub I thought well that's cool there's two cubs but I still haven't seen mama yet the bear factory yeah the bear factory

was generating right there and anyway I thought well I'll just let them pass on by and I'll just keep an eye out for her and they keep going around the hill but you know they won't be no problem or nothing well about that time the two little peckerwood bears here they come right towards me

they start mosing and playing and pushing on each other and they come towards me get closer they get with probably 10, 15 yards. I mean, I thought, that ain't good. They're going to get way too close, and I still haven't found Mama yet. So I don't matter if I talked to them or motioned myself, but I got their attention, and they both just stopped

and looked, and I think I may even kind of wave my bow at them or something to other, maybe said something real light. They just jumped into the bushes. Out of sight. I thought, well, that's good, but I thought I still haven't seen Mama yet. So I went to just back up and get out of there, but I kept looking because I didn't know if she might be behind me where she was at.

And about that time, I see movement, here comes Mama out, right where the Cubs did, out there about 25 yards. And she had her nose down to sniffing like Mama's do. She was following her cubs around, just staying where they was at.

And I thought, well, did I need to let her know I'm here or to see what happens? So I think I just sat there for a few seconds, and then she turned, sniffing, and started coming the same way they did towards me. I thought, this ain't good. This is not good.

How big would you say she was? was your average sow bear out in the mountains. $1,200. About 800 pounds. I would say she was 150 to 170 pounds. See, this is an honest man right here. You can't you? I can't.

150, 170. And it looked like she was not that old a bear. I figured that might even been her first cubs she'd ever had, you know. Oh, now we're speculating. I'm speculating like you do all the time. Anyway. Anyway, she started that same direction. I thought, I got to do something.

So I think I just in a soft voice said, hey bear, hey bear, hey bear. She looked at me and raised her head up and looked at me on all fours. Well, I got to get out here. So I knew where she was at the end, so I'm going to start backing up. Well, I start backing up and just talking to her, and she just standing there looking at me. And then I don't remember exactly what happened, but I remember all of a sudden, one of those cubs made a little ball sound like, br-h. And I looked at my left, and he'd climbed a pawpaw bush right beside me right there.

Oh, no. I mean like from me to you just right there and I'm like this is not good and when he done that you could see her demeanor change her hair bristled up she puffed up you know just I don't know I know you've probably seen them do that time or two yeah and when she done that I thought well I got to do something so I went to back up and before I even knew what happened she made it kind of a dust stuff like that and she was on me before I could even move I mean just bam right on my face snapping her teeth and I stuck my bow up in her face like that between me and her and just started hollering at her and backing up

she was biting snap it at my bow and once i remember she swatted at me but i think she was just trying to scare me about swatting leaves off the ground or whatever and uh but then she made a big lunge at me and i don't even know if i was ready or what caused it but she lunged at me like she was going to try to knock me down or bite me or something other and i just remember raised it up and i kicked her right in the face with my boot wow and it's just stung her she just froze like at and I really got loud in. I won't repeat some of the things I was probably saying. But I just kept backing up and hollering at her and hollering at her. And I guess I got far enough that she didn't think it was any danger. And I don't remember if the cub made another ball sound

or what, but then she acted agress again. She started towards me again and I got real loud that time and I even poked at her with my bow. She stopped again. I just kept backing up hollering real loud, I mean really loud. And I finally got, not plummed outside of her, but she finally just stood there and froze. And when she did, while I was backing up, she turned and went over into the bushes where the cubs were. And she kind of, I don't remember if she bailed at them or whether she swat at him. But anyway, she got that one off the tree, and the other one still on the ground, and I seen

them move off into the pop-ball bushes. So I just kept backing up fast and got quite a ways from them. And I caught my breath. And then I think there was actually a logger, and I sat down on it just to rest. I was probably 200 yards from where the bears was at, thinking about what had just happened. And then I realized then I carry a quiver on my side, and I had an arrow with a broadhead in my hand,

and I never remembered getting it out of my quiver. I don't know if I was thinking in my mind that she was going to get me down or what. I don't know. But I had it in my hand, and I thought, I don't even remember doing this. Wow. And then I got up and went home, and that was a story for sure. I'll never forget. That's amazing.

About what year would that have been? That was probably 2006, 2007, something like that. Oh, really? So it was in, six, seven. Sort of modern times. Yeah. Yeah. Not old like I am. Yeah.

Wow. You know, I've only heard one other story that kind of rivals that, and I can only tell it secondhand, and I'll do it real quickly. And it's an Arkansas-based story. Now, you can go in a lot of different places and get bear stories. And, you know, grizzly bears out west is a whole different ball game. Like, you know, our black bears are just not that aggressive typically. Grizzly bears are for real.

They'll eat you and hurt you. You know, so if you're in the greater Yellowstone region where there are grizzly bears in the lower 48, it's a different story. But for here, that story right there is pretty wild. Coming from, you know, coming from somebody that is reputable like Mr. Mo. I had a friend, and I'm telling his story secondhand. He was bow hunting. used a climber tree stand in the wash stalls, setting up in a big pine tree,

way up a pine tree. And he had walked in that morning in the dark. Well, just after daylight, whatever time, he sees a bear. And he has no interest in shooting a bear. He could have, his bow season. And this bear has its nose on the ground like a hound, and it's trailing him, just walking right where he walked.

And he was just like, huh, that's kind of odd. And the bear just comes right up, under his tree stand, sniffs up the tree and just look straight up at him. And he, as I remember the story being told, you know, he talked to the bear just like, hey, get out here, you know, and the bear started popping its teeth at him and kind of getting bristly. And the bear walked off and kind of did it. When they get aggressive, they kind of bristle up and kind of strut almost like a turkey. But he walked out there and then he, he, he, Whether he ran back, but basically a cycle of three or four times that bear would run to the base of his tree

and it would run up like two or three jumps. And then he was like, hey, you know, his intensity went up. And it came up like halfway up the tree. It went down. And before you know it, that bear, he said, was coming over the top of his tree stand. And he had a bow. And he was trying to shoot it when it was coming up the tree. but every time he leaned out, his era came off the rest.

If you're a bow hunter, you know what I'm talking about. You're trying to shoot straight down. And he could not shoot that bear until he was able to be about like this. And he shot that bear right in the throat when it was even with him. Point blank. Yep. And anyway, that story was told to me about, and I know the guy had happened to. And anyway, that's a wild story too.

Was it a male or a female? It was, well, he never recovered the bear. Oh. The bear dropped out of the tree, ran off, and never found it. He believed it to be a juvenile male, which makes sense, doesn't it? Yeah, well, maybe. Really? Do you know any wild stories?

That man is still in the tree today. He never came down. He texted me. He never came down. The battery ran out. Send food. I mean, uh,

Moses is probably about the crazy. one that I've heard. But I mean, I can, working with bears as many years as I have, I can absolutely see what happened to you as being, yeah, a legitimate deal. And, you know, I mean, doing all the den work that I've done over the years and everything else, having females with cubs and all that, I mean, sure they can be protective. You know, the adage mama bear. I mean, you know, that saying came about because of a reason because mama bears can be so protective above their cubs. Yeah.

But, you know, outside of that particular scenario, I mean, black bears just inherently aren't known to exhibit predatory behavior like a grizzly bear is or something like that. They have had black bear attacks in British Columbia or some places up north, you know, predatory black bear attacks. Right. But you probably have a standard, yeah, much different. A predatory attack would be a bear seeking you out. Yeah, actually stalking, walking you down and sizing you down and sizing you.

you up and it's a very distinct behavior pattern. And so it's, I mean, you know, bears are bears. Yeah. Yep. Ms. Newcomb, have you ever had any tough bear encounters? Does he usually make you talk? I was just thinking your story kind of reminded me and your story of last week my son was playing basketball and someone fouled them and I kind of felt some of those same

urges of that mama. I like get holding him. Snapping my teeth. Yeah. You know, but I thought what Myron was talking about, how the old timers in Arkansas will talk about how they saw bears in the 30s and 40s. And Clay knows this story, but my great-grandpa was kind of a legendary man in our little tiny town of 400.

My brother's here, and he could attest to if when people found out that that was our great-grandpaul, they'd be like, oh, Louis Joplin, strongest man I ever knew. One time he killed a bear with his bear hands. And that was like an actual thing we heard. He killed a bear with his bare hands. When I, so when we, when we, I didn't let her talk long. Yeah, I know, I know, all done. Is that where you, well, what I was going to tell him is that, and so when I started dating Clay, I told him, like, he's, he was interested in.

My grandpa killed Bear with his bare hands, what she said. It's kind of like, you had me at hello. And we would hear stories about him, like that he caught logs. You know, you kind of just don't believe stories like that. Like, I saw a truck, a whole truck of logs. he caught him with his own back. We'd kind of, you know, try to get him to talk about it. He was a pretty humble guy.

And sometimes he would be like, oh, yeah. And he would just real mildly be like, yeah, basically no arrogance whatsoever tell us, yeah, I did catch an entire thing of vlog. So you hear these stories enough. And I told Clay when we started dating, I don't know if it's true. But everyone in town tells me he killed a balance. So what did I do? He researched it.

I went and asked him. He was 89 at the time. So this would have, we've been married for 21 years. So it would have been while we were dating. Yeah, it was while we were dating. It was while we were dating. So it would have been, you know, right at the end of his life. And I asked him, I said, did you kill a bear with your bare hands?

And he said, no, but I killed one with a rock. And what happened when he was, it was, I think we figured it to be in the 1930s in Polk County. So this is a real deal. He lived right around Hatfield, Arkansas, and Polk County. And he said he was walking home from school one. or maybe not school, I don't know. He was just under 20, you know, he was a kid. So under 20 years old.

Yeah, I think he was around like 13. We didn't do the math when it would have been. It probably may have even been in the 20s. I think it was in the 20s and I think he was 13 years old. It's been a long time since we've done the math. But he said that he was walking home and he saw a bear cub crossed the road in front of him and run up a sapling. And he just picked up a, I mean, just what would a kid do back in those days?

He picks up a rock and starts chunking rocks at this bear. And, you know, at that time, I mean, you can't blame him. I mean, this was a vermin. I mean, these people were trying to make a living off the land. And I thought he was scared. What's that? I thought he was scared. Or I guess the bears.

Yeah. He, anyway, and he knocked it out of that tree and killed it. Wow. But why that story is unique and what we've talked about is that I'll have to go back and do the actual math of how old he was when he died and when it all happened. But it would have been probably in the 1920s, which there were not supposed to be bears in western Arkansas. Exactly. I mean, there's no doubt in my mind.

there was remnant bears running around, you know. Yeah, yeah. I believe there shouldn't be any day. Yeah. If I see a bear, I'm going to kill it. Yeah. Yeah. And he did.

That's what happened to the dinosaurs. Yeah. Hey, we're, we're, we're, we're going to, I want to transition to talking a little bit about, like, how to kill a bear. And, you know, there's a thousand different things we could talk about. But James, a couple years ago killed a bear in national. Forest on purpose, non-incidental kill, like very much so on purpose. And I think sometimes that's the most accessible way for somebody to hunt is just go out

in National Forest. That being said, I think you should go somewhere else. You shouldn't hunt here. They're not laughing. They're not. No, it's no stretch to say that Killing-A-Barrant National Forest in Arkansas or Oklahoma or Missouri is a very difficult hunt, but a doable hunt. And James did it the first year he tried,

which don't be encouraged by that. You probably can't. I tried it for 10 years. Daniel Boone, when Daniel Boone went into Kentucky crossed to the Cumberland Gap and came back after two years. Just see, oh, no, this is like my life, okay? I mean, we'll be talking about something. He's like, you know, that reminds me of Daniel Boone.

I like to talk at Misty, too. I talk at James, I talk at Brent. I'm not as willing as James. You talk to every. Listen. You just like to talk. Yeah, well, I mean, I guess so. No, so Daniel Boo, when he went into Kentucky and for two years went on the big

trap line and, I mean, there was nobody there except, you know, some few bands and Native Americans. And he was torn his whole life of telling people about it. Because by him telling him about it, he ruined it. Yeah. And so I think that's the story of us in a way, but like, We want to share what we know, and it doesn't do any good to hold stuff back. But I will say, Georgia and Tennessee, West Virginia are way better bear hunting.

That is actually not a joke. You can take more bears in Georgia. That's for sure. They have bigger bear populations. Yeah. There's other options you have. Yeah. Definitely if you think you want to get into bear.

That's not the game and fish say that. That's me because I hunt out there. So I hunted last year and the year before that is the only times. that I've ever bear hunted. I've seen two bears. One of them's dead, and the other one ran across the road in front of me before the season was open.

So it's hard. And if you haven't done it before, it's a lot of fun. You just kind of have to set your mind to what you're going to encounter, how you want to go about it, and you measure your success more by, I think,

how long you can stay out there and keep after it. You know, I scouted a couple days, before the season open. I scouted before that, but went in earnest a couple days before the season and hunted two, three days into the season during archery season,

you know, so put five to seven days into it, and that was about all I needed. I mean, because I was done. Like, I didn't want to do it anymore. Yeah.

Bears are a low-density animal. So if you think about it, like a high population of white-tailed deer might be 40 deer per square mile. In good bear habitat, how many bears per square mile would we have, Myron? 15 to 20 bears maybe per 100 square kilometers. Tradlate that. Todd.

Translate that in English. Our British guy is. Tom biologist and their metric. Come on, guys. This is America. What's a kilometer? Someone convert it for me real quick. Antiquely.

Give me an anecdote, like a bear per square mile? Two bears. Oh, gosh. Okay, I'll land base. I'll convert it for you to land base wise. 62. 62 square miles? Square miles.

62. So 25 bears per 62 square miles. Man, that's some really... Give us some bears. Give us a bear. About 0.6 bears per square mile. Okay. So there's our number.

Right. So, you know, 40 deer per square mile. 0.6 bears. Those are the size bears. These guys kill 0.6. No, that's good info. Yeah, and so, I mean, that's like prime bear density. So to qualify what James was saying, you can't be validated by seeing game.

I mean, we're used to deer hunting in like the golden era of whitetail deer hunting in North America. And we go out and we don't see deer. We're like, what's wrong? Man, when you bear hunt, that's why I love about it. You can't be validated by seeing game. I mean, I'll go seasons without seeing a bear in Arkansas. Me too. And I mean, we're doing stuff very much so on purpose and don't see a bear the whole season doing what we.

So what you're saying is I'm as good of a bear hunter as you guys are? You were that one season? You were one season apparently. Even a blind South finds an acre once in a while. Jonathan Wilkins over there. Jonathan, raise your head. Yeah, he killed a bear. Jonathan did the same thing James did.

Jonathan set out several years ago and he didn't even live over here but traveled into the mountains and Western Arkansas, hunted a couple years all on his own and killed a bear last year, didn't you, Jonathan? Yeah. So, I mean, this is a, this is a doable thing. Yeah, but you shouldn't, you probably shouldn't even try it. You should try to do it in Georgia or Tennessee. I would try to do it in Georgia.

Somewhere else. Yeah, way more bears over there. And definitely not at that place that Myron mentioned. I don't like that. Either one of them. Yeah. You know, I give bear hunting seminars around the state usually before bear season comes about or before you can bait.

And I really tell people, I mean, there's, you know, there's two different avenues to bear hunt. You can bear hunt on private land or you can bear hunt on public land. And, of course, private land, you know, there's certain techniques that can benefit you in establishing a bait station. And I tell people all the time, you know, I kind of go through the processes of finding natural bait stations on public land. Right. And I can attest to you, everyone here that a natural bait site can be

every bit as effective as, you know, a man-made bait site. Or even better at times. Or even better. You know, find a natural food source. You find that one particular white oak on a bench that's throwing acorns like crazy. Right. You almost said it. You almost said it.

You almost say right. But or you find that one particular black gum tree that's throwing, you know, berries like crazy right at the front of the season. So, I mean, I tell everybody. Or hickory nuts. Or hickory nuts. Hickory nuts. Hickory nuts. call them mostly in Arkansas.

Yeah, hickernets. So, I mean, I really kind of harp on that point to people. If you don't have access to private land and to do all that, a natural bait site can be every bit as effective. Let's just run through that just a little bit. Like in the eastern deciduous forest, really this would apply in Georgia and anywhere you can hunt bears over here. In the fall, we don't have spring bear seasons in the south.

Very few spring bear seasons in the low. lower 48. Maine has some spring bear seasons on some tribal lands and Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Washington has a limited, anyway, we hunt bears in the fall. And hard mast is going to be probably the main thing you're going to key in on. That's what the bears are keying in on, and that would be acres, whether it be red oak acres, white oak acres, whatever kind of acorn there is, it would be possible bear food. But just like white-tailed deer, they're going to be selective. they're going to high grade their food, just like you or I would. If there was a buffet out here, we'd go through and we'd say, I want that, I don't want that,

I do want that. But if there was a limited amount of food and there was only one or two options and we had to eat, we'd eat a lesser desirable food. The number one desirable food, we can just almost say without question is going to be white oak acres. During the time we're hunting, it's just a small window of time that really that we're keying on these bears. There's other times of the year they're eating berries. They're eating soft masts. We're not as keyed in on them during that time.

Myron mentioned black gum. That's something that you don't hear a lot about. But a couple years ago, I found a black gum tree. It was about 18 inches in diameter at the base. And it looked like a telephone pole that they had been climbing for years. Just, I mean, claw marks, branches all over the ground. and there were eight piles of bear scat under that single tree. Bears were just climbing.

It was probably one or two bears. They were climbing that tree, breaking the branches out of that black gum. And black gum has a little soft berry. It looks like a raisin. And boy, at the right time. When they hit, they are loaded with berries as they hit. Yeah. And, you know, so Acorns, you know, black gum, you might find a persimmon tree that the bears are hitting.

Persimins are pretty, there's just little windows when they're, when they're using those hickory nuts, beach nuts. Parts of Arkansas are going to have some beach timber, you know, few parts of Arkansas, but when beach nuts make, they're going to eat, they're going to eat those hard and heavy. That's primarily what they're eating in the fall. You guys agree?

Yeah. Like I said, I'd say acorns and then black gumberries. And then the hickory nuts is what I've found myself. But if you're in, like you said, and where the beech nut are, those are a half protein content mass. When they do hit,

They just don't hit very often. They will sure go to them then. And what I've found is that bears will use natural food very similar to the use a bait site. I mean, that's what Myron's point was, is that a bear is extremely habitual. If you can find where he's been, he's probably going to come back. And this is like the dream scenario that I would have only found. I mean, I talk about scenarios like this and you're like, well, heck, he must find a spot like that every year. not true. I mean, I probably found this three or four times in my life, but this is what you're

after. So I like to talk about what you're after. What you're after is to walk onto a bench or on the top of a ridge or wherever the acorns would be and find a significant amount of your food source and then a significant amount of bear scat. I mean, I've been in places where you walk up there and it looks like hogs had been in there and there's bears, you know, find 10 or 12 piles of bear scat. in a hundred square yard area some of it very fresh some of it old acorns on the ground i mean it's just if you can find that you're in the chips and then you just hunt it smart like you would hunt a deer you know you got to watch the wind or smarter smarter smarter there there so when you find that you treat it just like a deer spot you know you got to get the wind right but what i found and what i

didn't I didn't know until I did it is that you can kill a bear on the ground. I can't believe I'm telling people this stuff. Doggone it. You can stalk a bear and dry leaves on the ground when he's got his face eating acorns. And that's what I was unsure of. And 10 years ago when I was kind of just like trying to kill one in a national forest, I'd be out and the leaves would be dry and I'm sitting here with a traditional bow. And I'm like, how the heck am I going to get within 18 yards of a bear? And what I found and I have a video on bear hunting magazine YouTube channel of a bear that I first spotted about 60 yards away and I filmed him for 18 minutes. I know it because it was on the camera. I filmed him for 18 minutes just circling a white oak tree, just circling. Never looked up one time,

Myron. And I just started walking towards him in the bra. There was nothing to hide behind. And I walked to where I could hear him crunching acorns. And then I was like, this is close enough and I just kind of crouched down in the wide open and that bear you know eventually just kind of made his way my direction and I killed them at 14 yards but the leaves were crunchy dry point is you can stalk them if they're eating now if they're moving if you're like going through the mountains and you see one like coming across the ridge he'll be as I mean I'm not going to say as spooky as a deer but that bear is going to be alert if you can catch them feed them feeding, you could about walk up to them and slap them in the rear.

As long as they don't smell you. Yep. I mean, yeah, absolutely. They smell you, they're gone. Common denominator, and that is the wind was at your face. Exactly. Bears do not see, they're kind of near-sided, don't see probably well as most people. They don't have little small fuzzy ears, not big radar ears like a deer.

So they don't really hear that well. But the bear has the strongest nose of any land animal. and they use it. They live or die by it. So if you want to be a successful bear hunter, that is probably the most important factor that you can never ever leave out is wind. How thermals play, how down drafts play,

what your wind is doing, because you will never, ever stalk a bear with the wind, not in your favor. That's right. Yep. I noticed he didn't say use scent control products. He said play the wind. like a real man that's a whole other argument yeah I'm kidding yeah we won't dig into that yet

how much time do we have we're walking at all kind of inside jokes for bear grease rendered yeah yeah yeah so um I wanted to touch on that and that's all the secrets I've got I mean like people talk to me about how do you kill a bear in national forest I've told you everything I know right there yeah really it's literally get out and pound the dirt looking for places to hunt. And now James and Jonathan, they have taken my advice and gone out and done it. So it'd be interesting to see what I told him was.

Yeah. Thanks, Moe. And I taught Mo how to hunt too. Yeah. No, I will say that the, why I got into it is because it was an adventure and a challenge is something new to do, something you could do here in Arkansas.

It happened to be, I was planning to do it anyway, and then we had COVID, so we weren't going to travel anywhere. but I wanted to become a better woodsman. I wanted to just get out and see more of the state. And if you choose to do this in the National Forest, you're going to see parts of the state that you didn't know existed.

We live in a beautiful, beautiful place. Not as pretty as Georgia. Not as pretty as Georgia, thanks Clay. And you will challenge yourself in many, many ways to go out and do that. but that's what I wanted out of that particular adventure. And I thought there was a lot of value in that for me is just on my journey as a hunter. And I'm kind of thoughtful about that kind of stuff.

Not everybody is. I mean, I'm glad I brought a bear home and had all the stuff from it too. But it was a very fun adventure to go on. And that's what I would sell anybody. If you're looking for an adventure, take up bear hunting. Yeah.

On national forest on public land. It's tough. Real tough. Yeah. I want to talk real quickly about baiting bears. Just kind of give the high points of bait and bear. I'm trying to just get a swath of what people might be interested in. Does that sound fair to all?

Yep. Yep. Ms. Newcomb. Is that fair? Yes. Very fair. Oh, we ask you another question. What do you have to say about baiting bears?

Well, I'll say two things. There's bear bait around here. I can smell it. Well, what you smell is, yeah, Northwood's bear bait. Yeah. This whole time I've been looking for it. Wow. She nailed that.

She didn't know I brought this. First of blue bear. This is, uh, yeah, this is some stuff I like to use this Northwoods bear products. It sounds like. I'm going to give some of it away. That smells like false. If you bait bears, just come up here. I'll give you some.

And then in the, we also, Clay always finds, you know, places to go get just junk food, stuff that we wouldn't let our kids eat and fills the back of his trunk. And when our kids were little, one of them came toddling in. A handful. An expired honey bun. in their hand just gnawing it down and I was like what do you eat this is just normal bear bait and stuff yeah and my kids might whenever we see certain items in the grocery store they're like oh look there's some bear bait and it smells like that so when you're when you're bait and bear I always tell

people it's all about location location location most people they say well I got property in this county we saw a bear there once or twice you know is it going to be good for bait and bears and what I've seen is that even on a micro scale, like if you took like half of a county, there are going to be even inside, like even, let's say it's the best bear county around and you took even just a quarter of that best bear county around, there is going to be fringe bear habitat in that there's property in that best county that you probably couldn't kill a bear on. Bears are very selective about where they're going to go and where they want to be in the daytime. And so the short version is when you're baiting bears, you want to be in, you want to be where the bears want to be in the fall.

So it's possible that somebody's got bears, and Myron can tell you this, got bears on their place during the summer. But they're like, but when we put out bear bait in the fall, we don't get bears. Nothing shows up. Bears have big ranges. They're moving around. They do. They typically have a summer range and a fall range. And that fall range, you know, it may be two miles away.

but in the home range of a bear, they will have seasonal ranges within that whole home range. And they definitely, I mean, some bears have their summer forage area in very close proximity to maybe where their fall range would be. Right. But in other bears, you know, they may be three or four miles apart. Yeah. And you're not, as a hunter, you're not like trying to map out home ranges of different bears. but if you can have access to private land that you have permission to hunt in very secluded, remote areas that are typically connected to big blocks and national forest.

In our state, the bears are on national forest. I mean, that's just the truth of it. Bears want big, unfragmented, not true wilderness like capital W federal wilderness, but they want to be in big, unfragmented blocks. That's not exclusive. Bears can adapt and can be living, you know, in your backyard. In general, though, the bigger blocks, a big public land, rugged, rough, nasty stuff. That's where bears are going to want to be.

And you'll learn over time, like there was a time years ago where I was baiting like 11 different spots in a good county in Arkansas. And of those 11 spots, by the time season came around, we would usually have three, spots that you could kill a decent bear at. That whole time we baited, though, in September, we'd have had bears at every one of those spots. And as the calendar turns in September, coming to October, the White Oak Acorns, all the acorns start getting ripe, falling, bears start to transition. You know, during that time, there's just a big transition in the natural world from

summer to fall. and bears start to move around and you can basically you can hold bears early it's hard to hold them late everybody's baited bears you know will say man I had bears but they left by the time season came

you know what can I do to keep them and I told the guy earlier today I said the best thing you can do to keep a bear and be able to kill him on opening day is have a spot that you can kill bears and keep them until opening day it works that's the secret brilliant

so what I finally did after after what I finally did. Did Mo teach you that? Mo and his backwoods wisdom taught me that. What I finally did after baiting 11 spots is I said, why I may even baiting those other eight? I'm just going to bait the three. And so that's what I did.

I mean, pretty much just narrowed it down. I was like, I cannot kill a good bear at this spot. So we're just chunking it. You know, we tried it for several years. You can't give up on a spot after one year. I'd bait it three years before I was like, ah. Um, but you know, but a lot of, you may not have access to that many properties. So you may, it may be a deal where you bait for five years and finally you get a straggler that comes in.

And that's, that's okay too. But point being secluded land. Moe, myron. Yeah. And then, and the later in the season it gets, later in the fall it gets, the harder it is to get a bear to come to bait. Absolutely. Like a later muzzleloader hunt or the gun hunt, it's a lot harder to get them to come to those areas. you've got to try to get closer to where they want to be in that fall during the mass.

They'll come to bait once they hit the mast hard, you know, from opening a, when the acorns first fall, they'll hit it hard. But then as the acorns disperse and they get less of them than they're more apt to come back to a bait site, but you need to be closer to where they're hanging out, hitting that mass crop, too. So Mo and I kind of worked together on a bait site one year, and he killed a bear on November the 5th overbate, which was the latest I've ever. It's pretty late.

What he's trying to say, and I have people that are like, hey, I'm going to come bear hunt. What if I came mid-October talking about hunting over bait? And I would just be like, stay home. That's one of the worst times to try to kill them over bait. The bear season over bait, I kind of had this revelation last year

sitting over a bear bait in Arkansas is that it is an ephemeral window. I mean, it's like a short window that comes and goes where those big bears are using the bait site during the daytime, very short window, and it's always going to be as early as the season is open. I mean, so like when we bear hunt, I mean, we pretty much bear hunt over bait

the first three days of season, and then our baits just die. It's like they just turn to switch. We've done it for 20 years. It's not anecdotal. I mean, it's like, sometimes you hear, hear people say stuff and you're like, you haven't done that very much. Or you come to the wrong

conclusion. Man, bears leave baits. They're hard to hold most years. And you better, you better, you better hunt them quick is what I'm trying to say. Yeah, that year, you remember the reason we talked about it because I told you I'd killed a bear with about every means there was other than my pistol. Yeah. And the only way I could do that was during the opening of the gun, there was a firearm, fire on bear season. And that year, it was when it opened just a few days, five days prior to gun deer season. Yeah, it was long. It was pretty good.

And so we've baited and got a bear coming in, a good mature bear. And I was lucky the first evening I sat there. I sat there all day. But the first evening, I sat there about noon and then had to go eat about it. I'm hungry, you can tell. You look hungry. Yeah, the bear came in, you know, 30 minutes before dark. And I took it with my pistol and called Clay and said,

cut it up here. I've got a bear down. You're going to have to help me. we got a lot of fat off of that bear too that bear had a beautiful coat on November 5th you know the longer you wait in the season yeah I've got a had a rug made out of

and it's a beautiful rug I mean it's thick a lot of fat I remember holding a big filet of fat that was just like you know like that big yeah wow but um yeah and then as far as what to bait with you know there's basically anything

I mean there's regulations look in the look in the reg books for what you can bait. They have had to kind of get specific, but in general, just about anything that will make a human fat, a bear will eat. That's what I say.

We use a lot of bread, pastries, dog food, corn. I didn't know dog food made people fat. That's a good. Touche, Mo Shepherd. I've never tried to have you. It's how I stay this trim.

We're both fat, you know. Do y'all eat dog food? At every opportunity. No, we use a lot of used cooking oil. I would say that's a key component. And this is not a sales pitch. I got nothing tied to these guys, but these friar grease additives,

this is Northwood's Gold Rush. Incredible. It really is. Incredible. You pour this in with your friar grease, put it on corn, dog food, bread, whatever. It really attracts them, don't it? I can smell it right now.

Misty knows. That's the smell of September at our house. That's right. That's true. Yeah. The smell of September. We open this up in September when we're having dinner together. Hey, could you put that in a candle?

Could you put that in one of those bear grease candles? Oh, yeah. Colby. We need that. I don't know where you. Northwoods bear grease. The smell of September. I'm not sure.

That stuff really is incredible. It smells up here right now. Wow. Yeah, it really does. There's a lot of resource. I'll tell you what. If you want to learn out of bear hunt, you ought to subscribe to bear hunting magazine. Colby, Colby Moorhead and Jolene run bear hunting magazine.

It's the only bear hunting magazine. in the world. Wave at them, Coe. They've been a big health of course of that. I mean, people ask me all the time.

People message me and asked me some real specific question about bears, which I don't mind, but I'm like, man, I've spent the last 10 years writing about that

in every issue of bear hunting magazine. And so the first thing I say is you should subscribe to Bear Hunting magazine. And, but it's not a sales pitch. I'm just telling you the truth. If you want to learn how to bear hunt and see bear hunting on a big national scale,

it's handy because I can only talk so much. You got a lot of stories, a lot of different kinds of adventures and different ways to do it. And bear hunting is pretty diverse. And as a new bear hunter, you know, I'm still learning all the different ways to do it in different places. And I like getting the magazine to see those different things in different perspectives and just add different ideas to what I might do. So it's a good resource. Yeah, yeah. Brant, we hadn't talked to you yet.

It's surprising. What you want to talk about? I don't know. Closing thoughts? Well, I'm for bear hunting. Okay. I'm for baiting bears. I'm for doing anything.

I really appreciate where the gaming fish is gone as far as the Gulf coastal area, because that's where I'm from. That's a big deal. Yeah, it is a big deal. And the ground down there is flat. What? Yes, sir. It's like I tell you about coon hunt, you don't have to coon hunt in the mountains.

And now, maybe, we're not going to have to have. to bear hunting. So you don't have to walk up a mountain? Exactly. Well, I just, it's, it's just good. And, you know, I've, I've got friends that work down at Felsenthal, the guys that I grew up with, and they just, it's just, they see more. That's down in the southeast part

of Arkansas, actually goes down into Louisiana. And they see more and more. It used to be, he would call him, man, I saw a bear today. Now, now when I talk to him, it's like, you know, once every month or two. He only calls you when he sees black peppers? How many

bears have you seen he's oh gosh i don't know i couldn't tell you how many you know it's just it's absolutely remarkable at a place that i grew up and there's not many acres down there i didn't put a track on that you'd never saw a bear and now you see them it's it's not unlike it's not uncommon anymore yeah and it's yeah it's an absolute testament it's a testament to the folks that mire and that mire and that mirein works with and all these folks around here that put some value on something and see the value in it and they've been working for a long time to get it to where it's at now and it's hats off to you it's a testament to great bear conservation yeah it's what it is and it just continues to be you know flagship species for the agency i mean it really is yeah

continues to be a success story it's good to see that louisiana's getting a little after that wolf and we put on them a couple of days ago yeah you're welcome for both of those things. The bears and that. Bears and the whoop. Yeah. No, man, I can't, I can't reiterate enough how special it is that we have bears here and that we can hunt them like we can.

So, I mean, I'm like super great for that. Hey, thank you guys so much for being a part of the bear grease rendered. 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 Phelpsgamecalls.com. I think you'll be glad you did.

And you'll find out that the Steve Rinella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed human.