Bear Grease - Ep. 55: Bear Grease [Render] - Predator Calling Grizzlies and Crackling Fat

Episode Date: May 25, 2022

This is an in-the-field recording of the Bear Grease [Render]! Clay hosts his son, Bear John, and MeatEater's Cory Calkins, as they discuss a harrowing encounter they had calling in a black bear and grizzly at the same time. They recount the story Bear Newcomb's first-ever spring boar -- a blonde bear Clay calls "the most beautiful bear I've ever seen." Later in the episode, they touch on the second Genuine Outlaw podcast. This all comes to you straight from the back country as the boys sit around the fire and render down the fat of Bear Newcomb's bear. This episode is full of great stories and close calls. Connect with Clay and MeatEater Clay on Instagram MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and 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. All right, Corey, go ahead and put that bear fat in.

All of it? Yep. We just need to keep it stirring. So we are, we're in Montana, and we've got a fire going. We're on the side of the creek here. We just put about seven pounds of fresh Montana spring color-faced bear fat into a Dutch oven. And maybe the most apropos bear grease render of all time, we're going to render bear grease while we are talking.

So welcome to the bear grease render, everybody. Like I said, we're in Montana, and I'm joined by two special guests. I have to my left, Bear John Newcomb, my son. Hello. How's it going, Bear? Pretty good. Pretty good. Bear's got a story to tell us in a little bit.

and then Corey Calkins of Meat Eater. Corey, good to have you, man. Thanks for having me. We are, we're Creekside, we've been bear hunting in Montana, and so for anybody that this would be their first bear grease render, the bear grease render is when we generally talk about the previous week's podcast. On this episode, this is in the field, Bear Greas Render, which is a little bit different. We're going to talk about the adventures that we've had over the last.

five days. This is the fifth day of our Western Spring Bear Hunt. Cori, you've been doing this for a long time, though, right? Yeah, I sure have up in these parts anyway. Bear, this is your first spring bear hunt. Western Spring Bear Hunt. What are your impressions so far, man? I like it. I mean, it's a lot different than hunting back in Arkansas. I mean, like, everything's bigger, so, like, the hunting is just way different. Yeah, big mountains. Yep. Big, big, mountains. We're going to talk some about our last genuine outlaw series. We're going to talk about that, but we're also going to talk about that on the next render. But I want to dive into our hunt this week. Corey, this is my seventh Montana spring bear hunt in, I think, nine years. I think it's my

seventh hunt in eight years, because once I came twice. Last year, I came twice to Montana. So I'm counting that as two different hunts. Man, you've guided back in here for a long time. That's right. Tell me what you used to do before you worked for meat eater, and then I want to hear what you do for meat eater. Well, I guided back here for eight years. Fishermen in the summer, I should say

spring bear hunters, and then fishermen all summer, and then come September, we do eight weeks of archery and then rifle elk hunters, too. Yeah. Guided back here for a while, and then moved down to Bozeman and guided fishermen and hunters down around Bozeman for about seven years after that. So I've been guiding for about 15 years until I started for Meat Eater.

You started for Meteor a year and a half ago? Correct. And now, Bear, did you know that Corey guided for a big, fancy elk outfit in Montana? And you guided, I mean, like over 30 successful elk hunts for hunters. Is that right? Yeah. What years would that have been? 2014 to 2020.

Really? Mm-hmm. Can you tell the name of that? that place or no it's the CA ranch yeah climbing arrow ranch it just sold to it some new owners so the history of it has changed quite a bit just in the last year it's not a secret place anymore it's it's a well-known ranch for both its history and the elk hunting guys like will primos who's been on the show has hunted there yeah so we're bear we're up here talking and and corey had heard will primos on this podcast and he was like yeah i know wilber primos i guided him

For elk. Old Wilbur. Yeah. Isn't that cool? Now, you were guiding back into, you were doing horse trips, mule trips back into some pretty wild places. Mm-hmm. So you've been around equine and mules a lot.

My whole life, yeah, I grew up with them. My parents had a couple horses. More show horsing. They'd throw my little cute blonde-haired blue-eyed kid on a bay horse and ride me around, and we'd win some blue ribbons just for showing. Oh, nice. And then my parents did some trips back in here on horseback. So I grew up with them.

And then they got a little expensive as I got older. So we got rid of horses. But then when I started working back here, started using horses and mules, you know, packing on them. So our hunt this week, we're just on foot. I didn't. The last, I think twice I brought mules for spring bear hunting into Montana. But this year we're just on foot. And we've walked.

much do you think we've walked over the last four days, Corey? I'd say we've we've averaged about 10 miles a day so over 40 miles 40 to 50 miles. Yeah we've covered we've covered some ground bear. Were you a little bit war out after day three? Yes. I got to say though these Arkansas boys do pretty well in the Montana mountains I will say. Well bear's getting big enough now where he can outwalk and out hunt me that's for sure. I can see that it took him a while to get there but he's there now. We've got this We've got a big Dutch oven that's just full of bear fat. We're going to have to get this fire hotter. That's for sure.

Yeah, move that. So we've got to grate over the fire, and we really want to get that fire right up under that pot. It's got to be pretty darn hot to render it down. Okay. We got to tell. So the way that we're hunting these bears up here is that there's a lot of heavily forested area,

not a lot of openings, but there's a lot of logging activity. And so we're walking roads. So these roads green up before everything else. And it's no secret about how in the northwest people hunt bears, in the spring, there's no berries. The berries haven't ripened yet. There's no hard mast because hard mast grows all summer and then is ready in the fall. Pretty much what these bears have to eat is insects that are coming out and then green vegetation.

And then anything they could catch as far as meat, like they, you know, You might catch an elk calf or a moose calf or find winter kill carrying type of stuff. That means, though, that these roads create openings in the timber where green grass grows, vegetation grows. There's these clear cuts. Wherever the sun can reach the forest floor, there's going to be green stuff. And, man, there's no rhyme or reason. Well, there is rhyme or reason, but you're basically just trying to cover as much possible ground as you can. find the bear sign and then hunt in those areas.

And bear sign would be bearscat along roads. You might see bears from a long ways in places. There's small openings where you can see stuff. But this week, it's been pretty wild because we've seen. Corey, how many bears have we seen? 13, I believe. Well, 14, if you count the one that I was 30 yards from but couldn't see last night. Yeah.

So 14. Okay, 14 bears. and give me the breakdown on the species of bears. You're getting smoked. Corey's getting smoked out. Well, we've seen three grizzlies from camp, four, five grizzlies, and the rest were black bears. So five grizzles and then so nine black bears.

Yeah. Five gris, nine black bears. So let's start off by telling what happened on day two. with the incident, as we'll call it. All right. Bear, I need some input from you on this. So it had been raining. It had been raining and it was cold.

Temperatures have been fairly cold up here, which I like for bear hunting in the spring. And it'd been raining. And right at last light, we found a road that we liked, Corey liked, and we decided to walk it. We started walking it and we found small, amount of small, what we believe to be a small black bear based upon the gauge of the bear

scat and the size of it. It looked like a small black bear. But then as we're walking, we're probably a mile from the truck and we start seeing some big gris tracks. And I mean, you can tell a gris track from a black bear track by its architecture. You know, a black bear, you're typically not going to be able to see the claws. and it's kind of rounder and just typically smaller.

Gris is going to be much bigger. You're going to be able to see the claws. And this track was just evidently gris. Did you think so, Bear? Yeah. I mean, it's like twice as big

as a Black Bear track. Yep. Yeah, I think we guessed it was about seven inches wide. Seven inch path. Which, okay, when you're gauging bear tracks and we got, we tested this theory,

I've done it 100 times, we tested it again, pretty much the width of the bear track add one inch to it and that typically gives you the square of the bear. So if it's a four inch track, you go four plus one equals five. And so that means it's a five foot square bear. So if you have a seven inch track, that's typically an eight foot bear. It doesn't always play out just like that, but it's get you in the ballpark.

And the square of a bear, my goodness, we'd just digging ourselves a hole of having to explain stuff. bear how do you square bear do you know you measure from claw to claw like the wingspan of the front arms the bear that's the high yeah it's like stretched out on the ground and then from tip of the nose to the base of the tail add them up together divide them by two yep and that gives you the square so like a six foot square bear would be like a really solid good bear like there wouldn't be very many sals that would square six foot, even though it's possible. A seven-foot bear would be a giant I have seen with my own eyeballs in all the Canadian bear camps and all the bears I've seen and helped people's skin.

I've seen one true seven-foot bear. And so everybody and their brother that, you know, I don't know, I've seen a lot of bears and I've only seen one that was a true seven-foot square bear. That's just the way it was. Like Andy Brown said, that's just the way it happened. I loved it when Annie Brown said that about Louis Dale and Charlie turning their dogs out on October 1st. He just said, Clay, that's just the way it happened.

I've only seen one seven-foot bear. So there we are, walking the road, hour before dark. It's raining. We see gris tracks. We start seeing a little bit of gris scat, and we see black bear scat, which is odd because typically the gris push out the black bear. That's the theory anyway.

Yeah, they don't like to. hang out together. Right. As far as I've noticed. Yeah. Yeah. And we get to the end of this road and we're sitting there trying to decide what to do. And Bear Newcomb hears a stick pop way out in the woods probably 75 yards away.

And he says, hey, did y'all hear that? We stop. And sure enough, pop. We hear another stick pop. And Corey says that's for sure an animal. You know, when you hear a twig snap, you know, maybe a log fell or, you know, just something. A squirrel drop of pine cone or something, you know, you never know. And it was two distinct crack.

And then 20 seconds later, crack. And we're like, there's an animal there. And then we keep listening and we're keyed up on it now. And we hear it scratching kind of, what was it doing? Like digging or something? It sounded like a dig. Something with claws was scratching or digging. Yeah.

Yeah. So it was right away with all the bear sign thinking. Bear. So Corey goes, that's for sure a bear. But it's in such thick timber. We don't know. We can't see it. Well, I have my Phelps predator call with me.

And so I go, hey, let's predator call that thing and see if it'll come in. And what was cool is that the whole week, Corey had asked me if I'd ever been successful predator calling a bear. And I've not done it a ton, but I've done. told him that one time in British Columbia we called up a bear that was probably 300 yards away by blowing on a rabbit squealer

and watched it come across a clear cut like into bow range. It was a small bear. And then another time in British Columbia on a different hunt, we had a sow out in a field, Bear John Newcomb, and the sow was feeding in grass, was bear we didn't want to kill,

we were just messing around. We are probably 80 yards from her. And we go to wailing on a predator call. And we were thinking she's going to lift up her head from that grass and just come busting into us. She literally didn't even lift her head. And I'm not exaggerating. She didn't even acknowledge us.

And we're, I mean, just wailing on this thing. It, like, didn't affect her at all. And then one time in Washington, we probably made five or six sets of blowing a predator call for bear. So, you know, mixed success. Well, I get about five yards behind bear and kind of tuck him up by a little spruce. Corey gets up on a bank behind some trees. We've got two guns. We're in gris country.

And so I pull out my bear spray, take the safety off and have bear spray because we're in tight quarters. You can see like 10 yards in any direction. Yeah. And we've got a bear out here. We're about to blow on a predator call. Sounds like a good idea. Man, that fat's looking good. Holy cow.

Yeah, it is. Listen to that. Oh, my lands. Wow. It's looking really good. So, bear's ready. Corey's ready. We got two guns and bear spray.

And I start, probably 20 seconds. I make eye contact with Corey, and I can tell he's watching a bear. And what happened? There was a little black bear, maybe a four-foot black bear, just bounding across the logs right for the call. And from what we could hear, hear, scratching, well, that must have been what was scratching.

20 seconds of calling, that bear was on us in 10 seconds. Yeah. And bounded to the edge of the little opening we had and then just hit. How close was it, Bear? He's probably like 10 yards from me. And Bear has his gun up, and pretty much, if it had stepped in the opening, I don't think we would have gauged much. we probably would, he probably would have just shot it. And so you got your gun up, bears come running in.

And now you, what did you tell me after that? You said it's kind of, you said it's kind of unnerving? Yeah, I mean, like, because you're right behind me. And so, like, the bear is, I mean, he's coming for the predator call. He's wanting to eat something. And it sounds like, I mean, you can't tell how big he is. You just hear brush cracking. So I don't know if a...

It could have been a gris. Yeah, I don't know if an eight-foot grizzly is about to bust out of the brush 10 yards at front of me or it's going to be a or a lion. Or a black bear. Yeah. And so here comes a brush crashing. Corey goes, there's a bear.

I can't see the bear. Okay, do you take it from here, Corey? Once I could see it bounding and I could tell what it was, I whispered. Black bear, Black bear. And both Bear John and I raise our guns up, we both had tags both ready to fill it.

And the bear just came to the edge and stopped. like it hit a brick wall. It must have winded us or seen us standing there. Came to that brick wall, stopped and just turned and bounded the same speed away as it did coming in. And took five steps into the woods

and out of nowhere, a big silverback grizzly bear chasing right to left, chases that little black bear right up into a tree 40 yards away from us. I mean, the whole scene was 20, 30 yards into the woods, but it chases the black bear how high into the tree.

That's 20, 30 feet up a tree. That little black bear was scared to death. And so were we. So this little black bear comes bound in, and I whisper, black bear, black bear, black bear. When it stopped and turned around and I knew we couldn't get a shot, two seconds later, grizzly, grizzly, grizzly, grizzly, grizzly, grizzly, it was intense.

And just Clay and I and Bear, we just started screaming, Hey, bear, hey bear, get out of here, bear. it was it went from all right we're going to get a shot here to we need to protect our lives it felt like i mean the way it was running across the woods like that and it was the wildest thing because all you know you always feel like if there's black bear around there's not a gris around and it is it is an incredible mystery why this gris and that black bear were within no way they couldn't have been more than a hundred yards apart yeah because they they we didn't call for 30 seconds. The woods are that thick, though. They could easily be coming down parallel to each other

without knowing each other. It was wet. There was no wind. The scent kind of stays around you. It's possible they didn't know each other were there. And so, I mean, just to, I mean, Corey just said it, but basically this bear comes running in. We're about to shoot it. Corey says, Black Bear, Black Bear, so we're just like about to shoot. The bear's thinking about it. And then he goes, Gris, gris, gris. And at that point, we all, bear clicks the safety off his gun. I start yelling, hey, bear, hey bear, hey bear, hey bear, and kind of step out where I can see good. And the black bear shoots 30 feet up a tree, probably 50 yards from us.

And I look out and I see the gris turn and just make eye contact with me out there at about, I felt like it was a bow shot away, you know, 40 yards. Those beady little eyes just looking through the dark timber at you. It was such a wild scene because there's this gris standing there and there's a black bear in the tree right above it and bears trying to shoot the black bear. Bears like, should I shoot it? And I absolutely would have let him shoot it. But I was thinking, is this smart to shoot a black bear?

Because we're going to have to skin this black bear back. here. That was my thought. While we know for a fact that there's a gris right there, the black bear would have landed on the grizzly bear. Literally. Yeah. And so bear has his gun up and he's saying, Dad, I got my crosshairs on that black bear. You wanted to shoot it bad, didn't you? Yep. Yep. And then, but we're yelling at the grizzly bear. So we're, hey bear, hey bear, hey bear. And so the black bear is flipping out. He ran up the tree. He ran up the tree because of gris chasing a tree and now there's three humans yelling at him and so I mean just no sooner than all this happened you know we're talking we've been talking about this for 10

minutes this happened in the span of 25 seconds absolutely chaos and anyway the bear's coming down the tree and the bear gets halfway down the tree and stops and bears says again dad I can shoot I can shoot and I go whoa whoa wait wait wait wait wait wait I just I don't I just wasn't sure enough you know If you're not 100% don't do it. And we weren't, it was just too much chaos to know what to do. Yeah. Like, yeah, I think we made the right decision. That was day two.

So we weren't, if it was day five, maybe, you know, but day two, just take your time. And we weren't 100% sure. So that was a wild, wild experience. Now, Corey, guiding one time you had to shoot at, you know, to scare a gris. Tell me that story. Yeah, I had an archery hunter. that I was guiding and we parked our horses and walked up this ridge, got onto a little bench.

And same, similar thing, heard an animal cracking in the woods, but we're elk hunting, so assuming it was an elk. I mean, that was what we were after, and very elk,

uh, heavy zone. Mm-hmm. And we got set up without even calling or anything, without seeing anything. We just got set up to try and call this whatever it was in, hoping it was a lone bull elk or something. It's September 10th.

Right. And I set my client up behind a bush, 10-foot bush, big alder bush, and I backed up about 50 yards and gave one little cow-calf squeal. And whatever it was was walking towards us. You could just hear it, a couple cracks here. Like, it kind of sounded like a hoof. I was just thinking, okay, here we go. Here's an elk coming in. Client was hoping for a big bull, but I was assuming he was going to.

shoot anything like maybe it's just a cow coming in to the calf call whatever 20 seconds later a giant grizzly bear stands over the top of this bush now that bush might have been nine feet tall i might be over exaggerating maybe eight feet tall but that bear stood a foot over the top of that bush now montana black grizzly bears excuse me don't get that big but in the moment it was a giant that bear stands up on two legs and is looking for whatever's making that noise now that bears on the other side of the bush for my hunter. Now my hunter's on, I think, a knee or two knees, waiting for an elk to step out from either side. He has no idea, this bush is so thick that he has no idea that there's a bear standing five yards on the other side of the bush

over the top. And it's looking around. And when I see that the bear, I pull out my 44 revolver and fire it off in the air and just start screaming. And the bear gets down, like it turned on two feet, took off and went up the hill, but not out of sight, just up and stopped. It scared it, but it didn't leave. That was a close call for sure. I mean, I think if he would have saw my hunter and caught him off guard like that, who knows what, it was a big boar grizzly bear. Who knows what the bear would have done. Scared the bejesus out of that hunter, though, when he's quiet, just sitting there and all of a sudden a 44 mag goes off 50 yards behind.

It scared him a little bit. Yeah, I bet it did, but you probably saved him at minimum from a very, very close call and maybe even from getting whooped. gone by there is, could have, could have happened. It was a close call, no doubt.

We were talking earlier about black bears and grizzly, and, you know, the grizzlies are typically the ones that you hear

about being dangerous. And certainly, I would say that that's true. I mean, they are the ones that are dangerous. But you,

you were telling me a story just randomly this morning about a black bear that attacked a guy. Tell me that story, Corey. Well,

gosh. Cory's got some good stories. When you spend eight years guiding, you have a lot of good stories. Yeah. We were floating, floating our rafts down the river that I was guiding on. And there was a single gentleman just on the riverbank. I couldn't tell if he was tying a shoe or tying a fly on the end of his fly line. We was just sitting there up against a big boulder.

And as we come up to him, we're saying, hey, how's it going? how long you're going to be out here? You're camping. You're way back in the wood. I mean, you're way away from civilization. Yeah, we're pretty far in there. And chit-chatting. But as the boat goes around this rock and this gentleman,

as we're floating downstream by him, I see a little black bear, five and a half, maybe a six-foot black bear, sniffing that rock. Like, he can smell something funny. And I go, black bear, black bear. Like, sir, get up. There's something's sniffing right behind you.

And he gets up, and the bear scurries off. runs up into the woods. Didn't think much about it. Just just another bear. A little too close to a human, but it freaked him out for sure. Come to here a week later, that gentleman got drug out of his tent by a black bear. Wow.

Whether he had a Snickers bar in his tent or his toothpaste or whatever, that bear, now, don't know if it was the same black bear or not, but that person got drug out of his tent and got beat up pretty bad. If I remember right, Life Flight had to fly in and pick them up and get him out. And when you told me that story, I mean, it makes sense to me that it was, I mean, had to have been the same bear. I mean, if it was that curious, I mean, it's possible. Yeah.

That's wild. It's very ironic regardless. Well, what we were talking about was what's more dangerous, a black bear or a gris. And I mean, the obvious answer is a grizzly, but there are definitely more grisly fatalities, but there are quite a few black bear attacks, but black bears are in a much, much, much larger geographic area, I mean, exponentially larger than where grids are, so it's not really comparing apples to apples, you know.

But bear, what's the closest bear encounter you've had? Probably that. The one we just said. Have you ever been bear baiting with me when we've had bears? I mean, I remember one time whenever I was probably like 10, we were going in on a bait, and there was already a bear there. Mm-hmm. And I actually remember twice that happened,

and once where we were baiting, and there was kind of a bear just, like, probably 50 yards away from us. It's kind of circling. Yeah, in Oklahoma. Do you remember the one time we had a bear? You were just a little boy, and there was a little bear at a bait, and I kind of halfway remember saying, hey, bear, see if you can see how close you can get to that bear.

And you started stalking him. I mean, you were just a little kid. And you kind of got a little ways away from me. And all of a sudden I was like, this is a really bad idea. And I called you back. And then I went in and stalked up pretty close. It was when we first started baiting bears pretty hard. Was it when you were guiding?

Yeah. Yeah, I think I kind of remember that. Yeah, I sent you in. And it was such a small bear. I was like, it was just kind of funny. And then, and then, the bear didn't wasn't afraid and then I moved in and got about five yards from it and then I remember having the initial thought first time I ever thought of that that's like a hundred and

twenty five pound raccoon and I have incredible respect for a raccoon and I was like oh I get it now there was a time when I was like I remember having a philosophy at one time of my life Corey that 150 pound tough man ought to be able to combat 150 pound bear. I was like, bear muscle, muscle is muscle. So if it's 150 pound bear,

other than he's got claws and teeth, you should be good. And then I've recanted that sense. I think bear muscle is more legit than human muscle. Now I realize how stupid that was. Punch him in the nose. Punch him in the nose.

Right? It's like hitting a man in his groin. I've heard. Really? I haven't had to yet, but if you punch them in the nose, it hurts them. Yeah. That's their weak spot.

Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps game calls and building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called prime cuts. Now, I'm going to tell you, I love mine because it's easy to use. I'm not going to go, I'm not going to win a turkey calling contest. It's just not going to happen. But when I run this call, I get the sounds that gobblers are looking for. I have a great turkey hunting track record. if you go listen to real turkeys out in the woods,

they're not going to win calling contests, right? That's who I listen to. I can make those sounds on my cut. I also hunt with Phelps's cut, and I hunt with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts. Check out Prime Cuts at Phelpsgamecalls.com. I think you'll be glad you did, and you'll find out that the Steve Ronella cut

is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good. turkey noises and getting action well okay so that was the exciting part of day two the exciting part of day three was we we decided to walk back into an area that was just kind of walk in only and we've we left the truck around one o'clock would you say guys one o'clock we leave the truck yeah pretty early And we start finding quite a bit of gris sign. And gris sign is just going to be like huge piles of bear scat

that are just way bigger than you know a black bear would have. It's usually pretty obvious. It's like the size of a horse. Yeah. Horse scat. Yeah. And so we started seeing some gris sign. We continued to do a little predator calling.

We were kind of encouraged by our success with predator calling. So we had a pretty good system where I would have the bear spray out and I would be turned around behind these guys and they had two rifles. And we started Predator Calling in bigger, more open areas where you could see something coming. And we probably Predator called four or five more sets and never had any success,

even though we did Predator Call at a Sal and Cubs that we saw. And they moved towards us slightly, but they wouldn't commit to come in. in. We could see them a long ways off. So on this day, I'm getting ahead of myself, but we would later in the day see a sow with Cubs.

Black Bear. Black Bear. Predator call at them. The sow just got real nervous and got pacing around, and she trot 40 yards closer to us, and then stop, and the Cubs would run up to her, and then she'd kind of run back. And you could tell she was just kind of confused, and she was out there

about 200 yards from us, and never would commit. But And we just wanted to see what she would do. But prior to that, we started seeing some bear scat in the road. And then what happened, Bear? We'd come around a corner and we look up and what do we see? It's like an almost completely blonde. Hold on, hold on.

You're missing one. The gris. Oh. I don't want you to cut to the chase yet. Before we saw the sow and two cubs. We've seen a lot of bears this week. Yeah. we saw a grizzly bear

probably 80, 90 yards away. Yeah. We kind of come up over a little rise. There's a grizzly 80, 90 yards away, just in a wide open. And we watch it for a little while, and finally it kind of moves off. And we let it,

after we watched it for a minute, we kind of let it know that we were there. Just kind of made our presence known, just kind of waved our hands a little bit. Yeah, it didn't take much. She saw us, took off. Took off. that's when we hunted on up

saw the black bear sound cubs and then we split up for the first time in the hunt Corey kept going down a road and bear and I dropped off the mountain to a lower road that we'd found on on X we knew there was a road right below us and we'd been split up it took us probably 30 minutes

45 minutes at most to get down to the road and we're making our way back to the truck and now it's about seven o'clock and bear and i are coming down this road this road corey just beautiful green grass which is perfect and it was in a cut so both sides of the road had uh for whatever reason they've been cut by the forest service so there was just like big openings which is great and around the big openings was big dark timber and you know it's getting the last two hours of daylight just prime time and you're just slipping along just trying to see a bear before it sees you and you're

thinking it's going to be 150 yards away or or 90 hundred yards away bear and i are just moving down through their slow and bear was i pumped about that i mean was i like what did i say you were saying that this is where we're going to kill bear yeah yeah now i say that like every day we go hunting but this one was like this one i was a little amped up more than usual right yep Yep. Could you tell? Yes. So we're walking down this road, and this is Bear's first spring bear hunt.

So I'm trying to just tell him how good this scenario is that we've found ourselves in. And, yeah, man, the bear fat is looking incredible. Liquid gold here, folks. So what we've done is we've, yeah, we're going to get back to the hunt. We've got to talk about this for a minute. we've pulled the heat off of this fat, and there's still what I would call it, cracklings.

Did you just eat one? It's pretty good. It tastes like chicken. It tastes like chicken. Yeah, it's hot, but good. Yeah. It's like a pork rind. I would say the oil is light,

like kind of amber colored, and the cracklings, we'll get a little bit more liquid oil out of that. The finer that you can cut your bare fat, put it on low heat the finer that you can cut it the more yield of liquid bare grease bear oil you'll get from it all we did was we cubed up we cubed up about five to seven pounds of bear fat put it in the dutch oven and put good heat on it and Corey's been stirring it this whole time and so it's now probably 80 liquid, 20% solid, and the little cracklins eventually get down to where they won't render out into liquid oil anymore. The best way, though, to do it to get the most yield of liquid to oil and bear grease is to grind it. But in this scenario, we had to just dice it up into like one inch cubes and then just keep it stirring, keep it on good heat. and what we'll do now is we're going to let it cool down for a while

and we're going to run it through a dish towel as a filter to filter out any just any particles that are in there some of our meat in the field the other might have been something on it we're going to filter it through a dish towel and pour it into some jars that we have and so we'll get some fantastic oil but we're going to kind of let it we'll let it take a little bit of heat but we're going to let it cool down

so there we were Bear John we're walking down the road it's prime time we're looking out to our left at big snow-covered mountains walking through a road of emerald green

it was like a bear hunter's dream it's like it'd be in November 5th and you're setting over a bunch of good sign and in your white-tailed tree stand. And you just feel like it's about to happen. I really felt like it was about to happen. Well, what happens, Bear?

What happened? Well, so we, so we're walking down this road, and there's kind of like this little rise in the road where it kind of goes up and then drops down, and there's like a little brush pile almost to the left of the road, right, even with, like, the peak of the rise. So we can't really see anything. anything in that area.

Like, because the brush is covering it and then there's the rise so we can't see over that. So we come up right to the top of this, this little rise and you, like, dug down and you're like, bear, bear. So I, like, kind of see it. And I can see that it's, like, blonde. It's real confusing hunting with somebody named bear. Yes. Especially when there's a gris and a black bear running at you.

Like, bear. Bear, bear, bear, bear. No, seriously. No, one time, one time, Corey and I, I keep interrupting this story. We'll get there. We've got to draw all this out, man. You can't just spill the beans this quick. No.

One time while we were hunting this week, all three of us are walking, we're all just scoping out the woods. It was quiet, and I was trying to say something to bear John, nuke him. And I said, bear. And I remember Corey jerked his head. Like, he thought I was saying, bear. There's a bear. You did.

There's a slight difference. between there's a bear and bear I mean almost indiscernible but I was like no I'm just trying

to get him so okay there we were yep and so so I say bear yeah like

saying that there's a bear and so I was saying yeah and so I see the bear like right as right as you go down like I see you go down I see you looking over here

and I see a bear like probably 35 yards from us and at first like I could tell it was like black bear shaped, but it looked like a grizzly. I was thinking like, oh man, it's just another grizzly,

which would have been cool, but, you know, we're trying to get a black bear, and we've seen a lot of grizzlies at this point in the hunt. Yeah, you had just seen one an hour before. A blonde grizzly. Yeah, I mean, almost the same color as the one that we saw. A grizzled grizzly bear. And so we kind of like peek back up,

and you look at it, and you're like, that's a black bear, and you tell me to look at it, it and I look at it and I mean it's definitely a black bear. I want to get confirmation from him because to hunt Montana you have to take a bear ID, a digital bear ID test where they show you pictures of color face bears and the grizzly bears and says, is this a grizzly bear? Is this a brown bear? Is this? Man, it'll be hard to describe. Like, unless you, when you see them, you know, and, you know, bear hunters know, it would be hard to mess up. But at the same time, this bright, blonde bear, like I did a,

double take just like, golly, is that a black bear? And I wanted, and bear was going to be the one to pull the trigger, so I wanted him to be confident too, and I trusted his judgment, and I said, are you sure that's a black bear? And he said, oh yeah. What distinguishing

characteristics? Um, it, it was just small. It was more round, just like its body, just like in general. It had a little bigger ears, a little closer together. That's really all. I mean, it just look like a black bear. Its face, like if you, if you couldn't have seen its head, you'd have thought it, it would have been hard to tell, told what it was. Its head to me, its head was

slightly darker than its body. Yeah, and darker legs. Little darker legs. And so once we like bleach blonde on the top. I mean like beautiful. I mean, just glowing in the sun. I mean, it was incredible. Yeah. And so I get the gun up. There's kind of some like, weeds in front of it. How far is the bear? Probably less than 35. Probably like, I mean, we could, it was a bow shot. Yeah. And there's some weeds in front of it. And I mean, I probably could have shot through the weeds and would have killed it, but I

was not going to risk that. So I kind of like walked to the ride a little and you were telling me to shoot, but there were weeds. Shoot. Yeah. But there were weeds. And so then it took a big step and it was clear. So just freehanded. Yep. Just freehanded, you know. So. Close. Yep, shot it, jumped up, probably ran 15 yards and died right next to this little brush pile. And, yeah, we walked over to it.

And it had a big, like, diamond crest on it. Like, it was, like, the shape of a diamond, like a white crest, but there was nothing in the middle. So it was just like... So it was the color phase, blondeish brown in the middle. Yeah, yep. And for real, I'm not just saying this. It's the prettiest blackware I have ever seen. Me too.

I was shocked. I mean, when we walked up to it and we knew what color it was because we saw it when we shot it. But then I walked up to it and Bear picks up that front leg and it's got this, not just a small diamond, not like a six-inch diamond. I'm talking like a 14-inch diamond that goes way down in between his front legs

and way up on his chest, just this big white spot. You'll see it on my Instagram. I'll post on the Clay Newcomb Instagram. A picture of the bear. I mean, just beautiful bear. I've never killed a blonde bear. I've killed multiple color phase bears,

but chocolate cinemish, cinnamon-ish, but never a blonde bear. And then, okay, I'll say this. Typically, in the West, you can almost take this to the bank. Typically in the West, if you see a bright, blonde black bear, usually it's a sow. I don't know why. I can't describe it. But usually the sows are the ones that are going to be super light, that bleach blonde color.

So when I saw the bear, I actually thought it was probably a sow. But we looked it over and could see it so good. And it was kind of in the wide open. So I mean, we knew if it was a sow, it didn't have cubs. And when we got up to it, I said, lift that thing's legs up. And sure enough, it was a bore. And it was a good one, man. We squared it out back at camp.

And it was six foot three wingspan. Yep. and then five foot eight nose to tail. Yep. So it ended up square in just under six foot. So if you divided those two numbers, it ended up square in five foot ten and a half is what we decided. That's a Western bear hunter's dream bear right there.

It really is. For up here, that's a great, I mean, if it had been a solid black bear, we'd have been thrilled just even at the size of it. So the fact that it was a colored bear like that was just off the charts, man. Off the charts. It's a rare, rare bear.

And we thought that, like, whenever I asked you, like, what you think it would square, at first, like, when we just first walked up to it, you said, like, it'll probably be, like, a little bit above five foot. Once we started dragging it out, started skinning it, you said, like, maybe five and a half. And then once we had it, like, stretched out in the back of the truck, then it just, like, seemed like it just got bigger and bigger. Usually they get smaller. Mm-hmm.

Well, yeah, when, so Bear and I decided, so we're now in Gris Country Deluxe, and we've got a bear on the ground. And so we knew we needed to work quick. And it kind of was in a, it fell in a little bit of a brushy spot. So I said, hey, let's drag this thing into that wide open right out there where we'll skin it. And so he and I start dragging the thing. And it was all we wanted to drag. And that's when I thought, man, this dude may be bigger, a little bit bigger than I think, you know. I would guess the bear weighed in the 200-pound range.

And for a Western bear, that's a fantastic bear. That's a dandy. I've weighed a lot of bears, Corey. And, man, I could make jokes all day. I've written articles about it about how typically people are at least 30% off on their estimation of weight. If somebody says it's 200, it's probably 30% off that. That's just my assessment of... of watching the world.

Rarely is anybody under that. And honestly, the bear was, I'd say, from 180 to 200. Now, counting the 30%, I'm hoping that's not 30% off. Well, those packs were sure heavy. With all the meat, the hide, and the head, you guys were coming out heavy.

So Corey had separated from us, and so we go to breaking down the bear immediately. I mean, we take a few cell phone picks. And we know it's getting dark and we're four miles from the truck, four miles from the truck. And all of a sudden I'm thinking, you know, we got to be watching for grids. So I pull out my bear spray, keep the safety off. We go to skin and the bear. And we get it broke down in probably 45 minutes or so and get it in our packs.

and off we go to meet you and meet up with you. Anyway, incredible hunt. And since that time, Corey and I have hunted a little bit. Well, we've hunted a fair bit since that time, but hadn't killed one since. It's gotten a little warm, so our time frame is a little bit narrower. It was wet and cold. The first three days now it's been warm and dry,

so it's been, in my opinion, a little harder to find them. when it's warm and dry like it is. So we've done well this week. Yeah. Seeing a lot of bears. Yeah. Well, okay, I want to talk about the genuine outlaws episode number two. But I don't want to go into much of it, guys.

I just want to touch on it. I know both of you guys have listened to it. And this is a bear grease render in the field where we're literally rendering bear grease. And I want to talk about this podcast with the with the Render crew from back in Arkansas too. But Corey, you listened to it. What was your, what did you think, man? Intriguing subject, number one. I mean, and brave subject.

Nobody's really talked about this sort of thing. You know, there's movies and books of outlaws and bad guys. Nobody's really dove in and, uh, operated on it like you are. Just in the hunting space? Yeah, well, in the hunting space. Yeah, exactly. Outlaws, poachers, what have you.

Yeah. So it's been an intriguing topic, and I love that you're diving into it like you are. Yeah. You know, it was, we talked about this extensively, but in the past renders, and even on the podcast, but I kind of want to be true to the culture of hunting. of rural America.

And I'm telling you, people where I grew up wanted to talk about Louis Dell and Charlie Edwards. And so did I. And so here I have this podcast where we talk about all things hunting. And I'm diving into these little nuances inside of hunting and just trying to figure out kind of what makes us tick and what's special and what is the culture of hunting. and obviously poaching and outlawing is a negative thing in any context but i was just really really had questions of why these guys kind of held the positions that they did inside of our community and why we were so intrigued by them and i still don't have all the answers for that You may never find the answers.

They were definitely a interesting, super interesting brothers. Bear, what did you think, man? Yeah, I thought I was interested too. I remember, like, you and Pop-all talking about them, like just how they, a lot of those stories that were on the podcast, I remember hearing from you and Pop-all, but, yeah, I thought it was interesting.

They had to be, like, really good hunters. I feel like because I mean like they were we hunt in that area all the time and like the fact that they could

kill more turkeys than were legal to me I mean I know there were more turkeys back then but still to me seems like you'd have to be a really good hunter

yeah we can hardly kill one yeah man if we were trying to be outlaws we'd have a hard time we'd be like doggone it

I can't kill over my limit for anything We need to make a movie called Poachers gone bad Where a couple of guys go out And inspired by the Bear Grease Genuine Outlaws podcast series They're like doggone it, man, we're going to be poachers And they go out and they can't kill a thing They like try to break every game while

This is a joke people Yeah This is a joke Bear did listen to this make you want to be an outlaw No Okay good, just checking just checking man my dad if Gary Newcomb were here he's a guest on the render often he kept he did a good job with me and I mean just he he exposed us to that stuff and I said at the

beginning of the podcast that dad instilled me with a value system that I mean I've not always upheld to I mean but I knew breaking game laws wasn't the thing to do or something I was interested in going out and doing on purpose. But at the same time, he exposed me to all this stuff. And I think it was really valuable to me to see him. And he really did, man. He was influential to me in a lot of ways when it came to people because he dealt with so many people.

And when he came home, those are the stories he would tell about the people he'd met. And it just, I don't know. I probably just was sitting there as a kid not saying much, not, he probably didn't even know that I was being impacted by a lot of that stuff, but that's the beauty of kind of father and son relationship, you know. But what else do you think, Corey? Anything else? What else stood out to you?

This is kind of like an abbreviated, an abbreviated render as we talk about the Genuine Outlaw series. I mean, who was it, Neil took the words right out of my mouth, describing them similar to Robin Hood, how they were poaching all these animals, but they didn't waste a thing, and they were giving them to the needy, the less able who couldn't get out and hunt, you know, like helping people out at the same time, breaking laws, being unethical, if you were to describe it, but helping people out at the same time.

Yeah. I mean, I could see those two being like Robin Hood and Little John walking through the forest, shooting turkeys and deer, gollywood a day. Beautiful rhyme. You know, when I said all that, it wasn't to justify what they did because it doesn't justify what they did. It's just interesting. Very. And it's just interesting. And their ethics when it came to waste and meat, I would say they had very high standards, especially for the,

time when it came to waste a meat. And does that mean I'm trying to say it was okay for them to poach? No, I'm just saying it was interesting. Well, you wish ethical hunters had that same drive to utilize the entire animal. There's many people who only get one deer tag, one elk tag, but they don't take all the meat. They don't cook up those deer or elk shanks. You know, they don't know about it. And it sounds like these guys, even though they were breaking laws, they were somehow

on the bright side of things at the same time. There was a dark side and a bright side. Well, and then I was really, I'll tell you what, we're going back to the render pot. Let's go ahead and take that off of there, Corey. And let's just put the Dutch oven lid on it so it doesn't get ash in it. I think we're, so we've rendered it down.

It's probably over 80% liquid. We're just going to let it cool in this pot before we pour it into our jars. But I'm going to guess we've got over a, gallon. Would you say we've got a you think it's probably a gallon? I'm envisioning pouring a gallon milk jug in there. Yeah, that's a gallon.

More than a gallon. It's close. Yeah. So, no, I I was interested in I asked Stoney. I said,

Hey, Stoney, do you all have some deerheads from your uncle and dad? I envision them just having a barn just full of deer horns. And to be honest with, I wasn't going to put that on the podcast. I wanted to go see them. I mean, these guys were deer hunters, too. I mean, their whole life, I mean, like serious deer hunters. And Stoney says, oh, no, they didn't keep any horns.

Wow. And I was like, what? Didn't keep any horns? I mean, when you hear a poacher, you think, oh, somebody that's wanting to shoot the biggest buck and, you know, brag on what a big bucky killed. Around here, people, yeah, anywhere, I guess. They shoot animals and you just see a decapitated critter

because that's what they were after was the trophy. Right. And does that make it right to poach? No. No. And then the one time that they turned somebody in, and that would have been funny. Like, in our community, like, if you would have heard

Lou Del and Charlie turned in somebody, the game of fish, I mean, people would have laughed at that, you know. that these guys were turning someone in, but the one time they turned somebody in was when they found, behind a deer camp, they found, like, four deer that just the back straps and horns have been taken. And they were like, no,

this isn't going to fly. They call it game of fish. Does that make it right, bear? No. It just makes it what? Interesting. Yep. That's what it does.

It's just interesting. And I always like it when, when when I don't know I just feel like just everybody's got a story and there's value inside of just about any story and just about any person's life and I like it when we kind of can see interesting stuff inside of maybe someone that the world had labeled as a negative person and we're going to dive into this a lot deeper man do you all have any closing thoughts On the Outlaw podcast, Corey? Let's just start there.

Outlaw podcast, closing thoughts? I hope you dive in and dissect if there's another duo of outlaws. So you want some more of it? I want some more. You're going on the record. I know this was kind of just like a tippy toe step into the subject, and I hope there's more.

Okay. Yeah, it's intriguing. You weren't offended by this. No. It may have been just like crystal clear. Like I was, obviously I was confident enough to do it, but I have taken a little bit of heat because it is controversial. It's controversial to paint someone who's clearly an outlaw in any kind of positive light.

And I absolutely, I mean, we talked about their whole lives. But you want some more of it. Yeah. Okay. Bear, what do you think about the Bear Greer's podcast? Do you a fan or you just kind of like, ah, it's a dad talking? I like it. You like it?

Yeah. How much do you listen to the Bearers podcast? Honestly. Well, since I've started driving on my own, I've been listening to me less. Oh, I thought you were going to say more, and I was going to be really proud. Oh, yeah. No, because whenever I'm in the car with you, when you're driving me places, you know, we always listen to them. But whenever it's just me.

I listen to them to edit them, Corey. Bear, how often do you listen to the Meat Eater podcast? Probably never. Oh, no. Well, that means bear grease must be a little better. No offense, Steve. Well, hey, great week. What a week.

Great week. Gris encounters, bear encounters, killed a beautiful bear, ate some great food. We're hunting in Corey's, this is Corey's place, and, man, thanks a ton for having us up here. My pleasure. Thanks for coming all the way up here. Hey, tell us, I never got to what you do for meat eater now. You were the what? I was the communications coordinator.

answering all the incoming emails to meat eater at the meat eater.com. But I just got promoted to the hunt and fish coordinator. Okay. Yeah. Which I'm fresh at this role. Yeah. I'm excited to work. I'll be able to work a lot closer to the crew, Clay, Steve, Yanni.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm excited. Excellent. Well, we got some bear fat to pour into some jars. and the next Bear Grays podcast, I'm very excited about it. It's more outlaw stuff, but it's more us dissecting the American intrigue with outlaws, not just American, the human nature's intrigue with outlaws and kind of dissecting it.

I think it's going to help for me to make sense of some of this. Yeah, I'm going to need some of that too, because that's what's intriguing. I didn't realize it was an intriguing subject, but being able to delve into that will make it. And I may or may not have interviewed the director of the Arkansas Game in Fish Commission about poaching in Arkansas. Cool. You have to see if I did or not. Maybe that's just a bluff. You think I'm bluffing bear?

Doubted. A bluffing bear. Get it? Bluffing bear. We've been bluffed out maybe once or twice this week. Keep the wild place is wild because that's where the bears live. Amen. 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. also hunt with Phelps's cut, and I hunt with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts. Check out Prime Cuts at Phelpsgamecalls.com. I think you'll be glad you did, and you'll find out that the Steve Ronella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. This is an I-Heart podcast, guaranteed human.