The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 448: Munching Off the Mussel Tree

Episode Date: June 12, 2023

Steve Rinella talks with Clay Newcomb, Randall Williams, Dirt Myth, Seth Morris, and Chester Floyd. Topics include: The infinity house with a missing porch; get your book signed by Steve at MeatEater's Catch a Crayfish, Count the Stars Book Tour event; when you get in trouble for handling a baby bison in Yellowstone National Park; where Chetiquette ends and philosophy begins; buck ball bag shift covers; are you morally obligated to give access to landlocked public land through your private property?; how Steve wants a full mustang suit; bears feeding from the mussel tree; how Southerners get two syllables off the word "hen"; Clay's general ambivalence toward instructions; when putting on your wetsuit initiates a panic attack; so many seals; listen to Clay's Bear Grease episodes on The Education of Little Tree and David Crockett; and more.  Connect with Steve and MeatEater Steve on Instagram and Twitter MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube Shop MeatEater MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. You might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that because of raffle and sweepstakes law, but hear this. OnX Hunt is now in Canada. It is now at your fingertips, you Canadians. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. Now the Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints and tracking. You can even use offline maps to see where you are

without cell phone service as a special offer. You can get a free three months to try out OnX if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwearless. Welcome to the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwearless. We hunt. The Meat Eater Podcast. You can't predict anything.

Presented by First Light, creating proven, versatile hunting apparel from merino base layers to technical outerwear for every hunt. First Light. Go farther, stay longer. Alright, we're recording in Seth's trashed out A-frame. His trashed out moldy Alaska A-frame, which is looking really good. It's coming a long way.

Looking really good. The porch is still gone. Yeah, no porch. The porch fell off. It's kind of a nice touch though because you know those endless pools it is it's like an infinity it's like an infinity house yeah when the tide is up and you sit where chester is it's an infinity house you cannot see land in between the the front windows and the in the water that amazing. Yeah. So we're looking at two big sliding glass doors at the ocean. Yeah.

When Seth bought his Southeast Alaska A-frame, I think, had you bought it when I notified you that your porch was gone? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I came up and I, um, Seth recollects this. I don't recollect this, but. Yeah, yeah. I'll tell a story. Okay. Um, we hadn't, as the crew that'll tell a story we hadn't as the crew

that bought this place we hadn't been up here all together yet I was the only one that had seen this place everyone else bought sight unseen but you came up last spring to bear hunt and I get a phone call from you and you say I have good news

and I have bad news and I was like alright well let and i have bad news and i was like all right well let's let's hear the bad news and he goes your porch fell off it's a high point i'm like what do you mean fell off and he said it fell off it's laying on the ground said all right well what's the good news he said the fishing's been good uh here's the thing here's the thing right off top going out uh going on a book tour with a twist no not really a twist so our first book ever for kids is coming out and we got some great videos coming up to show the book um we got great videos it's like you know it's like those kind of videos where you see someone doing

something in little bits i don't know what the hell you call them they're like how to video the process videos yeah process videos so we got a process video coming up making your own scaler and scaling the bluegill all with real live kids doing it we got a process video coming up this will be on my instagram at steven rinella wherever we got a process video coming up of making a blow gun out of nothing but stuff that would be in any house besides a little chunk of pvc which is in most houses well that's fun yeah if you're a kid just tear the pvc off the wall yeah make a blow gun out of it out of the wall in my place they used to be exposed but uh you know what i'm saying yeah dig around just tear the sheetrock up see if he finds the pvc back there you can find some up here at the shack and get your tubing get

your thing so everything every the book has everything you need to, not everything you need, you still got to love them and feed them and everything, but has much of what you need to raise adventurous, competent outdoor kids with a little bit of a raw edge to them. How to build campfires, how to build their own little ground blind, how to build bullfrog gigs navigation using sun navigation using stars hot tips on tree climbing emergency shelters identifying fossils

fish gutting animal tracking much more it's a great kids activity book a lot of stuff's a little bit dangerous so you got to do it with them some stuff's fine you go through the book and you decide what the kid could do by himself and what the kid ought to wait for you to help them with so i'm gonna go on uh we're gonna go on tour to sign the books and i'll be gone i'll be out june 16th to June 25th. I'll be signing first edition copies of the new book at Shields stores. Okay? So you go to your local Shields store in the towns I'm going to tell you about in a second here, and we'll do pictures and sign books. Billings.

That's Billings, Montana. Minneapolis, Minnesota. Omaha, Nebraska. Kansas City, Missouri. Dallas, Texas, Colorado Springs, and Johnston, Colorado, and Sandy, Utah. No eastern cities at this time, but we're going to do a lot. We're going to have live shows coming up, and we'll hit other areas.

So here's how this works. It's annoying, but it's just true just true you got to buy a ticket to go but all you're doing when you buy a ticket you're just buying the book okay you have to buy the book to go to get in the door i think there might be some way to do it there but like just but but it's capped okay so you buy book. It's like you're buying a ticket, but you're not, you're getting the book and bring your kids. Like you don't need to buy a book for everybody.

Like, you know, buy the book, bring your kids. So any, uh, how's this go? I'm going to make sure I get this right.

Where do you go to get them? Hey, to clarify, you're saying that a ticket would get a family in yeah okay that's big it's big visit themeateater.com for tickets so go to themeateater.com for tickets and we'll see you at uh at the shield store in those locations they'll get their book at the store with the ticket i believe you redeem it yeah that's right it sounds right you get it and it's just the it's the cover price of the book yeah it's just the cover price of the book when you

get there your book will be waiting for you we'll get your book signed that's great do some pictures shield stores got it i love that's big shields yeah did you say the name of the book steve i don't think you said the name of the book i know know you've said it a lot. Good eye, Clay. I know you've said it a lot. This guy's like a professional. Catch a crayfish, count the stars. Great name. I like that.

Fun projects, skills, and adventures for outdoor kids. I think this would be a good book to buy as a gift for people that have young kids. For real. As a friend, a family that's got young kids and you're going let's say you're going to their house for you know a special holiday you just want to bring a housewarming gift or whatever catch a crayfish count the stars i'm gonna get one for oscar that's a great idea. I'll sell you one. As long as it's signed, to Oscar.

Love, Steve. I was fishing the day you were born. There you go. That's what it's going to say. But didn't catch nothing. I'm going to leave that little detail out. Because I wasn't with your dad. No. Here's a call to action I need everybody

People got to listen up We're doing so If you followed our campfire story series Campfire stories Close calls There's the close calls volume one Close calls volume two These are audio originals

We're working on running right now And here's what we're looking for There's the Close Calls Volume 1, Close Calls Volume 2. These are audio originals. We're working on one right now, and here's what we're looking for. We're looking for people out there who have had unexpected finds. Finding something crazy. It doesn't even need to be totally unexpected, but finding something crazy. Let's say you were the person that found the Edmund fitzgerald sunk on the bottom lake superior that's interesting say you found a body that had been missing for decades while you're out hunting that's interesting definitely say you had say you Say you were... Oldest artifact. Yep.

Like, for instance, when we had Mike Kunz on, and Mike Kunz talked about finding the Mesa site. That's interesting. It could be anything that we're just looking for great stories of finding discoveries. It could even be, and I'm hesitant to say this but in the perfect scenario it could be that you found out something about yourself but go light on those that that's a high bar what about like finding a well-preserved bear trap in the mountains perfect that would be good here's another one it's good you find a frozen ice age hunter coming thawing out of a glacier hey what what if you your father was

hunting in the 1990s and he died but before he died he shot a bull elk that he never found that fell into a glacier 20 years later you come back with your son who's never met his grandfather and you find the bull elk in the glacier how about that fabulous got it yeah what i see okay okay uh a hermit if you found a little hermit that would be a good story. The more relevance, the better to the find. Like, for instance, the guy that found Samuel Champlain's astrolabe while tilling a field in Ontario, that's interesting. But you can't set the bar too high because most of us have not made world-changing discoveries in the wild.

We need to hear stories. most of us have not made like world-changing discoveries in the wild there are stories about the stories we're looking so if you got one if you were fishing and you hooked yes body with your number a box with your with your or an old shoe with your crankbait and reel them in and it was was a what? A person. Oh, yeah. Right in about that, for sure. When I was beachcombing yesterday, I came across the wetsuit down in all the rubble. You didn't.

Yeah, I did. And I was like, am I about to find a dead person? You found a wetsuit beachcombing? Yeah, it was all tore up. Yeah. You didn't even tell us? You should write into this email I'm about ready to give. I will. CampfireStories at TheMeatEater.com.

On to the news. I was reluctant to cover anything out of Yellowstone. Guy at Yellowstone, a bunch of bison swim across the river, although a calf can't make it to him. Calf gets stranded on the bank. The herd takes off to the other side of the lamar somebody put it in their car again no he didn't do that he scurried it up the hill and like scurried it back up the hill away from the river a white male

i'll buy that that's it that's it i was thinking like he was going to get... 40s or 50s, no. I thought mom was... Balder today is long. Blue t-shirt. Are we looking for this guy? I think they got him.

His name is... He's got a graying beard, shades. Balder and Cal. I thought it was going to be that Ma came down the bank and whooped his ass. No, they already found him. He pled guilty. Okay. So this guy got in trouble for doing that.

Yeah. So he got in trouble for doing it. So he pushed the struggling calf up from the river and onto the roadway where it proceeded to like follow cars around and be abandoned. And they said the herd wouldn't accept it because the man touched it. I don't know that I buy that. I don't either. I think that it might have, or like it didn't cross the river when they crossed the river and they abandoned it there. I think this guy's getting in trouble for something he didn't cross the river when they crossed the river. And they abandoned it there.

I think this guy's getting in trouble for something he didn't do. Fine $235 and had to pay $500 to the Yellowstone Park Foundation Wildlife Protection Fund. He didn't flat out break the rules. You can't get within... You can't... You got to stay 25 yards away from uh you got to stay 25 yards away from bison hundreds a hundred yards away from bears and wolves park officials are investigating i don't know why at this point it's not clear to people that like when you go to yellowstone

don't touch the animals well you can picture not clear to people that when you go to Yellowstone, don't touch the animals. Well, you can picture this poor guy. He's like, it's stranded. Dude, how many people go to Yellowstone every year? The chances of there being a couple kind of... You just can't get the word out enough. Yeah. Just don't touch the animals.

Don't touch the critters. And. Just don't touch the animals. Don't touch the critters. Don't touch the critters. But also, I don't know what people's vision of Yellowstone is, but natural life still goes on there. If you see a bison calf that's about to die, that's how it works. Well, it's like they've never heard heard of yellowstone because if you're looking for yellowstone in the news it's just people getting in trouble for getting too close to the animals they're like oh you mean that place

you go into you get in trouble for touching everything a listener did us a great favor we've talked a couple times about the guy every time if you're like a a male i i don't know how they i'm sure this is served heavily to males if you're a male in the let's say 20 to 50 age bracket i'm guessing who they're serving this ad to you're familiar with the shirtless guy making selfie videos or he's on fake podcasts yeah v, V Shred. And he's like, he'll say something to the effect of. I think that's his name. Yeah, oh, is it? I think.

He'll say something to the effect of, everybody knows Cardio Bill burns fat, right? Wrong. Oh, yeah. Well, the YouTube ads. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And you want to, and when he starts talking,

you're like, man, is he right? Well, a guy, he was alerting me a couple times to a testosterone killing food yeah i've heard that one and i would watch as long as i could bear it and i did never find out what exactly is killing men's testosterone so a guy a listener after listening to monday's episode you guys were joking about the YouTube ad guy where the guy never gets to the point. Shortly after listening, of course, his ad popped up. I'm a painter, so I threw in my earbud and got to listening.

After watching a one-hour and 18-minute video, no joke, the mystery food killing testosterone was flax seeds. Oh. No joke. The mystery food killing testosterone was flax seeds. Oh. P.S. After watching the video, I'm still unsure of what the guy is selling. Huh. That really is one of the great mysteries of the internet. Flax seeds.

Well, no. Just like what that guy is selling. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, folks, stay're gonna pretty soon we're gonna talk about uh the new revolutionary black bear hunting technique i developed that clay executed upon it was a it was a collab yeah um i developed it and then quickly tried to abandon it but But Clay stuck it out. Clay stuck it out and developed

the new technique, which I'm hesitant to even bring up. I might make a YouTube video where I'd be like, what's the best way to kill a black bear? And just,

and then you watch and watch and watch and I'd never tell you. And at the end, you're like, boom. This one secret. Okay, now you guys got to pay attention because this is very philosophical in episode 440 you all debated whether it would be okay to lie

on a rental application asking if a tenant planned to bring firearms into a home i remember this mm-hmm he says this is not an etiquette question. It's a philosophical question. During that conversation, Steve used the, quote, murderer at the door scenario. Now, pay careful attention. Most of the other podcast members, and especially Phil, seemed to think it was irrelevant to the situation being discussed. I'm quoting from the person that wrote in.

It's actually, this is my favorite part, it's actually very relevant. The murder at the door scenario was made by the philosopher Immanuel Kant in the 18th century, specifically to counter a French philosopher's claim that you only have a moral obligation to tell the truth to one who has a right to truth. Kant believed that being truthful was a sacred and unconditionally commanding law Kant would say that the man who wrote in asking for advice

was morally obligated to be truthful on the rental application regardless of the potential outcome. The less famous French philosopher, who I think is right, would say that the man could morally lie if the person renting the home had no right to know if a potential tenant had firearms. No right to know. Meaning, you're out fishing and you just land on a real hot spot. Some guy you never met in your life says,

are you catching anything? You go, just a little one. Or whatever you say. Nothing much. Yeah, that happened. You're right, Steve. You feel.

That happened all the time. Not really. They have no right to know. I'd say a few. But then your main fishing partner says, did you catch any? He has a right to know. Yeah. Oh, if I'm catching them, I'm on the phone with my main fishing partner

go ahead go ahead if i'm not with him do you want to hear the rest because he gets into you in a minute here sure why not chester's argument that if the wife really wanted the apartment and you did too then you could fib it a little bit, which is a quote, is essentially hedonism. A philosophy which claims that man's only moral obligation is to maximize his own pleasure. I don't think there are many etiquette books written by hedonists, so if he acts fast, he might be able to corner the market. Can I give one last thing before you counter, Chester?

He says, anyways, love the podcast. I've noticed, I'm not going to get into details on this. He goes, I've noticed that there's often an inverse correlation between the fame of your guest and the quality of the show. It goes on to have many examples. Which I'm not going to read the examples because that's mean. Go ahead, Chester. Yeah, I was kind of going back and forth on that one.

The etiquette thing there. I think I should have stuck with my guns what i said first which was none of their business no i i think i said i would tell the truth you're like a can't you're like an emmanuel can't yeah but whatever i would not tell the truth hey everyone phil just chiming in here to stave off any sort of snarky emails we might get containing something along the lines of oh steve can't pronounce conk a dumb joke that i would never make of course steve is aware that the name is pronounced emmanuel conk back to the show guy wrote in about uh for some i can't remember this We were talking about

Coin purses made out of kangaroo nutsacks Is that true? I mean it's not shocking I think we talked about that Wasn't there like a They shut down I don't remember talking about coin purses Anyways this guy says

My family we have a long history making buck ball bag gear shift covers. After you get a buck, I've seen these, just sharing it. I've never done it. After you get a buck, you cut the screw off

and empty the contents. You then put that over the shift knob like a helmet. I like that little detail, like a helmet. On your manual transmission or transfer case shift knob like a helmet i like that little detail like a helmet on your manual transmission or transfer case shift knob and tie the bottom off with a short piece of string he likes to run fuzzy side out the bag dries around the shift knob saving you

leaving you with a great conversation piece and a warm soft spot to put your hand on a cold winter's day. Most commonly, people will ask if it's rabid. It's not. In my opinion, anyone who takes issue with it doesn't need a ride all that bad. He also points out there's no stink. As the hair wears off over time, you'll be left with a thin leather cover a thin leather cover that can last for years eventually it will crack one day you'll have to take it off or it'll fall off the factory knob becomes a subconscious reminder that it's

been a while since you were successful man this guy This is deep. He's covering every aspect of it. I feel like we should... Yeah. Find a role for this guy. He's like an email writer. Mule deer seem the best for my make and model. Antelope are a tad small. Big shifter.

Elk is too big. Bighorn sheep sacks would probably cover the shift knob, shift lever, and half the transmission. He can't send a picture because he's in Japan. Oh. Wow. We need to have that guy on the podcast. He signs off. They're under a buck.

Under a buck. They're under a buck. Golly buck. They're under a buck. Golly. Man, this guy's good. I want to know what he's doing in Japan. He's probably, I bet he's military. Yeah, okay. He's stationed over there.

What's a guy that's got a buck sack on his shifter doing in Japan? Military. Here's a good one. This is a chattakit question so the rule on chattakit is chet gets the final answer even though it's probably wrong yeah can i coach him just a little bit yeah i'm staying out of no no no like beforehand like i don't want to get into the we need this is what we need he would tell he would he would lose the apartment over someone telling someone something that's none of their business well i'm saying we just need more certainty okay i think you know you have an opinion yeah i think you're being more like a magic eight ball you're being pulled a little bit too hard. And sometimes we're left not knowing really what you think.

I think really what happens is like I'm on a podcast right now. So what I say is going to be heard by a lot of people. So I'm thinking about it too hard and I just need to go with my guts and be certain. Just trust yourself. Be certain. So I'm going to be certain. Hey, folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness, do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes.

And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of you know, sucking high and titty there, OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. The Hunt app

is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking. That's right. We're always talking about OnX here on the Meat Eater Podcast. Now you guys in the Great White North can be part of it, be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service. That's a sweet function.

As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services hand-picked by the OnX Hunt team. Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more. As a special offer,

you can get a free three months to try On x out if you visit on x maps.com slash meet on x maps.com slash meet welcome to the to the on x club y'all there's a chetika question I'm not going to say anything Clay, you can talk about it You can talk about it Dr. Randall, feel free I have a question concerning the purchase of land

Seth perked right up, you see that? I like purchasing land I have found I have found 15 acres in a western state that is bordered by over 15,000 acres of mostly landlocked public land there are only a couple of homes within a quarter mile from the house so it's perfectly remote but you still have what I'm hoping are cool neighbors. If I purchase the land, what do I do about public access?

I don't want to be the feller in Wyoming that brought the nonsense corner crossing BS, which a judge is, you know, that guy's getting totally shot down. There's just another ruling in that case, which is more to the effect of nothing happened. Like, nothing happened to your land. No damage was done by corner crossers. We're going to cover that in greater detail as things become more clear.

Anyhow, he doesn't want to be that guy. However, I don't know how I feel about a bunch of people parking on my land to access the public land. Now that I'm typing this, I don't really know how to ask what I want to know. I think he wants to know would you let would you let people so here's your land to access the yeah so here he's saying here i am i'm gonna buy a chunk of private land that has access to landlocked public land a bunch of it does he have a moral obligation to make his house a trailhead well i don't think i don't think a moral obligation no well so i'm staying out of it oh yeah from the con from the context that we got he leaves in there he says mostly landlocked so if if it's truly landlocked i would say

i'm all about letting people access public land i think we are all too so i would say you could probably work with your work with the state and get a little parking area or something and really you would do that chester i don't think you understand what's happening here what he yeah i do i mean as the piece of private land are you kidding me you might have just bought the best hunting property jess you're saying you're saying that if you bought 15 acres of land and it gave you access to 15 000 acres of landlocked and when he says mostly land i don't know what he means but okay you buy 15 acres and it abuts a big chunk of landlocked public you're saying you would turn your 15 acres into a public access part that's

that is wonderful if true i mean dude think about all the stuff we do at meat eater to get access to public land. So you put your money where your mouth is. Yeah, why wouldn't you? If we're the ones raising money to get easements and stuff like this. What about if you didn't work at MeatEater?

I probably wouldn't let people access it. I just think in a real life scenario you wouldn't be quite that altru I just think in a real life scenario, you wouldn't be quite that altruistic. Like in a real life scenario. I'm just saying, with what we're doing right now, I'm being certain here, Clay. Okay.

With what we're doing at MeatEater and raising all this money for land access and stuff, absolutely, that's 15,000, whatever he said. That's a ton of hunting land that we are raising money for currently to try and get little easements and stuff. I'd like him to send

me the listing. He doesn't even give what state. I was going to say, that guy if he's ever interested in selling, should send an email to Cal. Cal will buy it. And maybe they can work out a little land access initiative deal there. Did I say I was going to stay out of it?

You did. Well, you can take it back. I'm taking it back. Here's what I'd do. Here's what I'd do. Real world scenario. I bought that chunk real world scenario is i wouldn't be a tight ass with my friends and stuff but i don't know that i would actually turn my home into a trailhead i would probably be like i'd like to think i would be very generous with friends and kids and neighbors and whatnot but i don't know that i would put up a sign just just trying to be realistic i think it's i agree it's it's a there it could be spread out

to different areas of life where you have access to something good it's like we have a great elk pot roast cooking in the kitchen are we gonna let all the strangers that want to come eat dinner with us come eat dinner no yes are we gonna i we going to, I mean, it's just like, there's all kinds of stuff that we individually have access to that we have a right to as humans to have some access to something that's. And this guy as the most recent purchaser of land adjacent to this big chunk of public it's he's under no obligation to solve a problem that everybody else isn't solving yeah i mean he might actually really be a deeply moral person he might piss off his neighbors oh he will for sure oh yeah if and if he really i mean i would approach it similarly to you and if i felt really guilty about it i would make it my life's mission

to establish new access to some other piece of public someone else's on the other side of the state it would be the same question of if you had you know 1500 acres of private ground it's like chester would you let the public public it? And I think the answer would be no. Oh, that's a great. Let's say, yeah, Chester, let's say you bought. Here's the deal. Clay brought up the pot roast thing. If I'm cooking a pot roast in my kitchen,

and I'm not going to go hold a sign out like Steve saying, hey, come and get some pot roast but if some guy out there rolls up on his boat and it's raining and he's like you guys got any food I'm gonna welcome him in here with open arms and I'm gonna give him some of that pot roast if I straight Chester if I own a chunk of private property my father he owns a chunk of private property, my father, he owns a chunk of private property. He doesn't have a sign out in front of it saying, come hunt. Okay. But if some guy comes over with a compelling story.

Moldy old A-frame, porch fell off. Yep. He'd be generous. He'd be generous. Yeah. Our friend, Carl Malcolm. That's how I get hunting permissions. Ask my father to hunt.

I know there's no relevancy here, but... Have you seen my house? Sir, my porch fell off. I'd like to hunt elk on your property. My A-frame in Alaska, the porch fell off. You poor guy. Think I could hunt? Yeah.

Sorry, Jack. Go ahead. So I know a guy also that has an easement through his property. And he's got it on the corner. He doesn't have a big old sign out there. Got it. People aren't constantly, people know. The people that know, know.

And it's not a whole lot of people accessing that. And also those people that access through that do all kinds of real nice things for that guy yeah is that right he really like you know they they take care of him so i i don't think it'd be the worst thing in the world it's all just depends on the situation but we gotta we gotta put our money where our mouth is at meat eater we uh back in the day when i was still in pennsylvania i was real young the hunting property that my family owns which you got steve chet you've guys seen we used to be enrolled in this program with the game commission where they would supply trees and food plot seed and we would plant all that stuff and then let the public on it oh but that quickly quickly ended did it yeah

too much chaos too much chaos you try to go up to your tree stand on opening morning and someone's sitting in your stand like it was just yeah too it was too much to handle and you just basically lost all your opportunity on your own property you know but it worked for a little bit but yeah so that's like kind of ends this whole conversation on a sour note just one perspective well i'm glad that there's chesters out there maybe there are a lot of chesters out there in the world because i know and am the beneficiary of many landowners who are exceedingly generous. Doug, Bubbly Doug, I can't remember what the hell. Someone, like, Bubbly, I can't remember what the number.

Bubbly Doug had, like, 40-some people hunted Doug's place last year. He's controlled about it. Mm-hmm. You know, you've got, like, Turkey A season, Turkey B season, da-da-da- season, down the line. You've got like, you know, youth deer, rifle, late this. You know, he's measured about it and kind of has a schedule in his head. But, man.

Yeah, nothing wrong with being generous. Super generous. My friend Mark lives by me. He's super generous. People are always out there. Super good about kids right he's not in a program he's not an access program no big sign out front but like exceedingly generous to the point where you like you're saying to the point where you are costing yourself opportunity because you could just you could, mine, mine, mine.

But in the long run, that probably makes a guy like Doug just a happier human being because he's sharing and stuff. I don't know. So could we say that this guy has a moral obligation to be generous? No. No. No, but he'd probably feel good if he was. Okay. Ready to move on?

Yep. You good, Chester? Yeah, I'm good. So the final thing is Chester's taking the moral high ground doing what's right. Yeah. So we kind of forgot about the listener.

If you buy that place, it's great. If you don't, let me know where that spot's at. Either way, whatever he does, I'm not going to be bummed if he wants to keep that to himself. But it's just what I would do. So over the years of hunting coastal black bears, I have adopted a couple strategies that I like. And one strategy I adopted for hunting coastal black bears is to do it in waders. Now, when you're doing it in waders there is the obvious

safety risk you do not want to go overboard in deep water with good current cold water in waders that is a that's just the reality you could act like you're going to be so uh diligent that you don't put your waders on until you're ready to get out and go after a bear but that's you're not being realistic i leave in my waders and i am out in my skiff in my waders, which many people would think is not smart. Because when you go overboard, if you hit something, and we were hanging out with a kid last night that recently went overboard. He had a full survival suit on, so a full Mustang suit. I'll think about getting me one of them full Mustang suits. You should do it, man.

Me being up here for the first time it's striking to me i think you guys are desensitized to it but how dangerous this really is oh it is i was talking to an uber driver in catch can one time and he was coast guard and we got to talking and he had over his career he's kind of retired and started driving over his his career, he had been to many distress calls and many bodies. One that shook him up one time is the guy had tied himself to his skiff. Tied himself to a cap-sized skiff.

So his boat flipped over. Tied himself to a cap-sized skiff, and he boat flipped over. Tied himself to a cap-sized skiff, and he felt it was obviously so that his body would be recovered. Oh. Another time he talked about two people had made it to the beach and were dead leaning on a tree in the winter. One of the first days we were out in some of the bigger water we were probably a half mile from shore maybe closer than that and i said steve we have a wreck right now and go in the water

can i make it to that shore swimming and he was like no probably not and it was kind of surprising to me because you feel like adrenaline the current is so strong dude and you'd and you'd make it but the water's so cold you just lock up before you got there when we were diving scallop just to give you sense of the current so we were diving scallops the other day i had a spot that i was diving down to that I was marking because it was about, it was like at a two o'clock position, about 25 yards off the bow of the boat. The boat's anchored. 30 feet of water.

I would dive down, hit the bottom, and then ride the current looking. So it's an 18-foot skiff. I'm 25 yards up. In a one-minute dive, when I pop up, I'm back of the stern. Really? Yep. You could have swam against the current. Yeah.

But where you're talking about, that shoreline you're talking about, the current runs parallel to that shoreline. It just takes you down. So you would have a hard time getting to shore. On an incoming tide, it would be a lot better than an outgoing tide. But I'm just saying, yeah, likely not in 50-degree water. I've got a little bit, once we get further into the— Without a survival coat

but we you know we use survival coats but the kid we're talking about he hit a he hit a it's crazy he hit a tree i don't know if he caught this no he had a tree that had snapped off on top and the tree was oriented vertically in the water root wad and everything wow and the end of the tree was was bobbing up and down at the surface so you would have seen the tree was standing upright in the water huh so you would have seen nothing no gashed a hole in his thing he was able to swim to the beach it was march but it was like a warm sunny day he gashed a hole in his boat had a full-on full survival suit made it to the beach walked up to a logging road i wouldn't have known what a mustang suit was so these survival coats are

basically it's like a jacket with a zipper and pockets but it's a it's a flotation device yeah mustang is like the leading maker it's a brand yeah mustang is a leading maker of survival coats yeah there are other there are other brands yeah and it floats you and insulates you yeah picture a life jacket with a with sleeves yeah hey when we get when we get more i don't want to give away the bear stuff fully i'm trying to leave i've got a current i've got a current thing about the about being having a sense of being pulled out oh so point being out before i was before i got distracted there what i was getting at was it's dangerous riding around and skipping your waders yeah so just bear that in mind where you're maybe put your mustang coat on so you counteract that way just your legs will fall off uh so oh it's so good for like it's just a great way to because you

you don't have to think about where you're getting out you can't shoot from a boat i remember one time we lost a bear the bear was going along the beach and went up in the timber we pulled up me and my buddy r, we pulled up, and I'm like, well, I'm going to wail on a predator call. And I started wailing on that predator call, and that bear looked like it was going to get in the boat with us when he come back out of the timber. But we're pulled up on a steep thing,

and you can't shoot from a boat. So I was like, get out of the boat, get out of the boat, so he could shoot. But he's like, it's too deep. One, who cares? But two, had you had waders on, whoop. Just jump right in. Yeah, so I like to hunt in waders.

One day I was sitting there, years ago, and I never took action on it. It was just one of those thoughts I had. I was looking at some bear or another, and I was thinking, man, if I never took action on it, it was just one of those thoughts I had, I was looking at some bear or another, and I was thinking, man, if I had my wetsuit, I would just swim up to that bear. No problem. In a wetsuit.

He would just think it was a seal coming. I mentioned this to Clay, and Clay said, I'm going to do that with my bow. That's about the way it happened. So Clay got himself a 7mm wetsuit. 5mm with a 1mm liner. Oh, is that what you did? Yeah.

Our friends over at Rob Allen made him a suit. Did you do the custom measurements? Yeah, 42 measurements, man. Gets real personal. I'd like to see that sheet i know the measurements of every circumference on my body i did the same thing so got a five mil suit with a one mil liner and bought a little teeny pool toy boogie board like a like a like a 30 inch very cheap go ahead and walk four and walk them through your equipment foreign made you know little boogie board from some box store you know and it had all the beach

colors on top and it was kind of like a scaly black on the bottom and i spray painted a little camo on top because that's what my bow floated on so i drilled two holes up through the it was just styrofoam and put a piece of hay string through the holes and i would uh do just like a little slip knot over the handle of the bow to cinch it down you know i feel you should have gone velcro strap yeah it probably would have been better. It probably would have been better. Painted a seal's face on the front. Yeah, yeah. We're seeing a lot of seals up here. Hey, can I describe the land features of why this is significant?

Oh, why it matters? I mean, because I don't think it would be – it wasn't evident to me here in UTEL why this would be effective. It was actually more effective than i thought it would be i was envisioning a lot of like long straight shorelines yeah that's what you think when you think shorelines but this is not that this there are uncountable islands and just much variation in the coast. And they swim around to little island hop. Yeah. We watched multiple bears swim.

And there aren't too many big flats on the coastline. I mean, there's some grass flats tucked away here and there. Let me give another little detail. You got two kinds of black bears. You got black bears eating beach rye. Eating grass. Grass. another little detail you got two kinds of black bears you got black bears eating beach rye eating grass grass you got black bears eating mussels and crabs on a low tide you know and the and the and like the waiter strategy is good for either but we're talking about we're talking about

bears that are down in the rocks so the first day that i was here we weren't quite ready to commit randall was hunting and y'all had an incredible hunt and i was in my waders randall kills a bear we can talk about that later i got in and we saw another bear well we already had randall's bear in the boat and i'm wearing waders and i stalk a bear and i'm bow hunting i stalk a bear went over your weight along the edge along the edge trying to go to a bear and everything was good until i got to a big rock that jetted out into the water where it was real deep out on the edge of the rock and so i couldn't get around it with my waders without getting way over them.

And so the waders are good to a point. Most of the time, a wader would get you. And the thing about, and this is, if you're trying to get within bow range of these bears, you're not walking on soft ground. You're walking on rocks and it's loud. Coated in barnacles. Barnacles, mussels.

It's very loud. So if you have waders or and you know a wetsuit the water is silent there was a bear the first day that bear was feeding on mussels and i was in the water with my waders can i can i interject for a minute here because there's a detail on express it's a steep bank and trees will fall over and they'll fall into the ocean and muscles blue muscles which i'll point out is a circumpolar species meaning there's a band of latitude there's a latitude band and that the blue muscle same species occurs all the way around the globe so when you go into a restaurant order muscles that's what we're talking about. But they attach to pretty much anything.

There's a tree that fell over into the ocean, and its limbs over the years have become seeded with mussels. At high tide. At high tide. The tide goes out. We watch a bear come under the tree, and it's like he's pulling apples out of a tree, but he's feeding on muscles over his head, draped off tree limbs. Very cool.

Two different times. Randall's bear was doing that when we hit the beach. Two different times. Very cool. And these bears are crunching these muscles. Yeah, they're crunching them like acorns. And they'll just sit down. Acres, acorns.

That'd be a good show for you. They'll hunker down and just eat. Yeah, they'll lay on the beach and just eat all the muscles around them. Okay, I got a quick question about the South. Seems irrelevant. Totally unrelevant. around them so okay i got a quick question about the south seems irrelevant um totally unrelevant i just noticed in the south you guys get two syllables out of the word hen hen hen hen hen they get two syllables out of a turkey hen. Go on, no. Henn? I don't know if I do that or not. Some people do.

Now, Ben, Ben and Ben, yeah, never mind. And here comes the hen. The bears, so the bears are feeding on these rocky outcroppings and there's a lot of little channels

and we decided with a wetsuit you would be uninhibited in the water and we felt like that you we one thing that we thought i gotta come clean about something too go on though well go ahead my case scenario had a lot to do with rifle hunting. In that you can't shoot from a boat. And that big boars don't like the sound of motors. They learn what a motor sounds like, and they don't like it up close.

There's a point at which a bear don't want to hear an outboard. My use case scenario was different than yours. Mine was how to extremely quietly get to a point or island or whatever, how to extremely quietly get to something where you could shoot from a ways off. I wasn't picturing as getting in there and shaking hands with them like you were doing oh really what you thought i was gonna get to the land and stalk no i thought no my original concept okay was wasn't shaking hands with them my original thing was just getting yeah that you could just slip out of your boat instead of trying to beat your boat right

you could anchor and just slip out of your boat yeah yeah right and it wasn't like like following them in a wetsuit like you were doing yeah i wasn't thinking about that so much as i was thinking like man if i could get to that little point all i gotta do then is wait for him to get clear 100 yards 200 yards whatever the hell yeah it wasn't quite like how you put it to use like you were putting the use like up close and personal yeah but go on well it it ended up being incredibly effective and the wetsuit thing was kind of interesting for me this first time i've had a wetsuit and and put it on and i was uncertain how cold this water would be how

difficult it would be the first time you put that wetsuit on you had a slight panic oh man no doubt i did i i got this wetsuit and i was sent this lubrication, which was a powdered lubrication. And I thought, I didn't read the instructions on it. I thought it was like talcum powder. Like, okay, you put this wetsuit on with this dry. How would you not? It was dumb, man. There's no excuse.

The thing I'm finding, like you're. Here we go. Just at times, like you're just ambivalence to directions i'm guilty man i'm guilty i'm guilty you'd get a powder you'd never seen before and put it on your body without looking like like how to use it what it is when clay gets a prescription from the drug store he probably takes the paperwork just throws it out don't tell me how to use it, what it is. When Clay gets a prescription from the drugstore, he probably takes the paperwork and just throws it out. Don't tell me how to take this. Don't tell me how to take this medicine.

I'm guilty. I'll take this medicine how I please and when I please. And so I'm putting this wetsuit on, and I get it over my head, and I'm like, man, this is hard. And I finally get both my arms in it and i got my head it is choking me to death and i literally start to have a panic attack because i can't get it off and i call my wife and i'm like i'm like pulling it out from my neck and i say when i go down like trying to get under it just pull it off my back as hard as you can i was literally like my heart was

pounding she thought i was gonna pass out it was it was bad and i was slightly and i didn't have time to it was like the day before we came you know and so i didn't put it on until the first day and actually that first day when it was choking up on me even while we're in the boat i was it made me like physically nervous having that thing on yeah you kind of brought you back to you yeah i was i was like pulling it down and i actually was like man i wonder if i can do this or not and then finally after a while you just get used to it yeah hey folks exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada.

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As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit OnXMaps.com slash meet. OnXMaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX club, y'all. The wetsuit was an incredible way to get close to these bears. And we had multiple wetsuit stalks you so what happens you see a bear from a long ways away and then you you boat in and get to a place where they can't see you get out of the boat and then me and dirt dirt was really people be able to see this at some point he was filming with an underwater camera and a gopro and some stuff and we would we would swim usually staying close to

the shore and try to come in downwind of the bear which we thought that being under almost underwater would would cover our scent well you weren't doing it right we had bears smell us if you did mask and snorkel not gonna smell you but they'll smell your breath that's i mean that's all they were smelling anyway and you put some tic tacs down that snorkel bears love tic tacs no so i mean do you want me to tell when we finally killed the bear sure i feel like i want to add more color in here but no you're no no no let's go i thought that when when i first heard you were going to have a wetsuit, a boogie board with your bow on it in salt water,

you've never been in a wetsuit, you're from Arkansas, I was like, yeah, that's not cool. Chester was doubtful. Seth had the best observation. We were talking about how bears comprehend stuff and he said the last thing they'll be thinking is that it's some hillbilly from arkansas that is the last thing they're like maybe some yuppie from california might think of this not a hillbilly from arkansas yes yeah no there were a lot of there were a lot of

variables they're like worst case it's a california there are a lot of variables but these bears i i knew from steve's observations of being in the water with them that they were gonna be pretty much oblivious to things coming from the water and that's like deep biology that there's just not danger on the water. They hear a sound on the shore. They hear a rock pop on the shore. They're going to be gone. They're going to be alert. But from the water, we knew that they weren't going to be that alert.

And there literally are seals swimming around all over the place. And here we are in these black wetsuits, cam wetsuits you know with stuff pulled up over our head we we look like seals but you guys needed to do i think that uh like a little face paint oh might have made a big difference it because the white face it becomes very pronounced yeah a little grease on your face you might even look like totally. You might have got it. We talked about it. Did I tell you I saw where a black bear killed a seal here?

Yeah. Because when the salmon are in, this is quite a ways out from here, but when the salmon are in, the seals will go right up in the creeks. And my theory is some bear's standing there, sleeping in the grass whatever and also he's like you gotta be kidding me there's a seal and he had skinned that seal it was just a seal's hide wow he emptied it out like a sack didn't like to hide i was envisioning a bear like trying to get in the water you know you think of all the scenarios and i just felt like

you could get away from a bear in the water i don't think they're that that agile in the water they don't hesitate to swim man two different times when we were out in a channel we were in this like cluster of islands and two kind of peninsulas that came together and so there's there's there's like a braid of channels two different times we were in the water with a bear that was swimming across the channel you know a couple you know 200 yards from us but it looked like a beaver from water level looked like a beaver going across the water and then it'd get out and it'd be this bear yeah but no so when we finally i think we've covered all the bases here of why we were doing it scent sound getting close i mean i had shots at 30 and 40 yards all day stalking on the land and and that's a good shot

i mean a guy that's pretty decent with the bow can take that shot but i've also bow hunted enough to know that 30 plus yards with a bow on any animal maybe other than an elk that has a kills on the size of a beach ball there's just a lot that can happen i like to get inside i want to be i want it to be 20 yards from a bear i think it's important to note here you want to put a kill shot on those things because if they go up into that thick wet nasty stuff it is the worst stuff in the world to try to blood trail on yeah it's just moss moss it's not like a forest floor of like fallen leaves it's it's heavily vegetated moss that doesn't show blood good. Yeah. And depending on where the tide's at, they have like 10 yards,

and then they're just disappeared. Yeah. Yeah. So I didn't want to take a marginal shot. I had some shots at other bears at 40-ish without the wetsuit, and I just was like, man, I don't want to take it. And again, I can hit a target all day at 40. without the wetsuit and i didn't i just was like man i don't want to take it and uh and and again you i can hit a target all day at 40 but the here's my tide my tide story i don't even think

i told you this dirt and i were on a small island with a channel that at low tide was probably 40 yards wide to get to the main part of land and And we see this bear like 200 yards away on the shore from our island. And we're going to swim this channel, this 40-yard channel as the tide's coming out. It's starting to get low tide. And the wind's blowing pretty good. And we don't have flippers on

because we've decided that we want to be more moat. We've got Crocs over our the feet of our wetsuit and no snorkel no goggles or anything and i'm pulling the boogie board and uh we dive off this kind of like deep front like there's not a bottom like you pretty much just jump off the edge of a rock almost into water you can't touch in. And, man, I got about four, you know, just doggy paddle strokes out there, and it kind of starts taking you, like, out to sea. I mean, that's what it felt like. It really wasn't that dramatic.

But to me, I was very cognizant that I'm not going the direction I'm swimming. And I thought, dang, this isn't going to be cool. It's like a full-on river basically yeah yeah and but by the time i the that little section was short though it was like 10 yards and then once i got out in the middle it kind of calmed down and i could actually swim the direction i was wanting to go but the bear was 200 yards away around the corner we get out into the middle of the channel dirt and i are just like floating just like bobbing and here comes the bear we didn't know it was going to come our way it comes around the corner and we're in clear view of this bear on the shore and it never even looks at us that's why you need snorkel mass though too

the wind's good though and but now we float down and just kind of slow swim watching the bear i mean it's like within bow range of us now and there's just it was a perfect scenario because there was a rock about half as big as a car that was right on the edge i get in behind that rock and i didn't even have my release on yet. I untied the bow, untied the haystring, put my release on and the bear was so close I didn't even use my rangefinder. I didn't take it. I had a rangefinder clipped onto the haystring. And man, if there's ever a Vortex commercial, it's this, man. I was using the Vortex rangefinder that more than once I saw it bobbing from the end of that boogie board down in the salt water. It looked like a halibut jig bouncing down. Hanging off that baler twine.

Yeah, man. I mean, and I would scoop it up and I would range to see if it still worked. And I'd be like, she still works. And I just put it back on that boogie board. Wow. And I'm serious. It works today. I checked it last night before I put it up. I was like, yep, she works. Anyway, I didn't even take the range finder, got the bow, and then we ducked back into the water to about chest-deep water. It kind of bent down and just started going towards the bear,

and the bear was kind of in a cluster of rocks. I estimated I was 12 yards from the bear, and I stood up, and all I had to do was be in water deep enough so that at full draw my bottom cam didn't slap the water you know yeah so I I just stood up and the winds in my face the bear never sees us and I'm in you know about thigh deep waist deep water and shoot the bear get a great shot the bear you'll see water, and shoot the bear, get a great shot. The bear, you'll see it on the video, the bear jumps like a marlin coming out of the water.

For real. The entry hole was on the right side of the bear, and the bear spun so fast that I watched the arrow exit like almost towards me. Then the bear runs maximum of 15 yards and rolls down to the edge of the water. It wasn't a big bear. It was just the bear that did things right. I really feel like you could probably target a big bear and do good if you... I just wanted

proof of concept. Randall got a big old board. Yeah. He did. This is Steve's idea. 100%. I'm mostly joking. My idea up to the point that I never did it.

I told Dirk... It's more like, you know what a fella could do. It was a perfect merger because I would have never had even the thought cross my mind because I didn't have the spear fishing tool skill set. Like I would have never

gone out on my own and got a wetsuit and drew a POW tag. You'd have never dreamed of getting in that water. Yeah, I wouldn't have known that you could have gotten that water and not been eaten by a killer whale. So your confidence in the wetsuit

and then just me loving bear hunting and just wanting to do something different. It was kind of like a perfect merger. Well, hunting sea cucumbers in wetsuits, you're working all the edges and you know i mean so you learn just how nicely you can get along and yeah and how like you know just how you're not thinking about stealth but just how unbelievably stealthy it is it is yeah just be down in the water working along the edge yeah and i know from past experience the way in which

uh stuff floating just isn't of a high concern. They're just not. Quiet stuff floating is not as alarming to them as other stuff. Now, I say that, and just to really quickly touch on it, we spooked Randall's Bear approaching approaching it no motor running yep but y'all it was wide open we got it it was wide open and it was only one what did i say it was 190 it spooked at 190 yards yeah something like that and we were in the canoe paddling towards it and at that point i knew we desperately wanted to get it yeah yeah we we um

we spotted him from the skiff out in the middle of the channel and we're curious enough to want to get a better look at him and i can't tell what i'm looking at till i'm close yeah well when he was tough when we got about halfway from the skiff to the to the shore and he was he had kind of moved so he was sitting on his haunches and looked up at us and it was like right then that's a bear that we're real interested in i was looking at one well i was looking at one one time and i'm still like looking at it trying to assess and it was enough that i wanted to look at it more but i hadn't said shoot and a friend of mine shot and it wasn't a big one he got mad at me but i was like i never said shoot i'm still looking yeah in fact when they're going off

about deafening me because i wasn't prepared for it but it's like i gotta look at them well and we i mean i gotta look at them from a couple hundred yards away is why like you know the first night for a while we saw three that all you know each one of those i i couldn't have said one way or the other they got it yeah you're in a boat moving around yeah you're i mean even even with your binoculars up you know it's so hard to get a clear picture of them and they're moving until they sit down and they all look pretty big when they're sitting there squatted over eating muscles you know just because the way that their body uh arranges itself but when that one he kind of turned his head and looked straight at us and then i could see the configuration of its ears i could see its ears

dickens i was i turned around the canoe and we're both nodding at each other. Like one, and people say this isn't, around here, I don't, around here, I find this to be true. Ears off to the side of the head, ears that look small, peeled off to the side of the head is a big bear. Ears that look pointy on top of the head is not. And let me, I got to say what i want something about that because that's the thing that people in general say about bears across north america is the ears and you're 100 right i mean here and in a lot of places that is 100 true but where i hunt in in the south in arkansas and oklahoma the biggest bear i've ever

killed in my life had five inches of ear sticking off the top of his head i mean straight off the top i mean it's just a little different so i don't yeah i'm not saying it's always true but of all the things people are looking for um of all the things you're looking at, it winds up being it's an easier one. And then the other thing is like that little triangle. Like if you go make a lot, make a triangle where

the top, what do you call the parts of a triangle? The top line of the triangle is a line from base to ear to base to ear. And then the point of that triangle is the end of its nose. You want where it's not pizza shaped. If that triangle is pizza shaped, it's small. Yeah.

If that triangle winds up being, what's the kind of, where all the parts and the sosleys? The sosleys is two sides. Equilateral. All the sides and the sosleys? The sosleys is two sides. Equilateral. All the sides are the same. Yeah. If it's that kind of triangle, it's probably big. Yeah, that's good.

Anyways, he looked at us, and I was like, da, da, when he got up and ran off. But one in, I don't know what percent. We got out to the beach. Randall had the Phelps predator call, the fawn. And we'd talked about that. Who else Phelps call that one? It's his Predator call.

He's got several. He's got a Cub in Distress call. That's the one I have. Predator, Cub Distress. Yeah. And then maybe a Fawn Jack. No, no, no. Once you have the Cub Distress.

I think it's the Fawn. The Fawn. Yeah. Either way way one in well let me tell this story one time i was looking at a black brown a grass flat and it vanished somewhere out in the grass flat or i thought it went in the way i couldn't find it i knew it was on a grass flat i get to the grass flat bear's not there i get set up where i got a good commanding view and I start wailing on the fawn distress.

To my surprise, out of the woods comes a black-tailed doe. Out of the timber across me, comes across the whole grass flat, gets up to me, stomping mad, blowing, all pissed off, and goes back. And I'm like, well, that amount of ruckus absolutely would have lured the bear in if he was here i stand up and move forward and that thing is right in front of me still feeding on grass and a little cut didn't care me blowing that call the doe coming out of the woods running around all pissed off and that bear never stopped feeding on grass that's how little it cared and then the next one will try to get in the boat with you yeah i think it's like one in ten two in ten i don't know yeah it's not one in two

no it ain't one in three no well that it's some it ain't one it's. No. Well, in that... It ain't one in... It's like some number really care. Yeah. And some number don't care. And at that point, we couldn't see the bear. We didn't have anything to lose. No. It was like we're already...

No, we spooked it. Yeah. We spooked it visually, not smell. We had the wind run. No, he was looking over. He kept glancing back over his shoulder. He's like, what in Sam Hill is that? He took a couple quick steps up and just disappeared into the trees we're and and meanwhile we got

some folks in the boats watching all of this myself clay sam who else chris or something or no you guys were but i was like there i saw the bear spooka and i even said i was like that thing's not coming back little did i know little did i know you guys had that call it was awesome from our view we were a quarter mile away basically out in the middle of this this inlet and i got my glass up and i think it's a done deal and y'all are about to come back and i hear the squall and i'm like oh they're predator calling and man that bear was we could see this the whole cross section of this thing shoreline you know y'all banked the shoreline and where the bear went in the woods and he went in the woods probably 25 30 yards and probably was

just sitting there because very quickly after you started blowing i saw black moving through the woods coming towards you and and the bow of our canoe was tucked up against this hump of rock so i got out of the canoe and i'm kind of sitting there holding it steve's in the canoe blowing on the call and i'm i've got like one foot on shore and one in the water just kind of crouched down looking down the beach waiting to see this thing pop out of the trees and uh little did you know and all of a sudden i'm sitting there, and I can hear Steve get excited. And I hear him saying, down the beach, down the beach. In reality, he's saying, in your face, in your face.

Which isn't that much more descriptive. No, Randall's looking at his 12 o'clock down the beach. And at his 9 o'clock, there's a at his nine o'clock there's a bear like standing there it was just out of my peripheral and i'm i'm kind of between the canoe and this hump of rock and so steve has another 12 feet or so of or 10 feet of perspective on the whole thing and i i'm looking down and i don't see the bear i bring up my binoculars quick i put them down and i look over my shoulder over my right shoulder to see where steve's looking at and i look over my right shoulder and i see his head craned left and so i spin around and i mean

i could not see that thing until i turned and had my chin over my left shoulder. This bear is on top of you guys. Yeah, he's sitting right – I mean, he's sitting over me. Yeah, he's like 10 feet above you. Yeah, he's like 10 feet above me just peering over the rock. He's got this real – I can see from his chest up. He's looking over the rock and, uh, it happened real quick, but I got to, I saw him for, you know, a second or two for it to register. And, and that was like the, the limits of his patience with this whole scenario.

So he hops back off the rock and he turns and takes a step to the right and then he zags back to the left and at that point i shot him hey i thought it was key to make it off the calling like when he was running away you were calling and he made him stop yeah and he didn't go yeah he paused for just a second i mean he didn't it's not like he turned around and was just you know hammering his way back you shot him when he ran out there another 15 yards. Yeah, he paused and turned around and stopped. And that's when I shot him and saw him kind of work over the next rock. And I followed him around, and he was just laying there.

That was fun to watch from a boat. It was stressful. We were just like, why isn't he shooting? It looked like the bear was like an watch from a boat oh it was stressful we were just like why isn't he shooting it looked like the bear was like an inch from you oh man i mean he was he was you know felt like he was an inch from us i was i was like at that point it wasn't like he was you know in front of us i was between him and the boat yeah i was between him and the canoe he came out he popped out like right over our shoulders he was close enough where i was zoomed into 200 mils on my on my lens and i i like same thing i was looking down the beach and all of a sudden like i looked

to my left and he's like right there and like pan the camera over quick and could not find him in the viewfinder yeah just because he was so close i was too zoomed in said i don't want to be the bearer bad news but there's about a three four inch warp net countertop oh yeah i was sitting here the other night looking at that that's probably high on his priority list there's yeah there's a long list well uh you'll be able to at some point or another you'll you'll be able to see all this we got it we got we got good it would be good it'll be good video i think it's gonna be a good oh it's gonna be a good show good episode anything else we're gonna wrap it up yeah planes in here. Can I tell them to listen to my Davy Crockett series on Bear Grease? Yeah, go ahead.

That's it. Steve's not a Davy Crockett fan. We've got a great series on Davy Crockett. You're going to learn some stuff. Yeah, you'll learn a lot about Davy Crockett. But first listen to Clay's, but if you don't mind, first listen to Clay's thing about the education little tree okay yeah yeah yeah yeah we did a series on uh Asa Carter and the education a book called education of little tree lots of twists and turns dark twists and turns dark twists and turns and

then if you're still into it listen to Crockett yeah Crockett whoever whatever Crockett I'm glad that you included why he didn't like Taters. Oh, it's in there. Because that is the most harrowing Taters story. That about turned me off to Taters. Yeah. Do you want to tell it? No.

Okay. Yeah. Oh, yeah. It is a... Taters cooked in human fat. I would imagine that this audio series, aside from just listening to a book on tape about Crockett, would probably be the most comprehensive podcast series on Crockett. I feel like.

It's going to be four parts. Did you include how he was born on a mountaintop in Tennessee, green estate, and land of the free? Yeah, we talk about it. We talk about how it's not true. You've been duped, Seth. Disney's been lying to you your whole damn life, Seth. Well, I'm glad you set the record straight.

Yeah, there's a lot of myth around little Crockett and Boone, too. Yeah, well, go listen and get the true story. That's all. Tune into Crockett. And while you're tuning into Crockett, go order Catch a Carey Fish, Count the Stars, new kids' activity book put out by us. I think you're going to love it. Order it now.

Chips in June. Hell, it is June. Order it. Oh, ride on. Ride on, let it fly. I want to see your gray hair shine like silver in the sun. Ride on, ride on, my love. Sweetheart, we're done beat this damn horse to death. So take your new one and ride on.

We're done beat this damn horse to death. So take your new one and ride on. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. You might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that because of raffle and sweepstakes law, but hear this. On-Axe Hunt is now in Canada.

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