The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 912: Clay’s Ozark Bear Camp | 12 in '26

Episode Date: August 4, 2026

Clay gives behind the scenes details and answers com viewer questions about his annual bear camp that is featured in the Meateater “12 in ‘26” film series. It’s a film about tradition, camaraderie, tough situations, and the love of the hunt.  Hear the details and what happened that you didn’t see in the film. Watch the film now on MeatEater's YouTube channel. Connect with MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and YouTube Clips Subscribe to MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTubeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Behind every night spent making the kids' lunches, there's a lot of suspense. Will they finally eat the veggies? Will the pastos survive the first bite? Will the lunchbox come home empty, half full, or come home at all?

And will you finish episode 8 before you're done slicing the cucumbers? Get Bell Pure Fiber Internet with Craved Netflix and Disney Plus from $94 a month. Price guaranteed for two years on Internet with a two-year term and auto pay credit. Visit bell.ca for details and to check availability. Bell, connection is everything. I'm in the Ozarks today, and tomorrow is the opening day of the Arkansas bear season. It's like a holiday to me.

We're going to be competing against the White Oak Acorns to kill these bears. But the day before season, today, we're going to be making molasses with my friend Willard Beline. Hey, everybody. My name's Clay Newcomb, and what you just watched. was the intro to our newest film called Ozark Bear Camp with Clay Dukham. It's the latest in Meat Eaters 12 and 26 series brought to you by Maltry and Onyx. And that little intro kind of warms my heart. I love the landscape shots.

Willard Velines is kind of a legend around here. And it was a good film. So on what we're doing right here is our companion series podcast where we're going to go behind the scenes, answer viewer questions, and talk to you about a bunch of stuff that we weren't able to talk about in the episode. And in this film, we head to my Arkansas bear camp with my family, friends, and a bunch of other people. And, well, I guess everybody's family and friends. There were no non-ins friends. There's a few people that came that just I completely, you know, are not my friends. That's not true.

But we're going to talk about that on this podcast. I'm joined today by my producer, hero, mustache icon, fly fishing sage, and best friend, a guy could ever ask for Josh Landbridge spillmaker. Very kind of you to write that. Wow. Yeah, that was touching. So appreciate that. Great to have you here, Josh.

Speaking of warm and hearts. Hey, you were at, you were with me on this film. I was. Yeah, you showed up a couple of times. Yep. In the film. Yep. So, well, let's...

We're excited, man. This, the, this film has tons of bear hunting in it. You know, it's, it's kind of a iconic region. That's right. It's got a lot of bear hunting. Yeah, exactly. Not so not a lot of bear skinning or... Yeah.

But the, you know, this, this region where we're hunting is kind of iconic for bear Greece especially. You know, this would be kind of your home, you know, the Ozarks and the Washatahs are kind of where you've cut your teeth hunting. And so without further ado, we want to just dive right in. Like I said, there's lots of bear hunting in this film, but the film starts with a thing that happens to coincide with bear season, and that's the harvest of the sorghum. Yeah. This was really cool for me because the previous year. was the first time that I would have made sorghum with Willard Velines and the whole You get into it let's actually watch a clip we're gonna watch about a one

about a one minute clip about the sorgam making so well my dad made molasses when I was a kid so that's been about 70 some years ago and then the Vlines when they came into this valley brought with them sorghum seed and some of that same seed is the seed that you grow today right yeah it's been handed down from generation to generation that Mr. Doyle is putting in there and squeezing all that liquid out. Right. You gotta boil it down and it goes in for molasses. The history is pretty remarkable and in modern times, the timing of the sorghum harvest is coincided with bear season. When you're boiling something down like this, really you're just removing the water and just concentrating the sugar. I mean that's really all it is.

Right. So... With the molasses making finishing up, it's time to get down to brass tacks for hunting bears in less than 24 hours and we're going to take today's skimmings to sweeten up my bait side so there you go just a little clip just a little clip um from the sorghum making with with willard it was pretty cool the the year before was the first year that i'd ever made sorghum with willard vallines and it was it was right before bear season and so I wanted to act I'll tell you exactly what happened is the year before I was there with them just a scene just like what you saw and I made a little video on my phone yep I remember that put that video on my Instagram and really didn't think that much about it it was just a cool video showing the mule grasshopper you know you know turning the mill it showed the whole process and less than a minute and that video got 30 mill million views on Instagram.

30 million? 30.5 million views on Instagram. And it just kind of queued me in that this is something that the world needs to see in more detail. This is a 30-second, maybe minute-long clip. And so that's when I talked to Willard and said, hey, we're going to bear hunt

next year over here. And we're going to have a crew here. Why don't we film the full sequence of you making molasses. And I mean, it was no sweat off his back. It was like, we're going to be doing it anyway. It was a little bit of coordination with when to harvest the sorghum. Is that like the optimal time?

So, yes, they always harvest it in September and early October. Okay. So you couldn't, you wouldn't have done it too much earlier. But, but. but here anyway, mid to late September to early October. You know, it seems like in the harvest and production of the sorghum with the vallions, like not a lot has changed. Is there anything that has changed since they started doing that?

A couple generations back. I mean, the way... Obviously, they weren't lifting it with a track. So if you go to the store and buy a jar of sorghum molasses, most likely that was made in a modern mill you know they weren't using a meal it was an electric mill somehow

that you know right presses down the the canes and makes the juice the way that they're doing it is identical to the way it would have been done 100 years ago because that that mill that he has the press is has been

in his family for many years they actually have one of the other brothers. So what's cool about the Vylines, Willard Velines is one of 10 children. And how old is Willard? Willard's 78. Okay. And don't get me talking about where he's at,

but I want to say he's somewhere in the middle. Okay. So he has some brothers that were older. Right. And one of the brothers has the original mill. that his father had used the sorghum press. Am I saying the right word for that? I think Mill seems right.

So, but that's a classic. It might be a press. Mill seems like it would be grinding. Right. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, the way they're doing it is just the same. And it's really pretty simple. You know, when you, the first time I was there,

I was like, man, this is a complicated process with a lot of stages. You just press the canes. Get the juice out. Uh-huh. And then you just heat it and remove the water. Like there's no recipe. Right. There's no, there's not like, well, at this moment, you have to do this.

However, that makes it sound simple. When that fire's burning, Willard and those guys are watching it like a hawk. Because you can ruin it. It seems like the critical things would be like timing of when it's done, you know, keeping it moving and making sure that fire doesn't get too hot or too low. Exactly. And they can tell you the taste difference in where sorghum has grown, even in their county. Like, Willard will it be like, now this cane came from here, and it tastes a little bit sweeter than the cane that came from up on the mountain.

So is this something that happens regionally? Like, are there other families in that area that are? Yeah, I'd say there's quite a few that, not quite a few. There are others that make sorghum. just this same way, not a lot. I wonder if they have like a sorghum off, like whoever makes the best sorghum. Oh, it would be a contest, highly, highly contested. I wouldn't want to judge it.

I wouldn't want to judge it. Yes. But if you haven't had sorghum, it's an interesting product. It's sweet. You could use it like syrup. Yeah. But it's kind of got a very unique taste that if you didn't grow up with it, you might be like, you know, it might. kind of catch you off guard right i grew up eating sorghum molasses my grandfather he treated it like

it was like we got to go out and have ice cream i mean it was like hey you want some sorghum you know i mean like it was really something special and what he would do is he would pour he would take a butter knife and pour it out of the jar and he could very strategically you know it drips it's like thicker than syrup right it's more like honey yeah it's like it's like a like a thinner honey. Uh-huh. And so when it's poured out, if you just tip the jar back up, it gets all over the side of the jar. And so at just the right time when you're tipping it back up, you zoom the knife across

and keep the jar clean, and you'd have a little dollop about as big as a silver dollar, about a, you know, less than a quarter inch high. Then he would take a piece of butter, a square of butter, and put it in there and mash it up with the sorghum and put that on a bit of it. That's what he did. And it was... Making me hungry. Man, back in the day before the commercialization of sugar and candy and how much access

that the everyday American has to sugar, which is bizarre, and you should be very concerned with how much sugar you eat. I mean, wildly bizarre that of the people watching this video, I mean, what are the statistics of how much sugar the average American eats? I mean, it's like 50 pounds of sugar or something a year? At least. At least. And if you drink sores.

That's insane. You should be very, very... Which camera does look at it? You should be very concerned about this. But back in the day, to have sorghum, which was sweet, was like a treat. Right. It is interesting, this overlap.

It wouldn't have had sugar in your everyday consumption. That's right. And it's kind of interesting because when I would do this same thing with my kids, hey, you want some sorghum? I mean, I'm ashamed to say that it... They're kind of unimpressed, you know. Yeah. But kids these days.

Now, my kids don't eat that much sugar. Bar Newcomb? No, Baranukum. Bear Newcomb is like almost sugar-free. Yeah. And he's also like a lean-meat. He's also like 2% body fat. Yeah.

So, no, that kind of stuff is really special to me to be able to document it. And what is most special. And this is what you get behind the scenes is I wanted to do that for Willard and his family. Right. because Willard's his family's been doing this and I mean all they would have would just be some cell phone videos in modern times and then some just you know a handful of photographs from years ago and so it was pretty cool to have the meteor crew there um to document it so well and you know it's about a 10 minute clip so it's not like it was exhaustive so but you know a couple of

questions first you know that same seed's been passed down for the through the generations yeah why does that matter clay good sorghum good sorghum no it's just i think it's just a connection to the past like the human life is deceptive it feels like people from the 1800s your third and fourth great grandfathers were a long ways away but they really weren't right and you know by willard holding that seed and planting it in the ground and knowing that his ancestors you could track it back and grew that seed. I think it just connects you to the past

and to the just the heritage of the region and it's just unique. I mean there's nothing that I have that I could touch that I mean my great grandfather's shotgun

which I've got over there like very little and you know when you think about history which i talk a lot about history right and you might think that i was hyper nostalgic in the way that i think about even my life and i'm not sure that i am because the past is interesting there's a lot of the past that we should forget and even reject and move past in our own personal lives and even in our family's history like but the knowledge of some of this stuff is powerful. That's more a statement of like general understanding of like why the history. Because I think there's probably can be an unhealthy attachment to the past.

And this is not that. This is a celebration of heritage and a connection to a family legacy. And over in this part of the world, in Newton County and kind of central Ozarks the name the lions there are hundreds of the lines because the guys that brought that sorghum seed i want to say willard told me that abraham belines had 18 children wow and they're all still over there and they're they're a wonderful family there a lot of lot i know a lot of the lines over there one last question and it's kind of a philosophical question would be...

Oh, another one? Yeah. What does Willard represent about the Ozarks that you wanted the viewers to appreciate? Mm. By starting...

I mean, you started this film off with that. What is it about him that you want people to see? He's just... There are people that are... He just has such a connection to the Ozark. He's just a real deal,

Ozarkian. Like, he's not trying to be anything. He just is what he is. He didn't put those other people. overalls and hat on because he was going to be on film he may have just a little but but but he wears those all the time i mean you know there's actually a part of history in all these places that we we reflect back to our past and are influenced by me wearing these overalls right here i mean it's like yeah it's a it's a hat tip to the past and i think people still do that today but but willard's the

real deal he's a he's a mule man he's a hunter he's a He's just a well-respected guy over there. Love it. Yeah. Yeah, great guy. Okay, we've got another clip here. Let's go ahead and watch it. Bears right now are going into what they call hyperphagia,

which is a physiological state of incredible increase in metabolism. So a bear... About fell off right there. Bear eats 5 to 8,000 calories a day. In the fall, they can eat 20,000 calories a day. And so when you're baiting, you're capitalizing on a natural process inside of a bear. We're using pop tarts, corn, sorghumans. We got in a little later than we wanted, so it was a quick drop of the molasses over the bait.

We filled up the bait barrels. The last thing we want to do is spook bears the night before the hunt. Everybody's here for the season opener. and we're having a big time. Much of my hunting is primarily solo, but our bear camp is always full of people, and that's something that I love. I always got to give, like, the state of the union,

the state of the bear union. I have pretty good news. Like, I would say that the bear situation is average to slightly below average. So tell us a little bit about, you know, you typically have a bear camp every year. Tell us what made this bear camp different than bear camps in the past. Well, it was fun to have Lake Pickle, Jordan Blissett there. They were both new bear hunters had never bear hunted before, so it was cool to get to introduce them to it.

We were actually in a new spot that I hadn't hunted before. We were in a new spot. Disclosed new spot. And my buddy, Justin House, was there. James Lawrence came up. Bear grease icon. Yep. Yes.

And there was another interesting guest at our bear camp this year. Ted Cople was there. As in the real Ted Cople. that interviewed Richard Nixon, Ted Cople. You actually see Ted Cople in the last clip of the film sitting by our fire. He's wearing all black and he's kind of sitting in the back and we're playing music and the lights are on. And you actually can see Ted Cople. So he had come to do.

So, yeah, what you wouldn't have known from watching the film is that CBS Good Morning. Sunday morning. Sunday, CBS Sunday morning, came to our bear camp and we're there for basically two of the five days. There were people there. I guess there were people there for parts of three of five days. They came in on the evening. Ted was there all day, one of the days, but the guys were still there the next day for portion of the day, if I recall. Yeah. And they did a spot on CBS Sunday morning. And so Ted interviewed many of us. We rendered bare fat, aside from what you saw, we rendered bare fat for CBS Sunday morning.

And he just hung out with us. Hey, your neighbor, you know that guy your neighbor? He's been out there all summer. He's hanging cameras. He's watching the photos roll in. He knows where that buck is bedding, where he's feeding. He's pinpointing where he needs to be on opening day. You've seen the pictures, and you know the deer is there.

The question isn't whether that buck gets shot this fall. is whether it's your story or his. So tip the odds in your favor with the Onex Hunt app, trail camera analysis, hyperlocal wind and weather forecasts, and the insights to act on what you're seeing. Don't show up to opening day empty-handed. Bring Anex Hunt. Behind every night spent making the kids' lunches,

there's a lot of suspense. Will they finally eat the veggies? Will the pasto survive the first bite? Will the lunchbox come home empty, half full, or come home at all. And will you finish episode 8 before you're done slicing the cucumbers? Get Bell Pure Fiber Internet with Craved Netflix and Disney Plus from $94 a month. Price guaranteed for two years on internet with a two-year term and auto pay credit.

Visit bell.com for details and to check availability. Bell, connection is everything. Good Lord, they're finally here at long last. After fighting and yelling and fighting some more, Clay Newcomb and First Light have done it. They have built a pair of work bibs together. Not just any work bibs. We're talking the bare grease bibs from Clay. Now, I've watched Clay work long enough to know that he wasn't going to put his name on a pair of hunting pants,

pretending to be work bibs. And boy, he did not. These are Clay's invention for things like breaking mules, rendering grease, kneeling in the dirt. I'm going to use them all the time, trap and working, fixing stuff. It doesn't matter. If you want good, durable, comfortable bibs, these are your bibs. These are your bibs made from tough stretch duck cotton. They got briar-proof chaps that run from cuff to thigh.

They got pockets damn near everywhere. Again, comfortable and durable. Put them on. You don't need to worry about having anything go bad. If it wasn't so hot right now outside, I'd be wearing them right now. But you can bet your ass I got them in my truck. And they are up at the meat eater store right now at the meat eater store.com. I have to say that compared to some of the bear camps of the past, which have been awesome,

this one was a little boogey or two. We had a pretty nice place. We stayed in a really nice cabin. We did. That was unused. Get spoiled there. We kind of had to do that because we had so many people there and because we had Ted Coppola's crew coming. And so we on the Bear Grease podcast spoke about when Ted Cople came.

He was a, he's 85. 85 years old. A very spry, 85. You're younger and you don't anybody, I would say, 35 and older would know who Ted Koppel was, was one of the most famous, well-known faces in America

for probably 25 years as a broadcast anchor for CBS. Yeah. So, yeah, back in the day, kids, there were, when there was just television, that's, you had television

and books. looks and radio. That's all you had. No cell phones. People watch television at night. Ted Coppel was a household name. And there would have been like three or four major networks. And the anchors for the nightly news on those stations were as famous as the president. Right. Right. And so Ted Cople was one of those guys. He was on Nightline for years. Yes, many years. And he was a delightful man. He was. It honestly, it honestly, honestly surprised me how endearing he I mean just like personable humble yeah set with us and just talked he singled out almost everyone in our camp and had fairly in-depth conversations personal

conversation when I realized what he was doing was Justin house who it can just kind of be a fly on the wall at times was there And there was a little bit of a lull. We're in a big group. This is after he'd been there for hours. And he looked at Justin and he said, Justin, tell me what you do. And it was clear that he was trying to connect with everybody there.

And, you know, one time I came around the corner and he and Brent were sitting over in a chair just chatting away. Tell him what Brent was telling him. When you guys were out hunting one afternoon, he sat down with your mom and dad and Misty and I. and I think just the four of us and just for an hour and a half and just let us ask him questions about his career and his family and yeah just really neat yeah what is it about bear camp that that means so much to you so most of my hunting I said it in there most most of my hunting is solo like most of my hunting I wake up here at my house and you know go deer hunting or go bear hunting and maybe somebody comes with me right but you know I'm driving there and hunting for a day or two and and and coming back. Other times I'm leaving on the bigger hunts.

To me, my hunting and probably most people's hunting can be segregated into two things. Your local hunting, but then if you're so fortunate to get to travel to hunt, and many people do make one big trip, hunting trip somewhere. Right. You know, you travel. So when I travel, I'm usually with

people, but it's not home and it's not with family. Bear can't is very communal, very focused on the camp, very, um, we're not, honestly, we're not hunting that hard in terms of hunting. The work that goes into it is more than I do for anything else that I do. And that's, that's hard to describe for some people. I mean, it just, you know, the work that goes into bait and bears is the most, you know, the most work that I do. Like when I go to Alaska next month, I'm just going to like show up and I've

never been there and all of my energy will be dedicated during the time I'm there and then I leave. You know, this takes a whole bunch of effort to get there. I mean, for a month ahead of time. Yes. And so when we're there, though, we're typically just hunting the evenings, maybe a little bit in the morning. And so we're spending a lot of time at camp, a lot of time with people. And that's fun to me. Man, we had a great time just having food and, you know, in the evenings, people would show up and, you know, one night there were, there were guys there playing some fantastic music. It was your birthday. We celebrated that. It was, man, we had a great time. I've got a couple questions here from some Instagram, from Instagram. First question is from

Isaac Rennels, Isaac underscore Reynolds 34, if you're out there. What's your recommended draw weight for bear and what's your favorite bear bait to use? Mm. You can use archery equipment on a black bear that you would use on a white tail deer. Okay. That they're really, they're really, I wouldn't do anything different between my white tail set up and my bear set up. Broadheads as well. Now that I would do different. I typically, I go back and forth between expandables with, with white tails.

Okay. I'd say 75% of the time I'm using some expandable head for white tails. They're thinner skinned, thinner boned. They're more likely, I feel like, with a white tail to get a compromised hit because of the way they can react to a shot and drop and move. And so I want a big cut in diameter. When I'm bear hunting, I prioritize an entry and exit hole, so I want the arrow that is going to penetrate the most.

You use fixed blade. Do you use a cut on impact? I would not, you wouldn't have to use a cut on impact necessarily. But I like to use a fixed blade broadhead for Black Bear. Now, yeah, I mean, we could go into all the stuff about shot placement and... Sure. I'm sure that it will come up later. Today later?

Well, we'll talk about shot placement on a bear. Oh, yeah. I forgot about that. Yeah. So favorite bear bait? Favorite bear bait is going to be carbohydrate for here. Now, what is interesting about black bears is that they have such a wide geographic distribution, which black bears have the currently of the large mammals on this continent have the largest geographic distribution of them all. Okay.

Historically, wolves would have had a wider geographic distribution than the black bear. Okay. Think about this, Josh. This is going back to bear bait and why bears prefer different foods in different places. But the wolf essentially would have historically ranged from north of the Arctic Circle, all the way down into Old Mexico, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Wow. I mean, like, without a gap in there.

There would have been different subspecies of wolves, you know, based upon the biology and all this, but the wolf would have done that. The black bear would do the exact same thing except black bears historically were not in the great prairie regions of America. A black bear has to have trees to survive. And so there would have been pocket. in the Great Plains where Black Bears wouldn't have been. They would have been in the riparian zones, but wolves would have been in those areas.

And then the treeless areas of the southwestern desert in the Great Plains were the only places that there were not Black Bears. So imagine, Black Bears ranged north of the Arctic Circle as well. Wow. Probably not as high as wolves, though. Sure. And the furthest southerly documented

black bears have been around Mexico City, which is deep into Mexico. And so, but are there wolves today in Arkansas and in Oklahoma and in Kansas? No, they're not. So historic range, the wolf had the biggest. Today, the black bear does because the black bear now exists in basically 65% of its of its historic range. In many regions, 100% of its historic range,

if that makes sense. Like in Canada and Alaska, the black bear is in 100% of its historic range. Okay. So how does that tie to bear bait? Okay. Thank you.

Bears prefer different things in different places. Okay. So, for instance, in the spring and Canada, these outfitters are using oats with oil on it. I'm convinced that if you put

oats with oil on bear bait in this part of the world you would have not great results and we can only hunt in the fall here but my favorite bear bait

I would say would be pastries donuts pop tarts and bread and grease that seems to be when we're baiting them and I want to emphasize

for anybody that's has not been around bear baiting there's a ton of research about baiting black bears and we cover it in my book that's coming out in February. Right. American bear.

I mean, excited about it. We cover it all. But I can just summarize for you to say that all the research indicates that baiting bears does not habituate them to anthropomorphic foods, anthropogenic foods. Like they're not going to come raid your house because they're being baited a half a mile away. Basically, it's, it's. it's not detrimental.

And they still have a preference for... Oh, they're always going to have a preference for natural organic. They're always going to have a preference for natural foods. Yeah. They just do. They would rather eat a wild-o-caker. So, things that make a bear fat. But up in Canada, they would use, like, oil and oats.

Okay. One of the questions I had when I watched it is you mentioned that during hyperphasia, when they're trying to put on weight, that a bear will eat. 20,000 calories in a day. In nature, what are they eaten that they're able to get 20,000 calories in a day? In the fall, hard mast has incredible caloric content. Okay. And so, like a white oak acorn has five to seven calories per acre. Right. And imagine, I tell a story in the book of once when I actually watched, and the only reason I knew the time stamp was because I videoed it, but I watched a bear eat white oak acorns for 18 minutes straight without lifting its

head. Wow. And just estimating that that bear was chomping one white oak acorn every five seconds, which probably would be about as fast as it would. Right. It, it would have consumed like 1,800 calories. Okay. In 18 minutes. It may not have been that. It may not have been that. precise 18 and 18 makes me think my numbers are wrong but it consumed an enormous like over a thousand calories in that 18 minutes and it's like how many times could it do that in a day right 20,000 right fairly easily could right so yeah they're just cramming on the calories okay and they but they but what's so cool about these bears is that they have to because our bears here are typically up

on their feet for 10 to 9, 10 months a year, but in the highest portion of their range, way up in the north, they're, the, boy, I don't want to spill too much about the book. The coolest fact in the book, the coolest fact in the whole book is the longest documented dinning that we've ever seen a bear staying in a den, like a collared bear. Right. They knew when it went in. They knew when it came out. And let me just say, it was an unbelievable amount of time.

And when they're there, they're not eating, they're not drinking, they're not defecating, that's right. That's right. That is unbelievable. Yeah. And that's, yes, it is. It's an absolutely fascinating process. But that connects back to them eating, having to eat 20,000 calories a day or being able to in

all. Is that they're trying to make a year's life. living in six to nine months. So they've got to pack it all in. And a bear is just built to consume calories. I mean, it just has big intestines, big stomach, the ability, you know, a mouth that just can just consume. Right.

And process it quickly. I mean, like every, they're just, they're just an eating machine is what they are. Wow. And the coolest thing about bears is they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, They're omnivores, and whatever's happening ecologically on planet Earth, it is favoring omnivores. It is favoring generalists. Specialists are often the things that are struggling. And that's why that we see the black bear thriving.

Every researched population of bears is stable or increasing right now. Wow, that's awesome. one more viewer question the simple one do you have a favorite fresh kill camp meal

and that's from mac fink biner oh 711 you know I think I don't

have a fancy answer but just to cook a backstrap over a fire some seasoning on it yeah or just to just

fry pan fried battered and pan fried this is a way to go All right, well we've got another clip here. Man, I'm excited for you. I'm just eager, man.

I'm ready to get up there. I'm ready to see a bear from a stand. That's just going to be something new for me. Dr. Pickle. We're starting our hunting early afternoon. Bears are crepuscular, so they move at dawn and dusk. But these baited bears move a lot at night. So we opt to go and start hunting in mid-afternoon

when the bears aren't there. and just set up and wait for the last hour of daylight. Maybe Lake's anticipation of seeing bears had something to do with it, but he actually doesn't have to sit long until he actually sees a bear. Lake has some truly big bears that are coming into this bait. We know they're coming in, and we also know that these aren't them, so today they get a pass. But in this kind of hunt, your options can change by the day and even by the hour.

So you've kind of addressed a lot of the, a lot of the, the, the baiting issues. I feel like the film does a good job showing just how difficult it is to bait. I mean, the work that goes into it. But just because you bait doesn't mean a sure thing. So, um, there's dissenters. Um, is there anything that you haven't covered that you feel like you want to communicate about baiting, you know, there's always the comments, you know, this is cheating, this isn't fair. You know, I would say that somebody that would say that, well, I would say to them, let's look at the bigger

picture of bear management. Wherever there is a season that allows it to be legal to hunt bears over bait or use hounds, the other methods of hunting, which basically would be spot and stock, would be inadequate to harvest the number of bears that needed to be taken out of that system. Let me give you an example. Arkansas currently has about 6,000 bears in the state, which is really not that many. So many other places.

Like, don't come here to hunt. It's not that great. Georgia, West Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee. Tennessee. All these places have more bears than us. Right. But in 20 years, Arkansas hunters have legally harvested over 10,000 bears.

Okay? I talked to a biologist. We did the math together. And if there was no hunting since the year 2000, there would be between 20 and 30,000 bears in the state. like with the reproduction, like counting how many were taken out. Right. And basically the carrying capacity of the state and the habitat that we have is a, you know,

is probably, we're reaching it. They're actually trying to like keep the population just stable. Right. And there's many factors that go into that. There's actual habitat constraints. And 6,000, I kind of get bummed when I hear that number because that, at one time, they believe this state had 50,000 bears in it. And to say we have 6,000 and I celebrate that today is kind of like, wow, that doesn't sound

that great. But the truth is, is that this place is full of houses in roads and shopping malls and Bermuda grass fields that are no longer bear habitat that at one time were. Every square inch of basically, I mean, I'm just using Arkansas as an example, but you could extrapolate this out. Right. Every direction. Every square inch of the state used to be bear habitat.

And would have been used by bears in some way. Okay. And so today, actual habitat is a limitation. But then number two, and even more important and most important, the reason that we couldn't have 30,000 bears in the state is the cultural tolerance, which is how many, how many bears will a culture tolerate? how often how comfortable are you going to be with bears sleeping under your house. And in California and in New Jersey and a lot of these places,

the cultural tolerance and the amount of bears there is in this big conflict. That's a lot about what my book is about. And I do think I would have a high tolerance for more bears. But also last year in this state, two people were killed by bears. Right. I mean, wild. This year there's been more black bear human fatalities. It's on the rise.

I mean, it absolutely is on the rise. So, to answer your question about baiting is that when we bait a bear, we are playing a very significant role inside of bear management to keep the bear population stable, and you couldn't do it any other way. You send out spot and stock hunters, they will not be able to harvest the same bears. And so you become a pompous. on inside of a system. And when you

bait a bear, it's less about like clay one-on-one and outsmarting a bear. It's more about, I want to pick the specific bear I want to take. And I'm going to

eat this bear. Render is fat. Tan is high. I'm going to use this animal to the highest degree. And I'm going to be selective about the animal that I take based upon the opportunity that I have, which varies from year to year. My judgment of what bear that I would take changes by the day. With a white-tailed deer, I might have in my mind what I'm going to take and what I'm not.

Maybe I'm going to take a dough. Maybe I'm going to take a 115-inch plus buck. With a bear, depending upon how much meat I need, if I need some grease, I might take the old. oldest best male that I really got a shot of taking, which might be a three-year-old male. Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely. Other years on really good years, which it varies dramatically. Some years bears a very responsive debate, and you can be highly selective.

And I've taken some multiple 500 plus pound, just monster, beautiful, stomper bears. That you might not have had an opportunity to harvest had it not been for bear. Last year, there was no chance we were going to kill any of those bears, though we had them on camera in the middle of the night sporadically. And so like Lake's sitting there thinking he's going to shoot a 500-pound bear. I mean, by the time we actually got him in the stand, it was pretty much like, hey, that's not going to happen. Right.

That bear is long gone. He's on some White Oak Ridge devouring 18, he's just eating. thousands of calories. Non-stop. He doesn't want to be here. He's not here. And so that really doesn't answer the question, but baiting bears is critical for bear management. You mentioned the 50,000 bears.

At one time there was 50,000 bears in Arkansas. That would have been at a time when populations in Arkansas were very small. And one of the main things that took that population way down was market hunting. Correct? Would that be correct? More so landscape-level logging than even market hunting. Okay. Yeah.

Okay. Logging and the loss of habitat had vastly more impact on Black Bear than market hunting. Wow. Okay. Yep. Interesting. Okay. You'll learn all this in American Bear coming out in February of 2027.

I'll be first in line. All right. Here's another clip. Bear is such a reclusive animal. They're an animal of the shadows. More biology here, folks. It's black. Lake made fun of me for that. The color is for camouflage. And it shows you where they want to live. The real reason that a bear is black is that the

early ancestors of black bears like deep, deep history developed in the tropics and there's a thing called Glogger's rule which Glogger's rule means if an animal the close they are to the equator oftentimes furred mammals are darker because it reduces the potential for them to get like fungal infections. So modern geneticists have found that the ancestral color of the black bear that ercius Americana's American black bear is black so they can tell by DNA that a long time ago, bears were black and color-faced bears. By genetics, they can tell, developed in the southwest U.S. about 9,000 years ago.

So, I never thought that was going to make the cut. And I cut a bunch out. Yeah, yeah, it went on and on and on. When did you first become interested in bear? You know, you're writing this book. When did you first become interested in bear? biology beyond just hunting bears? Well, when I killed my first bear in 2001, that is what catalyzed me to really start studying about

bears. And I was in college at the time and went back to the U of A and the University of Arkansas and went up into the library and started looking for bear books and found at the time what was all the research, academic research, that had ever been done on our populations of bears. And it wasn't that many things. I mean, it was like, you know, probably less than five thesis projects that people had done and research that people had done. And I read it all.

I read every word of it and just was fascinated by it and didn't really have a conclusion of why I was interested in it didn't it didn't really wasn't like I was thinking oh I'm going to talk about this one day right I was just interested in it so taking that first bear was well I tell the story I've told it many times I maybe I haven't told it on the podcast before but it's definitely in the book is uh if you guys haven't picked up on it Clay wrote a book that's coming out in February where start saving your pennies when I kill this bear, I walk up to it.

My dad's with me. This was what year? 2001. October 1st, 2001. At the crack of dawn, I shot this bear on the first day it was ever legal to hunt over bait. So I claim, and no one has disputed me in 20 years, so I'm no longer taking disputes,

because it's so long ago, if you think you shot one before me, you probably just don't remember. I say that I killed the first legal bear in the state of our state of our. Arkansas. Over bait. Now, I know people that killed them illegally before that. Have you turned them in? No. Many of them are no longer with us. But so it's a joke, but I actually think it's probably, it might be true. Pretty close to true. It was barely shooting life. Yeah. When a bear, when I watched a bear glide, it was so dim, Josh, that I couldn't really.

see the bear's legs. I couldn't quite make out his legs. It just looked like a floating black blob coming up from down the mountain. And he came right in and I was just like, there he is. Do you have game pictures of him? No, we didn't have game cameras. The game cameras didn't really come out until later. Okay. 2001, no. Okay. We were, but we had, I mean, we just knew there were bears there because they were, they're eating her bait. Oh, it was one of the most exciting things in my life was that year when it became legal to bait bears. We started baiting bears and they started showing up and we would go out there and we would occasionally see a bear. And it was just so exciting. And then I shoot this bear. And when I walk up to it, I was 21 years old

and I had an incredibly hollow feeling that I knew nothing about it. I was 21 years old. I was 21 years old and I had an incredibly hollow feeling that I knew nothing about this animal and it was just this majestic awesome animal and you know i had deer hunted and turkey hunted and small game hunted up until this point and you know i knew what deer ate where they lived when they bred i knew how to call turkey i knew about these animals and so when i took one there was a sense of connection to this thing when i killed this bear i realized i didn't know a thing about it right and this was a incredible animal and honestly many people of the generation before mine and even my generation at the time viewed a bear as just kind of like a big raccoon you know just kind of like yeah shoot all of them you know and man when i walked up to it that is not the

sense that i had at all it was just like wow yeah this what a beast i cannot believe that was a good bear too i mean it was it was a nice bear and um and that just set me on it on a track to kind of i remember when you got the rug back and i was like wow like it was one of the coolest things that i've ever ever seen yeah yeah um recto re k to joj m 63 um has a question of of the many bears you've harvested which one of them stand out in high quality flavor flavor can you tell the difference from bears that you've killed in different regions no i wish i could and maybe somebody that paid more attention to their palate could. I will say that there's a lot of press about how bears in Southeast Alaska taste

fishy. And man, I've just, I've eaten two and I have not found them to. Really? I have, I have not. Bear Newcomb killed one on the shore of the Alaskan coast this year that was eating muscles when he, when he, when he shot it. And I can't tell the difference between that bear and one here in Arkansas. Okay. But I think it probably maybe was luck of the draw because it's kind of indisputable that some of these bears that are eating a lot of fish and ocean type food, you know, have a kind of a fishy taste.

But in the two that I have had, I have not, I have not had that. Okay. Well, we've got another clip here. This one's a little bit longer when Lake has his first interaction with, was shooting a bear. Based on the pictures, there are about 10 different bears that have been coming to this bait. A lot of them look the same. Two bears showed up on the first day that Lake saw that he chose to pass.

I don't want to shoot that. I think we got it, buddy. Lake gives the bear an hour before climbing down to assess the situation. That's my arrow. He finds his arrow, which clearly passed through the bear, but it hardly has any blood at all on it, which is not a good sign, and there's hardly any blood on the ground.

The whole gang comes down from their stands to help look for lakes bear. When there's barely a blood trail like this, it takes the whole camp. Luckily, we've got some guys with some experience. If we're going to find this bear, these are the guys I'd want helping me. Across it.

All right, we got blood right here, guys. Bear coming in clutch. This is the hair, not much. And there is not much blood, and it's that dark red, not great blood. What are you seeing? I honestly, it weren't hitting the bear. I can see it blowing out the other side of the leaves. It does look a little high, don't it?

Yeah. I think I shot them too high? Yeah. I don't want to admit that, but I... I think that's what happened. And it's easy to do. It's a bummer. I hate it for you, man.

The truth of it is that bear is going to live and he's going to be fine. Hey, there's a version of hunting where you just show up, you sit in a tree stand, you hope something happens, and then you go home. A lot of people hunt that way. And every once in a while, it'll work out. Then there's the version where you've done the reading before the test. You've got the on-X hunt app with cameras integrated on-es-hunt. on your map, a tailored deer movement forecast to help you make the most of your days in the woods, and precise weather predictions.

So when a buck starts showing up, you already know where he's coming from and where he's going. Most of us don't have unlimited days in the field. We've got a week, maybe a little more. And every hunt that doesn't produce because you were in the wrong spot, that's a cost you can't get back. Build a real plan before opening day with the on-X hunt app, because hope is not a strategy. Behind every night spent making the kids' lunches, there's a lot of suspense. Will they finally eat the veggies? Will the pasto survive the first bite?

Will the lunchbox come home empty, half full, or come home at all? And will you finish episode 8 before you're done slicing the cucumbers? Get Bell Pure Fiber Internet with Craved Netflix and Disney Plus from $94 a month. Price guaranteed for two years on internet with a two-year term and auto pay credit. Visit bell.com for details and to check availability. Bell, connection is everything. Good Lord, they're finally here at long last. After fighting and yelling and fighting some more,

Clay Newcomb and First Light have done it. They have built a pair of work bibs together. Not just any work bibs. We're talking the bare grease bibs from Clay. Now, I've watched Clay work long enough to know that he wasn't going to put his name on a pair of hunting pants, pretending to be work bibs, and boy, he did not. These are Clay's invention for things like breaking mules,

rendering grease, kneeling in the dirt. I'm going to use them all the time. Trapping, working, fixing stuff. It doesn't matter. If you want good, durable, comfortable bibs, these are your bibs made from tough stretch duck cotton. They got briar-proof chaps that run from cuff to thigh. They got pockets damn near everywhere.

Again, comfortable and durable. Put them on. You don't need to worry about having anything go bad. If it wasn't so hot right now outside, I'd be wearing them right now. But you can bet your ass like, got them in my truck and they are up at the meat eater store right now at the meat eater's store.com. So we kind of see the arc of emotion of Lake from his first shot, you know, feels pretty good about it.

And then all of a sudden it comes to the realization that the shot placement was not optimal. Why was it important to leave that whole sequence in the film? well we've we've always at me to just kind of showed things the way it happened you know and so yeah it was a as you can see i mean it wasn't a compromise situation when lake shot i mean the bear was broadside probably 19 yards i mean which is a chip shot and he just hit a little high and uh and it it it Boy, there really is a big hollow spot high on those bears. Bears are difficult because they've got so much fur. It's hard to see what's...

I always say that a short-haired, light-colored animal like a white-tailed deer, you can see the contour of its body. You can see where the shoulder comes up. You can see where the neck comes down and the shoulder bulges. You can see where the rib cage ends a lot of times. you can see the you can really see and you can really

aim where you want to on a black bear it's almost like you are shooting at an inflated black trash bag and so and when you draw back and you're looking through a peep

oftentimes all you see is black especially if it's close several bears that I've shot close I've drawn back and all you see in your peep side is black and

And now, Lake being at 2019 yards would have had more aperture than that. But, I mean, he just said high. He did. And, you know, the film doesn't show the extent to which we went to look for that bear. Right. There were comments of, well, you should have looked for it longer. You guys looked for that bear for hours and hours and hours. We did.

We exhausted our efforts and used all the data points that we had. And, I mean, I will, I am fully confident that that bear is still alive today. And, I mean, you would collectively inside. Because it didn't hit anything vital. That's right. It just, it, it, it was high, passed through the backstraps. I mean, we could, we could see that. And, you know, lakes in an elevated stand.

And, you know, it's, it's kind of dumb. to try to justify to the world that we did what we should have done. But, I mean, I grew up, my dad, Gary Believer-Nookum, was, he was absolutely the biggest stickler I've ever been around in my life for giving the fullest extent towards tracking an animal that you made any contact with with an arrow, you know. and so that's that's been built deep inside of me for a long time and uh those those periphery hits on an animal if you hit one too high or too low like that animal is not going to die now if the shot had been far back like if he had hit that shot that bear right far back and hit it in the guts yeah totally different story right because that bear that's a mortal wound that bear is going to die and it's a completely different scenario but

But we knew, based upon the blood on the air, you know, we knew that there was not a chance of finding this animal. But we did exalt. We spent, yeah, we got back to camp way after midnight. Yeah. And I mean, with multiple people. What if our, to help those people, what if our whole film was just us tracking the bear and it was a six-hour film? That would be cool. Yeah.

No, I mean, of course we show this like condensed version. Right. And it's a bummer. And, you know, I hated it for Lake. And I hate, Ted Cople was there. Yeah. That was probably the most difficult part of it is, you know, when the America is watching, you're hoping that as a hunter you're going to put your best foot forward. Right.

And we did in that just. And Lake wasn't being careless or a bad shot. It was just. I mean, yeah, it just happened. It just happened. It could have happened to me just as easy as it happened to him. And so we had to go talk with Ted Cople about this. Yeah.

He didn't seem that worked up about it. Yeah. Lake just felt sick about it because y'all had to come back to film with Ted Cople here after he's been looking for this bear. Yeah. And then it was the only thing on his mind while we were trying to. do the interview. Yeah. And then he went back out looking for it even more.

So Lake chose not to continue hunting after he drew blood. What do you think about that decision? Yeah, I think it's a great decision. In some places, that's the legal requirement, but not here. Not in most places it's not. There's probably just a few places in the country where if you draw blood, you legally have to notch your tag. so he kind of

he chose to do that and I thought it was a good move yeah we talked about this a little bit on the last on the last companion podcast when you were in Alaska hunting bears but what are some of the pros and cons

of hunting with a bow and what kind of hunter do to mitigate the opportunity to have a failed harvest well shooting a bear is is

they're a difficult animal really well I take that back a well-placed arrow is very efficient to take that right people that are used to shooting white-tailed deer can have trouble shooting a bear right okay

the structure of a bear is different than a white-tailed deer and you aim low on a white tail these are all the bullet points I always say when you're shooting a white-tail deer with the bow you aim low because that animal is going to react to the sound of the shot and duck a bear is not a prey animal he does not have the same flight response as a prey animal like a white tail deer

they're not going to jump the string so you don't need to aim low one of one time i took a veteran white till hunter out a guy that had killed 300 white tails with a bow and he he shot a bear right through the brisket that we that we didn't find and it was because he was aiming low and tight anticipating the bear dropping into the air right So don't do that. And then the other thing that's slightly uncomfortable for white-tail hunters about bears is that you need to aim further back. Like you need to aim probably four to six inches back from the shoulder.

And it's because, Josh, if we had a picture of a white-tail deer and a bear, a white-tail deer's legs are further back on its body compared to where its neck and brisket come down. Okay? Like, imagine the head of a bear. Right. And there's just his neck and then there's his shoulder. Right.

His front legs are up further. Right. Does that make sense? Yeah. The white-tailed deer is back and you can actually see his chest stick out like this. And so it's not that their anatomy is different. I mean, in a wild way, all mammals are about the same. Right.

Heart, lungs, intestines, liver, all this stuff is the same. But the positioning of the legs. on a bear is further forward. So it means you have to aim further back from the leg. That makes sense. Yeah. Yeah, it does. So middle of the middle is what some people have said.

I go not quite middle of the middle, almost middle of the middle, but then back a little bit towards the shoulder. Oh, back even further than the leg. No, no, no. I see. Back going back toward the head. Towards the shoulder.

Okay. Excellent. Okay, we've got another clip here. Man, that's some beautiful bear grease or bear fat right there. Here we go. We're a little optimistic even. I would say this was a... Well, let's go back here.

I think it started a little late. There we go. I would say my predictions were a little optimistic even. I would say this was a below average. But we had somebody give us some bare fat. This is fresh bear fat. We're gonna render it down. I'm gonna put about a...

We've got a quarter inch of water in there so that when it hits the pan, it doesn't scald and burn. So we're just going to put it right in that water. Good looking bear fat. It is. It's getting there. Look at that oil lake. Boy, you want it to be that light colored.

See how that's like the color of like chicken broth? Mm-hmm. Yeah. That's what you want it to stay the whole time. We're almost done. I mean, you can see these, like, little pieces. Like, they're almost rendered down, like, as much as they're going to render down. Gotcha.

With our bare fat rendered, we're ready to put it in the jars. The lower and slower you cook it, the lighter the oil will be. My preference is to cook around 225 degrees for 45 minutes until it's the color of chicken broth. All right. Well, why? That's great, I think a great way to end the film with rendering the bear grease. Why has rendering bear grease become something that you're so passionate about? Well, let me address a little more functional question first. Is that okay?

Absolutely. The best case scenario when you're rendering bare fat is to grind it. So we have a question from Kevin Klein, 1851. I've got a question about rendering bare fat, would grinding the fat prior to rendering more oil, and does it does cutting it in small cubes? Yeah, so in the field like that, you can cut it up into cubes just like we did. And the smaller the cubes, the better,

and you can render it down. And you get a pretty good yield. You probably get 80-20, like 80% oil, 20% solid cracklons. And that's a decent yield. You will get probably close to 90% yield when you grind it. And just fine grind ideal?

Yeah, yeah. And what you would do is you would get your bare fat, the chunks of it cold, or even put it in a freezer and just like almost get it frozen and then cube it up and then put it in a grinder and then render that. And, you know, there is no, it's kind of like making sorghum, you're just heating the fat. like there's no recipe right and you could water that you put in there just evaporates out that's right that's just uh that's just to keep it from burning and scalding at first it's just something that we do just put a little water down there but you can render bare fat with any heat source you know i've

i've done it in a fry daddy i've done it over fire and cast iron like a dutch oven done it in a jet boil. I've done it in these like turkey cookers with propane. I've done it on an electric stove with just a like a sauce pan. And you're using like medium heat? Well, so that's the only variable inside the whole process. You could just barely

turn it up, you know, to 180 and let it cook down for longer periods of time. I've... theoretically, you could do it in a crockpot. Oh yeah, people do. That's what, that was my next time. list was a crock pot. There's people that really love cooking it in a crock pot. What you can do, and it doesn't completely ruin it, but it's not ideal, is that you can burn it. Like, if it gets to

like 300 degrees, it's going to be dark, and it's not unusable. It's still usable, but it does have a stronger odor, and it just kind of has a little bit of a burnt taste. But much of the barrel oil that I have rendered has had a little bit of a burnt taste because it's easy for it to get too hot. Right. And so low and slow, the 225 for 45 minutes is just a generalization. Probably, I say that because it's just easy to cite those numbers. Probably it would be more like 210, 215 for a little under an hour.

Okay. It would probably be ideal. But you just don't ever want it to get like really dark and really hot. lot. Right. So. What are some of your favorite modern uses for bear grease? Well, I've got, I've got bear grease on my face right now. Oh, really? I've, for several years, have been putting bear grease on my face.

After we had bear grease chemically analyzed by one of the top lipid labs in the country that we report in our book what we find but what we found made me want to put it on my face every day okay um so but we cook with it frying with is the best thing that i do i mean you use it to to oil your saddles you use yeah you can use it i mean to soften leather but the the to me the premium use is for pan frying either fish or meat we you can use bare oil and substitution for anything that calls for oil. So any cake recipe, any biscuit recipe that calls for Crisco or oil, you can substitute in bare oil. And it, if you cook it too long, it does, it can't have a burnt flavor. If you cook it just right, it really doesn't have a flavor.

You can make, you can make, you can make bare oil chocolate chip cookies. That just, it's like, it's like using shortening. Basically, before, before these processed oils and short, animal fat oils were used for all this stuff and and so historically oh man I could go I could go on and on but the the first time the word bear grease shows up in the literature in the in the record of America was in 1541 July the fifth Hernando de Soto his scribe a guy named Elva wrote when they encountered Native Americans in East Tennessee, he writes, they have what they call bear grease stored in gourds,

which is like olive oil and butter. And that's the way he described it, like olive oil and butter. And what we found when we did the chemical analysis of black bear fat was that it actually is very similar to olive oil and chemical composition. That's really, would they not have been doing this like in Europe and Bavaria and that kind of thing?

Black bears are only in North America. Oh, really? Yeah. I don't think I realize that. What bears do they have in Europe? Ursus Americana's, baby. I guess the Ursus Americanaus. Now, they, they would have been rendering Asiatic black bear fat in Asia in the places.

But Ursus Americanaus is the only, I mean, it's only here. It's endemic to North America and only on. on the North American continent. Okay. Now, an Asiatic black bear looks similar to a black bear, but they're completely different species. Well, I'm going to have to read the book.

Black bears are actually genetically more kin to grizzly bears and polar bears than Asiatic black bears. Fascinating. Isn't that wild? It is wild. It's absolutely wild. But the black bear was the premium bear on planet Earth for fat. because of their diet.

So in Europe, they would have had some bare fat, but it would have been brown bear fat. Okay. And so when these Europeans came over here, and in the Roanoke colonies, some of the first correspondence that they had with England, I mean, like the first guys that came over and set up a colony,

and they were doing it to make money to, like, export stuff back to Britain, bear grease was in their list of stuff that, hey, there's some pretty wild, bear grease over here different than anything that we have that became a commodity. In the mid-1700s, 14% of the exports coming out of New Orleans was American black bear grease going to Europe. 14% of all the exports out of New Orleans was black bear fat. Much of it stored in skin hides and what they called a deer of oil. When, oh, wait till you read the book.

When they kill the deer, there's this historical accounts of when these guys would kill a deer and they would describe what would happen, what Native Americans would do. If you killed a bear, you immediately went and tried to kill a deer. Oh. And you would skin it and tube skin it and basically tie off the legs and the neck. The neck would be the spout of this bag, this deer skin bag. and you would completely fill it with oil and then seal it off

and that would be what you called a deer of oil. A deer of oil. Some of the first travel riders that ever came to the Ozarks described that he described what he thought was bizarre

but a deer of oil hanging on someone's house that he walked in. He was like, they had a, I mean, he described that. So wild, wild history of Bear Gries in this country, bizarre and wild history. And we documented it in a really thorough fashion.

So no bears killed. No bears were killed. The quota didn't get filled. Very difficult. The bates go cold, but still this film was like satisfying. In your opinion, can you have a successful hunt without harvesting an animal? No, it's all. Did you write these questions? Wait, did my hero, producer, mustache icon, fly fish, and sage? I don't know who wrote that. Best friend a guy could ever have Josh filmmaker write that. I don't know who wrote that.

I don't know who wrote that. Yeah, it's like that. I mean, I guess that kind of the question. That's like the clickbait social media question of the ages. You know. What does a successful hunt look like to you then? When you kill something. No, you know, I'm kidding.

You know, you're just not always. the killing out where we disappointed massively was i surprised yes was i pretty confident we were going to get a bear yes i was and we did have an opportunity right you know and i passed a bear that was legal to have killed yeah i only saw one bear in five days that first afternoon had about a hundred pound boar come in i mean technically that would have been a legal animal to take brent was hunting on some property that he had secured and he his arrow deflected on a little tiny branch yeah yeah brent actually had a pretty nice boar come in the first day that he missed. Yeah.

And we didn't, you know, just limitations of making a film. We, we didn't have a cameraman with Brent, which we should have. We should have, we should have, we should have a cameraman with Brent. Right. If someone has, who's never hunted watches this film, what do you want to be their takeaway? Mm. Just to see the, the history, the culture, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the bigger picture of hunting.

It's not just about harvesting an animal, but it's a lifestyle, a regional lifestyle. Great. So thank you so much for joining us on this companion podcast of Meat Eater's 12 and 26 film. If you haven't seen our Arkansas Bear Camp film, go to the Meat Eater YouTube channel and check it out. You can leave your questions and comments there.

It's not lost on us that all of you watch this content and it's really great. It's one of the joys inside of my life is to be able to make content. And man, I recognize what a privilege it is to get to document this stuff because I know so many of these people out there are doing stuff. cooler, better, faster, stronger, and more compelling than what we're doing. I mean, that's the truth. I think there's a inside of society, there's sometimes this idea that the guys that are on TV are the best. Right. We are not.

Does that, is that relevant? To me, it's relevant. I just want to say thank you and so many of you are the people that, you are the people that, I look up to and teach me so much about hunting. I mean, we're not the best. We just love it. I do think I do think I love it as much as anybody. Yeah.

Not the best. Absolutely. So it's a privilege to just document it. Yeah. So thanks everybody watching. Really appreciate it. This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human.