00:00:14 Speaker 1: My name is Clay Neukleman. This is a production of the Bear Grease podcast called The Bear Grease Render, where we render down, dive deeper, and look behind the scenes of the actual bear Grease podcast, presented by f h F Gear, American Maid, purpose built hunting and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the place as we explore. Welcome to the Bear Grease Render. We are we're on assignment on assignment from really the Good Lord, but also a Gary Gerald Brewer. We're on assignment. We're at uh, we're at our bear camp and we've we've completed the bear camp for this year. Bear season is still going. They should close the bear season after our bear camp is done. Yeah, it should just be like, hey, y'all done, Yeah, Okay, season's over. Shut down that that's not a good idea. But did it before we started? What's that? So they kind of shut it down before we start? Mother Nature We're gonna So it's great, great to be out in the wild today. We're at our We're at our camp here in Arkansas. I have a great guest, a great group of people here with me. Josh Lambridge Spilmmaker. Hello, Brent reeves bear, John Newcomb here, and we've got you've been on the podcast before, but this is Anthony Ballard from Mississippi. 00:01:50 Speaker 2: In a in a different capacity. 00:01:53 Speaker 1: Yeah, well, but you're still the bear biologist from Mississippi. Well it's not Spencer. We gotta get y'all mixed up that well, expert. 00:02:01 Speaker 2: There's there's some I wonder about the intentionality of that. Yeah, there's some stories. I'm just intern anyway. Yeah, well most of your mom Yeah, that's true, added to some confusion. 00:02:12 Speaker 1: Oh, we gotta tell that story. Okay, So this is Anthony Ballard. He does work for the Mississippi Department of How did they say, what's. 00:02:21 Speaker 2: Their md WFP Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks. 00:02:25 Speaker 1: It's a bad one. 00:02:26 Speaker 3: That acronym is too much to. 00:02:27 Speaker 2: Say, it is. Yeah, when I'm on the phone, I just say Wildlife and Fisheries because it's just that's what your maleean. It's cumbersome. 00:02:34 Speaker 1: Yeah. And then we have uh, Spencer Daniels, the intern. 00:02:41 Speaker 4: Yep, the intern. 00:02:42 Speaker 5: I'm a graduate student of Mississippi State on the bear project and Anthony worked together a lot and uh yeah, just get my master's there and kind of working on bear stuff. 00:02:51 Speaker 4: I do my thesis. 00:02:52 Speaker 1: Yeah. So the other morning, we were up real early, and Spencer wasn't up as early as us. He didn't have to go as far as they were sleeping in an extra hour and we were like creeping around downstairs making you know, like making sandwiches in the dark and being real quiet. And I said, Anthony, I said, is Spencer the only one a sleep up there? And he was like yeah, And I was like, he's just an intern. I flipped on the lights. About ten minutes later, he comes walking down and he goes, yeah, I was just it. He heard me. 00:03:27 Speaker 5: You apologized if you woke me up, and I said, don't worry about it. 00:03:30 Speaker 4: I'm just an intern. 00:03:34 Speaker 1: Okay, So tell the story about your mother meeting someone in the airport. 00:03:39 Speaker 5: Yeah, a little background first. Brent put out a video when y'all came down to do din checks with us, and he kind of introduced the video saying, y'all are down here with bear biologists Spencer Daniels and Anthony Ballard, and we joked about it for a while because technically I'm not a bar biologist. I'm a wildlife biologist that researches bears for my graduate stuff right now. You know, then i'd say something and say trust me, I'm a bar bolog just that kind of thing. But uh, that's kind of the setup for it. My parents went on their anniversary trip up to Mackinaw Island and they stopped over in Michigan. 00:04:14 Speaker 4: I forget the name of the airport, but they. 00:04:16 Speaker 5: Stopped over there and my mom's at the counter and she hears this voice that she recognized and she turns around and there's Steve Vanilla standing there talking on the phone, and she like freaks out and goes, call. 00:04:29 Speaker 1: Your mom would have recognized Stephennilli. 00:04:31 Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, yeah, we watched Meat Eater and you know all that stuff at the house, y'all. Yeah, pretty much household names. But yeah, anyway, she goes and grabs my dad and it's like there's Steveniller right over there. 00:04:41 Speaker 4: You know. 00:04:41 Speaker 5: They waited around, wait around for him to get off the phone, and he starts to pack up like they're about to walk out, and hangs up the phone about at the same time, and so she's just she just stops him and says Steve, and he kind of turns and looks at her and it's like, excuse me, Like there's some strange lady just trying to stop Steve Rnell at the airport. 00:04:59 Speaker 4: But so he's just think, I'm sorry. 00:05:01 Speaker 5: Uh, you know, she does the proud mom thing, talks about me, and eventually she gets around to saying he's the the bear bologist in Mississippi. So Steve Vernell apparently thinks some of the bear bologists Mississippi but. 00:05:16 Speaker 1: And your mom does. 00:05:17 Speaker 6: Yeah, apparently, then did she tell didn't she tell him that you were coming hunting with us? 00:05:23 Speaker 2: Yeah? 00:05:23 Speaker 5: They kind of mentioned that, and that's when he kind of, you know, he was he was cool with him, hung out and took some pictures and stuff. 00:05:30 Speaker 1: Oh cool, yeah, x U s see, Steve, he'll be like I asked all you were with that bear biologist that main bearp will be like Anthony and he's. 00:05:40 Speaker 5: Well, my mom swears that his follow up question was how long has he been in that position? 00:05:47 Speaker 4: But my dad said he never did, so I don't know. I can't get that straight. 00:05:50 Speaker 1: That's funny, that's funny. Well, you guys have been bear hunting with us, and this was your Well, okay, we're gonna on the bear Grease Render if you're if you're new, we we talk about the past week's podcast. Every two weeks we come out with what we really call the Bear Grease Podcast, which is a documentary style podcast. Then the Renders and we just gather up a bunch of folks and we talk about that this is gonna be a little bit different. We're gonna end this week's episode with talking about bear Camp. Is that okay with y'all? It makes sense because I think I think if we get to talk about bear Camp, we're not gonna want to come back to Deer Stories. So this last week we we did our annual Deer Stories episodes, which is one of my favorites. I hear a lot of people say that it's some of their favorite podcasts of the year because it's it's a collection of stories. This this episode, I think had five stories. Usually we have six or seven. All of them were kind of longer this time. And and we're doing another interesting thing is hu a week from now will be meat Eater's White Tail Week YEP, which is gonna there's gonna be a ton of sales on First Light all the deer hunting gear, Phelps game calls, you can get your Acorn Pro two grunner. So there's a lot of sales and stuff that's connected to Whitetail Week, but that's not what we're really talking about. We're talking about deer stories. There were multiple really good ones. What was what was y'all's favorite story? Favorite? 00:07:34 Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like the elephant in the room. 00:07:36 Speaker 6: Everybody's got everybody's got the gonna have the same favorite, and I think we should talk about that one last before week. 00:07:42 Speaker 1: Okay, what was your second favorite story? I like Lake's Lake Pickle story. Yep, really yeah. 00:07:49 Speaker 6: The you know, I'm crazy about nostalgia and history and family legacy and all that kind of stuff, and story him taking that deer on his grandfather's land. 00:07:58 Speaker 1: I think it was his grandfather other daddy Dole. 00:08:02 Speaker 6: Yeah, I think that that that really resonated with me because everything you know, from pocket knives to shotguns to even lineage of dogs in my family has always been so important. 00:08:14 Speaker 1: And I really. 00:08:14 Speaker 6: Identified with with how Lake felt and the way he described the feeling of taking that deer, and how proud his grandfather and grandmother would have been of him. 00:08:23 Speaker 1: It was I really liked it. He did a good job telling the story too. Yeah, very good. 00:08:29 Speaker 3: Yeah, like, okay, I really I really like Lakes two. I think I think first of all, likes a great storytelling. 00:08:35 Speaker 1: Don't give you don't get late too much credit. 00:08:37 Speaker 3: Sorry, like we don't even like it. 00:08:40 Speaker 1: I mean you like Pickle loucked into a decent story. 00:08:45 Speaker 2: Okay, looked into a decent buck. Andy. 00:08:50 Speaker 1: Did you know Anthony lives within walking distance like Pickle up. 00:08:54 Speaker 2: Right around the corner yep, rough neighborhood. 00:08:56 Speaker 1: I like that. 00:08:58 Speaker 3: I love the unusual thing of him walking through the grass and crinting. 00:09:04 Speaker 1: Good. 00:09:05 Speaker 3: I never never thought to even try that if I was in that situation. 00:09:08 Speaker 1: It worked. Yep, A good calling sequence. What I hear? That's a crow? 00:09:15 Speaker 2: A crow? 00:09:17 Speaker 1: No, it's like coming in and out. Oh it's all right? 00:09:22 Speaker 7: Uh? 00:09:22 Speaker 1: What well? What was your favorite story? The second favorite story? Was it? 00:09:27 Speaker 4: Like? 00:09:27 Speaker 1: For real? 00:09:28 Speaker 3: Yeah? 00:09:28 Speaker 1: I like you guys didn't like the bear story? 00:09:31 Speaker 5: That's what that was my favorite just because they had a bear in it. I mean, here's what. 00:09:35 Speaker 1: I here's what. 00:09:36 Speaker 6: Every time every time you ask somebody what their favorite story is or second favorite story, and if they. 00:09:42 Speaker 1: Don't say the one, you think they're crazy. Yeah, so you either tell us what you want us to say, asking you could just have a little bit of thick skin defend yourself. 00:09:58 Speaker 2: That's not an option. What's your second favorite story? 00:10:02 Speaker 1: My second favorite story by far would have been Mitch Syke's story him shooting the bear. Mitch. It's pretty interesting because I would have known Mitch pretty much my whole life. We just grew up together in a small town. But he was six years older than me, so it's not like I really even knew him, knew him, just knew of him and his family, went to school with his little brother. And I actually hunted with Mitch one time, like one hunt up in northwest Arkansas, and he killed a buck and we drug it out together. But Mitch's friends with a lot of people that I'm friends with in our world's just kind of overlapped. But I haven't talked to Mitch in twenty years. Oh really? Yeah? And I heard about his bear story years ago from my friend Scott Brown. And Scott Brown is he told me just like he just told the story, was just like precision about what happened to Mitch. He told me that story years ago. I have since told Mitch's story many times, even publicly about Mitch getting charged by that bear. And so when I actually sat down with Mitch is from this well. When I actually sat down with Mitch and was like, hey, tell me that story about that bear, I thought that. I was like, there's no way that I got this story right. So did you? Well, I was a little nervous because I just was like, I've told this story with such confidence for so many years, and I'm telling you I could have told that story. 00:11:41 Speaker 3: He was like mouth on the words as Mitch was. 00:11:43 Speaker 1: Scott Brown, if it was if it was a story of tell you know it game a telephone, yeah, you would have been surprised at how accurate it was. Because Scott told me he was like, Mitch came down a little holler and did a ninety degree turn and come up to his stand, and that bear walked every step the way he That's the story. That's the story I told. Bear comes up, bear runs up the tree, one time, comes back down, and the second time he comes up. He was coming around the platform of the tree stand when Mitch shot it in the face with his bow. I mean, that's the story I told him. That's exactly what Mitch said happened. And Mitch is such a credible guy. He works for Farm Bureau. He's a Farm Bureau insurance agent. And I mean a really good hunter. I mean just a good hunter. And yeah, he said in that story he was afraid to even tell people what happened because he didn't think they would believe him because it was highly unusual. What do you think that bear was doing? I mean, like, was it just straight up trying to get him? I mean it was it. Predatory attacks on humans in North America is increasing, like period, this happened fifteen years ago. I don't that bear acted like what happens when a bear attacks someone and eats them, like stalk, like trailing them up and like purposely trying to fight a big bear. No, he said it was like a one hundred and fifty to two hundred pound bear. 00:13:15 Speaker 3: And still wouldn't want to fight one on a tree stand. 00:13:18 Speaker 1: Especially in a tree stand. Yeah, and no, I mean the chance, the likelihood of that bear like climbing up in that tree and pulling him out, I mean it's so low, but I mean it had to happen once it was four feet from him. It was four feet from him when he shot it, and yeah, so, I mean, you know, I don't know, it was uh, it was wild. The thing about uh, you know, black bears are extremely docile and like not wanting to hurt you in general. But the black bear range is so widespread, there's so many bears, there's so much human overlap that you just get at that anomaly bear that for whatever reason, is aggressive towards people. And there's more and more people across the country getting messed up by black bears. But it's still you'd still have a better chance of getting struck by lightning. But anyway, and then he kills the buck, which I thought was calling was a real nice buck. I'm going to post a picture of the of the of the buck the target book. Yeah, and there the one that he killed. But so that was my That was my second favorite. 00:14:29 Speaker 3: That's ridiculous. 00:14:32 Speaker 1: That Lake Pickles story wasn't your second favorite. That really hurts my feelings. 00:14:37 Speaker 2: At least is at least your third favorite. 00:14:39 Speaker 1: Pick Let me think about that, Miles Malone. 00:14:44 Speaker 3: Miles Malone story is pretty good too. 00:14:46 Speaker 1: What stories were there? There was a Jude, the story of Juju in the Bar and the Mule Lake Pickle. Miles Malone Mitch and and Mad Palmers. Yeah, so there was five. Yeah, Lakes would have been. I like my story too, though, You've got to give some credit. He's a limb following in front of a camera. 00:15:11 Speaker 3: He's a hard he's a hard deer hunter, that guy. 00:15:13 Speaker 1: Yeah, what was your favorite, Anthony? 00:15:17 Speaker 2: I probably like Lakes too because sorry, gonna be sorry, Sorry, dang it. 00:15:29 Speaker 1: Lake is my good friend. I'm giving Lake a hard time. 00:15:32 Speaker 2: It was a great story, Lake, So it's just the reason, I guess, the reason that that it resonates with me was a lot of you know, I was like cussing you in my mind, Brent, because you were taking all my answer. But you know, like those stories that resonate that tell stories about your grandparents or you know, historic land that you've always hunted and have that you know, history established where the woods are literally just full of memory and stories of particularly your formative years coming through. I mean, that's that kind of stuff is what roots people, you know, and it's when somebody tells a story like that and you can have so many parallels to your own upbringing, and you know, like you said, Lake and I grew up in similar areas. You know, hundred similar areas, probably had a fairly similar childhood and and that sort of thing. It's a it's something that just kind of you just kind of fall right into it and follow it, you know. 00:16:29 Speaker 1: But doesn't you pipe and smoke it? About that? 00:16:32 Speaker 7: Cheers the Lake Pickle Lakes We're story Sham and Spencer all. 00:16:44 Speaker 1: That was great? That was great? Yeah, which was your favorite? Spencer? 00:16:49 Speaker 5: That's probably the one with the bear. I forget what was the guy's name, Mitch, Mitch? Yeah, like that's that. That's pretty intense story. Yeah, and that bear stalking basically, yeah, which is not common at all, like you said, so, yeah, that's pretty cool. 00:17:03 Speaker 6: Yeah, as you know, you guys study bears. We've probably talked about this in in the bear camps. But how long do y'all get any reports of that through the through the year that are credible? 00:17:14 Speaker 1: Any any documented attacks in modern times of bears in Mississippi. 00:17:18 Speaker 2: No documented attacks. There have been a couple of incidents where it was a self defense type situation and as far as we know, they were found to have been credible. But you know, most of the kills that we've had, they've been pretty low amount and they've all you know, buy and large been illegal kills that somebody just saw bear and shot it for some reason. 00:17:41 Speaker 1: But wow. 00:17:41 Speaker 2: Yeah, But there there was one particularly in the in the in the Delta north of Vicksburg, that was deemed to be a pretty credible self defense situation. Yeah, and it was. It was kind of the same version of the bear charge and in the tree stand, except the gal was on the ground and he was making his way to his state. And as the story goes, the first was a warning shot kind of over the bear's head, and rather than turning and going away, the bear just hit another gear towards him, and he racked another round and killed it like as it was coming towards him. 00:18:16 Speaker 1: Wow. 00:18:16 Speaker 3: Wow, interesting you shoot him right head on? 00:18:21 Speaker 2: Yeah, wow yeah. And that's I mean, like, you know, our law enforcement guys are great, and those things are investigated just like a murder scene would be. And so you're bringing into account every single thing, you know, how the projectile traveled, where were the tracks, where was the bear, like all that stuff is put together and so, like I said, as far as we know it was, you know, it was legit, like you said, it happened m you. 00:18:45 Speaker 1: Know in the community I grew up in there's a handful of legitimate stories of people being really spooked by bears. You know. Dad always talks about a guy named Truman Richmond who was he was out in the mountains and uh and and and and got a real good woodsman, real good woodsman. Is it is it legal to dig Jensen? Yeah? Can you dig Jensen? 00:19:17 Speaker 3: Yeah? 00:19:18 Speaker 4: You sure check him before he tells us. 00:19:21 Speaker 1: This happened like forty years ago. 00:19:23 Speaker 2: So anyway, he was. 00:19:30 Speaker 1: Charged by a bear and this was like a real woodsman, and he thought the bear was gonna get him. I don't know the whole story all these Anywhere there's bears, there's going to be stories of like close encounters, you know. But uh, let's talk about let's talk about Med Palmer story. So this was Miles Malone is the one who connected this to Med Palmer. M E. D. Palmer. 00:19:54 Speaker 3: And he's a surgeon. 00:19:58 Speaker 1: Yeah, just kidding. 00:20:00 Speaker 2: He meds a lot of things, surgeon. 00:20:02 Speaker 1: He'll tell us about Mad. 00:20:05 Speaker 2: That was, I mean, obviously that's the favorite. And talking about having connections, I mean since I came to work with wildlife and Fisheries in twenty fifteen, I've known Med and he's on Capai County Wildlife Management Area, which is only an hour from where I usually work most of the time. And you know, I knew Gunner, I knew Med hadn't hunted much with him, but I mean, just one of those guys where you know, if you if you run into him on the w ma A, you better carve out twenty or thirty minutes because you're gonna be talking for a little while. And just the most personable, down to earth guy you'd ever want to know. And so you know that that whole story. I watched it unfold firsthand, you know, and was one of the ones that were, you know, helping with the process, sending text messages. You know, the whole thing was like navigating that. I mean, it was it was almost a family thing, what it felt like in in Wildlife and Fisheries. It's not a huge agency compared to a lot of other state organizations, and so you know, when something like that happens, it it hit everybody. Man like there was there was nobody in the agency that was not affected by that story. And so it was to hear him tell it, you know, in somewhere like this and that would actually do it justice and more people could hear. It's just it's a really cool thing, really personal. 00:21:31 Speaker 1: And that a lot of people told me that they remembered that, even on like national news when it happened. Yeah, and uh and and I didn't realize it, but I had heard people refer to these you know, these boys that got killed on the river duck hunting, Like that was in my mind that in recent years, some boys got killed on the river. Well, I didn't know that we were going to I didn't know where this story was leading. We just we just heard from Miles. Hey, this guy med Palmer, he lost his son on the river and he ended up killing a deer that that boy was after. And where I'm like, well, would he tell us that story on the podcast? And Miles was like, I bet he would. And so anyway, it all finally painted the big picture of what happened. And even my mom knew about that. She was like, I heard it. I watched that on the news. 00:22:29 Speaker 2: Yeah, he's also got if you ever get a chance to have him again, he's also got a Turkey story that's very similar. 00:22:36 Speaker 1: We got it, okay, foreshadowing awesome Yeah, yeah, yeah, Well, I mean it's hard to it's hard to even talk about the story because it's you kind of just want to let Med tell it. But I mean, if you hadn't listened to it, you know, he lost his son and another boy that we didn't really even bring up. I just I don't know the story with that family, but uh, these two boys were on the river there. They never never recovered, never recovered the boys. And uh and then Med goes and uh, you know, a month later, goes hunting one time and kills this buck that his son, Gunner had been after it was it was a powerful story. It was very much people. People we were messaging me all day on Wednesday of last week telling me that they were like pulling over on the side of the road, crying, walking into work, crying at the gym, crying. 00:23:34 Speaker 6: Camp, crying yeah, yeah, yep, yep, confirm yeah yeah. 00:23:40 Speaker 3: So that's just one that's just a story you just can't help but put yourself in the position of and and it's just like you got to have some serious grace from God to be able to walk through that. And I feel like I feel like Med did a great job exemplifying how you should walk through it, you know what I mean. He wasn't angry. He wasn't he wasn't just tore up to the point where he was debilitated. But he you know, obviously that's a that's a heavy load to carry. But he did what he had to do. And I think I think the fact that he spent so long searching on the river. You know, he told us and behind the scenes that he put forty seven hundred miles on his boat looking for looking for Gunner, and uh yeah, and. 00:24:31 Speaker 2: He still goes to the river to this day, he still goes. Yeah, really yep. 00:24:36 Speaker 3: So I think I think he just he it was a good example because he just yeah, I think he did. He didn't carry bitterness, but he just he found ways, good ways to be able to walk through it into and to kind of move past it. 00:24:53 Speaker 1: I I appreciate that. You know, as he was telling the story, it was clear that he didn't he didn't go He didn't give us the full version of the of of Gunner. I mean, like it was he was telling us a dear story that included that, So I mean it was like it was a very condensed version. But I appreciated how he he knew he had to take on the grief of it head on. 00:25:27 Speaker 3: Ye. 00:25:28 Speaker 1: He was like, I needed to go. I needed to go to our land and walk past those stands. I needed to be by myself. I knew it was going to be hard, Like he just kind of like took it on like it was a job. 00:25:38 Speaker 3: He didn't avoid it. 00:25:39 Speaker 1: Yeah, he was just like, this is what I gotta do. And I mean I can only imagine, you know what. That's all I can do is is imagine what that would be like. But I do think that there are versions of that story where where someone is just debilitated, maybe forever. And I didn't get that sense from him. I mean, like he's he's he's still, he's strong and and just seems to be I mean I didn't know him before yeah, bet a minute, but he seems to be doing good. Yeah. 00:26:10 Speaker 2: And I mean there's a lot of a lot of people that would in that situation would just stop hunting, yeah, or stop being outdoors or like just avoid those things, like you're saying, just just shut that part of your life off, just you know, avoid it all together. And he doesn't do that. I mean, he's still and another thing that that he wouldn't tell you that I will is. There are some people that are just put on this earth to kill stuff, and Med is one of those dudes. He is you could put a turkey on the surface of Mars, one turkey, and he would go up there and he would find it and kill it. I mean, he is just an absolute And Keith. 00:26:46 Speaker 6: Keith Poke sent me a message after he listened. He said, if you have the opportunity to go hunting with Med Palmer, he said, you better jump on it. He said, because you're going to learn some stuff. 00:26:58 Speaker 2: Yes, you will learn things about turkeys that you never knew. But anyway, said all that to say, just just in casual conversation, I talked to him, you know, in the years following that, like hey, are you are you still going hunting? Are you doing this and that? And during turkey season there were several times that you know, I would talk to him. He'd say, yeah, I've had I've had five or I've had seven turkeys within shooting range and just didn't pull the trigger, you know, or or sometimes that he did, or you know, he would take another youth, another kid. You know, I've got this, I got this so and so hunt with this organization, and you know, we went out and this kid killed a turkey. I called it up for him. And so like he's he's still very much involved in in the outdoor world and even with other other kids and helping like that's one of his favorite things to do, is it's still helping youth fulfill those dreams for themselves. 00:27:54 Speaker 3: He does a lot with wounded veterans too. 00:27:56 Speaker 1: Yeah, what'd you think in the story? Bear? Well, you didn't hear it? Yeah, no, I didn't. Let didn't hear it? Oh okay, so I was actually. 00:28:06 Speaker 3: Right now in front of us. Just watch them, Yeah, just watch them tear up what what? 00:28:10 Speaker 2: Where? You leave and you don't come back. 00:28:12 Speaker 1: And I forgot that you hadn't heard it. Yeah, Well I was wondering what story we're talking about when you were first describing it. It was pretty confusing. Well, it'll it'll go down in the archives, man. That's what's so for me that what's so fun about doing what we're doing is that you're collecting you're you're collecting people's kind of most precious, valuable memories and stories and they come in all kinds of different versions, you know, and uh, and sometimes the focus isn't is an animal? Sometimes the focus is a person. Sometimes a focus is uh is something you know, life changing that happened inside of it. But uh, but to me, Med's story told on Bear Grease will go down as Ah is one that I won't forget. Yeah, there's a handful of stories that I could just if I met somebody, if I met Spencer's mom in the airport, I might be like, and she'd be like, what do you do, young man? I go, well, I have a podcast and we tell stories like and I would yeah, Med Palmer's story about Beyond There, and she'd go, are you the lead bar biologist in Arkansas? Uh? Well, we're gonna have another Dear Stories episode coming up, so it'll be it'll we got we got one more. It's gonna be great, and we're gonna get to Ostiola. We we had we interviewed Stirling Harjoe and we were gonna follow it directly with the with the Ostiola series. But it's gonna come later on October. 00:29:54 Speaker 2: YEP. 00:29:55 Speaker 1: So well, so we've we've had we've had a good bear Camp. It's been tough. Who wants to start talking about bear camp? 00:30:05 Speaker 2: Not men? 00:30:10 Speaker 6: You tell us about your bear hunt? Well, you at first you need to put some context to it. Okay, you know this is the one thing we all look not the one thing, but this, this hunt, this camp right here is something I would give up just about anything to be here every year. 00:30:27 Speaker 1: And it's usually, you know. 00:30:30 Speaker 6: Pretty sporty on the first opening day when everybody gets here and we come from all points of the compass to get here. Then we got here and it's raining acrens like hailstorm, and everybody immediately thinks this may be pretty tough. 00:30:44 Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll let you take it from Well, we're in Arkansas. We can hunt over bait on private land, so we've got we've got places that we've been baiting. And typically the the success of the hunt is really in a high correlation to the amount of acrons that are falling. So a bear just period a bear would rather eat an acre and as he would anything that you can put out, So as the acrons start to fall, the bear activity on your baits just decreases. But usually the season opener is at a time when you know some of your bears are leaving, but there's still some hanging around, and it's always this fight with the calendar, and every day you go further into the fall. You know, bears are more and more keying in on natural food sources and really more and more moving into their fall ranges. You know, bears have these big, huge ranges. And Anthony could tell me tell more about it than I could, but in general, you know, a bear has a huge range. You know, let's say it's let's say it's fifteen square miles for a bore or something, and he'll he'll focus on different parts of that range at different parts of the u year. But their fall ranges are typically pretty standard, and that's just where they want to be. Now, if your bear bait is inside of that that area in a secure location that he feels comfortable in the daylight and he wants to be there anyway, that's money. But usually that's not the case. Usually on the private land that we're able to gain access to debate, usually you're on the fringe of like core bear ranges and and the odd property is you know, like just where you want it. But uh, anyway, we had we had quite a few bears. Like if you if I just showed you pictures, if I showed Spencer's mom the videos of the bears that we had on camera she would be impressed. I mean, like we had some no shortage of like big bears and uh, but they just they just come in at night. They're they're sporadic. And by opening day, I mean we were what was it like? What what was it like? Community? Because I I communicate with Anthony every day for three weeks, like sending in beaar pictures. 00:33:12 Speaker 2: Well, and that was one thing that kind of, you know, I kind of said on the on the front end that I want to I'm really excited about this experience to learn more and if I kill a bear, that'll be icing on the cake. And I really didn't mean that and I still do, but to kind of to kind of place myself in the hunting aspect of something that I really haven't been able to do because obviously I'm from a state that doesn't allow it, and I've never been outside, so. 00:33:38 Speaker 1: He's never been outside of the state of MISSI outdoors. 00:33:43 Speaker 2: I don't, Yeah, I don't. I don't get out much at all. But anyway, so that's why I've never met Steven Ell at an airport. But anyway, so to kind of see how how everything let up, you know, you you said that it's it's very depending on acronfall obviously, but just to see the difference in the bears activities in in you know, a forty eight hour period and that just precipitous drop in traffic and activity around that bait site in that one short little period. Because, like you said, as you were sending pictures one after the other, I was like, it's just a matter of shopping for which bear I want, yeah, and shooting. And that's what a lot of people think when you're you know, hunting over bait. You know, the argument is even made that it's not ethical and that it's cheating because you're just and this process really opened my eyes to like, look, that bear is wired to utilize what we call pulse resources. So it's hard mass in the fall, it's a lot of berries and other soft mass in the spring, and when those resources come available, they are on them and they are on them until they're gone hot and heavy. And if they don't have to come to your bait to supplement that, they're not going to And so that's you know, it's one of those things like you kind of know in the back of your mind, but to actually see it firsthand was was a really eye opening experience. 00:35:06 Speaker 1: He saw it firsthand. Yeah, yeah, not seeing a bear. 00:35:13 Speaker 2: Yeah, daylight to dark. I think we I think we hunted all but about two or three hours of daylight both the first two days, so upwards of you know, thirty hours in the stand and either saw the same yearling twice or saw two different yearlings in all that time put together. 00:35:32 Speaker 6: In a spot, in a spot where some big bears were using. 00:35:36 Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it was a that was a it was a good spot. Yeah good. I mean really that that that spot. I would I would hunt any year and feel confident. 00:35:47 Speaker 3: So because it is rain and acrons here. 00:35:50 Speaker 1: Yes, it is. It is. So the interesting thing about this is I have a philosophy that when you're when you buy people to bear camp, that you should order to anything. You should just like kind of communicate where they stand in the in the in the in the Yeah. And so I told I sent word to Spencer through Brent. Now you this is like me telling Mitch Psych's story. You know, my story was like hyper communicated or it was accurate with So when I was gonna inviite Anthony and and I only had what I felt like was two good spots and so Bear was gonna hunt one, Anthony was gonna hunt one, and uh and I said, well h Brent and I collaborated and were like, let's invite Spencer. And I said, okay, I said, but you just tell him that he's getting the third best spot, and the third best spot isn't always that great. Was that communicated to. 00:36:50 Speaker 5: You a little bit? 00:36:52 Speaker 1: Yeah, get gar hold a little bit. 00:36:57 Speaker 5: I wouldn't say that was my impression, but I knew had the third best spot. 00:37:01 Speaker 1: Okay, so you knew it. Brent did a good job. He was diplomatic. 00:37:03 Speaker 6: Yeah, you know you're this. This counts nothing towards how we how we love you, Spencer. 00:37:10 Speaker 1: It's just the look of the drove. 00:37:12 Speaker 4: I know where I stand. 00:37:14 Speaker 1: We could have we could have. I could have like drew up on a whiteboard like daylight before daylight at opening day and had like bare place number one, number two, number three, And I'm like, okay, now we're going to draw straws to see who who gets to go, and I like rig it to where they all get it. Sorry, Spencer, looks like you're going to garhole number three. But what the heck happened at garhole number three? Man? 00:37:39 Speaker 5: Well, I mean it turned out so the first day we I mean I didn't go out, you know, at the crack of dawn like these two, because we checked the cameras. We decided to check the cameras the next morning and just see how it looked, because otherwise I was just going to go still hunt the mountains, you know, because I hadn't had a chance to do that. 00:37:56 Speaker 4: That would have been nice. 00:37:57 Speaker 5: But we checked the cameras and there was one big sal she was coming in at night and not looking too good on that. But there were a couple of yearlings and you know, kind of a bigger small bear. I guess I'll put it that way. But it looked okay, And since it was already you know, late in the first day, I decided I'll go up there that afternoon and see how it felt. And at about four o'clock, a bigger bear, well bigger, smaller bear came in and I spent forever arguing with myself whether or not I wanted to shoot it, and it gave me broadside about five or six times, and I just know I had three hours left on the first day. 00:38:40 Speaker 4: I was like, I'm not going to shoot this bear, So I didn't shoot came back in. 00:38:47 Speaker 2: That's like the beat sounds like we're being shot at yea. 00:38:50 Speaker 4: Yeah. 00:38:51 Speaker 5: And we talked about it that night and it's like they're still not really coming in in the morning. So I'm I'll check the cameras early to the next day, and we did, and he came back at like seven thirty that morning while I wasn't out there. So I was, you know, kicking myself for that, because once we looked at the camera pictures, it actually looked bigger than I thought. 00:39:10 Speaker 1: So you were being conservative and you were like, when you saw it, you thought that's not a bear I want to shoot. We go back and review the pictures and they were like, hey, that's actually a decent bear. It looked like a boar yep, and that's typically what we're trying to shoot. 00:39:24 Speaker 5: Right, And so after looking at the pictures, I was like, you know what, I will try to kill that bear upon further reviews. 00:39:30 Speaker 1: Yeah, but it. 00:39:32 Speaker 5: Had come in that morning, and like I said, I didn't go out like these guys again. But I wound up getting in the stand about nine thirty or so and sat all day saw year ling, you know, didn't shoot anything. And the final day, I went out all day. That was my plan was to go out all day and hope he came back in. And he came in at seven fourteen. I smacked him like maybe minute and a half, two minutes after he showed up. 00:39:57 Speaker 1: So the guar hole produced. 00:39:59 Speaker 4: It worked out. 00:40:01 Speaker 2: It reminds me of a I say in one of the old guys at deer Camp has told me one time. It says, you can be the best hunter in the world. You can know all the things to know, you can have all the track and experience and all the knowledge you ever want to have, but you can't compete with dumb luck. About dumb luck, that's a quote, that's not that was. 00:40:25 Speaker 1: It wasn't necessarily directed at you, even though it was told after. It was a coincidence, just random thought. 00:40:33 Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, just thinking about things. Yeah. 00:40:37 Speaker 1: Well so we uh it was cool getting to see you kill a barr first bear and uh and we we processed that bear. I want to talk about the gall bladder on that thing. Uh. 00:40:52 Speaker 3: So you know I did like how much you got for it on the black market. 00:40:57 Speaker 1: I'm trying to get into. 00:40:58 Speaker 4: Uh. 00:41:03 Speaker 1: No, I actually have never really intentionally looked for a gallbladder and a bear. And for those who wouldn't know, gallbladders are sold on the black market for a lot of money, and it's highly illegal to sell them in some places. It's illegal to have them in possession, you know, like to keep them. I'm post them. Yeah, And so anyway, when we were gutting the bear, we were just we found it. And I had never messed with it before, or never even really looked at one. But I've been reading quite a bit about the the gallbladder trade in Asia, and there's a couple of ways that they do it. They kill wild bears. There are Asiatic black bears that span from Afghanistan to Japan and kind of this like crescent moon shaped like thousand mile long rain and there's a lot of Asiatic bears and moon bears, you know. There's these different versions of ursids that are in Asia, and they'll kill wild bears and just extract the gallbladder. But more so they have bile farms in those places where they'll have and I'm pretty sure today it's illegal in every country in the world to have a bear bile farm, but it's so deeply entrenched in some of the cultures that it's not as enforced, and it's kind of like blind eyes turned to it because it's not like something that popped up in the eighties and they're doing. This is stuff that's been going on for thousands of years, just like deeply entrenched into into these cultures, you know. And and basically they'll have you know, like dog kennels in its bears, and they have like catheters basically on them getting bare bile out and then they sell on the black market for all kind of you know it just you name it bare byal curate, you know. And and it's possible that there is some medicinal was it you Spencer those telling? 00:43:13 Speaker 5: Yeah, So Anthony and I went to the Eastern Black Bear Workshop twenty twenty three and Dave Garcelis did a talk on this, and there's kind of some I don't know if you i'd call it argument, but kind of a gray area on the ethics of it, because there actually is some legitimate medicinal value to it, and it helps helps some people out that wouldn't otherwise have access to it, and you know, there I think there's he mentioned that there's actually some farms where they they let them. You know, they're basically in a zoo, but they're not locked up all the time, so it's a little bit better than just being an a dog kil the whole time. And they'll actually train them to walk in and they have the catheter and they kind of get up. I don't know, that's kind of up to your own interpretation. 00:43:55 Speaker 2: Whether that's I think, but yeah, yeah, there's kind of that moral dilemma because you know, on one hand, and you've got bears in captivity, they're basically being farmed for the sole purpose of extracting this bile. But then on the other hand, it could be argued that those bill farms are one of the reasons why the wild population hasn't had such of a hit, because the demand hasn't really gone anywhere, It hasn't really changed that much. The question is what where's it being sourced from, And so it's kind of one of those like lesser of two evils thing. You could sort of make an argument for either one. I'm not informed enough to really, you know, go much further than that, but that was kind of the point of Dave's presentation that we saw was like, you know, is it really the evil that people make it out to be or is it actually you know, the lesser of two evils, because there's not really a great option either way, right. 00:44:46 Speaker 1: And Man, something like that that's so steeped in the culture is interesting to me because I mean America, you know, we've had an official country here since seventeen seventy six, and we feel like we've been here, you know, we just it's like deep root of culture. Man. Some of those places over there, like perhaps the country name has changed in different things, but I mean those cultures are going back thousands of years. And uh. And I'm not suggesting that Bareby is something that should be should be I'm not even I'm not informed on it enough either. It's just interesting. And yesterday, if you know anything else, really negative. But yesterday we we we pulled this. It felt like you're holding a small water balloon, just this thin, thin skin kind of greenish bluish, grayish, and uh, and we we poked just the tiniest hole in it and you just kind of squeeze it and it would shoot out this like kind of glowing liquid. Yeah, like almost like neon colored oil. I got some in my coffee. I can see in the dark now I. 00:45:58 Speaker 2: Can get you good one in the morning. 00:46:01 Speaker 1: Uh No, anyway, Yeah, you don't want to mess around with gall bladders. I mean they'll they'll the feds will be at your door knocking on your door at three am. So glady nukemb is not messing around with gall bladders. But you do have to gout a bear, so you do have to check them out. But pretty interesting. So anyway, great bear spencer, thanks man. The other bear hunter amongst us will tell us about your hunt bear. Well, I was hunting out of the bear pit which is where you killed the bear two years ago with a stone point, and I was hunting out of it with the self bow that I made the copper head, And yeah, it was the same deal. We had a lot of bears coming in and then it just started raining acrens and they all kind of just disappeared. Bears said acres were falling out of trees and bouncing into the bear. They were literally white oak acorns bouncing into the pit. Whenever the wind would come through. It sounded like a hailstorm. I mean, it was just like cover acrons. But yeah, so pretty much all the bears maybe, I mean a week before season almost all the big bears were nocturnal or just not there. And then just like the day before season, there wasn't even a bear in there in the daylight. Yeah, so we went in there and there was a big sow that we've been keeping track of for the last what three or four years, and she just has like a real blonde face, so she's real recognizable. Never had cubs, but she was big and old and she was coming in there pretty consistently. And then there were just some other smaller bears. But we went in there the first day right at daylight. We sat until four didn't see anything, and I was kind of sitting on this like little. I had to dig the front of the pit out because my bow's ten years. We had to do. We had to do a remodel on the bear pit. We dug it about probably eight inches deeper, yeah, because his bow was longer than mine. 00:48:05 Speaker 3: Granite countertops and ship lap. 00:48:06 Speaker 1: Siding, yeah yeah. We redid the roof. Very tasteful, but uh yeah. And so there's kind of like this ledge and I was just sitting on that ledge like a bench all day. And so I was sitting, you know, like this, and I just see a bear head and just stick out like literally six feet from me. We measured it after it was seventy three inches like roughly. I used my bow kind of to measure it, and uh, this bear just walks right out in front. So when you're in the pit, all you can see, your world becomes very triangular. You sat in there for like fourteen hours and you're looking at this triangle window, so everything around you is black, and then the daylight is like right in front of you, and it's it's insulated too with with dirt and logs and maw and leaves that makes the roof so you can't hear a thing other than what's in front of you. Yeah, and so bears typically coming from behind you, so they just appear just like just right there, you know. Yeah, And I mean this one just like straight up just appeared. There was no warning at all. It was just there was a bear. I mean it appeared so quick my heart rate didn't even go up. It was just like old, dang, there's a big bear, shooter bear. I mean I could I could have poked on my bow and it stood there probably six foot from us. We've got this on a Moultrie trail cam video. Yeah, it's a cool video. And so, Lauren Malten, I'm I happened to be interrupting you a lot. I'm sorry for that. Lauren Malton cameraman for me either was in the in the blind with bear filming, but this happened so quick and then the bear just like looked at them. They couldn't turn the camera on. So but we did capture this moment on the Moultrie video had it on video mode out there. Yeah, So, and it was tough finished the story. At this point, we'd sat like ten hours, so we were kind of just like numb to everything that was around because we've been looking at the same thing for ten hours. When you close your eyes, do you see a triangle light? Yeah, I'm dreaming about Yeah, that's all I could see now. But so, yeah, we were just kind of it's hard to just stay alert for fourteen hours. But this bear just pops out six foot from us, and it stands there and kind of just like looks around and looks right into the bear pit and just like looks right at me. And I'm still sitting the exact same way I was before. Because it was so close, I couldn't move that bear thought that it was a bear's kindergarten picture exactly. And so I'm just sitting there like this, just looking that bear right in the eyes, and it sees two dudes in there, and it's like what on earth? And it took off. It went out of like twenty yards and sat down. But it took off. We couldn't get a shot at it. And uh, we sit for another hour and then we hear something, this time real loud, sounded like breathing. So I get on my knees, get ready, and sure enough, just like a bare head just sticks out on the left side. But immediately it's looking in, so it must have smelled us or it knew we were there trying to take a peek. Yeah, it just it didn't come around. You know. The big one came around and looked around, then looked at the bare pit. This one immediately just turned its head straight into the pit, saw us, and it was two just yearlings, and there's another one back behind it, and they saw us and took off. So that was pretty discouraging, just having two bears come in and not being able to Yeah, they just you know, the second one just knew we were there. The big one. The shooter just looked right in, saw us and took off. We sat for the rest of the day, didn't see anything. Let's talk about the strategy of the bare pick, because a lot of people have asked me, like, why did we do that? Uh huh. The The whole purpose of the bear pit was to get a five to eight yard shot at a bear from the ground, because shooting primitive equipment like the year I built it, I was shooting a stone point out of a traditional bow, and I did not want to shoot out of a tree stand because I knew I was gonna probably not get an exit wound and I didn't want to and I knew it had to be close. I wasn't gonna shoot it at thirty yards, so I knew I was gonna be shooting straight down at some bear, and I didn't want an entry hole way up here, and it'd be hard to track. So I just was thinking, how could I shoot a bear like I really honestly wanted to shoot it at five yards with a bow, and that's all I could think of was a pit. And I also felt like it could help with scent if the wind was blowing into the pit and we covered the pit with dirt, and I think it I think it helps. It's not fool proof obviously because there's moles, but that you know, and I mean, the wind can swirl and roll out. But like for instance, with that the bear that I killed and the bear, the big one that came in on you that first day, it worked. Yeah, they didn't smell us. They just got right in front and saw you. 00:53:11 Speaker 2: Yeah, And that was another thing I was going to add about the difference between the two locations. We were in a ladder stand and so you know, you're up off the ground, and the wind never stayed out of the same direction. It swirled the entire time. It would be in your face one minute and be at your back the next. And I think that made a difference too, because the yearlings that we saw, they didn't actually even come into the bait, and they came from directly down wind from us. And so I have no doubt in my mind that, like I said, either the same bear or those two different bears smelled us before they even got to the bait. And so you know, that little thing might have been the difference between the bear smelling you possibly too late, after you've already gotten a shot or smelling you on the front end, and you never knew it was there. 00:53:59 Speaker 1: Yeah, that's how. That's the reason that big bears it's hard to kill, really big bears on bait. There is no shortage of people really anywhere you can bait bears. But you know, I'm talking about Arkansas. Everybody's got pictures of big bears. Do you talk to anybody and they're like, man, you ought to see this bear and they show you some picture of a four hundred to five hundred pound bear and they're like, we can't kill him. And it's because of that very reason is that those bears know they know the game one hundred percent, and so they you just never see them. I mean, they come in down wind, they smell you, they don't come into the bait while you're there. Now, the anomaly of that is, first of all, younger bears will sometimes come in even if they smell you. Number one, number two, some percentage of bears, I don't know. I don't know if it's in a month, four days out of the month, that big giant bear just would ignore his nose and come in anyway, or if it's bears, or if it's like one out of eight bears, no matter if he's five hundred pounds or three hundred pounds, just ignores his nose and comes in. Because that's why I kept telling Anthony was telling me the wind was swirling. I was like, man, sometimes you'll see a big one out there at fifty sixty yards smelling you, and he'll sit there and eventually, like right at dark, he'll just come in anyway, you know, But most of them don't do that. So you know, you're trying to catch that anomaly, you know. So the wind is the wind is tough. Yeah, And so the second day we go in right at dark or right at daylight. Planning was sit till dark and we were actually we were making bets on when the we were going to see our first bear. And the first guess, Lauren's guess, was eight am. And we didn't see a bear pretty much all day, and so, like you know, we kept getting along. We're like, okay, maybe noon, Yeah, well okay, well when's it going to come in now? Yeah? Eleven the time, and uh, anyway, so we do that all day, don't see anything, right, and then you know, obviously my final bet was one's going to come in right at dark and uh. 00:56:21 Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's the only. 00:56:27 Speaker 1: And so, uh the last hour of daylight, I was just sitting on my knees, ready to ready to shoot, just because I could. I couldn't do that for all fourteen hours, but whenever I had like a deadline, I knew I could do. The trouble forgive me for in erupting. Uh the trouble. The trouble with sitting in that blind is you can't hear or see anything, and the bear just appears. And the bear that I killed, I was like I learned that you just had to like almost be in shooting position, just just ready, you know, during prime time. 00:57:01 Speaker 6: Even when there was nothing that you knew, nothing was even out. 00:57:04 Speaker 1: And it's taxing because you're just like because you know, if your boat there's a little hanger in there, if you like hang your bow and have all kind of relaxed, and then when he steps out at five feet, I mean you got to grab your boat, get situated, turn and shoot. It's like too late. So bar did what he should have done, just like be ready. Yeah, So for the last hour I was just sitting there on my knees with my bow and at seven I think it was like seven twenty three, so that would have been like fifteen minutes until it was totally dark. It uh like twenty minutes. I look out in front and I just see a black blog moving towards us. So we kind of got lucky that it came out of the front of it, popping out right in front. Yeah. Yeah, And so I got ready, I got situated, and as it gets closer, I could see it's that big sow and she comes around kind of on the right side, which wasn't ideal because you know, we were trying to get it on a camera and the right side was kind of a blind spot where I could see but Lauren couldn't. And she goes and sniffs a GoPro that we had, and she kind of like sticks her left arm in front and was just like perfect shot. But she was just so calm. She didn't even look in the pit, even though she'd seen two dudes in there of the day before. She just yeah, she just kind of sniffed the GoPro and but she was so calm. I figured she was just gonna walk right in. We were going to get a good you know, everything was going to be just broadside, all in the center, you know. But about the time I passed up that shot, she turns and looks in the pit and sees us and turns just totally away from us. Her butt's facing me. And at this point, i'm, you know, imposition, and I draw back, and she's walking away at this point, and I just kind of whistle at her. I just kind of do something like that, and she stops out there at maybe like ten yards and quarters. You know, she was facing totally away from me, and she turned and looked back, and in my mind, I felt like she was a lot more. It's like a lot what lot's wife? Yeah, yeah, yeah, come back? Yeah, And uh, I felt like she was a lot more. 00:59:34 Speaker 2: What's that that can get you too? 00:59:36 Speaker 1: I felt like she was a lot more broadside than she really was. But you know, I was at full draw, and I mean it was just like split second that I had to make a decision to shoot or not. And so I shot her, and the at like ten yards and I couldn't really tell where my arrow hit. I could just I saw it sticking out, you know, more than I would have liked it to been sticking out, And I thought it might have been a little low and so, and it ran off, went like forty yards out there and stopped, and I thought she was about to tip over, you know, if I made a good shot. Seems like usually on a bear, if you just yeah double on them, they don't go far. And she stops there at forty yards and then takes off again, and I felt sick because I kind of figured I made a bad shot on her. And we watched the video and it was just it was too hard to really tell. But what I could tell is that she was definitely quartering. It was a lot steeper angle than I thought, and it probably like if I did it again, I probably wouldn't have taken the shot. Just it was in that moment everything just felt a little better. And I was on my fold there for fourteen hours, yeah, waiting for that. He was a split second, and it was like literally it was a split second of either you shoot or she gets away and I shot and anyway, so I was not feeling good about it at all, and I actually I thought I might have just hit her like right in the back of the leg and at such a steep angle, like two inches off is a totally different shot. Yeah, like it just and so it looked like I just hit her, maybe right in the back of the leg or just barely clipped her. And so I thought, I really thought that. Well when he called me and he said, I shot the bear, I don't think it's a great shot. And you know, the luxury of having a camera in the in the stand with you filming the shot was big, and he he was actually able to send me a video of the shot. And I didn't think it was a mortal hit. I thought he just kind of like, H hit it in the leg, to be honest with you, and H and I said, well, hey, y'all just stay in the pit, and it was dark by now, and I said, I'll ride Izzy up there, and you know that'll be forty it'll take me an hour to get there, and we'll see. I felt like we were just gonna kind of do some due diligence and be like, this bear's not hurt. Yeah, And whenever I went and looked like right where I shot her, immediately there's blood. But I tracked it for maybe fifteen yards, and it like in that fifteen yards it started out real hot, but like immediately started to kind of yeah, it was like looking for little spots and I was just like, that's it. Yeah, she's got an arrow in her leg. And I was that's never the feeling you would have after a shot. And so we sat in the baar pit waited for you to get up there uneasy, and we start tracking it and there's pretty consistent blood, but it kind of still doesn't look great, just looks like a like a flash wound. 01:02:58 Speaker 7: Yeah. 01:02:58 Speaker 1: We just keep waiting for it to to piddle out, and man, it doesn't. It just keeps getting It doesn't really get better, but it just stays really solid. And and and we we tracked the bear for i'd say two hundred and fifty yards. Yeah, and it it the bear. Anytime you're tracking an animal, man and the animals trending downwards, you know, if you're in hilly and mountainous train. I kept waiting for that bear to turn and go up because that's just where that's the place, that's where they want to go, and that area is up and uh, and it just kept kind of trending down and I was like, huh, this bear just kind of keeps going down and uh, we found the arrow. Found the about one hundred yards and it got maybe a foot of penetration, and but it was a pretty it was a good arrow set up, real heavy broadhead, real sharp broadhead thanks to Anthony sharpening it. But it uh yeah, it got like a foot of penetration and darrow didn't break somehow. But so it kind of started to like at that point, I was like, there's no way I killed the bear. But then when we found the arrow and the blood, just like kept staying consistent, started thinking maybe it, you know, we might walk up on it. Yeah, and anyway, we we trailed that bear walking full speed. I mean we never even stopped, there was that much blood. But and so, you know, I I was optimistic. 01:04:25 Speaker 6: At what point did after from did you start feeling a little better about it? 01:04:30 Speaker 3: Well? 01:04:31 Speaker 1: Found we never felt better about it. I just kept thinking this is about to end. Yeah, And then finally bear looks up and he goes, there's the bear and uh, I actually I actually it's silly, but I had my knife out because I didn't bring my pistol or bear spray or anything. And I told him, I said, this bear could be alive, you know, I told him to Yeah. Actually right before bow I'm strung and I said, dude, string that bow and anyway, yeah, yeah, And it actually was a great shot for the for the steep angle that it was. He hit it like in the one spot he would have killed. He just tucked it, I mean just right behind the shoulder and it was a little far forward to actually get the heart, but the era went up in and and got a major artery up and you know, north of the heart basically. Yeah, And I mean it ended up being a very difficult shot. It just kind of threaded the needle. So good job. I told him, you really shouldn't be shooting the stuff that steep quartering. Yeah, definitely. I definitely would not take that shot again. And I'll say, like, of all the animals that I've ever made a bad shot on, I think that might have been like the first time I've ever gotten the benefit of the doll. Yeah. Well, we were your mother, your grandmother, me, We were all praying that it would happen, so for sure, Well it was. And then we we got the bear out. We uh, you want to get that that thing beeping. We have a we have an inReach message. I'll tell you what. Whatever the message is, we'll share it with you. So we uh, that animal had an incredible amount of fat. So we harvested all the fat, all the meat, carried it out and yesterday we spent most of the day rendering bear grease and we got how many jars? Twenty four pints? All right, I bet an acre hits Is that here, truck? Josh, it'll be a brief pause. It's from Misty. 01:07:01 Speaker 6: We'll be back after going to send you a text. Oh once she gets out here. Okay, great, that was the message. 01:07:09 Speaker 1: So we rendered twenty four pints of bear grease. What do you guys think of the bear grease rendering? 01:07:15 Speaker 2: It was very interesting, really interesting. It was funny telling the camera, well, it looks like bear killed a bear in the bear pit. But it was cool, man. I was like, and that was one of the things that I wanted to do here was to see a bear killed mine or somebody else's and just see the process from from that point of that perspective, you know, just to to make me a better rounded biologist. And you know, at some point that's what we hope happens, is we have a bear season in Mississippi, and so you know, if I've equipped myself to know what that process is like, and have learned about it, then that's going to make me able to make better decisions, you know, down the road. So be a part of the process and and seeing specifically the rendering and then you know the different cuts that you made, the different cuts of meat, and and like the whole process was was That's exactly what I set out to do. 01:08:13 Speaker 4: It was not as difficult as I anticipated either, watching y'd render that. 01:08:17 Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, it's really it's really simple. 01:08:20 Speaker 4: Yeah, definitely gonna have to kill a fat bear next time. 01:08:22 Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. Yeah, Well, Anthony, we we indoctrinated you on the way of the unsuccessful bear hunter. So now you'll be able to you'll be able to identify. 01:08:31 Speaker 2: Make me appreciate people. 01:08:32 Speaker 1: Yeah. Uh, well, now this really. 01:08:37 Speaker 3: Is We forgot about Spencer's real story. 01:08:41 Speaker 1: Oh yeah, we're going to talk about that. Yeah, I've been waiting. 01:08:45 Speaker 4: The story the first night. 01:08:47 Speaker 1: The first night, Oh, I forgot about that. Lie tell it, tell us, make it, make it. We're we're we're running low on time here. But this, yeah, we should have started with this. I I'm sorry, I keep well, I was just kid. 01:09:06 Speaker 2: Yeah. 01:09:07 Speaker 5: So the I talked about the first day I went out there late. I think it was like noon thirty or so, and I saw the bear I wanted. I didn't want that day, but later wanted at four. And then it gets around the last bar. 01:09:21 Speaker 2: I was about to close, all right. 01:09:24 Speaker 5: It gets around the last light, and I'm thinking maybe something else will come in. So I'm getting ready, and you know, I'm sitting there standing up with my bow, and it's I'm looking to the right of the stand just in case something comes from somewhere else then where I saw that bear from, and it kind of catch something out of the corner my eye. I was just like, you know, half second of trying to register what it was. Oh, deer's walking in. Go watch this deer. And I look up and there's just kind of this tan figure walking real smooth, not slow but not fast, kind of across this this game trail about forty yards from the stand, and I get to looking closer and it's got this long swooping tail behind it, and that there's a mountain lion just crossing up there on the hill. Brent loves to tell I'll let you tell the next one. 01:10:12 Speaker 6: Oh man, this is a classic. Our host Gerald Brewer was here. Josh was here messing around, and me and and me and Spencer, everybody else was out hunting. They walked away and Spencer said, I took video of that bear. I'm gonna show it to you. And he's standing behind me, and I'm sitting there holding my phone or his phone, and I'm sitting there holding and looking at this bear and I was. 01:10:35 Speaker 1: Like, oh, you know, that's a pretty good bear. 01:10:37 Speaker 6: And out of the blue, Spencer behind me says, y'all, y'all have a mountain lions here, and you know, I'm like, yeah, you know, they're they're around. And I thought, what an odd question. I thought, Now, why would he ask me that when I'm looking at this bear? And I turned around and looked at him, and his eyeballs are this bear around? He said, I just saw one ten minutes. 01:11:02 Speaker 1: You can't tell you, So, I mean he is a well laught by. 01:11:08 Speaker 4: I knew what I had seen. Yeah, but if he told me no. 01:11:14 Speaker 3: What percentage would it have dropped? 01:11:16 Speaker 4: If he told you, we wouldn't have changed what I thought. 01:11:19 Speaker 3: But I didn't change what you said. 01:11:20 Speaker 4: I'm a fairly new biologist and your reputation, reputation can ruin it. 01:11:25 Speaker 1: Yeah, myself, good or bad. Yeah, I can't believe I didn't bring this up at first. She reminded me, this should have been the first thing we talked. I hadn't been able to forget it. 01:11:34 Speaker 6: I don't know you. 01:11:35 Speaker 1: I don't know. Yeah, no, No, in all seriousness, I one hundred percent believe you. 01:11:44 Speaker 4: I'm glad you changed your mind. 01:11:45 Speaker 1: I still think you're a liar. But it wasn't black. It wasn't a black panther. No. So I told James Lawrence your story and he said, he's a James, he's in his late seventies and and he's seen two and he saw one like this summer right over in the community. Oh really, Oh yeah, yeah, Well he hadn't even told me, he said that. He said, I hadn't told many people this, but you. 01:12:12 Speaker 3: Wouldn't believe me. 01:12:13 Speaker 1: Yeah, probably, So I just want to be scrutinized a BYuT uklay. But uh, oh it did. It didn't surprise him at all. He was like, oh, yeah, I saw one. I mean, go in any rural community and ask some body if they've seen him outline, and you're going to find somebody that says that. So that's not always the way to determine if the story is true. But uh but uh, I think they're here. 01:12:37 Speaker 2: And if he's had a song written about him, that's got to lend a little credibility to him. 01:12:41 Speaker 1: James Lawrence. Yeah, yeah, Well it's been great to host you guys. It really has been a lot of ton of fun. 01:12:50 Speaker 5: So I can't tell you how much I appreciate it, even even if you did garhold happy. 01:12:56 Speaker 2: Yeah, time happily gar hoold yep. 01:13:01 Speaker 1: Well, uh anything else, guys, Nope, close her down. Well, keep the wild places wine that's where the bears. 01:13:11 Speaker 6: Live, and the poolas and the point line from Puma point 01:13:26 Speaker 1: H