00:00:14 Speaker 1: My name is Clay Neukleman. 00:00:16 Speaker 2: 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. 00:00:46 Speaker 1: I'm very excited about today. 00:00:48 Speaker 2: We have a very very distinguished guest and I'll say that has been on the last two episodes of Bear Grease, Geene Hopkins. 00:01:01 Speaker 1: It's such a pleasure. Thank you for coming to Arkansas. 00:01:04 Speaker 3: Well, it's my pleasure. I appreciate you guys inviting me. This is exciting for me. 00:01:08 Speaker 1: Yes. 00:01:09 Speaker 2: Well, So to fill you in if you haven't been paying attention, we did an original episode on Ishi, which that's what we're going to talk about extensively in this episode. We're we're gonna cover some kind of housekeeping stuff up front, but just to let you know where we're going with this, we did an episode two what we've now done two episodes. We did episode one on Ishi, which was basically his history and life before coming into Oreville, California in nineteen eleven. His history with what we know of the Yahee and this fascinating story. Going to get into it. Then we interrupted the series, which we've never done before forgive us. We put out an episode where I interviewed Ted Copple, which was just an interesting episode, and we dropped it, and then now come back to do the final episode with Gene that came out on the Bear Grease feed Is She two basically, So we're going to talk about. 00:02:11 Speaker 4: All that awesome episode. 00:02:14 Speaker 1: By the way, yes, agreed, no doubt. 00:02:18 Speaker 2: When I first started Bear Grease five years ago, Gene, I was telling him this earlier. I had to write out twenty six potential topics for this podcast because we do a Bear Grease proper or documentary style episode every two weeks, and media was like, okay, well, what are you going to talk about? Make a year's schedule, and Ishi was on that original list, but it's taken me five years to get to. 00:02:45 Speaker 3: It, so well, I hope the wait was worth it. 00:02:48 Speaker 2: Oh man, I think it's perfect timing and that yeah, we're going to get into all of it. Before we do, there's three things I want to talk about. The Mediater Live tour that's coming up, the Christmas Tickets Live Tour. 00:03:03 Speaker 1: You got your I got a whole table, man, did you? I did excellent? 00:03:08 Speaker 4: Yeah, And I haven't decided who the other pair of people want to invite. 00:03:12 Speaker 2: Oh, well you might. I could bring them. You could bring in a bear Grease listener. The Faydeville show is sold. 00:03:19 Speaker 4: Out exactly except for the two tickets I've got. 00:03:23 Speaker 1: There's six six shows. 00:03:24 Speaker 2: There's a show in Birmingham, Nashville, Tennessee, Memphis, Tennessee, Fadeville, Arkansas, Dallas, Texas, and Austin, Texas. Sixth cities, six nights in December, the seventeenth through the twenty second. I believe, And uh, I'm so proud of Faydeville. Arkansas is the smallest city on the tour, right, I mean all those other all those other cities are huge, big metropolises. And meat Eater came to us three and said, do you think it would work in Faydeville? 00:03:56 Speaker 1: And what did that? What do we say? 00:03:58 Speaker 2: We said, buddy, speaking to meat Eater as if it were a man, Buddy, you better believe that better people in Arkansas are going to show up for Meet Eater Live sold. 00:04:11 Speaker 4: Better Razorback Stadium because we're gonna fill it up. Sold out in three days, sold out three days. 00:04:17 Speaker 1: Yeah, it was. 00:04:17 Speaker 2: Before the they even actually went on regular sale. 00:04:22 Speaker 4: It was like pre like the pre release. 00:04:24 Speaker 2: Yeah, and so all the other shows, the other shows are filling up quick. But meeting her live to I had a lot of people ask me what the live tour is. It's like, a it's like a two hour variety show. 00:04:33 Speaker 4: That's a great description. 00:04:35 Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's it'll be Steve Ranella, Brent Reeves, Giannis would tell us Randall Williams and myself. Every every city will have a couple of local guests who will be there, like surprise guests that we're not going to tell you who they are, but people that when you see them you'll be like, whoa, They're gonna be there, and like there's gonna be music, trivia, storytelling, crowd participation, U A lot going on. And so it's it's really fun. I mean even if you had non hunting family, I would be very shocked if you would bring them to this and they wouldn't be entertained. 00:05:12 Speaker 4: Yes, I would agree. 00:05:13 Speaker 1: I mean just a lot of fun. So so excited, but so you better get your tickets for the rest of the shows. If you're going to go because they're probably going to sell out, and if. 00:05:23 Speaker 3: You're trying to get into the fatal show. 00:05:25 Speaker 1: Sorry, you could Josh let you at his table. 00:05:31 Speaker 5: You should. 00:05:32 Speaker 2: What if we left one spot for that table and we could have people right in why they wanted to be there. 00:05:38 Speaker 1: It's not a bad idea, you know what. I want to say this too. 00:05:40 Speaker 2: I don't take it for granted that we can have a live show and sell out like it's really it means a lot to us that people are willing and want to come and come and see us. So I don't I don't take it for granted. 00:05:54 Speaker 1: That that that people are you know, are willing to do that. 00:06:00 Speaker 5: Yeah. 00:06:00 Speaker 1: Thanks everything, and thanks for showing up in Arkansas. 00:06:03 Speaker 5: Yeah. 00:06:04 Speaker 1: So that's number one. Number two. 00:06:08 Speaker 2: Man, if you need a good deer call, this is a blatant sales pitch. 00:06:13 Speaker 1: Getting ready, just so happy, ready to be de Yeah. This phelps acorn Grunner made burnt osage Orne. 00:06:22 Speaker 4: I'm a little jealous of that one. 00:06:25 Speaker 1: Yeah. So this is uh, we call. 00:06:28 Speaker 2: It the acorn Grunner and it's an inhale exhale grunt bleep. You can flip it and it's the opposite. Then it's a blow for the bleat in heale for the grunt. But I wanted Jason Phelps to make a call that a single call with a bleat and a because man, I use a bleat as much as I use a grunt. And uh and and I've called in a lot of deer with a dough bleat, including this. 00:07:01 Speaker 1: This is the deer hunter's call. That's what I call it the deer hunters call, because I kill. 00:07:06 Speaker 2: A lot of dough deer by calling them in with a dough bleat. I mean, you know, dough out there at forty yards, She's not coming to your buck grunt. But it's a deer that you want to take right. Man, during the early season, especially a dough deer will respond to a dough bleat pretty pretty good. What do you think, bear? I agree all hype, all commercialization and hype, I. 00:07:29 Speaker 1: Don't think so. Pretty good call? I think so. And I was just looking at this one. 00:07:35 Speaker 6: These bodark trees have some pretty nice growth rings on them too, so. 00:07:38 Speaker 1: It's pretty good boat ark. Pretty good boat ark. 00:07:40 Speaker 3: I could have made a good bow. 00:07:41 Speaker 4: Uh yeah, yeah, Well they cut them up in the call. 00:07:45 Speaker 7: Right there, he's got some thin rings, but up here those are prime ring. Now, thin rings would be better, though, right, tighter growth, hard years. 00:07:54 Speaker 6: They're just a lot tougher to work with, really, And if you, if you like, hit. 00:07:58 Speaker 7: Them on a tree, standard rock or something, they violate a lot easier violate. 00:08:03 Speaker 2: Wow, that's a big word sounding about bowl wood. 00:08:08 Speaker 1: Yeah, man, because then it blows up the whole bow if the rings are tight. Yeah. 00:08:13 Speaker 2: I mean, like, what you're telling me, is there a metaphor? You know, we find in life a lot of times trees are used as metaphors for life. 00:08:20 Speaker 1: Jesus did it. 00:08:20 Speaker 2: He said the Kingdom of God is like a like a mustard seed that grows on the biggest tree and the birds. So you're telling me I would have thought that the tight rings meant hard years, which meant growth of character in tight rings. 00:08:34 Speaker 3: Well, you were follow the bow. You're over here. He knows what he's talking about. 00:08:40 Speaker 7: I've made some bows with tight rings and they're great bows. But if it's got a thick ring, it's just more security. 00:08:46 Speaker 3: Okay, easier to stay within the ring while you're making the bow. 00:08:49 Speaker 1: Eh, yep, exactly. That's probably part of it. Yeah, Okay. 00:08:53 Speaker 2: Third thing and then we're gonna start talking about is she and Gene, who's like the most interesting man in the world. 00:09:00 Speaker 4: I don't always talk about my grandkids. 00:09:02 Speaker 2: Your grandkids, well, well we do too, So this is like super serious. In Arkansas this week there was another black bear fatality. If you're paying attention on the Nash, it's been in New York Times. 00:09:22 Speaker 1: BBC did the BBC report on them. 00:09:25 Speaker 2: It's been in all the major headlines and all the news outlets have covered it. 00:09:29 Speaker 1: Media covered it. 00:09:30 Speaker 2: But there was a second bear fatality in less than thirty days in Arkansas. In recorded history, recorded history, what I would call modern history, there's not been a black bear fatality in Arkansas since eighteen There was some after that, but usually they were induced inside of a hunting situation with dog. I mean like Erskine was killed bears, the dog dogs were baying a bear. Guy killed, you know, eighteen forty three, you know a man September third, there was a man just south of us, about an hour near the Mulberry River, on a tractor grading his gravel road on a on a I think was a new hauland tractor and no connection between a little a little bear, I mean eighty pound bear comes up. He films the bear and he's like talking to the bear, and. 00:10:31 Speaker 1: Next you know, this bear is kind of like. 00:10:33 Speaker 2: Cat walking, like getting real close, and basically he stops filming and the next thing, the bear jumps on the tractor, pulls him off the tractor and basically gives injuries to the guy that caused him to pass away several weeks later after being I see you. So that was just wild, and it felt like this lightning struck and it was this. 00:10:57 Speaker 3: One off thing that's unusual. 00:11:00 Speaker 1: It's so unusual. 00:11:01 Speaker 2: And then last Thursday, a man was discovered at a campsite in the ozark to a place called a very popular place called Sam's Throne, which is in National Forest, a place where rock climbers climb some big sheer face bluffs and just a big National Forest campground. And a man had from Missouri, sixty year old man. They released his name. 00:11:27 Speaker 1: Today, oh yeah, yesterday. 00:11:29 Speaker 2: His name is Max Thomas, and that he had sent a picture to his wife on Tuesday of a Baroness camp and it had just been like, wow, this is interesting. A bear in the camp, not threatened, just had this bear. Basically he goes radio silent and on Thursday they called the sheriff and say, hey, we do a welfare check. My husband hasn't can't get him, haven't talked to him since Tuesday. They go and basically there's signs of distress in the camp and they follow. They basically find the man one hundred and ninety four feet away appeared to have been mauled by a black bear. And and they put that two together by the pictures and then by evidence there and in a unique circumstances I can't really talk about fully. Baron Nuklem and I were that night called to go to the scene. 00:12:38 Speaker 4: This is like an hour from us, yeah, yeah, yeah. 00:12:42 Speaker 2: And so Bear and I went there that night and and we helped round up guys that had some dogs that would treat a bear, you know, and and they free cast dogs. But this track was potential a couple of days old. By now didn't get the bear game and fish comes in game and fish authorize the use of dogs. It's not legal run bear with dogs. It's a game and Fish director along with the bear coordinator and other people authorize the use. And Glenn Wheeler, the Sheriff of Newton County. 00:13:22 Speaker 1: He was on the scene. 00:13:24 Speaker 2: Unique guy, a hunter, kind of had some a little bit of background and besides his law enforcement but being around bears and whatnot. Anyway, the game and Fish puts up traps and bucket snare traps and big tube traps, puts up cell cameras all over the place. They shut down the campground and basically the best bet is to wait for the bear to come back. But we all suspected that the bear would not go in the trap because we've been baiting bears in Arkansas here Gene, and it got to where you couldn't hardly take a bear over bait just because they were eating acorns, I mean mass crop, just a bumper crop. 00:14:13 Speaker 3: They love those acorns and the protein. 00:14:15 Speaker 2: Yes they do, and so and so basically we were the houndsmen were on call, the guys that had these dogs, and on Sunday gave and fish got a picture and the bear just walked right past all the traps. 00:14:31 Speaker 1: Just didn't even go in them. 00:14:34 Speaker 2: And the houndsmen were called and within two hours dogs were on the ground, and within an hour of the dogs being on the ground, essentially they tread this bear. And so the question that remains, and this has been I'm not saying anything that has not been put out by the media. We don't know one hundred percent that the bear that was killed by game fish in these houndsmen. We don't know if that was the bear, but it was a We know for sure that it was a juvenile male that was in the camp with this guy, and we know that this was the only and the first bear that showed back up at the spot, and. 00:15:27 Speaker 1: It was a juvenile male. 00:15:30 Speaker 2: There's it's hard, you know, the markings on the bear, it's hard to say. I mean, the bear had a tan muzzle. The bear that was killed had a tan muzzle, so it's it's difficult, but there were no other distinguishing characteristics. 00:15:43 Speaker 3: That Well, the test will come back, that's right. 00:15:47 Speaker 2: So they've they've the DNA test will come back. We'll know for certain if it was the bear or not. But you know, a lot of people I would imagine this year in the state, there's going to be a lot of bear encounters that have always happened, and people are probably gonna overreact a little bit to them. And I think it's already happened even this week, there's been reports of a bear that was kind of terrorizing people at a camp, which to my knowledge with the information I have right now, which this is being recorded before this, you're hearing this, but right now, this morning, there was a news report of a bear terrorizing some campers and. 00:16:36 Speaker 4: In the area. 00:16:37 Speaker 1: Yeah, yesterday for real, Yes, in Franklin County. 00:16:41 Speaker 2: These hikers on the Ozark Islands Trail reported a bear giving them a lot of trouble. The real story and what is in the SoundBite is, to my understanding right now today is quite a bit different, and it probably was fairly normal bear behavior and no one was hurt, No one was attacked, no doubt. It was a little bit scary for someone, sure, but to my knowledge, it would not have been that abnormal. I mean, like basically a bear came into the camp. 00:17:12 Speaker 3: People are hyper sensitized right now. 00:17:13 Speaker 2: They are they are, and so I think a lot of that's going to happen this year, maybe all over bear country. 00:17:21 Speaker 1: And you know, here's the bottom line is, if you have a bear. 00:17:28 Speaker 2: Casually dealing with you, that is hanging around, you need to get the heck out of there, and you need to do everything you can. 00:17:36 Speaker 1: To get that bear out of there, yep. 00:17:39 Speaker 2: Like it's not abnormal to see a bear cruise past your camp. I mean sometimes they're pretty nonchalant, especially when there's food involved. And that doesn't mean that that bear is a super threat. But man, with the current circumscans, if I saw a bear that was casual with its encounters with humans, I mean, you need to run that bear off. You don't need to casually handle. 00:18:04 Speaker 4: Don't be standing there taking pictures of them. 00:18:06 Speaker 2: I mean that and and that's that's the truth anywhere. Yeah, that's the truth anywhere in bear countries. You just can't be lasadaisical. You know, ninety nine thousand out of one hundred thousand times that bear is not going to do anything with you. But for whatever reasons, has happened twice in the last month here. 00:18:27 Speaker 4: So anyway, well, our condolences to the family. No doubt they're terrible, tragic into these these guys. 00:18:35 Speaker 3: Yeah, no doubt common sense in the bear woods. 00:18:39 Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, yeah, man, I don't know. I'd probably be carrying some pepper spray these days too, Yeah, wouldn't hurt. 00:18:49 Speaker 1: You know. It's kind of changed the way bear and I think about black bears. 00:18:54 Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, we've kind of built a ideology of just casual, you know, just like, hey, these bears aren't going to hurt you. You got a better chance of getting you know, hurt on the highway or in engagement with the humans. Probably more dangerous than any baron counter you'll ever have. But there's something about being arms reached from an attack like this that makes you kind of just go goly. 00:19:19 Speaker 1: You'd hope you're just prepared. 00:19:21 Speaker 2: But I just want to say it over and over again, man, bears, bears are expanding their range all across the country. Bear and humans are overlapping more and more and more, and uh, there's nothing to be afraid of. That's something to be celebrated, in my opinion, in the vast majority of American's opinion. But you just can't be casual with them. You can't be casual, can't can't let them just come in your camp and. 00:19:48 Speaker 3: Don't feed them again common sense? 00:19:51 Speaker 5: Yeah, that's right, that's right. 00:19:53 Speaker 1: Bear. 00:19:54 Speaker 7: You anything to add m Yeah, I mean, like you said, it was definitely pretty wild be that close to a bear attack like the first one happened, And I mean it was pretty wild, but it didn't really, It didn't really change any way that I would have gone about in bear country. But seeing the second one and actually being there was like definitely extremely eye opening. 00:20:20 Speaker 1: To what they could what they could do. 00:20:23 Speaker 7: It definitely like we were in the bearwoods yesterday bear hunting, and I was definitely a lot more like I was considering what, considering what could happen a lot more and just being a lot more cautious about, like, you know, getting really close to bears and especially small bears. 00:20:44 Speaker 1: Yeah. That's probably the biggest takeaway, isn't it. 00:20:47 Speaker 7: Yeah, Yeah, because both bears were juvenile males. 00:20:50 Speaker 5: Yeah. 00:21:00 Speaker 2: On average, over the last hundred years, there's been one black bear fatality in North America per year on average. 00:21:07 Speaker 1: Some years there's been in North America like North. 00:21:09 Speaker 2: America, Wow, average one per year, But that means some years there's none, right, some years there's three, maybe four, But on average one. If you're killed by a black bear, there is upwards of a ninety degree chance that it was a juvenile male that killed you. This is where the statistics get interesting. There's a but if you're just attacked, like if you just come away with some bytes and some scratches, there, it's like thirteen times higher a risk that that would be a sal with cubs. I've talked to a lot of people who said, oh, probably South cubs, and I went No. 00:21:52 Speaker 1: A sow with cubs. 00:21:54 Speaker 2: Her objective inside of an attack would be to defend her cubs just enough so they could get way, Like she doesn't want. 00:22:01 Speaker 5: To eat you. 00:22:02 Speaker 2: There's a big, huge distinction between a South with cubs defending her territory in a close range encounter and the very rare, rare, rare, rare thing that is called the predatory attack. When a bear sets his sights on you and his intent is to kill you. That's it's a thing. So does that make sense? So if if you're dead, that it was probably a juvenile male that did it. If you were attacked and not killed, it was most likely a South cubs upwards. 00:22:35 Speaker 5: Of like. 00:22:36 Speaker 1: Thirteen times higher chance. So there's. 00:22:42 Speaker 2: Over ten to like ten to fifteen people per year that get attacked by black bears but survive. The vast majority of those are sALS with cubs. 00:22:52 Speaker 1: Does that make sense? 00:22:53 Speaker 2: Yeah, so the stats are different. Now grizzlies is a whole different story, like completely different story that. 00:23:03 Speaker 1: We're not even talking about here. 00:23:05 Speaker 2: But you know, on average, two people per year get killed by grizzlies in North America. And when you consider how many fewer grizzlies there are in the smaller range, you. 00:23:16 Speaker 1: Really you extrapolate that out. 00:23:17 Speaker 2: Black bears are, you know, all over the place, from Maine to Old Mexico, from Florida to Alaska, everywhere in between except the Great Plain States essentially, and we have one bear killed per year. Grizzlies are essentially in the Greater Yelstone ecosystem, and then in Canada up to Alaska. I mean, the range just dramatically smaller, and there's two kills per year and the attacks are are much more. There was a guy attacked an elk hunter attacked pretty critically this week. So grizz is a different story. We're talking about black bears. But and that's why, and this is kind of in the weeds, but that's why. 00:23:57 Speaker 1: It helps to understand what you're doing. 00:23:59 Speaker 2: If if you are attacked by a sow with cubs, your best bet is to cover your head and neck, getting the ball and act like you're dead because all she wants to do is extinguish the threat. Threats O ye she will leave you alone and go to her cubs, chuckle her cubs out of the tree, and get out of there. If it is a predatory animal, predatory meaning stalking, direct eye contact, persistence in like, won't leave. If that bear attacks you, you better fight for your life because he is trying to kill you, right. The majority of bear attacks have wounds on the forearms where people put up their arm to protect themselves and they get bit on the arm and they have lacerations and bites all over the face. 00:25:01 Speaker 1: A black bear goes. 00:25:03 Speaker 2: For your face, it's interesting, like they so they don't they don't really kill with the precision of like a big cat. A big cat would go for the throat, and I mean big cat fatalities and humans is just like incredibly rare. It does happen, but a black bear is more of just like a like a mauling. 00:25:28 Speaker 1: But they do target on the head. 00:25:31 Speaker 2: And you think about it when a black I don't know if you've ever seen black bears fight, but when two male black bears fight, they target the head of the other male like they grab each other's ears and they put their arms up almost like their boxing and fight. 00:25:47 Speaker 1: And so I mean a. 00:25:49 Speaker 2: Lot of interesting parallels, but as dark as all that is black bears in humans, this conflict isn't going away. And the more we kind of educate people, but a lot of people have asked me, like, well, do you run or do you yell? Man, if a bear came into my camp just casually strolled by my camp and I'm sitting there camping with my food and everything, I would yell and scream and throw stuff and stomp around. 00:26:22 Speaker 1: And I mean, if you can. 00:26:26 Speaker 2: Leave, yeah, at at best, put your food up way away from your camp. I mean, that's standard procedure is to put your food store, your food away from your camp, because they really don't want you, They want your food. They're attracted to the camp, to the food. So that's my that's my take on the take on the situation. And just yeah, true condolence is to the family there in Missouri. Just just super sad situation. 00:26:54 Speaker 4: Yeah. 00:26:55 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:26:56 Speaker 7: And one one more thing that I learned just from the two is that if a if you're not armed and a black bear wants to kill you, it's it's probably gonna kill you. Like that's the thing that I learned, was like, you, like, there's no reason to necessarily be afraid of them. But like if it's wanting to kill you, it's like you're not gonna fight it off. 00:27:20 Speaker 1: Like these were like eighty pound bears. 00:27:22 Speaker 7: Yeah, and they just I mean, there's like no way you're gonna fight one off unless you're arm. 00:27:27 Speaker 2: That is a good point because I talked to a buddy of mine this week. He's a big guy, like probably two hundred and thirty pounds, and we had this conversation about like, ah, if one hundred pounds bear got on you, you could just fend it off like you would a dog. One hundred pounds of bear muscle is way stronger than one hundred pounds of human. 00:27:51 Speaker 3: Muscle, and their reflex is so fast. The claws and the teeth, we're no match. 00:27:57 Speaker 4: I think that's the thing. Like if a bear hits you in the face claws, I mean that's you're done. Like even if you like he takes your vision or something like that, it's like you have no defense against that. 00:28:09 Speaker 5: Yeah. 00:28:09 Speaker 2: And if you've ever seen bears fight, which you probably have sitting on bear baits in Canada like I have, Mayan. 00:28:16 Speaker 1: God, They're wicked. You wouldn't want to be there. You wouldn't want to be on the other end of them, just really wanting to tear into. 00:28:25 Speaker 3: Yeah, and back to what you said about them going for the face. A lot of times you'll see an old bear, but his face is all scarred up from the fights. You know. They when they're fighting each other, they're going for the head. They're trying to repeat your head off. They bite the claw and the muzzles are all scarred. Yeah. You know, you can see an old boar bear he's been in some battles and those scars all show on his muzzle. 00:28:49 Speaker 2: Yeah, and ears, yeah right, you know where they're biting at each other. 00:28:54 Speaker 4: It just makes me reevaluate that whole video where you and Brent were in the stand and that bear comes in the the blind like that could have turned south in a hurry. 00:29:03 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean it's true. Well that was a that was a. 00:29:14 Speaker 2: Kind of a dark introduction to a wonderful topic. The story of Ischi, to me is one of the great stories of this continent. 00:29:24 Speaker 3: I agree, no matter which angle you come from, if you come at it like we from the angle of bow hunting, you know, in our archery and buehunting history, or if you just come at it from an angle of you know, anthropology and the history of Native Americans in our country, in our country, the evolution of me, and you know, the treatment of how we treat each other. No matter what angle you come at this story from, it's just fascinating. 00:29:49 Speaker 2: Yes, But Gene, give us, give us a little introduction. People would have heard me talk about you some on the podcast, but you have a long history in bow hunting. But I can say this, and you could too if you weren't so humble. You have one of, if not the premiere collection of bow hunting artific facts in the country. 00:30:14 Speaker 3: Yeah, I do, you know, take away the humble part of it. But I'm fascinated with history, you know, And I've always been a history buff in school. You know, history was my favorite topic. But then I love hunting with the bone and arrow. So to be able to put the history of hunting with the bow and arrow together, you know, how much better can it be? So I've always been a collector, you know, a saver. When I was young, I got collected coins, and I collected stamps, and you know, I collected vintage firearms. But I started saving old archery equipment just because you know, as bow hunters we do that. We throw our old broadheads in a drawer, and pretty soon you've got a drawer full of nineteen different broadheads, and then you move from saving to collecting. But I really don't think of it as collecting anymore. I think of it as caretaking. You know. What I'm doing is preserving. What I hope I'm doing is preserving the items, but not just the items, but the story of the items and the story of the people who use those items. I'm caretaking that for my generation, and there will be a time when I'm looking for somebody like Bear, you know, who's the next caretaker. And that's me, our duty. That's what we owe those people who came before us, you know, the pioneers of Fred Bears and the Glenn Saint Charles. We owe that to them, to keep their story alive, all the work they did for us and all the sacrifices they made for us, to keep that story alive and keep their spirit alive. By keeping their story alive. 00:31:36 Speaker 1: Will you tell me what is in your museum, Give me a rundown. 00:31:41 Speaker 3: A lot of people will collect something or save something that is most interesting to them. I have a really good friend in Michigan, John Cabisa, and John focuses on the history of bow hunting and Michigan. Other people will collect just simply Fred Beher items or Ben Pearson items and things, you know, from the history of those people or those companies. For me, it's the history of the pioneers of our sport. So and I quantify that. What I'm saying is, you know, pre nineteen fifty, in nineteen fifty, our sport was off the ground pretty good through the efforts of Fred Beer and Glenn Saint Charles and Howard Hill and Roy Case and a lot of different people. But prior to nineteen fifty, there, you know, our sport was going through some really difficult times. You know, we had been as the bow and arrow had been largely forgotten. Even the Native Americans had forgotten about the bow and arrow. When the gun came along. If you wanted to go hunting, you want hunting to survive, you want hunting to feed your family, so you wouldn't take a bow and arrow. You'd take a rifle or a shotgun. Well, in the late eighteen hundreds, a couple of brothers, the Thompson brothers from Crawfordsville, Indiana, wrote a book called The Witchery of Archery, and it was right after the Civil War, and right after the Civil War, for the time in our country's history, people are starting to have a little bit of free time, and they're starting to have a little bit of free spending money. So you see a lot of sports growing at that time. You see badminton, you see tennis, you see bicycling, and things like that start to appear as sports. And we're starting to look for things to do with that spare time and that spare money. So when they wrote that book, The Witchery of Archery was published in eighteen seventy eight, people around the country are reading this book and they're reading the magazine articles that these guys are writing, and they're saying that sounds like fun. You know, bow and arrow, I'd forgotten about that. Let's pick up, let's go find us at bow and arrow. Let's go out and shoot. And at that time, not a lot of people were hunting with bone arrow. The Thompson brothers were a few others were, but target archery started to become a big deal, and the National Archery Association was formed in eighteen seventy nine through the efforts of the Thompson brothers and the exposure they gave to our sport. So now we start to see a lot of clubs springing up around the country of shooting targets with the bawe and air. Well, that kind of tailed off a little bit, you know, around nineteen hundred or so, and then the story of Issue comes along nineteen eleven. Issue comes down meets Pope. You've heard all this, you know, in the two podcasts we did before. And then Pope writes this book, Hunting with the Ball and Arrow, and he publishes this in nineteen twenty three. Now, this book really ignites the revolution of fire of people that want to go out and hunt with a ball and arrow. I told briefly the story of Doug Easton in the earlier podcast. You know, Doug was out as a teenager hunting small game rabbits with a shotgun and they come back to the car for a break and one of the shotguns falls over, discharges and part of the shot hit Doug in the legs. A Doug spends a year in the hospital recovering from the wounds, and during that time somebody brings him one of Pope's books about hunting with the ball and arrow, and he read the book, and all that time and all the different operations he had in the hospital, he reads this book and it fires him up about archery. So you know, that's what got Dug Easton into archery. And he started shortly after that, in the nineteen twenties, he started each Eastern Archery company. So story after story after story of people that are coming from that. Let's say that point of issue being the spark that ignited the fire, and then Pope and Young and Compton starting that fire and carrying that fire to the next generation. And that's why we're here today. If that hadn't happened, if Issui hadn't been the spark, if Pope hadn't looked down his window that day and saw Issu shooting the bow out there on the grounds of the University of California, Pope hadn't walked down of his office and went down to issue and what are you doing. I'm shooting a bow that looks like fun. Pope grew up in Texas and there were a lot of Natives Americans still around, and they were still shooting a bow's but you know it wasn't it was fun. It was a game to the right, right, So he had been exposed to a bone arrow. But that day and when he saw Issue out there on the lawn shooting the bow, is when he went out and he said, you know what I want to do this. I want to become an archer. And eventually then that translated nerd transformed into I want to become a bowl hunter. 00:36:11 Speaker 2: And I think what made the Ishy story and Pope that be such a lightning strike is because of the nature of who is. She was completely disconnected from Western civilization. And you know, if you listen to the first episode, you would have seen each He's like fifty years old, been in hiding his entire life. His people were incredibly primitive, surprisingly primitive. Like when you understand the history of Native Americans across the country, you see this like slow roll of either extermination, removal to reservations, or assimilation essentially, right, I mean, And so there were Native Americans presumably that were still shooting bows and whatnot in that time. But with Ishi, he stepped out of the woods and that had been the primary tool for his entire gather protein. 00:37:08 Speaker 3: That's the only thing he knew was the bowl and arrow. 00:37:10 Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's I want to ask you a question. Do you think men Bear had this conversation yesterday? 00:37:18 Speaker 1: Ishi? 00:37:20 Speaker 2: Is this one guy out of that entire civilization that was you know, became the epicenter of archery? Do you My question is how good was Ishi? Because imagine us picking a bow hunter out of all the people that we know and that guy being the single touch point for archery, and like, I wonder if people in his company, in his tribe, I mean, even for generations before, would have been like one one extreme would have been like Ishi was the best archer, bow hunter, bowyer flint Napper of all time. Thank goodness that he was the one that made it through to talk to Saxon and Pope. 00:38:05 Speaker 1: Or do you think they would be like. 00:38:07 Speaker 3: You're kidding me, right? 00:38:08 Speaker 1: That guy? 00:38:10 Speaker 2: That guy was Like how you should have had this guy? How good do you think she was? 00:38:16 Speaker 3: Okay, I'm going to break that into two. As far as Flintnapping goes, I think he must have been one of the best. Really, you look at his points and I wish you know, at some point I want you to look at the point that I've got of his and you see the skill that's in that and to be able to make a point that precise, and that how it is, how hard it is to make one thin and still keep that integrity of the point. And you know it's this long and and it's so narrow, and it's so finally. 00:38:43 Speaker 2: Made baseline competency though, I mean, do you think, like everybody was that I've. 00:38:49 Speaker 3: Got some other points that came from that area and they're you know, most of those are obsidian points. And he Iss, she liked to make points from glass. And even before the nineteen eleven, before the capture, he would when they were raiding the stock cabins and they were raiding the settlers cabins, they would sometimes steal the plates and they would go to the trash pile and get the broken plates and they would make points from that. Or they would get the you know, the old insulators from railroads, or you know, they would get the milk of magnesia bottles. That would be a favorite for them, and they would make it out of glass because glass was easier to work than obsidian, and obsidians a volcanic glass. But not all obsidian is pure obsidian. There's a lot of of abnormalities in the obsidian, but you take a glass plate or a bottle or something like that, it's pretty pure, so it was easier to make a more precise point. So it's maybe not a fair comparison. But some of the points that i've that I've got that are also from that area. There were you know a lot of people call them the Milk Creeks, you know, the Yahee, also known as the Creek Indians because they came from the Mill Creek area. And those points are still fairly well made, you know, but they're not Issue quality. Maybe that's because Issue was really really good at what he did, and maybe it's because of the media he worked in, you know, in the glass the bottles and the plates and things was easier to work than obsidian. 00:40:21 Speaker 1: Regardless, it's got a point to the high level of skill that that society had. 00:40:26 Speaker 2: Absolutely you just think of the chances of just picking one guy, yeah, out of that that stream of people for generations and him being as competent as is. 00:40:35 Speaker 1: She was right pretty unique. 00:40:38 Speaker 3: You know, as far as it's hunting and shooting ability. There there's a lot of documentation that Pope wrote about and some of the others wrote about is his shooting skills were good, but they weren't. You know, he wasn't going to be an Olympic caliber archer. But that's not what he trained for and that's not you know, he was about getting the animal close, because when you lose an arrow at an animal and his culture, you know, that was dinner. And if if this doesn't work, if I don't hit him, or I don't kill him, or I don't find him, I'm not eating tonight. Well they're so they're focusing. They're all their effort was getting the animal close. So I don't care about shooting thirty yards. You know, we go out and we shoot thirty yards forty yards sometimes for fun. He didn't care about that. So you know, Pope and especially young were much better shots. 00:41:26 Speaker 1: M okay did is she have a floating anchor? 00:41:31 Speaker 3: His if you look at him, he would anchor more into here. And his style of he didn't put his fingers around the string like we do, two fingers under, three fingers under. He would pinch the string and bring it back and it was more like this. 00:41:45 Speaker 1: What was the weight of the bows that he was making. 00:41:48 Speaker 3: I would guess I've never seen an issue bow, but I would guess the bows are probably you know, going to be forty pound, you know, they're not heavy. 00:41:57 Speaker 2: And he's pinching that string. Yeah, I guess whatever you train yourself to do with your hands, your hands. 00:42:03 Speaker 3: You know, his hands on his feet were so Yeah, stories of his feet. You know, they gave him shoes when when they caught him in the stockyard, they gave him some clothing and they gave him some shoes, and he wouldn't wear the shoes. They weren't comfortable to him. But his feet were so calloused and so rough. He's you know that he didn't need the shoes. Yeah, and so yeah, if you've done this all your life, if you walked over rocks all your life, if you've drawn the bow this way all your life, you know, just like playing a guitar, you're gonna have callouses, you know, and your body's going to adapt to that. 00:42:35 Speaker 1: Bear showing your fingers. 00:42:38 Speaker 6: I've been shooting with two fingers for maybe like eight months, and the two fingers that I pull back with are like significantly bigger. 00:42:49 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:42:49 Speaker 1: Of course he's been shooting without a fingertab. Yeah, So it's just been grat, which if you don't know traditional archery, that's pretty most people. I don't do that pretty hardcore. I shoot three. 00:43:00 Speaker 2: Fingers under, which isn't necessarily that popular either, but I use a finger tab. It's if I pull back a traditional bow much over forty pounds with bare fingers, it hurts my fingers. 00:43:10 Speaker 5: Yeah. 00:43:11 Speaker 2: The bear the other day was like, hey, Dad, look at my hands, and his fingers are like notably bigger on the two that he's been working. So, I mean you're starting to see, Yeah, you do that your whole life. 00:43:22 Speaker 4: There's an illustration in one of the books that Gene has of issues bowhand too, and the way he the way he. 00:43:29 Speaker 3: Held more or less. 00:43:30 Speaker 4: Yeah, it's weird. How he used his fingers for a rest. I can't I can't even. 00:43:35 Speaker 3: Oh you're talking about the bowhands, the string head. 00:43:37 Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, the way he had he was. 00:43:39 Speaker 3: He would somehow I can't even try to recreate it here, but he would use his hand. We don't. He didn't have a shelf on his bow, he didn't have a rest on his bow. The arrow would lay on his on his fist. 00:43:52 Speaker 4: Yeah, but he tucked his thumb. 00:43:54 Speaker 6: It was like a weird his thumb was the shelf. 00:43:56 Speaker 1: Yeah, like, yeah, I've seen it. It's it's man. Yeah, they must have been getting stuff close. 00:44:11 Speaker 3: Yeah, And that's the whole point, you know, and deer where I got to say, you know, we both hunted a lot, and sometimes you get into an area where the animals haven't been hunted as often or as hard, and they're not as wary. So you know, I'm thinking, you know, they're not the white tail in California at that time period. We're probably not as weary as the white tail we have today, which see people every day have arrowshot at them every week, so you know, it might have been a little different game to get animals closer to them. 00:44:43 Speaker 2: So you're in your museum though you've got like twenty three hundred over two thousand bows and. 00:44:50 Speaker 3: Yeah, I felcus again back to that. You know, we get a little rabbit hole now and then, but they come back out of the rabbit hole. Now. What I like are the pre nineteen fifty and that's the era where you know, I call it the pioneering era. From eighteen seventies to nineteen fifty. This is when people are starting to really get into the sport for the first time. You know, we don't have books to read, we don't have magazines, we don't have videos, and we're going out and we're shooting a bow and arrow. But it looks like fun. It sounds like fun. It is fun, But I don't know what I'm doing. How does an arrow work? What kind of broadhead should I be using. They didn't know that a broadhead had to be raiz or sharp, surgical sharp. They didn't know that, you know, all the things that we take for granted today about hunting with a ball and arrow. They were learning, they were discovering. And even when I started, I started my first year bowling was for deer was nineteen seventy, and a lot of the things I was taught in nineteen seventy aren't true. I was taught that you wanted to get an arrow in a deer, and you wanted the arrow to stay in a deer because when he ran, you wanted to get to cut, you know, cutting more as he was running. Well after that, we learned that we need to get blood on the ground, and to get blood on the ground, you need an exit wound. And that's where you know, especially shooting from a tree stand the entrance round's going to be high, the exit wound's going to be low, and your your blood trail is going to come from down here. So we want complete pass through to be able to get that blood on the ground. Well, for that to happen, we want that arrow to pass through the animal as quickly, in effort effortlessly as possible. We don't want the arrow to stay in the animal because we're not going to get a blood trail. So they were learning all this stuff, you know, they were writing the books, and that's the period I like. That's the period I like to focus on. So when I'm looking for things in my collection, I'm not looking for, you know, a nineteen seventy Bear Kodiak, they're great bows. I'm looking for something that was a wood bow that was made by somebody with a spokeshave and a draw knife over their workbench and their blood, sweat and tears are still their DNA are still on that wood, you know, And that's the that's the kind of stuff I like in my collection. 00:46:57 Speaker 5: Yeah. 00:46:57 Speaker 4: Yeah, in seventy years it will be Iron Bears, classic bows and putting them in him. 00:47:03 Speaker 3: He's gonna sign it though. 00:47:05 Speaker 2: Yeah, I wanna I wanna ask you two to give us some place to start. What what stood out to you, Josh in this second episode. 00:47:15 Speaker 4: Man, it's such a it's it's such a powerful story. And I think that there's a lot of things that us in modern society could pull from the life of Ishi after his emergence. And I think, I think, I'm I'm drawn to the character of Ishi. Yeah, and I have great appreciation because the injustices that were done to his people and to him. 00:47:41 Speaker 3: And he was an eyewitness to all of. 00:47:42 Speaker 4: Those exactly, were incalculable to us, like we can't even be compared, like we we don't understand that. But to take this man from a jail cell in Oroville to Berkeley and for his I don't want to say assimilation, because I don't know that is she assimilated, But his adaptation to life inside of modern society was incredible. And the way that he was able to I can't imagine that is she ever forgot about his family or how he lived, but how he didn't carry that, I don't know another way to say it. Then he walked through a fire, came out and didn't smell like smoke, and he was able to live his life joyful, build strong relationships with people that he cared about, live a life in a world that was completely unimaginable to him previously. I think it's just commendable for a human being, And that is really what impacted me when I hear his story. 00:48:56 Speaker 2: Jan said it a couple of times just about the care character of the character. 00:49:01 Speaker 3: The character of the man was incredible. 00:49:04 Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, he. 00:49:06 Speaker 3: Comes out of hiding in nineteen eleven and he's seen his whole family, his whole culture, his whole tribe killed before his eyes. These are things he's eyewitness to, and he comes out of that in nineteen eleven, comes down into that stockyard, and within a matter of two months he's at the University of California and they're opening the anthropology wing, and of course Issue's going to be a focus of the new anthropology wing they're opening. And so they have all these dignitaries coming from all over the country to come to the opening. They would have come anyhow, but they're coming really now. Especially I want to see Issue while I'm here. So he's got to transform from this stone age man to this man who's going to be welcoming dignitaries at the university opening of their new anthropology department in just a matter of two months. So he's in good clothing and he's taught enough English to be able to welcome those people. And when he welcomes those people in his culture, in his mind, he has to give them the respect to say their name. 00:50:22 Speaker 1: So that was something that he was doing on his own. 00:50:24 Speaker 3: He was doing that on his own. He wasn't coached to do that. That was part of his culture, That was part of his his respect, you know, for other people. So when he would be introduced to somebody, he would hello, mister, you know, he would repeat their name on purpose, because that was his way of showing respect to people who have killed his tribe, his family just a matter of years before that. And that was that was a sign of his culture, you know. 00:50:52 Speaker 2: You know, it's interesting because it was said and Krober said it in her book, but about how he wouldn't say his name because there was no one, no one, no. 00:51:05 Speaker 3: One left alive to give me a name. 00:51:06 Speaker 1: Yes, but that was the story he gave. 00:51:09 Speaker 3: Of course he had a name, you know, that was the story he gave them. But of course he had a name. Yes, he just in his culture, you weren't allowed to say your own name, you. 00:51:18 Speaker 2: Know, right, Well, it's interesting that he was doing what like, by him saying your name, it kind of validates that ye like, I'm not going to say my name. 00:51:27 Speaker 3: But yeah, it's very important for me to know your name, yes, but it's not so important for me to be speaking my name. So it was, you know, again back to the culture of that society that it was not all about me, it was about you. It was about us, you. 00:51:42 Speaker 2: Know that that right, that statement right there, and the stuff about the name, I just my brain just spends when I try to understand what it would be like to not have this Western ideology of this individualistic society is so deep, it's so deep inside of us, this idea of exceptional like personal exceptionalism. 00:52:10 Speaker 3: Me. 00:52:11 Speaker 1: Look what I've done. 00:52:12 Speaker 2: I mean even the We've talked about it in other things, but we did a we did a series on to comes to the Shawnee Leader, and I talked to Ben Barnes, the chief of the Shawnee today, a modern chief, and he says that in their language, even the structure of language and where they put nouns is different than English. English emphasizes who, what, who did it? Like if I say something, I say I cook the soup, the emphasis on I, And in the Shawnee language the emphasis would not be on. 00:52:46 Speaker 1: You, me or who did it? The soup was cooked. And you know the point is we are. 00:52:54 Speaker 3: It's foreign to us, but it's there's something to be learned from that, right. I think there's a a good moral lesson there for us. And I think another interesting story, you know, in that time period there where he's again he's just come out of this stone age culture and how he's living in you know, the University of California and meeting all these dignitaries from all over the world, and he would be invited to go into these different rooms, different meetings and such. And when he walked into the room, one of the things he would always say to people as he walked in and he was trying again to speak English, you know, he was trying to assimilate, you know, his into this new world. And when he walked into the room, he would say, everybody happy, And it was really important for him. It was really important for him to know that everybody in the room was feeling good. Are you happy? You know, everybidy happy. You can just imagine his accent, you know, saying that. And I think that's just another another aspect of who he was as a man. But I think he was as a man probably as he was the culture. 00:54:01 Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I'm just imagining him walking into his camp on Mill Creek with his mother and his sister cousin. 00:54:09 Speaker 1: Yeah, and that was part of their culture. 00:54:12 Speaker 3: It was part of their culture. 00:54:13 Speaker 1: It would have had to have been. 00:54:14 Speaker 2: And that's what's so unique about issue that will never, at least on this continent that never have another opportunity to is to deal with somebody that was that isolated from Western society and to draw these conclusions about who they were. Here's the questions that I have though, Like talking about how happy is she was, It's possible a critic today could be like, what was he really happy? 00:54:41 Speaker 1: Well, and we all know. 00:54:42 Speaker 2: That humans we're supposed to not just tell every We live in a restraint as powerful like if I'm unhappy right now, like you don't have to know about it. I mean, so, like, I wonder how how traumatic, how much his front of being happy and cordial I was real. 00:55:05 Speaker 3: Here's what I think, and I feel pretty confident in this. When when the door was closed, he had to shed tears. He had to. But when the door was open, that was the real issue. You know, the inside of issue was a happy person. The inside of issue was an optimist. When the door was closed, the memories had to come back. 00:55:25 Speaker 5: Yeah. 00:55:26 Speaker 7: Yeah, Yeah, it's wild that he didn't hold any or at least it doesn't seem like he held any bitterness towards right. 00:55:34 Speaker 1: The people that wiped out his whole culture. 00:55:37 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:55:38 Speaker 2: I think I think that bitterness, though, is an artifact of our modern society. 00:55:45 Speaker 1: I really do. 00:55:46 Speaker 2: Like I don't think he would have known that he had permission, and I don't know, not permission from a person, That's not what I mean, but like like bitterness, I don't know. I think really there's something inside of there's something about knowledge and the communication and the all the biases that we have about other people or other social classes of people or people from wherever that like you kind. 00:56:16 Speaker 1: Of like, you know, I'm going to feel like you can. 00:56:19 Speaker 3: Just just hit me, as you said that, just hit me. The world today is filled so full of hate, and I wonder if hate was a concept that he even had, you know, and. 00:56:28 Speaker 4: Maybe that was the Well, that's an interesting thought. 00:56:31 Speaker 3: Yeah, just you know, everything that's happened over the last few weeks, months, and even years. You know, hate is a big part of our culture today. Wow. See, if we didn't have hate, maybe that's what's separated in. 00:56:42 Speaker 2: Well and the fact that we could imagine a culture that didn't have hate, Yeah, because you know, you think about you would think, Ischi with this little tight group of people that have been exterminated, that his family would have been sitting up on that mountain looking down there, saying those evil people, Yeah, it's trying to kill us. We've got to And maybe they weren't. 00:57:03 Speaker 3: You know. And I've got a bookshelf full of books on issue. You know, Krober's book is one, and that's the most well known, but there's a lot of books. I brought several here today, every book that I've read about issue over the years. Nothing in there is ever makes you believe there was there was animosity, you know, hate or animosity, whichever word you want to use. Nothing in there ever leads me to believe that he or his family members ever had any of that feeling even while they were all alive. 00:57:34 Speaker 2: That's an odd place to be though, when you when you know that these people are after you to kill you. They the surveyors that stole all their gear and supplies, which is just it's just hard to imagine. 00:57:47 Speaker 1: It's also I also. 00:57:48 Speaker 2: Know that historical revision is really complicated for us today to be like, oh, those you know, barbarians, How could they do that? I mean, you know, in their time, I don't know, for some reason they felt the liberty to take take that stuff from them? 00:58:06 Speaker 3: How could you? 00:58:06 Speaker 1: Do? 00:58:06 Speaker 3: You know this? This old lady is obviously on her deathbed, laying there in the camp, and she's under the covers, and you steal everything. You steal everything except the bed and the covers that she's got. You take everything that they need to make food, to get food, to gather food, the baskets to carry the food. They take it all as souvenirs and leave the lady laying there. I mean, what kind of person does that take? 00:58:30 Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's that's one of the wild stories. 00:58:34 Speaker 3: That's one of the ones that makes me just cringe, you know, you know, I just you know, human nature can sometimes maybe there's evil in us that is buried deep, and most of us keep that buried deep and sometimes it comes to the surface. And that came to the surface. 00:58:52 Speaker 2: I think that would be a result of generations of not viewing those people as yeah, they're not people's right. I mean, it's just like and there had been that was at the tail end of literally a century plus long I mean centuries plus long genocide. Yeah, so it's like these people were sub sub human, right. I think that's the only way that you could just see. 00:59:19 Speaker 3: Way could do it in your mind? How could you sleep? You know? The story of Kingsley's Cave, which we talked about in the podcast, is one of the last massacres, you know, mass massacres of the Yahi. And there were about thirty three Yahie in this cave. They had been chased by these people, these four vigilantes, and they thirty three of the last remaining Yahi's going to this cave and these men walk in there with their rifles and just start shooting. You know, these people in a cave backed up against the wall, and they just men, women and children, and they just start shooting. Within One of them had a fifty six caliber Sharp's rifle and he's just blasting away with this repeater sharps, and he puts the rifle down and picks his pistol up to finish the job. And you know what he said afterwards, I put the rifle down and picked up the pistol because the rifle was tearing them up too bad, especially the little ones. 01:00:25 Speaker 5: Wow, brute. 01:00:27 Speaker 3: Oh my gosh. I mean that makes me cringe sitting here today. 01:00:33 Speaker 1: The brutality of it. Wow, incredible. 01:00:38 Speaker 3: Yeah, But you know, I'll go back to the you know, talk about the good things about Ishi. I think again, the things we can learn from Ishi. You know, the optimist in him. You know, when they went on the nineteen forty expedition back up in the Yahee country, he didn't want to go because there were too many I think you said fourteen fourteen, nineteen fourteen. He takes Pope and Waterman and Krober and Pope's son Saxton Junior. Well, they planned this trip without him really being involved. And then they go to him and say, hey, you know, Issu She, We're going to go back up into where you came from and we're going to do a little expedition back up in there to see all these stories you tell us. We want to go see it issues like, you know, I don't really want to go. I mean, you know, and I can imagine what's going on in his mind. There's a lot of ghosts up there that all the memories that I don't want to relive. He didn't say that, but I got to think that's what he's thinking. You know, he didn't want to go. One person that I read speculated that he didn't want to go because he thought they were going to take him back up there and release him, you know, that they're going to put him back into the wild. Well, no, that's not what they were going to do. They wanted to truly go learn more about him, him and his culture by going into where he lived and where he had for those during those forty years of concealment. So they go up into there, and they finally convinced him to go up into there, and we talked about that in the podcast. 01:02:13 Speaker 5: You know. 01:02:13 Speaker 3: They had to make sure that all the equipment they took was stored in a room where it wasn't near the bones and all the things in the museum, because the spirits would have been not favorable on the trip if if that had happened. So they put everything in boxes and they shield it at all, you know, and convinced him that the spirits can't get into these boxes and they go up into the. 01:02:36 Speaker 1: She knew that was hogwash, well my life, but he was whatever he said. 01:02:41 Speaker 3: But when he got there, Once he got there, it was like you could you know, the relief over him to be back home. You know, it feels good to be home. It always feels good to be home, right that I don't want to go to I'm home feeling that he must have had. And then he took them around to all the places that he drew up, and he you know, where the stories he had been telling them about killing the bear when he was a young man, he killed a bear and you tah, I like the way you said it in the podcast. You know, the ceremonial disposal of the carcass was you know, he did that, and all these years later he's able to walk them back and go to that spot and dig those bones up. This is where I killed the bear. 01:03:26 Speaker 5: Wow. 01:03:27 Speaker 3: And you know, and they he took them swimming in the holes where he swam as a young man. You know, he took them back to the grizzly Bear's hiding place where he was with the last four when the surveying party found them in nineteen oh eight. He recreated that whole experience for them on that trip and that trip lasted like six weeks and it was it must you know. 01:03:49 Speaker 2: Can you imagine that that trip, like when my buddy Steve Renella always talks about it, he could go on a time machine, you know, he'd go back with like the Pleistocene hunters and seeing kill mammoths and stuff. That trip right there would be high on the list. 01:04:03 Speaker 3: That'd be on my bucket list of the. 01:04:05 Speaker 1: Time machine trip. 01:04:07 Speaker 2: To imagine going back there with him. The question that I have about that trip, and again it's going back trying to get into the head of Ishi. But would he have wanted to go back? And if he could, I mean like to go back and live like because you think about. 01:04:31 Speaker 3: No, he and the you know the books talk about that, and his feelings were No, that's that's the old me. The new me is here. I'm happy now. I'm happy at the university, I'm happy with my job. I'm happy. 01:04:45 Speaker 2: I think that's true because there could And again I'm playing a little bit of Devil's Advocate, but just kind of trying to answer some question, you know, historical revision. You go back and you say, was the guy really happy or was he just appeasing his captors? 01:04:59 Speaker 1: How much agency? Actually, there's got. 01:05:00 Speaker 3: To be there's got to be truth to both of that, because I think again, the stories and the memories must have been overwhelming, and as a person, you me, all of us would be the same way if we'd witnessed the genocide of our people, of our family. I don't know that I want to go back there. It's painful. But on the other hand, if I pushed those out of my mind, you know, that was home, that was where I came from. That's me. So I think that's where he transformed. You know, when they first approached him, he was like, no, not going, not going to do it, and then he was like once he got there. 01:05:37 Speaker 2: I also know that we it's a very difficult thing to not over romanticize, like his life living off the land too. I mean, I think it's possible that he would have come into civilization to California and he would have been like, oh, I can. 01:05:58 Speaker 1: Eat three times a day. 01:05:59 Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know have to. 01:06:02 Speaker 1: This bed is pretty comfortable. Yeah, these people are pretty nice. 01:06:06 Speaker 2: You know, in our mind and modern civilization, like now we have this romantic thing like we're trying to go back, you know, we're like, oh, man, if he could have just roam the woods man, he sounds like, by all accounts, he came back in he came into this place and was just like this is this is the way I want to live. I mean, and that's that's probably not fair to say that. 01:06:31 Speaker 3: You know, the relief of not having to worry, not just about being able to sustain my life through hunting and fishing and gathering, but the relief of not being shot at every day, you know, or being fear of being shot at every day. It must have been I can finally sleep, I can finally relax, I can finally rest. It probably not just the creature comforts that he had, but it was the life that he had. 01:07:00 Speaker 5: Yeah. 01:07:01 Speaker 1: Yeah, wow, man, it wouldn't it have been incredible if he would have lived twenty five years. 01:07:07 Speaker 3: Yeah, the more we could have learned from him. 01:07:09 Speaker 1: That's the saddest part of the deal. 01:07:10 Speaker 2: I mean, people as should probably learn if they listen to Bear Grease and it's an old story, there's going to be some tragic yeah, inside of it. Almost all these stories end in a tragic way. But I mean, now, the fact that he was here for five years is it. I mean, I'm grateful for that. I mean he could have come in and died at tuberculosis in six months. O. 01:07:33 Speaker 3: You know, maybe he would have came in and not been associated with Krober and Waterman and Pope. You know, everything just came together. You know, it could have been scripted any better. Yeah, for those people, you know, Edwin Sappier, the linguist, Krober and Waterman, the anthropologists, Pope, the doctor to have all come into the story and all of them been the people they were, They really helped you know that story Flower, Yeah, you know, issue could have been captured, taken somewhere and the story would have been over. Yeah without those people. 01:08:09 Speaker 5: Yeah. 01:08:10 Speaker 7: What I've found most interesting about the podcast, and just like listening to the whole story, was like how Ischi was kind of this like bottleneck of knowledge, Like all the knowledge from like thousands of years got passed through one man. Yeah, and you just wonder how much of that was lost. Like like whenever you look at like Arkansas Black Bears, they had this major population bottleneck and so now like the genetic diversity is still recovering. It's the same way with all that knowledge, it kind of came down to this really tight bottleneck where it was just ischy, and then now it's kind of back on the you know, like the knowledge is kind of being spread, but I'm sure a lot of it is kind of being rediscovered. I'm sure, Like you just have to imagine how much of it would have been lost? Yeah, like how much we don't know. I mean, like the fact that easy could go kill a deer in three days is like, you know, with a primitive weapon. Like I tried all season last year to do that and couldn't do it. So it's like it just makes you wonder how much did the generations of knowledge? 01:09:22 Speaker 1: How much of that got lost? 01:09:24 Speaker 2: Oh yeah, we had this conversation yesterday about they go up there and in three days kill a deer with a primitive bow. 01:09:31 Speaker 1: It's like that's pretty hard. 01:09:32 Speaker 2: I challenge anybody in the country with a primitive bow, and there's got there's guys that do it and can and have and we've done it. But you know, I've got just on the spot to just go kill a deer with a bow. 01:09:45 Speaker 3: Of one of the back We're going to back up a little bit. You know, you asked me earlier about some of the things in my collection. One of the things in my collection is a quiver, a back quiver. No, it's a belt quiver of Saxon Pope's. It was came from the pope's family direct, and it's made of white tail deer hide. Pope wouldn't have gone and bought a white tail deer hide and made a quiver from it. Pope killed that deer. Probably Pope killed that deer. Could have been Issue, but it probably Pope killed that deer and made that high or made that quiver out of the hide from the deer he killed, you know, because Issue was there to teach him how to do that. And he didn't kill that many white tail deer, you know, so it had to be one of the few white tail deer he killed in this time period. He died in nineteen twenty six, and that story of him going up into the mountains with Issue was nineteen fourteen, so a very short period of time there, and you know he killed I don't know, I don't remember now exactly a half a dozen deer during that time one of those deer. Is that quiver? It is it has to be. 01:10:49 Speaker 1: Yeah, that's interesting. 01:10:51 Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean you know that you can touch the history, you know, when you hold that in your hands, like holding that issue point or holding that quiver or the bow that Pope killed the lions with over in in Africa. When you hold that in your hand, you know you're holding the history of that bow. But you're also holding the history of that man, the man that made that bow, the man that used that bow. And that, to me, is what collecting is all about. It's not my collection isn't worth a nickel. You couldn't buy my collection. People have tried. It's not money. It's history, it's people, it's stories, and that's what makes it valuable. 01:11:36 Speaker 1: So interesting, what were the things that you said you wanted to You said there were a few things you wanted to clear up. 01:11:44 Speaker 3: Well, you know, yeah, I think going back and you set the plate for us here when you talked about earlier in this taping, you talked about the character of the man. And that's one of the things I didn't think I did a good enough job with when in the two podcasts earlier we talked a lot about the events, and we talked a lot about the stories, but we didn't talk enough about the character of the man. So we've talked a little bit about that today, and I think that's one of the main things I wanted to cover. But you know what kind of soul it takes to go through what he went through and come out of it an optimist and you know, walk into a room everybody happy. You know, when he left that trip in nineteen fourteen, when they finished the trip and they come back to the train station and they're going now back to Oroville, there's a crowd at the train station waiting to see is she leave? They're the hometown He's the hometown hero. 01:12:42 Speaker 4: Right, How ironic is that? 01:12:48 Speaker 3: Yeah, just years before you're trying to wipe out the whole culture and now he's the hometown hero. Well, there's a crowd of people at the train station to see is she leave? And that surprises is she? And it kind of must make him good. So he's on the train and he lowers the window and he sticks his head out the train window and he said, ladies and gentlemen, goodbye. Really, that's just I mean, that's the kind of man he was. You know that's a good gentleman. Good bye my fans. Yeah wow, But you know, and how he came from. To really emphasize that point, in eighteen ninety four, while he was still in concealment, there was one of the ranchers who had been his cabin had been raided west certainly by the issue or by the Ahi over the years. Had gotten tired of being raided, things being stolen from his cabin, So I'll get those rascals. So he put a sack of flower out on the table. And he wasn't there. He used the cabin only temporarily or part time. He puts a sack of flower on the table and he poisons the sack of flower with rat poison, and he puts a sign on the sack of flower that says poison. His logic was, if white man comes in, white man can read, and he won't take the flower because he knows it's poison. But if those rascal yeah he come in here, they won't be able to read. They'll take the flower and it'll kill them. So that's the kind of life that he lived for forty years in concealment, people trying to kill him, not to shoot him but poison, you know, vermin rat poison. Wow, and he comes out of that everybody happy. How do you do that? You know? 01:14:42 Speaker 2: I mean it's just it's such the story that shows the humanity of all people. Yeah, you know, just all the differences that we have and that we see that are external between men. 01:14:57 Speaker 1: I mean from different cultures, different times. 01:14:59 Speaker 2: The way we do things is the way we think about God, the way we think about our families. Man, there's really not that much difference. 01:15:07 Speaker 1: In all of us, you know, they shouldn't be. 01:15:10 Speaker 2: And the fact that the fact that this was notable to me, how quickly is she understood in a functional way the modern world with a matter of days. It just showed like there's no gap in his intelligence. You could have taught she had a flying airplane. 01:15:30 Speaker 4: Yep, he could. 01:15:31 Speaker 2: He could have been a pilot in six months and flown a plane if he'd have been live. It was not an intelligence issue, which I think sometimes there's this gap in our ability to think about these these primitive cultures as well. They must have been you know, not intelligent. Not so, I mean there were he is she could have had a i Q off the charts. I'm not saying he did, but he could have, and there were people that did that were just brilliant and you know, too interesting for. 01:16:04 Speaker 3: His family and his you know, other tribe members to have lived forty years up there in concealment, and for many of those years, people believed they were extinct because they were so good at covering their trail, and they walked from rock to rock, careful not to even make a footprint anywhere, not bend a branch, not break a branch, not leave any trace behind. I mean that's a sign of intelligence there, you know, in its own way. How could you be able to you know, think strategically like that for so many years. 01:16:36 Speaker 2: Yeah, Hey, I want to do something, and I want to do it while Jean's here, And it's going to surprise y all because y'all didn't know I was going to do this. Okay, we have we have a thing, Jane, that's called the Bear Grease Hall of Fame, where we we we. 01:16:52 Speaker 1: We take this actually quite serious. 01:16:54 Speaker 2: It started a little bit as a kind of a funny thing, right, But these are all people that we've done stories on, not all of them. I mean, we've done hundreds of stories. But there's like twelve. Let's see one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven. There are eleven people in the Hall of Fame. Some of our Hall of famers will be Daniel Boone, George mcjonkin, Roy Clark. Now Roy Clark is a plot man. This is not the singer Roy Clark. Yeah, the compass there, Davy Crockett, Wholt Collier. Some of these other guys are living guys. But we typically before we do a Hall of Fame induction for a person, we usually take a long time to think about it and talk about it. 01:17:41 Speaker 1: Yep, y'all know what I'm about to do. 01:17:43 Speaker 4: I do. 01:17:44 Speaker 3: I feel it coming. 01:17:44 Speaker 1: I want to. I want to. 01:17:46 Speaker 2: I want to make a motion to nominate. Is she to be in the Bear Grease Hall of Fame? 01:17:53 Speaker 3: Absolutely? 01:17:54 Speaker 4: I will second that age. 01:17:55 Speaker 1: Can we can we get a raise of hands in favor of the issue being in the. 01:17:59 Speaker 2: Hall of famesoutely okay, without a doubt. Never before have we so quickly put someone. But when this these stories started happening, I was like, she's in the Hall of Fame. Yeah, so we'll get a We'll get a little plaque made, yep, and he'll be the thirteenth inductee on to the Bargers Hall of Fame. 01:18:20 Speaker 3: Excellent. 01:18:21 Speaker 1: Yeah, and and the guys that we put in. 01:18:22 Speaker 2: There, there's some level of character that's in those in the every one of these people that stands out to us. 01:18:34 Speaker 4: It's not just accomplishment. 01:18:36 Speaker 2: Not yeah, it's not it's not just accomplishment base, but there's a there's a component of character and that that's it's interesting. That's what you emphasized, and that to me, that's what stands out about issue. Maybe it's the most it's the part of it that you wouldn't think would be most interesting, but probably is. 01:18:59 Speaker 3: Is how he he Yeah, he could have been just another story. I think if he hadn't been the person he was, you know, in the character of the man I think is what separates him. Yeah, it makes him such a unique part of that story. 01:19:14 Speaker 5: Yeah. 01:19:15 Speaker 2: Way before we uh, before we close down and we're we're in no hurry, I want to I want to talk to you about Fred Behar. All right, another one if you if you don't know Fred barre is, I would imagine most people who listen to this podcast would, But Fred Bear is considered the father of. 01:19:35 Speaker 1: Modern bow hunting. 01:19:36 Speaker 2: And uh, but to meet something, meet somebody that actually knew Fred Behar is pretty unique. But tell me how you knew Fred and just kind of your impressions of him. 01:19:46 Speaker 3: Well, you know, I've been a bull hunter all my life. You know, again I told you earlier. My first big game animals were grasshoppers when I was six years old out in the cow pastor. So always been infatuated with a bow and arrow growing up, turning on the TV and watching the American sportsman Fred Bair Glenn Saint Charles hunting British Columbia for grizzly bears the highlight of my life, you know, as a young person. And then I started a retail business and archery retail business back in Columbus, Indiana, late seventies, and I was a bear dealer. So as a bear dealer, right, you get to go to shows. You get to go, you know, at that time, the Shot Show. There wasn't an archery trade show at that time, so going to the Shot Show and I got to be introduced to Fred as a dealer. And Fred was such a humble man. You know, if you're a dealer, you're at the top of the pyramid in Fred's mind, because you know, you're the one out there, You're the foot soldier out there bringing our sport to the people. You're the top of the pyramid. And that's the way Fred treated you. So as a dealer, I had to meet him several times, going to shows several times, and then you know, after a while, you kind of get to know each other and it becomes more of a you know, we weren't hunting buddies or anything like that, but you know we get to spend time and talk and build a friendship. But such a humble man, you know, and every story you hear about Fred, you would think maybe somebody of that stature, with the you know, all those accomplishments that Fred had, would have an ego. If Fred had nothing close to an ego. And that's just he would walk up to you, shake your hand, and he wanted to know about you. You know, what's your story, how are you doing? And that's that was Fred Bear. And I think without Fred, there were a lot of people making archery equipment back in the thirties. You know, he started go back to issue is Issue brought Pope into archery. Pope brought Compton, Will Compton and our young and archery. Our young brought Fred Behar into archery. Fred Bear brought me into archery. So I look at it like a family tree, you know. Fred Fred was you know, uncle Fred to a lot of us, and I think his story is worthy of a deep dive. 01:22:11 Speaker 1: Yeah, I've said it before, Fred Behar. We've got to do a bear grease at some point on Fred Bear. I mean he deserves that. 01:22:20 Speaker 3: Absolutely. 01:22:21 Speaker 2: Look, you said something, and I want to talk about this. You said that Fred was the best marketer of archery, maybe of all time. 01:22:31 Speaker 3: Yep. 01:22:31 Speaker 2: And that could be taken as, oh, Fred was just a good businessman and charismatic, but you kind of looked at it and I would too, as that marketing ability was actually really powerful, not just for the sport of archery, but for getting people on the bandwagon of modern hunting and conservation. So like, it took somebody that was really good at mark and this is relevant today and this is kind of where I'm going. 01:23:03 Speaker 1: It took somebody like a Fred Bear, Like we're all here today maybe maybe in large part because of a Fred Bear that marketed this to the world. 01:23:15 Speaker 5: Right, And. 01:23:18 Speaker 2: It wasn't just you said this, but it wasn't just you said it on the podcast. It wasn't just about making good archery equipment. He knew it had to be marketed. 01:23:26 Speaker 3: Well, you go back, you know, he started Bear Products Company in nineteen thirty three in Detroit, and at that time, archery and bow hunting in particular was not a very big sport. You know, there might have been a few hundred people across the whole country that were hunting with the bow and arrow. But he saw it his love for the sport. He saw it as something that he could bring to the masses and he could grow this. So it wasn't necessarily just to grow Bear archery. It was to grow the sport. And that's why all the patents that Fred ever put He got a lot of patents on archery equipment, he never enforced any of them. Patented the boat quiver. Can you imagine how much royalties he could have made off of enforcing the patent on the bulk uiver. But it was more important for him to see that be used to grow the sport than it was to make a dollar. And again, I think that goes back to character, you know, the character of the man. He cared about building the sport that was what was important to him, and that's bear archery will grow, but only because we're building a sport for it. 01:24:27 Speaker 1: Right, Okay. 01:24:29 Speaker 2: The reason that's relevant today is that there's a group of people, it's a very small minority of people that would say that modern hunting is over commercialized and is being marketed just for the sake of companies making money. Which there are plenty of companies that make money. Mediator makes money, Bear archery makes money today, Matthew's archery. I mean, like companies do make money, so what they're in business for. But their criticism is that we're promoting the sport of hunting for the sole purpose of making money. And there's a whole bunch more people in hunting today because of influencers and outdoor media than there would have been. And I heard you say something before this, you said, oh, there's always been those guys. I mean, basically, the opinion of these folks is that we should hunt and not talk about it. And in short, what I would say is that if we hunted and didn't talk about it, a generation from now, this whole thing would be dead. 01:25:36 Speaker 3: It'd be gone. Yep. 01:25:38 Speaker 1: Is that do you believe that to be true. 01:25:40 Speaker 3: Absolutely true. You know, I've been an active member of Popen Young. I'm a senior member of Popen Young. And Fred was a big part of Popen Young. And Fred was Bear Archery. You know, he was in the business. He was one of some people will say, you know that the commercialization of our sport has ruined our sport. Well, if that was true, Fred Bear would have been one of the first guys commercializing our sport. He didn't ruin our sport. He built our sport. So in are you commercializing the sport for the sacrifice of the sport? Are you commercializing to build the sport? Yeah, I'm going to make a few dollars. Like I said, Fred made money with Bear Archery Company, and that was his livelihood from nineteen thirty three until he passed away in nineteen eighty eight. But he didn't do it at the sacrifice of archery. He did it at the benefit of archery. And another quote I want to give here, and we talked about this earlier too. One of the people that crosspaths with in my life was the guy that started Muzzy Archery Company. John and John and I got to be friends over the years and John said something to me one day at a show, and he said, there's you know, there's some people who want to be something in archery, and there's other people who want to do something for archery. And I thought, I sat down and I thought, Wow, that's really deep, you know, and I think that's where we're at. Are you doing what you're doing because you want to do something for archery, right? Are you doing it because you want to be somebody in archery? Are you're trying to be another thread bear? There'll never be another thread bear. Quit trying. It's not going to happen. You're just making a fool of yourself. But if you're trying to do something for archery, hats off to you. 01:27:18 Speaker 5: Yeah. 01:27:19 Speaker 2: And I think that's a powerful distinction because we have something today that we've never had before, which is social media influencers, which is a whole different category of marketing that the world's never seen before. And so you could make the argument that there's a lot of people in the hunting, not just bow hunting, but there are a lot of people in hunting that are trying to make a name for themselves, and you could, you. 01:27:46 Speaker 3: Know, you can smell those people right away. 01:27:48 Speaker 2: Well, I think you're right, and I think there's people that would probably get some of them wrong too, you know, I mean, because I would, It's possible there would be. 01:28:03 Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a lot of criticism of influencers. 01:28:06 Speaker 2: But my point about the hunting stuff is is that our culture, I mean, in bicycling and ATV stuff, and the equine world and the mule world, in sewing and knitting, there are influencers and homemaking and cooking. I mean, our culture has now social media influencers. Why wouldn't hunting have social media influencers as well? But the motivation of them is everything, and they're bad apples there are. But I just was thinking about I'm connecting all this kind of Yeah, I'm kind of including you in a conversation you maybe hadn't been in before. 01:28:45 Speaker 1: But like those guys would criticize Fred Behar. 01:28:48 Speaker 3: If you think commercialization of our sport is bad, then you criticizing people like Fred Bhar and Ben Pearson, right, and you're wrong. Yeah, you know they commercialized our sport for the sake of our sport right now, the sake of their personal image or to be somebody important, right, They didn't cross their mind. Yeah yeah, it was just a byproduct of them building our sport. 01:29:09 Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, that's that's really interesting. Any closing thoughts, Joshua Bear. 01:29:16 Speaker 4: I don't think so. Man, that's been great. I really enjoyed this series, and I enjoyed getting to spend time with Jene man as a wealth of knowledge in that guy right there. 01:29:26 Speaker 5: Yeah. 01:29:27 Speaker 2: Yeah, I can't thank you enough for coming to Arkansas and being willing to share your story. Anything we could ever do for you that would be beneficial, I mean, we'd do it. 01:29:36 Speaker 1: I just thank you for I just. 01:29:38 Speaker 3: Keep doing what you're doing. You know, I'm bringing the stories and bringing you know, sharing the history of our sport and keeping the spirit alive with those people that came before us. I think that's that's what motivates me. So thank you for helping with that. 01:29:51 Speaker 5: Yeah. 01:29:52 Speaker 2: Well, all right, keep the wild places wild, because that's where the Bears live.