00:00:02 Speaker 1: This is Bear Newcomb's first time to Alaska. 00:00:05 Speaker 2: He's nineteen years old. I really think it's. 00:00:08 Speaker 3: Going to impact probably the rest of his life. 00:00:11 Speaker 1: There's just some landscapes in the world that just seemed to just grab you. It's hard to describe. 00:00:19 Speaker 3: This place is like exotic and wild and dangerous and beautiful and just has a whole different five. That's what's so incredible about Planet Earth is you go different places and you bring something home with. 00:00:34 Speaker 1: You that's unique. I'm really excited to see what. 00:00:37 Speaker 2: Bear brings home. 00:00:41 Speaker 3: Hey everybody, this is Clay Nukeomb And the clip that you just heard is from our film Southeast Alaska Boat Based Bears that's on the Meat Eater YouTube channel, and it was This film is about when me and my son Bear John went to Southeast Alaska last spring twenty twenty five and hunted with our friend and outfitter David Bennett's on his big old crabbing boat and shrimp and boat, the Sandpiper. It was an incredible hunt, an incredible time. And it's episode three of Meat Eaters twelve and twenty six. And this what you're listening to what you're watching. So there's a video of this on the Meat Eater Podcast YouTube channel, but you could also listen to this on audio. If you're listening to this, this is the Companion Podcast where we're gonna give behind the scenes, and like I said before, there's only so much that a video can show. I mean, imagery is beautiful and powerful and you can see, but there's just so much that goes on behind the scenes. And that's what we're gonna talk about today. I have with me my main sidekick, Josh Landbridge spilmmaker, and we're about to talk about this whole Hunt with Bear, which was really spat I mean, kind of the key features of it were, first of all, Southeast Alaska, which is just a phenomenal place. I mean, anybody that loves wilderness, hunting, epic landscapes, I mean Southeast Alaska. Yeah, rivals any place I've ever been on Planet Earth number one, Number two. What was cool about this film was I got to go with my with my son Bears now twenty. 00:02:23 Speaker 1: At the time, he was nineteen years old and it was his first trip to Alaska. I've heard somebody say it. 00:02:29 Speaker 3: People have said it since they saw the film, but there's a pretty famous quote about somebody saying don't go to Alaska when you're young. Oh really, Yeah, they're like, don't go to Alaska when you're young, because everywhere else you go after that will be a lesser place. I mean, that's kind of the idea and obviously the intent of that. 00:02:51 Speaker 4: So you've ruined your son basely. 00:02:52 Speaker 1: Well, really, what the. 00:02:54 Speaker 3: Guy is saying is that Alaska is an incredible place and you should go. But I took Baar on there for the first time and it was it was it was really awesome. 00:03:04 Speaker 4: Well great, Well, this is, likelay said, this is a companion podcast. If you haven't watched the film, go to YouTube search the meat Eater channel and watch the film called Southeast Alaska boat Boat Based Bears and you'll you'll get see the film and then get to follow along with what we're talking about today. Also, if you're listening to this podcast on one of our audio platforms, know that there's a video of it on YouTube as well, So come enjoy the video of this companion podcast. But we got some great clips. You know, you kind of mentioned Alaska and that it's it's a special place. Is there anything specifically that that makes it a special place? Specifically for hunting well. 00:03:49 Speaker 3: Just the I said early in the film that it's it's arguably the best place in the world to hunt black bears for for numbers of bears that you're going to see, and for even size of bears. 00:04:02 Speaker 1: I mean, for many, many years. 00:04:04 Speaker 3: The biggest bears black bears in North America, in the world. 00:04:08 Speaker 1: Black bears are endemic to North America. They only live here. 00:04:11 Speaker 3: Was on Prince of Wales Island, which we were hunting within one hundred miles of Prince of Wales's Island. So the bears they're big, have big skulls. Bears are measured by their skull so that's not necessarily way. The biggest bears weight wise in the world are typically in the southeast North Carolina. 00:04:32 Speaker 1: The growing seasons are longer, but for skull size, Southeast Alaska has big bears, so bears just get old there. 00:04:42 Speaker 3: Southeast Alaska is a rain for us. They get over one hundred inches of rain per year and that's one of the biggest challenges of hunting there. But it also makes for this like incredibly productive and rich environment that just causes animals to bears to go big. And it's partly because well, southeast Alaska is not I mean it's sea level, right, it is far north right, but like, it doesn't have really extreme winters, so the bears actually stay out of their dens, you know, typical to what bears in the lower forty eight would like. Okay, now, a bear in the interior of Alaska would be sleeping for as many as as much as six months of the year. 00:05:32 Speaker 1: Wow. 00:05:33 Speaker 3: In my bear book that's coming out spring of twenty seven, we cite the longest hibernating bear ever recorded by science, which it was in the last interior. 00:05:44 Speaker 1: Okay, I'm not going to give that number. 00:05:46 Speaker 3: You're gonna have to check the book out, but it was incredibly it was more than half of the year the bear was hibernating bears. That means smaller bears, is that right, right, they're just out less. 00:05:58 Speaker 1: They're eating less. 00:06:00 Speaker 3: These coastal bears are out for longer, and they grow. 00:06:05 Speaker 4: Bigger, and they're eating primarily. 00:06:08 Speaker 3: I mean, they're eating a lot of vegetation. But in the early spring, the woods, the berries haven't produced yet. I mean, think about the cycle of the spring. It's wintertime, there's no berries. Vegetation has to grow and then berries grow so like midsummers when berries to the end of the summers, when berries and stuff come out. 00:06:27 Speaker 1: So early spring, I said it. 00:06:30 Speaker 3: Southeast Alaska has really big tide swings, which means I don't understand the science of it, But there are places where the tide swings are much less, so like the water would go down like say a foot or two and would expose just like small amounts of the shore. 00:06:45 Speaker 1: Every day. Man, in parts, we were seeing places where the tide would push out like hundreds of yards daily, really yes, like daily daily, like multiple times per day it would the edge of the water would be way up there, and then four hours later the edge of the water would be hundreds of yards. 00:07:09 Speaker 4: Well, you mentioned the difficult one point. You mentioned the difficulty of getting to the shore without you know, without having to get the water above your boots. 00:07:16 Speaker 3: That's one of the biggest challenges that like somebody like me who wouldn't know just the ends. I mean, I've been there several times, but still like the ins and outs of how to navigate that country. Anytime you go to the shore, you got to be thinking about the tide, right, because if you get out of the boat and you're gone for an hour, you could come back and your boat could be on dry land and you'd be sitting there for six eight hours, whatever the cycle is, and that it might be the middle of the night before you know, the tide comes back in and then you can't drive in the night. So there's all kind of challenges. And that's probably the biggest thing that stands out to me when I go there. And and honestly, why going with somebody that's a veteran like David Bennetz or I mean, I don't even know that I would have enjoyed it if I had gone by myself because of how treacherous it is. 00:08:11 Speaker 1: I mean, you're you're on big water. 00:08:13 Speaker 3: We were crossing like this big channel that took you know, I don't I don't want to say multiple hours, but huge channels like out of like big open water and like these small skills just. 00:08:30 Speaker 1: Which to me is scary because if you go down, you die. I don't want to jump ahead. 00:08:37 Speaker 3: But like you asked in that interest that Alaska is like scary and exotic, and. 00:08:43 Speaker 1: It is to me that's like the top of the list. 00:08:46 Speaker 3: Like if I were just listing the things that stood out to me on any hunt in Southeast Alaska, it's it's a little bit of fear and that made just be me. But I mean, just like being on that big water and so many times been with Steve Vernella, I've been with David, been with others, and I always ask the same question. We'll be like a quarter mile from the shore, like you just feel like you could just like jump in and just like swim right. And I say, if we went down right now, would we survive? And everybody's like, no, you did. 00:09:18 Speaker 4: There's a high potential for risk there it is. 00:09:21 Speaker 1: And those guys just don't think a thing about it. And it's just every day just. 00:09:26 Speaker 4: Go wow, wow. Well we've got we've got some great clips coming up. We've also got some questions and comments from UH our audience who've watched the film and left comments on social media and on YouTube. So without further ado, we'll do it. 00:09:41 Speaker 1: Let's do it. 00:09:41 Speaker 4: Jump into our next clip. So we're opened to do some shrimping, a little crab. 00:09:49 Speaker 5: In this week, eat some good food. 00:09:55 Speaker 6: We're gonna get back into a little a little cove that's secluded from the wind, and we're gonna anchor or we're gonna send down our pots and then this afternoon we're hoping to do some bear hunting. This bear hunting with weather like this, it's it's really only gonna be good probably the last couple of hours of daylight. 00:10:17 Speaker 3: But the days are long. It's middle of May. But maybe we'll catch some shrimp. 00:10:25 Speaker 2: Oh yeah, we got some shrimp. 00:10:27 Speaker 1: Look at there, sweet, Wow, those are a lot bigger. 00:10:31 Speaker 4: Than I thought. 00:10:36 Speaker 1: You know, there's some meat on that good dungeoness crab. Look at that guy. 00:10:48 Speaker 4: Go ahead, you cut. 00:10:49 Speaker 2: Up some more bait, bear rebait, thees you got lots. Get Let me have friends over to an inlander like me. 00:11:02 Speaker 3: The availability of this exotic protein is wild, and it's one of the coolest parts. 00:11:08 Speaker 2: Of being with David on the sandpipe. 00:11:10 Speaker 3: Seafood, dungeoness crab and spot shrimp are a rare delicacy. 00:11:15 Speaker 2: But we'll need full bellies for the long afternoon hunt. 00:11:20 Speaker 1: Man. That's good. 00:11:25 Speaker 2: We're crawling around on the bottom of the ocean. 00:11:27 Speaker 1: About two hours spoken. 00:11:33 Speaker 4: So for guys here in Arkansas going to Alaska, tell us what it was like to be able to add that as part of your trip. 00:11:42 Speaker 1: Have you ever been to Captain D's. 00:11:45 Speaker 4: Once or twice, Yes, is that what it's like? 00:11:47 Speaker 3: Oh, it's almost as good as Captain D's. That's the only thing we have to relate to you Captain D's. You get there like seafood combo platter, and you get an actual like shell of a crab, Yes, like a real crab Captain D's. 00:12:06 Speaker 4: So this video is sponsored by on X and Multie trailcra Cameras, but not by Captain D's. 00:12:11 Speaker 3: Not by Captain Des. You know, that was always one of the things. I've known David for a long time and uh follow him on social media and we've been friends for over a decade, and uh, that was one of the most intriguing things he always showed pictures of was his shrimp and crabbing. He's David's a commercial crabber, which is dungeness crab and uh that's what that boat primarily is used for. 00:12:39 Speaker 1: And uh, yeah, it's it's it's a lot of work. 00:12:43 Speaker 3: You know, it seems to me when I watched this any of these videos, Uh, you know, just like shows, it's just like pitching a pot in the water and coming back and right shrimp like that was hours long work. 00:12:57 Speaker 4: So you guys pitched those off like in the morning and went back in the evening and got them. Yeah, was that was that? We let them sit for a night okay, overnight. 00:13:06 Speaker 3: Yeah, so we put them out the first day on the way into the bay. And the logistics of the thing, I said it, but you can't just park that boat out in like the main channel and sleep. I mean, the water just gets too crazy. And so you got to find this Like we found this David knew at this little secluded cove that was really tight and just like kept you you know, away from the wind and stuff. And so we on the way there, we dropped our shrimp pops. Okay, and there are real specific rules about non residents shrimping, and you know, originally the original cut we had this whole section about the legality of us catching shrimp and how many we could keep and all this. 00:13:50 Speaker 1: We ended up cutting it. But you know, there's a lot of regulation. 00:13:53 Speaker 3: You have to report to the elastica Game and Fish how many, how much shrimp that you catch. It's pretty wild, like they're keeping train of all that, you know. Yeah, yeah, and so we we submitted all that. 00:14:05 Speaker 4: Did you guys eat shrimp and stuff? Every day. 00:14:08 Speaker 1: No, not every day. 00:14:09 Speaker 3: We had two big cookouts where we ate dungeonus crab and shrimp. 00:14:13 Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll be honest with you. 00:14:14 Speaker 3: What I realized was how critical hush Puppies, French fries and Coast Law are because we had all this incredible, first rate seafood, and I was kind of like, hey, minute. 00:14:27 Speaker 4: Where's the where's the carbs, where's the Coast. 00:14:29 Speaker 1: Law and the potatoes? You know? Yeah, I can't complain it was. It was really great. 00:14:34 Speaker 4: Uh cut Cama chika xbox. The YouTube comment This is a YouTube commenter said, I wanted to see more of the cooking on the boat. The meals looked amazing. 00:14:45 Speaker 3: He basically boiled all that. He had a propane cooker, big pot. 00:14:49 Speaker 4: He seasoned it all and I mean, was it pretty just straightforward? Man? 00:14:53 Speaker 3: If if we'd have been in Louisiana, he we would have. He seasoned it some, but it wasn't heavily seasoned. Yeah, it's pretty district. Were huge they were. You'd be surprised how much they cooked down though, Like those those spot shrimp would be as long as your hand, like it, I mean for real that long. And but when they would cook down they would be like that long and you know, yeah big as your thumb, you know, bigger, a little longer, but yeah cool. 00:15:22 Speaker 4: Well let's uh, let's go to our next clip here for those of you on the audio platform, were watching video of Clay shooting the selth bow on the orange bow of the boat. This o sage came a far property. 00:15:43 Speaker 1: But I made this bow last summer, killed a couple critters with it. But it's got coppy red skins on the back. There some turkey feathers. Pronghorn Osaye orange is the king of North American wood for making bows. This is the primitive archery tool. I mean we could have used like a sinew string. This is a modern string. Uh are our broadheads are are gonna be modern metal broadheads. But the actual bow itself is as primitive as they come. It's one piece. It's it's called a self bow, and a self bow means that it's what does that mean it relies on itself for strengths. 00:16:23 Speaker 3: Yeah, it doesn't mean that you made it self bow means that it relies on its own own self for strength as opposed to a laminated bow. 00:16:32 Speaker 1: And this thing is full. This is this thing will kill any animal in North America period. But you're you're limited. I mean, you need to be close and I'm going to try to be within ten yards, and so it's going to take probably a lot of stocks. We're gonna have to try to find the right bear that's doing the right thing, that's in the right place, and then Bear with his rifle looking for a big one going after. 00:17:02 Speaker 5: Yeah. 00:17:05 Speaker 4: So, and in the film you mentioned the hunter education requirements for bear. You're hunting with the bear the bow that Bear made, Now, was the original intent for bear to hunt with that bow? 00:17:19 Speaker 1: Yes? 00:17:19 Speaker 4: It was, okay, so tell us about that. 00:17:21 Speaker 3: So Bear Nukom and I were headed to Alaska, both of us with our self boats that he made we were gonna do. 00:17:31 Speaker 1: We were both gonna hunt with them. And on the way they. 00:17:33 Speaker 4: So you had two self boaths we did okay. 00:17:36 Speaker 3: And on the way there, I woke up like in the night, just like my eyes just like sprung open, and I remembered from like ten years ago when I bow hunted in Alaska. I had to get a bow hunter's education course and card to be able to bow hunt in Alaska from the sun from Alaska. But just like a Certified bow Hunter Education Course. Okay, I was able to take it here in Arkansas, but you get this card and it's good. 00:18:04 Speaker 1: You know, all the states honor it. 00:18:07 Speaker 3: And I realized that Bear didn't have that, and so I go, Bear, you you can't legally bow hunt in Alaska, which is just such a technicality. But but obviously we we had honored and so we were able to get Uh. 00:18:24 Speaker 1: We actually borrowed that. 00:18:27 Speaker 3: Six point five PRC from Jannis Putelus just like at the last minute sent it up there. And so yeah, Bear was really bummed, but it ended up working out good. I wish I could have shot the rifle and Bear could have bow hunted though, right, you know, because it was just way harder than I thought it was going to be. It just uh, I mean, well we can, we can get into it. I want to I want to say something else about that clip. Misty nukemb my wife, the keyed in on this comment. 00:19:00 Speaker 4: Uh. 00:19:00 Speaker 3: This guy tagged that section and he said, typical, Dad, move son builds a bow with his own hands. Dad explains there were a couple of people that were like, my goodness, Clay sure talks a lot, you know, and Misty loved those comments. 00:19:18 Speaker 1: She was spreading up. She was like showing everyone. She was like, oh, yeah, I mean. 00:19:26 Speaker 4: So that in that same vein tell us a little more about that bowl. 00:19:29 Speaker 1: Like I gladly tell you about bear's self. 00:19:32 Speaker 4: Both that he made. 00:19:34 Speaker 3: The bow was fifty pounds, which is, you know, just about the right way. 00:19:41 Speaker 1: And I had some people say, oh, that bow's way more. 00:19:45 Speaker 3: You could shoot an animal further than that, and you absolutely could. That was like a self self induced regulation of my own you know. I just knew for my proficiency, and I have hunted with a traditional bow enough to know that I just wanted to be inside of ten yards. Honestly, I wanted to shoot one at five and so I just in my mind just committed to that. And it was harder than I thought. And I just felt like there was going to be more terrain features that. 00:20:23 Speaker 1: Would help us get close to bears. That's what I thought. 00:20:26 Speaker 3: And I found a lot more of these bears just on these like wide open beaches. There was there were sections of where we were hunting that was like real rocky, big bluffy stuff like on the ocean. But it was first of all, why would a bear be there? Like the beaches where there was all this grass and the low tides where they were coming out to feed on muscles and different stuff like, that's where they wanted to be. So we were trying to find one like up in the rocks, but we just never truly did. 00:21:01 Speaker 1: Well. 00:21:02 Speaker 3: You would see him, but but then the wind might be blowing so hard that like you couldn't get the boat up there without without problems, and so we just kept making stock after stock. 00:21:15 Speaker 4: But so, you know, you talked about the gamut of hunting, you know, modern versus primitive. You know, most modern would be a you know, a rifle like like that, a precision rifle like that with a scope all the way to you know, you know, kind of down the list would be like a compound bow, and then like a recurve, and then you've gotten all the way to a self bow, which is you know, homemade one piece of wood, right tell us, you know, for for those who wouldn't have a lot of knowledge of hunting with primitive weapons, like what's the motivation in doing that? Why why limit yourself? Why use something that wouldn't be as a effective as a rifle? Why those self imposed restrictions? 00:22:06 Speaker 1: So everywhere that I've ever bear hunted. 00:22:10 Speaker 3: To me, the landscape and the numbers of bears and the numbers of opportunity kind of dictate what kind of weapon I've hunted out west in Montana's spot and stock before. And you can go out there and hunt for a full week and just see a handful of bears and maybe get one opportunity. Okay, I would never dream of taking a self blow there, right, because I mean, in my experience, I think I've been to Montana seven times and hunting the spring for like a week at a time, and typically on average, I get one to two opportunities at a bear and a whole week, you know. So yeah, Southeast Alaska, I knew we would see multiple bears per day. I don't know how we didn't say this in the film, but one day we saw nineteen bears. 00:23:00 Speaker 5: Wow. 00:23:00 Speaker 3: A couple of days we didn't see any bears because it was just raining and we didn't hunt. 00:23:04 Speaker 4: How many miles of coastline? Would you say that. 00:23:07 Speaker 3: David Bennett's is a wild animal in that skiff he would drive, I'm telling you we we were in that skiff sometimes for I don't want to exaggerate, but I want to say twelve hours. 00:23:21 Speaker 1: I mean like really driving. Wow, I mean we were going fifty sixty seventy miles. I mean like. 00:23:30 Speaker 3: It was more than I wanted. I hope David doesn't watch this. David, I love you so much. 00:23:36 Speaker 4: The stories you told me about David Bennett's is that dude is hardcore. 00:23:40 Speaker 1: He is. 00:23:40 Speaker 3: He is a veteran Alaskan huntering god and just relentless. 00:23:47 Speaker 1: Like that first day, you know when when I said it. 00:23:49 Speaker 3: Was just pouring rain and cold and we got in that boat and we went on like a six hour afternoon run. You know, I was like, did you expect? Are you surprised we didn't a bear? And he was like, no, I didn't think we'd see one. 00:24:02 Speaker 1: I mean what I wanted. 00:24:03 Speaker 4: To I just wanted to spend six hours, Like why. 00:24:05 Speaker 1: Didn't we stay in the boat and drink coffee. I mean, I'm usually on. 00:24:10 Speaker 3: A hunt the one wanting to go, and I would much rather have a hunting partner that was wanting to go rather than one you were like dragging around. I mean that's kind of a to me, a requisite for a good hunting partner, somebody that just wants to go. 00:24:26 Speaker 1: Because we all know. 00:24:27 Speaker 3: I mean, man, I can tell you success in hunting is all about just going. I mean, and we all know people that that that maybe just don't have quite as much drive, and they enjoy hunting for different reasons, I mean, just being there and experience. But David is David's hardcore, and we spent some brutal days in that dang boat. 00:24:51 Speaker 1: And he was used to it. 00:24:53 Speaker 3: I mean, it's just like if you went mule riding with some of these guys that I ride with over here, we might ride, we might ride for twelve hours, and maybe we don't think much of it. 00:25:04 Speaker 1: Right. 00:25:04 Speaker 3: You take somebody that's not been on the mule much and they would be going, holy cow, how do you do it? Same way? Being in a boat on that water, cold, wet, windy. 00:25:15 Speaker 1: To me, it was like that. It was just like holy cow. 00:25:18 Speaker 3: And I mean a film can only show so much. The other thing is that I kept talking about bad weather, and like every scene that opened up with me going. 00:25:27 Speaker 1: Man, the weather. 00:25:27 Speaker 4: It's true, It's true. 00:25:29 Speaker 3: I thought about that. I mean, obviously we only filmed during good weather, right, so in eight days you saw all the windows of good weather, if that makes sense. I mean there were there were I think two full days that we pretty much lost, and then even on those good weather days, there would be periods. 00:25:48 Speaker 1: That it would just be bad weather. 00:25:52 Speaker 4: Yeah. Mister Spaceley three two one on YouTube said, I guess when you get to Clay's level, you try to make the hunt as difficult as possible for the thrill of it. 00:26:02 Speaker 3: Is that your motivation of No, and I didn't finish what I was saying about why I chose what I chose. I knew in southeast Alaska I would have a lot of opportunity, and I just felt like it would be the place to get really close to bears and I wanted to. I mean I used it for seven little trad history for seven years, probably from twenty fifteen to twenty twenty one or two. Traditional archy was my primary weapon. Like I didn't always sometimes I rifle hunted, but that was my go to thing that I brought and I killed multiple bears killed, deer killed. I mean, I had success with it. And then, man, just to be completely frank about it, it was so much work and so hard that I just kind of was like, Hey, I did it. Yeah, I think I'm gonna go back to the compound, And it's kind of funny. Inside of hunting circles, you'd have people that would be like, oh, you know, he shouldn't have done that, or a sellout or something. Man, I don't view it. 00:27:10 Speaker 1: I used to would have. 00:27:12 Speaker 3: I've also learned that it's kind of problematic to have opinions about hunting because. 00:27:19 Speaker 1: People can disagree with you. 00:27:20 Speaker 3: But I mean, I grew up with a very exclusive mentality about bow hunting being like the superior way to hunt, and I just don't It's just not true. I don't believe that anymore. There are times when I love to limit myself to the extreme, and then there are other times when I'm like thrilled to be out there with a rifle. And so that's just the way I think about it. And I wanted to use that bow because Bear had made it. 00:27:51 Speaker 1: I wanted to. 00:27:52 Speaker 3: I mean really, that was honestly why I did it. Like if I had just gone with somebody else, I might have taken a compound or might have taken a rifle. 00:28:03 Speaker 1: I just wanted to kind of. 00:28:04 Speaker 4: So you limited your range to the self bow to ten yards. Had you had a compound, what would be the difference between shooting the primitive bow and the modern bow. 00:28:13 Speaker 1: I would have killed a bear probably on the first or second day. 00:28:17 Speaker 4: And effectively you could reach out how many yards? 00:28:20 Speaker 3: I mean, that's again a subjective question, but I would have shot a bear for sure out to forty yards. 00:28:27 Speaker 1: Yeah, And I mean, you know. 00:28:29 Speaker 4: And you have many opportunities. 00:28:31 Speaker 3: I wouldn't say, I don't want to exaggerate how many of the twenty one stalks, but I was within thirty yards of that seven foot bear on like day five. Yeah, I was within forty yards of several of them, you know that were so And I said it it's kind of not that hard to get to fifty yards, right, to close the distance inside of there, You've got to do a lot of things right, And I man, you see your weakness when you are exposed that much to stalking. I mean, I've never stalked that many bears in a week, And so you learn so much and and boy, there's there's a lot of different skill levels. David was critiquing my stalks, you know, I mean. 00:29:24 Speaker 4: He's he doesn't he does bow hunt. 00:29:29 Speaker 3: He exclusively bow hunts, and most hunting an Alaska spot in stalk. So I mean he's a master, I would say. I mean, that's just the way he hunts, right, I'm probably proficient. You know, most of my hunting for archery stuff has been out of a tree stand or round blind. 00:29:50 Speaker 1: I mean, we don't do as. 00:29:51 Speaker 3: Much stalking, So I don't claim to be the best spot in stock hunter in the world at all, or there's a dumb way to say it. 00:30:00 Speaker 1: But I mean, like I don't. 00:30:01 Speaker 4: It's not like, let's just say you're the best spot in stock archery hunter in the room. 00:30:06 Speaker 1: Well, you're probably pretty good, Josh. 00:30:09 Speaker 4: But well great, Well let's watch another quick clip here. 00:30:16 Speaker 3: This is a not fun part of Southeast alast Goa just rains all the time. 00:30:20 Speaker 1: I was so cold right there, I thought I was gonna die, really serious, really. 00:30:28 Speaker 2: Old West, Like I tell you, had to spring. 00:30:31 Speaker 3: Dive in the bear. 00:30:32 Speaker 6: Don't like the rain. 00:30:36 Speaker 1: So I'm trying to do the best I can to waterproof these fletchings. That didn't work at all. Really, Oh, we're gonna be in some suitous David laughed at me when I put that on the whole week. It didn't really work. If I was using you know, just modern archery equipment, I would. 00:30:54 Speaker 5: Be using veins, which are plastic fletchings. 00:30:59 Speaker 1: But these are real, real feathers, and they'll get matted down if they get super wet, and it affects airflight. But this little magic powder will help a little bit. May have to do it a couple times over the trip. 00:31:16 Speaker 3: I was a little bit worried we were gonna get stopped by the coast guard and they were gonna see this little ziplocked bag of white power. It's like a teflon powder. It's made for archery. Perhaps in like a drizzle, it would it would keep your feathers up, but just in like non stop downpour, it really didn't do that much. That's another reason why I wanted only ten yards, because airflight at longer distance becomes exaggerated by things like if your feathers are matted down or whatever. So like that was another reason. I was just like, I'm probably gonna be shooting a bear with wet feathers. 00:31:57 Speaker 1: I want to be close. 00:31:58 Speaker 4: So the weather definitely came into play. I mean that that limited your the amount of time you could hunt. 00:32:05 Speaker 1: That's right, yeah, for sure. 00:32:07 Speaker 4: Okay, all right, let's watch this next clip. 00:32:09 Speaker 2: Here we spot a big bear on the shoreline. 00:32:14 Speaker 1: Sometimes they're stationary and feeding and they're just staying there. 00:32:18 Speaker 3: But a lot of times they're traveling and this one is moving. We make a move to interceptor. 00:32:27 Speaker 1: They left me at the boat and they were like, you stay at the boat, young man. Oh yeah, man, that was crazy, big bear. I don't think I've ever shot a bear in such a pretty place. That was one of them. I saw the whole thing holding the boat down there. 00:32:56 Speaker 3: Think of God, look big, yeah, huge to get a good shot, I think, So. 00:33:05 Speaker 1: You find them? Yeah yeah, oh man, Alaskan bear. Man, man, These Alaskan bears have some big old pans on their feet. 00:33:17 Speaker 4: Yep, so big bear there. It was. What did the bear square? 00:33:27 Speaker 1: The bear squared six foot six to six foot eight. 00:33:33 Speaker 3: I can't exactly remember, but it was a It was a top shelf bear. 00:33:39 Speaker 2: I mean. 00:33:42 Speaker 1: A seven footer is like big. 00:33:46 Speaker 3: Yeah you all you hear pete? Oh yeah, let's get on this. How big bears are. For years I had Bear Hunting magazine and for a decade like bears were my entire world, and people and about bears talking about bears, and I was amazed that all the people that always talked about seven foot square bears, And the square of a bear is you take a green hide, like a freshly skinned hid, right, stretch it out, measure from the base of the tail to the tip of the nose. That's one measurement, and then measure claw to claw on the front arms. 00:34:20 Speaker 1: Of the bear. 00:34:21 Speaker 3: Take the average of that number. So add those two together divide by two. 00:34:25 Speaker 4: That's they're typically close. 00:34:28 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, usually they are. 00:34:31 Speaker 3: And I've always been amazed that how many people told me that they had killed seven foot bears or seen seven foot bears. 00:34:40 Speaker 1: The only. 00:34:42 Speaker 3: I've seen, like with my own eyes in a camp, and I used to hunt a lot in Canada and would be in camps where multiple bears per week were being killed. 00:34:52 Speaker 1: And I have personally only seen with my own. 00:34:55 Speaker 3: Eyes maybe two seven foot bears that were killed. 00:35:00 Speaker 1: So they're incredibly rare. 00:35:02 Speaker 3: Wow, it's kind of like one hundred typical one seventy whitetail. 00:35:05 Speaker 1: It's like. 00:35:07 Speaker 3: They're just not that many of them. And maybe people say, yeah, as one seventy, but really when you score it is one sixty three, right. 00:35:14 Speaker 1: You know. So I find that to be with bears. 00:35:16 Speaker 3: And so when I say that a six and a half foot square to six foot eight square bears top shelf. I think that's pretty accurate, that bear. So we when we checked it, we sent the tooth. They took a tooth in the Alaska game and fished does a really good job. They sent bear a letter and that bear was fifteen years old. 00:35:38 Speaker 4: Tell me what the name of that process was, you said. 00:35:41 Speaker 3: Cementum ANNUALI it's so, you know, they tooth They they give toothage estimates on toothwear for deer, like you just kind of look at a jaw, and guys give estimates and we all know that those very inaccuracy. But cementum annually, it's basically like they cut a tooth in half and look the annual growth rings like a true a diet. Look at it under a microscope. It's done at a professional lab. Me and you could take the teeth of any animal that we wanted. You could pull one of your teeth and we could send it in to have its cementum annuli aged at the Matson Lab in Montana. 00:36:21 Speaker 1: But be bear was fifteen years old. Somebody made a good comment. 00:36:24 Speaker 3: They were like bear and that bear were almost the same age' true, it's true. Another thing That's interesting to me is that if you'd have told me bear was going to kill a fifteen year old boar, I would have been tempted to be like, oh, man, I bet it'll be a boon and Crockett animal. I bet it be seven foot square boon and Crockett. And bears are just like people. Me and you are about the same age, but like I'm just smaller than your smaller frame. Bears are the same way. So that bear wasn't getting even bigger, okay? 00:36:56 Speaker 4: And would that bear have changed skull size over the year. 00:37:00 Speaker 3: I've debated that with so many people, talk to biologists all over the country, and I don't think anyone really knows the full answer. It's but like a bear, like, is your skull getting bigger with age? 00:37:16 Speaker 4: Brain? 00:37:17 Speaker 1: Your ears are in your nose? 00:37:21 Speaker 4: That my mustache. 00:37:22 Speaker 1: That's actually fact. I wasn't, you know, poking fun at the. 00:37:28 Speaker 4: Mustache. 00:37:28 Speaker 3: Yeah, size of their mustache. It's possible that a bear could calcilify parts of its skull and get a little bit bigger. But really, I've never had a biologist tell me, And like, science isn't necessarily trying to understand the answer of that, because there's not a big reason for it, So I don't know if they get bigger. They obviously get bigger up until the time they're fully mature. The biggest bear that I have ever killed on the boers crocket scoring system was six years old. The bear way three hundred and sixty pounds and had a twenty and eight sixteenth inch skull. 00:38:05 Speaker 1: Okay, that's a Boon and crocket skull. 00:38:08 Speaker 3: And I have also killed more than one five hundred pound bear that did not score boone Krockett that was much older. 00:38:17 Speaker 1: I've killed an. 00:38:18 Speaker 3: Eleven year old, nine year old and another older bear, and none of them scored Boon and Crockett. The six year old bear scored Boonu Krakka, So it's genetics. 00:38:28 Speaker 4: That was one hundred and forty pounds lighter. 00:38:31 Speaker 1: Yep, wow, yeah. 00:38:33 Speaker 4: Interesting. We had an Instagram question talking about how did you get the meat back to Arkansas. 00:38:42 Speaker 3: So David has a commercial freezer on the Sandpiper. We quarded that bear up, put it on there, and then put it completely frozen in ice chests and just had it shipped back to Arkansas. So in the town we were in, they ship a lot of salmon and so there were commercial companies that shipped frozen goods. So we took it to this place and they. 00:39:11 Speaker 4: Package, they ship whole quarters. 00:39:13 Speaker 1: Yeah, just shipped it right here. Okay, yep, pretty wild, awesome. 00:39:17 Speaker 3: You can also check of a cooler, you know, duct tape the cooler. I mean, it's not cheap, It's never cheap to do that, but yeah, it was good. 00:39:28 Speaker 4: Do you know how many approximately, how many pounds of meat you got? 00:39:31 Speaker 1: I don't even remember. 00:39:32 Speaker 4: Okay, well, let's we got another clip here quickly following that bear kill. 00:39:39 Speaker 1: So these are some stone knives. This when I made, That's when a buddy made me. But these are flint apped and they're razor sharp. 00:39:51 Speaker 5: But this is what people would have skinned animals with for long before we got here, and so we're going to try the mout on this bear. 00:40:01 Speaker 3: It's believed the first humans to come on to the North American continent passed through southeast Alaska, and without a doubt, they use stone tools to kill and butcher game. In a world where a lot of young people spend a lot of their lives behind screens, I'm glad to see bear John interested in primitive hunting technology. I'm grateful for steel blades and technology. Hey, but I think skinning a bear with a rock put the modern world in perspective. 00:40:32 Speaker 4: So tell us what that was like. So using this, do you feel like how effective were they? Were they? I mean, did you find yourself at a significant disadvantage using the flint mat knives over a modern steel knife. 00:40:44 Speaker 1: Yeah, I would say if you characterize it like that, it would it would take a lot longer to use a flint knife. It just would have. 00:40:52 Speaker 4: But still effective. 00:40:53 Speaker 3: It works like if it's all you had, you could absolutely skin it. 00:40:57 Speaker 4: And those were flint, yeah, those blades were yeah. 00:41:01 Speaker 1: Yeah, and they can re sharpen them. 00:41:03 Speaker 3: So we did a video a couple of years ago where we me and Steve Vanilla and Ryan Callahan and Spencer Newhart skinned the entire bison using stone tools and we had a guy there that was sharpening them for us as we went. 00:41:20 Speaker 1: And because they get dull, just like a knife and. 00:41:23 Speaker 3: Nap it, get it sharp again, and uh, I mean it probably takes twice as long, but I mean that's not that big a deal. Like if it took you like an hour to skin a bear, it would take you maybe two. And again the video can't show everything, and we weren't trying to be We were trying to show exactly what happened. You see a picture of David helping him skin that with a with a regular knife, and David did, like we bear just was jumped in there and it was getting dark and had to get back to the boat before dark, and so we had some time constraints. So we didn't I didn't want to be like I mean, I guess in some ways you might think, well, he skinned the whole bear by that with that, but David actually helped him, you know, but you absolutely could if all you had was a flint knife and a way to sharpen it, you could skin any animal in North America. 00:42:15 Speaker 1: People have been doing that for longer than we had steel. 00:42:18 Speaker 4: You know. 00:42:18 Speaker 3: That's it kind of blows your mind when you think about it. How long have we had steel as humans? I mean a couple thousand years, right, you know that we were using I mean, we were using stone technology for who knows how way longer. Yep, we've had steel and humans survived, they lived, they ate, they butchered meat. 00:42:42 Speaker 1: We know that. I mean, it's pretty kind of a neat idea and and I really Bear it is cool that he is focused on those things. 00:42:53 Speaker 3: Speaking of that, I actually didn't even mean for this to happen, but I was. We had a big rain last night and our Arkansas I was wandering around the mule pasture this morning and picked up these stone tools out of my front yard. These are broken stone points, airheads or you know, add addle dart heads. Wow, that were in the mule pasture this morning. Evidence of ancient bow hunting right here where we're amazing recording this podcast. 00:43:24 Speaker 4: So what was it like getting to watch Bear kill that bear from a distance there and just seeing them do that. It had to be pretty rewarding and fulfilling. 00:43:35 Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, it was cool. 00:43:38 Speaker 4: You know, You've got four kids and they've all at times hunted, you know, different differing levels of engagement and passionate about hunting. But watching Bear do something that you're also passionate about, man, that's got to be got to be cool to see. 00:43:54 Speaker 1: It really is. And I. 00:43:57 Speaker 3: It may seem like this was all planned for Bear to just be a really passionate hunter, but it really wasn't. I mean, we never like made our kids, you know, follow these passions that I had right, We just kind of took them. It was a major part of their life. And Bear is a of the kids. This is the one who's kind of taking it the furthest so far, you know, but all the others like to hunt too. 00:44:28 Speaker 4: Yeah, all right, here's an next clip. 00:44:33 Speaker 2: Bear didn't believe in Wales. He had to see one first before he believed it. 00:44:38 Speaker 4: Didn't believe him. 00:44:39 Speaker 2: It was just wasn't totally convinced. 00:44:41 Speaker 1: That there's a giant fish that just jumps out of the water, a mammal of things that suckles, it's young with milk. This is ridiculous hard, But now we believe they're right there. 00:44:57 Speaker 4: Wow, this was a hump back away else. 00:45:00 Speaker 3: Yep, this was so crazy that we have given anything to bring one of those rib bones. 00:45:06 Speaker 1: In fact, we pick it up. We just can't take it home. 00:45:08 Speaker 4: You can't. You can't keep them. 00:45:10 Speaker 1: I mean, they're just gonna get to our old Yeah that's a rib bone, I guess. 00:45:16 Speaker 3: Yeah, what we have really looks like a dinosaur. 00:45:22 Speaker 1: Yeah, that is so, you said, David. That for a year and a half after this Well died, the the. 00:45:33 Speaker 3: Wolves, eagles and bears were just having a heyday over here. 00:45:37 Speaker 4: Yeah, it lasted a long time. It was a soupy mess. 00:45:40 Speaker 6: You can see the. 00:45:41 Speaker 1: Bears, yeah, you know you death look that is these are these are all hrks and what this is the skull the old look that's like the gosh, the wonder if I got that name right? 00:45:59 Speaker 5: Form? 00:46:02 Speaker 1: How's that for? 00:46:05 Speaker 4: Wow, that's that's unbelievable, that vertebrae. 00:46:09 Speaker 1: I'm a believer. 00:46:11 Speaker 4: Well real, so tell us more about that. I mean, that's that's unbelievable. 00:46:18 Speaker 3: Did I get the name right? The magnum Foreman, magnum Foreman? 00:46:24 Speaker 1: I was. I was for those of you who aren't watching. 00:46:28 Speaker 3: I was looking at the skull of a whale and like the hole in the back of the neck, like where the spinal column comes into the to the to the skull. I believe it's called the magnum Foreman. That was, I mean almost one of the highlights of the trip for me. I don't I don't really know why form oh forum and ma I reverse the words. David said that that carcass for like did I say two years year and a half year and a half up? Was rotting and just I don't know if every time you drove by there, but like that's where the bears were, and he actually let a client shoot. As I remember it, a client killed a bear close to there, and after he skinned it, he said, I'll never do that again. The smell was so putiline, and the bear had just been got rotting meat for a year and a half. The bear had just been all over it. He said that even the bones, after all the flesh had been gone for a long time, still smelled terrible. 00:47:33 Speaker 4: So how long ago had that place? 00:47:36 Speaker 3: I couldn't tell you. Probably three four years, probably three or four years, and you could still smell a little bit of that bone. But yeah, there were there were humpback whales all over the place. I mean just every single day, without exception, we would see humpback whales. 00:47:55 Speaker 4: How close would they be. 00:47:57 Speaker 3: Well, you'd just be driving your boat and they would just pop up, you know. Sometimes we were seeing their spouts. They you see the spouts of water that goes up, you know, ten to fifteen feet in the air. You can see that from like a mile away. You just see. But then just randomly, you're driving and one just pops up like fifty yards away, or maybe maybe you see him and you're going that way and you have to kind of drive by him just to get where you're going, you know, And yeah, pretty incredible. 00:48:26 Speaker 4: Like cow, that's that was really interesting to watch on the film. Okay, here's here's the first. 00:48:35 Speaker 1: Still bummed about this stalk. 00:48:38 Speaker 4: Watching Clay stalking a bear and then all of a sudden he takes off end of the world. 00:48:44 Speaker 1: It's embarrassing to watch yourself run and waiters and swirls. 00:48:47 Speaker 3: The bear wins me while he's inside of ten yards but still quartering to me. 00:48:52 Speaker 1: And when he spooks, I opt to chase him and try to run him up a tree. It actually works, and I just can't get a shit. 00:49:00 Speaker 5: He was about eight yards but. 00:49:04 Speaker 1: Still in a good shot such as tried hunting. 00:49:11 Speaker 4: So was that a spontaneous move? Was that something you thought, Hey, if if I see a bear and he goes on in the woods, I'm go and chase him. 00:49:17 Speaker 1: It's kind of just in the bag of tricks. 00:49:20 Speaker 4: Done that before. 00:49:21 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and it it's worked before too, So to we did weren't able to show that whole stalk. 00:49:31 Speaker 3: That stalk was money. Okay, right at dark, we see this bear just trucking down the woodline. We're able to get way in front of it. I'm able to get out walk down the woodline towards it, duck deep in the timber, and he's he had just been walking down the woodline for a quarter mile, just right on the edge. And I get tucked in behind this tree and just and waiting for him and peek out, and here he comes. He's been walking for a quarter mile end. Basically when he got ten yards, just kind of swirled. I mean, just like inside of this small perimeter of a human in that kind of turbulent environment with like waves and water and the woodline and the open area, like you just it's hard to predict what the wind's gonna do. I was on the down wind side of the winds hit me in the face. But when he got he was inside of ten yards but quartering to me, okay, right, because he's walking towards me, right, So I mean like he's in range, but I can't shoot him. He's got to like come past me, or at least get even with me, because with that trad bow, you don't want to shoot one quartern to you gotta be broadside, right, And so he gets like right at ten yards and makes a and kind of throws his head up and I'm just like no, and he makes a loop and basically I knew this it was busted. 00:50:54 Speaker 1: But he was so close. 00:50:56 Speaker 3: I thought maybe I can run him up a tree, right, and I would have shot him out of a tree, you know. And basically you can't see it, it's so dark, but he ran. He jumped up on a tree. You could see it in the video if you stopped it. The bear has his head out from behind the tree looking at me, and I'm very close to him, but all I can see is his head. He's like around the tree. And then he ended up not running up the tree but running off. But originally he jumped up on the tree when he saw me coming and it was like what is this guy doing? And then he took off and so it was over. But in British Columbia one time I stalked a bear, actually through a culvert. 00:51:36 Speaker 1: It's on the old it's on the Bear Grease Channel. There was a bear. 00:51:42 Speaker 3: There's this big road, this big like commercial gravel road for log trucks. Okay, imagine a four foot culvert under this deal. I'm watching a bear feed right beside the end of a four foot culvert that has water running through it, coming away from the bear. I sneak up on the other side, walk through the culvert. The air is pushing down with the water and I basically poked my head out and there's a bear like five yards from the mouth. And I wish I would have taken the bear. It was a boar, but it was young, and it was early in the hunt. And I've got my trad bow. This is British Columbia, several years ago. And I see the bear and I'm wearing a go pro in my head. You can watch it on YouTube. 00:52:29 Speaker 1: Wow. And I just go, hey, bear. 00:52:32 Speaker 3: And it looks at me, just coming out of the culvert and just takes off and then I just chase it and it goes right up a tree and I just stand there. 00:52:40 Speaker 2: Wow. 00:52:41 Speaker 3: But anyway, so that that can work pretty good, chasing them. 00:52:45 Speaker 1: I've never killed one like that, but yeah, it works. More clips everywhere clips would prove to be. 00:52:53 Speaker 3: We're going to be watching the three legged bear. Look at him, winds not bear, you see it. Look at that he's missing a front left leg. 00:53:04 Speaker 4: Well, for our listeners, right now, we're watching kind of a montage of man. It took us an hour. A few of the twenty one different stalks. 00:53:16 Speaker 3: Hard to stalk, but this part of Alaska doesn't have a ton of grizzly I find black bears. 00:53:22 Speaker 2: Easy to stalk. 00:53:23 Speaker 1: Within fifty yards, the bear finally breaks the ten yard mark. This is the good one. Seven yards. 00:53:30 Speaker 3: But now he's facing me and he's way too close. I can't move. 00:53:35 Speaker 1: I try to shift my weight to getting better shooting position, and he hears me, sees me, and finally spooks. 00:53:43 Speaker 2: This was a big. 00:53:44 Speaker 3: Bear, probably nearing the seven foot square mark. And once again I got to inside of thirty yards, but just couldn't close the distance. I'm starting to doubt if I can make it happen. 00:53:58 Speaker 4: Twenty one different stalks, twenty one So after over the course of how many days. 00:54:04 Speaker 1: Eight days? 00:54:05 Speaker 3: Well, bear hunted kind of two days, so really six days, okay, seven days. We'll give bear one day at full stalks of. 00:54:14 Speaker 4: Those stalks, I mean, from those stalks and being in a place that's unique for hunting bears. Tell us some of the things that you learned, and maybe some things that you would have done differently. 00:54:26 Speaker 3: Yeah, Number one, I would have planned on wearing some type of moccasin. 00:54:34 Speaker 1: You almost had to wear ribber boots because it was so wet, right. 00:54:38 Speaker 3: But I started carrying some little Stalkison's little shoes that you put on, but it was so late in the game. I never actually never used them. I would have used them a lot more. It's very hard. Those bears were hearing me, really yeah, and I had a cameraman with me, like right on my heel, so it's like two people walking and those bears hurt us probably thirty percent of the time. And again they wouldn't have heard us, Like if you're just trying to get to thirty yards, you'd be okay, right from thirty to ten. 00:55:13 Speaker 4: Yeah, there's a lot more you hear in ten yards that you don't. 00:55:15 Speaker 1: And they can hear. They can hear so good. They just hear. They hear so well. 00:55:22 Speaker 3: And you know, a bear is not a prey animal like a deer, so they don't have quite that response. But they are very concerned with other bears sneaking up on them because they'll kill them. I mean, it was grizzly country too, Like did. 00:55:36 Speaker 4: You see any grizzly bear? 00:55:37 Speaker 3: No, No, not a lot of gris, But I mean it was in bounds for grizz to be, especially on the Alaska mainland side we were on and so bears here very well. 00:55:52 Speaker 1: So your feet. 00:55:53 Speaker 3: Number Two, the wind, there's just nothing you could do. You're just at the mercy of the wind and where you could park the boat. And again, getting inside of thirty forty yards, the wind. 00:56:02 Speaker 1: Would typically stay pretty good. 00:56:04 Speaker 3: But in that inner cone, you know, inside of thirty even if the wind's hitting you in the face, like we've all felt that when the wind is blowing consistently and then it stops, yeah, and there's like a little bit of a drag and the wind just kind of eddies, and man, it just got me almost every time. 00:56:24 Speaker 4: Really. 00:56:24 Speaker 3: Like now, we may talk about the successful stalk, but the successful stalk had two things going for it that the other twenty stalks didn't have. Okay, Number one, that bear was within twenty yards of a creek. 00:56:39 Speaker 4: That was let's actually we have that coming up here in just a second. Let's save that one. But anything else that maybe you would have specifically done differently besides the Stalkisons. 00:56:50 Speaker 3: Man David Bennett's has guided hundreds and hundreds of bear hunters, and he says the thing that most people do is they're too slow. Oh really yeah, he said, he said, on this kind of hunt, volume is what he finds that kills bears, and he would rather get out of the boat and just do the boldest move possible. Really, yeah, do the boldest move possible, and if it works, it works. If it doesn't, it doesn't. What I was doing was getting out and like just like trying to be like, this is the stock. I have to give it my everything. And we'd end up spending an hour on this bear that was probably going to be blown whether I took my time or I didn't. 00:57:37 Speaker 1: Does that make sense? 00:57:38 Speaker 3: Yeah, And so David Is just was just like Clay, you're too slow. 00:57:43 Speaker 1: You know. 00:57:44 Speaker 3: And I'd be like you think and he'd be like, yep, you just he said, why did you try to get up in the woods and sneak around? I was like, well, I didn't want him to see him see me. And he was like he wouldn't have seen you if you'd just laid low and just like walk. 00:57:56 Speaker 1: Straight towards it. 00:57:57 Speaker 3: And so but again, it's like taking instructions from a pro basketball player when you're playing in the G league, you know, it's like, uh, that's the way I felt. I really was humbled, not that I thought that I was going to do good, right. I don't mean it like I had high expectations for myself. But it was harder than I thought it would be. And I mean, I've stock plenty of bears. 00:58:22 Speaker 4: Joe Etlinger three four two three says Clay, there's no rule in bow hunting that you have to stalk every animal to the point of failure. If thirty yards is the closest you can get, just stay put and see if he comes your way. Seems like you may have learned that one on that that on the one that went up the tree. 00:58:40 Speaker 3: Joe t Linger three four two three. That's a that's a good comment. I understand what you're saying. You don't have to like push, push, push until the animal spooks. What Joe doesn't understand is the constraints that were bigger than just what you see on the film. 00:58:58 Speaker 4: Yeah, I could get a full picture by a forty eight minute film. 00:59:02 Speaker 3: Well, and just like what David was saying, he was like, Clay, don't mess around, Just get in there and try to do it. If you spook one, no big deal. We'll go into the next one, and eventually you're gonna find the one. 00:59:13 Speaker 1: That's just right. 00:59:14 Speaker 3: So I see what he's saying. And in some cases, like if you were in a place where you were going to see three bears in a week, you better do what Joe Linger three four two three says is don't push it. Just get to where you can get and then just wait. 00:59:30 Speaker 1: Yeah. I probably could have done that. 00:59:32 Speaker 3: This was a volume hunt though, And there was also a timestamp with David setting out in the boat and navigating the tides. 00:59:39 Speaker 1: Oh okay, you know he would pull me most of the time. He would pull me up. I would jump out, then. 00:59:45 Speaker 3: He would go back out because the waves are just like slamming the boat, right. So he's out there just like, you know, like messing around waiting for me. It's not like I had three hours that I could see what the spirit Joe did. Some of those stalks last well, I mean a couple of them lasted two hours. Most of the time they lasted ten minutes. 01:00:08 Speaker 4: Okay, okay, ye off Road Tech double zero said, great episode. The Alaska shows are full of amazing scenery except Clay's butt. There was way too much of it. Must remember Stalk Hunt's equal watching butts. 01:00:24 Speaker 3: Hey, brother, you ain't wrong. That's the first thing that I noted when I watched the draft. I was like, wow, this is like feature was watching. 01:00:34 Speaker 4: He's like, does this stalk make my butt look fat? 01:00:36 Speaker 3: The feature length film of Clay's butt. I am so sorry. People, all right, he ain't wrong. 01:00:43 Speaker 4: Well, we've got one more clip here. We're going to show. 01:00:50 Speaker 3: Tucked in La butte, which offers some great cover to get close. He's just feeding on grass and there's also a running stream really. 01:00:59 Speaker 2: Near vibe that covers my sound. This is perfect. 01:01:04 Speaker 1: This is what I've been waiting for. I hit it wrong when I was aiming. You aimed in the wrong place, Clay. We got on the other side of that tree. The bear was laying down right there. Air hit right where I. 01:01:40 Speaker 5: Was aiming, but it didn't go in very deep. 01:01:49 Speaker 1: Oh no, oh my god. That's not good at all. 01:01:59 Speaker 5: M hm, David. 01:02:00 Speaker 1: I don't think it penetrated past the broadhead. 01:02:04 Speaker 5: I felt like I hit him right behind the shoulder, but I must have touched the tip of his shoulder. His elbow must have been back because it broke that broadhead. And I mean, we're going to come back in the morning and look, but that bear is not mortally wounded. And that was my biggest fear, and that is why I limited myself to ten yards and I hit right where I was aiming, and so I don't know what to say other than I messed it up. But that's just part of the game. I think that bear will be fine. It's a bummer to hit a bear and not recover it, but my hunt's over. Such as the drama of the self bow. 01:03:00 Speaker 4: Mmm, so kind of walk us through that thing. 01:03:05 Speaker 1: Well. 01:03:06 Speaker 3: So that stalk was so good and it took it took twenty one stalks to get one that was just perfect. That there was a fallen tree that completely shielded the bear from anything going on the direction I was okay. There was also a stream that flowed out into the ocean there that did two things. Flowing water typically pulls air currents, so my wind was kind of like going out on the water. You know, you'd puff and it would just be going out of the water by that by that little creek. That creek was like twenty yards from the bear. And then number two, it was loud, the sound of that water. 01:03:48 Speaker 1: So I mean it was like the perfect sight. 01:03:50 Speaker 3: So I just peek out around that tree and that bear is there ten yards. It was just a average male bear. I mean, we know because the bear got killed like two weeks later, and I was told that it was like, uh, you know, just a decent, younger type boar, probably a two hundred pound animal. 01:04:15 Speaker 1: You know, it wasn't a big one. And uh, I wish we could have got better footage of the actual shot, but we were so worried about spooking game. Dirt was but just. 01:04:29 Speaker 3: Dirt was your camera, Yeah, Garrett Smith, Dirt myth was my cameraman, and he just did the best he could without you know, having to get out further than me. 01:04:39 Speaker 1: Spook the bear. 01:04:40 Speaker 3: And as I watched the film, I said it like three times and it could come across as me trying to make an excuse, and maybe I probably was, but I was like, I hit right where I was aiming. 01:04:53 Speaker 1: I hit. 01:04:53 Speaker 3: I mean, I kind of kept telling myself, well, I hit where I was aiming. Well, I mean I aimed in the wrong spot that you know, and I I've said this for years and it's hard to compensate for. But on a on a shorter haired animal like a deer. Okay, a deer has you know, this like half inch to one inch fur. To see the contour of that animal, you see a shoulder. A black bear is like shooting at a black trash bag that's been blown up like a balloon. He don't see the contour of its body quite as much because the longer hair. Okay, number two, the difference between shooting a bear and shooting a deer is that a bear has a lot more ability to contort its body. And what I've always told people is a bear can make itself into a sea. Like envision a bear being broadside, but his butt and his shoulder are closer than to you than the. 01:05:47 Speaker 1: Middle, like his last rib, like the middle of his body. 01:05:50 Speaker 3: It's like a dog. He can like curve his back. A deer really can't do that. Think about that. So when he's when that bear is like curved like a sea, if you're aiming like kind of where the vital should be at this black trash bag that you can't see much contour on, you will hit its shoulder. 01:06:11 Speaker 1: Does that make sense? 01:06:13 Speaker 4: Like it folds in and so it narrows the picture. 01:06:17 Speaker 3: So you could actually shoot in the place that on a three D target you would shoot, but if that bear is cupped toward you in a sea, you're going to hit it shoulder. 01:06:25 Speaker 1: And that's what happened. 01:06:27 Speaker 3: Like just in the moment, I wasn't able to see that that bear was actually maybe just slightly cupped. And like I always say that a bear can do so many things that a deer can't. A bear can sit on his butt. That bear was actually laying on his belly when I first saw it, like laying flat on its belly with its palls flat on the ground like this really chopping grass, I mean just and like if I had come up and that bear would have been like that, that shooting target would have been compressed and different than if it was just standing there with like its ribs kind of like fully extended hanging down. So most people, including me, mess up on a bear when a bear is doing something unusual, and it's not like he was just standing the broadside in my mind, and I just wop and just hit that shoulder. 01:07:17 Speaker 1: I knew that a lot of. 01:07:19 Speaker 3: Air was sticking out, but I actually thought that everything was okay, because you know, I'm telling myself, I hit right where it was aiming right, do. 01:07:25 Speaker 4: You feel like you're did you feel like you're you had a full draw, you feel like all the shot was okay. 01:07:31 Speaker 3: I mean that's where any traditional archer will tell you it's easy to what they call short stroke when when you're in the heat of the moment where you're just like in such a hurry, you don't like get. 01:07:44 Speaker 1: Your full extension. I don't know it's possible. 01:07:48 Speaker 3: I mean I was so josh being inside of ten yards, and I mean I had time, and I walked through my shot sequenced consciously. I was like, bore him up, focus anywhere you want to hit, draw it to your anchor point. I mean, I did everything. 01:08:04 Speaker 1: But who knows. I think so much of human memory is flawed. 01:08:10 Speaker 4: That's true. I mean it's true. 01:08:12 Speaker 3: You know, like even me saying I hit right where I was aiming. It's like I wish the foot the foot you cannot see it. You cannot see the arrow in the footage. I don't know why, you just can't. Who knows if I truly did. I do know it hit the shoulder, because we know that for a fact, because a couple of weeks later, and this is maybe the most bizarre part of the story. So we go check bear's bear with the Laska Game and Fish. You have to take the animal. Actually two a biologist that pulls the tooth, that takes the hair sample, that does all this stuff. And so we're talking to him and you know, and I'm like, man, I shot one guy away, you know, I told him. And so David knew the guy that we were with really well. And a couple of weeks later, David sends me a text message and said, found your broadhead and uh, I'm pretty sure some guys from Texas killed that bear with a rifle. 01:09:12 Speaker 4: Yeah, and they pulled the broad head out. 01:09:14 Speaker 3: They just were skinning it and found a broadhead and thought it was interesting. And when they took it into the Game and Fish, they were like, hey, we found this. And the guy was like, I think I know whose that is why? And uh, you know, I was I almost you know, part of me didn't want to tell that part of the story because I mean, animal the ethics of just the treatment of animals. It's not the right words I'm saying there. But you don't want to shoot a bear and not find it. You don't want an animal running around with the broadhead. 01:09:48 Speaker 4: And you guys went back the next morning to look for it. 01:09:50 Speaker 1: Oh, we did, we we did. 01:09:52 Speaker 3: We went back the next morning, looked for it, found nothing, you know, and uh, the bear there was fine, except for he got shot by a guy from Texas, you know. So I don't know if it's from Texas. That's what I remember being said. But so that's the story. 01:10:15 Speaker 4: Well that was great, man. The film was fantastic. And another comment here, did you feel fortunate the bear ended up okay after you hit it? And also I didn't see any firearms on your stalks as a safety backup? 01:10:33 Speaker 1: Man. 01:10:36 Speaker 3: I've read that comment, and nobody carries firearm backup on black bear hunts. And when I say nobody, obviously there are exceptions to that rule. 01:10:48 Speaker 1: I would say eighty plus. 01:10:50 Speaker 3: Percent of people hunting black bears are not if they're bow hunting or not carrying a firearm backup. Now, if you're hunting Griz country, you probably will. There's been times when I've carried a pistol, almost just for the fun of it. But I would say ninety five percent of my black bear hunting I've never. 01:11:09 Speaker 1: Had firearm backup. Griz totally different story, Yeah, yep, much more aggressive. 01:11:14 Speaker 3: So just it's just not You're just not gonna be attacked by a bear while you're hunting them. You might be attacked by a bear while you're at your camp, you know, he wants to eat your food, or you run into a side with a cub while you're out hiking. 01:11:33 Speaker 4: Another comment here, he says Caleb Allen says, just finish the episodes. Still can't believe what happened to Clay's arrow. Do you think maybe the constant moisture may have weakened the wood at the broadhead point, I would have imagined that even with the self bow, with that type of broadhead would have struggled to get I can't imagine even with a self bow that that type of broadhead would have struggled to get more penetration. 01:11:57 Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good point. 01:11:59 Speaker 3: I don't no, I don't think. I don't think wet would necessarily means weak would if that, If I'm understanding this comment, it's possible though. 01:12:07 Speaker 1: Definitely the water. 01:12:08 Speaker 3: On the string and water on the feathers would have slowed the boat to some degree. But again, that's why I was limiting myself to ten yards because I felt like at that distance it really wouldn't have mattered. I mean, the bottom line is I hit the shoulder right, and and with any I mean even with a compound, if you hit the shoulder, potentially you're going to have problems. 01:12:33 Speaker 4: And so hitting that hitting that animal ends. 01:12:36 Speaker 1: Your it does. 01:12:37 Speaker 3: There's legality of such is different in many states, but in Alaska, if you draw blood on an animal, that's your that's your tag. And and in most places and in most people that I've been around, even if that's not the law, that's typically the way that I would manage something. If you have a one bear tag and you wound one, just check your tag. 01:13:06 Speaker 1: Yep, you know I wouldn't. I'd say most of the time. That's what a lot of people would do. Anyway. 01:13:15 Speaker 3: Man, thank you guys so much for watching this companion podcast for meat Eaters twelve and twenty six. 01:13:22 Speaker 1: Film. This is episode three of our Southeast Alaska boat based for Bears. Check it out on YouTube. If you haven't watched it, please go watch it. It's a lot of action, I tell you what, it's a lot of action and it was a really special time to get to spend that with my son Bear John and Man, I hope you guys get to get out and hunt this spring, And thanks so much for checking this out.