November 26, 2020 • 55 mins
Clay Newcomb is joined by Myron Means, the Arkansas Game and Fish large carnivore biologist. They talk about black bears and the 2020 bear season.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
My name is Clay Nukeleman. I'm the host of the
Bear Hunting Magazine podcast. I'll also be your host into
the world of hunting the icon of the North American
Wilderness Fair. We'll talk about tactics, gear, conservation. We will
also bring you into some of the wildest country on
the planet Chasing Bear. We're back to bears and we've
(00:32):
got an expert in the global headquarters today. Myron means
that Arkansas Game and Fish Commission Large Carnivore Biologist, which
inside of that title fits versus American It's the black Bear.
Myron means is in the office and we continue to
dig into the nitty gritty of bears. We talked about
this year's bear season and have a great conversation. I
(00:54):
always love talking to biologists. You're gonna enjoy this podcast.
There are several muzzloader seasons that are still going on
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(01:17):
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(02:22):
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Bear Foundation. So that that that bear right there is
that bear and that picture this photograph I took right
where I killed that bear. Yes, he was. He was
laying right here. He had his head laid on that
(04:12):
rock right there, and I was I was up like
about sixty yards. Oh yeah, he I never saw it then,
I mean there was he was just sunbathing, but he
was laid on that rock and there was no there
was no dens that I could see anywhere, but anyway
(04:34):
he was, he was just laying I saw him roll over,
That's what I saw from sixty yards where I saw
his feet go up in there like this. And then
I just stalked down and was able to shoot him. Man,
it was a wild deal. And there was after I,
you know, kill the bear and was you know, getting
him out and stuff. We started seeing bear sign all
(04:55):
over that side of the mountain. I don't think he
was going much more than a couple hundred yards their direction,
but there was white oak akerns all over the mountain
that year, and uh yeah, I'll that that animal right
there to me. I'll never kill another animal that I'm
more proud of. I may kill another one that I'm
as proud of. Well that's a pretty unique experience. I mean,
(05:16):
you could hunt the rest of your life like a
banshee during bear season and never be able to replicate
that experience. Well, and what was cool was I was
after a bear, and I had been after one for
a long time. And I've learned something since that time, though,
and that is they're easier to kill in the mountains
(05:39):
in the early season. All my reasoning back then was,
you know, our bear season goes to November. I'm recording
by the way our our bear season Arkansas goes to November.
Was that in the late season, the leaves were all
gone and you could see good. Was kind of what
(06:00):
I thought, because you know, you start hunting a bear
in early October and Arkansas is gonna be hot. You
can't see more than forty fifty yards in the indirection.
But unfortunately, the bears are usually gone by the bears
are slow moving by then. And what I learned was
you're way better off with a bow and era in
(06:21):
the early season than you are. I mean, I I
ended up having more success right now is it's a
super tough time to call a bear. But hey, I'm
We're at the Global Headquarters and I've got uh, I've
got Myron Means with me. Myron works for the Arkansas
Game and Fish Commission. He is a large carnivore biologist.
And you've been on the podcast before. I have uh,
(06:42):
first time of the Global Headquarters. Of the first time
to the Global Headquarters. Man, I love it. This is
a really nice place. Well you, of all people could
probably appreciate some of these Arkansas bears hanging in here.
Um and uh now really appreciate you coming up. So
you um being a large carnivore biologists. You were the
(07:04):
bear biologists and your name changed. And we're gonna talk
about this at a later time more in depth, but
large carnival biologists. What else does that entail? Mountain lions?
Mountain lions. Uh, that's pretty incredible, And we're intentionally not
talking about that for because we will at some point.
(07:25):
But black bears, you what what trends did you see?
I've honestly not paid a ton of attention this year
to the quotas and different things. Uh, what what's the
bear season in Arkansas have been? Like? Bear season in
Arkansas this year is, Uh, without a doubt, it's going
(07:47):
to be a record harvest year. And that is solely
attributed to the fact that we raised the bears on
one quota, which is the Ozarks quota. We raised the
bears on one quote from two hundred and fifty to
four hundred or five hundred total, four hundred of archery
and fifty momsloader fifty modern gun. But it's a cumulative quota.
(08:11):
So that means when muzzload season comes in, you add
fifty more bears to the four hundred. When modern guns
season starts, you add another fifty bears, and and so
the fifty stack on top of the four hundred, stacked
on top of the four fifty. So it's a cumulative
total total. And I think a lot of people didn't
(08:32):
really understand that this year. Will you will you break
you just did break it down, but will you break
it down even slower? Like so, archery season starts the
fourth Saturday in September. Well, I mean for the foreseeable
future in Arkansas, if you're wondering about when you need
to take vacation or something like that, just look on
the calendars for the next few years. Anyway, archery season
(08:55):
will coincide with dear archery season, which is for the
foreseeable future probably going to be the fourth Saturday in September. Uh,
the muzzleoad season will begin the third Saturday in October,
and the modern gun season will usually start the second
(09:16):
Saturday in November, and the Saturday prior to that is
going to be a youth modern gun season. So the
first Saturday and November is going to be a youth weekend.
Second Saturday and said November is going to be the
modern gun deer and bear seasons. Yeah, that's uh, that's
just kind of the way we've we've set the same
(09:38):
framework for the foreseeable future to coincide deer season with
bear season. I mean, if people are going to be
out there bear hunting, they can deer hunt. If they're
gonna be deer hunting, they can bear hunts. It really
is a great opportunity. So tell me how the quota
works with archery. So archery season starts, and first of all,
there's there's two main bear zones in Arkansas. Zone one,
(10:00):
which is Ozark zone that's correct. Zone two, which would
be the Washtall No no quota in zone two. No,
you know, we kind of figured out several years ago
that because of the landownership and the way the wash
Tall Zone is laid out, bear Zone two is laid out,
you have a big contiguous block of public land, which
(10:21):
is the Ozark National Forest. That's kind of the questionall
excuse me, Washtaw National Forest. Uh, it's kind of the
core nucleus of that bear population. And uh, there's bear
outside the Washtaw National Forest, but the National Forest acts
as a nucleus. And because there's not a lot of
private land interspersed within that contiguous block, a lot of
(10:45):
those bears aren't really susceptible to being harvested, say over
Bay over something like that. So it's really kind of
a self limiting situation. Regardless of you know, what we
do in zone one, they're typically gonna harvest kind of
the same amount of bears about every year. So. Yeah,
(11:08):
So so zone one has the quota and um so
the quote, so the archery quota, what is how much?
Uh it was two hundred and fifty This year, we
raised it to UH four hundred, and that seems like
a substantial jump, and it was a substantial jump. But
(11:30):
because the way we framed our regulation process, we can
only recommend regulations every other year now. UH. We used
to be able to recommend every year so we could
change them, you know, we could take a baby step
this year and then a baby step the year after.
But the way it's set up now is we can
(11:51):
only propose every other year, and last year we weren't
able to adjust it up. So this year was kind
of a little bit of a makeup from not being
able to adjust it last year. And so what that
would mean would be archery hunters could kill up to
four hundred bears and before the season closed. So the season,
(12:11):
you know, in theory, they could kill four hundred bears
and three days in the season would close and it
wouldn't open back up again until muzzload season, when you
added fifty more bears to that quota, and if they shot,
uh say, if they shot fifty bears during the muzzload
season uh by Monday, then the bear season would close
(12:37):
again the following Monday, after the opening weekend of muzzload,
and it would not open again until the youth weekend
of modern gun, which would add fifty more bears starting
at that point. Uh. It kind of confused people a
little bit this year because it's it's a cumulative quota,
(12:58):
and uh, they did not made the quota this year
with archery. Uh. I think when we went into muzzload season.
I'd have to go back and look at the numbers,
but I think we were sitting somewhere around three hundred
eighty bears maybe when muzzleload season started, so we hadn't
met the quota. But when that opening day of muzzlold
(13:19):
season hits, those fifty bears were added to the previous
four hundred quota, So we could have killed seventy bears, right.
So instead of you know, the quota being hit, or
instead of saying, well, we got twenty more bears with
archery we can kill and you can kill fifty with muzzloader,
that just confuses. That just muddies the water. So the
(13:42):
easiest thing to do is say, okay, it was four
hundred bears up until the opening day of muzzload season,
and then that adds fifty more bears, so now the
quote is four hundred and fifty and because you know,
any season in Arkansas you can with a lesser weapon.
So when muzzload season closed nine days later, the quota
(14:07):
was still four hundred and fifty bears, but you could
continue to hunt with archer archer. That makes sense and
so we uh so basically as a management decision that
you guys made was, hey, we can take out five
hundred bears out of Arkansas. And so where do we
stand right now? Today's November, Yes, November twenty three in
(14:29):
our zone one total right now stands at four hundred
forty nine, four forty nine fifty one more bears until
November three. And I bet, I bet they won't kill them.
Do you think they will? I don't think they will really,
since um, I'd have to go back and look at
the day to day. But I think when when youth
(14:51):
modern gun season started, I believe we were at four
hundred and maybe twenty really, so only twenty bears got
killed eat. Yeah, with the modern gun and the opening
weekend of deer season, that just tells you a lot
about bear activity because it was a ton of guys
(15:12):
hunting National Forest with a bear tag in their pocket.
In Arkansas, everybody that's got a sportsman's license, which is
our sportsman's license. I think that's what it's called. You
get turkey tags, deer tags, you get a bear tag.
So in Arkansas you don't have to go buy no
specific bear tag. Everybody's got a bear tag. And I
(15:33):
would I bet of Arkansas deer hunters would shot a
bear if they saw it. You think, so, I mean
there's probably add there's an odd guy that might be like,
I'm not gonna especially if they knew, you know, the
season was still open and everything. So yeah, but you
know they're probably not going to meet the quota. Uh.
(15:54):
Today was today. This year was a really lean year
for mass availability. There was not a lot of masts
on the ground. Uh and uh, I think a lot
of the bears started turning in, especially the pregnant females,
probably the salves. They probably were starting to uh enter
(16:14):
the dance as early as late October, I think, so
I'll do. And you know, you can tell by the
way it trickled in through the youth gun season uh
and the opening of the deer gun season the adults season.
You can just tell. I mean one or one bear
checked every day, or one or two bears checked every day.
(16:35):
You can tell when it's like that they're just not
out on the landscape. Well, that's what's so interesting, always
has been to me, and a lot of people don't understand,
is that, you know, our our winters are relatively mild
compared to especially north of us. But these bears are
dinning based upon food availability. And then the females are
(16:59):
obligate dinners, which means, and these are all words I've
probably learned from you, myron Um, obligate dinners meaning they're
the only bear that actually has to den because there
they have their cubs and their reproductive cycle takes place
when they're in the den. But if there was a
bunch of mass crop on the ground, the bears would
be more active, they would be they'd be staying out,
(17:20):
and it's there. It's really kind of an issue of
energy dynamics with bears. I tell people all the time,
bears don't den in response to cold weather, because they
certainly don't. We've we've tracked females in February, uh, doing
den checks on them when they're laying on top of
the ground with four inches of snow covering them and
(17:41):
two cubs sitting under their belly. I mean, the cold
is not a factor with bears. It's food availability. So
you know, if they fed up, had a good late
summer and early fall, and they're really fat, the pregnant
females are going to enter the den cycle and they're
gonna stay. Um. If there's enough food on the landscape,
(18:02):
it may push their entrance into that den cycle a
little later. Instead of being laid October, it maybe mid November. Uh.
Females with year leans or cubs of that year, uh,
you know, they'll stay out later. If they're not going
to be in an energy deficit finding food walking around
(18:24):
all day, then they'll stay out like that. That's a
good way to say it. That's a good biological term.
I'm gonna put my repertoire and energy deficit. So they're
going out there, they're burning calories, pounding the mountain trying
to find food. If they're not getting as many calories
as they're expending, they're going to sleep. Is that right?
That's right? If it's not worth If if they end
(18:46):
up at an energy deficit, then there's no point. I
was calculated that way. I would stay home and play golf, man,
I am had a massive energy I have. I have
had a massive energy deficit this year because I have
expended a lot of calories. I need to be at
(19:07):
an energy deficit because I put on a little too
much weight. But it, uh you know, and it it
progressively gets less I guess, um less specific or less important.
When you move to males. You know, males, uh you know,
they're not hard dinners like females, and uh you know,
(19:31):
in any given warm day, uh, a male is likely
to emerge from a den, walk around, sniff around a
little bit. And because they're not locked into den really
for a specific amount of time with either year leans
or cubs that are being born, I mean, you know,
a lot of times males will emerge from the den,
(19:51):
usually by late January early February. If it's really really cold,
you know, they'll just tuck in and sleep it off.
But if they're all acorns on the landscape in December,
sure a lot of males will get out and forward
even in December. You know, this is really telling to me.
I've bear hunted in East Tennessee with some houndsman, and
(20:14):
they've got the super late bear seasons that go into
I think the Tennessee bear season and it may be
structured different, but for the region we were in, their
season went to December, and those guys find bear tracks
every day, and it's of time males. Yeah, I was
gonna say it's probably set that way to specifically target males.
(20:38):
I mean, if they still have a quote a fairly
young population or you know, they're still trying to grow
their population, yeah, they're gonna do things to target males. Yeah.
And it blows my line because you know, over in
the Appalachians there, I mean they're at some hot, pretty
fairly high elevations, at least compared to here. I mean,
they got mountains six thousand foot tall, and it's cold
(21:02):
in late November and December, I mean like single digits sometimes,
and these guys load up their hounds and rig bears
and strike a track and uh run bears and and
do real well. I mean and it's and it's they'll
tell you. I mean they're paying attention to the nuances
between the different years. I've only been over there once
(21:22):
with them during that time period, and I mean we
ran bears every day. I mean you wouldn't have you
would have just thought bears were just up on their
feet like crazy, all males and uh but uh, I
think they would say there's years when it's not that good.
Maybe the year I was there was exceptionally good. I
don't know, but I mean, you know, if there's a
(21:43):
lot of masks, you know, I would say it's probably
going to determine a lot how the late summer and
fall was going into the season. You know, if the
bears are really really fat, have a lot of fat
on and then it just turns off really cold. Um,
you know that. I don't know, but that might be
(22:04):
a badge year I said. They're just like, hey, I'm
I'm just wonder how they like we gauge are energy
levels day to day. I feel like based upon whether
we're full or not, Like literally like if we've eaten
in our stomachs feel full. These bears are gauging their
(22:27):
understanding of their health and long term you know, ability
to survive based upon fat reserves. Have you ever heard
anybody talk about that? I would never have, But just
do you see what I'm saying? Because they're their belly
is not gonna be full of food, what's telling their brain?
What's Yeah? Yeah, it's it's almost like there's got to
be a different receptor that's like, hey, boys, we've got
(22:49):
plenty of fat. We're just gonna burn this today. Don't
worry about getting up and eating. Would say that those
are probably you know, physiological clues that they've evolved to
because it doesn't work that way with you even, does it.
It certainly doesn't work that way with me. But then again,
my life doesn't depend on finding an acorn for food.
(23:10):
So but yeah, it's kind of a fascinating deal. The
whole dynamics of you know, their physiology and the processes
they go through, you know, for den cycles is uh,
it's absolutely remarkable. And I mean you can tell it's
not something they just evolved into over a few generations.
I mean you're talking about millennia of evolution that is,
(23:34):
you know, and they have they have refined it to
the point of no other. Yeah, man, if if that's
what's so interesting at looking at these animals from a
biological level and trying to understand even just the kind
of the small level of understanding that we probably really have,
(23:54):
it's incredible and and um, well, you know, for years
years in the scientific community, you know, bears, bears, weren't
category categorized as true hibernators. They were estivators, you know,
because they can arouse spontaneously, whereas true hibernators like groundhogs
(24:15):
would chocks, they can't. But because bears can arouse spontaneously,
they said, well, you know, they just don't exhibit some
of the traits of true hibernators, and um they've sent
The scientific community has since turned around and said, well,
you know, they are true hibernators in a sense, but
(24:39):
technically they're probably some of the most efficient hibernators in
the animal world because of the way they can They
can basically turn on and off, you know, their body
processes that allow them to go into this torpor and everything,
whereas a true hibernator can't. You know, they what So
(25:01):
you're you don't realize what you just said and how
it affected me because I have made a living myron
off correcting people. Every people that have listened to this
podcast have heard me harp on when people say it
bear hybridates, I go, no, no, no, no, they don't hybridate.
Bears hybrid So you're telling me this is wrong, Well,
(25:22):
technically in a true sense of the definition, you know,
of the word bears are not true hibernators, but they
certainly exhibit body processes that the true hubernators use. The
thing that makes them quote not a true hibernator in
the historic sense of the word, is the fact that
(25:45):
they can turn on and off those body processes that
define a true hibernator. Uh, they wake up, but son
of them. Yeah, basically means they can wake up right instantly.
They can arouse instantly, which they always do when we're
doing our den work. They always wake up. They always
(26:05):
know you're there. Uh, their motor their muscles aren't at
a their body temperature never does fall at a low
rate like a true hibernator does. But their heart rate
at things like that will lower to a great degree
what it is, but their body temperature doesn't lower that much.
(26:28):
So there's some things that could categorize hyperation in short periods. Maybe, Okay,
I see what you're saying, but the world he is
not wrapped. I think I still got some credibility. It's
pretty it's pretty fascinating, you know, reading in the literature
when they talk about well, you know, bears aren't true hibernators,
but they're probably the most efficient hibernators, efficient in the
(26:49):
animal world because they're able to just turn it on
and turn it off almost at will. Well, so it's
pretty remarkable. But when you think about what's happened ecologically
across North America and you see how successful bears are
being right now, it's pretty incredible. I mean they're they're
(27:12):
opportunistic omnivorees that just have survival built down into this
like incredible efficiency, like you really do. And really, you know,
we've I guess we've kind of found out all across um,
you know, North America that really all bears really need
is pretty good habitat and uh, you know, they're they're
(27:35):
gonna they're gonna thrive. I mean, you know, they're not
gonna just boom like some other animals will on lands
and yeah, like a white tailer or even kyo. They're
not going to adapt to urban environments only. But we
have found out that, you know, because bears are opportunistic omnivorees, man,
(27:56):
just give them a little bit of good habitat and
they'll do fine. Um, I want to I guess this
is a good this is a good place to tell
you this story. So I saw a bear because we're
talking about like this is a difficult time to hunt bears,
sea bears. It's bear season in Arkansas, and uh I
(28:16):
I saw a bear two days ago in National Forest. Yeah.
When you told me that, I said, man, that was
your pretty fortunate. What was while is it broke all
the rules. It broke all the rules of my of
what I mean, it was the I was deer hunting, man.
I mean, I it was the last thing I expected
to see. I knew I was in good bear country.
(28:38):
I mean any other time of the year, I would
have thought, yeah, there's a chance I could see a bear.
But there was no bear sign. I mean, like I'd
been over that country pretty good and uh no bear sign,
didn't have any bear pictures. I had a few cameras
out and uh man, I did an all day hunt.
(29:00):
You know, I got in after daylight just because I
walked back in there. But setting a tree for nine
hours in the middle of the day, I don't know
if that had anything to do with it. I mean,
you know, it was the warmest part of the day,
but it was at eleven fifty two. I looked down
in uh salt bear, a good sized bear bar and
I can't. I won't say it was a big one,
(29:24):
but considering that it was still up and it was alone,
I mean, I would assume it was a male. I mean,
probably a pretty good chance it was a male. And uh,
it just looked to me. It looked like a two
fifty pound bear, you know, I could tell it had
a thick, nice coat. And uh, it was across a
boundary line that I could not There was a property
(29:46):
line there. I was on public land, but it was
anyway I couldn't. I couldn't shoot the bear, which was
crazy because that it was I wasn't there because of
the property change. But anyway, it was in a place
that I couldn't shoot the bear. But it was man.
I mean, I'll take that memory and like chalk it
(30:09):
down as almost the equivalent of a of taking an animal.
I mean, because I can count on well, I'm starting
to have a few more encounters these days, but very
very few times do I actually see a bear on
public land. Like you know, I've killed some that way.
But it's tough, man, and it's a it's a great man.
(30:31):
Was kind of built especially on years like this year,
you know, when mass availability was very lean, uh, you know,
and and that kind of it's I said, you were
fortunate because I've been watching the harvest, you know, updating
the harvest totals every day, and I could tell by
the end of muzzload season, which was twenty something of October,
(30:54):
I could tell by then that, you know, harvest rates
for I mean down to just a can't if you
one or two bears a day maybe something like that.
And you're talking about, you know, all the hunters across
the landscape, you know, it's uh, there's a lot of
deer hunters out there. And when you're only harvesting one
(31:14):
maybe two bears across all zone one, you know, that's
just your translates to me, the bears just aren't out
So I knew it was getting pretty lean, uh, you know,
going into the modern gun season and everything else. In
the course of harvest reports show evidence of that. It's
just bears just aren't out there. Man, when the food
(31:35):
is not there, they just rather turn in that. I
must have been pretty close to that bears den I figure, so,
you know, and a lot of times in the Wash Toalls.
What we've seen in the Wash Toalls is probably thirty
or forty percent of the bears that din just make
day nests or make a nest on top of the ground,
And that's different than those arcs. Yeah. Do you think
(31:56):
it's because of the rock cavity availability. I think so.
I'm still formations are a lot more prevalent in the
ozarks than they are in the wash of dolls. And
as I said before, you know, bears don't really they
don't really need, you know, to be out of the element,
so to speak. That makes zero sense to me. I
(32:17):
mean a bear cut big a hole, he can. I
mean there's not as many rock cliffs and the wash dolls,
I mean, there's very much less. But it wouldn't be
hard for a bear to find up crevice and a rock,
or a dugout under a tree, a tree that's fallen
over and just dig out under it, which is what
most of the cavities are in the wash dolls are dugouts.
(32:39):
And then but you know, you have a fair piece
of bears that just scratch up a bunch of leaves
and grass and sit right on top of the ground.
Now they're they're gonna be chances are there going to
be in the middle of a thicket or something some
really really thick area and they'll just scratch it out,
making big birden extraight on top the ground. That's crazy.
(33:01):
So I figured you were probably pretty close to this
bears den. I mean, you know, they may limit their
activity to maybe an hour or two a day, you know.
So yeah, well it was a I've made it like
a like a holiday if I see a bear in
national forest. I mean really, I I was just thrilled
(33:22):
to see that bear, and it was cool because I
wasn't expecting the last thing I was expecting. So that's
always a good That's a good day in the mountains
when you see a bear. Uh. Um. So if you
guys up the quota, that must mean that our bears
are doing good. You know, they really are. They're doing great. Uh,
They're doing great in the Washtawls. They're doing great in
(33:44):
the Ozarks. I mean, you know, we still have bears
moving into northeast Oklahoma. We still have bears moving in
the south central Missouri, you know, presumably expanding out from
our Ozark population. And uh, you know, we've known for
a few years that we needed to start throttling up
(34:06):
on our harvest to kind of maybe stabilize those populations,
and uh, you know, we we were probably behind a
little bit on you know, the increases that we've made,
so we made a little bit bigger jump. We think
the population can certainly was stand it. Uh. So you know,
we'll see how it rocks along at five hundred bears
(34:29):
for a couple of years and kind of see how
the population responds. And you know, we may at some
point in the future have to back it off a
little bit, but I would be willing to bet we're
probably gonna be fine. Yeah. Man, it feels like we
kill a lot of bears in Arkansas at five hundred bears.
But what it puts into perspective for me, like a
(34:50):
lot of these uh, like the Great Lakes States, Wisconsin, Michigan.
I mean I think Michigan kills three thousand bears a year. Uh.
I think Pennsylvania, I think they killed nine thousand. Incredible
nine thousand something like that typically I saw. But I
mean they harvest more bears than we probably have in
(35:12):
our entire state. So you know, but I mean this
year so far today we're up to six hundred forty eight,
which surpasses our previous record harvest year. Of five hundred
and thirty three. Now how could we Okay, then I
don't understand the quota. We've killed six hundred bears this year. Yeah,
but that's bears on one bear zone, two bears on
(35:33):
five bears one five bears. You. So, how many bears
are they killed in the wash tows this year? Hundred
ninety four, which is going to be a record year
for the wash tolls as well. Hundred and ninety four.
I'll be doron okay, that is yeah, I think so
we're a hundred and one. Uh, we're a hundred and
(35:55):
above our previous harvest record statewide. Yeah, today we'll probably
have I don't know we'll break six d and fifty
but maybe people killed. Yeah, well that's that's awesome. Now, Mayer,
and you're a bear hunter. You do some bear hunter? Yeah,
tell me about y'all y'all season. Well, I'm a little
I don't know. I don't know if I want to
(36:16):
tell to me. I hunt, I hunt there. Uh, I
hunt on private land. We have a lease, and I
have some really good friendships that I've developed from people
in Texas and people in Nebraska, and we share hunts
back and forth and uh, we're in the least together
(36:38):
and uh uh I usually because our lease, you know,
is about forty minutes from my house. Uh, I usually
kind of take care of most of debating. And we
have some really really great landowners to have some nice
lodging facilities on the least for us, and we're able
to just kind of have the run of the place speak.
(37:01):
And uh so we had we ended up having seven
hunters this year because one of the one of my friends,
instead of him hunting, he brought his eleven year old
son and his eighteen year old daughter and he wanted
to put them on the stand ins tod him hunting.
(37:23):
And so out of seven hunters we were, we harvested
five bears out of our camp this year. And uh
one of the guys that chose not to harvest bears,
he actually had several opportunities and some younger bears. Uh
he had a golden opportunity to a collared female and uh,
(37:46):
we can't know, we can't harvest the collared bear, but
he got some really good pictures over it was a
great expd you know what bear it was? I do
know which bear it was. Unfortunately, Uh, this particular bears
collar has quit work and we lost her last year
and uh, there was no reason because it was a
brand new collar, but it was some type of malfunction
(38:08):
and it has to be that bear. But she doesn't
have a working collar. But I know she was den
probably pretty close in that area, So I plan on
catching her this spring. She'll have cubs with her, I suspect,
so she's gonna be pretty close and I'll catch her
this spring when she comes out. You have one of
those orange collars, bright orange collars. Yeah, I'm pretty sure
(38:33):
that's the bear. It had to be. And I went
in with my telemetery gear when we were baiting, and uh,
she was pretty consistent at a couple of the different barrels,
and I knew she had to be right there, and
I ran through all my frequencies and didn't have them
because of the proximity of where she's at. It could
really only be one of them, one bear that I
(38:53):
called ago. So yeah, but yeah, so really, I mean,
when you break it down, I'm the only person that
didn't have a chance or harvest the bear out of
our camp was the bear bottle? Isn't that the way
it always works? The short end? But you know, it
(39:15):
was a great year. I didn't have too much heartburn
about it. I never do. I mean, anytime you can
you can feel five tags out of a bear camp,
it was a really good year. So yeah, I was
really happy with that. So that's good. But it was
it was a good year. I mean, it was really
it was a perfect year to set up for, you know,
(39:36):
for baiting on private land. And really, I mean, if
you had the right circumstances, it was really a perfect
year for someone to hunt public land too. And you
know that's something that you and I have talked about
in the past about public land bear hunting, you know,
hunting bear specifically on public land. And I have people
tell me all the time, they said, man, you know
(39:57):
it's well, you know you have bear hunt on private land,
you've got a good lease. It's easy. Well, it's not
really easy. It's never a sure thing. It is a
lot of hard work. And I think a lot of
people don't believe me when I tell them this, But
you know, given the right circumstances in the year with
sparse mass availability, you know, really, if you can find
(40:19):
that one white oak flat or that one white oak
on a flat, that's really throwing good mass that year.
You know that can be as effective, by far and
away as effective as a bait site. It can actually
be more effective because if you've baited for any length
of time, you know that when the white oaks get ripe,
(40:43):
all the bears leave the bait sites and go eat
the white oaks. So uh and uh really, you know,
I just I tell people, if you can hit, if
the mass of ailability is right, when it's kind of
lean or sparse. Uh uh. And you go out and
you find those natural bait sites, those white oaks, those
(41:04):
white oak flats that you see all the sign app
that you would at abit barrel, they can be just
as effective, if not more effective than the bait barrel.
And you tell them what you told me about time
theory on you know, spend my theory on time spend.
I tell people, I said, you know, they said, well
baiting is easy, Well it's not. I mean, if if
(41:25):
it's done right, if it's done the way, I'm gonna
do it every year. And you count all the time,
all the hours you spend going to your lease or
your land, clearing, shooting lanes preseason, maybe moving stands preseason, gathering,
gathering Oh my gosh, if I could tell you the
(41:47):
amount of hours that I spent opening bread packages and
everything else going to get debait. I mean, and if
you're baiting on a you know, a real regimented bait
sched jewel once every two or three or four days,
and you know it's it is a lot of time.
(42:08):
I mean, you're gonna spend hours and hours and hours
and hours doing it, right, And uh so, I mean,
you know, if you spent the equivalent amount of time
serveying a public area that you knew pretty well and
really fine tuned, you know your knowledge of that area,
(42:29):
I have no doubt in my mind that you could
successfully hunt bear on natural bait sites just as effectively
as you can on uh man made basis. I think
that's a good a good perspective and a good way
to look at it, is that. Yeah, And I think
you're right. I think if you if you really spent
that much time, here's the problem. Here's the mental challenge
(42:50):
with doing that is when you're baiting bears, you're seeing them,
you're getting pictures of them. And let's say you've got
thirty hours, Like if you did the math, you know,
you're like two hours here, two hours, so you got
thirty Well you're gonna go put thirty hours you know,
in the stand or on the ground hunting. And for
those thirty hours, you're probably not gonna see very many bears,
(43:13):
but you might kill one. That's what I always say
about public land hunting is that you can't be validated
emotionally by seeing game. I mean really like as hunters,
like we come back from a hunt and they're like,
did you see anything? And if you're like, no, I
didn't see anything. I mean, it just takes the energy
and dry. You know, you think you're doing something wrong. Man,
(43:33):
with these public land bears, you've got to And this, honestly,
this is what I love about it, Myron's I think
it makes you a better hunter all across your hunting
is you can't be validated by seeing game, because I'll
the times I've been successful in public land hunting for
long periods of time without seeing anything, but then it happened.
(43:56):
I mean, just you know, so you're not gonna see
ten bears, you're gonna see you you might see one. Yeah,
and uh so it really makes you. I think it
makes you a better hunter. I think it does It
certainly makes you a more patient hunter. I think it
allowed It makes you trust your instincts better when you're
(44:21):
seeing the sign there but not seeing the critter. Uh,
you know, you have a tendency to kind of doubt,
well maybe it's moved on or whatever. But classic example, Uh,
we went in I think it was a weekend before
the season started. We went in, Uh, some of the
guys and myself went in and moved stand. One of
(44:41):
the stands, it was a ladder stand, was in a
big white oak. And when we got there to move
the stand, there were white oak liums, fresh white oak
liums busted all over, laying all over the ground, acorn
shrap and I'll just lay in everywhere, you know. And
we got to look in and looking up in this
big white oak and yeah there were white there were
(45:03):
green limbs bent over and broke up in it, claw
marks all up and down the tree. I mean, you know,
that is a classic. That's a bait site right there.
I guarantee if a guy you know, found that on
public land and it was right before the season, he
could come and hunt that specific tree. And it's not
(45:26):
like they're just gonna be nocturnal. You know, bears aren't
nocturnal that time of year. They're feeding every available hour
they can. So yeah, that specific tree. If I would
have found that tree on September, yeah, you can bet
I would have been hunting that specific tree. You know,
I've seen a black gum like that on multiplicasions. Black
(45:48):
gum is a really big one, and a lot of
people don't realize that that black gums throw these little
grape looking berries and uh man, I tell you what,
before the acorn to get right, they will blister black gums. Yeah,
I mean just blister them. Yeah, they love them. It's amazing. Uh.
I would have never paid much attention to black gum
(46:10):
until I had just found a couple that looked like
it looked like a tornado dropped out of the sky
directly above this black gum. I mean I saw one
one time that I bet the bear had tore out
of the limbs out of that tree. I mean it
had to have affected the life cycle of that tree.
And uh, I mean it was like a it looked
(46:31):
like a telephone pole that somebody had just I mean
just had wore it out. And there were eight piles
of bear scout underneath that black gum, and probably every
inch of the tree was at claw marks and there
was still black gun berries all in that tree. That
was on October the third, Uh, not this year is
(46:52):
several years ago, but October the three. They were climbing
that tree like crazy. And those black gums produce a
lot more asked than I thought they would. I mean
they produce a lot. I mean if you were just
to collect the amount of berries that some of them
can produce, I think we'd be pretty surprised. And the
cool thing about black gum too is that you know,
(47:13):
you might get on a white oak flat and there
might be a hundred and fifty white oaks within a
hundred yards of you. I don't know. Black gum are
are not gonna necessarily grow in groves like that, you like,
they'll just be like and I'm not saying they won't
be three or four together, but there don't seem to
be as concentrated. So if you find one that's really good,
(47:37):
they can be good. Yeah. I inadvertently, on a piece
of property that I hunted several years ago, I had
inadvertently put a bait barrel right next to a big,
mature black gum. And while I was baiting, you know,
a couple of weeks prior to the season. This was
back when it opened October one. Excuse me, I noticed that, Man,
(48:00):
they're just tearing up this tree. And then it just
dawned on me to look up. Oh it's a big
black oh there. And yeah, through berries that year, and
I think they were eating more out of the tree
than they were out of the barrels. It's uh. And
for those of you who don't know what we're talking
about black gums species, if you look across the landscape
(48:21):
in the late summer, real early fall, just prior to
you know, when late off or well, i'd say early
to mid September, look across the landscape, and some of
those very first trees you see that are starting to
turn red are black gums gum trees. So you know,
(48:41):
if you they turned a little earlier, they turned a
little earlier than hold their berries something else. Yeah, they'll
hold their berries after their leaves are gone, because sometimes
I'll stay on there for a good while if the
bears don't strip them all up. So you know, if
you're scouting public land or something like that, and it's
(49:02):
mid September, you know, and you start to see a
few trees kind of start turning. Take notice of the
ones they're starting starting to turn red or orange. Could
be huge trees talking about you know, diameter on a
lot of these big mature gum trees. One time, Myron,
(49:24):
I've never done it. It's what I've wanted to do it,
but to shoot a bear out of a tree. And
one time I've actually only seen with my eyes one
time in Arkansas a bear climb a white oak. But
it was it was and uh, I was sitting kind
(49:46):
of on this kind of on the top of this ridge,
and so you know, the ridge dropped off pretty quickly
on both sides of me, and so I was you know,
if you were just looking out straight, you were seeing
the tops of oak trees about fifty sixty yards away.
You of things closer you could see the whole trunks. Well,
I'm sitting there and I hear what sounds like a
two pound gray squirrel scratching on the bark of a tree.
(50:09):
And I look over there and above the horizon rises
this bear. And you know, you know how they climb,
I mean they use their front legs and pushed down
and they kind of jump and catch the tree. And man,
he just comes up out of the horizon, going to
the top of this wide oak. And I had my
traditional bow, and I knew he was gonna be distracted.
(50:31):
It's a great opportunity to shoot one. I mean, I
knew he was distracted up in that tree. I pretty
much just grabbed my bow and just went straight towards him.
And Uh, I kind of I didn't chicken I want.
I wanted to say I chickened out. I didn't chicken out.
I just I was If I had it to do
over again, I would have just not even thought and
(50:51):
just gone. I got about thirty yards from him and
started a stalk real slow, and he came down the tree,
but as quick as he went up. Uh. But if
he had has stayed up that tree, I mean, I
was just gonna slip right under it. I should have
not worried about trying to be stealthy though, because he
was breaking. He was just making a racket in anyway.
(51:12):
When he hit the ground, I'm about twenty yards from him,
and uh. This is where bears are funny on public
land in areas where they're not used to seeing people.
Is that bear saw me and didn't spook like a
deer would have. Like he he saw me, but he
didn't get my wind, and he just started walking kind
(51:35):
of away from me, but kind of parallel to me.
And I started walking with him. I was literally walking
trying to find an opening, and he would kind of
crane his neck and look at me over his shoulder.
And I walked with him for probably twenty yards, and
he just kept getting further away from me, though, but
he never just bolted. Now, if he had smelled me,
I think he would have been gone. He just he
(51:57):
was just like, what is what are you doing here?
But now that was a unique experience that I've only
seen it once, but I've I've heard uh. I actually
heard it from a guy in Georgia. Uh that that's
a I mean, it was just random. That was a
guy from Georgia telling me that that's what they There's
that I know why it is Their season opens early
(52:19):
in September, and so they have a lot of climbing
bears because bears only climbing these oaks before they're falling,
and so our oaks are gonna be falling late September.
You know, Sometimes even that it's differs every year, but
especially the white oaks sometimes they'll The year that I
saw the climbing bear was actually October. I remember it
(52:41):
was October the one and so that the acrons were
still holding on enough that even by then they were
still climbing. I think that's pretty rare. Usually they're falling
a little bit before second to third week or so
of Septembers. Typically sometimes it will be the fourth week.
That's what you hope for. Yeah, those guys in Georgia
(53:05):
with a September bear season, they are hunting these bears
like squirrels. Yeah, I mean they make a ton of
racket when they climb that they do. You can imagine,
I mean, you know how much racket of gray squirrel
makes when you're running around in the bushes. Imagine if
they're up there breaking branches and breaking climbing up your wrists,
(53:25):
climbing up and down the tree. And uh. A friend
of mine was on the stand a couple of years ago.
He had had shot a bear on our lease, and
he just went out bow hunting deer the next morning
and he said, yeah, I was set there and this
awful racket back by me, and I looked back by
(53:46):
me about a hundred yards and it was a young
bear running up and down the tree. Run up one.
He'd be up there a while and he'd come down.
He'd go up the next one. He'd be there while
and he'd come down. And yeah, so they're incredibly agile,
and trees incredibly agile, but amazing. Well, Maron, Hey, thanks
(54:07):
a ton for coming and talking with me. It's my pleasure.
Always glad to talk bear. Man. I could have this
conversation with somebody like you all the time. We always
talked about something different. You know, the last podcast we did,
we talked about bears. But I think we've covered a
whole bunch of new stuff that's such biology stuff. Yeah,
(54:27):
this is kind of the behind the sinkings kind of
bear talks. Yeah, well, I really appreciate it, man, I'm
glad to be here. Thanks for having to keep the
wild places wild and that's where the bears live.
My name is Clay Nukeleman. I'm the host of the
Bear Hunting Magazine podcast. I'll also be your host into
the world of hunting the icon of the North American
Wilderness Fair. We'll talk about tactics, gear, conservation. We will
also bring you into some of the wildest country on
the planet Chasing Bear. We're back to bears and we've
(00:32):
got an expert in the global headquarters today. Myron means
that Arkansas Game and Fish Commission Large Carnivore Biologist, which
inside of that title fits versus American It's the black Bear.
Myron means is in the office and we continue to
dig into the nitty gritty of bears. We talked about
this year's bear season and have a great conversation. I
(00:54):
always love talking to biologists. You're gonna enjoy this podcast.
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(02:22):
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(03:50):
Bear Foundation. So that that that bear right there is
that bear and that picture this photograph I took right
where I killed that bear. Yes, he was. He was
laying right here. He had his head laid on that
(04:12):
rock right there, and I was I was up like
about sixty yards. Oh yeah, he I never saw it then,
I mean there was he was just sunbathing, but he
was laid on that rock and there was no there
was no dens that I could see anywhere, but anyway
(04:34):
he was, he was just laying I saw him roll over,
That's what I saw from sixty yards where I saw
his feet go up in there like this. And then
I just stalked down and was able to shoot him. Man,
it was a wild deal. And there was after I,
you know, kill the bear and was you know, getting
him out and stuff. We started seeing bear sign all
(04:55):
over that side of the mountain. I don't think he
was going much more than a couple hundred yards their direction,
but there was white oak akerns all over the mountain
that year, and uh yeah, I'll that that animal right
there to me. I'll never kill another animal that I'm
more proud of. I may kill another one that I'm
as proud of. Well that's a pretty unique experience. I mean,
(05:16):
you could hunt the rest of your life like a
banshee during bear season and never be able to replicate
that experience. Well, and what was cool was I was
after a bear, and I had been after one for
a long time. And I've learned something since that time, though,
and that is they're easier to kill in the mountains
(05:39):
in the early season. All my reasoning back then was,
you know, our bear season goes to November. I'm recording
by the way our our bear season Arkansas goes to November.
Was that in the late season, the leaves were all
gone and you could see good. Was kind of what
(06:00):
I thought, because you know, you start hunting a bear
in early October and Arkansas is gonna be hot. You
can't see more than forty fifty yards in the indirection.
But unfortunately, the bears are usually gone by the bears
are slow moving by then. And what I learned was
you're way better off with a bow and era in
(06:21):
the early season than you are. I mean, I I
ended up having more success right now is it's a
super tough time to call a bear. But hey, I'm
We're at the Global Headquarters and I've got uh, I've
got Myron Means with me. Myron works for the Arkansas
Game and Fish Commission. He is a large carnivore biologist.
And you've been on the podcast before. I have uh,
(06:42):
first time of the Global Headquarters. Of the first time
to the Global Headquarters. Man, I love it. This is
a really nice place. Well you, of all people could
probably appreciate some of these Arkansas bears hanging in here.
Um and uh now really appreciate you coming up. So
you um being a large carnivore biologists. You were the
(07:04):
bear biologists and your name changed. And we're gonna talk
about this at a later time more in depth, but
large carnival biologists. What else does that entail? Mountain lions?
Mountain lions. Uh, that's pretty incredible, And we're intentionally not
talking about that for because we will at some point.
(07:25):
But black bears, you what what trends did you see?
I've honestly not paid a ton of attention this year
to the quotas and different things. Uh, what what's the
bear season in Arkansas have been? Like? Bear season in
Arkansas this year is, Uh, without a doubt, it's going
(07:47):
to be a record harvest year. And that is solely
attributed to the fact that we raised the bears on
one quota, which is the Ozarks quota. We raised the
bears on one quote from two hundred and fifty to
four hundred or five hundred total, four hundred of archery
and fifty momsloader fifty modern gun. But it's a cumulative quota.
(08:11):
So that means when muzzload season comes in, you add
fifty more bears to the four hundred. When modern guns
season starts, you add another fifty bears, and and so
the fifty stack on top of the four hundred, stacked
on top of the four fifty. So it's a cumulative
total total. And I think a lot of people didn't
(08:32):
really understand that this year. Will you will you break
you just did break it down, but will you break
it down even slower? Like so, archery season starts the
fourth Saturday in September. Well, I mean for the foreseeable
future in Arkansas, if you're wondering about when you need
to take vacation or something like that, just look on
the calendars for the next few years. Anyway, archery season
(08:55):
will coincide with dear archery season, which is for the
foreseeable future probably going to be the fourth Saturday in September. Uh,
the muzzleoad season will begin the third Saturday in October,
and the modern gun season will usually start the second
(09:16):
Saturday in November, and the Saturday prior to that is
going to be a youth modern gun season. So the
first Saturday and November is going to be a youth weekend.
Second Saturday and said November is going to be the
modern gun deer and bear seasons. Yeah, that's uh, that's
just kind of the way we've we've set the same
(09:38):
framework for the foreseeable future to coincide deer season with
bear season. I mean, if people are going to be
out there bear hunting, they can deer hunt. If they're
gonna be deer hunting, they can bear hunts. It really
is a great opportunity. So tell me how the quota
works with archery. So archery season starts, and first of all,
there's there's two main bear zones in Arkansas. Zone one,
(10:00):
which is Ozark zone that's correct. Zone two, which would
be the Washtall No no quota in zone two. No,
you know, we kind of figured out several years ago
that because of the landownership and the way the wash
Tall Zone is laid out, bear Zone two is laid out,
you have a big contiguous block of public land, which
(10:21):
is the Ozark National Forest. That's kind of the questionall
excuse me, Washtaw National Forest. Uh, it's kind of the
core nucleus of that bear population. And uh, there's bear
outside the Washtaw National Forest, but the National Forest acts
as a nucleus. And because there's not a lot of
private land interspersed within that contiguous block, a lot of
(10:45):
those bears aren't really susceptible to being harvested, say over
Bay over something like that. So it's really kind of
a self limiting situation. Regardless of you know, what we
do in zone one, they're typically gonna harvest kind of
the same amount of bears about every year. So. Yeah,
(11:08):
So so zone one has the quota and um so
the quote, so the archery quota, what is how much?
Uh it was two hundred and fifty This year, we
raised it to UH four hundred, and that seems like
a substantial jump, and it was a substantial jump. But
(11:30):
because the way we framed our regulation process, we can
only recommend regulations every other year now. UH. We used
to be able to recommend every year so we could
change them, you know, we could take a baby step
this year and then a baby step the year after.
But the way it's set up now is we can
(11:51):
only propose every other year, and last year we weren't
able to adjust it up. So this year was kind
of a little bit of a makeup from not being
able to adjust it last year. And so what that
would mean would be archery hunters could kill up to
four hundred bears and before the season closed. So the season,
(12:11):
you know, in theory, they could kill four hundred bears
and three days in the season would close and it
wouldn't open back up again until muzzload season, when you
added fifty more bears to that quota, and if they shot,
uh say, if they shot fifty bears during the muzzload
season uh by Monday, then the bear season would close
(12:37):
again the following Monday, after the opening weekend of muzzload,
and it would not open again until the youth weekend
of modern gun, which would add fifty more bears starting
at that point. Uh. It kind of confused people a
little bit this year because it's it's a cumulative quota,
(12:58):
and uh, they did not made the quota this year
with archery. Uh. I think when we went into muzzload season.
I'd have to go back and look at the numbers,
but I think we were sitting somewhere around three hundred
eighty bears maybe when muzzleload season started, so we hadn't
met the quota. But when that opening day of muzzlold
(13:19):
season hits, those fifty bears were added to the previous
four hundred quota, So we could have killed seventy bears, right.
So instead of you know, the quota being hit, or
instead of saying, well, we got twenty more bears with
archery we can kill and you can kill fifty with muzzloader,
that just confuses. That just muddies the water. So the
(13:42):
easiest thing to do is say, okay, it was four
hundred bears up until the opening day of muzzload season,
and then that adds fifty more bears, so now the
quote is four hundred and fifty and because you know,
any season in Arkansas you can with a lesser weapon.
So when muzzload season closed nine days later, the quota
(14:07):
was still four hundred and fifty bears, but you could
continue to hunt with archer archer. That makes sense and
so we uh so basically as a management decision that
you guys made was, hey, we can take out five
hundred bears out of Arkansas. And so where do we
stand right now? Today's November, Yes, November twenty three in
(14:29):
our zone one total right now stands at four hundred
forty nine, four forty nine fifty one more bears until
November three. And I bet, I bet they won't kill them.
Do you think they will? I don't think they will really,
since um, I'd have to go back and look at
the day to day. But I think when when youth
(14:51):
modern gun season started, I believe we were at four
hundred and maybe twenty really, so only twenty bears got
killed eat. Yeah, with the modern gun and the opening
weekend of deer season, that just tells you a lot
about bear activity because it was a ton of guys
(15:12):
hunting National Forest with a bear tag in their pocket.
In Arkansas, everybody that's got a sportsman's license, which is
our sportsman's license. I think that's what it's called. You
get turkey tags, deer tags, you get a bear tag.
So in Arkansas you don't have to go buy no
specific bear tag. Everybody's got a bear tag. And I
(15:33):
would I bet of Arkansas deer hunters would shot a
bear if they saw it. You think, so, I mean
there's probably add there's an odd guy that might be like,
I'm not gonna especially if they knew, you know, the
season was still open and everything. So yeah, but you
know they're probably not going to meet the quota. Uh.
(15:54):
Today was today. This year was a really lean year
for mass availability. There was not a lot of masts
on the ground. Uh and uh, I think a lot
of the bears started turning in, especially the pregnant females,
probably the salves. They probably were starting to uh enter
(16:14):
the dance as early as late October, I think, so
I'll do. And you know, you can tell by the
way it trickled in through the youth gun season uh
and the opening of the deer gun season the adults season.
You can just tell. I mean one or one bear
checked every day, or one or two bears checked every day.
(16:35):
You can tell when it's like that they're just not
out on the landscape. Well, that's what's so interesting, always
has been to me, and a lot of people don't understand,
is that, you know, our our winters are relatively mild
compared to especially north of us. But these bears are
dinning based upon food availability. And then the females are
(16:59):
obligate dinners, which means, and these are all words I've
probably learned from you, myron Um, obligate dinners meaning they're
the only bear that actually has to den because there
they have their cubs and their reproductive cycle takes place
when they're in the den. But if there was a
bunch of mass crop on the ground, the bears would
be more active, they would be they'd be staying out,
(17:20):
and it's there. It's really kind of an issue of
energy dynamics with bears. I tell people all the time,
bears don't den in response to cold weather, because they
certainly don't. We've we've tracked females in February, uh, doing
den checks on them when they're laying on top of
the ground with four inches of snow covering them and
(17:41):
two cubs sitting under their belly. I mean, the cold
is not a factor with bears. It's food availability. So
you know, if they fed up, had a good late
summer and early fall, and they're really fat, the pregnant
females are going to enter the den cycle and they're
gonna stay. Um. If there's enough food on the landscape,
(18:02):
it may push their entrance into that den cycle a
little later. Instead of being laid October, it maybe mid November. Uh.
Females with year leans or cubs of that year, uh,
you know, they'll stay out later. If they're not going
to be in an energy deficit finding food walking around
(18:24):
all day, then they'll stay out like that. That's a
good way to say it. That's a good biological term.
I'm gonna put my repertoire and energy deficit. So they're
going out there, they're burning calories, pounding the mountain trying
to find food. If they're not getting as many calories
as they're expending, they're going to sleep. Is that right?
That's right? If it's not worth If if they end
(18:46):
up at an energy deficit, then there's no point. I
was calculated that way. I would stay home and play golf, man,
I am had a massive energy I have. I have
had a massive energy deficit this year because I have
expended a lot of calories. I need to be at
(19:07):
an energy deficit because I put on a little too
much weight. But it, uh you know, and it it
progressively gets less I guess, um less specific or less important.
When you move to males. You know, males, uh you know,
they're not hard dinners like females, and uh you know,
(19:31):
in any given warm day, uh, a male is likely
to emerge from a den, walk around, sniff around a
little bit. And because they're not locked into den really
for a specific amount of time with either year leans
or cubs that are being born, I mean, you know,
a lot of times males will emerge from the den,
(19:51):
usually by late January early February. If it's really really cold,
you know, they'll just tuck in and sleep it off.
But if they're all acorns on the landscape in December,
sure a lot of males will get out and forward
even in December. You know, this is really telling to me.
I've bear hunted in East Tennessee with some houndsman, and
(20:14):
they've got the super late bear seasons that go into
I think the Tennessee bear season and it may be
structured different, but for the region we were in, their
season went to December, and those guys find bear tracks
every day, and it's of time males. Yeah, I was
gonna say it's probably set that way to specifically target males.
(20:38):
I mean, if they still have a quote a fairly
young population or you know, they're still trying to grow
their population, yeah, they're gonna do things to target males. Yeah.
And it blows my line because you know, over in
the Appalachians there, I mean they're at some hot, pretty
fairly high elevations, at least compared to here. I mean,
they got mountains six thousand foot tall, and it's cold
(21:02):
in late November and December, I mean like single digits sometimes,
and these guys load up their hounds and rig bears
and strike a track and uh run bears and and
do real well. I mean and it's and it's they'll
tell you. I mean they're paying attention to the nuances
between the different years. I've only been over there once
(21:22):
with them during that time period, and I mean we
ran bears every day. I mean you wouldn't have you
would have just thought bears were just up on their
feet like crazy, all males and uh but uh, I
think they would say there's years when it's not that good.
Maybe the year I was there was exceptionally good. I
don't know, but I mean, you know, if there's a
(21:43):
lot of masks, you know, I would say it's probably
going to determine a lot how the late summer and
fall was going into the season. You know, if the
bears are really really fat, have a lot of fat
on and then it just turns off really cold. Um,
you know that. I don't know, but that might be
(22:04):
a badge year I said. They're just like, hey, I'm
I'm just wonder how they like we gauge are energy
levels day to day. I feel like based upon whether
we're full or not, Like literally like if we've eaten
in our stomachs feel full. These bears are gauging their
(22:27):
understanding of their health and long term you know, ability
to survive based upon fat reserves. Have you ever heard
anybody talk about that? I would never have, But just
do you see what I'm saying? Because they're their belly
is not gonna be full of food, what's telling their brain?
What's Yeah? Yeah, it's it's almost like there's got to
be a different receptor that's like, hey, boys, we've got
(22:49):
plenty of fat. We're just gonna burn this today. Don't
worry about getting up and eating. Would say that those
are probably you know, physiological clues that they've evolved to
because it doesn't work that way with you even, does it.
It certainly doesn't work that way with me. But then again,
my life doesn't depend on finding an acorn for food.
(23:10):
So but yeah, it's kind of a fascinating deal. The
whole dynamics of you know, their physiology and the processes
they go through, you know, for den cycles is uh,
it's absolutely remarkable. And I mean you can tell it's
not something they just evolved into over a few generations.
I mean you're talking about millennia of evolution that is,
(23:34):
you know, and they have they have refined it to
the point of no other. Yeah, man, if if that's
what's so interesting at looking at these animals from a
biological level and trying to understand even just the kind
of the small level of understanding that we probably really have,
(23:54):
it's incredible and and um, well, you know, for years
years in the scientific community, you know, bears, bears, weren't
category categorized as true hibernators. They were estivators, you know,
because they can arouse spontaneously, whereas true hibernators like groundhogs
(24:15):
would chocks, they can't. But because bears can arouse spontaneously,
they said, well, you know, they just don't exhibit some
of the traits of true hibernators, and um they've sent
The scientific community has since turned around and said, well,
you know, they are true hibernators in a sense, but
(24:39):
technically they're probably some of the most efficient hibernators in
the animal world because of the way they can They
can basically turn on and off, you know, their body
processes that allow them to go into this torpor and everything,
whereas a true hibernator can't. You know, they what So
(25:01):
you're you don't realize what you just said and how
it affected me because I have made a living myron
off correcting people. Every people that have listened to this
podcast have heard me harp on when people say it
bear hybridates, I go, no, no, no, no, they don't hybridate.
Bears hybrid So you're telling me this is wrong, Well,
(25:22):
technically in a true sense of the definition, you know,
of the word bears are not true hibernators, but they
certainly exhibit body processes that the true hubernators use. The
thing that makes them quote not a true hibernator in
the historic sense of the word, is the fact that
(25:45):
they can turn on and off those body processes that
define a true hibernator. Uh, they wake up, but son
of them. Yeah, basically means they can wake up right instantly.
They can arouse instantly, which they always do when we're
doing our den work. They always wake up. They always
(26:05):
know you're there. Uh, their motor their muscles aren't at
a their body temperature never does fall at a low
rate like a true hibernator does. But their heart rate
at things like that will lower to a great degree
what it is, but their body temperature doesn't lower that much.
(26:28):
So there's some things that could categorize hyperation in short periods. Maybe, Okay,
I see what you're saying, but the world he is
not wrapped. I think I still got some credibility. It's
pretty it's pretty fascinating, you know, reading in the literature
when they talk about well, you know, bears aren't true hibernators,
but they're probably the most efficient hibernators, efficient in the
(26:49):
animal world because they're able to just turn it on
and turn it off almost at will. Well, so it's
pretty remarkable. But when you think about what's happened ecologically
across North America and you see how successful bears are
being right now, it's pretty incredible. I mean they're they're
(27:12):
opportunistic omnivorees that just have survival built down into this
like incredible efficiency, like you really do. And really, you know,
we've I guess we've kind of found out all across um,
you know, North America that really all bears really need
is pretty good habitat and uh, you know, they're they're
(27:35):
gonna they're gonna thrive. I mean, you know, they're not
gonna just boom like some other animals will on lands
and yeah, like a white tailer or even kyo. They're
not going to adapt to urban environments only. But we
have found out that, you know, because bears are opportunistic omnivorees, man,
(27:56):
just give them a little bit of good habitat and
they'll do fine. Um, I want to I guess this
is a good this is a good place to tell
you this story. So I saw a bear because we're
talking about like this is a difficult time to hunt bears,
sea bears. It's bear season in Arkansas, and uh I
(28:16):
I saw a bear two days ago in National Forest. Yeah.
When you told me that, I said, man, that was
your pretty fortunate. What was while is it broke all
the rules. It broke all the rules of my of
what I mean, it was the I was deer hunting, man.
I mean, I it was the last thing I expected
to see. I knew I was in good bear country.
(28:38):
I mean any other time of the year, I would
have thought, yeah, there's a chance I could see a bear.
But there was no bear sign. I mean, like I'd
been over that country pretty good and uh no bear sign,
didn't have any bear pictures. I had a few cameras
out and uh man, I did an all day hunt.
(29:00):
You know, I got in after daylight just because I
walked back in there. But setting a tree for nine
hours in the middle of the day, I don't know
if that had anything to do with it. I mean,
you know, it was the warmest part of the day,
but it was at eleven fifty two. I looked down
in uh salt bear, a good sized bear bar and
I can't. I won't say it was a big one,
(29:24):
but considering that it was still up and it was alone,
I mean, I would assume it was a male. I mean,
probably a pretty good chance it was a male. And uh,
it just looked to me. It looked like a two
fifty pound bear, you know, I could tell it had
a thick, nice coat. And uh, it was across a
boundary line that I could not There was a property
(29:46):
line there. I was on public land, but it was
anyway I couldn't. I couldn't shoot the bear, which was
crazy because that it was I wasn't there because of
the property change. But anyway, it was in a place
that I couldn't shoot the bear. But it was man.
I mean, I'll take that memory and like chalk it
(30:09):
down as almost the equivalent of a of taking an animal.
I mean, because I can count on well, I'm starting
to have a few more encounters these days, but very
very few times do I actually see a bear on
public land. Like you know, I've killed some that way.
But it's tough, man, and it's a it's a great man.
(30:31):
Was kind of built especially on years like this year,
you know, when mass availability was very lean, uh, you know,
and and that kind of it's I said, you were
fortunate because I've been watching the harvest, you know, updating
the harvest totals every day, and I could tell by
the end of muzzload season, which was twenty something of October,
(30:54):
I could tell by then that, you know, harvest rates
for I mean down to just a can't if you
one or two bears a day maybe something like that.
And you're talking about, you know, all the hunters across
the landscape, you know, it's uh, there's a lot of
deer hunters out there. And when you're only harvesting one
(31:14):
maybe two bears across all zone one, you know, that's
just your translates to me, the bears just aren't out
So I knew it was getting pretty lean, uh, you know,
going into the modern gun season and everything else. In
the course of harvest reports show evidence of that. It's
just bears just aren't out there. Man, when the food
(31:35):
is not there, they just rather turn in that. I
must have been pretty close to that bears den I figure, so,
you know, and a lot of times in the Wash Toalls.
What we've seen in the Wash Toalls is probably thirty
or forty percent of the bears that din just make
day nests or make a nest on top of the ground,
And that's different than those arcs. Yeah. Do you think
(31:56):
it's because of the rock cavity availability. I think so.
I'm still formations are a lot more prevalent in the
ozarks than they are in the wash of dolls. And
as I said before, you know, bears don't really they
don't really need, you know, to be out of the element,
so to speak. That makes zero sense to me. I
(32:17):
mean a bear cut big a hole, he can. I
mean there's not as many rock cliffs and the wash dolls,
I mean, there's very much less. But it wouldn't be
hard for a bear to find up crevice and a rock,
or a dugout under a tree, a tree that's fallen
over and just dig out under it, which is what
most of the cavities are in the wash dolls are dugouts.
(32:39):
And then but you know, you have a fair piece
of bears that just scratch up a bunch of leaves
and grass and sit right on top of the ground.
Now they're they're gonna be chances are there going to
be in the middle of a thicket or something some
really really thick area and they'll just scratch it out,
making big birden extraight on top the ground. That's crazy.
(33:01):
So I figured you were probably pretty close to this
bears den. I mean, you know, they may limit their
activity to maybe an hour or two a day, you know.
So yeah, well it was a I've made it like
a like a holiday if I see a bear in
national forest. I mean really, I I was just thrilled
(33:22):
to see that bear, and it was cool because I
wasn't expecting the last thing I was expecting. So that's
always a good That's a good day in the mountains
when you see a bear. Uh. Um. So if you
guys up the quota, that must mean that our bears
are doing good. You know, they really are. They're doing great. Uh,
They're doing great in the Washtawls. They're doing great in
(33:44):
the Ozarks. I mean, you know, we still have bears
moving into northeast Oklahoma. We still have bears moving in
the south central Missouri, you know, presumably expanding out from
our Ozark population. And uh, you know, we've known for
a few years that we needed to start throttling up
(34:06):
on our harvest to kind of maybe stabilize those populations,
and uh, you know, we we were probably behind a
little bit on you know, the increases that we've made,
so we made a little bit bigger jump. We think
the population can certainly was stand it. Uh. So you know,
we'll see how it rocks along at five hundred bears
(34:29):
for a couple of years and kind of see how
the population responds. And you know, we may at some
point in the future have to back it off a
little bit, but I would be willing to bet we're
probably gonna be fine. Yeah. Man, it feels like we
kill a lot of bears in Arkansas at five hundred bears.
But what it puts into perspective for me, like a
(34:50):
lot of these uh, like the Great Lakes States, Wisconsin, Michigan.
I mean I think Michigan kills three thousand bears a year. Uh.
I think Pennsylvania, I think they killed nine thousand. Incredible
nine thousand something like that typically I saw. But I
mean they harvest more bears than we probably have in
(35:12):
our entire state. So you know, but I mean this
year so far today we're up to six hundred forty eight,
which surpasses our previous record harvest year. Of five hundred
and thirty three. Now how could we Okay, then I
don't understand the quota. We've killed six hundred bears this year. Yeah,
but that's bears on one bear zone, two bears on
(35:33):
five bears one five bears. You. So, how many bears
are they killed in the wash tows this year? Hundred
ninety four, which is going to be a record year
for the wash tolls as well. Hundred and ninety four.
I'll be doron okay, that is yeah, I think so
we're a hundred and one. Uh, we're a hundred and
(35:55):
above our previous harvest record statewide. Yeah, today we'll probably
have I don't know we'll break six d and fifty
but maybe people killed. Yeah, well that's that's awesome. Now, Mayer,
and you're a bear hunter. You do some bear hunter? Yeah,
tell me about y'all y'all season. Well, I'm a little
I don't know. I don't know if I want to
(36:16):
tell to me. I hunt, I hunt there. Uh, I
hunt on private land. We have a lease, and I
have some really good friendships that I've developed from people
in Texas and people in Nebraska, and we share hunts
back and forth and uh, we're in the least together
(36:38):
and uh uh I usually because our lease, you know,
is about forty minutes from my house. Uh, I usually
kind of take care of most of debating. And we
have some really really great landowners to have some nice
lodging facilities on the least for us, and we're able
to just kind of have the run of the place speak.
(37:01):
And uh so we had we ended up having seven
hunters this year because one of the one of my friends,
instead of him hunting, he brought his eleven year old
son and his eighteen year old daughter and he wanted
to put them on the stand ins tod him hunting.
(37:23):
And so out of seven hunters we were, we harvested
five bears out of our camp this year. And uh
one of the guys that chose not to harvest bears,
he actually had several opportunities and some younger bears. Uh
he had a golden opportunity to a collared female and uh,
(37:46):
we can't know, we can't harvest the collared bear, but
he got some really good pictures over it was a
great expd you know what bear it was? I do
know which bear it was. Unfortunately, Uh, this particular bears
collar has quit work and we lost her last year
and uh, there was no reason because it was a
brand new collar, but it was some type of malfunction
(38:08):
and it has to be that bear. But she doesn't
have a working collar. But I know she was den
probably pretty close in that area, So I plan on
catching her this spring. She'll have cubs with her, I suspect,
so she's gonna be pretty close and I'll catch her
this spring when she comes out. You have one of
those orange collars, bright orange collars. Yeah, I'm pretty sure
(38:33):
that's the bear. It had to be. And I went
in with my telemetery gear when we were baiting, and uh,
she was pretty consistent at a couple of the different barrels,
and I knew she had to be right there, and
I ran through all my frequencies and didn't have them
because of the proximity of where she's at. It could
really only be one of them, one bear that I
(38:53):
called ago. So yeah, but yeah, so really, I mean,
when you break it down, I'm the only person that
didn't have a chance or harvest the bear out of
our camp was the bear bottle? Isn't that the way
it always works? The short end? But you know, it
(39:15):
was a great year. I didn't have too much heartburn
about it. I never do. I mean, anytime you can
you can feel five tags out of a bear camp,
it was a really good year. So yeah, I was
really happy with that. So that's good. But it was
it was a good year. I mean, it was really
it was a perfect year to set up for, you know,
(39:36):
for baiting on private land. And really, I mean, if
you had the right circumstances, it was really a perfect
year for someone to hunt public land too. And you
know that's something that you and I have talked about
in the past about public land bear hunting, you know,
hunting bear specifically on public land. And I have people
tell me all the time, they said, man, you know
(39:57):
it's well, you know you have bear hunt on private land,
you've got a good lease. It's easy. Well, it's not
really easy. It's never a sure thing. It is a
lot of hard work. And I think a lot of
people don't believe me when I tell them this, But
you know, given the right circumstances in the year with
sparse mass availability, you know, really, if you can find
(40:19):
that one white oak flat or that one white oak
on a flat, that's really throwing good mass that year.
You know that can be as effective, by far and
away as effective as a bait site. It can actually
be more effective because if you've baited for any length
of time, you know that when the white oaks get ripe,
(40:43):
all the bears leave the bait sites and go eat
the white oaks. So uh and uh really, you know,
I just I tell people, if you can hit, if
the mass of ailability is right, when it's kind of
lean or sparse. Uh uh. And you go out and
you find those natural bait sites, those white oaks, those
(41:04):
white oak flats that you see all the sign app
that you would at abit barrel, they can be just
as effective, if not more effective than the bait barrel.
And you tell them what you told me about time
theory on you know, spend my theory on time spend.
I tell people, I said, you know, they said, well
baiting is easy, Well it's not. I mean, if if
(41:25):
it's done right, if it's done the way, I'm gonna
do it every year. And you count all the time,
all the hours you spend going to your lease or
your land, clearing, shooting lanes preseason, maybe moving stands preseason, gathering,
gathering Oh my gosh, if I could tell you the
(41:47):
amount of hours that I spent opening bread packages and
everything else going to get debait. I mean, and if
you're baiting on a you know, a real regimented bait
sched jewel once every two or three or four days,
and you know it's it is a lot of time.
(42:08):
I mean, you're gonna spend hours and hours and hours
and hours doing it, right, And uh so, I mean,
you know, if you spent the equivalent amount of time
serveying a public area that you knew pretty well and
really fine tuned, you know your knowledge of that area,
(42:29):
I have no doubt in my mind that you could
successfully hunt bear on natural bait sites just as effectively
as you can on uh man made basis. I think
that's a good a good perspective and a good way
to look at it, is that. Yeah, And I think
you're right. I think if you if you really spent
that much time, here's the problem. Here's the mental challenge
(42:50):
with doing that is when you're baiting bears, you're seeing them,
you're getting pictures of them. And let's say you've got
thirty hours, Like if you did the math, you know,
you're like two hours here, two hours, so you got
thirty Well you're gonna go put thirty hours you know,
in the stand or on the ground hunting. And for
those thirty hours, you're probably not gonna see very many bears,
(43:13):
but you might kill one. That's what I always say
about public land hunting is that you can't be validated
emotionally by seeing game. I mean really like as hunters,
like we come back from a hunt and they're like,
did you see anything? And if you're like, no, I
didn't see anything. I mean, it just takes the energy
and dry. You know, you think you're doing something wrong. Man,
(43:33):
with these public land bears, you've got to And this, honestly,
this is what I love about it, Myron's I think
it makes you a better hunter all across your hunting
is you can't be validated by seeing game, because I'll
the times I've been successful in public land hunting for
long periods of time without seeing anything, but then it happened.
(43:56):
I mean, just you know, so you're not gonna see
ten bears, you're gonna see you you might see one. Yeah,
and uh so it really makes you. I think it
makes you a better hunter. I think it does It
certainly makes you a more patient hunter. I think it
allowed It makes you trust your instincts better when you're
(44:21):
seeing the sign there but not seeing the critter. Uh,
you know, you have a tendency to kind of doubt,
well maybe it's moved on or whatever. But classic example, Uh,
we went in I think it was a weekend before
the season started. We went in, Uh, some of the
guys and myself went in and moved stand. One of
(44:41):
the stands, it was a ladder stand, was in a
big white oak. And when we got there to move
the stand, there were white oak liums, fresh white oak
liums busted all over, laying all over the ground, acorn
shrap and I'll just lay in everywhere, you know. And
we got to look in and looking up in this
big white oak and yeah there were white there were
(45:03):
green limbs bent over and broke up in it, claw
marks all up and down the tree. I mean, you know,
that is a classic. That's a bait site right there.
I guarantee if a guy you know, found that on
public land and it was right before the season, he
could come and hunt that specific tree. And it's not
(45:26):
like they're just gonna be nocturnal. You know, bears aren't
nocturnal that time of year. They're feeding every available hour
they can. So yeah, that specific tree. If I would
have found that tree on September, yeah, you can bet
I would have been hunting that specific tree. You know,
I've seen a black gum like that on multiplicasions. Black
(45:48):
gum is a really big one, and a lot of
people don't realize that that black gums throw these little
grape looking berries and uh man, I tell you what,
before the acorn to get right, they will blister black gums. Yeah,
I mean just blister them. Yeah, they love them. It's amazing. Uh.
I would have never paid much attention to black gum
(46:10):
until I had just found a couple that looked like
it looked like a tornado dropped out of the sky
directly above this black gum. I mean I saw one
one time that I bet the bear had tore out
of the limbs out of that tree. I mean it
had to have affected the life cycle of that tree.
And uh, I mean it was like a it looked
(46:31):
like a telephone pole that somebody had just I mean
just had wore it out. And there were eight piles
of bear scout underneath that black gum, and probably every
inch of the tree was at claw marks and there
was still black gun berries all in that tree. That
was on October the third, Uh, not this year is
(46:52):
several years ago, but October the three. They were climbing
that tree like crazy. And those black gums produce a
lot more asked than I thought they would. I mean
they produce a lot. I mean if you were just
to collect the amount of berries that some of them
can produce, I think we'd be pretty surprised. And the
cool thing about black gum too is that you know,
(47:13):
you might get on a white oak flat and there
might be a hundred and fifty white oaks within a
hundred yards of you. I don't know. Black gum are
are not gonna necessarily grow in groves like that, you like,
they'll just be like and I'm not saying they won't
be three or four together, but there don't seem to
be as concentrated. So if you find one that's really good,
(47:37):
they can be good. Yeah. I inadvertently, on a piece
of property that I hunted several years ago, I had
inadvertently put a bait barrel right next to a big,
mature black gum. And while I was baiting, you know,
a couple of weeks prior to the season. This was
back when it opened October one. Excuse me, I noticed that, Man,
(48:00):
they're just tearing up this tree. And then it just
dawned on me to look up. Oh it's a big
black oh there. And yeah, through berries that year, and
I think they were eating more out of the tree
than they were out of the barrels. It's uh. And
for those of you who don't know what we're talking
about black gums species, if you look across the landscape
(48:21):
in the late summer, real early fall, just prior to
you know, when late off or well, i'd say early
to mid September, look across the landscape, and some of
those very first trees you see that are starting to
turn red are black gums gum trees. So you know,
(48:41):
if you they turned a little earlier, they turned a
little earlier than hold their berries something else. Yeah, they'll
hold their berries after their leaves are gone, because sometimes
I'll stay on there for a good while if the
bears don't strip them all up. So you know, if
you're scouting public land or something like that, and it's
(49:02):
mid September, you know, and you start to see a
few trees kind of start turning. Take notice of the
ones they're starting starting to turn red or orange. Could
be huge trees talking about you know, diameter on a
lot of these big mature gum trees. One time, Myron,
(49:24):
I've never done it. It's what I've wanted to do it,
but to shoot a bear out of a tree. And
one time I've actually only seen with my eyes one
time in Arkansas a bear climb a white oak. But
it was it was and uh, I was sitting kind
(49:46):
of on this kind of on the top of this ridge,
and so you know, the ridge dropped off pretty quickly
on both sides of me, and so I was you know,
if you were just looking out straight, you were seeing
the tops of oak trees about fifty sixty yards away.
You of things closer you could see the whole trunks. Well,
I'm sitting there and I hear what sounds like a
two pound gray squirrel scratching on the bark of a tree.
(50:09):
And I look over there and above the horizon rises
this bear. And you know, you know how they climb,
I mean they use their front legs and pushed down
and they kind of jump and catch the tree. And man,
he just comes up out of the horizon, going to
the top of this wide oak. And I had my
traditional bow, and I knew he was gonna be distracted.
(50:31):
It's a great opportunity to shoot one. I mean, I
knew he was distracted up in that tree. I pretty
much just grabbed my bow and just went straight towards him.
And Uh, I kind of I didn't chicken I want.
I wanted to say I chickened out. I didn't chicken out.
I just I was If I had it to do
over again, I would have just not even thought and
(50:51):
just gone. I got about thirty yards from him and
started a stalk real slow, and he came down the tree,
but as quick as he went up. Uh. But if
he had has stayed up that tree, I mean, I
was just gonna slip right under it. I should have
not worried about trying to be stealthy though, because he
was breaking. He was just making a racket in anyway.
(51:12):
When he hit the ground, I'm about twenty yards from him,
and uh. This is where bears are funny on public
land in areas where they're not used to seeing people.
Is that bear saw me and didn't spook like a
deer would have. Like he he saw me, but he
didn't get my wind, and he just started walking kind
(51:35):
of away from me, but kind of parallel to me.
And I started walking with him. I was literally walking
trying to find an opening, and he would kind of
crane his neck and look at me over his shoulder.
And I walked with him for probably twenty yards, and
he just kept getting further away from me, though, but
he never just bolted. Now, if he had smelled me,
I think he would have been gone. He just he
(51:57):
was just like, what is what are you doing here?
But now that was a unique experience that I've only
seen it once, but I've I've heard uh. I actually
heard it from a guy in Georgia. Uh that that's
a I mean, it was just random. That was a
guy from Georgia telling me that that's what they There's
that I know why it is Their season opens early
(52:19):
in September, and so they have a lot of climbing
bears because bears only climbing these oaks before they're falling,
and so our oaks are gonna be falling late September.
You know, Sometimes even that it's differs every year, but
especially the white oaks sometimes they'll The year that I
saw the climbing bear was actually October. I remember it
(52:41):
was October the one and so that the acrons were
still holding on enough that even by then they were
still climbing. I think that's pretty rare. Usually they're falling
a little bit before second to third week or so
of Septembers. Typically sometimes it will be the fourth week.
That's what you hope for. Yeah, those guys in Georgia
(53:05):
with a September bear season, they are hunting these bears
like squirrels. Yeah, I mean they make a ton of
racket when they climb that they do. You can imagine,
I mean, you know how much racket of gray squirrel
makes when you're running around in the bushes. Imagine if
they're up there breaking branches and breaking climbing up your wrists,
(53:25):
climbing up and down the tree. And uh. A friend
of mine was on the stand a couple of years ago.
He had had shot a bear on our lease, and
he just went out bow hunting deer the next morning
and he said, yeah, I was set there and this
awful racket back by me, and I looked back by
(53:46):
me about a hundred yards and it was a young
bear running up and down the tree. Run up one.
He'd be up there a while and he'd come down.
He'd go up the next one. He'd be there while
and he'd come down. And yeah, so they're incredibly agile,
and trees incredibly agile, but amazing. Well, Maron, Hey, thanks
(54:07):
a ton for coming and talking with me. It's my pleasure.
Always glad to talk bear. Man. I could have this
conversation with somebody like you all the time. We always
talked about something different. You know, the last podcast we did,
we talked about bears. But I think we've covered a
whole bunch of new stuff that's such biology stuff. Yeah,
(54:27):
this is kind of the behind the sinkings kind of
bear talks. Yeah, well, I really appreciate it, man, I'm
glad to be here. Thanks for having to keep the
wild places wild and that's where the bears live.
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