April 3, 2019 • 46 mins
On this episode of the Bear Hunting Magazine Podcast Clay Newcomb is joined by Ryan Greb and Kolby Morehead in an in-depth discussion regarding archery & rifle shot placement on bear. Most people come into bear hunting with a whitetail shot placement mentality, and there are many places where they just don't overlap. The guys discuss topics such as: organ anatomy, shooting 'middle of the middle', fat & hair, not shooting "low & tight", prioritizing getting two holes, blood trailing bears, equipment needs, fixed blade vs mechanical, pit blinds for bear, and kinetic energy versus momentum for evaluating penetration.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to the Sportsman's Nation podcast network powered by
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Outrageously Dependable. My name is Clay Nucoman. I'm the host
(00:27):
of the Bear Hunting Magazine podcast. I'll also be your
host into the world of hunting the icon of North
American wilderness. There, we'll talk about tactics, gear conservation who
will also bring you into some of the wildest country
on the planet. Chasing batter Welcome to the Bear Hunting
(00:54):
Magazine podcast. On this episode, we're talking about shot placed
on black bear. This is a very misunderstood topic and
we often relate in this podcast to ideology that people
are coming from an understanding of white tailed deer shot
placement and then coming into bear hunting and applying those
(01:16):
same principles, and there's several places where they just don't
totally cross over. I believe that this is probably one
of the most densely compacted pieces of information about shot
placement on black bear, probably around so you're gonna learn something.
Spring bear season is quickly approaching. Last podcast, we talked
about a very wide swath of information about spring bear hunting.
(01:41):
I wanted to make two quick corrections from the last episode.
Number one, there is no spring bear season in Nova Scotia.
There is a fall bear season. I had a listener
from Nova Scotia contact me to let me know that,
so I want to make that correction. Secondly, the only
Western state that we left out of the list that
(02:02):
has a spring bear hunt, it's Wyoming. Wyoming has a
quota hunt, and we listed all the other states except
for Wyoming. At the Global headquarters right now, we're working
on the May in June issue of Bear Hunting Magazine,
and we're also working on a new video that's gonna
(02:23):
be released sometime probably in the next week on our
YouTube channel about a brown bear hunt that Billy Moles did.
So we're having We're gonna have a new episode of
Bear Horizon out and the new issue of Bear Hunting
Magazine coming out soon. Thanks for checking this episode out.
You gonna enjoy it. Welcome to the Bear Hunting Magazine podcast.
(02:51):
We are at the Global headquarters of Bear Hunting magazine.
It is March the in We are going to have
a couple of episodes here where we're gonna just get
to the nitty gritty technical side of some very relevant
bear hunting related topics. The topic that we're gonna talk
(03:13):
about on this episode is shot placement on black Bear,
and we're gonna get into several different topics that are
highly relevant. But before we get into the episode, I
want to introduce who I've got with me here. I
have directly to my left, Ryan No greb Ryan greb
(03:35):
Ryan is Uh a long time good friend of mine.
And Ryan was killing bears while my mama was still
wiping my nose. It's true. Now Ryan is Ryan's traveled
with me all over Canada. But more than that, Ryan's
(03:58):
hunted in Arkansas for years. Ryan's been on the podcast before,
but he's he's hunted bears in Arkansas since well for
years and years, killed a lot of big bears, bow
hunted bears a lot, and so I consider Ryan an
expert for sure. So he's here. And then on my
right someone that you well, Kobe has been on this
(04:20):
podcast before. I've got Colby moorehead. Colby has is now
news to all of everybody. He's working full time for
Bear Hunting Magazine. So Kolbe is also a longtime friend
of mine that uh is now he's full time working
for Bear Hunting Magazine helping us with all kinds of stuff.
(04:41):
So if you ever call the global headquarters, you'll probably
talk to Colby. And Kolby is a bear hunter. He's
a new bear hunter, went on his first bear hunt
back in the fall and took a really nice bear.
And so we've got a good mix right here, and
that uh, we've we've got a lot of experience. But also, um,
you know, Kobe's new to bear hunting, so you might
(05:03):
have some questions or you might hear us talking to
might have some insight and something that somebody else might have.
I just feel sorry for him. What he is to
hang with you here in the office during every day,
all day, and he's right underneath the big bear over here.
You need to make him a cubicle over here where
you don't have to look at you like box him in. Yeah,
(05:24):
we can box him in. But well, hey, let's let's
jump right into this. And I'll kind of give the
precursor to why this is relevant. Most people in North America.
Most of the guys that are listening to this podcast
have been trained on white tail deer anatomy for shooting,
(05:44):
well for shooting any big game. We've been trained to
hunt ungulates, deer, elk, moose that all have a really
similar body structure. They have a similar bone structure, they
have a similar um anatomical or organ structure. But they
also have short hair, they don't have big layers of fat.
(06:05):
And so basically shooting a bear is different than shooting
and ungulate, and there's lots of different variables inside of
it that are important for a first time bear hunter
or even a veteran bear hunter. I mean, the truth
is that in most situations, and right would you agree
with this most situations, if you just took a deer
(06:26):
hunter out and didn't tell him anything, he could probably
go out and shoot a bear, I mean and not
have any problem. But in the finer tuned points of
bear hunting, and if you took that same guy, and
this is the way I would describe it, if you
took that same guy that was trained as a white
tail hunter and put him on ten bear hunts, I'm
(06:48):
gonna say three of those ten he's gonna mess up
simply because of lack of understanding of a few principles.
I mean, is that a good and is that a yeah?
You know, a bear postures constantly changing, you know, Yeah,
you're looking for that broadside shot more often than not.
(07:10):
I mean, dear, that's preferred to shot anyway, but a
lot of people pack the quartering away shots. But you know, bears,
the if you can get that broadside, that's usually money. Well,
let's start off by talking about bar anatomy. I read
a a article that was written very recently that was
circulating on uh Facebook, clicked on it. It was about
(07:34):
ten ten I think it was ten things about spring
bear hunting, and one of them was about shot placement.
And this this author said that bear organs are further
forward than a deer, which I want to quickly say
is exactly opposite of what I have found, not just
(07:55):
in what I've read, but we did the first year
Barrenny magazine we killed. We went up to Alberta and
we killed six bears in five days. We actually did
a knee cropsy on a bear where we took the
carcass with the all the internal organs inside and stripped
off the layers of rib or the stripped off the
(08:18):
rib meat so that you could see into the rib
cage and tried to determine like where the lungs would layout,
and man, we made some incredible diagrams that were in
Barrenning magazine. They're also online. And to make a short summary,
beare vitals are slightly further back than a white tail?
(08:38):
Would you agree with that? Right? So there, so let
me just say that is a big premise of black
bear shot placement and brown bear for that matter. The
vitals they're not it's not like they're just like in
the middle of the body, but they extend slightly further back.
(08:59):
I found um that the lungs of these bears went
all the way back to the very last rib, which
if you can imagine shooting a white tail at the
very last rib, you'd be pretty far back. You would
kill that, you'd kill the deer because you'd get liver.
But the lungs of I mean the very tip of
that long and I'm not saying that all the way
(09:22):
back at the last rib there was eight inches of lung.
That's what I'm saying. That the lungs are like oblong shaped.
You know, they're like they're like long and deep towards
the front of the animal, and they go back like this,
and so the back to the very last rib there
was a little bit of lung. So I'm not saying
that's where you want to hit them. The second part
(09:45):
of that, Kolbe has some experience with this, Kobe, you
really made a mistake by shooting the bear far back
on the first hunt. Ever with me, you were like
the prime target to just make an example out of,
but you got the right posture for it here. I'm
glad I could take on that for one. Oh man,
it was on video, it was all there. But for
whatever reason, and this perhaps is it has to do
(10:07):
with the the anatomical structure of the bear. But you
can shoot a bear further back than a white tail
and be okay. There was an article that we had
published a few years years ago called the Middle of
the Middle, which there are a lot of Canadian outfitters
that tell their clients to shoot a bear in the middle.
(10:30):
And I think the way it started out was they said, hey,
shoot the bear in the middle, and the client said,
what do you mean the middle? And the guy in
the outfitter goes the middle of the middle, I mean
straight up middle of the bear. And uh what this
article is written by a guy named Rob Nive, Saskatchewan
outfitter that I know, and uh he was taught that
(10:50):
by some other old outfitters. And man, when you shoot
in the middle of the middle, you have a lot
of room for error. And that's the whole point of it,
room for air. Now, I do not suggest I don't
like shooting them in the middle of the middle. I
like to go about four inches back towards the shoulder
from the middle of the middle. And when I say
(11:11):
the middle of the middle, I'm talking about the distance
between the front legs and the back legs. I'm not
including like the head of the bear, but like the
middle of the middle. I like to go about three
to four inches back towards the shoulder, so slightly further
back then then you would like try to heart shoot
(11:32):
a bear. And that's maybe the biggest thing that's different
about bear hunt bear hunting versus deer hunting is that
as deer hunters, we were always taught to try to
heart shoot the deer. Okay, which would be low and tight.
You don't want to do that with a bear. Do
you agree, Ryan? I agree? You got all that hair
hanging down below. You know that hair could be two
inches long, could be four inches long. So definitely want
(11:55):
to try to get it the vertical line in the middle. Yeah,
the body. Yeah, you the problem with low and tight
on him on a bear is that what Ryan said.
Imagine a big mature board that's got two inches of
fat beneath the rib cage. He's also got uh hair
(12:17):
that's a minimum of two inches, but could be hanging
down as much as four inches. And so what you
perceive as the silhouette at the bottom of that bear
is actually probably six to eight inches above. That would
be vital. And so a veteran bow hunter that was
hunting with me at one time, who had taken a
(12:40):
lot of white tails with a bow, I mean ate
a lot of white tails bear hunting for the first time,
and he just tried to heart shoot this bear, I
mean just low and tight, and he ten ringed right
where he was aiming. We never found that bear, totally
hit it in the brisket, and he was fooled by
the silhouette of that bear. Um. Now have you ever
(13:03):
have you ever hit a bear low and tight. I
don't think I ever have. Now the two thousand and
sixteen up uh bear pro safar as you know, shot
that one low and back, but I've never shot one
low and forward. I wasn't sure if you had, because
I have another story of a friend of ours here
in Arkansas that had a monster bear come in and
(13:25):
it was just kind of one of those deals, or
I think he would say he was probably just on
autopilot and was just trying to heart shoot it and
shot low and tight, and it was a big bear,
so it was exaggerated, long hair, lots of fat, thick
rib cade, and so I mean he just basically shot
the bear in the brisket, where if it had been
a white tail, he would have tendering that that's a
(13:45):
big deal with black bears that you don't want to
do with archery shots. It's low and tight. You want
to be further up and Number Another thing is that
a bear doesn't jump the string like a white tail.
I mean, especially with the with V E O and
all the stuff on that we're seeing now, almost a
hundred percent of the time these white tails are dropping
(14:07):
at the sound of an arrow, even if you still
kill the deer. I mean, like we've killed all these
deer with bows, not on film, and you just you
kill the steer. Those deer dropping a lot, sometimes dropping
sixteen inches before the arab gets there at like a
thirty yard shot. A white tail as a prey and
only as a flight response to danger, a massive, quick
(14:28):
flight response. A bear has some of a flight response,
but not near as much as a white tail, would
you agree in terms of dropping and going. He's not
on pins and needles all day long like a deer is,
you know, thinking he's gonna get eat. He's an apex
animal and probably stays relaxed, you know, most of the day,
(14:49):
so he's probably not sensing a lot of danger. And
so the translation of that into bear shot placement is
that you don't have to aim low like it's bow hunter.
As we've been taught to aim low on a deer. Man,
you don't want to hit low on a bear because
that silhouette is so deceptive. And I would say that's
(15:10):
those are the biggest things. Like, if we're talking about
shot placement slightly further back than a bear, don't be afraid.
Most people aim so far forward because they're afraid to
hit so far back because in the white tail world
we have been preached to our whole life, don't hit
them far back, don't hit them far back. And honestly,
I would rather hit a white tail far back than
(15:31):
I would further forward. I think people that that has
been preached us so much because guys have really not
been very good blood trailers. That's the truth. I've found
that inside of my excursions inside of other hunting circles,
is that guys sometimes make a shot that they probably
could recover that animal, but they really don't have the
(15:53):
skill to blood trail that animal, and so a marginal
shot all of a sudden becomes marginal, but more shot
becomes an unfounder. And obviously I'm not suggesting shooting dear
far back at all, but that fear that's been put
in us to hit an animal too far back has
pushed us forward to the animal. But with a bear,
(16:14):
you can be a little bit further back, a little
more forgiving, little more forgiving if you're hitting in that
middle of the middle or you know that that mid
section from Kobe tell us about your bear, just kind
of like where about where you perceived the shot to be. Yeah,
it was. It was a straight up gut shot, you know.
I uh, I was aiming like the middle of the middle,
(16:36):
but then he started moving and I was already in
my shot sequence, so uh so, like vertically it was
in the middle. And I think that was what made
things come together in the end, was just that and
then backing off for the night and waiting until the
next morning to to look for him. But I mean
he was pretty riggered up, like he had died, like
he'd been dead. Awhile mechanical or no. I was shooting
(17:01):
a four bladed fixed Yeah it passed through. Yeah, it
passed all the way through. I mean it didn't get liver.
It was like way back and uh we we backed out,
came back the next day. And now, granted, this is
a situation where somebody who didn't have a lot of
experience might have had a hard time trailing that bear.
(17:23):
I'm not gonna lie about that. But Corey Grant all trained,
he's a good blood trailer, and I mean we we
just we found just spots of blood. I mean just
I mean it was a tough trail, don't get me wrong,
but the bear ran probably two hundred yards to fifty
and Um, we easily recovered the bear. I mean, now
(17:44):
we had to we had to fight for it a
little bit. I mean just in that there were times
when we lost it and we were going off a
scuff mark and the leaves going down the hill. But
I mean, you know, within forty five minutes we were
standing over the bear. Yeah. I think the thing that
surprised me was when the blood stopped hitting the grounding
you just started seeing smudge marks on the side of trees. Ye.
You gotta you gotta use everything in your arsenal when
(18:06):
you're telling any kind of animal. Like if we had
just been looking for bright red blood drops on the ground,
we would never found that bear. But we were staying
on game trails. We started splitting up going down different
game trails, and you you learn to look at the
backside of all these leaves because this bear. And we'll
talk about how bears are notorious within with a not
(18:29):
ideal shot. They're notorious for not bleeding much. But the
point is we found the bear, no problem. That's what
these middle of the middle guys say all the time.
It's like they say they'd rather have a gut shot
bear than a bear that was shot too far, low
and forward or shot straight in the shoulder, you know,
because you are not going to break through a bear's
(18:50):
shoulder with archer equipment, I don't believe. I mean, perhaps
there's a you'd have to be very lucky tho. Yeah,
you probably have to hit some kind of artery something
to even kill something with a far forward shot lock
at and he's you know, I've never trailed a bear
and recovered one as far as Kobe's. You know, usually
(19:12):
if you get yards, that's really that's been your experience. Yeah,
you know, I've had some bad shots, and you know,
I've trailed them jokers like you say, three four hundred
yards and on minimal blood never find them. But usually
a lethal shot on a bear, you know, a hundred
(19:34):
yards are less. They just don't you know, they don't
carry their weight that farest seems you know, they kind
of give out quick if they're hit good. Yeah, let's
go ahead and jump into what I was saying about
how and how a bear bleeds and the importance the
whole point of this is gonna be the importance of
getting two holes with so this would factor into the
(19:57):
shot angle, but also your equipment that you're using but
a big priority with bear is to get two holes.
So it goes back to what you said at the beginning.
A A broadside shot is what you want. A broadside
shot gives you the shortest distance between two points when
the era is going through and even if the era
is not sticking in the ground on the other side,
but if the broadhead at least penetrates the skin on
(20:20):
the other side, you've got two two holes. That bear
is gonna bleed more. But bears are notorious for not
bleeding because they are they do have a lot of fat.
They do have a lot of a lot of fur,
which is like a mop. I mean, it's soaking up
some of that blood, not all of it. And you
know if you just double double lung tin ring a bear,
(20:42):
I mean, he's gonna bleed pretty good. But when you
get into that marginal category, like with Colby's, if you
had only gotten uh, had one hole, didn't have an
exit wound, you know, we would have had a much
more difficult time finding that bear. But he he was
bleeding on two sides because we got that pen traction.
And so that goes back to on whitetail, a quarter
(21:04):
and away shot is a pretty good shot. Smaller animal,
smaller bone, not a stick of hide, not a stick
of hair. You could probably gonna you know, you're probably
gonna get a pass through. And unless you hit that
offside shoulder on a cord and away shot on a deer.
And I mean we even look for a quarter and
away shot on a deer oftentimes. Um, but boy, you
(21:27):
want to get you want to get two holes. The
other thing about getting two holes is that most bears
are being shot out of tree stands, especially in a
bait situation. And if you get one hole from a
high elevated position, that means your entry hole is gonna
be high on that animal and that dude is gonna
(21:47):
bleed very little lower hole. Yep, you know that's where
you're gonna get you. I guess you could set up
a dungeon type set up where you had a hole
underneath and whether you're shooting up into the bears, oh man,
like dig a hole. It's a whole new setup. You're
(22:09):
supposed to laugh that cold, ye, then your entry hole
would be on the bottom of the bear. That's for
all those duck hunters out there, they can just you know,
like yeah, like a like a duck hole, like a
what would you call a yes yes? Well okay, so
getting two olds okay, and that even goes into your equipment.
(22:31):
Like we at Bear Hunting Magazine, we are pretty much
adamant about not using the expandables for bear Okay, there's
gonna be a ton of people that maybe even listen
to this podcast that will say they have killed bears
with expandables, as have I. But I have heard too
many stories and seen for myself too many examples of
(22:55):
when they have not performed as well as a fixed
blade broadhead. I mean, just by very principle, it does
remove energy from an arrow. For those blades to expand
large cutting diameter is gonna cause more friction on that arrow,
reducing the energy driving that eraw into the animal. If
(23:15):
the whole objective is to get two holes on a
big animal, I mean a big white tailed deer is
maybe at most twenty inches too. I don't know. Maybe
a big Canadian deer would, or big Midwest deer be
inches wide. I doubt it. Like you're trying to penetrate
block eighteen inches with a big bear trying to penetrate
thirty inches, I don't know, if that's accurate or not
(23:38):
not counting the all the hair you're traving yep to
shoot through. Yeah, the conclusion that we've come to is
just that if your priority is to get two holes,
it's best to use a fixed blade broadhead. And there's
all kind of fixed blay broadheads, there's all kind of
uh cut on impact broadheads. I would rather have a
small hole but have two of them than have one
(24:00):
big hole. I've also heard stories of from reputable, reputable
bow hunters and archers that they have seen uh expandable
heads get clogged up in hair like like they hit
a bear, had reduced penetration, killed the bear, extracted the
mechanical broadhead to find it just covered in hair like
(24:24):
where it was catching hair and dragging hair into the animal.
Do you have any experience with expandables. I've killed probably
half of the bears. Okay, I've shot with expandables and
had great luck. I haven't had one fail yet. But
you know, I've been shooting uh fixed four blade for
(24:45):
the last four or five years. But you know, in
early years, when I first started bear hunting too, I
just shoot a three blade and yeah, it's all no, no,
and seeing a with a good shot, like a broadside
shot at a reasonable distance when you're not having a
crazy angle. I mean, I agree with you can probably
kill everybody in the woods with an expand yeah, I'm
(25:06):
shooting high pounded. You know, I'm shooting right at seventy
pounds and all my shots or you know, fifteen yards
or less, and you're trying to take that broadside and
any percent of the time you are gonna punch through.
You know the rif did you get penetrate? You've got
to hold a lot of pass throughs. Yeah, yeah, almost. Um, well, okay,
tell us why you're using a fixed blade head now,
(25:29):
just you know, I didn't really think about it. Then
you want to not your eyes cross your tees. I
can see you know, a fixed blade, you are going
to get that penetration. You are gonna get that passed
through on most every shot. So you know, just trial
on air. And I've got to wear a feel more
comfortable shooting a fixed blade, you know, uh, confidence in it.
(25:52):
And like you say, I think, uh, you don't have
to have the big gaping hole and uh you know
if you I guess the question is what you gain
by by shooting a expandable. You know, I guess the
volume of the cut. You know, maybe you're cutting a
few more arteries or something like that. But you know,
there is always that thought in the back of your mind,
(26:14):
off that broadhead failing and not performing, Yeah, like it
should fix blade. You pretty much eliminate that. What you
see is what you get. Yeah, you know, in my opinion,
the expandable broadhead is made for white tail. I mean,
it's a smaller animal, not a lot of hair, not
thick hide, not thick bones. And they're great. And if
(26:35):
you get a marginal shot, and I've killed a gobb
of white tails with expandable heads back in the day,
And if you get a marginal shot on a white tail,
I would rather be shooting a big fat expandable. But
they're really not made for bear. They're really not designed
for a big bone, thick haired, thick fat animal. That
(26:57):
means so it's kind of you know, you could kill
every a bear in the woods with an expandable. That's
the truth. But I believe and in somebody that's as
good as you ride and as experienced as you. I'm
being serious, like you're not gonna you're not a good
example for someone to show an expandable, that's messed up.
But I would say for the average guy, if he
(27:18):
were the average bow hunter with you know, I mean,
there's all these different levels of experience that people have.
If he was shooting expandables at ten bears, it's gonna
cost him a bear in ten bears, I believe. And
you may be on your fifth bear and it's not
cost you a bears, so you're still going when if
you had been shooting the fixed blade, you'd have killed
(27:38):
all ten. That's what I believe. And now everybody's got
to do what they think. But that's a pretty good topic.
Let's talk real quick to about set up. A lot
of people ask about archery setups for bear and the
question is can't I use my white tail set up?
And my answer to that is basically yes. I mean,
like I'm not, I'm shooting around sixty pounds. Actually the
(28:01):
bear that I killed in Oklahoma this year batman pound bear,
I was shooting a fifty well it may have been
sixty pounds. I want to say it was the high fifties.
Just tendering, you know, no problem, I hit to ended
up hitting kind of the offside shoulder. He had his
leg down, so I didn't get just a complete pass
(28:22):
through with him. Yeah. Right, you were there with me
on the recovery. You know that bear was crouched and
he had his elbow back like this and hit him
right here, and it actually went down through his shoulder
and like was sticking down in his inside the hide,
but in his front leg. So when you getted the bear,
(28:43):
you found the arrow actually, and remember were to recover
James Lawrence's bear. Ten days later, David Miller found my
iron wheel broad head on the ground. Yes, uh, trying
to think it was still It's a kind of a
mystery to me what happened because I never found an
exit hole. But David Miller found eight inches of arrow
(29:06):
in my two d and five grain iron wheel broadhead.
We were tracking James kilderbarrel over there in the same place.
We went over there and tracted and he came back
and handed me that, And I said, where did you
find that? Because David was with us when we recovered it,
you know, I mean, so anyway, it was just a
weird deal because I mean that that bears front legs
(29:27):
were you know, ten inches in diameter, so in in
that arrow, just at the steep angle. But point being,
you don't need super heavy pounded drying shooting seventy pounds.
What was your bow set up something? Yeah, yeah, you were.
You were shooting pretty low pounded average way there. I
figured your aarrawwaight, Kolby was in the four hundreds. I
(29:49):
mean you're shooting a hunter grain trick, Yeah, slick trick magnum,
and that's a great head. I mean I love a
slick trick broadhead and have for a year. Um, I
did shoot the iron wheels this year mainly because of
my traditional stuff. Um. But if if you and I'm
sponsored by no broadhead company, but if you just said
(30:11):
to Clay pick your poison for broadheads, I would I
chide a hunter grain slick Trick Magnum. Now for for compound,
I've actually shout their Viper trick, which is not a
traditional not not a not a traditional you know, traditional
archery head like that. But so the main thing would
(30:31):
be just getting the right broad head and shot placement.
It's not about having an eighty pound bow, so you
can't use your white tail set up. People evaluate aero
penestration based on kinetic energy momentum is actually the correct
way to men to evaluate the possibility for aero penetration.
But basically momentum measures of vector which vector momentum measures
(30:56):
the the directional force. Kinetic energy measures force just like
like an explosion almost just like just like it just
measures how much energy is present in this thing. Basically,
what I'm getting to is arrowweight is more important than speed.
You know, there was a time when an archery everybody
was worried about speed. You know, it's just like, shoot
a really fast bow with a light arrow. But a
(31:19):
really fast bow with a light arrow does not penetrate
as well as a slower bow that's shooting a heavier arrow. Anyway,
this is all nerd talk, but momentum is the correct
way to measure arrow penetration. Not CONNECTICU. Energy didn't speed
come from where you're wanting to get it there faster,
(31:39):
so the white tilt didn't duck as much. Yeah, like
my dad, who who is bow hunted his whole life,
he loves speed, and it's because he didn't want after
judge yardage. He always wanted a bow that would shoot
flat to thirty yards, so that just any there that
showed up in the woods of Arkansas, which basically most
time you can't see much more than thirty yards. If
(32:00):
a deer showed up, he just put his first pen
on it because in his experience shooting slow bows all
through the seventies and eighties was he was missing deer
because of misjudging yardage. They didn't have range finders, you know,
they're good range finders. He had these range finders that
like combined images. Have you have you seen those rhynd
(32:22):
where it's like you put your eye in and you
dial it and it like combines the old school. Yeah,
and so so his whole thing was speed so that
he didn't miss judge yardage. As I went through that,
I was like, well, we we've got range finders. Now
you're set in a tree and you can range everything.
So you pretty much no yardages for tree stand white
(32:42):
toil hunting, for bear hunting. So I would rather shoot
a heavier arrow and get more penetration because I did
have some mishaps with uh, not getting penetration with white
tells when I was younger. We've talked about barre anatomy,
we've talked about shot angles. We haven't talked as much
about shot angles, But like you, you really don't want
(33:03):
to take a super steep quarter and away shot on
the bear. Now, if that's all you have, you can
certainly kill a bear that is at a steep quarter angle,
but you're probably gonna forfeit that exit hole, and so
you just gotta be prepared for that, and you gotta
make sure you're on your a game. Ryan mentioned this earlier,
is that one of the biggest differences between deer and
(33:24):
bear is that a bear, first of all, is a
black animal. Black. The color black is designed to absorb
light and to not give away much. I mean, like
if you just look into a black piece of paper,
it's like all you see is black. But if you
looked at a white piece of paper that maybe was
(33:46):
folded just a little bit, like you could see the shadows.
White show shadows shows shape, and so a black a
bear can often look like just a black trash bag.
And you can't see where the shoulder comes up, you
can't see the ribs, you can't no definition where a
(34:08):
white tail. Ryan has short hair, light colored hair, has
a very defined muscular body. I mean, you can see
the shoulder, you can see the ribs, you can see
the rump, you can see the muscles. So when you
look through the peep on the boat a white tail,
you can see right where you're aiming. A lot of
times with a big bear or a little bear, you
(34:28):
pull up and look for a peep and you feel
like you're aiming at a black trash bag. And I mean,
even inside of me having killed some bears, I still
struggle with that. Sometimes at close range, like close range,
you draw and you're like, holy cow, Like in the
bear that I killed in Oklahoma. I don't know why
that one got to me, but I drew the bow
(34:50):
bear just right there, I mean like ten yards and
I looked through the peep and all I could see
was black. And I was looking around my peep to
try to get a you know, trying to just figure
out where my pen was, and that would lean back
in and look and lean back in and look, and
finally I felt like I had where I wanted to hit.
(35:11):
I shot, and if you remember, I shot far forward.
I've had that same problem in low light conditions before dark,
you know, trying to see through your peep and like say,
no definition on a bear. You want to make sure
that body is not cupped. You know, sometimes they'll roll
them hips to the side and be cupped. Uh, that's
not the best. Just wait for him to maybe expose
(35:34):
that leg or just you know, completely broadside. But yeah,
it's uh, it can be tricky sometimes we'll see. And
that's that's the next point is that a bear can
do a whole lot more stuff than a white tail.
A bear could be sitting on his butt, a bear
could be standing up, a bear could have his feet
(35:55):
up on a tree. A bear could be cupped. And
that's probably to me one of the things that gets
most people. We've made some videos about this. But a
bear could look like he's broadside, but actually his spine
would be like in a u A deer can't even
do that hardly. But like a bear could be appear
to be broadside looking at you, but actually eighty percent
(36:17):
of his vitals be covered because he's cupped like a
you know, I mean, like a like a dog. Well,
that's that's not a good example, but yes, or or
a lot of times with inbated situations, bears come in
and lay down. Lots of guys have shot bears laying down,
and again, you can do it, but it's trickier because
(36:40):
those vitals are compacted. He's literally laying on his rib cage.
Those ribs flex and you you know, shooting a bear
laying down, you're probably shooting at a target that is
twenty percent less in size than it would be if
the bear was standing up. Would you agree with that?
I mean, like that that rib cage would flex just
a little bit and those vitals would those vitals would compress.
(37:04):
So basically a deer doesn't just have the flexibility to
do what a bearer does. That throws people off run people,
especially people that aren't familiar with seeing bear. As a
bear comes in, he might be standing up, he might
be laying down. He might be setting on his haunches,
you know, licking his bottom feet. He might be he
could do all kinds of stuff. I've seen you do
(37:26):
that yourself, and licking my feet, you know occasionally that
man that's massively. When I first started hunting bears, I
remember just kind of being like confused by watching a
bear move. And I think that's kind of what freaks
people out sometimes when they're hunting bear for the first time.
(37:49):
It's just to see an animal that that's just different
than what they're used to. Kobe was at your experience. Yeah,
it was really surprising, like first being so big, they're
pretty pretty since they are like they're pretty, like they
know what movements they're making. It's like they're so articulate
with their movements. I guess it would be the things
they're definitely in the the yoga animal. You know, if
(38:11):
you like to do yoga, the bears your your spirit animal.
Ryan's big in the yoga the yoga. That's one more
thing let's talk about. So we most of what we've
talked about here would relate directly to archery hunting. I
do want to say that hunting with a rifle is
gonna be different. Now, bar anatomy stays the same, all
(38:34):
the stuff stays the same in terms of the actual bear,
but with a rifle, shooting a high powered rifle, you're
kind of been a different ball game because you can
shoot a bear straight in the shoulder, high in the
shoulder and just drop them. You can shoot a bear
that's facing you. I would never suggest shooting an archery
bear just head on. I mean, I know it's worked
(38:57):
for people. I mean I'm sure it has, uh, but well,
you know, bullet you're getting that shock, that energy hydro
static shock, you're shutting down the electrical system. Basically, shoot
him in the shoulder, head on, like you're talking about
quarterin away a little more forgiving on. Definitely a rifle, right,
(39:19):
So with a rifle, I would have to say that
it would be fairly similar to a white tail in principle.
I mean, because you can shoot them the shoulder, you
can shoot him head on, you can shoot him quarter
in a way that wouldn't be a problem. Um, you know,
you don't have to obviously judge for you don't need
to shoot low because they're not gonna jump the string.
I mean, so rifle hunting is quite different. And this
(39:44):
podcast really isn't about rifle caliber, but a lot of
questions about caliber rifle, and it kind of goes back
to the same thing with archery. You can kill a
bear with a thirty thirty and a hundred and fifty
grand bullet. I mean there are lots of air it
probably thirty thirties probably killed as many bears as any
any caliber, just from the old days of when guys,
when that was a main cartridge. But you the bigger
(40:08):
the better, the bigger the better with with bear because
they are a big animal, you do want to hit
them hard. Uh. You know, my gun of choice currently
for black bear rifle of choice mag with a two
grain bullet out of my my Best of the West rifle.
But I did want to just clarify that a lot
of the delicate things that we're talking about in terms
(40:30):
of shot placement for black bear does include is about
archery hunting, not as much about about rifle hunting. But hey,
closing comments or thoughts, Ryan Um, let me ask you
a question, what would you say would be the biggest
mistake that you have seen? First time bear hunters are
(40:53):
just inexperienced bear hunters make on shot placement biggest mistake.
You know, Bears aren't like dear people are excited to
finally you know, Hey, I've got a bear here in
front of me, and you know it's in range. I
need to hurry up and get take the shot. Bears
are pretty patient, you know, especially on a baited hunt.
(41:15):
You can wait and wait and wait for that perfect shot.
You don't have to be in a rush. You know,
a lot of people want to take that first shot
opportunity just to wait for the right shot. You know, Um,
I've made mistakes and you know, not made the right shot.
(41:35):
But you know it's all about patients. But I guess
you know it just comes with experience. So um, more
bears you get a chance to be around and and harvest,
you'll learn from that and take it to the next hunt.
But like I said, just be patient, wait for the
right shot opportunity. You don't have to be in any hurry.
(41:56):
That's a. That's a great example because in white tail hunting,
most of the time you have a very short window
to execute a shot on a big buck. I mean,
like take the first shot you get, you know what
I mean, Like, that's a that's a good ethical shot.
That's that's kind of the way we're preached to because
most time these animals are just moving through areas that
we're hunting. But especially on a baited hunt or even
(42:19):
on a spring a spring hunt, when a bear is
feeding out in the meadow, you got time. If that
animal is feeding, he's gonna be there for a while,
and so you don't have to rush it. So you're
number one thing when the first time bear hunter, new
bear hunter would be rushing the shot. Yeah, yea, yeah,
you know I'm basing that on hunting over a bait
(42:42):
where the bears occupied. You know, like you said, he's
not passing through. Uh, you're gonna have some time to
especially if the wind's right and he don't know you're around,
You've you've got a little bit of time to play with.
And I can say, the right opportunity to present itself. Yeah,
very good, Kobe, What do you think? I mean, those
(43:07):
are the things that Corey told us or told me
whenever I went up there. It was just you know,
to be patient and make the right shot. And we
were patient, I mean watching We watched that bear for
a while and the right opportunity was there. Um. I
think one of the things that happened I didn't realize
he was he was moving, you know, And so I
think what happened was I was looking through the peep
(43:27):
like once I should close my other eye and just
like focused on him. I couldn't tell that he was moving,
you know, because it was the right opportunity. He just
started moving right at the wrong time. So you probably
hit right where you were aiming. He just wasn't in
the same spot he moved. Yeah. Well, and I think
that's a good thing to to think about is that
once you initiate that shot cycle, you've got to be
(43:50):
super flexible. I mean, your shot cycle has to be quick.
And when I say shot cycle, I mean like draw
your bow and from the time you make the decision
to shoot until the time you actually execute the shot,
you need to be able to back out of it,
you know. I mean like because in that situation, you
were like, Okay, I'm gonna shoot, and then two seconds
(44:13):
time he moved, you know, and you went ahead and shot,
you know. Now, I think that I think that's just
learning being in bow hunting situations in archery and executing
the shot, you know, which is anybody could have made
the mistake. But yeah, I think, uh I I had
been drawn back for a while. I think that if
(44:33):
I there, if in the future, like whenever I get
an opportunity or I think I have one, I think
I'm gonna just, you know, if I'm drawn back for
too much time, just let it down and just reassessed,
you know what. Though that being said, my strongest trait
I think when it comes to actually taking an animal,
especially with a compound bow, it's knowing when to draw.
(44:57):
And I love drawing before they get there. I mean,
like I like doing what you did. Yeah, I felt
like you did the right thing. I mean like the
bear was just at any second gonna step into a
correct shooting position. So you were drawn and ready. Now
once you start holding up for over a minute or something, yeah,
I mean like if you start to fill your body
be compromised and like, yeah, you should have let you
(45:20):
you can let down that situation. But like, the biggest
thing that I see people do is like a deer
or bear is coming and they wait till it's in
position to shoot before they draw their bow. Man I draw.
I'm not talking about like draw a minute before it
gets there, but I'm anticipating the shot, drawn and ready,
and boy, when it steps to where I want to shoot, shoot,
(45:42):
And that's probably more a white tail thing because a
lot of times they're moving. And but hey, we're gonna
we're gonna end this podcast. I hope that you've learned
something here, and uh, yeah, you know, ultimately our goal
is to make as many good at the gold quick
killing shots as possible. And uh, bears are big, tough,
(46:06):
unforgiving animals, but when they're hit right, they go down easy.
And so hey, guys, thanks for being on the podcast,
and we're gonna have We're gonna continue, We're gonna have
a few more podcasts that are kind of this style
where we're just talking about a specific issue. Hey, keep
the wild places wild. Why keep us? For the bears
(46:30):
b
You're listening to the Sportsman's Nation podcast network powered by
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Outrageously Dependable. My name is Clay Nucoman. I'm the host
(00:27):
of the Bear Hunting Magazine podcast. I'll also be your
host into the world of hunting the icon of North
American wilderness. There, we'll talk about tactics, gear conservation who
will also bring you into some of the wildest country
on the planet. Chasing batter Welcome to the Bear Hunting
(00:54):
Magazine podcast. On this episode, we're talking about shot placed
on black bear. This is a very misunderstood topic and
we often relate in this podcast to ideology that people
are coming from an understanding of white tailed deer shot
placement and then coming into bear hunting and applying those
(01:16):
same principles, and there's several places where they just don't
totally cross over. I believe that this is probably one
of the most densely compacted pieces of information about shot
placement on black bear, probably around so you're gonna learn something.
Spring bear season is quickly approaching. Last podcast, we talked
about a very wide swath of information about spring bear hunting.
(01:41):
I wanted to make two quick corrections from the last episode.
Number one, there is no spring bear season in Nova Scotia.
There is a fall bear season. I had a listener
from Nova Scotia contact me to let me know that,
so I want to make that correction. Secondly, the only
Western state that we left out of the list that
(02:02):
has a spring bear hunt, it's Wyoming. Wyoming has a
quota hunt, and we listed all the other states except
for Wyoming. At the Global headquarters right now, we're working
on the May in June issue of Bear Hunting Magazine,
and we're also working on a new video that's gonna
(02:23):
be released sometime probably in the next week on our
YouTube channel about a brown bear hunt that Billy Moles did.
So we're having We're gonna have a new episode of
Bear Horizon out and the new issue of Bear Hunting
Magazine coming out soon. Thanks for checking this episode out.
You gonna enjoy it. Welcome to the Bear Hunting Magazine podcast.
(02:51):
We are at the Global headquarters of Bear Hunting magazine.
It is March the in We are going to have
a couple of episodes here where we're gonna just get
to the nitty gritty technical side of some very relevant
bear hunting related topics. The topic that we're gonna talk
(03:13):
about on this episode is shot placement on black Bear,
and we're gonna get into several different topics that are
highly relevant. But before we get into the episode, I
want to introduce who I've got with me here. I
have directly to my left, Ryan No greb Ryan greb
(03:35):
Ryan is Uh a long time good friend of mine.
And Ryan was killing bears while my mama was still
wiping my nose. It's true. Now Ryan is Ryan's traveled
with me all over Canada. But more than that, Ryan's
(03:58):
hunted in Arkansas for years. Ryan's been on the podcast before,
but he's he's hunted bears in Arkansas since well for
years and years, killed a lot of big bears, bow
hunted bears a lot, and so I consider Ryan an
expert for sure. So he's here. And then on my
right someone that you well, Kobe has been on this
(04:20):
podcast before. I've got Colby moorehead. Colby has is now
news to all of everybody. He's working full time for
Bear Hunting Magazine. So Kolbe is also a longtime friend
of mine that uh is now he's full time working
for Bear Hunting Magazine helping us with all kinds of stuff.
(04:41):
So if you ever call the global headquarters, you'll probably
talk to Colby. And Kolby is a bear hunter. He's
a new bear hunter, went on his first bear hunt
back in the fall and took a really nice bear.
And so we've got a good mix right here, and
that uh, we've we've got a lot of experience. But also, um,
you know, Kobe's new to bear hunting, so you might
(05:03):
have some questions or you might hear us talking to
might have some insight and something that somebody else might have.
I just feel sorry for him. What he is to
hang with you here in the office during every day,
all day, and he's right underneath the big bear over here.
You need to make him a cubicle over here where
you don't have to look at you like box him in. Yeah,
(05:24):
we can box him in. But well, hey, let's let's
jump right into this. And I'll kind of give the
precursor to why this is relevant. Most people in North America.
Most of the guys that are listening to this podcast
have been trained on white tail deer anatomy for shooting,
(05:44):
well for shooting any big game. We've been trained to
hunt ungulates, deer, elk, moose that all have a really
similar body structure. They have a similar bone structure, they
have a similar um anatomical or organ structure. But they
also have short hair, they don't have big layers of fat.
(06:05):
And so basically shooting a bear is different than shooting
and ungulate, and there's lots of different variables inside of
it that are important for a first time bear hunter
or even a veteran bear hunter. I mean, the truth
is that in most situations, and right would you agree
with this most situations, if you just took a deer
(06:26):
hunter out and didn't tell him anything, he could probably
go out and shoot a bear, I mean and not
have any problem. But in the finer tuned points of
bear hunting, and if you took that same guy, and
this is the way I would describe it, if you
took that same guy that was trained as a white
tail hunter and put him on ten bear hunts, I'm
(06:48):
gonna say three of those ten he's gonna mess up
simply because of lack of understanding of a few principles.
I mean, is that a good and is that a yeah?
You know, a bear postures constantly changing, you know, Yeah,
you're looking for that broadside shot more often than not.
(07:10):
I mean, dear, that's preferred to shot anyway, but a
lot of people pack the quartering away shots. But you know, bears,
the if you can get that broadside, that's usually money. Well,
let's start off by talking about bar anatomy. I read
a a article that was written very recently that was
circulating on uh Facebook, clicked on it. It was about
(07:34):
ten ten I think it was ten things about spring
bear hunting, and one of them was about shot placement.
And this this author said that bear organs are further
forward than a deer, which I want to quickly say
is exactly opposite of what I have found, not just
(07:55):
in what I've read, but we did the first year
Barrenny magazine we killed. We went up to Alberta and
we killed six bears in five days. We actually did
a knee cropsy on a bear where we took the
carcass with the all the internal organs inside and stripped
off the layers of rib or the stripped off the
(08:18):
rib meat so that you could see into the rib
cage and tried to determine like where the lungs would layout,
and man, we made some incredible diagrams that were in
Barrenning magazine. They're also online. And to make a short summary,
beare vitals are slightly further back than a white tail?
(08:38):
Would you agree with that? Right? So there, so let
me just say that is a big premise of black
bear shot placement and brown bear for that matter. The
vitals they're not it's not like they're just like in
the middle of the body, but they extend slightly further back.
(08:59):
I found um that the lungs of these bears went
all the way back to the very last rib, which
if you can imagine shooting a white tail at the
very last rib, you'd be pretty far back. You would
kill that, you'd kill the deer because you'd get liver.
But the lungs of I mean the very tip of
that long and I'm not saying that all the way
(09:22):
back at the last rib there was eight inches of lung.
That's what I'm saying. That the lungs are like oblong shaped.
You know, they're like they're like long and deep towards
the front of the animal, and they go back like this,
and so the back to the very last rib there
was a little bit of lung. So I'm not saying
that's where you want to hit them. The second part
(09:45):
of that, Kolbe has some experience with this, Kobe, you
really made a mistake by shooting the bear far back
on the first hunt. Ever with me, you were like
the prime target to just make an example out of,
but you got the right posture for it here. I'm
glad I could take on that for one. Oh man,
it was on video, it was all there. But for
whatever reason, and this perhaps is it has to do
(10:07):
with the the anatomical structure of the bear. But you
can shoot a bear further back than a white tail
and be okay. There was an article that we had
published a few years years ago called the Middle of
the Middle, which there are a lot of Canadian outfitters
that tell their clients to shoot a bear in the middle.
(10:30):
And I think the way it started out was they said, hey,
shoot the bear in the middle, and the client said,
what do you mean the middle? And the guy in
the outfitter goes the middle of the middle, I mean
straight up middle of the bear. And uh what this
article is written by a guy named Rob Nive, Saskatchewan
outfitter that I know, and uh he was taught that
(10:50):
by some other old outfitters. And man, when you shoot
in the middle of the middle, you have a lot
of room for error. And that's the whole point of it,
room for air. Now, I do not suggest I don't
like shooting them in the middle of the middle. I
like to go about four inches back towards the shoulder
from the middle of the middle. And when I say
(11:11):
the middle of the middle, I'm talking about the distance
between the front legs and the back legs. I'm not
including like the head of the bear, but like the
middle of the middle. I like to go about three
to four inches back towards the shoulder, so slightly further
back then then you would like try to heart shoot
(11:32):
a bear. And that's maybe the biggest thing that's different
about bear hunt bear hunting versus deer hunting is that
as deer hunters, we were always taught to try to
heart shoot the deer. Okay, which would be low and tight.
You don't want to do that with a bear. Do
you agree, Ryan? I agree? You got all that hair
hanging down below. You know that hair could be two
inches long, could be four inches long. So definitely want
(11:55):
to try to get it the vertical line in the middle. Yeah,
the body. Yeah, you the problem with low and tight
on him on a bear is that what Ryan said.
Imagine a big mature board that's got two inches of
fat beneath the rib cage. He's also got uh hair
(12:17):
that's a minimum of two inches, but could be hanging
down as much as four inches. And so what you
perceive as the silhouette at the bottom of that bear
is actually probably six to eight inches above. That would
be vital. And so a veteran bow hunter that was
hunting with me at one time, who had taken a
(12:40):
lot of white tails with a bow, I mean ate
a lot of white tails bear hunting for the first time,
and he just tried to heart shoot this bear, I
mean just low and tight, and he ten ringed right
where he was aiming. We never found that bear, totally
hit it in the brisket, and he was fooled by
the silhouette of that bear. Um. Now have you ever
(13:03):
have you ever hit a bear low and tight. I
don't think I ever have. Now the two thousand and
sixteen up uh bear pro safar as you know, shot
that one low and back, but I've never shot one
low and forward. I wasn't sure if you had, because
I have another story of a friend of ours here
in Arkansas that had a monster bear come in and
(13:25):
it was just kind of one of those deals, or
I think he would say he was probably just on
autopilot and was just trying to heart shoot it and
shot low and tight, and it was a big bear,
so it was exaggerated, long hair, lots of fat, thick
rib cade, and so I mean he just basically shot
the bear in the brisket, where if it had been
a white tail, he would have tendering that that's a
(13:45):
big deal with black bears that you don't want to
do with archery shots. It's low and tight. You want
to be further up and Number Another thing is that
a bear doesn't jump the string like a white tail.
I mean, especially with the with V E O and
all the stuff on that we're seeing now, almost a
hundred percent of the time these white tails are dropping
(14:07):
at the sound of an arrow, even if you still
kill the deer. I mean, like we've killed all these
deer with bows, not on film, and you just you
kill the steer. Those deer dropping a lot, sometimes dropping
sixteen inches before the arab gets there at like a
thirty yard shot. A white tail as a prey and
only as a flight response to danger, a massive, quick
(14:28):
flight response. A bear has some of a flight response,
but not near as much as a white tail, would
you agree in terms of dropping and going. He's not
on pins and needles all day long like a deer is,
you know, thinking he's gonna get eat. He's an apex
animal and probably stays relaxed, you know, most of the day,
(14:49):
so he's probably not sensing a lot of danger. And
so the translation of that into bear shot placement is
that you don't have to aim low like it's bow hunter.
As we've been taught to aim low on a deer. Man,
you don't want to hit low on a bear because
that silhouette is so deceptive. And I would say that's
(15:10):
those are the biggest things. Like, if we're talking about
shot placement slightly further back than a bear, don't be afraid.
Most people aim so far forward because they're afraid to
hit so far back because in the white tail world
we have been preached to our whole life, don't hit
them far back, don't hit them far back. And honestly,
I would rather hit a white tail far back than
(15:31):
I would further forward. I think people that that has
been preached us so much because guys have really not
been very good blood trailers. That's the truth. I've found
that inside of my excursions inside of other hunting circles,
is that guys sometimes make a shot that they probably
could recover that animal, but they really don't have the
(15:53):
skill to blood trail that animal, and so a marginal
shot all of a sudden becomes marginal, but more shot
becomes an unfounder. And obviously I'm not suggesting shooting dear
far back at all, but that fear that's been put
in us to hit an animal too far back has
pushed us forward to the animal. But with a bear,
(16:14):
you can be a little bit further back, a little
more forgiving, little more forgiving if you're hitting in that
middle of the middle or you know that that mid
section from Kobe tell us about your bear, just kind
of like where about where you perceived the shot to be. Yeah,
it was. It was a straight up gut shot, you know.
I uh, I was aiming like the middle of the middle,
(16:36):
but then he started moving and I was already in
my shot sequence, so uh so, like vertically it was
in the middle. And I think that was what made
things come together in the end, was just that and
then backing off for the night and waiting until the
next morning to to look for him. But I mean
he was pretty riggered up, like he had died, like
he'd been dead. Awhile mechanical or no. I was shooting
(17:01):
a four bladed fixed Yeah it passed through. Yeah, it
passed all the way through. I mean it didn't get liver.
It was like way back and uh we we backed out,
came back the next day. And now, granted, this is
a situation where somebody who didn't have a lot of
experience might have had a hard time trailing that bear.
(17:23):
I'm not gonna lie about that. But Corey Grant all trained,
he's a good blood trailer, and I mean we we
just we found just spots of blood. I mean just
I mean it was a tough trail, don't get me wrong,
but the bear ran probably two hundred yards to fifty
and Um, we easily recovered the bear. I mean, now
(17:44):
we had to we had to fight for it a
little bit. I mean just in that there were times
when we lost it and we were going off a
scuff mark and the leaves going down the hill. But
I mean, you know, within forty five minutes we were
standing over the bear. Yeah. I think the thing that
surprised me was when the blood stopped hitting the grounding
you just started seeing smudge marks on the side of trees. Ye.
You gotta you gotta use everything in your arsenal when
(18:06):
you're telling any kind of animal. Like if we had
just been looking for bright red blood drops on the ground,
we would never found that bear. But we were staying
on game trails. We started splitting up going down different
game trails, and you you learn to look at the
backside of all these leaves because this bear. And we'll
talk about how bears are notorious within with a not
(18:29):
ideal shot. They're notorious for not bleeding much. But the
point is we found the bear, no problem. That's what
these middle of the middle guys say all the time.
It's like they say they'd rather have a gut shot
bear than a bear that was shot too far, low
and forward or shot straight in the shoulder, you know,
because you are not going to break through a bear's
(18:50):
shoulder with archer equipment, I don't believe. I mean, perhaps
there's a you'd have to be very lucky tho. Yeah,
you probably have to hit some kind of artery something
to even kill something with a far forward shot lock
at and he's you know, I've never trailed a bear
and recovered one as far as Kobe's. You know, usually
(19:12):
if you get yards, that's really that's been your experience. Yeah,
you know, I've had some bad shots, and you know,
I've trailed them jokers like you say, three four hundred
yards and on minimal blood never find them. But usually
a lethal shot on a bear, you know, a hundred
(19:34):
yards are less. They just don't you know, they don't
carry their weight that farest seems you know, they kind
of give out quick if they're hit good. Yeah, let's
go ahead and jump into what I was saying about
how and how a bear bleeds and the importance the
whole point of this is gonna be the importance of
getting two holes with so this would factor into the
(19:57):
shot angle, but also your equipment that you're using but
a big priority with bear is to get two holes.
So it goes back to what you said at the beginning.
A A broadside shot is what you want. A broadside
shot gives you the shortest distance between two points when
the era is going through and even if the era
is not sticking in the ground on the other side,
but if the broadhead at least penetrates the skin on
(20:20):
the other side, you've got two two holes. That bear
is gonna bleed more. But bears are notorious for not
bleeding because they are they do have a lot of fat.
They do have a lot of a lot of fur,
which is like a mop. I mean, it's soaking up
some of that blood, not all of it. And you
know if you just double double lung tin ring a bear,
(20:42):
I mean, he's gonna bleed pretty good. But when you
get into that marginal category, like with Colby's, if you
had only gotten uh, had one hole, didn't have an
exit wound, you know, we would have had a much
more difficult time finding that bear. But he he was
bleeding on two sides because we got that pen traction.
And so that goes back to on whitetail, a quarter
(21:04):
and away shot is a pretty good shot. Smaller animal,
smaller bone, not a stick of hide, not a stick
of hair. You could probably gonna you know, you're probably
gonna get a pass through. And unless you hit that
offside shoulder on a cord and away shot on a deer.
And I mean we even look for a quarter and
away shot on a deer oftentimes. Um, but boy, you
(21:27):
want to get you want to get two holes. The
other thing about getting two holes is that most bears
are being shot out of tree stands, especially in a
bait situation. And if you get one hole from a
high elevated position, that means your entry hole is gonna
be high on that animal and that dude is gonna
(21:47):
bleed very little lower hole. Yep, you know that's where
you're gonna get you. I guess you could set up
a dungeon type set up where you had a hole
underneath and whether you're shooting up into the bears, oh man,
like dig a hole. It's a whole new setup. You're
(22:09):
supposed to laugh that cold, ye, then your entry hole
would be on the bottom of the bear. That's for
all those duck hunters out there, they can just you know,
like yeah, like a like a duck hole, like a
what would you call a yes yes? Well okay, so
getting two olds okay, and that even goes into your equipment.
(22:31):
Like we at Bear Hunting Magazine, we are pretty much
adamant about not using the expandables for bear Okay, there's
gonna be a ton of people that maybe even listen
to this podcast that will say they have killed bears
with expandables, as have I. But I have heard too
many stories and seen for myself too many examples of
(22:55):
when they have not performed as well as a fixed
blade broadhead. I mean, just by very principle, it does
remove energy from an arrow. For those blades to expand
large cutting diameter is gonna cause more friction on that arrow,
reducing the energy driving that eraw into the animal. If
(23:15):
the whole objective is to get two holes on a
big animal, I mean a big white tailed deer is
maybe at most twenty inches too. I don't know. Maybe
a big Canadian deer would, or big Midwest deer be
inches wide. I doubt it. Like you're trying to penetrate
block eighteen inches with a big bear trying to penetrate
thirty inches, I don't know, if that's accurate or not
(23:38):
not counting the all the hair you're traving yep to
shoot through. Yeah, the conclusion that we've come to is
just that if your priority is to get two holes,
it's best to use a fixed blade broadhead. And there's
all kind of fixed blay broadheads, there's all kind of
uh cut on impact broadheads. I would rather have a
small hole but have two of them than have one
(24:00):
big hole. I've also heard stories of from reputable, reputable
bow hunters and archers that they have seen uh expandable
heads get clogged up in hair like like they hit
a bear, had reduced penetration, killed the bear, extracted the
mechanical broadhead to find it just covered in hair like
(24:24):
where it was catching hair and dragging hair into the animal.
Do you have any experience with expandables. I've killed probably
half of the bears. Okay, I've shot with expandables and
had great luck. I haven't had one fail yet. But
you know, I've been shooting uh fixed four blade for
(24:45):
the last four or five years. But you know, in
early years, when I first started bear hunting too, I
just shoot a three blade and yeah, it's all no, no,
and seeing a with a good shot, like a broadside
shot at a reasonable distance when you're not having a
crazy angle. I mean, I agree with you can probably
kill everybody in the woods with an expand yeah, I'm
(25:06):
shooting high pounded. You know, I'm shooting right at seventy
pounds and all my shots or you know, fifteen yards
or less, and you're trying to take that broadside and
any percent of the time you are gonna punch through.
You know the rif did you get penetrate? You've got
to hold a lot of pass throughs. Yeah, yeah, almost. Um, well, okay,
tell us why you're using a fixed blade head now,
(25:29):
just you know, I didn't really think about it. Then
you want to not your eyes cross your tees. I
can see you know, a fixed blade, you are going
to get that penetration. You are gonna get that passed
through on most every shot. So you know, just trial
on air. And I've got to wear a feel more
comfortable shooting a fixed blade, you know, uh, confidence in it.
(25:52):
And like you say, I think, uh, you don't have
to have the big gaping hole and uh you know
if you I guess the question is what you gain
by by shooting a expandable. You know, I guess the
volume of the cut. You know, maybe you're cutting a
few more arteries or something like that. But you know,
there is always that thought in the back of your mind,
(26:14):
off that broadhead failing and not performing, Yeah, like it
should fix blade. You pretty much eliminate that. What you
see is what you get. Yeah, you know, in my opinion,
the expandable broadhead is made for white tail. I mean,
it's a smaller animal, not a lot of hair, not
thick hide, not thick bones. And they're great. And if
(26:35):
you get a marginal shot, and I've killed a gobb
of white tails with expandable heads back in the day,
And if you get a marginal shot on a white tail,
I would rather be shooting a big fat expandable. But
they're really not made for bear. They're really not designed
for a big bone, thick haired, thick fat animal. That
(26:57):
means so it's kind of you know, you could kill
every a bear in the woods with an expandable. That's
the truth. But I believe and in somebody that's as
good as you ride and as experienced as you. I'm
being serious, like you're not gonna you're not a good
example for someone to show an expandable, that's messed up.
But I would say for the average guy, if he
(27:18):
were the average bow hunter with you know, I mean,
there's all these different levels of experience that people have.
If he was shooting expandables at ten bears, it's gonna
cost him a bear in ten bears, I believe. And
you may be on your fifth bear and it's not
cost you a bears, so you're still going when if
you had been shooting the fixed blade, you'd have killed
(27:38):
all ten. That's what I believe. And now everybody's got
to do what they think. But that's a pretty good topic.
Let's talk real quick to about set up. A lot
of people ask about archery setups for bear and the
question is can't I use my white tail set up?
And my answer to that is basically yes. I mean,
like I'm not, I'm shooting around sixty pounds. Actually the
(28:01):
bear that I killed in Oklahoma this year batman pound bear,
I was shooting a fifty well it may have been
sixty pounds. I want to say it was the high fifties.
Just tendering, you know, no problem, I hit to ended
up hitting kind of the offside shoulder. He had his
leg down, so I didn't get just a complete pass
(28:22):
through with him. Yeah. Right, you were there with me
on the recovery. You know that bear was crouched and
he had his elbow back like this and hit him
right here, and it actually went down through his shoulder
and like was sticking down in his inside the hide,
but in his front leg. So when you getted the bear,
(28:43):
you found the arrow actually, and remember were to recover
James Lawrence's bear. Ten days later, David Miller found my
iron wheel broad head on the ground. Yes, uh, trying
to think it was still It's a kind of a
mystery to me what happened because I never found an
exit hole. But David Miller found eight inches of arrow
(29:06):
in my two d and five grain iron wheel broadhead.
We were tracking James kilderbarrel over there in the same place.
We went over there and tracted and he came back
and handed me that, And I said, where did you
find that? Because David was with us when we recovered it,
you know, I mean, so anyway, it was just a
weird deal because I mean that that bears front legs
(29:27):
were you know, ten inches in diameter, so in in
that arrow, just at the steep angle. But point being,
you don't need super heavy pounded drying shooting seventy pounds.
What was your bow set up something? Yeah, yeah, you were.
You were shooting pretty low pounded average way there. I
figured your aarrawwaight, Kolby was in the four hundreds. I
(29:49):
mean you're shooting a hunter grain trick, Yeah, slick trick magnum,
and that's a great head. I mean I love a
slick trick broadhead and have for a year. Um, I
did shoot the iron wheels this year mainly because of
my traditional stuff. Um. But if if you and I'm
sponsored by no broadhead company, but if you just said
(30:11):
to Clay pick your poison for broadheads, I would I
chide a hunter grain slick Trick Magnum. Now for for compound,
I've actually shout their Viper trick, which is not a
traditional not not a not a traditional you know, traditional
archery head like that. But so the main thing would
(30:31):
be just getting the right broad head and shot placement.
It's not about having an eighty pound bow, so you
can't use your white tail set up. People evaluate aero
penestration based on kinetic energy momentum is actually the correct
way to men to evaluate the possibility for aero penetration.
But basically momentum measures of vector which vector momentum measures
(30:56):
the the directional force. Kinetic energy measures force just like
like an explosion almost just like just like it just
measures how much energy is present in this thing. Basically,
what I'm getting to is arrowweight is more important than speed.
You know, there was a time when an archery everybody
was worried about speed. You know, it's just like, shoot
a really fast bow with a light arrow. But a
(31:19):
really fast bow with a light arrow does not penetrate
as well as a slower bow that's shooting a heavier arrow. Anyway,
this is all nerd talk, but momentum is the correct
way to measure arrow penetration. Not CONNECTICU. Energy didn't speed
come from where you're wanting to get it there faster,
(31:39):
so the white tilt didn't duck as much. Yeah, like
my dad, who who is bow hunted his whole life,
he loves speed, and it's because he didn't want after
judge yardage. He always wanted a bow that would shoot
flat to thirty yards, so that just any there that
showed up in the woods of Arkansas, which basically most
time you can't see much more than thirty yards. If
(32:00):
a deer showed up, he just put his first pen
on it because in his experience shooting slow bows all
through the seventies and eighties was he was missing deer
because of misjudging yardage. They didn't have range finders, you know,
they're good range finders. He had these range finders that
like combined images. Have you have you seen those rhynd
(32:22):
where it's like you put your eye in and you
dial it and it like combines the old school. Yeah,
and so so his whole thing was speed so that
he didn't miss judge yardage. As I went through that,
I was like, well, we we've got range finders. Now
you're set in a tree and you can range everything.
So you pretty much no yardages for tree stand white
(32:42):
toil hunting, for bear hunting. So I would rather shoot
a heavier arrow and get more penetration because I did
have some mishaps with uh, not getting penetration with white
tells when I was younger. We've talked about barre anatomy,
we've talked about shot angles. We haven't talked as much
about shot angles, But like you, you really don't want
(33:03):
to take a super steep quarter and away shot on
the bear. Now, if that's all you have, you can
certainly kill a bear that is at a steep quarter angle,
but you're probably gonna forfeit that exit hole, and so
you just gotta be prepared for that, and you gotta
make sure you're on your a game. Ryan mentioned this earlier,
is that one of the biggest differences between deer and
(33:24):
bear is that a bear, first of all, is a
black animal. Black. The color black is designed to absorb
light and to not give away much. I mean, like
if you just look into a black piece of paper,
it's like all you see is black. But if you
looked at a white piece of paper that maybe was
(33:46):
folded just a little bit, like you could see the shadows.
White show shadows shows shape, and so a black a
bear can often look like just a black trash bag.
And you can't see where the shoulder comes up, you
can't see the ribs, you can't no definition where a
(34:08):
white tail. Ryan has short hair, light colored hair, has
a very defined muscular body. I mean, you can see
the shoulder, you can see the ribs, you can see
the rump, you can see the muscles. So when you
look through the peep on the boat a white tail,
you can see right where you're aiming. A lot of
times with a big bear or a little bear, you
(34:28):
pull up and look for a peep and you feel
like you're aiming at a black trash bag. And I mean,
even inside of me having killed some bears, I still
struggle with that. Sometimes at close range, like close range,
you draw and you're like, holy cow, Like in the
bear that I killed in Oklahoma. I don't know why
that one got to me, but I drew the bow
(34:50):
bear just right there, I mean like ten yards and
I looked through the peep and all I could see
was black. And I was looking around my peep to
try to get a you know, trying to just figure
out where my pen was, and that would lean back
in and look and lean back in and look, and
finally I felt like I had where I wanted to hit.
(35:11):
I shot, and if you remember, I shot far forward.
I've had that same problem in low light conditions before dark,
you know, trying to see through your peep and like say,
no definition on a bear. You want to make sure
that body is not cupped. You know, sometimes they'll roll
them hips to the side and be cupped. Uh, that's
not the best. Just wait for him to maybe expose
(35:34):
that leg or just you know, completely broadside. But yeah,
it's uh, it can be tricky sometimes we'll see. And
that's that's the next point is that a bear can
do a whole lot more stuff than a white tail.
A bear could be sitting on his butt, a bear
could be standing up, a bear could have his feet
(35:55):
up on a tree. A bear could be cupped. And
that's probably to me one of the things that gets
most people. We've made some videos about this. But a
bear could look like he's broadside, but actually his spine
would be like in a u A deer can't even
do that hardly. But like a bear could be appear
to be broadside looking at you, but actually eighty percent
(36:17):
of his vitals be covered because he's cupped like a
you know, I mean, like a like a dog. Well,
that's that's not a good example, but yes, or or
a lot of times with inbated situations, bears come in
and lay down. Lots of guys have shot bears laying down,
and again, you can do it, but it's trickier because
(36:40):
those vitals are compacted. He's literally laying on his rib cage.
Those ribs flex and you you know, shooting a bear
laying down, you're probably shooting at a target that is
twenty percent less in size than it would be if
the bear was standing up. Would you agree with that?
I mean, like that that rib cage would flex just
a little bit and those vitals would those vitals would compress.
(37:04):
So basically a deer doesn't just have the flexibility to
do what a bearer does. That throws people off run people,
especially people that aren't familiar with seeing bear. As a
bear comes in, he might be standing up, he might
be laying down. He might be setting on his haunches,
you know, licking his bottom feet. He might be he
could do all kinds of stuff. I've seen you do
(37:26):
that yourself, and licking my feet, you know occasionally that
man that's massively. When I first started hunting bears, I
remember just kind of being like confused by watching a
bear move. And I think that's kind of what freaks
people out sometimes when they're hunting bear for the first time.
(37:49):
It's just to see an animal that that's just different
than what they're used to. Kobe was at your experience. Yeah,
it was really surprising, like first being so big, they're
pretty pretty since they are like they're pretty, like they
know what movements they're making. It's like they're so articulate
with their movements. I guess it would be the things
they're definitely in the the yoga animal. You know, if
(38:11):
you like to do yoga, the bears your your spirit animal.
Ryan's big in the yoga the yoga. That's one more
thing let's talk about. So we most of what we've
talked about here would relate directly to archery hunting. I
do want to say that hunting with a rifle is
gonna be different. Now, bar anatomy stays the same, all
(38:34):
the stuff stays the same in terms of the actual bear,
but with a rifle, shooting a high powered rifle, you're
kind of been a different ball game because you can
shoot a bear straight in the shoulder, high in the
shoulder and just drop them. You can shoot a bear
that's facing you. I would never suggest shooting an archery
bear just head on. I mean, I know it's worked
(38:57):
for people. I mean I'm sure it has, uh, but well,
you know, bullet you're getting that shock, that energy hydro
static shock, you're shutting down the electrical system. Basically, shoot
him in the shoulder, head on, like you're talking about
quarterin away a little more forgiving on. Definitely a rifle, right,
(39:19):
So with a rifle, I would have to say that
it would be fairly similar to a white tail in principle.
I mean, because you can shoot them the shoulder, you
can shoot him head on, you can shoot him quarter
in a way that wouldn't be a problem. Um, you know,
you don't have to obviously judge for you don't need
to shoot low because they're not gonna jump the string.
I mean, so rifle hunting is quite different. And this
(39:44):
podcast really isn't about rifle caliber, but a lot of
questions about caliber rifle, and it kind of goes back
to the same thing with archery. You can kill a
bear with a thirty thirty and a hundred and fifty
grand bullet. I mean there are lots of air it
probably thirty thirties probably killed as many bears as any
any caliber, just from the old days of when guys,
when that was a main cartridge. But you the bigger
(40:08):
the better, the bigger the better with with bear because
they are a big animal, you do want to hit
them hard. Uh. You know, my gun of choice currently
for black bear rifle of choice mag with a two
grain bullet out of my my Best of the West rifle.
But I did want to just clarify that a lot
of the delicate things that we're talking about in terms
(40:30):
of shot placement for black bear does include is about
archery hunting, not as much about about rifle hunting. But hey,
closing comments or thoughts, Ryan Um, let me ask you
a question, what would you say would be the biggest
mistake that you have seen? First time bear hunters are
(40:53):
just inexperienced bear hunters make on shot placement biggest mistake.
You know, Bears aren't like dear people are excited to
finally you know, Hey, I've got a bear here in
front of me, and you know it's in range. I
need to hurry up and get take the shot. Bears
are pretty patient, you know, especially on a baited hunt.
(41:15):
You can wait and wait and wait for that perfect shot.
You don't have to be in a rush. You know,
a lot of people want to take that first shot
opportunity just to wait for the right shot. You know, Um,
I've made mistakes and you know, not made the right shot.
(41:35):
But you know it's all about patients. But I guess
you know it just comes with experience. So um, more
bears you get a chance to be around and and harvest,
you'll learn from that and take it to the next hunt.
But like I said, just be patient, wait for the
right shot opportunity. You don't have to be in any hurry.
(41:56):
That's a. That's a great example because in white tail hunting,
most of the time you have a very short window
to execute a shot on a big buck. I mean,
like take the first shot you get, you know what
I mean, Like, that's a that's a good ethical shot.
That's that's kind of the way we're preached to because
most time these animals are just moving through areas that
we're hunting. But especially on a baited hunt or even
(42:19):
on a spring a spring hunt, when a bear is
feeding out in the meadow, you got time. If that
animal is feeding, he's gonna be there for a while,
and so you don't have to rush it. So you're
number one thing when the first time bear hunter, new
bear hunter would be rushing the shot. Yeah, yea, yeah,
you know I'm basing that on hunting over a bait
(42:42):
where the bears occupied. You know, like you said, he's
not passing through. Uh, you're gonna have some time to
especially if the wind's right and he don't know you're around,
You've you've got a little bit of time to play with.
And I can say, the right opportunity to present itself. Yeah,
very good, Kobe, What do you think? I mean, those
(43:07):
are the things that Corey told us or told me
whenever I went up there. It was just you know,
to be patient and make the right shot. And we
were patient, I mean watching We watched that bear for
a while and the right opportunity was there. Um. I
think one of the things that happened I didn't realize
he was he was moving, you know, And so I
think what happened was I was looking through the peep
(43:27):
like once I should close my other eye and just
like focused on him. I couldn't tell that he was moving,
you know, because it was the right opportunity. He just
started moving right at the wrong time. So you probably
hit right where you were aiming. He just wasn't in
the same spot he moved. Yeah. Well, and I think
that's a good thing to to think about is that
once you initiate that shot cycle, you've got to be
(43:50):
super flexible. I mean, your shot cycle has to be quick.
And when I say shot cycle, I mean like draw
your bow and from the time you make the decision
to shoot until the time you actually execute the shot,
you need to be able to back out of it,
you know. I mean like because in that situation, you
were like, Okay, I'm gonna shoot, and then two seconds
(44:13):
time he moved, you know, and you went ahead and shot,
you know. Now, I think that I think that's just
learning being in bow hunting situations in archery and executing
the shot, you know, which is anybody could have made
the mistake. But yeah, I think, uh I I had
been drawn back for a while. I think that if
(44:33):
I there, if in the future, like whenever I get
an opportunity or I think I have one, I think
I'm gonna just, you know, if I'm drawn back for
too much time, just let it down and just reassessed,
you know what. Though that being said, my strongest trait
I think when it comes to actually taking an animal,
especially with a compound bow, it's knowing when to draw.
(44:57):
And I love drawing before they get there. I mean,
like I like doing what you did. Yeah, I felt
like you did the right thing. I mean like the
bear was just at any second gonna step into a
correct shooting position. So you were drawn and ready. Now
once you start holding up for over a minute or something, yeah,
I mean like if you start to fill your body
be compromised and like, yeah, you should have let you
(45:20):
you can let down that situation. But like, the biggest
thing that I see people do is like a deer
or bear is coming and they wait till it's in
position to shoot before they draw their bow. Man I draw.
I'm not talking about like draw a minute before it
gets there, but I'm anticipating the shot, drawn and ready,
and boy, when it steps to where I want to shoot, shoot,
(45:42):
And that's probably more a white tail thing because a
lot of times they're moving. And but hey, we're gonna
we're gonna end this podcast. I hope that you've learned
something here, and uh, yeah, you know, ultimately our goal
is to make as many good at the gold quick
killing shots as possible. And uh, bears are big, tough,
(46:06):
unforgiving animals, but when they're hit right, they go down easy.
And so hey, guys, thanks for being on the podcast,
and we're gonna have We're gonna continue, We're gonna have
a few more podcasts that are kind of this style
where we're just talking about a specific issue. Hey, keep
the wild places wild. Why keep us? For the bears
(46:30):
b
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