Dummies Guide to Utilizing Bear Meat and Fat

This week at the Bear Hunting Magazine Global Headquarters Clay talks with Matt and Weston Taylor and Bear Newcomb about their bear, deer, turkey and hog hunting in 2020. However, the meat of the conversation comes at the end of the podcast when they talk about processing bear meat and fat and how to use it. Matt killed a bear this year and he goes into detail about how he's used the bear, including the bear grease. Matt and his family prefer bear meat over deer meat. You'll enjoy the stories and you'll learn something as well. 

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to the Sportsman's Nation podcast network, brought to
you by Federal Premium Ammunition in their new centerfire rifle
ammunition Terminal Ascent. Now, the Terminal Ascent has a slip
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(00:23):
match grade long range accuracy in a bonded hunting bullet,
and it comes in a variety of cartridges including the
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want to find more information about the Terminal Ascent, visit

(00:46):
Federal Premium dot com and while you're there, check out
its Federal Season, the official podcast of Federal Ammunition. My
name is Clay Nukeleman. I'm the host of the Bear
Honey Magazine podcast. I'll also be your host into the

(01:06):
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. All right, We're at the Bear Hunting Magazine

(01:35):
global headquarters and we just settled a pretty significant issue
that uh that came up and I had nothing to
do with it, but I was. I had to score
a deer for my friend Matt Taylor, who's here with
his son Western Taylor, also known as the Eagle, and

(01:58):
my son Bears here as well. Um, Matt, tell me
just a little bit about what just happened. Yeah, so
we Uh, I've been hunting with the same group of
guys for about twenty years deer hunting, and uh, nineteen
years ago tomorrow I killed what we think is the
biggest deer our camp, you know, record holder in terms

(02:20):
of big buck and uh, this year one of my
hunting buddies, Cody Umney, shot a really nice eight pointer
opening more in a muzzloader season, and uh, I thought
we might have a record breaker, so we needed an impartial,
third party official judge to settle it. Western. Were you
there when Cody killed that buck? Yeah? I was there

(02:43):
right camp. You were there at camp? Did you think
it was bigger than your dad's Dear, I don't know,
it was close. Just when you saw it, What did
you think we'd be like, oh man, this is gonna
give Dad's buck a run for the money, sort of yuh,
you kind of thought maybe it would steal your family's honor.
So when did you kill your buck mat like in

(03:04):
or something. It was two thousand and one, so the
camp record was killed in two thousand one. So you
brought Cody's deer over here, and uh we we scored
it pretty quick. And I told you, I said, uh so,
I I scored for Boone and Crockett, but we we didn't.
We kind of gave like the the deer camp version

(03:24):
score like we didn't. So when you're scoring a deer, guys,
Bear would know it. He seen me do it. But
when you're officially scoring a deer, Western you mark the
baseline of the times, which so that means like, so
there's the main beam, but then there's the times, and
you have to have a baseline to determine where that
time starts so you can know really how long it is.

(03:45):
So usually you put a you put a piece of
tape at the base of every time, and then you
lay a wire. I've got a little cable actually, it's
a cable over the top of the main beam. As
if you were going to take a saw and cut
that tying off flat, so the main beam would just

(04:06):
would just be a main beam with no times like
you you this envision, you know, this this invisible line
that would go across there. You would mark it on
the tape because you don't want to draw on somebody's
dear an, let's put mask in tape there right there.
And uh, but we didn't do that because this was
a deer camp. This wasn't official. This was like deer camp,

(04:27):
which in many ways is more official. Okay, um, because
there's a little bit of liberty. But uh, Cody's buck
was an eight point beautiful eight point dark racked, heavy
horned The longest time was like ten and a half inches,
I think, which is a tall time, real naughty, gnarly

(04:48):
basis gnarly bases, uh, sixteen and a half inches wide
or so, which is pretty typical of a good deer.
And uh it scored like one thirty one and something,
which is a really respectable eight points, especially for around
here on public ground. So here's what was wild is
that Matt thought for all these years that the deer

(05:13):
that his deer which is a tent which which is
a main frame ten point with a split brow time,
so it's an eleven point. You thought it scored one
would headed at one thirty two and a half. So
you had that written on the back of the mount
from two thousand one. Yeah, yeah, my rough measurements back then.
Who knows where we got the information on how to
measure it. Yeah, and so we just scored it and

(05:36):
it scored. What did it score on a half? One
and a half. It's like a surprise. This is like
this thing has been on the wall for decade. It's
not even been off the wall almost two decades. You
pull it off the wall and it's ten inches bigger
than you thought. Is this like change your life a
little bit? I feel a little more accomplished. These guys

(05:58):
are gonna have to work a little harder to be
this camp record. I know. I'm really I was hoping
Cody beat it like it's time. Yeah, yeah, I'm with it.
It's been too long for one record. We we need
something else to shoot. Would it would kind of give
the camp a little bit of momentum to think that
the record has been broken. Yeah, it's kind of like
the world record typical White Tail was killed and I

(06:18):
think nineteen um up in Saskatchewan by Hanson. Who golly,
it's been so long. See, that's just it. It's been
so long since the world record white too, Milo Hanson,
that's his name. It's been so long since the world
record white tail hit the dirt that we've forgotten the
guy's name. Yeah, you don't even shoot for it anymore.

(06:39):
It's just not achievable. Western were you going for a
world record white tail this year? Sort of sort of hoping? Well, now,
it would have given the camps the momentum. But I'm
gonna say that Cody's buck. You could, you could find
other categories like biggest eight point Yeah, yeah, it would
definitely hit that. You know, we we've fast some good
deer over the years. In fact, my oldest son, Jackson,

(07:02):
killed a big eight point four years ago that uh,
I would say it was maybe just under Cody's but
we get a decent one every year. Yeah. Well, hey,
so what we're gonna do on this podcast is I
want to get around to butcher and a bear, how
to process and butcher a bear, and all the different

(07:23):
things that we can do with bare meat and bear fat.
In Matt this year just got finished butcher and one
killed a bear. We're gonna talk about that. But I've
got Weston and Bear and Matt in here, because all
of you guys have had an incredible season. I have not.
Uh so Western You first second day of muzzleloader season

(07:48):
killed the biggest buck of your life? Is that right? Yes?
Were you excited about that? Very public land? Yeah? What
just tell briefly tell me the story. I saw us
sitting on the ground. Um, he dropped me off about
four o'clock in the afternoon. Yeah, yeah, after he shot

(08:09):
a dough that morning. Okay, that's right, you killed one
that morning. Now set settled down about five o'clock. This
dere it comes coming down and you could hear him coming,
and um, he starts to get closer. I'm getting ready
and he's I couldn't really see where he was until
he started hook bushing, hook bushing, and uh see the

(08:32):
tree just going back and forth, and um, I sort
of sweart. I was going in my bag trying to
can call it towards me because I thought I saw
it going away from me. But I thought I messed up.
And they're giving some sound effects. I don't think that. Okay,
go ahead and uh wait, wait wait when you okay,

(08:55):
let me just keep you and how we're gonna do this.
When he said something, I need some sound effects, like
if he says combustion, like I think that's kind of
a camp term these guys have. I need to hear that.
Go ahead, go ahead, okay, and uh he turns and
starts coming right to me, and she turns go ahead.

(09:18):
And I looked at my gun and clicked back the hammer,
and all I see is his head and his neck, like,
this is the only shot I have. So I took
it and he went down just right in his tracks.
Next shot, yeah, next shot right in the white patch. No.
It was like if I was an inch off, it
probably would have missed it. Oh yeah, I got lucky, okay,

(09:41):
and went down. I was shaking real bad, trying to
get the cap out, struggling. I finally got all loaded,
waited a little bit. Then I walked up on it
and it was big, big, nice public land six. Yeah awesome. Well,
Weston had to sit there with that deer for two hours.
We didn't have any communication in the mountains, and I

(10:03):
told him I'd come and get him at dark. Yeah,
and uh, I was walking in and it was after dark.
I had my flashlight and I got almost two of
them and out here, Dad, hurry, oh boy, something that happened.
I bet that was a long two hours, wasn't it. Yeah? Now, okay,
so Weston killed the gobbler in the spring too. It
was your first gobbler and then on the very same day,

(10:26):
was it not? So Baron Western or fourteen your fourteen
no night yet you okay? Okay, thirteen bears fourteen and uh,
you killed the gobbler. We got a text message from
them on open a day youth season and uh, we
didn't even know they were going turkey hunting. Yeah, I
think I text you. I said, hey, are you home?
We got something to show you? Yeah? Yeah, and uh

(10:49):
and we were down we were at turkey hunting. And anyway,
bar ended up killing one late in the morning. So Bear,
so y'all both killed gobblers. And then Bear tell me
give me the like Abrevier did version of your Halloween Buck. Okay,
so I got home pretty late at like three thirty
or something. West excuse me. I need sound effects anything

(11:13):
that any action word, any verbs. This is like English class.
I need some sound effect. Okay, quality is not the
issue here. Just energy energy. Okay, this rings energy, Okay,
I need this, okay, all right. So it's Halloween Day
and I got back from school pretty late, about the
time i'd want to get in the stand. And so

(11:36):
I got home and I quickly got dressed because I
knew that I wanted to go. So I asked River,
my sister, if she could drive me over to this place.
She could drive me over to this place about half
a mile from her house, and I took a climbing
stand in me. But you calculated the wind because I
told you to go somewhere else. Yeah, the wind was

(12:00):
out of the south, blowing north, and so I knew
this stand where you would call that a south wind, okay, Yeah,
and that's something that maybe not everybody would understand. But
a wind that's blowing to the north as a south wind.
So the wind is categorized about the direction that comes from. Yeah,
And so I knew that the wind at the spot

(12:20):
I would sitting will be blowing into a field where
I didn't think that the deer would come from. So
I went and I climbed this wide oak tree after
trying to climb a shag bark hickory tree with a
climbing stand. Oh you didn't tell me that you tried
to climb hill tree is not the kind of tree
a lot of climbate of climbate. I got like six
ft up and decided that you're like, not, this is

(12:42):
not gonna work easy to come down. They're hard to
go up. Yeah, because the way that the way the
bark lies. Yeah. So I went to this like white
oak tree, probably like ten ft from it, climbed up.
It got up probably a like four forty five, a
lot later than i'd want to be up getting dark
at six yeah, before time change, and so I waited

(13:02):
about fifteen minutes before I started calling. I would do
an extra spleet and then I would do like attending grunt.
Like we're like, we need, we need, I need to
hear this, but we're like it'd be like a couple
of deep your mouth like a round, you know, like
the extra sleet, and then like an okay, So the
extras bleet would be like a long, higher pitched bleat

(13:26):
that ends with a little crescendo yeah yeah, and then yeah,
and then attending grunt is like a deeper grunt and
it's kind of like that there's like a buck tending
a dough basically, And then so I was doing that
like when they're doing that Western if you heard about

(13:46):
grunt in the woods. Yeah, they when they're with a
dough that they're kind of like corraling and trying to
you know, do what they do. They he's like back
back back, just I mean, like it's an incredible thing
to hear. I've heard it, you know a few times,

(14:07):
and it's just it's kind of like hearing a turkey go,
which like you know, something special is happening. Yeah, And
so I was doing that probably like every fifteen minutes
about the time that like whenever I had grunt that
like I would think, if a deer here's this, it'll
come in. But then I would wait until like whichever

(14:27):
deer that was that would have been there would be
I've decided to not come basically. So I was doing
that probably every fifteen minutes. And at about five thirty
almost exactly, I did that, and about forty five seconds later,
I see a rack of like a big, bigger rack

(14:50):
than anything that I've ever shot coming down the hill
and he was just coming straight towards me, and he
was grunting every time you take a step. He got yeah,
and he got He just walked right behind me like
perfect at seventeen yards and I drew back a grunt,
stopped him, shot hit him a little high, so he

(15:11):
just dropped and then you know, I shot him and
dropped him, dropped him with a bow nice ten point.
I was I was hunting somewhere else and he texted
me what was funny? And this is the way this
is kind of what you you kind of live for
in the fall, is that moment when things shift because hunting,

(15:35):
I'm in this stage of hunting right now where it
just almost seems impossible, Like I hadn't whitetail hunted this
much in years. I mean, I've just spent an incredible
amount of time in the woods and I have yet
to I did draw my bow on a shooter buck,
but then that's it. I haven't killed one. And so
you just get to thinking like this is just an
impossible task. And then just all of a sudden things change.

(16:01):
Because I had texted Bear and he was like, you
see anything, and I was like, no, have you know nothing?
You know, just like this pretty typical exchange we'd have
and then like four minutes later, big ten point down. Yeah,
it was exciting, and it was Halloween night and a
bunch of people were coming over to our house for

(16:22):
a kind of a bonfire, and that made it all
the more fun. You'll probably once in your life kill
a deer like at a time when like a whole
bunch of people are gonna be like coming to your
I'm being serious, like usually it's kind of a solo
thing and you share the experience with people after the
fact or through technology, or you call somebody and tell

(16:44):
them it's pretty special when you kill a deer and
you can bring but I know it deer camp. You guys,
would I mean you have that experience that deer camp. Yeah,
I started say. It's it's incredibly the parallels these boys
have had this year between killing that their first gobber
on the same day and then this year both of
them getting a good buck. Western had a similar experience.
On our way into camp. We use CB radios up

(17:07):
there in the mountains, and our radio to head to
the camp. As we're coming up the mountain, and the
guys answered, I said, hey, Weston is bringing another big
one into camp. Get the hanging tree ready and we
got up there. Man, it was real special. Everybody gathered
around the truck and they're high five and just a
really cool moment. And so bear got to experience that too,

(17:27):
I know. Yeah, yeah cool. Well, and then, uh, Matt,
you've had a heck of a year. We were just
going through, like, give me a give me an overview
of how your year so far? And then but I
want to get to the specifics of the bear. Sure,

(17:48):
but yeah, give me an overview. Yeah, well, the bear
kicked it all off. Really. That was October two. Uh,
we went and hunted that bear and and got got
it with a bow. I kicked off the season. Man.
That that I guess we'll talk more in detail about
that later. But uh, Weston and I and and our

(18:08):
our buddies, we all camped the week of musloader season.
It's a big week for us. And we went down
there and my oldest daughter, June is six years old,
and she came with us this year for the first time.
And uh, Saturday and Sunday we didn't see anything. Weston
got his two deer on Sunday, and then Monday morning,
June and I got a seven point buck together and

(18:31):
so that was pretty incredible. The next morning, UH, June,
Western and I all hunted together and and we had
Weston set up on a hot trail and and a
nice nine point came in behind June and I I
wasn't expecting to come from that way. There's no way
Weston was going to see it. So I had to
do the shooting, which I sure hated to do, but

(18:53):
but I got that one. So we we killed bucks
two days in a row. So I had a had
a bear in two bucks at that point. And then uh,
later that week, I was still hunting with a muzzloader.
UH still had dough tags and got a bobcat, which
I've been trying to kill a bobcat my entire life.
I've shot at him. I've never gotten one until this year.

(19:16):
So that kind of came together. And then this past weekend,
Western and Bear and I went back to deer camp.
They were able to hunt with rifles, my youth and
I took my bowl, thinking, you know, I'm still still
after a dough and Uh, Saturday evening, right before dark,
a big wild hog came through and I was able

(19:37):
to get him. So a bear, two bucks, a bobcat,
and a hog. Wow, man, and this hog, uh, this
hog was quite the word deal. You don't have to
go into all the details. But you shot this hog
right at dark and y'all trailed it for now. I've
i've i've kind of mind this story out of all

(19:59):
of you, individ, Julie and I have pretty much come
to the same story. So I know you're not lying,
But the collective ideas that trailed this this hog close
to a mile, that'd be my guess. I know. Walking
hard back to the truck up a creek bed took
us probably an hour. Yeah, so and and and we're

(20:24):
trailing this thing, crawling through briars, you know, after this
big wounded bore, no weapon, you know, flashlight, and went
in and weren't really prepared. We're just going to retrieve
my arrow. I thought I missed it. Oh, so we
went in totally unprepared, and so by the end of
it we trailed. We got a knife in one hand
and a flashlighting, not knowing what we're gonna walk up on.

(20:49):
But we eventually did find him. Well. And so go
ahead and tell kind of the end of the story.
You you give up on the trail. Yeah, he made
it to a field, and uh, there was five of
us looking, two of my buddies, Rustling Cody and then
me Bear and Weston and Rustling Cody. We're gonna going

(21:10):
ahead and try to figure out where we were because
we we lost our sense of direction. Moon hadn't coming
up yet middle of the night, and they're gonna try
to find They think they know where a road is,
so they leave us, and we we lost blood trail
after a while. And I'm like, boys, that's it, I said,
all for none. Man, We're just gonna have to go
and try to find those guys and get out of here.

(21:32):
We take about what ten or fifteen steps Weston and
I here, and I shined the light over and we
are what ten ft from this bore. I mean he's
right there and standing up like he's yea, oh man.
That shook us up pretty good. But he was he

(21:52):
was almost expired, like he didn't charge us or anything.
So we uh again, didn't have a weapon other than
I for none of us were brave enough to dive
in on him, so we uh, we just we had
to leave. No. Can you believe it? Wow? Well, I'll
say that's a pretty uh I mean wild boars are

(22:15):
if they're not just stereotype to be aggressive, I mean
they really are aggressive. Um so, I mean it's pretty unusual.
I would say if he had enough life to be
standing there, that he didn't at least take a round
at you could have been dangerous. He was chopping his
jaws at us. This is not a small hawk. Is
that big hawk? I would say, over three pounds and

(22:39):
big tusks? Big tusk yeah, probably two two and a
half inches long. Yeah, yeah, he was big. Well, man,
that's quite the Uh. The Arkansas slam right there to
get a wild hog, buck and a bear West to
kill a turkey. So the family, the family slam our

(22:59):
best year ever for sure. Yeah, well that's pretty cool.
That is pretty cool. Well, um, Matt, so let's talk
about let's talk about our bear hunt. Um. I wasn't
planning on I wasn't planning on inviting you. I wasn't either,

(23:21):
I was working that day. Yeah, Now I kind of
felt like this would happen. Is that? So the first weekend,
all the kids hunted and I kind of just I
was saving my tag to kill a bear in the mountains.
This is the this is a short version. I was saving.
I didn't I didn't want. I didn't plan to kill
a bear over bait, even though we were baiting bears

(23:43):
and had bears on bait. So after the weekend, the
first weekend ended and the kids went home, and that
meant it's my turn to hunt. I went into the
mountains and checked a bunch of spots that if I
was gonna kill a bear in the mountains without bait,
this is where it was gonna happen. And I quickly

(24:06):
saw that it was gonna be real tough just because
the mass crop was scattered. It was, it was not
a dry year. There was many factors that made bear
hunting the mountains tough for the way that I hunt
and the places that I hunt. So I spent a
day and a half hunt in the mountains and pretty

(24:26):
much ran all my little traps, you know. And uh,
and so it came to be Monday, and I had
been there had been one spot. And if anybody follows
Barony magazine stuff, they would have seen the video we
did with River the mule bait you know where she Uh.

(24:47):
It was a video called Rivers Bear on Barony Magazine YouTube.
And and we we had this this private land. We
can only hunt bear bait bears on private land in Arkansas,
and so we've got a piece of private land that's
that you can't get to with a vehicle, essentially, so
we have to pack in bait on mules. Well, I
had neglected that bait this year, Matt. I probably told

(25:10):
you this. I baited that thing like three days before season,
only one time because I didn't intend to hunt it
because it's so hard to get to and where we
hunt with James Lawrence and that's where we dedicated our
whole weekend and our whole bear camp was in his
part of the world. And uh so I wasn't even

(25:31):
gonna get I wouldn't. I wasn't even gonna hunt the
mule bait. But I just couldn't stand not baiting it.
So I had gone in there one time and baited
and hadn't even gone back to check it. Um. I mean,
let me think of the sequence. Let me think of
the sequence. Yeah no, no, no, no, that's not that's

(25:53):
not true. I didn't bait it at all. I didn't
bait it. Uh No, I baited it twice. I'm sorry.
That's exactly what happened. Three days before a season, I
baited it, didn't go back in there, went to the mountains,
decided I wasn't gonna kill a bear in the mountains.
And I thought, well, maybe I'll go kill a bear
at the mule bait. But I'd only baited it one
time three days before, and I knew how all the

(26:15):
bears were responding on our other baits, which was pretty poor.
On years when there's good mass crop, the bears don't
respond to bait that well. So I knew that at
the mule bait it would probably just be average. But
and I I just you know, I knew I wasn't
gonna The only way I was gonna shoot a bear
over bait this year was if it was gonna be

(26:36):
a real nice bear. Well, I figured i'd go into
the mule bait and just law of averages and having
baited and hunted a lot, you know, the chances of
killing a really big bear on October the two were slim.
But and I didn't have any intel, but I wanted

(26:57):
to be a part of a bear kill up there,
And I, you know, I just thought it to be
a shame for me to let a nice bear walk by,
just because I didn't want to kill it. And so
Matt works real job. And uh, I called you? Did
I call you the morning of? Yeah? You sent me
a text at like nine thirty that morning. Hey, going

(27:20):
bear hunting at eleven o'clock. I want to go. M hmmm,
let's see. I can't. I've got too much to do. Yeah. Sure, Hey.
That is why I texted you, because I could have
sent that text to a lot of people at nine
thirty in the morning and they would have been like, ah,

(27:40):
thanks for the invite, Clay, but I can't do it.
And I would have been like, check, I'll remember that
for the next ten years. And and I just had
a feeling I had given you a tip the night
before though. Do you remember I said, what are you
doing tomorrow? I got yeah, kind of a cryptic what
what are you doing tomorrow? And I'm like, where's this going?
I will. I'm not afraid to say that sometimes I am.

(28:08):
It's hard to get me to commit when it comes
to hunting, because you know, the scenario changes constantly. Like
and I had the thought the night before ought to
invite Matt to go up there with me, Like that
just crossed my mind. And so you know, many variables. Well,
I wonder if he could go. I figured he'd want

(28:30):
to go, but it's like, I wonder if he could go.
So it's just like, what are you doing tomorrow, Matt?
Because I mean, I'm I'm thinking maybe I ought to
go to the mountains and hunt on the mules. Maybe
I ought not to even go up to up there,
you know. And uh So, anyway, I sent that text,
and then finally at like nine thirty the next morning,
I was like, I'm going to the mountain and I

(28:52):
want to bring you know, somebody. They're not just somebody.
I don't just take somebody. I mean I I wanted
to take you. And so I was like, hey, I'm
leaving eleven if you want to go kill Beart And
and I was very upfront about our deal, was I not?
Not exactly. I don't think he presented a deal until
we were on the way down. Are you sure? No?

(29:13):
I don't remember, because I said, I mean, I feel
like this is what happened. I feel like I said, Matt,
if there's a big bear, I'm gonna shoot it, because
that's this's just what I said. But if there's a
bear that I don't want to shoot, or if a
bear that I don't want to shoot comes in first,
I just felt like there was gonna be. It wasn't

(29:34):
just gonna be one big bear coming in there. Yeah,
it's gonna be. And And to give some context to this,
I was completely cool with that because man, I I
killed a bear back in two thousand five, just uh incidental.
I was deer hunting and got a bear. And I
had a lot especially deer hunting and in bear country,

(29:55):
like my son Jackson killed a bear four years ago,
just you know, while we were dear hunting. They're up there.
But I haven't seen a bear in fifteen years. And
so when you said, you know, if it's one I
don't want to shoot, you can shoot it. Like, that's
fine with me, man, any bear, right, because I'm fascinated
by bears. I want I wanted another bear and you

(30:18):
just don't see him there. Yeah, I think you. I've
heard you'd call them black ghosts. They literally are. Yeah. Well,
and I knew you'd be okay with with that deal.
And and I and I knew that probably leaned towards
your favor because I knew what I was after would
we'd have to been pretty it's been pretty good fortune

(30:39):
for me to go in there and shoot a I
was probably looking for a fifty pound plus bear. Yeah,
and so we so we so we have to load
We load up two mules, We drive down there, saddle
up the mules. Um, I'd say, well, we left at
eleven and uh we were up on the mount hunting

(31:00):
by about three o'clock. About three o'clock we were in
the stands. So we rode up the mountain and uh
and the way we hunt that places we tie mute bears.
Never hunted up there with me, have you. You didn't
hunt it up there with the bat. Yeah, not at
the bait. So we we get about a quarter mile
from the bait and just tie the mules up. Better

(31:22):
time up good, or they'll get away and run on
the bottom of the mountain. That's happened before. Um and
uh so we just parked them, leave and go hunt.
And uh. So that's what we did. And so I
checked the camera while I was as soon as we
got there, and there were there was a bear coming
in there that I would have shot. But it was

(31:43):
real weird because there were hardly any daytime photos. There
were actually only two bears on camera and both of
them were what appeared to me and quick analysis on
the phone was large adult males, both of them probably
over three hounds. That's what I analyze. So it's like, Okay,

(32:03):
there's two good bears. But they weren't coming in daylight,
which is odd because no human pressure up there. These
bears aren't being hunted like see. You often think about
animals going nocturnal, like thinking, oh, well, they know hunting
seasons around, they know they're being pressure. They they're trying to,
you know, protect themselves from human predation. I don't, I

(32:27):
don't necessarily think that's I think that can be true.
But even with these places that are totally unmolested, these
big animals just feed at night sometimes. And I think
it has to do with lunar cycles. I think it
has to do with photo period. You know how there's
some mystery with animal movement nocturnal and daylight movement that

(32:50):
is is a is a hard riddle to solve. But
these bears had not been coming in the daytime to
the States. I was discouraged by that. Typically with a
bear bait, as you're anal lies and photos, I mean,
I mean, it's kind of common sense. But I mean
if there had been a daylight bear there the day before,
in the in the evening, I would have been like,

(33:11):
there's a pretty good chance he'll be back. Yeah, you
didn't seem very optimistic if you look at the pictures,
like you gave me the impression like we're probably not
gonna see one. Yeah, and uh, I don't know. I
kept my optimism just being there. You know, I've never
been around bear bait before. That's that experience was new.
And I think I told you, I said, if we

(33:33):
just see it bear like, this is a huge win
for me. Yeah. Yeah, well and then we said. I
remember sitting there, so so I had one one stand
up in the tree and it was just a lock
on stands and you setting the lock on standing. I
sat in my saddle. I just tied my tree saddle
right beside you. And uh, And I said, this bait

(33:57):
has been out for such a short amount of time,
it's possible that new bears could be finding this bait
for the first time. Because this was an established bait,
like it had been used for a couple of years
so and used extensively. A lot of bears were hitting it.
So I knew that a pretty large number of bears

(34:19):
knew where this bait was, and they ken on food
sources at times, specific points, you know, like uh, bears
have I've read some research where bears have an incredible
memory for where food sources like down to like a
specific tree on a mountain you know that is highly productive,

(34:43):
or or berry patch in a certain place. So they
have these vast home ranges, and they have big brains.
They're they're omnivores. They can see color, they they can
their ability to categorize and remember food sources what makes
them so suc tessful. So like a bait site, they
hit it one time, they remember that for the rest
of their life. They're not ever gonna be like, where

(35:06):
was that place when I was a cub where Mama
took us? It's like they hone in on it. Have y'all,
have y'all. He heard me tell the story of this
didn't happen to me, but it happened to some guys
that really taught me how to bait bears, The Beastons,
some friends of mine here in Arkansas, Will and Adam
beast and there early when I started baiting bears, they

(35:27):
were real. They gave me a lot of good info,
but they had truill cameras up. They had a really
established great bait site and they had traill cameras up
and for whatever reason, they had cameras up before they
put out a bait. And I don't know if it
was a camera that they left up the whole year
and the batteries lasted that long as it was intentional.

(35:47):
But basically every year, their whole strategy was like clockwork,
put out the bait ten days before season, bait hard
for ten days as much as they would, as much
as the Bears beat, and that's what they did. So
you know, for years, every single you know, September theft

(36:08):
or you know what. Back then opening day it was
October the one, so you know, like you know, September
twentie let's just say they would put out bait September,
twenty September, twenty September for years. Well, uh, as the
season started to change, their their their dates got off

(36:28):
like the season then moved up and moved back anyway,
the Bears one time showed up on like September for
the first time and there was no bait there. Um,
so they weren't coming into scent. They were coming into
this is when this is supposed to be here, you know.
And Ryan Grab had stories like that too. But so

(36:51):
all that to say, I said, there could be new
bears still finding this bait. And uh, anyway, like prime time,
you know, the last probably hour of daylight, you know,
we hear, we hear a large animal. You know. It
wasn't like footsteps like Weston heard of his buck coming in.

(37:14):
It was just like just just a stick pop, a
little bit of a shuffle, just light noise, but enough
to know that's not a squirrel exactly. Yeah. It was
like I remember, after probably ten seconds, like I was
convinced it was a bear. Yeah, I wasn't sure what
it was. You know, like I could hear it. I

(37:35):
knew it was it had to be a large animal,
but man, it seemed like it was right there and
I couldn't see it. It's kind of like when you're
looking for a deer and and it's a squirrel, you
can't see it, you know. It was like that, but
it didn't sound like a squirrel. So finally you saw it. Yeah,
and he was right there. It was. It was probably

(37:57):
had come into the open, but the shadows this black
animal that I'm not used to seeing I was overlooking at. Yeah,
it was a it was. It came out of a
pawpaw thicket, if you remember that. But we were kind
of kind of in open woods, I mean not really open,
but for that area, semi open, but there was a
thick papa patch right there, and uh that those I knew.

(38:21):
I just felt like they would come from that direction,
you know, and we hear some popping in anyway, I
see the bear out there, and I immediately recognized that
it's not a bear head on camera because it wasn't
big enough. And it was it ended up being a
really nice bear, but I just knew it wasn't that
three fifty type pound bear that I had seen on camera.

(38:45):
And I at first glance, I was like, this is
bear for Matt. Shoot, yeah you immediately I think that's
what you whispered to me. When I was like, oh,
it's right there, and you're like that's your bear, Yeah,
I was like, are you sure that? I think it's
big and man, that bear. So first of all, I

(39:06):
had not seen that barrow on camera, but really the
way that bear acted told me that it had never
been to that bait. It hadn't been to the bait
that year. The bait had just been put out. I
believe it was that bear's first time into that bait
because it took it fifteen minutes. Yeah, that was incredible

(39:26):
to watch. And I got shaken some bad just because
it took so long. It would take one step and
then just sniff and look and sniff and look and
then finally take another step and just so cautious. It
was just incredible to watch. Yeah, Yeah, I've rarely seen
one come in quite like that. It uh it, guys,

(39:50):
It just I mean it would just it would pick
up its feet like a cat just set its feet now,
I mean just walked in, I mean almost silent after
we saw it, Yeah, and uh and it just eased.
I mean just it took forever for that thing to
walk probably fifteen yards to get into range and be broadside.

(40:11):
And I think that's the way they approach, you know,
a bear bait, Well, any kind of congregated bear feeding area,
whether it be a white oak ridge that's full acorns
and there's bear sign and bear scent, you know, these
bears coming into it, new bears. You're gonna be real cautious.
They're afraid of other bears. Well that I remember asking you.
I said, why bears don't really have any natural predators?

(40:34):
I said, why are they so incredibly cautious? And that's
what you said, was there. They don't want to be
around other bears. Yeah, I mean big male bears are
are uh, you know, cannibals can be. I mean they'll
they'll kill you know, in fantaside. You know, they'll kill cubs. Um.
They're highly territorial for the most part. I mean, if

(40:57):
they if you see two or three bears the debate side,
which is common when you're baiting bears, I mean, they're
just tolerating each other. They're not like herding up like
deer and gonna run off and hang out together. The
odd times you'll see pairs of bears is usually sibling
bears that have that are two years old and for
whatever reason just kind of had a bond that they

(41:19):
hadn't split up yet. But you'll rarely see other than
you know, like a breeding pair in the spring or something.
I mean, bears are solitary animals and they want to
be solitary. And uh, any bear is capable of killing
any other bear. I mean, they've got they so you know,
they're just super cautious, you know. And um, so this

(41:39):
bear just crept and crept in, crept in, crept in,
and finally it got in abroad. I remember one time
I could, you know, it was It's a kind of
a fun experience, and I've I've done it before, but
never for that extended period of time. But you know,
we were at a super steep angle, like we were up.
We were all up probably eighteen feet off the ground,

(42:02):
but the ground sloped off. He was down below us below,
so we were probably above this bear, maybe not that
high above it, but and in this and and it
was the first time I had set in these this
stand because I moved the bait slightly on this property.
And so when we got up there, I was like,
oh wow, we're super close. So I knew we were

(42:24):
gonna be shooting like straight down. And I also knew
that that is a really tough situation to be in.
Shooting a bear is shooting straight down a lot of
and it's boy, it's easy to wound a bear. It's
easy to get a bad shot. So I was watching
you like a hawk and and uh and and I
you know, I won't immense words about it, like guys

(42:47):
that have killed I have seen guys that have killed hundreds.
Like literally one of my guy know real well, good
friend of mine, veteran white tail hunter, one of the
best white tail hunters I know, probably one of the
best white owners in the country, hunting with me years ago,
and uh wounded a bear at like twelve yards. Got
this guy's killed like three deer with his bow and uh,

(43:11):
first bared ever shot at and just got rattled and
just made a bad decision and shot despair wrong. And
I mean like he was the last person I had
any I mean, this guy is a killer. And and
I put him in a bear stand and I was
just like, dude, just kill a bear, no big deal.
Big bear walks in and he gets rattled and just

(43:32):
makes a poor decision. Wounds, Despair would never find it.
So anyway, I don't take anything for granted. You're a
you're a veteran hunter that I was watching you and uh, man,
that bear started to get up even with us where
it was almost broadside but not quite and I saw
your hands started to kind of tighten up on that string,
and I remember saying, I don't remember exactly what I said,

(43:53):
but I was like, wait, yeah you did. Wait wait wait,
because I I just really wanted him perfectly broadside or
slightly quartering away. Didn't want to take any any kind
of front, you know, any kind of quarter in two shot,
y'all understand what that means, guys, quarter and two okay,
broadside would be a deer bear that his his back

(44:17):
hips and his front shoulders are equal distance to you.
He's like flat like the face of a barn, like
broadside like a barn. If he's quartering to you, it
means that his front shoulders are closer to you than
it's But does that make sense, Like his head would
be right here if he's quartering away. In the whole

(44:40):
quartering thing has to do. It has to do with
the angle, like like if if this were a compass,
Like if we had a comp and this is getting
this is digging into the weeds. But you know, like
if we had a compass, hundred and eighty degrees would
be like in front of you like quarter and would
be like twenty five for cent. So it has to

(45:02):
do with the angle like it was on a compass, okay,
but quartering away Weston would be if his butt was
closer to you than his shoulders, And that's a much
better shot because you can slip a bullet or an
arrow in and the forward movement of the bullet is
going to carry it into the vitals. If he's quartering
to you, you gotta shoot through the front shoulders anyway,

(45:24):
and we've got a compound angle because we're up so
high as well. Account for that too, and that's the
hardest part of it. So anyway, the bear, the bear
is probably eight yards from the base of the tree.
It wasn't not, and we're probably twenty five ft above
the bears. I mean, we're just shooting straight down on it.
But he finally gets broadside and beyond. Because once he

(45:47):
gets broadside and we were kind of and there was
a little bit of brush at the perfect broadside moment,
there was a little bit of brush there, I had
to let him get a little further, so he was
slightly quartering away. But man to be that patient. I
was glad you told me to wait, because I'm not
used to be impatient. Like even deer hunting, like we
don't hunt with any bait ever, like I've never I

(46:11):
never had moments like that most of our shots, Like
you see the deer, you better get ready and shoot,
they're passing through, you know. And uh so to wait
and be that patient was real hard for me. But
I'm glad I did, and I'm glad it came in
that slow, because man, I was shook up when I
first saw it. But like I said, it's been fifteen
years since I've seen one in a while, and uh,

(46:34):
it just you know, it's it's emotional in a way,
and and you know, you you get the jitters and
the adrenaline. And I had time to breathe a little
bit and try to calm myself down before the shot. Yeah,
well you drew back shot hit him, hit him kind

(46:55):
of where'd you hit him? High on the shoulder, man, right?
Really where I want it too, And it was weird.
I've heard listening to your podcast and and and reading
bar Hunt Magazine helped tremendously because you talk a lot
about shot placement and how you've even talked about you
don't see the defined shoulder like you do on a
dyer And I had all that in my mind, you know,

(47:17):
and it's absolutely true. Because that peep site and Alex
he is black and shooting at a fifty gallon trash
bag up with a Yeah, it's like it wasn't like
just obvious where that shoulder is and what you're even
shooting at. I had to kind of look back out
of my peep and get back and settle in and
get comfortable. And what I tried to do was was

(47:39):
hugged that front shoulder pretty tight and and shoot a
little bit high, thinking that downward trajectory would get done
into the vitals. And and that's what we did. Released
the arrow. Uh, Barry gave out a moan and went
down and kind of rolled around and uh. And I
think I was grabbing for another arrow when you said

(48:00):
put another one in it, and I was already on
my way, and we did, and it it didn't even
get out of sight. Yeah, well it uh it Uh,
it had to you know, that high shoulder will just
drop them to Yeah, you know. So it either clipped
the clipped the spine a little bit or the high shoulder,

(48:21):
but it did it. It passed through though, didn't it did? Yeah,
somebody and it may have clipped something in that spine.
I'm not real sure, it didn't stop the arrow, But yeah, yeah, man,
you know what I call that. I call that getting
blacked out when you look through your peep site and
all you see is black. Yeah, And it's pretty common

(48:41):
if you're shooting a bear inside a fifteen yards, especially
if it's a very big bear. And this was a
This was a good size bear. I mean, I think
it was easily two fifty pounds, I would say. I
remember when we were skinning it. Remember it kind of
rolled down the hill and we had to drag it
back up and barely could. Yeah, it was it was
a fat bear. Um, So I mean, it wasn't a

(49:02):
small bear. Um. But yeah, yeah, I call it getting
blacked out. And you did the right thing, and that
is not to panic and you I did the same
thing kind of the last time that happened to me,
as I looked around the peep and then back in
the peep, and around the peep and back in the peep. Finally,

(49:23):
you just kind of figure out where you need to
aim and you just kind of gotta let it go.
But yeah, that's that's a tough situation. It is. And
it's funny I had the exact same thing happened with
that hog on Saturday evening that you just look up
and see black and it was forty yards so and
it was a losing daylight. So uh but yeah, it's tough.

(49:44):
It's not like shooting it a deer. Very different. Well,
and then the fun began because we're there's no way
we would have I mean, we could have like quartered
that bear up and hauled it out ourselves, but they
would have been a pretty the major or a deal
without the mules. Yeah, that wouldn't have been fun. Yeah,
and we we went back and got the mules and

(50:07):
by this time it's dark and and uh but we
we know we're gonna have to break the bear down
out in the field. And I went back and got
the mules and it was pretty cool. Bear. You should
have been there, because uh it was is he's fifth
bear to haul out? So is he's my mule, and uh,
this is our fifth bear to haul out, and uh

(50:30):
every so basically the first four bears. She pretty much
responded the same way, which was she didn't want that
bear on her back. I was talking to somebody about
it the other day. I think, Um, I think a
lot of equine guys try to put a animal on
a horse or mules back, and I mean their natural tendency.
I mean, like the vast majority of animals are not

(50:53):
gonna want you to do that, and so they're gonna
throw a fit, They're gonna be scared, They're gonna respond
in a flight response. No, I don't want something bloody
and strange or a predator on my back. But what
I'm learned is you can condition them if you handle
them right in the field to where they'll gradually just
get better and better and better and better. But you
gotta take you can't take no for an answer. I mean,

(51:16):
when is he first kind of balked at me wanting
to put a bear on her? I mean it was
more than balk. I mean she went nuts, you know,
but I just was I just was like, well, you
don't have a choice, is he I'm going spars going
on your back? And eventually I got it on her back,
snorting and kicking, and and uh, I was afraid that
maybe that's just what I was gonna be up against,

(51:38):
because you do hear the odd story of a mule
or horses just totally just doesn't care from the first one,
just like just whatever that's not the norm, but that
does happen. And so what I think it happens in
the equine world is that those mules kind of get
the good reputation of yep, some will do it and

(51:58):
some won't. Just they either will or they won't. But
Izzy would have been in the category of the ones
that won't. But you know, you saw how she acted.
I mean, she didn't fuss at all. You know what
I did though, after we skinned that bear, I had
blood on my hands and you know, smelled like a bear.
And when we walked back to her, the first thing

(52:20):
I did was I put my hand up and let
her smell it, and she kind of snorted a little bit,
and then I just pat her and talked to her
and just put my hands on her nose. And finally
she was just like, oh, we're haulding out a bear. Okay,
got it, walked back in and she never really balked
much at all after that. Um So, anyway, I was

(52:41):
really thrilled about that. But hey, the reason that we're
having this podcast, though, Matt, is to talk about what
you did with that bear. Um So, if you kill
a bear, uh like, So this would have been the
second bear that you skinned. What what what would you
tell somebody that would be different than like a skin
and a deer. I think, uh, one thing, Well, we

(53:03):
skinned this one on the ground after dark. But but
prior to that, the last one I skinned was the
one my oldest son killed four years ago, and uh,
he killed his in the mornings. We skinned it in
daylight at camp and just hung it up like you
would a deer um from its hind legs and skin
it down. It's it's, uh it's different in that you

(53:25):
hear about bears being greasy. It's it's gets oily like
on your hands as you're skinning it. Yeah, it gets
real oily and and and that's different. But other than that, uh,
we skinned. We skinned that one just like you would
have dear, just skinning down. And what's different about how
you and I did it is, you know, for one,

(53:47):
skintting it on the ground, but then two we harvested
the fat, which at that time, you know, I didn't
know anything about being able to use the fat for anything,
so we just threw it away. Yeah, we kept all
the fat. And then we also after we skinned it,
we just cord it up bone in and uh we

(54:09):
we used to do that with deer, and uh, man,
it just makes for so much more work in the
kitchen for me. I've always processed all my own game,
and uh we found that, you know, if you can
hang them up, especially, it's it's so much easier in
the field for me to cut the meat off the
bone and just bring the meat home. Okay, so you're
de boning them in the field, yeah, while while it's hanging,

(54:32):
and I never bring the bone in the house. Now
with the bear, it might be different on some parts
of it because you might want to cook it bone in,
and we actually did that with part of it. Uh,
Colby cooked part of his. He made that awesome Buco,
and my wife and I made that recipe at home
and we we used a picture. Yea, what do you
think of it? I loved it. The family like it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

(54:58):
awesome Buco. I don't remember if you ain't any of it,
I don't. I don't think you were there, not for
some reason. But our whole family loves while game. My
wife cooks a ton of it, and it's just a man,
just an amazing organic alternative adds variety to our diet
and when we get a ton of it. See my

(55:19):
my wife doesn't. She loves to cook it and she
does most of the cooking. So but yeah, the ausobucco,
we cooked bone in with part of that hot it.
I cut it with a saws all the bone so ausobuco.
The November December issue of Barony magazine, uh Colby did
an article on ausobucco where you you take the shank,
which is like the least desirable cut of meat on

(55:42):
any animal, like the front the lower section of the
leg on the front quarters its grind meat. I mean,
it's sinewy, it's tough, and you and you and you
slice it like you're slicing the loaf of bread. Leave
the bone in and then you Colby cooked it in
a in a what he cooked in a is that

(56:06):
what you did too? It was? In fact, man, we
that's our go to for a lot of meals now
and especially wild game meals. It's fast and it really
breaks it down and and and makes it so tender.
It's pretty incredible. But yeah, we made that with it. Um.
But yeah, what got me on that was you might

(56:26):
want to leave some bone in for things like that,
but other than that, like I don't like to take
bone in the house. It's it's a lot more work
for me breaking it down in the house than it
is hanging out in the field. And we uh so, yeah,
we hey talking about bone in Let me just interject
this because you guys are a part of it. Remember
that ham that I yeah, that y'all ate with us.

(56:48):
That was incredible And that was the first real well
I've cured pork hams before. That was actually the first
bear ham that I cured. Now I had smoked bear
ham before and just basically had smoked meat. That was
so when you say the word ham, you're talking about
the back back lag of the animal. But a cured

(57:11):
ham would be like a Christmas ham. Cured ham would
be like pink meat. That's characteristic of a cured meat.
Usually it's pork that we cure. Well, we cured a
bear ham and uh we did an article on it
and like the September July August or September issue of
Barnie magazine. Yeah, man, you know I overcooked that meat

(57:32):
a little bit, Isn't that what we decided. It's been
a little while. You said you did, and maybe you did,
but man, I thought it was fantastic even the next day. Yeah,
you sent some home with me in the next day.
It's just fantastic. And what did you just put honey
on it? Right? Well, I glazed it with honey. But
you know it had a special cure. I mean, you
do have to get the Instacure. Uh. I ordered it

(57:54):
off Amazon really easy. You get Instacure, and and you know,
you just you do have to follow this recipe and
it's a wet cure, so you leave it like a
like one. You let it brian for one day per
pound of the ham. So this was a nine pound ham,
and I think we let it brian for seven days,
maybe eight days, and uh oh it was just right.

(58:16):
So we brind it and then we smoked it and
I let it stay on the smoke for like four
hours and then put it covered in the oven for
like another three hours or something, so it cooked like
a total like seven hours. But like that would be
a good example of bony and stuff. But uh, you know,
I just want to say to just for somebody that

(58:37):
listened to this podcast for this thing about like how
to butcher a bear, like always say this, like people
are intimidated about killing a bear. And butchering it. Like,
I'm kind of surprised at that, because if you know
how to skin of deer, it's no different skin and
a bear other than you're gonna have to joint out
the feet. That's the only thing different. Then uh like

(58:59):
a like a white tail, and uh, I keep going
back to Barony magazine. You remember all the pictures we
took of jointing out. Yeah, those weren't great pictures because
we were we were hot, and it it's like my
phone was fogging up. But basically, you know, I mean,
any four legged animal that has hair, you're gonna cut

(59:20):
it up the center. You're gonna cut down from the
wrists down to the chest, down to the legs, skin
the hide off, and it's just got four quarters, backstraps,
and loins and ribs and neck meat. That's all it's got. Yeah.
And it complicated a little bit because I wanted to
keep the hide and head. Yeah, And the most people
that are killing the bears, they're gonna do that. Um,
But we in the field, we leave the feet in

(59:41):
the hide and the head and the hide, so there's
no reason to Most of the time, the text rmers
takes care of that. But you do just have to
get to the risk joints and you know what we
would call and the ankle joints, and you just gotta
you know, it's actually really simple and and I even
sometimes it's still when I get to it could be
a little bit like dang, this is gonna be hard.

(01:00:02):
But basically, if you just if you just slow down
and just move those feet, move the feet and kind
of locate where that pivot point is and then get
your knife in there and start poking around, you'll pop
that joint and then be able to cut that foot
off and then you just skin that hide and then
that bear just has four quarters, two backstraps, two inner

(01:00:24):
tender loins, neck, meat and ribs and fat. And you
carried it all out. If you got a mule, you
put it on your mule. If you gotta to fourteen
year old boys, you put it in their backpass. You
have them carried off the mountain bear. Do you remember
when we I killed rock Slide and I took you
up to get him. Bear was with me when I
killed that mountain bear. Man, that thing was like skinning

(01:00:47):
a beached whale up on the side of the mountain.
We had six guys and we all carried out parts
of it. My my packway ninety eight pounds coming off
that mountain. What yours way? Bear would have been like, uh,
well it was it was hold would you have been?
It was seven years ago? Like eight I think, Okay,

(01:01:08):
the total derailed. But I gotta say this because I remember, man,
we were coming off the mountain in the dark out
of ninety eight pound pack, and I was carrying my
gun too, and uh it was dark, and I had
my seven year old son with me, and we had
to cross a pretty fast flowing creek and uh, I
remember Bear was in front of me where it's dark,

(01:01:31):
and I mean we're just like, I'm just running off adrenaline.
You know. I've been up since way before daylight that morning.
Now it's way after dark. I've killed this what we
believed was a five pound bear. I mean, just like
this incredible day. We're coming out of the woods and
we come to this creek and I had carried him
across on the way there, but now I got a
ninety eight pound pack on and and I just say
bear across that creek and I could see him getting

(01:01:54):
nervous and kind of like not really knowing how to
do it. And man, I just grabbed him up by
one arm and just stormed across that creek. And I
just remember thinking, adrenaline is an amazing thing because there's
no way I could have I felt like I could
have done that if i'd have been like in my
right mind, like because I don't know, he probably weighed
forty pounds at that time. I don't know, maybe not

(01:02:17):
side anyway sidetracked, but that was a good packout story.
Um So, what are you gonna do with you? Bear? Matt?
So we've eaten I think three, no, four meals, I
think already. So we've had We had the ausabuco. We
we ground a lot of it. Um and then ground
bear meat is incredible ground meat. Oh yeah. We we

(01:02:38):
had chili one night with it, which fantastic. We had
um man, we had bear stew the other night, and
how good was that? Weston ground chunks just so so
like stewed stewed up chunks. And my wife cooked it
in the insta pot and she just kicked it first
in the insta pot in the insta pot. Really good

(01:02:58):
with some some oil. I'm not sure what she used.
It was some sort of that would stand a high temp,
seared it really good, and then uh worked her magic
from there. Man just put everything in it and cooked
it in that thing for a while and it was incredible.
And then the other meal that Shepherd's pie we head
was bear. Wasn't it what you think of that? I

(01:03:21):
thought it was really good? What? Okay? So this being, uh,
how do you handle if somebody says, hey, Matt, what
about trickin nosis? I would say, you know, from from
all the research I've done, which a lot of it's
been from education from you. I know, Ranella did a
thing on it where he actually contracted it right, and uh,

(01:03:45):
just just to be careful, you know, just use common sense,
clean all surfaces, but then just cook it. I think
what one it dies instantly? That you nailed it, and
if you cook it for a long enough period you
don't even have to get to one forty four? Right you?
You nailed it so few people. I mean that that

(01:04:05):
data that you just said is what I got off
the government website. I can't remember what it what it
would be the c d C I don't know. Is
that what it is? U S D A Y in
it and it and it was talking about pork because
tea and pork used to be a big thing. Dies

(01:04:27):
instantly at a hundred forty four degrees and and it
there's a gradual scale, so at one forty three and
I'm just making this up now, but just so you
get an understanding, at a hundred forty three degrees for
three seconds, it would die. At a hundred forty two degrees,
at six seconds, it would die. And it goes all

(01:04:47):
the way down to like if you cooked it for
and I'm just making this up, so nobody go and
do this, but like you know, some you know, for
three hours and a hundred twenty degrees, it would kill it.
Like there's this graduated scale where it dies. So this
idea that you just gotta cook bear meat till it's
black is just not true. And most foods we are

(01:05:08):
accustomed to cooking to one sixty five. And I'm not
suggesting you cook all your bear to one four. I'm
just saying, go ahead and cook it to one sixty ish.
But you kill that trickin nosis a long time before that. Yeah,
And that's what we do. And I have zero fear
of it. Honestly, I would have more fear of getting

(01:05:29):
salmonilla poison something by the store. Um. But the only
difference in what we do with deer meat and bear
meat because of that is with my dear tender deoins,
I cook them kind of like a steak on the
grill and we'll we'll rob olive oil on them, put
something pepper on them. Just see here, I'm really good,
and leave them pink in the middle. Yeah, yeah, I

(01:05:49):
won't do that with bear. But but other than that, man,
anything we use deer meat for, we use bear meat for.
And so so you would ground meat, did you do?
You go ahead and cut it up in the steaks
before you freeze it. I don't what I left was,
and I think I labeled them bear hunk, So just

(01:06:11):
hunk of clean meat off the back hand, and then
so you'll thaw it out and then you'll cut it
up into stew. Me cut it up in the stakes
into whatever. Yeah, we can decide later what we do
with it. Um. And that's how we did that. And
and there's obviously a lot of ways you can freeze meat.
A lot of people use the vacuum sealer or I
used to use just ziplock bags past few years. I

(01:06:34):
use freezer paper. Okay, so you don't even put any
kind of plastic or something anything. I wrap it in
freezer paper, Uh, tape it up good. And I just
make sure I eat all my wild game before the
next season starts. And I've never had an issue. Yeah,
you know. I I like to cut my meat to
it's finished product before I freeze it. It's just a preference,

(01:06:56):
just so that I can just pulled out. So I'll
this la. We can some deer in the last ten days,
and I Misty has been wanting cubes for she just
does a lot of stuff with just cubed meat. So
I went ahead and cubed everything. I made roasts, made

(01:07:16):
tender loin. The tender loins I would cut into sections,
kind of like a servings, you know, like for a family.
Take a whole tender loin and cut it three times
and put it in a ziplock back. But and I'm
just using ziplock bags. I'm pretty old school. I'm sure
I'll end up getting the vacuum sealer pretty soon, just
because that's the trendy thing to do. I used one

(01:07:39):
for wise didn't like it. Some of the seals wouldn't
wouldn't take, and it just this contraption that you're fighting.
I just so you were there and went back. Yeah, okay,
I went from ziplock to vacuum seal to freezer paper.
You know, Matt, you're kind of an old fashioned kind
of guy. A little bit. When y'all told me that
y'are back in the boonies the other night and didn't
have on X, was like, this is a real woodsman.

(01:08:02):
It's either a real woodsman or just somebody real frugal technologically.
Um no, so um. I was, okay, fat, give me
you you harvested? How much? How many pounds of fat
did we get off that broad? I didn't weigh the poundage,
but uh, it was a lot, and I didn't. You

(01:08:27):
did some tutorials on it, I think, and I was
kind of going based off that, but I didn't really
know what I was doing, so I don't know if
I did it right or not. But what I did,
I didn't freeze it first. I just cubed it up
in the house, and then I took it outside into
like a turkey fryar and threw it in that fire,
turned the fire on on, and walked away. And that
was my first mistake, and I'm bad to do that.

(01:08:48):
That's why my wife didn't let me cook. I'll turn
it on and leave. But I think I started burning
it at the time I went back out. I had
had you put it all in at one time I did.
That might have been a mistake to um, But I
started burning a little bit, So I turned my fire
down and started stirning it up a little bit. And man,
I was expecting like twenty minutes. I took it. I

(01:09:10):
cooked it for a long time, like probably over an hour,
and it still didn't get it all to melt. Um
We Weston helped me jar it, and uh we we
got thirteen point jars out of it, and I still
had a lot of little cubes that were solid in
the pot. But I've found that a pound of bear

(01:09:32):
fat will make about a pint of oil, So we
probably had about thirteen pounds fifteen pounds. I would say
if all of it would have rendered down to a liquid,
I would have probably had twenty pounds. Yeah, that's probably
about it, right, Yeah, I bet we had. I bet
we got twenty pounds of fat off that bed. Yeah,
but man, it was just as brown and clear and beautiful. Uh,

(01:09:53):
it was awesome. I mean it did turned kind of
cloudy and white overnight, is it cooled down. But uh, yeah,
we just poured in the jars. I put lids on them.
A lot of them actually popped and sealed. Yes, Uh,
report you just so all you gotta do. There's not
there's no there's no tricks. I mean, I you just
use Mason jars with the syllable is just like you

(01:10:15):
would use if you were cannon vegetables or something. And
I mean you just pour the oil in while it's hot.
I typically let it cool down just a few minutes
before I put the lid on, but you can pretty
much put the lid on right away and that's it,
that in that jar. I have used bar oil, and
I probably said there's a hundred times on this podcast.
I guess I keep saying it. I've used bear grease

(01:10:37):
that's setting a window sill for a year and a half. Uh,
and it was still usable. I could start to taste
kind of an off taste in it at a year
and a half and it wasn't it wasn't off putting,
it wasn't soured. But I could just I could I
could be like, yeah, it's kind of old, so man,

(01:11:00):
and if you kill a bear, I would say, you've
for sure got a year of good use. Yeah, and
I would absolutely take advantage of it because it's it's
we probably already used four or five yards. What are
you doing with man? We used it a deer camp.
We fried deer meat in it. We fried taters in it.
I uh, I agrease our biscuit pan at at deer

(01:11:21):
camp so the biscuits don't stick. It works incredibly well.
I'll grease my frying panting home before I cook eggs.
Just rub some in it. They don't stick. It's uh,
it's amazing. I love it. Yeah, I love bar grease
man bargrease. Well, um, it's it's great for frying fish too.

(01:11:41):
I haven't tried that yet. Yeah, you guys got to
catch some fish. Westing just kind of shallow fry as
Honespitela says, uh, you know, about a quarter inch, a
little bit more of oil and just flip the fish.
But yeah, bar oiled fried potatoes. I don't know that
there's anything better. I mean, like in terms of you

(01:12:02):
couldn't have a better oil, you know. And and now
what they're finding is that the science, the data, the
nutritionists are now saying that animal fat is some of
the healthiest oil that you can use. Like, so, don't
feel like you're compromising your health when you're cooking in
barrel oil. Uh. So this guy that was on Ronnella's

(01:12:24):
podcast the other day, Carnivore m d Um, what's going
on here? Guys? They're get they're throwing hand six. Yeah,
y'all gonn play basketball here in a minute. But just wait.
Uh a guy named Carnivore m d. He's a medical doctor,
and he's doing some experiments on eating only carnivorous diet,
and he says that there are certain things about animal

(01:12:47):
fats that are actually more healthy than even olive oil.
Because you know, like right now, Barnet, like, if somebody's
listening to this and they're still using like a lot
of the time, using canola oil and vegetable oil for frying,
I mean, you're just killing yourself. I mean, and that's
what we yeah, and and and and you know, once

(01:13:07):
or twice a year, I'll still use it just because
it sometimes you have to. And that's what fast food
stuff is fried in. So I mean, it's just like
poison to the human body. And it's very different than
end product, Like even with the deer meat, it's not
is like oily when you used when we use the bargrease,
and a lot of that bargrease, I don't know where
it goes. It cooks out. Yeah, it's going up in

(01:13:29):
the air somewhere. But we had to keep adding even
to the taters. But well, it's it's it's the healthy
choice boys, healthy oil, God's oil. Bear grease, bear grease. Man.
I love bar grease. I love it. I love it. Um.
One thing I was gonna say, just for we've had

(01:13:51):
podcasts about this, videos about this and stuff, but best
practice for rendering bear fat is to grind the fat
before you and and and it's it's a lot of
work to do that you don't have to. So what
I was gonna say is like, probably a better thing
to have done would have been to turn that turkey
for on lowest heat possible and probably not put it

(01:14:13):
all in it once. And you gotta stir it pretty.
You gotta stir it a lot at first, because those
first pieces of fat that hit are gonna want to
stick and sizzle and burn and cook it more like gravy.
Keep it stirring, keep it stirring, and once it once
it once, you get a layer of oil at the
bottom of it that kind of like lubricates the rest

(01:14:35):
of it. But when you chunk it up, you'll never
utilize all the oil because you'll it'll always just render
down to a certain point and you end up having
maybe cracklings. You know where you have about will be
solids and uh and you can take those solids out
and salt them and pepperam and eat them the dogs them,

(01:14:57):
or put him in zip like wags and use them
as dog treats in the next year. Hey, I wanted
to ask you that. So when I'm when I'm skinning
the deer and cutting up the meat, you have a
lot of waste. You know, you're you're what you call it,
the not the tending starved with an ass send you
send you. I never know what to call it, but
a lot of that waste. I always just chunk it

(01:15:18):
up and feed it to my dogs and it'll, you know,
it'll it'll keep us from buying dog fit for a
week or two. I didn't do that with the Bearer
because I wasn't sure about the thesis going to the dogs. Yeah,
that's a good question, um, and I don't have a
scientific answer. I know that dogs, My dogs have eaten

(01:15:41):
bear meat and and show no symptoms of anything in distress.
If you and I ate raw bear meat and got trichinosis,
we'd get sick. Yeah, you know. Um, but just like
that bear, for whatever reason, a bear can carry trickin
nosis and not affect him. Yeah, I mean because he's

(01:16:01):
not I've never heard anybody speculate on like what that
parasite actually does to that bear. But the healthiest bears
on the planet might have trickin nosis. So it's almost
like they're a host, but they're unaffected. We when we're
a host, it kills us or you know, you're not
gonna die from trichinosis, but untreated, you know it could

(01:16:24):
mess you up. So does it hurt the dogs. I
don't think so, but I don't know why. I couldn't
tell you why. Yeah, I probably wasted some then, because
all that that's I'm gonna research that. I mean, uh,
because my dogs have eaten bear meat and uh, you know,
maybe they've all got trichinosis, but they all still hunt
and do fine. Yeah, it may not matter. I don't know.

(01:16:45):
That's a great question. But um so, anyway, best best
practice is to get that fat, cube it up, get
the fat cold, and you know, put in the freezer
for thirty minutes and then grind it and you'll get
about a nineties seven percent efficiency rate in turning fat

(01:17:06):
into oil. You'll have a little bit of crackling, you know,
kind of scuzz. Scuzz is the wrong word. I mean,
just like you know, grains, you'll just because it's so
finely ground. But that's best practice. But you know, other
than it, maybe approaching it wrong. It was super easy.
Like I thought we'd have to strain a bunch of

(01:17:27):
stuff out of it. Man, it poured off just clean.
I didn't have to strain it at all. I see.
I usually strained mine through cheese cloth. I used my
wife's got a little it's not a colander, it's it's
it's kind of shape like one, but it's more like
a screen door would be. Yeah, that that and I
used that but it didn't catch much and the grease

(01:17:49):
just came out clean. So awesome. Well, um that's that's
that's good stuff. Man. Really utilizing the bear meat, I
mean you know, we say it all the time, but
I mean, there was a time when people didn't eat
deer and they ate bear. They were like, they killed
deer for their hides and bear for the meat. You know,

(01:18:11):
I can see why. And it's funny because most people
I talked to like, you can eat bear. Yeah, man,
I prefer bear over deer. Yeah. I think it's it's
more tender. It's just we love it. This is a
symptom of our society trying to push out the backwoodsman
mentalities and ways out of the culture. Boys were bringing

(01:18:34):
it back. Baker for bringing it back. All right. There
was a time when a bear hide being being salted
and hanging on your barn was a status symbol. It's
like having a Porsche parked down in front of your house.
You drive by somebody's house, They're like, oh, man, they

(01:18:54):
killed a bear. They're gonna be living high on the
bear this year. The guy that didn't have the bearer
were like, man, sorry, I feel sorry for that guy.
It's like driving past the guy that's you know, got
like the nineteen Toyota Corolla out in front of this house.
It's like, man, I dude is having a hard time. Yeah,

(01:19:16):
I think when I when I go up, it was
big catfish heads the status simple Southwest Arkansas. People would
hang them from uh like road signs and stuff in
front of their house. Yeah, yeah, look what I caught. Hey,
thank you guys, uh Weston. Congratulations on the on those deer.

(01:19:37):
Thank you Bear, Congratulations on your deer. Matt, congratulations on
your deer and bear and Bobcat and big wild hog.
Thank you man. Thank you for for taking me that
you know, the whole adventure from Ryan the mules up
that rugged mountain to to seeing the bearer taking in
utilizing every piece of it. Like, what an incredible adventure.

(01:20:00):
And I didn't have to do any of the work.
You know, you've baited it and you were available part
of part of Sometimes good fortune comes to those who
have built their world in such a way that they're available. Well,
I told you, I said, next year, when it's time debate,
I'll go help you bait and and not even hunt,
I'll help do the work next time. Well, I tell

(01:20:23):
you what, here's here's how you can repay me. And
you've already mentioned this, and I was going to bring
this up not on the podcast, but if you say
stuff on the podcast, it becomes official because then like
other people hear it and you kind of have to
be accountable to it. Whatever you say. I mean, you
could say no, but I need some help. Flesh and
all these coon hides and the one skunk cod that's

(01:20:48):
I've got. I've got to bobcat hides too. I've got okay,
we've got to bobcat hides a skunk cod in a
bunch of coon hides. Weston's got one or two coons
in there. Yeah, that's right, that's I was trying to
remember why I had you guys chalked. That's ones that
we're gonna help. It's because y'all got coons in there. Still,

(01:21:09):
we need a good cold. They didn't have to be cold,
but just like a Saturday that's not hot and not
during hunting season, probably decent. Well, we need to do
it soon to beat all the guys to the tannery
because all the trappers are about to start trapping and
they're gonna send their stuff that tannery. I got big
plans for my Bobcat that I killed. Yeah, big plans.

(01:21:33):
Are you're gonna make a hat? Yeah? Yeah, I'd love
to see that hat. Yeah, I got big plans for
those those coons too. That's for another podcast. All right, guys, Well,
do y' all know what we say at the end
of the podcast. Do you know Weston, you don't bear?
You know, keep the wild places wild because that's where

(01:21:56):
the bears live. Nailed it.