Secrets to Baiting Bears

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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dot com and while you're there, check out its Federal Season.
The official podcast of Federal Ammunition. Name is Clay Nukeleman.
I'm the host of the Bear Hunting Magazine podcast. I'll
also be your host into the world of hunting, the

(01:08):
icon and the North American Wilderness Prepare. We'll talk about tactics,
gear conservation. We will also bring you into some of
the wildest country on the planet, chasing fair. I want
to describe what this podcast is about and kind of

(01:32):
the style that we used on this podcast. If you've
listened to us very long, you know that we have
a lot of long form, conversational style podcast that don't
necessarily have a specific topic. Maybe we're interviewing and old
hunter or houndsman or a deer hunter or whatever. Sometimes
we have podcasts that are very technical and tactical, and

(01:56):
we try to just get down to business and really
educate people. That's what this is. So this podcast, I
have gathered up the best black bear hunters that I
know in where I live, Heath Martin, Ryan Greb, and
these guys have taken baiting bears to a whole another

(02:19):
level of expertise, and so we nerd out for an
hour and a half about all things pertaining to baiting
black bears. And I think you can use this information
anywhere in the country that's legal debate. I think this
information would be valuable for spring hunters and fall hunters,
but most of what we're talking about is specifically fall hunting.

(02:41):
We talked about how to set up a bait, what
bait to use, how long do you bait, how do
you target big bears, what's the root baiting routine that
you use, and how do you utilize strategic routine on
the day that you hunt to target these big bears.
I'll also think that even if you're not interested in

(03:01):
baiting bears, you could learn about fair behavior. I have
learned more about bair behavior from watching how they interact
with food source on an unnatural bait than I have
any other way because the sheer exposure that you get
to animal behavior bare behavior is exponential. If I only

(03:23):
gathered information from watching bears on natural food, I would
have very limited understanding what bears do because it's just
so hard to find them doing what they do, especially
in the East and thick cover. So watching bears over bait,
understanding what they do, how they utilize that, it's the
same way that they utilize natural food sources out in

(03:45):
wild places. So this is a great podcast. It it'll
go in the archives, and when somebody direct messages me
and say hey, Clay, I'm starting to bait and you
give any tips, I'm gonna send them this podcast. You
listen from this to start to fit ish, and you
will learn a decade worth of three guys who pretty
much dedicated themselves to hunting big bears over bait in

(04:09):
a pretty pressured area. When this podcast was done, I
turned to Heath and I said, Man, if somebody would
just listen to that and really heat the advice that
was given, they would learn what it took us ten
years to learn. The last thing that I want to
say as a preface to a podcast about baiting bears
is that a lot of people don't understand baiting. And

(04:31):
I think if you listen to this podcast, you'll see
how much work it is, how much strategy goes into it,
how much thought goes into it, and you'll have an
appreciation for that. I want to say that wherever that
we're baiting bears, the management agencies are using this as
a management tool to harvest the number of bears that

(04:52):
we need out of that habitat. And that's just it.
It's a It is a management tool and high effective
management tool. And you know what if you if a
thousand years from now, anthropologists are going through a fossil
record which would include us, and they perceived fair baiting

(05:15):
activity and they were like, Wow, these ancient hunters put
out bait for bears. What that would indicate to them
is high bear populations that needed to be managed. Are
you with me? Are you tracking me? Basically, baiting bears
is a management tool that actually indicates success of a

(05:38):
species that needs to be managed. So this whole premise
that baiting is, you know, somehow not fair, chase, not difficult,
that's an old world mentality that is no longer relevant.
It's a management tool, and bear baiting allows a hunter
to be selective. The least selective hunting that Clay Nukeom

(06:02):
does is a spot and stock hunt, because I usually
shoot the first bear I see. I pass incredible amounts
of bear when I'm hunting over bait, waiting for an older,
mature mail, which is the perfect animal to take out
of the population. And so in terms of ethics as well,
when you're talking about shop placement, you know exactly where

(06:23):
that bear is gonna be, strategically set up your stand
and debait in such a way that the animals turned
in the right direction. You have all these factors that
you can control, and I think that's highly important inside
of a of a time when really we're inside of
a uh a culture war in a sense where people

(06:44):
don't understand our way of life. They don't understand our
methodology for harvesting game, utilizing the meat, just our lifestyle
of hunting. And so being educated on why we do
what we do is incredibly important in to blind important
and you've heard us say it because we've got a
guard the gate. Hunting bears and large predators is often

(07:08):
the place that the anti hunting community finds fault with
North American hunting, and I don't think we've done a
great job of even understanding why we do what we do,
and so we've got to guard the gate, build a
strong understanding of why we do what we do, and
I think that will help preserve the whole of North

(07:31):
American hunting. You're gonna enjoy this podcast about the secrets
to baiting black bears. Yep, I love baiting and black bears.
We are in Heath Martin's office. We're looking at a
bunch of big, nice white tails, a big British Columbian moose,

(07:57):
big five four pound Arkansas black bear over here on
the rocks. Um. Yeah, so I've got Heath Martin heat.
This is your first time on the podcast. You you're
You've been due for a long time for bear hunting
magazine podcasts. I think we tried to We talked about
doing a bear related podcast probably last year. Because you're well,

(08:22):
I'll get to the introduction of you after I talked
about Ryan Grab, Ryan Flint Flay scrab You've been on
the podcast several times, Ryan, Yeah, a few times. Thanks
for having me back. Yeah. Man, Well, hey, you two
are like, to me, this is like the uh It's like,
I don't know if there are any sports that just
have three players, but you guys are like the dream

(08:46):
team of at least Arkansas black bear hunting. And I've
said this before about Ryan, and I'll say it again
because unless somebody disputes me and Heath, maybe you can.
And if you can, you can. I think per volume
of bears killed in the state of Arkansas, I think

(09:06):
if you just added the weight of every bear you've
ever killed, I think Ryan's killed the most beared by
volume of any person I've met. There may be people
I have not met, but this guy has killed a
three hundred plus pound bear every year, just about for
the last twenty years. I've been a couple of years interspersed.
You've killed good ones, I mean, is that true? But

(09:27):
have you been lying to me, Y'll take half the
y'all rotate every other year, so you'll probably stay up
with me if you stay after himself. I don't. Did
you hunt last year the last couple of years? Well, okay,
And then Heath, he has killed He's the only person
in the state of Arkansas that's killed two boon and

(09:48):
crocket bears, monsters, monsters five d plus pounds are there, Yeah,
And so I mean that's and you've killed a many
many big bears. But you know, every everybody kind of
does things different, like, uh, I haven't. I've killed just
a handful of bears personally over bait in the state

(10:09):
of Arkansas. I don't think a lot of people realize
that you've catered. But every year for the last twenty years,
I've baited extensively, you know, and um, and I've usually
tried to So I mean, you know it just in Heath,
you have baited extensively for periods of time. And then

(10:31):
you know you've been going on some of these big
game hunts at prime time, and that's a that's a
big deal. When you're baiting bears and you've gotta be here.
It's a ton of work for about a month before season,
and so if you're gone during that time period, it
doesn't even make sense to even try. And so the
last couple of years you've been galivanting across the planet, uh,
killing big game and all these crazy places. That's correct.

(10:54):
Leaving next week for Pinizza, Alaska, Pinesza moose hunts this year,
but there most September. So yeah, Well, the thing most
I respect about both of you guys is that you
you just you're good. You've you've you've learned, you've learned
what it takes to be successful, not just with bears,
but with big bears. And uh, and you guys know

(11:17):
as well as anybody that you gotta do a lot
of things right to kill big bears consistently really anywhere. Um,
And so what I want to do today is just
kind of nerd out about baiting bears. And you know,
there's a lot of different people that listen to this podcasts.
I mean, there's guys that listen to podcasts that don't

(11:38):
even bear hunt. There's guys that listen to this podcasts
that don't bait bears. But we always have to at
some point narrowed down the focus to just hone in
into like this one area, you know, And uh So,
what I want to do with you all is kind
of take somebody from start to finish the key components

(12:02):
of baiting bears, and then we can also talk about
kind of like the advanced technical side of killing big bears,
because there's a big difference, wouldn't you say, heath? Just
from I mean, like if a guy here, a guy
anywhere that can bait bears, and there's quite a few
states that you can bait in a lot of the

(12:23):
Canadian all the Canadian provinces pretty much. Um, there's a
big difference between just killing a bear and killing a
big bear. Wouldn't you say heath? Yeah? Absolutely, Well let's
uh so, I've got to I've kind of got a
list here. I'll go ahead and read the list of
what I want to cover, just so if you're listening

(12:45):
to this, you can kind of track what we're gonna
talk about. We're gonna talk about where to place a
bait site. So I want to hear about you guys
experience on actually where to place it. A lot of
guys who have questions about that, And what I learned
is that two places in the same county can be
one can be absolutely a wonderful place to kill a

(13:10):
big bear, and a mile away you have a you know,
difficult time even killing a bear. So just because you're
in a good county, just because you're in a good state,
doesn't mean that your bait site is gonna be in
the best place. And on a micro scale, there's always
a best place, no matter if you've got forty acres,

(13:33):
if you've got five thousand acres, there's one spot that's
gonna be the best, I feel like. So we're gonna
talk about where debait, where to place abait, what type
of feeders to use. That never entered my mind that
that was a big deal, but people ask me all
the time about get questions on that. Yeah, like what
you know, are you using bait barrels, plastic or metal?

(13:53):
So I want to talk about that. Um let's see
here my list, Uh, how far in advance to start
feeding bears. We can talk about timing, what type of bait,
and how much. There's all kinds of controversy in the
bear world about how much to feed bears. You know,
there's the philosophy that you feed him a small amount,

(14:17):
and there's also a philosophy that you give them as
much as you can eat. And I think I know
where you gotta stand on that sent attractants. And then
we'll talk about how to target big bears. And then
I want to hear about y'all's routine for opening day.
I think that is the biggest mistake that people make,
and I have made it and I've learned stuff from
you guys, is that you have this routine of abating

(14:40):
and then on opening day what you do is really
really important, especially if you're targeting a big bear. And then, uh,
the last question I have written down in my notes
here is what is the proper way to celebrate when
you kill a five hundred round bear? But you guys
both have know that. Um, go get the tractor. Go

(15:02):
get I hope you can get the tractor to it.
That's the reality, because if you can't, the work begins.
He tell me a little bit about your like when
you started baiting and and and you know how you
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(17:38):
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Northwood Bear products where you did. Oh yeah, so we'll
probably My first serious dive into bating is and around
two thousand seven. I think I killed my first bear
in two thousand and seven. Actually, and uh I believe

(18:20):
if I remember that year, it was just over a
corn feeder, so it was very dre was dry, It
wasn't a lot of work. I had never killed a bear.
First bear to walked by, I shot it and was
tickled to death, not knowing I'd ever shoot another bear
because in r l E. In the last ten and
twelve fourteen years, our population has exploded tremendously. I mean,

(18:41):
that's something you have a chance to kill every year,
even in two thousand and seven. It was really the
first bear I've ever seen that I'd had an opportunity
to hunt, right, So then that kind of gave me
the bug, I guess you would say, And so I'm
sure it's the conversation with you and other people. I
started figuring out how to bait and just trial and air,
you know, so I was like, well, dog food and grease,
you know, I'll so then that the next year I've
waited a little more and corn and dog food and sweets,

(19:04):
and you know, getting baite is tough getting sweets. You know.
We'll talk about that. I'm sure about you get a
question on there, so we can talk about that later.
But I got lucky and killed that bear, I believe
in No, I think I killed him in over night,
And actually so I don't think I killed a bear. No.
Eight and uh, but got some barre pictures, learned some
stuff baiting, you know, trial and error, and then up

(19:26):
my game a little bit. It was a little more
serious about it and killed my first boon and Crockett
bear with my second bear ever, so I mean a
little luck involved, but still was able to harvest him
once I got him coming to bait, you know. And
then yeah, from there, I just it was pretty serious
about it and learned from trial and air and figured
stuff out, you know, and try to get better at
getting better quality food to feed him and figure out

(19:48):
what worked good. And you know a lot of it's
based on where we hunt. Not other places in the
country maybe, but tremendously on mast. Yeah, that's a that's
a theme anywhere they're bad. It may not be hard, yeah,
but are And it's all the seasons too, you know.
So our season always opens as or after the hard

(20:09):
mast is falling, right, So that's just and it depends
on what opening day is, you know. It's whole conversation. Um,
so you got to figure out how to keep bears
big bears. You guys know, we'll leave a barrel of
donuts overnight for a white okayre just just the insane.
I know it's crazy, So you know, I had to

(20:30):
kind of start learning how to keep bears as good
as I can. And just because you do some of
this stuff don't mean you're gonna keep that bear. A
quick question, do you have much competition over around where
you hunt? Human competition? Yeah, I think there's probably some,
you know there for a while, when I get real
serious about it, I had three bait locations over about

(20:51):
a twelve square mile area basically four miles and four
miles and four miles kind of a trying spaced out
to where I wasn't fighting myself, right, but in our reality,
there was a time or two when I would get
the same big bear on two of those bats four
miles and four miles apart. And I bet you had
a lot more competition than you realized. I think there is, right, absolutely, um,

(21:15):
But a couple of the plot, the couple of my
most successful spots were harder to get into, and the
competition would be I think a little further way because
of the way the block of national forest adjoining our property,
so we can only bait on we can private land,
but the land I would bait on borders some national
forest blocks, and so if they're big enough and remote enough,

(21:37):
you don't have people right on you baiting. So you're
tracking bears out of that large block of national forest
into your private property, you know, where you can legally
bait at that point, So you can you can pretty
safely assume that unless somebody's doing something illegal, if you've
got this giant block and national forest, that nobody's baiting bears,
and they can hunt bears there, but they can't beta bear. Yeah,

(22:01):
and around here, you know, there's only even in giant
blocks national force, there's some private back there somewhere, so
somebody could be but there's a couple of blocks. There's
a mile a mile and a half blocks that nobody's in,
which is not that big for a bear in reality.
But if you get one sometimes it's likes to stay
there and hold tight. And you really got what he

(22:23):
likes to eat, you can keep him on a pretty
good pattern. Now, you tell me about your competition, Ryan,
where you're at um. I did have some guys you know,
a mile and a half two miles from me, and
they took big bears. I mean, you know we were
talking about and uh, I know he does because he

(22:45):
actually just sold the property just a year or two ago. Uh,
but yeah, that was it didn't seem to be a
really a factor because we both understood that we were
chasing big bears, not average bears, and we communicated back
and forth, but we were really remote, didn't have any

(23:06):
really four wheeler traffic or people and out even deer
hunting them. So it was it was almost like a
a buddy was baiting because you kind of knew what
was going on. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it man just
happened to be luck Out and it's just a place
that holds big bears and always always did and uh

(23:27):
still does to this day. Well let's let's talk about
where to put a bear. But I think that's key too,
and I'm sure we'll get to that later. But I mean,
just because you go put a bait in the woods,
don't mean you're gonna kill him with your bear. Not
all created equal, and I can attest that to all
my baits. That's we can talk about that. Well, that's
that's why, that's what I want to talk about. There's
two two things that I want to analyze. So if

(23:50):
you're taking this really serious, like we all have at
different times, like there was one time when I was
baiting eleven different spots in a good county in Arkansas,
and every year I would end up having two to
three spots that I was willing to put somebody on

(24:10):
the hunt when it came down the season. And finally
I just got to where I didn't bait the other
eight places because they just didn't produce. Now, could I
get bears to come in there, yes, but by the season,
by the time season arrived, the big bears would be gone,
or all the bears would be gone, or we're big
bears even coming to it right, And and most of

(24:32):
them I've abandoned sites for that reason too. We was
I talked, we had three when we were really heavy.
Three main sits too always produced giant bears. Now they
might not be there come season, but there was always
giant bears in the area. A third one we probably
baited four years and there was always quite a few
bears there, and there would actually be bears there come season.

(24:52):
That one year I killed that big double tag old
sal a couple of times. She came off of that pace.
She's probably the biggest bear that in four years that
ever came to that base. Three pounds south. She's a
big sal But the point of that was there was
never I mean, i'm not gonna say a two hundred
and fifty pounds sou didn't or a board didn't walk
by that bait occasionally, but there was never a sure

(25:16):
enough mature boar ever in four years come to that base.
And that's a fantastic point because some places produced big
bears and some don't. And when we say big bears,
we're not talking about a two hundred fifty pound mile.
We're talking about a four hundred plus pound trophy ultra
mature big bear. And this we finally abandoned this site

(25:36):
because it was really remote and theory it had everything
what I thought should have to grow hold and be
able to bat mature bears. It took a long time
to get there. It's hard to bat, which is some
of the keys. But after four years it's like, I mean,
I've never had a mature board come here. Why am
I still baiting here? So we kind of abandoned that site,
you know, in our reality, and killed just some meat

(25:56):
bears off the two that we had, and I had
to put as much work or bait somewhere that we
weren't really ever hunting. I mean, I did kill the
one bear there, but of all those years, that's the
only time we ever even hunted there, which one day
I hunted this one day four years and it was
the only bear. What are the characteristics of the good

(26:16):
sites that tend to draw big bears? Man, thickness? It's
just quietness, no intrusion. Quietness, you mean, like not a
county road half mile away. Bears like bed a lot

(26:37):
of times in low areas with lots of shade, preferably
maybe some damp, you know areas. But you know, each
piece of land has a story to tell, and it
may take you a couple of years to totally understand
how the animals move on this piece of ground. So

(27:00):
and in our reality, my opinion that too sometimes is
I don't know if there's a right answer to your question.
I mean, I think sometimes there's a spot almost like
a deer or fish, which there's usually a reason the
fish likes to be here versus even a big deer.
And that's all of our first love was dear, But
I don't know why there was never a big boar
in this one spot. To me, it was perfect right,
But there never was. And but then there's these two

(27:21):
other spots. It's like, I mean, every time a bear
comes in, not every bear, but there's always big boards.
And to me, they're all fairly similar in characteristics, you know,
so why I did the one never produced, but the
other two always had a mature and and and usually
the other two had multiple mature bears coming from you know,
maybe not by season, but throughout the bating time frame,

(27:43):
and you can kill one or two of them and
then another one next year. Next year, they'll be back here.
It's I mean, it is one of the deals. Were
there all. We did a we did a last week.
We had a biologist on the podcast, and she was
talking about how the female bears, they're the ones that
they're mainly tracking in understanding what they're doing. And these

(28:05):
female bears will select to live in areas that are
is remote from human intrusion as possible, Like they don't
like roads, they don't like human houses, like if a
bear is not stressed, and obviously people have bears coming
to their houses and eating their trash cans and stuff
in the in the summertime and periods of stress, but

(28:27):
those bears want to be an unfragmented wilderness. And we'll
use the term wilderness, not as in capital wilderness like
capital w wilderness like federal land. That's but wilderness in
terms of wherever you live the most remote. If it's
in Michigan, it's gonna be the deepest, darkest swamp that
has the least human intrusion. If it's in Arkansas, it's

(28:50):
gonna be that rugged drainage that you know, has big
national forest on every side and it's just hard to
get to. And that's where theo that those are typically
the places that we're gonna be able to draw big bears.
And that's one reason the baiting in Arkansas when we

(29:11):
talk about sometimes they're not there come season, is that
way we can only bait on that private land. And
I think that's key because even though we find remote
land that we can bait on privately on, it's not
as remote as maybe in the summer or before the
acrons start falling, they're coming to that bait, but we
all know as soon as acren is falling, they're gone.
They're way back somewhere else in a more remote area.

(29:34):
I don't think the acrons really even have to fall
off there's somewhat mature, and the trees are loaded. You
know they're going to climb to the climbing trees. I
bet fifty of the bears in the state of Arkansas
right now don't have their feet on the ground right
there in a tree right now evening. So that's what
makes it harder sometimes to keep these bears. When we
say on a bait, it's because it's not where. If

(29:56):
we could put it wherever we wanted to, they'd probably be.
If we get in Idaho, you bait on National Forest
and and we could put a bait out right where
they're gonna want to be and have a better chance.
So we're limited and where we can bait them, so
we have a hard time holding them once the natural
mask becomes available. And we'll talk about some tricks that
we've all used to try to hold them. Okay, let's

(30:19):
talk about so we've established like and it's it's kind
of a no brainer. But for some people that are
just getting used to understanding bears, it's probably helpful to
hear us say the most remote place you can get.
If we could boil it down to something that's simple.
But okay, here's the next scenario. You got forty acres
that you can bait, okay, and you drive into that

(30:40):
forty acres down on a low creek and there's one
high knob on this place that's maybe connected to a
string of mountains. Um, my philosophy is that on that
forty acres, even where you put that bait is important,
Like you can't choose anywhere outside that forty acres. But
I have always been of the persuasion that higher it's

(31:05):
better than lower because of wind like more consistent winds.
And any time I've tried to bait down low the
evening time, thermals make it really hard. Have you guys
had different experience than that your baited and super high?
I agree with you Hucent to some degree, do you, well,

(31:26):
then you don't agree with the U I agree with you.
I do it probably a little different. And what and
the reason I did is if we want to dive
into that, like where you place your bait is my
most successful places I've learned. And I'm not talking to
hunt a bear. We're talking to kill the mature bear.
Because you have to out smartest notes just what you're

(31:47):
talking about, the thurtles and stuff. So the best way
I found to do it in where we hunt, the
way the ridges and stuff lay out is I always
and this forty acres may not have the perfect spot,
but if I had the perfect spot, here's how it
is for me. And the two that are most successful
for me are not exactly identical. The one of our
farm you've been to is not exactly perfect, but it's close.

(32:07):
The one that I killed this bear on is the
best spot I've ever been on. So I get on
the downhill side, not the bottom of the hill, but
I like to be on a secondary point that comes
off a main ridge, a short secondary point thirty or
forty yards. It just juts off and then it dives
off right and it's got deep drains on both sides
of this secondary point. And then it's always on the

(32:29):
north side of the mountain because we have south southwest
early fall early fall. But also the bigger thing, like
you talked about, was the thermals. So I always set
my baits up on the very end of this secondary
and not I'm sorry, not my bait, my stand. I
put the bait up on this secondary point, but I

(32:50):
set my stand on the slightly downhill side on the
very end of the secondary point where it's steep. And
I'm not saying the bears can't come in below or
behind you, but it didn't there or their path, they're
most likely they're likely going to come down the main ridge,
go right around the head of the draw this way
or this way, come right onto this finger, and they're
always on the south side of you. And as soon

(33:10):
as the sun starts sitting behind the trees, the thermal
starts sucking your scent off that point down those two
draws down in the valley below. And if that's why
we hired him the brains man, So that's a good,
really good description. Typically the and the way you would
do that is because we're baiting on private property that's
really close to national forest. I mean usually the fence

(33:32):
ain't far, you know, fifty sixty yards, but we're on
private property. You're baiting here, you're the bears typically aren't
gonna be behind you in that situation anyway, because your
private properties down there, they're coming from this bigger block
of national forest, right and so they're coming from that direction.
So you get your uh south wind, then you get
your thermal shift and it sucks your sent off down

(33:54):
behind you, and I mean you rarely ever. I mean
as long as your winds right and your thermals are good,
you rarely ever gets winded. And that that's how I've
tried to set up all the two and in the
one of our farming exactly like that. We are on
the downhill that you've been to of a secondary point.
It's not as steep as I would want it, but
I don't have anywhere else to put it so because

(34:15):
we've run out of private property. Right. The theme of
what you're saying is is that you need to think
about where you're putting it back. You need to think
about I'm not down in the bottom bottom. I'm up high,
but I'm not on the tip of the ridge. I
get on the kind of the bottom into that secondary
point and have the thermal stuck my sin away and
down the drains behind me, and try to keep the
bears above me right. And then also you can be

(34:37):
twenty of you know, twenty foot in a tree and
your baits over here at eighteen yards. Well it's up
a little bit anyway, so it's just it ain't straight.
But I think it's worth saying that we're all hunting
in the evenings. Yeah, and bow during that time of
your tall bow. That's right, you know, if we've got
to be close and we are primarily hunting in the
evening time, I mean, like almost nine even do you

(35:00):
all your hunts in the evening. I've called you on
open morning to bear season and you were drinking coffee.
I mean, that's the way I have to open a
day a bear season. I sleep in, we hunt him
in evening, and we do that on purpose because these
big bears are feeding overnight. And if you try to
slip it this this is a little bit off topic
from where to place a bait, but I wanna say,

(35:20):
because it's not in my notes. People all the time
ask me, well, maybe we would get into wind hunt.
If you're hunting a big bear, don't even risk hunting
him in the morning. Now, you might kill him in
the morning, but there's a better chance that you're gonna
spook him off the bait, or you're gonna spook bears.
And so all the big bears we've killed have been

(35:40):
in the evening time, and we choose not to hunt
in the morning because those bears are in there all night.
So if you're trying to slip in there with a
flashlight before daylight. They're still debate. There's still at debate.
May not be the one you want to kill, but
there's a bear debate. You're gonna bump off there. It's
gonna make a noise and racket and going in there
and the dark, the flashlight the most unnatural thing you

(36:03):
could do, right And and even if you don't bump
the target bear, he that I'm pointing at a five
pound bear amounted over here. He got that big because
he took cues social cues from that bear is bedded
a hundred and twenty yards away. He hears a bear
wolf and run off and you know he goes down

(36:25):
when a check and he's like, yep, that fools into
tree stand. You know, we're talking about mature bears. But
certain people might just have access to flat ground, might
just be a pine timber stand and there's no kind
of features and you know, only maybe we'll drive right

(36:45):
to the side of the road and have to backpack
something in and not saying don't go try it, you know,
I mean, if that's all you got, you gotta do,
but maybe understand the lay of the forest that's leading
in to this property to give you an idea where
you want to maybe put some bait and you know,
hanger stand. But yeah, not everybody's gonna have prime. Yeah,

(37:10):
And I'm just talking from experience on the property I hunt.
If you put me on a flat forty acres, I
probably wouldn't know where to put the ba that's where,
And that's where these guys that like baite up in
Michigan and different places, Like they're using terrain features of
the swamp, like you know, they're backing up against a
big swamp that you know, the bears aren't gonna come

(37:31):
from that direction. And so the point of hearing the
Heath dissect how he sets up his bait sites is
that you can do the same thing on your land
for whatever it is, Like you just gotta think about it.
You can't. You don't set a bear if you want
to kill big bears, you don't set a bear bait
based upon ease of access for you. That's the biggest thing.
Like when I've helped people, it's like, man, we gotta

(37:53):
find a place I can drive the truck and it's easy.
And now granted that's nice, and most of the places
I can drive a truck where I go. But like
the point of it is not for you. The point
is where is that bear comfortable in the daytime? Because
you're asking that bear to do a lot a big bear.
You're asking him to come into a feeding area in

(38:15):
the broad daylight, in a place that he knows there's
a human involved. That's the thing that's so different about
this than deer hunting. A deer hunting situation, you know
that deer doesn't know there's a human around. Ultra ninja
stealth is what you're trying to do, especially if you're
not hunting over feet or something. But with this bear,
that big five pound bear knows there is a human involved.

(38:38):
You can't really hide that, at least around here when
it's so hot, and their nose is better than a
deer's nose, right, I mean, we've had this. This is
a whole another story. But you know, I know you
killed the big bear finally on the Red Knicks sent Typeline.
You know, for a few years, we had that conversation
for years. I'm like, Clay, the best way to kill
bears in a blind, But I'm not find a blind

(38:59):
just to go bear hunt, because you gotta full their nose.
So that's why I kind of did what I started
doing on the end of them points and ridges, was
just using the thermals as much as I could to
try to help my sin. But yeah, I mean you
gotta full their nose. And I mean these beards, I
mean they sit out there and listen. You know, this
bear here came up and just happened. I could see him,

(39:20):
you know, probably not thirty minutes but twenty minutes before dark,
and he just sat there like a dog just listen,
you know, sixties seven out there, way out there, yeah,
a hundred yards probably a hundred and twenty. And then
it just had to be kind of an opening through
the woods that I catched him, you know. And then
he'd get up and I'm like, oh, here it comes.
He'd take like two steps, he'd sit back down, listen

(39:41):
and sniff around and listen, and you know, well, by
the time he came to a hundred yards is almost
a dark I couldn't see him, right, Well, I saw that,
But had I not seen that, I wouldn't have know.
You know, you wouldn't know. And they're just they're different
than a little two pounder that just comes walking in
because he wants see a donut the whole there personality.

(40:01):
So and he may I mean, and you know, he
may have been bedded just a hundred fifty yards all day.
I don't know, but he could have been the whole time.
That is my my persuasion on what they're doing when
they're pounding a bear bait, going far far meant. So
last year we tracked a bear that we tracked a

(40:23):
bear that we didn't recover um and we we went
off of this bear bait and hit a bear trail
and this bear just went straight off the side of
the mountain. And I mean it was like following a
cattle trail and we're seeing this little specks of blood
and we pretty much knew this bear wasn't that hurt.
It was a it was a different hunter I was helping.

(40:47):
And that bear went right to a place that looked
like the bear holiday in Really it was down in
a super steep draw paw paw patch with boulders and
is the nastiest place on the side of that mountain.
And he had a spot war out on the ground,
I mean as big as you know, we're I don't know,

(41:09):
he spent a lot of time right there. It was
his bedroom two and fifty yards from the bait side,
and he just woke up, went to the bait, went
laid back down. He had no reason to go anywhere.
So I mean, I'm sure this bear is doing the same.
I didn't follow Australia, but he wasn't go on a
couple hundred yards, you know. And that's why this is
another topic. But being consistent on later your question. On

(41:32):
the opening day of season, they hear you when you
go bait them bat, I mean when you go bat
and stuff, and so if you're at a routine, they
can figure that out, you know, and it may just
cause them to come in thirty minutes later because they're
being extra cautious or something, you know. So I mean
I might when I go bait. Well, let's talk about
that baiting routine. That's a great that's a key key

(41:54):
point for killing big bears. Go ahead, Well, most debates
I set up are steeping rugged my two most cessed ones.
But I do have them set up because let me
kind of back up a little bit. The population has
gotten so large where we hunt most people I don't
think would believe us. But the last time I truly
baited hard. I had forty different bears hitting three bait sets.

(42:15):
So the sheer volume of bait. We have to put
out two feed forty bears for two weeks or thirty
days or whatever you decide to bait to try to
have one there come opening day. You can't carry all
that in. So I can't drive a truck to any well,
I can't drive a truck to anyone, but I can
drive a side by sat so and they get used

(42:35):
to that. You know, you go in there, you drive
the subpside. At my bait sets, I put two fifty
five gallon barrels of bait plumbfoil. You're stacking it on top.
And I'm not saying every year is exactly like that,
But on a good baiting year, they're eating all that
in a couple of days. And you're saying good baiting year,
you mean not much mass baits really hard to absolutely

(42:56):
when there's a lot of activity at a bait you
know some years is gonna be less for the very reason.
But when you do hit it perfect and all the
bears are hitting your bait, man that year, I was
filling up that much bait every other day or it
was bones dry empty, not because I wanted to, It
was we had to put out that much bait to
keep bears coming. So I drive the sube beside and
there you beat and bang around you. I use metal

(43:18):
barrels just because I can chain them to the tree,
and they got the lid on bolt the ring down,
so they don't you know, right, And I'm not saying
it's the best. That's just what I do. But I'm
gonna do that on opening day. I'm not gonna have
Opening Day be a day I miss right. I'm gonna
get up, I'm wanna drink coffee whatever. At mid day,

(43:39):
I'm gonna go check the but cameras to see if
my bears still coming. Was he there last night before dark?
I'm gonna refresh debait and make noise, just through my
normal routine, because just like we said, he's probably laying
out there if you're still there and hadn't left for
the mask crot yet, he's not far. I guarantee he
can hear that a TV. And you're banging on that
barrel when you are making putting that bait you're at.

(44:01):
So I don't really try to be quiet when I'm
putting that bait, don't I mean, I don't may not
trying to hide your sin. I don't try to maybe
make too much extra noise. But I bang around and
do my stuff and clink the barrel and hit it
with a stick sometimes. And I got a funny story
about that in canadaate. Uh So that's what I do.
Then we leave and then just try to slip in there,
you know, a couple of hours before dark or whatever

(44:24):
time we want to go in that day. Then where's
stealth about getting in there at that time? You know?
But the middlen't want them to know. But the middle
of the day, I want him to thank just another day. Man,
he's come beating and banging. Barrels are full of donuts.
I'm gonna go eat tonight. You have a lot of
your mature bears come in that evening the day you
Bathe see that's let me uh so, let me go

(44:48):
back to baiting routine and then then we can jump
right into the day. But I think when you're baiting
a bear, so you're you're trying to create this safe
zone where this bear feels comfortable coming into your bait.
And so the more consistent you can be the better,
like even in terms of timing, because what people run

(45:11):
into is that they have jobs and they can't bait
until like evening time. Um, you know, And I'm just
gonna describe best case scenario, and people can craft this
to fit their life. But I think this is pretty
best case scenario type stuff. Is that I only bait
my really good spots between about eleven and two during

(45:33):
the day. And I would rather miss a day of
baiting than to go in there at seven o'clock in
the evening and blow that bear out. I won't do it. Yeah.
So so it's like the more the more it's the
more predictable that you are, the more predictable your big
bears you're going to be there because if you if

(45:55):
he's in there strutting around at six thirty in the
afternoon thinking about what a great life he has and
all this bait, and for the last ten days you've
only been in there at mid day, and he's like, man,
that guy coming back to the bar, and then you
roll up on the side by side day after tomorrow. Yeah,
you roll up and blow him out of there. Man,

(46:15):
you've spooked that now the tuner pound bear, that he's
gonna sit out there and watch. He doesn't care. That
guy right there pointing to the big bear over there,
he cares. He's probably consistency. He's either going nocturnal or
he's not coming back that time here. Now, you might
get away with that thirty days before season. Yeah, But
the closer we get the season and you get a

(46:36):
photo period coming into play, another stuff, he's gone. They
get touch here. That's a great point. They get touchy
at least here. Man. Like, right now, you could and
we could legally bait bears right now in Arkansas because
we're under thirty days out. You could go out right
now and make bear baiting look easy. That's right. You
can put out acrons aren't falling it. Yeah, I mean,

(46:58):
bears would just speak two weeks earlier and coming in
the daytime. And then the closer you get to that
end of September, more mass becomes available. These bears have
this in eight draw to want to get back into
their natural fall ranges. And boy, you mess up just
a little bit. You can screw the thing up with

(47:18):
the big bears. Absolutely, But so the timing stuff or
the consistency stuff, that's kind of my best ideas on
it is just be as consistent as possible. And if
you can only bait in the evening times, if you
work and you can only do it, just do it
the same every time, just don't you know, I mean,
just be consistent with whatever you do. You don't want

(47:39):
to surprise that bear. But that's my thoughts on it.
The last couple hours of daylight is their time, and
the last thing you want to do is have him
nervous or on his toes, you know, trying to win
constantly or yeah you don't. You don't want to ruin
that that time in the evening. Well we're it a

(48:00):
little bit out of order, but that's fine. Let's talk
about Heath brought up like the day of the hunt,
what do you and that was great. So you're gonna
go in and bait like normal, check cameras, bait, do
the normal stuff, because yeah, I just think being consistent
like that, because like I said on those I'm not
bating every day, I'm bating the least every other day,

(48:21):
you know. But and I usually try to time it
out where I don't bait the day before and I
do bait the day of season. So it's stays routine.
We're not saying that every year just depends on work
and stuff too, but um, yeah, I just think being
routine like that it's just key. Yeah. What about you, Ryan?
What do you do? I usually bait the day before

(48:43):
season rules in bait real heavy, uh for me and
where I'm hunting. It seems like the mature bears don't
want to come in as early. I mean some years
they do, but I've always done the day before season
bait real heavy the day of which you know, we

(49:04):
probably all got cell cameras out nowadays and not me.
I'm a traditionalist. Yeah, I don't I understand, but you
know I usually go in here. What I said, I
just threw you under the bus. I said. You probably
use a crossbowt too, don't you know. I ain't that
old yet, but now usually, you know, slip in mid

(49:30):
day and I maybe a little stealthier than other people.
I will usually try to find a water puddle or
if not, I'll grind my boots even though what I
think they're clean. I will grind them in a cedar
limb or a pine limb, just a little natural cover
scent when I'm walking in which I have bears that

(49:51):
will come down my baiting path to the bait, you know,
depending on which way the wind is. But I won't
touch any saplings, won't touch any foliage. My hands don't
touch anything but what I'm carrying. And I will ease
up at tree, just climb tree, stand without your hands. No, no,

(50:12):
I just feed only, feed only. But you know, elevator
No like a like a punch of button. And I
wish I don't own one of them rednext stands like
you like those rich guys. But now I slip in
just as quiet as a mouse, and you go ninja
on him on it. I do don't always work, but

(50:34):
that's just, you know, makes me feel better about time.
So what I have a trend I've seen Heath with
my bears is that I feel like the big bears,
like he's saying, we'll hit it hard. As the day
after I bait. I find a lot of times the
big ones on the day I'm there are more nervous

(50:55):
to come in. But the second day it's like plenty
of bait because they probably came in that night and
they know the barrels are full. So the next day
they're hammering it, you know, and so I usually I
usually like debait the day before full throttle, just make noise,
leave scent, and then slip in like a ninjut about

(51:16):
two o'clock, you know. And I usually that's why I
usually do like shooting light around that time of year.
I don't know, it seems like it's getting dark about seven,
seven fifteen, and so I'll try to get in way
before peak movement. You know. It seems like I always
end up trying to get in there about two, well,
about three o'clock, and said, the last four hours, and

(51:37):
you know, the last hour is really when you're gonna
kill one. But you don't want to get in there
too late or you'll bump bears. Uh, quick question, do
y'all ever like have these rogue bears that just sometimes
they'll roll in at noon or one o'clock and big ones, Yeah,
big whoppers. You know, the booner I killed in two

(52:01):
thousand fifteen, two thousand sixteen, I never hardly got any
nighttime pictures of that bear. Daylight every hour of the
day he was guarding that bait site. I studied my
pictures for a long time, and from one o'clock to
two o'clock I never hardly get any pictures of him,

(52:22):
So I thought that opening day, I'm sneaking in right
at one o'clock and I want to ease in there
without bumping him off. He come in as I was
walking into the bait. Yeah, so I remember that you
shot him off the ground. Yeah. I was able to
took my boots off and socked feet and snuck up
there with the like nine yards and got airly in. Yeah. Yeah,

(52:47):
but you know everything that's unusual though, I'd say that's
highly unusual for a bit, especially at Boon. Every three
or four years, I always have this one mature bear
that just does something opposite of what it know what
that is really what we're trying to capitalize on. It's like,
you can bait for ten years. In three of those years,

(53:08):
you're gonna have a bear that just really cooperates. Yeah,
there rest time. It's just they're all like humans. They
all have their own personality and the way they want
to do things. You know, they're all different and they
all and I think a lot of it depends on
what people may not think about, is their previous experience
at a baits that somewhere else exactly now our baits

(53:29):
that probably if he's that old, that bear was nine,
but on that bear was way older. They've been debates
that somewhere before. You know, how many human encounters have
they had on bait? Have they been shot at before
and missed or run off to or three times with
a n a TV or you know who knows? So
in their mind, we don't know what they're thinking because
we don't have a clue what first off, how old

(53:50):
they even are, and how many years of experience they've
had at somebody else's bait who don't know maybe what
they're doing or is not as careful or whatever. You know,
I mean, you just don't know. Yeah, Well, what we
do know is that they they program, they understand your patterns,
probably better than you understand your own. Well, that's why
I talked about the consistency. Yeah, baiting on time, making

(54:13):
the noise, and it makes them comfortable slide you know,
I mean, yeah, absolutely, I agree. I mean I killed
a bear and alberta one year. One day we weren't
seeing anything, and uh, I climbed out of the tree
and got a stick and banged on the barrel and
climb back and standing before I got to stand bear
come walking in. You know, there wasn't no bait in it,
but I banged on the barrel with the stick, and
they were conditioned to that noise that somebody'd been there

(54:34):
to bait. Yeah. Yeah, I'm like, I'm about to go
bang on the sparrel. I'm talking not seeing nothing. Yeah,
And it worked then it wouldn't you know. I'm not
saying it's gonna work every time you do that. Yeah,
that's pretty cool. You know, everybody's bears are gonna respond
different tube based upon where they're at. I mean, like
those Canadian bears are like, especially the willerscious right, they're

(54:55):
no's cautious. These bears down here are gonna be pretty cautious.
A lot of places in the US where people are baiting, Maine, Michigan, Idaho.
I mean you almost had to hunt these bear like deer,
you know. But when Canada, boy, you can just about
anything goes and if you're hunting younger. But you know,
I remember one time we called in a bear in

(55:16):
Arkansas by called in. I got my air quotes up here,
Me and a buddy, we're hunting, uh Lee Walt, my buddy,
Lee Walt. We're hunting, and we hunted the morning that
years when I first he just could only hunt one
day or something. We hunt. We did hunt the morning.
He just wanted a bear and we didn't have a
big bear at this bait. We just had average bears.

(55:36):
We went in there in the morning, it's out there
for an hour and a half, didn't see any bears,
and I said, stay here. I climbed out of the tree,
went and got the truck, drove the truck in there,
slammed the door, drove the truck back out, walked back in,
and in twenty minutes eat shot a bear. Bear came in.
I mean, he thought, you know, it's your routine. He thought,
you just made it the barrel just like hogs on
a feeder. You know, when it spins here they come.

(55:58):
So that wouldn't have worked on five pound bears though
it wouldn't have worked at all. Hey, this is this
is all good stuff. Let's march down our list. So
how far in advance you gutts start feeding bears. Some
states have regulations that you can only you know, you'll
need to check your rags on the states like here
in Arkansas can bait thirty days before season in Oklahoma.
There's no regulation on season. In Idaho. I believe some

(56:23):
of those places out there you can only bait like
seven days before season. But what's your thoughts a new bait?
Probably as soon as possible. Okay, we'll see check inventory
established baits. It's been there for years and years. You know,
bears are already there. You know, two weeks, three weeks,

(56:44):
that's should be ample, because it seems like like the
rational thought would be, well, I'm gonna bait him as
long as possible. If if you can start baiting in June,
I'm gonna start baiting in June. But there's a law
of limited return, you know on a deal like this,
Like there's a sweet spot because I found y'all tell

(57:07):
me if you've we've all had these conversations together over
the years, but it's all kind of blurred together. I
feel like it's hard to keep a single big bear
for much more than about ten to fourteen days. I've
never had a five hundred pound bear that just stayed
on my bait for thirty straight days. They'll burn out,
just like you. I mean, you don't want to eat

(57:27):
steak every single that of the week. I mean, you
know most people don't, you know, I mean, you can
only eat Chinese buffet so many nights, weak, right, I mean,
whatever it is, So yeah, I agree, I think they
do get burnt out. I think there's a little more
technical set of that question. For me. Is is based
on wind, season is and when the mask falls. To me,

(57:49):
you have to start baiting long enough in advance to
get the bears on there before the mast falls first
rat So then if the mast is falling or where
we are acorns when I say mass, that's our mask,
you know. But if I don't get him there before,
then I'm probably not getting him there right. So you know,
we've had seasons varying and opening dates throughout history. So
my process that's kind of changed based on that. So

(58:13):
now the way the season structure is, I would probably
try to bait a little longer than previously, just because
I know I gotta I gotta get them there before
they can fall, and then I got to try to
hold them all the way to season. Right. If not,
if the season was a little earlier and I knew
I only had some I mean I knew I had
then X amount of days before season, I would do

(58:35):
it as short, you know, two weeks. Really, like he said,
established baits if they can ain't falling, you know, a
couple of weeks. I mean, really, thirty days is just
too much time. You had a scenario one year. I
remember when we were both trying to do these shorter
baits when you didn't have bears, so you we you
kind of got burned. But I remember that year because
we were talking about it. We're like, man, we're just

(58:56):
gonna bait ten days now. I don't think I ever
had a bear command, and so the bears that already
they may have heath, they may have even moved off
to other baits. True, somebody started bating before you, or
you know, even an established bait. That may be because
of season changed the year or two before. We had
started bating at x date. And then now we're well,

(59:19):
I'm only ten days before season, but the season was
two weeks later. You're saying, we've season that roll two
week period. So the bears may have came by before
we started baiting. They're nothing here. I'm going down to
the southern bait, right. So I think it depends. Actually
answered your question, I don't want to have to bait

(59:39):
any bear thirty days because with the volume bears we have,
they just take too much bait to keep them there.
Here's the answer, the least amount of time you can, Yeah, exactly,
but I mean you don't. But you have to do
it early enough to get your bears on your bats right.
So that's the key at all. We're all working inside
of a real world where none of us just have
it's not our full time job debate bears. So it's

(01:00:01):
like you have a limited amount of bait. There's only
so much bait you've got, there's only so much time
you've got. There's only you know. So it's like finding
that sweet spot in some of the places Ryan's got.
I think he could probably go in five days before
season and put out a bait better spots and staying
baits that have been a state of sever many years. Absolutely,
as long as the akrons aren't following. I think a

(01:00:21):
lot of guys, especially some of these guys that's just
getting into it, they want to look at pictures and
the baiting process that's part of the fun, that's part
of it, and they want to see bear pictures as
soon as possible. And you can't and you know that yeah,
I mean everybody wants to do that. Yeah, but you know,

(01:00:41):
if if it's somewhere you know there's gonna be bears,
and say you've already been in there and done your
tree standing work, trimmed out some lanes or something. You're
already seeing padded doubt trails and stuff, so you know
there's to me, there's no reason to go ahead and
start baiting thirty days, four seasons. But if a guy

(01:01:03):
who just wants to kill a bear, then by all
means do it. But when we're talking about four five sick,
hundred pound bears, here's the here's the best case scenario.
If I go to some one of my baits and
I put out a bait on August twenty nine and
I see my target bear show up there the day
I put out bait, I kind of cringe a little bit.

(01:01:25):
I'm not gonna be there, and I'm just like, what
are the chances I want to hold him for a month.
Best case scenario, and this has happened many times, is
my target bear shows up about a week before season,
after I've been baiting for about ten days or two weeks,
and I'm like, okay, I told him for a week.
You know that's ideal. Um, So I had got even

(01:01:48):
more ideal is two or three days before. This was
a long story. Back when I very first started, I
shot and didn't recover a big bear several years ago,
one the only times I've ever had this happen, and
he showed up. And I can go through pictures and
show you this too, but at least for me, I
don't know what you guess. See, but if a big
bear comes to my bait whenever the first time he

(01:02:09):
comes to the bait that year, I guarantee you he'll
be there in daylight the next day. Every time I
had the big bear I shot show up. We'd baited
a couple of weeks and there wasn't really any big
bears that you're kind of odd. A big bear showed
up the night before season and he and the only
reason I knew that was I went in the first
day season when ahead and baited midday, checked cameras, pulled

(01:02:31):
the card on my Holy cal there's a big bear.
He came in right after dark. I don't ever may
have been the middle of the night, but he came
in that night first time and been there. And I'm like,
that bear be here in daylight today, I guarantee you.
So we were planning on hunting somewhere else. Totally switched
a game plan and I did shoot the bear, but
it was back when I was I was twenty five
feet in the tree and he was right here, and

(01:02:51):
I I hed. Yeah, I wasn't a fatal shot. It
was a rookie mistake. Young bear hunter still kind of
learned what to do, you know. And so I he
was a big He wasn't five hundred, but he was
probably four d he was. Yeah, I remember he was
a big bear. So I see that too. So you're right.
I mean, if you could time it out to where
season stars just two or three days after them big

(01:03:12):
bears get there, I think your chance of killing them.
That's happened. That seems to happen pretty regularly. Uh, A
big bear they killed in Oklahoma the first year. That
was the first year I hunted over there. But uh,
I called it a no name bear because he showed
up the day before season. I didn't have a name
for him. I had, you know, all these other bears

(01:03:32):
that I knew, and they were big bears, and uh,
he was. He came in the Opening Day like nothing.
You know, I've also had an Opening day bear bite me,
not literally, but two years ago, No, last year, when
I was hunting with the river at the mule bait,
which is a remote bait we used our mules to access.

(01:03:53):
We showed up Opening day and that morning at ten o'clock.
Were there at like one o'clock. We've wrote our mules
in there and I checked the card and there is
a monster that showed up that morning at ten o'clock
and stayed at debait. And I told driver, I said
that bear will be here. I mean he's he's within

(01:04:16):
two or fifty yards. I was right now. The problem
was is that it was his first time to debate,
and we hadn't been there in two or three days.
So he came into that bait and never smelled a human,
and he came in. We watched him. I saw him.
He came in at like three thirty and got forty
yards down the wind of us, smelled us, and never

(01:04:39):
came back to the bait again. Now, if he had
been there and three hours after we had baited three
days before and he had been like, huh, there's a
human over here, but look at this good food. Do
you see the scenario. I mean, like he it was
a perfect timing for him to nail us out of

(01:04:59):
your control or to that. But so you you you
want them. These big bears have to know. And in
that particular spot that was so remote, those bears acted
like Canadian bears almost a big bear that river shot
and didn't recover, smelled us, looked at us in the
tree and just shrud it in like nothing. He just

(01:05:21):
kind of cautiously came in down wind that color phase
bear like anyway. That wasn't normal either. He usually would
have winded us and left. He winded us. It was
just kind of like very up in the tree. But anyway,
pretty wild. That's odd though. You're not gonna have that
happened very often. That's odd. And you kick yourself because

(01:05:43):
you're like, man, we should have done something different, but
you don't know. I mean, I just don't happen very often, right, Okay, man,
this is a great discussion. Okay, let's talk about what
type of bait, what type of bait, what do you
put out? Whatever you can come up with. I will
say in the fall, you're probably gonna try to do
more carbo hydrates. Than anything. That's what they're geared forward

(01:06:04):
and the falls to put on. You still use beavers
quite a bit here, not as much. I tell you what.
When the bait's hot and heavy, you got lots of
bears coming in, they will just carpet bomb up beaver carcass.
But if there's not a lot of bears and that

(01:06:24):
thing starts doing rancid it, they don't like it. It's
vice versas in Canada. I mean them guys will use
rancid meat up bear and the bears are just distroy
feast on it down here. Once you get some stink
to it and maggots and you just got a big mess.
Yeah yeah. But on the years where there's not a

(01:06:46):
lot of masks and they're hammering your baits, if you
got a beaver carcass, man, it's icing on the cake. Yeah,
I see, I would have u Now, I've never I've
never put a beaver out in Arkhams so, but I've
heard of guys doing it and bears not hitting it here.
Now in Canada they'll go crazy. But okay, walk me

(01:07:06):
through what you put on your bait. Just just list
out the stuff. Uh, pastries, mostly pastries, Just like doughnuts.
You're getting donut bread, bread that you're this, you know,
bread from a thrift store or something, white bread, wheat bread, bagels,

(01:07:28):
peter bread. Like people ask these kind of questions. We
we know because we've filtered through it all for other
of you. But any of that stuff they'll eat. Yeah,
I'm not trying to interest you know, corn dog food
whatever a ga. Okay, now you're the one that taught
me about a corn barrel. So Ryan will have probably

(01:07:48):
two metal barrels, and we'll go ahead and say all
of us are using metal barrels. I'm cutting the eight
inch hole above the lowest ring, trying get a barrel
that's got a top, like he said that you can
screw together and you were just chaining that to a tree.
Or you can put eyebolts off the back of this

(01:08:09):
barrel and chain it to a tree. That's there's no
secret to that. Some places you can't use metal barrels.
You gotta use stumps and stuff like a natural or
like a natural so you know, check your regulations. Most
places you can use metal barrels. Plastic barrel is just
the same, but plastic barrels usually the lid is not
as good as usually so, or they don't have a

(01:08:29):
removable lid. Anyway, we're all using metal barrels. Just cut
use the saws off and just cut about eight inch
hole down towards the bottom. But ryan, Um, We'll take
a fifty five gallon drum, a two inch circular metal saw,
put two inch holes maybe seven or eight around the
base of that barrel, eyebolt coming off the back of

(01:08:55):
the with some big washers and an eyebolt, chain it
to a tree. Fill it with three pound as a
corn and pour about two gallons of grease with Northwood's
gold rush in it, and you have a a corn
roller barrel when everything else is gone, that's still gonna
be there, just to keep them interesting, because they'll they'll
they'll they'll high grade debate, they'll go, they'll hit and

(01:09:18):
different bears are different. But you know they're probably gonna
eat the doughnuts and the bread and the sardines or
whatever you put out first. And then if they just
pound it, you still got this grease barrel that they'll
come in and roll around. And last year it takes
it takes more time to Yeah, they get a roll
it around a little bit falls out. Yep, yep. And

(01:09:38):
you know, certain years it's better than others. Like I said,
when there's not much natural food, they will pound the corn.
But some years they don't want to touch it as much.
You know, it varies from year to year. Yeah, okay,
so bread, grease, dog food, dog food, old sweets. I've

(01:09:59):
used gum worms, skittles. Uh, yeah, you name it. I mean, heath,
what do you use the same thing? I mean, I
you know, there for a few years we were going
in and buying semi truckload up sweech. You know, so
it changed a little bit. The best I've ever found
was donuts. They loved donuts, but you can't get an

(01:10:21):
unlimited supply. One year, the year I killed that bear
right there. A matter of fact, they had put in
a new Dunkin Donuts where I lived at the time,
brand new, and they did not know how many donuts
a day they needed to make, And they were literally
throwing away half a truckload trash bag full of donuts
every night because they were cooking too many donuts. You

(01:10:41):
could just go buy and get them out of dumpster.
So one year I had like for a short time,
it didn't last long because they figured it out. But
I had like this unlimited supply of every kind of donut.
You can imagine that Duncan Donuts found the bird nest
on the ground. I mean it was unreal and but yeah,
the same thing. I mean, I still you know, then
where were you? And cookies and Oreo cookies with the

(01:11:02):
cream filling worked really good, some of the ice cream
sandwich cookies. Where we are, I don't use corn as much.
I don't think my bears and I think a lot
of it's where you are, obviously, and the timing of
season to you, um so early New Year. Yeah, they're
hitting corn right now. You can just come pour a corn.
And I mean you can't even get pictures of your

(01:11:23):
deer right now because the bears right. But the closer
we get the season, yeah, I'd do the same thing
I do, kind of similar to what Rynd does with popcorn.
Though we were getting the big cherry popcorn or caramel
popcorn for in a quasi roller barrel that might have
a bigger hole in it, but i'd like chain it
to the tree on it just a rubber barrel. I'd

(01:11:45):
still have my two main metal drums full of the
regular stuff, but i'd feel it full of that candy
popcorn and the same thing. They could roll it around,
get some the popcorn out, and it's interesting. They're like
humans to me. The one in year I had a
low rider, you remember him for a couple well to
three years, big big, big chocolate bear, biggest tacolate bear

(01:12:06):
I ever seen in Arkansas, and another big bear coming.
One of those bears and I can't remember which now.
I loved the popcorn. One of them would never eat it.
He would always eat other big barrels. So it is
personality to me too. Somebars like some things and some
beards don't, just like the way we do, you know.
So a lot of that's just you need to research.

(01:12:26):
Check the game cameras and see what he's eating, you know.
And if this one bear and he's not eating the
popcorner all the time, and he's the one that you're
wanting to kill, you need to maybe try to start. Well,
he likes I mean, I know he likes this more.
I need to keep more of this because I want
him to be coming in right. But so, yeah, donnuts
are my favorite, but you just can't ever get enough
Don't nuts spread grease, you know, one of the things

(01:12:50):
I used one for a few years. I had a
good connection to you know, you talk about friar all
and just grease. But I had a friend that had
a barbecue you restaurant, and he had his big pits
smoker in the restaurant and he smoked a whole new
meat every night for the next day's meals. And he
had a big, huge spicket on the back side of
this big uh smoker that all the grease and drippings

(01:13:14):
would run out into a five gallon bucket and it
was like, I mean, you'd want to dip a biscuit
in it, and it was it was barbecue trippings did
oh it was. It smelled so good you don't have
to admit it. Yeah, And so for there for a
few years too, I would have him start by taking
buckets with leads that he could put on it good

(01:13:35):
and start stack, you know, stalking up on that. And
it had a really good strong odor. And you know,
we'll talk about grease too, but grease gets on their
feet and they track it back in the woods, and
the central component I felt like some sort of grease,
I mean, and even if it's just greasy but warmarn't.
You're pouring it on the ground even to get on
their feet, so they track it off. Another bear is

(01:13:56):
gonna smell it and follow that track back in. So
it helps the other bears in there and find your
bait a lot quicker in my opinion. Well, not only
was I doing that, but they loved this grease because
it was actually dripping set of smoke pit, so you
can put if I didn't have doughnuts, I had the
day old bread store stuff. You could fill the bread
stop it in. This dripping is right out of the
smoke pit. Holdly cow. They love that. So I'm sure

(01:14:18):
it's like anybody else in my experience. Every year, I
don't always have access to the same thing. Yeah, you
kind of got because it's hard to get. Yeah, you know,
baits hard, it is, and a lot of people don't
want to. You know. I was getting pastries and stuff
at a day old bread store one time for quite
a while. Well, they got to where they didn't want

(01:14:39):
to sell them to you because some guy bottom and
went and sold them to somebody, you know, and they
didn't want to get sued for somebody eating a bad pastry,
you know, So then they would stop giving the bear hunters.
Well we were, I mean, we're having to buy and
they weren't giving them to this, but they just stopped
giving them sore like, well, heck, there goes my whole
supply of pastries. I gotta find some somewhere else. You know,

(01:15:00):
I've got a huge undertaking. I've got a tip for
people trying to get bait from like commercial places, whether
it's a donut store, where it's a thrift store, because
people always want to know what you're gonna do with it,
and you don't don't lie to them. But feed bread.
That's what I asked for when I call thrift stores,
like do you'all have feed bread? Because a lot of

(01:15:21):
people buy this stuff for livestock, and so you know,
I don't ever lie, but you know I've been I've
learned from some good people over the years that you
want to give as much information away as you need,
because I have for sure. Early on, I remember buying
bread and be like, man, we're baiting bears, and I
mean it's dried up before because of that. Uh yeah,

(01:15:44):
so feed bread. That's a good way to say a
lot of people feed livestock and pigs and stuff with
that stuff. Hey, let me tell you what I would do,
just in real short because to me, this isn't people
think this is like the magic bullet to killing a
big bear. Is what kind of bait you use? I don't.
I think it's a puple of notches down. I think
it's less important if you have quality bait. Um. Basically,

(01:16:06):
you gotta feed him what they'll eat. This is what
I'll do on the first time that I bait, which
will probably be in the next ten days, sometimes all
by fifty pounds of cheap dog food. I'll have five
gallons of of grease, which, depending on what I can get,
I may go to Walmart and buy three or four

(01:16:27):
gallons of maybe just three or four gallons of canola oil,
and I will put my Northwoods gold Rush in that
brand new canola oil. Uh. Then I'll have my feed
bread from the thrift store, which is just gonna be
a conglomeration of wheat bread, white bread, whatever I've got,
and I will pour a fifty got five gallons or

(01:16:50):
a fifty pound bag of dog food in that barrel,
and it'll fill that barrel up almost to the bottom
of my whole because I've got I cut that whole above,
you know, about fifteen inches up from the bottom, so
they'll be dog foot food down there. I'll pour some
grease on that dog food, maybe half a gallon gallon

(01:17:10):
of grease, and then i will literally stuff that barrel
full of bread, so much so that I'm having one
of my kids or me jump on the bread to
compress it down into that bait barrel. And we'll put
I don't know how many pounds of bread you can
put in there, but a lot, probably two pounds of bread,
and then I'll put the lid on that thing, and uh,

(01:17:32):
if depend upon if it's a really good bait that
I anticipate bears pounding, I'll probably do that a second
time with another barrel, and then I'll fill up my
corn roller barrel. I'll set my camera in a bare box.
You gotta have a bare box, and you're gonna you
might as well get up get a camera you can
put in a bare box because the bears are they
may not destroy it, they're just curious. They're gonna knock

(01:17:55):
it around and they're gonna turn it sideways. And I'd
say there's about a forty percent chance they're going to
destroy it. Yeah. Yeah, I have people that say, man,
I've never had bears messed with it. It's just a
matter of time if you do it much special, if
you've got quality cameras, and if you have good cameras
they cost a lot of money today. You know you
want to protect them. So I actually found double A
batteries and bears scat before I have no kiddens, I'll

(01:18:19):
be darn well, that's my that's my baiting typically what
I'd made. One thing to add kind of on Ryan's point,
I don't run used to use the beavers, and or
still do. Sometimes you talked about going rancid, you know,
I think sometimes we've talked about and or I've done
sometimes if you want to hold the bear another a

(01:18:39):
few more days and try to keep him there, and
I don't mean a bear, a big bear. You can
add beef scraps or beef fat or something a little
different to their diet and they don't get a lot
of meat here at And I've tried that and I
do think it works. But I also agree with run.
You got to be very careful because the moment that
goes rancid, they stop it. Our bears here do not
want rancid meat. Bears are all for tunists. You know,

(01:19:01):
they're kind of cumbersome. They don't get to eat red
meat real often. So when there is, but if you
put too much, here's here's the bad scenario. If you
go in there and they're hammering it and you put
a bunch of bait or say a bunch of meat
scraps on top to bait and just coincidentally the acor
and start following that night. Yeah, who you gotta miss

(01:19:21):
on your hands and then and then it just it's nasty,
so you gotta be careful. But Clay, you know, pork
or beefs fat with no meat on it, just the fat.
But that you were reading my notes, he because that's
what I was going to talk about. I feel like,
and we've all had this conversation. Is that a key

(01:19:42):
to holding a bear I think can be too strategically
add something new just before season that intrigues them a
little bit. And I'll walk you through a scenario I've
I've had this happen multiple years, baiting a big bear
and he you know, because you get the season, the

(01:20:04):
more nocturnally becomes. Unless he comes to your bait, and
if you can put something new out there that he's
not seen, that he likes, you'll have a chance of
keeping him around a little bit longer. So usually what
I do is I'll buy. You can go to just
about any butcher, like custom butcher, and buy fifty pound

(01:20:25):
box of pork fat or beef fat frozen to be real, neat,
nice little box, fifty pounds for five to thirty five dollars.
I mean, it's not expensive, and then strategically put that
out with your bait like I put it right on
top of the barrel. I would go in and bait
just like I described, and then just put it on

(01:20:46):
top of the barrel. And I've seen bears come in
and not eat a doughnut, not eat corn, just carry
off a big slab of fat. You can do it
with beef tremans to like you might be able to
go to butcher and get beef. I one time watched
a bear come in, walk past donuts, walk past corn,
and start crunching beef bones. It was just that time

(01:21:09):
of year, it was just like two weeks before it
would have probably ignored that meat and it would have
ate donuts and corn and dog food. It could have
caurred less about this point though. We had been eating
those carbohydrates for a couple of weeks on ten days
or whatever, and then you've switched to this new source
of protein or meat and they're like, wow, this is

(01:21:29):
this is awesome. Man, that's right. I looked. I'm coming
back to this Chinese in my face for a couple
more days. And that's all you need. You're just trying
to get him to hang on. And so for sure,
always the time before that I bait. The last time
I bait before season. Man, I'm putting some good stuff
out and I'll tell you the l primo bait that

(01:21:50):
I have never ever ever witnessed a bear not eat.
Don't tell it, don't tell him. You're right, I'm not
gonna tell them. They're gonna have to go to our
pay for a podcasts to get this one. Now. Sardines,
I have never not seen a bear eat at Cannas Sardines.
I've seen him walk past corn, doughnuts, dog food, beef meat.

(01:22:16):
Any I mean, like you know, blueberry pie. I don't know.
I've never seen one walk over at Cannas Sardines. Maybe
they have but it's like gold to them. So the
day before season, I usually put out a lot of sardines,
and I and I put those out throughout the year,
me and James Lawrence. James is pretty good at finding
these like bargain sardine deals. And he'll have he'll have

(01:22:39):
fifty cans of sardines, you know, and we'll we'll eat
some of them are baiting bears. But then we'll we'll say,
James probably find sardines for itself. Me and James are
cut from the same cloth. Man, We're like, we we
both gained a little weight during bear baitings. Um, but
I think that's a key point for holding a big bear.

(01:23:00):
And if we're talking about big bears, you gotta be consistent.
You gotta be where they are. You're not gonna kill
a big bear where there's not one. So if your
bait doesn't have one, you need to find somewhere else.
Debate and you can. That's the best trick I've got.
I mean, like people are like, well, can you go
in and do a honey burn? You know, the day
that you hunt and draw one in that hadn't been

(01:23:22):
there in four days? I don't think so I've never
seen it where like there's no just like magic bullet.
You know, how do you make him be not not
be nocturnal? That's probably the biggest question I got there.
I don't. I think the way to not keep one,
or the way to for one to kill one that's
nocturnal is you may not be able to. There's just

(01:23:44):
some bears that are probably unkillable. But you just gotta
keep stacking everything in your favor. You gotta be in
a place he's comfortable in the daytime. You gotta give
him the food he wants. You gotta mix it up
just a little bit on that opening day you've got
a we all think he hunt the mornings the evening.
What you're talking about too, though, And here's the thing
about that. I mean, it's just like if the wind

(01:24:05):
is totally wrong opening day, you're not gonna kill the
bear if you go in there, you know, I mean,
we all want to go hunt, but if all of
a sudden we get a rainfront came in and we
got that north wind, you might as well not go,
you know, if you're after a big one. Yeah, it's
just like deer, Yeah, I mean, they're they smell you
know their ability to smell is better than deer. So

(01:24:26):
I mean you gotta be a smart hunter too. You know,
on top of everything we're talking about um sent attractance,
commercial cent attracts. We've talked a little bit about gold rush.
What you've been your experience with it. I think it works,
you know, the I think i've last time or two
I baited pretty hard. I use some of that cherry
bomb spray your cherry one of the cherry flavors from there,

(01:24:48):
and we sprayed up in the trees where smell better
and carry, and then I put some of the stuff
in the grease or whatever because I I didn't use
it when I had that connection to get the barbecue
drippings because it had its own smell, right, So I
didn't need it. But yeah, if you're just using regular
fra all you should use it. I mean it's inexpensive
for as much as it smells and attracting. It gives

(01:25:09):
the grease in your bait set. In my opinion, I
think it adds. It would be hard to put a
percentage on it really scientifically to say how much more
scent to power your bait would have, but I would
say it would be it would double at least. I mean,
like natural natural bait only has so much scent, and

(01:25:33):
this stuff is chemically designed to like be loud, as
Ryan says, you know, to just have a loud smell,
and so it's just gonna carry better. It's gonna carry further,
it's gonna stick on stuff better and scents everything. That's
the way you're gonna that's the way you're gonna attract
bears exactly. Adding to the bears getting the grease on

(01:25:55):
their paws and walking down the trails, if they got
that smelly grease on there, there gonna smell it way
back in there as well. So it's gonna last longer
that old based chemicals gonna last longer on the plants
when they're rubbing going down the trail and stuff. So
I mean that's the key really with the grease and
the attracting is to get as many bears as quickly
as you can to know the bats there, especially if

(01:26:17):
you're you know, I mean maybe not for thirty days,
but for me, it's always I got a bait to
get the bears here before acorns, and then I got
to hold them till season here at So the key
is I gotta get all the bears in there. You
know there's a bait here. Well, that grease is a
huge factor. And you know, I also think it's important
to uh continue to use the sense throughout the season

(01:26:38):
because just like I said earlier, you might be attracting
a bear two days before season opener and he may
be the one you kill. Like a lot of guys,
I've heard people saying, and I maybe even said that
that I like to use commercial sense when I'm opening
a bait live now kind of drifted my full spez.

(01:27:00):
I like to use commercial since the whole time, because
two days before season you made draw in a bear
from four miles away, that is the one you want
to kill. Where if you if you just used at
the beginning to get some bears coming in, you know,
maybe you wouldn't have got I mean, if if we're
talking about best case scenario to kill big bears, I
keep using it, especially with the gold rush stuff. Yeah. Hey,

(01:27:24):
one thing we didn't say when we were talking about
bait site placement is that I feel like your bait
has to be on the up wind. Well, the bait
scent needs to be blowing into areas that hold the bears.
And I've got two stories. And I've told this before,
so if you've listened to these kind of podcasts, you've

(01:27:45):
probably heard both these stories. One time I had a
bait that was on the rim of this big block
national forest. I mean, everything was beautiful about this bait,
except it was on the north side of a big,
giant block of National four Rest, and north of the
bait was just civilization, I mean just farms and cattle

(01:28:06):
pastures and places bears didn't want to be. Well, a
south wind that whole time in September, which usually, you know,
most of our winds are out of the south in September,
most of them. Well, it just so happened the three
weeks that abated, we never got a north wind. So
the wind was constantly coming out of the good bear

(01:28:26):
country blowing into all the farm country. I could never
attract a bear there. You know, if we'd had a
north wind, it would have blown that bait sent down
into that wilderness and the bears would have been like, oh, dang,
there it is. So I believe that if I had
had the same bait that was on the south side,
you know, you could follow my wind direction. You know,

(01:28:49):
I think that's important. Another another time, I had a
killer bait site in terms of area, rugged, remote, big country,
and the wind was always blowing up this canyon which
is where all the city where I came from, and
really the bears were down, you know, kind of downstream

(01:29:11):
into this big national forest. Well, I put out a
bait and uh, for a week didn't get a bear.
This is over in Oklahoma, and uh it just shocked me.
No bears. How could this spot not produce a bear? Well,
I took I took a I I did a little
scent trail run with a drag. I did a little

(01:29:34):
drag down on the property and got just around the
point of these two big ridges. Basically I had to
be low and there were two big ridges and I
was between them. I drugged that scent just out beyond
where those ridges came down, and it was a whole
new draft of wind, I felt like, and within twenty

(01:29:56):
four hours I had a bear. I just did a
drag sent drag that just got my bait sent into
a little bit different current. And so that's important. And
if you can't and here's the flip side of that,
that bait is going to be better for you to
hunt if you have a big bear coming, because he's

(01:30:18):
trying to smell you, So setting him up like that
and then doing a drag to get the bears there,
then having the grease there for the bears to disperse
the scent for you actually makes it a better spot
to hunt. It's just harder to get the bears to
come to it. Get a little more work you gotta
do for that. Yeah, so as good. I've done that before,
done a drag and not probably as far as you did,

(01:30:39):
but just over the ridge down just to kind of
drag back out. And yeah, I mean it don't take
no time. Family fall that trail right in and then
the bears are leaving their scent and they're creating trails everywhere,
so you don't have to all you got has one
bear coming. If you get one bear coming, tell all
the rest all the rest of them are gonna figure
it out. But you gotta get the one bear to
come in first. What would you guys say, We've we've

(01:31:00):
covered everything we said we're going to cover. Um, what
do you think people would have questions about, like, you know,
like how to set up trail cameras? I almost want
to talk about how where to shoot a bear, like
how to set up your stands and stuff. That important
subject is basically getting your stands set up, everything done

(01:31:21):
before you even bait. I have everything like say, turn
key and not being there tinkering around even when you're baiting.
Just go away, get out that way the bear first
time he comes in. The stands already there. You don't
want to be in a climb and stand opening day
and clanking up. Get all and bear, get all your

(01:31:43):
homework done right off the bat for even bait and
it's ready to go. Come open it down? How high
do you put your stands? Honestly? For bear? Base now?
And I've got to where I put ladder stands? Eighteen seat? Maybe?
How far is the bait away from your stand? Twenty yards?
Are less? You get up hired in that though, don't you? Uh?

(01:32:09):
I think it depends on your terrain a little bit. Yeah,
if you're too far downhill and some of the snails,
then I might need to be a little bit first. Well,
where I'm going to is shot angle, shot angle. I
used to think I needed to be up in a tree,
and that burnt me big time. It's man and it's
a hard angle for dear any critter to be shooting
at a super steep angle, but I feel like a

(01:32:31):
big bear or any bear, it's pretty dang unfriendly too.
I have now, I have permanent ladder stands that just
stay there. I mean, I never moved them changes straps.
One of them probably a fifteen footer and one of
them is an eighteen footer, but it's more steep off
the end of the point, So in r L it's
probably only fifteen ft above kind of the ground level.

(01:32:52):
Always kind of the sweet spot that I've found. And
Bernie Barringer has kind of helped me or he has
some pretty good philosophies on this too. But b sixteen
the nineteen feet high and have the bait barrel eighteen
yards away, you getta you're you're you're up high enough

(01:33:16):
that you're wind is a little bit better, but you're
not up so high that your angle is super steep.
Eighteen yards is just far enough that a bear is
in our reality. Both of my good spots are probably
seventeen to eighteen yards from the bait. You don't want
to be twenty five. I've I've I've been to some
Canadian hunts where they got a bait barrel twenty five

(01:33:36):
yards out there, and I'm like, that's too far. I mean,
I could shoot at twenty five yards, but why, I
just don't think it's necessary. But you don't want to
be ten yards from either, you know, that's kind of
a sweet spot. You know, really fifteen to twenty ft
eighteen is yards you don't want to be right on
top of and that angle is super crazy. Now, just

(01:33:58):
because we're getting close to opening a let's real quickly
go through shot placement stuff. And this is a whole podcast.
I think me and you did a whole podcast on
shot placement. We did, and that podcast is still up
and I'll refer people to that. It's called Dummies Guide
the Shop Placement on Bear and we nerd out for
an hour or longer just about shot placement. But the

(01:34:19):
biggest thing that I would say is a bear is
not as big as he looks. He's got three inches
of hair all the way around his body. He's got
fat and so the biggest thing that I've seen people
mess up on and shoot him too low. Yeah, you
do not shoot him like a white tail. You don't
want to try to hart shoot a bear because they

(01:34:40):
don't duck like a white tail. For that's right. I mean,
that's the whole key. That's another podcast. But you know,
dear duck bears don't. That's right. That's exactly the reason
we aim low and tight on a white tail is
because that animal is gonna move at the sound of
the string. He's gonna drop and then lunge to get away.
You're always gonna hit him a little higher than you're aiming.
A bear is not that case. I mean, you should

(01:35:01):
be able to pick out a tick on the bear
and hit the tick heat moving. Yeah, at eighteen yards,
maybe at thirty or something. So that's the biggest thing.
Don't shoot him too low. And listen to this. This
is my new philosophy on where the vitals of a
bear are at. And we could go look at your

(01:35:22):
bear over here. We've we've said for years, and I've
said for years that a bear's vitals are slightly further
back than a white tail. Functionally that is true, but
in reality, his shoulders are further up on his body.
You'll see what I'm saying. Like a white tail, you
can see his briskets stick out on the north side

(01:35:44):
of his shoulders and then his neck starts and then
and so their their anatomy is actually really similar in
terms of of organs. And if we're getting super technical,
but bear, a bear doesn't have a brisk it that
hangs out in front of his shoulders. If we look
at that bear amount over there, his shoulders come up

(01:36:05):
and his neck immediately starts, and so his shoulders and
legs are more forward than a deer. So what that
translates into is that you have more space for vitals
further what seems to be further back on a bear.
And so you know, people say there's a phrase a

(01:36:25):
lot of Canadian outfitters used the middle of the middle,
and they literally mean aim at the dead nuts excuse
my French, middle of a black bear and shoot it.
Which if you did that with a white tail, you
would be hitting him in the liver. Well with a bear,
you're you're gonna be hitting him kind of in the
back of the lungs. I don't like to go middle

(01:36:46):
of the middle. I like to go the middle of
the middle and then back towards the shoulder about four inches.
But the point is you can hit him further back.
The second point is, I have seen this. You know,
I've killed quite a few bears, but more than that,
I've tracked a ton of bears in Canadian bear camps
over the years and Arkansas bears. I mean, I've tracked

(01:37:08):
a lot of bears. You can shoot a bear in
the absolute guts, but you don't want to do and
you can find that bear relatively easy. He's gonna die
within three yards. You're gonna have to put on your
blood trailing cap and you're gonna have to give him time.
But so the point of all that is to say,

(01:37:29):
in white in the white tailed world, the biggest fear
you have is hitting one far back, or at least
that's what we've been told our whole lives. Don't hit
him far back, man, gut shot that deer. And that's true.
That is not the worst case scenario with a black
bear in my opinion. I mean, Colby, there's a great
video on Bear Honey Magazine YouTube of our buddy Colby

(01:37:51):
just absolutely shooting one deep in the guts, and I
mean it just makes you go, oh, man, we've down
that bear, and no problem. River Nukem. Last year, Ryan
helped me track Rivers bear. She tend ring that sucker
in the guts. I mean we had to blood trail it,

(01:38:12):
but we found it relatively easy the next day. I mean,
you know, thirty minute blood trail and you know it
went three hundred yards probably. But point being, I think
people are so afraid to shoot them far back. They
want to shoot them tied up against that shoulder and
they hit the shoulder, and you were guaranteed if you
hit that scapula or an actual shoulder bone of that bear,

(01:38:33):
you're not gonna kill it. I've done that. Yeah. Yeah,
And you don't want to hit them low because you'll
shoot I mean I've done that, especially if you're in
the angle in a tree stand, because they're not gonna duck,
so you're gonna shoot low hair brisket. I mean you
might clip a hertery or something there. But yeah, I
mean I like to shoot them. I still shoot them,

(01:38:54):
probably not as middle as most people, but I would
like I'm probably gonna shoot him a full and say
hand my hands probably nine inches wide. I'm gonna put
him a hand with behind the shoulder. That's about what
I like to do. It gives you more room for
air here. If you hugged that shoulder just to hit
this way, and I still got nine or from probably more.

(01:39:14):
But you know at eighteen yards as good as we
practice and shooting now, you should hit right pretty big.
I'm close to that spot. You know he's not moving. Yeah. Well,
and see that's the that's the logic. And if we're
talking about you know, you can kill one bear doing
something kind of crazy, and statistically you might win the

(01:39:36):
statistics war if you shoot ten bears. You want to
do the best case scenario. And so if you hug
that shoulder, you've only got room for air to the south.
By south, I mean back, you know, you you scooch
it over and then you got room for air towards
the shoulder. You got room fair behind the shoulder. And

(01:39:58):
then the worst thing you can do is hit the
bear on the fringe, and that would be with white
tails or anything else. You hit a bear too high,
you know you're not gonna find him. You hit a
bear too low, even in the cavity, and you may
not find that bear. I mean, I think the bear
you probably shot that you talked about, Yeah, and that
my blood trailed that bear like he was pouring blood

(01:40:18):
out of a bucket. For a quarter of a mile,
you know, but I no, I just shot riding under
his hard probably Yeah, and at the angle, I may
actually not have got the heart, you know what went
in here and bropo came out right there. You know
what I'm saying, It's just a rookie mistake. I mean,
I just pulled up aimed at where I would shooting
whitetail that I've killed the hunter of and it wasn't

(01:40:40):
where I needed to shoot him, you know. I mean, well,
the the only other thing I would say in terms
of shot placement, it's best case scenario is gonna be
a broadside standing bear. Bears do all kind of weird
stuff when they come into a bay. They can sit
down on their rump, they can stand up, they can
lay down, they can cut their body. Yeah. That's the

(01:41:02):
biggest thing Ryan, and you've heard me preach about that,
is a bear has so many contortions of his body
that he can do that a white tail camp. A
white tail is almost like this linear like static animal
for the most part. I mean like they're they're gonna
be like a bear is like a cat almost like
he can cut his body. So and bears are black

(01:41:24):
which is a color that just soaks up its surroundings.
And his hair is long, A white tail is short hair.
You can see every crease in his body, you can
see his shoulder line, you can see everything. A bear
is like shooting at an inflated black trash bag. Well
and thinking about big bears, especially asn't we all know
this other than you know, Ryan killing one who walks

(01:41:47):
up on all the really big bears I've ever killed,
it's been within three minutes of shooting light, Yeah, there
are you know five, I mean late, just like that one.
I mean he may have came up over the ridge
thirty minutes before dark, but he didn't come in there
until three minutes before the legal shooting, you know, so
it's almost dark anyway, and then you're shooting at this
black blob literally at that time, he's just a black

(01:42:10):
blob with all this big hair on him, you know,
And so I mean I've killed him, you know. Don't
get me wrong, I've killed not old big bears earlier
in the day, but these bears like this don't come
in often until it's almost last light, at least in
my experience. So you gotta be real careful where you
shoot him, and you just wanted to be standing up.
You don't wanted to be cups towards him, which that
would mean he would be standing broadside, but his shoulders

(01:42:35):
and his hips would be closer to you than the
offside rib cage, if that makes sense. And so you
might think I've been in a stand more than once
watching someone shoot no names being named here where they
ain't thought they were aiming right behind the shoulder, and
they actually hit right where they're aiming. But when that

(01:42:57):
bear straightened back out, that era was eighteen inches back.
I mean, and you know, we may have still found
a bear, but it wasn't It wasn't a tin ring
double lung shot. There. He's gonna run thirty yards, you know.
And you can use your bait set up to make
a bear stand the way you want them to to shoot, too,

(01:43:17):
the way your barrels are angled. I know I don't
do this much, but you know, some guys may lay
some logs behind the bait, so the bears have to
come in on this side and turn and face the barrel,
and they're slightly quartering away maybe just you know, not
a lot, but slightly fifteen degrees or something that you
can slap. Every time I've done that, the bears just
trumpet to the ground. I've done it many times, and

(01:43:40):
they always because you're always trying to block it the
way that they naturally want to just use the barrel openings.
Especially when they first come in there, they'll kind of
square up with it in the beginning to look in
the hole and reaching the whole. Now they're going to
do all kinds of stuff after that, but when they
first walk in there, oftentimes it seems like they'll square

(01:44:03):
up with that whole, which if you've got two barrels,
there might be the one. But it's broadside enough that
an eighteen yards you should make a perfect shot on it, right,
and you don't have to be usually in any hurry
on a bear a debate set situation. On the big ones,
it's always fate lighting, you know, and word in the timber,

(01:44:23):
you know, So you walk out the timber up on
the ridge, it might still be daylight when it gets
dark in the timber lost sooner. Yeah, yeah. And on
mine sites, I'm always on the north side of the mountains,
so it's getting darker there before the south side of mountains,
so I run out of daylight a lot sooner there
than you probably would in some other locations. But it's
the locations that I found that I can successfully get

(01:44:45):
them in there in the daylight without being winded and stuff.
You know. Yeah, well, man, I think we've really covered
a lot of good stuff here. I'll throw the only
secret weapon the only man we're gonna yep, we're shutting
this day. This is a pay for a part. You
can go to Bear Hunting magazine. Only people that get
a subscription to the magazine get this silver bullet. The

(01:45:08):
only silver bullet that I've ever found in baiting bears
is a redneck blind conversation. It was years before you
got it. Yeah, I mean I told you we had
talking about winning swirling stuff. I'm like, the only way
to kill the bear every time and he not know
you're there is being a scent typeline and you know,
and not just a redneck, but you know whatever. Whatever. Yeah,

(01:45:30):
that's why we sealed tight. There's and I mean people
would have if they followed the podcast, they would know this.
But I hunted a bear. We got access to a
property in twenty fifteen, I think, and for well, I
was fourteen for five years. I had pictures of this
bear I called Batman and never saw the bear totally nocturnal,

(01:45:55):
just he just would read your mail like you just
couldn't kill him. I put up a red neck mine
have killed him the first day. I put a red
nickline and I had things in my favorite. It was
a good mass year, like in terms of there wasn't
much mass. He was responding to bait, but he came
in and he had he He was that bear was
used to me or James Lawrence climbing up in the

(01:46:17):
tree on opening day, and I guarantee he just knew
we were there and he didn't come in, and he
come in really comfortable. When the day you did shoot him,
Oh yeah, it was. It was if he can't smail
you and don't think you're there, he's gonna be like
just any other day. That's one that works so well.
Is and that's why I used those drains to try
to keep the bears from coming in behind me. Is

(01:46:38):
those big bears are circling down there sniffing before they're
coming in. They're not coming in blind. And here's the
deal too, And the reality is even some of these
bears that I might have fooled their nose when they
come in there and they know you're there most of
the time. This bear walked up to the base of
my train and looked at me, and he did not
win to me. He knew I was there. Somehow I
had to let him turn and walk away from the
stand to shoot him. Yeah, that's unusual, it did. I mean,

(01:47:02):
and but had I been in there, I mean, you know,
the wind wouldn't I don't know. I mean, he just knew,
you know, bears are just smart. He may have just
went by and checked that stand every day too. I
don't know. On that day. I just happened to be
in it before he came to you know, he would
like circle down on that secondary point and it may
just come up to the barrel, you know. Man, I

(01:47:23):
tell you what a lot of people that I guess
a lot of people that bait bears would understand this.
But what we have like me following you guys bear
baiting or bear hunting in Arkansas. Man, it it is
a awesome thing to kill a big ball. They're like

(01:47:43):
they're like a ghost, man. I mean, he's video. I
think it's up on our It was on our DVD.
Bear Horizon. I think Season one bear. He killed that
five hundred four pound bear right there. And man, I'll
tell you what, it's fun to kill big white tails,
and it's fun to kill big elk. I've never done it,

(01:48:05):
but I'm going to in three weeks. And those things
can never be replaced. I mean, like this, it's it's
like your kids, you know, it's like your kids love
his white tail. Don't get wrong, you'd probably tell but
looking into here, but a lot of bear stuff. But
a bear makes your heart beat in a different way
than a white tail. It does. And these big you know,
when when I killed Batman two years ago, and that

(01:48:28):
was the biggest bear I ever killed, and maybe the
biggest bear I ever killed my life, it was it
was a I felt like it was you know, those
fleeting moments that you were in the presence of a
true monarch of the woods are pretty special moments as
a hunter, and they're quick. I mean like I hunted

(01:48:52):
that bear for five years. I watched him with my
own eyes for about thirty seconds, and you know, it's
it's it's a pretty cool thing too to see those bears,
you know, and people don't realize how big they really are,
you know. I mean I think it's probably just like
a mooze or whatever. They're huge, but I mean I've

(01:49:12):
killed big bears before. And even you walk up on
a five pound bear with the head that big land
on the ground, it's just it's you're all struck. I
am all struck. I don't not saying everybody would be,
but and I've done it, and I'm just still like, Holy,
can look how big this thing is? You know, I
mean it's just impressive, you know, And there's just it's

(01:49:36):
an interesting feeling. You know. We have a great, in
my opinion of phenomenal resource shre in Arkansas to be
able to hunt bears like this, you know. Uh, and
so it's pretty cool I have that opportunity. Yeah, yeah,
I agree. Well, guys, hey, we've uh we've pounded the
ground pretty hard here, covered a lot of good stuff.
So uh yeah, I really appreciate it. Thanks for sharing

(01:50:01):
your wisdom. It's fun hanging to appreciate Shading Hill. Well,
keep the wild places wild because that's where the bears live.
That's your head

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