June 19, 2025 • 55 mins
Jason and Dirk get back together again after a busy spring and shoot the breeze about their bear hunts. Jason and close friend Tyson, hunt bears in Idaho. Dirk hunted black bears in the great state of Alaska on an invite from Christensen Arms. They discuss the highs and lows of bear hunting and throw in a few bear hunting tips.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Welcome back to another episode of Cutting the Distance podcast.
I'm Derk Durham and today Jason Phelps and I we're
going to talk about bears, bulls and bs.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
It sounds like to me, I like it.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
I like it.
Speaker 4 (00:25):
You you made that PG on how we thought we
were gonna do that intro, But no, I thought I
was driving this podcast. You you gave a moment of
silence and you just took off with it.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
So this is great, this is great.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Well, you tried to tell me I was going to
do it, and then then I said I don't want
to do it, and then and I'm like, all right,
it's just gonna do it.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
Oh that worked out great. This means you're responsible for
this thing turning out.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Now I have to ask all the questions, right.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Yeah, yeah, this is awesome. I appreciate it. No, no,
we have.
Speaker 4 (00:52):
You know, last week we got together, talked about our dads,
how tough they were, and yeah, we've been on some hunts.
We haven't really did it recap on much of our
Turkey hunts, much of our bear hunts, much of our
plans this year, and so it'll be good to talk
kind of let everybody know where things are at and
maybe even sprinkling kind of these ELK category. You know,
by time this comes out, I guess, well easy one
(01:14):
will be out. But yeah, we'll talk just a little
bit about everything going on and our hunts and hunts
coming up.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
And yeah, it's been kind of a crazy busy spring.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
It seems like, man, I haven't had a chance to
put my head up or anything. I haven't posted about
my Alaska bear trip on social or nothing. I've just
been just digging. It's been busy.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
Yeah, yeah, a lot of you know.
Speaker 4 (01:37):
Within we I hate to use the word corporate, but
you know, working for a big company, you know, things
are always changing and turning. Dirk's got a new boss,
I've got new and so it's like processes changed, which
always you're.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Not comfortable with.
Speaker 4 (01:47):
And so yeah, Dirk's running a million miles a minute
getting all our marketing stuff. And We've got a lot
of ELK expansion this year. I've got a bunch of
new processes, new power points, this and that, you know how,
and so yeah, it's just been it just seems busy,
extremely busy, and it's all work related.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Well, you know what they say, you can't teach an
old dog new tricks, and that's that's wrong.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
That's that's a fallacy. Now you can mean that I'm
an old dog. It's just not fun though.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
My old, poor old brain has to learn anything new,
like a new platform to to make documents and stuff.
It's just it just just seizes up and the little
spinning wheel goes round and around and I kind of
feel like, yeah, I feel like I've got amnesia or
not amniesia, but dementia or something.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
It's it's it's bad. But you know, once you.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Blow off all the old cobwebs, you know, things start
working and he's got to dig in. And once you
kind of it just takes a minute. Once you get
the understanding, it seems like, okay, I get this, and
it's just data entry at that point.
Speaker 4 (02:54):
Yeah, we've we've crushed it. Everything's going really good. All
launches have went great, all the assets. So no appreciate that.
But I also was on a spring bear hunt. I
had the speaking of you know, dust and the cobwebs off.
I had to run a camera again, which we've all
we all know I'm not very good at hold on.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
I'm hold on. I opened this wide open for you, Dirk.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
You did.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
You stepped right in it. So back in twenty fourteen,
our good friend Charlie, his wife Kelly, she drew an
amazing ELK tag in Washington that was fourteen, right, yeah,
and you know Charlie was the caller. You know, Charlie
and Kelly are main diaphragm called builders here at Phelps
(03:40):
and anyway, she had this tag. Charlie was calling, She
was the shooter, and Jason Phelps was the camera guy.
And as Jason and I watched this film together here
I don't know, must have been like a year ago,
He's just like, look at that, Dirk.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
I am a I'm like the best camera guy you've
ever seen. Look at that. I'm getting all the shots.
Look at that slow motion shot. Look at this. I
even had a glidecam or something.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
Yeah, I had I had a glidecam. Ye run through
the trees.
Speaker 5 (04:07):
That was back before gimbals, right, yeah, yeah, you had
to wag him up and get them all balanced for
the lens and just crushing it basically, is what you're saying. Yeah, yeah,
so you know you told me you were like the
best videographer ever.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
But then something changed.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
For Yeah, I Copps.
Speaker 4 (04:25):
I don't like to say I'm above something, but at
times I'm like I just want to hunt, Like I
don't want to run this turn this button on and
have hit the red button and figure out all these
settings every time.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
And no. But so fast forward to this year.
Speaker 4 (04:39):
Budgets, you're a little tighter, you know, you're trying to
figure out how to stretch your money a little bit further.
And so Tyson he's going to Idaho on a spring
bear hunting and we're like, uh, nobody else is going.
I don't have any So there I was, uh, the
long lens, the ACAM, the BCAM, and yeah, I got
to go on an Idaho bear hunt this year. I
I don't I'm I haven't been there in this area
(05:01):
and in springs past. But it seems like the snowpack
was really really light this year, which changed where everything
was typically at. We could get to areas that were
further up the mountain than anybody ever said you can
get to, you know, talking to people that were camped
around us, people that turkey hunt in the area or
you know, do bear hunt. So it it the density
(05:22):
of bears was was quite a bit different. So got
to go over there with Tyson and it was it
was awesome. We I can't even remember the days we
were there May sixteenth to twenty second or whenever the
season was.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
There lots of bears.
Speaker 4 (05:39):
The best part was, you know, even though it's supposed
to be a good area, you roll up and like
within the first minute having my binoculars up, I spot
a bear. I'm like, oh, this isn't going to be
too bad. You know, pretty good density. We've seen lots
and lots of bears, which was which was great. You know,
our strategy is the way that this area is trying
to back up. And this goes for any hunting. You
(06:01):
know a lot of people talk about like, well, you know,
how do you do this or how do you that?
Like it's information gathering and and it's like that top
of the funnel to start with, and then you start
to hone in so now you like go to the
mid funnel and then by the end you're putting yourself
at the end of the funnel where like your odds
and your success is very high. So we our first
day was really just exploratory. If we went in to
(06:24):
bottom of the funnel, I thought we if we thought
we knew where the bears were and sat there the
entire time. Our chances a kill one we would probably
be very low because they may not have been there.
So we we knew. We set up, we looked at
on X, We knew for the first day we were
going to do some traveling. We're gonna look at a
lot of country, try to find where the bright green
you know, grass shoots, onions, sunflowers, just kind of learned
(06:48):
the lay of the land.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
We had never been there.
Speaker 4 (06:50):
Dirk knew the area a little bit, but it was
for us to try to figure out, like where do
we think these bears are going to be, look at
the ground, and then get way back. Some people don't
like to spot things for two or three miles away,
But when I'm two or three miles away, I can
now look at twenty times the amount of country looking
into faces or nooks and crannies. So what lets us
(07:13):
while we're trying to do that quote unquote top of
funnel work, you know, just trying to figure out the area,
figure out where the bears are, figure out where the
concentrations are, which is now a little bit more spread
out than springs past back out look, and we were
seeing lots of bears. I think we ended up just
to put a number on it. Twenty six bears in
five days, I think is what we ultimately saw.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
Maybe more than that that we didn't. We tried not
to double count.
Speaker 4 (07:35):
Bears that we knew we had seen multiple times. But
the problem with trying to kill them was Number one,
there's a lot of patience required because he usually had
to go the way. This ground laid out a lot
of timber, but your meadows where these bears were coming
out to the green grass to feed, where you could
actually get a shot and keep your wind right, you
(07:55):
had to sit on these one hundred to three hundred
yard tight meadows patients, which doesn't work good for most guys.
For me especially, is a sit for four or five
hours and just stay at the same spot the entire time.
And so by day, by the second night, that was
our strategy, right. We knew where we were seeing concentrations
(08:17):
of bears, we knew where we've seen target bears.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
Go sit and you get restless.
Speaker 4 (08:22):
You know, your first hour you're kind of locked in,
and then by hour two you're trying to make your
back feel better, and by hour three or four you're
trying to stay awake, and you know, by hour five
you're talking yourself into going and checking out a different meadow.
When you knew that that was kind of the hot spot.
We didn't see a bear to shoot until the very
last day. So everything we've seen was a cross canyon.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
And the funny part.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Big enough ones they were, they were big enough, they
were just too far away.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
Oh yeah, definite bores. You know, end of May, they
were starting to chase so.
Speaker 4 (08:53):
Big bores, you know, big front shoulders, big, you know,
short ears. Everything we were looking for in a where
just by the time you got over there, those bears
in the springtime. The other thing that we struggle with
is everything we've seen was moving quickly. Besides a few
sow and cub sets. You know, these spring bears are
running either looking the big bores or running to look
(09:15):
for sALS if they're not on one, or even when
they are, they kind of push the sows through these
feeding zones and they don't stay out there for very long.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
So it's something else you're working with.
Speaker 4 (09:23):
So every bear we'd spot, you know, it's a mad
scramble a fire drill to load up your stuff, run,
get around. Oh, I think we'd be there in an hour.
Nothing's ever there when we would get there. The other
thing that mess with us is our once again it
comes to patients, is we would we'd get bored in
that third or fourth hour. I'd get the spotting scope
back out and spot it back across the canyon where
(09:44):
we had spotted these bears from, and you'd inevitably always
spot something over there, and you're like, well, that bear's
not moving real fast compared to the rest of them.
Let's let up our stuff. Hour and a half to
get over there, and well, no, that didn't work, and
now you're on the wrong side. Now it's another hour
and a half to get back. And so you're like, well,
we'll just sit over here. Well, sure as heck. Multiple
times you'd be over there and you're like, you'll never
(10:05):
guess it, But there's a bear two hundred yards when
we were just sitting we're just not there anymore. So
there was a lot of there was a lot of
this like wrong place, wrong time on Tyson's hunt, looking
at lots of bears, and finally on the last night
we're like, we just got to go sit in the
two best spots you could smell, you know, wild onions.
(10:25):
The area reeked of wild onions. The area was as
bright green as you could find on the hill. Went
and just hung out at that spot. The first spot
had a small sal moved through it kind of heading
to the second spot. We sat there for three three
and a half hours, kind of drove ourselves crazy, and
then moved to the other spot. You know, one thing
(10:47):
for us thermals bears ability to smell. We were very
methodical on how we moved on how we didn't want
to mess the area up. I feel like you know,
on moose hunting, you know they talk a lot about
just sitting still. You don't want to send up the area.
Same thing with bears. Like we're in the hot spot
where where we're all the action is. But how do
you navigate this country without like laying a scent right
(11:09):
down the ridge or you know where these bears are
going to.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
Cross through, and how do you limit that?
Speaker 4 (11:14):
So we were trying to be really smart about that
play the thermals play where we you know where most
of the bearers went through, and tried to tried to
pick a route that allowed us to not send up
where the bears are going to come from, but then
also not screw things up as much, you know, for
the future. But on that last day, we knew we
had a look that you know, you can go for
(11:34):
broken the last day. We always talked about last day
you can do things you couldn't do earlier because you
don't want to mess an animal up. So we were
able to take a little bit different approach, get in
and sit down and how we made it for about
an hour and a half and we had a sound
a cub show up below us and in this area.
To describe it is, you can't see it all. There's
(11:57):
a lot of green around you, you know, acres and
acres are green. You can see like one little shooting
lane down in front of you, one little shooting lane
you're right, and then like the upper part of a
little meadow to your left.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
And so quite a bit of timber.
Speaker 4 (12:07):
Yeah, there's there's strips of timber, just chunks of just
stuff in your way where you can't see it all
that you'd like to. So I was of the opinion
that sitting in being quiet, you know, bears don't have
the greatest eyes sight.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
We were pretty good on the wind.
Speaker 4 (12:22):
We were getting up moving quite a bit, and uh,
just just move five or six feet one direction opens
up stuff you can't see, and as fast as these bears.
So we were pretty active on our feet. Even though
we were sitting. We were looking here, looking there. We
spot h sitting this time, we spot a sow and
a and a cub down below us. And you know,
(12:44):
first last day, Tyson's like, well, if she doesn't have
a sow or if she doesn't have a cub, we'll
I'll take her. And sure enough, we watched for a
while and a and a cub you know, comes out.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
It's like, dang it.
Speaker 4 (12:56):
We watch watch them for a half hour, and in
about ten minutes into them feeding, she kind of snarls
and growls a little bit and runs her cub back
to the right.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
That's kind of weird.
Speaker 4 (13:11):
And then five minutes idah, she comes back feeding out
in that little gap that we could see in and
what's going on? And then out of the blue, the
bear that Tyson ended up killing. We actually spotted this
bear the night before chasing the sal around in there
at about eighty yards down to our left. There's a
little ravine in between where we're sitting in the meadow
that we could see the top of. There's a little
(13:32):
a little cut that we couldn't see when it rolls
off that black the boar was going towards that sal
which is now we're starting to think like she probably
seen him or he looked at her, and she snapped
and growled a little bit and ran her cub off.
Now he's going towards her at a quick pace, a
quick walking pace, and we know it's the boar. We've
(13:53):
seen how he acted the night before as a bigger bear.
And we do a once again another fire drill because
we've been kind of standing up. We were standing up
when this bear walks out, we got to kind of
get I get back on the camera.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
So I couldn't. I could my pride couldn't handle another.
Speaker 4 (14:09):
You know, lashing from dirt telling me I missed this
and that. So I'm flipping every camera on. I got
I flip on the the a camera, hope, I just
get a wide I flip on the just get enough
time to get the spotting scope set up, and I
when anything can go wrong, it will go wrong. So
I hadn't did this the whole time. Got the Alans
sitting on the thing. Somehow I get switched a photo
(14:31):
mode in the kill moment, right, and so I'm calling
Tyson off.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
He's like tell me when I'm like no, no, no, yeah, no, no, no,
you know.
Speaker 4 (14:38):
And so I'm trying to relay this to him and
finally get the thing back on video, get it semi
focused and tell him yeah. And he had about four
more steps before he was out of this little shooting lane.
And Tyson made a great shot and.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
Wow, yeah, by the skin of your.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
Teeth, barely last night. We were going home the next.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
Day Indiana Jones style.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
Yep, yep.
Speaker 4 (15:00):
So made a good shot, probably a two hundred pound bore,
one of the few true blackberries we've seen.
Speaker 3 (15:06):
Everything else was mainly color phase.
Speaker 4 (15:08):
I bet you we've seen five black phase and probably
twenty blonde, cinnamon brown, dark brown, you know, something aside
from straight black, nice black boar and the of course,
we were in an onion patch where died. Tyson kind
of anchored him where he was at, and Tyson, we
(15:29):
were convinced it was just rolling around in onions, like
in the fur. But this bear one of the things,
the meat was onion, if that makes it like we
skinned it out with yeah, preseason, Tyson got at home
put it in the cooler. He's like, man, you open
up the cooler. I took the hide out of there,
so it wasn't that and just like when you smell
the meat, it's just like all onions. But he said
(15:52):
he's been eating it and it's been it's been awesome.
So one of those weird things. I'm like, I don't
know if it smells like onions, if it's good, bad,
if you should I'm like, he's like, no, we tried
it and it was all good. So you know that bear,
the bear I killed back in the Blues and twenty
twenty was in the onions a lot, but I didn't
have that same like smell coming off of them. So
(16:12):
that's a pro tip. If you're in an area that
has wild onions, I don't know, like if you looked
at one of those maps like where do I where
are wild onions in the United States, I don't know
where they're where they are at. But if you have
an area that has sunflowers and wild onions kind of
mixing in those meadows. As the snow snow line moves up,
like hunt over the bright Green, which typically is onion
(16:36):
shoots hunt over those wild onions because that's where the bears,
the sALS, the bores, everybody's kind of feeding, and that's
where all the high densities were. There were ridges there
without onions, there were ridges with onions, but definitely way
more bears in the sunflowers in the onions.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
Gotcha, gotcha?
Speaker 1 (16:54):
Yeah, I've I've noticed that too, you know, and more
people I talked to who hunt bears a lot, you know,
they're they they are definitely focusing in on food sources.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
You know.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
It's you know, there's a lot of land out there
to like try to hunt a bear in, but they're
like just like they get that narrow scope like food source,
whatever it is. You know, maybe you're in north western
Montana and you don't have any wild onions, but you
have all these other little flowers and stuff that that
just pop up right after the snow leaves, and and
if you're not seeing those flowers, you're probably not in
(17:28):
the right spot, you know, because those bears are going
to follow those those flowers and those little shoots as
soon as that snow leaves and pops up.
Speaker 4 (17:34):
Yeah, and the elk there were a lot of elk
in this area, and the elk were competing for that
same feed, like it was the same spot he shot
his bear from. We sat the night before or two
nights before those elks. Elks, those elk literally looked at
us and didn't care, like they wanted to stay, They
wanted to bed there, they wanted to feed there that night.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
They they had no cares in the world.
Speaker 4 (17:55):
And we watched them in the same spot from two
miles away, and and there would be elk and bear
in the same meadow.
Speaker 3 (18:02):
And this lets me.
Speaker 4 (18:03):
Know that the the bear eating so much in this
area that the cows they would stand up, but they
would just watch that bear walk by. Like so it's
evidence that like these these bear don't want to waste
energy to try to kill something that's on four hoofs
or at least a mature animal. Maybe when the calves drop,
they would try it for a day or two, you know,
three or four days, and then give up when they
(18:23):
can't catch them anymore. But at that time, it's like
you're just trying to like, oh, there's this is like
the prime food for everything right now?
Speaker 3 (18:29):
Is that stuff right below the snow lion and the
bears are.
Speaker 4 (18:31):
Well fed because they don't give a that it could
give care less that they had elk, you know, eighty
yards away from them.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Do you think the elk eight the wild onions or
were they on grass?
Speaker 4 (18:52):
It was mixed, Like I was trying, you know, the
wild onion has a I'm gonna do my best to
describe the flower. It's just kind of a white, wispy
flower that kind of you know, it has vertical little
shoots off of if that makes any sense. And there
was grass and wild onions, and then there's a light
purple wild onion in there as well, So I think
the elk were maybe maybe eating it. I can't tell
you for sure, but there was enough grass in there
(19:13):
that that was also what they were probably going after.
And you know, all all the three cows were all pregnant,
and so I don't know if they were like getting
into their zone where they wanted to drop calves or
you know exactly why they like that area, but it
seems like they just wanted to eat that that bright green.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
Now, were the bears getting the bulbs of the wild
onion or are they getting just everything?
Speaker 3 (19:35):
Yep, yep, they go for the bulbs, so they'll I
think they eat it all. I don't you know.
Speaker 4 (19:39):
We didn't go through a patch where you could see
where they just pop the bulbs off, but definitely big
sections when you'd go through the wild onions where they
would dig and I'm almost wanted to like if I
could tell the bears like you guys are over digging,
like these bulbs aren't a foot and a half deep, but.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Yeah, they're really shallow.
Speaker 4 (19:55):
It was crazy like I've seen I've seen areas, you
know in the past spring bears, a lot of spring
bear hunts in the blues where they'll roll rocks and
they'll dig around a little bit. These bears, they you
could see like there was a hole in the left
and a hole in the right where they were like,
you know, if you can imagine they're like trying to
dig two tunnel where their hands are, you know, their
paws are going to.
Speaker 3 (20:14):
Connect, but they would have You could see.
Speaker 4 (20:16):
Where like the left paw would pole in the right
paw would pole. And we could figure out if a
bear was left handed right handed by how deep each
hole was. We had a big brown bear that was
definitely left handed because he was pulling more with his
left hole. But just kidding, but they were digging super deep,
and I don't know if there's something else down there
obviously they're looking for.
Speaker 3 (20:34):
But yeah, the onion bulbs. When you're trying to track
those down, you know, you hold on and then you
kind of dig around them and dig that up. They're
only an inch or inch and a half deep.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
Typically, huh. So that sounds like a fun hunt.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
You know.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
I was supposed to go with you guys and be
camera guy, and that didn't pan out. My Alaska trip
was too close.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
Had had to bail.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
I mean, I could have went, but man, I had
so much preparation and work and we've just been busy
at work. There was no way to skip out of
my work responsibilities and do both.
Speaker 4 (21:05):
So yeah, yeah, So Derek his hunts more recent. He
was up in Alaska a little bit later. So go
ahead and give.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
Us a little rundown on on the Alaska Black Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Yeah, So.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
I got invited on this hunt with Christians and arms
up in Alaska.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
Flew into Valdez, Alaska. You've probably heard of that place.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
They I think they have like one of the one
of the or one of the biggest, the biggest oil
refineries in the world are at least the United States. There,
it's it's it's Alaska. Man, it's beautiful. You fly in
and you come into this big valley or kind of
a big bay, and there's mountains and greenery and snow
(21:47):
capped peaks and and ocean water and man, it's it's cool.
And it's just a tiny little town. It's a pretty
small town. My guide, Caleb, I think he said there's
two thousand people. Four thousand people, But I was like, really,
because it seems like there's like two hundred people. It's
a pretty small town. But you know, I think you
(22:08):
don't the way it lays out, you don't see like
the residential area too much.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
But but anyhow, flew up.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
To Alaska to hunt black bears, and the initial plan
was to get there and then fly in on a
bush plane into this particular area to hunt. But there again,
back to what you said about early spring here in
Idaho and snow lines being high and bears being in
(22:35):
different places and kind of spread out, That's exactly what
was going on there. So our initial place that we
were going to go, the snow line was so high
that the guide in the outfitter were like, there's no
way you're going to have a good bear hunt. They're
going to be too dispersed. They're going to be at
the top of the mountain. We got to go to
a different area, so we had to We took a
boat ride and got to an area that or the
(23:00):
snow line, you know, you know, the face, the direction
the mountain range was facing and such just kind of
lended itself to having a better snowpack lower.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
So we got a boat ride to there, but still
the the snowpack was still really high. It was super high.
So we get there.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
You know, on a typical year, the snowpack's really low,
so bears are going to feed on the shoreline. So
as the tides go out, bears go down on the shoreline.
They're looking for yungy stuff that washed up. They'll eat help,
they'll eat.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
Other little things, probably molluscs I had imagined. I don't know,
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
Maybe that that may not come out very good on
the on the backside when if you eat like little mollusks,
I don't know, but typically that's the mode of operation.
Hut on the shorelines, come down and eat the green
grasses and shoots and stuff on the shore lines. But man,
the snow level even where we were hunting was pretty high,
so we had to had to hike around a little
(24:03):
bit every day. And this particular part of Alaska, and
I've heard about Alaska kind of being like this or
different places. It's like walking on a big wet sponge.
So every step you take, your foot sinks in till
about the level of the top of your foot, and
most of it water was over the top of your
(24:25):
foot or real close. So every step is squishy, gushy
and takes a lot of efforts. So man, I wish
I'd have done more more step ups, some going on this,
some lunges and stairclimbs and stuff, because man, it it was.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
It was hard.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
It's just like, man, you just put a ton of
effort to go anywhere in this kind of in this
kind of terrain. So every more, you know, And then
i'd heard about this, but I didn't really know, you know,
time a year and dates, but i'd heard about, you know,
Land of the Midnight Sun or whatever. Man, it'd be
(25:08):
midnight and it still wasn't dark.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
It was kind of.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
Dusky, So that would really screw with you at nighttime
when you go to bed, you'd be like, all right,
I'm gonna go to bed, and it's pretty light in
my tent, and you wake up, Oh it's time to
get up. No, it's two in the morning.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
You wake up, Oh, I got to get up. No
it's four o'clock or three o'clock.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
And so, you know, we'd hunt and go to bed
about midnight every day, you know, trying to you know,
take advantage of those you know, late evening bear movements.
But the first couple of days were pretty nice. You know,
we had some rain flurries off and on, but for
the most part there was some some nice sunny weather
(25:49):
first couple of days two first two or three days,
and the evening of the third day the rain kind
of moved in and man, it rain most of the
time the rest of the trip, so which I don't know,
I bears are kind of like me, you know, one
of us like raining that much. But it is what
(26:10):
it is, right, so, you know, and I planned for
ray and it took all rain gear and you just
kind of like, we're just gonna get wet, and you know,
it didn't. It didn't disappoint you know, we did get wet,
so mode of operation was so since then we sat
and watched the shorelines the first couple of days, and man,
we did we're just not seeing bears. We saw one
(26:32):
bear on the shoreline about a mile and a half
away as the crow flies, but about three miles if
you were to walk the shoreline, so there's no.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
Way to catch up to it.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
It was just it was on the movie.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
It showed itself for about thirty seconds and was gone.
So it's like, well, we're gonna have to get up
high and try to glass them up at a distance
kind of figure out where these things are living. So
we got pretty high and we could glass up this big,
huge drainage and there was a couple avalanche shoots and
(27:01):
we spotted a bear in that. It's like, okay, you
know there's bears in the avalanche shoots. There was a
few of them close to us that one. We're like,
it was going to be a big trek through a
lot of thick, nasty country to get to where we
might possibly have a shooting vantage point. And I wasn't
able to download any maps for my on X, so
(27:24):
I could, you know, figure out shooting areas because it
was like so last minute, like which place we were
going to go, we didn't really know until we got there, basically,
so we didn't we weren't able to kind of prepare
with like, okay, well if we get on this vantage
point on the map, you know, on on X, and
be like all right, we'll be able to shoot across
or glass across. We could just we were just kind
(27:45):
of hunting like we did back in the olden days, right,
So we're like, well, we'll save that one kind of
like for a bond's eye, because that one's going to
take a lot of effort to get there from a
maybe or maybe not even having a chance to get
on a bear. So we marked that one and we
kept on hunting around. We found some avalanche shoots closer
to us where we could glass into her. It'd be
(28:06):
a you know, six hundred yard five hundred yard shot.
And we've put some time in there. And on day
three we'd hiked up and through the sponge the spongy country.
It was it was kind of it was beautiful. Is
this place is one of the most beautiful places you've
ever been. We're sitting there glassing, we're watching I had to, like,
(28:28):
I had to like focus really hard on looking for
bears because I kept on gravitating to the ocean and
looking at the otters, the sea otters and seals and stuff.
We saw orcs swimming by.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
That was cool.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
I was like, oh, man, I hope those things get
close and come up in this little bay we're in.
But it was kind of a shallow bay whenever the
especially when the tide would go out, so I don't
think they came up in there too much.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
Maybe they did. We never seen him in there, but.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
Anyway, it's like, man, I was, I was enjoying watching
the ocean life as much as any thing. But so anyhow,
we hike up and get up to this spot. It's like,
all right, we'll get up on this vantage point, Caleb,
the guide tells the camera guy, and I hear you,
guys hang out here for a minute. I'm gonna go
(29:13):
look over on the backside of this ridge and see
if there's anywhere I can glass over here too, and
I'll get back. So he turns around. We turn around,
all right, I see you, and he makes about twenty
yards away and I turn around and look, and there's
a bear right out in the open. Where did that
thing come from? We just literally looked there. It's like
we turned our back and he walked out. And I've
never seen this before, but he came out. So we
(29:35):
were like, hey, Caleb, get over here. And this bear
he comes out of the woods and he starts kind
of almost wallowing, you know, or wallering or wallowing however
you like to say it. But it's not even hot out.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
It's overcast. It's pretty chilly. So I don't know why
he did this, but he was. He started rolling his
face in this marshy sponge sponge waterlow place.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
You know, he started rolling his face around. Pretty soon
he's on his back, rolling around. He's rolling, but he
paid a lot of attention, like with rolling his face,
you know, back and forth. And I don't know if
he just got stung by a thousand bees, if he
got a b nest or something, or maybe he was
just trying to freshen up. But we put a spotter
(30:23):
on him and so we kind of kicked him back
and forth. Yeah, he's a mature bear, you know, how
big izzy. You know, bears, you just really got to
study him. They're hard to judge. But he had a big,
old punkin head and his ears were way on the side,
they weren't on top. That's a kind of a tell
tale judging bears. You know, if they're up the ears
are positioned on top of the head and looked kind
of tall or long, that's a young bear. If they're
(30:45):
off to the side, you know, a long distance in
between them and they look short, you know, that's a
telltale that's more of a mature bear. So we sat
there and watched him for a while and Caleb's like,
I think he's a five and a half foot.
Speaker 2 (30:58):
Six foot type bear.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
So we're looking and he's like, you can take him
if you want. But I wasn't sure, you know. I
was like, wow, are we going to find a seven
foot in here somewhere? I mean, you know there are
big bears, that's the area is known for really big
black bears. But this bear's no slouch, just pretty nice. So, man,
that thing is out in the open for a really
long time. And I kind of kick the can around
(31:22):
a little bit and I don't know if I'll shoot him,
I don't know. And then I started he's kind of
wandering off. I'm like, I think I'm going to call
to him. I'm like, hey, look, would it be okay
if I call? He said, yeah, go ahead, knock yourself out.
So I start calling to this bear with a bear
cub in distress sound and stops in Deadney's tracks, and
(31:44):
he turns around and faces us and comes towards us
a little ways. I'm like, oh man, this is gonna work.
And at that moment in my mind, I'm like, I'm
gonna shoot this bear because I'm gonna call it in right.
But then he kind of got so then I get
on the gun and get tried to get ready and
I'm arranging stuff. This time he was probably three fifty
three hundred and fifty yards and getting all my scope
(32:05):
dialed and everything, getting a good solid rest. It wasn't
a great place to try to shoot for him, but
I found a good solid rest.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
And I kept calling, kept calling it.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
And then I remember your podcast with Fred Eichler and
he said, just keep calling, calling calls because bears lose
interest quickly. So I just kept calling, calling it. And
we were on a ridge that was fairly open. It
wasn't a timber ridge. There was a lot of open stuff,
and I don't think that bear seeing any black black blobs.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
Running around rolling around up there.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
You know, there was no motion, you know that he
could see, and he's just like, I don't think so.
So then he turned around kind of will started watering
back off, you know, feeding here and there.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
And then.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
By the time he got into the timber, I had
finally got a really good rock solid rest. I'm like, ah,
dang it, I don't think I'm gonna get this thing.
So we were watching him in this brush and you
could just see little bits and pieces of black, and
I thought, well, if I get a good clear shot,
i'm gonna I'm gonna take a shot. So he gets
(33:09):
He finally wanders around in there and kind of gets
broadside and it's pretty open in the timber.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
It looks good. I don't see any major obstructions. So
get on the gun. I'm on the gun. Squeeze squeeze, squeeze, squeeze.
Speaker 1 (33:22):
Gun goes off. Boom. I just know I just killed
this thing right boom. CALLB says, you missed, And my
what it was a really good squeeze, Like how there's
no way, So of course, you know, I put another
another round in and look and through the scope and
he's gone like right at the shot, you know, as
soon as the bullet hit then he ran.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
Caleb said, yeah, I seen the bullet impact. He's like,
he didn't hit but we better go look, So we
go over there. I'm like, man, stupid me.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
I'm just mad at myself because we had all the
time in the world to shoot this bear in the
wide open at three hundred and fifty yards three hundred
and fifty to four hundred. I shot at for eighty
in the timber, but it looked open to me. Well
we get over there, Oh yeah, there's a pretty good older.
Speaker 2 (34:14):
Limb with a bullet hit it. With a bullet hit it.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
So that's what we're blaming on the myths. But I
blame myself more than anything for not getting on the
gun sooner, being a little more you know, decisive, and
maybe making my having my mind made up a little
better of really what I wanted to come home with.
He was a beautiful bear, great bear. I would have
(34:39):
been happy with him. I should have just made that
decision a little earlier. And maybe I should have had
that pre that decision made before we ever gotten the
situation where I had to you know, you know, think
about it, like I should have just been like, yep,
if it's this, I'm going to shoot it. But I
didn't do that, and I think, you know, I can
only blame myself because I didn't get that bear. I'd
(35:00):
blame you too, I know you would, Yeah, because that's
what friends are for, right, they tear you down.
Speaker 3 (35:06):
I'm here to let you know. I'd blame you. That's
a bummer. You a way to Alaska.
Speaker 4 (35:11):
You know, not that anything Alaska is necessarily a slam dunk,
but you know an area like that that typically with
snowlines in, you know, in the right place, you probably
got high densities, and then just for it to come down,
that's a bummer. And then I think you had what
three or four days left where you just sat under
a tarp and tried to see the rain for four
days straight.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
So up until that point, right up until I pulled
the trigger, the weather been pretty good. I mean we'd
had a little bit of rain, but nothing to really
be poopoo about. But right after I pulled the trigger
and we go over there, it started raining and wind.
It started blowing pretty.
Speaker 2 (35:44):
Good in it.
Speaker 1 (35:47):
Typical Alaska fashion, you know, it rained off and on
a lot. For the next duration of the hunt, we
saw probably five bears total in the area. I just
think I think there's a lot of bears there. They're
just not right in that very spot. But it's funny,
you know, we that bear there, you know, we turn
our back and a bear walks out.
Speaker 2 (36:08):
If we had kept walking up the help, we had
never seen that thing.
Speaker 3 (36:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
In another instance, same thing.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
We were walking to one of our perches that we'd
like to set sit down, and Caleb's like, I'm gonna
walk back to camp and get our freeze dried food,
you know, our peak freeze dried food and my cooker.
Let's just stay here for the day. So he turned
We'd only been there ten minutes. He turns around, walks back,
comes round back. There's a bear right here, like literally
(36:35):
the same type of thing. It's like, we turned around,
we're facing a different direction. If we would to walk
twenty yards back the other way, we'd have seen this
bear walking through the opening. And I we got over
there and seen him and it was a really small bear.
Speaker 4 (36:47):
But yeah, we had a lot of that too, where
just slight angle changes, like Tyson couldn't see the same
opening that I could see and I couldn't see the
same ones he could, And if you just weren't in
the right spot at the right time, or if you
(37:07):
weren't Like this is what drives me nuts because I'm
a I'm a math guy right in a statics as
you know, statistics stattician.
Speaker 3 (37:16):
Yeah, I'm a stattician while I'm out there.
Speaker 4 (37:18):
But what frustrates me is when you finally do spot
a bear and you realize that you had like fifteen
seconds of seeing it before it was gone and would
have never been seen again. You're like, I can't even
as I got my eye glued to a spotting scope
or into my binoculars, Like, there's lots of fifteen seconds
times where I'm not looking at the best spots right right,
And you're like, so what It starts to drive me
(37:40):
nuts and frustrate me, Like are there bears walking through
the whole time and we're just not picking them up?
Speaker 2 (37:45):
Yeah? Yeah, I wondered that too. That was good because
we had three eyes on stuff, you know, camera guy
Daniel he was he was scanning stuff, and Klew was scanning.
I was scanning.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
And then but you know, you know, if you're looking
in the wrong opening at the wrong time.
Speaker 2 (38:04):
You're going to miss them. You're just gonna miss them,
I thing. But yeah, there's the rain rolled in.
Speaker 1 (38:09):
So we would we'd hunt till eleven thirty, you know,
get back to camp, eat something real quick, go to
bed at midnight, and sleep in because bears aren't super
active in the morning even there, so we'd sleep in
and then we'd we'd have get up, have breakfast, sit
around bs, shoot the breeze for a while, have something,
(38:31):
have a top Brahmin or something, and then head out
for you know, tell tell us bedtime.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
You know.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
We'd spend the rest of the afternoon, evening, night, you know,
out and you know, up there you can hunt twenty
four hours a day if you want. You just can't
use artificial light, which is crazy to me, but it
wasn't a slam dunk. By hunting late like that, you know,
either they're moving or they're not. Usually a bunch of
rain would move in and we just sit there under
a tarp. Pro tip if you're hunting Alaska, carry an
(39:01):
ultra light tarp with you at all times. That way,
when it starts raining, you just pop that baby up
and get under it and that way you can stick
stick around.
Speaker 2 (39:10):
But man, we we.
Speaker 1 (39:12):
Logged some serious hours glassing and we hiked around a bit,
you know. We we got to the points like, all right,
we're gonna do that Hail Mary hunt to that bear
and that and that shoot the avalanche shoot we saw,
you know, a long ways away. So we hiked and
it reminds me of pictures videos I've seen of like
the Oregon coast or western Washington coast, you know, type
(39:36):
of rainforest similar to some of the North Idaho stuff,
except there was tons of Devil's club and uh and
raspberry BlackBerry brush I don't know what it was, and
it see no berries, but it was just poky, a
lot of pokey crap, you know, and we just you know,
I decided to wear waiters that day because my waiting
(39:57):
pants because everything had been.
Speaker 2 (39:58):
So fricking wet.
Speaker 1 (40:00):
So we trudged through the rainforest and then stupid waiters,
I mean they are awesome though they kept me dry
the whole time.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
Shout out to the waiter people.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
But man, we slogged through that stuff and that forest
and wind falls and up and down swamps and we
got way over there and then we just found out
that there was just no way to ever look into
that avalanche shoot close up, and in fact, if you
were even standing in it. You know, the brush is
(40:32):
super tall, you know, someplaces ten feet tall. Some little
openings are open enough where you could see, but there
was no if you were standing on one side of
it and the bear was on the other, there was
no way you.
Speaker 2 (40:41):
Ever see it.
Speaker 1 (40:42):
So we turned around. That little recon mission kind of failed,
but it was a good hike. You know, we've seen
some pretty country. Was what was weird though. I thought
I would see lots of little wildlife, wild creatures living,
you know, But man, we saw one coyote and bears
and that's that's all we saw in the land. A
(41:04):
lot of seagulls flying around. And let me tell you what,
if you don't like the sound of squirrels chirping, wait
till you hear lots of seagulls squawking constantly.
Speaker 2 (41:14):
Man, those things are obnoxious.
Speaker 1 (41:16):
I almost like, I asked Caleb several times, can I
do I get a seagull tag? He said, no, you
can't shoot seagulls. But then things were so terribly obnoxious.
But then, since we wanted to kind of branch out
becoming The outfitter came and dropped off a boat for us,
a little I want to call those a little zodiac,
(41:39):
if you will. And we got on that thing and
talk about feeling sketchy being out in the ocean on
a little rubber rafts with a motor on the back,
with a I think it was like a fifteen horse motor.
Speaker 2 (41:52):
It was a little bit unnerving for somebody's never done that,
you know. Didn't like it, no, And it was it
rains so much.
Speaker 1 (42:00):
We'd have to constantly bail the bail the boat out
every time you'd stop and go hunting for a while,
and we'd go hunt for a few hours. We'd come
back that boat would be full of water, so then
we'd have.
Speaker 2 (42:09):
To drain it and all that.
Speaker 1 (42:10):
And this one time we went up went up this
cool river drainage and we get way up in there
and we hunted for a long time. And this was
like the second to the last day, and it was like,
you know, we're in we're in go time now. It's
like we're gonna hunt all day. Rain, shine don't matter.
(42:31):
So we were out in the in the rain all
freaking day and got soaked. But when we get back
to the boat at eleven o'clock at night, then it's
plump full of water. So we have to we have
to drag it uphill to get it to where you
can drain into the you know, drain the water out.
So the bank is super super steep, so we drained uphill,
(42:53):
drain it, put the plug back in, and then get in.
It's like all right, everybody load up and we load up.
Caleb starts ranking on the motor won't start.
Speaker 2 (43:02):
We flooded it.
Speaker 1 (43:05):
To the point where like, I don't know if it's
flooded or maybe something else is going on here. So
we're calling the outfitter and he's like, well, can I
land my plane somewhere close by? And we're like no,
cause he's not He don't have a he don't have
a pontoon plane or whatever he's got the other kind
of thing. There's nowhere to land and he maybe hoofing it.
We'll give it some time here. I'm like, I bet
(43:26):
it's just flooded. So we gave it some time and
finally it started and we were able to go back.
Speaker 2 (43:31):
But yeah, it was cool.
Speaker 1 (43:33):
There was there was glaciers out there in the ocean.
We could see you know, we're not too far from
a giant glacier, you know that, but there are not glaciers.
But there was icebergs out in the ocean, you know,
floating around. And there was this little point during low tide
that the channel got pretty narrow and man, there were
fricking sea otters everywhere. I never you know, I'd like,
(43:55):
how many sea otters are there? Oh, there's the pretty
common man. There was a couple of hundred them. It
looked like just black dots everywhere out there, and that's
where the channel kind of got narrowing.
Speaker 2 (44:05):
Then things are weird. They're they're not that scared.
Speaker 1 (44:08):
You can just run right up to them, and you know,
they're they're kind of a cool little animal.
Speaker 2 (44:12):
They're protected.
Speaker 1 (44:13):
You know, I think only people that can can shoot them,
or natives, but these little guys, they just they they
lay lay on their back most of the time and
just kind of do the backstroke and paddle around like
like they're just lounging around eat.
Speaker 4 (44:25):
Little shellfish off their belly like you see on the
at the zoo.
Speaker 5 (44:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
Yeah, and this one is like, what the heck's going on?
Speaker 1 (44:32):
We got up close and I got the by noose
on it, and I was like, it's some weird there's
two of them.
Speaker 2 (44:37):
Well, I had his baby on it.
Speaker 1 (44:39):
Well, the baby's head was almost as big as the
mama's head, but it just it's whiskers weren't as whiskery.
It's just kind of a real fuzzy head, but its
body completely covered. The mom's body is like these things
float around so good, but they're.
Speaker 4 (44:53):
Pretty fun to watch. Yeah, that sounds it sounds awesome. Yeah,
definitely an experience bummer. On the the shop, we got
to see a lot of cool stuff and got the
spring bear and a new New state.
Speaker 3 (45:04):
They had never been to, so that's that's always fun.
Speaker 2 (45:06):
Yeah, yeah, and we man the view from camp was amazing.
Speaker 1 (45:11):
You know, we could look across this big long bay,
you know, look at the mountain range across you could
see you could see where the glaciers have melted in
the last thirty years where you know. Caleb was like, yeah,
you know, thirty years ago that was all glacier over there,
it's all gone. You could see how the vegetation had
there's no trees, but it was all brushed. Now you
(45:31):
could see that line where it had melted, and man,
it was the most beautiful, one of the most well,
it was the most beautiful camps.
Speaker 2 (45:39):
I'd ever I've ever had.
Speaker 1 (45:41):
And then then we get back to civilizations, like, well,
the hunt's over. When we get back to Valdez and
we're like, all right, it's time to go home.
Speaker 2 (45:50):
Cool.
Speaker 1 (45:51):
Well, the plane for a anchorage is like, we can't come.
We got we have to delay.
Speaker 2 (45:57):
There's too much.
Speaker 1 (45:57):
Fog to land, and Caldi's and then okay, we're gonna come.
So they fly and they get over there, they turn around,
they can't land, there's too much fog. So the next day,
too much fog. Same thing. It's like on day three,
we're like, we got to get home. So the buddy
that had the boat that took us out, he was
(46:20):
a buddy of the outfitter. So the outfitter said, hey,
you know anybody that's heading the anchorage driving the anchorage
And he's like, yeah, I am. Actually he's like, hey,
can we hitch or ride? These guys hitch your ride
with you. So we hitched a ride. Is a five
hour drive to anchorage, which turned out to be I
don't know, I think it was almost better than the
plane ride, because man, we got to see a lot
(46:40):
of the interior.
Speaker 2 (46:41):
You know, just beautiful, beautiful, cry beautiful.
Speaker 1 (46:45):
Through the Copper Copper River area, which is you know,
world renown for moose hunting, and it looks it's just
you know, picturesque moose country.
Speaker 3 (46:55):
I thought you were going to say it's world renowned
for its tasty salmon. Salmon.
Speaker 1 (47:00):
Oh maybe so and back. You know, Jason wanted to
alask Was that last year?
Speaker 3 (47:06):
Last year? Yeah? Four?
Speaker 2 (47:08):
And you said the the state bird was the mosquito.
Speaker 3 (47:12):
Yeah, miss it is.
Speaker 2 (47:14):
I even't bought mosquito nets. I bought a mosquito net
for my head. I bought a mosquito net for my body,
like a jacket for your body.
Speaker 3 (47:20):
I want to see you. I want to see you
in a mosquito net.
Speaker 2 (47:25):
That's all that was wearing, is a mosquito net. Yes, anyway, anyway.
Speaker 3 (47:33):
I heard.
Speaker 1 (47:34):
I only used it a couple of times, and it
wasn't for mosquitoes, as these other little bugs that fly
around and get in your face, try to fly in
your nose and your eyes, but mosquito, like, I had
way more mosquitos here in Idaho than I've had up there.
I think it was just timing was off, you know,
which was good because I I'm more scarce Mosquitos and
the Grizzlies bearers.
Speaker 4 (47:52):
Honestly, Yeah, we got I was riding, you know, we'd
be riding the fouriller and uh, you'd have the ding
just after we killed the sheep. We hung around and
things will be able to fly and keep up with
you and still somehow get inside your you know, face
mask or inside your hood or whatever you had on them.
Speaker 2 (48:09):
This is terrible, man, and I'm glad I didn't have
it that bad.
Speaker 4 (48:12):
But yeah, yeah, here's a here's a little plug, a
little shout out that hunt is going to launch this Sunday,
that is twenty second, So you're gonna be listening to
this on the nineteenth. In three days, you can go
check out that hunt on Krispy's Youth Chrispi's YouTube channel.
Speaker 2 (48:26):
Oh oh your sheep hunt?
Speaker 3 (48:27):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, the one we're talking about. Yeah, just
a little shameless plug there.
Speaker 1 (48:30):
Yeah, Sunday, the twenty second. I don't know what time
did he ever say?
Speaker 3 (48:34):
Just probably in the evening, I'm guessing.
Speaker 4 (48:37):
Yeah, Well, if you go in the evening, it'll be
there whether it's launched early, it'll be there by Sunday evening,
So that's.
Speaker 2 (48:42):
A Saunday evening.
Speaker 3 (48:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (48:43):
Yeah, And just to let you know, if you want
to win some cool crap, I think there's like thirty
nine hundred. I think there's over four thousand dollars in
cool gear. They're giving away sign up to win.
Speaker 3 (48:56):
You know.
Speaker 2 (48:56):
We got loop pulled Optics, we got I think there's
a there's a there's a pack in there, there's there's
some calls. I think we're gonna do a call package,
carbon Tube.
Speaker 1 (49:08):
I'm gonna have some first like gear. We're gonna have
f HF Bino Harness, some Crispy boots.
Speaker 2 (49:15):
Yeah, it's gonna be.
Speaker 3 (49:16):
A knife companies.
Speaker 4 (49:18):
We kind of did the giveaway what I used on
that sheep, what I had on, what I used, what
I wore, Yeah, sort of a package.
Speaker 2 (49:25):
Yeah, so that'll be that'll be really cool. Yeah, and
I think and we both have seen the film, the
final product. Our buddy Dusty Roup did the edit on it.
Speaker 1 (49:36):
David Frame filmed it, Dusty edited it, and it turned
out really good.
Speaker 3 (49:40):
Yeah, really good.
Speaker 2 (49:41):
Made me look like a like a cool guy.
Speaker 3 (49:43):
Yeah, yeah, a guy that really knew what he was doing.
Speaker 4 (49:45):
Sheep, yeah, sheep expert. Well we we made it fifty
minutes into this thing. I think we might need to
save the bowls and bs for later. This might just
be a Barry cap.
Speaker 1 (49:55):
Yeah, we might have to. Yeah, we have some pretty
fun stuff planned for the all. I can't wait. And yeah,
we should probably save that for another one. That way
we can, we can, we can talk about death and yeah,
a little bit more.
Speaker 4 (50:09):
Yeah, well yeah, no, it's I think draws are all
done now besides Montana Antelope, which uh.
Speaker 2 (50:16):
I thought they just came out.
Speaker 3 (50:18):
No, so the nine hundred Dash twenty comes out in
mid June.
Speaker 4 (50:22):
The actual like special units don't come out until early July.
Speaker 3 (50:26):
Gotcha, guys, all I thought.
Speaker 4 (50:28):
They came out to Some guys were posting like I
do my Antelope tag? Will I go and jump on?
I'm like Montana forgot me, Like, hey, you guys forgot
to put my name in the.
Speaker 3 (50:36):
Draw, you know.
Speaker 4 (50:37):
And then I went to some reading just the nine
hundred Dash twenty because it must be a really early start.
Speaker 3 (50:42):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (50:42):
I remember that now because I remember.
Speaker 1 (50:44):
The last time I applied, and it was like it
was like almost antelope season when you find out like
Montana likes to hold that money.
Speaker 4 (50:51):
Oh yeah, I'm gonna sends you threw me under the
bus a little bit. I'm gonna throw a Dirk under
the bus a little bit. So Dirk's and Idaho resident.
He has a lot of antelope points, and so me
and Dirk build this like elaborate content plan right like
where we're gonna try to get tags, like where we
have good odds so we can start to plan this. So, Dirk,
what are your chances to draw on your Montana antelope
(51:11):
tag with your six points?
Speaker 3 (51:13):
This year?
Speaker 2 (51:13):
They're having a leftover drawing.
Speaker 4 (51:16):
So you're gonna be in the leftover drawing, not the
And then so I know they they dropped a big
early like Idaho for the first time, and ever decides
they're gonna draw like in June and not in July
and give you some time. So I Idaho surprisingly comes up,
like however to get in? So I got in snuck
in like real early, like dang it, not selected, not selected.
(51:37):
I drew for the you know, shot for the stars.
So I catch up with Dirk later like what do
you draw?
Speaker 3 (51:44):
I forgot to put in. That's his own state. That's
just like that's his back door.
Speaker 1 (51:49):
I know, I know, And like the last day was.
Whenever I'm traveling home from Alaska, I'm like, oh, yeah,
I'll apply in Portland. When on my layover, I get
to Portland and oh, my connecting flight is just in
time for me to run over to the next gate.
But this is like, this is all an excuse because
that was the last day. I should have plied on
the first day.
Speaker 4 (52:08):
But so so long story short, I've now built Dirk
a calendar with all the reminders put in, and he'll
never miss another date.
Speaker 3 (52:17):
I got blamed for all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 2 (52:19):
Hey, I got in for Colorado this year. You know
that's last year. Last year he didn't hold my hand
and tell me to play.
Speaker 6 (52:26):
And I I do feel a little bit guilty because
of what I usually do is I'll tell Dirk like
two weeks until such and such do and I know
he's gonna forget, and so I should take responsibility and
give him another reminder like three days away, versus like
this year, I forgot to give that, like second reminder
did you put in for Arizona?
Speaker 3 (52:46):
Deer?
Speaker 2 (52:47):
I don't think I have any points oh no, no,
Arizona Deer point just out.
Speaker 3 (52:51):
Yeah, that was the last one.
Speaker 4 (52:52):
That just I'm like, I forgot to remind you that too,
because I think you were in bear hunting, which wouldn't
be no good.
Speaker 2 (52:57):
I don't think. I don't think I've ever applied for
Arizona Deer.
Speaker 3 (53:00):
Yeah, no, I had to.
Speaker 4 (53:01):
I have to give you a little bit of a
hard time on your application strategy this year. It's real,
it's real tough to draw if you don't put in dirt.
Speaker 1 (53:09):
Well, hey, listen, I don't know, I know, like in
your world of work. I know, as a general manager,
I know you're probably just sitting around drinking lattes and
you know, you know, smoking cigars and having you know,
at four thirty every day you have a bourbon, you know.
For for us in the marketing department, we've been busy,
all right.
Speaker 2 (53:29):
You know.
Speaker 1 (53:29):
I've been building, you know, filling in spreadsheets, been building
building all this this marketing plan out. I've been making assets.
I've been editing my butt off. I've been you know,
that's good hunting. I've been, I mean.
Speaker 4 (53:42):
Just doing it all basically carrying the carrying, the carrying,
the whole team I.
Speaker 2 (53:45):
Don't even sleep at night. I mean, I've been working
so much.
Speaker 4 (53:49):
So no, no, no, you have been crushing on the
marketing side. We're we're having a heck of a year
and new products are doing good, so appreciate that. But
I think I think we save all of our our
upcoming hunts and this will give me some time to
like dig up some dirt on you and cacheade over
whatever you got going on, and how it's a rig
season and if you do better than me, it's because
(54:10):
of the hunts you got coming up.
Speaker 1 (54:11):
And yeah, I hope, so I hope we can do that,
maybe maybe be really good. I mean, when we go
moose hunting, you're gonna get to shoot first, as long
as it's not big.
Speaker 4 (54:22):
So all right, well, no, thank you for for jumping
on here doing the bear hunt recap.
Speaker 3 (54:32):
Thanks for running this show.
Speaker 4 (54:33):
So now you're responsible for the description and all the
stuff that gets this thing to air.
Speaker 2 (54:39):
Oh yeah, you're welcome. Yeah, and I probably have to
wrap it up to hunts.
Speaker 4 (54:42):
I got a bourbon, I got a bourbon. Call my
name here, so I gotta go get.
Speaker 2 (54:47):
The cigars and all the other you know, fat cat stuff.
All you executives have yeah.
Speaker 4 (54:53):
Yeah, So we'll take everybody thanks for listening to cutting
the distance, and until next time, we'll see it then
Welcome back to another episode of Cutting the Distance podcast.
I'm Derk Durham and today Jason Phelps and I we're
going to talk about bears, bulls and bs.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
It sounds like to me, I like it.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
I like it.
Speaker 4 (00:25):
You you made that PG on how we thought we
were gonna do that intro, But no, I thought I
was driving this podcast. You you gave a moment of
silence and you just took off with it.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
So this is great, this is great.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Well, you tried to tell me I was going to
do it, and then then I said I don't want
to do it, and then and I'm like, all right,
it's just gonna do it.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
Oh that worked out great. This means you're responsible for
this thing turning out.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Now I have to ask all the questions, right.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Yeah, yeah, this is awesome. I appreciate it. No, no,
we have.
Speaker 4 (00:52):
You know, last week we got together, talked about our dads,
how tough they were, and yeah, we've been on some hunts.
We haven't really did it recap on much of our
Turkey hunts, much of our bear hunts, much of our
plans this year, and so it'll be good to talk
kind of let everybody know where things are at and
maybe even sprinkling kind of these ELK category. You know,
by time this comes out, I guess, well easy one
(01:14):
will be out. But yeah, we'll talk just a little
bit about everything going on and our hunts and hunts
coming up.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
And yeah, it's been kind of a crazy busy spring.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
It seems like, man, I haven't had a chance to
put my head up or anything. I haven't posted about
my Alaska bear trip on social or nothing. I've just
been just digging. It's been busy.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
Yeah, yeah, a lot of you know.
Speaker 4 (01:37):
Within we I hate to use the word corporate, but
you know, working for a big company, you know, things
are always changing and turning. Dirk's got a new boss,
I've got new and so it's like processes changed, which
always you're.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Not comfortable with.
Speaker 4 (01:47):
And so yeah, Dirk's running a million miles a minute
getting all our marketing stuff. And We've got a lot
of ELK expansion this year. I've got a bunch of
new processes, new power points, this and that, you know how,
and so yeah, it's just been it just seems busy,
extremely busy, and it's all work related.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Well, you know what they say, you can't teach an
old dog new tricks, and that's that's wrong.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
That's that's a fallacy. Now you can mean that I'm
an old dog. It's just not fun though.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
My old, poor old brain has to learn anything new,
like a new platform to to make documents and stuff.
It's just it just just seizes up and the little
spinning wheel goes round and around and I kind of
feel like, yeah, I feel like I've got amnesia or
not amniesia, but dementia or something.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
It's it's it's bad. But you know, once you.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Blow off all the old cobwebs, you know, things start
working and he's got to dig in. And once you
kind of it just takes a minute. Once you get
the understanding, it seems like, okay, I get this, and
it's just data entry at that point.
Speaker 4 (02:54):
Yeah, we've we've crushed it. Everything's going really good. All
launches have went great, all the assets. So no appreciate that.
But I also was on a spring bear hunt. I
had the speaking of you know, dust and the cobwebs off.
I had to run a camera again, which we've all
we all know I'm not very good at hold on.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
I'm hold on. I opened this wide open for you, Dirk.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
You did.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
You stepped right in it. So back in twenty fourteen,
our good friend Charlie, his wife Kelly, she drew an
amazing ELK tag in Washington that was fourteen, right, yeah,
and you know Charlie was the caller. You know, Charlie
and Kelly are main diaphragm called builders here at Phelps
(03:40):
and anyway, she had this tag. Charlie was calling, She
was the shooter, and Jason Phelps was the camera guy.
And as Jason and I watched this film together here
I don't know, must have been like a year ago,
He's just like, look at that, Dirk.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
I am a I'm like the best camera guy you've
ever seen. Look at that. I'm getting all the shots.
Look at that slow motion shot. Look at this. I
even had a glidecam or something.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
Yeah, I had I had a glidecam. Ye run through
the trees.
Speaker 5 (04:07):
That was back before gimbals, right, yeah, yeah, you had
to wag him up and get them all balanced for
the lens and just crushing it basically, is what you're saying. Yeah, yeah,
so you know you told me you were like the
best videographer ever.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
But then something changed.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
For Yeah, I Copps.
Speaker 4 (04:25):
I don't like to say I'm above something, but at
times I'm like I just want to hunt, Like I
don't want to run this turn this button on and
have hit the red button and figure out all these
settings every time.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
And no. But so fast forward to this year.
Speaker 4 (04:39):
Budgets, you're a little tighter, you know, you're trying to
figure out how to stretch your money a little bit further.
And so Tyson he's going to Idaho on a spring
bear hunting and we're like, uh, nobody else is going.
I don't have any So there I was, uh, the
long lens, the ACAM, the BCAM, and yeah, I got
to go on an Idaho bear hunt this year. I
I don't I'm I haven't been there in this area
(05:01):
and in springs past. But it seems like the snowpack
was really really light this year, which changed where everything
was typically at. We could get to areas that were
further up the mountain than anybody ever said you can
get to, you know, talking to people that were camped
around us, people that turkey hunt in the area or
you know, do bear hunt. So it it the density
(05:22):
of bears was was quite a bit different. So got
to go over there with Tyson and it was it
was awesome. We I can't even remember the days we
were there May sixteenth to twenty second or whenever the
season was.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
There lots of bears.
Speaker 4 (05:39):
The best part was, you know, even though it's supposed
to be a good area, you roll up and like
within the first minute having my binoculars up, I spot
a bear. I'm like, oh, this isn't going to be
too bad. You know, pretty good density. We've seen lots
and lots of bears, which was which was great. You know,
our strategy is the way that this area is trying
to back up. And this goes for any hunting. You
(06:01):
know a lot of people talk about like, well, you know,
how do you do this or how do you that?
Like it's information gathering and and it's like that top
of the funnel to start with, and then you start
to hone in so now you like go to the
mid funnel and then by the end you're putting yourself
at the end of the funnel where like your odds
and your success is very high. So we our first
day was really just exploratory. If we went in to
(06:24):
bottom of the funnel, I thought we if we thought
we knew where the bears were and sat there the
entire time. Our chances a kill one we would probably
be very low because they may not have been there.
So we we knew. We set up, we looked at
on X, We knew for the first day we were
going to do some traveling. We're gonna look at a
lot of country, try to find where the bright green
you know, grass shoots, onions, sunflowers, just kind of learned
(06:48):
the lay of the land.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
We had never been there.
Speaker 4 (06:50):
Dirk knew the area a little bit, but it was
for us to try to figure out, like where do
we think these bears are going to be, look at
the ground, and then get way back. Some people don't
like to spot things for two or three miles away,
But when I'm two or three miles away, I can
now look at twenty times the amount of country looking
into faces or nooks and crannies. So what lets us
(07:13):
while we're trying to do that quote unquote top of
funnel work, you know, just trying to figure out the area,
figure out where the bears are, figure out where the
concentrations are, which is now a little bit more spread
out than springs past back out look, and we were
seeing lots of bears. I think we ended up just
to put a number on it. Twenty six bears in
five days, I think is what we ultimately saw.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
Maybe more than that that we didn't. We tried not
to double count.
Speaker 4 (07:35):
Bears that we knew we had seen multiple times. But
the problem with trying to kill them was Number one,
there's a lot of patience required because he usually had
to go the way. This ground laid out a lot
of timber, but your meadows where these bears were coming
out to the green grass to feed, where you could
actually get a shot and keep your wind right, you
(07:55):
had to sit on these one hundred to three hundred
yard tight meadows patients, which doesn't work good for most guys.
For me especially, is a sit for four or five
hours and just stay at the same spot the entire time.
And so by day, by the second night, that was
our strategy, right. We knew where we were seeing concentrations
(08:17):
of bears, we knew where we've seen target bears.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
Go sit and you get restless.
Speaker 4 (08:22):
You know, your first hour you're kind of locked in,
and then by hour two you're trying to make your
back feel better, and by hour three or four you're
trying to stay awake, and you know, by hour five
you're talking yourself into going and checking out a different meadow.
When you knew that that was kind of the hot spot.
We didn't see a bear to shoot until the very
last day. So everything we've seen was a cross canyon.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
And the funny part.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Big enough ones they were, they were big enough, they
were just too far away.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
Oh yeah, definite bores. You know, end of May, they
were starting to chase so.
Speaker 4 (08:53):
Big bores, you know, big front shoulders, big, you know,
short ears. Everything we were looking for in a where
just by the time you got over there, those bears
in the springtime. The other thing that we struggle with
is everything we've seen was moving quickly. Besides a few
sow and cub sets. You know, these spring bears are
running either looking the big bores or running to look
(09:15):
for sALS if they're not on one, or even when
they are, they kind of push the sows through these
feeding zones and they don't stay out there for very long.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
So it's something else you're working with.
Speaker 4 (09:23):
So every bear we'd spot, you know, it's a mad
scramble a fire drill to load up your stuff, run,
get around. Oh, I think we'd be there in an hour.
Nothing's ever there when we would get there. The other
thing that mess with us is our once again it
comes to patients, is we would we'd get bored in
that third or fourth hour. I'd get the spotting scope
back out and spot it back across the canyon where
(09:44):
we had spotted these bears from, and you'd inevitably always
spot something over there, and you're like, well, that bear's
not moving real fast compared to the rest of them.
Let's let up our stuff. Hour and a half to
get over there, and well, no, that didn't work, and
now you're on the wrong side. Now it's another hour
and a half to get back. And so you're like, well,
we'll just sit over here. Well, sure as heck. Multiple
times you'd be over there and you're like, you'll never
(10:05):
guess it, But there's a bear two hundred yards when
we were just sitting we're just not there anymore. So
there was a lot of there was a lot of
this like wrong place, wrong time on Tyson's hunt, looking
at lots of bears, and finally on the last night
we're like, we just got to go sit in the
two best spots you could smell, you know, wild onions.
(10:25):
The area reeked of wild onions. The area was as
bright green as you could find on the hill. Went
and just hung out at that spot. The first spot
had a small sal moved through it kind of heading
to the second spot. We sat there for three three
and a half hours, kind of drove ourselves crazy, and
then moved to the other spot. You know, one thing
(10:47):
for us thermals bears ability to smell. We were very
methodical on how we moved on how we didn't want
to mess the area up. I feel like you know,
on moose hunting, you know they talk a lot about
just sitting still. You don't want to send up the area.
Same thing with bears. Like we're in the hot spot
where where we're all the action is. But how do
you navigate this country without like laying a scent right
(11:09):
down the ridge or you know where these bears are
going to.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
Cross through, and how do you limit that?
Speaker 4 (11:14):
So we were trying to be really smart about that
play the thermals play where we you know where most
of the bearers went through, and tried to tried to
pick a route that allowed us to not send up
where the bears are going to come from, but then
also not screw things up as much, you know, for
the future. But on that last day, we knew we
had a look that you know, you can go for
(11:34):
broken the last day. We always talked about last day
you can do things you couldn't do earlier because you
don't want to mess an animal up. So we were
able to take a little bit different approach, get in
and sit down and how we made it for about
an hour and a half and we had a sound
a cub show up below us and in this area.
To describe it is, you can't see it all. There's
(11:57):
a lot of green around you, you know, acres and
acres are green. You can see like one little shooting
lane down in front of you, one little shooting lane
you're right, and then like the upper part of a
little meadow to your left.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
And so quite a bit of timber.
Speaker 4 (12:07):
Yeah, there's there's strips of timber, just chunks of just
stuff in your way where you can't see it all
that you'd like to. So I was of the opinion
that sitting in being quiet, you know, bears don't have
the greatest eyes sight.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
We were pretty good on the wind.
Speaker 4 (12:22):
We were getting up moving quite a bit, and uh,
just just move five or six feet one direction opens
up stuff you can't see, and as fast as these bears.
So we were pretty active on our feet. Even though
we were sitting. We were looking here, looking there. We
spot h sitting this time, we spot a sow and
a and a cub down below us. And you know,
(12:44):
first last day, Tyson's like, well, if she doesn't have
a sow or if she doesn't have a cub, we'll
I'll take her. And sure enough, we watched for a
while and a and a cub you know, comes out.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
It's like, dang it.
Speaker 4 (12:56):
We watch watch them for a half hour, and in
about ten minutes into them feeding, she kind of snarls
and growls a little bit and runs her cub back
to the right.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
That's kind of weird.
Speaker 4 (13:11):
And then five minutes idah, she comes back feeding out
in that little gap that we could see in and
what's going on? And then out of the blue, the
bear that Tyson ended up killing. We actually spotted this
bear the night before chasing the sal around in there
at about eighty yards down to our left. There's a
little ravine in between where we're sitting in the meadow
that we could see the top of. There's a little
(13:32):
a little cut that we couldn't see when it rolls
off that black the boar was going towards that sal
which is now we're starting to think like she probably
seen him or he looked at her, and she snapped
and growled a little bit and ran her cub off.
Now he's going towards her at a quick pace, a
quick walking pace, and we know it's the boar. We've
(13:53):
seen how he acted the night before as a bigger bear.
And we do a once again another fire drill because
we've been kind of standing up. We were standing up
when this bear walks out, we got to kind of
get I get back on the camera.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
So I couldn't. I could my pride couldn't handle another.
Speaker 4 (14:09):
You know, lashing from dirt telling me I missed this
and that. So I'm flipping every camera on. I got
I flip on the the a camera, hope, I just
get a wide I flip on the just get enough
time to get the spotting scope set up, and I
when anything can go wrong, it will go wrong. So
I hadn't did this the whole time. Got the Alans
sitting on the thing. Somehow I get switched a photo
(14:31):
mode in the kill moment, right, and so I'm calling
Tyson off.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
He's like tell me when I'm like no, no, no, yeah, no, no, no,
you know.
Speaker 4 (14:38):
And so I'm trying to relay this to him and
finally get the thing back on video, get it semi
focused and tell him yeah. And he had about four
more steps before he was out of this little shooting lane.
And Tyson made a great shot and.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
Wow, yeah, by the skin of your.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
Teeth, barely last night. We were going home the next.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
Day Indiana Jones style.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
Yep, yep.
Speaker 4 (15:00):
So made a good shot, probably a two hundred pound bore,
one of the few true blackberries we've seen.
Speaker 3 (15:06):
Everything else was mainly color phase.
Speaker 4 (15:08):
I bet you we've seen five black phase and probably
twenty blonde, cinnamon brown, dark brown, you know, something aside
from straight black, nice black boar and the of course,
we were in an onion patch where died. Tyson kind
of anchored him where he was at, and Tyson, we
(15:29):
were convinced it was just rolling around in onions, like
in the fur. But this bear one of the things,
the meat was onion, if that makes it like we
skinned it out with yeah, preseason, Tyson got at home
put it in the cooler. He's like, man, you open
up the cooler. I took the hide out of there,
so it wasn't that and just like when you smell
the meat, it's just like all onions. But he said
(15:52):
he's been eating it and it's been it's been awesome.
So one of those weird things. I'm like, I don't
know if it smells like onions, if it's good, bad,
if you should I'm like, he's like, no, we tried
it and it was all good. So you know that bear,
the bear I killed back in the Blues and twenty
twenty was in the onions a lot, but I didn't
have that same like smell coming off of them. So
(16:12):
that's a pro tip. If you're in an area that
has wild onions, I don't know, like if you looked
at one of those maps like where do I where
are wild onions in the United States, I don't know
where they're where they are at. But if you have
an area that has sunflowers and wild onions kind of
mixing in those meadows. As the snow snow line moves up,
like hunt over the bright Green, which typically is onion
(16:36):
shoots hunt over those wild onions because that's where the bears,
the sALS, the bores, everybody's kind of feeding, and that's
where all the high densities were. There were ridges there
without onions, there were ridges with onions, but definitely way
more bears in the sunflowers in the onions.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
Gotcha, gotcha?
Speaker 1 (16:54):
Yeah, I've I've noticed that too, you know, and more
people I talked to who hunt bears a lot, you know,
they're they they are definitely focusing in on food sources.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
You know.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
It's you know, there's a lot of land out there
to like try to hunt a bear in, but they're
like just like they get that narrow scope like food source,
whatever it is. You know, maybe you're in north western
Montana and you don't have any wild onions, but you
have all these other little flowers and stuff that that
just pop up right after the snow leaves, and and
if you're not seeing those flowers, you're probably not in
(17:28):
the right spot, you know, because those bears are going
to follow those those flowers and those little shoots as
soon as that snow leaves and pops up.
Speaker 4 (17:34):
Yeah, and the elk there were a lot of elk
in this area, and the elk were competing for that
same feed, like it was the same spot he shot
his bear from. We sat the night before or two
nights before those elks. Elks, those elk literally looked at
us and didn't care, like they wanted to stay, They
wanted to bed there, they wanted to feed there that night.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
They they had no cares in the world.
Speaker 4 (17:55):
And we watched them in the same spot from two
miles away, and and there would be elk and bear
in the same meadow.
Speaker 3 (18:02):
And this lets me.
Speaker 4 (18:03):
Know that the the bear eating so much in this
area that the cows they would stand up, but they
would just watch that bear walk by. Like so it's
evidence that like these these bear don't want to waste
energy to try to kill something that's on four hoofs
or at least a mature animal. Maybe when the calves drop,
they would try it for a day or two, you know,
three or four days, and then give up when they
(18:23):
can't catch them anymore. But at that time, it's like
you're just trying to like, oh, there's this is like
the prime food for everything right now?
Speaker 3 (18:29):
Is that stuff right below the snow lion and the
bears are.
Speaker 4 (18:31):
Well fed because they don't give a that it could
give care less that they had elk, you know, eighty
yards away from them.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Do you think the elk eight the wild onions or
were they on grass?
Speaker 4 (18:52):
It was mixed, Like I was trying, you know, the
wild onion has a I'm gonna do my best to
describe the flower. It's just kind of a white, wispy
flower that kind of you know, it has vertical little
shoots off of if that makes any sense. And there
was grass and wild onions, and then there's a light
purple wild onion in there as well, So I think
the elk were maybe maybe eating it. I can't tell
you for sure, but there was enough grass in there
(19:13):
that that was also what they were probably going after.
And you know, all all the three cows were all pregnant,
and so I don't know if they were like getting
into their zone where they wanted to drop calves or
you know exactly why they like that area, but it
seems like they just wanted to eat that that bright green.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
Now, were the bears getting the bulbs of the wild
onion or are they getting just everything?
Speaker 3 (19:35):
Yep, yep, they go for the bulbs, so they'll I
think they eat it all. I don't you know.
Speaker 4 (19:39):
We didn't go through a patch where you could see
where they just pop the bulbs off, but definitely big
sections when you'd go through the wild onions where they
would dig and I'm almost wanted to like if I
could tell the bears like you guys are over digging,
like these bulbs aren't a foot and a half deep, but.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Yeah, they're really shallow.
Speaker 4 (19:55):
It was crazy like I've seen I've seen areas, you
know in the past spring bears, a lot of spring
bear hunts in the blues where they'll roll rocks and
they'll dig around a little bit. These bears, they you
could see like there was a hole in the left
and a hole in the right where they were like,
you know, if you can imagine they're like trying to
dig two tunnel where their hands are, you know, their
paws are going to.
Speaker 3 (20:14):
Connect, but they would have You could see.
Speaker 4 (20:16):
Where like the left paw would pole in the right
paw would pole. And we could figure out if a
bear was left handed right handed by how deep each
hole was. We had a big brown bear that was
definitely left handed because he was pulling more with his
left hole. But just kidding, but they were digging super deep,
and I don't know if there's something else down there
obviously they're looking for.
Speaker 3 (20:34):
But yeah, the onion bulbs. When you're trying to track
those down, you know, you hold on and then you
kind of dig around them and dig that up. They're
only an inch or inch and a half deep.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
Typically, huh. So that sounds like a fun hunt.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
You know.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
I was supposed to go with you guys and be
camera guy, and that didn't pan out. My Alaska trip
was too close.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
Had had to bail.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
I mean, I could have went, but man, I had
so much preparation and work and we've just been busy
at work. There was no way to skip out of
my work responsibilities and do both.
Speaker 4 (21:05):
So yeah, yeah, So Derek his hunts more recent. He
was up in Alaska a little bit later. So go
ahead and give.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
Us a little rundown on on the Alaska Black Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Yeah, So.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
I got invited on this hunt with Christians and arms
up in Alaska.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
Flew into Valdez, Alaska. You've probably heard of that place.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
They I think they have like one of the one
of the or one of the biggest, the biggest oil
refineries in the world are at least the United States. There,
it's it's it's Alaska. Man, it's beautiful. You fly in
and you come into this big valley or kind of
a big bay, and there's mountains and greenery and snow
(21:47):
capped peaks and and ocean water and man, it's it's cool.
And it's just a tiny little town. It's a pretty
small town. My guide, Caleb, I think he said there's
two thousand people. Four thousand people, But I was like, really,
because it seems like there's like two hundred people. It's
a pretty small town. But you know, I think you
(22:08):
don't the way it lays out, you don't see like
the residential area too much.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
But but anyhow, flew up.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
To Alaska to hunt black bears, and the initial plan
was to get there and then fly in on a
bush plane into this particular area to hunt. But there again,
back to what you said about early spring here in
Idaho and snow lines being high and bears being in
(22:35):
different places and kind of spread out, That's exactly what
was going on there. So our initial place that we
were going to go, the snow line was so high
that the guide in the outfitter were like, there's no
way you're going to have a good bear hunt. They're
going to be too dispersed. They're going to be at
the top of the mountain. We got to go to
a different area, so we had to We took a
boat ride and got to an area that or the
(23:00):
snow line, you know, you know, the face, the direction
the mountain range was facing and such just kind of
lended itself to having a better snowpack lower.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
So we got a boat ride to there, but still
the the snowpack was still really high. It was super high.
So we get there.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
You know, on a typical year, the snowpack's really low,
so bears are going to feed on the shoreline. So
as the tides go out, bears go down on the shoreline.
They're looking for yungy stuff that washed up. They'll eat help,
they'll eat.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
Other little things, probably molluscs I had imagined. I don't know,
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
Maybe that that may not come out very good on
the on the backside when if you eat like little mollusks,
I don't know, but typically that's the mode of operation.
Hut on the shorelines, come down and eat the green
grasses and shoots and stuff on the shore lines. But man,
the snow level even where we were hunting was pretty high,
so we had to had to hike around a little
(24:03):
bit every day. And this particular part of Alaska, and
I've heard about Alaska kind of being like this or
different places. It's like walking on a big wet sponge.
So every step you take, your foot sinks in till
about the level of the top of your foot, and
most of it water was over the top of your
(24:25):
foot or real close. So every step is squishy, gushy
and takes a lot of efforts. So man, I wish
I'd have done more more step ups, some going on this,
some lunges and stairclimbs and stuff, because man, it it was.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
It was hard.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
It's just like, man, you just put a ton of
effort to go anywhere in this kind of in this
kind of terrain. So every more, you know, And then
i'd heard about this, but I didn't really know, you know,
time a year and dates, but i'd heard about, you know,
Land of the Midnight Sun or whatever. Man, it'd be
(25:08):
midnight and it still wasn't dark.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
It was kind of.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
Dusky, So that would really screw with you at nighttime
when you go to bed, you'd be like, all right,
I'm gonna go to bed, and it's pretty light in
my tent, and you wake up, Oh it's time to
get up. No, it's two in the morning.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
You wake up, Oh, I got to get up. No
it's four o'clock or three o'clock.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
And so, you know, we'd hunt and go to bed
about midnight every day, you know, trying to you know,
take advantage of those you know, late evening bear movements.
But the first couple of days were pretty nice. You know,
we had some rain flurries off and on, but for
the most part there was some some nice sunny weather
(25:49):
first couple of days two first two or three days,
and the evening of the third day the rain kind
of moved in and man, it rain most of the
time the rest of the trip, so which I don't know,
I bears are kind of like me, you know, one
of us like raining that much. But it is what
(26:10):
it is, right, so, you know, and I planned for
ray and it took all rain gear and you just
kind of like, we're just gonna get wet, and you know,
it didn't. It didn't disappoint you know, we did get wet,
so mode of operation was so since then we sat
and watched the shorelines the first couple of days, and man,
we did we're just not seeing bears. We saw one
(26:32):
bear on the shoreline about a mile and a half
away as the crow flies, but about three miles if
you were to walk the shoreline, so there's no.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
Way to catch up to it.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
It was just it was on the movie.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
It showed itself for about thirty seconds and was gone.
So it's like, well, we're gonna have to get up
high and try to glass them up at a distance
kind of figure out where these things are living. So
we got pretty high and we could glass up this big,
huge drainage and there was a couple avalanche shoots and
(27:01):
we spotted a bear in that. It's like, okay, you
know there's bears in the avalanche shoots. There was a
few of them close to us that one. We're like,
it was going to be a big trek through a
lot of thick, nasty country to get to where we
might possibly have a shooting vantage point. And I wasn't
able to download any maps for my on X, so
(27:24):
I could, you know, figure out shooting areas because it
was like so last minute, like which place we were
going to go, we didn't really know until we got there, basically,
so we didn't we weren't able to kind of prepare
with like, okay, well if we get on this vantage
point on the map, you know, on on X, and
be like all right, we'll be able to shoot across
or glass across. We could just we were just kind
(27:45):
of hunting like we did back in the olden days, right,
So we're like, well, we'll save that one kind of
like for a bond's eye, because that one's going to
take a lot of effort to get there from a
maybe or maybe not even having a chance to get
on a bear. So we marked that one and we
kept on hunting around. We found some avalanche shoots closer
to us where we could glass into her. It'd be
(28:06):
a you know, six hundred yard five hundred yard shot.
And we've put some time in there. And on day
three we'd hiked up and through the sponge the spongy country.
It was it was kind of it was beautiful. Is
this place is one of the most beautiful places you've
ever been. We're sitting there glassing, we're watching I had to, like,
(28:28):
I had to like focus really hard on looking for
bears because I kept on gravitating to the ocean and
looking at the otters, the sea otters and seals and stuff.
We saw orcs swimming by.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
That was cool.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
I was like, oh, man, I hope those things get
close and come up in this little bay we're in.
But it was kind of a shallow bay whenever the
especially when the tide would go out, so I don't
think they came up in there too much.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
Maybe they did. We never seen him in there, but.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
Anyway, it's like, man, I was, I was enjoying watching
the ocean life as much as any thing. But so anyhow,
we hike up and get up to this spot. It's like,
all right, we'll get up on this vantage point, Caleb,
the guide tells the camera guy, and I hear you,
guys hang out here for a minute. I'm gonna go
(29:13):
look over on the backside of this ridge and see
if there's anywhere I can glass over here too, and
I'll get back. So he turns around. We turn around,
all right, I see you, and he makes about twenty
yards away and I turn around and look, and there's
a bear right out in the open. Where did that
thing come from? We just literally looked there. It's like
we turned our back and he walked out. And I've
never seen this before, but he came out. So we
(29:35):
were like, hey, Caleb, get over here. And this bear
he comes out of the woods and he starts kind
of almost wallowing, you know, or wallering or wallowing however
you like to say it. But it's not even hot out.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
It's overcast. It's pretty chilly. So I don't know why
he did this, but he was. He started rolling his
face in this marshy sponge sponge waterlow place.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
You know, he started rolling his face around. Pretty soon
he's on his back, rolling around. He's rolling, but he
paid a lot of attention, like with rolling his face,
you know, back and forth. And I don't know if
he just got stung by a thousand bees, if he
got a b nest or something, or maybe he was
just trying to freshen up. But we put a spotter
(30:23):
on him and so we kind of kicked him back
and forth. Yeah, he's a mature bear, you know, how
big izzy. You know, bears, you just really got to
study him. They're hard to judge. But he had a big,
old punkin head and his ears were way on the side,
they weren't on top. That's a kind of a tell
tale judging bears. You know, if they're up the ears
are positioned on top of the head and looked kind
of tall or long, that's a young bear. If they're
(30:45):
off to the side, you know, a long distance in
between them and they look short, you know, that's a
telltale that's more of a mature bear. So we sat
there and watched him for a while and Caleb's like,
I think he's a five and a half foot.
Speaker 2 (30:58):
Six foot type bear.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
So we're looking and he's like, you can take him
if you want. But I wasn't sure, you know. I
was like, wow, are we going to find a seven
foot in here somewhere? I mean, you know there are
big bears, that's the area is known for really big
black bears. But this bear's no slouch, just pretty nice. So, man,
that thing is out in the open for a really
long time. And I kind of kick the can around
(31:22):
a little bit and I don't know if I'll shoot him,
I don't know. And then I started he's kind of
wandering off. I'm like, I think I'm going to call
to him. I'm like, hey, look, would it be okay
if I call? He said, yeah, go ahead, knock yourself out.
So I start calling to this bear with a bear
cub in distress sound and stops in Deadney's tracks, and
(31:44):
he turns around and faces us and comes towards us
a little ways. I'm like, oh man, this is gonna work.
And at that moment in my mind, I'm like, I'm
gonna shoot this bear because I'm gonna call it in right.
But then he kind of got so then I get
on the gun and get tried to get ready and
I'm arranging stuff. This time he was probably three fifty
three hundred and fifty yards and getting all my scope
(32:05):
dialed and everything, getting a good solid rest. It wasn't
a great place to try to shoot for him, but
I found a good solid rest.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
And I kept calling, kept calling it.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
And then I remember your podcast with Fred Eichler and
he said, just keep calling, calling calls because bears lose
interest quickly. So I just kept calling, calling it. And
we were on a ridge that was fairly open. It
wasn't a timber ridge. There was a lot of open stuff,
and I don't think that bear seeing any black black blobs.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
Running around rolling around up there.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
You know, there was no motion, you know that he
could see, and he's just like, I don't think so.
So then he turned around kind of will started watering
back off, you know, feeding here and there.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
And then.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
By the time he got into the timber, I had
finally got a really good rock solid rest. I'm like, ah,
dang it, I don't think I'm gonna get this thing.
So we were watching him in this brush and you
could just see little bits and pieces of black, and
I thought, well, if I get a good clear shot,
i'm gonna I'm gonna take a shot. So he gets
(33:09):
He finally wanders around in there and kind of gets
broadside and it's pretty open in the timber.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
It looks good. I don't see any major obstructions. So
get on the gun. I'm on the gun. Squeeze squeeze, squeeze, squeeze.
Speaker 1 (33:22):
Gun goes off. Boom. I just know I just killed
this thing right boom. CALLB says, you missed, And my
what it was a really good squeeze, Like how there's
no way, So of course, you know, I put another
another round in and look and through the scope and
he's gone like right at the shot, you know, as
soon as the bullet hit then he ran.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
Caleb said, yeah, I seen the bullet impact. He's like,
he didn't hit but we better go look, So we
go over there. I'm like, man, stupid me.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
I'm just mad at myself because we had all the
time in the world to shoot this bear in the
wide open at three hundred and fifty yards three hundred
and fifty to four hundred. I shot at for eighty
in the timber, but it looked open to me. Well
we get over there, Oh yeah, there's a pretty good older.
Speaker 2 (34:14):
Limb with a bullet hit it. With a bullet hit it.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
So that's what we're blaming on the myths. But I
blame myself more than anything for not getting on the
gun sooner, being a little more you know, decisive, and
maybe making my having my mind made up a little
better of really what I wanted to come home with.
He was a beautiful bear, great bear. I would have
(34:39):
been happy with him. I should have just made that
decision a little earlier. And maybe I should have had
that pre that decision made before we ever gotten the
situation where I had to you know, you know, think
about it, like I should have just been like, yep,
if it's this, I'm going to shoot it. But I
didn't do that, and I think, you know, I can
only blame myself because I didn't get that bear. I'd
(35:00):
blame you too, I know you would, Yeah, because that's
what friends are for, right, they tear you down.
Speaker 3 (35:06):
I'm here to let you know. I'd blame you. That's
a bummer. You a way to Alaska.
Speaker 4 (35:11):
You know, not that anything Alaska is necessarily a slam dunk,
but you know an area like that that typically with
snowlines in, you know, in the right place, you probably
got high densities, and then just for it to come down,
that's a bummer. And then I think you had what
three or four days left where you just sat under
a tarp and tried to see the rain for four
days straight.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
So up until that point, right up until I pulled
the trigger, the weather been pretty good. I mean we'd
had a little bit of rain, but nothing to really
be poopoo about. But right after I pulled the trigger
and we go over there, it started raining and wind.
It started blowing pretty.
Speaker 2 (35:44):
Good in it.
Speaker 1 (35:47):
Typical Alaska fashion, you know, it rained off and on
a lot. For the next duration of the hunt, we
saw probably five bears total in the area. I just
think I think there's a lot of bears there. They're
just not right in that very spot. But it's funny,
you know, we that bear there, you know, we turn
our back and a bear walks out.
Speaker 2 (36:08):
If we had kept walking up the help, we had
never seen that thing.
Speaker 3 (36:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
In another instance, same thing.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
We were walking to one of our perches that we'd
like to set sit down, and Caleb's like, I'm gonna
walk back to camp and get our freeze dried food,
you know, our peak freeze dried food and my cooker.
Let's just stay here for the day. So he turned
We'd only been there ten minutes. He turns around, walks back,
comes round back. There's a bear right here, like literally
(36:35):
the same type of thing. It's like, we turned around,
we're facing a different direction. If we would to walk
twenty yards back the other way, we'd have seen this
bear walking through the opening. And I we got over
there and seen him and it was a really small bear.
Speaker 4 (36:47):
But yeah, we had a lot of that too, where
just slight angle changes, like Tyson couldn't see the same
opening that I could see and I couldn't see the
same ones he could, And if you just weren't in
the right spot at the right time, or if you
(37:07):
weren't Like this is what drives me nuts because I'm
a I'm a math guy right in a statics as
you know, statistics stattician.
Speaker 3 (37:16):
Yeah, I'm a stattician while I'm out there.
Speaker 4 (37:18):
But what frustrates me is when you finally do spot
a bear and you realize that you had like fifteen
seconds of seeing it before it was gone and would
have never been seen again. You're like, I can't even
as I got my eye glued to a spotting scope
or into my binoculars, Like, there's lots of fifteen seconds
times where I'm not looking at the best spots right right,
And you're like, so what It starts to drive me
(37:40):
nuts and frustrate me, Like are there bears walking through
the whole time and we're just not picking them up?
Speaker 2 (37:45):
Yeah? Yeah, I wondered that too. That was good because
we had three eyes on stuff, you know, camera guy
Daniel he was he was scanning stuff, and Klew was scanning.
I was scanning.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
And then but you know, you know, if you're looking
in the wrong opening at the wrong time.
Speaker 2 (38:04):
You're going to miss them. You're just gonna miss them,
I thing. But yeah, there's the rain rolled in.
Speaker 1 (38:09):
So we would we'd hunt till eleven thirty, you know,
get back to camp, eat something real quick, go to
bed at midnight, and sleep in because bears aren't super
active in the morning even there, so we'd sleep in
and then we'd we'd have get up, have breakfast, sit
around bs, shoot the breeze for a while, have something,
(38:31):
have a top Brahmin or something, and then head out
for you know, tell tell us bedtime.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
You know.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
We'd spend the rest of the afternoon, evening, night, you know,
out and you know, up there you can hunt twenty
four hours a day if you want. You just can't
use artificial light, which is crazy to me, but it
wasn't a slam dunk. By hunting late like that, you know,
either they're moving or they're not. Usually a bunch of
rain would move in and we just sit there under
a tarp. Pro tip if you're hunting Alaska, carry an
(39:01):
ultra light tarp with you at all times. That way,
when it starts raining, you just pop that baby up
and get under it and that way you can stick
stick around.
Speaker 2 (39:10):
But man, we we.
Speaker 1 (39:12):
Logged some serious hours glassing and we hiked around a bit,
you know. We we got to the points like, all right,
we're gonna do that Hail Mary hunt to that bear
and that and that shoot the avalanche shoot we saw,
you know, a long ways away. So we hiked and
it reminds me of pictures videos I've seen of like
the Oregon coast or western Washington coast, you know, type
(39:36):
of rainforest similar to some of the North Idaho stuff,
except there was tons of Devil's club and uh and
raspberry BlackBerry brush I don't know what it was, and
it see no berries, but it was just poky, a
lot of pokey crap, you know, and we just you know,
I decided to wear waiters that day because my waiting
(39:57):
pants because everything had been.
Speaker 2 (39:58):
So fricking wet.
Speaker 1 (40:00):
So we trudged through the rainforest and then stupid waiters,
I mean they are awesome though they kept me dry
the whole time.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
Shout out to the waiter people.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
But man, we slogged through that stuff and that forest
and wind falls and up and down swamps and we
got way over there and then we just found out
that there was just no way to ever look into
that avalanche shoot close up, and in fact, if you
were even standing in it. You know, the brush is
(40:32):
super tall, you know, someplaces ten feet tall. Some little
openings are open enough where you could see, but there
was no if you were standing on one side of
it and the bear was on the other, there was
no way you.
Speaker 2 (40:41):
Ever see it.
Speaker 1 (40:42):
So we turned around. That little recon mission kind of failed,
but it was a good hike. You know, we've seen
some pretty country. Was what was weird though. I thought
I would see lots of little wildlife, wild creatures living,
you know, But man, we saw one coyote and bears
and that's that's all we saw in the land. A
(41:04):
lot of seagulls flying around. And let me tell you what,
if you don't like the sound of squirrels chirping, wait
till you hear lots of seagulls squawking constantly.
Speaker 2 (41:14):
Man, those things are obnoxious.
Speaker 1 (41:16):
I almost like, I asked Caleb several times, can I
do I get a seagull tag? He said, no, you
can't shoot seagulls. But then things were so terribly obnoxious.
But then, since we wanted to kind of branch out
becoming The outfitter came and dropped off a boat for us,
a little I want to call those a little zodiac,
(41:39):
if you will. And we got on that thing and
talk about feeling sketchy being out in the ocean on
a little rubber rafts with a motor on the back,
with a I think it was like a fifteen horse motor.
Speaker 2 (41:52):
It was a little bit unnerving for somebody's never done that,
you know. Didn't like it, no, And it was it
rains so much.
Speaker 1 (42:00):
We'd have to constantly bail the bail the boat out
every time you'd stop and go hunting for a while,
and we'd go hunt for a few hours. We'd come
back that boat would be full of water, so then
we'd have.
Speaker 2 (42:09):
To drain it and all that.
Speaker 1 (42:10):
And this one time we went up went up this
cool river drainage and we get way up in there
and we hunted for a long time. And this was
like the second to the last day, and it was like,
you know, we're in we're in go time now. It's
like we're gonna hunt all day. Rain, shine don't matter.
(42:31):
So we were out in the in the rain all
freaking day and got soaked. But when we get back
to the boat at eleven o'clock at night, then it's
plump full of water. So we have to we have
to drag it uphill to get it to where you
can drain into the you know, drain the water out.
So the bank is super super steep, so we drained uphill,
(42:53):
drain it, put the plug back in, and then get in.
It's like all right, everybody load up and we load up.
Caleb starts ranking on the motor won't start.
Speaker 2 (43:02):
We flooded it.
Speaker 1 (43:05):
To the point where like, I don't know if it's
flooded or maybe something else is going on here. So
we're calling the outfitter and he's like, well, can I
land my plane somewhere close by? And we're like no,
cause he's not He don't have a he don't have
a pontoon plane or whatever he's got the other kind
of thing. There's nowhere to land and he maybe hoofing it.
We'll give it some time here. I'm like, I bet
(43:26):
it's just flooded. So we gave it some time and
finally it started and we were able to go back.
Speaker 2 (43:31):
But yeah, it was cool.
Speaker 1 (43:33):
There was there was glaciers out there in the ocean.
We could see you know, we're not too far from
a giant glacier, you know that, but there are not glaciers.
But there was icebergs out in the ocean, you know,
floating around. And there was this little point during low tide
that the channel got pretty narrow and man, there were
fricking sea otters everywhere. I never you know, I'd like,
(43:55):
how many sea otters are there? Oh, there's the pretty
common man. There was a couple of hundred them. It
looked like just black dots everywhere out there, and that's
where the channel kind of got narrowing.
Speaker 2 (44:05):
Then things are weird. They're they're not that scared.
Speaker 1 (44:08):
You can just run right up to them, and you know,
they're they're kind of a cool little animal.
Speaker 2 (44:12):
They're protected.
Speaker 1 (44:13):
You know, I think only people that can can shoot them,
or natives, but these little guys, they just they they
lay lay on their back most of the time and
just kind of do the backstroke and paddle around like
like they're just lounging around eat.
Speaker 4 (44:25):
Little shellfish off their belly like you see on the
at the zoo.
Speaker 5 (44:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
Yeah, and this one is like, what the heck's going on?
Speaker 1 (44:32):
We got up close and I got the by noose
on it, and I was like, it's some weird there's
two of them.
Speaker 2 (44:37):
Well, I had his baby on it.
Speaker 1 (44:39):
Well, the baby's head was almost as big as the
mama's head, but it just it's whiskers weren't as whiskery.
It's just kind of a real fuzzy head, but its
body completely covered. The mom's body is like these things
float around so good, but they're.
Speaker 4 (44:53):
Pretty fun to watch. Yeah, that sounds it sounds awesome. Yeah,
definitely an experience bummer. On the the shop, we got
to see a lot of cool stuff and got the
spring bear and a new New state.
Speaker 3 (45:04):
They had never been to, so that's that's always fun.
Speaker 2 (45:06):
Yeah, yeah, and we man the view from camp was amazing.
Speaker 1 (45:11):
You know, we could look across this big long bay,
you know, look at the mountain range across you could
see you could see where the glaciers have melted in
the last thirty years where you know. Caleb was like, yeah,
you know, thirty years ago that was all glacier over there,
it's all gone. You could see how the vegetation had
there's no trees, but it was all brushed. Now you
(45:31):
could see that line where it had melted, and man,
it was the most beautiful, one of the most well,
it was the most beautiful camps.
Speaker 2 (45:39):
I'd ever I've ever had.
Speaker 1 (45:41):
And then then we get back to civilizations, like, well,
the hunt's over. When we get back to Valdez and
we're like, all right, it's time to go home.
Speaker 2 (45:50):
Cool.
Speaker 1 (45:51):
Well, the plane for a anchorage is like, we can't come.
We got we have to delay.
Speaker 2 (45:57):
There's too much.
Speaker 1 (45:57):
Fog to land, and Caldi's and then okay, we're gonna come.
So they fly and they get over there, they turn around,
they can't land, there's too much fog. So the next day,
too much fog. Same thing. It's like on day three,
we're like, we got to get home. So the buddy
that had the boat that took us out, he was
(46:20):
a buddy of the outfitter. So the outfitter said, hey,
you know anybody that's heading the anchorage driving the anchorage
And he's like, yeah, I am. Actually he's like, hey,
can we hitch or ride? These guys hitch your ride
with you. So we hitched a ride. Is a five
hour drive to anchorage, which turned out to be I
don't know, I think it was almost better than the
plane ride, because man, we got to see a lot
(46:40):
of the interior.
Speaker 2 (46:41):
You know, just beautiful, beautiful, cry beautiful.
Speaker 1 (46:45):
Through the Copper Copper River area, which is you know,
world renown for moose hunting, and it looks it's just
you know, picturesque moose country.
Speaker 3 (46:55):
I thought you were going to say it's world renowned
for its tasty salmon. Salmon.
Speaker 1 (47:00):
Oh maybe so and back. You know, Jason wanted to
alask Was that last year?
Speaker 3 (47:06):
Last year? Yeah? Four?
Speaker 2 (47:08):
And you said the the state bird was the mosquito.
Speaker 3 (47:12):
Yeah, miss it is.
Speaker 2 (47:14):
I even't bought mosquito nets. I bought a mosquito net
for my head. I bought a mosquito net for my body,
like a jacket for your body.
Speaker 3 (47:20):
I want to see you. I want to see you
in a mosquito net.
Speaker 2 (47:25):
That's all that was wearing, is a mosquito net. Yes, anyway, anyway.
Speaker 3 (47:33):
I heard.
Speaker 1 (47:34):
I only used it a couple of times, and it
wasn't for mosquitoes, as these other little bugs that fly
around and get in your face, try to fly in
your nose and your eyes, but mosquito, like, I had
way more mosquitos here in Idaho than I've had up there.
I think it was just timing was off, you know,
which was good because I I'm more scarce Mosquitos and
the Grizzlies bearers.
Speaker 4 (47:52):
Honestly, Yeah, we got I was riding, you know, we'd
be riding the fouriller and uh, you'd have the ding
just after we killed the sheep. We hung around and
things will be able to fly and keep up with
you and still somehow get inside your you know, face
mask or inside your hood or whatever you had on them.
Speaker 2 (48:09):
This is terrible, man, and I'm glad I didn't have
it that bad.
Speaker 4 (48:12):
But yeah, yeah, here's a here's a little plug, a
little shout out that hunt is going to launch this Sunday,
that is twenty second, So you're gonna be listening to
this on the nineteenth. In three days, you can go
check out that hunt on Krispy's Youth Chrispi's YouTube channel.
Speaker 2 (48:26):
Oh oh your sheep hunt?
Speaker 3 (48:27):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, the one we're talking about. Yeah, just
a little shameless plug there.
Speaker 1 (48:30):
Yeah, Sunday, the twenty second. I don't know what time
did he ever say?
Speaker 3 (48:34):
Just probably in the evening, I'm guessing.
Speaker 4 (48:37):
Yeah, Well, if you go in the evening, it'll be
there whether it's launched early, it'll be there by Sunday evening,
So that's.
Speaker 2 (48:42):
A Saunday evening.
Speaker 3 (48:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (48:43):
Yeah, And just to let you know, if you want
to win some cool crap, I think there's like thirty
nine hundred. I think there's over four thousand dollars in
cool gear. They're giving away sign up to win.
Speaker 3 (48:56):
You know.
Speaker 2 (48:56):
We got loop pulled Optics, we got I think there's
a there's a there's a pack in there, there's there's
some calls. I think we're gonna do a call package,
carbon Tube.
Speaker 1 (49:08):
I'm gonna have some first like gear. We're gonna have
f HF Bino Harness, some Crispy boots.
Speaker 2 (49:15):
Yeah, it's gonna be.
Speaker 3 (49:16):
A knife companies.
Speaker 4 (49:18):
We kind of did the giveaway what I used on
that sheep, what I had on, what I used, what
I wore, Yeah, sort of a package.
Speaker 2 (49:25):
Yeah, so that'll be that'll be really cool. Yeah, and
I think and we both have seen the film, the
final product. Our buddy Dusty Roup did the edit on it.
Speaker 1 (49:36):
David Frame filmed it, Dusty edited it, and it turned
out really good.
Speaker 3 (49:40):
Yeah, really good.
Speaker 2 (49:41):
Made me look like a like a cool guy.
Speaker 3 (49:43):
Yeah, yeah, a guy that really knew what he was doing.
Speaker 4 (49:45):
Sheep, yeah, sheep expert. Well we we made it fifty
minutes into this thing. I think we might need to
save the bowls and bs for later. This might just
be a Barry cap.
Speaker 1 (49:55):
Yeah, we might have to. Yeah, we have some pretty
fun stuff planned for the all. I can't wait. And yeah,
we should probably save that for another one. That way
we can, we can, we can talk about death and yeah,
a little bit more.
Speaker 4 (50:09):
Yeah, well yeah, no, it's I think draws are all
done now besides Montana Antelope, which uh.
Speaker 2 (50:16):
I thought they just came out.
Speaker 3 (50:18):
No, so the nine hundred Dash twenty comes out in
mid June.
Speaker 4 (50:22):
The actual like special units don't come out until early July.
Speaker 3 (50:26):
Gotcha, guys, all I thought.
Speaker 4 (50:28):
They came out to Some guys were posting like I
do my Antelope tag? Will I go and jump on?
I'm like Montana forgot me, Like, hey, you guys forgot
to put my name in the.
Speaker 3 (50:36):
Draw, you know.
Speaker 4 (50:37):
And then I went to some reading just the nine
hundred Dash twenty because it must be a really early start.
Speaker 3 (50:42):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (50:42):
I remember that now because I remember.
Speaker 1 (50:44):
The last time I applied, and it was like it
was like almost antelope season when you find out like
Montana likes to hold that money.
Speaker 4 (50:51):
Oh yeah, I'm gonna sends you threw me under the
bus a little bit. I'm gonna throw a Dirk under
the bus a little bit. So Dirk's and Idaho resident.
He has a lot of antelope points, and so me
and Dirk build this like elaborate content plan right like
where we're gonna try to get tags, like where we
have good odds so we can start to plan this. So, Dirk,
what are your chances to draw on your Montana antelope
(51:11):
tag with your six points?
Speaker 3 (51:13):
This year?
Speaker 2 (51:13):
They're having a leftover drawing.
Speaker 4 (51:16):
So you're gonna be in the leftover drawing, not the
And then so I know they they dropped a big
early like Idaho for the first time, and ever decides
they're gonna draw like in June and not in July
and give you some time. So I Idaho surprisingly comes up,
like however to get in? So I got in snuck
in like real early, like dang it, not selected, not selected.
(51:37):
I drew for the you know, shot for the stars.
So I catch up with Dirk later like what do
you draw?
Speaker 3 (51:44):
I forgot to put in. That's his own state. That's
just like that's his back door.
Speaker 1 (51:49):
I know, I know, And like the last day was.
Whenever I'm traveling home from Alaska, I'm like, oh, yeah,
I'll apply in Portland. When on my layover, I get
to Portland and oh, my connecting flight is just in
time for me to run over to the next gate.
But this is like, this is all an excuse because
that was the last day. I should have plied on
the first day.
Speaker 4 (52:08):
But so so long story short, I've now built Dirk
a calendar with all the reminders put in, and he'll
never miss another date.
Speaker 3 (52:17):
I got blamed for all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 2 (52:19):
Hey, I got in for Colorado this year. You know
that's last year. Last year he didn't hold my hand
and tell me to play.
Speaker 6 (52:26):
And I I do feel a little bit guilty because
of what I usually do is I'll tell Dirk like
two weeks until such and such do and I know
he's gonna forget, and so I should take responsibility and
give him another reminder like three days away, versus like
this year, I forgot to give that, like second reminder
did you put in for Arizona?
Speaker 3 (52:46):
Deer?
Speaker 2 (52:47):
I don't think I have any points oh no, no,
Arizona Deer point just out.
Speaker 3 (52:51):
Yeah, that was the last one.
Speaker 4 (52:52):
That just I'm like, I forgot to remind you that too,
because I think you were in bear hunting, which wouldn't
be no good.
Speaker 2 (52:57):
I don't think. I don't think I've ever applied for
Arizona Deer.
Speaker 3 (53:00):
Yeah, no, I had to.
Speaker 4 (53:01):
I have to give you a little bit of a
hard time on your application strategy this year. It's real,
it's real tough to draw if you don't put in dirt.
Speaker 1 (53:09):
Well, hey, listen, I don't know, I know, like in
your world of work. I know, as a general manager,
I know you're probably just sitting around drinking lattes and
you know, you know, smoking cigars and having you know,
at four thirty every day you have a bourbon, you know.
For for us in the marketing department, we've been busy,
all right.
Speaker 2 (53:29):
You know.
Speaker 1 (53:29):
I've been building, you know, filling in spreadsheets, been building
building all this this marketing plan out. I've been making assets.
I've been editing my butt off. I've been you know,
that's good hunting. I've been, I mean.
Speaker 4 (53:42):
Just doing it all basically carrying the carrying, the carrying,
the whole team I.
Speaker 2 (53:45):
Don't even sleep at night. I mean, I've been working
so much.
Speaker 4 (53:49):
So no, no, no, you have been crushing on the
marketing side. We're we're having a heck of a year
and new products are doing good, so appreciate that. But
I think I think we save all of our our
upcoming hunts and this will give me some time to
like dig up some dirt on you and cacheade over
whatever you got going on, and how it's a rig
season and if you do better than me, it's because
(54:10):
of the hunts you got coming up.
Speaker 1 (54:11):
And yeah, I hope, so I hope we can do that,
maybe maybe be really good. I mean, when we go
moose hunting, you're gonna get to shoot first, as long
as it's not big.
Speaker 4 (54:22):
So all right, well, no, thank you for for jumping
on here doing the bear hunt recap.
Speaker 3 (54:32):
Thanks for running this show.
Speaker 4 (54:33):
So now you're responsible for the description and all the
stuff that gets this thing to air.
Speaker 2 (54:39):
Oh yeah, you're welcome. Yeah, and I probably have to
wrap it up to hunts.
Speaker 4 (54:42):
I got a bourbon, I got a bourbon. Call my
name here, so I gotta go get.
Speaker 2 (54:47):
The cigars and all the other you know, fat cat stuff.
All you executives have yeah.
Speaker 4 (54:53):
Yeah, So we'll take everybody thanks for listening to cutting
the distance, and until next time, we'll see it then
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