Welcome to This Country Life. I'm your host, Brent Rieves from coon hunting to trot lining and just general country living.
I want you to stay a.
While as I share my stories and the country skills that will help you beat the system. This Country Life is proudly presented as part of Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you the best outdoor podcast.
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All right, friends, pull you up a chair or drop that tailgate. I think I got a thing or two the teacher Canadian chocolate. I love it when a plan comes together. It's even better when it comes together early. We're leaving the pressure and allowing the opportunity to relax and just enjoy the time allotted with new friends. We're in the land of bears, perogis and the kindest folks you'll ever meet, and I'm going to tell you all about them. But first I'm going to tell you a story.
This story was sent in by Ryan Prochs, who rambles around in Nelson County, Virginia. It's about three generations and shows how even the youngest hunter in the group can sometimes add the most. In Ryan's words, in my voice, here we go. On May twenty twenty my dad Fredday, and I decided to take my three year old son land In Turkey him. Now, we were heading to a place I had permission to hunt that was beautiful in
Nelson County, Virginia. So we pulled up to a little meadow just through the gate at the bottom of the property. It was such a pretty place, with a nice little cabin, a pond, and a couple acre field at the base of a steep mountain. Now we ended up getting there an hour or so after daylight because my wife says it's never good to wake asleep, and Toddler and I
tend to agree with her. Now Landing at the time is completely obsessed with four wheelers, so the first thing he does when we get out of the truck is run back to the trailer and climb up on the back of the ATV. I figured if the turkeys weren't doing much, we could always spend a morning in the mouths, just riding around, maybe a little fishing or another one of his favorite hobbies, which was catching lizards and snakes.
Now I'd given him a box call that I'd gotten from a National Wild Turkey Federation bank with a couple of weeks ago prior to the hunt, just to let him play with He was actually pretty good with it. As soon as we got there, he was sitting on that four wheeler messing with that box call and not doing bad with it. While me and my dad were putting on all our gear. Suddenly, way off in the distance, I thought I heard a gobble. I froze, and I told Landon do that again. He did, and sure enough,
several hundred yards away one hammer. I quickly realized we were a pickle. We were on the edge of a medal with a truck, a trailer, a four wheeler, and three people that looked nothing like a flock of hens. I knew I had best get to the other edge of that field before that turkey did, where he would see what was going down. And as I was thinking that, my dad said, boy, you better get to the edge before he does. And with that I told them to stay there and for Landing to keep doing what he
was doing. I quickly made my way across the field while putting my mask and my gloves on. The Whole time he was gobbling and getting closer. I was in a race. I made it to an old lapidated fence row fifteen yards from the edge of the tree line and hopped into what I soon found out was a big old briar patch.
I loaded my shotgun, set.
It up on my knee, and within twenty seconds here he came, stretching his neck up.
Over that ridge.
I settled a beat on his head and hit him with some remedy to nitrol number fours, and he hit the ground.
I stood up in a state.
Of disbelief, not believing what had just happened, and I turned around to see my son and my dad walking through that field headed my way. What a beautiful sight. We all walked up to that old gobbler together, which was and still is my biggest to date, a twenty five pounds stud and my dad and I were speechless and overcome with joy. We were high fiving and hugging and telling Landing what a huge deal this was, and
that he had called him in all by hisself. Neither my dad nor I ever touched a call.
That morning.
Landing walked up to Turkey, you've been down and he studied it for a few seconds, and then he stood up and said, can we.
Ride the four wheeler now? I told him we sure can.
Buddy, that was the day I'll never forget and one I'll always be thankful for.
What a blessing to share that moment with my son and my dad.
Well, we appreciate you sharing that story with us. And according to Ryan, that's just how that happened. If you haven't noticed that, I was blessed to bring home a big color phace black bear from Canada recently, I applaud your ability to stay off your phone and sparse out your time on social media. Now, if you did catch one of the six million pictures I and others posted about it, Here's the story of that hunt and some
context on that grand adventure I recently participated in. Better yet, the grand and benture in which I recently participated thanks to missus Mary Cupp, my twelfth grade English teacher. She taught both my older brothers too. She was diminutive in stature, but an absolute giant in teaching me the correct way to write a story. She'd be looking at me over her glasses right now by ending a sentence with a preposition.
I owe her a lot, and I find myself seeking her approval even now when I sat down to write these stories. Even though she's long passed away. Thanks miss Cupp, you're still teaching me. Also, hang on because you know I write like I talk, So I hope you're grading on the curve up there. Anyway, last week, my buddy David McDaniels and my new friend Logan Ingram and yours truly let out for the Riding Mountains of Central Manitoba to hunt with Craig and Melanie McCarthy at their outfit
and concern called North Mountains. Twenty one hours of driving later, I was introduced to Hayden and Kirsten, the MacArthur youngins, both of which were eager to meet and talk to us. And now I was impressed with their manners, how they conducted themselves and around adults and people they'd only just met. I'll tell you more about them in a later episode. Suffice it to say these kids were an accurate barometer of how the week would play out and how this
family lives their lives close to the Canadian wilderness. The respectful reverend and with humility, and I felt at home immediately. I also felt excited because I loved to hunt bears, I love to talk about bears. I loved to eat bears. I love everything about bears, and these folks are in the bear business. And this wasn't my first trip to the land of maple leaves and hockey pucks. It was my fourth trip north of the border, but my first to Manitoba. That place looked like home to me, Saskatchewan
in British Columbia. They're beautiful in there in their own way. But I was drawn to this land with a subtle familiarness. It was big country that was for the most part flat as a flitter and broken up by wooded streams, rivers and roe crop farms. It reminded me of the Arkansas delta dirt that looked like PLoud dark chocolate, and you just knew it would be cool to the touch,
even on the hottest days. Cattail ringed potholes dotted the landscape, and mallard ducks and Canada geese, blue winged teal sand hill cranes were a daily attraction as we made our way to and from Camp. Kyots, turkeys, coons, big coons like forty plus pound coons lived there. How I'd love to cut old waving and loosen them bottles and see how quick he could put one of those fat rascals up a tree. They've got swamps too, big beaver ponds, and absolute trappers paradise. More on that in a later
episode two. Right now, my focus was bears. Might as well get this part over with. There'll be some folks who don't like a baited bear hunt, and that's one hundred percent fine with me, But I have no interest in hearing these opinions. Send them to somebody else. Baiting bears is a tool that allows the hunter to confirm the maturity and sex of the bears, so the young ones or the sows with cubs aren't targeted. There are a million more folks more articulate than I am that
have presented that argument from day one. I'm not going to repeat it here. It's legal, it's ethical, and it's nowhere near automatic. Also, my primary reason for hunting a bear is to kill him and take him home to eat and render his fat for cooking healthier organic meals than I provide for my family. Any advantage I can give myself an accomplishing that task as well.
Now it's enough of that.
Bears hit baits around the clock, but the best time to get set up for them is in the early afternoon. Time is most dependent on where you are as far as the latitude goes on the spinning orb of ores and three thirty PM seem to work for me for leaving the cabin, I'd be sitting and ready to roll with a fresh dose of beaver meat and grain at the bait by four fifteen on the first afternoon shooting light would be over a little after ten pm. That still makes for quite a long sit. Six hours in
a tree is a pretty good pull. And if you're hunting bears, the big ones normally don't get there to the last fifteen or twenty minutes of light. They're like big bucks and a gold nocturnal. The reason the last hour of daylight hunting is usually known as the golden ire. Now when you're bear hunting, you could narrow it down even further to the golden twenty minutes or less. The name Riding Mountain is believed to be derived from a Cree Indian name meaning hill of the buffalo chase. How
cool is that? I love learning about the history of any place I'm fortunate enough to be able to hunt. My mind wanders to earlier times and I try to imagine what it must have looked like to those folks who called this place home and how important hunting and trapping was to their survival. Connection to the land is important to me, and I don't take any place for granted. We owe it to those who roam there first to keep their memories alive by being good stewards of the land,
especially when we're only visiting. Like my friend Doug Darren says, it's not ours, it's just our turn.
Now.
The bears started in early that evening six point fifteen, two hours after I'd settled in. I was looking at some prime examples of Ursus americ common. They were in just about every direction, and I look sitting on the bait is also a great way to observe bear behavior.
And how they interact to each other.
The sounds emitted by them are incredible, varied, and somewhat intimidating at times. Now. I didn't witness any show enough knockdown dragouts, but the boys did get a little grumpy about sharing at times, and contrary to what you might think, the biggest bear ain't always in charge. All through the afternoon and evening, I watched one particular color faced bear, chocolate colored bear run others away from the barrel with bluff charges, popping his jaws and woofing. That reminded me
of the fellow with a Napoleon complex. He was making up for his lack of size by being the toughest kid.
On the block and work most of the time.
Occasionally, a larger bear would stroll in and the class bully would retreat without making a sound or offering any resistance. This let me know that they'd already established who was a boss between the two of them, long before they met in front of me that evening. I've witnessed barfights before,
real ones. They escalate quickly and are extremely violent. Those played out in front of me and another part of Canada on multiple occasions, and I was sitting on the ground with them as it happened, hoping they just ignored me when it was all over. You know how it is, the guy that loses is embarrassed and mad and looks around at the gauking crowd yelling what are you looking at? At the first guy he knows he can walk. I didn't want to be that guy he picked out and challenged.
Admittedly the crowd. I was sitting in watching the pugilistic endeavor was pretty thin, consistent only of me and Clay Ichi the turkey calling contest nukem. But then as abruptly as they start, they're usually over. They know who won, and each goes about their business as if nothing really happened, kind of like a Major League base ball when a good hitter hits homer off a good picture, the hitter runs the bases, goes back to the dug out without show bolting, or he can rest assured if he does.
Next time he steps in the box, the posing picture is going to put a heater in his ear. Sometimes you eat the bear, sometimes the bear eats you. I can't remember where I heard that, but it was probably at a bear bait said by bear, probably the same bear that said if attacked by a bear, you should lay down and play dead. That's just so you'll have some practice when it happens for real a few minutes later.
But from where I sat, the bait was less than twenty yards away in an opening no bigger than a fifteen by fifteen room. The aspen and maple trees, along with the bushes that grow there, thick and lush with new spring leaves. It's pretty close quarters, and for good reason. Big bears feel more secure in tight spaces. They have avenues of escape and they can slip in undetected by other bears that may be bigger than them. There's always someone bigger and batter. The big ones know this, and
they get to be old bears because of it. Bears don't like to fight, and they only do it when threatening, when it's absolutely necessary. They know that injury is weakness, and weakness is hunger and death in nature. If they can posture well enough to get their bluff in on whatever is causing the problem, they'll they'll let it go with that. The trails coming into the bait were virtually
indistinguishable from the rest of the woods. They were more like open top tunnels and passageways with only opening to fully see in size of the bears being at the barrel itself. Now you could get glimpses of them through holes in the bushes as they approached, but take them a shot anywhere other than at the bait was out of the question. With the boat, and that's what I like to hunt with. I'd already determined that none of the bears that were hitting. The bait were bigger than
the bears I had at home. They were all getting to pass. On opening day, I pictured in my mind having a slingshot and drilling that chocolate in his ham with a rock, just to let some of the others have a bite. When through an opening up the hill, I saw two bears. First, I thought they were fighting. Turns out that fighting was the last thing they had on their mind. That couples out on the date, which coincides with this time of year when sal's come in heat.
The receptive sal can be better than bait any day. The dominant bore in the area will check her out if he's close. And I had two things going for me. There salth coming in season and the bear bait of six or seven different bears that had been using it on and off all evening. I started calling the color bear Choco Taco. Now, I'm not a wild animal namer. I've never given a bucket name that I was after. I think it's dumb. I think deers should be called
deer because that's that's what they are. I only care about knowing the name of someone if I'm going to hold a conversation with him. Or avoid here's an example. I'd like to meet Frank. He seems like someone i'd like to know. Or Oh Lord, here comes Frank, let's get out here. He is not someone i'd like to know. But this bear was a regular at the bait and comical in his defense of what he thought was his.
He'd been there all evening. He was the first in and would grab a chunk of frozen beaver and walk out in the woods to gnaw on it. Or, as Miss Coope would say, out into the woods he'd walk with a frozen beaver on which to naw. Oh my gosh, I wish I could hear her say that I love you, Miss Cope. Chako Taco had ventured out from the bait for the upteenth time and had been replaced by a bigger bear who fancied himself a snackerl of beaver and a dip of grease soaked oats. Still not what I
was after, though. My eyes drifted back up the hill toward where I had last seen the happy couple. It was getting darker now and was actually prime time for the big boys to show up. Then the barrier the bait got up and left like he'd been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Movement straight out in front of me had me looking over the top and past the bait barrel to a trail that Barris had
been using earlier in the day. My good friend and cameraman David McDaniels was positioned behind me filming the hunt. In the video, you can see me motion to David that I'd seen something there, and I picked up my bow and attached my release to the stream. I was training to see through the woods forty yards away, and I was alerted to the presence of a different barrier the bait when I heard David whisper, that's a big chocolate bear right in front of you.
Grin Now.
I didn't have to do anything other than the lower my gaze, and magically, there he was. How in the world did that joker get there with that eat, seeing or hearing it? I don't know how they move across the landscape and sidly as they do, but they move like poetry and perfect rhythm with the environment, and float through the woods like dust dances in the rays of
sunshine through a window. I waited, and I watched for what seemed like forever, and then he took the final step I needed him to take to.
Stand clear in the open.
I could only see two thirds of him, but it was the part that held his vitals. And I leaned over just a little bit, and I picked out a small spot and was surprised when the air jumped off my strain. I followed the air's path and saw it disappear right where I was aiming. One months later, I heard him crash. Shortly after that, I heard his death moon. Now I have to tell you, the death mon is not something I enjoyed. Here half the bearers I've taken to done it to me. It's raw and emotional and
maybe a little sad. I'm not ashamed to admit that the first time I heard it brought tears in my eyes. I also think that that's a good thing. Hunting is a raw emotional act, and we're driven instinctually to hunt and gather for our families. Taking the life of an animal that's not taking light and it shouldn't be quite quite the opposite that four hundred and forty pounds manitoble BlackBerry will feed my family for months good healthy protein.
The grease rendered from his fat will be cooked with for many months as well, and his hide and skull were hanging my home with reverence, his memory to live within me for as long as I did. The beast as dead long lived.
The beast.
That would be remiss if not taking the opportunity to talk about the outfitters. I'd heard about him ever since David came back from his hunt with him last year. He went on and on about how gracious they were now, just how rock solid of a family they are. David brought home a nice bear from there last year, and I didn't know, but I thought maybe his judgment was biased by his successful trip, that dude wouldn't shut up about him. But David was a pretty good judge of
character if you take me out of the mix. So I booked a hunt along with several other folks in his circle, and from day one it was like rolling into the family hunting camp and seeing folks you only see that time of year. I knew from the moment I met him that he was right and they were good folks. Craig and Mail treated us all like ken.
I tagged that on the first day and spent a lot of time with all the McCarthy's from Craig and Mail to their son Hayden and daughter Kirsten, along with Derek Lammy and ash Nor Shappoo also known as Ash And If that ain't a classic Canadian bush name, I don't know what is. They were good, honest, hard working folks who are let by faith and are shining examples of a family working together for a common gold. It could have been raising chickens and farming like I grew
up doing, or making cabinets in the family shop. It could have been anything. The job didn't matter. What mattered is that they all did it together and supported one another along the way. In this case, it just so happened to be bear hunting, and they do it well. Now that's something special and something I was proud to witness for myself. Check them out at North Mountain Adventures in Oaka River, Manitoba, Canada. That hunt will be on their YouTube channel next year, but go subscribe to their
channel now to see some great content that's already up. Now, I'm gonna leave you with this. It's the first stanza of a poem that reminds me of the McCarthy's, every last one of them, including Derek and Ash as I watched them going about their chores and require task of guiding, entertaining, and caring for hervest game, reminding me of this poem. And it was written by Robert W. Servis, and it's
titled A Busy Man. Here's the first stanza, this crowded life of God's good giving, no man has relished more than I. I've been so gall darned busy living. I've never had the time to die. So busy fishing, hunting, roving up on my toes and fighting fit, so busy singing, laughing, loving, I've never had the time to quit until next week. This is Brent Reeves signing off. Y'all be careful, AD