Backcountry Hunting Using Mules

American wilderness. There, we'll talk about tactics, gear conservation, who will also bring you into some of the wildest country on the planet chasing battery. Thank you for checking out the Bear Hunting Magazine podcast. On this episode, we're talking to about using mules to access the back country. My thirteen year old son and my sixteen year old good friend's son are on the three day Christmas whitetail hunt hunting in Arkansas. Bear live in wild places and it's

an adventure to get to them. Bears are iconic of North American wilderness and part of the adventure of hunting them is getting into wild places. I use a mule and have chosen to use a mule to access wild places, to get deeper, and to stay longer. That is something just in the last few years that I have taken on as a challenge, and I have significantly enjoyed it. I have not enjoyed it because I necessarily think it's the best strategy for taking game back there. I haven't

enjoyed it because it's the easiest. It's actually quite difficult and has complexified my my hunting. It has put this whole other set around my hunting that I truly enjoy in my hunting, I am fine tuning the narrative of how I enjoy hunting and how I want to hunt in unique ways. Hunting with a mule is not necessarily the most efficient way or the only way to access back country, but it's the way that I have chosen

to do it. If my only goal was to get antlers and meat, I would probably take the money and energy that I've invested in these mules and buy lease in Kansas and go up there for you know, a week and have a chance at a really nice buck. I have not chosen to do that. I have chosen to drive and too. Probably some of the most difficult white tail hunting that there is in low density areas, rugged rough mountains, in places where you just don't see many deer. And that's I say that because I live

in northwest Arkansas. I could drive two and a half to three hours and being some of the best tail hunting in the country, and I've never done it. I choose to limit myself and I dear hunt down there quite a bit, and that fits the narrative in the way that I want to and choose to limit myself in hunting, and I do not regret that decision. This whitetail hunt is also directly connected to my public land

bear hunting. I want to make that clear because this is the Bear Hunting Magazine podcast where we talk about strategies for hunting bear and how to get people involved in bear hunting, and well, this white tail hunt takes place in a region of Arkansas that I bear hunt, and so intimately knowing the land is critical for public land bear hunting where we cannot use bait or hounds. But we're just hunting these bears basically like deer and

so on this hunt. Even though we're hunting white tails, bear seasons long over, I am storing up information about the region for where and how I plan to bear hunting next year. Lastly, before we get into the episode, I think appreciating diversity and hunting is critical for the future of our honey. When I say diversity of honting, what I mean is you'll see You'll see videos and here podcasts of me talking about hunting bear over bait, and I love it. I'm passionate about hunting bear over bait.

I think it's a challenge. I think it's a beautiful bear management tool to be selective. I think it is extremely difficult to kill an older, mature mail over bait no matter where you're hunting. I love it. If you pigeon hold me and too thinking that that's all that I appreciated, you would be mistaken. I also love bear hunting with hounds. I think bear hunting with hounds is one of the most underrated, underappreciated, most misunderstood methods of

legal hunting in today's world. Thirdly, I love spotting stock bear hunting. I love spotting stock bear hunting in the West, I love spotting stock bear hunting in the East. And my favorite way to hunt bear right here in my home state of Arkansas is to just go out in the mountains and just hunt them like deer. And I

value and appreciate all those different types of hunting. And I think that sometimes people are so focused on the method that they prefer that they think that that is the moral high ground or the elite way to hunt, and they look negatively, speak never negatively, and look down upon other methods of hunting. That, my friends, is detrimental

to the whole of the hunting community. We have to in twenty nineteen be people that are supportive of all legal methods of hunting, because the anti hunting community is after hunting through incrementalism. Every single thing that they take from us, we have nothing left to give them. Every ele thing that they take from us at this point is a win that is going to contribute to more winds.

And so yeah, it may be bear hunting with hounds today, but in five years, ten years, whatever years, it's gonna be bow hunting. And after that it's gonna be this, and after that it's gonna be that. We live in a critical time and unification is the only way forward. And I stand and speak on behalf of those who are at the bottom of the barrel. Bear hunting is the target of the anti hunting community, and we are rallying all of our brothers inside the hunting community to

just stand for it. And by stand for it, I mean joint organizations that are defending bear hunting. Don't talk negatively, even in your own camps, even in your own families.

Don't disparage people that hunt in different ways than you, but build them up and say, man, we don't hunt that way, but man, ifit's legal and it's conservations based, scientific based, if it's adding mass to the North American model of wildlife conservation, that is the most successful animal husbandry human effort on the history of the planet and the history of mankind, and we're for it. That's what we need to be saying to our kids. That's what we need to be saying the new hunters, and that's

what that's that's where we need to be. So you'll enjoy this podcast about hunting in the back country, will hear a few of our stories, and then we'll talk about the specifics of how we're using this mule. I hate it when somebody has to make excuses for audio quality on a podcast, but you'll have to excuse some part of this podcast because of the wind. Just view it through the filter of this is some real hunting authenticity the wind house sometimes. Welcome to the Bear Hunting

Magazine podcast. It is December twenty seventh, is that right? Two days after Christmas? Yip? Two days after Christmas? And I am here with my son, Bear Newcomb and practically my other son, David Spillmaker practically Bears thirteen, David's six team, and we are on the right now in Arkansas. There's a three day rifle season they call it the Christmas Hunt goes and we are on a back country white tailed deer hunt. And before we get into the meat of the podcast, I want to tell you what we're

gonna talk about. Basically, we're gonna try to keep this podcast fairly short, even though Bear Newcomb is extremely long winded. Um, we're going to we're gonna talk about access in the back country using mules, and we're gonna talk about the way that that we do it. And I'm gonna start off by saying that I don't profess that it's the best way, and I don't profess to have a lifetime of experience doing this, but in either just David, but the way that I do. It has worked for us,

and we're learning every single time. And so we've we've packed back in here on uh well, using my my mule that I've named Ezy, and so okay, so let's start. So that's what we're gonna talk about. We're gonna we're gonna talk about how to use the mule. But before we do that, I want to talk a little bit about exactly what we're doing and a little bit about this hunt. So now we so we we packed back in.

We're in national forest here in Arkansas. We used the mule using a writing saddle and a paniard, which a paniard is basically a bag that drapes over a writing saddle. So in short, what we do is we use the paniard bags to pack all our gear and then we get to where and so we lead the mule in. So we've only got one mule. There's three of us hunting and there's one mule. Basically, the mule carried everything in for us, right bear, not your backpack. So what we do is we we lead the mule in here,

so we did have to walk. Well, once we got here, we unloaded all our gear and then we had a riding saddle underneath the paniard. And like today, you guys walked from camp to hunt, but I rode Izzy from camp way off and hunted pretty far away using the mule.

The other part of this that would be that's valuable is that if we killed the deer back here, and now it's not bear season, but if it were a bear season and we killed the bear, typically a limiting factor of being back in like this would be that if you killed the deer, and we're not terribly far back in, but if you killed the deer, you would have a hard time getting it out. So that's a

limiting act your butt. If you've got a mule that will carry game, and that's what I'm gonna get into, kind of the specifics of some of the things that people think about mules that maybe aren't necessarily true, and so I'm gonna stay the statement and clarify it later. If you have a mule that will haul game, if then you could use the mule to haul out game, and then we'd come back in and get our camp. But now, so let's start off. I said bear, We went on this exact same hunt, and camp tried here

about a month ago, is that right? Ye? On your birthday? On my birthday, I turned up here. Yeah, you turned thirteen on this mountain, didn't you. I'll be darning. I didn't even think about that on this trip. And let me let me describe something too about the way that we're hunting or or or the time period we were

back here on November put out these chick cameras. We saw some deer, bear actually passed a legal buck back in here, and uh, all the activity on the trail cameras was the first week of December, which I've decided it's probably a good time to hunt the mountains of Arkansas, the late November, in the first week of December, because uh, the big seven point was actually chasing a dough on our truck camera. But I say all that to say that we're right in amongst some pretty good deer for

public land, National Forest. And this is, uh, this is David's David's hunted, grew up hunting with us some but but you know, you've not hunted a ton with us. But so this is your first well it's not your first back country hunt because you killed the gobbler turkey up here. How old were you when we did that. So it's two years ago to fourteen. Yeah, we did. We did this exact same thing that the mule, and except your dad came. My dad came, about six or

seven of us. It's right. Che didn't go quite as smoothly with the meal that time. Why there's a lot of bags falling off and ripping and things like that happening. Yeah, we've re sewed the bag, that's right. That's right. Yeah, yeah, we were. That was one of our earlier back country adventures on the mule, and I was intentionally trying to push the limits. I mean, we had that mule packed with so much stuff it was unbelievable. So it really wasn't the mule's fault or the packing fault. We were

just trying to put everybody's backpack on. We were trying to carry goods for seven guys for two days, and not just goods, but a lot of goods, water, carrying everybody's backpack. The mule was carrying everybody's shotguns. I mean, it was quite the ordeal. But we So it was opening day of youth Turkey season, and we got ways back in here, camped out and opened the morning Turkey season. We just walked up on top of the mountain then

called in to we did we called into gobblers. We actually we weren't even sitting down and we just spotted too and then just hit the ground real fast, loaded the gun and then shot shot this turkey coming by. It was pretty awesome. Yeah, yeah, we called him in. They the wind was howling that morning, so we felt really fortunate that we even got on a turkey. Okay, so you guys walked out from Camp Bear. You left camp what time this morning? Like seven fift seven? I

don't know. We got we still gotta go backwards. It rained last night. We got in here, yesterdy and hunted yesterday afternoon, very windy last night, At like seven pm it absolutely started to howl. The wind did, and it started to rain. It started raining at seven pm and did not stop raining until probably six thirty this morning. And I mean it didn't just rain. How hard did

it rain? Well, we have this tarp up here and it was just like banging and you could hear like water dripping off of it, and it was like thunder and lighting. The entire tent would us like flash all of a sudden. It was crazy. So much lightning. It was a pretty intense night, but we stayed dry. I think the only we're staying in just kind of an average two man tent. There's three of us in there, but it but we we've got a tarp strategically placed

with about fifteen ties going to different trees. We've got our we've got our tent up. I mean, we've got a tarp over the tent, which helped some. I think that's the only reason we really stayed dry. Okay, bear, so you we want we David's larm went off this morning at like five thirty, and I told him just to turn it off because the rain was just pounding down. At five thirty, we all went back to sleep, and then I woke up and there was just a little

bit of twilight out and it had stopped raining. So you left the tent about seven fifteen, And what did you do? Well? I went down to the spot that I was hunting yesterday, and I was thinking, and maybe I should go lower this time because David was hunting pretty close to me, and so we would have been like a couple hundred yards apart. So I decided to go lower and I found a nice little spot where I could see way out in front of me, and I could see the creek at the very bottom of

the mountain. And yesterday we hiked up this mountain, and then by the time we got up here, I mean day, would just threw off our bags and just like sat down because not tired we were. And I realized that I was at the very bottom and I was gonna

have to do it again. So I sat there for probably an hour, and then I heard some like leave shuffling over to my far right, and I I got I pulled my gun up and I slowly looked over there and I saw the head of a turkey and it's started coming down, and I realized that there are more turkeys with it. And then six turkeys came out in front of me, and they all kind of just went down the mountain. And one came and was kind of curious to see what I was what I was,

because you know, they see in color. And he came really close, like ten yards, and then he went down and I moved down a little bit. I moved down like probably I don't know, thirty yards, so I could see even further out. But there was also this little trail an old logging road and I saw another turkey. Then here's what it got exciting. This is the most exciting thing that happened to us on this hunt. Squirrel. Squirrel came up right behind me. Wow, that's exciting. So

so Bear saw some turkeys. And how long did you have Bear all day? I mean Bear walked back to camp. I saw him come up the hill at about five o'clock maybe five, and so he hunted from seven fifteen until let's just say five fifteen. So was that ten hours? And you didn't come back to camp. I mean, thirteen year old boy walks out here and hunts for ten hours. And I know that he sat there for a long time.

And David basically did the same thing except you. I told David to go hunt on this side of the ridge this morning, come back to camp, have lunch, go back to the other side of the ridge. And so I mean you were only in camp for an hour today? Yeah, less than that, actually, probably about forty five minutes old together. Fortunately, my day wasn't as eventful as Bear. As I did see a bird, you know, and and I read a sign. It was pretty pretty crazy, you know, that's crazy. As

Bear wasn't no squirrel. But you know, yeah, wow, that's what's crazy about this back country hunting. And when we say back country, what we mean is just in Arkansas, we've got big blocks of National Forest which are pretty much um continual, just big mature timber, very little timber harvest. The last twenty years in Arkansas and the National Forest has been very little timber harvest. And and I mean

this big woods. It's beautiful and we like it. It's a good bare habitat, but it's a low densities of animals. And so I was the only one today that even saw deer. And I saw a deer while I was riding up the mountain on Issy's back, and she always sees game before I do. I saw her poker ears up and look, and I knew she saw a deer, and immediately it looked up and probably yards away, I saw two white tails running up the hill that probably wasn't hundred and fifty yards behind our camps. So he

stuck a gun between her ears. I am gradually training her to shoot off of her back. I haven't done it yet, but I think I think she do. I shot shoot a bow off her back. I do know that. Well, that's a great place to to segue into using a mule to access this country. So I just want to give a little bit of a background, and I'm open it up to these young men who both have been

involved in a couple of back country mule hunts. Now, um, in Arkansas, we're not accessing back country that has twenty miles of you know, open trail before you start hunting. I mean, we're really accessing, comparative to the West, relatively

small areas of wilderness or national forest. And so that one of the techniques that I learned from my my really good friend James Lawrence been on the podcast before, is packing in using the mule to pack all your garia, and then using the mule to ride out from your camp to go where you need to go, and using the mule to huh back any game they have you kill. I want to give some background. I grew up like I had a good friend that had a lot of horses. I spent quite a bit of time at this house

and we rode and stuff. But but my family didn't have econ animals. So I would be just like any of you guys out there that aren't familiar with with mules or horses, as I didn't have a ton of experience with them. Um And for those of you who are experienced horsemen or mule people, then I'm probably gonna say a lot of stuff that maybe you even disagree with,

but that's okay, or you you already know. But when I had this image of own mule, and I've had it for years and years, and I think it started as a little boy seeing people in the community that I grew up in. All these old men had mules, and mules are really kind of a icon of Southern culture, and not even Southern culture, but they're an icon of

American agricultural rural regions. And I knew from growing up to um in the Washington Mountain of Arkansas, I knew guys that hunted on mules, and I think my dad probably told me stories about those guys and meeting back

in those days. I thought it was cool when they did they were using mules to get back in And so about three or four years ago, I finally was in a position in life where I could had a place for a mule, and I just was like, man, I'm gonna buy a mule and I didn't know much at all about I figured it was gonna be harder

than what I thought. But I kind of had a naive, this naive idea that you just bought a good mule and it was like right, and the foe with her, I mean, he just kind of got on it and went and you know, you'd have to be a good writer, and you have to, you know, take care of it, and you have to learn how to load it. You'd have to learn about all the tack and all the

gear and of some of which already knew. But I quickly found out that getting into mules and horses is a highly complex thing and I had to do a lot of learning quick because I don't want to discourage anybody from getting a mule, of course for the reasons that I have, But I will tell you you better have you better be ready for difficulty, and you better be ready to learn to love it. And that's what

I have. And that's the reason I'm talking about is because I truly have learned to love mules now that I've messed with them and had some bad experiences with them too. But Bear, what do you think when we first started getting mules, h you were you with me? You getn't think much said, was were you with me when we got that first mule out of Lamar, Missouri? Yeah, that was yeah. And then to give you a little bit of history about my I think it was June

of twenty sixteen. I guess, I guess it's only been There'll be three years this June. So two and a half years ago. I purchased a green broke mule, which a greenbroke mule is a mule that basically somebody it started to train, but they're not trained. And I bought a greenbroke mule, brought it home, started riding it. Had some had some good experiences with it, but also had

some negative experiences with it. I got it. The mule ran off with me a couple of times when I first got it, which meant I was on its back writing it. The mule got spooked and just took off running like full throttle. Couldn't get it stopped, I mean, basically just out of control. That was the first time I'd always heard people talk about getting hurt on ecline animals, and you know, I knew not to get kicked. I mean,

I know, you get hurt by getting kicked. I know you could get hurt by getting bucked off, but that first experience with the running mule made me realize how easily you could get hurt bad on a mule. But I got her stopped and consulted some good horse trainer about what I should do, and UH did that what he told me, and it actually happened again. It wasn't because of what he told me. It was my fault

that it happened again. Anyway, long story short, we actually had a pretty good relationship with Ellie May, the mule that I actually don't own anymore. But then in I got a young eighteen month old mule named that we named is He, and uh, this is He is a mule that we've got right now. So is He's only three years old. She's the paint colored mule, which that means that she's she's like a paint horse. She's got white stocking feet, and she's got some white in different

places on her. But she's pretty much red sorrel. And Uh I trained Izzy from scratch. Uh she had. All she'd had on her was a halter. She'd had her Uh, she'd been handled just a little bit, but basically hadn't been handled much at all when I got her, and

UH and I and I. It's a long story. I won't go into all the training details, but basically, UH did some research and a lot of learning and had some great advice from some good friends and train this mule and I called the project Project Huney Mule, and we videoed it, didn't we Bear, because we just needed we need some content for the YouTube channel. And I was training this mule and ever done it before, and I thought, hey, that'd be cool though. Just every week

for the next six weeks put out a training video. Uh, not trying to teach somebody something, but just trying to show them what I was doing. I mean literally, I was just looking for content and made these series of videos. And David, did you know that that episode six of Project honey Meal on YouTube has eight hundred over eight hundred thousand views almost a million views, well maybe not almost a million, away from a million. Um, yeah, did

you know that? Bear? And people cuss your dad every day on there, and then some people think I did a good job, oh ma'am YouTube. But um, let's see what I want to talk about. Two is why mules do you guys have any questions that do you think people ought to know about using mules? If you're getting in the back country like relevant quite jens widely you can mule instead of Okay, that's a good question. Why would you get a mule cyner horse? Okay? So horses

are much more readily available to mules. And to start off, a mule is a is a cross between a female horse or a mayor and a male donkey, which is a jack. So jack and a mayor breed to make a sterile hybrid, which is a mule. And there's something that happens when you when you when you make a hybrid animal, so you reread two different types of animals together, but they're close enough to getting together genetically that they can actually breed and produce offspring. That you have something

called hybrid vigor. And the mule is the epitome of what they call hybrid vigor because there's basically that's where you get a synergy that happens because of across A synergy would mean like a ampli amplification of positive traits that are greater than the sum of the individuals in essence,

and so a mule. What we would say is that a mule has a lot of the really great traits of the horse, but it also has a lot of the really great traits of the donkey, but doesn't have the bad traits of the donkey, and doesn't have some of the bad traits of the horse. And so what you get in a mule is you get an animal that is has more strength and stamina than a horse. That's what they say anyway, And I know there's probably people that have examples where they weren't, but in general,

a mule has more stamina than a horse. But the main thing that a mule has over a horse that has more sure footedness. The feet of a mule are typically smaller hoofed and harder hoofed like a donkey, and in rough, rocky terrain, a mule can pick through it with extreme uh intentionality. And that's why that you know, in the in the Grand Canyon National Park, they don't ride horses down to the bottom. They ride mules. Um mules are sure footed, They're not gonna fall over. Um

mules are in the South. The part of the reason they use mules for plowing and for a lot of work on this very mountain that we're on, boys, as y'all know this, that they use mules to log this. In the early nineteen hundreds, this very mountain, on this ridge Gay Roanti, there were men that were up here logging using mules to haul logs down. Um. So mules, But in the South, mules didn't need as much water as horses, and they had more stamina than horses, and

they could tolerate the heat better than horses. Okay, And so why do I use a mule? Partly because of safety. A mule will almost not A mule has a very strong ability to not get itself in danger. So, for instance, like my mule when it gets tangled up in its lead rope, which it does sometimes, UM, when it when it feels pressure up against it, it doesn't fight against that pressure freak out like sometimes a horse could do. Um. A mule won't go someplace that it's gonna hurt itself.

And now that would be in contrast to what people would sometimes say about horses is a well trained horse would probably run off a cliff if you told it to. Um and uh. But there's a lot of really positive traits about horses. Horses are faster, horses are more comfortable, horses are easier to train, horses are more readily available, and horses are are are generally easier to get along with.

A mule does have that stubborn nature of a monkey, which in the end is good because when you get a read I've heard some I've heard people say this, and I believe when you have a good trained meal, he'll never go back to a horse. I'm not trying to step on horse people's feet because there's tons of great mountain horses for doing exactly what we're doing that would easily do what we're doing here today, were you

gonna say something. Also, horses you have to like feed them grain every day and you have to like get shoes for them. So a mule is much more hardy than a horse. I mean, like basically I feed my mules just regular old fescue and bermuda hay and very very little grain, and they stay fit and healthy all year round. Um, horses, you gotta you gotta feed. The more you gotta feed them more grain, they're a little bit harder to take care of. And shooing them. What

about shoeing them? Bear? You have shot them like once every eight weeks. And yeah, and you have to if you can't do it by yourself, you have to like pay for somebody else. You gotta pay a ferrier. And uh, anyway, we've we've never shoot any of our mules, and we ride them in this rough, rocky mountains and they've never had any trouble with them. So mules are cheaper. You don't have to spend you know, uh a year on a ferrier. You don't have to feed him as much.

They're just easier to easier to maintain their fitness and health. And they're just sure footed in the mountains. And I just like them. I think that's the main reason people have mules is because they just like them, you know. I mean it's like why do you drive a Ford over Chevy? Well, it's like a Chevy. You just like it. David, can you think of any good did you have a question? Well, like, I know, um you said, as he was probably carrying, you know, a hundred pounds. I mean, how much can

they carry? That's a good question. It all depends up upon how far you're you're taking them. Now, she was carrying a hundred and seventy five pounds of our gear. But I've got a saddle that probably weighs forty plus pounds heavy saddle, So so she was probably carrying two hundred pounds of deadweight coming up here, and she could probably carry You wouldn't want to pack a whole lot

more on her than that. And if we were going real far, like let's say we were in Montana and we're packing back in fifteen miles through rough train, we wouldn't have packed her that heavy. But for a shorter pack as we had, which is really probably um less than a mile, but but straight up a mountain, um, we could have packed her probably a little bit heavier even um. But most of your packers are only wanting to pack about a hundred and fifty pounds on an

animal that they're gonna take in very far um. But so mules are mules. Mules are readily available in the South. I helped a guy up north last year by mule because he was up in Michigan and wanted a mule and couldn't find one. But down in this part of the world, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Southeast Kansas, Tennessee, you're gonna have a lot of mules, because that's kind of historic mule country. But I have I guess the biggest thing that I'll say is that if you're gonna get into him,

you can't if you don't enjoy the process. It's just gonna be a lot of work because it does add a layer of work. Like, yes, I was able to go up to the top of the mountain this morning with eavesh you know, I I'm I climbed about feet of elevation today and got off my mule with fresh legs. Okay, so that's pretty good. That would have taken me at least an hour, probably an hour and a half carrying

a big, heavy pack like I was today. So that's the beauty of it is that you can get to where you hunt and when you're there you'll have fresh legs. But what you guys just woke up this morning, put on your hunting gear and just left out from camp. It took me fifteen minutes, twenty minutes of pretty hard work to get Izzy bridled up, sadalon bags, you know, all the everything. Just get her, just get her ready

to go. And then when I got up to where I wanted to hunt, I tied her up and Izzy's done pretty good at staying uh, staying tied without throwing a fit. Like every aspect of this is is what you have to train this animal to do. And by training it sometimes that means just going out and doing it. But you know some animals when your time and leave them might freak out and paul the ground and nay and throw a fit and make a ruckus and try

to break loose. So is he's really good? I left Izzy today for four or five hours at one stretch without going back to her, came back to her and she was fine. Um, twice we've let Izzie get away from us, bear, hadn't we? Well? Actually it was Elie May once tell us about that, Ellie? Or is he was Ellie May that got away from us the first time we came up here. Do you remember not a lot? Well it was it was on your birthday two years ago, and we hunted and we came back and Ellie wasn't there.

Oh yeah, and then you never went back up Yeah yeah, yeah, we we bear And I left Ellie May for six hours and came back and she was gone, and she had chewed her lead rope. She had chewed I didn't. That was something that was new to me. Elliot had chewed her lead rope and uh, we were camped on

the side of the mountain. So we walked back to camp in the dark, carrying the saddle because I had taken the saddle off of her way up on top and came down the mountain and uh and interestingly enough, the closest, the closest residents to where we were hunting was a bar. And uh, so I went to the bar late at night told Bear, I said, son, stay in this truck. If anyone comes to the truck, don't

open the door, and just duck yourself down and hide. Anyway, I went into the to this bar and uh, country bar, late at night, Saturday night. Have you heard this story, David, I haven't heard that. I think I told this at church one time. Do you not remember that? And Uh? Anyway, I go into this spar and I'm dressed at all camo and I mean every head in the place, which are probably ten people in there, turns to me and

they see me walk up to the bar. And what I'm gonna tell this woman is, hey, I lost my mule. And if you hear anybody driving down this highway that pulls in here and says, hey, there's a mule or a horse hip on the highway, like I wanted her to call me. I didn't know what was gonna happen anyway. I I as soon as the people saw me trying to get the waitress the bartender's attention, it was a woman. They all every head in the place turned towards me,

and everybody went quiet. Everybody stopped their conversation and looks at me. And I go and there's loud music playing, and so I'm yelling and I say, I lost my mule. I lost my mule up on the mountain. If you see it, I'd like to leave my number and you can call me if anybody pulls in here and says they saw a mule, and uh and everybody people were like, mule, you lost your mule. You'll never find it. Yeah, it was it was great. Uh so, yeah that happened bear.

And then the other time, when we're tracking River's bear up here, is he get away from us? And what I learned about these mules. Two different mules did the exact same thing as they went back the direction that they came from, and we were able to catch them back, not right back at the truck, but basically en route to the truck. Both mules were able to catch hours later. But that's no fun. But you know, hunting on mules has been extremely rewarding for me. But I really enjoy

riding in the mountains. And one of the biggest things for me is, as I've tried to decide, is hunting on a mule, where's your flashlight out there? He is hunting on a mule um advantageous to killing game, And uh, I haven't made that. I haven't decided if it is or if it isn't. Sometimes I think it'd be better if I just got out of the truck and just

walked up the mountain and hunted. But I can guarantee you one thing, bear, the big buck that we found last year, we would have never found because I've jumped the buck while I was on the mule, and I was back in a place I never would have been if I'd have been walking on foot. And so I jumped this buck and then later came back in and hunted that deer and passed a few deer while I

was hunting that one. And that's when we started hanging cameras back in here bear trying to find these deer, and so the mule just basically opens up more country to you. It doesn't necessarily make anything easier. That's my assessment on it at this point. And uh oh, I could, I could talk and give a whole another thirty minutes of commentary on on how to buy mule what you're looking for. But I will say this, not every mule

will carry game. I mean, um is he is? He will because I've I've gradually, over the course of training her, put game on her. The first thing I put on her was a coon. And that may sound like reasonable. You're like, well, yeah, I throw a con over your mule, that doesn't sound bad. But man equine animals are their prey animals. They're designed to flee from danger, and they are skittish of almost everything unless you train them and expose them to that thing in safe situations where they

realize that it won't hurt them. So by nature, they're almost afraid of everything. So we've coon hunted off is he and put mules over this or put excuse me, coons over the saddle horn. That was the first thing. The second thing last year I turkey hunted on Izzy and killed a gobbler turkey and carried out the gobbler, just put a piece of peara cord between the turkey's feet, put that prayer cord over the saddle horn, and just came right off the mountain. Um, we're gonna come back

to Turkey hunting off a mule. Uh. This year, I've yet to kill a deer while I've been hunting back like this, But this year when I killed, when Bear killed the deer a couple of well months or a month ago, Um, I I basically exposed the mule to the carcass and uh, and fed the mule with a carcass like laying at the laying at the mule's feet. So the mule had to come over and eat grain right by this deer and got really used to it.

And so now I think if if we killed a deer, Izzy would figure she was about to get some grains, so she'd be happy. And I eventually got the deer honor back, and so is. He's pretty well mannered when it comes to games, so I don't think we'd have any trouble with her. Now Bear would be a totally different experience. I have not exposed her to bear that smell, because they do smell. But that being said, now turkey

hunting is a whole different story. Turkey hunting in the big National for us, on meal back is the way to go because you ride the mule and just call right off her back, like I don't even get off. I don't even get off her back. I just ride up this ridge calling and if I when I hear a gobble, then just get off, tire up and go

hunt to turkey. Now, the only negative thing is if you were calling like that in one gobbled like seventy yards away, I mean you'd have to just act quick in the in the mule might end up spooking to turkey. But most of the time you're gonna hear a turkey gobble further off, and you're gonna be able to either turn and ride away for um the turkey. That makes sense.

Like you hear a turkey gobble it's a hundred yards, well, then just turned dead away and ride back fifty sixty yards, get off, tie the mule, and then come back up to where you were called worked a turkey, or it just gets you back into good country like I ride last year, I never heard of turkey while I was on is He's back. But I got into some good country way back in there, tighter up and then went hunting on foot, killed the turkey, then used her to

haul it all out. So turkey hunting on mule back is big um, but you know it's dangerous. That's one negative about it. Uh. My daughter River was if you listen to one of the first podcasts, I talked in detail about a mule wreck that my daughter had back in October while we were bear hunting. We used our mules to haul in bear bait to a secluded property that we couldn't take vehicles into. And uh, on the way down the same deal, we're using paniards, bags that

fall that lay over a saddle. On the way down, we took the paniard off and River was just gonna ride the mule down and the mule got away from her. River lost her balance while ducking under a limb. River wasn't used to the mule she was on. The mule started to run down the mountain and basically the mule was loping down the mountain out of control with my fifteen year old daughter on her back, and Uh, the river came off buster. Her head had to get How

many stitches did you have, David, I had. I know it was like ten or eight. I don't remember. It was a lot. I don't remember either. She also got a concussion, Yeah, she got. It was a bad deal. It was. It was a father fail, you know, Uh, to this day, it was. It was a mistake. Had a lot of faith in the mule and in River, and still have faith in the mule and river, but it was wasn't the best combination. And uh yeah, River

slic eye open, River sliced her eye open. Limb. My, my daughter, Rivers had a tough go out it with mules and we've made a couple of visits to the er because of it. She loves them exactly, but I won't hardly let her ride. But no, she a limb sliced her eyelid while she was on the mule, and uh, I had to take her. She came back to the

house bleeding all down her face. It was pretty spooky. Um. But I guess I'm I guess I'm saying some of the negative things too, because I had kind of a romantic view of owner the mule and that I didn't think it was gonna be easy, But I guess I just didn't know how hard it was gonna be. But but boys, this is where this is where the story

turns awesome. Because things that are really hard, that are difficult, that stretch you, that caused you to grow, that caused you to have to learn a totally new set of skills and test yourself tests your fear are good because one of the greatest accompliment external accomplishments, let me describe it like that, one of my most my favorite external accomplishments that I've ever done is training Issy from scratch.

And I mean, she's a good mule man. She'll go where your pointer, she'll do what you tell her, she'll cross water, she'll get in the she'll get in a trailer, she'll let a hound ride on her back. Um, she's a She's a heck of a mule for a young mule. And I had to overcome a lot of year, had to overcome a lot of knowledge barriers, had to overcome a lot of limitations to do that. And so the difficulty of it has actually made me into something stronger than what I was. And so just because it's hard

doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. And as a testament to that, I remember when you bought Izzy because I was there. You were there, weren't you. Yeah, And that was crazy. That was she was absolutely out of control when that happened. But now, I mean we packed stuff on her and you know, let her up the mountain and she'll do exactly, like like you said, everything that you tell her to do. Yeah, yep, Barry, you've never been in a mule wreck, hav you? Nope? No? Uh?

I once well when we were writing ELI one time and I kind of like turned her and ship was on the back and he flew off. Yeah. Man, we're telling all these bad stories. Yeah, like the first two weeks we had a mule, It wasn't even the mule's fault. My son just fell off and broke his arm. We've had a pretty rough go now that we started stacking up the casualties. And um, I had a pretty hard

fall off elim Ay when I first got her. So it's not something that you get into lightly, but it has it his you know, I may who knows what the future holds, but I doubt they'll ever be a time in my life where I don't have a mule. I mean, I love them, I really do. I enjoy riding them. Hunting these mountains is so much fun to cruise around on a mule. It's you gotta be tough, but it's I love it. And hunting these mountains is

different than hunting out west. These woods are thick, you're fighting limbs, you're fighting super steep hills, you're you know, it's mainly the limbs that make it difficult. But all right, and closing, this is just supposed to be a short, kind of a short podcast, just talking about backcountry hunting with mules. Maybe at the later day we could talk

about what we packed. But the biggest thing that's cool about this is like we could have all carried you know, fifty pound packs and walked in, but we are living like kings up here on the mountain and and where we're honey, we can't. We have to carry in all our ouwn water because there's no water sources up high on these mountains that are that are predictable anyway. There's water now because it rained, but yesterday that before that,

there wasn't any water up here. They probably won't be tomorrow. Yeah, so we have to carry water. So for three guys for three days. I mean, you know you're talking, you need forty pounds of water or more and so bye bye. By having this mule, basically we're able to be real comfortable in the back country. Have plenty of food, plenty of sleeping bags, plenty of tents and tarps, and for me, camera gear because I'm I'm filming a lot of these hunts and doing a lot of filming, so I got

a ton of gear that most people don't have. And that's part of the reason I carry right of mule closing thoughts, guys, closing thoughts, mules for the wind, mules for the wind mules for the ones you're closing. Comment one time, is he let me get on her back while I was coming from a tree? What do you mean, well, you tied it to a tree, I climbed, the tree dropped down in her back. When when was this this summer? Is he or Ellie? All right? Well, hey, I hope

you enjoyed our fireside talk. We uh, we're sitting here on the side of the mountain and we're gonna hunt tomorrow. And uh, but as of yet, we've we've we hadn't killed a deer, but such is this mountain hunting. Thanks for listening to the Barony Magazine podcast. Do me a favor, do all of us a favor? Consider subscribing to Bear Hunting Magazine, the only print bear hunting magazine in the world.

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And so you know, really, by subscribing to the magazine, you're you're you're you're feeding into meat. You whether it be our YouTube channel, are our print magazine or social media that's promoting ethical, conservation based big game predator hunting for bears, and so check it out. We've also got lots of cool merchandise on our website. Check out our YouTube channel. You might even if bear kills a big buck tomorrow. You'll probably even see a video of it

up on our channel. But if he doesn't, you'll never hear about it, and this, this hunt will be lost like smoking the wind. You still want to hear about it, Well, if David does too, yes, or if I do. But hey, it's a it's an honor, guys to be able to hunt in a place like this in the year it's almost twenty nineteen. By the time people here, this will

be twenty nineteen. For sure. It's an honor, a privilege that we have public lands and we can carry our firearms intwo pack our mules back in here, put out our trail cameras and get pictures of nice bucks and be able to hunt. So well, we gotta do what you boys have to do, what I have to do. Let's keep the wild places wild, because that's where the bears live in the deer. You didn't see a squirrel to well, bear did, and I believe that he saw. I saw a monster grace squirrel. I mean like it

was a shooter. For sure. We gotta go to bed