British Columbia Black Bear

of the Bear Hunting Magazine podcast. I'll also be your host into the world of hunting the icon of North American wilderness and bear We'll talk about tactics, gear conservation that will also bring you into some of the wildest country on the planet. Chasing band. So we are on a bear hunt. I believe the day eight is May May the nineteenth, May seventeen, and we are in it's I think we've been in camp for five days. Maybe this is a sixth day. This is a sixth day

that we've been in camp. And we are in the coast mountains of British Columbia, Canada, and we're with Devin Jewel of Pacific Bear Outfitters. Myself and my long time really great friend Daniel Rupe is here and so Devin Jewels here, Daniel Rupe is here. We're sitting in a wall tent camp slash tarp camp with the soft wood Canadian fire crackling in the near well close, so we're being warned by the fire. I would say it's in the high sixties and we have so we've been bear

hunting and I don't spoiler alert. There are two bear hides, salted bear hides within about twelve ft of us to our northwest. Totally made up that direction, but no. So this is this is a really unique hunt for Daniel and I. I've hunted with Devon in me and my father in law came up here in Daniel w Roupe has been. He has been out of the country Wild Wild, Daniel Wild Group has been. He's been out of the country for over ten years, working out of the country.

He and his family, and so they were back in the States. They planned a trip back to the States for a couple of months several years ago and we said, I said, Dan, you got to go spring bear hunting with me. But before that, in two thousand and seven ish, when Daniel and his family were planning to go overseas long term, what did we say, Dan in seen ten years from then right, man, let's go bear hunting. What if we went bear hunting in Canada? Well, we actually

said Alaska. I messed up this story, no, so but remember saying we're gonna go bear hunt in And what's what's cool about that is that at that at that time, I mean, that was like the first it might as we might as well have said, because neither one of us were in their position to go on a bear hunt. And it's interesting. I wasn't doing bear Hunting magazine. I had not started the Arkansas Black Bear Association with your health. I didn't even know if you lived that long. True,

I'm just I was just tottering away. So so back then we were like, we're going on a bear hunt in and we were like yes, and then here it is and it has here we are, here we are. And so a little history of Dan and I. So we grew up in towns close to one another, but we didn't really meet until we went to college and uh, we're both were married and our families met, and then

Dan started bow hunting with me. So how that, um, I think for me just being buddies and I remember being buddies of you and hearing you tell these stories about hunting and it was just so much fun. I thought, Man, I would love to do that. And I never really had the chance to do anything like that for whatever reason. Um, but my wife bought me a bow for my birthday, and um we were living and I was in grad school in Kentucky and I had a week long fall break.

It was in November of two thousand and three. Shepherd new ed Yes, two thousand three November, had a week and flew back to Arkansas and we went to Madison County and Wildlife Management aream and Clay took me down to this little shelf on the side of an Ozark mountain, put me up on a big old pine tree, and uh, I've never been the same. Yeah, you ruined me. It was. It was your first bow hunt ever, first bow hunt ever. First.

I had gone deer hunt one time with another buddy, but he wasn't as good as a buddy as you were. You never even told me that. Look at the side of those bear HUDs. Devin is gonna continually bring up the fact that there's some big bear hunts. Oh my goodness. So hey, back back to the Madison County story though, So first, his first bow hunt of all time and put him up in a climbing tree stand click clack, click cluck, click clut way up in the tree everything.

I had no idea what I was doing. I don't know if you remember, but when I going up the tree, I remember pulling up my bow and I couldn't. I thought the bow was gonna fall off the string. I I didn't know anything. At one point, I think I knocked an arrow and the arrow kind of slid out of the rest. I didn't have a whisker biscuits, so and then actually, I my bow I didn't really fit me. So I shot out of my left eye to get my left exactly, you know, which, Maybe I should go

back to you. Worked out pretty good. It worked out okay, But I mean everything, Clay put me in the stand. I remember you saying, if if Doe come through, don't shoot him because a buck might be behind him. And these two dog came through, and it's like your little voices in my head, so don't choose, don't don't shoot,

And sure enough here came Uh. What I thought was it's not a huge but a medium, little little six point buck came in, seven point seven pointer man I pulled back on and he walked down and touched his nose to the base of my tree and then turned around. He must have not liked my tree, and he turned right around and walked out the other way. As he was walking away, he turned around and looked back and we locked eyes, got him put an arrow in his neck.

And so this was this was such an iconic moment because I come back and there was another good friend with us. We come back and Dan's like, I killed one, and so we track it and we actually had an old video camera that we we used to film the recovery, and and that that piece of footage is kind of legendary. It's deep in the archives, deep in the archives. Yeah, yeah, And I'm actually planning to dig it up and maybe use it on the episode of Bear Horizon that your

Bear Hunt's gonna be on. So then I have a a fun history. But then, like right about the time we started hunting, you kind of deserted me. You went to Kentucky, you went to places far far away, and so we it's we've it's not like we've hunted every year together anything, but that's so that's why that's not so cool. Because we get to go. We've we've we're

on a seven day hunt British Columbia. First of all, I kind of want to just just describe this scenario for those who may not understand the big world of black bear hunting. But British Columbia is kind of a el primo destination for black bear because of the size of bears, but probably even more so because of the epic nous of the landscape in many places. We're in the coast mountains. So the coast mountains basically start at

near the Pacific coast at near sea level. M my correct, Yeah, they stayed at sea level, and so what's unique about them is they start at sea level and what's the biggest mountain that we've seen Probably nine thout the biggest one we've seen right there. Okay, so what's cool is they go from sea level to nine thousand feet and so these mountains have these massive relief and so relief would be the actual amount of vertical feet from the top bottom of the mountain to the top of the mountain.

So like let's say you're in Colorado and you're on a mountain that's fifteen thousand feet, Well, the base of the mountain may have been at ten thousand feet, so the mountain only looks like it's five thousand feet tall.

But you get the point there. They're spectacular mountains, so almost any direction that you look, I mean like you go around a corner and you're looking at the snow capped mountains, but you're down in these lush, thick, forested, moss covered, big tree, big, fast moving glacial river valleys. It really does look like Lord of the Rings. It looks like Lord of the Rings. Yeah, And so in the world of Canadian bear hunting, there's really no rivalry for a place to black bear. When it comes to

epic beauty, just sheer beauty. All the other provinces um are well, I'm not gonna beauty is found everywhere, truly is, but just in terms of grand scale every beauty. So the way, let's see, do we want to say anything else about I'll say something. Being from the south, so we live in Arkansas, most of our large rivers are slow moving rivers because the elevation change between point A in point b is is yeah, is small, and so you might have this big like like the Arkansas River.

We crossed the Arkansas River. Often it's a big river. I mean it's like half mile across in some places, but it's muddy and it's fairly slow moving. I mean, you don't see like white cap. So when I come up here, we see these rivers, which this river is not like a half mile across. This river might be like a hundred hundred yards across in some places, bigger in some places, even begger. But this is like white cap,

white water, fast moving water all the way through. So you're just I'm I'm impressed with the volume of water coming out of these mountains. Let's talk about where the water comes from. There are waterfalls everywhere. So Dan and I every time we pass the waterfall would be like, that'd be a state park in Arkansas. They'd make that what did you say, they would make that one up unesca World Heritage site right there, and I think it

was a drainage ditch. Yeah. Yeah. We drive past like a little crevice in the mountain and there's this like waterfall. I mean like literally you could see cascading water for two feet, not like a vertical drop, but like like a thirty foot fall hits a rock and then I mean just spectacular waterfalls all coming out of these white

Cap mountains. So above these waterfalls, these white Cap mountains, you can yesterday just randomly we got at the trucks of glass and across the valley there were three huge waterfalls just so just beautiful the water work to this place or spectacular. So the way, let's any anything else about anything else we want to describe Devon. This is

where you live, man. Lots of trees, a whole lot of so that's actually that's another thing is just for me, the scale of everything and the scale of the trees. So again co Clay lives up in northwest Arkansas. I'm down the river, yes, amen. And the trees, you know, the like the trees on my family's farm. A huge tree, you know, fifty maybe seventy five tall. Um there uh,

a medium tree here is twice that size. And I think looking through the binoculars and just looking out over this vast uh watershed valley and and seeing all these different features that you're describing, and everything is just so big, just huge, And that's actually a in our bear hunting has been calibrate. We've had to calibrate our eyes to the scale. It took us a few days. Are a few times of glassing when we were glassing for these bears.

I don't and I'm going to get into the way that we hunted, but basically Dan and I were looking for bears that would have been the size of like school busses. And Devin would be like, there's a bear right in the middle of that that block, and we'd be like what, and he'd be like, there it is. He tell us where it was. We'd look at it and it would look like a speck of pepper. Dan and I were thinking it was gonna look like I mean like three times four times is big, and I

think what was it would take you. Devin would see it almost immediately, you know, we just pause and parked the truck for a second, hid whip up his binoculars, and oh, there's one in that cut block, this area where they had cut a bunch of trees down the logging had cut some tree And it would literally take me five minutes to find it. In the first few times, he would you tell me right where it was, right and you see that shadow, you see that tree, and

I just couldn't even find him. They're just so right, Yeah, yeah, so Devin describe to me the so like down down low with the lower elevations, it's almost like rainforest here. Yeah. So the way the rain shadow works is obviously the Pacific Ocean influences the weather. So we have a mountain range running north south, so as the weather comes in and hits the west side of the mountain range and

continually just like dumping water on it. So you just get more growth, right, more berries, more trees, more or anything that's gonna grow, gets just way more water than the east side of the mountain range. You get almost like a desert condition because the water is always on the west side, so it really even with snow and everything, or just way more Yeah, on the west side of the mountain. We're on the west side of the mountain range.

Yet that translates where there's more food, where there's more resource, where there's more nutrients. That translates into more of our animals, instant, more bears and bigger bears. That's where they've got. So you live though, on the on the east side where it's dry, about six seven hours from here, six seven hours from here, so we just come down for our

hunting seasons. The guy yeah, and so back over in your part of the world historically has been big mule deer country, big mule deer country, pretty good moose country, and I mean there's bears there too, but not to the densities we see on the coast side. So Devon and his wife, they're like British Colombian folk. And I'm not sure how great a hunter Devon is, but we know his wife is a great hunter. She I can

definitely vouch for her. So yeah, Well, so Devon and Ashley flew in last year to a place in northern BC and Devon killed a sixty four inch Canada moose, which, for those who don't understand, that's a massive Canada moose. I mean, he's not had it officially scored yet, but pretty certain that it would make the all time Boone Crockett record. So I mean, so, I mean, so the way moose work is that Yukon moose are the biggest moose.

Yukon moose live in Alaska and the Yukon Northwest territories. Yeah, and so those moose can I mean, the sixtien Yukon moose is a massive moose. Heck yeah, they can get up to seventy. Yeah, so but Canada moose tipa, most people are shooting Canada moose are shooting forty to fifty in moose, right, Well, yeah, you'd like to see a benchmark of fifty. I guess in the northern part of this is a big moose. Yeah. So anyway, Devin Devon

shot at sixty four in moose last fall. So it's a Devon's a no. Devon is an accomplished, very very accomplished big game northern hunter. He and he's a he's a guy in the gods in the Arctic. Uh and this guy in northern British Columbia for stone, sheep, doll sheep, everything, yep, caribou, moose. Yeah. So now when you're with Devin, it really is neat because he's he's a just a just a veteran northern big game hunter and so it's always it always kind

of it's fun to hear those stories. So so when we're hunting here in British Columbia, there's primarily two ways that we're hunting these bears. I mean, basically, these barriers have come out of dinning. They've been out of the den for a while now. At this point. Yeah, so maybe like mid April, they're starting roaming around, so there's lots of green vegetation, there's lots for him to eat. But one of the primary food sources this time of year is a plant called fireweed. And we have learned

that fireweed. It's it's just kind of like a two foot tall plant, just you would just think it was a weed. It was in your yard, you spread with the the round up. But if it was in my yard, I would pick the tops off and make a salad because it's good. We've been eating fireweed this week and devon uh carries ranch dressing with him everywhere he goes. So this cli can eat fireweeds. No, I'm We're just kidding, but we did eat something. It tast really good. So

there's two ways that we're hunting the roadways. Roadways in this part of the world lust sunlight to hit the forest floor and so the ditches grow fireweed and clover and just different vegetation the bears reading. So in this dense forested region, roadways are an attractor for bears, so the bears want to be on the roadways. These roadways are like forestry roads that have very little vehicle traffic on it. But some of them might be big, nice roads, but you could walk on that road for a day

and never see a vehicle. They're they're so good because of the four stry Logging basically built these roads. So one thing that we did, and we did this on Dan's Bear, is that you walk these roads and you see bear scat where these bears are feeding. So you might walk a stretch of road that's a half mile long on and find ten or twelve piles of bear scauting the road, see grazed fireweed, and you're like, there's a bear here the road. See tracks in the dirt

on the road. And so what you'll do is you'll wait till the wind currents are favorable, which typically the wind currents that Devon is using is the thermals. So late in the evening after the sun is set, the thermals are moving down and then most the rest of the day they're moving So you kind of got to be strategic how you walk these roads. But basically you walk these roads and just kind of creeping around the

corners looking and you'll see bears in the road. So on this hunt, well we'll let me go ahead and just say we walk roads. And then the second way that we're hunting is that densely forested region. The forestry practices here are really unique. Like in Arkansas, we have what we call clear cuts, and they just take square blocks of land and just like cut everything. And there's

some selective cutting. There's a lot of forests here. It's much more regulated and like, so there would be this huge mountain covered in trees and there'll be an irregular shape maybe if it could be five acres or it could be acres that will be cut. And inside of that cut there'll be islands of trees left for bird sanctuaries, there will be strips of trees left down drainages, and so you have this like patchwork opening. And the first year that they make a cut, it's not that good.

But the second year, when the fire weed comes in or and or clovers, it is super hot for bear and so we're looking for a second year. Second year cuts are prime. Third year is good, but second is like prime. And then once they get much older than

that fourth they drop off big time. You know, you don't seem anything sapling start, just that new lush growth is just waned right, And so like in Devon's hunting area, every year there's new cuts and so like this year we're watching loggers cut, and so in Devin, you know, Devin's like, well next year that would be good. And

so it's like this constantly rotating cyclic change. Yeah, so it's good that way, you're always into new areas to hunt different values for bear, right, So it kind of spreads out the pressure to Yeah, in this area is a thousand square miles, so you know, we're driving as far as two hours to go and hunt from camp closer in our case, but as much as when I was here, so we're years ago. I mean we were

driving like two hours to go ahead. So he's trying to spread out the pressure across this vast area so that he's hunting you know, old mature males that's working.

So so there's two ways. So we're hunting on the roads where we're also hunting these cut blocks, and some of these cut blocks are helicopter cut blocks, which means they dropped Well I don't know if the largers walk in if they're dropped in, but basically it will be this island with no roads to it, like in the side of the steep forty degree mountain and those places are great but hard to get to. Most have roads. Most of these cut blocks have roads that you can

get to. And so when you're hunting these cut blocks, you're just getting in there and glass them or trying to get away from them to glass them to right across the vala. A lot of times the best place to glass is not in the cut, but it's on the other mountain looking into the cut. And we did that too. I saw a bear from like two miles away and then moved in and just got right on it. And we'll talk about that in a second. But so it's fun, so you're you're you're moving around, but it

can also be a lot of work. So on the first so on this hunt, Dan was up to bat first. So our plan was two on one deal and so I was I was filming them. And so the first day when we arrived, what do we do? First day we arrived, we we got to camp the night before, real late, I don't know what time, um, but we slept in good, super comfortable, had a great breakfast, Dave cook and everything else just always feeds us real good.

And then we got in the truck and went out pray by mid afternoon, drove an hour and there road. I mean, you're gonna see the occasional logging truck, but I mean you see nobody out of it. It's just wilderness. Um. So drove for an occasional burnt car with bullet hole with bullet holes in it. Don't be that guy. Um. And then we got out and we hiked, hiked the road, hiked the roadway up this, up one kind of spur valley off of the big valley that that Devon runs

and um hiked for about six miles in would you say, yeah? Yeah, And the whole time, you know, Devin's super knowledgeable. And so there's large stretches of this where there's not any fireweed on the side of the road. But you're still again, you're looking for scat, you're looking for tracks. Every once in a while, you're gonna pause because there's a break in the the woods and you can see a cut block across the way, and so you're gonna glass and

speed anywhere. Yeah. So we could be walking down the road and maybe you get a glimpse of any I mean, a bear could just speak anywhere. An easy way to get around, so they're not just feeding on the roads, they're also just traveling down the road. And at one point we came around were coming the road turned right and kind of went down pretty dramatically down this hill and and and that's where we thought, oh, we're gonna we're gonna see a bunch of bear. Right there was

one of the real potential areas, but we didn't. The winds were a little wrong. The wind was a little bit wrong. But what we did see across the way, and it took me about fifteen minutes to find it after Devin saw it was a grizzly bear up on this cut block way far to easily two miles away um and literally it would have taken I never would have seen it in my life had Devin not pointed it out showed us where to find it. And I

think that's when I realized. When I'm looking across the way at a cut block and I think it's covered in you know, knee high shrubs and grasses, in reality, I'm looking across the way and those knee how shrubs are as tall as a you know, as tall as a house, and the trees on the edge are two hundred ft tall. Yeah, that was a cool experience, you know,

to see that grizzly bear. So we we had been hiking for a couple of hours and we really did walk about six miles in and we knew that because all these logging roads are marked every kilometer, so it's like you're in the wilderness. In every kilometer there's a sign that says one k m, two km, three k it's for the loggers to keep track of where they're at and so and then Dan and I, being the math geniuses that we are converted kilometers to miles because

we have no idea how for our kilometer is. And we were really proud of ourselves when we realized we hiked like twelve miles that first day. When when we had hiked like eighteen kilometers or whatever, we didn't we didn't think that was very cool, okay, but when we realized there's twelve miles with that was cool now. The brown but the grizzly bear was really a unique experience.

We're sitting here glassing for bear down the road and Devon just goes, there's a grizzly bear and it is way the heck over there, and many of you would know that this year British Columbia officially closed the grizzly bear hunt and so this area is not not a prevalent grizzly are high identity grizzly area now, but I mean, the first day of our hunt, we saw what we

believe was probably a big male. Yeah. It looked like a big like a large old boar, so yeah, And I kept trying to talk him into the fact that it was just a huge color phase black bear, but it wasn't. And we we watched it for a long time. It fed in this opening midday, middle of the day hot just below the snow line up above us. But we got to see a British Columbia gas there, which was my first Yeah, definitely the first for me. Yeah.

So we hunted out the rest of that evening and we were trying to catch the thermals before they shifted down, and we were a little late coming out of there. And when we came to this prime spot of road that we that Devon was like, there's a big bear here, because Devin had seen a big bear two days before, two different times while driving on the sex in the road. A big crinkle eared bear that went by the name

Mr Fuzzy. Mr Fuzzy. Um, we were coming out of there, and I mean in the exact place that Devin thought he would be, and we're slipping pretty we're moses, I mean, we're we're hunting, and but the wind was wrong and there's nothing we could just not like we could go around. I mean, it's like, we gotta walk back to the truck that way. It's not like we go well the winds doing this. Let's take a different game plan. We're six miles from the truck and it's getting dark, and

we gotta walk back that way. We walk into this area, and sure enough Mr Fuzzy on the road, walking right on the road, and minutes before, like maybe thirty seconds before this, Devin kind of looked over his shoulder and said, now keep your eye on the ditches because a lot

of times they'll they'll be down in the ditches. And sure enough, we were on this little bend and he was right in the ditch, but he had scented us, and all I saw was this kind of big blur of black fur moving diagonally across the road, and I pulled the rifle up, but didn't even get him in the scope, and he was gone. He was gone. He was gone. And so when we got up even with where the bear, I mean, it's probably like fifty yards from us, and we got to be even with the bear.

We could hear him down in the brush, moving and laughing at us. He laughed at us. Yeah, I would like to just for the record, um, just bring up the point that you guys were out in front, but I was the one who saw the bear first. I mean I just for the record, Okay, there's ever historical dispute who saw Mr Fuzzy. I don't know what y'all were doing, but I was like, I actually he I will say that when you did that, his head turned around,

he took off. Dang it. I spooked Mr Fuzzy. You're like, hey, okay, so Mr Fuzzy, where's Dan going. Oh? Dan's going to get some more wood for the fire. So so that was it, and that's when Devin said, hey, tomorrow. We basically we walked back to the truck and Devon says, hey, tomorrow, we need to do the same thing, but we need to hit the thermals, right. Yeah, he said, we need to do the same thing. We need to hit the thermals and we need to keep Clay from hissing when

so then what happened Devon the next day? Yeah, we just started later and came up the valley close are dark, so thermals are against us. And we got up to pass where we've seen Mr Fuzzy into another like a semi slide semi feed area coming up through there where we had actually heard a bear in the brush the day before, and he came around the corner and there was a bear. Oh man, it was like it's like in our face, it really was. And we've been hiking

along I think at that point the second day. First day we hiked twelve miles if our kilometer to mile math is is even half right, And then the second day we hiked shorter, just probably about ten miles, so but we were all the way in, uh so we had hiked five miles. Devon. I like him a lot. One of the things that don't like about him is his really long legs, and so he just effortlessly bounds

through the woods like a young gazelle. Yeah, and that's a great that's a great thing there because Dan and I, let's describe this. Dan and I are roughly the same size. I'm probably a little bit taller. Actually, today today we speddle. We we're gonna settle a two decade old dispute. We're gonna We're gonna speddle. We're gonna settle a two decade old dispute of who's taller at twelve noon. Well, no, I'm not doing it till Dave gets back to camp. Yeah.

But so as I was walking behind Devon, who's like six too, and he's not only six too, but his legs are like way longer than a normal six ft two man legs. He's got like the trunk of like a dwarf. He's in the legs of like a six eight man. I would recommend him as a guy, but not as like a clothing model. Yeah. And so as we walked for like a total of like twenty five aisles, as I was walking behind him, I would see his footprints. You do things kind of to just pass the time.

I would see where his footprints stepped in the dust. And I calculated that his stride is four inches longer than mine. And so when we did the math, Dan and I had to walk like twice as far as Devon. So right, Devon, okay, so where are we are? Okay? So now it's it's they two. We've hit the thermal's right day one when we went all the way in and the road you know, turned right and went downhill. Now Devon has put us in a perfect spot where we went all the way back, but the road is

is turning left and going up. So we've come in opposite and sure enough, just like he thought, we're wait wait, wait, don't say I forgot about a really important part of this story. You forgot to remember and I forgot to remember. This is your first bear hunt? Oh gosh, yeah, I don't think we said that. This is okay? So here yeah, yeah, So this is my first bear hunt, and it's also my first other than you know, Arkansas coons with a you know, ten twenty two. This is my first never

even killed a deer with a gun. Everything I've ever done has been with my bow. Um. I shot this really nice gun that Clay has a couple of times before we left to come up to Canada. Um. So I'm on several fronts. Honestly, I'm pretty nervous, um and kind of the last thing I wanted to happen was I need, I need. I wanted to have a really good rest. I wanted to have time. I didn't want to kind of make the shot real quick like Mr Fuzzy the day before you kind of a black beard.

I think probably a normal bear hunter could have made that happen. No, yeah, I don't know, I don't think so. Thanks for if you're lying to me, that's very helpful. Um, but I just I really didn't want to mess it up, and I wanted to get a good shot. And really also I really wanted to get a bear. Yeah. If the that morning priority list was not necessarily to get a big bear, my priority list was to get a bear. Uh, it really was. I really wanted to get a bear.

I just always dreamed of this, and so I had prepped you for this time, like this is this is I mean, so, yeah, you never know when you come to you never know. And I knew that we were going to get on some bear. But also it was like, hey, it's hunting, this is tough. We might hunt really hard for a week and you never know, you might you know, I'm thinking my kind of expectations you set the expectations, and then I lowered them even further just to kind

of prepare myself, you know, just not knowing anything. I just thought, um man, we could hunt all week and I might get one shot. Uh, and so I better not mess that up. In reality, Devin, highly knowledgeable, worked his tail off. Every day we've seen bear. We've basically been multiple bear and been very We were seven yards from a bear yesterday. I mean, it's just insane kind of how it is up here. I just had no idea. But anyway, I didn't know all that. This is day two.

I'm still kind of it's evening, but I'm probably just kind of half awake at this point. And uh, and we start heading slowly up this turn in the road. The winds are in our favor coming down the hill. We're going up the hill and sure enough, Uh, just for the record, Devon saw it first, and he he didn't He didn't hiss or cackle or anything like that. So the bear stayed, the pair didn't run off. That's weird. I was shocking. Um. So we we come around the critic.

Of course enough, Devin's hit me on the shoulder right there. Um, And so you know, I had already jack the shell in there, and I got down on the ground and put the rifle on the left knee and at that point, uh, the bear was on the left side of the road in a little bit of fire weed, just kind of munching. Had no idea we were there far with him. Oh, I would say it was forty yards away. Yeah, something

like that. Yeah, close close, he was very close. But again for me, that might as you know, it could be four hundred I'm just not super comfortable with a rifle. But got down on one knee, felt good about it. And another thing that again I had no idea about. I had no idea about all this. But Devon said, you know, as soon as we see a bear, don't just shoot. He needs to sex the bear, determine if

it's a male or female. And then he also needs to judge kind of the size of the bear, because you don't want to just unlike me that I just want to shoot a bear. He he really wants to help you get a really nice bear. And we have been on a bear earlier. That Uh. I had a really good rest and again Devon set us up really good for that, and I bet I watched that bear for an hour through the scope and I really wanted to shoot it, but you know, he he was like,

you know, that's a really small bear. You don't want to do that. So um, this time, I'm basically I'm waiting for the go ahead from Devon and I'm hope you are hardly waiting that. I mean, like the trigger was like squeezing. Oh my good man. I could feel I could feel you like, oh man, I really I was just I mean, I was just and I I think I was saying, Devin, I'm surprised I didn't scare the bear off saying Devon's name, and the whole time before you know, Devon was like yeah, wait, wait wait,

and that bear was too small. Um. So I was just waiting for a half of a positive remark from Devon and I was gonna peel it off. And the the problem was is that the bear took two steps off, kind of away from the road, further into the the the greenery on the side of the road, and I could no longer see it from my knee uh, from my knee rest, And so I had to step up and hold the rifle up and get back on the bear.

And again I said Devin, and he said, I think he said something like that's a that's a pretty good bear. It's the inflection of his voice, like he said, it's a pretty good bear. But sorry, because he's speaking Canadian that a lot of times, I don't even know what he's saying. He said that, and I heard that's a monster boom, and and I shot. And at that point, the scope, in my mind, the scope was just full of that bear. Uh. And I really felt like, uh,

how was the positioned he was? Um, he was his hind quarters were closer to me, and he was quartering away. His left uh, left shoulder was was in my his hind quarters and his left shoulder and he had turned around to look at us. Wait a minute, I think that's the way it was. Well, what do you think he was? He was quartering to us? He was quartering to us. Yeah, yeah, which bear did you shoot? Shot a different There were three and I shot the one in the middle. Well, no, the bear was the bear

was facing us. His front left shoulder was closest to us, and he had his head up looking at us. His rear end was further way. That's what I said. Okay, anyway, So so basically you could tell. All I saw was there was fur in the scope. And I remember, Clay, you haven't said, you know, just hit the center of the center and I put those crossing. What what we what we talked about was a broadside shot is really what you want, but you're not always going to get that.

And with a big high powered rifle like three or wind mag I'm shooting a tune or twelve grain bullet. I mean that's a that's a big gun. So what then I talked about was if a bear is facing you and we have to take a frontal shot, you kind of want to shoot for center mass of the body, cavity at the bear, like if he's facing you, like right in the chest. And if you at many from many angles, center mass with a big gun like that

is going to do the job. That's what you remembered now that Yeah, it is early and I have only had I mean, that's what you said. I was just clarifying. Yeah, Um, so Devin kind of gave the half nod. Okay, that's an okay bear. I think somebody not in my shoes probably would have waited and gotten a much bigger bear. But I I wanted a bear. Yeah, and I shot, And I just haven't shot that gun a few times.

I know that I had the tendency to when I pulled the trigger to kind of in in anticipating the kickback to jerk and oh man, what if I what if I did that? What if I missed? What My first immediate thought was, that's an amazing opportunity. This is awesome. I sure hope I didn't mess it up. Because what happened, Devin, what did the bear, I mean tell us look like at the shot? It just immediately left. I guess you'd say there's no real reaction, or like a hit reaction.

I would say there was, there wasn't. I just left. Yeah, And that, to me that was odd. And now I don't have extensive experience shooting black bears with rifles. I expected the bear to flinch when it got hit with a tuner in twelve grain bullet flying flying second the bear. I mean, if you had missed, it would have looked the exact same. Yeah, if I if we had stepped on a twig and scared it, I feel like it would have looked he just didn't even move. I mean

it didn't, it didn't flinch. It just ran off, and that that kind of shocked me. And what I was anticipating too, was because the way the bear was facing, I felt like, if you hit it in the chest, that there's just no way it just could have taken that past and just like not even flinched. And so we were just kind of like, oh, man, we weren't sure.

But Dan was like, man, he's like there was a lot of bear in the scope when I pulled the trigger, which is terrible because any basically anybody in the world would have been able to hit that bear until either I had somehow magically shot him in a way that it it went through him and missed all of his bones, you know, because we said if it if it had been a shoulder head, if it had it a major bone,

you would have seen the bear react. If it just passed through flesh, potentially the bear would have it wouldn't have been like a thud. Yeah, we didn't hear a thud. No, no, I mean, but it was so close you probably wouldn't have had the delay just just yeah. So so in

my mind were statistics. We weren't sure. It's almost dark, it's like right on the verge of dark, right on the verge of dark, and it seems like statistically the odds that I missed it are higher than somehow I shot it without it right, you know, So we uh, you know, we're all excited. I'm real nervous. And we go over and we look around and um, we're trying to see are is there any blood? Is there anything?

And again it's getting really dark, and Devin first spotted some blood, but not a whole lot, just the smallest spec dull, dull speck of blood. And from hunting, I mean from hunting deer, I know that, and I know that I know now that bear are really different and because of the fat layer around him that a lot of times they're not going to bleed a whole lot.

But again, as a deer hunter, I'm I'm expecting and hoping to walk over there and just see a bode deer hunter, I'm expecting to walk over there and see this about just bright red pile of blood and it's the tailtale sign of everything's okay, victory. But we walk over there and instead we look around for a few minutes and Devin finds this, you know, one spot basically a dull blood. And I even said, are you sure that's blood? Yeah, it didn't even. Yeah, yeah, I didn't even.

It's just a small speck of blood. And and so then the you guys said, let's not go in let's not go in there because it's getting dark. We don't want to push him. Um, let's just give him some time. And um come back to which is awful that not. You know, we got back to camp and you know, everybody's like, oh, we got a bear, and I was like, we didn't know, We don't know if we got a bear,

you know. And I remember just kind of eating dinner and just be like, oh man, this is awful, just really really hoping that I got it, but hoping that I hadn't messed it up. And um, so the next morning we wake up, we load up in the truck and well, let's not skip over the fact what happened that we walked like six miles in the dark truck. Yeah, yeah, I think I blocked that out. Yeah, Devon, that was

about fifteen steps for Devon and about for Clay and yeah. Yeah, um, so we hyped back quite as many for me because I'm so a a little taller and Okay. So the next morning, we we we get in the truck, we drive all the way back out there, and in my mind, I'm geared up for a half a day of grueling. It's because once you get off of these roads into the woods, it's really it's a jungle. It's a jungle, and it's just the mosque covers lots of stuff. It's hard to

see stuff. It's just really hard to penetrate these woods and go through it. And so it's gonna be a grueling half day of tracking, and um, we're not gonna find it. Yeah, that's basically what I'm thinking. Right, And we walk up park about you know, fifty or twenty yards from where we shot at. Look around again. There's really not a lot of blood at all. We'll hope. I was hoping to kind of say, oh, the sun's that we saw a whole lot more blood, but we didn't.

And you looked in over this fallen true from the spot that we were the night of the night the night before, but it had gotten so dark that we couldn't see much, and you said, I see the bear And I thought you were a kidding And I thought, how can he not know that? My entire soul was wrapped up here, like, this is not the time to joke. You know, usually you're dumb and I can understand that, but not now, now, Clay. But there he was, and

I said, you're joking. He said, no, I see the bear and how many feet from where we were standing? Twelve twelve and there he was. Man, he didn't make it twelve yards from where he shot him. No, no, no, no, And we didn't hear him crash or was down, and so we went in. It was a boar and we

we we looked to see where the shot was. And so the shot was the bear was quartering to us, and if the quartering two means the front on the front, left shoulder was the close this body part to us, okay, and Dan hit from that angle behind the shoulder, so the bullet would have entered right behind the left front shoulder. And the mushroomed bullet was pushing out the skin on the bear's right hind quarter, so it passed through all

the goodies all but didn't exit. I mean it just it was literally pushing the skin and it went the entire length there. So the bear was down, like yeah, it was toast. It was just too dark and we just didn't I couldn't see at that point in real yea. And so it was awesome, man, it was fantastic. Did drug him out of there? Yeah, we drugged him, put him in the track. You know, another really fun thing about British Columbia is you've got these pictures. Number one,

there's a bear in it. And for a guy like me from Arkansas, you know, that's just that. I mean, there could have been like a you know, used car lot in the background, and I would have been real happy. But you have these pictures and you got this bear in it, and you're hunting British Columbia and there's these snow capped mountains and some epic photos. Ludicrous. The whole thing is just crazy awesome. Yes, we took some great photos.

Took some great photos. Yeah. And so there's a running joke that Devin's cell phone pictures are better than my pictures off of my Cannon five D Pro level camera, I would say, not a running joke, but fact, dang it. So we had some great pictures and and the cool thing too, is we got all this on video, so people be able to watch this whole hunt on Bear Horizon, first Bear Man, British Columbia. You can see Devon's camp, get to see the whole organization. Yeah yeah, yeah, and

too bad he's not here. But the heart and soul of this this place, it's Dave Dave. You got to use his name, Old old Dave, who's not He's still alive. He just went. He just he's just not here right now. No, Dave Dave is Devin's really good friend. He's a he's retired retired school teacher, and he's the cook. And he's like the nicest guy on the planet. Yeah, yeah, yeah, And so old Dave, Old Dave is always around. He's always doing something for you. He's always cooking something for you.

He's always like hey, giggling, and he's always like he does putting your towels up so they'll dry, or rolling up the somebody did it wasn't me. He didn't put my towel up. What do you do with yours? He threw it in the dirt. He didn't like you as much he likes me. So so anyway, that is a story, Dan Bear, you know, and I think, just kind of thinking back on it, there's no I'm not. I'm the furthest thing from a highly skilled hunter. I love to

hunt and I love being outdoors. Um, and this whole trip was a gift from my wife to me, and I just didn't know what to expect. And seriously, like Devin, you worked so hard and super knowledgeable, really friendly, got us right where we needed to be. UM, to me, it's a dream come true that you know, I really don't think would have happened had and for me, it never would have them had you guys not been got me and and doing this and making it happen. So uh,

I'd come back and dinner every time. Tell him if a huge adventure, beautiful story of a lot. So that's Dan's bear. And to hear the story of my bear, it's a little bit small, you'll have to listen to the Yeah, to hear the story of my smaller bear

from Devon's picture. You look at Devon's picture, you would think my Maror was smaller and the picture really you have to listen to the next the next halpisode at so sign just talking trackling fire with warm coffee got proxy on amazing company as in company signing up