Dummies Guide to Making and Using Bear Oil

followed by the number twenty. My name is Clay Nukeleman. I'm the host of the Bear Honey magazine podcast. I'll also be your host into the world of hunting the icon of the North American wilderness Prepare. We'll talk about tactics, gear conservation. We will also bring you into some of the wildest country on the planet chasing bare. I hope everybody is navigating through the COVID Night Team coronavirus stuff that's going on all across the world. Pretty interesting times

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So check out Bear Hunting Magazine. Hey, if you want a five dollars office, we're gonna go ahead and tell him Colby. Let's just tell him b h M twenty and get five dollars off a new subscription. So that's for a new subscription, it's not for renewals. Five dollars off for a new subscription into the code b h M check out. Hey, this is a fun podcast about how to make bar oil, bear grease, bear lard, bear tallow. We go through all the yeah, everything about about bear grease.

It's a good one. We are at the Bear Honey Magazine Global headquarters on quarantine. Social distancing is happening here, Colby sitting totally across the room for me, we're legitimately a spear linkal spear length. Yeah, about a spear length. There's a spear up on the wall. We're about that far away. Hey, so I've got I've got Colby the bear Tech more head with me, the Global Bear Tech Global Bear Tech. Hey, we're gonna do something different than

we usually do. You know, there's a lot of different kinds of podcasts, Colby. There's like short podcasts that like have a prescribed time. They're like twenty minutes long, and they're just like pounding out information and asking questions. That would be like you know, like information based podcast. And then there's like a long form conversational top podcast, which is typically what we would have. They would have no end time. You know, it might go two hours, might

go an hour and a half, Rabbit trails. It's conversational, long form stuff. Yeah, that's my natural ten see inside of communications. So that's usually what we do. And I think when you communicate like that, you mine out a lot of nuggets of information and and stuff about the person and stories that are cool. Yeah. Okay, there's a third kind of podcast that This one is gonna be

topic based. Topic based podcast where we pick out a topic and we we're gonna take our time, but we're gonna mine into the facts, the figures, the everything there has to do with this certain topic and we're gonna talk about it. Okay, and that topic today it is bear grease, bear grease, chewing the fat, chewing the fat, rendering the fat. So we're gonna just jump right into

talking about kind of a systematic way. First of all, we're gonna talk about how to harvest the bear fat off of a bear, like where you're gonna find out what to do proper handling and freeze it, all this kind of stuff. We're gonna talk about best practices of rendering. So we're gonna talk about how to render the fat, and then we're gonna talk about uses. So once you have this, what do you do with it? And then we're gonna end the podcast with talking about some historical

significance and some kind of fun facts about bargrease. That's what we're gonna do. I like it. Okay, First of all, let's talk about terminology. There's a lot of different terminology with this. We're going with bear grease. Um, but it could also be called beare oil. Yes, Like if you're doing an Internet search, you might find this topic under bare oil, bare grease, or bear lardy or rendered bear fat,

hurt them all, a lot of different possibilities. Bare grease is kind of like the historical, kind of old version of of the way to say it in uh gir stokers Look written in eighteen thirty seven about his travels and hunting in the Ozarks, which we're gonna do a podcast at some point about specifically about that book Wild Sport, Wild Sports, Yeah, by Frederick Gerstalker. His dog was named bear grease. Pretty cool, okay, and so um, but if you were being more technical, you probably call it bear

lard or bear oil, okay. And so that's what that's for our purposes, bear grease. So the first topic at hand is where do you get bear fat? I think step one located bear go back to all the other podcasts to learn how to kill a bear? Yeah, yeah, all right, so you knowledge while you're quarantine, you can learn how to pursue bear, pursue and overtake and kill a bear in multiple different settings and locations. Yeah, whatever, however you do it, Yeah, kill a bear. Okay, Um,

so you have to find a dead bear. So let me use the success has already been achieved. Its success has been achieved. We've covered that another podcast Feeling good about yourself? Now it's time to get right right. Um. Some people may have never skinned a bear, and and and so when you think of like lots of fat, like you wouldn't find this kind of fat like on a deer or on an elk. And sometimes you'll find uh elker deer that would have, you know, quite a bit of fat like on the rum. But this is

way different. Um. Basically, basically, when you skin a bear, he is gonna depend upon what time of year it is. If it's the spring, he's gonna have less fat. If it's the fall, he could potentially have a lot of fat. You could also kill a bear in the fall that didn't have much fat at all. So it's not guaranteed that you're gonna have a lot of fat. Um, if you killed the bear in mid September, you're gonna have less fat than if you killed that bear on November thirty, say,

like the Arkansas bear season last November. I killed a bear one time on November and he was an absolute butter ball of fat. Bears typically store their fat on their rump, like the biggest the biggest collection of fat is gonna be on the bear's rump, but it could be all over his body, um, going all the way down the top of the back where you'll typically find it. It's from the shoulder blades all the way back down the body, about halfway down the rib cage to the rump.

But that's really where they store this, like the big chunks of fat. And so you're you're gonna skin this bear just like you would a white tailed deer essentially, Um, I mean you're gonna you're gonna make cuts from the from the ankles down the inside of the leg to the center of the chest. Uh on both sides. You're gonna make a split down the belly, and essentially you're

gonna quarter this animal. But you're gonna want to harvest some filets of fat off of this bear, which by filets would mean don't do your best to not get any little chunks of meat inside the fat in this that is gonna be it? Could it could differ in color, but typically it's like a pearly white I mean even like bright white, kind of granular looking fat like uh, pig fat is kind of has a real tight texture.

Beaver fat has a has a little bit bigger grain to it almost, if I could describe it that way, it's it's uh. And and so you're just gonna take off like usable chunks of fat, like, um, well, this bear that I killed, we were literally cutting off four inch thick, probably twelve inch long slabs eight inches wide that weighed twenty pounds. I went home and weighed a piece of fat that I brought home in a weigh twenty pounds. Yeah, usually it's gonna be the smaller pieces.

You're gonna be chunking off little pieces. And I would say that you need about you need about probably you know, taking home like five pounds of fat would probably get you started. Yeah, a couple of jars and uh, from the from the collection that I've done one pound. I'm looking on my notes here. Uh. We did an article on Barony magazine, uh in the September October issue basically, Uh, let's see, let's see, I'm looking for my one pound of fat. Basically, we'll get you about a pint of

liquid oil. Yeah, I'm I'm looking for that here, depending on how well it renders. Yeah. Um so one that's a pretty good that's a pretty good equation, is that one pound of fat is gonna render about a pint of oil. Okay, but there's different methods for rendering it, and some of them are gonna be more efficient than others. But you've got this bare fat, You're gonna treat it

just like a piece of meat. Like if you're if you have if you have game bags and you're hauling a bear out of the back country, you're just gonna pitch them in there. Yeah, You're just gonna put them in there. If you're if you're able to get the bear, you know, in the back of a truck and you're taking it back to your house to process it. Yeah, you're gonna want to keep it cool, just like anything else. Um,

you're gonna want to freeze it quickly. I've actually never I don't think i've ever rendered fresh lard, like taking it straight from the animal, aside from just cooking with it. Maybe there, Yeah, I mean like I've never like taken unfrozen lard and and rendered it into oil that I was gonna keep for a long time. So it freezes just fine. Yeah, so you just you just freeze it. It actually helps to freeze it. And you'll see later when we talk about the methodology for rendering fat. Um.

But so you're gonna want to freeze it. I have heard somebody say that bear fat can spoil and a freezer frozen. I've not experienced that, And I've kept fat frozen for at least six months before and never had any problem with the freezing or or spoiling while it's frozen. Okay, so that's not been an issue. Um, In the spring and fall, you're gonna find different amounts of fat. Last year, a year with me in Montana when we killed the bear early, I mean this bear hadn't been out of

denlong killing. I made the fifth sharp Claws, Sharp Claws, long guard Hair's beautiful critter. He had a fair bit of fat on, I mean enough fat that if I had gone to Montana for the sole purpose of bringing home some some bear fat to render a couple of pints, I could have done it. Now I was I was trimming, I was having to be more particular, I was trimming off, you know, like these little filets, and they would be

these thin, like half inch wide filets. I was primarily getting off the rump, okay, So and I was able to take home probably three or four or five pounds of fat. Okay, you kill a bear in the fall, you probably could a big bear in the fall, like some of these that were killing around here, there would

be so much fat you'd have a hard time at all. Yeah. Honestly, if we're just being honest about it, I mean you you, you you could probably I mean, like that bear right there that I killed in November, you probably could have taken a hundred pounds of fat off of that bear, more than you one a haul. Yeah. Well, it's not even about hauling, it's just storing it more than you'd want to render. I mean, a little bit of bear greas goes a long way. Yeah, you have to. You'd

have to go in empty walmart shelves of jars. Yeah. And more power to you, though, uh to to utilize as much as the animal as possible. And I think that's what's that's a cool part of this idea of utilization of bear grease. Because Kobe people in in in the United States and these United States, upwards of high seventies of of percentage of people approve of modern hunting if they believe that the person is using the animal

for food. So like, let's just say seventy plus percent of people are okay with hon anything they believe it's done for food. The disconnect that we have with the bear hunters and the general populace is that people don't immediately assume that we're eating or utilizing bears for food. So there's that disconnect that we have to that we have to span, is that hey, yeah, we're using bear

for food. And here's what I say is that you actually, we actually, as bear hunters, utilize more of that animal than any other kind of big animal that we hunt. Because how many deer that people kill did they tan their hides? Many? Very few some, but percentage wise, I mean probably like one percent of white tailda in this country that are harvested are their hides tanned. Well, bear I would say upwards of eighty five of bears that are harvested their hides are tanned. And obviously that's not

for food, that's for ornamental purposes. These hides are being kept and hung in houses and and you know, used as just memory activators, trophies, whatever you want to call it. I don't care. That's number one. Number two the meat we we this podcast isn't about bear meat, but man, bear meat is incredible. Uh, it's hard to refute that if you've given it much of a try in more than one place. Everybody's got some story about when they

had bad bear meat. Well I've got a thousand stories of when we've had good bear meat, and people that want to like it like it. Yeah. Number three, bear fat, And that brings us right back to here. There's no other animal. I mean, people aren't rendering down the elk fat for utilization throughout the year for all these different purposes. So that narrative about utilization of animals for a for for commodities equating to approval from non hunters, really our

place is pretty strong right there. You know, um and so bear fat, um, so spring and fall. Uh, you can get it in the spring, but there's more in the fall. Can you think of any other aspect of getting the bear fat that somebody might have. You can freeze it, cutting it off the rump um. There's really not much to it other than that, I mean, it

takes longer to freeze and than meat, doesn't it. I don't know, why would you think that, just because it's more of an insulator, like I would think that it would take longer to freeze solid than like regular meat. But I don't know, I don't know. I don't know if that's true or not. I mean it's possible, but yeah, I can't think of anything. Yeah, okay, I mean it's just let's let's talk about how to how to render bear fat. Yeah, okay, So I prefer two. So rendering

just means that you're heating. You're heating it until it turns into a liquid. Rendering as the idea that something starts out as a solid and then turns into a liquid. Change of state. Yeah, and so when we there's just like in most scenarios, there there are ways to do something that are fine, but there are also ways to do that same thing that are way better, and we would call that best practice. So I'm gonna tell you what's best practice for rendering bare fat. But it's quite

a bit harder. Yeah, not that harder, much harder, but quite a bit harder. But the other way is just fine air quotes. Yeah, I think. I think one thing about the difference between fat and and like taking the muscle off or the meat is you don't have to worry about like getting in big chunks or like keeping like some group together. You can just like off, you know, however, you can get it off, so there's not liking you right, a wrong way to to take it off, that's right. Yeah,

you could have small pieces either big pieces. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good point. Um, So let's start with let's start with best practice. To me, best practice would be too take a semi frozen slab of bear fat that would be unfrozen enough that you could that you could cut it into small like one to one and a half inch cubes. The meat would be cool, and you

would grind that meat. You're not meat. You would grind the fat, run the fat through a grinder and so just like a meat grinder, and basically it you know, it grinds up this to where the surface area of that large fat is way more than if you cube it up. And then you you heat that down and the render is very efficient. And I guess I've got to tell the story of the other way to do it.

The way I first started doing it was just cubing it up into those one to one and a half inch squares basically when and it's easiest to cut when it's about half frozen. If it's totally thought out room temperature, it's much harder to cut. But if it's about if it's about half froze, man, you can just you can cube it up, just like you're cutting fudge or something. You know, it's it's fairly solid, but you can still

get a knife into it. Typically, what I first started doing was just putting those one inch cubes down into a heat source. And we'll talk about different heat sources you can use, and um you could. I would pour a little bit of water in there, just a little bit, not much, just to keep it from that fat from sticking to the heat, sticking to the pan, and then you would stir these chunks and basically those chunks would just begin to melt down, I mean, almost like butter,

and you would begin to see liquid form. And you know, after uh, four or five minutes, you look down and half of those cubes would be gone and there would be this amber colored boiling liquid coming up around this fat and What happens is you eventually get to the point where all the fat that's gonna render is gonna render, and you still have some of the fat left and little chunks down in this oil, and uh we call

those the cracklings. And what you would do then as you would strain out using uh any kind multiple types of strainers, but we like to use a cheese cloth cheese cloth over a metal funnel metal strainer funnel type apparatus. But that cheese cloth for sure gets all the really fine particles because there will be there'll be a little particular matter in there, um just from whatever, and you you strain that out into we'd like to use Mason jars, metal lid Mason jars, point jars down to what are

those right there? This is like the little like three or four like quarter and I think you court point What did I say? Did I say? One pound does a point? Chucks? One pound does a One pound of bare fat will make a court tort? Okay, one one pound will make a court yeah yeah yeah. Um, So you you run through these cloth and you put it in these Mason jars and then you just immediately settled it up while it's hot but then you have this

left over. Um, you have these leftover cracklings that can be you can you can salt them and eat them. I've used his dog treats before, just put them in a ziplog bag and just kept them using as dog treats. I've I've used them as snacks later. But there in lies the inefficiency because however much fat was in that little crackling, you didn't get his liquid oil when you when you grind the meat, you get almost a one percent efficiency. All of that bare fat turns into oil.

So they're in lies's best practice turning bear fat into grease is if you grind it first. Yeah, we didn't have much in the last one that we did out here much what much anything left? Like most of it cooked down? Yeah. Yeah, you'll strain it through that cheese cloth and you'll just see small a few small, little little chunks of stuff. Um, you know, and I guess it's just like burnt bits of fat that that kind of solidified rather than turned into oil. Um. So let's

talk about what kind of heating apparatus. You could do this on a stove in a metal pot, just like you cook with at home. Put it on low heat and stir it and just let it gradually melt down. We've done it in jet boils. Um. Last year we did it in a jet boil, and I think we rendered down probably a pint or two in like eight

or nine minutes. UM. We also used a turkey cooker, which would be a kind of a one of these outdoor propane you know, hooks into a large propane tank, and used a big aluminum um, big aluminum pot or stay in the steel pot whatever. A little fish friers growing up. Yeah, yeah, like a fish fryer exactly. And we found that the hotter you cook it, the darker the oil will be. If you cook it slow and low,

the oil is lighter. I want to say that we were just cooking it up to about two and twenty five degrees in the in the low portion, um, and it was getting up to it was getting up quite a bit hotter than that with the jet boil. I think it was right around three hundred degrees and the jet boil. Do we try fried daddy too or something like? Yeah,

we did a fried daddy. Um. You know what I'm gonna do, Kobe, I'm going to pull up our YouTube video so we we did a YouTube video called experimenting with Bear Fat, and I'm gonna pull up a few of the the stats from that video just as we're as we're talking about it, because it was I probably should have reviewed this before we uh, before we started. But okay, here we go grinding. Okay, yeah, that we we We did the cookie turkey cooker up to two

twenty five degrees. The Fried Daddy cooked at three hundred degrees, and so the Fried Daddy oil was a little bit darker than than the other oil. The jet boil got up to three d and fifteen degrees. We we couldn't really regulate the temperature that much with that, but the turkey cooker were able to slow it down to about two five um. So the jet boil and the Fried Daddy we cooked about eight to nine minutes. So this

doesn't have to take all day. You know, when I first started doing this, I had this idea that like took hours to like interface mails down quick eight to nine minutes. That that those temperatures eight minutes in the Fried Daddy, I mean, the oil is totally rendered and it doesn't do you any good to keep cooking it after it's done. Now, when we did it at two twenty five degrees, we had to cook it about thirty the thirty five minutes to get it down into oil.

And one pint per pound of fat one pint tint per pound of fat. So we were right, not a court one pint per pint pound of fat. Um. So what you're gonna have once you so, it's gonna be this amber colored liquid. It's gonna be super hot and dangerous. Hey, rabbit trail alert. You see my hand right there? Do you know what happened in my hand? No? Do you not know? You never told me? I'll be darn. Have you ever noticed my hand? Tell me the truth? Not that I've paid attention. Okay, it used to be way

more noticeable. But do you see that scar going across my knuckles all the way down to my fingernails. Um, it used to be really knows what? My hand was almost white, and it's because I was burned by bacon grease when I was about twenty two years old. Yeah. Yeah, we were camping on Buffalo River and we were cooking bacon grease over a fire and I went to dump the pan, dump the oil out of a cast iron skillet and Uh, I used it was kind of using a makeshift potholder. It was a it was a hat.

It was like a straw hat. And I took it over just outside of our camp and the the hat started smoking like the straw hat. It's like a it was like a like a real floppy like women's straw hat. Why I was using that, I don't know. I was twenty two years old and it kind of freaked me out that it was smoking. And I tilted that back, tilted it back, and that just sizzling bacon grease went all over the top of my hand and h and sent me to the hospital, sent me out of work

for two weeks. And UH had a man. Uh I think it was a second degree. It wasn't quite a third degree, but all the all the skin burned off my hand. It was miserable. Yeah. And I say all that to say this stuff is super dangerous. Yeah, it really is. I have deep respect for hot oil holds. The heat. Oh man, you get it on your skin, you're in big trouble. So let's be careful with it. Um. The so when you first poured into a jar, it's it looks almost like honey it's like liquid, beautiful amber

colored stuff. As it cools, it will solidify and it'll it'll turn into almost like a semi solid, slushy type material. But the solids and the oil, like the pure oil, will begin to separate. And I've seen different batches of oil separate in different quantities, Like I've seen some oil colby that was like solid and this beautiful amber colored liquid. And that's what me and you were actually trying to discover last year when we cooked it at different temperatures.

I thought it was a temperature variable because you'll get some barre oil that you do the same thing and it's almost solid. It's this white, creamy fat. And so I was like, well, how do you make sure that you get this beautiful oil versus this creamy white stuff? And somebody told me that it has to do with what the bear has been eating. Like since I haven't gone into the science of it, but essentially like the

choresterol level of the animal. I don't know if that's true or not, but we couldn't find a way when rendering it that it made a difference. It's kind of like it just does it on its own, Like how much solid and how much liquid. But color had to do with temperature. But it doesn't matter that. That's the thing like with if you're just if you're just trying to have oil just to use for cooking, for all the things we're about to talk about, like what do

you do with this stuff? It doesn't matter if it's you you use the creamy white stuff. It's not like you have to strain out just to get the the the amber colored liquid oil and not use the solid stuff because it's not really solid. You put it in the paint hot pan and it immediately turns into liquid with me, yeah, yeah, changes changes it's solidity. Would solidity be a word good enough? Yeah, it would change for more of it, like a solid looking to just a

clear oil. So at room temperature, that's what it looks like. If you were to take that. We were looking at the barrel oil in our eastern window here at the Global Headquarters, and it's got probably uh, I would say this amber color liquid that you can see through, and then this white and if you took a spoonful of that and put it in a frying pan, it would

immediately turn to just liquid and fried, just like olive oil. Yeah, and it's even loose light whenever with that when whenever you move it around, like the what looks more solid moves around too. Yeah. So that is uh, that's how you make it. When you when you pour it into these jars, after it's been sieved through cheesecloth, you you seal it up, let it cool down before you touch it, mess with it, and then you just store. You don't

even have to refrigerate it. It will store. I have used barrel oil that's set on a window sill for a year and a half inside of and it get cooked with it and it was fine. Yeah, uh it, if I'm being honest, it had a slight taste to it that the fresher stuff didn't have. That was a year and a half later, which I would say that's pretty extreme. Yeah. So this stuff easily has a shelf life of a year. That's that's really this stuff is. Hey, you know what this we did this almost a year ago,

this oil that we're using now from may Montana bear. Yeah, and uh I fried crappy in it, uh ten days ago? Yeah? Perfect? No, I mean this beautiful, great frying oil. We did a good job. We did a good job. Colby Um, so I'm gonna say that a year without refrigeration, a glass jar, barrel oil perfect Bear Hunting Magazine approved. Yeah, I mean that's what we've found. Um okay, let's talk about us. What do you do? What do you do with barreil? A lot of things? There's a lot of things, so

bear oil can here. Here's a simple rundown. Here's a SoundBite rundown. And this isn't like a list that's completed. This is a list that's always attitude. Right, Yeah, I think there's there's always ways. But but you can take this list and understand in general practice what this kind of stuff is used for. First of all, back in the day, they used animal large for different stuff than we do today. Now we have some other types of oils that we use. Um, but in general, you can

use barrel oil as a baking substitute for shortening. Yep, okay, so in in barrel oil is renowned for pastries. A lot of people know that. That's pretty common. I think ten years ago that wasn't that common in outdoor space, like people. I'm not saying people didn't know it, but it's just like anymore, you're just like, what's barre all is good for them. People are like pastries, so and

that's cool. That's good that people know that. We posted in UM March April issue Barning Magazine a recipe about how to make bear claw danishes using the barrel oil. Yeah. Uh, that was a good Yeah. Wild Feast, the wild Feast, what's our buddy's name, Michael, The wild Feast um so number one. You can use it as a substitute for anything thing that calls for shortening or margarine not margine shortening um number two. And this is my favorite way to use it in the way that I like to use.

Its pan frying stuff we do in the fall a lot of times with dear meat. It just seems like when the fall comes, I have this inclination to want to pan fry, whether it be deer meat, would be bear meat, whether it be fried potatoes, fried potatoes and onions. And man, that lard is so good for pan fry and stuff. Way better. You know, you think people use vegetable oil or or whatever. The healthier choice would be olive oil. Olive oils like really way better for you

than conola or vegetable oil. A lot of people know that, but historically, if you're pan frying like backstraps, venison backstraps. Yeah, you would use vegetable or canola oil, man use bear fat. We could cat fish in it too, yeah, in in what in barrel? Yeah yeah yeah. So pan fry and anything. Yeah, I like, I love pan frying, fish, hand frying, anything, vegetables, squirrels, anything.

So if you don't use it for anything other than that, like maybe you don't bake a lot man, take the lard off a bear that you kill this year, pan fry with it. Great thing. Okay, well was it that that thing that the guy did with was it with gumbo or something like? He did like a yeah, a rue for gumbo. So last year I had a guy I have to tell you that he wrote a really great book about He's a chef down in Louisiana. World.

Are now gumbo chef? Uh? Camera call his name? He sent in his book and and he wanted to do a historically accurate rue for gumbo, which called for bear fat because all the bear fat from this part of the country and the Ozarks would be shipped down the White River to the Mississippi River and down to Louisiana. And for making this rue, which is basically the first step in making gumbo, you needed some type of lard. So these guys had in the old cookbooks that said

to use bear lard to make the roof. Well, he didn't know where to find bear lard. He contacted us and I sent him a pint and he made his roof for his gumbo. Yeah that's pretty cool. And yeah, um, I've read in the historical literature where people ate bear grease like butter. Like they would have a jar like that and put it on bread. And again, you gotta remember back in those times, these were people that were

just looking for ways to in take calories. Yeah, you know, I mean these people were surviving, and so they you know, salt some bar grease and and spread it on a piece of toast. I have it. They would use it like molasses, like pop it on the plate right beside him. People from the South may not eat molasses, but you

know the way we would eat molasses. Just take a big spoonful of molasses and put it on a put it on your plate and with your biscuits, and usually in breakfast is when you eat it, you just take a little nippa molasses with it. Well, that's the way they would eat bear grease, eat it like butter. Okay, Um, those those are most of the cooking type things that I'm going to talk about. That that covers a fairly wide span there. But uh, it can also be used

for softening and waterproofing leather. So it's in oil. Um. I've used it on my boots and times past, and it does a good job of waterproofing. I'm not gonna say that it's not as good as some of the more modern waterproofing technologies. Yeah, I just don't think it is um at least not in its raw state like minx fed oil and stuff. Some of that stuff is top notch still today, and I'm not sure how that's processed.

Minx foed oil, I'm not sure how that's processed to turn it into that kind of creamy almost like lotion e type white stuff that you put on your boots. I put barrel on boot. It's it does repel water, but I just don't think it's quite as good, So I think they used to use it for that. I've also heard complaints that if you barre oil your boots and you like leave them in a dark closet for six months without wearing them. They can come out and

you can have a little bit of mold on your boot. Okay, but if you regularly apply it and you're it's a pair of boots that you're using, I don't think you have any problem with it. But remember back of a day, it is the best they had, so they were it would have been great, you know, way better than nothing. So more exploration going on there. Okay, oiling metals which would be knife knife blades. So you gotta think back

in the day, they weren't using stainless steel. We're just these guys were just using like standard type uh steel that would easily rest and so they oiled knife blades. I still do that today, that big knife right there, that's in that sheath you pulled out right, and now I don't have a film on it from a year ago when I put barrel el on it. Uh. They also used it for oil and guns, which you can still use to this day. I have not found any

negative consequence to using barrel oil on a modern firearm. Yeah, somebody may be able to contradict me on that. I have yet to find it. They also used the barrel oil as a lubricant for muzzloader patches. So they were cramming round musket balls, you know, down of down guns, and they would they would wet the patch with barrel oil.

Makes perfect sense. Yeah, that's pretty cool stuff. Okay. Uh they used barrel oil for fuel in oil burning lamps, which we tried yep um, and I haven't ran that experiment to my satisfaction yet, colbe because the we only had a short wick. And uh, I just poured barrel oil down in this oil burning lamp and lit it and it will certainly light, But it burned away quicker than I was anticipating, and I burned up my wick. I've got some more wicks ordered. This is from last year.

I just ordered some wicks, by the way. Yeah. But they used it as a fuel for basically producing light, you know, and in a lamp, in a fuel burning lamp. Okay, wells around here for brooks. Blevins told me that they used it for making candles. Yeah, the bare oil for making candles, which would be to make use it in the wax in some way. Uh. And then the final one on my list here is making Lye soap, so

you use animal fat to make Lye soap. Yeah, a guy sent us some the other day from Montana and he said, this is a bear tallo He called it bear Tallow. There's another name, bear tallow. Coconut oil, olive oil, castor oil, uh spit s P I t U l I n A, and essential oils. And it is a beautiful bar of soap. Smells great Lye soap has so many different positive things that guys talk about. One of the coolest things that's coming to mill. Yeah, yeah, that

was cool. A guy one of our readers up in Montana sent that to I've tried to make bear fat lie soap one time, Kolbe, and it turned out more like bear fat uh bear fat shampoo. Okay, it didn't solve, it didn't solidify. I did it wrong. It was a pretty big process. And so it's it's this liquid when it's hot and you're supposed to just like leave it in these trays like overnight. Yeah, you come back the

next day and you have this like sheet of soap. Well, when I came back the next day, it didn't solidify completely. So it's real mushy, So I called it shampoo. It was more like a shampoo. But I actually want to experiment with that some more. But any kind of animal lard you can use to make lass soap, which is has a lot of positive benefits. Okay, can you think of anything else that I didn't hit there? I mean I came up with a pun. Oh, of course you did.

That's here. Let's here. It's like, you know, you're using bear fat on your on your musket ball. It's like, really could be boar butter, boar butter. Okay, Okay, that's why Colby gets paid the big bucks here at the global headquarters for the puns more butter more. But we're gonna market that. You know, I kept it to myself for a while. You were grinning over there on the Something's having. When Colby grins, there's nothing funny going on.

He's thinking of a pun. That's that's way his mind works. It doesn't happen that often. But um so, the history of bear grease, So bear grease is nut was known to not go rancid as quickly as pork lard. Okay, so pork lard. Now, I've never put pork lard in a jar and left it for a year to see, so I can't say, but they say that it would

go bad. Bear lard would keep longer, that's what they say. Um. So it was really valuable and it's a super valuable commodity in the pioneer days all across the bear range where people were trying to forge out a living and market hunters for bears sold bear fat. So you killed the bear, you sold the hide, You sold the fat, and you sold the meat. Bear hide was sold in eels, so it's a unit of measurement called an eel, which an eel is was the tanned neck of a deer.

So you'd tell you'd kill a deer, and you would tan the neck of the deer, sew it together, make a pouch of barrel oil which would hold around a gallon, maybe a little bit more than a gallon, and then you would sew it or seal it up, and they would sell an eel of barrel oil and um and

sell it a market. Um. They were companies. We learned from Brooks Blevins last week that there were companies in Arkansas and presumably all over the country that made I mean they were they were bear fat rendering companies, UM that that made oil and they would usually be positioned in great places for them to be able to ship on the waterways to Almost all the barrel oil coming out of Arkansas, most of it was going down to Louisiana the markets down there, because it was so easy

to get down down in that part of the world. Wasn't when the town was called like Old Trough or something like that. Yeah, so he gave a big explanation. There's a town to to this day, or at least a community in Arkansas called the Oil Trough, and uh, a couple of different stories, but essentially the oil Trough was a barrel oil trough, you know. Um, so it

was a valued commodity worth a lot of money. Um. Daniel Boone, you know, once killed a hundred fifty five bears in one winter and he stored bear lard in barrels. I mean, it's all this really cool history about bears, Old Troff, Arkansas, Bear Grease, the Dog and the Girls Darker Book. Um. I mean, back in the day, this would have just been like super normal stuff like Okay, I'm going to the store. I'm gonna pick up a gallon of milk, some bear grease, and uh, you know,

some cheese. It's you know, it's like, um, this would have been like a household commodity, which is so cool to think about. Um, And you know, you think about the wildlife loss we have. Now you can't sell wildlife related commodities, so we can't. It's been taken off the market, which essentially killed it from modern culture. You know. I mean back in the day when you could buy it, everybody would have used it, and it would have been common for people to connect what they were using in

their house back to some wild place in the land. Well, no, there's no longer that traction there. So that's why I think bear grease is so cool. Um. Lastly, let's close by talking about a guy named Gordon Wimsat. Yeah, okay, so there's a lot of folksy stuff around bear grease.

So Gordon Wimsat. We published an article in the July August issue twenty nineteen issue of Barony magazine about Gordon Wimsat, who lived in uh Cloudcroft, New Mexico, and Gordon was friends when he was young with a guy of Apache descent, and that that guy his friend, told him that the Apaches used to take the scraped bladder of a deer

which we're gonna do some experiment with. And they put bar oil in the scraped bladder of a deer, which the scraped bladder just meant that they fleshed it basically like you would have hide, and it hardened and made like a little jar essentially, and they would pour rendered barrel oil into these bladders. And that's how they stored the barrel oil. Well, you could see through the barrel oil. It was a it was a clear became a clear container.

And he said the apaches could forecast the weather looking at a bladder of bear grease. Well Gordon Websat he was born in nineteen fifteen and basically he spent sixty years studying barrel oil. And at one time he had a hundred jars of barrel oil in a south facing window in his home. And he built an elaborate weather forecasting chart that we have printed in Barren Hounting magazine.

And he became I mean to say he was world renowned would probably not be an understatement, but he became renowned for being able to forecast weather based upon this barrel oil. And essentially what he would do is you remember us talking about this solid and then liquid portions in a clear jar barrel. Eil is that that changes

basically with barometric pressure and with weather conditions. You would he got to where he he could just notice the slightest, most nuanced change in that layer between the solid and the liquid. Like you look at this piece of this jar right here, Colby, It's like the top of that solid layer isn't totally flat. I mean it's not like a billiard table. It kind of undulated. It's kind of got some curves and some little pieces that stick up

and it's not flat. Well, Gordon Wibsite said that he could forecast the weather based upon what changes inside of that. Um make call it, call him crazy. I don't know, Um, but we've been observing bear Flat for several years here at the Global headquarters, and um, it does get weird sometimes, it does change. It does change. It's I'm not gonna say it's like massive changes all the time. Um. But he so, we we'll somehow make this available where you

can see Gordon's chart. But he has this like pictograph type chart. I'm gonna I'm gonna read you a couple of his weather forecasts here. Okay, So number one has a description of just like a totally flat top. And he says heavy and bottom no change for several hours. Clear number two slight build up, some cloud cover like if the if the center of the solid part is higher than the edges, he said, there'll be cloud cover.

So these are like really like nuanced weather forecast. Um build up and peak like if there's a point, if it's like a if it angles up to like a pretty distinct point, he says. Um, clouds and moisture close at hand. Okay, um, he goes on, you gotta read this, people gotta read this article. Gordon got to where he was known for predicting earthquakes and pretty crazy stuff. Ripley's Believe It or Not did an episode on him back in the eighties, and then he was also on Good

Morning America after he predicted an earthquake in Mexico City. Crazy. Yeah, this guy, Gordon Whim said. He died in nine uh at the age of eighty years old. And um, anyway, it's pretty cool stuff. It was a cool article to read. Yeah, it was. It was. So you know what, here's another use of bear fact. Put it in decorative jars. Okay, bear hunters shouldn't spend a lot of time at hobby lobby. Okay,

really one good reason. But if you want to get some cool decorative jars, go ahead and go to hobby lobby. Bring your wife with you, you know, so the hobby lobby. You need your camouflage, right, Yeah, I wear a Cama Barrett, wear a Bear Honeting magazine Bear Grease hat, and you'll be you won't lose your Man card some back order right now due to popular to man. Yeah, you're right, No,

I actually I like hobby lobby. Um, go to hobby lobby, get some decorative jars, put them in there, and then give bear grease away to people as gifts at Christmas time. Tell them they can forecast weather if they put in the south facing wind there. I've done it. My mother in law still has a jar that she's probably had for five years, and uh, it's beautiful, still sitting in her window. I think if you open it up right now and try to use it, I think it would

be bad after five years. It is beautiful though, because the longer it's set there, the more it's solidified. So the amber colored liquid is just like almost clear and has this solid stuff at the bottom. But it's a conversation starter. It's like, yeah, that's that's my bear grease. Yeah, so that's a great use for it. Yeah, I've given away a lot of bear grease um and uh a

lot of people. You know. Uh, Well, there's another lady that we both know that has requested some bargrease because she wants to use it as a glaze on I want to say, meatballs. Yeah, she heard that it would be really good for like a Syrian the outside of meatballs. Anyway, Well, I'll have to follow up with her on that. Yeah. Hey, man, that's I'd say that's a pretty good overview of beargrease. Um,

a great overview. But the main thing is is is we want to we want to continue to educate people that, man, we're using these animals. You know, just because this is a big predator doesn't mean that we're just taking the hides and heading out of town. Um. And uh, you know, we want to encourage people to to to eat it, to render down some fat tan the hides. We're we're

utilized as much of these bears as we can. That's cool. Yeah, closing comments, Kobe, I mean, I think it's just cool to be able to assign value to things that people don't see value in, you know, and then also to like going through it in this way just um taking off any any type of thing that would make someone think that it was difficult or hard or like remove some of the mystery of it, because really like historically would be a really normal common practice that you know,

just kind of lost touch with just based upon I mean really like beare numbers are are are high right now where they wouldn't have historically been. So it's kind of like uncovering some history and some common use that you know still value today. I mean, it's gonna be the pure stuff you could probably use. This doesn't it's not gonna have any additives or anything. It's just you know, what you take from the land and really like this whole like filled the fork and and everything. I mean,

how cool is it too. It's just one more part of the process that you have involvement in inside the house, like whenever you're cooking and stuff. It's not I just didn't get the meat. I also got the grease of the oil and other things that that we're using. So I think there's a really cool aspect to that. Yeah, absolutely, you know, we didn't. I didn't mention that this oil taste like oil is supposed to taste, which is you're not supposed to taste it exactly. Yeah, Like people like,

what does it taste like? And I'm like, well, good oil doesn't taste like anything. Yeah, good oil gives texture to food, gives texture to pastries. Like you don't. It's not like you're gonna eat an apple pie made from burglaries and be like, well that's kind of gamy. Yeah. No, I mean good oil is absent except for just making

it taste good. And and that is barrel. I thought about that while you're talking for some reasons, just like it's not like you're compromising something by you know, taste like well you fry pan, fry fish or something in barre oil, It's not gonna have a gamey taste. It's oil. It's oil. Doesn't have a smell to it. No, it has a now it probably has. It does have a smell, like it smells like something, but so would pig lard. Yeah, it would have a it's not a bad smell like

it's you don't stick your nose on it. And just like I cannot smell that like you wouldn't say that, like you would go, something's there, something is there. It's not off putting, it's not unusual, not super strong, right right, No, it's not. But great, well, hey, all the more reason to keep the wild places wild because that's where the bears live.