Elk-pedition

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boots that they have. I've been using mind for a couple of weeks now and I am very impressed with the the fit in the field and I can't wait to get them in the woods this hunting season and give him a trial run. So Lacrosse Footwear dot Com check them out. My name is Clay Nukelem and I'm the host of the Bear Hunting Magazine podcast. I'll also be your host into the world of hunting the icon

of North American wilderness bear. We'll talk about tactics, gear, conservation, but we'll also bring you into some of the wildest country on the planet Chasing the Bay. We're taking a new turn on the Bear Hunting Magazine podcast this week is we're talking about elk hunting. I think it'll be relevant to you because we are not elk hunters, or we weren't before this trip. This is our first elk hunt.

About three or four weeks ago, I decided that I'd take my son out of school bear Nukem, that we'd go to and over the counter unit in Colorado take the mule go hunting. So we record this podcast on the way home from that incredible hunt. Also already out right now is a video about our hunt. It's called Elk Pedition. Let's play on words for the word expedition, because buddy, when you're hauling stock across the country and you're going on to do it yourself hunt, it is

an expedition. And so on the Bear Hunting Magazine YouTube channel, go check out this video. It's about six minutes long. It's a ton of fun and you'll get to hear us talk about it, but in six minutes you can see it too, and you'll really have a great story, which is a lot of fun. We are starting right now to bait bears in Arkansas. In Oklahoma, we've been baiting them for a few weeks, but one place in Arkansas.

I mean as we speak, I mean, my my truck is island in the parking lot of the Bear Hunting Magazine Global headquarters, and I am headed to bait bears in this one place for the first time where we pack in with mules into UH into a remote region that you can't access by truck. So we're gonna pack in with mules. We've got the mules loaded and we're headed there right now. I want to draw your attention to a product that we're gonna be using this very day,

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So check out our friends at Northwood's Bear Products dot Net. You're gonna enjoy this podcast and go check out our video for Bear Honey Magazine YouTube channel. Today is September the eleven, and we are on the road. We are recording right now in my truck. We're pulling our nineteen sixties two horse trailer that's been refurbished. We've got two mules in the back, one exceptionally flashy mule and one really nice black mule named Ace. Flashy mules named Izzy.

And I have a very special guest on the podcast today, my son, Bear John Newcomb. That's not my middle name. Introduce yourself, Bear. My name is Bear. I'm thirteen and I got out of school this week to go oh cunning in Colorado. Right on, So tell him your full name, Bear, Jo, Bear, Josiah. We've always called him Bear John on but yeah, so we are. We're on the tail end of a not just a hunting trip, but we've called it an elk how do we call it? Expedition? This isn't just an

elk cunt. This is an expedition, so we're trying to we're trying to call it an elk expedition, and so on this we want to describe all that we've done. We want to tell some stories, we want to talk about the process that guide us here, and we're just gonna describe our hunt. Let me start by saying that I have never hunted elk in my life, never in my life, and I've all I've been invited on elk hunts. I've known people that have gone, and I mean, it's it's it's such a iconic hunt that I knew that

one day I would probably do up. But I never have, and almost intentionally, I've stayed away from it. I've I've kind of been a specialist in a lot of ways in my hunting, and I've focused on certain things, never elk. Kind of this year, Bear John, two things happened. Two things.

Number one, while we were spring bear hunting in Montana this spring, I found an elk shed out in Montana and I brought it home, and your mama loved that elk shed so much that she wanted me to put it as the core in our living room and she said that she would like an elk head in our living room, which is pretty significant. And uh, so that

that was one thing. The second thing that happened was I spent some time up in bos in Montana this summer, just a few days with my friend Kevin Harlander from First Light and Joe Ferronado from Meat Eater, And it's been just an evening with those guys, and they were talking about elk hunting, and uh they both invited me

to go elk hunting with them next year. Basically, you know, they are everybody's plans already made for this year, and so I spoiled their plans of getting to you know, of getting to take me on my first elk hunt because we just said, man, you know what, We're just gonna load up the mules. We're gonna drive to an over the counter area of Colorado and we're gonna hunt elk ourselves. You know, how hard can it be? Right, I've been saying that to everybody, How hard can it be?

How hard can it be? And obviously it's a joke because Elk County is extremely difficult. Non residents success rates in Colorado are about ten and and we just decided to do this about four weeks ago. So you know, honestly, most people planning elk hunts like a year in advance. And Man, about the tenth of August, I was like, man, we need to go elk hunting. And so I talked to your mama and I said, what do you think about me taking Bear out of school for a week

and us going elk hunton and uh? And she was off for it. And you're gonna do a presentation at your school about what you've done. That's one of the prerequisites for them getting excused absences. They gotta come back and tell what kind of activity they did. And so Bear is going to do that. But there's actually a third reason that we went elk hunting this year is because in the spring was the first time that I trailered my mules long distance to hunt the west by myself.

I had I had hunted the west for Bear uh with gym sessions once with his mules and horses, and learned a ton from him about back country equine hunting. On the spring, me and Colby Moorehead went and and did it ourselves and we learned. We just learned a ton there. It's extremely complicated to haul mules across the country. I mean, there's just a lot of things you gotta

plan for. And aside from that, we were we we learned how to We learned a good system for camping and hunting off these mules, not using any pack horses or pack mules. A lot of guys bear when they hunt the West, they'll ride one animal and they'll use one animal as a pack animal. But I didn't want to do that. I wanted to stay lean and mean, as they say. And so we pretty much have an ultra light gear set up and we're applying that to

our mules. Because even though mules and equine animals are super strong and carry a ton of weight, when you're putting a rider on them and try and to pack all your gear, you know, they can get overloaded pretty quick. It's they're not invincible, you know. And so I've we learned a lot. So it was like, yeah, we can, we can go to Colorado. Colorado is closer than Montana. Montana was a twenty four hour drive for us. Colorado was about a fourteen hour drive. I got some intel

from a good friend of mine. You won't mind me saying, his name Jason Bossman. Jason gave me some intel on a region that he thought would be good for finding some milk. So we did have that outside input because that was my first question and probably the limiting factor and hardest part of this hunt, Bear, was just where do you go and if you go there, are you gonna find elk? And so Jason was like, hey, if you go here, he said, and you put in your time and get back in there. You know, he gave

me a lot of great pointers. He was like, you'll find some milk. So the objective of this hunt, though, knowing that we were up against like some pretty serious odds of not not killing an elk. Really we were just trying to get our feet wet, right Bear. Um. I wanted Bear to have in his repertoire of experiences as a young man. I wanted him to be able to say, yeah, we took our mules and we went elk hunton, and I knew that after and we we

ended up hunting about five days. Okay, so it wasn't as long as some hunts, but we hunted for five days, and I knew that after five days in the back country that riding mules that Bear number one would become a really qualified equine mule man. There's a ton of stuff that goes on about handling animals in the back country, and you can't mess up, you know, even even down to like tie how do you tie up your mules

at night? How do you let them feed and graze during the day, Because if you lose your mules when you're twelve miles back in and they will absolutely run away from you if you let them, then you're in big trouble. And so you know, I taught Bear about that. We we we in in a five days span road forty miles on these mules. Isn't that what we figured Bear? Maybe more? Maybe more? And so I knew that after that much time in the saddle and that kind of

difficult country, that Bear would be a muleman. I mean, I just knew it. If he survived, did you survive? So there was a lot of objectives. Really my only, my only goal, which obviously I wanted to kill an elk, But deep down I almost knew that that was an unrealistic just absolute goal, Like I wasn't gonna say the success of the trip sip on whether we bring home elk meet or not. I never said that, even though I've always got the end goal in mind and everything

that I do. But success was gonna be us being safe, hunting hard, camping well, handling the mules well, and us finding elk and having a good hunt and giving them heck. Okay, giving the elk heck? Do you think we gave the elk heck? Bear? Hey, why don't you describe the first day of the hunt and where we went? You don't name any names, now, but like where, like what we did, and why don't you describe a little bit of that? Like, So we'll start with day one. So day one, we

arrived in Colorado, what do we do? We went and we got the overly counter elk tag, and we went to a trailhead. Don't well, yeah, we don't want to say the name of the trailhead. And then we rode ten miles up the trail and then we camped in a spot and we hunted a little bit. That afternoon

we mostly just glassed and cold a little bit. And the next day, well, yeah, so we we went in ten miles on the first day, and we had in mind a lake that we were trying to get to and We had no idea really what this country looked like. I mean you can see it on your on X maps, which we used, but honestly, I had no idea what it was gonna look like. Once we got up there, we got ten miles back in and uh and it

started to rain. Um And I learned a few things on that first night, Bear, I learned a few things about you know, Jim Sessions. He Jim. Let's let me tell you something about Jim Sessions. Okay, Jim Sessions Sessions at Husk the Mall. Jim is a veteran Western hunter. Jim Sessions packs in on mules and horses thirty miles into the Wyoming back country to elk hunt, to sheep hunt, and they're going in places that there are not trails. And he doesn't even bring as much as a GPS.

I mean, he navigates that country just like the old timers did before there were GPS is. I think he probably uses some paper maps. But Jim, you ask him, why did you you know what kind of GPS you running? And he said, I've never heard of her. That's funny, Bear, never heard of her. I mean so, but Jim, Jim tells me. And when he says it, you know, it's like it's sinks in as he says, he said, Clay, when you're thirty miles back in, and he didn't even

carry an ind reach, so there's no communication. His only communication if something went wrong back there would just be to have somebody right out and tell somebody once they got a cell phone range. And he said, when you're that far back in, he said, you really begin to

have to watch yourself. You have to pay attention to every single thing that you do, because if you make a mistake, and if you get hurt, or if you lose an animal, or if you know your your your pack animal runs off and he's got your supplies on his back and you can't catch him, or he runs back to the truck, or you get thrown off and break a leg or whatever. Have you cut yourself with a broad head, and you start, you know, in in a bad spot. You know, he said, you're you're basically

two to three days away from help. Think about that, because it's taking a day and a half to get back in there, and so if you get hurt, it's a day and a half out for somebody to tell, you know, to recruit help. And it's a day and a half ride back in and anyway, I was thinking about that Bear. Well, we were back in there. Well, the first night we were ten miles and the next day we went another three. So at one point we were thirteen miles in the back country. And Bear, were

you Did that make you nervous at all? Not really? Okay? We talked about this earlier and I told him, I said I was nervous. Uh. I think, I think when you're that far back in you you really have to have the fear of God in you. And uh. And I made a few mistakes. It was the first day at a hunt. Number one, I forgot my pistol in the truck. That wasn't a big deal. We weren't in

grizzly country. I didn't even have bear spray, so, um, you know, if we were in grizzly country, I probably would have turned around and we would have come out of there if I didn't have any kind of bear protection. But there's no grizzlies in Colorado, So that was a mistake number one. Mistake Number two, Bear, if you remember, Um, about five miles in I turned around and look at my backpack, and what did I do? You dropped your arrows.

I was scared. My arrows in my Kafaru shape charge backpack and I didn't have them strapped in there, right. I just thought they would ride okay the way I had them. And I turned around and I don't have any arrows. I'm carrying my bow in a custom bow holder that hangs off the side of the saddle protects the bow really well, really like the setup. And I

turned around and I don't have any arrows. And so we turned around and start heading back down the trail and I'm hoping that they didn't fall off, you know, three miles back in, we backtrack a mile and pick and finally find the arrows. That was mistake number two. But think about it, if we had got all the way to the top ten miles in and I realized I didn't have any arrows. I mean, you know, little mistakes cost you big. If you were three yards from

the truck, it wouldn't have made any difference. You just walk back and get them. Number three, What was the third mistake that I made? Um? You broke broke so we uh, we were using the first light Nemo collaboration tent called a recurve, which is an incredible little tent, super lightweight, ultra lightweight. I think it weighs less than I bet. I bet it weighs just a little bit over a pound, maybe pound and a half two pounds. Tiny tent, I mean light tent. It's a two man tent.

So all the components are ultra light and so a couple of the rods on the tent are fiberglass and small fiberglass, like as big around as like a match stick almost, you know. And I stepped on one of them while we're up there, didn't I first night broke it snapped in half. It wasn't that big of a deal. We were able to carve a stick out that took the place of that tent pole. But it was a mistake.

You know. If we had been back there for a week and that was our only tent and there came a big windstorm or something, I mean, that would have been the weak point of the tent. What was the other mistake that I made back there? Both sites, man, we had a lot of mistakes. Yeah. So this new saddle or this new uh this new boat case that

I was using, I had never used it before. And I was using a compound boom, and we got all the way to the top and my sights were loose on that bow and we were able to get it back together and was confident in its shooting ability. But at the time there was we were in a pretty bad fix. So we were able to navigate through that. But I was able to re situate the bow case so that there wasn't any pressure on those sites any longer.

But that was a weak point in my system, okay, And I don't have any trouble talking about the things that we learned about bear because you know that strength is actually found inside of humility, you know. I mean, it'd be awesome to come out of this and say we did everything right, but we didn't. And uh, but you know this that a wise man learns from his mistakes and he'll be wiser yet on the other side of it. So we learned from that. And then the

fifth thing. This all happened on like the first date. Do you remember what the other one was? No, I burned a hole in my air mattress, so we we brought an air mattress. And this was a minor thing. But if we'd been on a seven day hunt, it would have ended up being sort of significant. So I have this little Cabella's blow up air mattress, and uh, the first night, I pulled it out and we had a little fire going. It was pretty moist. We were able to make a fire up Worrid about eleven thousand feet.

I think we made a fire just outside of the tent, and I flopped this air mattress out to blow it up, and the tail of it drags through a couple of embers and puts a hole in the stinking air mattress. Didn't it It wouldn't hold air. So hey, those were the mistakes that we made on the very first day and it kind of put us on our a game after that. And aside from all those things, these things were pretty minor. We were able to navigate through them all. But the rest of the trip we were very conscious

about everything that we did. We talked about it, we talked about being being aware. So that was day one and day two. Day two, we left from our campit eleven thousand feet and went up to over twelve thousand feet, which was way above the tree line and is it was in some of the most incredible country that a human has ever laid eyes on? Would you agree? Bear, Tell me about it, describe it to me. Well, we got to the top and we kind of came over

with this little peak and we looked down. There's this big blue lake that had like fish in it, like you could see him eating bugs off the top of the water and they were just like it was sort of like a prairie, but it was like really high up because there were no trees. And then if you looked the other way, there was like this really big

view of all the mountains. Yeah, it was incredible. I I said that it would have shamed Rocky Mountain National Park, which we've been to right, which is a beautiful park. But I mean, this was some incredible country. Mhm. And by now we're thirteen miles from the truck and our tents broke. We don't have a pistol. You know, we've we've we've made a few blunders. And we could have stayed back in there and hunted if we'd have found elk.

But we went back in there and looked around, looked around, looked around, looked around, and found no sign of elk. Didn't And so after an assessment and and and Honestly, Bear, I wasn't sure that I wanted to kill an elkin back that far, even with mules, because the truth be known, our mules are untested when it comes to elk. Now, we know that izzie'll carry out meat and she seems

to do fine with that. Ace is untested. Ace is sixteen years old, the southern mule that we got, but we didn't really know what he would do with an elk. And so you know, we get a eight hundred pound bull elk on the ground twelve miles back in and what if we have problems even getting it on the mule. These were things that I was thinking about. So after not finding any elk sign, we say, what do we say? We said, let's get out of here, didn't we Yeah,

we just said, let's go, let's try something else. We didn't find out. We didn't find any fresh elk sign in the thirteen miles and never never heard of Bugle, never heard anything. Anyway. We come out of there and uh, we we see an outfitters camp off the trail and we go down and we talked to the outfitter, real nice guy. Uh. He had two clients from Texas there with him. And we gave him our report. We told

him everything that we knew. We told him that we'd been all the way back in there, thirteen miles we didn't see any elk sign. We told him we were rookie elk hunters, so not to take what we said too serious. But we did not see any fresh elk sign. We talked to him a little bit, and he gave us some good intel about the region. He said that there's pockets of these mountains, in these mountains that hold out. Do you remember him saying that bear, because that was

a big question to me inside Elk Counties. Is you step into the Colorado Wilderness and you know, are the elk everywhere? I mean, are there elk on that ridge and on that ridge and it's just a matter of getting back in there and getting close enough to him and calling to him. Or is that ridge and that mountain and that slope right there totally void of elk? I mean? Is it like fishing where you know ten

percent of the ground holds of the fish. You know, that's what they say in fishing, is ten percent of the water holds the fish. That makes sense. So I honestly didn't know those answers, and so I talked to this out, this elk guy, and uh he was a good guy. We talked about mules. He was a mule man. He critiqued the shoe and the front shoes on my mule and um, anyway, told him about is he being four year old? And he liked her. He's riding a four year old mule too, and uh so that was

pretty cool talking to that guy. Well, we come out of there. So by day two we have we had ridden twenty six miles. Mhm Is that right? Yeah, because we went thirteen Yeah, where you sore? Yes, definitely? Where are you really sore? Ye? Well, I wouldn't have known it.

You never complained. Well, so we end up back at the truck about mid afternoon on the second day, and we had another area that we were gonna go try out, and so because of the day was kind of shot and we needed a few things, we ended up going back into town and we actually ate dinner in town and then we went back and slept in the truck. On the night of day two, we slept in the truck. Okay, you slept most of the night in a hammock, which, well,

we'll have to tell them about the bears at some point. Okay, but bear, we had bear sleeping outside in a hammock right by the truck. I was sleeping in the truck. Well. The next day we packed back into another section of ground that you know, we've never been to. Uh, we didn't really even have in mind exactly where we wanted to go in here. I guess I did have in mind one little region, but I'm still trying to figure out, like, why are the elk using certain parts of the landscape?

And thirdly, there were elk hunters behind every spruce tree? Am I a correct? Bear? It was? It was crazy. I mean, this is an over the counter region of Colorado, so I mean what can you expect, But I mean it was almost like a circus, and they were just people camped out, just waiting to get in. And uh that was I wouldn't say it was disheartening, but but it was just a real thing, is that there were hunters everywhere, and uh, we just had to deal with that.

But we were We did feel like that we were able to get back in there further than a lot of these guys that were on foot, which ended up

being true. Well, at on day. Let's see, the morning of day three, we set out and we're riding and we get back in about three and a half to four miles from the trailhead, and we come start coming through these big meadows at about feet okay, big meadows, and we look on on X and sure enough, there's some bigger meadows that are up above us that are way off the trail that you couldn't see from the trail.

And what do we do, Bear, we go to the meadows. Yes, we said, let's go to the meadows, right, So we start riding up and it's pretty steep, and we get about a half mile off the trail and we have yet to see any fresh elk sign at all, and so we're just still just trying to find out. We get to the we start going up this steep section and I see what I believe as a fairly fresh pile of elk droppings, and I go, hey, look right there,

I think that's elk droppings. Well, we keep riding. We go about another hundred yards up the mountain and I see two fresh elk rubs on a tree, and that is all I needed to see. I said, Bear, look right there there, elk rubs. I said, those are fresh. We've seen a fresh pile of droppings and elk. Rubs. I said, we are in the elk officially, and what do we do? We take the mules out of that

part and we go and we set up camp. Well, okay, what we did was we didn't we didn't want to bust them, right, We didn't want to just ride the mules right up into this area we were having elk sign. So we were like, hey, let's back out of here and go back in on foot and see what we can see. Right, So we backed the mules off the mountain, we tether them up, and then me and you at about eleven o'clock head up the mountain and we start finding more and more elk sign every step. Would you agree?

What what kind of sign did we see? We saw really beat down elk trails. We saw lots of elk droppings Rubs. Yeah, um yeah, I mean we were seeing like smoking hot elk scot. I mean stuff that was like made that day. And I knew that that we were in the elk. Yeah, And so the wind was right, we knew we didn't need to pressure this spot. We stayed in there for about an hour, and we actually did a little bit of calling right at noon. Didn't

do anything aggressive, didn't even a bugle. All we did with some cow calls, and uh about noon, we knew that we weren't probably gonna just sit in there all day. We didn't think it'd be that productive. So we backed off the mountain and we went down to where the mules were, which is about a quarter mile away down the mountain, and we we set up our camp and then at about three thirty four o'clock we went back up the mountain to where we found the elk. Am

I right? Am I right? Or am I right? Okay, And I'm gonna let you take it from here about what happened, walk us through what we did, okay, and try to be as dramatic as possible. All right. Um, So we got up there and we saw this little knob that was right next to the a pretty big meadow, and it was right it was right above where and all the elkshim. So we decided to go up to the top of that and we were gonna just coult call a little bit and see what we could see,

what would happen. And so we're testing the wind, the whole time. The wind was great, it was blowing back the way we came from. And then so we got up there to this little clear spot and we started cow calling and we heard something probably a hundred yards away, like a limb crack or like somebody something stepped on a stick and it broke, and so we set the camera up. Both of us looked at each other like

did you hear that? And we were like, yeah, we heard that, and so we set up the camera and then we heard it coming in and even closer we heard. We heard it again and then we saw it and it was it was a bull elk. It wasn't like a giant one, but it was. We think it might

have been legal. We couldn't tell. It was at least at three right three, and we thought that we saw a fourth one, but we also realized that there was another one behind it, and so we didn't want to so we passed up the shot on that one because we didn't want to shoot a little one and then see a big one coming in. Well, so we we see, you know, we hear a pop, which wasn't unusual, but we were like, huh, I think that, you know, it's

possible that that was an elk. All of a sudden, we see an elk out there at fifty yards, I mean, just coming right towards us, and I see it's a bull. I immediately go to trying to count time, which is very difficult in thick brush. I've learned, especially with a marginal animal, and in Colorado, bull's gotta have four points on one side or have a nine inch brow time.

And I mean, this thing is coming in hard, and I see at least three on one's I see for sure three on one side, and on his right side, which was closest to us, I believe that I see four points, but it wasn't I wasn't certain. And you know, you just have to be certain, you know, you you never pull the trigger on anything unless you're a certain.

And so I come to full draw when they're out there at forty yards, and I mean, I'm I am ready, and there's a big opening about probably fifteen yards in front of me that this elk is just coming right through. And uh when he comes through that opening, and I still have not been able to decide if if he is, if he's a legal bull or not. Well, he he comes through the opening and I think I see if I mean, we gotta look at the video, because we

did video, but I'm confidently. I mean, I was pretty confident that it had a fourth point, but I needed to confirm. And the bull comes into like eight yards down the wind of us, but in thick, thick brush and the bullet and there were two bulls and the one behind it was for sure of three by three, and so he was not legal. But this one that I think is legal is at eight yards in the brush and I'm at full draw, and he stops as soon as he gets down wind, and I you know,

we're just at a stalemate. He's looking at us, he's winding us, and I know that this thing is about to explode. I mean, I was hoping he would turn and walk out the way that he came. He didn't do that. He busted out of there. You know, after probably ten fifteen seconds of us just staring down each other, he busts out of there and the deals done. And um, you know, if it had been a bull that I knew was a legal bull, I could have killed him

when he walked through that opening. But that opening was the first chance that I had to see his rack and I just needed to get a better look. So anyway, here we are. We've found these elk. We've slipped in on him. We made a few cow calls, and we have stinking called in two bull elk. And I mean we were pumped, were we not? Day three and we just had we were at full draw. I mean we were in the we were in the chips. We were in the game, am I right? So that was super

exciting and not to be labor the hunt. But we stayed on those elk for another two days and pretty much never got on any elk again. Yeah, and that was pretty disheartening. We Uh, right after we called those bulls in, we ended up moving a little bit further down the ridge and we bumped a cow and you know, who knows if we bumped more than that that we didn't know about. But basically, I feel like that one encounter was our one chance at those elk. And we

hunted in there for the next two days. Never heard a bugle, never never heard anything, never saw another elk. I mean it was done, and uh, we didn't have a long time to hunt. Bear was out of school. Uh, we kind of ran out of supplies. We we we ended up uh eating a little bit more food than I had planned, and uh we ended up coming out of there on on day five, and uh we covered a lot of ground on two days. One day we walked four and a half miles and next day we

walked about five miles. We bugled, we cal called, we found some more areas with some pretty fresh sign but never ever got on ELK again. Did we no? Um? But we basically we we felt like that the trip had been a success though, and we were happy when we came out of there on the evening of the the day five because we'd accomplished our goal, which our goal was just to get our feet wet inside the elk counting world. We I knew that the biggest hurdle would

be finding ELK. I didn't feel like Colin would be that big of a deal bear, because you know, I blew my first ELK call three week ago, maybe four weeks ago, and I'm a I'm a proficient diaphragm turkey caller and have been since I was a kid, and so blowing on an ELK call is not much different than blowing on a turkey call. And so I feel like we were decent enough callers that that was not a limiting factor at all inside the hunt, and I felt like we were prepared for how to manage these

elk because it's so much like turkey hunting. I mean we we were in the back country for five days and never heard a single bugle, never heard a single bugle, and so I knew that it wasn't gonna do us much good to be bugling. It's just like in turkey hunting, if the turkeys aren't goblin and not calling very much and not responding to calls, you know, you don't call much.

You do what the turkeys are doing. And so you know, we were trying to do what the elk we're doing, which wasn't much, but we were were primarily you in elk calls, I mean cal calls, and uh. Even though the further we got into the hunt, the more and more aggressive that we got, because we were just like, man, we gotta we gotta crack a bugle out of an elk so we can find them. And so we started

bugling more and more as the days progressed. We started out very conservative and then got more liberal, and after five days we never heard an elk bugle. So I have still after five days of hunting, I've never in my life heard an elk bugle, but I almost killed an elk. Pretty wild huh. So well, Bear, what would you say what was the most exciting part of the hunt for you? Probably whenever we called in the bulls,

because I've never seen a bull elk that close. I've seen like so, but they were just like in a national park from a distance. Yeah, but that was pretty cool, especially because we were hunting them. Yeah, it's different, isn't that. I mean, just to see an elkina and yellowstone, you know, I mean, that's a cool experience. But to see an elk when you're carrying a bow wanting to pack one out on a mule, that's exciting stuff, isn't it. Bart? What? Okay?

So what what would you say? The challenges of the hunt were, um, probably finding the elk and then walking so far. Yeah, we covered a lot of ground, didn't we Yeah, up and down and and we were at different time, you know, between ten and twelve thousand feet, which compromises your your respiratory system as especially being from the lowlands of Arkanas well, Arkansas highlands, but not high enough.

Bear okay, wild experiences, what was okay? So you rode Over the course of those five days, we rode about forty miles on the mule. I knew that you were either gonna come out of it strong, are you gonna come out of it broken. I believe that you came out strong. Were there any hairy moments riding the mule? Well,

with Ace, there wasn't a whole lot. Like every now and then there'd be like a steep part and you would try to get off the trail and turn around and go back to the truck, And like there was one part where it was just like I had no idea that you could even get in that position. He just somehow got in it. And then I don't know if he was gonna be able to get off right. He kind of took a wrong turn and jumped up on a super steep bank and kind of got kind

of got bewildered a little bit. Yeah, And what do I tell you when when stuff like that happens? What did I always say to you? Just hang on, just ride it like a cowboy. I mean, that's the thing is, you can't get scared. That mule is going to take care of himself. And that's why we ride mules. You know, a horse might have killed himself and flipped off the side of the mountain. A mule is not going to do that. As long as you stay on that mule, you were going to be safe. That's what I tell you.

And so I mean, just ride him, Just ride him, son. Just push your feet down the stirrups and lean back, don't lean forward, keep your heels down and cowboy up right.

There's also another time where we were going to get the mules some water down by the creek and there was like this really steep rock and Ace got up the rock pretty good, but then is he was on the side and her feet kind of started to slip thing, and then she like just jumped off the rock with you on her and went like right under this tree with a bunch of branches and it almost took you off. Yeah, that was man. We were just having just a normal day,

normal ride in this big, wide open country. Wasn't that big of a deal. And we came to a slick rock and so our our mules are shot on the front. Shot means that they have shoes on the front, okay, and uh, Ace struggled a little bit getting up this slick rock, but it wasn't that big of a deal. So I just took easy, actually took easy a different way. And she gets up on the side of the slick

rock and just starts sliding. She starts losing her feet and so she's scrambling on the rock and she finally slides off the rock, which you know, it's probably six or eight feet down into a creek, and she she slides, but then down in this creek is like thick. It wasn't alders, but some kind of thick bramble, you know, with branches about as big as your wrist. And I mean, she just she kind of doesn't have anywhere to go

except right into that stuff. And so I mean just all of a sudden, things turned south quick, and so she to keep from falling over, jumps into those bushes, and um, at that point, I'm like, I'm probably gonna end up on the ground. That's what I felt like, But I just leaned back. I mean, it probably looked like Man from Snowy River stuff. You you've seen that movie, right, remember when he rides that that horse down the mountain and all those other guys are looking at him. That

was an awesome scene. I just kind of leaned back and rode her out, and uh, man, I came out on top of the saddle and we just I took her right back up the same way and there we came. Yeah. Man, that's part of the reason I, I I don't know, I love riding mules and equine animals. It just, uh there's some excitement in it, and uh, things can go bad quick. But it also I think makes you stronger, makes you more aware. Um it. Uh, you really do have to

overcome fear. Riding the equine animal is a craft. It's not just uh it's not like riding a four wheeler, you know. I mean even it takes some skill to do that. But you learned to become a good writer. You learned to stay on You learn how to handle situations. You learned to trust that animal. And I knew that Izzy wasn't gonna flip over. I knew that. I knew if I could just stay on her, I'd be okay.

I knew that those limbs might break my hat off and my glasses or you know, tear my clothes or something. I didn't know, But it's like if I I just got to stay on her. But anyway, we had a few exciting moments like that across a lot of creeks um uh, went through some thick stuff, went through some very steep stuff, some very rugged, rocky stuff, but overall great experience. Here's the things that I learned, Bear, and

this is what I want to do next time. I'm gonna start putting in for draw hunts, probably in Colorado, maybe some other places, but I would rather. We got to get away from the people, and I think that you do that through going on a draw hunt. Okay, this was an over the counter unit number two. We gotta go later in the year. I mean, hunting turkeys is no fun. If the turkeys aren't goblin. You know a good turkey. Enter can still kill them, but it's just no fun. I mean, you don't you go turkey

out into here here a turkey gobble and to work him. Okay, I'm a new elk hunter, but you go elk hunting to hear them bogle and to work them. And it's just no fun when you don't know where they're at. They're not responding to calls, they're not bugling, So we need to go later in the season when they're bugling. Um, those are the two main things. I want to go later and I want to get away from the people.

And uh. But that being said, I felt like it was a massive success and that we we learned about our gear, We enjoyed the the new first light gear that we had. We were totally decked out in first light stuff. Uh. You know, we used the Nemo first Light tent. I used the Nemo sleeping bag. I was using the thirty degree bag called the Scout. Uh. Really like that sleeping bag, ultra lightweight, warm, a lot of neat features. Um. I wore the Sawbuck pants for I

believe I've had these pants on for six days? Have you? Would you agree? Bear? I put these on in the parking lot on the first day and I'm still wearing them. I put them on last. Let's see what Thursday last, right, and today is out? Today is Tuesday. I don't know. I've been wearing them for a while. And uh, I used the clammate. I basically wore the Sawbuck pants, a wick undershirt, long sleeve, and a clammath hoodie almost the

entire time. And uh, everything works great. I was wearing actually borrowed Kolby's Can't Attract boots, which he had a really nice pair of can attracts that he said I could try out. And we wear the same size shoes. So that's what I wore, and uh Bear was wearing uh first light gear two. I liked it, still wearing it. So anyway, man, anything we hadn't covered Bear that you'd like to say? Not really nothing? You got nothing at

all for me? Sorry? Well, um man, I wanted Bear to have in his repertoire of memories and know how um you know, a western back country hunt and he's got that now. And you want to go back though, right, And what do you want to do when you go back? Um? Well, okay, yes, but do you remember what what I'm prying. I'm prying Banjoe. Thank Banjo. Next year when we go back, I want to take Banjo with us. Tell him who Banjo is? Banjo is my mule that I'm training right now. And

yeah he's not. You can't, we can't write him yet. But he's about a year old. He's getting there. He's getting there. So it's is he's full blood brother? Is that right? Yeah, I'd say he's pretty flashy too. Yeah, alright, guys, Well, so that is our That was our l khant. We're gonna be producing a video that will be on the Bare Hunting Magazine YouTube channel at some point. I don't know if it will come out before this or after

this podcast. But what an incredible adventure an expedition and what other place in the stinking world can a man just load up his animals or just jump in a truck and drive buying over the counter tag no need to get permission from the king and go into true wilderness and back country that he owns that he has every right to be there as much as anybody else, and go in there and hunt a majestic beast like an elk, my o my, bring home his flesh, feed your family for a year, put his horns above your

fireplace as a memory activator for decades and generations to come. What other place can you do that but right here where we live. And I think that's the biggest thing that stood out to me is that the access that we have to adventure as hunters is incredible, incredible, and there's something inside of the adventure and the danger and the drama and the craft and the skill of being able to come out here and execute this that that makes you something different that so many humans on the

planet don't have access to. But we're tapping into something that is ancient and inside of our DNA from the very beginning, you know, we were we were warriors and hunters and gatherers and tamers of horses, long before we were office clerks, long before we were insurance men, long before we lived sedentary lives. We were this thing and hunters are still that today. And I feel like that there's a There is a spiritual component to it. There

is a natural physical challenge component to it. There's a mental strength component to it. There's a component of coming up against real fear and overcoming it. There's a component of the complexities of the planning that exercise muscles that are rarely exercised in modern life. When the things that you do actually affect your ability to survive, you know. I mean, when you wake up and you live in a house and you know you forget something, you just

go to the store and buy it. When you're the back country and you forget something, they're real consequences, And I think that that makes us more aware, more conscious. It makes us kind of into a different kind of human And there's a spiritual component as well. The script the Bible says that the the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows His handiwork, firmament being the earth and man. We looked at such incredible scenery.

A man would have to be a fool to not think that this was created by design on purpose, that the intricacies of the ecosystem bear. One night when we were sitting over a water hole, he said that he saw four different kinds of rodents within about thirty feet of him, And we talked about the intricacies of the ecosystem and how those all those little critters play a very vital role, from the kind of seeds they gather and store all the way back to the animals that

prey on those rodents. And we just talked about the the intricacies of the of the natural systems and the brilliance and majesty of it, didn't we And I think that something really does come alive inside of a person, and and and it's in my mind it's got to be connected back to a creator for it really to have effect inside your life, because you know, you could be a hunter and have no you know, just just

going into back country doesn't change you. To me, when you go into back country and then you connect to the thing behind the thing, that's when you really begin to that's when you begin to see and understand and uh, anyway, incredible time and it's it's fun to be able to to spend this time with your son and uh bear John, this is just the beginning. Oh oh sorry, I have like a little thing. Right, Hey, what do we say when we close the podcast every week? He's Okay, now,

I'm gonna give you one shot at this. But you gotta say it with enthusiasm. You can't just you can't just say it. You gotta say it. Ready, go keep the wild place as wild because that's where the bears live. The elk Oh, we gotta tell them about the bear. Oh yeah, oh man, fall start. When we get back to the truck. The mule feed is scattered all over the back of our truck and we have no idea what's going on until further inspection reveals bear tracks all

I mean all over the back window. They were on the top of my truck. They were there, Like, we're driving down the interstate right now and people are looking at us thinking that this truck was attacked by a bear and it was. So, while we were in the back country, the truck was molested by a bear. It was. Yeah, we were told it was to bear cubs that their mother had to be euthanized back during the summer, and so these little fifty pound bear cubs are just rummaging

through this area terrorizing people, right. Yeah. So that's why we keep the wild places wild, because that's where the bears live and the ill. H m hm