Live BHA Storytelling Event

North American wilderness. Better. We'll talk about tactics, gear conservation, who will also bring you into some of the wildest country on the planet chasing the battery. If I'm not back in ten minutes, I want you to get in the driver's cy to this truck and I want you to drive to this truck runs out of gas, and when the police come and pick you up, you tell that your father and his mule are dead your mother.

On March fifteen, I had the opportunity to speak at a back Country Hunters and Anglers storytelling event in Springfield, Missouri. This podcast is gonna be the stories that I told that that event. The stories lasted about forty five minutes. I think that you're gonna enjoy this podcast. You'll also be able to watch the actual live event on the

Bear Hunting Magazine YouTube channel. You'll be able to go to our channel and we're gonna split the stories up in four different videos in the next ten days or so that are gonna come out and they'll be titled as different stories, so you'll actually be able to watch this on the Bear Hunting Magazine YouTube channel. There's something really special about oral traditions where we get to tell stories. It's it's different than any other medium, and it's obviously

the oldest medium for human to relay a story. So much information is inside of the spoken word, and you're gonna enjoy this, so check it out. Also, guys, we want to let you know that we now have all of our podcast, the Bear Hunting Magazine podcasts on our website bear hyphen hunting dot com. That's bare dash Hunting dot com. So you can now go to our website and you'll see a description of all the podcasts, you'll see photographs from the podcast, and you can actually listen

to the podcast from our website. While you're there, you might as well pick up one of our awesome custom Bear Hunting Magazine t shirts. There we go, give this guy one? Yes, all right, great, So I'm from Arkansas. How many? How many people are from Arkansas? All right? Where are you guys from Benville? Okay? All right, all right, Well it's great to be here in Missouri. I am.

I am a seventh generation ar Kansen. So it's it's it's cool to come to Missouri and hear you guys talking about like I sent some like Missouri pride, you know. So that's good because I know we do have that. We do have some pride down in Arkansas. To um So tonight, what I want to do is I want to tell you four stories, four short stories that all revolve around basically the same piece of public land. Um. I'm gonna time myself. This is my second sprite of

the night. Um So, who knows what's gonna happen here? But uh, before I tell you these stories about public land in Arkansas, let me tell you we've got We've got two point two million acres of national forest and Arkansas, and that doesn't even count all the w Mays and

all the different other places that we can hunt. We have two point two million acres of national for us, We've got eleven wilderness areas in Arkansas, and Uh, I grew up in a town any direction that I could drive within ten minutes, I was in massive national forest and that truly did impact my life in a major way. I mean, uh, a little Leopold said that wilderness in the areas that we live actually forge our civilization and culture.

And it's true wilderness and the in the geographic landscapes in which we live inform inform our culture in a significant way. And what's awesome about being a hunter and being a contosseur of wild places in twenty nineteen is that the world is becoming increasingly urbanized and increasingly concrete ized, and increasingly distant from the lie style that all of us represent. And I think it's our mission to represent that lifestyle with deep levels of integrity, honor, and passion.

And to me, what I even have wanted to do since I was a kid, was I saw these I saw this culture that I grew up in, and I was powerfully impacted by these men that I deeply respected that there were these mountain hunters that that weren't trying to put Instagram posts up, they were hunting to put

food on the table. They were hunting for they were they were hunting for horns too, but they were they they were just these people I respected and I wanted my life, and part part of what I do inside of media, I feel like it's bring dignity to that lifestyle. And I think that's really probably at the heart I hope of most of you guys, is to bring dig dignity to the lifestyle that we represent. So now for

the fun stuff. I'm gonna tell you four stories. Two of them are funny, I'm gonna need you to laugh, Okay, one of them is terrifying. One of them is an epic hunting story that will end with So the first First, all these stories come in different so there's different chronological order. Okay. So they they happened in the same place, but they didn't have So the chronology of it is, uh, it's gonna be We're gonna skip around here. So the first one is in is when I started hunting off my

own mules in backcountry in Arkansas. And I will tell you, jeez, there's a lot of things you gotta talk about. I gotta talk to you about hunting ethics first, Okay, My dad taught me this and live this his whole life. Okay. It's when another man shares his stuff with you where he hunts on public land, you were therefore obligated for the rest of your life to never set foot there.

I hunt public land in Arkansas, and so I mean, I know, all you Godfair and Missourian's probably are gonna be jealous, but you can never go there now because I've told you. Now, these guys from Arkansas, you know you you can hunt your lands just as you did before. Okay, but uh so, y'all y'all stay up here. It sounds like y'all got lots of public land up here. But you know, b h A. People are really funny. It's like we're like public lands. Public lands were like hashtag

and public lands. And as soon as somebody says where do you hunt, You're like, man, I don't. I don't know where I hunt. It's true, it's true. I'm the same way, like, go enjoy your public lands, not mine. It's true. So four stories, they all came from the same place. First of one, excuse me. We started We started hunting with our own mules. I took my at the time ten year old son. His name is Bear

Baron Newcomb. Took Baron Newcomb and we took our mule, packed it back into this wilderness, and we had it was the first time we'd used this mule in this context. And we we hiked to the top of this mountain with a mule, tethered the mule to a treat we went off hunting. We hunted for six hours. I marked on my on my GPS where the mule was at.

I'd come back at dark, and we timed our We timed our exit from where we hunted to get back to the mule just before dark, and then from the mule, we would then traverse down the mountain back to our our camp where we were hunting, which was way off the road too. We get to where the mule was supposed to be, The mule was not there, mule was gone.

The lead rope was still tied to the tree, and the lead rope was broken half and and and I picked up the lead rope and looked at it, and it it actually had it actually had been chewed by the mule. So this was news to me that a mule would chew a lead rope. So we're up on the side of the mountain. We're in a we're in a wilderness sary of federal wilderness sary, you know, and uh, I tell my son Bear, I say, hopefully the mule went back down to our camp where we'd stayed the

night before. So I pick up this like fifty pounds saddle because I unsaddled the mule all the saddle back. Pick up this fifty pounds saddle, have our hunting gear, and we walk off down the mountain. We get to the body, We get to our camp and no mule at the camp. We had parked our truck on a two lane Arkansas highway. I envisioned, so my truck and trailer was on this highway and we came in from there. There's no trails or anything. We just went in from there.

So I envisioned the mule being back at my truck, like, you know, that's the next place. Maybe the mule has gone. And then it's dark and it's night. We're wanting to hunt the next day. We don't want to go back out to the truck. But I envisioned the mule, uh, on the side of the highway by my trailer with a broken lead rope, and I envisioned someone calling the sheriff, the sheriff running the tags on my trailer and then calling my wife is right here. This is missing Newcomb.

I've so much for having got This is my Lafe's message. Also, this is my friend Brett Reeves. Is his birthday? Uh it was Brett reis oudaya So so I envisioned the sheriff running tags on my truck and calling my wife and saying, your husband is dead. So I couldn't let that happen. There was no cell coverage or anything. And so we come off the mountain. To me in Bear, come off the mountain, as it was the closest civilization to where we were was a small, small county line bar. Okay,

in this bar. This was the closest civilization any direction. There's no reason for this bar to be there except for it was a county line separating a dry county. You guys know that kind of bar. I don't know that kind of bar. I I don't go to those places. Ironic that I'm even here. Uh but uh so the closest place was this bar. I go, So, I say, Bear,

We're gonna have to go to this bar. I wanted to leave them my phone number so that when somebody was driving down the road saw a mule with a broken lead rope, they'd probably stop the next place and maybe say, hey, there's a mule out here on the road, you know. So I pull up to this bar. It's a Saturday night County Line bar, and uh. I pull up and I've got my ten year old son with me, and I turned my son and I say, son, I'm

about to go into this bar. If I'm not back in ten minutes, I want you to get in the driver's seat of this truck and I want you to drive to this truck runs out of gas, and when the police come and pick you up, you tell him that your father and his mule are dead. I know your mother is. This is a rough place. This is a rough bar, Saturday night, Saturday night. I'm decked out in full first light first light fusion camo. Okay, this is not standard real tree stuff like this is like

unaccepted in most places in Arkansas. I've got my like skinny suspenders on, got my dark framed glass has, got my five panel hat on. I'm really not hampster at all. I'm really just the redneck, but in their mind they might have perceived that way. So I walk into the bar, and if it had been like a spaghetti Western, it would have been like, you know, the girl at the piano playing and like the bad guy from out of town that no one knows walks through the swinging doors

and like everybody's just like and I get stopped. So that's exactly what happened. I walk into the bar and there's like it's a it's small. I mean, it's like it's like a thirty by thirty room, you know, and uh, everybody turns and looks at me, and uh. And I've also just come off the mountain carrying all these packs. I'm sweaty, and what I come to the bar of

music's loud. Everybody's looking at me. I waved to the bartender and I say, my name's Clay Nukem, and I lost my mule on the mountain, and I want to leave my phone number here with you in case somebody drives by, so they can, you know, call me. And and so I'm yelling because the music is loud, okay, and everybody in the bar looks down at me. The bartender can't hear me, he said what and so I yell it again. My name's Clay Nukem. And I lost

my mule on the mountain. And by this time, everybody in the bar is really intent on what I'm you know, they're they're key, don't what I'm doing. So I hear somebody from down here say, has you have you ever been up there before that mule? And I go, now, it's our first time with the mule. Now I knew the mountain very well. And he in in the bar rubs into laughter. You never get that mule back, that's what they said, so and I agreed with him. Um, I didn't know then. I'm sitting at the bar. They're

not sitting. I'm just standing there and a and a man stands up from down at the end of the bar, and you can tell he is glassy eyed, little wobbly, and he said, what's your name? And I turned to him and I say, Clay and Nucm. And he says, is your mother Judy Knogan? And I stood there and I wondered why this man knew my mother's name. And I gotta tell you a little bits for her about

my mother. My mother Juju as we call her. She is the most God fearing value, just a woman of valor, woman of character, a woman of integrity, built the foundations of my life. And as this man called out her name, which was odd to me, my life stood before me like a house of cards. And I thought, what is this man going to say? Why does he know my mother? Lots of questions Rather th my mind, I envisioned many words that he might say. You know, I won't say

what I thought he might say. And I say, I say, yeah, Judy Nugam is my mother. I didn't know if I was about to get in a fist fight. I mean, like it was hard to say what was about to happen. And then kind of a kind of a wobble like this, he goes, she's my teacher. That's exactly what he said. He said she's my teacher. He didn't say she was my teacher. He said she's my teacher. And my mother has been a school teacher at the public schools down

in that part of Arkansas for like forty years. And this man had been taught by my mother when he was a first grader, and he was just like enamored with with Ms Newcom and he was just like so tickled to meet her son in a bar on a Saturday night. So we we I left in my number. I walked back out Barris. Fine, he's in the truck because all took place in under ten minutes. So he was still there. And uh, we walk out of there.

And we come back the next day and I took my do my other daughter with me, and we actually went up there and the mule was at our camp. We saved our mule. End of story. Okay, that's story. One Switzer bar and uh they knew my mother, my sweet mother. Okay. Second story, exact same ridge and finger of the exact same mountain. The year was two thousand and eight. It was the first time that my father and I had we we had actually had a guy pakistan with horses. It was before I had my own stock.

And uh, we'd had a guy pack us back into this wilderness on horses. The very first day of our hunt. Uh, my dad was were bow hunting and my dad walked out from our camp. We had just separated. I mean the way we got there we set up camp. I went one way, he went another, and he was carrying his compound bow. He went and he he was not three yards our camp. He set his bow down on the ground to uh, go check a scrape. He walks

over to a scrape, big, wide open woods. It wasn't like he was in a thicket, wide open woods, sets his bow down and when he turns back around, there's a bear sniff in his boat. Bear sniff in his boat. To this day, he swears that it crawled out of the ground and uh, he thinks the but the bear is gonna eat the strings off, you know, break the strings of the boat. And so he get out of here bear. You know, he's kind of freaked out a little bit. The bear runs off like twenty yards and

stands there. He picked runs over and grabs his boat and in classic nucom fashion, draws his boat, shoots the bear, kills the bear dead. Yeah, so we've got a bear. On day one. When I come back, Dad's I killed the bear, and uh and in Arkansas we can hunt bear. And that's a whole another story that I can tell you about the retroduction Arkansas black Bear. But he killed a bear, and so Dad was like on this rant.

So but on this camp, we still had five or six days of hunting left and Dad was all worked up about a bear getting in our camp while we were gone hunting. Okay, so all week, I mean we were like tying our our food up in trees and doing all this stuff. So it's the fifth day of the hunt. We've seen no more a sign of bear, and uh, fifth day of the hunt. It's the middle of the night, and it's one of these nights where

you can just hear everything. It's something I coon hunt a lot, and there's some nights that are just so dead still, like you could hear a dog like a mile away, and another night's you just can't. This was the night where you could just hear everything. We had two tents set up. Dad was in one tent. I was in another tent. Or sometime early in the morning, a couple of hours before daylight, I hear I'm awoken by what what sounds like large footsteps, you know, but

they're not continuous. I mean, anybody that's hunted much knows that big game the wait until it's different from a big game animal and a squirrel is that a big game animal just keeps walking. I mean a squirrel will make three hops and he'll sound like a squirrel, a big game animal. You know. Usually after about the fifth or sixth step, you're like, that is something that's not

a squirrel. I knew it wasn't a squirrel as night, but I hear these steps and they're loud, they're familiar, and and they're way up on the mountain, and you know, you'd hear like three steps, and then you'd you'd be like, well, I guess it's nothing that you started to fall asleep, and then you'd hear him again, and they were coming. They were moving our direction, just ever so slowly. And then the footsteps began to be accompanied by a noise

that at the time I was not familiar with. And it sounded just like this, it was like, and they'd wait. It kind of sounded like, uh, if you see crocodile dundee when he takes that that that boomerang and puts us on a rope, and he's like, who, that's probably more what it's like. I thought it was a bird at the time. I was like, that is a crazy bird. I don't know why that bird is here, but I've never heard it before. The footsteps continue, the noise continues,

and finally my dad he calls me, Clay Baby. He said, Clay Baby, it's like, you know, we're supposed to be like death sleep. He goes, Clay Baby, do you hear that? You know this us I'm laying on my back in the tent. He's in the tent over there, and I go, yeah, I said, I've been listening to it for the last hour, and he goes, it was like when he confirmed that he had heard it, and when when I confirmed him that I had heard it, it was like a light switch went off in our heads. And Dad goes, Dad said,

he said, just like this. He said, Clay Baby, we're being stalked. He didn't he didn't say it. He didn't say like we're being stops and he said like a Pentecostal preacher, he was like, we're being stalked. And he I mean, immediately, a massive rush of activity just happens in all of our tents, like I'm scrambling for a

flashlight and Dad has well. The next scene, we get out of the tent about the same time, and I see my father is whitey Tidy's a white T shirt and he has a three fifty seven stainless steel Smith and Wesson five and a half inch barrel magnum in his hand. And I'm the light man, and I shined the light up into the woods, and what do we see but the fiery, devilish eyes of a Arkansas black bear. And this bear, if you've ever shined your lights on the bear at night, you can see nothing except eyes.

That's all you see. His eyes. And this bear is like just out of our camp and he's been stalking us, you know. And my dad is all worked up and he and he I see him. I mean he's taking a bead, but he and he's like, I'm gonna kill that sucker. I mean, he was as mad as the bear,

and and he is waving this gun. And I even at the young young man I was then, and I knew that my father had so much integrity that if he killed this bear, that we would spend the next two days, first of all getting the bear off the mountain, and then going to the game and fish and reporting ourselves.

And they would put us in separate rooms and they would say what happened, and Dad would say that bear was trying to kill us, And then I could not tell a lie, and I would be like, man, it was probably just curious and so and so I begin a I feel like now, looking back, you know, sometimes there's those moments in your life, like like like like he talked about, when you just realized like you're on a whole another level. I was like an FBI hostage negotiator,

and I think I was fully closed. I don't really remember, but and I was just like, Dad, don't do it. Don't do it. Put the gun down. Dad put the gun down. And I'm like, I don't want to touch him, you know what I mean. You never touch somebody that's in a state like this, But I was, I was. I feel like I was craps with a hand out like to swap the gun off it like swung my way. And I'm just like, Dad, don't do it. It's not worth it, man, And and he's he's just he's just

wanting to squeeze that trigger. And finally, after what seemed like an hour stand off, I see the gun go down, and I see you can take a few steps back, and what does the bear do? The bear just disappears into the Arkansas night and we go back to sleep. So that's the story on the same piece of public ground that we lost our mule tonight. I had to talk my dad down. It almost killed the bear. Okay, so that's that story. Okay, third story. We gotta keep

moving here, I know. So the third story, This is a terrifying story. Those are the two funny stories. Okay, this is a terrifying story. So on this same mountain, same mountains, same place. Public lands have influenced my life in massive ways. We bear hunted just this last year on top of this said mountain, there was a piece of private ground that was land locked by National Forest on four sides. No roads to it. Uh nothing, No. The only way to get to it was by folds

to it. No way to get to it, but we had access to bait bears on it. So the only way to get bait back into this place. You couldn't take a four wheeler, couldn't use a hand glidder. If it's news to me, you can't use hand glidders. And Wildern series actually says that on the signs. Uh did anybody know that? Yeah? Yeah, put that on Instagram. Hey

can with these handglaiders in the Wildern series. Um, So we we decided that this was gonna be an epic place to hunt bear, and so I decided I was gonna use my mules to pack in bear bait back on this mountain. It was an all day event to bait that site one time. Took me a full hard day of driving, two and a half hours, loading the mules up, loading the bait up, and we walked up the mountain. We led the mules up the mountain hour from the bottom of the mountain up to the top,

off back down load the mules. Big deal. My daughter, River, it's tougher. I want to tell you this. She's fifteen years old and she's tougher, probably than every man in here except for Brent Reid's. And uh you're supposed to laugh at that. I mean, guy saying his daughters stuff. River is really a hunter. She's not. She's not like the girl that I just recruit because it's cute to have your daughter hunt like River Newcomb is a hunter. And uh I wanted to her to kill a bear

on top of this mountain. And uh, so I was like, if you're gonna kill a bear, you're gonna do the work with me. And so we're gonna we're gonna start baiting these bears. We take the mules up the top of the mountain. Remember this is my terrifying story. We bait the bears um that day. Yeah, that was the first thing that the first day we went up there. Okay, the second time I went up there, there was another thing that happened. We're coming, so we we baked bears.

We set up our cameras and everything. Again we're on private land. We're coming off the mountain now on public land. And I told River that she could ride my mule named Izzy, Uh, And I had rained Izzy, and she's a young mule, but she's really good, always been really safe with me. Um. And I put River on Izzy, and I said, why don't you ride down? Because we had one riding saddle and one sawbuck like pack saddle, and so I couldn't ride. Only one person ride. I'll

let the river ride. Why don't you ride easy down the mountain. So we take off down the mountain and Iszy it's kind of just hot to trot literally no pun intended. And she she starts kind of trotting fast, and I see River kind of trying to get her to stop, and is he will stop and throw up her head, and I mean just kind of typical like young mule stuff. I don't think much about it. We keep going down the mountain, going down the mountain, and I mean this this mountain in many places, I mean

it's like steep like a cow's face. It's just a rock pile. I mean it's not it's not like a rolling hill. This is like a rock pile. Anyway. At at some point, mule is he in the river and Izzy are like probably ten feet in front of and I see River. I see the mule start to trot and and as she's trotting, there's a limb about that big around that's looks like it's gonna hit River, just like right in the chest. And the mule is now running.

And I see River lean off the mule like this to try to not get clotheslined by the by the by the by the limb. And as she does this, you know, the queue for that animal to move is is to squeeze, squeeze underneath it, not to kick, really, but just to squeeze. River squeezes, so she hangs on and the mule. That's a queue for the mule to go. And so the mule just goes, I mean just like turns into just like a straight gallop going down. I mean, it looked like man from snowy river stuff, you know.

And they're going downhill and the river is now off the side of the mule and she's lost the rains and all I hear is my daughter, who's very tough, also very sweet, and my daughter. I hear her screaming in terror, and I see her totally out of control, just blowing down the mountain on this mule, as out of control, like a train wreck. I dropped the lead rope on my mule and just run after, just as fast as I can run. And they keep going until I can't see them, and they're totally out of sight.

Now I'm just running, running, running river river whatever, you know. I'm trying to tell her what to do, and anyway, I break over kind of this just the my line of sight, and I see the mule standing down there, turning back looking at me, with no river on her. And I come over the top and I see my daughter sprawled out with her feet going up the mountain, her head down the mountain, and she's she's just laid out, and I this is my terrifying story. I really thought

she could have been dead truly did. And in that moment, I also realized that it it was one of the stupidest things I've done as a as a father, my father took a lot of risks with us boys that paid off because we all lived. And I think those risks, those risks helped make us into the men that we are. But there were calculated risks and and this was just a mistake. I shouldn't have let her on that young mule going down the mountain. Going up would have been

a different story. But I run to her and I jump on the ground beside her, and she's conscious, and I just begin to feel all over her body, you know, just like just like touching her, and I just think if she's busted or hurt, there would be a place where she's you know, where she shows pain. And I feel all over her body, feel and finally reached back around her neck, and that's really where I'm worried the most, you know, reached back to her neck, and uh, and

she seems to be okay. I run my hand back around the back of her head and I pulled my hand out. In my hand is bloody, just covered in blood, and uh, And basically she busted her skull. And she didn't bust her skull, she busted she had how many stitches in her head? Fourteen stitches? You could her skull in the cut that was on the top of her head, and had a concussion, no broken bones, no broken neck, and you know, no cell coverage back where we're at.

And uh, and so we immediately I'll tell exactly what I did, is I prayed, I thank God that she was still alive. And uh, and we gathered ourselves up and she hiked off the mountain. And uh, it was a It was a pivotal moment in her life though, because it was I always knew and if you know, I won't go into the details of rivers development process as a human, but she in some ways is too fearless,

you know. And so as this event played out before me, I had been thinking that at some point in her life, she's gonna really be scared of something, because up at this point she hadn't been. And uh, I think this thing, Uh, this event did really put the fear of God in her. And uh it ended up being a moment that neither one of us will ever forget. We hiked off a mountain and went to the e r and you know, spent the whole day and it was a big deal and we're still paying for it. Um, but it was

a significant moment. And and here's here's what I think though, is that that that day there were probably a lot of fifteen year old girls like playing on their phones or watching TV or I don't know what they were doing. But my daughter and I were on public land in a wild place in Arkansas having real life experiences that had some real some real, uh real potential consequences later. The sad, sad part of that story is later River

went back in there and hunted. Ten days later, she was on the mountain hunting and uh and we let a giant uh color phase Arkansas black bear get away from us. That's another story. So that's my third terrifying story. Do you all have time for one more? That't tipe of one more? Okay? So the fourth story goes back to same exact mountain, same exact finger, the bare eighty and actually took place like three miles away, but on

the same mountain. Um. This story takes place on the same finger that we lost the mule, the same finger that my dad, you know, I had to talk him down from the bear. Um it was and I had just acquired Bear Hunting Magazine. So what I do for a living is I published Bear Hunting magazine. Barny Magazine has been in print for twenty years. I've had the business for the last six years. Okay, Um. It was a major thing for me to acquire this business. It

was not without massive risk. It was not what I mean. It was like jumping into a you know, jumping into a fire just to see if you can survive it, you know, and if it worked and you're in good shape. It was. I acquired the magazine and July I felt like that I got into it, I realized that I really didn't have enough money to do A small business takes a lot of money, even if you're passionate about something. I mean, it's like I calculated I needed this much

to get this thing running. It took more I was. I was frustrated. I didn't know if it was gonna work, and actually felt like what it felt like to me was that I had taken the handoff and I was just about to fumble the ball I had. So that was what was going on inside of me as a as a business owner, which is a big part of my life. Prior to this, I had made a goal that I wanted to kill a black bearry in the national forest without bait. I love hunting over bait and

always will. But to me, like the sheep hunt of the South, is to kill bear in national forests, just just kill one, just one on one, hunting them like deer. And so I've made that my goal, and I can tell you there are very few people in Arkansas that consistently do that. Um and I had only met just I mean like one or two guys, and to this day, there's very few that consistently do that. It's just a difficult hunt. You have to be in a different state

of mind. We are validated hunter sometimes. I think sometimes when game populations are so strong, like they are right now in North America, that it actually produces some softness inside of us, because we're validated by constantly seeing game every time we go and hunt. And if you're gonna hunt black bears in national forest in Arkansas, you cannot be validated by game sightings. I mean you hunt years

and not see a bear. And that's true. Um and I had actually hunted a couple of years, and I've not even seen a bear in some of the best bear country in Arkansas. Their densities are just less than white tail. High whitetail densities forty five sixty year per square acre or per square mile, excuse me. High bear population in Arkansas is probably around one bear per square mile, so this is a low density animal. So I had

set out to kill a bear on National Forest. I've been logging every time that I hunted, and uh, and up until that point, I had walked thirty two miles in National Forest in Arkansas before I was using mules and uh. It was the the last day of the Arkansas season, which the Arkansas season ran until November, last day of Arkansas season, and it was like the Saturday after Thanksgiving, and I had I had decided that I was gonna give one last hurrah, an all day hunt

and National Forest hunting for bear. I decided to go back to this particular spot, which at the time I hadn't been to in several years. Now I had this you know, long standing history of hunting here, but it had actually been a couple of years since I've been up in this particular spot. But that the night before, I was just like, man, I'm gonna go back up there.

So that morning, I've started off at the truck at daylight, and I like to do what I just called slip hunt, which is just get the wind right and just move. I mean, when you're hunting bear, you just you just gotta cover a ton of ground until you find one. Then once you find one, then you hunt him like a deer basically. And so I had walked thirty two miles cumulatively over the course of the last say two weeks, and had not seen well, I had seen one. I saw a sound of cub like three days before at

a different spot, which was a massive wind. I get out of the truck across the creek, starts to get daylight, walk up the hill. I start seeing white oak akrings. So I've seen a lot of white oakacrings, which is not something that I had seen before on my and and all my journey, and and so I was like, this is a good sign. I immediately uh bumped the flock of gobblers. I see, you know, I hear look up and there's turkeys, Like, okay, cool turkeys. I see

these turkeys go up the ridge. I kind of move in. I'm going the direction they're going. So I kind of go up by and I bumped a deer, I bumped a fawn in the dough, and they run right across in front of me, and I'm like, man, this is pretty good. There's some game on this finger. And that's another key that I found this in the in the late winter, especially in the big hardwoods of Arkansas, the

game is pretty concentrated, whether it's food source. And so I was like, man, deer in turkey, that's cool, I'm after a bear. I didn't take another step after seeing that deer run out across from me, and man, you just don't see deer in the big woods of the Washington National Forest that much. Uh, you just don't see him that much. So I hadn't walked very far and I saw a big fresh pile of bear scat, I mean fresh, and I was like, bam, there is a

bear on this ridge. There's game on this ridge. And I didn't plan to go back to the truck until dark, so I just said no, I was gonna walk, though, plan to walk all day. So I dressed real light. It was cold November thirty, but I dressed light didn't plan to hunt, didn't plan to sit still. So I walk on. Well, I knew there was a little saddle right up above where the bear scat was, and it's final day of the season. I couldn't come back tomorrow. And I just said, man, I'm gonna sit in that

saddle all day long, just gonna sit there. And so I get up in this saddle and I sit there and the wind is swirling, the wind is hitting me in every direction, and I'm thinking, man, that bear has probably already smelled me, and he's probably already in the other county. Um. And I sit there for two hours, and I just get bone chilling cold because I didn't

dress for sitting. And uh, about the time I got so cold i couldn't stand it, the wind shifted solid from the west, and I just I mean, as a when you're hunting like that, you're just constantly in tune with the wind constantly. And I noticed for about fifteen minutes the wind was hit me right in the side

of the face. And so I thought, ma'am, I'm just gonna get up and just walk into the wind right off the side of this ridge, just basically just see what I can see I was it was firearms season, okay, but I was actually carrying a muzzleloader. At the time. I didn't even have a I didn't even have a deer rifle. We grew up bow hunting and little muzzload hunting.

So I had a muzzleloader. And uh, I walk off the side of this ridge and I get into a cluster of what in the wash tools they call um they call him um uh rock glaciers is what it is. It's remnants of when the Washtall mountains and I'm I'm down in the washtalls. It's remnis of when the Washing Tall mountains were as big as the Rockies and had huge rock slides that would come down from like avalanche shoots.

And you still see these vast You'll you'll be in like big timber and then you'll walk into like a like a field, like a two acre field, and nothing but boulders as big as your car. It's pretty amazing. You don't sit in the wash tool those arts. Those arts are limestone and totally different than the washtalls. You see that. I walked into this, this this uh rock glacier just kind of to see what it looked like and I was standing on top of a rock and

I looked off down through the woods. The woods were no leaves on the trees, and I see what I think is the head of a bear. Hunters know what I'm talking about. You just see a flash of movement, and uh, you're just kind of what was that. I see what looked like two big ears stand up like this and then go back down. And I was like, man,

that is a bear. And I turned and put the scope over where I saw this like dark blob, and I zoom the scope in, and man, there is a bear laying on a rock about sixty yards from me. As soon as I get the scope on him, I see him roll over. He's laying on his side and I see him roll over. I see his feet go up in there like this and turn over. The wind still hit me right in the face. It's too far for a shot. There's twigs and limbs and everything. So I start to just walk towards this bear. And I'm

in a boulder field. There's some trees growing up in this one, and this one wasn't a real big one, and I just start taking steps, walking like walking on rocks, I mean, just in the wide open, pure sight. I mean this clear sight of this bear. But he's asleep. Uh, or he's at least he's laying down. And uh. Every time I take a step, I put the scope up and like, you know, kind of to have a shot, to have a shot. Can I see the vitals of this animal? Can I tell what it is? And anyway,

I just keep creeping, keep creeping, keep creeping. Every time I'm thinking, man, I don't want to get any closer, because all this bear would have to do was just throw his head up and look see me, and he'd be gone and be a running shot or bad deal. So I just keep creeping, creeping, creeping, creeping, creeping, and every time I can't get a shot. Finally I'm within twenty yards of this bear. The wind is hitting me straight in the face, and I mean there's not a

twig between us now. I mean he's like, you know, from here to get a little further than the cooler there and uh, and I just sit down and uh, and I can see this the top of this bear's head. He's laying on a big flat rock and he's got his head laid over the top of that rock. Are you okay with an epic hunting story that has a kill in it, and were okay with that. Okay, this bear was laying and he had his he had his

head laid over this rock. And I now I'm twenty yards from this bear, and I believe that it is a two pound black bear. That that is what I knew, that this was a two pound black colored bear. I don't know if y'all know this, but we have color color face bears in Arkansas. So about they say upwards of our bears are not black, but they're cinnamon colored and can even be lighter than that chocolate colored. And uh, I perceived this to be a tuner pound black bear.

And I did not care what it was. I was after the sheep of the Washtaw Mountains, which was a spot and stalk black bear, and I didn't care really how big it was. It was just a legal animal. And so I crouched down and I'm waiting, and I'm like, should I whistle at this bear? And this is where most hunters mess up stuff is that you know you you either you either take a chance and move too quick or you're not patient enough, and we all make mistakes.

But so I didn't know if I should whistle at this bear and get him to stand up, or if I should just wait for him to stand up on his own, or what I should do. But I knew the wind wasn't gonna stay steady forever, but it had stayed steady this entire time. Hit me right in the face anyway. I finally look at this bear's head and I'm like, man, I can drive tax with this muzzleloader. And basically I just put the cross hairs right on the top of his head, squeezed the trigger, and the

bear never flinched. I walked over to the bear, so I shot the bear. Okay, we're cool with that. Okay, got bear bear down. Shot the bear, shot the bear. Walked up to the bear, and I believe it's a two hundred pound black bear. I get up to it and it is a what we estimated to be a five hundred pound color phase Arkansas male black bear. It

was a giant. It was. It was absolute giant. I had killed a bear in Canada a month before that weighed four d thirty five pounds on a scale, and when I walked up to that bear, my initial response was that bear weighs a hundred more pounds than the bear I killed last month that I weighed, and I mean it was a giant. It was a giant, and I was absolutely I mean I just couldn't believe it. And the fact that was color phase, the spectacular animal.

We ended up having at tooth age. And it was an eight year old bear, which that's what we want to take out as older mature males, that's what we're after. And it was it was incredible. We we I went off down the mountain, got my dad and five or six guys. We couldn't drive to the bear. We quartered it up and we hauled him off the mountain. And uh, here's the here's the whole point of this story is that when I walked up to that bear, and remember that, I was like in turmoil, young man who had just

acquired a business, and I had no backup plan. I mean it's not like I had. I mean I really didn't. We put everything we had into this. There was no plan B. There was no one to bail us out. There was no trust fund from daddy. Uh. We this was what we put all our eggs in, and I was I felt like it was about to fumble when I walked up to that bear, I was not at the time. Uh well, let me preface a us, and

I'm I'm a deep man of faith. I believe that God is very active inside of our lives and wants to be And when I walked up to that bear, I just the deepest sensation of knowing that I've ever had in my life. I said out loud, I said, God is gonna help me. That's what I said. And I knew that that. It's like it encompassed like my whole life. It's like I saw my family, my business, because it's like I didn't deserve this. I hadn't worked, This wasn't a result of a calculated plan, even though

I put in work. I had worked really hard. But I mean, this was supposed to be a tuner pound black bear, and it was a five plus pound color phase bear, and just the significance of it was very real. And from that moment on, I went back into my business and I'm literally Bear Honey Magazine has been on an upward trajectory. We're not we're not we're not Jay curving. We've just been on an upward trajectory of influence and and and God has helped us. That happened to me

on public land. All those stories happened in the same place in public land. Public Land is is more than more than just valuable to me. It truly has shaped my life. And so that's why you know, I'm part of this organization and I believe that it's significant. Hey, thank you guys. I appreciate thanks for laughing at my jokes. Yeah, I guess that's all I got. Thanks a lot, Dach