Manitoba Black Bear with Kolby Morehead

this app? You can find this app wherever you currently download your apps, or you can get more information on their website time to go wild dot com. Trust me when I say it's a fun app and it's dedicated to men and women who just love the outdoors. So download the app today, play around with it, and I guess joined the next big thing on social media. My name is Clay Nukeleman. 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 and bear. We'll talk about tactics, gear, conservation, but will also bring you into some of the wildest country on the planet chasing bear. Welcome to the Bear Hunting magazine podcast. I think this is our fourth podcast. I'm not sure, but we are at the global headquarters of Bear Hunting Magazine. Me and my good buddy Colby Moorehead just got back

from the wilds of Northern Manitoba. We got back two days ago, so we're just now recovering from an epic road trip and an empic hunt. So what we're gonna talk about in this podcast is we're gonna We're gonna talk about our hunt. We're gonna detail out this is ciffics of what happened. We're not holding anything back. We're

gonna share it all, spill all our guts here. But we're also gonna talk about some specific topics inside of the hunt that were relevant, like shop placement because Mr Moorehead made a very unique shot that turned out great and I think we can all learn something from it. Right, And uh, we're gonna talk about fall bear hunting. Way up north, most Canadian bear hunting is done in the spring, and there's some super benefits to hunting in the fall.

I've only bear hunted in Canada in the fall one other time, So we're gonna talk about kind of the differences between spring and fall bear hunting. We're gonna talk about our friend Corey Grant and all trained bear hunts at Bear Hunting Magazine. A big part of what we do is represent outfitters bear hunting outfitters. A lot of them are from Canada, and so Corey Grant is a longtime Bear Hunting Magazine advertiser. He uh, he has been

an outfitter since nineteen. The former owner of Bear Hunting Magazine hunted with Corey Grant back in the mid two thousand's and killed the Boone and Crocket bear with him, and so the magazine has a lot of history with Corey. This is the first time that I've hunted with Corey, first time that Colby hunt it with Corey, and we we had a good hunt with him, We really did. We will also spill the spill the beans about how my hunt went, which I can't I cannot tell yet exactly.

I can't tell the people yet what happened. But we partook in some world class walleye fishing um which was a new thing for me. I fished quite a bit up in northern Canada, but usually we're in big pike waters, but we were in a tremendous while I like, and then we'll close out this episode by talking about the road trip home and Colby and I like, a couple of bandits from the South were able to evade the

law on three different traffic stops. And we've got a routine that we think will help all bear hunters and outdoorsmen in general be able to when they fight the law to win. It's about documentation, documentation and overwhelming them with information, lots of movement. No, So I want to introduce to you Kobe moorehead. Kobe is from Dallas. This was your first bear hunt. Yeah, yeah, I've never seen a bear before this. So you're you, dear? How did

your whole life you fish? You grew up, grew up hunting, and then when did you want to start bearing? After coming across Bearing magazine, just you know, following the content and how much much fun it is and uh, you know, it always seemed like people have a good time, very relational um inside of the hunts, and so it just seemed like a good group to to uh traverse with.

I guess yeah, you know, bear hunts and bear camp in the far North is typically pretty laid back, as opposed to a lot of other different kinds of hunts. And this is something that we talked about all the time. Um, you know, not that it's well, it's you're at a bear camp and typically you're just hunting in the evenings and so you have a lot of time during the

day to fish too, just relax. So a lot of these northern hunts are kind of laid back as compared to a hunt that you're waking up at the crack of dawn and you're going out and hunt in the

mornings and evenings. So it's a different it's a different style hunt which all of us like to really challenge ourselves and kind of have that type too fun when it comes to hunting, which is something that's fun later, not necessarily fun at the moment, you know, which like sometimes whitetail hunting and and lots of different types of hunting can be and bear hunting can be as well, but it's a little bit more laid back and just

a unique hunt. Bear hunting over bait in Canada is you're gonna see a lot of game that's usually a given, not always usually given. If you're going with a really good outfit, are in a good region, you're gonna see bears. You may not see bears every hunt, but for the most part, you're probably gonna see game every hunt. And one thing that I always say is that abated bear hunt you get to interact with a big game animal more intimately than any other type of honey. And when

I say intimately, I just mean close personal. You're you're getting to see these animals for long periods of time. Most types of hunting, like when you see your target animal, I mean you are trying to take advantage of that opportunity. You're trying to shoot that animal as quick as possible, so you actually don't get to see that animal do

what it does when you're not there. That's the cool thing about abated bear hunt is you are are first of all, Usually the first couple of bears that come in are not target bears, or maybe you sit for days without seeing a target bear, and so the place that you're sitting is the destination of where these animals want to go. You know, you're at a bait site, and so you get to watch these animals be bears. So we saw bears fighting, we saw bears, lots of

bear vocalizations, we saw young bears. Now you you work with me when I saw the sow with three cubs, but you did see a different sow with three cubs, didn't you. Well, we saw the three cubs without the cell right right right, Yeah, So when you guys went into Betas spot when I was not by myself, so you got to see some pretty unique bear behavior. Yeah, yeah,

it was really cool. I think the vocalization has really shocked me as far as like how how many they actually have, So it was really cool, and you could start to anticipate by the you know, the way they would that they would move, and like what they would do, like what they were about to do, and just to try to learn like the characteristics of each individual bear because they weren't alllways the same, you know. I think that was the biggest takeaway is that there were no

two bears that acted identical, you know. Yeah, so it was pretty cool to see those those individual characteristics that they had. They all do have personalities, and there were certain bears that were that are like aggressive and we can say that not aggressive necessarily towards us, but like we're just aggressive towards other bears, aggressive towards defending the bait, aggressive towards well towards us. I mean could come over to our ground blind or come over to where we

were and want to check us out. They were always looking at us. And then there were other bears that when they came in, they knew we were there, but they never it was almost like they never gave us the the the the honor of even looking at us in the eye. I mean, it's kind of like they knew were there, but they didn't they didn't really acknowledge

us the bear you killed. It's like that. I find that the bigger, older, mature bears will often come in and they might know you're there, which is a unique thing for wilderness hunting, and when you talk about that, he might know you're there, but it's like he's not gonna acknowledge you really, Whereas some of these little bears come in and they're just like bam, they're just looking at you and they're circling you and they're wanting to come up to you and mess with you and uh.

And then the lesser bears are usually pretty vocal, pretty active, moving around a lot, wanting to fight and wolf and pop their teeth and do all kinds of stuff. So it's it's fun to see the different personalities of these bears. And and going back to my point about big game hunting, a lot of people don't understand hunting over bait, you know,

they feel like it's not exciting or whatever. But there's bit, there's there's pros and contest everything do I mean, I enjoy a spotting stock hunt that's just a just to go out, find animal in their natural patterns and hunt them. I mean, that's a lot of what I do, and

it's some of my favorite hunting. But at the same time, hunting animals over bait is also some of my favorite hunting because number one, it's a conservation tool to be able to manage bears in places where you would not kill bears at all if you're just spotting stock hunting. I mean, the Far North is absolutely is thick as I mean, it's it's super thick. Can't see you're never

gonna find these bears. So so modern hunters like us have to view it in the way it is is that it's a conservation tool to be able to manage bearing numbers in places where there are compromised populations of ungulates. Moose. You know, Corey was talking to us. I mean, it's a good moose area up there, and their bear hunting plays a role in that. So baiting bears is part of a conservation hunting strategy. Number two, it ain't easy. I mean to kill a target bear over bait anywhere

is not easy. I mean, if you've never done it, you think you just go out and put out bait and go shoot an older age class mature mail bear just you know, yogi bear walking up to a pilot donuts. Not so. I mean it's not so. I mean if if, if, if I could jump to well, I don't want to give away my hunt, but let's just say I hunted for an extended period of time and only encountered a

few target bears. Um. So, it's it's a it's a it's a challenge, especially here in Arkansas, Oklahoma and places in the lower forty eight than for whatever reason, to get more pressure there. Bears are much more educated, they're they're super difficult to kill. I mean, it's I almost think you'd have a better chance spotting stocking and older age class mail in some places and hunting them over bait because they just get smart to you. So, so

I say that to say it is a challenge. So and and then the other pro is that you just get to see you get to see animals. You get to see a lot of animals. It's a lot of fun. And it's just interacting with a predator. For somebody that is mainly used to hunting deer, it's like a whole new experience. What was that like for you? I mean just because this was the first the first bear you saw, it was actually on the drive into bear Camp. Yeah,

we saw a bear across the road. Yeah, there's high five. Yeah. Yeah. We were like, first bear, Yeah, first bear, and then we saw another one that was cool on the drive. On the drive end the bearcat. We saw two bears cross from yeah, and then one swimming the lake from camp camp was awesome. Yeah. But hunting predators, it's definitely it's definitely different. It's like if they come close, I might not be as comfortable. Like if a white tail comes up a few yards away, it's like, that's just

a cool interaction. But yeah, if if there's one looking at you from closest, like, how am I going to deal with this? Yeah? What's my response in this situation. Yeah, and it's it's unnerving for some people how a bear responds to us. I mean, we are used to animals when they see us in wild places, running wanting to get the heck away, but in some bears act that way, but over bait typically they don't. And so it's a little unnerving, you know, to to see an animal that

just doesn't really care that you're there. And uh, but it's just an interesting hunt, interesting hunt for sure. So so we drove Kobe drove from Dallas to northwest Arkansas, and then we drove together from northwest Arkansas to northern Manitoba, toss in Manitoba, which is if so if Manitoba, if you measure the length of Manitoba, we're about three quarters of the way up. So we were probably three hundred miles south of the none none of it territory, I

believe geographic lesson here. I'm pretty sure it's none of it that's north of Manitoba. And uh, Corey was telling us, and I actually didn't know this, but they're polar bears on northern Manitoba. He was showing his pictures of polar bears, like like two hundred miles north where we're hunting, right, So, I mean this is like way north. This is like far northern part of part of Canada. And it was about a twenty two hour road trip for us. I have chosen to drive to Canada the last two years

when i've had the opportunity to um for several reasons. Namely, I get to leave when I want to and come home when I want to, and win carry a bunch of gear um and it's and usually I'm going with somebody, so it's been kind of convenient. People haven't understood that. They're like, why don't you fly? Man? I hate flying. Flying stresses me out. If I'm flying somewhere, like two days before I fly, I'm just like, I find myself stressed out. If I drive, it's kind of a little

more laid back. But so what do you think about the drive? It was as bad as I expected. That mean, it's a long I mean it's a day at least if you're driving straight. Yeah, and uh no, I know it wasn't bad. Uh, a lot of new stuff to see. I had never been that far north, so just to see the landscape change was was really cool. And uh, you get into Canada, it's like a whole another world because everything is so thick off the side of the road.

So you go from you know, planes to just you're in wilderness, and and the further you go back just like, man, I wonder what old wildlife wildlife is out of here, you know, and uh, watching the roads and just thinking it's like, wait, there are any white tail up here? You know. So it's like the change in wildlife from from you know, just in within a couple hundred miles

is crazy too, you know. It's it's interesting because yeah, we leave here and we're on the fringe of the Eastern deciduous forest, like basically from the Arkansas line all the way to the Atlantic Ocean is you know, if

you're talking then massive. Uh uh let's see what would be the right word, uh, not topographical, not geographical, but just like um climax forests were in the Eastern deciduous forest from here all the way to the Atlantic Ocean would have before European settlers got here, been forested from the border of Arkansas to basically the Rocky Mountains is the plains. I mean, you get very far into you start heading west in Oklahoma, you get into like flat country,

great plains, I mean, big time stuff. So we drove, we kind of we kind of cut the edge of the deciduous forest and the plains went up through southern Missouri, and then once we get into Iowa, you're still you're still in the eastern deciduous forest. But then we started to kind of move west, and that's when we transitioned into South Dakota, North Dakota, and that's like big flatland plains. Southern Canada is big egg land, I mean bread basket of the planet type land. And then you get into

the border forests. About a third of the way up in the Manitoba you hit the boreal forest. And the boreal forest is an amazing place. It's not spectacular beauty like the Rockies, or it's not like majestic beauty like setting on top of you know, the continental Divide in Montana and seeing snow capped mountains. It's more of a to me, it's more of a nuanced, rugged beauty of well, it's jackpines, it's spruce. There are a lot of poplar, but these trees only get to grow for five maybe

six months a year. Average snowfall is like super deep and so it's like a rugged environment. And to me, that's where the beauty comes from. Is you know that anything that has survived up here is an ultimate specialist. You know they that animal, that tree, that plant has developed. You know, it's it's it's designed for that environment. And uh So, to me, the beauty comes in just understanding

the difficulty of being a living thing there. And just like you said too, as you travel north, you get into the different the different wildlife transitions, and up there, the only things that are there as far as big game are the odd caribou, which are some Cariboo there, Moose, black bear, and wolves. That's it, those four things. And I mean in Cariboo we work in the scenic Cariboo where we were at. I mean they might get the

odd herd that would come through. Small herd now moose, yes, a lot of this good classic moose country, but really the thing that dominates the landscape is black bear. I mean, the boreal forest was made for black bear and uh and also wolf. To diverge slightly, just because I said the term wolf. A lot of our outfits and Bearning Magazine offer wolf tags for on their fall bear hunts, and some of their spring hunts. I've always kind of thought that was just like a constellation prize that maybe

just happened really randomly with hunters. But while we were there, we realized what a real possibility is to shoot a wolf in the fault. I mean, one of the guys we weren't so cold. So Corey has two camps in Northern Camp Southern camp. Colby and I were just it was just us in the southern camp, and there were five or six hundreds in the northern camp. And on the first night one of the guys in the north

killed wolf with a boat. Yeah. Um. And we were seeing wolf pictures on trail cameras, probably not every day, but often on the baits we were hunting. And on the final day of my hunt, we bumped a wolf off of the bait. We didn't see it, but we saw the truck coming. Pictures later we bumped a wolf off of the bait while I was there, And I mean, so when I climbed up in the tree, it was like a wolf was here like thirty minutes ago, sitting

right there, and they're actually eating the corn and grease. Yeah. And then Corey spotted a wolf on the way up. Yeah, when we were headed out of account if yeah, if we had played our cards just right, we'd have seen it. We were following the outfitter out on the way out one night and he saw a wolf across the road. So I mean wolves are up there big time, and I mean it's a real possibility to shoot a wolf,

which was cool. So the wildlife, the transition. So we said all that to say, it's pretty cool the road trip to the far North. And you know, economically, I haven't done the math, but for two people we definitely save money. I mean we would have spent six hundred bucks apiece and then rented a car and then drove another eight hours probably, so we we would have had two thousand dollars and travel expenses probably between the two of us. And so we've probably spent uh it wasn't

that much. Seven hundred bucks and fuel maybe hying that much combined comebin yeah, yeah, so combined it travel expence was a lot less. Now we were traveling for a good part of this. When we when we switched over the old white Betty Chevrolet to kilometers per hour, we had her pegged out at a hundred and forty kilometers per hour. We had no idea how fast we're going. Turns out that's about eighty miles per hour. So we were averaging about eighty miles and the loading wasn't around

in Canada laws on the road man. When we got to Canada and you started hitting the speed limit signs that are in kilometers per hour and just f y, well, it's probably just Americans let into this, but if perhaps a Canadian listens to this, Americans have zero understanding and native ability to translate kilometers per hour into miles. Prom Yeah, we had no idea how fast we're going, so we decided that since we didn't know that, maybe the laws just didn't apply to bear hunters, so we just just

we were passing those Canucks left and right. Yeah. Yeah, uh totally safe though. We were totally safe now. So so that gets us start through our road triple. So we we at Thompson, Manitoba, and to get to bear Camp, we drove about forty five minutes out of Thompson, put all our stuff in a boat, and then took a boat to his what he calls his outpost camp, which is uh super nice. I mean, I guess you'd call

it a lodge. I mean it's not like one large building, but it was multiple log cabin buildings, sleeping quarters, and then the main lodge. It's a small lodge, rustic but nice clean. You know. We weren't roughing it. We were not roughing. It felt like the lap of luxury. Yeah. Yeah, off the grid style. Yeah, totally off the grid. You can't drive, I mean, the only way to get there is by boat. Um and uh, or if you're cool, by float plane. Yeah, if you're yep. Corey brought in

this float plane the first night. So the only way to get there was by boat. And so we ended up taking the boat to every day we hunted, which to me added a neat a neat field to the hunt, you know. But so just a little bit about the camp. So we we stayed in our own bunkhouse and uh, right on the lake shore. Uh, the cook and the

cooks were fishing every day right off the dock. We didn't fish off the dock much, but I mean, just a spectacular hundred and eighty degree scene of this Canadian lake up there, and you guys be able to watch it on Bear Horizon when we released that episode. You'll you'll see kind of where we stayed super nice. We had three way too big meals every day. We ate a lot, so this was not roughness, but in a daily shower that that was pretty yeah. Good food, yeah, electricity,

it was, it was, it was nice. We saw a piece of the Northern lights. Yeah yeah. The second or third night while we were there, while we're coming back from a bear hunt. The clouds were low, but above us was an open sky. It's pretty neat riding back on that boat with no lights at night. I mean, Corey knows how to navigate that lake really well. A lot of trust and a lot of instant trust. Yeah yeah yeah, but we could see we could see the

Northern lights. U just too. I tried to convince Colby that the Northern lights were to the south of us, but it only worked for just like a few seconds, and it's like, wait a minute, So we did see the Northern lights for just a second. They get some spectacular views the Northern lights pretty often photos on Quarry's phone.

They were just phenomenal. Yeah yeah yeah, So the let's go like so the first day, so our plan was is that Kolbe was gonna hunt and I was gonna try to hunt with him and film and so this will be your first bear hunt. So this is the first day, Corey Texas to a spot that's got like a two man stand and uh, just just walk us through the Yeah. Yeah, so it was screwed up just a little bit closer to our bid go. Yeah, so it was I mean, at least by this time I've

seen three bears, just none none up close. And so yeah, we got in the stand. Corey set everything up, you know, trying to make sure that the that the bears would stay in the area. Um, whenever we're there. It seemed like there was quite a bit of bait out and so yeah, we would have We had a bear come in first, and he was pretty cautious. Um, but you know, he was more interested in the in the corn than he than he was with us, and he would come back and check us out every once while he stood

at us lunch with you know, which was cool. And we had a second bear come in and then that's when it got really cool to see them interact with each other and that you know, each bear had its own bubble that it was comfortable with giving other bears room and then they would um, you know, they would vocalize and chase each other a little bit. Um. And what was really cool is whenever the big bear was coming in, um, the one that we that I actually got that it. Um, they just started acting acting out

like you knew something was coming. They were just really uncomfortable. Uh. And so all of a sudden he walks under the stand and and you just you watched him walked by, and you could just see how white he was, you know, and uh, all of a sudden he goes up by a barrel and Clay looks over. He's like, he's not fitting in that barrel. So, yeah, he was just he was a really big barrel. Would you say, were you guessing around three fifty? I mean we think he was

three fifty and I would say he was minimum three fifty. Yeah, he looked pretty heavy. Had Clay noticed he had really really big pads on his on his paws, and so he just he was in there, and then he chased a few of the smaller bears off a few times, and um, you know, it was clear that this was was a good specimen to take out a good a

good mature board to harvest. And so I, uh, he came back from chasing a bear off and he was, you know, standing up, and he was just quartering towards me and then he uh, I was like, as soon as he turns, there's my shots. So I drew and then he turned and I kind of got in my my shot cycle, and then he started walking and it was like, I couldn't put an arrow back, so I hit it a little far back. It was still middle, but it was about eight inches went about eight inches back.

It was a straight gut shot, and uh, I just felt terrible. As as soon as the arrow left, I knew, I knew it wasn't the shot that I, uh, that I had planned on. And so we've been patient, We watched steam, we took our time, but you know, in the end, it was one of those things where it was just, you know, it was a bad judgment call Um.

And so then he he ran off for what about thirty forty yards something like that, and stopped out in the woods, and then one of the other bears that we had been watching came out and chased after him. Um went out there and stood up at him, and then we didn't hear anything else side of the bear, and the other came back and fed until Corey came and picked us up, and uh that I had a lit knock on my arrow and it was just mocking me. It's like, made a bad decision these twinkling alternating red

and green knocks and just watched out there. Yeah, so I was. I was pretty hard on myself for the time it took for core to get out there, and all of a sudden, I was like, you know what, it's just time to shift gears from uh, you know, the shot was bad, So now what's the right right decision? And so it's like, no matter what it takes, we're gonna find this bear, you know. And so I just had to have that hope that we were recovering well. And so there's two there's two things I want to

talk about about this, which is a shot. But before we talk about the actual shot, because we've said it was far back, um, which that's gonna be important, I want to talk about the decision to shoot this bear. I think that's the biggest thing with a bated bear hunt where people mess up, is that they shoot a lesser bear when they could shoot an older bear. And there's like, so this these were the first bears that you've ever seen from the stand, and now you've you

have been tutored by the Bear Hunting Magazine vlog. You've been tutored by Bear Hunting Magazine for several years. So I would assume that you're above the typical grade. Now it really is hard. I mean, like the first glimpse that you see a bear, I mean you're like, man, that's a big bear. I mean like the first time I saw the bear that walked in first, I was like, I mean in my heart, it was like that's a big bear. And then immediately saw his ears and head,

and I was like, just an average bear. I mean, immediately you're able to interpret it. A lot of it has to do with scale, A lot of it. It's multiple factors. If you lean on just one factor to judge bear, you'll end up messing up. Like all these bears were fairly tall. They weren't short bears. They weren't like two year old bears. There were probably three to

five year old bears. We had these two bears that came in for both of them boars, and we could tell there were boars, and and I'll tell you I leaned more on this hunt for whatever reason, on telling the bear was a board by seeing the hair that hanged down on the front of him, off of the off of their sheath. You could see this like three or four inch hair that would hang down off about the middle of their belly, you know, and that was

pretty visible. But the but a boar is typically just gonna be taller, you know, just he's just gonna look taller and lankier. The sALS are squatty and short. Um. But you can tell a younger bear by a narrower head, a more immature head. A big board is just gonna have a big, blocky, rottweilder looking head, you know. Um.

But there's a lot of other factors too. I mean, we saw several mature looking boards that probably only weighed in the two five pound two fifty pound class, that had a lot of features of big bears, and I can see somebody shooting them thinking they were shooting them three and fifty to four and a pound bear. They just weren't. And so you need things for scale, you need you know. What we used on this one was

the barrel. A lot of these bears went and laid down by a barrel that was laid over and I said, do you think you could fit that bear into the barrel? I had an old bear outfitter tell me that one time. He says, when you see a bear that won't fit into a gallon drum or you don't have a hard time putting it there, kind of a graphic image shoving a bear in there. But he's like, that's a shooter.

So these two bears that came in, when they laid down by the barrel, and you're like, they would easily fit in that forty five gallon drum when but more than that, there were other features. I mean, they're there. Their paws and feet weren't huge, ears and face were narrower. Um, they just weren't that big. Bear didn't have a big

drooping belly. So when we saw this bear came in beneath us, immediately noticed just how thick it was, and it was just a notch bigger than these other bears, which these other bears would have been shooters in many camps across North America. They really would either one of

those two bears. This bear came in, he had big when he when he was walking away from us, I watched him walk and I saw his pad kind of come up and I saw it and I could tell that it was over five inches probably six inches wide. I mean, it just looked like a just a huge pad and that's what I was like, Man, that's a that's a big bear. But it was a nuanced difference, like if you just would have glanced at it, like maybe you wouldn't have noticed. But anyway, he went overlaid

by the barrel. He was he was just bigger than all these other bears, but made the decision to shoot it, and uh, and then it was on. So those are just a few few tips there about judging bears that might be helpful, but it's it's a challenge. I mean, even for me, I've seen a lot of bears taking a lot of airs, are right, it's still a challenge to really judge um. So moving to the shot. We've we've written articles, we've talked about shot placement for years

and years. Bears are one of the hardest big game animals to get a good clean shot on for multiple reasons that we've talked about so many times. They've got four, you know, two to four inches of hair all over their body, which exaggerates their size. So they're really not as big as they look. Number one. Number two, especially in the fall, they've got two to four inches of fat over a good portion of their body, which the

fat is going to be non vital area. So there again exaggerated to really how big they are, so their vitals and where you're trying to hit is smaller than what it looks like. Number three. They're solid black, and a solid black animal doesn't show the features of the animal in the light like a short haired, light colored deerwood like you could see where you'd see the shadows on a deer's shoulder or where it came up, you could see where the hip came up, like the light

just shows up better on a black bear. It's just like you're just looking into a shadow. So it's hard to like just pick out the exact spot that you want to hit. Number four. Their bottles are slightly different than the white tails. Not not a lot, but slightly different. There's slightly further back and you can and it was proved this week that you can shoot one way back and you've got a really good chance to find an animal.

We've published an article in BARONNY magazine several years ago called middle of the middle where a lot of these Canadian outfitters say that shoot a bear in the middle of the middle, like literally from from the shoulders to butt in the middle and then up and down vertically. If you were just to pick the spot from the top of the back to the belly the middle, which on a white tail that would be way back, I

mean way back in the guts. But on knee cropsy that I've on on multiple bears, I have seen that the lungs extend back beyond the midpoint of the bear, and then behind those lungs lay the liver and a lot of other good stuff. And so by aiming at the middle of the middle, basically you have the most room for air of any shot on the bear. If you're for ing just to the right, you're really in

the sweet spot of where you want to be. If you're forward of eight inches to the left, back into the guts, you're still you're not gonna hit liver and and lungs, which you did not, but you're still gonna kill an animal. I talked to an old Sasketchman outfit here one time that told me, he said, he said, I have found almost every gut shot bear that we've ever had clients take. I personally had not recovered a

bear that was gut shot quite like yours. And so while we're in the stand of telling Klobe this, I'm like, man, it wasn't the best shot, but I think we're gonn to find that bear. And uh. And so to cut to the end of the story, and and I mean, you hit just like basically right in front of the hips of that bear, passed all the way through using the four blades slip trick, brought it super sharp, good broadhead, passed all the way through. We found that bear. It

took some good blood trailer. I mean, no doubt about it. There was not a lot of blood. Like if you had just stumbled out there and just started wandering around looking for blood like, probably wouldn't have found it. But we blood trailed that bear and it probably took forty minutes. And and I do not believe the bear run more

than twoundred yards. Uh. The bear was bleeding and there drops of blood on the ground at first, and then he quit bleeding like that, and pretty much we were then following places where he had rubbed on the trees. So what we started doing we learned is wed. You'd kind of see tracks where the bear, you know, fresh not not like tracks in the mud, just like scuffed leaves.

We could tell the animal to walk through press down vegetation, and you'd kind of go, well, I think he went that way, and you'd you know, kind of crawl ten feet and look kind of underneath a leaf and you'd see a smear of kind of this dark, you know, dark red blood. I mean it almost wouldn't even blood, I mean, just looked wet. But we kept following that. I mean we found the bear, yeah, pretty during easily. Yeah.

I believe the bear did not live very long. I mean I think the bear was dead within thirty minutes. So the point of all that is to say is that if you're gonna air on a shot on a bear, air to the far back of the animal. I wounded a bear in Saskatchewan this year by shooting too far forward his shoulder. I mean the bear is still out in Saskatchewan right now, being a bear. I didn't even hurt him, party got any penetration. If I had been four inches towards the back of the animal, I would

have taken that animal. So just as an encouragement to people. You know, if you shoot one far back, don't track it right away. Yeah, give it some time. Uh, but just take your time on the blood trail, don't get in the hurry, and you'll find that bear. So so when we found it, uh, the bear kind of circle back around the direction that had came. It came from behind us, but when it ran out, it ran out away from us, and I kind of had a feeling that it was gonna want to get back in the

direction I did, and sure enough it did. It circled out in front of us and then started heading back towards the spig swamp behind us. And uh, I wish you hadn't made it to that big hill. Yeah, yeah, it went downhill and uh but we walked up to the bear. What was it like? Man, it's great for me. It was more of like relief. You know, you don't want to like because it seemed like he had gone down pretty quickly. You know, the last thing you want is to injure an animal and have it out there

suffering or or whatever is going on inside of their mind. Uh. But yeah, man, it was just like instant relief. It was like, oh, thank god, It's like it was one of those things where it's like you told me dead bear and I wasn't gonna be like excited until I saw it myself. I was like, are you sure, man? Is it? Is it a stuff? So no, it was. It was fantastic and I was glad that there are other people with me whenever I got there. I think that's the important thing about hunting is just like the

other people being with you. If I if that had happened on my own, it wouldn't have had the same value to it is as the collaborative the collaborative nature of you know, you and Corty being there and like working just as hard, if not harder than me to find the bear. You know, there are a few points like I saw you like on your hands, just like

looking low seeing if you can find stuff. And man, I don't know that I could have found the bear on my on my own, just like you know, I haven't had a lot of a lot of experienced blood trailing, but it was it was cool to see people that have been through and down several blood trailers to to

watch the process. And I think there's there's almost a point of of a mentoring inside of that respect, whenever you're watching people that have done things more than you, and like you're just trying to take in whatever you can so that you can improve for the next time. And I bet you I never make that same shot again. Yeah, Yeah, I thought I was erring on the side of caution, and I guess I just got in my shot cycle and I didn't think that that bears just started walking

and it was it was just too late. Well, that's there's something to learn from that, because that is a critical things when you initiate that shot cycle. You pull the bow back. Now you'd actually held the boat for probably thirty forty seconds, maybe longer. It was a while. You held the boat for a long time, but then mentally you executed the shot cycle because you were thinking, when the bear turns fully broadside, I'm gonna shoot, yeah, And that's really where a guy's got to then kind

of complexify a shot cycle. And then I'm gonna shoot if he stops, if he is turned right, And so you shot in the bear was still walking. So that's what happen you probably I told you. I think initially you said, man, I was like way off, and I was like I don't think you were. I think you probably hit right where you're aiming. Bear was just moving, you know, and that comes with experience inside of bow

hunting is managing that moment of truth. And that's what we talked about, you know, like uh and Matt, I was impressed with how calm you were. I mean, like, I think I think I was more nervous than you. I man, when I'm in a tree stand with somebody that's gonna shoot, I'm like nervous as a cap. It's like, ye, my heart was pumping. I was filming. It was fun.

But so I mean, I guess just more cognizance in the moment and just like really being sure, you know, because we've all every bow hunter has made that same mistake and so you just you just wear and luckily on this one it didn't really matter. I mean, if you'd made a great shot at the bear, would a run forty yards rather than two hundred, which really was inconsequential. Um, so it was awesome bear. We didn't weigh the bear, it was so far back in the bush, weren't able

to like bring the animal out whole. But we really believed that Wade three fifties. We bore. Um, it was a good one. Scored the skull eighteen four or something like that. Yeah, six ft nine square, it was. It was six and a half foot six and a half foot from those to tail green hide, so you know, green hide stretched out six and a half foot and

then the wingspan was seven foot so square. You take the length of the bear nose to tail divided by the width of the bears, basically the average of those two. And uh so it was a super bear, I mean, super duper bear. So that was day one and I'm gonna speed us along here because so now Colby's hunt has done and he's gonna film me. Um. And the first afternoon that I hunted, we were sitting on the ground.

I told Corey that I wanted to hunt on the ground and I was gonna hunt with the re curve, and you know, the it's a little you know, I continue to learn every time I'm going to hunt, because you're constantly like gauging, like how good the hunting is, what your expectations are for the hunt, what you would like to bring home, like as far as like the best possible scenario, and then kind of the reality of really,

what are your chances for bringing that home? I mean, like I kind of taking a complex look at the whole hunt, and like, for instance, like if we had hunted with you the first day and it had been like super tough hunting and we hadn't seen a bear, they would have calibrated me to be like, buddy, you better take advantage of every opportunity that you get. But when it's as awesome as it was on the first day, it kind of sets you up to think, man, this is this is we're in, We're in the chips. You

know this is gonna be good. This is the first bait that we sat on. We killed the top notch bear, so we've got four days left to hunt. I can be picky, like that was what I thought, and I don't regret thinking that. Okay, So the first day we went into this bait, we knew what was there. We'd seen church A pictures. We knew there was a color phase bear there. We knew he was a good one, didn't know exactly how good. And basically the first couple of hours we're a little bit slow, but at about

eight o'clock gets dark, about nine o'clock. At eight o'clock bears just started piling in. We're on the ground, and the first bear in was a nice boy that I would say most clients of any Northern Canada bear out for probably was shot. I mean it was. It was a nice boar, older board, kind of had squatty ears. He was one of those boards that I think can fool you and make you think you're shooting a foreigner pounder because he wasn't a young bear. Um. But I

didn't want to shoot that bear. And then the second bear that came in was his color face bear, and oh he was he was. He was spectacular just just the coloration of him. But he was not as big as your bear. And so in my mind I really valued size and age of the bear over color of the bear. I'm probably the first person ever at Corey's camp to pass up a color face bear like that because it was good size. Yeah, I mean it was.

You know, at the time I said it was a six ft bear, but it probably was like a six three six four type bear. Um. I don't think it weighed three under pounds. I could be wrong. I posted a picture on Facebook a minute ago and I looked at that bear and I was like, dang, that's big bear. But in my heart of hearts, I don't think it weighed three and pounds. And in my mind in the fall, I was wanting to shoot at least a three or

pound bear. So when I saw the bear, I immediately I was just like, I'm not gonna shoot that bear. And I'll tell you why, because when I was in Saskatchewan two months ago, I learned something that I hope I don't forget. We we we hunted the whole week. In the first like minute of bear hunting, I'm not kidding you, in Saskatchewan, a color face bear Cameman. I mean the first day we got there hunting with Bear

Prosafaris Colby Morrison. I mean, we sit down and here comes a color face bear and it's a nice bear. It's probably, I don't know how big, it was two durn thirty forty pound spring bear, which is a good bear. And we end up watching that bear all week. For five days. We see that bear every single day. I passed him on the first day, and then on the last day of the hunt, I decided to shoot that bear.

And I ended up shooting that bear and wounding it, and it just left a terrible taste in my mouth for obvious reasons, but really more internally because I felt like the old saying that we've heard hunters say our whole life, don't pass up anything on the first day that you wouldn't shoot on the last for people say that, but so you could you could switch that old proverb around, you know, and say, why shoot something on the last day that you didn't shoot on the first, you know.

So it's like that bear. I didn't want to take it then. And then at the end of the hunt, I was like, oh, rather than going home at the hand, I'm gonna shoot this bear. And I did made a bad shot, and it just, you know, I think there's a lot of lessons to be learned inside of hunting that are broader than just what happens in the natural, you know, and and I and I just I just didn't feel right about it afterwards, not not just that I wounded the animal, but it was just like I

felt like I kind of compromised my value system. So we passed this. But well, when I saw this by this bear was almost identical to the Baron shout in Saskatchewan, and I just kind of had this like taste in my mouth. It's like, I don't want to shoot that bear. Just it wasn't rational, it was like internal, you know. And uh I used to not really listen to that voice very strongly as a young hunter, but I do now.

And I was like, I turned to Kolbe, who was filming, and I just said, I don't think I want to shoot that bear. Did that surprise you? Well, you know, I was on the ground step and stand, so it looked big to me, so, uh, yeah, yeah, I was surprised. So so this is my first day to hunt. This bear comes in. This is the bear we're there to kill, and I decided to shoot it, and uh we watch it. Another color face bear comes in, a color face Sal, beautiful color face Sal comes in. And then another big

black south. So at one time we had four bears within twenty yards of us. One of the bears was we We said, there's different class sifications of the way that bears respond to you when you're on the ground. There's some that are just curious and they'll come over to you, maybe get seven or eight feet from you and kind of booger off after they get a good look at you and smell you. And there's others that are what I classify as highly interested, which those are

the ones you kind of gotta watch. And one of the boards was highly interested in us, and he I don't know how many times he circled around came very close to us, but probably six seven times in an hour,

maybe more than that. It was. I mean, he just kept coming in a different side of what they do, yeah, differently, And what they always do when they do that is the first time they'll come to like this buffer zone that they have in their mind, and then next time they'll come two foot closer, and then next time they'll come two foot closer, and I mean the cycle ends when they're in the blind with you. You know, you don't you don't let them get to that situation. And uh,

it's all we had was a bow. He can't carry, Uh, you can't carry pistol or anything. So it wasn't have a gun. I had bear spray and uh, the bear when he came in he could kind of lower his head and look at you in the eye. I mean, I didn't like that bear, and so I had the bear spray out and I don't know if you can see it on film. But after about two times of them doing that, I dug the bear spray out, and a couple of times I almost just popped him just

because he was getting pretty close. One time I talked to him and he walked away. But so we at one point it was a amazing evening. I mean, like this bear will be coming in from this side, and we'd be kind of looking over our shoulder because there was another bear, you know, eight yards from us over here, and two bears fighting out here. I mean, it's a just a cluster of bear activity, which is super fun. So this is the day number two, and then I'll

go back to the calibration of the hunt. This adds to the the It adds to the story that this is gonna be an easy hunt. Maybe not easy, but we're gonna have some opportunity to be picky, you know, be picky. And so I'm feeling good. We come back out. You killed the big one on the first day. Second day, I passed up this bear, and then third day comes, we sit in the same spot as we did not before and didn't see a single bear, didn't see a

single bear. Scump skunked, and so they were like dang, the only skunk in northern man So and then at that point, that's when I was kind of like, maybe this is gonna be harder than we thought, because then I only had two days left, five day hunt. Spent one day hunt with you. Thanks for that. Yeah, I'm

glad I did. And uh so, to make a long story short, and hunted the next two days after that, Um, the next night we actually saw six bears and a shooter bear came in, I mean a dark thirty I mean it was like it was it was light enough to be able to see a silhouette up against some of our reference points for us to go, that's a good bear, but it's too dark to shoot. Didn't shoot him. So we saw lots of action that night, saw a

lot of our activity, but didn't kill a bear. And then here we are at the last day and I still like, killed a bear and we don't really have just a I mean we had tons of options. I mean, Corey's got tons of baits, tons of bears coming in and bears like coming in that we haven't seen yet camera Like what happens with these bears in the fall though, is even if there's not hunting pressure. What they end

up doing is they turned nocturnal. I mean even on these baits that have not even been hunted this fall. So it's not from hunting pressure, but it's just like the lunar cycle and just the way that they start to respond to falled inning, that's that they get more and more nocturnal. So we had some really big bears of a nocturnal and anyway, finally on the last day, I hunted by myself. We're trying to be a little more incognito rather than bringing in two people. Uh, these

bears are pretty sensitive to people. Been in some places in the far North where you could bring your family in there and have a picnic, and these bears don't seem to care. These bears did. They were pretty concerned about us being there, you know. So we were trying to watch our scent and watch the wind and I was running an os onyx and you know, we were doing some stuff to try to help our scent. Anyway, in the final day came and uh, we bumped a

wolf off the bait. And this was a new bait, so I had to I guess we had I hunted three different spots, four spots counting yours in a five day hunh um And I said, in the final day, and I had a nice, like really nice bore come in, but just he just wasn't. He just wasn't what I went up there to kill. Watched him feed mostly even and had a south come in with three cubs right at dark, which is fun to watch them. And then in the sunset the Manitoba evening and house over and uh,

so I didn't kill a bear. I didn't kill a bear, And I don't like that that that puts a cramp in my my systems. Uh. I mean, you know, with the magazine, I mean I make a living gathering bear hunting content and we've got some great content. But I mean, you always hope to bring on a bear. And now this is two hunts in a road in Canada that I have not brought home a bear. So in five years of traveling extensively with Bear Hunting magazine, that's never happened.

I mean, I've almost killed bear on every hunt except for Alaska. Um And uh, once I went to Alaska didn't kill a bear. I've been spotting, I've been hunting in Montana twice without killing bear. I've been to. Yeah, I was Quebec one time. I didn't kill a beart so the odd hunt don't bring bring home a bear. But so but I felt good. I left and I felt like I hadn't compromised my value system. We could have on the last night. Corey said you could go back to where you saw the color face bear on

the first night, and he gave us that opportunity. The bear was coming back in. We had pictures of the bear there um and we really could have gone back in and probably killed that bear. And I just said, nahn't want to do it, because that's the exact same thing I did in Saskatchewan. Passed the bear on the first day, came in on the last day, shot it didn't turn out good, and I was like, nah, I'm not gonna do it. If I passed that bear, I'm not gonna take it on the the last day. So went in,

didn't kill him. So I was super impressed with Corey. Grant all trained Baron hunts like. He's very he's very managed, he's very ordered. He's a man of his word. If he says he's gonna do something, he's gonna do it. His intent really is to get people on Big Bears, his intendance to give you a first class northern experience. He's a veteran um. I mean I say that because I've been in camps that weren't well managed, and most

of them are. I mean I kind of cherry picked my hunts these days and just go with people that I really feel like a gonna gonna represent our magazine well and stuff. And I mean Corey totally fits in that category. And and I'd highly recommend him to anybody that's wanting to Northern Canadian hunt and to go back and to it. We're gonna end this quickly here, but the fall hunt is pretty awesome because these bears are getting ready to go to sleep for six months and

they're eating like crazy. They've got a lot more weight on them than the spring bears do, and their coats are absolutely fantastic. I mean, they are getting ready to go survived the northern winter coach or I think they're better than spring coats. They're thicker, they're finer um and uh no, we didn't see any rubbed bears at all. Bears were all fully fully haired out. Underbellies were fully haired out. Yeah, slick shiny coats I mean l primo coats. Um,

I don't think we saw that. No, No, I mean and we saw I don't know how many bears, bears about twenty bears. Um. So we left that night, got out of the stand, got in the boat, motored back to the camp. Colby was like, let's go home, and I was like, okay, if you drive. So we uh we got to the truck. We realized there was a break lad out on the truck. Okay that we didn't

notice before. So we drove all the way from Northern Manitoba northwest Art and saw with a tail lie out and we did get pulled over three times the trip. The first guy, the first state trooper, was in South Dakota and the first thing he said was he saw the first light sticker on the back of my truck. And then Colby was wearing the first light and so was I. Cobe was still at his get up from hunting. I mean he had like cannabs on his rubber boots.

Is uh first light shirt? Anyway, this this cop comes to our truck and he's like, I like that first light here. I was like, wow, this guy's and then he saw the deer horn hanging from my key chain shows you how perceptive they are. And he was like, he was like scanning our truck. He's like the first light deer horn. And then he saw my my crested arrows in the back of my truck and he's like your traditional bow hunter. And I was like, this is a good cop. This guys like totally dialed us in. Yeah,

and uh. I was like, yeah, I'm a traditional boy. So he's like he's like real professional. It's like, sir, um, did you have a cruise control cruise control set? And I was like yeah, and he was like, we're going eighty six miles per hour, but what saved this was from eighty mile per our speed living South Dakota, so that wasn't terrible. And he was like, yeah, my cruise control is said and I said, man, we're coming home from Manitoba. We just we just got off this hunt.

And then Kobe and this is where our strategy rolls into how to get out of a ticket on the way home from a hunt. Colby is like, yeah, man, I just killed my first bear. You want to see the picture and bam, the situation it's like flipped flipped, and so Kobe pulls out the phone starts showing in pictures. The guy started talking to us about hunting, and I mean, we knew we were in the clear. Yeah, And then he kind of surprised us when he said, sir, do you mind stepping out of the car and going back

with me from my cruiser to the cruiser? And I was like, well, that's not customary here in Arkansas or Texas the whole time, what's going on? And I was like, oh, okay, uh, And so I get out, go to his cruiser, sit with him in the car. Like when I got to the door, I'm like, you want me to like get in here? And uh he was like yeah. And so I sit in the cruiser with him and we talked about hunting for twenty minutes. I'm serious, it was a

whole I didn't know how long it was. I mean it was I was maybe my exaggerating was I don't feel like it. I mean, we we talked about hunting in South Dakota. We talked about him hunting back in the western part of the state and trying to find deer in the east, talking about hybrid whitetails, milled deer. I mean, we had extensive conversation. I told him about Bare Hunting magazine. Uh. Anyway, we had a good conversation and he's just like, I'm just gonna give you a

verbal warning. He said, we really just want you to slow it him a little bit. Now it's like ten four, buddy. And so then but so then on the way home after it got dark, we did not get pulled over for speeding. If that cop is listening right now, officer in South Dakota. We did pretty much keep it under control the rest of the way, but we did get pulled over for the tail lights. Yeah, and so Colbe

and I are both concealed carry permit holders. And so what we learned was the second you see the lights, get your license concealed carry permits out, got the registration out. It turns out my proof of insurance was out of date. I am insured, for the record, but I didn't have the actual proof of insurance. So we had two driver's

license to concealed carry permits, the registration. So we hand him this like massive amount of information and he's like trying to process, like what all this stuff is, and we're like, we're both concealed carry permit holders. And he goes, do you have a gun in the truck, and we go, no, we don't. We just got both because we just came from Canada. Canada handguns in Canada. I mean, we're just like overwhelming him with information like before you even asked

for it, and don't have a gun. The owner of the truck has to be in the passenger So I'm driving both sets of yeah, yeah, yeah. So so Coby's driving, I'm in the passenger seat and like he and then Colby's gone, it's his truck, but he's driving blah blah blah, blah blah. And then right when all that, like the moment that he processes what he's got in his hands, Colby is like, I just killed my first bear. And then every single cop was like highly impressed with that.

We're like really the picture and we were like man, and then I turned, you know, I chime in, I'm like, yeah, man, we've been driving. We just came from Northern Manitoba going to our and they're like really you drove all yeah, And then they all wanted to know what was in the ice chest. Okay, the other thing that threw them off was the Oriyan ice chest in the rack on the back of the truck that covered our license plate.

Oh man, if there's one tip for traveling, I would say, even if you have a truck and if you've got room for it in the back of the truck, don't put in the back of the truck. Put it on the rack on the back covers the license plate. Because it just the cops are just like, it's not illegal, it's them off, throwing them off. It's just one more thing they had to ask. And Orange bright Orange. Yeah. The cop in South Dakota was like, what kind of ice chest is that? And I was like, oh, right, man,

it's really nice ice chest. Man. In Tennessee, they make kayak to you can sell them down the river and be good. Oh man, I'm serious. I told him the whole story of O Ryan and so. But then they go every single cop asked if the bear was in the ice chest and we were like, yep, he yess it is. It's it's totally and they all of one of them, I think, wanted to see it. He didn't. He didn't quite We didn't quite get there. But it was like his next question was gonna be like, can't

I see it? He didn't and it was it was frozen. The whole balled up. But so anyway, overwhelmed them with information. We made it home. Um, but we had one more stop. It's just the second stop. Yeah, that was the second stop. The last one went about the same the last one went. I mean, we nailed this guy. It's like we got pulled over and like forty minutes ago. Yeah yeah, like we're like, we know the tail lights out, Yeah, we know the man's killing our time. Yeah yeah, I was.

We were trying to get home to see the family. But so overall, epic road trip, epic hunt. You got your first bear, he had your first northern bear experience, the first trip to Canada. Um as for my first time, I'm with all terrained bear hunts. Corey Grant super impressed. Would love to go back. Hope to go back and uh man, awesome, awesome hunt. I want to go back on a moose hunt. Yeah, he's in a super mooser. Yeah, yeah,

that would be that would be very epic. Corey has like twelve moose tags I think that he uses every year and he he killed a Boone and Crockett like sixty in Canada. Moose they kill some super nice moose. Canada moose. Canada moose are the smaller moose. I mean, the Yukon moose are the big moose that are in Alaska. In the Yukon, Canada moose are the most that are just all across most of Canada. A big Canada mooses, I mean, obviously I get big, but the average Canada

moose is probably in the forty forty inch range. I mean they're not a giant moose. And then a small loss moose is the Shiers moose was Sharers moose are the moose center in the lower forty eight Shiers moose would be like in Idaho and Montana and Maine. Man this Maine is not a Sharers moose. Main is a Cannaba Monson bture. But neither here nor there. He's got a good moose hunt for sure. All right, Hey, thanks

for listening to the Bear Hunting Magazine podcast. You'll be able to watch this hunt in Colby's Hunt on Bear Horizon on our YouTube channel. And for those of you if somebody's listening to this that has not seen our YouTube channel, that's where most of our content is going right now. Video content. But we also have two channels on Carbon TV. We've got our from the Global Headquarters blog and we've got our Bare Horizon series around season five.

This is the fifth year that we've um takee video to all our hunts across North America and you'll be able to watch Colby's whole hunt. So hey, check out baron a new magazine. If you're not a subscriber, check it out. Every single one of you needs to get this magazine in the mail. Why wouldn't you want to get it in the mail every other month to your house. I mean, you strike to your house. You get to hold it in your hand print magazine or businesses, businesses

put outduring the coffee table. Yep, yep, yep. So all right, until next time, Keep the wild places wild, because that's where the bears live.