Montana Mule-based DIY Spring Bear Hunt

They have a ton of great features, right, I don't have enough time to share all of those features in this little time frame that I have to talk about it. But here's what I'm gonna tell you. I have a camera off their very first run and it has not giving me any problems at all. Right, put the SD card in format the card, turn it on, and it takes pictures period. Right, And that's what we want trail cameras to do. They work every single time. Take advantage

of off. Go to their website, Exodus outdoor gear dot com. Do some research about all the functionality of their cameras. Right, you can take a look at your price. You can find the one that's right for you. You can enter the discount code year four y E A R the number four and save. My name is Clay Nucleman. 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. We'll talk about tactics, gear conservation, but will also bring you into some of the wildest country on the planet. Chasing the Better Man on X with baiting, it's basically equivalent to hunting out of a helicopter with a machine gun. In Chad Newton attend helicopter machine gun is equivalent to baiting bear using on it Yeah. With Colby moorehead yeah, okay, bam and smoke Yeah, smoke. You should not be fair, Chase. Yeah, Smokey is not fair, Chase.

This is the third podcast in our Montana Tour series. We did a podcast with Justin Rebecca Spring. Justin is the director of records for the Boon and Crockett Club. We did a podcast with Gym Sessions Jared Peterson with Huska MA Optics and Best of the West Rifles and Cody Wyoming. This podcast is where Colby moorehead the Bear Tech and I sit down and talk about our do it yourself mule based Montana backcountry spring black bear hunt. This is a in depth podcast that we just go

through all the details of our hunt. You're gonna be able to watch this hunt at some point very soon on the Bear Hunting Magazine YouTube channel, and we want to invite you to check out our YouTube channel, and uh, we've got some incredible videos on there that you're gonna enjoy. Without further ado, I want to continue to remind you about our Patreon page. The Bear Hunting Magazine Patreon page is designed for those who want to support the podcast,

but also our YouTube channel, which is free content. So check out Patreon. But more importantly, or likewise, or both, check out Bear Hunting Magazine. Bear Hunty Magazine is the world's only all bear hunting print magazine. We've been in print for twenty years. By supporting Bear Hunting Magazine, you are supporting the ancient and honorable culture of hunting in North America. And uh, it's a great magazine. We print

six issues a year. We worked hard. We worked hard to make it as relevant and as real as possible. We're not just trying to fill the pages with stuff. We really are trying to give show the full gamut of bear hunting in North America. Hey, you're gonna enjoy this podcast. We talked about the challenges of the hunt, we talked about bears, we talked about hunting out west. It's a great podcast. You couldn't enjoy it. This podcast is gonna be the third or fourth in our Montana

Tour series of podcasts. So Colby Moorehead and I have the Bear Tech got back about ten or twelve days ago from Montana. About ten days ago. Today we're at the Global headquarters and we've had ten or twelve days to ruminate upon the events of are we were gone eleven days on our do it yourself Montana mule based black bear hunt. Um, let me give just a little bit of the story behind this year I had. This was my third trip to Montana in I went to Montana with my wife. We drove up there and we

hunted in western Montana. We were kind of hosted by Justina Rebecca Spring near Missoula, Montana. They told us some places that we should go and we did a backpack based five and a half day hunt. No equine animals. We just packed in gear. I think I had a sixty pound pack. Misty carried like a forty five pound pack. We went into the back country for five full days. The first day we were there we saw a sound of cub We didn't see bears for four days. Finally, on the fifth day we saw a bear that we

couldn't get too big Boor. It was our first like western back country hunting experience. I came away from that hunt with it with my tail took between my legs really because it was a difficult hunt, I mean, and we didn't kill a bear, And to me, it's always such a It is a difficult thing to invest that much time and energy into a hunt and you not get what you went there for. Obviously, that's part of

fair chase hunting is that there are no guarantees. Um. So, with the knowledge of that game from this hunt, in twenty seventeen, Jim Sessions and I from Huska my Best of the West, went back to pretty much the same region of Montana on an equine based hunt. We really

didn't have that much information. Jim is a veteran Western hunter, but he had never been to these areas before, and we went up to Montana and we hunted for six full days and we the closest that we got to a bear was like a thousand yards for real, um, super difficult hunt, and and we didn't kill any bears.

But I learned. So so now I have these two six days, five and a half days, eleven and a half days in Montana, and I in and what people were telling me was or what I was seeing from my sources in Montana, my local sources, is that guys were killing bears basically by driving around, being mobile and finding bears and clear cuts, walking roads in the in the comments, so, I mean, these guys were kind of like wild Clay, You spent eleven days in Montana and

he didn't kill a bear. You're doing something wrong, okay. And I kind of agreed with them in a sense because I knew that the methods that they were employing were probably more effective, but it was more important for me to do it kind of the way I wanted to do it in terms of being a back country hunt. And then we introduced mules and horses, which to me is the way that I want to spring bear hunt in the West. That's just why I wanted to do it. I've got we'll get into my mules and stuff, and

so they were like, you're doing it wrong. You should have killed a bear. Um. And these people were trying to help me. Obviously, these were like my friends. And so what we did in twenty nineteen was we did kind of a morphed hunt between these two things, which we brought equine animals. We were in back country, but the equine animals allowed us two access areas that we just probably couldn't have on foot in a day or two and carried all the equipment that we needed. But

we were mobile. We went to multiple different places. In the times past, I had locked myself into certain regions like I would be like we're going to this place and we're gonna stay there for six days. Well this time we said, hey, we're gonna be mobile. We're gonna we're gonna day hunt into places on the mules and then come back out. If we get in there and find critters, we're gonna stay there. We're gonna camp, but

we're gonna be mobile. And that's what we did. So that that brings up to speed with where we're talking about. So in this podcast we're just gonna talk about the details of the time we did a gear related podcast before. But the cool thing is is that Kolby went with me. How many days before this hunt did I'd like say, Kobe, you're coming with me to Montana, maybe like six six or seven six or seven days? Yeah, so you had plenty of time to prepare and to get physically in shape.

Yeah yeah, No, No, you didn't jump on like the trendy fitness plan to like. No, I figured that my I wouldn't be able to get through my first initial soreness before we were going to be there. Yea from light really hitting it. I don't even have Arkansas legs yet at this point, and it's like, let's go to Montana. Trekking polls saved my life. Yeah, well, it was a unique situation. I was looking for somebody to go that.

First of all, I needed a video man and uh, I needed a video man documentary and I and I needed somebody that was flexible. And that's why I didn't. I mean, there was lots of people that could have gone. I would have enjoyed going, but I needed somebody that was flexible because we were basing this trip based a lot upon the weather, and I wanted to do an early season hunt, but I didn't want it to be too early. And so I mean just a week before we went is really when we decided we were gonna go,

and then we even delayed it. I think you had six days before we originally planned, but then we delayed the trip five days, so you actually had eleventh days, so you could have been in shape by that. I totally could have been. No, And so I totally sprung this on Kolbe. And so there were a couple of challenges in that we were gonna this was gonna be a mule based hunt, and you've never written a meal, So how did you? So we prepare you for this twenty minutes on the back of Smoky at my house

the day before we left. Yeah, literally the day before we left, or two days before now it was. It was it was that Saturday, we left Sunday night, that's right. I was like, hey man, we probably better make sure that like everything's okay and that, and so we we this.

This was my friend Trey Autrey's mule. If you watched our our film hundred Dollars Squirrel, there's a white mule that Trey Autry rides, and uh, we borrowed Smokey, and Smokey's like, we don't even know how old he is, but he's just like an old warrior safe, like just a dead, broke, awesome mule. And so I knew that Colbe would be safe because that was my number one thing. I knew he couldn't ride a young mule like I'm riding. Just you would have you've probably been killed. But I

knew Smoky to take care of you. But still some close calls. Well, we had some close calls. But so you came to my house. We saddled up. We I just basically said, all right, get up there, go for I said, ride for thirty or forty five minutes, just kind of get your feel on this animal. Found out I had legs shorter than the schoolgirl. I'm gonna let you tell that story. We had to meete. We had we had well you remember Trey, Okay, I'm gonna have to so we borrowed the saddle from Trey and Trey

goes Clay. My daughter rode this mule last time. And so these stirrups are like really short, you're gonna have to lengthen him, if only. And so when Kobe gets on the mule, he's like, is there any way to make these stirrups shorter? And I was like, man, a thirteen year old girl wrote the single last time, but she's all legs. Well, so Kobe, she must be. She must be. I don't know, Kobe. Uh. So he rode

the mule. Everything was good. He did good, and I mean it was just like I knew you could do it, though, And that's an ultimate compliment for real, I wouldn't I mean, I wouldn't have taken somebody that I knew would fail. I knew that you would have the mental stability and toughness to do, because that's what it takes. I mean,

people get scared of equine animals. Almost almost everybody that I talked to about mules and horses that have experienced with them in the back country, unless they are a straight up cowboy or just love equine animals, either love them or you hate them. And there's a whole lot more people that hate them than love them. And when you dig down into why people hate them, it's because

they're afraid of them. And it's not their fault. I'm not faulting someone for being afraid of an animal that uh, they've had a bad experience with, because tons of people and and that would have been me even through or four years ago. But for some reason, Colby, I knew that you could handle it, um And I knew that that smoke was gonna be safe as safe as a mule could be. He's not a big mule, um And

and he's old. And I've just been around him enough and seemed trade mess with him enough to know that he's he was the he was the one for the job for you. And so but so we so there's many things on this trip that we were totally testing out. Like I had already been to the Montana back country, but we had never carted stock all the way across the country, which has his challenges for sure, no doubt.

I mean, so from northwest Arkansas to let's just say Montana is twenty four hours on the GPS, and that is driving the speed limit and doesn't include stops and different things. And so when you're when you're when you're pulling a trailer full of mules, full of equipment, you're not driving the speed limit. Most of the time. You're don't think we ever hit the speed limit. Yeah, I mean rarely. And so we're like the trip took, I couldn't tell you how long, many more, probably six more hours,

and it's it's probably a thirty hour. We're probably in the road thirty hours counting the times when we stopped and everything. And but I want to say that that in itself was probably the most uh challenging or stressful part of the trip for me, because I was using, uh a horse trailer that probably was built in the nineteen sixties. Yeah, for real, the old horse trailer. And if you saw a hundred dollar squirrel, you saw me say, you can tell a lot about a man's expendable income

by his mule trailer. Well, but there was there was some major upgrades to this, to this trailer, no doubt. Yeah. I had some fresh paint, some some official bear Hunting magazine stickers. Yes it looks good. There's some new shoes. Yes we put we So we did our homework with this trailer. Though I had the re the barings repacked a couple of whenever ago. We we painted it, uh just for just so we wouldn't be profiled on the highway. It's like, man, those guys are no telling what they

got in the back of that. I mean drug dealers. I mean, I mean the roof even matches the truck. So I mean we're color coordinated. It looked good. Got our stickers on there. Got our insurance, you know, I got yep, I gotta equine based like equine. It was

called American Equestrian or something. But what I was thinking was, what do you do when you're in downtown Denver, downtown Kansas City and you have a flat tire on your trailer and rush hour traffic and four lane interstate and you've got these animals that you you aren't getting out of the trailer at that point, I mean on the side of the highway, you know, if you're sitting there for four or five hours trying to figure out what to do in anyway, Now, for like a hundred and

fifty bucks a year, about this Equestrian insurance And basically, if you break down, your trailer breaks down, your truck breaks down anywhere in the country, they will send a record service that's equipped to help people that are traveling with equin animals that bring the water and hay, and they have boarding facilities put up. Let's say you blow a motor where you know, and you're not gonna be back on the road in three hours, you know. So

that was that was good, got new tires, um. But we made it the first day to Spearfush, South Dakota, and stayed with one of our good friends up there that has a farm, and we're able to put the animals in a crowd. So that's about a fourteen hour trip to Spiritfus, South Dakota, and from Spearfish over to western Montana was another well bye bye map another ten hours. And uh so by the time we got to spear Fish, I felt like our equipment was solid and that we

were gonna make it up there, right. And uh so that was just part of the battle that a lot of people wouldn't think about. But you can't you can't keep animals in a trailer for long periods of time, I mean, for like twenty hours. You know, you want to let them out about every every eight hours at least. Let them walk around, let them stretch their legs, let them roll if they want to roll, give them some grass, just kind of let them be horses and mules, um. And so we did that um. We we then made

it to Montana. UM. Once we made it to Montana, we went and met with our friends and stayed with them, and basically we the first evening we were there, we bought our tag and so we had to wait twenty four hours. Bought our tag at eleven o'clock on the day we entered Montana. We had to wait twenty four hours before that tag was ready, so we couldn't hunt the next day till eleven o'clock. That evening we weren't hunting, but we spotted a bear from several miles away, at

least two to three miles away. We spotted the bear and it was in a place we could hunt. It was on public land. It was in a place where you could just glass forever. And we found a bear on the first day. That was encouraging. Yeah, and we felt like it was mature enough to go after yeah, you know, just from a distance. But it didn't like a juvenile. Yeah. It was a good bear. And we knew that if there was one bear up there that we could see, we thought that potentially on the way

into this bear that we would find other bears. So the next day we we figured out how to get into this place, which wasn't straightforward like from where we spotted it. We were probably only three miles, but from the information we had at the time, the only way in there was way around the back side of this mountain range and up on public land because it was kind of separated by some private land. Between us and where we saw the bear was private land, so he

couldn't just walk straight to this bear. So we had to go way around, I mean like thirty minute drive around, parked in on some public there's a gated road. And so it starts day one, right the day of Kobe's trials. That's what we have labeled the Day of Cody, the day Kobe became a mule skinner. So we start off on the mules. And if you've ever written equine animals, they're they're always they're always feisty, full of energy, jumpy,

ready to roll, like right out of the gate. And these animals also have been in a trailer for two full days, and they're a new and a new environment. And I'll go ahead and interject here that I was riding my easy mule. She's three and a half years old. She's that's young from you that's like, you know, a teenager. It's like having a seventeen year old, you know, mature physically eighteen, you know, but but still very young. And uh,

Izzy's done phenomenal for me. I've I've ridden her extensively in the mountains here in Arkansas, UM and in this hunt really was a lot about me and Izzy. For for me, it was when I first got Izzy in twenty mark February. She was basically an untouched mule. She had a bride loner. I mean, the guy that raised her had you know, he could handle her just a

little bit, but I mean untrained. And I trained Izzy and it was the first time I'd ever trained a mule, and it was an incredible life changing experience, truly was um. I learned a ton about training animals. And the whole point in my mind was to get deeper and stay longer in wild places. That's why I had this mule, and I wanted to take her to Montana. That's what I wanted to do. It's just just kind of in

the mule world. When you hear people say, oh, that mule has been out west, You're like, oh, that's a good one. Like that, that's kind of like the statis factor for mules, you know, because if you if if you could trust that animal to take it all the way out west and not die, then this is a good animal. If both of you come back, okay, it's a really good meal. Yes, yes, And so I had this idea that I wanted to take easy out west

and so this was that. Um just for somebody that's listening that maybe never has it doesn't hasn't been following the Bear Hunting magazine stuff for a while. The video there's a video on the Barning Magazine YouTube channel right now that has over a million views and it's an eleven minute video that encompasses the full training experience that me training easy. So it's it's pretty neat. I mean, it kind of went viral, especially in the equine world.

It's called Project Hunting the Mule, and there's actually six or seven videos, but the final one has over a million views, just bumped over a million, and uh I was I was fried by the equine community in many places. Uh Man, trolls are everywhere. They're not just in the hunting world, but they're in every world. There's there's people that just love to just get on there and just say you're an idiot, but yeah it is. He's a good mule now, um despite me not being very uh

me being green, but is he's an incredible animal. So back to the start of our hunt. We make the Montana we ride and I would within the first hour of the hunt the ride you you were tested. Do you want you want to tell this person? Try? I don't know if it's better from my perspective. You're your perspective. Will you tell the first you tell it and then I'll add to it. All right? Yeah, so we get the ride. First, first thing we come against is I I have to go under uh a tree that's fallen.

But there's enough space for for me and old Smokey because he's we're both short. Yeah, I think you got off? Yeah I got off. Yeah. I was like, I'll just try it might as well. Anyways, so we made it okay. I was feeling feeling a little bit better. And then we we went up and there's some switchbacks and there was I guess what you call it? Dead fall? Yeah,

it was just dead fall. Yeah, in the West, there's dead fall all over roads that just because of the snow and fire that burns up trees kills them that like unmaintained roads are just full of deadfall. So we we'd come off a main road and we're on a side old log and trail that was totally unmaintained. Well before we got to to this dead fall there was the road had a lot of ups and downs, Like

I don't know, it was just really really rough. I don't know what you would call that, um, but it just kind of seemed like carved out to where it's like imagine like several different triangles that you had to go over. And uh, I had to little bit of confidence because smoke he took me through it is he was like, I don't know what this is. Oh yeah, the dirt piles where yeah, they tried to close off the road. Yeah yeah, so they piled up big big

piles of dirt keep cars and foreweathers out of there. Yeah, So so Is he was like, I've never seen this before. So Smokey just chucked on through and then she just followed along. And so like we would do this thing to where is he and Clay would lead and then whenever we would come to something that, uh maybe is he had an encounter before she was uneasy about. Smokey was like, let me add it. Like, you know, I would have to hold him back not to go. He's like,

I'll show how it's done on this part. You know. He's very He was a good mentor for Is. He he was certain areas because he just didn't care, you know. Uh. And then anyways, we came to some dead fall to where like the to where the tree had fallen across the road and then uh, the low part was on the outside edge of the of the road, so there was like a decent like drop off I guess, like a high, high steep degree of of drop beside it. And so Is he just went up to it and

just stepped over it. No problem. Smoke he's a jumper, we found out. He went up and he looked at it, and then he just decided I got to jump this thing. But in the part of him jumping, his back leg called a called a limb too, And so I I don't know if I think this is where your perspective needs to come in. Yeah, well, let me say too. There was all this There were all these limbs, as we call it in the industry, widow makers sticking back towards us, and we were kind of navigating just a

small hole through this dead fall. And it actually happened twice in about thirty minutes Kobe where we had to cross these logs. And the first time is he and I made it across, and I turned around just in time to see Smoke just sailing through the air. And Kobe wasn't ready for it, I guess. And uh, I mean you wouldn't have known he was a jumper. I mean, is he stepped over and that's kind of what you want a mule to do. You really don't want him jump. But it was high enough that I think Smoke had

to jump. And uh, and man, I look back and I see about eight inches of air between Colby's butt in the saddle, and I see it appeared like your feet were out of the stirrups too. I mean, all you were holding onto was the reins. If if we could have had like a snapshot of that, it would have been incredible. And I I just know, I mean, like there's not a question. It's like Colby's gonna hit

the dirt. Like I knew that. And you know, equine rex um basically all involved someone hitting the dirt and it. It seems like it wouldn't have been that big a deal. But I mean, like you hit the dirt while you're carrying a forty pound pack, you have a pack on. I think at that time, didn't you know we didn't have well I mean it sounds simple, but like you hit the dirt, you might break your leg. I mean there was a steep hill off to the right side.

I was I was worried about getting impaled by dead fall, like for real, or you know, not impaled like you're gonna die, but like that dead fall could have put a gash on your legs. So big we had, I mean, there's a lot of different things that could have happen. Anyway, I see Kolbe in the and I just think, I just think, man, he's about to eat dirt. And man, you landed that thing like a like a skier, like an Olympic skier on those big jumps, and bam, you

stuck it. You stuck the landing. And I was like, all right, and then we go and just a little bit up, the same thing happened again, did it not? That's the way I remember, And you did this well this time I got off is he and That's that's when I came over and I was gonna try to just like be there. I didn't know what I was gonna do. But that's when smokes back foot back feet caught the log and the log slam into the back

of my leg as it jumped. It was a smaller log, Yeah, and I thought we were both gonna be in the dirt, and anyway, we stayed on. So that was that was the first like trial by fire that you survived to skip ahead just a little bit. The other thing that happened that got you your mule skinner wings was on day two. Yeah, tell us what happened. I hit the ground. Yeah, Yeah, I hit the snow. It was almost inevitable. It was

gonna happen at some point. We at the end of the day when we were talking about how I had have this, this full mule experience, there's just the stuff that we had done and except for falling off and then day two long behold like it was like a foreshadowing of U events that were a certainty. Yeah. And so we're coming up, we're driving, We're coming down a

road and there's a big snow bank. We're up in about six thousand feet and there's a pretty deep snow bank, and the mules are really self preserving, and my in my mind, I was like, well, if the mules will walk on the snow bank, then it's safe. And so smoke just he's out in front leading and he's walking across the snow bank. And then you tell me what happened. Well, you know, Clay turned on his GoPro and he was like, oh,

this is a cool shot. Well, we're what you know, we're walking and all of a sudden, all I see is like smoke He's right front foot just disappears, or his his hoof his leg and then I mean, I get real close to the ground, real quick. But the video makes it look a little graceful though, like this kind of slow mo. So basically the Smokey's front right foot just went to the ground, which was about two

ft beneath the surface of the snow. Well, I think on the video that's what we thought happened in the video when we were watching it. He actually just it looked like he slipped. Okay, yeah, there's a new I've watched it again and again and now have even revised what I thought happened. He fell through the snow, just like we thought, quickly pulled his leg out of the snow while you're still on him, puts his hoof back

on the snow and slips. So he did both. But when he slipped is when you went off canter and spot the snow. Because I could have sworn I saw his let go through through. Well, you were right, And then when we watched, I was like, it didn't even go through the snow. He just slipped. It went through the snow. Then he slipped, then he went down, and that's when you went down. And luckily I had all this.

It was the first time I turned on the go pro the whole trip, and I like thirty seconds before I turned on the go pro because it was just it was really pretty. We're coming across the snow and captured on film, which everybody will be able to see Colby hitting the ground on YouTube and social media platforms. Yeah, if you're if you're around me, you've already seen it. I don't know. It's just something cool about It's like

what happened? You got in some street crib around these parts, smoke, you broke me in, getting dumped off the mule and then, to make a long story short, we rode eighteen and a half miles the first day trying to get back to where this bear was. From where we saw it again, it was only three miles, but to get there we and as the crow flies, from where we parked to where the bear was may have only been like five

or six miles. But the switchbacks, like these mountains are super steep, and if you're following logging roads, you're following these switchbacks. And so I mean you would you'd go for a half a mile one direction and turn and go for another half mile back the same direction and look down in the road would be like seventy five yards below you. So you've only gained very little. But you really can't take these mules up stuff that's steep

and stay on them. I mean something that's like a I don't know what degree slope it would be, but I'm gonna say a seventy degree slope. I mean, like, dang here, straight up. You just can't ride up that stuff. Now, a mule could go up it, you could lead that animal up it, but then you might as well just be walking because you're walking up the mountain, you know. So I mean, so you you you choose to use these logging roads to have these switchbacks pretty easy on

the mule, but it does take time. Um and uh, you know, our mules aren't big mules. They're not super fast. There uh there you know is these almost fifteen hands and smoke it's probably fourteen or less and uh, you know, so they're not fast. You know, some guys have these uh uh Tennessee Tennessee walking horses and and and different things that are probably have a little a little a little better pace than our mules. But we weren't interested

in speed. We're just interested in getting there safe and and so that's what we did. But first day, we we get to the top of the mountain and we realize that we're in too deep to turn around. We're further away than than we just couldn't get back really, and long story short, we make it to the spot where we can see where this bear was, and we glassed for maybe thirty minutes from that point, and we

find the bear at five o'clock that afternoon. So we started at eleven because we left kind of right when we could start hunting, and it took us six hours to get to where to get within a mile or the bear, because it's not like we were two hundred yards from the bear. We were like a mile, but we could see the bear. And then we're like, well, here we go, let's go find him. And so it takes us an hour to ride around to get to where the bear is. We come around this point, I

see the bear across the canyon six yards. Well, do you want to talk about my other trial? Which one the one where we had to lead the mules down from where the one logging road into it down to the lower one. That's where you you turned around and I kept on him like rolling and falling. Okay, okay. We learned that when you get off these animals to lead them like I was able to lead Izzy pretty

easily down these real steep things. And then Kobe was coming behind me, and Smoke would want to catch up with us, and so Smoke would be like leading me, leading you, and I had said, whatever you do, don't let that animal go. That was my thing, and so I turned around and Smoke is like dragging you down. You're like rolling. Really I turned around four times in the period of probably four minutes. Just check on. I mean, I was trying to survive myself. So I wasn't that

worried about you, Koble. I'm sorry, but every time I turned around and you were on the ground, and finally I just yelled, just let him go, and and and everything worked out fine. Like when we let him go, he just came and got right behind Izzy. That was our method going forward. You just have to let him go. I got I got pretty whooked. Yeah, he just rolled you down the mountain. And let's jump right to the

to the shot. Because the first day, first day, and remember this is a culmination of two years of hunting for me, um, and I had yet to even fire a shot at a bear, and so on the first day, we come around this corner bear is six hundred for the yards, I want to I want to qualify the shot because I did take a shot at that distance.

I'm shooting the best of the west right long range rifle, and I could take some heat for taking a shot that far, and I'm okay with that because I know what that gun is capable capable of, and I know what I'm capable of. I'm a good shot with that gun. I've shot at a lot at those distances. Um the gun is validated the quote unquote out to nine yards, which means that it literally has been proven accurate by the best of the west guys before I even got

the gun. At nine yards, the Husking turrets, you can dial the yard agen directly, so there's no m o A, there's no calculation, there's no hold over. Okay, Usually with a scope you would say six and fourty yards and you would know the amount to hold over the animals. So there's still some guessing that goes on. But with the Husk Myth system, you know exactly because there's no

guessing because their turret is in yardage. So you range the barrett six and fifty yards and you put you turn the turret to six fifty and you put the cross hairs exactly where you want to hit. And so that's exactly what we did. I the only thing that we didn't calculate for was the wind. And I've got a super good prone to position rest rest on the backpack.

Had you take your beanie off, put the beanie on the back butt of the gun, I squeeze the trigger and fully confident that this bear is gonna hit the dirt. I've I've shot extensively at long range with this gun out well beyond six hund fifty yards, and and that would be about the effective range that I feel like

I would shoot an animal for real, I wouldn't. I wouldn't want to shoot one much further than that, just because I do know my capabilities and uh and and honestly I can hit and this is not this is not uh. This can't be equated to how good the best of the west rifles are because they're actually better than this. But I Clay Knucomb can consistently hit something the size of a beach ball at eight hundred yards

with a two point prone rest. That's a good So, I mean, that's pretty pretty good shooting size of a beach ball, so big black bear, I mean, that's within bounds. But six fifty you know you're gonna drop that circle down just a little bit smaller. So totally a legitimate shot. But well, we didn't calculate was the wind Kolbe and there was a cross wind, and at the time from where we were at there wasn't much of a wind.

We couldn't we couldn't really feel a wind anyway. Soon after we shot, we realized there was a cross wind in this canyon. You saw the bullet hit far to the right of the bear, and the bear was unhit. Yeah, he scampered off up the mountain, looking around, trying to figure what was happened. You know, heard a clap of thunder, heard the dirt pop off to his left, and there's right and uh so here we are in day one.

We've just traveled I believe at this point where like twelve or thirteen miles I'm not sure away from the truck per the amount we've traveled per on x Okay and um the so we're in pretty deep and it's like six o'clock and it's way too far to go back to get to the truck. I mean, if we if we went back the way we came, we'd be riding for several hours in the dark. Um And it's at this point that we have to make a decision

about how we're gonna get out of here. And it's the only time in my hunting career that I've actually thought that I was gonna have to stay the night unplanned on the mountain. It was it was getting cold, it was getting down below freezing at night. We had no tent, no sleeping bag, no water. I think I'd probably had my jet boil, may have had a jet boil like for I'm not sure if I had brought any food, but I had jet boil for making coffee. I think we had some Becca bars, had some beck

Of bars. Becca bars are our friend Rebecca Spring makes these uh granola chocolate chip raising not raising like cranberry dried cranberry big bars with all They're good, so good beck Of bars. We I did. We did have some Beca Bars. And as we're coming out of there, I was it was the only time I've really thought we're

gonna have to stay the night on the mountain. I was envisioned taking the wool saddle pad off my mule and using it as a blanket and widen up underneath it, and all I really thought there was no other way. And at this point is when we pull out the on X our on X on our phones and we find a route that we previously had not seen that came through. It was it was a legal route to get out of this place that took us directly down

the mountain, and we found it. And I want to take just a second here to talk about and this is an un this is this is a just an off the cuff plug for on X. Ridiculously good. And I said this while we were on the mountain colbe People talk about fair chase these days, you know what makes a fair chase hunt? I mean, just let's hunt like they did five years ago when it was just man versus beast and no technology camp bait bears talk about fair chase. Man on X ought to be not

fair chase. And I'm joking, I'm exaggerating to make a point about how good these this on X mapping system is. We would not have been able to do what we did in six days of hunting. Without on X, would have been lost. We would have been lost. We would have been we wouldn't have been able to find roads, we wouldn't have been able to find private land boundaries

like ridiculous with on X. I joke. I joke all the time with people about like they're upset with us for using bait for bears, for using hounds for bears, saying that that's fair chase. Let me tell you what's not fair chase. Using on X. I'm obviously joking. I think we should be able to use on X. It makes the back country experience better. But there's all these different ways to evaluate how we gain advantage over an animal. And for someone to turn a blind eye to optics,

do you think, uh, prehistoric man had optics. We would have never found this bear without high quality optics on the first night from three or four miles away. So, I mean, people have to if people are are not wanting to be powerfully hypocritical, they've got to be real careful about where they pass judgment on ways that people hunt.

And obviously at Bear Hunting Magazine we are pro predator hunting in every legal method, hunting that's based upon science for regulating predator populations for the good of the whole ecosystem, for the good of the ungulates, and for the good of the bears themselves. And so hounds, bait, trapping, whatever is legal, we gotta we gotta maintain it and inside

the honey. And this is a perfect segue into my pet peeve is that there's all these people that are big game hunters and and don't understand baiting and hounds and these different things, and sometimes by their but inadvertently they are actually against us in some way by the way the stands that they take on these things, and that's hurting the whole hunting community. And so we can use bait, Well, you get to use on XA. I

hope that point is clear. It's it's kind of a joke, but baiting man on X with baiting is basically equivalent to hunting out of a helicopter with a machine gun. Ted nugent, ted nugent helicopter machine gun is equivalent to baiting bear. Using on X with Colby moorehead yeah, okay, bam and smoke yeah, smoke. You should not be fair chase. Yeah, smokey is not a fair chase. So we're we're in a predicament. We think we're gonna to spend the night.

We basically navigate our way through some private land and find a way out, okay, and we end up at dark riding up to the house that we were staying at the night before. We're supposed to be driving our truck back to this plate. Well, we actually we're gonna camp.

We ride our mules down these like paved roads and get back to our hosts home, knock on their door and like, hey, could we borrow your truck to go get our truck and we had gone about eighteen and a half miles that day, which is an incredible day. And you know, to me that is a power that that day was an iconic experience for big game hunt

big game hunting for me. I mean, we worked our tails off, went into New country, found the bear that we were after, got a shot at the bear we were after, failed, got in a sticky situation with daylight. I thought we're gonna have to spend the night on the mountain without provisions, ended up using technology to navigate through, and ended up back to where we're going after dark. But after a hard, long day and after day like that,

you do feel accomplished. You don't feel victorious because if we had killed the bear, we'd have felt victorious, But you feel accomplished. I feel victorious just for surviving. Yeah, yeah, you did get man. You when when you rode eighteen miles and stayed on that day, I was like, we're gonna be okay. Yeah, Kobe and I and I actually thought I was right. I knew he could do it, and you knew you could do it too. Mostly, there's a lot of people that couldn't have though, And I say,

that as a compliment to you. I remember just like my legs giving out one of the times that we had to lead, and I was just kind of like I had that Grandpa walk down the mountain. It was like angles, angles, but just like a little like half steps. Yeah. Well, it was a great day. So let's let's skip through the next two days. Basically, the next two days were fairly uneventful. We tried some new areas, we went into some new places. We we stayed overnight at one place,

Glass the Big Valley. The next morning Glass of the same valley. Didn't see any bears on the second day, third day, we ended up having to come back out for some provisions, for some water, to charge some batteries, went back up on the mountain where we shot the bear on the first day. We got up there, spent the evening glassing and did not see a bear that evening.

That's correct, we didn't see a bear. There were two days we didn't see bear, I think, so let's just say that for all purposes, we we certainly didn't put a stock on a bear on day three. It was day four when things started heating up. But on day day so the morning of day four is when from our camp and by this time we've now spent two nights in the back country and we're camping up where we missed the bear on the first day. We're overlooking

this big draw. It's a burn area, so there's patchy timber, but you can see in multiple directions long distance. And the thing about hunting up here is like you could see a bear, like have a clear sight of a bear, but him be hours away from you. And that's what it's hard for people to understand. It's hard for me to understand. Like sometimes when I think about hunting the West, I'm just like, well, there's a bear, go go kill it. Man.

It is not that easy. I think. The other thing about where we were camping was the fact that the wind was great for where where we weren't gonna be blowing out a lot of a lot of bears if they were close, you know. It's the way we came in with the wind that just was blowing our scent away from the areas where we had seen that before. And so I think I don't think we would have camped there if we didn't have the new access to

come in from that other direction. But it would end up being perfect well, and we hadn't talked about the new access yet. We we skipped over that. We we basically looked up a landowner, went and contacted him by phone and just said, hey, we're from Arkansas. We kind of pulled the Arkansas mule card, which gets a lot of sympathy and empathy seems to um and we're like, hey, we're bear hunting. Would it be possible to go through your land? And he was like, sure, no problem if

people ask, I don't have any problem and uh. And I said, well, thank you so much. And I said I want to come by and meet you and and he was like, well, okay, if you want to do that. We went over and shook his hand, talked to him for a minute. He was an old outfitter, petted the dogs, petted his dogs. That was key. Yeah, we accept your animals too. So we we gained access and that's the

reason we're able to get back in there. I'm glad you said that, because that sometimes these stories all come together. The first day we had to ride twelve miles to get to that spot. Now we only had to ride three or four miles to get to that spot because of the access we had. So day four, we're glassing and you spot a bear across the canyon at nine o'clock in the morning. Somehow, somehow, it's just like a

little opening between the trees. And I spotted him, and then whenever I came and told you came back, we couldn't find him. Yeah, you were just like, I know, it was a bear there, and it looked like you. I remember you saying it looked like a good bear. I mean, just a mature just a just a solid bear. And and so from there we were glass and glass and glass, try to find us bear. Again, we can't find him, but there's a lot of timber over there,

so we just figure he's in the timber. Well, we just ide to go down the mountain to get directly across. Didn't you glass him before we made the move, Like right before we moved. I we finally found him at two hours later. It was at eleven o'clock. He was walking down that logging road about probably a quarter mile from where you originally saw him, and he yeah, you're right, he was walking down the logging road and we saw

him disappear into a little patch of timber. Yeah, do you remember, and and that's actually where I ended up spoiler alert killing the bear. The next day, we see him going to this patch of timber and we're like, okay, he's in that timber. We gotta get down across the canyon from him and watch that block of timber until he comes out. So we we ride the mules, uh,

probably a mile from our camp. We led him away, well, we had to lead him because we we had to traverse or a bunch of stuff where it was in trails or anything. And we we got directly across the camp Indian from this bear and just staked him out. I remember we got there, I don't know, twelve thirty or one o'clock something like that. And and and the whole time we're riding, we we we saw the bear

going to the timber to eleven. The whole time we're riding, we're glass in this like making sure he doesn't leave. And we finally get over there and we're confident that he's still there. We felt like if he had left, we'd have seen him. We just set up camp. We're still probably six seven yards away across the canyon. Wind is perfect, It's never gonna hurt us. And we just set up camp right there, metaphorical camp. We just sit down and glass um. While we are sitting there waiting

for this bear. At four o'clock, a bear appears a hundred and twenty six yards away from us, on our side of the mountain. And I'm sleeping, Colby's asleep, dead asleep. I wake up the rocks being chunked at me. Yeah, I sorry, cold, is like ten ft away. Um, laying down on the other side of this log, and I hollered at you first, you know, uh, muffled holler, you know, call me, call me and you And so I picked up a rock and through it hit you. You did it,

didn't budge you through another one bam. And then your eyes popped open and I said, there's a bear right here, and you jump up, grab the camera. The bear is walking directly towards us, And pretty quickly I was able to evaluate that it wasn't a bear that I was interested in taking. But it still took a few minutes. I just wanted to make sure it wasn't, you know,

a shooter bear, and and you had a tag. And after watching the bear for just too short I mean, just the second that I realized I didn't want to shoot it. I said, do you want to shoot that bear? And you said yes, I do, yeah, And and so we switched places. You jump on the gun. This bear doesn't know we're here, and he's walking straight towards us down the road like feeding on grass. Im And in my mind when you jumped down on the gun, it was like, we're gonna be skinning a bear in about

twenty minutes. And uh, what happened. As soon as I touched the gun, that bear just decided he was gonna go up a path up the forest. Like I don't think he knew we were there. It just he just kind of just went up through the trees, never had a shot. I mean, it was miraculous. Yeah. And then when later we had what two coyotes that came up and went up that same path, so like step for step,

called the same path as that bear. So Colby Colby's opportunity slipped through his hands, which truly, I I I that's the only part of the trip that I look back on now and I just wish it had been different, because it would have been awesome if you to kill the bear, and you know, the rest of the trip, you never got an opportunity to um. So when that bear leaves, we continued to watch across the hillside for the big bear. He never showed. Was never shows, never shows,

never shows. Finally it gets like seven o'clock, seven thirty. We've been sitting there since one or two. Yeah, we've been sitting there for six hour. I think we sit there for six hours, and um, we decided that we're gonna walk down the trail to get a little bit different vantage point. We go down to that vantage point and we leave the mules where they are. We leave the mules, we start glassing, and what do we spy Blondie, a spectacular blonde bear down weighed down in the canyon.

We've been kind of looking up high pretty much. People had told me, and what we had seen was that the bears were between four and six thousand feet that's just typically where they were. Well, this bear was probably three thousand feet down in the bottom of this valley. And it was Man, I'll never forget finding that bear in the by nose because when I first came out and the bear wasn't moving, it just looked like this br out of place yellow dot and I was just like,

no way, that's a color face bear. But dang, it sure looks like one. It's but was facing me so I couldn't see it's profile. I can see this just like bright blond, yellow hump. I get to watching it and it didn't move. But before it I just I was like, that's a bear, color face bear. And finally it moved. I saw its head and I was like, that is a color face bear. Ranged and it was seven dred yards away. I'm like, Kobe, we got to

get down there quick. We barrel off the mountain and uh get pretty quickly within three and fifty yards of it wins in our favor. I get down on the gun and I'm gonna take that shot three and fifty yards um and dial it in and the bear just kind of is it is actually moving away from us. So by the time I get down, I just almost squeeze the trigger a couple of times, but then like, no, no, wait wait if I of the bear kind of goes

out of sight. So we pick up all our gear bust after the bear, and then it kind of becomes a rodeo of us, of me trying to get a shot on this bear, and what ends up happening is we're on a road above this bear, you know, a logging road, just to shut off small overgrown logging road, not overgrown, but and and this bear is down a very steep hill directly below us, and we can just see parts of the bear, like I can see the top of the bears back. I can see. That's mainly

the challenge I was faced with. I had your shooting sticks, and I'm looking downhill and just right at this bear. It's an odd shot angle. And basically we move up and down the road multiple times trying to get a shot on this bear. As it's moving down the mountain. It has no idea that we're directly above it. The therminals are going up at that point, and so it's

I mean, this is about to happen. And I remember, right before I squeezed the trigger, I turned to you and I said, I don't think that's a very big bear. And now that I reflect on it, it was not a very big bear. I believe it was a soal most of these real bright colored bears out west or south. Well, we saw another sal that first day, right with two cubs the color facials. Oh that's right, we did. We forgot about the first day we saw a sal two cups um. But here I am on the now the

third trip to Montana. This is the closest I've been to a bear. And you know, from my position, I want to shoot older mature males. I mean I preached that, and I wasn't sure about this bear. I mean it's it was only upon reflection that I really I was like, yeah, that was a sow and uh, but I'm gonna take this bear. I mean the or fifteen cumulative day of hunting in Montana, three trips, I mean, this is a big deal. And and I've I've never I have that's

the only bright blonde bear. Well, I have seen one in Saskatchewan. I take that back. I saw bright blond bear and Saskatchewan, but spectacular animal Western bear is this is this is where I want to take long story short, I bury the crosshairs on that bare shoulder and shoot. And now I hadn't even told you this. I went back and looked at the footage like just on the big screen, I was I was fourteen inches above that bears back. Well, I'm serious. The ground just it hits

some rocks. I mean, it was that it was. I bet it was fourteen inches over that bears back. I'm glad they cameraman captured that you did right over the shoulder. Yeah, and they'll get to see it on bear horizon. I'm not ashamed to put it on there. And I missed the bear. It bounds off like a gazelle that I had the arc, the range compensating or the the angle comme sitting range finder, your vortex. Bam. The bear was fifty two yards. I think in in line of sight

it was probably eighty yards. I mean it was that steep and uh to this day, and I wish someone could explain to me the gun of zero to two hundred yards. I had the gun at zero um, and I just put the crosshairs mid body. I mean, I was just thinking, you know, I might be an inch or too high. I really wasn't thinking, to be honest, but I mean I I had a rest, I was steady squeezed, and I was way high. So maybe somebody

could give us some insight for why I missed. We we kind of speculated, and the bear bounds off and and that's it. And I actually went down there and you know, just made sure that the bear wasn't laying down there dead. You know, we looked. We actually came back the next day and looked for the bear. We we went way out of away, went down to the bottom of that drainage, scouted around down in there, and never the bear. The bear is still being a bear out there today. Man. So now it's day four and

I've missed two bears. Well, but then i missed another one. I'm forgetting Kobe. No, no, but the end of that day, you went back for the mules, and I stayed there, and then I see the bear that we were immedially after, going back the opposite direction, like going the direction from which he came. And so we would have never had a play on that bear from where we were with

what what he was doing. Yeah, So after we shoot this colored bear, we see the bear that we were originally after, and oh man, he just strutted down that mountains from us, not a care in the world, No way we could have got to him. I mean it was a but we did get intail from that that the bear was on that side of the mountain, and you know, we hoped he would still be there the next day. Yea. So we go back to our our backcountry camp and eat a couple of mountain houses. You didn't,

I did. Um. I went into some mode where I just didn't hardly eat. Yeah, he really did. We he didn't really eat. And now that was the day that I well, by the time I dropped off the mountain and came back up, I think we figured out climbed about vertical feet that day. Um. Um. We we wake up the next morning. Let's just jump to the next day, which is day five, and uh, then we go out because we're needing water and stuff. I think that's right. Yeah,

because we didn't hunt until that afternoon. Yeah, we had to for some reason, we had to come out. Yeah, we did go out. I think we needed water and just like different things. Yeah. I think that's the morning of the epic breakfast. Oh you're right. Yeah, Yeah, we had a big breakfast down at down at the spot. Yeah. Um, the water. But we go back in because we now have this this shortcut into this place. It's not that hard it you know, it takes us about two hours

by mule to get back to our camp. So we get back to our camp. Uh, we get back to our camp kind of late Yeah, it was like three o'clock in the afternoon. Yeah, it might have been even later in the because I I stayed there because we're tearing down camp and setting it up every day, because we remember, we're trying to stay mobile. So we get back to camp at three or four or maybe even five, and I say, we make the decision, Kobe, you just stay here in glassroom camp, set up our camp, and

I'm going to take off on foot. We're gonna leave the mules here. And so I go out to the point where we had set up the day before, where we'd seen the bear. And it took me. I mean I had in Glass thirty minutes and I saw the bear and he's in basically the same spot, the same patch of timber. And I watch him and watch him and watch him, and he can't I can't decide which direction he's gonna go because the direction that he goes

will we'll determine which direction that I go. And if he goes out the mountain to the south, he'll he's kind of out of play. But if he goes to the north, back up to the head of the hollow, oh man, it's game on. I can eat him well. Yeah, that all those roads kind of narrow to that point. And so towards the head of the you're basically together like the top of a triangle. Yes, the closer you because you get to the head of the hollow, the

closer the shot distances across the canyon. Yeah. And I'm glassing this bear from a different spot, and you know, not knowing what's going on, I'm like, man, that bears yeah, yeah, if it was a different now it was the same bear. Yeah. Well, and so I'm trying to determine what the spaar is gonna do. And finally it's kind of like he's just stalling over there. And I felt like he only had two decisions and that he was gonna do one or the other, go north or south, but he really didn't.

He kind of just stayed there. Um. But it was hard to determine that because he would be out of visibility and invisibility, and basically I felt like he was going to go back to the north, which would have been to my advantage. And so I start heading up the hollow, but he never comes. In long story short, I make the decision to try to beat darkness and go get on his side. Of the mountain. It's kind of like he's not doing anything. I'm gonna have to go over there to him, and so I just start

hooking it. And it's a couple a mile walk, uh, you know, around the head of this canyon. And I mean, I remember, I'm just walking as fast as I can walk, just just pound and pound and pounded. Now wasn't happened to There was only one time when I had to gain some elevation um. But for the most part it was relatively easy walking. Others just long distance, other than this one section where it had to gain about five

feet elevation um. And basically I get over there, and at this point it really didn't matter if the wind was in my favor or not. I mean, we're on day five. I know there's a bear back over here, and luckily the wind was in my favor. But even if it wasn't, I think I still I still would have gone. I mean, we were were. There comes a point in a hunt when you just have to make something happen and you just have to like feel you

just have to say something good it's gonna happen. And so I come around this point and man, the bear is just right there. He's a hundred and sixty nine yards standing on this logging road. And when I say road, this is like a what do they call it? Defunctionalized road. There's a phrase that they use out there, a reclaimed I mean it hadn't you couldn't have ridden a four with her on. I mean just a old logging road and the and the bears right there, and I mean

that's totally in range. He doesn't know him. They're hundred and sixty nine yards. I mean that's like a chip shot. And man, the excitement and satisfaction of seeing that bear, it was incredible. Of all my hunting experiences, it was as good as any of them in terms of and it's kind of hard to describe because of the work that we put in up and at that point, not but just this time, but with the other two, and it's like, finally, I'm really within striking distance of a bear.

I'm gonna have time to get down on him. He doesn't know him. Here it's just perfect, and I'm getting a proposition. You know, put the gun zero to two hundred, put it right behind his shoulder. Bam, you hear the shot go off. You can't see us. You can't see no idea what's going on. I just knew one shot meant one of you is gonna die. I'm just kidding. You were like, please don't miss again. You watched me miss twice at long and close and they're like, man,

he's he's explored the gamut of potential misses here. Yeah. I decided that the third times of charm, we're I'm gonna start giving you a hard time. Yeah. Well, in between two, it's to note that we went and shot the gun upon the mountain because we were like, it's something wrong. Missed twice, one at close range, when it long range, you know, is the gun off? And we did go and shoot and right where, shot at tunity yards at a rock about probably seven inch rock, and

just just so we felt good about the gun. But still after missing twice, it does take some of your confidence. But when I squeezed the trigger, I felt like the bear was hit. You know, sometimes with a rifle shot, it's amazing you you don't. You feel like they're just gonna roll over. But you know, I hit him in the lungs, so so if I had hit him in the shoulder, he probably would have folded up. But oh

my god, I wish that would have happened. He still would have barreled off there because he was off the edge of the road, but he might have just rolled down there rather than a hundred yards he but when I shot, he sailed like a superhero off that mountain, and I just I never see him again. It's just a flash, and I run over there, thinking I'm gonna get a second shot if he's still moving, and I hear him. I don't hear him death moon, but I

hear him growling down there. Pretty much, if you hear a vocalization I've found after a shot, it's usually a good thing. And UM felt like the barrel is dead. I go over there and pretty much immediately just go down to the bear, and I find the bear. UM find the bear probably eight two hundred yards below the road, And that sounds like he ran far. He didn't run far. He just he probably made three or four big bounds and then just rolled that. That's how far. It was.

Pretty it was pretty down. It was Uh it was straight down. So man, I was incredibly excited. UH made it back to camp surprisingly before dark, and per on X I traveled like seven and a half miles round trip that afternoon from camp, and Man, we went back in there the next day with the mules, and it's kind of a another story, but one of the big things that we didn't know was whether our mules would

carry a bear. We didn't We really didn't know. Is he was untested, is he is he's carried coons, turkeys. I know she'll carry a deer. I've had a deer here that uh put up on her back. Um, she's had some bad experiences with bears though. When we're baiting bears in Arkansas, she had some We had some live bears come in on us while we're baiting bears multiple times. Kind of freaked her out. Smoke he's the great mystery. Yeah, and we don't know about Smoke. I mean, a mule

could go either way. You could have the best mule in the world quote unquote like Hiden mule and him be petrified of the game. We do not know. We don't know Smokey's history trade. It only bought Smoky about a year before and had never carried big game on. Smoky just carried squirrels on him. So, Man, we start bringing up meat and hide and that's a whole other story. But we got it up out of there, quartered him up on the side of the mountain, brought him out

of there, and big footholes to get back up. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was, it was. It was. It was true Western experience for a hundred yards. Because we had to pack that thing out of there. It wouldn't have been that bad once we got it up out of that ravine. Then it had just been two hours of just kind of downhill walking. But basically Izzy was okay with the meat, and to make a long story short, she carried the meat no problem, but she flipped out on the hide.

So for all you following Project Honey mule, um, I've got to be honest about the update. She flipped out. I mean flipped out to the point I thought she was gonna hurt herself. Uh, she's tied, she's tied to a tree, and uh, I mean I think like she's gonna break her neck trying to get away from this

bear high or break the lead. She hit it hard. Yeah, it's so much so that I tied another rope onto her halter, thinking she's gonna break that lead and bust out of here, and we're gonna have to catch her, and at least we'll have another lead on her that maybe we can catch her. Well, we just took our time. If there's one thing that I do understand about training equine animals, as you just got to give them time

and you can't pressure them. And so we sat there with that hide within about thirty feet of her for probably twenty thirty minutes, just chilled out, just kind of set around, messed with the animals. I'll put the meat on Izzy, which I was very happy with, very pleased that that she let me put the meat on her. Had no problem with that. Um, I'd bring meat over in my hands were just covered in bare smell, and I would feed her these you know, our our range cubes.

So she's having to put her nose down in bear and and and eat. I've fed her on top of some of the meat bags, put grain on them, or you know, the cubes. And but every time I would inch towards her with that hide, she would flip out. So pretty much this is a stressful situation because we don't know if Smokey's gonna do the same thing. Long story short, we bring smoke over and he could care less about that bear. Yeah. I mean I put some range cubes on the bear hide and he's just like,

oh cool range cube. He's just like eating the range cubes off of this bear hide. I'm like, okay, that's a good sign. I mean a I was praying, yeah, I really was. I was just like, God, help us to make this work somehow. And man's moke saved the day. And we just threw that hide over the saddle horn smoke and just came out of there, no big deal. And it is like she was getting closer and closer and getting okay with it, like yeah, so I think

I think smoke even helped her something. So for two hours coming out of there, she was riding right behind Smoky. He's carrying this bear hide. She's down window that she's watching it. And so it was actually a great experience for her. I mean when we stopped, she eating, like went up put her nose up to it and see, these are the things that you have to do as an animal trainer. Is that you know, like somebody that didn't they didn't know, might have just been like, well,

that mule is never gonna carry carry hides. You know that Peo will never carry a bear hide, or if we'd have pressured her, we truly could have ruined her from it. Like if I would have just been just like thrown it on her and just said buck all you want. I mean, like that would have been a massive mistake that you might not ever be will recover from. But the way we did it, I was I was very happy. I mean I would have been real happy if she had just walked up there and I could

have just thrown it on her back. But it didn't happen, and so but she carried all meat out of there and out of there we came when he got back to the truck about two o'clock in the afternoon. We had left our camp at daylight. So it took us like eight hours with mules to get that bear out of there. We were that far back. It just it was just hard. It just everything about that kind of hunting and it's hard. Uh, smoke got wore out. I mean, this last track, this is day six now, and per

on X after the full thing we had traveled. I think I calculated like fifty eight point five miles or something by the time we finished day six with the bear hut out and on the way up the mountain on day six, smoke was pretty much done. He was, Yeah, he wasn't living life. He was just like, I mean, he's he wasn't lame. You know, sometimes you can get an animal in the back country and they they just pretty much get where they can't walk and they just need to rest for three days, and that's a bad

situation to be in. Smokey just found his granny gear and just would chug along. But every chance he would get he would want to go back down the mountain. You know, he was trying to just found his low gear and he's like, this is what I'm willing to give. And we finally on the way up, had to get you off of him and we had to walk him just to get him going. But thankfully the way down

the mountain he did great. And man, we came out of there feeling like a couple of heroes with a bear hide over the saddle horn and meat and kolbe. To me, that was iconic moment that as a bear hunter, I wanted to experience equine based my mules. I mean, smoke wasn't my mule, but close enough. Yeah, Uh, my mule that I trained road the whole week. Um, we went back in there, we killed a bear. Um. You know, we've got this this shirt that I made earlier in

the year of some artwork that I did. Um, I like to draw and stuff anyway, mule riding bear hunter. And it's a picture of a guy, um coming out with on a mule with a bear draped over the saddle horn. And uh, this was that to me. And you know, there's all these different categorization of bear hunts, you know, I mean, you can go to southeast Alaska and hunt these bears back in these estuaries, you know, tidal estuaries, and you can go uh to Arkansas and hunt bears over bait. You can go up north and

hunt bear in the boreal forest. You can go to the Appalachians and hunt bear over hounds with those guys Western equine based do it yourself. A rifle hunt bear is its own category. And so I've experienced a wide swath of success and all these different types of hunting, and I wanted to do it out west and and so it was a big deal and and it was a great experience and uh, and it was cool getting to do it with you. But being your first time out there, first time on mules and uh, I mean

you you did incredible. I mean especially for having seven days to prepare. Guys prepare like six months for these kind of things. I tried to get tough quick. Yeah, and that's what I that's what I commend you for is mental toughness, like you never you know when you're you're choosing a hunting partner. Colby never complained, he never he never got a sour attitude. He never you know, yeah, we talked about being sore and being hard, I mean

just but that never was. It was never like Colby wants to go home and and spoiler alert, if you ever hunt with me, the worst thing that you can do is give that vibe of you want to do something else. I mean just just sort it just spoils the whole thing for me. Then I've just learned I don't hunt with people like that. I mean my dad taught me that when I was a kid. I mean like in the sixth grade, if I was like, Dad,

how long are we going to be here? I think he kind of pounded that out of me and I was like, I could have taken it negatively, but I took it as positively. I was like, okay, for us to be successful, I cannot let him know that I'm not having a good time. Yeah, and and again I think that could have warped somebody, or not warped, but could have made it a negative experience, like as soon as I get out of here, I ain't never come back. But for me, it gave me insight into how that

you manage type two difficulty, you know. I mean, yeah, it's hard, like, yeah, I don't ride in eighteen miles and missing a bear and the stress of not knowing if we're gonna sleep on the mountain with no provisions. I mean, like that's not giggly fun, you know. I mean that that was stressful to me. But it wasn't like I was going Colby, We're gonna come off this

mountain and we're going home. I mean was there times I thought that, Yeah, like lots of times in six days of honey, and I'm like, dang, why do we even do this? But you just can't say that. I mean, it's it's a leadership principle, it really is. Is that not that you hide your emotions or high difficulty, But it's like we're on a mission. We're gonna complete this mission, and I'm not because emotions, emotions, attitudes are absolutely contagious,

you know. And that's really truly what I appreciated about you as you never got discouraged. You're always ready to go. I mean, you know, you never were wanting to take shortcuts. That's the other thing inside of hunting partnerships is sometimes you have somebody that wants to take shortcuts. It's like, you really to do this, right, we need to do this this way. We need to go up the mountain this way. We need to get there, we need to camp there, we need to do this, and it's harder.

And then it's like, well, why don't we just do it that way? Well, we don't do it that way because we want to win. We don't want to lose. We will lose if we do it that way. Well that's easier. Well, you know, you get what I'm saying. Yeah, I definitely modified some downhills though I'm I'm a mountain slider. Yes, yes, And I'll tell you that I was surprised I didn't have holes in the bottom of all my first light, my first life, because I mean, that was the way

to keep up. Yeah, you were sliding. Yep, you were sliding on your ear end most of the time on those downtairs. But it worked. It was steep enough for that. Yeah, yeah where it was. Well, it was an incredible trip. Uh we've been Uh. We just wanted to bring to you the totality of this adventure in one podcast. And you know, I would just say I would encourage people go out and spring bear hunt out west and don't spect to have just immediate success. I kind of did.

I kind of felt like the first trip out there, we'd be bringing home a bear. Then there's lots of people that do. I mean, it's really just a game of of of chance and finding that moment of good fortune, like of just when you when you connect on a barrier. And I mean maybe that happens on the third day of your first time out west. Maybe it does, but

maybe it doesn't. And I and I don't think I was prepared for that, uh, because the second time I went and made the twenty four hour drive home by myself in a vehicle without a bear, I was just like, dang, I want to do this again. And that's kind of what you think. Um, and I actually took a year off and then came back and uh and and we're successful. And now I'm starting to build this build this database of ways that I feel like it takes to be

successful out west. I think you've gotta be mobile. You gotta be willing to get into back country and stay there if they're bears, but if they're not bears, you've gotta be able to get out of there. Um. You gotta be willing to sitting glass. Um. Those are the keys for me being mobile. But the main key was we didn't over commit. Like when we would go in, we would just take the provisions that we needed to

just stay like one or two days. If if if it had been much more of a production than that, I think it would have slowed us down too much. But we're pretty mobile. Who made it work? And it was early season hunt. I believe I killed the bear. I made the fifth it was whatever that Sunday was, Yeah, or made the fifth or sixth? Um, I think it was the fifth. Oh yeah, I told you that you never look at Sinko to Mayo the same weekend. Yes,

that's right, that's right. Yeah, Well, what you're closing thoughts on the hunt? Kolbe Oh, it was definitely hard. Uh it was fun though. It's one of those hunts such you know that it's just so hard you're going to appreciate it afterwards, you know, the one one that you're gonna look back on finally. Um, definitely learned a lot. I mean this was my first like back country hunting

that way. Like I've been, you know, kind of on a back country hunt, but it was like truck hunt, I mean camping, yeah, Walton, driving the roads, glassing here and there, and it was just a totally different experience.

And I mean it was it was really it was really good and um, you know, I think it definitely is going to to help with my ability to navigate those things in the future, like looking at switch but those switch backs a different way learning where like you can uh go from one road to the other to cut out a a half mile or whatever. Uh. I mean the mules was a big thing. I mean even like like the first day we sidehilled a lot and that It's like that was a weird feeling, you know.

I was like, man, the saddle's not gonna slip off or something. And uh, I was definitely impress us with everything that the mules could do. Um And I think like after that first day, whenever we uh learned how to manage the relationship between the two mules were Smokey just wanted to be on our heels. It helped a lot, at least for for me. Uh. But I think like just being able to push through those things that just like builds character like inside of you to just you know,

whenever you come up against something. I think the biggest thing about these back country hunts is you come to a point of like flexibility to where it's like, well that didn't work. What now, you know, Like how do we adjust and how do we engage this particular scenario to where we can come to a point of success,

you know, or whatever success is inside of our minds. Um. But I think just the ability to be flexible and fluid, you know, like if your tree stand hunting, you're just gonna go and you're gonna sit in that stand for the most part. You might hunt to and from it, but for the most part, you're committed to that thing. And I think that being mobile and and moving back and forth and just you know, just being you being fluid with what your plans are and not holding onto

them too tight. I think that was a big thing because I mean, you wouldn't have had a shot at that blonde bearry even if we had sat there in the bear with adopts. It way like just being willing not to hold onto anything too tightly. I think it was was an important key. Uh you know, even being willing to shoot that other bear. You know, well what happens to the other one, Well, this bears right here,

you know it's right yep. So well, incredible experience and this is we're gonna have multi more, multiple more podcast from the Montana tour. Like we said, we we interviewed Joe Condela's interviewed Brian Strickler, an interview Barren Snyder all on this trip. They weren't necessarily about this trip, but we referenced this trip on this podcast. Hey, thanks for joining us, and uh, keep the wild places wild because that's where the bears live. Peo