River's Bear

Hunting Magazine podcast. I'll also be your host into the world of hunting the icon of North American wilderness. There, we'll talk about tactics here conservation. We will also bring you into some of the wildest country on the planet chasing. For all you houndsman out there, check out our friends over at W Hunting Supply tu supply dot com. W has been in business since two thousand, so for almost

twenty years. They've been serving houndsmen and their biggest thing is that they hunt with the products that they use. They really do. When you call the guys at W the ladies at W, they know these products their houndsmen and hounds women, and they're gonna bend over backwards to give you incredible customer service and stand behind all the products that they sell. They've also got a very unique and custom line of T shirts Hound t shirts with

cool graphics and you're gonna like w Hunting Supply. Also, check out our friends at Northwood's Bear Products. And we're coming into the fall. Bear baiting season is winding down, but we can't talk enough about the fact if you're baiting bears, you you need to be using commercial sense and check out Northwoods Bear Products full line of sense at Northwoods Bear Products dot net. Check them out. And lastly,

are good buddies at the Western Bear Foundation. You know, sometimes just having a voice inside of a situation is really important. Sometimes just showing up is the most important

thing that we can do. And the Western Bear Foundation is a voice out there with the bear conflict mitigation and right out there in the heat of the battle right now with the the listing of the grizzly and uh and there a voice of reason in a voice of the hunter, and a voice for conservation, and a voice for the North American Bottle of Wildlife conservation out there in a pretty crazy conversation with people that don't understand our way of life, and and uh, the Western

Bear Foundation is just a voice. Just this week they were a petition and people to just for Sportsman's sportsman to just go to a public event where they were looking for feedback from the public. And uh, again it's these kind of services that bring attention to needed things in the outdoor community. Anyway, valuable organization. They're driven by membership, nonprofit hunting conservation organization. Check out the Western Bear Foundation.

This week, I have a very special guest at the global headquarters today and that guest is my daughter, River Nukem High River. This is your first time, your long

time listener, first time guest on the podcast. Is that right? Okay, Well, what we're gonna do is we're gonna talk about Rivers hunt because the River had a successful bear hunt here in Arkansas about just a few weeks ago, and just this week we released a video that called River's Bear And if you if you haven't seen that video, I don't know if it would be it might be better to listen to the podcast first, but you gotta if you're listening to this podcast, you got to watch the

video of all the video that that I've produced. I feel like it's one of the best films, not just because my daughter was in it, which that could potentially make me make me biased in some way, but the the story spanned two years, a serious accident, a mule wreck, and an encounter with a giant color phase bear that we did not capitalize on, and then eventually River taken a really nice bear in Arkansas, I mean a very nice bear, pope and young nineteen inch plus skull bear

in Arkansas. And but more important than that, the whole sequence of events from the perspective of a father was really powerful because River had to endure a lot, she had to practice a lot of restraint, and uh so what we're gonna talk about all those details, But so River, I want to start off with a little little history. When River was how old are you when you saw your first bear out there with when we were baiting bears when we were I was like four the first

bear I saw. Do you remember? I remember that so vividly? Yeah, tell us that story. Well, we had a bait and you're you didn't. We didn't have any picture to the bear or just any bear, and you were gonna you were we were gonna move the bank and move somewhere else. But that night I was gonna go with you the next day. And that night I had a dream that we were at the bear bait and there's bear, there's like cubs. It was just a bunch of cups. The

bear had left. That's what happened. The bears. The bears were gone. Like I was baiting bears and I had one bait and the and the bears left, and so you know, I would have come home. You'd have been four and might have been dramatic. I was like, the bears are gone, you know, Yeah, Okay, that's probably what happened. And then you had a dream and yeah, I had a dream and there was just a bunch of bears at the bait and you're four years old. Yeah, And I begged you to let us bait it one more time.

And so we went out like a couple of days later, and we had the back filled with bread and we carried it back there. You gave me like a little Walmart sack and you had a big old trash bag and I carried it out there and I was just like not, I was just like dancing through the woods with my little trash bag of bread, and I looked up and you were like crouching down on the ground and you were looking at me with your finger over

your mouth, telling me to be quiet. And I tiptoed over there, and you pointed out and there was like to me, it was a massive bear and it looked so big, and I was scared. I just grounded on your arm and was like, oh my gosh, yeah, I remember exactly what you said. You were just like happy, go lucky, and then you saw the bear immediately latched onto my leg and said let's go. You just said, you just said let's go. I mean, you were just like,

I don't want any man. When in my mind when I looked back, I remember that being awesome and not being scared. But it was so funny because you were just like just immediately just like let's go, let's get out of here. So so that was Rivers like first thing first like like sequence of interacting with bears and and so for years we were like River had a dream that the bears came back, and actually yeah, and and uh so that was that, and then you would

have bear baited with me and stuff for years. But so I saw a lot of people letting their young kids shoot bears over bait, which man more power to them, that's awesome. I did not want the newcome kids to kill a bear until I felt like they could truly appreciate it. Yeah, And you had it instilled in us that like a bear was this majesting animal and if you were going to kill it, you were gonna earn it. Yeah.

And that's a lot of the video. Like when watching the video, you see that we weren't gonna be able to kill a bear. Let's we could shoot it with bo Yeah. And that was the challenge pretty much. Well and and uh and not to take something away from somebody that lets a six or seven or eight year old kids shoot a bear, that's that's any parents progative. But I just knew that it would cheapen it a little bit if you were that young. And so you were the first nucom that I ever let bear hunt.

I mean, for years, y'all were totally capable. Y'all were killing deer, y'all were killing turkeys. Uh. Yeah, and you knew that, you knew what was happening and everything. But you were thirteen years old when you could pull the weight limit for archery in Arkansas, and I was like, I worked for that all summer. It's like, you, ever, this is the year where I want you to kill a bear and uh. And so that was and you just turned thirteen and uh and you killed a bear

the first first afternoon we hunted. I mean you helped me bait and do a bunch of stuff that you killed a really nice colored face bear out at at James Lawrence's old home place and out in the mountains, and uh, that was a really awesome experience. And we you killed the bear, knew come killed the bear. Well, So as it goes in our family, we don't just have unlimited access to be able to hunt and shoot

bears over bait. I mean, we've got some good properties, but usually what it boils down to is we work our fingers to the bone and when opening day comes, we have one spot. That's good. Yeah, because I killed that bear when I was thirteen, and then the next year I didn't. I sat on a bait for a long time, I didn't even see a bear. And when I was fifteen we went back where well point being, the next year I decided to bypass our oldest son and and skip down to our youngest son and let

him bear because Bear wanted to kill it. On. Well, we've made a we I feel like every kid is so different that you can't just script out just they're supposed to do. Baron Newcomb, he was hunting with me in the mountains in National Forest and I just said, hey, Bear, how about you not kill a bear overbait? You you you restrain yourself from that, and you just take five years and let's try to kill one in the mountains. And so he's not hunted over bait until this year.

He went hunting with James overbait one day without me knowing. They were supposed to go deer hunting. Did you know that? I thought Mr James was taking bear deer hunting and they went and said on that bait, good thing, he did get one, good thing, he didn't get one. Well,

so so Bear rivers younger brother has been bypassed. And Shepherd killed the bear, and I really wanted to kind of throw Shepherd a bone, and he had a lot of desire, and for whatever reason, I just felt like I needed to give him a taste of success fairly easily. And I feel like that's played out very well because now Shepherd is like, I mean in like well, in like June, and he's like, hey, Dad, we gotta start shooting. We gotta start getting ready. Where are we gonna bait? What?

You know? He's like, He's like, he always makes sure I'm shooting my bow. Yeah, and so Shepherd yeah, so so well he sell that to say. In twenty eighteen, we gained access to a piece of property that was inaccessible by vehicle. Okay, you could not drive a four wheeler in there, legally you could not. The only way to get in there is either by foot or by equine animal. And is it basically a mile and a half from where we could park the truck straight up

a mountain, a lot of elevation gain for Arkansas. And we gained access to hunt this piece of private land. And in Arkansas we can only bait bears on private land in certain zones, okay, And so we knew that this property was gonna be pretty good. We really did, just because of how secluded it was typically in Arkansas and and pretty much anyway, the more secluded, the more access to vast amounts of public land around where you're baiting, the more of that the better. So we knew this

place was going to be good. So in UH in early September, we gained access to the property and we started baiting on September. Is that correct? Is that when it happened? It was? But yeah, yeah, let's just say it was. So on September two thousand and eighteen, River and I basically bushed whack in bush whacked into where we could where we could park. We had two mules with paniards. We loaded up the mules with probably a hundred fifty to two h pounds of bait each. UH

season opened in like eight days. It opened on September, so we were just baiting like seven days, seven days before season. We went up there. We didn't carry a barrel in. We just put the bait right on the ground, put up a fair box and a cutting back camera and left it and just had no idea what was like. You know, when you start a new bait, even if it's in a good location, a lot of times these

bears are fixed in on baits and other places. Like baiting does kind of change the bear landscape for a certain period of time because bears are extremely habitual, even down to the day of when they show up at a bait site, there really are river um It's it's like a it's like a biological thing. Like if a bear knows that this certain section of a white oak ridge always produces, he remembers that for his entire life, and he goes back there and checks it every year.

And I remember Will Beason one time told him that he used to leave cameras up year around on his bait sites even when he wasn't baiting, and the bears would always show for like years in a row. The bears showed up on the very same day, even before he started bating. Yeah, like like they they they were real meticulous about when they started baiting bears. And uh in a bear would have not been there for months and would show up the day before they started baiting.

And they just know they're just so. I say that to say, even if you have a good location, you never know if you're gonna be able to draw bears because bears maybe you know, I mean bear movement is is navy is influenced by bear baits. When you can bait bears, it's pulling bears away. So we didn't know well and just like I wanted to kill a bear that year, I didn't kill the bear. I think I was fifteen and I hadn't kill a bear since I was Well, you hunted, you killed the bear in fifteen,

you hunted sixteen and seventeen and didn't kill anything. I wanted kill the bear, and we were like, why don't we kill it? For whatever reason? When I got access to this property, I was just like, Yeah, this is gonna be river spot, did you know? I mean, I didn't know that. I was just like gonna go bating with you and maybe well, I mean I could have

done anything with that spot. I could or like a lot of times on the day or like a couple of days, like we'd be driving down to where we're gonna bear hunt and we'd be like, okay, River's gonna hunt. Hear Chevard's gonna here. I was just going baiting with you the day one. I didn't know that was gonna be my spot. I didn't know. Probably just weren't paying attention when I told you, probably not. But but I just had not like I would just going to bait with you, like I wasn't well, I had in my

mind from the very beginning for whatever reason. I was just like, this is gonna be river spot because I knew it's gonna be really hard. Yeah, pretty quick I realized like this is gonna be my spot, and this is like a significant mountain. But and and it was I knew it was gonna be incredible. I really did. And uh, and I just I just had this. I just I don't know, it's just like from the very beginnings, like this gonna be river spot. I mean, I've never

killed a bear up there, you know. Um September two, eighteen, we go up there, we put out our bait, we leave, and it's hard to get up comment. It's it's a it's an hour and a half walk and we're leading mules in but on foot. Okay, so we're not riding the mules in most of the time. We're leading the mules in there, carrying all our gear on our bait.

So we're getting a heck of a workout hour and a half through the mountains up to this spot, which on the on the garment, it's it's really only about a mile and a half, but you're gaining about you're gaining a lot of elevation for these mountains. Yeah, it really does. It really does. But so here's what happened, is is we had a riding saddle on my young mule Easy, which a lot of you guys may have seen.

I was training Issy and stuff. Well I was just like, hey, Riever, you want to ride Easy down the mountain and she's like yeah, and I was like okay. And it truly is one of the biggest just kind of like blind spot mistakes that I've made. Is a father that put my kids in danger for real, I look at it like that because I just I was just like, yeah, I just ride that three year old mule down down this big mount and uh, soon as you got on it is he was kind of just just high spirited.

I remember, you're kind of having a little bit of trouble controling her or just lends being so low. That's right, that's what. That's what. And I thought that was just gonna be at the top of mountain, like at first I got caught in not a big mule, but she's not a short mule, so you're kind of up in

the trees. And yeah, boy, riding in Arkansas, that's the biggest hazard of riding the way that we're using these mules in the mountains of Arkansas is that you're constantly ducking and fighting thems, and you could get raked off a mule pretty easy if you're not moving around and limber and mounting around. And so I just let her ride and I was gonna lead my other mule down the mountain because we only had a sawbuck. Sawbuck is a is a pack saddle that you can't ride, So

you had a riding saddle. Ellie at the time had that pack saddle, you know, And so there just there you go off the mount and no, you know, no big deal. I didn't even think of think about it. Well directly, you get out about fifty yards in front of me, maybe forty, and I see Izzie start trotting, and then all of a sudden, I started here you start yelling, and I see Izzy go into a full gallop. What happened? She? We got out a little ways in

front of you, and there's a limb. There's a limb hanging down and it was just like it wasn't It was just about as stick as your wrist, and it was coming in. It was just gonna hit me like right in the chest. And so I bent overside. She wasn't trotting yet, and I bent over sideways the duck under that limb, which wasn't smart. And when I bent over, grabbed the saddle horn and she took off run and she just didn't. I guess you just didn't like that.

I think you squeezed her with your legs, queuing her to run, That's probably what it was. And she just took off like she she was running fast on that mountain, and I didn't have the reins, and you kept you were telling me like, yank the rent. You're telling me to just pull on it. You're telling me to do something, and I was just like I was yelling at the top of my lungs. Yeah. And I mean I just wasn't gonna let go with that side a word. Yeah.

And so what I see is I see this mule at a full gallop just disappear over the crest of this steep hill with with rivers sliding off the side. That's the last image I've had of you was you about halfway off of the mule, like going down and this mule running as fast as a mule can run downhill. And I've ever since we've been riding mules and with the kids involved. I mean there's inherent danger and pretty

much everything that we do. Um, and I've always just thought, you know, I mean, this is dangerous, but this is something that we're gonna do. And anyway, this was the bad dream that I thought could happen, and it was happening out before my eyes. And I dropped the rain the leader on my mule and just take off running.

And I finally catch up with you guys, and I see Izzy facing me with no river newcum on her back, and I see you head first on the ground on your back, with your head down the mountain and your legs up the mountain, and I honestly didn't know if you if you were alive, And so I run to you and yeah, go ahead and go ahead, um, because when we were going down, she was like I hung on for a long time. I hung out for a

long time. I'll give you that. Yeah, yeah, And she was like jump jumping, like she was like jumping like logs and and going through ditches and stuff. And my I can't remember why, but somebody it might have been you, But somebody told me, if you ever get in a situation like that, just kind of roll off. And I'm not sure that person was credible, but that's what I'm thinking. God,

that's what I was thinking in the moment. And my foot was like stuck in the stir and the stirrup on the other side, and I was leading like I was like, I was just riding on like my I was not sitting straight up on her. I was like, yeah you were, and she was just running on purpose. No no, but I was like like no, no, no, no, no no, no, no, no, I did not. My advice is to ride it out. Yeah, that's what you've always Somebody said, if you're going to fall, Yeah, that's what

you've always thought. But somebody said, if you're gonna follow, just roll off, because I mean, I wasn't even hardly on her, Like my one leg was not in the stir up anymore. I don't know how that happened, but I was just hanging off the side of her as she was running, and my other leg was just stuck and I couldn't get off Anyways, the saddle like kind of broke like something happened, and so kind of probably

spun a little bit off. Yeah, it suthing happened, and I like she jumped over a log and my leg finally just got loose and I just hit the ground. And at first, I was just kind of like, what the heck? And I thought if anything was wrong, it was gonna be that I had just broken my leg because it twists and side like. I didn't even realize that my head is like bleeding or anything at first. So I run up to you and I'm like, you know,

are you okay? Are you okay? Don't move, don't move, and and I kind of just started like poking you, like you know, and I just thought, if she's if she's broken somewhere, you know, you'll be really tender. And I kind of, you know, I couldn't find anything broken, and I put my head behind your, my hand behind your head and pulled my hand out. In my hand had a bunch of blood on it, and that's always saw the cut on your head, and we didn't think

it was that big deal. But I remember reaching back and like it was deep, like you could feel until it was deep. Well, we'll cut we'll shorten the story a little bit here. The basically, it was a cut so deep that you could see her skull and the river can't walked all the way off the mountain eating then a mule. I mean, we sat there on the ground. I'll tell you exactly what we did. We sat there on the ground and we prayed and I just thank God that you were alive. And uh and I mean

we're way back in the mountains, no cell cover. I mean, what else we're gonna do. We just walked out of there and you were you were, you were capable of that, and just shook up and bleeding and um. And we go to the nearest medical facility and basically have a pretty terrible experience. We stayed there for like eight hours. Yeah, we're in the waiting room for six hours, and then we went back there and sat there for two hours. So River turns out has a a concussion, and uh,

we believe that she probably fractured her rib. They never did any x rays on that, but it's because you know, there'sn't really not much they can do about a fractured rib. But a doctor that we know said it was probably And then she had eight staples in her head and with out anesthesia. Yeah, it was hours like while the guy came in like hours after we'd been there. We sat in the rading room for six hours and and he said, hey, has she been given any talent all

or anything for pain? And River and I just looked up at him. It was like, no, we hadn't seen anybody. And basically he was like, oh my gosh, you've been here this long and I I hadn't had any pain. And River it's like she she's very just physically tough. She's tough. She's been taught to ignore pain like Rambo. And so anyway, we I felt terrible because I don't know, I just didn't think about it. Anyway, they they put seven eight staples the head, and long story short, we're still kind

of recovering from that in some ways. But so we had a mule reck. Well we better start talking about barre Hunt. Um so the next year, well, no, no week. The next week we go back up on the mountain and and we we couldn't get there the first day of opening season. This is this is stuff we couldn't tell in the video because it was just two complex

of a story. But we had like flash floods opening day of season September Twe we tried to find other ways up there, and we drove back into like the craziest stuff and tried to in the middle of the woods. Well we couldn't cross. There's a creek that we had to cross. Well, we couldn't get across. It was too high. So we tried to go upstream several miles and come in a whole different direction to get back in where and we just couldn't do it. So we ended up

not hunting the first day of season. We went back up there the second day the water went down and we go up go up there, and it's probably one of the hottest bear baits I've ever seen in Arkansas. And uh, we had one big bear coming in and River was committed to shoot that bear. I mean, you know, we kind of we kind of talked this through, is that if we're going to commit to hunting this spot, we're not just trying to shoot a bear, We're trying to shoot the bear, you know. And so she was

committed to wait for a big, big mail. That's what we wanted to do. That was our goal. That's why we put in that much effort and work to go in there. Let me say to baiting this spot for us was it was in a full day of work because it's two and a half hours from where we live one way, so that's five basically five hours of driving, hauling the mules, loading mules on, you know, putting all attack and taking the attack off. I mean basically, you left here early in the morning and you got home

at dark. Baiting this place one time, and so a lot of work, a lot of work went into it. We go up there and the first day river passed seven bears and the big bear never came. Do you remember getting out of that stand? I do. That was the worst there was. I mean, do you single time a bear would come in, I would just be like, that is a monster, and I would stand up and that would be like, that's probably a two pounds sow and I was like, oh, and more bears right then

then most people will see in a lifetime. It was crazy, It really was. But like right before we left, I was gonna have to go we had a school trip and I was going to go on the school trip and I did not want to go on the school trip without a bear. I was just I was I just did not want to do that on this opportunity. Yeah, yeah, And I was at full draw, like I was. I was just so close dark. I was like, if you

want to shoot one of these bears, go ahead. And the four bears in front of us, and it was getting dark, and you had to leave the next morning early, and I I just was I just knew if I was gonna get on that bus and I was gonna go on that trip, I was gonna come back and there's gonna be no bears and I was not gonna get a bear again. And I just did not want to do that. So I was at full draw and I had that pin on one of the bears. I don't remember how big it was, but I was just like,

I can't do it. Man, I'm so glad you didn't. Well, this is what I asked, if you remembered. So we're, you know, an hour from a truck way back in the mountains. We got the mules tied up a quarter mile from us, and it gets dark, and that mountain was covered in fog, and there were four bears within ten yards of our tree. And I turned on I turned on my light to just I thought this flashlight'll spook them off. Man. I turned on that light and they didn't care. I remember when I crawled down and

got on the ground. I shined my flashlight out and there was a bear about eight yards from me this way. And I turned the flashlight this way and there was a bear about ten yards from me behind me, remember that. And I was just like, River, we gotta get out of here. And you crawled down and we hooked it out of there. I've never I've never quite had an experience like that. Um. I mean we've been we've been around bears close, but for something about being that far

back in and that's foggy, it was. It was good. It was good. Um. So the river comes back the next Saturday, we get there and the absolute perfect situation for a bear baiter happens. A giant bear had showed up that very day at the bait. He had never been there before. What I believe was probably a four fifty five pounds solid black bear had been there most of the day and he had he had just found

it that morning. I mean we could tell by truckcre and pictures like that bear had never been there until that day. Some ways, that was good. In some ways it was bad. It was bad because now we were there and if he smelled us, I knew because he wasn't. He'd never been to the bait, he had never smelled human there, that he was going to be real sensitive to human intrusion, where the other bears that had been there the whole time we've been baiting would probably be

a little bit more tolerant of the human smell. Well, that turned out exactly right. At four o'clock, the big, big black bear came in and got down the wind of us and disappeared. We never saw him again, am I right? We we We didn't even show that in the video. I mean you just couldn't because I mean it's just like this image of this like bear way

off and I couldn't even tell that part of the story. Well, about forty five minutes before dark, the bear that we were well, that the other bear that we were after, showed up a dark, chocolate, very large board. I haven't officially asked h Ryan grabbed my official Arkansas bear Bait wait guess or champion, but I'm pretty sure that he would agree that the bear was easily over four hundred

and probably in the four fifty range. That's what I believe. Um, and the bear smells us, he knows we're there, We're up in a tree stand and he comes right in and he's at like eight yards broadside, and River shoots him high. I mean, and and you'll see it in the video. It's like heartbreaking. Hits him right in a backstrap with a forty pound bow and the Arab penetrates in about five inches and the bear runs off. We spend the entire next day looking for the bear, would

never find the bear. We get trail camera pictures of the bear. It was actually three days later. We get trail camera pictures of the bear with a big white spot on his back, fully alive, and he continued to stay at that bait the rest of the year, only coming in at dark. And we were crushed. Oh my goodness. It was hard to take that. It really was hard

to take. I mean, obviously for for reasons that could even go and stated, I mean, you know, for new hunters that might be listening to this, I mean, it's a it's a massive deal to wounded animal. I mean, it's never your goal. It's an outlier in terms of it doesn't happen that often, but it did. The good news was is that we knew for sure that this bear lived and was okay, which was fantastic in that respect. We spent the entire next day looking for that bear

and the Holy cow. I mean, just like it was over. Like there's only so many times we could go down there, and it's not like we could just keep hunting for another week, and we did. We came back another day and one bear came in, yeah, which was which was not normal. Things things dry up quick, like like in Arkansas. It's like you get this short window before the acrons fall, and uh, and we knew it was gonna drive quick,

and it did. And uh and River and I came out of the season having invested all this work and we're just kind of dang that it didn't happen. And we were both kind of like shocked and surprised, and we really you learned a lot, though, didn't you. River talked to me about exactness. That was a phrase that that we we we kind of used a lot this year in at your arrow was just a little bit off. Yeah, and because of that, I didn't I came out without

a bear. Yeah, And so I mean you took that as a principle for your life though, I want to hear you, Um, Yeah, exactness was a word that we used a lot in this last year. And um hm, like as a hunter, you know, going and you know, like we would we know there's a specific spot on that bear that you need to hit, and like we would look at we look at the bear targets, we would look at pictures and we would watch videos and like you knew where to hit the bear. And on

the day I was like two inches off. And because that I came out without a bear, and there was like that was kind of a thing that we talked about. I don't even know how to do, but we we talked about it as a principle for life, is that you know there are places where not just in shooting bows, but in other places in life that you know you needed to be more exact and more intentional and aware. And I think you did a great job of taking this principle you learned from hunting and applying it back

into your life. That's what I heard you say all year, is that is that you were thinking about that with school, you were thinking about that with other things. Is that you know it seems like such a small miss because it was like if you watched the shot, like even me, you know, in the stand. I'm like, man, I think you probably got his lungs. I mean, like it's it's like one of those shots that you're kind of like, yeah,

I was a little high, but it might work. So it's like it was inches away from being just a tin ring shot, but because because it was off, the whole thing I mean. And so inside of life, man, sometimes you gotta be exact. Yeah, And there's just a lot of places, like a lot of practical things like in school or even at home, where there are things that it's like you can be just two inches off or you can be a little ways away, and if you don't hit the mark, it doesn't like, it doesn't count.

It doesn't count. That was just the thing for that. And so River and I we I've got a confession. We like Adele um like and what's the song that we sing someone like you talking about that? Uh, well, you were the first one that said that. One day

we were listening to music on just driving. In this song, it's just really sad like love song about how she is looking for someone like you and it's and it was talking about this love lost like Adele had like had this man she lost him and now she's looking for someone like you. And so River and I are singing this and she's like, this is the bear from last year, and I was like yeah, And so every time we heard that, I'm serious. I bet we did that many times this year When we heard that song,

we would say, this is bear. We're gonna get that bear. We're gonna get that bear. We're looking for someone like you. And we'd say this huge image of this giant, world class chocolate bear that slipped through our fingers. But you know, we learned from it. And so that brings us to twenty nineteen. Okay, And you know, honestly, coming off the mountain last year, I'm not sure that you wanted to

go back up on the mountain. That it's a really special mountain because every single time we would walk up that mountain and I get settled on that tree stand and I'd be like, I am never doing this again. Like it was not easy. And it kind of sounds ridiculous when you say it's just a mile and a half, but like it was not easy to get back. It

was not easy to get back up there. And I mean I had a concussion that whole season, and I had a fractioned rib and like that hurts, like it's about that, and yeah, yes, like it was hard to get up there. Yeah, so that's that's the one problem with like video, Like you watched this twelve minute video that we made and you kind of feel like everything was just like perfect, like you see the tribulation. But

it was tough. It really was, like, Yeah, there would be times when we get off that mountain it would be so hot, we would have been walking for a long time and I had a concussion and we would get up there and it's just like I could hardly, like and I had a pretty bad concussion, I could hardly. It was just it was hard. Like it was just it was hard. And we would go up there again and again and again, and every time we come out

of there without a bear. And one time we came out of there and we were like, I'm gonna have to go back up here tomorrow and track a bear that I just wounded. That was hard, that man, that was very That was hard for me. I came back and it took me about a week to get back on track mentally. It was just to get excited about hunting again. Yeah, I mean it was it was ridiculously hard. And every time we go up that mountain, I would saying, I am going down this mountain and I'm never coming back.

And then I didn't get a bear, and I was like, I'm gonna have to come back next year. I think you can't just end it like this. Yeah. Yeah, Well, we weren't even sure that we were gonna be able to bait back up there this year. Uh, just because of the time commitments and it just it just takes your whole season basically, or the first of your season. But we we were like, yeah, we're gonna do it, and uh, and so we started baiting bears this year on about September again and that we had a new mule.

We went up there, we we put out bait um and I mean basically we went in there and hunted and and we didn't have Uh, we had some really good bears coming in. But this year was way different than last year. Last year was a pretty incredible year for bears responding to bait because of the lack of mass crop here and this year mass crop was heavy, and um, so I knew the odds were gonna be harder, but we we we shot the bow all summer. I was I was wishing you'd shot a little bit more

at times, didn't I Yeah, But you did good. The River is a good shot. And we we practiced everyone up there, baby with we set everything up and we came back on opening day, which this year was September nine. Um, it was actually the second day of the season when you killed the bear. Yeah. Yeah, But we went in there and and we we sat for several hours and only saw two smaller bears, which by this point, this was the only time that River was going to get.

The hunt was basically these two days, and I knew that the next weekend the bears would be gone. So it's like, man, if we're gonna make this happen, we gotta make it happen River. And so I was just I was just like I'm not getting off this mountain, like I wasn't. I did not want to leave without a bear, and like I didn't last time, but this time it was like if it's dark and there's a

smaller bear, yeah, And I was with it. And I was trying to take all the pressure off for any type of size or anything, because you know, at different times I would have you know, probably influenced you not to take a smaller bear. So we were just like, hey, let's just go kill a bear. I mean, that's kind of the way I took it, was like, let's just go kill a bear up there. We got the mules, we can call it off. And I wanted to test

my mules. I wanted to see this whole system work, which is, if we kill a bear back there, can we get it out number one? Um. I just wanted to test the whole system and kind of reap some of the reward of all the work that we've done. And so we go up there and and and and where it's not real promising what we're seeing. Um. And right at dark, right at dark on the second day of the season, we see a big bear come in from the south on the horizon. And did you see

him up there? You can you can just seventy yards away, and you can just you can tell is a mature bore. But the wind had supposed to be blowing out of the south, and it was blown directly out of the north, which was sending our scent right up where this bear was. I knew for sure that he was smelling us. Well, he just kind of disappears, and I just think, well,

it's a done deal. He's not coming in. Well, it starts to get dark, I mean so dark that you could only see about forty yards probably, and I see the bobbing tan nose of a bear out there and just a silhouette of black. And I see this bear, bob in his head out there at about forty yards and I go wherever he's right, he's over there, and I watched him and watch him, and he's sitting on his rump and he's just they just it's almost like he's just he's torn, like he wants to come in,

but he knows that that we're somewhere around. He just had to have and I just watched him just Bob's head and Bob's head move around and and finally when it just got dark enough. And I've seen older boars do this several times. It doesn't always happen, but when it got to just like a certain point, he was just like, Okay, I'm going in. It's dark enough, And I mean he just walked right in. And it was probably within minutes of being not being able to shoot.

It was that dark, and you can see on the camera it was dark. I didn't know if River could see your pins or not. And I we sure weren't gonna mess around and take a bad shot, and so I just said, if you can see your pins, pull your bow back and just see what you can see. So she pulls her bow back, and I'm focused on filming, and I've got my right ear turned to her. Okay, I am basically deaf in my right ear, and River is at full draw and this bear is like it

like probably ten yards and she's not shooting. She's not shooting. She's not shooting. He was a little bit quartering too righte coarter he was, And I was just trying to make sure that he wasn't like I was just I was so scared of getting a bad shot like what happened last year. I did not want to have anything, and so I was gonna like take my time. And I was trying to ask him. I was trying to you were you were talking to me? And I couldn't.

I was trying to just be I was just like, he's not too turned, right, he's not too turned and and so well you were saying, can I shoot in that? What you're saying, just trying to make sure that she wasn't Can I shoot? Can I shoot? And I'm thinking, but not saying anything. I'm thinking, shoot shoot. And finally she's held the bow for so long. I leaned around the tree and I say, let your bow down. And she lets her bow down, and I said, could you see your sights? And she said yeah? And I said

why didn't you shoot? She said, I was asking you shoot? And I said shoot that about the yeah. And when you said let your boat down, I thought you were gonna tell me not to shoot it. Well, I don't know why, but I told you let your bow down because you held up for so long. I was afraid you're gonna get tired and maybe make a bat shot. And so when you let your bow down, I said, could you see your pens? And and you said yeah? And I said why do you shoot? And you said,

I mean the way I remember it was. You were like, well, I was asking you if I could shoot. I was like, I didn't hear you the right side, yea. And we obviously weren't yelling, and we were whispering, and I just said, and shoot that bear. And and so she pulls her bow back and just has no trouble, find her a pin, put it on this bear. And and man, when I heard that arrow hit, I knew we were in the chips. You can hear it on the video. That's a classic

passed through, you know, cavity shot. And uh, I mean it just and and I knew it passed through, and I did not at first. I was actually very very nervous, which is wild because it's a you're pulling forty five pounds and we were shooting one of those uh day six evo hundred grain broad heads, which is a good bow or a good a really good cut on impact sharp broad head. And uh. And I'm like, how did it feel? How did it feel? And she was like

it felt good. It felt good. Anyway, we crawled down and River goes over there and finds her arrow and it's just coded in blood. I mean, just like I remember telling the guys that I called afterwards. I was like, man, she picked up the arrow and her hand was just covered in blood after picking up that era, I mean, you know, meaning it's a good shot. And what we didn't realize it was a little bit far back and it was and it was probably a liver shot, probably

one long liver shot. The bear was slightly quarter in two. Anyway, we tracked and again you gotta remember, we're a long waist from the truck. Now it is black dark because we waited about twenty minutes before we even got down. So I mean it's like black dark. Were long ways from the truck. Um, we don't have cell rank. We got cell coverage up on top, but not when we're

off the side. And anyway, we tracked the bear for a little while and and figure out that it was the hit was a little bit far back by a few things we saw, and uh so I was like, okay, we gotta get out of here. So we we dropped off the mountain and came back the next morning, and I actually had to put a pretty good track job on the bear. Found him about probably he probably ran

three hundred yards through a pop off thicket. Ryan Grab, my good buddy, Ryan Grab came and Forest Teeter came and we brought the mules up, and I mean we found the bear fairly easily, but still we had to work. You know, we blood trailed them for three yards. Yeah, there's nothing about this hunt that was. So we get up to the bear and it's it's a beautiful, big bore. Ryan and I both felt like he probably weighed in the three pound change, which is a good bear at

a big old head. Um. I would later Green score the skull at over nineteen inches, which is like you know, Poping Young's eighteen inches. I mean, that's a that's a big bear. Guys, go to Canada and don't kill bears that big. It's a beautiful bear. In the night, the bear had been scavenged on by another bear. A bear had come in and basically gutted him for us. It's pretty wild. I mean it was almost like he didn't need any of the meat. He didn't tear up the

hide except on the belly. And uh, basically he that bear ate the guts out of that bear, which was pretty wild. Um. And while we were skinning your bear, a bear came in on us and got about eight It was coming back to the to the carcass to

get some more dinner. The wind was in our favor, and the bear got to about eight yards from us, and we just sat there and we're just gonna watch it, you know, and uh, it spooked when it finally saw us or got down window of this one and then we uh, we couldn't get the mules right to where the bear was at because of how thick it was. So we hauled all the quarters and all the meat and hide out to the mules. And this was actually is his first time to carry a bear hide. She'd

carry bear meat. And uh, it took a little bit of convincing, but we got the bear hide on her back and Ace our old mule, Colby's mule, uh carried carried the meat, no problem. I mean he could have carried less. About the smell of the bear. He was just like, let's go, let's go home. So he we put all the quarters on him and came off the mountain man. And that's our story. The river got her bear. You you I calculated. I think you passed eleven bears and and uh, you know, we let one get away,

so I'm not counting that with the pass. So, um, you passed eleven errors. And some of them were nice, nice bears, but just not not big older males. And um, yeah, that's our story. You want to do it again, kil bar him. Yeah, of course, what are we gonna do next year? M I probably have to kill one, not on a bait. Yeah, I don't know what I want to do. It's so much work up there. It's incredible

bear hunting though. Yeah, that was one of the most shocking things is that we would sit like that first bear I killed and then the other two years that are hunting. I mean I would sit on that bait for hours, and I mean we saw one and we got out there and like we had just got settled in and a bear walked up and just came to the bottom of the tree and shook it. And that bear left and seconds later another bear came and it

was like that all day long. I mean we got to watch sting cubs and it was like it was that was crazy and it was amazing, and like that's something that can't really be appreciated unless you're like sitting in a tree with the bear at the base of your tree shaking your tree. Yeah. Well it was a

great it was a great experience. And uh, you know, at the end of the video, I kind of give a charge about guarding the gate, and uh, you know, there's something really beautiful, really powerful about in modern times to be able to hunt a majestic beasts as awesome as a bear, and in Arkansas in all the places that we can. It's an incredible privilege to be able to hunt a bear and to and to to eat a bear. I mean we eat bear meat were we

bear meat all the time, healthy organic, good meat. People come to our house that aren't hunters and eat it and like it, do they not? Am I just making that up? No? Yeah, we could name names of all the people that come to our house. And bear nucom has been winning, uh some bets at school. There's a there's a little boy at school that is not from he's let's just say he's not from Arkansas, and uh, he knows that we hunt. He's a great, good little boy.

He's our friend. But he found out, you know, he's kind of new and he knows that we're hunters, and he has no context for hunting at all. And so he's like asking, my son, Bear, why are y'all hunting? Why are y'all hunting? Bears? Why are you even killing him? You just like to kill him? And bears like, no, yeah, we do like to kill him, but we eat him and we use the hide and we it's it's good. And Bears said he quote unquote gave him the conservation

speech and uh. And so this little boy was like, no, you don't eat bears and wild me. They were talking about deer hunting baron and Bear said, I bet you a dollar tonight we will eat wild game at our house and uh. And in that night he came home and he said, Dad, what are we having for dinner? And I said, bear chili. We have bear chili? What we have? No, you know it was bear nachos. Oh yeah, it was ranch being bear nachos, that's what. Yeah, And he said yes, And I said why are you saying that?

And he said, I just want to bet with such and such. And then so he came back to the next day and Bear said, I bet you too. Did you bet him two dollars? Did they bet a dollar? Yeah? Yeah, and the bets keep going up. Okay, that's that's the way I heard. He's like, well, we're gonna have to tell them stuff. Um, he's done. They're just kind of joking. They're really not exchanging money. But Beart was like, I bet you two dollars that we eat while game tonight at our house. And Bart had no not And he

comes home. He says, Dad, what are we doing? And I said, man wearing fried deer meat tonight and potatoes and he was like yes, And I was like, yeah, I know, it's good dinner. He's like no, I'm happy because I want another bet. It's so now appoint being the lifestyle that we live. Were privileged to be able to live it, and uh and and guarding the gate.

What guarding the gate means is that the bear hunting is the lowest rung on the ladder for the anti hunting community to enter into our sphere of hunting really is. They're not after elk hunters, they're not after dove hunters, they're not after duck hunters. They are after bear hunters, and so bear hunters in twenty nineteen, we have got to have a powerful narrative and a powerful ethic for

why we do what we do. And you know, we talked about it all the time, but I mean, hunting over bad is highly selective, and you were a powerful display of that, young lady. You passed eleven bears, You passed juveniles and females and waited for an older, mature male. And my buddy Brad Green always tells me that I need to say that that's not always the best thing

for conservation. Some management plans want you to take whatever bear or whatever type of animal because there's sometimes when they're trying to reduce the population, you know, So I will say that, I mean it's not every bear hunter shouldn't always just do what we're doing, but so, um, that's true. But guard the gate means having an intimate knowledge of why we do what we do, why we use hounds as a management tool for bears, why we

use bait as a management tool, why it's ethical. It's actually really ethical way to hunt bears because you're you know where they're gonna be standing. You can set up your tree stand in such a way that you're gonna get a good shot. Um, you get to age these bears, sex these bears. You know where the sALS are, you know where you know, you know the sALS have cubs because of pictures, And it's like it's actually a really

clinical way to manage bears. Also highly challenging, also very difficult to kill an older mature mail over bait, and super exciting and adventurous. I mean, I think we hunt for a lot of different reasons. We hunt because honey is a management tool. We hunt because we want meat, hide, claw and fang of we want wildlife related commodities, we want bear oil and setting our window luck right there um.

But we also hunt because we're hunters and we love it and we want adventure, and we don't want to just be office clerks all of our life, and some parts of our life we have to be office clerks. But then the other parts of our life we get to go out into wild places and have adventures and interact and beautiful places with majestic animals. And that is an experience that is powerful and that is what. That's what People that don't hunt don't understand it, and it's

not their fault. They just they've they've never seen it. They don't know. Yeah, you can't have like when people, if you're gonna respect that animal, there's nothing that I'll teach you how to respect a bear more than looking at it like head on and staring in the eyes of like a monster bear, or or walking up to bear that you just killing, and laying your hands on that bear and knowing no man has probably ever even seen this and much less touched it like that, Like

that is the most beautiful thing in the world. Is putting in all that work and hiking at that fountain and and just like washing bears all day, Like that's how you gain respect. And there's nobody in the world that can respect those bearing more than people that have done that. Yeah, well said, Well said, Well, we got to remember that the people that are the anti hunting world are the people that don't know hunting. They're they're not our enemies in a sense. A lot most of

them just don't know. And those are the people that we're trying to influence as the people that don't know, Like this little boy at school who now we'll bring him around the corner at some point and he'll be like, Yeah, what they're doing is good. It's a it's a good way to gather meet for your family. Um and uh. And we've got to tell our story or somebody else will tell it for us. And uh. I think that being a hunter makes you a better human if you do it right, It really does. Did we not on

that mountain River Nukem. When we came off that mountain, I said, let's make a deal. I said, I think God has helped us. You killed this bear, I think. And we talked, we we talked about a few parameters for your life that we felt like needed needed an upgrade, didn't we. That's an honorable thing. I'm not saying anything negative. And I said, okay, let's do that. I said, we've we have partaken of this wonderful thing that we just did together two years, two year adventure to take this

one animal. Let's leverage that and make it make us be better humans, didn't we. We talked about school, we talked about some other things, and and we kind of made a little commitment. And uh and that's that's powerful stuff and good stuff. So well, we'll have to forget what we're gonna do next year. Yeah, but uh no, it was awesome. So yeah, check out check out the videos called Rivers Barrett's on the Barony Magazine YouTube channel.

And hey, the best thing that you could do for us is go subscribe to our YouTube channel, watch our videos, and comment like it helps us to comment. The other thing that you could do for us, as far as an ask is, uh, leave a leave a review of this podcast, like a written review. Even if you just say this podcast is good or this is whatever. Just leave us, leave us review, give us some give us some stars on how we're doing, and we're about to

pound out some really great content. I think I'm gonna go on a podcast tour over in Tennessee, maybe hit from Missouri. UH got some special guests that are gonna be on. But anyway, River Knew com Thank you. Anything you'd like to say to the peeps out there in the podcast world, how about you say m hm, you don't want to say that. Ah So keep the wild places wild because that's where the beards live.