The Gate - Why Protecting Bear Hunting is Important

some food out for him. He's the one who doesn't like he's converted. It didn't take much. Yeah, man, I'm weak. That's a lot of people. A lot of people don't understand baiting like they have this. It's a it's a it's kind of a you know, it's like is it fair? And that's really not the right question, because if the macro concern is the health of wildlife and they're how they live inside of habitat, then we have to go back to what's the best management tool for this reason.

And then once you actually start baiting bearrass, you realize how hard it is. I believe that bears are going to be the gateway to the hunting community, and so if we guard that gate, they're never gonna get anything else. My name is Clay Nukeleman. I'm the host of the Bear Hunting Magazine podcast. I'll also be your host into the world of hunting the icon of the North American

wilderness bear. We'll talk about tactics, gear conservation, but will also bring you into some of the wildest country on the planet. Chasing Bear. We had the opportunity to sit down with James Brandenburg, the Arkansas state chair of the Southeast Chapter of the back Country Hunters and Anglers Organization

at the Global headquarters. We had an incredible conversation about some of the tough issues and tough questions related to large predator hunting and specifically baiting and using hounds for bear. James is a is a newer hunter, and we had a really open dialogue about some of the questions that he's had and undoubtedly some of the questions that other

hunters and non hunters might have had. One of the iconic phrases that came up inside of this podcast is the idea that bear hunting is the gate for the anti hunting community to come into the sphere of hunting. Why wouldn't we want a strong gate, with a strong narrative, with a strong understanding throughout the hunting community of why we do the things that we do and how we

do it. I think sometimes in the broader hunting community there's a sense that people would just like us to give this to the anti hunting community because they don't understand it. And it's probably one of the harder things about modern hunting to understand. Well, if bear hunting using hounds and bait was not the gate, then the next lowest rung on the ladder would be the gate, and we'd be in the same problem. So the answer is

to strengthen the gate. That's what we talked about on this podcast is filling in the gaps, building a strong narrative that makes sense and shows the rational aspects, also the traditional aspects, and all the positive benefits of bear hunting. If you're in the Southeastern United States in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, or Florida, Alabama, check out the Southeast chapter of the

back Country Hunters and Anglers. This group is dedicated to the preservation of access for hunters and anglers onto public lands. Public lands have typically been an issue that's been related to mostly public land in the West, or historically that's been where we think about these issues being. But the Southeast is full of public lands. A matter of fact, Florida, I think has some of the most public land of any state in the country. So we've got issues here

in the Southeast. Check out the back country Hunters and Anglers. Welcome to the Bear Hunting Magazine podcast. The day is June four. We're at the Bear Hunting Magazine Global head quarters. So we've got Jed here, Jed the Plothound, We've got Colby the Bear Tech, and our our guest today is James Brandenburg. James, I'll give I'll give a short introduction of of how I know you, and then I'll turn it over to you a little bit to tell us

a little bit about yourself. But so James is a native our kans and the way I know you is through back country hunters and Anglers. So James is the lead here in Arkansas Fort State Chair. Okay, so that's official. At the time we got to know each other, there really wasn't a state chair. But yeah, so James is with a back country Hunters and Anglers aside from being a father and husbands and hunter and golfer and you know, fisherman fisherman. Yeah, so before we get into you, I

want to tell people what we're gonna talk about. Just catch them right at first, because there may be some delay before we talk about this. But so James and I have been have been talking, and we thought it would be a good idea. Well was the one that actually had the idea, but to have a podcast where we talked about many of the misconceptions about bear hunting. And so James is, I'm not gonna say you're new to hunting. I don't know if that would be accurate,

but you didn't You didn't grow up with specifically bear hunting. Oh, definitely not. Yeah, And so there's somebody who's new to it doesn't understand it. There are a lot of questions that people might have, specifically about running bear with hounds, hunting bear over bait. I mean, I'm not afraid to say that those things are hard to understand. It's the thing that even many hunters don't understand. And so we're gonna have a discussion about about these things today. Yeah, yeah,

I mean, from my perspective, my background. Uh, grew up northwest Arkansas. As we've talked about, you know, is mostly my outdoor activity was golf. Um I did not. You will be the first golfer on the show. Excellent, excellent. I love being stinked in some way. Um. I didn't actually start hunting until I was trying to do the math on this on the way down here. Um. I think it was eight or nine years ago. So I've

got three boys. My oldest will turn nineteen, and then I have a seventeen year old, and or he'll be seventeen and he'll be four. My youngest will be fourteen this summer. So um, first one was interested in hunting, so I thought, well, I might as well at least get my hunter safety card and then I can buy a license, I can take him out. Okay, So at this time you weren't interested in hunting. I mean, I

was a little bit curious about it, but not. I was much more interested in fishing, you know, and I and I started that. Not too long before that, I started fly fishing, and I really got hooked on on that start. I did not intend to pun I'm very sorry about that. No, So I so I started with that and and that was kind of my introduction into

things outside the Yeah, yeah, very opposite everybody else's. UM. So I went through all kinds of things with them, and I'll and i'll we won't go into all of that, but that's how I got started with hunting. Um. Now, up in Missouri, you know, I know, down here in Arkansas, for example, let's just talk about deer hunting for a minute. You can bait down here. Well, in Missouri, you don't bait. And so a lot of what informed my early ethics around hunting I just had to do with the regulations

for where I was hunting. So then I then I started hearing even though I lived in Arkansas, we hunted in Missouri. That's where my in laws. I should I should spell that part out too. So we went to where my in laws lived and hunted up there. It's close to where we live. So those rules are what informed my own personal ethics. And so I would kind of like, well, why would you, I mean, baiting is bad, right,

and I hear about it in Arkansas. I'm like, well, I kind of looked down my nose on it little bit for why, I don't know, I mean, she's I've only been hunting a couple of years. Who am I to tell somebody else? Right? But then as I've gotten more and more involved in in hunting and and started to be exposed to different things. On the one hand, I've kind of realized, Okay, there's different ways to do it in different places, and maybe one is not necessarily

worse than the other. But there's also these other things that I think I do feel still like a new hunter, And so there's these different ideals that I that I come to, and I'm like, I think it's worth Yeah, I think I think a lot of people, if you don't know bear hunting, for example, you might wonder why do they have to use dogs? Why do they have

to use bait that doesn't seem fair? And and so I wanna we're gonna turn the tables, you know, I want to ask you those questions, and not my intention to to be confrontational, but I'm gonna kind of play Devil's advocate for a minute, and um, hopefully we can kind of give give people on both sides something to

think about. I think I think just talking about that stuff and discussing it openly is a better way to do it, rather than getting on Facebook and arguing about it and you don't know somebody on the other side of the screen, You have no idea what they're about.

You know, let's just talk about it openly. And I think inside of conversation like this, you really do create a the thoughts, the ethics, the narrative, the way that you say things kind of gets formulated in a formal conversation like this, And so I think we'll probably say a lot of things that probably a lot of bear hunters that have done this their whole life would understand. They'd be like, yeah, that's just the way that um.

But at the same time, it hopefully will I mean, I mean, I don't know what you're gonna ask me. So I hope we come to some good, good conclusions here of of ways to to think about this stuff, because there is an answer. I mean, if if the if the answer was word just we're just guys that are just trying to find the easiest way out to kill an animal and we're just lazy and we're we don't enjoy chat. I mean, you know, if if like all the negative stereotypes are true, then we're just dirt balls.

So there's there's got to be a way of looking at it that makes sense. And and the way that I've always said it is that I believe that if we were in if we could remove ourselves from this planet and go to another place that was just in some standard of you know, just nous, and you could present the case for hunting large predators based upon the world that we'd come from, because we're not there anymore,

I think we'd win. I mean, it's it's rational, it makes sense, that's sustainable, it's uh, there's all these positive things, and then the negative things oftentimes are not as rational. They're emotional, and there really aren't totally based in fact. That being said, nothing's perfect there. There there's bad they're bad things that have They are bad people at bait bears and run hounds. Well, there's bad people and everything. I mean, bad people that play tennis. Yeah, and golf.

O'm gonna say that one. You know what, we keep going back this golfing. I kind of I told I've told you this. I despised golf as a kid. My dad pushed me to be a golfer and I was like, no, I'm not a golfer. Don't bring up golf. Well, hey, I think that's a good introduction just for people that listen to like the first six or seven minutes of the podcast. Let's talk before we dive into all that stuff. Let's let's talk about let's talk about back country hunters

and anglers. Let's just give a I mean, even if we even if we just talked for a short period of time here about it, like, uh, describe what back country Hunters and Anglers is from even just like a national perspective, and then what's happening here in Arkansas. B h A is the uh, the voice for wild public land, public water, and wildlife in North America. That's the tagline.

And um, you know when we think about public land, public water, places where people go to hunt, or they go to hike, or they go to fish or bird watch whatever it is. You know, so much of that activity takes place in publicly held land and water. But b h A you know, got started I want to say, fifteen years ago, you know something roughly its evidentially the last two three years, you know. Um, And so originally you think about public land and and we're here sitting

in northwest Arkansas, were blessed to have national forest. I mean, we're basically sitting in the middle of it, but law out of a lot of parts of the country don't have that. Of course, public land was a big deal out west. There's so many millions of acres of it out there, and when they're started to become threats to that, to you know, getting rid of that public land, I think that's when the movement really started to to take

hold and people started to pay attention to it. Now you think about it, there's public land exists for a lot of reasons and recreation. It certainly is great for recreation, and it's there for other uses as well, and b h A recognizes those uses. But the part of the b h A steps up for is is the wildlife that's on it and and the people who use public lands and public waters for that purpose, to give them a voice at the table um now here in in

in the Southeast. You know, Arkansas right now is part of the Southeast chapter of b h A. We have of six states. Now Tennessee is just just ready to break off and become their own state chapter. So we'll be six states Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and Florida and um, so we're kind of a regional chapter. It's a little bit of an experiment within b h A. But within each state, you know, we we've got a leadership structure and and we focus on the issues that

are particular to that area. So Arkansas, it might be the Buffalo River, it might be um you know, the Ozark National Forest, might be something different in Louisiana. It's something different in every one of the states. But the great thing that we have, and I don't think most of the rest of the country understands this, we've all got that that Southern camaraderie, you know, the Southeast Conference mentality. You know, it's us against everybody else. It just matters

more here. So um, but here in Arkansas, what we're specifically doing right now is building out leadership structure. We've recruited some just awesome guys that stepped up at first

and said they want to be involved in helping. And we're not doing anything super formal with that right now other than you know, take advantage of their skills and their talents and desires and then you know, over the next I don't know, let's say six or eight months, we will start identifying the we'll name the seats on the bus, We'll start putting people in those seats on the bus, and we're gonna figure out where to drive the bus. That's the analogy that I like to use UM.

And we don't have any formal goals around you know, being being the next state to break out of the chapter or anything like that right now. But but what we do have is we want to get that leadership structure in place so that we can benefit from the rest of the Southeast Chapters leadership. And then UM bring BHAs message here to Arkansas. And what does that mean

for Arkansas? That's another question we get all the time, like why do I need to join b h A UM what's important in public lands and waters here in Arkansas? Think about where does a lot of our duck hunting happen, public land, public water. UM. You know, we've got world class trout fisheries, striper fisheries, we've got UM, you know, just just all these different resources in the state that we've got that heritage of taking advantage of those here

in Arkansas. And yeah, we're not maybe under direct threat right now. Let's hope we never get there. But but let's let's have something in place for if it ever did happen. Exactly right, and I think you said it, but a lot of the Western issues revolve around public lands actually being sold back to the state. That a pretty big deal. Like there's just keep you know, public public lands and public hands and that's pretty much what

that is referring back to. And and in super Layman's short terms, is that it doesn't sound so bad for public land to be sold back to the state, except the history of that transaction usually means that once it sold to the state, they don't have enough money to maintain it, and they shut stuff down, and they potentially

even ended up setting it into private hands. So it's like what what b h A from what I understand, and I'm a member of b h A, is that you know, no net loss of public land anywhere in the country, and an expansion of public lands and just the rights of who gets to go there, and and a lot of those issues are more Western stuff, but there's plenty of stuff here in Arkansas that I'm sure

that you guys will get involved with. C w D is another one just to briefly touch on, you know, that was something that was passed at Rendezvous just back in early May. And um, we'll be we'll be advocating for more money for research and things like that. You know, obviously here in Arkansas there's parts of area that's a

big deal. Yeah, you know, I think the biggest thing that b h A has done on a national scale has brought attention to public lands and and seeing and and they've made it They've made it cool to appreciate public lands, and that is a I mean, it's kind of a no brainer. But I mean I think it myself. I've been influenced by it. I mean, I'm in public land my whole life, and it's kind of like you just it's just your right and seeing. That's where like a difference of how how you and I grew up.

Because in twenty I think it was ten, we were on vacation, maybe it's even twenty sixteen. We're on vacation in Colorado and we're driving through National Forest and BLM Land and I'm I'm on my phone, like the kids are, so what's public land mean? Dad? I'm like, man, I don't quite understand that. So, I mean I'm googling what's the difference between BLM and for a service land and

what is that. And we actually took I mean, you know, much to my wife's chagrin, we just turned off the highway in one place and just took off, took the took the gate down, drove across, put the gate back up, and just drove out into this, into this rolling pasture, you know, public land, and just went driving around, took pictures, you know, until it was my wife was like, Okay,

this is enough, let's go back to the road. And uh that's when that's for me, when it started to become real that like, okay, this is what it means, like this is a place we can go and just go do stuff. But I didn't have that experience growing up, so I had to physically experience it to get it. Yeah. Well, I think it's and I think just the knowledge of the knowledge of the history of public lands and so powerful too. And I mean this is something that I

would have known before. But it's like I can't can't be denied that b h A has brought it to the forefront and that this experiment with public lands in North America is a very unique thing to the world, very unique thing for man the history of mankind that a government would say this land is for everybody, because typically kings and monarchs took stuff for themselves, Like for real, like the that's the king's forest, you can't go in there. I mean, that's typically how the world has worked for

a thousand years. And that's the that's what money does. You know, money, Money buys you exclusion in a lot of cases. And so it was a happy accident. I think it was just an experiment. I mean, it was Roosevelt and a bunch of other people that were just like, hey, these these places are worth protecting. Let's make this eternally the land, uh, you know, the land owned by the

people and citizens the United States. And what we can't forget and we can't forget inside that narrative is that Roosevelt most of those guys that were influential inside of that, did it because they loved hunting. I mean for real, I mean obviously the purpose of it was bigger than that, and Roosevelt knew that. I mean, like this is you know, not everybody's gonna just come here to hunt, and there's some places that you couldn't hunt. I mean, the national

parks and stuff, but in general that they were. Roosevelt loved land because he loved to hunt. I'm reading a book by Roosevelt right now called Tales of the Grizzly. I think he spelled grizzly with an S rather than Z like we do today. And it was his his book that he wrote about all his bear hunting. And I'm actually pretty amazed at the knowledge that he had chapters and chapters on on bear, uh just bear related,

not biology really, but just his observations anyway. I mean, the guy was in love with wild place is because of wildlife and because he loved to hunt and and and it's an interesting thing to think about how people who love to go out and and hunt that wildlife. I mean, yeah, I get it people, some people want to go look at it. But the ones spending the money on it and contributing to it are the hunters and anglers who are out there pursuing it for their

recreational purpose. And uh, we can't beat that drum loud enough. Where where where wildlife has cultural value, deep cultural value, specifically through hunting it is it is protected. And where wildlife is protected, the other way to protect wildlife. Wildlife is through game but regulations, but primarily through habitat preservation. I mean, we can't have bear and deer and turkeys and elk unless we got a place for him to live. So if you love wildlife, want to protect it, you

protect habitat. And I mean that is the drum. That's the drum. And and them back to even jumping into what we're gonna talk about. I mean, I think it's important that we understand the foundational the foundational ethics for why we're not just justified, but why it is right that we have the right to hunt, you know, and and and the main thing too is that it's worked. This it's no longer an experiment, you know, seventy five years ago, it was kind of an experiment, you know.

Roosevelt them in eight eighty nine, I think eight seven maybe was when they created the Boot and Crockett Club, and that was kind of the beginning point of coming from this century of mass degradation of wildlife. And then all these guys were like, wait a minute, all this big game is gonna die off. We gotta do something.

So I mean that's that's kind of like a point when you could say something started then forty or fifty years later, uh Aldo Leopold, a bunch other guys started, you know, it just it just kind of built on and this idea of wildlife management, that we can manage this wildlife strategically and manage land. And and it's like back then it was kind of an experiment, Let's see

if this works. And then now here we are hundred and twenty years later, hundred and thirty years later in the North American midle of wildlife conservation, and what we've done with habitat is created a continent that has more big game than any place on the Earth. I tell people that on YouTube almost daily. I'm pointing my finger for all those of you listening, I'm pointing at Kolbe

for emphasis. Now, I'm serious because on our YouTube channel we get a lot of interaction from people from other countries. They see shoot a bear and they they it just makes the well for them. It is they think it's the last one on the earth. Yeah for real. I mean they're like these are endangered. It's always in broken English, you know, and it's like these are in dangerous. How could you do this? I hope your family dies. We

have to do today. I translated a comment I didn't know what it was, and it was actually a good comment. But and and I'm always and I have the same banter that always go back. It's just like we have more big game than any place on the earth. Most places killed out their big game a thousand years ago, or they put it, you know, it's held in reserve somewhere, you know, by the barons or you know, the kings or whatever it is. And you can't you can't go

over there and do that. Don't don't shoot the king's deer or whatever it is. Yeah, yeah, well, so, I mean that's that's the thing that's so powerful to me, is that what we're doing is not an experiment. It's it's working. And uh, and it's the hunters that have primarily done it, and that's just hard to deny. And uh, that doesn't give us a right to just do whatever we want. I mean, it doesn't, it doesn't. But but it is well, and it's still we still can't always

agree on what that means. Is hunters right there, And that's that's a good maybe that's a good lead into even the conversation at hand. Just yeah, so Bear hunting. If we're gonna if we're gonna open up that that can you know, hunting large predators in general is a it's a hot button topic. It's a controversial topic amongst people that have no concept of hunting or rural lifestyle or tradition or scientific base wildlife management. It's a hot button with them, but it's also a hot button with

people hunters are our allies that don't understand. Um So, and when we say large predators in North America, what we're talking about is grizzly bearris, black bears, and mountain lions. Basically, those would be the large pred polar You can hunt polar bears in a few places. Um but those are those are the primary targets that that's that's what we're talking about. Um So, what would what would you say

or where would you like to start with? Just just kind of something and if you if you wanted even to just pick a certain a certain method of honey, Well, let's let's because I brought it up before, So let's talk about baiting a little bit. I knew you were going to bring it up. Yeah, you were ready, um baited yourself into that one. Wow. So so, you've walked into my trap. Uh exactly, so ensnared another another form call. But you gotta you gotta jump in here too. I'm

gonna help me. I'm gonna dial them back now, all right. So, so when it comes to baiting, obviously some places in the u S you can, in some places you can't. So as I came so first of all, you know, my first introduction to big game hunting was obviously white tail, as it is for most people. And that's about all I did, and that's about all I wanted to do. And then um started to get a little bit more interested in maybe a western hunt. I went on a

prong horn hunt last fall, and that was fun. You know, I would say that equating it to something in the fishing world, that's like taking your kid out and going blue yeo fishing you know, some worms and going to the dock. And I mean it's not quite that easy. It's it's a little more difficult than that. But lots of things to see, lots of game. You get to see it moving around all over the place. Okay, so I've crossed that bridge. I'm like, Okay, now stuff's getting

a little more interesting to me. Um, but like when it comes to hunting bears, Um, why why would you use bait? Why? And and I even only just took up archery hunting last fall and never wasn't successful at all, didn't really get a shot at anything. But um, why would you why would you need bait to to to hunt a bear? Well? Can I ask you a question first? We'll see, let me put it back now, like, would you like from a new hunter coming into this, would you have ethical issues like if you were to go

do it? Yeah? Yeah, I think that's what would you would what would be what would be the thing that would be like this could be bad? See, I would I feel a little uneasy about it from the standpoint of altering the natural habit of the natural habit of the bear exactly take an advantage of it. And that's I think that's just something that's formed in me over time.

It's not necessarily you know, I'm not repeating. I mean I've heard that said before, but I think from the standpoint of, um, if I wanted to try to be as natural of environment as I could, then the use of bait to me feels like I'm altering that in a way. That's unfair to the animal. Okay, no, that's good.

You know. I think the baseline understanding that a lot of people don't have about bear is that bears are so widely geographically distributed from the I say this all the time, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean, from the northern boreal forest all the way down to Old Mexico as the native black bear range. And we're talking about black bears, I'm talking about baiting. Let's just say that and and that. Why is that? Why is it only black bears on that you're talking about that?

Just because we know pretty baiting grizzlies would be like a pretty rare thing. It's legal in Alaska kind a few places, because just not that it's they just feel like it's more relevant to talk about baiting black bears. Why isn't it legal though, Well, because they don't have any trouble. Well, that's a great question. Because they don't

have any trouble managing the populations with other methods. So that is ultimately so if you understand this, why geographic distribution of black bear in these wide varieties of habitats eastern deciduous forests basically from where we're at right now in western Arkansas all the way to the Atlantic Ocean for the most part today is heavily forested eastern deciduous forest. Most places in Arkansas the visibility is about fifty yards.

So what I'm getting at, and I can describe in more detail, is that the only places that you can bait bears, it is used as a management tool to harvest the amount of bears that they need harvested out of a certain region. So it's more of a scientific approach rather than a convenience. I mean that that is, that's not even like doctored up theory, that that is the truth. You don't have to go to your like bear hunter manual and this is what you say, that's

actually that's what the biologist would say exactly. No, I'm being serious. I mean sometimes people we we spend things. And when I say we, I'm just telling like mankind in general can spend something to make it feel like it's in his favor. But I mean, uh, like a lot of Western states if they can harvest, because what

what states do state biologists. The ethic of wildlife management organizations run by the federal government of the state government is that we want to utilize wildlife for the people, but also for the greatest good of that particular species of animals in general. I mean, that's the ethic of it. And so wildlife managers say, we have this amount of habitat, we have this number of animals, This amount of habitat

will hold this number of animals. We that population of animals expands by this mathematical percentage every year, and for bear that's ten percent per year. So if you have a population of a thousand animals next year, you're gonna have animals. The next year you're gonna have yeah, you know. And and so just so what they say is to stabilize the pon So once that population fills up the habitat, then they have to take out the surplus animals every year.

And so they find ways to do that through management tools, which would either be through spot and stock hunting. Where there's no can't bait, can't run hounds. All you can do is just go out in the woods and try to kill a bear. Um they did that in Arkansas for twenty one years from night to two thousand one, and we killed about five two maybe the maximum amount of bears we ever killed was fifty in the entire

state in a given year. Well, the population began to expand so much that the game and Fish said, we have to have a way to manage these bears through hunters. And so they said, we're going to open up baiting bears on public land, and we're gonna manage these bears through Arkansas's bow hunters. I mean, so, so baiting was the only way that it could be done. And the private land in Arkansas private land in certain zones in Arkansas,

and so baiting is a management tool. And that was the That was the foundational point, James, that I was gonna say that has to be understood is that we take these things and we turn them into and I'm gonna air quotes sport. I mean, because we enjoy hunting. We do, and I didn't enjoy it, we wouldn't do it.

And and so what what somebody might see as sport, But actually we're killing two birds with one beautiful stone, and that beautiful stone is is that we're managing high life based upon science, based upon things that have worked in the past and are working extremely well. But we're also enjoying, enjoying the resource. We're enjoying hunting. We're enjoying bear meat, we're enjoying the challenge. We're enjoying these things and so um, so that would be like the foundational thing.

This is a management tool. Let me go on? Shall I go on? Please? Please do the the management tools. The more effective management tool is, the more selective that hunters can be. So like in bating, I can be highly selective on which animal I take out, and the hunting culture of a certain region dictates kind of how that plays out. What we're what we're trying to do in Arkansas is to build and this is this is gonna throw people off. But well, I won't use the

catch phrase I'll throw people off. We are I'm we're trying to tell people shoot older mature males over bait. Yeah, that's the target animal. The T word. Don't say it, no for real? Um. And so if there's a reason for that, there's a biological reason for that, right absolutely. I mean to an older mature males already contributed to the gene pool and he is, there is no net

loss on the population when he is extracted. So by targeting older mature males, we we give preference to juveniles and females and let them grow up and do what they do. So I mean like hunting older mature males is the best thing to do in almost any type of population. And so when I say the most effective, like we could go out here on private land and good bear country in Arkansas and get seven or eight ten bears coming into our bait. Now, could you go in there with a bow and kill one on any

given day? Man, you you've got your work cut out for you. And a lot of people wouldn't understand that, and that didn't necessarily what this conversation is about. But you can be selective when I go into the national forest to hunt bears. Let me just stop right there and say, are those points clear? Yeah? I'm not a selective And it's a management I think the management tool piece of it is. That's like a uh, like a

lightning strike kind of thing. Um when we when we talk about hunting a conservation, and and most hunters will use that as a justification hunting his conservation. Okay, So if we're gonna use hunting a conservation, then we want it, we need to be effective with it. And so in bear hunting, you know, even though I don't. I don't do that right now, and I don't didn't. Let's say

I don't understand it. If that's the best way to manage that population for a conservation, then I that's a gateway, like I can I can step over that chasm that I had. Now I have a bridge to get from one side to the other, and I can say, Okay, I can respect that. I can understand that now, I mean I could. I I could say, maybe baiting isn't the right way to go about other species, and we don't have to get into that. But but for bears, Okay,

I get it. And that's a good point. Probably for white tailed deer, we could kill all the white tailed deer we needed without baiting in Arkansas. Probably, yeah, I mean, but we might have to sharpen our skills a little bit. But but I know what you're saying. I'm picking up. Okay, here's here's the Here's I think the term would be. The counter factual is what if there was no baiting. Let's look at that world. Let's look at the world of Arkansas where you know, people just said you can't

bait bears, that's wrong. Well, this is what would happen is that. And I know this because I have tracked Arkansas bear hunting for the last twenty years. And I mean there are very few people in state of Arkansas that are consistently going out and killing bears in the National Forest, just without bait, without hounds, just like going

out and just hunting them like deer. Very few people now. Granted, if that was the only thing we could do, there would be more people doing it, and people would find ways to be successful maybe, but you'd also lose some people because you can only go out and beat your head against the rock for so long before you give up. Yes, that's a good point. So here's what would happen. I mean,

I can guarantee it. This is what would happen. Is we would maybe get to a point where we killed a hundred and fifty bears a year, where and and and we have got to take out four hundred bears a year for this bear population not to just explode. Well, and so I think that's a good segue into something else I wanted to ask you about, which is what

happens when the bear population explodes? Good question. So, so bear hunting as um it's a management tool obviously you've got if you get too many bears, you get too many of any animal on the landscape, you know, that causes problems with what they eat and the habitat they you know, they destroy the habitat um. But but what else goes on? Well, there's a there's a phrase that

biologists used called cultural tolerance. So what is the cultural tolerance of this region for people to have bears walking through their yard and people bears walking up on their porch eating their bird feeders, stuff like this. But here, here's here's a version of what would happen, is that bears would begin to saturate into places that people don't want them. There would be bears, you know, on I live kind of in the city limits of a rural

town in northwest Arkansas. I mean, if there were bears walking through this town every day, rummaging through people's we'd have all kinds of problems that would put pressure on the game and fish. Game and fish would have to trap foward to five hundred problem bears a year, massive amount of money, massive amount of energy that had problem bears, and ultimately bears would die. Ultimately, ultimately they would euthanize

the amount of bears that they would have to. I mean, it would be a good experiment to just let this thing go for fifty years and see how many bears they had to euthanize in order to stabilize the population with grizzlies. Now exactly. We did a we did a

podcast with Joe ondellas Yellostone Bear Country Association, Western Bear Foundation. Now, yeah, there the state officials killed forty four grizzly bears last year, euthanized forty four problem grizzly bears that they had, and you know out there they have they don't want to kill those things like there, this is like last resort they harvest. They killed euthanized forty four bears. What we're fighting for out there is a twenty bear hunter quota

for bears. All we're saying is those have twenty bear tags a year that we can utilize, and uh, they're killing more, they're killing more. Inside of that, what happens when you start to hunt a predator like that man that we talked a little bit about this on the podcast that that just came out. But when you have an unhunted population of of top predators apex predators. They just get bold and it changes them. They get bold

and it changes them and they become dangerous. The most dangerous grizzly bears on the planet are out there in the Yellowstone Region, um and what and so you know, I've thought, well, what good is it gonna do to kill twenty bears out in these places, because you're not gonna hunt them like in the city limits of Cody, Wyoming, where they're actually causing problems. Do you understand I'm saying, we're we're hunting. We'd be hunting these bears in the

national forest, out in the wilderness. But if they're out there, if you hunt them out there and leave enough space out there for them to live, they don't have to go to Joe described it that it's like a bucket. You know, there's only so much volume in that bucket for bears. The bucket is full, and now water is flowing over the top. And so these grizzly bears are in a bunch of places they were never even naturally before.

I mean, like, that's the way I understood Gym Sessions and Joe to say it is that there are grizzly bears now today in that region, inhabiting places that historically grizzlies didn't even live, like plane, you know, like and so. And it's because there's this bucket that's a really good bucket. It's full spilling out. So if you killed, if you harvested some of those bears out of the main bucket,

they wouldn't be having to flow out. Isn't part of the argument um in the courts around grizzly bears, this argument about connecting populations together, and you would have to have a certain number of I mean, you would have to overflow that bucket to force those populations to go together. So it seems like there's this I mean, it's not counterintuitive, but it's like the two ideas clash with each other, Like we we we must have these bears connect with

the other populations. But when they overflow the bucket, it's you know, broader water takes the easiest course downhill. And so that's Cody Wyoming, let's say, or wherever it is that they think. Some of those arguments are probably just a good way for them to stall this thing inside of court. I mean, would it be ideal for these like the Cellway bitter Root population of grizzlies and this other.

And I'm not an expert really on the geography there, but I mean, would it be ideal that all these populations inner bread and their bears moving back and forth. I'm sure it would be, But is it essential? No, I mean, that's that's from what I have filtered, But it is a I mean, the anti hunting groups are just concerned about keeping this in court for eternity. They would keep it in court for the next seven years. Good,

it's good business for them to make money off. I mean, like, but but to get back to our Arkansas analogy, Um, I mean, that's essentially what would happen. We would so we would deal with those same kind of bear issues. For example, if I'm vacation out in Colorado, you know, when you roll into town, they're they're trying to educate every tourist do not feed the bears. We do not want the bears coming into town. And everybody's like, oh, I want to see a bear, Well that's we don't.

We don't want to see bears in town. And we would deal with that same kind of thing in Arkansas, right, Yeah, And and you know a hundred pot here's here is something that a lot of hunters wouldn't know and actually kind of owes against in some ways. Our Our message is that a hunted population of bears grows and expands faster than an unhunted population. Why isn't about that? What it's just a proven it's just a bare fact, because that is it. Because they tend to stay in the areas,

they'll get more relis. It's even more mysterious than that. And I don't I've never heard anybody give a real good explanation of it. But basically it's an increase in litter size. I mean, it's like, think about it, like a sow bear out in the mountains here in Arkansas. Somehow her body perceives that animals are being extracted from the population, and so she rears three cubs rather than two. I mean, that is essentially the way it works. That's

what's happening in Oklahoma. Like there there. We opened up season in Oklahoma ten years ago, I think, um. And so they they're currently inside of a research project where they're trying to understand the impact of harvesting forty or fifty bears out of a population, because that's all they kill in Oklahoma between forty and seventy bears a year, and uh, and what they're seeing is increasing litter sized already.

And so but so again, like as a as a as a hunter that's wanting to hunt, you know, we say, well, we're going to control the population through hunting. It's true, but you actually have to begin. It creates a beautiful, wonderful cycle because it creates more bears. But but it also like if you were just a staunch anti hunter and you said, we want bears on the landscape, I want bears crawling in my windows at night, then we'd say, good, let us hunt them. I mean yeah, because we'll have

more of them. Okay, you think think about it. This way to Arkansas has had a we've been able basically the floodgates of Arkansas bear hunting opened in two thousand one when we were allowed to hunt bear over bait. For twenty one years from nineteen eight to two thousand one, all it was was just spotting stock bear hunting in Arkansas, and we killed between five and I can't remember, yeah, I mean and honestly I don't even know if we ever killed fifty two thousand one, we started killing bears.

We started killing between two hundred and five hundred bears a year. Let's just say twenty years, we killed three hundred bears a year. Math for me, how many bears? Is that? Six thousand bears? We've killed six thousand bears in the last twenty years in Arkansas, and we have more bears today than we've ever had, and more people, I mean, honestly more people than we've ever had. You talked to Myron Means, the bear biologist for Arkansas Game

and Fish Commission, to verify that statement. I just said, I promise you I could text him right now, do we have more bears in Arkansas than we've had in the last hundred years? And he would say yes. Someday. I would love to see in Arkansas bear in the wild. Never seen one? Yeah, you know a lot of people haven't. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know experience what swimming across Beaver Lake the other day?

Do you see that? I did? Yeah? But there was a bear and there was a bear in this town, uh a few weeks ago, like right over here, which is pretty I mean, there's a bear habitat here close. There's been I've seen bearside in this hollow across the road from me, because I mean, I've never seen a bear on my property, but this is my dream to one day see a bear on the properties walking right through the backyard and should start putting some food out

for him. He's the one who doesn't like he's converted. It didn't take much. Yeah, man, I I'm weak. No, that's a lot of people. A lot of people don't understand baiting like they have this. It's a it's a it's kind of a you know, it's like is it fair? And that's really not the right question because if the macro concern is the health of wildlife and they're how they live inside of habitat, then we have to go back to what's the best management tool for this reasons?

And then once you actually start baiting bears, you realize how hard it is. Yeah, which is true, and I've heard you mentioned that before. I mean success right in Arkansas for bears, they don't really have a statistic, but I bet it would be like it's hard to get a statistic because we all get a bear tag right exactly right, so um, And then they also leave the bait to go to natural foods really quick, and that's That's the thing that makes it tough here is that

they leave bait to go to natural foods. Um so you can. A bear would rather eat a white oakacre and as he would a donut or anything you can put out for him. The most animals are like that. It's kind of odd how they figure that out. It's better to eat the natural stuff than whatever it is we put out for him. Yeah, we're the only species that hadn't figured that out. We'd rather eat cheetos, I'd

rather eat venison. Yes, yes, let's talk about that. Well, okay, there there's another point that I think is a massive stumbling block for people is that they say, are you gonna eat it? Do you eat bear? Well? I want to. I want to. I want to come at it from a little bit different angle if if that's okay with you. So one of the things that I think has always been a roadblock, well, I use always loosely a roadblock

for me. I heard somebody say once that when you get down and you start skinning out a bear, man, it really looks like a person when you get all the fur off. Is that true? I mean, it looks more like a person than a skin deer. Looks like. I mean, so I can see somebody saying, yeah, okay, well, I mean that's just something you have to get over then, I mean, yeah, I guess i'd like in that too. The first few times I killed a deer, I had, but I struggled with gutting it and doing all that.

And now it's just like, you know, last year was the first year because because at my inn lost place, it was like, up, bring the four wheeler. We got one down, and we take it back up to the house, string it up, do all the stuff. Last year was the first year that I was like, I'm gonna do this right there. I killed it right there. I'm gonna

just do it right here in the field. It was way easier to do it that way than stringing it up and having it, you know, guts flopping out of it and blood running down on my shoes and everything. I mean, yes, okay, you get into it a little bit more in your elbows and stuff, but uh, you get over it. And if you being desensitized to a really natural and normal process, taking it, taking all the way from from the field to your table helps a

lot with that. Definitely. I just realized what I should have said when you said, does a bear look like a human when it's skinned? What I should have said, I never skinned the human. Okay, that's what I should have said. I get to stay for a little while longer. Oh man, we're just pounding away here, um on time. No, so well, let's stay on this just a minute. Like a lot of people don't understand that a bear's diet. A lot of people would say, well, eating a bear's

like eating a coyote. You know. They would think, like, you know, the kind of the old mosaic law of like don't eat anything without a what is it a cloven hoof? I mean like cow, sheep, deer? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean like and so you know, certainly something that doesn't have hoofs you wouldn't eat, you know, but a bear pretty much has a diet not much different than

a wild turkey when you actually realize it's a lot more. Well, this is this is that analogy only works in this scenario of the bears diet is is plant matter is protein from animal protein of that like cent of that typically for Arkansas bears anyway, is insects. No, kid, Yeah, I mean they're they're grubbing fools cants. I mean they roll logs and need ants. I mean that's basic essentially, like what turkey eats. I mean, but will they catch a fawn if they see one? Heck yeah, but that's

only going to be for a few weeks. And now you get into you get into bears that are influenced by salmon streams and stuff, and you're in a totally different category. There's gonna be periods of time that they're gonna be eating a lot of fish based proteins, and you don't want to eat those bears. Right Well, there, I just can't say that I have ever eaten a black bear that was like just pounding salmon. I've heard people say it's not bad. I've heard people say it's terrible.

It's just all over the board. Well, end of the day, you're not gonna kill it and not try to do something productive with it. You know, you're gonna try it one way or the other. It may not be you know, just like you go to the store and buy beef. I mean, sometimes you get a steak that's really good and sometimes it's not really good. So I guess you just kind of have to take what you get. But it's good. So so what you're you're working on just

it's it's good. I mean, like I could feed you bear in my house and you would think it was beef. I mean, I just really believe that. Like if you had no idea who I was, and you were just sent to my house to eat dinner and you walked to my house, I could feed you something and you'd just be like, that's good. It's good meat. I mean, it's good, had an interesting rub on it, little sweetness to it. Yeah yeah, maybe so maybe um so cold.

He's got a product, he's working on it, and it's in historically, you know, I think a lot of it. I don't know if there's really a place for this, but you know, in in today's society, everybody is so interested in preserving traditions and traditions of their people. Men, our people eight bear on this continent for a long time. I mean, and I guess when I say are people, I mean people who moved here. Even a lot of us have some Native American probably somewhere way back there.

But but that's what I'm talking about. And I mean, you know, the there's there's historical literature here in Arkansas that said, if you you know, in the early eighteen hundreds, set down at the dinner table in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas and had red meat, it's about an eighty percent chance it was black bear, you know. I mean,

there's just there's a lot of historical usage. And here's what happened in Arkansas is that for seventy five years we didn't hardly have bears because they were extra pated by habitat loss and market hunting, which is very different from what we do today. There's a big misunderstanding there with just the general public as they think, well, hunters are the ones that killed all the wildlife at the

turn of century. Man, they were they were basically like farmers, I mean they were they were going out to reap a harvest for to market it. You know. It's that's nothing like what we do. You know, we kill one barrier year and they're happy. Market hunter might kill you know, Daniel Boone kill the hundred and fifty bears in one winter, you know what I mean. So it's like very different. But so it's it's it's historical usage. Um, it's a good meat and uh, you know you do have to

cook it. Thoroughly. It can't carry trickadilla. That that's just a non issue. Trickadilla dies. I believe that just over a hundred forty five degrees or something, which is we don't cook hardly anything that other than like a rare steak. You just want to cook it and they'll be totally fine. They say, does it die if you freeze it for a certain moment? Heard, there's different strains of it, and

some strains die and when it's frozen, some strains. So it's better just cook it, Just cook it, just cook it, and then you have the fat. Yeah, So tell me, like what what all do you do with the fat. But this is intriguing to me because obviously white tail it's like get rid of the fat, you know, And I know there's some people that are kind of kind of trying to break that stigma now. But tell me

about bear fat. Well, we've actually I've actually got about thirty pounds of bear fat thawing out in my freezer and my refrigerator as we speak, because we're gonna render some bear fat this week. And uh, I've got three different types of bear fat. I've got some bear fat from Manitoba. Canada, from Montana and from Oklahoma, and all these bears were eating different things in different parts of the country. We're gonna render them down, and we're gonna

try a couple of different methods for rendering them. But basically bear fat is uh you know, it's just like pig lard of white lard, and you cook it down and it turns into oil. And there's all kinds of traditional uses and not even I say traditional and just in that that used to be the only thing that people had. But uh kolbe Or ordered a oil burning lamp for the office here that we're gonna we're gonna use uh bar oil in that lamp. It burns a

smokeless flame. So we'll have this glass. And that's why people use it for I mean, think about being a pioneer here in the Ozarks in the early eight hundreds. Nobody ever dreamed of electricity. And man, it gets dark at six o'clock in the wintertime, and you know, candles only burned for so long. But you killed the bear last fall that in you rendered, you know, three gallons of bar oil. Man, that stuff burns, I mean, so you can use it for burning oil lamps, burning oil lamps,

but you use it for cooking. I mean, um, well that squirrel video we did that was at the BH Deal. We cooked that that squirrel meat and just straight bear fat, and uh it does not have a wild taste. I mean you would just think like bear fat would just be like this, like it's just it's just oil. It didn't even have a flavor. It's just it's just large. Um, So you cook with it. That what bear fat is renowned for is for baking any any any baking product

that you would use oil, like for pie crusts primarily. Uh. I was just thinking about that. I made that turkey that I shot this spring. I made turkey schnitzel last night. And then I have a family recipe that goes way back. My family is originally from Germany. There's some recipe that was handed down. We call it miro Shan. It's basically

just like an apple pastry. So I made homemade dough and made my ro shan, you know, with just some you know, I had to cut some crist go into it and give you some barroil when we get it rendered down. Oh that's like a parting gift for being on the show. That's that's great. We gotta we gotta render it down first. But for l I'll give you something, even if it's just a as a keepsake. Um. The other it's it's people used it for oil and knobs and guns and stuff, for leather conditioner, I mean pretty

much anything. There's only so many things you can do with oil bait, you know, animal fat and and uh, you can anything you can do with anything else, you can do with bear fatum. Except there's one thing you can do with bear fat that you can't do with anything else, and that is forecast of weather. No kidding, I was actually just reading an article. Now there's there's like legitimate There was a guy named George wimsat Okay, Okay, back in New Mexico. He died in like ninety five

or something, and he you are agreed about him. Phenomenal guy that was covered on all these different news stations and he spent sixty years. Um. Native there was a Native American like folklore that you could forecast the weather looking at barre oil. They used to put bar oil in deer gall bladder or bladders. They would preserve the oil by putting it in a bladder and when it dried it was clear and you could see through the oil.

And so they would store this barrel oil and these bladders and the oil would change and it would bubble and it would change colors, which it does barrel oil does that changes atmospheric pressure and temperature, atmospheric pressure um. And so this guy began to study it and kept detailed records for sixty years and was like predicting weather with like great certainty. Well, we got some folks you

probably you know, learn a thing or two from that. Then, yeah, we need to get him out in the woods and and get a bear for some of these meteorologists and then maybe they could correlate. And uh. Actually the story where in his in his hometown that the local meteorologists and him kind of for like a publicity stunt, did a deal where they both forecasted and saw who was right. And then George was right that week, like he won. It was like a contest. I read this today from

back back in what was his cat's name? I believe it's George whim sat sad W I M s A T. We can put it in the show notes. There we go. Yeah, so so I've had bear fat on the south facing wind still for many years, Um, and I planned to, uh, we actually talked about it today. We're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna do some experiments. I've got bear fat right there. Actually, you see that jar right there, that is about six year olds duh, that is about

six year old bear fat. So that is not good bear fat. Bear fat will stay good in a window still like that for about two years at room temperature. But that's just been there for years. I've rendered it. But hey, let's talk about one more thing. Um, we've we've we've pretty much run our gamut here, But did you want to talk about hounds? Yeah? Sorry, how to wet my whistle there? Yeah, So obviously that's another as I get all kinds of love here from from a

fair dog. Yeah, I'm serious. This dog right here, and he himself is not a bear dog, but his entire genealogy on both sides goes back to bear and mountain lion hounds. That's that's ironic that Jed just like totally cuddled up right to James, is just like leaning on him and swabber and like he's trying to convert me. So so that's the other thing I think that you know, again going back to my to my it's crawled in

his lap. Now to my background is okay, you know, if you see dogs running deer, you shoot those dogs, right that, I mean, that's what I was told. Now, we didn't have a big problem with that, but the mindset that it placed in me was Okay, dogs chasing game equals bad. So I understood. Now there's other perspectives on that, but um just I'm briefly why would you need to use dogs for that, Like, what's the what's the benefit of that? Is it just the same kind

of thing as it is with bait. But to go back to the very foundational place, it's a management tool. I mean, like we could have in Arkansas, they could have said we're gonna let hound hunters manage the better population and we could have killed as many bears as we wanted. I mean, like, you know, you could have you could have taken out a better the percentage you needed.

Let me say that. Um so, the places that have hound hunts in North in in the States, and in Canada they hunt hounds, and lots of the Canadian provinces is it is a management tool just like baiting. So I just I'll say that to say it's a scientific based management tool to help game agencies gain their objectives

for harvesting bears. Number one. Number two, what a lot of people would say is that, you know, well, isn't this kind of you know, I've heard people say it's barbaric or it's it's old so old fashioned, like aren't

we beyond using dogs to like harass game? I mean, all the worst of what you could ever imagine have been said about this, and the this goes back some to tradition, but also too, it's those are the worst possible stories they've been We've been running hounds, especially in the Eastern United States since Europeans got here and then

Native Americans started running hounds. To one of my favorite books that we're gonna talk about another podcast right here in the Ozarks, there's a whole story about Native Americans having bear hounds and they ran bears out here at White Rock. Yeah. So I mean it's like it's not just the white Europeans that were the ones running hounds, but I mean they say George Washington brought over hounds from Europe. Um, So it's an effective tool to manage gaming and catch a lot of game. But I go

back to that effectiveness for selecting certain species. How honey is the only catch and release type of hunting. That's a fair point. That's that's what that's That's what we say is that you tree an animal and then you decide. You got all the time in the world to decide if that's an animal that you want to take, and so if you decide if it's a mature male or

or whatever exactly. Let me go ahead and say this while I'm thinking about it there, there's a lot of a lot of people would think that, uh, spotting stock would be like the purest, most most ethical form of hunting, which I love spotting star hunting like out West. We just got back from Montana, probably the least selective way because you see it from so far away, you have very difficult to tell what it is, and you might hunt for a week and see one animal. I mean,

Clay nucom is a perfect case in point. I was going to shoot that blonde bear. You saw the video. Did you see some of the Montana video? May? I can't remember if you I thought you can't remember? If I saw that maybe you just saw the teaser. I think I saw the teaser. There was a blonde bear in the tea. I didn't mean to put you on the spot. You better start watching our stuff. I saw that a couple of times. He just said he saw something about money. That video just came out. Don't feel bad. Now.

There was a blonde bear that I didn't really have time to judge, and I was going to shoot the bear, and and uh boy, after I shot, I was like, man, that was a small sow. You were thankful that you missed at that I was, I mean, and now if I had killed it, I would have just been like, you know, I would have been happy. I mean, like, this is spotting stock hunting. You know, you just take

what you can get. And that's true. Um, but so like that narrative that spotting stock hunting is the that's the pure way, that's the ethical way, that's the sportsman's way. And I'm not saying you can't be selective in spotstock hunting. I mean, somebody could easily combat that and say, well you got but it's more than point. You see my point. You you go on a hound hunt, you could look at I don't know three or four bears in a week. I mean, they're hard to treat. That's the other thing.

It's extremely difficult. Takes an extremely dedicated person and houndsman to be good. Um one and twenty bare hounds ends up being a real barehound. I mean, like these dogs like you know, I mean, like there's a these guys to vote their lifetimes to breeding these dogs. And uh, and it's very difficult to to tree animals and uh but you see my you see, my point is that

it's another way to be selective. And uh. And here's here's the thing, and I'll put this on the table, is that people say that it's inhumane, like because absolutely there are bears that get caught on the ground. I mean we got to say that there there are bay ups on the ground. When a dog is looking at the face of a bear, and I mean it's like, you know, they're being bade up from a I I think that in general, most people don't understand the ferociousness

of the natural world. That bear has been in so many bear fights. That bear, I mean, for him to swat at those dogs for and I'm just being honest, this is just the truth. For that bear to swat at those dogs and be running around for however long is a small is an easy thing for him to overcome. I mean it's like he's his life has spent, he's got claws and teeth. And and here's another thing. We

have hyper emotionalized death so much as a culture. Yeah, if if a bear or a squirrel or a turkey is not killed by God, fear and ethical hunter, then he will die of very terrible death guaranteed. Yeah. I mean, you see a bear walk through my yard out here, and you go, what a beautiful animal. How would you ever want how would you ever want to kill that thing? Okay, well, what's the counterfactual? I don't send my kids out that have a tag to go kill it. And let's say

it's in season they kill that bear. Well, let's say they don't kill it. I say, boys, don't do. It's a beautiful animal. Let's let it live. What are the

possibilities for that animal's death? If we're talking about being humane, like, if the whole point of a human is just to be this pristine, spiritual creature that causes nothing harm and just dictates humanenus on every single creature, really, tell me what could happen that bear hit by car, hit by a car, mauld by another bear, mal mald aer killed by another bear, dive dive disease, dive old age change, dive starvation. Uh. I mean like, contrast that with being

shot with an arrow and living for eight seconds. Contrast that with being chased by dogs for an hour and a half, being treated, setting in a tree and then getting killed. Your your your your, the resource of the animal to meet hide for fat being utilized in a productive way, built towards the scientific goal that's gonna help all the other animals thrive because of that bears absence with me. I mean so it's like people of hyper emotionalized death. That pretty animal that you see out there,

and Yellowstone is gonna die. Yeah, someday, someday. I mean so that and and you know, going back to the dog thing, Um, it's it's animal conflict is very natural and so and in most cases bears run up trees and the bears and dogs never fight, and uh, and it's it's a highly selective tool. And what most people don't understand if they say it's not fair, Chase, I promise you anybody that says that bear anyone hounds is not fair. Chase has never done it. I mean maybe

there's a lot of Chase involved in it, right. Yes, some of the toughest people that I know are hound hunters, just in terms of like woodsman. It's like woodsman tough, and you would you would think that, I mean people people think that hunting over bait and hounds is just like the lazy fat man sport, you know. And uh, but some of the toughest guys in most and they're not mountain fit like Instagram boys there there, but they're they're tough, they're in their hunters and there they holy care.

I could tell you some stories of being in West Virginia and the first time I hunted in West Virginia, the dogs tree to bear way off this mountain and I was with these guys that were older than me, one of I mean like way older than me. Um, they weren't didn't exactly look like CrossFit athletes, and they

were like, all right, let's go to that bear. And I looked at him and I said, you mean, we're just like going straight to those dogs, and they looked at me like I was crazy, Like yeah, that was a pretty much the only way to get there, And I was like, all right, and I mean we went through a holla that. I mean just it blew my for real. I was like wow. I mean because the hunting we do here in Arkansas, I mean that I even do in the back country, I wouldn't have done

anything like that. I mean, it was just like crazy, They just they just do it took him a long time, they were fast. But so there's a little bit of that. You have any other I mean, like honest questions about that or thoughts on that. No, I mean, I think I think from the standpoint of understanding the various methods of take as a as a as a method of management or means of management, and how do we deal with the population in a way that balances many competing demands,

I think that's very helpful. And I think even from a standpoint you know, we have our different camps within the hunting community, but then obviously we have there's many more people in the camp that's outside the hunting community, and and I feel like one of the best ways that we as hunters can um move the conversation forward is to know these things. Even if you don't you know, if I never hunt a beer to hunt over hounds, you know, yeah, But I need to understand why that is.

Why why do other people do it that way and not take shots at other people because they choose to do something that way, assuming that the reason that they do that is because there's a there's a benefit to it to the population of the animal. Like like we, like you said, we don't just get out there and run them with hounds so we can you know, laugh

and and have fun. We we do it to be selective, right, So I think understanding those things, I think unfortunately and a lot of hunters don't don't want to hear this message. But we we have to do better. We have to understand more about what it is we're trying to do. We have to be able to be advocates for what we want to do, because our ability to do it depends on the majority of people who don't and they'll

take it away from us. You've said that, and and and you just have to look in the in the parts of the country where it is happening and whatever whatever the small ways that it happens. People who don't understand it, you know, they're they're inconvenienced by X, Y or Z you know, or or they don't. They don't agree with you know, they think it's lazy hunting over bait.

Whatever it is, it's our job to come together as sportsmen and sportswomen and speak facts, to remove that emotional component from it um and and just try to first do no harm, you know, number one thing. First do no harm. Let's don't ruin it for the rest of us. But then if you can advocate and even just move the needle a little bit on somebody who's neutral, that's a right for us. I think a lot of the hunting community would like to say, hey, let's just give

him hounds and bait. Yeah, just give it away and then we'll still get to hunt, because it's kind of like that's like the redheaded stepchild of hunting in some ways, at least that's my perception in some ways is that Colby smirking a band retract the redhead to step child, and so people might just be like, or that's probably why people that don't hunt over bater they don't want it because they don't want to fight that battle. Right well here, and here's the thing, all right, we've got

to be quicker sweaking in. But if they don't fight that battle with us, we're gonna lose. And then the next thing they will get will be something that you're interested in. And like, you know, that's kind of like a threat, you know, and I don't want it to

come across as like a threat. Uh. But the truth is that in nineteen we have given the anti hunting community as much as we can give them and maintain this beautiful way of life that is creating great stuff for wildlife and habitat all across this continent unlike man has ever seen in modern times for amount of civilization we have for you know. So it's like if we want to maintain our way of life, we don't have

anything left to give them. And so any legal means of hunting in nineteen ought to be supported by every person on this continent that owns a hunting license if they want to keep even what they have for future generations to come. So that that's that's part of our messages, like hey, don't fight against us, go ahead and go ahead and join with us, even if you're never gonna hunt over house, hunt with hounds, or hunt with bait.

It's like at least understand it, you know, just understand it and and know that that is connected to what you do and uh that So that's my appeal to two people is that, uh, we've got to you know, we we we really do have to stand together. And I would hope that giving people, uh you know, kind of scripting the narrative for why we do these things makes sense. You know. Yeah, that's that's what That's what

my goal was. I was hoping to to provide some dialogue for people like me who maybe I don't want to be, uh, don't want to be the reason something gets taken away because we didn't understand it and we didn't fight for it. Yeah. Well, I think we're sit in a really unique position as bear hunters, and in the modern times. I really do, like, I mean, I

feel like it's like a call. I believe that bears are going to be the gateway to the hunting community, and so if we guard that gate, they're never gonna get anything else. It's a good it's a good way to look at it, like guard the gate, because we are at we're at the we are the I mean, we're right there and and and we probably see that here more than just the average bear hunter right there. That's bait and baron Arkansas. He doesn't know that there is a massive war going on and it's true, and

we see it here and we um. I mean there's legislation. We've had Sportsman's Alliance on here and I mean there's

legislation all over the place about bear hunting. Um. And so, man, we just have to keep we have to keep creating that narrative, educating people, giving people the words to say, giving them, given them the information, the knowledge, but also the heart posture, Like we're not just saying that we have all the answers and that this way is the best way, but there's like a human appeal to it as well. To me, it's just like, man, this is

this is a fantastic way of life. You know. It's it's it's a lot easier to throw rocks at somebody who's on the other side of the wall and you can't see him, but you make those personal connections with people. It's like, look, I like to hunt bears, I like to feed my family. I like, you know, we have a lot more in common than we do not in common, and so we we have to be that that friendly face so to speak. I think you guys are doing

a great job of it. Well, passionate authenticity, you know, the authenticity means I think that we well, I mean, we've got to have the knowledge, we've gotta have the science, we've gotta have the foundational stuff like we've talked about. But we've also got to be doing it for the right reasons. You know, I'm not trying to poke a stick and some anti hunter's eye or somebody else's eye that don't like bear hunting. I mean, it's just like, man, this is something that I love. Don't take it away

from me. I mean, like literally, like I mean to think that my sons would not be able to roll out here on public land in Arkansas and hunt in twenty five years, I mean, that's like, it's like tragedy, and so we want to we don't want that to happen. But man, we've gone over our hour. Hadn't we, Colvin just war, we wouldn't do it. Well, thanks so much Jens for coming on. Awesome. Yeah, no, I appreciate it very much, and and hopefully we made a few points

that people hadn't thought about. Yeah, well, everybody check out the back country Hunters and Anglers, and also check out Well, if you're in Arkansas, check out the Arkansas Chapter. It's not it's not SUNS Chapter yet, but you know Southeast Chapter, Southeast Chapter. I need to switch over from Texas. Yeah, yeah, you need to update your mailing address on the website and you'll be part of us just like that. Well, keep the wild places wild, because that's where the bears live.