Bear GreaseEp. 196: BEAR GREASE [RENDER] - Live from the Black Bear Bonanza
This podcast was recorded live at the Black Bear Bonanza in Bentonville, Arkansas. The crew talks about some of the most recent bear research in the state, then ends with a recap on the American Wilderness series. Clay is joined by AGFC biologist Myron Means, BHA CEO Patrick Berry, James Brandenburg, Bernie Barringer, Brent Reaves, and Misty Newcomb. Andrew Wills of Hawken Horse ends with the debut of his and Clay’s new song, "Arkansas Mule."
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My name is Clay Nukeleman. This is a production of the Bear Grease podcast called The Bear Grease Render, where we render down, dive deeper, and look behind the scenes of the actual bear Grease podcast, presented by f HF Gear, American Maid, purpose built hunting and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the place as we explore. We've got some big news that Meat Eater. We're going on another live tour from April twenty third through May the fifth. Me and Steve Vanella and the team are going to be all over the country. We're gonna be in Mace, Arizona, San Diego, California, Anaheim, California, Sacramento, California, Salt Lake City, Utah, Boise, Idaho, Missoula, Spokane, Portland, Tacoma. I know we need to come to the South. It's gonna happen one day, folks, But right now our live tour tickets are on sale. I'll be there, Steve will be there, a bunch of the team will be there. It's gonna be a lot of fun. Get your tickets today at the meeteater dot com slash events. The meeteater dot com slash Events Live tour tickets. We're hitting the American West. How's everybody doing great to see everybody. Hey, thank you guys so much for coming out today. This is a big deal, big deal for me, big deal for everybody that loves Arkansas bear and uh, it just means a lot to me that y'all y'all came out today. These guys at b h A do a ton of work, they really do. I don't do anything. I just show up, so you don't have to thank me for anything. But uh, these BHA guys that you've seen, James Brandenburg being the head of them here in Arkansas, doing a great job. Myron means is gonna open us up with a banjo tune. Hey, you guys may have been out here just a minute ago. This is the world's greatest bear biologist right here. He plays a banjo to Mayron, open us up with a banjo tune, and then we'll get started.
All right, we'll do now.
I'm gonna dance, No, I'm not.
I don't know which one will train and work work. This is uh called cripple Cree. You leave us about the first banjo song most banjo players learn, and uh it goes kind of like this. Y'all help me out keep rhythm.
That's right, that's.
All right, all right, excellent.
I recognize Taylor Swift anywhere.
That was excellent. Well, welcome to the bears Render Podcast. This is our This is our live podcast. So this will go out to the world here in a couple of weeks. What we so this podcast is the we have the bear Grease podcast, which is our documentary style podcast, and then this one is where we gather up a group of folks and we typically would talk about the last documentary style Beargrease podcast. Y'all familiar with the Bargerags podcast. Y'all know what I'm talking about. Okay, just check it. It wasn't sure, It wasn't sure. So this and this is a little bit different because we got all you guys here, We got a group of people I can't wait to introduce you to. But usually we would spend a little more time talking about the Wilderness podcast. Say hi to Brent's Instagram following there, but both of them. First of all, I gotta get things started off right. If you listen to the Bear Grease Render, you know that a couple of months ago, I was petitioning the world for a banjo player to come to the Render podcast and just stand there and wait for like fun one liners. Uh, you know, kind of like a like a side Well, I want you to come to I want the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission to finance you to come to every Render and play your banjo. That's what I want. I'm gonna work with your boss on that.
I think I think Director Booth is here. Maybe Director Booth is here.
I'm not sure it's possible that he's here. No, let me look. I want to introduce to a few people that are in the audience. First of all, my wife, Misty, who's on the stage here. But uh, my son Bear nukemb is in the back.
Bear.
Wave your hand. That's Bear. My daughter River is here. Where's the river at River? There's River dukem My mom and dad? Uh, Gary the Believer, New and Juju were here. Where are they at?
There?
They are? There's mom and dad back there. Uh, let's see who else was I gonna introduce? Yeah, where's director Booth at Austin Booth and his wife are they here?
Oh?
If they're gone, he's he gone, he gone.
They were wrangling their entire family, which a lot of people here are doing as well.
So I was glad. I was glad he came for the time that he did. Now I'm gonna really embarrass somebody. If if you've been listening to barger I hope he's here. I think he's here. If you listen to the Bargeras podcast. In the last couple episodes you heard are our Donnie Baker episode? Do you guys, did you guys listen to the Donnie Baker story? Yeah? Yeah, incredible, really was an incredible story. Donnie's here, Donnie, Where are you? Where's Donnie Baker at? There's Donnie Baker.
Donnie.
I'm sorry, man. Misty was like, you should tell him that you're gonna do that, and I was like, nah, but that's Donnie Baker.
Man.
Everybody I've been I've traveled quite a bit since that podcast, and that's all people want to talk to me about, is uh is that story. So it's good to have Donnie here. Good to see you man. Yeah, and uh, you guys have met. I hope you went by the Bear Hunting Magazine booth back here.
Uh.
Colby moorehead owner Bear Hunting Magazine's Colby in here Colby Morehead. He may he may still be out of his booth, but uh, I don't, I don't. I don't work with Bear Hunting Magazine anymore. I mean I owned and operated the business, and Kolby was working for me, and he he he now owns it and runs it and doing a great job. And they do a lot help him to put all this on too. So I wanted to introduce Kolby, but he's not here either is director Booth. Where are these people up?
Who knows?
Let me introduce you to my guests on the far right here. This is Bernie Barringer, came all the way from Minnesota, Bernie Bernie. When I back years and years ago, when I wasn't even in the outdoor industry. This is the embarrassing story I'm gonna tell about, Joe. I applied to be the editor of Bear Hunting Magazine, which I laughed at the literally when I had the thought, in about two thousand and ten, maybe when I was the editor, well you weren't yet. Hold on, that's the punchline of the joke. Okay, I wasn't even in the outdoor industry, and I saw that Bear Hunting Magazine needed an editor. I was completely unqualified, and I applied to be the editor, and Jeff Folsom called me and interviewed me on the phone, and I mean I gave him both barrels full about what I would do if I was the editor, and I mean was basically compensating for having no experience with just just passion. And he also interviewed another guy named Bernie Bearinger. Bernie got his John, Bernie got the job, and UH and so and then as things went on, I ended up owning the magazine.
And for me, he demoted me as to a columnist from the editor when he bought it.
Yeah.
Now, Bernie is a truly a macro scale bear hunting expert, hunted all over the country. UH is an outfitter in Minnesota and just a knowledgeable bear guy. He wanted to come down today. I wanted to have Bernie on the podcast. So thanks for coming. Brent Reeves. Everybody knows Brent Reeves this Country Life podcast. Were you last year at this time you were doing this right? Yep, you just started. No, it was actually fixing to come out Octo or a first Okay, so last week couldn't we couldn't even talk about it this. Yeah, his podcast hadn't even started. And uh man, Brent, y'all know Jerry Klower. We did a series on Jerry Clower. Jerry Klower became famous uh in night when he was fifty seven years old. Jerry Klower was a fertilizer salesman. Brent is kind of like that in a way.
He uh fertilized.
He he's still an undercover agent, I'm pretty sure, but uh no, just Brent does a phenomenal job at what he does. There's very few people that are as good at their craft as what Brent does with his podcast. This is my wife, Misty nukeom who uh who's introduction needs no introduction, No man, So much of the any any amount of I want to say intellectual power, but that word sounds pretty big and fancy. But if there is any of that in Bear Grease, a lot of it comes from doctor Nukom here, who constantly talk with about everything that's going on. So thank you for being here, Happy to be here. To my left, Myron means known Myron for a long time, and Myron's the large carnivore.
That's right, how coordinator. We known each other well, we've known each other long enough that when you call me up at the office one day and you said, hey, Maron, I want to do a podcast, And I said, well, what, that's how long we've known four people?
Do what podcasts? Or Yeah, that's right, that's right now. Myern's been working for the Game and Fish for a long long time and been working specifically with bears for fifteen years, seventeen years, and he does an incredible job, and so it's great to have you here. We may overlap a little bit with some of the things he talked about earlier, but we're going to talk a lot about Arkansas bears. To his left James Brandenburg, who is the head of the Arkansas Backcountry Hunters and Anglers Association the chapter YEP, and James is from Northwest Arkansas. YEP killed a bear before YEP.
And previously was you know, uninitiated in that stuff.
Yeah, yeah, I kind of went from zero to competent in the bear world on public land, Sam I yeah, yeah, yeah, Well it's good to have you, Maan. And to your left it's Patrick Barry, who's the new president and CEO of back Country Hunters and Anglers.
Yeah, thanks for having me on where do you live, Patrick, I live in the middle of nowhere in rural Vermont.
In Vermont, Yes, sir, I'll be daring.
Well.
So, Backcountry Hunters and Anglers is a national organization, And so how long have you been president and CEO?
I just finally learned how to use my computer, so I'm making progress. I've only been on for a little over two months.
Okay, you're right right right up, beginning. Great, great to have you. We're gonna do two things today. We're gonna talk about Arkansas bears, but we're also going to talk about wilderness. We've been the last three episodes, which Brent thinks we're extremely boring of bear grease. We're about American wilderness, and Brent is dead wrong, man. This is the best stuff we've ever done in our lives. We're going to talk about We're going to talk about wilderness at the last part of this, but I want to talk about bears at first. Myron, give me a what kind of research is going on right now in the state for bears.
Well, we have a lot of it is like spatial habitat use research that we're doing. We have the GPS project going on down in South central Arkansas and if you're familiar with the bear zones as a Bear Zone three and four, and summer of twenty twenty one, we started putting GPS callers on those females down there to try and get an idea of home range, size, habitat use, seasonal habitat use, and everything like that. And that was really kind of coming on the heels of finishing a population study that we were doing with you of a Monticello down there, and it's basically trying to gather all the information that we could about the Gulf Coastal Plain population because we knew relatively nothing about it, and it is a young population. It's a small population. It's a young population, probably no more than five hundred bears across all of it, but it's a growing population. We also have we've had the MAINS research kind of ongoing now for five years, looking at collecting samples, working with squid US South South Southern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study Group in Georgia, and uh, you know, US and a lot of Eastern states are trying to find out what the cause of Maine.
Main's a pretty big deal here.
It's not a big deal here. But in certain states like Pennsylvania and some of the Northeast states, it's a very big deal. Well, I mean sconsin up in yeah, Wisconsin too. Yeah, Pennsylvania has some areas of the state that have as high as a thirty percent prevalence rate.
Does that mean thirty percent of them are showing the signs of heavy main and its sarcoptic mange.
Yes, it is sarcoptic mange. And so we're looking at that. We just started this year on a on a Denning chronology study of our what I call our mountain bears. Those aren't in the Washstaw bears, and we're replacing the old VHF callers with bright shiny GPS callers which come with a bright shiny price tag. But we're looking to try and determine, you know, the Dennings timing or the Denning chronology of those mountain populations to get a better understanding of, you know, what's going on in the fall, especially with our females. I mean, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to have a bear season when a lot of the bears are in the den right, So it is relative to the hunting and our harvest strategies and everything. The seasons that we set and the frameworks and those are really kind of the big ones right now. But you know, some of the other kind of underlying research that we're doing is the bear hunter survey that our social science division is doing and all that with, you know, with successful bear hunters looking at the social science portion of our of our customer base, and what.
Kind of questions are you asking people. I probably took the survey, but.
You probably did, a lot of the questions are geared around, you know, age dynamics. Well, I think the average age of bear hunters today's forty eight forty eight, some other questions about how did you learn about bear hunting? Did you learn about it through podcasts or television or newspaper or gaming, Phish employees or whatever. Some of the other questions are, you know, what do you use a bear for if you have harvested the bear and that.
Why is that information important to y'all?
Well, it just kind of falls into the you know, just getting to know your customer money, y'all just ask me, well, you are a customer base, but you know, I mean that's just an area a lot of natural resource agencies are kind of using social science to not necessarily drive their harvest strategies or hunting seasons, but certainly maybe amplify how you may adjust something one way or another. And you know, it's a valuable part of knowing what who your customer base is and why they're hunting bears, how long they've been hunting bears. You know, have you been hunting two three years, have you been hunting fifteen years? And all that. So it's just getting to know the customer better.
Now, do we know how many bear hunters are in Arkansas?
Now?
Is there is there a way? Every state's different in the way that they assigned licenses. A lot of states you would buy bear tag you in Arkansas, if you're an Arkansas resident, you get an Arkansas Sportsman's Combo license, you get a bear tag. But this year didn't you have to get a free like bear hunter.
Right.
We changed over our entire license system this past year and there were some growing pains with it, but we'll eventually get all the kinks worked out. And one of the unique things about this new license system is if you intended to hunt or harvest a bear, you had to obtain a quote bear permit. The bear permit was free to residents, which means if you had a hunting license, all you had to do was go on the on the on your profile on your page and just click the box that gave you a free bear permit. Non residents had to purchase. That was three hundred dollars for a non resident bear permit. But for the first time in our management history, Game and Fish Eye Bear Program Coordinator is able to determine with a reasonable accuracy, how many bear hunters will we have in.
This Do you know that number? Don't say it?
Do you know that number? Well, I know an approximate.
Can you? Could you say it if I wanted you to? Okay, how many bear hunters do you think are in Arkansas? If you go over, you're out.
It's like the price is right now wait wait wait wait wait, okay, there's the caveat Okay, this included the number that I got, included resident bear permit holders and non resident everybody that's hunting, everybody else hunting, baron ard.
Okay, if you go over, you're out. Closest closest the.
Number, the price is right, twenty eight hundred.
Okay, good bear or bear brand whatever. It's like my son Waite outer end. Well, we don't know, we don't know the number. Twenty eight hundred. Just remember you number? How many bear hunters in Arkansas plus non residents?
Twenty eight oh one?
Ooh, price is right, six hundred and thirty eight.
Okay, remember your number. Okay, I'm I'm going last at what's Oh that's not fair, it's not go ahead, you could if you're Bob Barker, you get.
To do what you want, right if you say twenty seven ninety nine, I'm.
You bear hunters in Arkansas?
Now, this is the state wide d gets their help from the crowd. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, what yell out your numbers?
It?
Oh she says higher higher, higher.
More than more than five thousand, more than ten thousand. I think they're really optimistic. I'm gonna go for ten thousand.
Ten thousand.
Oh he's mmmm Patrick.
Not my my h My question though, Myron is Oh, youse a question? Come on, man, I got a question now too.
If this was irid, I'm gonna give you one question. Are these folks that aren't saying that they're taking opportunity to bear hunt but like this is their thing?
This is what they do.
It's just a legal requirement to hunt a bear.
You if I was going go ahead, ma, if you intend to hunt or harvest a bear, either directly bear hunt or incidental harvest of a bear.
That was my question.
You're deer hunting and the bear walks by, you can shoot it if so that counts that you bet?
All right?
So before you said that, if this were the price is right, I would have said one dollar.
Hmm.
There have been a good move maybe right.
But since you're going last, I can't do that anyway. I would say, Uh, I'd say eighty five hundred eighty five.
That's fair.
Good pha. Guys are optimistic down here.
Yeah, but the incident, the opportunistic part is the part.
Yeah, that's a tricky one.
That's a tricky one.
What was yours? Twenty eight?
I can't remember, but I think I might. What was that twenty eighth?
Twenty eight? No, I actually think, uh, I'm gonna say four thousand? What is the number over?
Twenty five thousand?
Whoa, my goodness, wo wow, Okay, should have listened to the crowd though, Yeah, oh that they knew that, Okay, that's wow. Twenty five thousand people bought bear twenty five thousand. Wow, that's that's surprising to me. Man.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Can can we say how many bears we had harvested in Arkansas last year?
Yeah, seven hundred and sixty five record harvest year.
For our record harvest year in twenty twenty three.
Yep.
And is that what third consecutive bear season?
Yeah.
I mean we're actually getting up there and harvesting the number of bears we need to. I mean, that's why we've liberalized the season a little bit more the last couple of years and brought it earlier, and we do. That's about where we need to be. We need to be between somewhere between five hundred and fifty and eight hundred bears probably.
Wow.
But I mean, if we got time to dig into it, There's a couple of other things I would like to mention about it.
Yeah.
In the bear world, bear management, you know, sustainable harvest rates often falls on the female component of a population. You can only harvest so many females in a population and those practices be sustainable. Well, if bears the magic numbers around forty six percent of the female component of a harvest, you start harvesting over forty six percent in a you know, in a given year, and if that is sustained long term, it's not sustainable.
In the son it does that, okay. So if the harvest is over forty six percent SAL, you're the long term trajectory of your population is going to be decreasing.
That's correct.
Forty six percent SAL, okay.
And that's just kind of the rule of thumb, you know, Arkansas. It may be a couple of percent here and there otherwise, but just across the board, because the reproductive rates are pretty general across the board with bears and everything else. So with this past year, even though knowing we're going to harvest more bears and get up there where we want, our female harvest rate was forty eight percent this year, okay. And in the past when we've had earlier openers, you and I've talked about years and years ago, you know that we saw the same thing. So we expected that as an agency, we expected to have elevated harvest rates of females and not to be one to run around and say, chicken, little disguise falling. But you know something, forty eight forty nine fifty female harvest rates isn't really sustainable, not only in Arkansas's bear population, but any bear.
Popular you understand, son, I do that, and so you know, part.
Of part of having a season earlier opener, the earlier opener and all that stuff. You know, it does come with some some downsides to liberalize in those seasons. And one of the downsides we knew we were gonna have elevated female harvest rates. So you know, we'll kind of see how it ferrets out. You know, I'm sure you know, through different podcasts and a rigorous education campaign, you know, I'm sure we can kind of convince people that. Yeah, so we need to be all let.
Me give a little spiel about so the earlier season dates for those of you who hunt bears, whether you're hunting the national forest or you're hunting overbait on private land, earlier season dates greatly increase your chance, first of all, killing the bear. But what I always say number two is it increases your chance of killing the target bear. I mean, if you've baited bears at all, you know that in early September, I mean you've got your big mails coming in during the daylight, doing stuff that just makes you think you're gonna have that bear's gonna be standing there on opening day. Closer you get to October, every single day, those particularly the big bears, start to fall off debates, and a lot of times, you know, if we have the later season date means it's just more difficult to harvest to bear. So the Game and Fish has done us the hunters. The hunter at least in the inside of the hunter opportunity side of management. They've done us a big solid by moving the season back to the third Saturday in October or September.
Excuse me, well, he's actually calculated the fourth Saturday back up ten days.
Fourth Saturday back up ten days. Okay, so any given year that could be from like the thirteenth to the twentieth. Basically, the difference between a thirteenth opener and a twentieth opener is miles incredible. It's hard to understand, but it's it's miles. So here's what I The charge that I want to give people that are that are hunting bears in the state is that if we can self regulate not shooting soals, we win because that that overall cell harvest number goes down and we can keep our earlier season date and so that the impetus really falls on the hunters to self regulate and try to avoid shooting juveniles and females and target these older age class males or just males in general. And if we can do that, Meyron and I were doing the math earlier, the difference between forty eight percent and forty three percent is probably less than fifty animals. So that's the way I'm talking to Myron about it. It's like, hey, if we and he's thinking about it too. You know, if if we could have people, by their own choice not shoot fifty fifty sALS in the state, we get to keep our season opener. But if we keep bumping up towards that fifty percent sal harvest, they're going to have no choice to protect the resource, to bump the season way back, which makes it way harder. And it's it's and so anyway, man, I've been preaching this for so long, and it's hard not to shoot a soal. And there's nothing wrong. I mean, we realize sALS are going to be harvested, and that's a component of the management, absolutely, But if you're setting in it, if you've got six bears coming to your bait, you know what these bears are. I mean, you might have to eat a tag one year because maybe your males for whatever have peeled off and there's that one big female that's been coming in. And that's what we're asking people to do. It's like, hey, do your best to not shoot a soal. And obviously we can't. We can't shoot sALS with cubs, which that, yeah, you want to talk about.
That, I mean I can. It's uh, you know, it's it's uh one of the big deal about game and Fish. I mean a lot of people think we just will and only throw regulations out there. And you know when you start talking about harvesting females or harvesting sALS with cubs, you know, present or something like that, I mean, really that kind of boils down to ethics rule. It's really not enforceable, and it kind of falls more on the ethics side of something rather than it does, you know, an enforceable legal side of something. And you know, I mean gaming fish. I can speak for our director and our director and all of our commission. We just we're not in the business to regulate ethics. However, I can tell you that, you know, something would have to happen if we had two or three or four years of you know, female harvest rates in the upper fifties one. You know, just one of the things that's an easy identifier is if you have a soul with cubs coming to abate site and even though those cubs have been with her all year and the likelihood of them going ahead and surviving is probably pretty good at that point, but still, I mean, you know, I tell people all the time, you know, the reason why those cubs go into that den cycle again with the mother when they're quote a year old in a month or two from marchery season. You know, that's just kind of the way Mother Nature designed it. And there's no doubt there's an added measure of knowledge and everything else that comes with that. So you know, if it if it boils down to hey, you know, don't harvest a sow with cubs. If that makes one or two or three percent difference over all statewide, you know, that's the thing it can help if you knowingly have a sow. You know, I mean, it's like Clay said, there's nothing wrong with harvesting seals. It's gonna happen, and it's fair game, but just kind of keep it in the back of your mind that, you know, unless the public makes that change, you know, game and fish charged with protecting the resource will have to do something different some point in the future, whether that means institute at regulations like not allowing us south with cubs to be harvested, or I'm bumping the season back another week, you know, to try and ensure more males are harvested. It's just, you know, that's the charge of the resource.
Yeah, I think I think people can get behind that. Oh yeah, I think so. Hey, what's a a little change is a subject here, but uh, let's talk about let's talk about eating bear for a second. Should we do that?
Yeah?
Can we go from from harvesting bear to eating bear? Bernie, what's your favorite way to cook a bear?
I make a breakfast sausage at all.
It's a killer breakfast sausage. Yeah.
And I take the bear meat and grind it with twenty five percent bacon ins and pieces, and then I put a what.
Brand bacon ins? You don't get that bar s stuff, do you?
I don't care.
I don't know what I'm talking about.
I don't think we have bars Minnesota. We're a little bit higher class than yeah.
Oh well yeah yeah and then yeah right right, they'll throw me out of here.
Man.
Yeah, I like chordsas it's yeah pretty country here. Yeah, bacon ins and pieces and then a seasoning that's uh, it's a Cabella's German breakfast sausage seasoning. And it's it's like, I don't know, if you're familiar with Johnsonville sausages, breakfast sausage.
It's at least that good. There may be better.
And hey, let me ask you a question. So in the in the deer hunting world, elk hunting, any kind of ungulate, you know, usually the big males are not gonna taste as good as female Like a big buck's not gonna taste as good as a dough. Have you found that a big, old male bear would taste different than a young bear?
Not really?
Uh.
The difference that you will notice in bears is what they've been eating. And if you take really good care of the meat when you first get it, get it cooled off quickly, that's the difference. I've shot five hundred pound bears and one hundred and five pound bears and there's not much difference.
That's that's that's what I was going to I hadn't talked to him about that. That's been my experience, which is not intuitive mine too. I mean, man, you kill a five hundred pound bear, it's gonna be in my what I've seen, the meat is just as good as if you'd kill the young one. You wouldn't think that that wouldn't be the same way with hogs, wouldn't be the same way with elk or deer. But Brian, what's your favorite way to cook a bear?
Chili? Chili?
Bear chili? Yeah, my little girl Bailey would rather eat bear chili than ice cream.
Well that maybe not.
Ice cream, but bear flavored ice cream.
But that bear chili, that's that's a big thing.
Very chili, Yeah, anything special, just.
Yeah, towns and chili season in it. Where's them folks at? Where's my man with the towns and spice?
Right?
Big caboy Misty loves cooking bear.
I do love cooking bear.
And my favorite way to cook bear is any way that you cook it and it can be ready in about thirty.
Minutes and so, and that's kind of really hungry.
That's kind of hard to do.
And if we've got a family, We've got four kids that have been raised on bear meat, and for us, it really we both have always worked and so it has to I can give about thirty minutes a day to get dinner on the table, and that's kind of hard with wild game. So we've figured out a couple of ways to do it. One is Carnita's and a slow cooker, and that's about so Clay and Bear and River when they harvest their bears, they have to cube a whole bunch of it for me, and they're very good at doing that. And so I'd love to cook it, put it in a slow cooker and have it ready when I get home if it's a special day like a Saturday or a Sunday, and I've got more than thirty minutes.
We love bear meat loaf.
We love meat.
You put onions, peppers, jalapenos, all that good stuff in a food processor.
So it's really really fine. Mix it all together really well.
Hey, tell them about the research you were doing about the nutrient content of bear meat.
Well of meat of wild games.
Yeah, it wasn't just bear, It wasn't just bear.
And I've just been researching a wild game because you know, there's a lot of people out there who are you know, there's some anti meat people in this world, and it's really an uneducated stance to take because we pretty much all of the world's B twelve, which you've got to have to have energy and to have you know, to be healthy, comes from meat. And so we really need to eat meat. And there's no amount you can get some of the vitamins that you need from vegetables that meat provides, but you would have to eat so many of those vegetables to get it, and not all of it is immediately available. And so one of the things you hear a lot about meat is that it's.
Bad for your heart.
That you know, they they's got a you know, it'll result in heart disease, and that's only They've done these lipid analysis on wild game, and it turns out that God made our bodies to consume wild game and there is an exactly perfect ratio inside of wild game and grass fed meat for your body that it actually does not result in heart disease and it does actually help you manage there we go.
All of the cardiovascular disease, arthritis.
All of these things. Yeah, I mean, I'm preaching to the choir. But these are things I think that need to be on our tongues and just an under we have an understanding of it. I mean, the wild game is the most incredible meat on planet Earth. But from every from every angle, from the environmental angle to the sustainable angle, to human health angle to social the social angle. Incredible. Okay, we're gonna go around. We'll make it quick. To me, there's a big five for for bear meat, burgers, spaghetti, taco meat, meat loaf, and what am I missing?
Ice cream?
Ice cream? The big five be nachos?
Is what Clay makes? You've missed chili?
I missed? What now chili? I'm chili?
Yeah?
Big five? Man bear meat Yeah, bear meats incredible, Mara, what's your favorway?
Cook it bear tips over us? Really no doubt about it. Really?
How do you do it? Uh?
Usually just separate out a nice big muscle chunk, put it in a crock pot, a couple of cans of cream and mushroom soup. Let it, let it cook for six seven hours. Put it over rice. That sounds good, plenty of plenty of pepper, salt.
What time is dinner?
Yeah? I like it?
Any way, I've had it every single way I've had it. I couldn't tell you a favorite.
I love it all right, Patrick, have you eaten much bear?
Oh yeah?
So every for a couple of years, every fall we would have the Patrick Killed It Game Feast.
Oh wow. Yeah it was awesome because I I, you.
Know, I live in a community even if they don't hunt, like, they're all about wild game and so you know, in the fall, you know, i'd have you know, a bunch of you know, ducks and geese and grouse and woodcock. Where I live, we had a fall turkey season, plenty of deer meat to go around. But my one of my buddies would always get a bear every year. And I am such a lazy cook. I would give out while the wild game to all my friends that would come to the Patrick Killed It Game feast, so that I didn't have to worry about cooking that.
You know.
My only rule for everybody was, like any wild game is I trying to grill everything. As soon as you overcook it in general, you're done, right. You've got to be able to deal with you know, not overcooking it. No matter what you think your preferences, I'll invite you to the Patrick killed It game feast.
I wish I had a clay killed its. Yeah, we don't.
I think you need to start that.
Yeah, yeah, Bernie. So, Bernie's hunted bears all over North Maurya. You've never hunted Arkansas, though. We need to choose mad at you because you were You got the job over me, so I never invited you down here.
Well, are you still mad at me?
I want to bring out that and bring that up now.
I definitely want to hunt Arkansas. I got a long list of places I've hunted, and it's this.
Is a hole in the map.
Pretty bad that this ain't one of them.
Well, uh, my question to you though, is I hear your son's probably a really good guy bear.
Will you take me hunting here?
What do he say? What do he say? Oh? He gives the thumbs up. All right, you have to find a new spot. Bernie's not setting in my spot. I'm teasing Bernie.
Takes me where you took Colby.
Yeah, where's your favorite place to bear hunt?
Yeah?
All yeah, I mean Bernie's hunted probably all the Canadian provinces.
Except for a couple of Eastern ones. Yeah. Wow, you know, can I give you like three each.
Sure.
Okay.
So my favorite di i Y hunt, where I just went and hunted on my own, was in Wyoming and really really cool, really fun chocolate. All the bears are brown. I got like nine bears on baits. They're all brown, no black ones. That was pretty cool.
So you were doing it, you were baiting bears.
And yeah, I mean yeah on a four wheeler and public land in the mountains and beautiful country. It was really fun. I killed a really nice bear. I did that in Idaho too, which was pretty cool. But man, I love Maine. Maine is a fun place to hunt bears.
Boy, I'll tell you what. Where's Todd? Todd?
Todd? Yeah, Todd.
What I'm about to say. If you said you can only hunt one place for the rest of your life, it would be a spring bear hunt in the Baldy Mountain.
Baldy Mountain.
Yeah there, Manitoba, the Duck Mountains, Baldy Mountain Outfitters, he's here. I've killed some nice bears with him. But the Duck Mountains of Manitoba they got at all. They got big bears, they got lots of bears, they got.
Yeah, all that, and you're not just saying that because Todd's our friend. I mean, for real, I've hunted there. I mean that part of Manitoba is special. It is, and there's a lot of other great places in Canada too, but that's a cool place to hunt them.
Yeah.
Yeah, cool, I'm going there in June.
Okay, Todd, I owe you a bow and I forgot it. Bear forgot it. I told Todd I was going to give him a you know, the bow. I don't know if you guys saw it, but on the Meat either episode, the bow that I used in Alaska on the wake board, Yeah, the boogie board.
Bear.
Well, Todd, that's your bow. I told Todd's my friend. I told him I was going to give him a bow. I forgot to bring it, Todd. I guess we're kind of having a private conversation here. I'll get it to you.
He's just a clear Bears name. He had nothing to do with that.
Bears should have known that I needed that bow here. I blame Bear new Com for this.
He drove all the way down here just for that class.
Just ye, just to get scolded. Brent. Where's your favorite place to bear hunt?
You missed that out loud? No?
Well, it had to be here. I mean, this is you have such a connection with the land here, even though I didn't grow up in in western Arkansas, where you know where I've killed all three of the bears that I've killed is over there. I have such a connection with this state and and what's going on here and seeing seeing bears now where I grew up. I cannot wait to kill a bear legally and where I grew up, and the efforts that admiring, and all the folks at the Game and Fish are doing down there, and they they did those collaring projects last summer, wasn't it last summer. It's it's I'm anxious to see where it goes. Because the first exposure I ever had with a bear, I was about ten years old, so in nineteen seventy six in Cleveland County, Arkansas, and I was cold hunting with my dad and the dogs had bade what we thought was a cold out in the middle of this beanfield, and I dad said, we got to go out there and get the dogs off and let this code he go. And I said, can I go? He said, no, it's real muddy. It's kind of thick right there, So you just stay here at the truck, and he was out there about five minutes and he come running.
Back for another light and I said, can I go with you this name? He said, no, it's a bear.
Stay here. And I'm like, okay, I'll stay here. But that was the first introduction I'd had with a bearer in that part of the world.
And then now.
Forty years later there are people that are seeing them there in that same place. It's pretty cool.
That's cool, you know when you look at years ago, fifteen going on twenty years ago that I turned my focus to bears in our really started learning about bears. I remember the first time I saw a map of North America that showed where we had bears. Okay, so imagine a map of North America and Canada that had colored sections that showed where bears were well, from the Appalachian Mountains to the east, from Florida to Maine. You know, there's this big swath on the east coast that had bears in the west, from the Rocky Mountains west into California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, all the way up into Canada, Washington. You know, all this western US and then the swath covers all of Canada and all of Alaska. Okay, So if you're following me, there's a giant hole with no bears. Hold with me, between the Appalachians and the Rocky Mountains except for this one little spot about that big on a map, about that big that was Arkansas.
Yep.
And I remember fifteen years ago in the literature twenty whenever it was. I was when I was at the University of Arkansas between two thousand and one and two thousand and five. When I was seeing these maps, there was this little population of bears that was right here where we lived. And at the time, I was like, that is incredibly cool that of all this landscape that's absent of bears, we have this population and today that population of bears that was. You know, we could talk this whole time about the reintroduction of bears into Arkansas. You know, between nineteen fifty four and nineteen sixty four, two hundred and fifty four bears were brought in from different places, released in three locations in Arkansas and became the most successful reintroduction of large carnivores in the world. Has spread out and now covers southern Missouri. Missouri now has a bear season eastern Oklahoma. Oklahoma now is a bear season North Louisiana. They're gonna have their first official bear hunt this year, which is major. Brent and I two days ago we're in Mississippi on a bear den study in southwest Mississippi. And basically that little spot that fifteen years ago basically covered the Washtaws and ozarks is now spreading out. And I'm telling you, in today's world where all we hear about is ecological crisis on every front, it's a major deal that black bears are expanding like they are. And it all started right here, right here in Arcas. This here for us, Yeah, yeah, no, it's incredible, and it's incredible, and one day I'm gonna go into more. We'll have a whole render up here about this. But I mean, the incredible cultural history that Arkansas has with bears is unreal. I mean, you know, we were once knows the bear state, and when you really dig down into that, you see all of wild stuff that happened here. But uh, it's such a and that's what this event is about, is is really a celebration of a wild beast. That wild beast, though, is only here because of wild habitat wild lands, and when you the reason that little population of bears was here is because this is the wildest country in any direction for long ways. By wildest country, I mean just most amount of public land, most amounted unfragmented sections of timber. And I'm going to use the quotes wilderness, not federal wilderness. But I mean what we have here is cool. Don't tell anybody.
Nobody's gonna cut that out.
Nobody cut that out. But James, this would be a great moment for you to Yeah, yeah, tell me what you're gonna tell me.
So, uh is everybody here loves bears, right, we want to we want to have some more bears, and we want to help get a fish commission do what they're.
Doing yep with the bears. Yes, okay, all right.
So as a thank you to you all for being here today, the Arkansas Chapter of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers is going to donate five thousand dollars to the Game and Fish Commission today.
All right, And.
Myron justish the bear the bear program specifically I was getting there.
So Myron is going to put that to work on some of the things that they were talking about and he's been talking about with his research studies.
So, you know, in order to put a collar on a bear, what do you got to do?
First?
Got to catch that bear.
So Myron and I were talking and he's he needs some equipment to help with that. And because of the generosity of the people here, they have bought their tickets to be here, they're participating in our raffles. They're just they're just here supporting conservation. And what we do as an organization, Patrick, is we turn around and do good work with the resources that people trust to us, their time and their treasure. And so we're gonna we're gonna trust some of that tomorrown.
You don't appreciate it. You don't have a big check with you don't.
How much a big check costs. We're giving that to the bears.
That's right. What do you do?
You know what you're gonna do with that much?
Oh?
Yeah, what do you what are you gonna do with that?
Well, lately, what we the last couple of years, what we've been doing is, uh, we've been taking of course, we we've got a new mouse trap you know that we've kind of developed over the years, and it's a pipe snare that we're using. But we also use live catch traps. And uh, I'm sure most of you are probably familiar with the big culvert traps catch trailer, right, that's on a trailer. Well, we also have big basically it looks like a great, big giant have a heart trap. It's like a four by four by seven. And the for so live catch traps, Well, the last couple of years we have developed a way to put some of the holl guy cameras or some of the live feed cameras and put a release selinoid on them to where we can close the gate on those traps on target animals. He say, well, why is that such a big deal. Well, you know, when you put the trap in a place where you know there's a female, but all you can catch are males. You don't really care about catching males. You don't want to catch a female and a year line in the trap. You want to catch the whole family. And really it's allowed us to do that. I mean, I've caught whole family groups in the trap when you're watching it, I'm watching and when a female goes in there a target female or the target female and one or two or three of her cubs or year lines that are with her. I know exactly when I can drop that door and it's not a miss. And it has red evolutionized how we trap bears and uh, I'm telling you it's it truly has revolutioniz.
So you have an app on your phone that has a it gives you a notification.
Yep, when you have it's motion activated camera system and we we have a sellinoid that can release the gate.
Are you the one that has on your app or don't you have people that do that?
Well, we have a network a bill just that PEO will help us. Peeps. Do you need people?
Do you need more people in the middle of the night? Is it like and your wife's like, wow, traps?
Well, I mean we have a network of people and usually it involves you know, a text from this person that person, that person. Bear Bear Bear Bear, and so you're trying to get on there and you're trying to watch it, you know, and everything else.
There's Bear's only coming the traps between nine and five, right working hours weekdays.
That's when they never come into the trap. But yeah, I mean stuff like that. But you know, I mean that that technology comes at the price I mean one of the those camera systems is about twenty five hundred dollars. And even though you know we have money and we use it. Hey, anytime we can, you know, get more money for stuff like that, it's great. Well, and this is a ate appreciate it.
And this is a chance for people to directly influence conservation work right here in Arkansas by supporting things like this coming out with their families. And you know, we're appreciative that they have chosen to spend time with us, and we want to take that and and invest that in the things that we love in our wild places.
That's great.
Another thing that the Arkansas Bear Program is pioneering is this new drug. You want to talk about that for a second.
I can't talk about it for a second. You know, we started a couple of years ago. The one drug combination that we have been using for the last couple of years is called BAM. That's the accuracy and this is.
What when they do their den studies, so they how many bears females do you have a collared right now?
About sixty?
This is o sixty females that are collared right now that they're have a circuit of going in every year and checking for cubs, and they're able to analyze, you know, what's going on with reproduction, right, so every one of those bears, they've got to tranquilize to be able to work the cubs.
That's right. They don't just give up their cubs willingness, like check these guys out. So but you know, we've moved to a new drug that basically had a reversal a couple of years ago, and it is a great drug, four bears, and it's scheduled to use four bears, but it has a drawback. During the winter time, when females are in a dense cycle, they lower their respiratory rates, metabolic rates, and all those physiological processes to the point that an average female may in a dense cycle, may have four breasts a minute. Well, if you give them a drug that suppresses that even further to have two breasts a minute, they're not going to be able to maintain blood oxygen levels and everything else like that they're under anaesthesia. So we kind of started a little pilot project a couple of years ago with some beta testers for the pharmacy, and they developed a new drug instead of BAM butrophenol as prone and medatomidine it's nam or now MEDA now beufeen as a perune and metatomidine. It's basically the same drugs.
Remember that.
BAM NAM before it was BAM, now it's NAM. But the great thing about this new drug is that it does not suppress respiration rates as much during a dim cycle, which is a key feature of why this drug is so good, especially uh in the dinning scenario. And you know, if we get it approved, we're kind of the tip of the spirit.
We organization using it for bears right now in the country.
Well, there's other organizations using it for bears, but I mean they're kind of doing it under the cloak of darkness so to speak. I'm not going to throw any of them under the bus. But if we do get it to prove four bears for on label use, then you know, all the bear researchers in the country will be able to use this drug, which is a much better drug in a dim cycle.
That's good. So like it, like Bear steff, tip of the spear, tip of the spirit, tip of the spirit.
You know, I was gonna mention something also, you know you mentioned twenty years ago when you were looking at maps, and I'm going to make this real quick looking back at bear conservation history in Arkansas. You talked about the reintroduction effort. Let's say nineteen sixty, Fast forward twenty years from that, nineteen eighty. What was the significance of that first bear seasons, first modern day bear season in Arkansas? Teen eighty, fast forward twenty years from that, what do you have?
First legalized bear baiting on private land?
That's right, fast forward twenty years from that, what do you have?
We moved the season back so we can kill big boars.
I think statewide, Gulf coastal, playing coast.
Sorry guys, I was thinking big bear.
Yeah, basically we you know, we reopened the bear season and basically four fifths of the bear state. So if you look at the conservation, you know, it's kind of twenty year milestones into conservation.
Yeah, that's that's that's really interesting.
You've been here since the beginning nineteen sixty you were working, right, what's.
Going to happen is eighty seven, twenty years from now, what's the next day?
Yeah, good question, Bernie, that is a good question.
Hopefully robust healthy bear populations.
Do we do you think the bear population is going to expand into I mean, so the bears are in the Gulf coastal plane right now five hundred. We know the ozarks and Washtalls are maybe not saturated, but close to the carrying capacity of the land. Yeah, what's Are there going to be as many bears down the Gulf Coastal Plain as there are in the Washtalls or what's gonna happen.
I don't know if those densities will ever mirror the mountain densities, you know, but I certainly think there is a lot of room for bears for that population to grow. Now, whether or not they're gonna, you know, disperse from the Washtalls into the Gulf Coastal Plain, from Felson Thaw area up into the northwest portion of the Gulf Coastal Plain where they're gonna come from. I mean, it's probably a mixed bag of everything. But I have no doubt that population will to continue to grow with good conservation strategies. Uh. And you know, I think you hit it right. I think our mountain populations are probably at our peak densities. Certainly what we can carry statewide sociological carrying capacity, which is a lot different than the ecological carrying capacity.
You know what that means, son, No, explain it? Okay, Well, social carrying capacity is what the people of a certain region are willing to tolerate many how many times a year? They willing to have a bear come up and eat their bird feeders and mess with their That's exactly trash cans versus what the land could hold. And almost always the social carrying capacity is less than the lands carrying capacity. And that's where management organizations come in and they manage bears typically for social carrying capacity. That's right, because they've got to manage this resource based upon the best good of the animals but also people.
That's right, and it's up to it's up to game and fish and d nrs to really find that balance in between. I mean, certainly Arkansas could sustain a whole lot more bears than we have now. But you know when you when when mother nature doesn't provide and all those bears go to bird feeders and dog food and cat food on someone's porch, that's when the public really become so excited about having bears everywhere. And so you know, that's been the charge of game and fish for the sixty year conservation story is to find that balance.
Yeah.
Interesting, so interesting. We've been going an hour for the integrity of this institution of bear grease. We have to talk about wilderness. We always do this if you listen to the render, you know this, right, We like talk about something for a while and then we stop, and then we talk about what we've been talking about. Maybe I'm the only person in the world that's interested in the wilderness. That's not true.
It is not true.
No, we did a three part We did a three part series. I kind of joke that it was boring.
It was.
My buddy Steve Vernella told me that, which, yeah, kind of kind of stuck me hard. It was more or less more or less the future Gift.
He was on it.
Yeah, I was like, well, it's your fault. No, we did a three part series on American wilderness, and if you listen to it, you're gonna be up to speed. If you're not, if you didn't, you're gonna have to you have to catch up. But basically, man in modern times and the time we live in, wilderness is an incredible it's an incredible word, but it's an incredible concept. That's going to become more and more important. And basically we talked about how there's two things when you say the wilderness. There's the idea of wilderness, and then there's the reality of wilderness, which is actually federally regulated wilderness with a capital W, which is the most regulated land designation from our federal government. The idea of wilderness would be that that you could you could have a feeling of wilderness anywhere. You could go down here to the creek, across the highway here and be in a wooded setting and have a wilderness feeling, you know, being in a landscape that's dominated by natural systems without the marks of man on it. Right, So that could happen anywhere. That could happen on national forests, that could happen on your private land, that could happen anywhere. Federally regulated wilderness is. There are one hundred and eleven million acres of federal wilderness in America. Roughly seventeen percent of America is federally regulated wilderness, which is a huge chunk of land. What did I say that, say seventeen percent, not say five percent, not seventeen percent?
Where come from?
I don't know. Five percent excuse me, pardon me, five percent of America is federally regulated public land with a capital W. And in this last episode we talked about two things. I talked with Steve Vernella about the personal impacts of being in wild places, like all of us have inherited this really a cultural inheritance of a particular way that we view wild places. Like if you went to anywhere in Asia or anywhere in Africa or even Europe, and you set people down and you talk to them about wild spaces unaltered by man, a person would have a sense in a way they would handle it, a way that they would intellectually think about it, the way that they would value it. That would be a product of them being in a culture here in America. And the whole series talked about this, but so much of our national heritage came from this idea of this place being forged out of a wilderness. And we talked about all the pitfalls of that. Oh, it's an incredible series for real, boring as it may be to some people, rent but we dove into some really wild stuff. So the great I'm given like a summary is this okay, little summary inspiration? Okay, Yeah, if you if you get hired on to come play, this is when you start playing when you hear me kind of get going. No, So the the early American wilderness prophets, all these guys mirror Throw, all these all these guys. They believed that wilderness impacted the the the the deep fiber of a man. Like Threau said that that wild places where the nourishment, the intellectual nourishment of civilized men, which is an interesting thought, Like what think about about for yourself? You guys are hunters, ladies or hunters, Like what happens to you when you're in a wild place? Like why do you go there? Why do you sacrifice to be there when you could be in the comfort of your own home you could be having all this, uh, the things we live in most of the time. What really happens when you're in a wild place. That's something to think about. Throw believe that it that it impacted him far beyond. I'm not a fan of Throw necessarily. Neither is Steve or Noa. If you heard our little spat about it, but we talked about that. I'm not necessarily interested in that as much. The second part that we talked about on this last episode was the criticisms of Federal Wilderness, which was interesting. There's an idea that federal wilderness is an elitist idea because Federal Wilderness can't drive a four wheeler, can't drive a willed vehicle. It's ridiculous. You can't take a hang glider. I always thought it was a hand glider. It's not a hand gliter, it's a hang glider. Can't take one of those in the wilderness. It says on the sign our government spent that much money on the on the signs. Yeah, I always thought that was funny. But it's the most restricted amount of land and all you can do is walk in there, ride horses and mules essentially. I mean, that's the only options. And so there's a some people would say that that land is then only for the people who can physically go in there, which is true, and they would say, well, that's not making it accessible to everybody else, which we talked about that. We also talked about primarily the management strategies. I had a good friend of mine named Adam Keith, real sharp guy. He I thought he gave it a really compelling argument. He's a land manager, and he he said Clay. When I hear somebody say federal wilderness, he said, I think of unmanaged land. He said, I'm all for wilderness, wild places, places that are untouched by man. But those federal wildernesses that don't get fire, that don't get any kind of management at all. He's like, they're wastelands like for by for flora and fauna, both invasives are taken over these wildernesses. And so there's this kind of irony that wildernesses often have a much more heavy invasive load than and this isn't across the board, but in a lot of our eastern wildernesses, they have more invasive loads in the wilderness than than places that are managed like national forest. So, James, what do you think, Well, it was a quick review. That was a quick review better with banjo music in the back.
You know, There's there's a couple of things that really stood out to me. And and so when I look out here and see all these folks, and I wish, I wish that the people who are listening to this on their phones or whatever could see the cross section that we have out here.
But I see a lot of people who like wild places and and for me.
The thing that stood out was right at the end when you when Howe was talking about, you know, trusting the federal government or not, and and he made this point and and it was in order for us to have those if we want those places managed differently, we're going to have to ask the federal government to do that or trust them to do that or whatever. And so the thing that struck me and I went back to the to Roderi Nash's book and I looked this up. So the first Wilderness with the Capitol w bill was introduced in nineteen thirty nine, and it took until nineteen sixty four for that to finally get passed. Now that's twenty five years. There's a lot of people in this room who are not twenty five years old yet. And what we backcountry hunters and anglers, you know, we try to inspire people to get involved in the outdoors and get involved in how we think about the outdoors and how we how we engage with the outdoors and some of that. Frankly, it kind of it's not fun, but it's asking the federal government to do stuff for us on our public lands.
And so the takeaway for me and then I'll quit talking. Is if we want something done differently, we the people here have to do it. We have to ask for it.
And we've been involved in things here in Arkansas where we asked for things to be done U as our as our particular BHA chapter, and we were able to be successful with that. For people to think that their voice doesn't matter, I promise you it matters. It might take a lot of us, but it matters. So that's the that's what I took away from it.
I was standing up problems with it. Then then it's then it's our problem. The system could work, Yes we did. Yeah, Yeah, that makes sense.
That's that's my that's my I loved it.
I was telling you that because we're here in front of a thousand people.
I love wild places and I fell in love with Arkansas when I started go into the wild places. So and I bet you for any any people in here who are from Arkansas, I would probably say the same thing, like our wild places are unique and we need to keep those wild places wild.
Yeah. Patrick, Well, I do.
Want to underscore what you're saying about the series, because if you thought you had an idea of what wilderness is or isn't. It will be very clear after they listen to it, and it'll it'll just enlighten all of us. I think in a lot of ways about what it is what it is, and I mean, you know, I know on a personal level, like, for example, I have a rule that I don't know if anybody else has it, but like if I can see turkeys anywhere from a road, I am not hunting there because that means everybody else can see them and I want to get as far away as possible and have my own experience. And by extension, that's kind of everything that I love to do would sort of be in those wild places, just as James said, is a magical thing, right. I think what's important with the discussion is the distinction between that feeling of being in a wild place in wilderness, because you don't have to live next to a big w federally designated wilderness ere have that experience. There could be a town forest or a state wildlife management area or some other place where you're in the middle of it and you feel like you are a million miles away from civilization. And what was really well explained in that third episode to me was how we kind of miss the mark on the wilderness designation in parts of the country, especially in the Midwest in the East, because the whole forests have changed. There aren't the same critters on the landscape, how they interact with one another. There aren't even the same things that grow on the landscape anymore. It's not just invasives, it's just how the trees and plants have changed over time. And to have this idea that we can just shut them off from everything and it'll go back to what it was like post ice age is it's just it's a fantasy. It would be like going into your cell phone store and where they have the latest gadgets of like iPhones and Samsung whatever's and saying I would like a rotary phone, right, that's which analogy right, which it's you know, I don't even know if those things work anymore through modern phone lines.
But it's just not reletive. I know.
Actually I called them on it, right, It's just it's just some of our ideas are coming from a good, well meaning place, but they've just missed the mark on how practical they are for certain places in the country that we will never be able to go back to what it was before, and that's one of the arguments of designating an area in wilderness. And I can tell you quickly from personal experience that one of my favorite places to go grousing would cock hunting. Up in the mountains was an area that had been managed over time. I mean, it was up in the mountains, and what I loved about it is that I got it. I got away from everybody and everything. It has since been designated as a wilderness area, which would be fine if, like your third episode.
They don't have management there anymore and it's.
Not the same place anymore. And I've gone back there years later and it's it's done. Wow, there's there's no the the limiting factor on the biodiversity or the number and type of critters that are still on the landscape. It's just not the same and it never will be because we can't go back to where we were.
You know.
So if you listen to the whole series, you would hear that I'm very pro wilderness. I mean, I think the wilderness designation and we all I think we all are on here. We're just trying to be open about the criticisms to it. The whole series. I mean the way America has handled wilderness has been has been monumental globally for how other countries have done it. We were the first place to have federally designated wilderness. I mean, so it's a an ingenious plan, an ingenious idea that I'm that we're four and I know Patrick is four too, but we're talking to I don't want anybody to get the wrong idea that we're saying wilderness is bad. No, we're just saying the wilderness model has been don't touch it. And I you know, I hear what you said is such a great example. I don't know that I trust what I said on the last part of the podcast was I said, yeah, these wildernesses would do better if they had management. But I don't know that I trust the people opening the gate necessarily, well, not the people. Just you know, if you if you open up the ability for that to be changed, will it go too far?
Yeah?
And that's that's the problem, just with any any institution, is like, would it be better to just keep it as is and it be a sacrifice?
Well, Clay, the thing is with that, if we don't get involved in it and ask for it, it might just get changed without our input. That's why we you had I mean, I heard you saying this on a different podcast here recently. If we don't tell our story, somebody else going to tell it the way they want to tell it. And if we don't ask for management the way we'd like to see it, somebody else is going to ask for it, and it might be like you can't even go in there. Not only can you not ride a bike in there, but you can't walk, you know. So that's why we have to be involved, you know it. It doesn't take every single person here to be involved. It would be great if every person was involved, but it takes it takes dedicated groups who do want that kind of stuff, conservation organizations like ours and other good ones that do that work to be involved, and then people have to pay attention when it's time, and that's what we need.
That's my that's my stump speech, yeap, just to you.
Know, add to that too.
I mean, and I really appreciate you making the point that, look, we all care about wild places, right and you know, I know Aldo Leopold gets over quoted, but like this is really stuck with me. You know, he said, wilderness is the raw artifact out of which mankind has hammered civilization. There's not a whole lot of raw artifact that's left in a lot of places in the country, and so it's incredibly appropriate to cherish wilderness and wild places and even wilderness designations where you still have that raw artifact or that opportunity where it can be what it once was. And so this is where pragmatic people have to have a conversation about where it's appropriate and where it's not, and that this you can't just plunk down some management prescription, which could be zero management, because it sounds like the right thing to do, and you love the concept of it, even though like that's probably not the best place for it, even if it's very appropriate over here in these stays of this region of the country.
But at Adam's point, it was so well taken. As you can't manage these big, giant wilderness areas. I mean, there's wilderness areas that are millions of acres in the West compared to some of these smaller wildernesses that we have in the East. It's just're just not managed the same. Misty, what did you think.
I thought it was really good and very very exciting. I couldn't I couldn't disagree with Steve Vanilla Moore.
No.
I thought it was I thought it was a very very interesting and I think it's important to just realize kind of what James was saying. It takes like twenty five years to make change happen and to sustain change, and it's really important to me when you think about wilderness. And what I kept thinking as I was listening to that podcast was how important it is to get our kids out in the wild places. You can't outsource your values. You can't just assume that they're going to get this, that they're gonna they're gonna appreciate the wilderness areas just because you do. You have to get them out there, and you have to talk to them about the value of this so that twenty five years from now they can fight the battles that need to be fought when.
Maybe we're too well too. Yeah, we probably won't be too well to in twenty five years.
Now.
There's there's never been, you know, the revolution in the world that came with social media, which expanded the networks of people to be able to communicate at an exponential level that has never happened before in human history, Like this is what we're doing right now, is like this total experiment with people being able to connect and communicate the way that they do. And there's never been I believe this was all my heart. There's never been a more powerful time for sportsmen and women, conservation minded people to stand up and tell the narrative of our culture are the way we do things and and and that's what I hear a lot of these guys saying, whether it's being involved politically in different ways or or just even inside of your own your own groups, uh, just of influence in your life, just being uh, telling our story. It's powerful, and I mean that's what that's what we try. That's what I try to do on Bear Greece is just like tell tell our story, interpret our our way of thinking to the world and goly Man. Time is such a deceptive thing because like we wake up and we just we're born and we come into consciousness and become adults, and we think this is just the way it's always been. But we live in unprecedented times when it comes to so many things. I mean, you know, expansion of human population in the earth, the urban sprawl, like, if we're talking about landscape level stuff, and holy cow, is our wild places wild places will be the most scarce resource on the earth. I mean, in a way it already is. But I mean, I mean, and the way the system works right now, it's such a unique thing in the world. But the but the hunters are the ones who have a lot of say right now in wild lands and how they're managed. That's the way it's been and and and we can't take that for granted. And anyway, I'm just kind of amazed the more I learn about how unique this American hunting culture that we all grew up in that just seems like it's normal. It's not normal. This is not normal. This is this is this is wild. We can't take it for granted. That's that's why I'm so passionate about knowledge and history. Like you, you have no you have no right to have an opinion about what something's gonna how something's gonna turn out. If you don't know history of what happened before. I mean, you don't really have an intelligent position to have a really strong opinion. I mean, that's why I that's why the stories that I like to learn and most of the stuff we do on bear grees. I'm learning, I mean, it's a process of learning. But we're talking about history, we're and we're we're talking about we're learning about wild landscapes and animals, but we're also dealing a lot with the social aspects of life, I mean, which are equally as important. Like, if you want to be in control of wild lands, you also got to know how to deal with people, you know, And is that true? I mean, Myron, Myron will tell you that probably the biggest part of your job is dealing with people, not bears.
It's not wildlife managements. People management.
Yeah, And I mean so as a as a and I like to use this word. I don't know if it's politically correct or not, but I mean, I think the hunters in America are a people group. Let's go do it, Let's go people. I mean, we're like, we're like a We're like a people group, We're like a tribe. And honey doesn't totally define us. Like I'm not totally defined by hunting. I mean, it's a part of my life that's visible. There are other things that define me much more than this. But at a pretty high level, as a hunter, that that that's my identity, something I grab on to. Not the most important thing, but most most important thing would be my faith in my family, which I put action behind making that be true. But down there ways on external kind of earthly stuff, being a hunter is is, it's like it is part of my identity. And uh and every generation, I mean, we're being swamped by the world really trying to squeeze us out of this culture. And what what what I'm trying to do. What's so many of us in this in this room trying to do. What we're trying to do with meat eater I feel like, is we're trying to carve out a cultural space. I like to I like to say, we're we're asking America for a cultural tenure. Like a tenure means that you're granted this place in the culture that never goes away. Way for the American backwoodsman, the hunter, to be able to to be able to hunt, to be able to have some jurisdiction over wild lands, to be able to go and harvest wild game, for our families, to be able to take our children into wild places. And man, that that means the world to me. And I want that my sons and daughters have already had that opportunity and will continue. But their kids and their kids kids, you know what's going to happen twenty years from now, forty years from now, sixty years from now, and we just can't take it for granted. Do you guys agree with that? We got to be We've got to be educated. And that's part of what education of even just learning about bears, learning the cultural significance if you got bears in your yard, if you ever killed a bear in Arkansas, man, that's a pretty major thing. And to not take that for granted. I think that's the That's the thing I'm most passionate about is just I'm grateful for what we for we have in so many ways.
And so what we do here at Black Bear Bonanza celebrate, celebrate the black bears. You know, I've heard you say the icon of North American wilderness, and you know, we're thankful to have all of y'all here to celebrate it with us, all of y'all out here in the crowd, to celebrate with us.
Patrick here. This is incredibly.
Meaningful, not just for us personally, but it's meaningful for conservation to see to see all of you all come here and support it and bring We've got a little guy asleep here in the front row.
You know, we've got the little ones down here.
We have people in wheelchairs who you know, made an extra effort to get here.
We have men and women.
It's it's amazing to see all this and see y'all's commitment to helping us celebrate bears, celebrate wild places. And I think, what did you say on the podcast that or somebody said it that wilderness made Americans right, right, and so that's that's what we're celebrating.
Yeah, man, it's fantastic.
That's great.
Well, thank you guys so much. Hey, we're gonna clue Andrew. Andrew, come on up, all right, we're gonna we're gonna close out the Bear Grey Shrender. This is my buddy Andrew Wills. He's gonna sing a song that, uh, that he wrote. I had a little bit to do with it.
Andrew's also known as Hawking Horse.
Yeah.
Oh, he came all the way from Nashville, Tennessee. You guys, Andrew's been on the podcast before, and uh he he sent me this song the other day and I was like, dude, you gotta come to Arkansas and sing it. So, I guess never sang publicly before, is that right? Yeah? This is hawking horse all right, buddy, Well you need me to dance up here, probably that'd be good. Yeah, yeah, it's a little little dancing.
Don't get too don't get too far away from your stuff back here, you'll.
Jerky right out of there. Andrew Andrew is a professional songwriter in uh Nashville, Tennessee, a little town called Nashville, Tennessee. And he's a big bear grease man, literally, a big bear grease man.
Could I say something?
Yeah, go ahead, just yeah, keep talking while Andrew's getting set up.
Patrick the turkeys is next to the road.
Can you tell me where that's at?
Yeah, Brent likes those close to the road.
I'll tell you what. I'll call you up on your rotary phone and we'll talk about it. Here.
You go drop him a rotary.
He'll send you the GPS coordinates.
I'll send you the GPS cordinates.
Just just holler at Sarah say give me Brent's.
Andrew give us a little background on this song.
Yeah. So, so this is a song.
Clay texted me one day and he says, I have a song idea, and I was like, what is it? And when he told me idea, my instant thought was, that is the most Clay Newkem song idea I've ever heard. And uh, he gives me a little too much credit. He had quite a few lines that he forgot. He even wrote, so, uh, we're pretty fifty to fifty on this one. But I don't know if there's anything else you want to mention about it.
I mean, we just wrote it.
It's pretty new, it's it's it's a lighthearted. So I told Andrew, I said, anytime I hear a song that has Arkansas in it, I just am like, yeah. I mean like Tennessee Stud. You remember song Tennessee Stud when he came through Arkansas. You know he had to fight this girl's dad from Arkansas.
Then woo heard nor her Paul, I promise.
You yeah, yeah, or her bro any song other than some there's yeah. Anyway, he wrote a song that has the word Arkansas in it and the word.
Mule in it.
Arkansas Mule, that's the name of the song.
I said, that's pretty Clay Newcome sounding, and it's kind of a cowboy song, right, I mean yeah, I'm not a cowboy, but I like cowboys anyway. This is called Arkansas Mule, and I've got the lyrics because we just wrote this so and it goes like this.
They said he killed a man in West Fork.
He had no choice but to run. They'd hanging in the gallows for the seiding of the evening sun. He wasn't innocent man, but he got framed out of the truth. So he threw his saddle bag on the back of that Arkansas buckskin mule.
Right.
She was tall and strong, lean, long, sturdy, has an iron.
Two.
They're inn't a horse alive. They would draw his eye from that Arkansas buckskin us.
Right, go ahead, you playing man Joe on.
In the heat of nos Ark night, they forded the river white Man, and the flowing steered deep under the glow of the moon light. Headed east into the bluffs where the bear suck gold. They're young. Made her walk backwards on the track and then looked it south. She was tall and strong, lean along, flashy. Yes, she was cool. They'rein't a horse alive that you could draw his eye from that Arkansas buckskin mule.
Right, This would be a great place.
God Andrew solo.
That's good, sounds good, y'all like the song.
All right.
In the month of May, they were cutting hay on the banks of the Fouish to Faith, and they waved him down for a bite of chow and to sit around flame. And that's when he heard the welcome word that his name had been cleared.
He didn't kill him.
And then he turned and grinned at his old friend and gave her a scratch behind the ear. And she's tom Strong leaned along faith to the last of rule. They read a horse alive, if I could draw his eye from down, Arkansas buckskin, horse alive, that he trade or by for that Arkansas bucks can and music all ride right.
Thank you, Thank you, Andrew Hawking Horse. Thanks buddy. That was awesome, awesome, awesome, Thank you guys so much.
