Ep. 912: Clay’s Ozark Bear Camp | 12 in '26

This is an iHeart podcast, Guaranteed Human. I'm in the Ozarks today and tomorrow is the opening day of the Arkansas bear season. It's like a holiday to me. We're going to be competing against the White Oak Acres to kill these bears. But the day before season today, we're going to be making molasses with my friend Willard Ballin. Hey everybody, my name is Clay Nukem and what you just watched was the intro to our newest film called Ozark Bear Camp with Clay Nukem. It's the latest in meat eaters 12 and 26 series brought to you by Maltry and Onyx and that little intro kind of warms my heart. I love the landscape shots, Willard the lines is kind of a legend around here and it was a good film. So on what we're doing right here is our companion series podcast where we're going to go behind the scenes, answer viewer questions and talk to you about a bunch of stuff that we weren't able to talk about in the episode and in this film, we head to my Arkansas bear camp with my family friends and a bunch of other people and well, I guess everybody's family and friends. There were no non laws or in laws as a few people that came that just I completely, you know, are not my friends. That's not true. But we're going to talk about that on this podcast. I'm joined today by my producer, hero, mustache icon, fly fishing sage and best friend a guy I could ever ask for Josh Landbridge spill maker. You're kind of you to write that. Wow. That was touching. So great to have you here. Speak of warm and heart. Hey, you were at you were with me on this film. I was. Yeah. You showed up a couple of times. Yeah. In the film. Yep. We're excited. Man, this, the, this film has tons of bear hunting in it. You know, it's, it's kind of a iconic region, a lot of bear hunting, not so not a lot of bear skinned or yeah, but the, you know, this, this region where we're hunting is kind of iconic for bear grease, especially, you know, this would be kind of your home, you know, the, the, the Ozarks on the Washtita's are kind of where you've cut your teeth hunting. And so without further ado, we want to just dive right in. Um, like I said, there's lots of bear hunting in this film, but the film starts with a thing that happens to coincide with bear season. And that's the harvest of the sorghum. This, yeah, this was really cool for me because the, the previous year was the first time that I would have made sorghum with Willard Baleins and the whole, we get into it. Let's actually watch a clip. We're going to watch a, about a one, about a one minute clip about the sorghum making. So, yeah, my dad made molasses when I was a kid, so that's been about, say, a big, some years ago. And then the valines when they came into this valley brought with them sorghum seed and some of that same seed is the seed that you grow today. Right. Yeah, it's been handed down from generations to generations. That Mr. Dahl is putting in there and squeezing all that liquid out. Right. Yeah, it was in from the last year. The history is pretty remarkable and in modern times the timing of the sorghum harvest is coincided with bear season. When you're boiling something down like this really you're just removing the water and just concentrating the sugar. Right. I mean, that's really all it is. Right. So. With the molasses making finishing up, it's time to get down to brass tacks. We're hunting bears and less than 24 hours and we're going to take today's skimmons to sweeten up my bait side. It was pretty cool. The year before was the first year that I'd ever made sorghum with wild valines and it was right before bear season. And so I wanted to, I'll tell you exactly what happened. As the year before, I was there with him just a scene just like what you saw and I made a little video on my phone, and I put that video on my Instagram and really didn't think that much about it. It was just a cool video showing the meal, grasshopper, you know, you know, turning the meal. It showed the whole process and less than a minute. And that video got 30 million views on Instagram, 30 million, 30.5 million views on Instagram. And it just kind of queued me in that this is something that the world needs to see in more detail. Right. This is a 30 second, maybe minute long clip. And so that's when I talked to Willard and said, hey, we're going to bear hunt next year over here, why, and we're going to have a crew here, why don't we, why don't we film the full sequence of you making molasses. And I mean, it was no sweat off his back. It was like we're going to be doing it anyway. It was a little bit of coordination with when to harvest the, the, the sorghum. Is that the, is that like the optimal time? So yes, they, it's, they always harvest it in September and early October. Okay. You couldn't, you wouldn't have done it too much earlier, but, but here anyway, uh, mid to late September to early October, you know, it seems like it, in the harvest and production of the sorghum with thevelines and like, not a lot has changed. Is there anything that has changed since they started doing that? A couple generations back. I mean, the way, obviously they weren't lifting it with a track. So if you go to the store and buy a jar of sorghum molasses, most likely that was made in a, in a, in a modern mill, you know, they weren't using a mule to turn it. It was an electric mill somehow that, you know, press us down the, the canes and makes the juice. The way that they're doing it is identical to the way it would have been done 100, 100 years ago. But that mill that he has, the press is, has been in his family for many years. They actually have one of the other brothers. So what's cool about thevelines, Willardvelines is one of 10 children and how old is Willard? Willard's 78. Okay. And I don't get me talking about where he's at, but I want to say he's somewhere in the middle. Okay. He has some brothers that were older, right. And one of the brothers has the original mill that his father had, had used the, the sorghum press. Wow. And might say in the right word for that, I think mill seems right. So, but, but that, that might be a classic, it might be a press mill seems like it would be grinding. Right. Yeah. And so, yeah, the way they're doing it is, is just the same, but it's really pretty simple. You know, when you, the first time I was there, I was like, man, this is a complicated process with a lot of stages, you just press the canes, get the, get the juice out. And then you just heat it and remove the water. Like there's no recipe, right? There's no, there's not like, well, at this moment, you have to do this. However, that makes it sound simple. And that fire is burning, Willard and those guys are watching it like a hawk, because you can run it. It seems like the critical things would be like timing of when it's done, you know, keeping it moving and making sure that fire doesn't get too hot or too low. Exactly. And they can tell you the taste difference in where sorghum has grown, even in their county, like Willard will be like, now this cane came from here, and it tastes a little bit sweeter than the cane that came from up on the mountain. So is this something that happens regionally? Like are there other families in that area that are? Yeah, I'd say there's quite a few that, not quite a few. There are others that make sorghum just the same way, not a lot. I wonder if they have like a sorghum off, like whoever makes the best sorghum. Oh, it would be. It could test highly, highly contested. I wouldn't want to judge it. Yes. But if you haven't had sorghum, it's an interesting product, it's sweet. You could use it like syrup, but it's kind of got, it's got a very unique taste that if you didn't grow up with it, you might be like, you know, it might kind of catch you off guard. Right. Eating sorghum will ask my grandfather, he treated it like it was like we got to go out and have ice cream. I mean, it was like, hey, you want some sorghum? You know, I mean, like it was really something. something special. And what he would do is he would pour, he would take a butter knife and pour it out of the jar, and he could very strategically, you know, it drips, it's like thicker than syrup. Like, it's more like honey. It's like a thinner honey. And so when it's poured out, if you just tip the jar back up, it gets all over the side of the jar. And so at just the right time when you're tipping it back up, you zoom the knife across and keep the jar clean and you'd have a little dollop about, because it's silver dollar. About a, you know, less than a quarter inch high. Then he would take a piece of butter, a square of butter and put it in there and mash it up with the sorghum and put that on biscuits. That's what he did. And it was, man, back in the day before the commercialization of sugar and candy and how much access that the everyday American has to sugar, which is bizarre and you should be very concerned with how much sugar you eat. I mean, wildly bizarre that of the people watching this video. I mean, what are the statistics of how much sugar the average American a meat eats? I mean, it's like like 50 pounds of sugar or something a year. - At least, at least. And if you drink soda. - That's insane. You should be very, very, which camera do I look at? You should be very concerned about this. But back in the day, to have sorghum, which was sweet, was like a treat. - Right. - It is interesting this overnight sugar in your everyday consumption. - That's right. And it's kind of interesting 'cause when I would do the same thing with my kids, - Hey, you want some sorghum? - I mean, I'm ashamed to say that. They were kind of unimpressed, you know? - Yeah. - But kids, these days. - Kids, these, now my kids don't eat that much sugar. - Bare nukum? - No, bare nukum. - Bare nukum is like almost sugar-free. - Yeah. - And he's also like a lean meat. - He's also like 2% body fat. - Yeah. So, now that kind of stuff is really special to me to be able to document it. And what is most special, and this is what you get behind the scenes is, I wanted to do that for Willard and his family. - Right. - Because Willard's, his family's been doing this. And I mean, all they would have would just be some cell phone videos in modern times, and then some just, you know, a handful of photographs from years ago. And so it was pretty cool to have the meat eater crew there to document it so well. And you know, it was about a 10 minute clip, so it's not like it was exhaustive. - So, you know, a couple of questions first, you know, that same seed's been passed down for the generations. - Yeah. - Why does that matter, Clay? - Good sorghum. - Good sorghum. - No, it's just, I think it's just a connection to the past, like the human life is deceptive. It feels like people from the 1800s, your third and fourth grandfather's were a long ways away, but they really weren't. And you know, by Willard holding that seed and planting it in the ground, and knowing that his ancestors, you know, you could track it back and grow that seed. I think it just connects you to the past and to the heritage of the region. And it's just unique. - Yeah. - I mean, there's nothing that I have, that I could touch that, I mean, I don't know my great grandfather's shotgun, which I've got over there, like very little. And you know, when you think about history, which I talk a lot about history, and you might think that I was hyper nostalgic in the way that I think about even my life. And I'm not sure that I am, because the past is interesting. There's a lot of the past that we should forget, and even reject and move past in our own personal lives, and even in our family's history, like, but the knowledge of some of this stuff is powerful. That's more a statement of, like, general understanding of, like, why the history? 'Cause I think there's probably a, can be an unhealthy attachment to the past. - Yeah. - And this is not that. This is a celebration of heritage and a connection to a family legacy. And over in this part of the world, in Newton County and the central Ozarks, the name Valens, there are hundreds of Valens, because the guys that brought that sorghum seed, I want to say Willard told me that Abraham Valens had 18 children. - Wow. And they're all still over there. And they're a wonderful family. There are a lot of, I know a lot of Valens over there. - One last question, and kind of a philosophical question would be, oh, another one. - What does Willard represent about the Ozarks that you wanted the viewers to appreciate? By starting, I mean, you started this film off with that. What is it about him that you want people to see? - He's just a, there are people that are, he just has such a connection to the Ozark. He's just a real deal Ozarkian. Like, he's not trying to be anything. He just is what he is. - He didn't put those overalls and hat on because he was gonna be on film. - He may have just a little, but he wears those all the time. I mean, there's actually a part of history in all these places that we reflect back to our past and our influence by. I mean, wearing these overalls right here. I mean, it's like, yeah, it's a hat tip to the past. And I think people still do that today. But Willard's the real deal. He's a mule man, he's a hunter. He's just a well-respected guy over there. - Love it. - They, yeah. - Yeah, great guy. Okay, let's, we got another clip here. Let's go ahead and watch it. - Bears right now are going into what they call hyperfagia, which is a physiological state of incredible increase in metabolism. So a bear fell off right there. - A bear ate five to eight thousand calories a day. In the fall, they can eat 20,000 calories a day. So when you're baiting, you're capitalizing on a natural process inside of a bear. - We're using pop tarts, corn, sorghum molasses, schimmons. We got in a little later than we wanted. So it was a quick drop of the molasses. Over the bait, we filled up the bait barrels. The last thing we want to do is spook bears the night before the hunt. Everybody's here for the season opener and we're having a big time. Much of my hunting is primarily solo, but our bear camp is always full of people, and that's something that I love. I always got to give like the state of the union, the state of the bear union. I have pretty good news. Like, I would say that the bear situation is, average to slightly below average. (laughing) - So tell us a little bit about, you know, you typically have a bear camp every year. Tell us what made this bear camp different than the bear camps in the past. - Well, it was fun to have Lake Pickle Jordan Blissett there, they were both new bear hunters had never been a bear hunter before, so it was cool to get to introduce them to it. We were actually in a new spot that I had 104. We were in a new spot. - This closed new spot. - And my buddy, Justin House was there. James Lawrence came up who's in-- - Bear Greece icon. - Yep, yes. And there was another interesting guest at our bear camp this year. Ted Coppel was there. - As in the real Ted Coppel. - The interview Richard Nixon. - Right, Ted Coppel. - You actually see Ted Coppel in the last clip of the film sitting by our fire. He's wearing all black and he's kind of sitting in the back and we're playing music and the lights are on. And you actually can see Ted Coppel. - So he had come to do-- - So yeah, what you wouldn't have known from watching the film is that CBS Good Morning-- - Sunday Morning. - Sunday, CBS Sunday Morning came to our bear camp and we're there for basically two of the five days. There were people there. I guess there were people there for parts of three of five days. They came in on the evening. Ted was there all day, one of the days, but the guys were still there the next day for portion of the day, if I recall. - Yeah. - And they did a spot on CBS Sunday Morning. And so Ted interviewed many of us. We rendered bare fat. Aside from what you saw, we rendered bare fat for CBS Sunday Morning. And he just hung out with us. - Good Lord, they're finally here, at long last, after fighting and yelling and fighting some more. Clay Newcombe and First Light have done it. They have built a pair of work bibs together, not just any work bibs. We're talking the-- Bear grease bibs from clay. Now I've watched clay work long enough to know that he wasn't gonna put his name on a pair of hunting pants pretending to be work bibs and boy he did not. These are clay's invention for things like breaking mules, rendering grease, kneeling in the dirt. I'm gonna use them all the time, trapping, working, fixing stuff. It doesn't matter. If you want good, durable, comfortable bibs, these are your bibs made from tough stretch duck cotton. They got brier proof chaps that run from cuff to thigh. They got pockets damn near everywhere. Again, comfortable and durable. Put them on. You don't need to worry about having anything go bad. If it wasn't so hot right now outside, I'd be wearing them right now. But you can bet your ass I got them in my truck and they are up at the meat eater store right now at themeaterstore.com. - I have to say that compared to some of the bear camps of the past, which have been awesome. This one was a little bougie or two. We had a pretty nice place. - We stayed in the really nice cabin. We did, that was on you. - Get spoiled there. - We kind of had to do that because we had so many people there and because we had Ted Coppola and his crew coming. And so, we on the Bear Grease podcast spoke about when Ted Coppola came. He was 85, 85 years old. - He was very younger and you don't wreck anybody. I would say 35 and older would know who Ted Coppola was. Was one of the most famous, well-known faces in America. Probably 25 years as a broadcast anchor for CBS. So yeah, back in the day, kids there were, when there was just television. That's, you had television and books in radio. That's all you had, no cell phones. People watched television at night. - Ted Coppola was a household name. - And there would have been like three or four major networks and the anchors for the nightly news on those stations were. It's famous as the president. - Right, right. - And so Ted Coppola was one of those guys. - He was on the night line for years. - Yes, many years. - And he was a delightful man. - He was. - It honestly surprised me how endearing he was. Just like, personable, humble, yeah. - Set with us and just talked. He singled out almost everyone in our camp and had fairly in depth conversations, personal conversations. - When I realized what he was doing was just in house who can just kind of be a fly on the wall at times. Was there, and there was a little bit of a lot. We're in a big group. This is after he'd been there for hours and he looked at Justin and he said, "Justin, tell me what you do." - Yeah. - And it was clear that he was trying to connect with everybody there and one time I came around a corner and he and Brent were sitting over in a chair just chatting away. They'll tell him what Brent was telling him. - When you guys were out hunting one afternoon, he sat down with your mom and dad and Misty and I. And I think just the four of us and just for hour and a half and just let us ask him questions about his career and his family and yeah, just really neat. - Yeah. - What is it about bear camp that means so much to you? - So most of my hunting, I said it in there. Most of my hunting is solo. Like most of my hunting, I wake up here at my house and you know, go deer hunting or go bear hunting and maybe somebody comes with me but I'm driving there and hunting for a day or two and coming back. Other times I'm leaving on the bigger hunts. To me, my hunting and probably most people's hunting can be segregated into two things. You're local hunting but then if you're so fortunate to get to travel to hunt, many people do make one big trip hunt and trip somewhere, you travel. So when I travel, I'm usually with people but it's not home and it's not with family. Bear camp is very communal, very focused on the camp. We're not honestly, we're not hunting that hard in terms of hunting. The work that goes into it is more than I do for anything else that I do. And that's hard to describe for some people. I mean the work that goes into biting bears is the most work that I do. Like when I go to Alaska next month, I'm just gonna like show up and I've never been there and all of my energy will be dedicated during the time I'm there and then I'll leave. This takes a whole bunch of effort to get there. - I mean for a month ahead of time. - Yes, and so when we're there though, we're typically just hunting the evenings maybe a little bit in the morning. So we're spending a lot of time at camp, a lot of time with people and that's fun to me. - Man we had a great time just having food and in the evenings people would show up and at one night there were guys there playing some fantastic music, it was your birthday. We celebrated that, I mean we had a great time. I've got a couple questions here from some Instagram. From Instagram. First question is from Isaac Underscore Reynolds 34 if you're out there. What's your recommended draw weight for bear and what's your favorite bear bait to use? - You can use archery equipment on a black bear that you would use on a white till deer. - Okay. - They're really, I wouldn't do anything different between my white till set up and my bear set up. - Broadheads as well. - Now that I would do different. I'd typically, I go back and forth between expandables with white tails. - Okay. - I'd say 75% of the time I'm using some expandable head for white tails, they're thinner skinned, thinner bone, they're more likely I feel like with a white till to get a compromised hit because of the way they can react to a shot and drop and move. And so I want a big cut in diameter. When I'm bear hunting, I prioritize an entry and exit hole. So I want the arrow that is going to penetrate the most. - Use fixed blade to use a split cut on impact. - I would not, you wouldn't have to use a cut on impact necessarily, but I like to use a fixed blade broadhead for black bear. Now, yeah, I mean, we could go into all the stuff about shot placement and now, ensure that it will come up later. - Today later? - Well, we'll talk about shot placement on a bear. - Oh yeah, forgot about that. - Yeah, so favorite bear bait? - Favorite bear bait is going to be a carbohydrate for here. Now, what is interesting about black bears is that they have such a wide geographic distribution, which black bears have the currently of the large mammals on this continent, have the largest geographic distribution of them all. - Okay. - Historically, wolves would have had a wider geographic distribution than the black bear. - Okay. - Okay, think about this, Josh, this is going back to bear bait and why bears prefer different foods in different places. But the wolf essentially would have historically ranged from north of the Arctic Circle all the way down into Old Mexico from the Atlantic to the Pacific. - Wow. - I mean, like without a gap in there, there would have been different subspecies of wolves, based upon the biology and all this, but the wolf would have done that. The black bear would do the exact same thing, except black bears, historically were not in the great prairie regions of America. A black bear has to have trees to survive. And so there would have been pockets in the great plains where black bears wouldn't have been. They would have been in the riparian zones, but wolves would have been in those areas. And then the treeless areas of the southwestern desert and the great plains with the only places that there were not black bears. So imagine black bears ranged north of the Arctic Circle as well. Probably not as high as wolves though. - Sure. - And the furthest, southerly documented black bears have been around Mexico City, which is deep into Mexico. And so, but are there wolves today in Arkansas and in Oklahoma and in Kansas? No, they're not. So historic range, the wolf had the biggest. Today, the black bear does, because the black bear now exists in basically 65% of its historic range. In many regions, 100% of its historic range, if that makes sense. Like in Canada and Alaska, the black bear's in 100% of its historic range. - Okay. - So how does that tie to bear bait? - Okay. Thank you. Bears. Prefer different things in different places. Okay. So for instance, in the spring and Canada these Outfitters are using oats with oil on it. I'm convinced that if you put oats with oil on bear bait in this part of the world, you would have not great results. And we can only hunt in a fall here. But my favorite bear bait, I would say, would be pastries, donuts, pop tarts, and bread and grease. That seems to be when we're baiting them. And I want to emphasize for anybody that's, has not been around bear baiting it. There's a ton of research about baiting black bears and it, we covered it in my book that's coming out in February. Right. American bear. I mean, excited about it. We, we cover it all. But I can just summarize for you to say that all the research indicates that baiting bears does not abituate them to anthropomorphic foods, anthropogenic foods. Like they're not going to come raid your house because they're being baited up, you know, half a mile away. Basically, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's not detrimental to, they still have a preference for, oh, they all natural always going to have a preference for natural foods. Yeah, they just do, they would rather eat a wide okay, can. Um, so things that make a bear fat that up in Canada, they would use like oil and oats. Okay. One of the questions I had when I watched it is you mentioned that during hyperfagia, when they're trying to put on weight that a bear will eat 20,000 calories in a day, in nature, what are they eating that they're able to get 20,000 calories in a day? Well, in the fall, um, hard mask has incredible caloric content. Okay. And so like a white oak acre and has five to seven calories per acre. Right. And imagine, I tell a story in the book of once when I actually watched, and the only reason I knew the time stamp was because I videoed it, but I watched a bear eat wide oak acres for 18 minutes straight without lifting its head. Wow. And just estimating that that bear was chomping one wide oak acre in every five seconds, which probably would be about as fast as it would. Right. It, it would have consumed like 1800 calories. Okay. In like 18 minutes, it may not have been that precise, uh, 18 and 18 makes me think my numbers are wrong, but it consumed an enormous, like over a thousand calories in that 18 minutes. And it's like, wow, how many times could it do that in a day? Right. 20,000. Right. Fairly easily could. Right. So yeah, they're just cramming on the calories. Okay. And that, but they, but what's so cool about these bears is that they have to because our bears here are typically up and on their feet for 10 to nine, 10 months a year, but in the highest portion of their range, way up in the north, there, the boy, I don't want to spill too much about the book. The coolest fact in the book, the coolest fact in the whole book is the longest documented dinning that we've ever seen a bear stay in a din, like a collared bear. Right. They knew and it went in. They knew when it came out. And let me just say it was an unbelievable amount of time. And when they're there, they're not eating, they're not drinking, they're not defecating. That's right. You're an eating. That's right. That is unbelievable. Yeah. And that's, yes, it is. It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a absolutely fascinating process, but that connects back to them eating, having to eat 20,000 calories a day or being able to in fall, is that they're trying to make a year's living in six to nine months. And so they've got to pack it all in. And that's, and a bear is just built to consume calories. I mean, it just has big intestines, stomach, the ability, you know, a mouth that just can just consume for a, and process it quickly. I mean, like every, they're just, they're just an eating machine is what they are. And the cool thing about bears is they're, they're, they're omnivores. And whatever's happening ecologically on planet earth, it is favoring omnivores. It is favoring generalists, specialists are often the things that are struggling. And that's why that we see the black bear thriving. Right. Every research population of bears is stable or increasing right now. Wow. That's awesome. One more, one more viewer question. The simple one. Do you have a favorite fresh kill camp meal? And that's from Mac Fink Biner 0711. You know, I think I don't, I don't have a fancy answer. But just to, to cook a backstrap over a fire. Some seasoning on it. Yeah. Or just just to just frot pan frot battered and pan fried. This is the way to go. All right. Well, we've got another clip here. Man, I'm, I'm excited for you. I'm, I'm just eager, man. I'm ready to get up there and ready to see a bear from a stand. It's just going to be something new for me. Dr. Pickle. We're starting our hunt in the early afternoon. Bears are crepuscular. So they move at dawn and dusk. But these baited bears move a lot at night. So we opt to go and start hunting in mid afternoon when the bears aren't there and just set up and wait for the last hour of daylight. Maybe lakes and anticipation of seeing bears had something to do with it. But he actually doesn't have to sit long until he actually sees a bear. They're coming on the right. Lake has some truly big bears that are coming into this bait. We know they're coming in and we also know that these aren't them. So today they get a pass. But in this kind of hunt, your options can change by the day and even by the hour. So you, you, you kind of addressed a lot of the, a lot of the, the baiting issues. I feel like the film does a good job showing just how difficult it is to bait. I mean, the work that goes into it. But just because you bait doesn't mean it's a sure thing. So there's dissenters. Is there anything that you haven't covered that you feel like you want to communicate about baiting, but you know, there's always the comments. You know, this is cheating. This isn't fair. You know, I would, I would say that somebody that would say that well, I would say to them, let's look at the bigger picture of bear management wherever there is a season that allows it to be legal to hunt bears over bait or use hounds. The other methods of hunting, which basically would be spot and stalk would be inadequate to harvest the number of bears that needed to be taken out of that system. Let me give you an example. Arkansas currently has about 6,000 bears in the state, which is not, it's really not that many. Right. So many other places like don't come here to hunt. It's not that great. Right. Georgia, West Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee. All these places have more, more bears than that. Right. But in 20 years, Arkansas has, Arkansas hunters have legally harvested over 10,000 bears. Okay. I talked to a biologist who we did the math together. And if there was no hunting since the year 2000, there would be between 20 and 30,000 bears in the state, like with the reproduction, like counting how many were taken out. Right. And basically the carrying capacity of the state and the habitat that we have is a right, you know, it's probably, we're reaching it. They're actually trying to like keep the population just stable. Right. And there's many factors that go into that. There's actual habitat constraints. And in 6,000, I kind of get bummed when I hear that number because that at one time, they believe this state had 50,000 bears in it. And to say we have 6,000 and I celebrate that today is kind of like, wow, that doesn't sound that great. But the truth is, is that this place is full of houses and roads and shopping malls and for mutagrass fields that are no longer bear habitat that at one time were every square inch of basically, I mean, I'm just using Arkansas as an example, but you could extrapolate this out every direction. Every square inch of the state used to be bear habitat and would have been used by bears in some way. Okay. And so today, habit, actual habitat is a limitation. But then number two and even more important and most important, the reason that we couldn't have 30,000 bears in the state is the cultural tolerance, which is how many how many bears will, a culture tolerate? How often, how comfortable are you gonna be with bears sleeping under your house? And in California, and in New Jersey, and a lot of these places, the cultural tolerance and the amount of bears there is in this big conflict. That's a lot about what my book is about. - Right. - And I do think, I would have a high tolerance for more bears, but also last year in this state, two people were killed by bears. - Right. - I mean, wild. This year, there's been more black bear human fatalities. It's on the rise. I mean, it absolutely is on the rise. So, to answer your question about baiting, is that when we bait a bear, we are playing a very significant role inside of bear management to keep the bear population stable. And you couldn't do it any other way. You send out spot and stock hunters, they will not be able to harvest the same bears. And so, you become a pawn inside of a system, and when you bait a bear, it's less about like clay one-on-one and outsmart in a bear. It's more about, I wanna pick the specific bear I wanna take, and I'm gonna eat this bear. Render is fat. Tan is hide. I'm gonna use this animal to the highest degree, and I'm gonna be selective about the animal that I take, based upon the opportunity that I have, which varies from year to year. My judgment of what bear that I would take, changes by the day. With a white tail deer, I might have in my mind what I'm gonna take and what I'm not. Maybe I'm gonna take a doe, maybe I'm gonna take a 115-inch plus buck. With a bear, depending upon how much meat I need, if I need some grease, I might take the oldest, best male that I've really got a shot of taking, which might be a three-year-old male. Does that make sense? - Yeah, absolutely. - Other years on really good years, which it varies dramatically. Some years, bears are very responsive to bait, and you can be highly selective. And I've taken some multiple 500 plus pound just monster, beautiful, stomper bears. - That you might not have had an opportunity to harvest past year, there was no chance where we were gonna kill any of those bears. Though we had them on camera in the middle of the night sporadically. And so like, like sitting there thinking he's gonna shoot a 500 pound bear. I mean, by the time we actually got him in the stand, it was pretty much like, hey, that's not gonna happen. That bear is long gone, he's on some wide oak ridge, devouring 18, he's just eating- - Thousand calories. - A non-stop, he doesn't wanna be here, he's not here. And so that really doesn't answer the question, but baiting bears is critical for bear management. - You mentioned the 50,000 bears that at one time, there was 50,000 bears in Arkansas. That would have been at a time when populations in Arkansas were very small. And one of the main things that took that population way down was market-hunting. Correct, would that be correct? - Well, more so landscape level log in the Neiman market, honey. - Okay. - Yeah, okay. - Logging and the loss of habitat had vastly more impact on black bear than market-hunting. - Wow. - Okay. - Interesting. - Okay, well we- - You would learn all this in American bear coming out in February of 2027. - I'll be first in line. All right, here's another clip. - A bear is such a reclusive animal, they're an animal of the shadows. - More biology here, folks. - It's black. - And most of the time. - Lake made fun of me for that. The black bear is for camouflage and it shows you where they want to live. The real reason that a bear is black is that the early ancestors of black bears like deep, deep history developed in the tropics. And there's a thing called gloggers rule, which gloggers rule means if an animal, the closer they are to the equator, oftentimes, fird mammals are darker because it reduces the potential for them to get like fungal infections. So modern geneticists have found that the ancestral color of the black bear versus American black bear is black. So they can tell by DNA that a long time ago bears were black in color phase bears. - By genetics, they can tell, developed in the southwest U.S. about 9,000 years ago. - So I never thought that was gonna make the cut. - And I cut a bunch out. - Yeah, yeah, it went on and on and on. - When did you first become interested in bear? You know, you're writing this book. When did you first become interested in bear biology beyond just hunting bears? - Well, when I killed my first bear in 2001, that is what catalyzed me to really start studying about bears. And I was in college at the time and went back to the U of A and University of Arkansas and went up into the library and started looking for bear books and found, at the time, what was all the research, academic research that had ever been done on our populations of bears. And it wasn't that many things. I mean, it was like, you know, probably less than five, like thesis projects that people had done and research that people had done. And I read it all. I read every word of it and just was fascinated by it and didn't really have a conclusion of why I was interested in it and it didn't really, it wasn't like I was thinking, oh, I'm going to talk about this one day. I was just interested in it. So, taking that first bear was, well, I tell the story, I've told it many times. Maybe I haven't told it on the podcast before, but it's definitely in the book. - If you guys haven't picked up on it, Clay wrote a book that's coming out in February. Where I start saving your pennies when I kill this bear. I walk up to it. My dad's with me and-- - This was what year? - 2001, October 1st, 2001. At the crack of dawn, I shot this bear on the first day it was ever legal to hunt over a bait. - So I claim, and no one has disputed me in 20 years, so I'm no longer taking disputes because it's so long ago, if you think you shot one before me, you probably just don't remember. I say that I killed the first legal bear in the state of Arkansas over bait. Now, I know people that killed them illegally before that. - Have you turned them in? - No, there are many of them are no longer with us, but so it's a joke, but I actually think it's probably-- - It might be true. - Pretty close to true, it's not. - It was barely shooting like when I watched a bear glide. It was so dim, Josh, that I couldn't really see the bear's legs. I couldn't quite make out his legs. It just looked like a floating black blob coming up from down the mountain and he came right in and I was just like, there he is. - Do you have game pictures of him? - No, we didn't have game cameras. The game cameras didn't really come out until later. - Okay. - 2001, no. - Okay. - But we had, I mean, we just knew that bear's there 'cause they were eating our bait. - Oh, one of the most exciting things in my life was that year when it became legal to bait bears. We started baiting bears and they started showing up and we would go out there and we would occasionally see a bear and it was just so exciting. And then I shoot this bear and when I walk up to it, I have, I was 21 years old and I had an incredibly hollow feeling that I knew nothing about this animal and it was just this majestic, awesome animal. And, you know, I deer hunted and turkey hunted and small game hunted up into this point and, you know, I knew what deer ate where they lived when they bred. I knew how to call turkey. I knew about these animals and so when I took one, there was a sense of connection to this thing. When I killed this bear, I realized I didn't know anything about it and this was an incredible animal. And honestly, many people of the generation before mine and even my generation at the time, viewed a bear as just kind of like a big raccoon, you know, just kind of like, yeah, I shoot all of 'em, you know? - Right. - And man, when I walked up to it, that is not the sense that I had at all. It was just like, wow, what a beast. I cannot believe. - It was a good bear too. - I mean, it was a nice bear. And that just set me on a track to kind of I remember when you got the rug back and I was like wow like it was one of the coolest things that I've ever ever seen. Yeah. Yeah Recto re re K T O J M 63 Has a question of of the many bears you've harvested which one of them stand out in high quality flavor flavor Can you tell the difference from bears that you've killed in different regions? No, I wish I could and maybe somebody that paid more attention to their palette I will say that there's a lot of press About how bears in southeast Alaska tastes fishy Mm-hmm, and man, I've just I've eaten two and I have not found them to really I have I have not bear bear nukum killed one On the shore of the Alaskan coast this year. That was eating muscles when he when he shot it and I can't tell the difference between that bear and one here in Arkansas. Okay, but it's I think it probably maybe was look at the draw because It's kind of indisputable that some of these bears that are eating a lot of fish and in Ocean tires Food, you know, it have a kind of a fishy taste, but But in the two that I have had I have not I have not had that. Okay. Well, we've got another clip here This one's a little bit longer When Lake has his first interaction with was shooting a bear Based on the pictures there are about 10 different bears that have been coming to display A lot of them look the same Two bears showed up on the first day that lake saw that he chose to pass kind of want to shoot that back one I think we got him buddy I Just got word to Lake shot a bear I don't really know anything about it Lake gives the bear an hour before climbing down to assess the situation Sparrow He finds his arrow which clearly passed through the bear But it hardly has any blood at all on it Which is not a good sign and there's hardly any blood on the ground The whole gang comes down from their stands to help look for Lake spare When there's barely a blood trail like this it takes the whole camp Luckily, we've got some guys with some experience if we're gonna find this bear the easier the guys I'd want and helping me across All right, we got blood right here guys fair coming in clutch And there is not much blood and it's that dark red not great blood What are you saying I see it bowing out there beside him and leave It does look a little hard on it I think I shot him too high Yeah, I don't want to admit that but I think that's what happened And it's easy to do it's a it's a bomber. I hate it for a man The the truth of it is the is that bear is gonna live from and he's gonna be fine Hey everyone big huge announcement Meet either live the Christmas tour is kicking off again this year for the Christmas season of 20 26 this time we're hitting the Midwest meet either live the Christmas tour kicks off in December across six midwestern cities We got Grand Rapids Milwaukee, Madison, Demolline, Minneapolis and Fargo Join myself Yannis Putellis Claynew can Brent Reeves and Randall Williams For a night of laughs trivia free prizes news and opinions from across the worlds of hunting, fishing, wildlife, conservation And wild foods also we're already stacking up some great special guests I got my buddy bubbly dug making the appearance in Madison Meet either live is the best Christmas gift for any outdoorsman or woman in your life Tickets go on sale September 25th, but sign up at the meet either dot com slash tour And you'll get pre sale access to buy tickets on September 14th days before they go on sale to the public We can't wait to see you there and I'm telling you go ask anyone who has ever come to one of the meet either live events And they will tell you we laugh our asses off. We give away great prizes We put on a solid show that I'm proud to be part of So we kind of see the arc of emotion of Lake from His first shot, you know, feels pretty good about it and then all of a sudden it comes to the realization that the shot placement was not Not optimal Why was it important to leave that whole sequence in the in the film? Well We've We've always at meet or just kind of showed things the way it happened, you know and So yeah, it was a As you can see, I mean, it wasn't a compromised situation when like shot. I mean the bear was broadside Probably 19 yards. I mean, which is a chip shot. Mm-hmm. And he just hit a little high and in it it boy that there there really is a big hollow spot High on those bears and that bears are difficult or because they've got so much fur. It's hard to see what's I always say that a short-haired Light-colored animal like a white-tailed deer you can see the contour of its body. Mm-hmm. You can see where the shoulder comes up You can see where the neck comes down and the shoulder bulge as you can see where the ribcage ends a lot of times You know, you see the you can you can really see and you can really Aim where you want to on a black bear It's almost like you are shooting at an inflated blush black trash bag. Mm-hmm. And so And when you draw back and you're looking through a peep oftentimes All you see is black especially if it's close right several bears that I've shot close. I've drawn back and All you see in your peep side is black and now like bed at 20 19 yards would have Would have had more aperture than that but um, I mean he just said hi. He did and and You know the film doesn't show the extent to which we went to look for that bear right? There were comments of well you should look for it longer You guys look for that bear for hours and hours and hours we did we We exhausted our efforts and used all the data points that we had and I mean I will I am fully confident that that bear's still alive today and yeah, I mean you With collect because he didn't get anything vital. That's right. It just it It it was high pass through the back straps. I mean we could we could see that and uh and you know Likes in an elevated stand and you know it's It's kind of dumb to try to justify to the world that we did what we Should have done, but um, I mean I grew up my dad Gary believer nukem was he he was Absolutely the biggest stickler. I've ever been around in my life for Given the fullest extent towards tracking an animal That you made any contact with with an arrow, you know, and so that's that's been built deep inside of me for a long time And uh those those periphery hits on an animal if you hit one too high or too low like that animal Is not going to die now if the shot had been Far back like if he had to hit that shot that bear right far back and hit it in the guts. Yeah, totally different story Right because that bear that's a mortal wound that bear Is gonna die and it's a completely different scenario, but we knew Based upon the blood on the arrow, you know, we knew That they're they're there was not a chance of finding this animal, but we did exhaust we spent Yeah, we got back to camp way after midnight. Yeah, and I mean With multiple people what what if our to help those people what if our whole film was just us tracking the bear And it was a six hour film Yeah, yeah, no, I mean of course we show this like condensed version right and it's a bummer and you know, I hated it for like And I hate it Ted Coppel was there. Yeah, that was probably the Most difficult part of it is you know when when the America is watching You're hoping that as a hunter you're gonna put your best foot forward right and we did in that just And Lake wasn't being careless or a bad shot. It was just I mean, yeah, it just happened. It just happened. It could it could happen to me just as easy as it happened to him and And so we had to go Talk with Ted Coppel about this. Yeah He didn't see that. worked up about it. Yeah. Lake, Lake just felt sick about it because y'all had to come back to film with Ted Cople here after he's been looking for this, this bear. Yeah. And then it was only thing on his mind while we were trying to do the interview. Yeah. And then he went back out, looking for it even more. So, Lake chose not to continue hunting. Yep. After he drew blood, what do you think about that decision? Yeah. I think it's a great decision. And some places that's the legal requirement, but not here. And not most places, it's not. There's probably just a few places in the country where if you draw blood, you legally have to not your tag. So he kind of, he chose to do that. And I thought it was a good move. Yeah. We talked about this a little bit on the last, on the last companion podcast when you were in Alaska hunting bears, but what are some of the pros and cons of hunting with a bow and what kind of hunter do to mitigate the opportunity to have a failed harvest? Well, shooting a bear is, is there a difficult animal? Really? Well, I take that back. A well-placed arrow is very efficient in taking the bear. People that are used to shooting white-tailed deer can have trouble shooting a bear. Right. Okay. The structure of a bear is different than a white-tailed deer. And you aim low on a white, these are all the bullet points I always say. When you're shooting a white-tailed deer with a bow, you aim low because that animal is going to react to the sound of the shot and duck. A bear is not a prey animal. He does not have the same flight response as a prey animal like a white-tailed deer. Right. They're not going to jump the string so you don't need to aim low. One of, one time I took a veteran white-tailed hunter out, a guy that killed three hundred white-tails with a bow. And he, he shot a bear right through the brisket that we didn't find. And it was because he was aiming low and tight and anticipating the bear dropping into that. Right. So don't do that. And then the other thing that's slightly uncomfortable for white-tailed hunters about bears is that you need to aim further back. Like, you need to aim probably four to six inches back from the shoulder. And it's because, Josh, if we had a picture of a white-tailed deer in a bear, a white-tailed deer's legs are further back on its body compared to where its neck and brisket come down. Okay. Like, imagine the head of a bear and there's just his neck and then there's his shoulder. Right. His front legs are up further. Right. Yeah. A white-tailed deer is back and you can actually see his chest stick out like. And so it's not that their anatomy is different. I mean, in a wild way, all mammals are about the same. Right. Heart, lungs, intestines, liver, all this stuff is the same. But the positioning of the legs on a bear is further forward. So it means you have to aim further back from the leg. That makes sense. Yeah. Yeah, it does. So middle of the middle is what some people have said, I go not quite middle of the middle, almost middle of the middle, but then back a little bit towards the shoulder. Oh, back even further than that. No, no, back. I see, back going back toward the head. Towards the shoulder. Okay. Excellent. Okay, we've got another clip here. Man, that's some beautiful bear grease or bear fat right there. Here we go. We're a little optimistic, even. I would say this was a. Well, let's go back here. I think it started a little late. There we go. I would say my predictions were a little optimistic, even. I would say this was a below average, but we had somebody give us some bear fat. This is fresh bear fat. Not again. And we're going to render it down. I'm going to put about a quarter inch of water in there, so that when it hits the pan, it doesn't scald and burn, but we're just going to put it right in that water. Good looking bear fat. It is. Look at that old lake. Boy, you want it to be that like light colored. See how that's like the color like chicken broth. That's what you want to stay the whole time. We're almost done. I mean, you can see these like little pieces. They're almost rendered down like as much as they're going to render down. Gotcha. With our bear fat rendered, we're ready to put it in the jars. The lower and slower you cook it, the lighter the oil will be. My preference is to cook around 225 degrees for 45 minutes until it's the color of chicken broth. All right. Well, that's great. I think a great way to end the film with rendering the bear grease. Why has rendering bear grease become something that you're so passionate about? Well, let me address a little more functional question first. Is that okay? Absolutely. The best case scenario when you're rendering bear fat is to grind it. So we have a question from Kevin Klein, 1851. I've got a question about rendering bear fat. Would grinding the fat prior to rendering yield more oil? Or does cutting it in small cubes? So in the field like that, you can cut it up into cubes just like we did, and the smaller the cubes, the better, and you can render down. And you get a pretty good yield. You probably get 80/20, 80% oil, 20% solid cracklings. And that's a decent yield. You will get probably close to 90% yield when you grind it. And what you find grind the ideal. Yeah. And what you would do is you would get your bear fat, the chunks of it cold, or you can put it in a freezer and just like almost get it frozen and then cube it up and then put it in a grinder and then render that. And there's no, it's kind of like making sorghum, you're just heating the fat. There's no recipe. And you can-- The water that you put in there just evaporates out. That's right. That's just to keep it from burning and scalding at first. That's just something that we do. Just put a little water down there. But you can render bear fat with any heat source. You know, I've done it in a fry daddy. I've done it over fire and cast iron, like a Dutch oven. I've done it in a jet boil. I've done it in these like turkey cookers with propane. I've done it on an electric stove with just like a saucepan. And you're using like medium heat. Well, so that's the only variable inside the whole process. You could just barely turn it up, you know, to 180 and let it cook down for longer periods of time. I've radically could do it in a crock pot. Oh yeah, people do. That's what that was my next time I list was a crock pot. There's people that really love cooking it in a crock pot. What you can do, and it doesn't completely run it, but it's not ideal, is that you can burn it. Like if it gets to like 300 degrees, it's going to be dark and it's not unusable. It's still usable, but it does have a stronger odor and it just kind of has a little bit of a burnt taste. But much of the barrel oil that I have rendered has had a little bit of a burnt taste. Because it's easy for it to get too hot. Right. And so low and slow, the 225 for 45 minutes is just a generalization. Probably I say that because it's just easy to cite those numbers. Probably it would be more like 210 to 15 for a little under an hour. It would probably be ideal, but you just don't ever want it to get like really dark and really hot. Right. So what are some of your favorite modern uses for bear grease? Well, I've got I've got bear grease on my face right now. Oh really? I've for several years have been putting bear grease on my face after after we had bear grease chemically analyzed by one of the top lipid labs in the country that we report in our book, what we find, but what we found made me want to put it on my face every day. Okay, so, but we cook with it. Fried with is the best thing that I do. I mean, you use it to oil your saddles, you use it to soften leather. But to me, the premium use is for pan frying either fish or meat. You can use bear oil and substitution for anything that calls for oil. So any cake recipe, any biscuit recipe that calls for Crisco or oil. You can substitute in barrel crusts, and if you cook it too long it does it can't have a burnt flavor If you cook it just right, it really doesn't have a flavor It's you can make you can make barrel oil chocolate chip cookies that just it's like it's like using shortening basically before Before these processed oils and shortening animal fat oils were used for all this stuff and And and so historically, oh man, I could go I could go on and on but the The first time the word bear grease shows up in the literature in the record of America was in 1541 July the fifth Hernando de Soto his scribe a guy named Elva wrote when they encountered Native Americans in East Tennessee. He writes they have What they call bear grease stored in gourds, which is like olive oil and butter And that's way described it like olive oil and butter and Well, we found we did the chemical analysis of of black bear fat Was that it actually is very similar to olive oil chemical composition, that's really would they not have been doing this like in Europe and Bavaria and that kind of thing like black bears are only in North America. Oh really. Yeah, I don't think I realize that What bears are they having Europe? Ursus Americana's baby. I guess they're Ursus Americana's now they they would have been rendering an Asiatic black bear fat in in Asia in places, but but Ursus Americana's is the only I mean It's only here. It's in Demick to North America and only on the North American continent Okay, an asiatic black bear is looks Similar to a black bear, but they're it's not a completely different species Well, I'm gonna have to read the book black bears are actually Genetically more kin to grizzly bears and polar bears than asiatic black bears In that wild that is wild Yeah, absolutely wild, but the black bear was the premium bear on planet earth for fat Because of their diet. So in Europe, they would have had some bear fat, but it would have been brown bear fat Okay, and so when these Europeans came over here and in in the Renault colonies Some of the first correspondence that they had with England I mean like the first guys that came over and set up a colony and they were doing it to make money to like export stuff back to Britain Bear greets was in their list of stuff that hey, there's some pretty wild Bear greets over here different than anything that we have that became a commodity stuff and the mid-17 hundreds 14% of the exports coming out of New Orleans was American black bear greets go into Europe 14% Wow all the exports out of New Orleans was black bear fat much of it stored in Skin hides and what they called a deer of oil When oh wait till you read the book, and they killed the deer There's there's this historical accounts of when these guys would kill a deer and they would describe what would happen What Native Americans would do if you killed a bear you immediately went and tried to kill a deer Oh and you would skin it and and tube skin it and basically Tie off the legs and the neck the neck would be the spout of this bag This deer skin bag, and you would completely fill it with oil and then seal it off and that would be What you what you sort of call the deer of oil a deer of oil some of the first travel riders that ever came to the Ozarks Described That he described what he thought was bizarre, but a deer of oil hanging on someone's house that he was wow He was like they had a I mean he'd he described that so right Wild wild history of bear grease in this country bizarre and wild history and we we documented it in a really thorough fashion so No bears killed no bears were killed the quoted it very difficult The baits go cold, but still this film was like satisfying In your opinion, can you have a successful hunt without harvesting an animal? No, it's all Did you write these questions? Wait did my hero producer mustache icon? I don't know who wrote that the best friend a guy could ever have Josh filmmaker right that I don't know who wrote that question I don't know who wrote that Yeah, it's like I mean I guess that kind of question clickbait social media question of the ages You know, what does a successful hunt look like to you then? When you kill something No, you know, I'm kidding You know you just you're just not always gonna kill now where we disappointed massively was I surprised yes Was I pretty confident we were gonna get a bear? Yes, I was and we did have an opportunity, right, you know and and I passed a bear that was legal to have killed Yeah, I only saw one bear in five days that first afternoon had about a hundred pound bore come in I mean technically that would have been a legal animal to take Brent was hunting on some property That he had secured and he his arrow deflected on a little tiny branch. Yeah, yeah, Brent actually had a pretty nice Bore come in the first day that he missed. Yeah, and we did you know just limitations of making a film We we didn't have a cameraman with Brent, which we should have we should have we should have learned that always have a camera man with Brent, right? If someone has who's who's never hunted watches this film what do you want it to be their takeaway? Just to see the The history the culture the the bigger picture of hunting that it's it's not just about Harvest in an animal, but it's it's a lifestyle a regional lifestyle Great so Thank you so much for joining us on this companion podcast of meat eaters 12 and 26 film if you haven't seen our Arkansas bear camp film go to the meat eater YouTube channel and Check it out. You can leave your questions and comments there Hey, it's not lost on us that all of you watch this content and It's really great is the one of the one of the joys inside of my life is to be able to make content and man. I I recognize What a privilege it is to get to document this stuff because I know so many of these people out there are doing stuff cooler better faster stronger and more compelling than what we're doing. I mean, that's the truth I think there's a inside of society. There's sometimes this idea that the guys that are on TV are the best right we are not Does that is that relevant to me? It's relevant. I just I just want to say thank you and and so many of you are the people that I look up to and and our our Teach me so much about hunting I mean, we're we're not the best. We just love it. I do think I do think I Love it as much as anybody. Yeah, not the best. Absolutely. So it's a privilege to just document it Yeah, you know, so thanks everybody guys watching really appreciate it This is an I heart podcast guaranteed human