Ep.122 Black Bear Talk With Ken And Terance

A big boar comes in after a week of absence, the shot looks right, the arrow is a clean pass through, and the blood trail is shocking for a bear. Then the track turns into every hunter’s gut punch: you hear coughing, you bump him once, you push hard because the sign feels “too good,” and eventually the trail just ends in thick, swampy woods. That’s where my conversation with Terance Boss of Boss Outfitting in Alberta begins, and it quickly turns into the kind of honest bear hunting talk most people only have around a fire.

Terance has guided black bear hunts since the late 1990s, and he’s seen what bears can survive: old bullets in shoulders, missing legs, and hits that make no sense until you’re skinning one out. We unpack what bear behavior after the shot can hint at, why waiting is part of ethical bowhunting and rifle hunting, and how easy it is to turn a recoverable bear into a nightmare by pushing too soon. We also get practical about baiting, from running meat early to switching when heat makes it brutal, the truth behind candy myths, and why trail cameras and any “new” smell can become a magnet because you simply cannot beat a bear’s nose.

Then the conversation goes wild in the best way: wolves circling bait sites, wolverines that make full grown bears scatter, and what happens when hunting pressure drops and conflicts spike, from beehives to wrecked ATVs. We close by talking remote bears, grizzly expansion, and why conservation often means targeting older, dominant animals even when that makes some people uncomfortable.

If you care about spring bear hunting, black bear baiting, tracking, and making better decisions after the shot, you’ll get a lot from this one. Subscribe, share it with a hunting buddy, and leave a review with your toughest tracking lesson.

Check us out on Facebook  Hunts On Outfitting, or myself Ken Marr. Reach out and  Tell your hunting buddies about the podcast if you like it, Thanks!

Transcript

Welcome And Spring Bear Update

SPEAKER_03 0:28

Hunt on this is Hunts an Opening Podcast. I'm your host and rookie guide, Ken Meyer. I love everything hunting, the outdoors, and all things associated with it. The stories to how-tos, you'll find it here. Welcome to the podcast. Hey, welcome to a brand new edition of the podcast. We're super happy to have you listening. Um so if you can't tell from the profile picture this week, we're talking bears. This will probably be the last bear podcast uh for this spring for sure. Uh maybe we'll do another one in the fall, I'm not sure, but I know everyone still has spring, not everyone, a lot of you probably still have spring bear hunting on your mind. Uh a lot of places it's just kind of wrapping up or getting close to it right now, and to the looks of everyone that I follow on Facebook and Instagram, uh they've been having people have been having a pretty good season this year. So congrats to all of you who are successful, and good luck to all of you still at it. So this week I'm talking with Terrence Boss of Boss Outfitting in Alberta, and we are just we're having a kind of a campfire discussion on bears. We're talking about how tough they are, some unique habits at the baits, wounding bears, what to do, baiting techniques, what happens when a Wolverine comes into your bait, and so much more. Uh really interesting. Terrence has been doing this for a long time. He has a wealth of knowledge, and he's just really fun to talk with. And I was just kind of bouncing some ideas off him and telling him a little bit about uh my bear season. So if you're looking on the podcast profile picture, the bear on the left is the one that I harvested with the rifle this year, the bear on the right is the one that I harvested with the bow in New Brunswick. Here we are allowed to shoot two in the spring if we wish. Um and then we talk about uh a bear that I wounded couldn't find, and you know it happens. And uh we're gonna be getting into that a little bit and just just a bunch of discussions on this. You know, I think you found it interesting.

Sponsors, Gear, And How To Reach

SPEAKER_03 2:38

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SPEAKER_01 4:59

Yeah, go ahead.

The Shot And A Huge Blood Trail

SPEAKER_03 5:00

Well, let's uh let's talk bear. It's been uh it's been a bit of a season for me here, and then you know, you guys in Alberta, and it'll be interesting to talk about some similarities and differences because I know there is some, but um the bear season, I'll I guess I'll I'll first say about how what happened to me because I messaged you this year trying to get you I messaged you and a few other guys uh that I knew were bear experts trying to get their input on what the heck is going on with my the bear that I shot. I I didn't know. I didn't know. So to give a little context, um it was earlier in the season and I was waiting for this one specific bear, absolute brute. Uh would you say he looked about 400 pounds?

SPEAKER_02 5:42

Oh yeah, for sure. That I mean, that's a good bear anyway. You cut it. Yeah. But you know, of course, judging a bear, always difficult. Sometimes they grow, sometimes they shrink when they're on the ground, right?

SPEAKER_03 5:52

Right.

SPEAKER_02 5:53

But he's good.

SPEAKER_03 5:54

Yeah, that one, yeah, he's just massive. So um I can't say enough good things about this. Uh a guy that was on the podcast, Stephen Smith, he gave me this pro expedition scent, and I hadn't seen this big boy in about a week, and I sprayed it out at about 4 30, 5 o'clock that evening. Uh, this sow and heat, I sprayed that out. That oh, really? Yeah, that evening he came in. Hadn't seen him in a week. He came in, so I was like, I'm a believer in this pro expedition stuff. Um try it.

SPEAKER_02 6:25

I yeah, I never used stuff like that.

SPEAKER_03 6:27

No, well, I I I was always skeptical on it, but I sprayed that out and I couldn't believe it. And he came in and he was sniffing right there, so I was I was like, I'm convinced. Um so he came out, and then this was the first year for me that I was hunting in a ground blind and I was 13 yards from the bait because up in the tree stands fun. I figured ground level, even more fun. So he came in a little closer than that. He was about nine, ten yards because he came in on a side trail, um a little closer than the bait. So then he comes out and I drew back with the bow, shot, looked like a good shot, but I was like, maybe I'm a little far ahead. I don't know. I was worried that I hit shoulder. But when he came out, I mean, just seeing him at eye level coming out like that, you see he had his head down, he's sniffing, and his shoulders coming, it's like, holy cow, there's no mistaking that bear. Yeah. Um shot, he took off, and I was like, whew. I had some uh some friends with me there, and we were like waiting, and then I was like, well, I said I want to see if I can find the arrow or check for blood something. Because I was like, I don't know. So then we go out, find the arrow. I was like, oh, awesome, it's a clean pass through. That's good. Then we started finding lots of blood, and any bear that I've shot with the rifle has dropped immediately, and the ones that I've shot with the bow, it's been a very short tracking job, and I know that they don't really bleed much, so we go out looking and we're finding blood like crazy. I'm like, wow, this is really good blood, it's the right color and stuff. We end up tracking that evening, and we could hear him coughing too. We ended up tracking, we bumped him once, which I really regret, but seeing that much blood, I figured he's gotta be dead, or close to it, because with that much blood, because they don't bleed much, right? And then Yeah, when you bump.

SPEAKER_02 8:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 8:12

Yeah, I figured that much blood, a big boar like that. You know, he figured he'd clog up quicker, he didn't, so I was like, you know, I felt confident. Uh we get go when we bump him, we could hear him coughing and stuff like that, and then um then nothing. We kept tracking. It was getting late at night, but with the flashlights we could see quite well. Tracked for about seven, eight hundred yards, uh, and then nothing. And we kept looking and looking, went back the next morning, looked, went back the next day, looked some more. Uh nothing. So that's why, you know, I called you and some other people I know that are bear experts, and I was like, what do you think? And everyone kind of said same, but same thing in a way. Bears are super tough. It takes a lot of blood for them to die, but the coughing thing, I mean, they can't recover from that. So I'm still searching around here and there. Uh, figure the smell gived away something, but um everyone was convinced that he was dead somewhere, but I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 9:11

Well, you'll be you'd be shocked. You'd be shocked what a bear will live through.

SPEAKER_01 9:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:15

Uh we took one this year that had three legs on it. Now how that happened, I have no idea, but maybe in past years. But uh man, I I can't even begin to tell you how many bears I find with with uh you know buckshot in them or like you know, rounds seven millimeter rounds on their shoulder or like that you guys have harvested that we're living with that. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I'm sure it's uh well there's very few people that hunt bears around me. We're very remote.

unknown 9:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:56

There is a few small communities that will shoot a bear if it comes on the porch to eat the dog food or whatever, but nobody really hunts bears. So when you find a seven millimeter bullet in a bear, or once we found a 4570 bullet in a bear, we know it's probably us. Right? Crazy and well, absolutely, but you know what even is the thought of them surviving something like that is what I mean.

SPEAKER_03 10:22

I mean, 4570 is a huge rail with just like uh mall hitting power going through them. I mean, that is and they were they lived. That's incredible.

SPEAKER_02 10:33

Yeah, and we had the same week that you called me, we had one the same thing. We had a tree stand probably 15 feet high, 22 yards from the bait site, set up for bowl. But we had a guy with a 4570, 300 and some green chunk of lead, you know. And he shot this giant bear twice, and the same sort of thing. We had a re not as good a blood trail as you, but we had a reasonable blood trail, and it petered out and it petered out. But tracking tracking a bear is just difficult. And sometimes you'll find them with one speck of blood every ten feet. So we never give up. We spend all day, and then we spend half the next day, because you just don't know until you put that effort in. But if you think you've done the best you can do and there's nothing else, it feels bad, but sometimes you gotta walk away, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:28

Well, it's see that I redeemed so I you know we looked as much as we could. Um, said I'm still poking around that it's big, thick, swampy woods there. So I mean, I'm still poking around as it is. But uh I redeemed myself. I I took one with the bow uh night before or a couple nights ago, three nights ago. Um good. And uh yeah, he came out, he came out even closer. I did it with my rain tarn. He ended up being at eight yards. And uh I had four different bear in that night. He came out, he was another he was a nice mature boy, he wasn't as big as the other one, but he was, you know, he was a good one. He was he was older and stuff, and uh really happy with him, and anyways, ended up shooting him with the bow with the hooligan broadheads, and uh he went uh he's about thirty yards, um, and then we got him, and I was real happy with him, and I figured I'd feel better, but I still sucks about that other one.

Bumping A Bear And Losing Sign

SPEAKER_02 12:22

You hate losing them. Yeah, doesn't matter what it is, you hate losing them and you try not to, but if it's ever happened to you, you're not you haven't hunted very much.

SPEAKER_03 12:30

And that's what everyone says. Yeah, my buddy Lane says that over and over. Everyone says that it's just it's part of big game hunting, unfortunately, and we do work the very best we can, but I mean, talking to you and other outfitters and stuff, the it's crazy what bears can live through and how tough they are. It's just it's unreal.

SPEAKER_02 12:47

So we had this one one time. We had a we had a guy that wouldn't go on a tree step. So we thought, okay, we'll put him in a box flight. In a blind. We just built him a blind on the ground and we put it a hundred meters, and he had a 4570. And that that bear came out of the bait and it was quartered away, and he took his shot, and the bear wheeled around and took off. And we found two or three specks of blood, but nothing else. We're back. It was it was quite uh you don't see that very often. It's either either some something you can track or nothing. This was three or four specs that we knew were from him, but we couldn't figure it out. Well, it turns out about two weeks later, a bait about ten miles away, here's this bear coming in. And all the hunters are saying scar face, you know. And so, sure enough, they shoot the bear, and it's it's the one uh we skin we're skinning it out, and that bullet went in the back of that behind the bear's head and stayed under the hide and ended up right in the bridge of its nose. 4570 row. And I wish I'd take pictures of it, but it's hard to believe it happened, but I think it was my own eye. It didn't it didn't really uh immobilize that bear at all. That bear did a couple flips and took off. And we did fortunately get it with a bow, it probably would have lived, it probably would have been just fine. The only deficiency it had was the part on its face is where the bullet had gone under the skin, yeah, and it lost all the hair in the in the tr in the track of the bullet, right?

SPEAKER_01 14:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:23

Under the skin. So there's kind of this line down its forehead right up to its nose where the bullet was sitting on the bridge of its nose. That is crazy. Wow. So horrible shot. Like unbelievably horrible. And this guy was terrified of bears. Like I we should have known better. We should have put him at 20 yards, but could you imagine a guy scared of bears at 20 yards with a 4570? Man, it would have been like an overfunt situation. We would flying everywhere.

SPEAKER_03 14:50

So why don't you want to be on the ground?

SPEAKER_02 14:54

Well, he he couldn't go, he wasn't on a tree stand. He's a little he's a big guy, he's great height.

SPEAKER_01 14:59

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:00

And we don't have this chinty little steel tree stands, yeah, which I don't really like myself, but I'll use them. I'll hang on like a cat if I have to, but I don't want to.

SPEAKER_01 15:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:10

So w we build platforms where you can put like a cameraman and a person together in two different seats, hopefully, depending on the configuration of the base site, but and he wouldn't climb those either.

SPEAKER_03 15:23

He's just a big dude and people like that. Yeah, that's fair.

SPEAKER_02 15:28

I got lists of bears that you know running around with. And we had another one. We it wasn't a it wasn't a a shot bear, but we ended up shooting the bear because he was pretty aggressive and he'd come after one of the hunters when we were checking baits. He was big. He was a seven, seven and a half foot bear, he was giant but skinny. Like he was gonna die, you know, or something wrong with it. But yeah, he something was real old, like no teeth left, and odd we went to skin his paws out, and they'd usually have five toes on each foot. I bet you he didn't have five toes total. Like something had happened to him, or his toes had been frozen. Something had eaten too much candy on the bear bait, you see. Yeah, yeah. So man, they live through

How Bears Survive The Unthinkable

SPEAKER_02 16:18

anything.

SPEAKER_03 16:18

Yeah, well, actually, I want to you're an outfitter, and I want to talk about that in a second, too, because people were like, how does this guy know so much about bear? But here's something. So I've heard of this and I think it's complete bullshit. So one guy was arguing that there the bear in his area have a lack of teeth and things like that because of the bear baits and how much sugar and candy they're eating. But bears are like, if they they won't overindulge, do you find if they know like if they're full, they're full. If they they will get picky and stuff like that. Like, is that that's just complete myth, right? It's gotta be.

SPEAKER_02 16:50

Man, I can't speculate. I can't speculate. But the running joke in our camp is so here's what I do. I I always start with meat. Every bear eats meat, okay? Like everything. And and you know, a beaver, you can't beat a beaver. I don't care if you could bottle that, that's the right stuff. Yeah, so you're trying to emulate that. The the soad meat that you're using um from your friend, it might be a winner, I don't know, but a beaver is the ultimate, right? Yeah, yeah. We we can never get enough. So I bring up you know, four tons of butcher shrimp. We start with meat, it's frozen, and then as time goes on, the guide and I we start to choke a little bit every time we do this. So now it's getting hot and the baby steak, so we switch over to candy or you know, something else. And and the running joke is once they're on the candy, they get meat. And I think they do. I think they get a little more aggressive, and I think they get like I I'd hate to say hyperactive, but they do get a little bit more aggressive. And it might be yeah, it might be similar to like when when you feed a horse oats and they say they get hot or whatever and they're all jumpy, and it might be something like that. I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 18:04

Yeah, maybe. Yeah, I forget about that. They do say that about horses, don't they? Feed them oats and they can get them a little more spry or whatever. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Never I don't know, never thought of that, I guess. Yeah. But as far as the candy knotting their teeth and stuff, I don't I don't think so.

SPEAKER_02 18:21

I don't think so. No. I don't think so. But you have to remember too, uh, a bear, what's an old bear? Twenty years?

SPEAKER_03 18:29

Yeah, they live to be old. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:31

There's not many people that make it 20 years without a good set of teeth. It's even if they're drinking a case of cola a day and eating you know, all the candy they want. So I don't know that the candy is an issue. Yeah, but I guess we gotta get it dentists on your podcast.

SPEAKER_01 18:48

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 18:50

Well, I mean, the bears, I mean I don't know. They know when they they eat what they want. If they don't want to eat it and they feel off or whatever, they're not going to, you know.

SPEAKER_02 18:58

So they'll hide it. Well, of course. They they'll drag that bait out, but how do you hide candy?

SPEAKER_03 19:03

Well, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:04

One at a time?

SPEAKER_01 19:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:06

So you you go back off my bear baits and you'll find stockpiles of buried bait. Oh yeah. From other bears that are eating. Oh, yeah. Oh. So what happens is so it was a weird year for us. We had like 18 inches of snow, like 40 centimeters, 50 centimeters of snow when I got there, and I was supposed to be hunting in four days, and I couldn't even drive my ATV. So the bears were on baits though. Like they were waiting at baits. We've been baiting some of these for 25 years. So they know where to go. And the young bears that are starving and coming out of the den go right to them. So it was kind of an interesting thing how um they were waiting for us, but um Yeah, I don't Yeah, I don't know. It's just an interesting spring.

SPEAKER_03 19:57

Yeah, yeah, I've heard that. You got uh guys out there, you know, with all the snow and everything, and I was talking to somebody from uh from on northern Ontario. He said the ice just came off the lake like a a week or two ago. It's like wow.

SPEAKER_02 20:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 20:09

Because I mean we're in June now.

SPEAKER_02 20:12

Yeah. Yeah. June 1st is usually where most of my fishing lodge friends start and they're a week behind. Yep. But the hides were good. The hides were good. Uh bear hunting was good. The they started to rut the same time and it was on fire. The moment it was on fire, it was on fire. It was uh maybe May May 6th is when we really started seeing a pile of bears, and it's usually like May 3rd. So it was only about three or four days different, even with the snow on the ground.

SPEAKER_03 20:42

Yeah. Yeah, well, that's good. And then so is it true that the heavier the snow, the better it is for the bears. They sleep a little longer and they seem to come out of the their den in better shape. Like, how does that work?

SPEAKER_02 20:56

Well, sure. I mean, yeah. I I I've heard of this, I've heard of this too. And you know, really, again, I I can only speculate. I don't really have any any direct information. I I do record my like I do record the length of all my bears, I record the days the baits get hit, how much food we're given each bait, I record all that. And when I see a correlation, I take note, but I don't see a correlation in how deep the sewing is as opposed to how nice the bears are coming out of the dens. What I do see is if we have a nice wet fall and there's a good berry crop, the bears are big coming out, and they're healthy coming out. I don't I would imagine insulation or proper den would keep those bears warmer over the winter, and of course they'll be heavier when they come out. But the truth of the matter, any bear that's you know in the six foot range, three hundred and fifty pounds up, they're almost always in great shape coming out of the den. Like two or three inches of fat on them.

SPEAKER_01 21:54

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:55

So I think it's the young ones that struggle and the sounds that comes. Sometimes take a beat and they're pretty skinny sometimes.

SPEAKER_03 22:03

Yeah. Yeah, I've been lucky. All the bears that I've had on camera this year, they're all pretty good in that board that I shot the other night to eat. He had a lot of fat on them, which is which was great to eat. Yeah, they look overly healthy, which is great.

SPEAKER_02 22:16

Did you do something with the fat? Did you keep it and uh give it to people or no?

SPEAKER_03 22:21

I didn't. Um maybe I should have. I haven't gotten into like rendering it down and stuff. I should, and I've also heard that it is the best uh waterproofing for your boots that you can get, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 22:32

Uh I give it all like I I don't have time to do it myself. I get home and I have a hundred, two hundred pounds of fat in my freezer that no one wanted, and I give it away, but people take it and they make soap.

SPEAKER_01 22:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:45

And uh pie crust. Huh. I I just hope somebody brings me a pie, that's all. But it's good. It's really good. Um we took a lot of meat this year. We sent it out. Guys are making uh pepperoni and stuff.

SPEAKER_01 23:00

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 23:00

It's we we use as much as we can, but the ones that you see bugs in, we don't use it. We use it for wolf bait instead. Yeah. Kind of have to pick through it and make sure you get the right stuff.

SPEAKER_03 23:10

Yeah. But uh, I picked through mine on the meat on his, and um, yeah, my dad cooked up some the other night. I gave him some, and uh I he I just cut some off in chunks off the shoulder and like and he made it into more bite-sized pieces, just put that on the frying pan with butter and everything, and he ate it like that, and it was delicious. That's pretty good. It turns out really good,

Bait Choices And Candy Myths

SPEAKER_03 23:30

yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:30

Uh how far how far do you got to drive to get your bait? Are you a long wait?

SPEAKER_03 23:34

No. No, not far. No. Um I've got my uh it's down the road from my parents' house throughout the country. And uh I go through my cattle pasture and drive another hmm from there, probably a kilometer, maybe, and there it is. So uh here's the good news.

SPEAKER_02 23:57

I the good news I think about your bear. Here's what I suspect. I suspect you shot him a little too far forward. You probably collapsed, like partly collapsed as long as you know. But who's to say exactly what happened? I'd bet you 50% chance that bear's on that bait next year. If not this year already. If you have cameras, sell cameras.

SPEAKER_01 24:20

Oh yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 24:22

So when I when I have a bat guy that wounds a bear, and this has happened multiple times, I more times than I ever can record, I it wound a bear, and we're sitting there again the next two days no matter what. First of all, because we've wounded a bear and that's not good. Second of all, because that bear will turn around and come right back to that bait. And like right away sometimes. And so if you don't have a good camera, monitoring system, or whatever, he might be on there. He might be back. Yeah. So just pay attention because you'll get bears. Man, we've shot lots with bullet grazes across the back or wherever in different jurisdictions in my time, and quite often you'll find them with bullets in, no doubt.

SPEAKER_03 25:08

Yeah, well, and then I don't know if it was you I was talking to or somebody else, but they're saying that 90, not 90, well, a high percentage of the time when they're talking to a client, like, yeah, I shot, but I missed the bear, you know, they were like, Well, I'm just gonna look around in case, and then a lot of the times their miss, they did hit them.

SPEAKER_02 25:29

Yeah. Yep, we had one like that this year. Thought we missed, and we went up there, and sure enough, they were there. Another thing I was told by an outfitter years ago when I was a kid, and it's true, if you shoot a bear, he does a circus act. He's jumping up and down, running in circles, and do well, you didn't do a very good job. It's not a good shot. If they if they lunge up and run away like a deer, or they take off like you never hit them, that's usually your better shot. That's usually your more efficient harvest, right? If the if they're doing this big circus act, that's when you better be loading another round in right now. That's what they and it's true. It's true. You watch these videos and you watch the the shots that you know are not uh optimum, and those bears just jump around and do an act for sure.

SPEAKER_03 26:18

Now, I I've heard I don't know, uh again, this is speculation, probably stuff, but if you shoot and they're like, uh, like they, you know, a little bit of yelp, that's a good shot, or it just it just depends on the bear whether they say anything or not.

SPEAKER_02 26:32

Of course it's of course it's relative, right? We're throwing spitballs here, but yeah, yeah, I think it's a little bit of a better scenario.

SPEAKER_01 26:40

Right.

SPEAKER_02 26:41

If they jump up and down howling and looking for an enemy, they're not winning. Right?

SPEAKER_03 26:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:46

Right? That's just the thing. And if if they jump up and run away like this they're out, that I think that's a better indicator that you have a good shot. But it doesn't give a guy any excuse not to try hard to find them once you shoot. You always follow up. I mean, yeah, we we've all learned our lessons by not following up a shot and finding a dead animal a week later. Like you shoot at something and you don't find any blood. A deer, deer can be really bad. A heart, my dad and I heart shot of moose when I was about 11, 12 years old. And we thought we'd missed, and there was snow on the ground, you know. And so we went up there and I'm shaking my head because my dad doesn't miss, you know. I thought he was like the greatest shot in the world as a kid.

SPEAKER_01 27:26

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:26

And so we I walked in 10 feet, and there was one drip of blood. I thought, well, that is the weirdest thing. So obviously we hit him, so we started tracking him. Went another 30 feet, and that moose was dead in the air on a dead run because it's a heart shot. They just don't have any heart to pump them out.

SPEAKER_03 27:43

Right.

SPEAKER_02 27:43

Right? Yeah, and he didn't bleed at all. I was shocked, and sure enough, moose was there. And I I've seen deer laying in the bush that other people have shot that I'm sure was this exact scenario. Yeah. Right? You always gotta follow your shot up no matter what, you know.

SPEAKER_03 28:02

Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's uh yeah, it's it's something. I mean, this is just part of big game hunting, and it it's funny, you know, after this bear thing, I was telling some people, and then people are coming out of the woodwork telling me about, you know, a deer that this happened with, and a bear or a bear, and you know, except moose, etc. And yeah, it's it's something how often it or it happens to everyone at least once, it seems.

SPEAKER_02 28:25

But it's the absolute hardest thing to shoot your first deer and watch it kick and or moose or do anything.

SPEAKER_01 28:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:31

And watch it kick and run off, and you know you got 'em. You know you got them, and you want to run up there. And I tell you what I tell the guys their first deer moose, like, if you don't smoke, you better start. And you better smoke a pack of smokes before you get off your knees where you shot from. Yeah. Because if you walk up there and that moose went 30 feet and laid down, the moment you walk up there and kick him up, if he's alive, he's going three miles. And now we got a problem.

SPEAKER_03 28:55

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 28:56

And so you learn to smoke. If you don't smoke, you learn to smoke. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 28:59

So that's a thing, yeah. You don't want it's it's it's can be so tempting. It's you know, you can't bump, you bump them, you're you're just in a world of trouble.

SPEAKER_02 29:10

It's so hard. It's so hard emotionally not to run up there and go look for him, but you gotta, at least even on the shot you think is the absolute best. If you don't see him lying there, you gotta give him 20 minutes, half an hour, at least, no matter what you think. No matter what my hunters say, we wait. I wait. I never walk up because the last thing I want to do is pack out a moose on my back that's a half a mile further than I could have drove my ATV to. Yeah. You know? Like, or lose a moose for that matter.

SPEAKER_03 29:40

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Tracking Discipline After The Shot

SPEAKER_03 29:42

Um, so Terrence, uh we're half an hour in here now, but uh I'll I'll I want to I it I know it goes quick, but I want to uh for everyone listening, you know, how does this guy know so much about uh about bear? Um so you've been on here before. We talked about your moose, and you're gonna be on again because I definitely want to talk about the buys in hunting sometimes that's really interesting. But tell us about your your bear qualifications, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 30:07

Well, I've been doing this since about 99, hunting black bears, and you know, every outfitter will tell you this is the best ever, and blah, blah, blah. You know, we run a pretty good hunt and we're very remote location. We uh this year, geez, I'm just trying to think through the numbers. We probably were almost half of our bears were in the seven foot range.

SPEAKER_01 30:29

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 30:29

If I'm counting the six eleven, if we're gonna stretch a six eleven to seven feet, I'd say fifty percent of our bears were seven foot nose to tail. Nice. So pretty good. Yeah. I'd say sixty-five percent of our bears were pulled and young, nothing over nothing over twenty-one inches, but several in the twenties. So the reason it's so good, the thing we have going on that a lot of guys don't is there's nobody hunting around us anywhere. Like to the north of us, there's not a bear hunting operation anywhere to the Arctic. There's nothing. There's no roads, there's no access. That's that's one of the things. Another thing we've got going on is we start bear hunting at about a thousand feet above sea level. And as those bears are getting up, we start to move up this big hill about three or four thousand feet. So we're getting fresh bears every, you know, every week we move up our bait sites a little further up the hill, we open up new locations. So by the time we're done hunting, we've got 30 bait sites. Some have been running, oh, running for, I don't know, three weeks. Other ones have been running for 10 for 10 days.

SPEAKER_01 31:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:29

And so we're always getting fresh bears out of the den. So it's pretty cool. You don't have to hunt, you know, everybody wants to hunt it just to peak. Well, it's always the peak somewhere if you go to the right altitude.

SPEAKER_01 31:39

Yeah. Right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:41

So so they're always in there somewhere and uh to hunt such a pristine herd or herd. Do you call it a herd of bears? Population. Pristine population of bears is a bunch.

SPEAKER_01 31:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:56

It's it's just pretty cool to hunt such a pristine remote area without flying in.

unknown 32:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:01

It's like we're next thing is flying in for us.

SPEAKER_01 32:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 32:04

So yeah, it it's pretty neat. And then what's it, I mean, what's it like when you have clients come from all over that have never even seen a bear before? Because the I mean, we talked about this on the podcast before judging them. It's so hard to judge. How do you tell them like I mean, I know when the big guy came out for me, and even the one that I did successfully harvest and cut up and all that. Uh you know, some people like, how do you know? Like, you for me, I knew. I was like, when he comes out, I'm gonna know it's him. There's gonna be no question at all in my mind. I'll know it's him.

SPEAKER_02 32:36

Yeah. Well, there are several characteristics that that matter. Um not any one characteristic is uh the aspect. You have to look at several things. You have to look at when the skull gets bigger, the ears start to turn to the side of it, and they appear shorter and rounder. Yeah, of course. They crease down the forehead. Uh a boar, a boar in general has a bigger block here front end where where a sow has a big rear end and tapers down to its nose like a pear sideways, you know? So there's a a few characteristics like that that indicate a boar as opposed to a sow. And uh as they get bigger, it's more obvious. And it's all relative, because you can get a short, fat bear that's 400 pounds and six foot four, or you can get a bear that's seven foot eleven that weighs four hundred pounds. Right. It's not yeah, like it they're just like they're just like any other uh just like people or anything else, they're not uniform. So it's really hard to tell for that reason. Generally speaking, if they have long legs or they appear to have long legs, they're a smaller bear. If their belly touches the ground, they're a big bear. Yeah, but then again, if you have a skinny, high seven-foot bear, he's gonna have long legs. So you gotta have several of those characteristics piled up before you start to uh say, hey, this is a shooter. But I'll tell you what I do know. When a 190-inch white tail walks out in front of you, are you counting points? Not a chance, right? Yeah. So when a 500-pound bear walks out in front of you, either you're shaking and you can't shoot at him, yeah, or you know he's your bear, right? Yeah. So we're fortunate every bear bait we have has seven to 15 bears hitting in on a regular basis. So there's gonna be a l, there's gonna be a circus of little guys and sows and small boars coming in before you ever see the big one. So you're gonna have a pretty good, you know, a guy's never seen a bear is gonna have one climb the ladder the first day and have a real close look at what a bear looks like. So they're gonna all have that opportunity to scope out a few before the big one rolls in. And it's not very often the biggest bear comes in first. Not saying it never happens, but it's rare.

SPEAKER_00 34:54

Yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:55

So time, time and viewing and seeing bears, determining the difference between a boar and a sow, it takes time. Uh out of the we were five percent of our bears harvested this year were sows. Okay, and uh uh two and a half percent of our bears last year we harvested were sows. So we're pretty good at picking boars.

SPEAKER_03 35:16

Yeah. Um but there's big I know that's the thing. I try not to, I know I don't want to shoot a sow. Um and I I think I've gotten pretty good at judging, you know, the difference and all that. But for someone new, there's some big sows out there, really big, that if you don't know, I mean it it can be you got it takes a minute or two to really figure it out sometimes.

SPEAKER_02 35:38

And you know when we have the biggest problem, if I stretch out and I go to a spot, I I I go in another 10 kilometers from an area that's really never been hunted before, and I put in a new bait, and I do it every year, I try a new spot. Yeah, all it is is big old boars and big old sows and a couple of cubs that are tough enough and beat up enough to survive. There's nothing else, there's not any younger bears. And so when we put one of those baits out and we start hunting them, you know, 350-pound sow rolls in, and she looks pretty good, you know? Like there's some pretty big sows out there. And so, like, yeah, it's there's not very many. I think maybe 25, but yeah.

SPEAKER_03 36:20

Wow. That is big, small in a sow.

SPEAKER_02 36:23

But but once you harvest a few of them bears, uh, the bigger boars out of there, the cubs start to survive and the habitat gets freed up. Yeah, so you get a younger bear population, and they're in better shape, the hides are better, they're better fed, they're well fed, you know, because they're all fighting for the beavers and they're all you know looking for that best habitat, that little niche that they can occupy. And if you can take a couple of those big old boars out of there, which is what we really want, yeah. You get a couple of those out of there, and by having you know 50% less old boars, you're gonna have way more healthier population. Healthier bears.

SPEAKER_03 37:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:02

Yeah.

Outfitting In Alberta And Judging Bears

SPEAKER_03 37:03

Yeah. Because I I don't think people realize. I mean, you you see the bear come into the bait and they look, you know, kind of cute and cuddly sometimes, some of them, but I mean, I've seen there's a few videos that like made my outlook on bears some different. They can be absolutely ferocious and just savage killers on other bears and stuff.

SPEAKER_02 37:22

Oh man, they they kill each other, I'm sure, regularly.

SPEAKER_03 37:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:26

You know what is shocking though, what a guy doesn't think about is when I'm hunting bears on a bait, the wolves are circling those baits too. The wolves are hunting those bears. And they're gonna be I tell my hunters, those wolves are gonna be out there, you know, 150 yards from the bait, and they'll come and do a snip, they'll do a snip test on the bait once in a while and try to kill a bear. So a pack of wolves will come in and do a circle. And I've heard wolves kill, well, who knows if they kill them? I don't know. Sure sounded like it, if you ask me.

SPEAKER_03 37:53

Really?

SPEAKER_02 37:54

But I've I've heard wolves attack bears, certainly, and then howling bears carrying on, right?

SPEAKER_03 38:00

Really? So the wolves will they'll see bears what as food or competition that they want to take out.

SPEAKER_02 38:07

I I'm pretty sure they're eating 'em.

unknown 38:09

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 38:09

What else do they got to eat in spring once everything's gone? The bears wake up, they eat every dead thing that they can smell out because their nose is the best thing that ever existed.

SPEAKER_01 38:18

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 38:19

As far as wild animals go out there and Alberta.

SPEAKER_03 38:23

You guys can keep the wolves. I I I hate those things.

SPEAKER_02 38:27

Well, yeah, we got a lot of them. There's a bunch. I mean, I talked to you know, another oh, go ahead.

SPEAKER_03 38:33

Oh, well, it's just yeah, I've talked to hound hunters from all over, and I've just thank God we don't have mere because like, man, I know guys that it's terrible, but the wolves will just take out their pack of hounds if they can, and not to eat just strictly to kill.

SPEAKER_02 38:46

Yeah, with with hounds, I I think it's a territorial deal.

SPEAKER_01 38:50

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:51

We we get it here. Yeah, we get it here. The cougars will kill your dogs, and we try not to run the dogs for cougars if there's a pack of wolves, they're leery. Yeah, you know, you don't really want to do that, you don't want to put your dogs at risk. Yeah. But you know, another thing we get on our baits that really changes the game. We had it a couple times this year. We had a Wolverine coming.

SPEAKER_03 39:11

Oh, okay. I was gonna ask that. Yes. Yeah, yeah. I was gonna ask.

SPEAKER_02 39:14

And I'll tell you, that little bugger is the king. I'll tell there's nothing that scares that thing. And you're sitting in that tree, he walks in like he owns this place. It's like the short man syndrome, you know. And the and the bears know it. They scatter. They just they scatter, and the bait will go dead for the day. Yeah. They know crazy.

SPEAKER_03 39:36

I was gonna ask you that if you guys are up, because I mean, wolverines aren't everywhere in Alberta, right? They're just up in the north.

SPEAKER_02 39:43

Uh yeah, they're they're most prevalent in the north country. Uh where my trap light is, we do trap line tours and stuff, and we we target wolverines. We try not to target them too heavily because they're sensitive species.

SPEAKER_01 39:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:54

Uh there's there's not a ton of them, but it's a really good stable population. And if I have uh 20 baits out there, I'll get at least two baits with a wolverine stopping in once in a while.

SPEAKER_03 40:05

Wow. So yeah, uh that yeah, you took the words out of my mouth when you when you said that, because I was gonna ask. Um, I find them such a unique animal. I was at a outdoor show a few weeks ago, and there's a guy there with a taxidermed one, just looking it all over, and I've got a friend in the Yukon, and uh, he said he's seen them take down adult, full grown uh caribou bulls. I was like, what? Yeah, he said they they are just ferocious and unbelievably tough. So the bears will scatter.

SPEAKER_02 40:35

Mm-hmm. Oh yeah. Wow. Yeah, they will not hit that bait. They scatter, they are out of there.

SPEAKER_01 40:40

Really? They're that scared.

SPEAKER_02 40:42

Even the big old tough ones. Yeah, they will not deal with that Wolverine, and he's snarling and growling and doing his thing. I'll say I'll send you some videos. That's pretty wild. And they don't bother the hunters, though. They've yeah, I've never had an issue where a Wolverine comes and comes up in the tree stand. Yeah, but that's good. Not like a bear. Every every third small bear comes and gives you a sniff, you know. Yeah, and so you gotta boot them out of the tree stand, but a wolverine, they don't seem to uh really bother the hunters in the stand.

SPEAKER_03 41:11

That's good. So that's crazy. So the I mean, how heavy those listening, I mean, how are they 40 pounds?

SPEAKER_02 41:19

Okay, oh yeah, 40 pounds or so. Yeah, yeah, I wouldn't say I wouldn't say, yeah, 40, 50 tops. Oh, a lot of times, of course, they're smaller.

SPEAKER_01 41:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 41:26

Imagine this. Imagine a a big badger. They're kind of flat, they're dorsally flattened a bit. And and they're a weasel, so that when they run, they kind of lope. They're yeah, they're really uh interesting critter and man that they stink. And they stink just like a wolf. Oh yeah, they stink. They roll around and dead stuff like a wolf. If you've ever skinned a wolf, you'll I'll I'll gut every moose you ever shoot in your whole life if you skin my wolf. I'll tell you that. Really?

SPEAKER_03 41:53

They smell that bad.

SPEAKER_02 41:54

They stink. Wolves, yeah. Lynx aren't too bad. I don't mind the smell of the lynx, they're clean animals. Yeah, relatively speaking. But a wolf and a wolverine, the stink on them. They come into a bait, sometimes you'll smell them.

SPEAKER_03 42:07

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:07

Like they're just rotten. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 42:09

Cause like coyotes don't smell that bad, but they don't not the same. Um, not as bad, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:15

They gotta smell some, but not like a wolverine. Holy.

SPEAKER_03 42:19

So so a 40 pan Wolverine, the bears are just like, nope, not worth it. I'm getting out of here.

SPEAKER_02 42:25

Well, you gotta think, they're all just trying to make a living, right? Yeah, you want to pick a fight? Yeah, nobody wants to pick a fight. It's just like it's just like calling a moose.

SPEAKER_01 42:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:34

You don't want they don't want to pick a fight. They just want the girl, right?

SPEAKER_01 42:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:38

So if you can convince them they can get the girl without a fight, you're way better off.

SPEAKER_01 42:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:42

You know? And and so this Wolverine he's stupid. He's gonna fight anybody. These bears know it too.

SPEAKER_03 42:49

So they just fighting, right? Like it's no big deal to them. Like they will they'll throw down.

SPEAKER_02 42:54

No. And man can like they can run too. Like I I've seen them on a lake, and you try to catch up to them down on the end of the lake, man, they're out of there. And they'll run off the lake and they'll stand back and stare at you. They just they're such they're the ultimate predator. They really, like, they really are.

SPEAKER_03 43:10

Um well, it's like that's a bunch of small animals. Yeah, well, that that's our version of it, the North American version. And then, you know, I I guess they're it's our version of the honey badger. Like, yeah, I've seen those videos. Of the honey badger, and they are like they're so tough. Like they're they're out picking fights with cobras and lions, and like I saw one take on an elephant. If the elephant was hitting it and all that, and I think it's oh that's a good one. And the thing just kind of you're like, oh, it's dead for sure, and it like shakes its head and like goes back trying to bite it in the ankle again. It's like, holy cow, this thing's nuts and tough. Crazy tough.

SPEAKER_02 43:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 43:47

Yeah. So same thing.

SPEAKER_02 43:49

But it's I every now and then we get a pine martin on there or a fish or two. They're kinda cool a lot of them. But I think we got them across Canada i every problem.

SPEAKER_03 43:58

So yeah, we have them here. Um we dropped one. And uh got looking at it and like, man, this thing's it's uh it's scary looking. Like I mean, that's as big as we get for weasels animals around here. And I yeah, I wouldn't want to pick a fight with it.

SPEAKER_02 44:18

Well, you'd fight too. You see me in a fight mode too. You know, it's just like you core you get those those cubs get up in a tree and you don't realize they're there, and here you are baiting a bait and that's out circling you. You know, yeah, that you you get in between them and it gets a little hairy sometimes. You gotta get out of there, get your motor. Oh man. I you know what, running running 20 baits or so, and I bet you every second bear bait I come to has a bear on it. Like right there. You can see them. You walk in and you gotta scoot them off. And sometimes you scoot them off, the cubs are right above the tree. You gotta look up because you don't know where they might be. Yeah, yeah. And uh almost always there's something in there.

Wolves, Wolverines, And Bait Site Chaos

SPEAKER_02 45:01

You gotta watch. One one of my guys called me the other day. He was up checking some baits, and he said, This bear's chasing me on my four-wheeler. I said, Man up, you got a rifle, go bait the bait and get out of there, you know. And he said that thing chased him for a kilometer down the trail. And I I don't know. I think I think he's a bit of a drama tweet to be honest with you. But, you know, it's pretty exciting. You're relatively new guide, he's not guided bears for me before. Okay. You know, the guy gets the guy gets pretty excited about him. Like, listen, he's not trying to eat you. If you drop your bait pail, he's gonna he's gonna learn. He knows that bait pails got baited, he's gonna want that. But once you teach him that, he's coming for you every day because now you train him. So try not to do that.

SPEAKER_01 45:45

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 45:45

Especially those young ones.

unknown 45:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 45:49

You know.

SPEAKER_03 45:50

Yeah. But uh I've gone into bait and had to chase young ones off. Well, I mean, they they were in there, they left pretty willingly, but luckily I I haven't had the style with young cubs in before. I had a style this year when I was leaving. Um, I was pretty close to them. She had last year's cub with her, and I was like, I don't know how protective she is still, but since they're hanging out together, you know, currently, I was like, I'm guessing quite a bit still. So I was like talking to him, like, hey, get out of here. I'm leaving. Because I was like, I I don't know, I don't trust her. I was pretty close.

SPEAKER_02 46:20

So we got a call from one of the hunters. A couple of my trees down to have self-service or in reach. And he says, Well, we're the last guy to get picked up, and we were picking up bears, so it's dark. It's it got dark on us. It's probably half an hour after illegal. And so we're going in to pick him up. Running out, running late, and he says, Well, be careful when you come in here. There's a sow with five cubs. And we thought, what a bunch of bullshit. There's not five cubs in there. He's just pulling our leg. Sure enough, we go in there and they scatter like a cartoon. There was bears up every tree. There was there was five cubs and a sow. And I actually I got a picture of it, so I could prove that. But I've never seen five and one before. I I have one with four that's here, I've got several with three. Um, and that just goes to show you that the boars are are not competing heavily to breed, right? Right. We've got them to a point where they're not killing all the cubs anymore to breed.

SPEAKER_03 47:21

Because they will they they'll hunt down and kill the cubs, right, just to bring the sows back into heat.

SPEAKER_02 47:27

For whatever reason they do it. Yeah. Right. I don't know if they're consciously saying, okay, well, this sow's going to heat if we kill these cubs, but like I was saying earlier, if you if you venture out to a far remote area that you've never hunted before, you'll find there's old sows with one cub.

unknown 47:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 47:44

And old boars, but not a lot of young up-and-comers. They're just not there. Very few. And so as soon as you start to pick off a few of those old, like dominant, perdaceous boars, because I think they turn very predaceous when they get bigger. They start to eat more moose and they start to eat more caribou. And they're they're not picking at berries and beavers as much anymore. And uh, I think their food source changes, and that's when you start to lose other bears. It's because you have this dominant bear that's just killing everything.

SPEAKER_03 48:14

Yeah, that's what I mean, these animal rights groups don't understand about you know, trophy hunting, trying to take the big, old, mature, the the biggest ones, but I mean it they don't they're idiots. They don't realize how important it is because that is proper conservation. It's taking it doesn't matter what you're hunting, taking the oldest, biggest, most mature is going to help uh, you know, the ecosystem there so much better than you know it trophy hunting is important.

SPEAKER_02 48:39

Well, we we do exist here, and if you want to have things like honey, your beekeeper is shooting bears. I guarantee you this. Yeah. Because he they're knocking over hives, and there's undisclosed amounts of bears that beekeepers have to shoot. Okay. Now, when COVID hit, all right, and we couldn't bring in people this Canada hunting bears. There's out operations taking 50, 60, 70 bears a year, some of the big ones, and all these guys like me taking 20, 30, 40 out there, and all of a sudden that stops, dead stop.

unknown 49:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 49:14

Well, guess what happens to the bee farmers? They're going pulling their hair out because there's nobody shooting bears anymore. Now all of a sudden you can't keep the beehive standing. You got electric fences on everything already. Bears are walking, it was a it was chaos, absolute chaos. And nobody really talks about it. But I mean, we're here trying to make a living too. And if we can't have honey, just send down to California or wherever it's going. I don't know where it's going. It's bad. I guess the good stuff goes over.

unknown 49:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 49:40

But but you gotta you gotta have a little bit of honey. We've taken away the habitat, and then we throw them, you know, the best thing for a bear is a bear a honey hive. Like, yeah, how do you not manage that? You have to.

SPEAKER_01 49:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 49:55

Yeah, we had that problem here too. With I mean, the Americans, they love coming down and hunting the bears, and again, when COVID happened in New Brunswick as well, um, you the bear population definitely went up.

SPEAKER_02 50:07

Yeah. You know, obviously, right? Yeah. And if if you can't control that just a little bit, I mean bears are breaking in. But there's always a bear in the back of my pickup truck. Like alive one, not dead one, alive one. Climb in there and eat my jerrycat. And I get mad. Like it's not very fun for me. I'm losing equipment, like they're wrecking my jerrycats. I had one two ATVs attacked attacked by bears this year. One of them, the seat, was totally destroyed.

SPEAKER_01 50:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 50:37

And the other one, he ripped one of the handlebar things off and got into the throttle cable. And I mean, we're leaving the ATVs for half an hour. Yeah. And they get destroyed.

SPEAKER_03 50:47

That's crazy. So yeah.

Problem Bears, COVID, And Real Conservation

SPEAKER_03 50:50

Wow. I know, I hear, but the knock on wood, that hasn't happened to me. But I always take my key out because uh I think his Ryan Kohler was telling me one time that he didn't take his key out, went in there. The bear had gotten the key. He's like, I couldn't find it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 51:07

So I've I've thought of this. I've thought of this, but I've never done it. But I all my ideal is I take the seat off and I slide it under the four-wheeler. For some reason, they got a hard time getting it out of there. So I don't want to carry it to the bait site.

SPEAKER_01 51:22

No.

SPEAKER_02 51:22

And then I try to perk at least 500 meters from the bait.

SPEAKER_01 51:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 51:26

Because they spider out from there less odds of running into my four-wheeler. But the the new guides, the new guides don't realize that if you leave your pails on the four-wheeler, the bear just think it's another bait site.

SPEAKER_00 51:38

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 51:39

So they're coming in and they destroy your four-wheeler. There are, you know, there's pad marks all over, and the grease is open and there's bear bait all over your machine. Like it's they're destructive. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 51:51

Yeah. Yeah, what a pain. Uh so I mean, where I'm at, I'm not real far back in the woods or anything like that. I mean, around here, it's it's we're in the country, but it's not as remote as some areas. So the bear are still, I find, fair even with how many people are around, they're fairly cautious around people and and you know. Which is which is good. They're scared of us. Um but where you're in more northern areas, and I see this on pictures on videos and stuff of people hunting in Alberta. The bears seem to have a bit of a lack of fear of people, and is it because there's just so few around?

SPEAKER_02 52:28

Well, I think there's two reasons. There's two reasons they get lack of fear. Number one, they're getting used to us uh baiting these baits 20 years in a row and we're coming in at 3 30 every day, you know, and a few bears become accustomed to that. I think that's a thing. But if you go into remote areas, those bears are not as afraid of you as you'd think. They've never really dealt with people. Yeah. Um, they'll just walk up to you and climb into your ergo. Like it's happened lots of times, they're not really that afraid of you.

unknown 53:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 53:03

Especially those big dominant bears. They're they own that place, that's their home, and you're the new guy, right? So it seems to me that the more remote you are, you run into bigger chances of having, you know, actual bear troubles. Where to me, bear trouble is a bear comes in my camp and rips a hole in my tent and knocks my barbecue over. That's bear trouble. But that's not yeah, that's not bear trouble. Bear trouble is when a bear is gonna eat you. He's decided you're his neckmack. That's bear trouble. And when I when I have that feeling, um maybe one in two hundred bears is is like thinks you're its competitor.

SPEAKER_01 53:44

You know, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 53:44

They just they react just differently. Well, one in a hundred maybe is is is dangerous a problem. You know, every third or fourth bear will show aggression to you, but I think it's more in you know, they're establishing a boundary with you.

SPEAKER_03 53:58

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_02 53:58

They're not they don't want to eat you.

SPEAKER_03 54:00

They're just a wild animal, and you know, yeah, they're too much trouble. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 54:05

They got they got candies and donuts down there. What do they want to eat you for? It's too difficult, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 54:11

So well, speaking about dangerous bears, I mean, where you are in Alberta, do you uh do you deal with grizzlies much?

SPEAKER_02 54:20

Uh I in my bear area I don't. Now the reason I don't have grizzlies, I don't want them. And I don't want them because they eat those black bears. They they really are hard on bear population, eh? Those grizzlies will dig those black bears out of the den. Because a grizzly doesn't they go into hibernation, but they get up and go for a stroll now and then. Okay. And they'll find a black bear, dig them out and kill them. You'll you can find those on YouTube all over the place. Wow. So the the black bear outfitters that are on the fringe land of grizzly country, which was never grizzly country before, but is now grizzly country because they're expanding, yes, are having uh some issues. Yeah, some guys are having issues. Uh a grizzly will get on the bait, and and that's not something you want to mess with too much. You you want to proceed with caution, and I think I would probably abandon the bait. Wow, if I had a grizzly on it, I don't think I would continue with that one. And if the grizzly or comes up on a camera on another bait, I would cancel that one and return to where I was. Or you know, I I would figure out an alternative because the last thing you need is to be showing up like the five cups scenario 20 minutes after dark because you had trouble, and here's a grizzly, you know. Then you're in trouble. That's claims your bait, and now we're going in back to back with 4570, like or whatever, whatever you think you need to do, but I don't want to do that. Yeah, there's there's that's something I don't want to do in the dark, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_03 55:56

Yeah, no, I was I was wondering that. So that's yeah, that's really good that you uh that you don't have to deal with them. That's something. So they'll dig out black bears, sleeping black bears and kill them.

SPEAKER_02 56:06

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I uh see in the mountains you'll see grizzly tracks in the you know, March, April, all the time.

SPEAKER_01 56:14

Really?

SPEAKER_02 56:14

Those grizzlies that get out and go for a good stroll. And if you if you backtrack them, sometimes you'll find their den, which is kind of fun and a little bit crazy, but they're fun.

SPEAKER_01 56:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 56:23

And that's when they're the most dangerous, apparently, is when they get up in the winter and they're hungry, yeah, looking for something.

SPEAKER_03 56:29

Yeah, probably a little cranky.

SPEAKER_02 56:32

Well, the the biggest grizzly in the world was was killed in the wintertime on a trap line out of Swan Hills, Alberta.

SPEAKER_01 56:41

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 56:41

By a trapper. Yeah, I'll have to look up the story, I'll send it to you. Yeah, it was uh a lady trapping checking her traps with a dog sled, and the the grizzly was on the trail and she met it, and they she put a box of 22 shelves into it and finally got it.

SPEAKER_03 56:56

Really?

SPEAKER_02 56:57

Yeah. Oh yeah, I'll definitely look that up.

SPEAKER_03 57:00

That's crazy.

SPEAKER_02 57:01

There was the hide was in the Canuso Hotel for many years. I don't know where it is now, but I do remember seeing it. Pretty interesting story, but Swan Hills had some giant grizzlies in Alberta.

SPEAKER_03 57:15

Yeah. Well, that's another thing that I don't know, Alberta. I know that you it's you cannot hunt grizzly there, but now they're slowly opening it up, right? Because they've realized there's a problem. The population is a bit too high.

SPEAKER_02 57:30

I I wouldn't say they've opened it hot, okay. There there isn't hunt open. What there is is uh problem. Um it's a problem bear team, right? Uh sort of. So I'll I'll explain it this way. Maybe I can get it right. Um so if there's a problem bear, it's brought to the attention of the government, whatever the government says, yep, this bear's got to go, it's done damage. Um, what they do is they have basically a draw, like a hunting draw, let's say, but they have the names of local people that are competent hunters that have drawn this privilege to uh to go hunt this problem bear in this guy's yard or very strict circumstances. This is the only bear you're allowed to hunt. This bear is eating this guy's cattle in his feedlot in his yard. When this bear comes, you can shoot this bear. Something like that. That's the uh intention. It's not an actual hunting season because who knows? It could be year-round. I don't know when. And I don't even know if it's been implemented. But I know people that are on the list, they call you. If you can't make it, they call the next guy, they call the next guy.

SPEAKER_03 58:34

It's got to be instant, right?

SPEAKER_02 58:36

Yeah, well, they give them three, four days, I guess. Do they idea? Yeah, yeah, they give you some time, I guess. I don't know. I don't know that anybody's done it to actually have something to go off of. But the idea is when that bear comes out into the prairies and he's messing around with somebody's stuff, or wrecking things, or killing things, or you know, maybe there was one in the schoolyard, I don't know where they said sundry the other day. There's a grizzly in the schoolyard, and you know, nobody's ever been called to uh remove one of these bears, as far as I know, but that's what it's for. Now there's so many bears now, though. I can't see why they wouldn't open a hunt because there's it's been closed for over 20 years for grizzlies. There's not a grizzly bear alive that doesn't that remembers being hunted.

SPEAKER_01 59:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 59:25

Right? That that remembers having fear of math. Uh and so now we have a problem. Now we have a problem because BC, it's only been closed for what, five, six years, I don't know, maybe more. Uh I think a lot more.

SPEAKER_03 59:37

Yeah, time does fly back. BC, it was open. Uh yeah, it was open for the longest time, then they they shut it down, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 59:44

So the bears there, there's bears alive running around there saying, hey, people are not. Something we want to mess with. But give it 20 years, and it's gonna change because those bears will fully realize that they're on the top of the food chain again.

SPEAKER_03 59:59

Yeah. And they're probably 2017 is when BC banned it.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:05

Yeah, so man, it's been 10 years, right? Like there's nine years, eight years, whatever. But it's it's been a while, like, and so it's gonna start to become a problem. And to have a hunt where they take out or the hunters are targeting the biggest, uh, most dominant bears. How is the hunt not logical?

SPEAKER_01 1:00:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:24

In in this case, right? Uh uh school field trip. I think it was an elementary school field trip. You look this up, kids got attacked in Alberta here.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:35

I heard about that.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:36

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:36

Yeah, that was recently, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_02 1:00:39

A year or so ago, I guess maybe this year.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:41

Yeah, with I yeah, within the year, I think. I remember hearing a little bit about that. I never looked into it completely, but uh, yeah, yeah, that's that's scary.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:49

Do you have groundhogs out there?

SPEAKER_03 1:00:51

Oh yeah, we gophers. Yeah, gopher. Yeah, yeah, we do groundhogs. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:57

So I'll tell you, this is my theory with Grizzly. Same thing. When you're out there in your cattle pasture and there's a gopher poking his head around, and you don't have a 22 and you're not pursuing that gopher, they know. They've got a feel, they know when they're being pursued.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:12

This animal is designed to survive. They they know when they're being pursued, when an animal is stalking it or whatever, and they get that feeling and they let out the alarm away they go.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:22

But if if you walk out there with a 22, they are on guard. They know. So as soon as you pursue an animal, it's not just the ones you've hunted and harvested that are no longer a problem, it's the other ones that know you're now they're being pursued, right? Yes. So there's that there's that little bit of tension there that makes them keep that distance. So you don't even have to harvest a bear. All you have to do is pursue them. And once you've pursued them and and they you give them that feeling that they are not the top dog anymore.

unknown 1:01:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:53

Right?

unknown 1:01:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:53

They're not gonna be as big of a problem. Because when I'm going into a bear bait and these young bears know that I'm not the top dog, that I'm gonna back away from them, get on my four-wheeler, and head for the head for camp, they get pretty aggressive. Whereas when I walk in there and I'm this bear's big enough to shoot 'em. I'm not too worried about them. Those bears run away. Right? Right. So they feel pursued. And I think grizzlies are the same way. You gotta open

Grizzlies, Fear, And Why Pursuit Matters

SPEAKER_02 1:02:20

a hut. Even if it's the smallest amount, you have to open a hut.

unknown 1:02:23

There's no question.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:25

Yeah. Well, I mean, yeah, I've I've heard from people in Alberta that the population, I mean, they're it's it's getting higher and it's becoming a problem.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:35

Yeah, and I'm sure guys are double counting grizzlies and stuff, and advocates for hunting are counting more than they really than are really there, and then the advocates for keeping it closed are you know counting less than are actually there. Yeah, you know, everybody on their own team is making the numbers the way they want. But the truth is they have expanded and they're coming into the prairies, and grizzlies were traditionally mostly a prairie animal. Yeah, right? So we should put some out in Toronto, maybe.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:08

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:12

All the people that want to save them, that's normally where they live, is the cities.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:17

Best habitat in the world is where the cities are.

unknown 1:03:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:21

Right? For every uh for all the animals in that district. You look at Bath and Jasper, all the best habitat is where all the buildings are.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:29

Yeah. You know.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:31

That's just how we how we did it when we came here.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:34

Yeah. Yeah, no, that's true. Um, yeah, it's in the grizzly, uh, it'd be a cool hunt. I mean, I've heard people that have hunted them that say it's so different because I mean, they they see you as as prey. I mean, you're not they're not they said they're not, yeah, they're just not scared of people.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:51

Not near. When we're sheep hunting and I see a lot of grizzlies in the open and I can feel the interaction with them.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:58

Because you when I'm moose highing and I see a grizzly, there's very little bit of actual visual contact. You see them for a few seconds and they're gone, then you see them, they're gone. When you're sheep hunting, you have a lot of visual contact with a grizzly.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:08

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:09

Um, you can feel that interaction and how they're not really that scared of you, not like they were 20 years ago. That's certainly true. Um, but you really want to be afraid and shaking your boots, go chase some polar bears around because you are food to them.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:24

And you've always been food to them, nothing's changed. Yeah. So try that one on.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:30

Yeah, I've heard that too. I've heard they're they're quite ferocious. You know, it's funny, they they like to show the commercials and all that, these skinny dying polar bears, but I'll tell you the pictures I've seen, they're big and fat.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:43

And you look at the numbers, I think the numbers are higher now than they've ever been.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:48

Yeah. Yeah, I think they're doing it.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:53

Which is uh which is sad. You can't get them into the US, and so uh Inuit have kind of lost their market for polar bears.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:01

So, you know, what are you gonna do? I guess we should go polar bear hunting.

unknown 1:05:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:06

Kind of support that, right? Really? I mean, what else is a guy gonna do? The the income has dropped from those, I'm sure, dramatically.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:13

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it'd be it'd be neat, but I mean, yeah, they try to say that they're dying off and all that, the animal rights groups, but yeah, the pictures and stuff I've seen, they're definitely not. They're big and strong and alive and well, and there's there's plenty of them.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:28

Coming a little bit south too, like we're did you hear there's grizzlies over Manitoba coming out of the Arctic? Artic Grizzlies?

SPEAKER_03 1:05:35

Oh, really?

SPEAKER_02 1:05:36

No, I hadn't heard yeah, yeah, look that up. It's kind of interesting. They've got a few, uh, supposedly. I haven't really looked into it. It's kind of out of my realm, but I have heard in several places that there's a few grizzlies hitting Manitoba now. So Alberta has 'em and and uh Manitoba has them. Manitoba. Wow. I haven't heard much about Saskatchewan, but I bet you it's not long. No, well Saskatchewan will have a grizzly pop up somewhere.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:59

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I mean they uh they can g I mean they have huge ranges. I do know that.

unknown 1:06:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:08

They'll just travel.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:09

Well when those boars start to walk, they'll do miles. No. Always the males that do the big travel.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:15

Right, and the females stay more in their central location. Uh-huh. But uh with the black bear, I mean, how big of a range in your experience do you find that they have? Say say the boars. I mean, it varies obviously because of the rut, but uh they cover do you find they cover quite a large area?

SPEAKER_02 1:06:33

Well, again, without collaring them, how do you know, right? But here's what I can tell you. Here's what I can tell you. I got a 50 or 70 mile stretch of of road, okay? And and I have no there's no other roads. I just that's the road I can drive with a truck. And then I go north and south off of it until the earth lands to the north and to the south um up to the Peace River. So I can tell you that if I see a distinguished distinguishable bear on one bait, let's say a brown bear with a black eye, I don't know, something ear missing. And we watch those bait sights, it's it's very rare for me to see that bear get more than say three bear sights over, and I keep mine at least three miles apart because I don't want double hits, right? I want I I want the bears to stay on the bait. When a hunger gets on the bait, I don't want the bears to have a choice to say, you know what, we're going over to the other one that's supposed to be dangerous. Yeah, right. So I won't see them travel, you know. Scarface, Scarface went the one I was telling you about earlier. Scarface went uh four miles, five miles, yeah, to the next bait, and it and it and it camped out and stayed there. So do they travel a lot now? I don't think is I don't I don't think once they're on the beach they do. I think those cells hang out. The boars probably travel for miles. Yeah, I would think. You know. But it's hard to say.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:06

Yeah, you're right, without collaring them, it is it is hard to say, but yeah. I uh but you know how it is too. I mean, once the rut gets going, you have these boars pop up from you know, ones you've never seen before and things like that could be from anywhere.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:21

Oh yeah, for sure. Yeah, for sure. It may the best bear baiter win, really.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:27

Yeah, that's what it comes down to. Like it, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:29

That's what it comes down to, and the best bear baiter has all the south.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:33

Right? Yes. Because the girls are more important than the food by far. You know? Yeah. So um you keep you keep two or three thousand there that are gonna go into heat, and every boar in the land is is coming there like a Friday night and they're heading over.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:50

You know. So that's the best way to do it. Yeah.

Trail Cameras, Scent Control, And Range

SPEAKER_02 1:08:55

Have you still got some bears on your bait there, or is that season over for you?

SPEAKER_03 1:08:58

Uh no, uh, actually, here we've got um till I think it goes till the end of June. Um, no, I'm still baiting. I still got a camera on there. My camera's been going off pretty steady this evening. Um, just keeping just keeping an eye on things. And then we've got two tags here, like a lot of uh Canada. So uh we'll see what happens. Keeping an eye on that.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:19

I hope your big guy comes back. Here's a casting all. I wouldn't uh you you laugh, but I wouldn't put it, I wouldn't say it's not gonna happen. I I would just be paying attention because he'll be back.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:31

Well, I I got all the bears that'll do it. I I got a picture I'm gonna send you. So I had a a really big boar come in and he was in the same position as the big one uh that I shot earlier in the season. And uh I'm gonna send you and then this other picture was taken about a week ago. Uh I'm gonna send you both and say I don't think it's the same bear, but you talk about that. I'll send I'll send you the pictures you uh you can see. Um yeah, I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:00

I think I think you'd know. I think you'd see a blemish on that bear both hundred feet so high.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:06

Oh, okay. It's hard to tell then, right?

SPEAKER_03 1:10:08

It is. And I I've got my camera, so I've got I've got the tacticam and I've got I've got it about 12 feet up in the air pointing down. And the reason why I have it so high is because I've got a solar panel hooked to it as well. So I really don't want the bear screwing with that, so that's why I have it up that high.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:27

The second best bear bait of all time is a trail camera. I know that. Well, one of them there, they're coming, and they're gonna eat that thing whether there's a cage or not. So Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:38

So I I always put mine high um and with a solar panel to touch it because I mean, I know a lot of people you hear about this, to get handling their bait and then just not thinking, they like, oh, you know, check the camera or whatever, right? Adjust it while you got your scent on there. That the bears are going after it.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:54

So do this next time you go in there. I don't even think it's by you handling your bait. They just smell something different. They got it, they got a nose better than any other sense that any other animal has.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:04

If you walk into your bait site, grab a piece of bait, grab a piece of meat out of that bait site, could be any random piece, walk ten yards away from your bait, dig a hole, stomp it under the ground, and bury it, and go sit in that bait site. And the first thing that bear does is he walks in, smells everything, and he goes right for that new piece you put there.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:22

Because it's new. He's gotta see what's buried that's new, and that's how good their nose is. And I I bet money on this when hunters can well, you know, I don't bet money on, but you know, I I'll tell them this, I guarantee you they're gonna do this. And nine times out of ten, they're going straight for that piece you put in the ground because it's just something they smell as a place. Yeah, their nose is so good, whether it be bear beat on your hands or just the plastic of the camera or something new in a location, they're gonna find it and they're gonna check it out. Right? They're gonna smell it. They're you're never gonna beat their nose. Like you can watch the wind, you can do all that kind of stuff, and all of that extra effort does help. It never hurts to be overly cautious with you know watching your smell and wind direction and that, but you're never gonna beat their nose. Never. It's just so good.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:13

Yeah, yeah, it's it's like you said, it's one of the best of the animals out there. But um, Terrence, uh I'll get you to stay on the phone for a minute, but I'm gonna end the podcast

Closing Thoughts And Next Conversation

SPEAKER_03 1:12:25

there. We've been just over an hour in, went by quick, and I appreciate you coming on. And um, we're gonna do it again this summer about the bison. Really excited to hear about that. Um so uh yes, thanks. But just stay on for a minute. I'm just gonna send you send you those pictures.