Speaker 1: Welcome to the bear hunting magazine Hunt Cash with me
Speaker 1: Koby Morehead. We're gonna nerd out on bears hunting in
Speaker 1: the outdoors. We'll tell stories, talk biology, tactics, gear, and
Speaker 1: the fight to protect the pursuits that we hold dear. So,
Speaker 1: grab your bino's, lace up your boots, load up your barrels,
Speaker 1: and gather the hounds. We venture on this journey together.
Speaker 1: Today on the podcast, we're gonna continue a similar conversation
Speaker 1: to the last one. We were talking about keying in
Speaker 1: on fall bears. This time we're talking to Josh Kershner
Speaker 1: from Arizona. We're gonna talk about what he looks for
Speaker 1: and how he scouts for fall bears in Arizona. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of things we can learn from Josh and
Speaker 1: other people that hunt in harsh, extreme environments. We've seen
Speaker 1: time and time again that Josh really learns and has
Speaker 1: figured out how to overcome obstacles in his way and
Speaker 1: have the ability to adapt in and.
Speaker 2: Find the bears.
Speaker 1: Most years, Josh writes a couple of articles every year
Speaker 1: for Bear Hunting Magazine, and we've seen just how passionate
Speaker 1: he is about bear hunting and whether you live inside
Speaker 1: of a similar environment or not. There is stuff to
Speaker 1: learn about bear behavior inside of this and good ways
Speaker 1: of thinking. So even if it's not something that you're into,
Speaker 1: there's always something to learn. We're starting out this episode
Speaker 1: with Josh telling us a little of his background.
Speaker 3: Here's Josh been bear hunting down here. Mostly. Bears really
Speaker 3: got me into hunting a lot, he said, Deer hunting
Speaker 3: my dad kind of like an annual deer camp every year,
Speaker 3: which was amazing as a kid. But I got older
Speaker 3: for some reason. Dude, I don't know what it was,
Speaker 3: but the bear thing just kind of got to me.
Speaker 3: So that's what really I just decided. I was like, man,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna learn how to do this, you know, And
Speaker 3: I just dove headfirst into bears, which is super unique
Speaker 3: for where I live because we're not necessarily considered a
Speaker 3: bear state Arizona. Like a lot of people that live
Speaker 3: here don't even know that bears exist here. Started learning
Speaker 3: how to bear hunt, and through doing so, that was
Speaker 3: the thing that kept me in the field the most.
Speaker 3: So I decided to try to do a kind of
Speaker 3: an online journal about it, which turned into a blog
Speaker 3: called dialdon Hunter, and I think that was about a
Speaker 3: decade ago. At this point, I didn't know anyone was
Speaker 3: reading it. I just wanted to be transparent, kind of
Speaker 3: have an online journal for myself to reflect back on
Speaker 3: and see where I messed up, see where I succeeded.
Speaker 3: I got a message from Clay about a bear that
Speaker 3: my first bear that I got, and he was asked
Speaker 3: me if to write an article, and that's the first
Speaker 3: article I ever had published. So nowadays, ten years later,
Speaker 3: I am a writer, videographer and photographer in the hunting
Speaker 3: industry and I'm due this full time. I've written a
Speaker 3: couple of books too, So yeah, that's me in a
Speaker 3: nutshell without getting too far into the weeds.
Speaker 1: I really like the quality that Josh has where he
Speaker 1: was starting an online blog, but he was doing it
Speaker 1: a lot for just himself and not knowing if anyone
Speaker 1: was reading. And then out of the blue, he gets
Speaker 1: a call and he was first published inside of Bear
Speaker 1: Hunting Magazine, which is cool. You never know where Clay
Speaker 1: Nukelemb's name is gonna pop up. But if you want
Speaker 1: to learn more about Clay, check out episode one. That's
Speaker 1: episode uno of the Bear Hunting Magazine Hunt cast to
Speaker 1: hear more about Clay. So since Josh brought up his
Speaker 1: first ever article that was published inside a bear hunting magazine,
Speaker 1: I asked him to go ahead and tell us that
Speaker 1: story real quick.
Speaker 2: So here's Josh.
Speaker 3: That was a roller coaster of the season. Ended up
Speaker 3: kind of all over the state, bouncing around. First bear
Speaker 3: I was on, ended up getting run out of the
Speaker 3: country by dogs. I actually shot a bear in August,
Speaker 3: tracked it for two days, couldn't find it, almost quit
Speaker 3: bear hunting that year. It was just a nasty deal.
Speaker 3: And then returned that following October and found this big,
Speaker 3: old jet black boar with my brother and he walked
Speaker 3: out and there was two other bears with it. We
Speaker 3: saw nine and bears that morning. I think I was
Speaker 3: wild and I shot that bear and that was my
Speaker 3: first bear. And that's so that's the article that I wrote,
Speaker 3: the first one for Bear Hunting magazine. Through all of
Speaker 3: the looking around I've done for bears because so like,
Speaker 3: one of the hardest things about the bear thing here
Speaker 3: is food isn't consistent from year to year. So you
Speaker 3: can't be like, oh, yeah, I saw nine bears here
Speaker 3: last year and then go back the following year and
Speaker 3: guarantee that they're going to be there. So because of that,
Speaker 3: you bounce around a lot, and through doing so I
Speaker 3: would find good deer spots and stuff too. So yeah,
Speaker 3: I along with the bears. Man, I absolutely love Coos
Speaker 3: deer hunting. Black bears are my number one love out
Speaker 3: in the mountains, but Coos deer is number two for sure.
Speaker 3: I hunted meals for a couple of years and was successful,
Speaker 3: but ever since I got my first coups, I haven't
Speaker 3: hunted one meal deer in Arizona since I'll go out
Speaker 3: of state Colorado, Utah or whatever to hunt meal deer. Also, obviously,
Speaker 3: we have great elk hunting here. You know, it's kind
Speaker 3: of a blessing and a curse to live in a
Speaker 3: trophy state like Arizona, because pulling a tag is like
Speaker 3: incredibly difficult, but I do, I do get after the
Speaker 3: late archery bull hunts are like fairly easy to draw,
Speaker 3: so like, I do that quite a bit and then
Speaker 3: have alinair are super fun too, and we got good
Speaker 3: turkey hunting here as well, so awesome.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think there's a lot of value that comes
Speaker 1: from the struggle. I wonder if Josh would have been
Speaker 1: able to have an easy chip shot ride at the
Speaker 1: first day break of day kind of luck with a
Speaker 1: bear if he'd be the same hunter he is today.
Speaker 1: I think sometimes the struggle makes us a lot better hunters. Well,
Speaker 1: I know it does. There's one particular story I asked
Speaker 1: Josh to share, and we're gonna be talking about the
Speaker 1: bears and the pears. It's an article he wrote a
Speaker 1: while back that talks about how plan a plan be
Speaker 1: doesn't always come into play and that you have to
Speaker 1: be able to adapt. So here's Josh talking about the
Speaker 1: bears and the bears.
Speaker 3: Every year it's I mean, some years it's absolutely arid,
Speaker 3: and some years it's like a monsoon, and some years
Speaker 3: it's kind of in between. All of that has an
Speaker 3: effect on food, on what food, on how fast food
Speaker 3: is growing, what food is growing, and where it's growing.
Speaker 3: So it's incredibly vital as a bear hunter, more specifically
Speaker 3: as a fall bear hunter, to go out and actually
Speaker 3: find that food. So what I do in a lot
Speaker 3: of scouting is I'm out there looking around for acorns
Speaker 3: and stuff like that to make sure that stuff is there.
Speaker 3: That story, I was predicting that there was going to
Speaker 3: be a lot of acorns, and I was right, but
Speaker 3: I also was wrong. So let me I'll elaborate on that.
Speaker 3: So we have different species of oaks here. Okay, so
Speaker 3: we have one called a scrub oak and another one
Speaker 3: called a gamble oak. Those are the two main ones
Speaker 3: that I focus in on for black bears. The scrub
Speaker 3: oak is an early season a corn august. The gamble
Speaker 3: oak is a later season a corn that happens in October.
Speaker 3: On that particular year, we had a good early season
Speaker 3: acorn crop, but not a good later season a corn crop.
Speaker 3: The struggle was I was going to these areas where
Speaker 3: I thought bears were gonna be at based on the
Speaker 3: early season acorns, and I was finding old sign. Okay,
Speaker 3: this is in October, by the way, When I was
Speaker 3: out here looking around, and I was assuming, and this
Speaker 3: is like growing pains of a bear hunter, right, I
Speaker 3: was assuming that we would also have a good October
Speaker 3: acorn crop. But it just wasn't the case. I found
Speaker 3: that out once I got into the field, saw old
Speaker 3: sign but no new sign. So after three or four days,
Speaker 3: I mean, I packed into the back country pretty far
Speaker 3: on that hunt, went back in there. I found one
Speaker 3: young bore way up high, but I think I saw
Speaker 3: three acorns when I was hiking in on the trail.
Speaker 3: You know. So for people that don't know, like, if
Speaker 3: you do not have the food, you do not have
Speaker 3: the bears, Like if you're wasting your time. Really Like,
Speaker 3: I'm a guy that likes to think that no day
Speaker 3: is wasted in the field. Okay, but if you're out
Speaker 3: there looking for bears, you best be you best have
Speaker 3: the food located. Okay. So I pulled out of there
Speaker 3: and I went to a different area to look at
Speaker 3: because another thing that will happen as acorns will occur
Speaker 3: in pockets. So I was like, oh, I wonder if
Speaker 3: it's better over here. So I pulled out, went to
Speaker 3: a different area, same kind of scenario. The early season
Speaker 3: sign was there, but there wasn't any newer sign. So
Speaker 3: after a couple of days of looking around, I was like,
Speaker 3: you know what, if there's no acorns, I'm gonna go
Speaker 3: check this other food source, which another main food source
Speaker 3: for us is prickly pears. There's a big berry that
Speaker 3: is about two three inches long that grows on a
Speaker 3: prickly paired cactus, and those bears, it's like candy to them. Okay.
Speaker 3: So I went to a different spot lower in elevation
Speaker 3: this occursion, and the first evening I was there, we
Speaker 3: found a giant bore going through the prickney pears and
Speaker 3: it's like, okay, now we're talking. So we never got
Speaker 3: a shot on that bear that evening. He ended up
Speaker 3: betting up in a spot that was just we just
Speaker 3: couldn't get a shot on him where he was. He
Speaker 3: ran out of light. Return the next morning, knowing that
Speaker 3: a bear is not going to leave an area if
Speaker 3: he doesn't have to, particularly a big boar, If he
Speaker 3: has food and water where he's at, he will completely
Speaker 3: clear that area out before he leaves on his own
Speaker 3: unless something pushes him out, which a something pushing out
Speaker 3: a big board the only thing that's gonna do that.
Speaker 3: As a hunter, I feel like or another big boar.
Speaker 3: So we came in the following day in three point
Speaker 3: thirty pm. He comes walking out. He was beneath us
Speaker 3: the entire time and we never saw him. He was
Speaker 3: betted up all day long, comes walking out and feeding
Speaker 3: on prickly pairs, and I shot him at four hundred yards.
Speaker 3: What I didn't say that fought that morning though we
Speaker 3: found another bear that was in the same area. So
Speaker 3: what I'm getting at here is we found the current
Speaker 3: What's important is finding the current food source, like what
Speaker 3: they prefer right now, not a month ago. And once
Speaker 3: we got that, we saw bears regularly, okay, and it
Speaker 3: was only a matter of a couple miles okay, and
Speaker 3: the spots that I was in to start out with,
Speaker 3: these are areas have I'm not I've seen in upwards
Speaker 3: of twenty bears in like within like three four hundred
Speaker 3: yard area on certain years. Not this year though, it
Speaker 3: was different. Which is the hardest part about black bear
Speaker 3: hunting in Arizona to me is it's a moving target.
Speaker 3: You can't just guarantee things. So yeah, just a prime
Speaker 3: example of yeah, you need to go out and you
Speaker 3: need to actually spend the time proofing the food source,
Speaker 3: and you can't bet your money on what you saw
Speaker 3: last year.
Speaker 1: A lot of the things that Josh was talking about
Speaker 1: made me think to the last episode with Myron Means
Speaker 1: talking about natural foods and kenn On bears, for one, like,
Speaker 1: we weren't talking about the same types of things. I mean,
Speaker 1: we were both talking about acrons, but we weren't talking
Speaker 1: about the the ones on scrub oaks and gamble oaks.
Speaker 1: We were talking about white oaks and post oaks and
Speaker 1: black oaks, and we weren't talking about prickly bears. We
Speaker 1: were talking about other soft masks here, like cherries and
Speaker 1: black gumberries and muscadions. I think it's a good reminder
Speaker 1: to always know that the same spot won't always work
Speaker 1: you after year. All right, let's start talking about scouting
Speaker 1: for bears.
Speaker 2: Here's Joshua.
Speaker 3: Time is money Cooby with Arizona in particular, how our
Speaker 3: bear season works is it opens on a Friday, and
Speaker 3: our units they're open based on South Quota limits. If
Speaker 3: a unit hits South Quota, that will close the following
Speaker 3: Wednesday at sundown. So what I'm getting at is you
Speaker 3: might only have six days to hunt a certain area, okay,
Speaker 3: because it might shut down you don't know. So in
Speaker 3: the spirit of that, in my opinion, it's very important
Speaker 3: to scout ahead of time so you're not wasting days
Speaker 3: during the hunt finding what you need to find. The
Speaker 3: beauty about on X and using something like the terrain
Speaker 3: X feature is that is really just how important elevation is.
Speaker 3: So I'm doing this literally right now, like I just
Speaker 3: got back less than a week ago from a scouting
Speaker 3: trip in any unit I've never been to. And what
Speaker 3: I'm trying to do is I'm trying to key in
Speaker 3: on a certain elevation band between you know, forty five
Speaker 3: hundred feet six thousand feet, like right in there, like
Speaker 3: that that area, because in the past, I know that
Speaker 3: that is kind of the area where food is going
Speaker 3: to be ripe during laid off. Okay, where in that
Speaker 3: is it going to be ripe? I'm I don't know.
Speaker 3: Within on X, I will use that terrain X feature
Speaker 3: to block out everything that isn't forty five hundred to
Speaker 3: six thousand feet, So basically everything will go like to
Speaker 3: like a dark shade of gray or something like that,
Speaker 3: and everything that I want to see will be in color.
Speaker 3: Super beneficial, Okay, cut a lot of the weeds out
Speaker 3: on a country. There's also the view shed tool on
Speaker 3: there where so I'm a glasser, Okay. You can only
Speaker 3: tell so much from a glassing point on a computer
Speaker 3: as to what you're like, what you're going to actually
Speaker 3: see when you get there. There's been many times I'm
Speaker 3: looking at a topple map and I'm like, oh yeah,
Speaker 3: this looks like a good glassing spot. And then I
Speaker 3: get there and I'm like, I can't see anything. So
Speaker 3: the cool thing about that terrain X in the view
Speaker 3: shed is you can actually drop a pin on wherever
Speaker 3: you're thinking about glassing and it will highlight what you
Speaker 3: can see the view from that point, So you can
Speaker 3: have a really good idea of what you're gonna be
Speaker 3: able to see before you even get there. But once
Speaker 3: those areas are located on the map and I've I've
Speaker 3: my ONYX looks like a Christmas tree with with all
Speaker 3: the pins all over it, the water sources, the potential
Speaker 3: glassing positions, which I try to do stuff like I
Speaker 3: try to find like like an ideal scenario would be
Speaker 3: like find like a big main ridge where I could
Speaker 3: walk along kind of like like shimmy along the top
Speaker 3: and I can look down off of both sides, down
Speaker 3: into the basins beneath that right and and fingers crossed
Speaker 3: that there's water down on both sides. For Arizona, that's
Speaker 3: incredibly vital. I won't even hunt an area if there's
Speaker 3: not water around. I won't even like I won't even
Speaker 3: go look at the food if it's not there. People
Speaker 3: in like the PNW and stuff like that. They like
Speaker 3: like with water, water is everywhere, dude, I'll tell you what.
Speaker 3: Like down here, the desert water is gold. Okay. So
Speaker 3: once I have areas of interest on on within my ONYX,
Speaker 3: then it's time to go prove them. And that's what
Speaker 3: I just did. I went. I went about a week ago.
Speaker 3: I went, and I hit all these points, not glassing
Speaker 3: at all. Okay, Like I'm not sitting down and glassing
Speaker 3: because the reason being is because I know that they're
Speaker 3: not there yet. The bears aren't in those areas yet
Speaker 3: that I know where I could go see bears right now.
Speaker 3: But the food source changes and the bears move with that. Okay.
Speaker 3: So what you're trying to do is you're trying to
Speaker 3: you're trying to alley up them. Basically, you're trying to
Speaker 3: find where they're going to be, not where they are, Okay.
Speaker 3: So and that's that's where finding that food, those food
Speaker 3: sources all come down to, uh, it comes into play.
Speaker 3: So that's what we did. We went, we proof water.
Speaker 3: We found lots of food sources, found a lot of
Speaker 3: good stuff, found a lot of bad stuff. Stuff like
Speaker 3: that I'm looking at on a map and I'm like, oh,
Speaker 3: this looks really good. I got there and I'm like,
Speaker 3: you know, I'm a little disappointed. That's what That's why
Speaker 3: it's so important to actually go and see it. So, yeah,
Speaker 3: that's that's what I do.
Speaker 1: And you're not glassroom for bears, but I'm assuming that
Speaker 1: you take your optics to be able to see the
Speaker 1: food sources, so you're not having to walk all the
Speaker 1: way over there.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, let me yeah, let me let me back
Speaker 3: up there. I was being more specific towards black bears.
Speaker 3: I have binoculars with me, and I also have a
Speaker 3: spotting scope, and I have done this in the past
Speaker 3: where I've actually used my spotting scope to zoom in
Speaker 3: on like prickly pair of cactus from a long ways
Speaker 3: out to see how the berries are looking and stuff.
Speaker 3: I do it in oaks because some of our so
Speaker 3: the early season acorn that we have a scrub oak.
Speaker 3: It's a smaller acorn. I mean it's only about the
Speaker 3: size of your fingernail, okay, so so when it's coming in,
Speaker 3: it's really small, all right. And like said, like sometimes
Speaker 3: like it's like a pe. So having optics to be
Speaker 3: able to sit there like even if I'm looking at
Speaker 3: something from less than one hundred yards away, you can't
Speaker 3: see them. Okay, so you need you actually need your
Speaker 3: optics to glass down into the food to see the acorns,
Speaker 3: butting and stuff. So yeah, another thing I'm glassing for
Speaker 3: Kolbe is the water, because the water will naturally pull
Speaker 3: up in the bottoms of our canyons, and I can
Speaker 3: oftentimes see that from above. So when I do see that,
Speaker 3: I'll use So a really cool tool that recently came
Speaker 3: out on within on X is there the compass mode
Speaker 3: on there. So with that I can actually pinpoint. I
Speaker 3: can like point my phone at the water, pinpoint where
Speaker 3: that is, and drop a pin right on that water
Speaker 3: is from where I'm standing, and then I have that
Speaker 3: there for future reference. Well.
Speaker 1: I wish we had time to do a deep dive
Speaker 1: into pre scouting and scouting inside of on X and
Speaker 1: on the ground, but Josh did a good job of
Speaker 1: bringing it down to the key things that he looks
Speaker 1: for and not getting too much into the weeds. I
Speaker 1: will say that there's some good resources on the on
Speaker 1: X YouTube channel. They call them masterclasses, and there's some
Speaker 1: pretty good resources in there regarding looking for bears, and
Speaker 1: you'll get some good information from those types of resources.
Speaker 1: The next thing that I want Josh to share with
Speaker 1: us is what kind of intel is good for him
Speaker 1: whenever he's in a season. So if him and a
Speaker 1: hunting buddy are in a similar area, what kind of
Speaker 1: information would he like to know about bear behavior here?
Speaker 1: And I think that it gives us some good questions
Speaker 1: so that whenever we just see a bear, it gives
Speaker 1: us a good list of questions when we're out there
Speaker 1: hunting to really begin to try to understand what it
Speaker 1: is that the bears are actually up to.
Speaker 2: Here's Josh.
Speaker 3: If you find one black bear, and let's say you're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: I found that bear. He's at he's at he's at
Speaker 3: forty seven hundred feet okay, and he's doing this. I
Speaker 3: always ask people that, like people that send me like
Speaker 3: oh yeah, I saw a bear. I'm like, well, what
Speaker 3: was he doing? It's like if he was just walking,
Speaker 3: maybe he was going to a different elevation band, it
Speaker 3: was he feeding? Okay? What was he eating? Okay? So
Speaker 3: then you know that okay, which which then means it's like,
Speaker 3: don't look at that. It's just one bear. Now you
Speaker 3: have this valuable piece of the puzzle, Okay, to be like, Okay,
Speaker 3: I saw this bear forty seven hundred feet he was
Speaker 3: eating this type of acorn, and he was on this
Speaker 3: facing slope, so he was on like a south facing slope.
Speaker 3: He's not west facing slope. Whatever that is. You can
Speaker 3: take that information and transpose it to different areas in
Speaker 3: where you're hunting, which then is gonna make more bears.
Speaker 3: Like I always tell folks like, if you see a
Speaker 3: black bear in an area, that bear is there for
Speaker 3: a reason. Okay they and chances are there's more than
Speaker 3: that bear around, Okay, So just yeah, So I always
Speaker 3: look at someone finds one bear, I'm like, there's more
Speaker 3: than that around for sure. That bears there for a reason.
Speaker 1: So when it's time to go on a hunt, how
Speaker 1: long do you give a spot before you move on
Speaker 1: to another spot that you've keaten on?
Speaker 3: So I like to give a spot at least in
Speaker 3: evening and the morning, you know, sit from like three
Speaker 3: o'clock or something two o'clock until dark in glass, and
Speaker 3: then the following morning be in your spot before daylight.
Speaker 3: With black bears, I think that's so important, like being
Speaker 3: late to your glassing spot when you're bear hunting is
Speaker 3: just man, you're just doing yourself a disservice. Man. Those
Speaker 3: bears really like to operate in twilight, in those like
Speaker 3: gray light hours. So yeah, like glass evening last morning,
Speaker 3: you know, first light to I don't know, ten eleven
Speaker 3: o'clock in the morning. And if I haven't seen anything
Speaker 3: in an evening in the morning unless I know, like
Speaker 3: I've walked through the area and I'm seeing a bunch
Speaker 3: of sign. If you're seeing fresh sign, okay, I'm just
Speaker 3: not seeing what's here, right, That's a good thing to
Speaker 3: key in on. I killed a bear two years ago
Speaker 3: at this point. I never saw that until I shot him.
Speaker 3: And I hunted for probably over a week before I
Speaker 3: actually saw him, and I put the puzzle together of
Speaker 3: how to play this bear what I was seeing. I
Speaker 3: would walk this canyon bottom up, and then what and
Speaker 3: there was a spring. It was a beautiful spring, and
Speaker 3: then I would I would sit that spring, okay, and
Speaker 3: I would wait for the bears to come into water.
Speaker 3: Along my route, I noticed there was pine needles that
Speaker 3: were simply moved, like if you took your fist put
Speaker 3: it down in the dirt and you push the pine
Speaker 3: needles forward, and so it makes a you that's what
Speaker 3: I was seeing. I never saw any paw prints. I
Speaker 3: just saw that going through the pine needles, and I'm like, man,
Speaker 3: that's a bear. One hundred percent. That's a bear. Once
Speaker 3: I got the wind figured out, which is also a
Speaker 3: super interesting situation, this was this was like one of
Speaker 3: those moments where I was like super just good hunting,
Speaker 3: you know. I was just super proud of how I
Speaker 3: figured this area out. There's water. I sat on the
Speaker 3: side of the spring where the wind was hitting me
Speaker 3: in the face. Okay, that sounds pretty good, right, the
Speaker 3: wind's going away from the water, it's sitting me in face. Well,
Speaker 3: what was happening is in the morning, like first thing
Speaker 3: in the morning, the wind would parallel the water, so
Speaker 3: it would actually go down the trail that I was
Speaker 3: hiking in on. And my thought was, oh, there's should
Speaker 3: be bears walking all around here. I don't know exactly
Speaker 3: when this bear is coming down this way. So I
Speaker 3: sat there and I never saw anything. What I ended
Speaker 3: up doing is I ended up getting up on the
Speaker 3: other side of the drainage, which would have meant that
Speaker 3: my wind was blowing towards the water, but I was
Speaker 3: up higher, so I sat it in the evening. It
Speaker 3: was an evening spot, and because of the thermals, my
Speaker 3: wind was blowing towards the water, but it was blowing
Speaker 3: over it. And then if when it did blow down
Speaker 3: the trail, it would parallel the trail, not blow on
Speaker 3: the trail. So essentially it was blowing over where I
Speaker 3: thought the bears were and to the left of where
Speaker 3: the bears were. The first evening I did that, that
Speaker 3: bore walked in and I shot him at thirty yards.
Speaker 3: So it's just like one of those things. It's like
Speaker 3: they are a ghost, okay, and if they don't want
Speaker 3: to be seen, they're not going to be seen. So
Speaker 3: putting together these these this puzzle, these puzzle pieces, that's
Speaker 3: how you that's how you have success out there. You
Speaker 3: got to pay attention to that stuff, you know. Ever
Speaker 3: since I got my first one, it just it was
Speaker 3: just a different experience than anything else, any other deer
Speaker 3: hunt or anything like that. It was just different. Man,
Speaker 3: Like we the first bear I ever packed out. Dude,
Speaker 3: I tell you what we were. We were leap frog
Speaker 3: and bear parts up a cliff to get it to
Speaker 3: get it out of where we were, Like, it was unreal.
Speaker 3: It was it was a big adventure. It was awesome
Speaker 3: and at and during the time of doing it, I
Speaker 3: was like, oh, man, I'm uh, I don't know about this,
Speaker 3: you know, like feeling super sketchy about the situation. But
Speaker 3: like once I got back to the truck, I look
Speaker 3: back on that, dude, and I was like, that was awesome,
Speaker 3: you know, like I can't wait. I can't wait. I
Speaker 3: can't believe we did that. I can't wait to do
Speaker 3: that again. It's just like so far removed from what
Speaker 3: from our city life, you know, It's.
Speaker 1: All right, it's uh, we're getting to that time. We
Speaker 1: need to wrap it up. But Josh, tell everybody about
Speaker 1: your new book.
Speaker 3: Been out for about a month at this point. It's
Speaker 3: called Becoming a Bow Hunter. It's a complete beginner's guide
Speaker 3: to archery hunting. I wanted to write it from the
Speaker 3: ground level, man, like you don't even have a bow yet.
Speaker 3: Like I start out, like, how do you buy a bow?
Speaker 3: How do you do that? Right from from that point
Speaker 3: all the way to your packing an animal out and
Speaker 3: putting it in your freezer, And there's a lot in between.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of stuff on gear. There's a lot
Speaker 3: on technique, like how to shoot, how to shoot all
Speaker 3: the different releases, multiple ways to shoot the different releases,
Speaker 3: different styles of hunting. There's a couple there's a couple
Speaker 3: guest pieces in there from Jace Bowserman and Brad Brooks.
Speaker 3: They contribute to that, to that book, And I did
Speaker 3: that because you know, there was areas within the book
Speaker 3: where I wasn't super confident in talking about, Like like
Speaker 3: Brad writes a piece on calling. I do calling, but
Speaker 3: like not like him. You know, he's like mister l hunter.
Speaker 3: You know, he does a lot of calling and stuff.
Speaker 3: Jace Jase writes this great piece on ambush hunting. Again,
Speaker 3: like I'm primarily a spot in stock Hunter. You know,
Speaker 3: do I ambush hunt? Yes, I use it as a tool.
Speaker 3: But Jace does it all the time, you know. So
Speaker 3: like having him put his wisdom into that, I just
Speaker 3: thought it was gonna bleed through more wisdom, you know
Speaker 3: for people I think I was writing a book to
Speaker 3: my younger self is really what it was, really what
Speaker 3: you know, because everything in it, I truly believe that
Speaker 3: if you're new to bow hunting and you pick this,
Speaker 3: but whether you're new to bow hunting, or maybe you've
Speaker 3: been like a bow hunter for a while and you
Speaker 3: haven't experienced success yet. I really believe that this is
Speaker 3: going to help you fill your first tag. And the
Speaker 3: reason for that is because everything in it helps me
Speaker 3: fill tags. Okay, these are just all the things that
Speaker 3: I've learned through the years and learned not only from
Speaker 3: my own experiences, but from talking to like veteran bow
Speaker 3: hunters and guys that are way more experienced than I am.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I'm super proud of how it came out. Man.
Speaker 3: If anyone wants to check it out, it's on Amazon
Speaker 3: Becoming a bow Hunter. Check it out if you're new. Man,
Speaker 3: I think I really wish I had it when I started,
Speaker 3: you know. Yeah, thank you for listening. The Bear Hunting
Speaker 3: Magazine Hunt Cast is recorded by Bear Hunting Magazine and
Speaker 3: produced by Mountain Gravity. Me be sure leave us a
Speaker 3: five star review on iTunes and keep reguarding the gate