Ep. 35: Spot and Stalk Spring Bear with Ryan Lampers
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Today's guest is a Washington native who many may say has made better life decisions than I have and moved out of our home state to Montana, which has allowed him to consistently hunt spring bears year in and year out. In addition to being a seasoned spring bear hunter, he does pretty dang well with deer, elk,

whatever he decides to pursue. We're talking about Mr. Ryan Lampers, also known by many as the stealthy hunter. Over the past few years, Ryan and his crew have had a ton of success on their spring bear hunts, but he doesn't just stumble into the success. He has put all the information he's gathered over years and years in the experience that's available to him. And this puts him in spots where he will find big bears year in and year out. Welcome to the show, Ryan. Thank you, Jason. Wow. Quite an intro there.

I appreciate the acknowledgement of making better life choices than you. I don't know if that's true, but on one level, it definitely is as I moved to Montana and away from the state of Washington. Yeah, I'll agree with you there.

yeah about this point uh all of these washington residents that uh just realized we're going to talk about spring bear hunting they've all just like turned us off yeah yeah there's no there's no hope for them they're they need more turkey calling probably yeah yeah in their world right now with washington and where it's headed oh so how's everything going there in montana it's uh very white very snowy very um

It's been a long winter and we're ready for it to be done. We are all jacked up and ready to get on to some spring bear. I tell myself the snow is melting, but it doesn't look like it's melting out there, man. The mountains are white, but now we're all ready for season. It's coming quick. We're a couple of weeks out from when you could possibly go out and start chasing some bears. Yeah.

But I think that might get delayed a little bit. A little delayed. Yeah, we're not going to jump the gun here, but a lot of our questions, we've got kind of a special podcast here, the way that we put this together. And a lot of it is going to jump into that conversation on finding bears. And then with that, what are you going to do in a year like this? So we'll get into that here in a little bit later.

So no, I appreciate having you. Like I said, you've been, I would say, you even joke with me, which I hope it's a joke, that you may even put like spring bear hunting above archery, rutting elk, which is...

It's tough to take, but no, you've been very successful. The groups you've taken have been very successful. And it's one of those hunts that I kind of I'm jealous of. Like, I just want to be out there, see what you guys do. The country that you guys are in for springtime is amazing. And, you know, the success kind of speaks for itself, you know, consistent on big boards here for the most part.

Man, there's spring bear hunting. You know, I can honestly say, coming from Washington, we didn't get a whole lot of opportunities back there. We had to travel and cross borders into Idaho and Montana, but...

Fall bear was always very popular with us. We never missed a fall bear season over there in the high country chasing them in the berry fields. But man, this spring bear hunt has in the last 10 years is just, it's really found a soft spot in my heart because I,

I wasn't lying, Jason. It is my number two, um, right, right square behind mule deer, which will never be overtaken, but I just, there's just something about spring bears. I think it's the time of year, uh,

The adventure, you can make it, right? I think, you know, there's, there's, there's hunts that you can make somewhat easy. There's hunts that you can make as difficult as you want. So the challenge of a spring bear hunt is incredible. You can, you can basically plan a trip around whatever you want to do in the mountains. Like we, we chase these things in, in mountain goat country half the time. So, yeah.

I absolutely love the places that bears bring you and the time of year that we're able to get out there and chase them. Yep. And that's one thing that I've only got the spring bear hunt once living in the state. I was lucky to draw very shortly before it was taken out of the big game rigs, you know, but I love that it can check.

So many boxes for so many different people in the way that they want to hunt. You know, if you some states, if you want to bait, you can bait some states that allow hounds. And then, you know, like you, a guy that's looking for adventure wants to go hunt them, you know, above the tree line at the snow line. Like you can check all those boxes and we've been cooped up for, you know,

It's like your first time out, you're back backpacking. It's one of those hunts that can check whatever boxes you need it to check. And you almost get to make that spring bear hunt your own. And you can... There's so many tactics and ways to go about spring bear hunting. And different topographies, different terrains. You could...

And they can be vastly different from like a Southwest Montana type, more open pines to a North Idaho country type where baiting and hounds and things like that are just, man, it's almost the way to go in certain places. Yeah, I honestly, I have settled on the...

um, the glassing spot and stock, uh, type of tactic. I, I love it. It keeps you on your feet. It keeps you moving. Uh, it's a great way to grab a lot of endurance and, and, um, and just glass a ton of country. I love, I love that type. I can't sit still. That's why I don't sit in tree stands or anything, but, uh,

Yeah. Yeah. Spring bear can, can be as easy as you want it to be or as difficult as you want it to be. And, and couple that with the terrain, the drastic differences in terrain that bears inhabit. Um, yeah, there's a lot of challenges there.

Yeah. And I, I loved it from a, another thing I like about spring bear, the same things that baiting and hounds give you is the, the ability to, um, take certain bears that you're after, you know, and that's why I love spring bears. It gives you that edge. Um, when they're out there doing their mating, you know, you can, it's easy to tell, which is a bore where, you know, a lot of times fall hunting, when you get those kind of tweener bears, like if you're not very skilled at knowing what you're looking at, like,

you're you know for some guys it may be 50 50 until you just do a lot of looking and like you know identifying if you're shooting a boar um or you know a dry sow or something that just doesn't have cubs so this gives us like a management tool to make sure we're uh you know a guy like you that's specifically after large bores or for somebody that would rather do that it gives us just another tool um to help manage um you know the resource

Yeah. I mean, there's no question. If you're looking to, or a sportsman are looking to take out a certain class bear, you know, those old ancient boars or the old dried up sows, you know, that is very manageable and doable with hounds. You know, you can be picky. You can choose which bears to let live and which bears to take as well as, you know, on baits and

you know, sizing them up, you know, in opposition to that, that bait barrel and stuff like that much easier. So there's a lot less guesswork in it with those two methods. And, you know, I'm sure we'll end up talking about

You know how we size up bears in the mountains at a distance. It can be difficult. I don't care who you are, how long you've been doing it. There are times where you you might screw up a little bit in your judgment, but there's definitely some things to look to. But yeah, I love those two management tools.

um, the hounds and the baiting. It's just definitely not the most adventurous for me personally. I, I like it the other way. I like the difficult part of it. Yeah. That I can see that, you know, but it's still, it's still hunting. It's still a great, great time to get out there. And, um, you know, we need to take some of these predators, you know, off the landscape. So this is going to be a different podcast, um, than normal. A lot of times we'll take a couple listener questions and then we'll jump into some of my discussion. Um,

Today, we're going to bring you basically all listener questions. So it's a different format. But if you have any questions of your own for myself or our guests, feel free to email us at ctd at phelpsgamecalls.com. Or like we did on this episode, we put a post out there on social media just to ask people what they want to know about spring bear hunting. And we can tee all these up for Ryan. So we're just going to kind of jump into these questions and kind of

The first couple are a little different and then a lot of these will start to run in, but they all kind of segue into each other. So it kind of gets us on a little bit of a roll here. So the first question, Ryan, is it realistic to be successful spring bear hunting when only weekends are available?

Okay. Yeah, that's a great question. And kind of going along the same lines, like I mentioned before, you know, you can make these hunts as difficult or as easy as possible. Absolutely. Bear hunting, more than almost anything else that I do, can be something that I can grab my daughter after school, run up to the closest range and start glassing. I can glass from the truck and pick up bears and it's not that difficult to do. So,

So, you know, hitting a logging road and you don't have to go far, you know, it's not always a five to 10 mile thing. It's not necessary by any stretch when it comes to bears, you know, especially as they're just coming out. You know, most of these bears, they're in this region, you know, the Rocky Mountain States and this western front, we got...

I'd say on average, we're finding them Dan up at about 3,000 to 5,500 feet up to maybe 6,000 feet. Um, so, you know, it's not like you're having to get into the eight, nine, 10,000 foot level, um, or elevation. You know, we're finding these bears on those South slopes fairly low on the hill, um, in a lot of these States. So I would say in short answer, I guess, absolutely. You can do it in an evening. You can do it on a weekend. Um,

Um, it's bear hunting is one of those things where, you know, a couple hours is all you need to go out and maybe glass up a bear. Now, I don't know if you're going to have time to go get him that night, but definitely opportunities to see him, um, and not have to put too many miles on him.

Yep. And, and, uh, you know, this applies to all hunting. If that's the only time I have to hunt, I'm still going to be out there. There's always a, you know, there's always a chance that we would be lying if we said that your probability of success doesn't go up the more time you can invest, or if you're looking for something specific. But I remember we had a, uh, my buddy had a Winaha spring bear tag. It went over for like a week and we were kind of coming back on just a bonsai weekend trip. Um, you know, for us, it was a

five and a half, six hour drive. We, we drove four times longer than the hunt was. We, we walked down a trail, um, you know, two hours in shot the bear and had him back to the truck and, uh, a lot less time than, than we, it took to even get to the unit. So there's always a chance what, you know, I think we'd be lying to say if your, your chances of success don't go down, but, um, yeah, if that's all you've got by, by any means, you know, I would still be out there hunting. Absolutely. So, um,

- This next question, a guy's hunting with his dad who it sounds like maybe can't get around as good as you or maybe even him and get into the back country. How would you deal with working around baiting and hounds? So this guy maybe sounds like he doesn't want to take advantage of the baiting or wants to give them space or the hounds. Do you have any, this is more front country stuff, but how would you deal with those two aspects of other guys out in the woods hunting the same critter?

Hmm. That's a great question. Um, you know, and, and I'll be honest in, I, I, uh, I don't tend to run into a whole lot of guys on baits. Now it is very popular in some of these States, you know, Idaho is, is there's a lot of guys that do it and with good reason, great success. Um, but when I go over to that state, I'm just going in too far, but you know, I think, you know, for someone that's not able to put in a lot of miles, um,

Most of these guys aren't baiting too far from the road, right? I've heard. I've not done it. I've heard to go even a half mile or a mile in is pretty far for a lot of these bait sites. Now, there are guys that go above and beyond that, but...

Man, again, I think I go back to grabbing a logging road and just hiking in. It doesn't have to be too much exertion to find areas to glass from. And, you know, some of these logging roads out here, these gated ones, they're not as good as the ones out here.

you just don't have to go far and and um you're picking up bears so yeah yeah just and we'll get into it a little bit but you just have to find that food that they're on if they're not on a bait and they're not you know if they're not crossing the main road where the hounds can pick them up they're going to be kind of left alone in those pockets and that's all you really have to find absolutely yep uh this this will kind of be the last and then we're going to really jump in we'll start with snow but this is the last question here so earlier in the spring do you focus more on those south facing slopes or the north facing den areas

So I guess it depends on how early in the spring, you know, we always try to time it just on the front end of where we're just starting to see those first bears come out. Um, you know, it's my opinion that the most mature boars are out in the open. Um, it's almost, I can't believe I'm saying this, but out in the open, um,

first, and they stay there visible more often than not than later in the season for sure. So some of the best bores that we have ever taken are on that very front end where the snow has just receded enough and you're not necessarily seeing any green, but it is just starting. It is just on the cusp of starting to green up on the mountain. So some of those north slopes prior to

the green up, you know, those bears don't generally come out sometime in April, sometimes front end, sometimes middle, sometimes late. Um, they'll be there, they'll be out and you are able to pick them up. But obviously when that South slope starts greening up,

Um, it's at that point when your focus should be turned to the South facers, or at least, you know, there's some North facers too, that just have topography laid out enough to where it's grabbing some sun, you know, it's still getting some opening enough to, to get some light and, and grow that vegetation. So, um, yeah, I guess very front end, you know, a lot of these bears will den on those North Northwest side faces. Um, generally it's in like a

Could be anywhere from a 20 to a 50 degree pitch slope on those north slopes. And it's those basins in those areas that have an adjacent south slope with some good green vegetation, man. Those are the money spots. Those are the places that I kind of key into. But, you know, obviously you're looking on both sides, but at the very, very front end,

Um, I'm, I'm looking in those North slopes and soon as that green starts popping though, I'm looking at those, um, those sun filled South basers.

Yeah. And it seems like, you know, watching some of your guys' videos, you guys are sometimes looking into North faces and the bear like crosses the head of the basin and is on the South. So it almost seems like there's no right or wrong spot. Yeah. You're looking at everything. Yep. Yep. Yep. You're looking at everything. And, and the interesting thing, you know, you hear South slope used a lot and it's,

Yeah, it's where the sun hits. That's where the grass first starts to show. But man, it really doesn't take that long for you to start seeing some growth on a north face too, if it lays out right. You know, if you got some sparse timber, you got some beetle kill or, you know, a sparsely logged area, for example, where just enough light is getting through there, you know, all slopes are different. Some north slopes are absolute jam-packed with

uh, you know, deep timber and dark timber and, and I'm going to get much grass in there, but there's other North slopes that are wide open and they'll still offer some good green up. And, um, a lot of those bears will do just fine sticking to the North slope. Yep. Yep.

Okay. Let's, let's jump into snow. We we've talked about right off the bat. Um, it seems like it's a big driving factor on where you're going to hunt spring bear, where the bears are going to be at. You know, we've talked about spring bear, usually following the snow line up or right there behind the snow line is where, you know, you're going to get that green up. You've talked about like that.

bright green chartreuse color like you're looking for the the vegetation that's that color um so on a year like this where you're you guys have a lot of snow down low your your typical spots you mentioned you know trying to get up into will this snow keep you out of the alpine will it force you to come down into that mid-range where there's timber or are you just going to wait longer so you can hunt these bears where you want to hunt these bears um

So I'm going to treat it like most years. You know, I love to get these things right out of the gates or at least target them out of the gates when they're just before that green starts. So I'm still going to be looking early. I'm definitely going to be on that front end, but we're going to be fairly low. You know, we're going to be, to be specific, we're going to be in that 3,000 to 4,000 foot range. You know, that's, those are the slopes that I'm going to be checking out first. And, you know, it all goes up from there.

But it is going to be a later season, no doubt about it. I think a lot of guys are in a situation where they're trying to figure out what week of work to take off. That's very important right now. And I'm getting hammered with a lot of people asking that question. I had scheduled this for that April 15th timeframe, but this year it's looking much different than I thought. And that's true. And I would say...

I would probably schedule it another week or two later this year. I don't think you're going to hurt yourself by moving your dates out a little bit. I'm still going to be chasing them, but I'll probably be on the front end of it.

And I'll just hunt through it. But yeah, there's not going to be a whole lot of green showing even in that three to four thousand foot range mid-April. It's going to be a little later this year. You know, we've had a crud ton of snow looking at the snow layers and the depth this time of year. We kind of

you know, pour over those numbers and those and seeing what prior years and historical data has been. Yeah, this year's a little bit deeper than it was last year in several places, some not. But yeah, we are definitely above and beyond in the places that I'm looking to go. We have more snow this year than we did last. So it's going to be a little bit later unless something drastic changes and we have this

you know, the heat wave come through and just melt this stuff quick. Yeah. And with, with the snow then, so you're, you're talking about hunting and maybe at a lower elevation and following up. Uh, do you feel that they're, they're going to hibernate a little bit longer? Will they come out earlier and just maybe head down to find food? Do you feel that that like affects when they're actually going to start showing?

I don't think they're necessarily going to be sleeping in longer, I guess, if you want to call it that. They're still going to be up, but they're probably not going to be moving away from that den much. They'll be there, but it's very few and far between on the sightings when we have a snow year like this. They just don't show themselves. They don't move around much.

Um, you know, we've seen years where, you know, they've, they've come out, we've actually had some green up and then we'll get a big snow, a big, you know, four or five inch spring snow. And the bears that we'd been seeing just disappear. They just disappear. You don't, you don't get your eyes on them. It's not like they went back to bed. They're just, they're just hunkered up and they're not going to move around much. And that's what I feel they do on a year like this.

you know, they'll be wiping the sleepy out of their eyes and they'll be there, but they're not going to be probably making themselves visible too much. So, um, you know, I don't know that necessarily going extremely low is going to help you much. Like I said, I think most bears are going to be denning in that three to five, 55, 6,000 foot range anyway. Yeah. And then

And then my last question on timing, you know, on the spring bear hunts I've been involved in, I think I've got to go on five or six of them down there in our southeast corner. I know you've there are seasons, at least the year I had. I don't know what the typical season is, but we ran through like the middle of June. And so I went over there early on the on the covid year and then went back late May, early June and noticed that like our bears were finally locked down there late. Is that going to change? I mean, I know you're out there after them kind of ahead of that.

part of the part of their schedule, but is that going to kind of push for maybe people that want to get out there why they're more active or kind of locked down on sows? Is that gonna get pushed back? Or is that just based like all the other ruts just kind of on photo period, it's going to happen at the same time, no matter where the snow is at?

That's a great question. And, you know, I can just go on my gut on that one. My opinion would be they're probably going to be rutting about generally the same time. Maybe it pushes back a little bit, but not much. You know, usually by late May, you know, those bears are starting to travel. You're grabbing boars, running ridges and looking for sows. And then, yeah, usually, you know, come June, they can be locked down pretty good at times. Yeah. Yeah.

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The next question we got is how often can you reliably find bears or bears of kind of that same caliber in the same area year after year? Yeah, surprisingly quite often. And I'll have disagreements with people. I know guys will say, no, it's not the case. They just move too much. But I can't tell you how many bears we've been able to relocate.

And with absolute certainty, you know, year to year, that is the same bear we saw last year. Now it changes, you know, but early in the season, I keep going back to early in the season, the front end of the season, I've found that a lot of those older mature boars will frequent the same general area as they did the year prior.

Um, on multiple occasions, I've gone back and found bears that I've seen. I had seen the year prior and, uh, gone back and relocated that bear the following spring. Now everything changes once that green wave just goes from top to bottom when it's green from 2000 to 6,500 feet, you know, number one, it's going to be hard to pinpoint those bears. They're kind of all over the place. They're really starting to range at that point. You know,

They'll hang more into the timber where they're not as visible. The green up is just such that it's kind of everywhere. But absolutely, I've even found fall bears in similar drainages. When I think back to my Washington fall bear days, I found bears that I could relocate year after year after year.

in the same small drainage on a berry field. So it's definitely something that you can, it's not going to happen every year, but we've proven it to be the case that you can go back and relocate year after year.

Yeah. And on the, on that same thread, um, do you feel, you know, similar to deer and elk, you know, you take a giant buck or a giant bull or a big buck or big bull out of it. Do you feel that you can like over harvest, you know, the more mature boars, if you're hunting the same areas or are they just following sows into an area? Is that like their home range? Um, or will the quality eventually go down? Like, what's your opinion on, on that?

I have a theory, Jason. I have a theory. I don't know if it's right or not. Um, but I will take an area, for example, there's an area that I'd hunted and took some incredibly old bears out of for years, several, multiple years, um, and took the oldest and baddest mofos up on the mountain. And, uh, and, and then about year five, you go back and

And not seeing those old mature bears, you know, there hadn't been enough time for another one to move in and take these prime feed locations. Um, you know, generally what you find with the oldest, most mature is they finally, these just magical areas out on the mountain. It's got everything. It's got feed. It's got the water. It's got everything they need. Um, now eventually that area will get filled in with another old boar, um,

But I've noticed that when you hunt an area out and you've taken the oldest, baddest bears on the mountain for multiple years in a row, you're going to hit a point where there's going to be a little gap from what I've seen. And for example, last year, I'd gone back to an area that I'd taken some great bears out of. And all of a sudden, you know, in years past, I hadn't been seeing a whole lot of cubs. It's rare. You see like...

Yeah. On a trip, you might see a couple sow cub combos, right? Last year, I can't remember the exact numbers, like 11, 12 or 13 different sow cub combos in these areas where now I'm not seeing any old boars.

but I'm seeing these young bears and the sows are like feeling, you know, confident enough to run their cubs through there. I feel like what happened and I'm just telling myself this, maybe it's not true, but those old boars were, were annihilating those cubs for years. And, um, and I think by taking them all out, it actually caused a boom in bear population in that general region, uh,

Because now there is just most every sow-cub combo we were seeing had at least two cubs, often three. And so, but we were really struggling to pick up the most old mature boars. It was slim pickings on that front. But man, we saw a lot of bears. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And then you always wonder once there's that high of a population of bears in there, is it not allowing like boars to reach that like very high level of maturity or have they just not moved in?

Interesting. So I know we've talked a lot about food source or even said like finding some of those big bores, like before the food even starts to grow there. So we know food's very important. Um, what do you like to see as far as like certain features or a combination of food and features? So if you're to take, you know, this, this prime lush green food, is that all that matters or are there features you like to see? Like the ability to go lay in timber, you know, where we hunt in the blues, it seemed like when it rained, um,

You know, when it stopped raining, you were going to find them right on the fringes, right? They were coming back out from staying dry or, you know, holing up. What features are you looking for during a spring hunt to kind of combine with the food source? I'd say the most obvious, like I mentioned before, my go-to areas are steep, nasty, rocky type drainages that have a lot of water in the bottom.

Um, generally they're a longer drainage and, uh, you know, you get that moss covered rock kind of on the bottom end of the drainage and then it kind of goes up from there and opens up. Um, I'm looking for those type areas, but one thing I've found on these spring, spring bears is.

When you can find a high on the mountain spring, like a spring that's up there 45,000 to 6,000 feet, and that snow recedes and you got this ridge and you got a north slope on the other side with deep timber, those bears are able to go back and forth.

Um, you know, grab that shade on the North slope and then come right back up and over and get that lush green. Oftentimes it's like, um, avalanche lilies that inhabit that area, you know, the very tip top of the hill. And then, you know,

balsam flowers and the leaves that come with them and all that kind of stuff. But man, when you can find a traditional water source, a spring that just runs and offers some good green up on the top of a mountain,

Man, that has been money for me. I've really done well in those type places. Now they can be hard to find. There's a lot of boots on the ground to find them. A lot of these don't show up on the map, but those spots have been really, really good. But like you said, I think having the ability to, most often these bears aren't out in the wide, wide open, especially the bigger ones.

they are on the fringes. They, they are in an area where they can tuck back in and grab a nap. They're pretty lazy on the front end of spring. And, um, and then, uh, just come on out and, and they, they like that fringe habitat where the sunlight's grabbing, um, it's growing grass just inside the timber and just outside the timber, getting enough shade that it's not getting burnt off and, uh, enough sun to allow it to grow. And those little fringe areas that are,

Kind of, you know, 50 yards inside the timber, 50 yards outside the timber. Those just hold grasses longer and that stays greener there if you ever, you kind of notice that when you're out glassing. Okay, so...

we've kind of elevation and feed kind of end up going together, especially with the snow. Right. We've, we've determined, all right, there, there are bears at this elevation, um, throughout a hunt. Will you stick to elevation or will you start to like diverge from it? Will you go up and see if you're finding bears above it? Or once you see that there are big boars at a certain elevation, let's say it's a seven day hunt. Things aren't going to change drastically, or maybe they will. Are you going to kind of hone in on that? Or are you going to still continue to, to, to venture out and, and, you know, go up or down and just,

continue to look or is it similar to like when you find that doe group mule deer hunt like I'm gonna stay focused here or do you continue to branch I guess yeah so generally with I'm gonna keep hammering on the old mature boars because young bears they travel they do all kinds of stuff I mean you can't they're not patternable in my opinion they'll wander all over the place they'll be on a rock slope one day and north slope and then south slope they just kind of wander now the oldest most mature boars that we're going for um

boy, it's really hard to pull them off of that elevation band. When you find them at an elevation band, say they're at 5,200 feet. Now, yeah, they'll dip down there a little bit, but it's rare that they're going all the way down to the bottom. And so once we find multiple bears at say 5,200 feet, we're going to continue to look at those places.

And, you know, we're going to start going to our maps and really keying into areas if we're in a new place, looking at that elevation exactly. And we're going to keep basically our eyes on that level as much as possible.

Um, you know, they tend to not go back down. My opinion, those older ones, they ride that green wave right up to the top. And once it's to the top and up and over, they can absolutely disappear on you. But that, that front end, when they're just slowly working their way up that, that receding snow line, I would say what I've noticed and what is 750 feet below the snow line to a thousand,

It's kind of like a rough estimate as to where you generally find that green up starting. You know, you're seeing the shoots from the avalanche lilies and whatnot. Sometimes it's a little bit higher than that, but that's kind of a good range to focus in on is 750 to a thousand feet below snow line. I've found that that's really where those older bears really like to focus and they just don't tend to come back down.

Even though there's a ton of green grass, and I know a lot of guys will get stuck on looking at these chartreuse lime green patches way down on the mountain, but if there is a chartreuse patch on the top of the mountain that just popped up, he's going to be there nine times out of 10 versus that spot lower on the mountain.

Yeah. And you just mentioned, you know, when it greens up to the very top bears getting up and out of there. So my question for you is, do you feel if you spot a bear like in a drainage or in a basin that you, until that snow line gets all the way to the top, to the ridge, it kind of locks them in that basin. Do you feel like if you spot a mature boar in a base and you should be able to stay there for three or four days and you're going to turn them back up or is there a chance he's going to leave or what happens most of the time there?

Most of the time we turn them back up. Now bears, bears are like teenagers, man. They sleep a lot. They take naps and they'll fall behind a log and disappear for you on you for like a half a day. And you'll think he's gone, but oftentimes they're still there. You know, if you, if you see on the front end of that spring, within a couple weeks of green up,

If you find a big old bore, I'm going to focus on that spot. And, um, you know, I may grab different bandages to look at different angles of the mountain and look at little creases where I, I may not be able to see from that first glassing point, but oftentimes I've found that they, they will tend to stick to that area. Now, once calving happens, once fawns start dropping, you know,

Things get crazy. Bears go every which way and they disappear. And I wouldn't expect to see that boar in late May in that same drainage. When they're keyed into some meat and they've heard some or they've smelled some fawns dropping, man, they're all over the place. Changes them like a switch goes off. It changes. It does. But in that front end when they're still, you know, they're kicking out the mucus plug and they're keyed into that

fibrous grass and they need that to get their digestive track back.

Um, man, they just don't move that far. So when they're, when they're focused on a little green patch, you know, unless it's just a Brown mountain, um, and that bear is traveling from his, say his den to somewhere where there might be some food. Now that could be different. Um, a traveling bear could end up anywhere, but if you witness a bear that is just parked on a green line, um,

patch of grass and he's stuffing his face and there's not a whole lot of green above him. Um, that's, that's a bear that I would expect to be able to relocate.

gotcha yeah um so we've talked a lot about where to find these bears and more specifically these mature boars um so somebody's getting ready to go out they they may not be as confident as you you know we've talked about a lot of it but you still get out there you're unsure so our next question was um how long do you give an area before you write it off do you feel you need to give it an evening a morning both multiple days like

You know, and this all this is very dependent on your glassing skill, right? There's different there's different levels of people's ability to glass where you're very, you know, you may be very confident, but but kind of what do you feel your confidence level is? How much how much time you need to give an area before you need to pull the anchor and go somewhere else to find a bear? Yeah.

Um, so bears aren't really just, they're not hiding, you know, they don't, they don't hide from you. They're just out doing their thing. They're feeding that front end of spring. They are there to feed and put some weight back on. Um, so, um,

Like I said, I love traveling and cruising country and all that. But depending on the topography that I'm looking at, if I'm looking at a burn that's got some good green growth underneath it, and I know that I'm just not being able to see everything, there's enough timber in there that I just can't pick everything up if it was there. I'll probably stay a little longer in that type place.

But if I'm able to see most of everything and there's a day spent there and I don't pick up a bear, I'm out of there. I'm going to go check something else off the list. And that's just me. I feel like at some point throughout the day, if there's a bear on an adjacent hillside and I'm glassing it, I should be able to pick that thing up. And as far as timing goes, don't put all your...

eggs into just glassing in the morning, that may be a time when that bear's just not standing yet. He may be sleeping in a little bit. But I'd say from 10, 11, 12 to the end of the day, that is, in my opinion, that is your prime glassing time. And it changes as the season progresses. It'll get much more evening dependent. But man, that timeframe in April, front half of May,

10 o'clock to noon, I can't tell you how many bears we start seeing moving around from 10 to noon and then 1 to 2. They're just up and on their feet and that's a great time. That is not the time for you to take a nap. Sleep in, if anything, and grab a little extra coffee in the morning, but focus your glassing throughout the day, even if it's sunny and bright and you

You know, if you're thinking about, if you're a new bear hunter and you're an elk guy or a deer guy, and that's the time that you kind of lay off the glass, it's kind of the opposite when it comes to bears. If you're going to sleep in, sleep in in the morning and make sure you keep eyes on the mountain throughout the day. Because what's funny, Jason, is one thing I've noticed, I'd be curious if anybody else has noticed this too, but sometimes I'll be looking at a mountain and

And it'll be dead till about 10 o'clock. And then all of a sudden I'll pick up like three, four bears on this open face, right? And they're all on their feet.

And then they're all napping again, you know, and say 30, 45 minutes, they're napping again. And then say like one o'clock at the age, almost the exact same time, they're all on their feet again. And they're feeding around. It's like this internal time clock that gets them up and then puts them back down. I've noticed that over and over and over again, like, well, that one's on his feet.

I bet if I look hard, I might be able to pick up another one. That's just something that I've always wondered why that is, but it seems like they have these certain times throughout the day

It's almost like the old Solonar chart when you're fishing, you know, a moon phase or whatever. There's something to it. I just haven't quite put my finger on it. Yeah. I'm in the same boat. You know, being originally only hunting blacktails and elk here, it was always, you know, very first half hour of the day, very last half hour of the day were always your best. And then I got to experience coos deer hunting, and it was kind of the first animal like, man, I might as well just slept in because, I mean, but you never miss that. I mean, I would still never miss the, you know, first...

first part of the day even spring bear hunting but the same thing on these spring bear hunts I've been on it's like man am I really wasting like my focus am I what you know my but you're still out there but the same thing um you know 10 o'clock on 11 o'clock on we seen a lot more bears and the one time if I had to like you know

if I was to write a spot off, it would be, as we talked about, we get a lot of those spring showers in the spring, you know, in hours rain. And then it suns up right after that, like in the blues, especially like if I didn't see a bear in that like sunup time when then I was like, all right, there's no bears here because we could almost set our clocks to it, you know? All right. It rained. Let's, let's, let's not glass or let's stay in the dry. And then as soon as that sun started hitting those slopes,

Um, it seemed like everything popped at the same time, you know, all over the mountain. I'll bet you, if you were to take a poll from guys that have spring bear hunted a ton, a ton of years over their lifetime, they would all agree with you on that one. Like when you get a storm, even if it's a multi-day storm or it's just a half day storm, and then the sun comes out and the grasses start steaming and the mountains warming up.

I don't know that there's a better time to be bear hunting than that time right there. Those are far and away the best days I've ever had and experienced where I've had the most sightings are those days. And you're right. If you're not seeing a bear after that happens, after that big nasty storm or even like a snowstorm and then the sun comes up and it just starts melting everything,

If you're not seeing bears at that point, move it along, hike to a different drainage. They're just not there. - Yep. Okay, so these bears in the springtime, I've heard things up to 30 to 35% body weight down from where they'll be in August. They're down whatever percentage that is, but they don't necessarily look like they do in the fall.

And it may cause some difficulty on sexing a bear, but what are some of the telltale signs or what do you look for specifically when you're trying to tell if it's a mature boar? Mature boars are maybe the anomaly, right? Because they carry some features that maybe those tweeners don't. But walk us through the features you're looking at. Yeah. So every time I immediately pick up a bear in the glass, sometimes and often is the case,

In the first few seconds, you know, like, wow, that is a tank of a bear. Like it's just blatantly obvious. Um, there's some features that you always key into. I think with boars, you know, we'll speak to the obvious. The front end of a boar is much blockier, much bulkier, um, than that of a female. You know, the, the female, the front end, you know, those legs kind of go straight down. It's much more narrow up front, much wider in the back. It's much fatter back there.

Complete opposite. Bears have that old man look. It's like they don't have an ass and they've got them. But they've got them big pit bull shoulders on them, the big rolling shoulders when they walk. And I think for me, when I'm trying to size up a bear, I'm looking for more of their mannerisms, like their behavior, how they're feeding, how they're moving through country. It is a very slow, deliberate thing.

movement through the mountains on those older age class boars. The younger, or just sows in general, younger boars, they're going to have a much faster pace. Their steps are going to be less deliberate. They're going to walk with their shoulders a little straighter, you know, it's much more streamlined versus that big rounded boar.

you know, waddle that a big old boar will do. Now, one thing you got to be careful of, because I have seen on multiple occasions, young boars try to bear stomp like an older boar. Like you'll see a young bear do the bear stomp and try to act as if, but it's funny to watch them do that. They just don't have the swagger that a big old boar is going to have. Now there's some other things to look at, you know, obviously when you're going for size, you know,

You know, one way I've found to help in that, because you don't have a barrel or whatever, you know, when you're out glassing to size them up to, you know, I'll use just some of the vegetation that's out there. Blossom trees or blossom flowers are easy. You can kind of get the general idea of the size of them and the vegetation that's around there, you know, the trees and whatnot.

And they'll give you a good idea of how tall that bear is or how big that bear's head is, you know, because their faces are buried in those flowers like crazy in the springtime. You know, obviously the blockiness of the head, but you got to be careful with that. I mean, blocky heads, you know, where there's a very defined triangle between the tip of the nose and both ears. Yeah, that's probably a big old headed bear, right?

But there are some skinny headed bears out there that will fool you and you'll pass on that might be a great bear to take. You know, I've taken some bears that are very streamlined in their features and yet their bodies, they're like polar bears. They're just like a polar bear. Some of the longest bears are just like that. They're not those front heavy blockheads.

They're more of a slender, long-bodied bear. And some of those are the best bears to go for. So, yeah, there's a lot of different ways. But my favorite way to kind of determine if it's a bear that we really want to target and go for, obviously targeting the mature boars,

is, is just that we watch them for a long period of time. We watch for that swagger. Yep. And that when you say swagger, I kind of related it to, it's almost like they've got to throw their shoulder out and around in front of them. They got to throw their back leg. They can't just walk in a straight line. They're kind of throwing their arm out in front and then they, they kind of almost, you know, zigzag as they walk. Cause they're, they're not walking in a linear line. They're kind of waddling side to side and,

So one thing we didn't touch on, I'm curious to get your take on one thing that we do look at a lot is ears, ear placement on the head and then how big the ears look like relative to the head. Is that something you look at as well to kind of help determine size? It is. I think ears also are one of those things that can be, they can kind of throw you at times though too because I've seen some pretty big eared old boars that

But the one thing you won't see is a very small bear with ears on the side of its head that look like buttons. You know, those are obvious. That's a giant. But I've also taken some big noggin bears that have had fairly larger ears. Now, they're not going to be pointed like a younger bear. They're not going to look like a German shepherd, but larger than...

Other older bears, you know, there's a, there's definitely a difference. Um, yeah, there's a range there, but yeah, they do help. I think, um, again, though, you might pass on something that may have been worth taking if you only are going by, uh,

button ears on the side of their head. Yeah. You know, there's a lot of bears that don't have that. Yeah. Yeah. We put a little more weight in the location versus like the size of the ear. Like when they start to roll over, you know, past on top seem to seem to be a better indicator, at least the more mature boars that we've killed. But yeah, it was, it can still fool you. You know, anything on a bear can fool you. Uh,

some of the time, but yeah, if you start, I think the important thing is if you start to similar to like when I was mountain goat hunting, like you should be able to pick up like the dark patch on their rump, you should be able to pick up this. And then when you put three or four of those things together, like you said, they've got the swagger, they've got the small ears, you know, one of those features may be off, but at least if you can put two or three together, your confidence level of what you're, what you're looking at should go up. Yeah. And I think, um, you know, we'll just throw it in there as well, but that crease in the forehead, you know, on a,

big bear they get those big cheeks you know those big meat cheeks on the top of their head there that we like to cook up later um but man those things they'll throw a pretty mean crease right down the center of that forehead and that's another way like if you see that on a bear that's got some swagger that's going to be a good bear for sure

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This is Brent Reeves from This Country Life. What makes South Dakota the greatest for pheasant hunting? With over 1.2 million pheasants harvested last year, South Dakota boasts the highest population of pheasants in the nation. In fact, you'd have to add up the total harvest from neighboring states just to get that many birds.

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And before we get going after, I'm going to throw another question in there. Bears, probably their best scent is, they can see okay, not great by any means, but they can smell well. What, in your opinion, how close is too close? If you're glassing across a real steep box canyon, if the wind's not right, what's your safe distance?

Man, if I'm glassing a cross canyon, I'm not going to be as worried about it. Often I find the scent doesn't go from one side to the other. When there's a crick raising through the bottom, I'm much less concerned about my scent just traveling over and even getting 500 yards to the adjacent side on a 40 degree or 35 degree pitch slope. I'm not as worried there. But if he's on the same side as me,

um, you know, and that bear is 800 yards away from me and I got a wind to my back, the bear's probably going to smell me with, without hesitation. Even if he's a thousand yards out, if I got wind to my back and he's on the same side as me and there's no cuts between us, I would put no faith in that. I would boogie and try to eliminate that. Yeah. I

I was a little taken back. There was an episode with Steve and Clay bear hunting there in Montana, I believe, spring bear hunting. And, you know, there's extra guys, camera guys and whatnot. But Steve couldn't believe that that bear winded him at eight, 900 yards. And there were a few rolls in the same hillside that they were on, but it was on the same base that they were on. And that thing, you know, it just by its mannerisms, it picked up something it didn't like and got out of there. And it was like, all right, these things are at a different level. Yeah.

man, the nose on those things is unbelievable. It was like a hundred times better than humans or whatever. I don't know how many, how close it is to a bloodhound. I know it's above and beyond that. Um, but one thing I've noticed on that front as well, um, and people may have picked up on this, but when you're hunting an area in the beginning, you know, you tend to see everything, but once you've moved through an area, especially with predators, you know,

wolves and bears, it seems as if like once they've picked up your scent in that area, all of a sudden your sightings go way down. Like it's not, it's not, it's not just that you're in front of them at the time, but once you've put a little scent on the mountain, um,

You may have a bear wander through that spot, but the likelihood of you seeing a bear that's not at heightened, at a heightened state is pretty slim. Man, your scent sticks to the mountain and they will pick it up. If you've ever seen one come across your scent after a line that you've taken, they stop and they know exactly where you were. Yeah. Yeah. That's a great point. And maybe something people should pick up on like,

with a very defined per, you know, move with a purpose. Don't just, you know, walk through a basin unless you need to, you know, similar to whitetail deer hunting, you don't go through, you know, their bedding area on, on a, on a predator, um, you know, hunt of any hunt, like be very careful on where you're putting your feet, um, you know, stay in it, stay in kind of a neutral area. I think the best approach is always in those type mountain scenarios is,

It's always trying to find that great vantage point that doesn't throw your scent into where you're looking, obviously, and try to stay there unless you absolutely have a bear to go for and you have to move. Less movement, the better in bear country, in my opinion, unless you're moving drainages. Yeah.

So we've taken all of this information, you know, you've shared and you finally, you've spotted your bear. So now we're going to, you know, decide on, on, are we going to stock this bear? Are we going to wait and kind of all the factors that dictate that.

that decision and then once you do decide what factors dictate your approach so i'm i know you're very patient yeah you say you're impatient but you're very patient when you need to be i think you know we we talk we go back to like the the big colorado buck that you killed like at what six seven days until you made your move and you finally slipped up um i i i'm guessing you're the same way with bears you're you're impatient until you need to be and then you're very patient um

what are some, I guess this question kind of all rolls into itself when you decide to stock. And when you do, what, what, what do you have to think about then? You know, and there, there's all of those things like, you know, where are you going to shoot from bear movement, time of day, all that stuff, but kind of give us, give us your, uh, your, uh, opinion on all of that. I think with patients, you know, it, it plays more of a role in bear hunting almost than anything else. Um,

Um, patience and glassing is one thing, you know, 95% of your, your day is consumed with just glassing and not seeing much with another small percentage of it, hopefully making a play on a bear. But even when you pick up a bear, you kind of have to make the call of, um, am I going to potentially blow this bear out? If I go hastily over after him right now, say the wind isn't perfect or whatever, um,

Um, and it's just my style, Jason, but I will tend to, if it's not, it's never going to be perfect, but if the deck isn't stacked in my favor, like if the cards aren't stacked in my favor, I'm probably going to sit back and wait for a better play. You know, maybe that bear is just not in the right spot at the moment.

And, you know, especially if you pick up a traveling bear, you know, a bear that hasn't been just parked in a spot for an hour, you know, that bear, I feel like I'll probably be able to pick him back up when I get over to this area and, you know, put myself in a place to shoot him.

But a traveling bear, sometimes it's best to sit back and I can think of multiple areas where I've hunted, you know, steep sided river type drainages where I'll pick up a bear maybe on the other side of the drainage. And, um,

Probably the worst thing that I could have done is taken my eyes off that bear and changed locations because they're moving so much. You know, there are times when they just, they grab a bite and they're walking. They grab a bite and they're walking. You kind of want to sit back and maybe this is a bear that you won't even get a play on.

But maybe he's going to feed right out of the basin or he's going to park it, take a little snooze. He's going to give you time, but you want to know where that bear's going. You want to know where he stops and give yourself the best chance. But I'm not going to

I jeopardize the hunt by moving too fast, crossing the canyon, getting up on the other side if I don't have to. Because again, we just talked about the scent thing. I want to keep that scent locked down as much as possible. You know, I like gimmies when it comes to bear hunting. I don't take a whole lot of chances just like anything else. So yeah, I'm very patient with that.

you know, trying to not put a bear to bed necessarily, but really get an idea of what that bear's doing. Does it look like he's going to stick to this spot?

Can I get closer? All the things that, you know, similar to what you do on a, on a classic mule deer hunt or whatever. Yep. Yep. And, you know, as you just mentioned, you don't want to necessarily go over there and not get a shot. Now you've just, you know, stunk up his favorite area and put your scent there. And yeah, so be, I like it. Yeah. A lot of times we use the phrase, like, what do we say? Cause we'll see something and immediately we're like, well, he's ours and,

All we got to do is not screw it up. Like it, it's on us. Like we'll get this thing unless we screw it up. And that's often the case with bears. Yep. And, and like the bear I killed specifically, we were three hours away from where he was at, from where we spotted him, like in order to go all the way around, hike out the ridge, get down on the finger. But, you know, some of the things we were looking at was, all right, there's one sow and two boars there.

Is that going to change the equation? And then we really monitored like where when we first spotted them to where we last seen them, it's been a half an hour and they've moved 50 yards. So they're not...

interesting getting out of the area we've got two bears or actually three bears to look at instead of two and so we used all of those things time of day it was you know earlier in the morning i think we picked them up at like 9 30 so we had all day to go over there and try to relocate them they were in a pretty isolated basin so like you said this is kind of all those stacking the deck features right we've now got all of this in our favor yeah there's still a chance they can get out of there but it was worth the time and effort to go over there um

you know, because of these things. Now, if they would have been moving, if they would have moved, you know, that, that 500 yards in five minutes, then it would have been very, we would, if we would have went over there, it would have just been a hastily, you know, we would have snuck the area up, probably never relocated them. And so similar to you, you know, you just, you put all those factors together and like,

If the probability of me thinking I have a 90% chance of killing them, you know, or him on this, this plan, then let's just sit back and wait so we don't screw it up. Yeah. And it's a case by case basis, right? I can, I can think of a time where, you know, I, I picked up a bear and he was over two miles away, you know, in, on an evening. And that bear, um, was coming out like, I think it was like three o'clock or something like that.

And, you know, we, at that time, obviously we're not going to get, get to, we had a river to cross. We had all kinds of stuff to deal with. Um, so we made the call, like it was an area where the best feed feature was a place that we could get a great shot on if we just got within 350 yards of this thing. But we had to spend the rest of that night and next morning to move country, to get to this new spot where we

Now we're going to sit there and park it and wait for this bear to come out and most likely get back on that feeding feature, which is like this grassy meadow. And it worked like, like a charm, you know, we ended up taking a giant bear and, uh, but it took us a long time to get there. And then once we got there, we basically took turns napping and one guy was always on the glass and

And we just waited that bear out. And sure enough, that evening started rolling by and, and out came the bear and we got him exactly where we want it to. But then there's also the other, um, situation where you pick up a bear in the evening and I've seen them, you know, just feeding in this big basin. And, um, you know, you might be getting a little bit low on light, um,

And you might be getting a little bit low on days at the end, you know, maybe you only have a couple of days to do this. You know, that would be a scenario where I would say, go for it, like do whatever it takes to get there, hustle your tail off. And there's a great chance that you're probably going to get a shot at that bear. Um, it's just, it's situation by situation, right? Yep. Yep.

So one of my favorite parts of hunting is the calling aspect, but I feel maybe out of any other animal I go out there to call a spring bear. I feel like my calling is like a very small portion. Um, and I, I'm curious, um,

you know, being, as we mentioned, the whole, everything we've been talking about mainly has been like a spot and stock type hunting, which is exactly how I spring hunt for bears. When do you use calling? What calls do you use? Kind of what's your approach on when you'll pull a call out and then when you do kind of what's your, your technique or strategy for calling and spring bears? Yeah. So generally we, you know, spring bear calling is so hit and miss, you know, on the front end of it, it's just, I've never found it to work.

Never found it to work much in April. I've not found it to work much the front end of May. As you get later and pushing towards the calving time, their digestive tracts are moving along and they're maybe already kicking around some rocks and feeding on some grubs and larvae. And now they're eating a ground squirrel on occasion. They're ready for some meat. Man, that is the time where calling can be probably the most

intense, exhilarating way to hunt bears that you'll ever experience. You know, um, it doesn't work all the time, but you know, when you hit that later part of the season, uh, just before the rut, oftentimes the bears aren't going to be out maybe as long during the day, uh,

And that's a great opportunity to get yourself on a, almost like a glassing knob type place and just rip on that distress call. You know, you've built some incredible distress calls. I've got three of them and those things work great. But man, it is a ton of fun just sitting on a knob, hitting that distress call and

Keep on with it. You know, you don't want to let off the gas on a distress call. Um, and, um, and oftentimes those bears will be on you in no time, you know, within seconds if they're close, um,

And I've also had experiences where I'm looking at a bear and I'm hitting him with a distress call and he may look my direction, but it's just not that time for him. It wasn't his day and he's not going to make the decision to come my way. But I've also seen the opposite where a bear is, you know, five, six hundred yards away.

And he hears that thing and he is booking it. I mean, he is boogieing across that mountain to get to where you are. So sometimes they come in slow. Sometimes they come in extremely fast and you better be ready for it. Yep. You know, to kind of reiterate what you said, bears get they they get sidetracked very easy. So you said kind of whale on the call and don't let up, which is one thing.

And then, yeah, the speed that they approach, the ones that we've called to, we used a calf distress on my buddy Charlie's hunt. You know, it was 1,200 yards away across the canyon. We couldn't get any closer. We started whaling on just a calf distress, just our normal cow call. And that thing closed 600 yards within a mere minute. You can see him just sprint down through the timber. Of course, he never came all the way in. He had to cross the creek and come up. But, yeah.

At that point, we had no other option. Like it was either going to work or we weren't going to kill him anyway. So it could only add, you know, we've used distressed calls a little bit. Like we know he's went maybe into a patch of timber or maybe running out of light and we're maybe.

of our hunt, like maybe that will pull them out so we can at least see them. Um, but yeah, a lot of times it may actually, uh, I don't want to, I don't want to say it can screw up, but early in the season when they just want to be a little bit isolated and left alone, like all you're doing is drawing attention to yourself and they may not be that interested in it. It may be for nothing anyways. So, um, yeah. And oftentimes, you know, if you're a rifle guy, um, um, the distress call just gets them out of the timber, just get some, um,

enough to get that clean shot. You know, you don't necessarily need to call them within a hundred yards or whatever, but you know, many, many times, if you're in an area with a cut, you know, some type of a, an edge to it, you can at least draw those bears to the edge and they're curious and they'll look and,

You know, maybe not to the point of coming all the way in, but just enough time to get that shot. And, um, you know, I think I'll, I'll just say, be careful in grizz country when you're in grizz country, which yeah, calling in Montana is, is different than a lot of the places we've chased them in Idaho where there are no grizz. Um, calling can be very effective, but it sure brings grizzlies in too. So, yeah.

All right. So we did everything right. We've either made our stock, we've called them in. Walk us through middle of middle a little bit. We're getting ready to shoot this bear. And there's a lot of, I believe it was Iron Will maybe had made a post here recently on where you shoot a bear. And there was a lot of confusion. There was even a lot of arguing on, you know, some of us answered middle of the body, you know, halfway up, halfway between the legs, like literally the center of the body where you wouldn't think about,

um, being a great shot on a deer and elk walk us through that. You guys have killed a bunch of bears and I know on some of your videos or, you know, make people have maybe asked like, why the heck did you shoot him so far back? But, um, explain that to us and maybe a little of the anatomy and then why it works so well. Yeah. It's going to be controversial every time when you talk about shot placement on bears for sure. Um, but I, uh,

I can confidently say you shoot a bear middle of the middle, that bear's not going far at all. You shoot a bear in the front shoulder, you may be trying to track a bear for a very, very long ways. Now, maybe this changes when you're talking about like a coastal brown bear or something in Alaska. You know, I know those guys are trying to knock those shoulders out. Number one, I think

I don't shoot anything in the shoulder, Jason. I don't shoot deer in the shoulder. I don't shoot elk in the shoulder, moose. I care about that meat to the point that I'm just not going to risk wasting any meat whatsoever. So I'm always a little off the shoulder. But with bears, you are so far better off shooting middle and middle. If you want to bring it a little bit forward, maybe two, three inches front of middle and middle, great.

But those lungs on a bear, I will challenge anybody, next time you break a bear down, look at how far those lungs go back. Those things literally go back to like that second rib, back rib on a bear. And man, nothing deflates a bear. Bears, in my opinion, are softer than...

Even a whitetail, Jason. Soft. They're soft. You shoot a middle of the middle, those things deflate and they go down fast and hard. But where most people run into trouble is they shoot a little too far forward and good luck tracking a wounded bear. And that's where those wounded bears come from is guys shooting them in the shoulders.

You're not going to track a bear far if you shoot middle and middle. It's never going to happen. But I'm sure there's guys that will forever and always claim to shoot them on the front quarter there. But I have seen and I have heard from and I have had so many people reach out in frustration about hitting them in that front shoulder. That was a bear that they tried to track and we all know how hard they are to track if they're not

If they're not down within, you know, 50 to a hundred yards, man, you know, you, they get into that timber and they don't leave blood. They tend to clog up with the fat and the hair and the hair. They can be tough. So you want to put them down quick. And the best way in my opinion to do that is to take out those lungs. It's not to go shoulder. Um, you spend a lifetime of hitting shoulders. You're going to have a good amount of wounded bears at the end of it.

You shoot middle of middle, you ain't going to have any. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thanks for joining us today, Ryan. In closing, what is one tip you'd give a new spring bear hunters? Maybe somebody hasn't found a bunch of success. Just kind of that main tip. Like what's, what's your voice of encouragement for them here? Oh man.

I think bear hunting has been overlooked by many, I think. It's underrated, in my opinion. Absolutely love it. I spoke to... It's overtaken elk for me as far as one of my most anticipated elk hunts. I'm going to pretend like I didn't hear that. Yeah. But I would encourage people to go give it a shot. We got a ton of opportunity here in these Western states. It's a great time to be out. Bear meat, we didn't even talk about...

Um, it's incredible. There's a lot of different ways. I've got, I've got some in the sous vide right now from, from last year that I'm going to feed some folks with tonight. Um, but I think, uh, as anything else, you know, make the hunt, however it works for you. If you don't have the time, you know, look to those areas that aren't too far off the beaten path where you're just going to have nice, you know, feed zones to glass, um,

Um, or get yourself in wicked ass, good shape and treat it like any mountain hunt, whether it's like a sheep hunt or a goat hunt, you know, you can get yourself into some awfully incredible places, chasing spring bears, if that's the hunt that you're looking for. So for adventure guys, I don't know that there is a better time to do it than after we've kind of shaken the rust off this winter to get out there and start chasing bears, um,

you know, take your time, be picky, you know, trying to take those older age class bears. Number one, I think they're better to pull out of the pool. Number two, you get a whole lot more meat off of a big bear than you do a medium sized bear. So I would just, uh, I would just say, um, you know, get after it. I encourage anybody to give it a shot. Maybe it's not for you, but give it a try. Yeah. I,

I spring bear hunting, you know, on those times I've got to go, it may not pass elk, but it was, it was, uh, an absolute blast. I had a, I loved it. I love the glassing aspect. Um, and, and they're just cool critters. And like you said, we didn't talk a lot about it, but my kids, uh,

When they found out you could kill two of them here in Washington, wanted to know why I only brought one home. So they eat really, really well. They do. We loved them. So in closing, Ryan, how can people find out more about you? Where can they follow your adventures, get a hold of you, give everybody a way to contact you or to follow with your adventures? Yeah, I guess the easiest is on the old IG. That's StealthyHunter, S-T-H-E-A-L.com.

And, um, and then, yeah, we, we have put a lot of bear videos out, uh, over the years. Um, folks can find that over on the gritty YouTubes. Um, we're about to drop some more that we haven't shown in the past. Uh, in fact, this weekend, we're dropping, uh, some of the trips from last spring. So guys want to kind of see some of the country we're hunting and the ways we're doing it.

you know, maybe tune into some of those, um, those YouTube videos. Well, like always really appreciate having you here. Um, I'm a little bummed. Like we'd kind of semi-planned a spring bear hunt together. And then, um, I let a trip to Disneyland get in the way of that. So, um, maybe 2024. Yes, sir. All right. Yep. Thanks Jason. Take care, Ryan. Have a good one.

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