In this episode we sit down with 4 individuals that have one thing in common, surviving a bear attack. Whether it’s while hiking through the trees in the middle of the day or a bear breaking into your trailer at night, facing a bear can be a terrifying experience. From what we learn in this episode one thing is certain, preparation is everything when you head out into the wild.
Disclaimer: this text was produced through an automated transcription service and likely contains errors. Please listen to the original audio for exact content.
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We wanted to remind everybody that we are in the final stretch of the 2024 winter membership drive. That’s where we give a bunch of awesome hunts away. And this time, I mean, we, we’ve gone all out and we’ve, we’ve purchased an $85,000 British Columbia stone sheep hunt for kind of the flagship hunt of the, of the giveaway. And I don’t know about you, but like winning a hunt like this is the only way I’m gonna do a hunt like that. So every chance I get, I put in, so I’m not eligible this time, but you are. So the membership drive part is if you join, if you’re not a member and you join, then you’re gonna get a free ticket into, into the giveaway. In addition to the British Columbia Stone sheep hunt, we’ve got two phenomenal elk hunts, two phenomenal mule deer hunts, a COOs deer hunt for two, and a Idaho wolf hunt for two. So if you wanna hunt giant elk, those are the, the one is a Utah, it’s on the Utah Nevada border and Pilot Peak. And you can actually hunt both states and it’s $30,000 hunt. We’ve got members of Epic who’ve killed 400 inch bulls there, just great, great hunt. And then we’ve also got Nevada elk hunt for that one’s a $22,000 hunt. So quality, quality. Then the two mule deer hunt hunts that we’ve got.
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We’ve got a Nevada Mule deer hunt, and that one’s on a landowner tag. So you can technically hunt, you know, all seasons on that. You can, the guide portion of it is for seven days and you kind of choose your season, but phenomenal, phenomenal hunts. And then the Utah Mule deer hunt is also $22,000. So best hunt that, that we can find. These are, these are hunts that we would love to go on personally. Then we’ve got Mexico cos deer hunt for two people. So if you win, you choose somebody else to go with you. So pretty awesome. And then same thing with the Idaho Wolf. That’s for two people. We, and then finally we’ve got a gear package, $15,500 value on that. So it’s got fierce rifle, Hoyt Bow, a spotting scope from Swarovski, a Zeiss Riflescope, and then a couple other pairs of binoculars. So this is another chance for you to draw an amazing hunt we’re putting in, in all the states. But this one’s a really good opportunity. I mean, it’s so easy to get in, either join or refer a friend or purchase tickets as low as $25 can get you an entry. And then we’ve got incentives, you know, and ticket packages. If, if you do buy the $500 ticket package, there’s a special bonus drawing for that. And so you, you will get one ticket for each $500 that you spend on it.
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And the winner of that gets to use $10,000 however you want, on any hunt you want. So kind of you choose your hunt and then we will write the check to the outfitter. So go to our website, epic outdoors.com. And it’s the first thing you see, the first banner there has a link. Click on it. It’s got all the details for every hunt. And so you can, you can just join right there. Or you can purchase tickets or you can also call our office. If you just wanna do it over the phone, you can call (435) 263-0777 and hope you get lucky and win one of these hunts. I mean, it’s, it’s really fun. We give them away and somebody’s got win. So might as well be you, you are listening to the Epic Outdoors Podcast. Check us [email protected]. Hey everybody. Jason Carter, Adam Bronson, Logan. Of course you’re here. Always here, right? Always here. Always loving it. Yeah. Hey, before I get first off, we’re really excited. There’s a bunch of rain coming. Bronson, we always talk about the weather and every, everything revolves around the weather here in Cedar City, Utah. Okay. Pretty much. So we’re excited about that. We got another week or two of that coming, maybe even more. And then Logan, I just wanted to know like, how tall is this girlfriend of yours? You just busted it out early, huh? Yeah, you gotta get outta the way she is five nine.
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How tall are you? I’m six foot on the dot. Are you? Yeah. Okay. You got a tall one? I don’t know. Your dad told me to ask you that. Yeah. Why? Well, that’s all right. Have they been teasing you about her height? Yeah. Well she has, she has these, if she wears heels or pumps, then, then yeah, well they, they make these thick converse shoes that give you like an inch and some Oh. And so she wore that to a family Christmas party and Yeah, everybody thought she was taller than me. It was pretty close. Yeah. Well if she throws real heels or wedges or pumps or whatever, the real verne, I, I tease my wife all the time. She laughs at me. About what, what are heels, wedges, what’s the difference if she wears those? She’s over six. It’s gonna be over six foot. Oh yeah. I told, I said we gotta throw away those shoes. ’cause what do you squeeze in there? It’s an another juice box, but I got an apple juice box. Oh, apple sauce squeeze. I, I opened that. Regretted it. What? I think he goes, isn’t there probably a section in the grocery store that’s for 12 and under and that’s where he goes. It’s, it’s called Gerber Gerber Rope. How do you take your vegetables? Do you have a little vitamin grinder? The little baby grinder for the peas vitamin. I get the carrots.
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All the vitamins that a young toddler needs is, we’re good. I love it. It’s carrots. No, it’s applesauce. Oh, I’m like freak. I’m not that weird. Okay. Just making sure. But hey, you, you teed yourself up, but you have a squeeze I know applesauce thing here. So this’ll be a unique podcast, Bronson, we’ve been talking a lot about bears. Okay. And I don’t know if it’s, if it’s consulting on Wyoming elk or maybe all the Alaska trips we’re talking about and things like that. But bears have been on our mind and we know guys, it’s one thing to like know that MO happen here, right? Yeah. We’ve had one another thing to know about a half dozen people that have been mauled. Yeah. We had, I don’t remember what podcast it was a long time ago. We had Jim Craig from Indiana on here, and he got crunched and munched repeatedly by a grizzly on a sheep hunt years ago in Alberta. And yeah, we’ve had John Alderson, one of our licensed app guys get treated. Literally I was in the top of that tree. And I mean, and dude, that story sticks with you looking for a wounded bull elk that he wounded with a bow, but he didn’t even have his bow or a pistol or pepper spray. And he want, and he’d go back. He, oh, we’ve applied him for the same unit ever since. I would never want to go back.
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No, I wouldn’t either. I kind of avoid those areas. I’m not, anyway, but then we have more and more and we’ve had, yeah, a good friend of Aaron and i’s had an encounter last year in Idaho. We’ll call him in a bit. And then we have, you know, you and Logan all this, one of the guys today. So we got three guys today we’re gonna maybe four talk, maybe four we’re gonna talk about. I know that one. That was right here in my, down down in my neighborhood. Yeah. All the wrestlers in Yeah. Wyoming. Yeah. Shit. Try him too. So, so I mean, what we can learn from it, I mean, they’re interesting stories, they’re kind of crazy stories that show maybe, and we can hear and learn how fast stuff can really happen. But also maybe be prepared if we’re hunting, whether you’re up north in Canada, Alaska, or one of the states, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, that you could have a problem. So what I think’s funny is we’re we’re planning trips to Alaska and things, and we’re taking big rifles, right? And we still, what what’d we do? Bought 10 millimeters and all ammo, all the best ammo we knew we heard stopped stuff. Your brother, your brother sends a picture. We buy 500 round now. I mean, we didn’t buy that many, but enough to protect ourselves.
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Well you gotta, you gotta get acquainted with, with the new 10 millimeter before you, you don’t want your first shot to be at a charging bear. Yeah, we’re gonna have to go through some rounds. I always think it’s gonna happen in a while. You’re in a tent or something like that. But it’s not, it’s usually walking usually on a trail and you startle something. Yeah, usually. Alright, well let’s go ahead, let’s tee the first one up. This first one we’re gonna call is Jace Taylor. He’s, he lives here in Utah now. He, he used to work for the Division of Wildlife as a sheep coordinator, now works as a biologist for a military base in northern Utah. And you know, he’s had a crazy story back, I think in his college years recently, not too long ago, about getting charged him and a buddy and actually mauled and lived to tell about it. So In Idaho. In Idaho as well. Okay. So we’ll get to call him first. Jayce Taylor. Let’s tee him up. Hello, this is Ja. Hey Ja, this is Adam Bronson and Jason Carter on the Epic Outdoors Podcast. How’s it going? Going well, how are you guys doing really well. You got service. Know you’re out in the field working today and maybe you got tinfoil on a, on a barbed wire fence and a makeshift antenna. But you got service it sounds like.
00:09:24:05 –> 00:10:35:10
Yeah, if you can hear me then it’s gonna work. Good. We got, well we appreciate you making some time for us today. We, we teed up just briefly who you were, but, but maybe before we get talking about what we’ve kind of teed up, our theme of the day is kind of bear encounters. Why don’t you tell us a little about who you are and where you’re from and you know, your background and where you worked and stuff like that. Sure, yeah. And then I’ll make up a good bear story for you after. Yeah. So you probably got scars. Scars to prove it from what I’ve heard, so, yeah, yeah. So, so yeah. Name’s Jace Taylor. I am right now a wildlife biologist up at Hill Air Force Base. Prior to this I was at the state DWR doing big horse sheep and mountain goats. And then prior to that it was doing schooling at BYU, doing research, doing my master’s stuff on, on big corner sheep outta Antelope Island. So that’s where I spent most of my time is there Antelope Island doing sheep and a little bit of deer stuff up the state and then now out here on the, on the Air Force base. Gotcha. That’s awesome. Where are you from originally? You from Utah, Jace? No, no, not originally. I grew up in southeastern Washington state and then ended up coming down this way through school is is how it ended up.
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I was down at BYU doing my school when I was doing the, the master’s work through some connections, got me here and, and then just, you know, working there on the island. Just got me connections with DWR and been here ever since. My wife is from down this way, she’s from Benjamin Gotcha. Down by Spanish Fork. So nice. So it’s good. And then actually a lot of my family’s ended up moving this way since as well. So I’ve got a fair bit of family up Logan Way and Gotcha. Up north in Utah, so yeah. So loving it, loving to being here. Well, good. So as you tee this up, maybe what, when was this, when did this occur and what were you doing at the time? Well, when Josh, so Josh Paul called me and said, Hey, can you tell the bear story? And then the hardest part was, I was trying to remember what version of the story I told Josh, like, was it just, was it just bears or was there a couple mountain lion and some wolves as well. Well, hey, if, if they were there, let’s hear it. Yeah, as time goes on it always changes and gets embellished.
00:11:27:08 –> 00:12:40:13
But, but no, it was, so this was 2013 and so at the time I was on the island, I was a student down there at BYU and during the summers what I would do is I had this job I could do up in Idaho. It was a environmental consulting, so it was a private company that would go out and do environmental surveys. We did like some stream surveys, some cultural surveys, like artifact surveys. But this stuff specific was forestry, forestry health. And so what we were doing is we’d have a crew of guys and we would go out to BLM parcels that they wanted to get like a, a health survey or a value, timber value survey. Stuff that they were either planning to, you know, improve or change something down the road. And so they needed to know what the, what that forest was like. So it involved a lot of walking around. We, you know, they’d give us a set of points, we’d hike around, we’d go to the points and it involved like measuring trees, you know, counting, it was, you know, kinda looking for defects and trees, kind of getting evaluation of the trees, the habitat, that kind of thing. So, so it was good. It was, it was a lot of hiking. It was a good job. And you know, most of the time we’d go out just as individuals and go to these plots and do these surveys.
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But for this one, what it was, was we were doing those types of surveys and we were an island park. Okay. So it was August and Island Park. And because we knew there were bears in the area, you know, we’d, we’d come by, we’d do surveys all around Idaho and, and into Montana and some in Wyoming as well. So, I mean, you know, it’s, you know, we’d come across bears, but for this one was in grizzly country, we were, instead of working as individuals, we had some extra stuff we were doing. So working in pairs, the guy I was working with was, his name was Scott Webster, good dude up there at Idaho Falls. And we had bear spray and we worked in the pears and tried to, you know, make some extra noise and just kind of keep conversation as we hiked around. You knew you were in bear, bear country. I’ve had friends say, I mean, it’s almost somewhat prevalent to, to encounter grizzlies up there. You, I don’t know if you encountered very many, but it, it feels like that’s, you’re in the heart of bear country right there. Oh yeah. No, it’s a lot of bears that just as they overflow out of the park outta Yellowstone. So yeah, at the time, you know, more and more so bears are coming more and more common.
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It actually, even the week it ended up being the week that, that we had our bear attack there ended up being I think two other bear attacks up there in Island Park. So, I mean, it was, at this time especially, and I know it’s probably hasn’t changed any of, there’s lots of bear, lots of bear activity there. In Island Park. We were, we were up by like the reservoir, geez. So Island Park Reservoir, we were working just west of that. And like I said, we’d known about bears, we’d seen bear tracks in the area. And so we were, we were well aware and thought we were well prepared. And this day, like I said, it was in August, we were hiking along, doing our surveys and we’d gotten, gotten into the afternoon, we’d had lunch. I remember we just had lunch and we were, it was kind of hot and we were just hiking along and for whatever reason, just, just kind of just lowing the conversation, you know, kinda that afternoon, siesta time of day and just weren’t talking a lot. And so that’s what ended up, that’s what ended up being the big mistake. And we walked right up on this bear. So I was in front and you know, like I said, we’re just, we’re just walking to our next point. So we had a set of coordinates that we were walking to.
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So I have this, this might remember like the, the GPS units were these big brick trembles. Yeah, big yellow brick, like a 10 pound brick. And we used to, we could do all our data entry in there and navigate with that. So funny, I was in the front, I was, I was wanting to be in the front and Scott was a little older than me, but I was just trying to, you know, show some, but also I was wanting to be, the guy in the front usually was the one that found sheds. So Scott, this guy had found, it was big old moose paddle or something. He had found this giant moose paddle. Oh wow. So that, that blew up our surveys for a couple hours. But, but I was so jealous. It was this awesome paddle. So, so I’m in front, you know, walking and, and like I said, we just, just, we usually did a good job of talking, but we just weren’t making enough noise. And it was hot. And it was an interesting spot we had, there was like some, I remember there was some lava rock that kind of made, that was, you know, just kind of broken stuff that you couldn’t really walk through. So we had this kind of natural funnel. They were walking down, it was a lot of like lodge pole pine, but small pines.
00:15:50:12 –> 00:16:43:15
And then every once in a while, so you could see it through there fairly well. But every once in a while there’d be like f trees or spruce trees. And there was this, we’re walking from north, from the south, walking north on this game trail that went kind of through this, this funnel. And there was a fur tree. There wasn’t a great big tree, but it was actually, you know, thick enough that you couldn’t see under it, couldn’t see around it. And as we got to the tree, we were probably just 40 yards from the tree and walking along and that was, the bear was sleeping behind the tree. We didn’t have any idea he was there. He had no idea where there he’d come from a different direction. So his, his tracks were on the trail. And so when we got to 40 yards, finally this bear woke up. I remember as he came out from behind the tree, his back kinda came out first, like his rump. And I remember it was real dark. And as he kinda stood up from around the tree, the first thing I thought it was was a cat, like a black Angus cattle. There was cattle in the area. He was real dark. And I think, oh, here comes a cow.
00:16:43:21 –> 00:17:47:23
And then his head swings around around the tree and just this, I remember it was dark too, but I remember it had a lot of white, just a lot of like white on like the, the bridge of his nose and up like through his eyes, just kind of, you know, just, just scattered hairs right through there. Just big block head, you know, looked like big old bunch box. Oh geez. So as soon as his head came around the tree, he’s spooked. I’m spooked now. So, but for him, you know, he, I guess he just had that point of fight or flight and, you know, running away from us was, or running right through us was just as easy as running, you know, away from us. And so, so he did, as soon as his head came around, he, he charged. And so as he’s coming, he is only got 40 yards to cover. And I just remember just thinking, I was amazed how fast he was. Like the way that he covered that, like I said, it was pretty open. There was like some shrubs and then these small trees and he just came flying through that straight at us. And I started yelling, probably don’t even have time to grab your bear spray. That was the thing. I, you know, I had the bear spray on my hip, but I had that big tremble thing in my hand anyways.
00:17:48:13 –> 00:18:54:12
And so I remember yelling and putting my hands up and I was just, I don’t know, I was just so confident that he was gonna stop. I, I, I just, you know, like this, this bear’s gonna stop. And that didn’t turn out to be the case. So by the time he got to like 10 feet, maybe not 10 feet, 15, 20 feet, and I realized this bear’s not gonna stop. I took that Trimble thing and I threw it, I threw it at him as hard as I could hit him right between the eyes and it just shatters and bear doesn’t even, doesn’t even notice that it happened probably. So that thing bounces off his head and I go to that point. I, the only thing I think to do is just to jump out of the way and try to run. So I turn to my left and try to jump out of the way and you know, he covers that last 10 to 15 feet and probably about, you know, split second. And so I turn to try to jump and as I turn, he gets me right on my, on my right leg. So basically there’s holes, the, his bottom jaw hits right above my knee, maybe two or three inches above my knee. And then his top jaw gets me like right in my butt basically. So he actually bit through my wallet, so no way he grabs me there.
00:18:54:24 –> 00:19:53:04
That’s where he grabs. And then he bites it down on it, the holes down or the teeth down by my, by my knees holds still. But everything else from the top, his top jaw just kind of rips down through, shredded down. Oh yeah. Just shreds down from, from my rear end down the whole back of your thigh basically. Yeah, basically now. So he’s got, yeah, so it just rips down that. And he’s got me on the back of my thigh. I remember when he grab me. So he hits me and grabs me there and it kind of pulls my, pulls my body back towards him. And I remember still thinking like, you know, they tell you when the bear gets to you and actually touch, you know, stand your ground. But when the bear touches you start playing dead. And I was just, you know, I’m just adrenaline’s pumping and I’m not thinking anything along those lines. You’re fighting, you’re fighting, you’re trying to get away. I was fighting, I was just decide I was gonna fight this bear. Geez. So I remember seeing his eye, remember his, it must’ve been, his right eye was right there, you know, on my leg. I had my right hand right there. And I remember gouching, his eye taking swings and I was thinking, that’s my, that was my thought. I was like, I’m gonna go for this dude’s eye and try to try to stab save me.
00:19:53:27 –> 00:20:55:11
So I’m proud of myself. I think I got at least a couple punches in because afterwards my hands smelled like wet dog. Like he Wow. Slobbered that and stuff. Yeah. Oh yeah. He had a real strong smell. So I took a couple swings, but then, I mean, that didn’t last at all. ’cause the next thing I know my, I feel my feet come off the ground and then he, he bit there and he held it with that bite they had on my leg. He just picked me up and just rag on me. Oh. So he just, just starts shaking me, you know, I can’t tell up from down or gee, you know, even where my legs at at this point. Like, he’s just like, like a dog that gets a rat and just tries to shake. Yeah, you’re trying, they’re trying to kill it. They’re like, we see it, we see dogs, we see bears when they’re trying to kill something. It’s like, that’s what they do. It’s the shake, it’s the kill shake. It’s the orca is on a seal. They’re trying to, they’re shake the life out of this thing. Shake, shake the fight out. Jeez. So where’s your, but what, what’s your buddy doing now? One, see, so Scott, Scott’s Scott. So I, I told you, I dunno if I mentioned Scott’s a little older than me, but Scott’s maybe just a few years now.
00:20:55:11 –> 00:21:57:28
He’s in my twenties I guess at this point. So Scott’s probably in his thirties. Scott’s a big, big strong dude. Scott’s probably like 6 4, 6 5, like 2 40, 2 50 and like, like hardly getting fat on him. So big strong dude, he is back there. And so I didn’t realize this till afterwards, but Scott at this point has his bear spray out. And while this bear’s shaking me, he’s just bear spraying pepper spraying both of us. The bear. He’s just crushing you. Yeah, just letting us happen. It was good. It might end have been one of, you know, the thing that saved us, but ’cause after it shook me, just shaking me left and right. How long do you think it did that Jace? Like, I don’t know it, you know, that’s one of the things I’d love to know. I’d love to see what it looked like. You know, felt like forever a second, second half to feel like 10 seconds. Yes. Oh yeah. I’m sure it was hardly anything. I’m sure it was just a couple of seconds, you know, that he, that he was trying to shake me. ’cause then he kind of tossed me off to the side. I remember I landed next to that trail and at that point, you know, that point I realized it took, he, the shaking got the fight outta me. I’ll tell you that much. Like you, you now you, it’s time to play dead now is what you’re thinking.
00:21:57:28 –> 00:22:58:29
There’s nothing I can be able to play dead. So, so I curl up and I put my hands, you know, back behind my neck. And that was probably the worst few moments right there. ’cause I think this bear’s just standing on top of me with his mouth open about to come down on me. You know? Yeah. You’re, you don’t want to look for him and trigger something. You’re just, you’re thinking this is the last, this is the end. Oh yeah. Yep. Yeah. No, it’s just, just the, just the makes my neck, neck still just itch. Like, just crawl, just waiting for the bite to come down. Is it gonna come down my back? Is he gonna get me on the neck? Is he gonna, his mouth gonna wrap around my head, you know, it’s just, here it comes, it’s just wait and see what happens. And that was the worst. But then after again, that’s probably only a couple seconds, which it seemed like forever. And I hear Scott yell and I realized the bear’s, the bear’s not on me. It’s on him now at this point. Oh. So I jump up and my next thought again, I’m still just, I’m just terrified. I’m like, I can’t run, I can’t, I don’t wanna lay down again. ’cause that, that was horrible. So I’m gonna, I’m gonna try to climb the tree and the trees. I bet this would’ve been funny to watch too.
00:22:58:29 –> 00:23:51:23
Just little, like I said, little trees. And, and I have, by this time my backpack is like, probably like is around my elbows and like down around my waist. ’cause he just shook everything. And so I’m trying to like climb on this tiny tree with my arms all like, tied up in my backpack. It was probably, probably another hilarious sight. Geez. But I look over and I realize the bear’s getting off of Scott. And so then I just, then I yelled at the bear a few times and the bear is off of Scott and running away. So basically just ran straight through us down this trail and kept going and the whole thing, you know, who knows how long it took, but it was probably only, you know, a handful of seconds. Yeah. But got the entire encounter. So what, what did he suffer? Yeah. Yeah. What what did it do to him? Did it, did you, did you even know he was onto Scott? Was Scott screaming at him? Yeah, I heard Scott yelling and that’s what got me to, and then I was laying there and I was like, I gotta get up. I can’t keep laying here waiting for, to see what’s gonna happen.
00:23:52:14 –> 00:24:53:04
So yeah, so it had gotten off the Scott and then I yelled at the bear as it, you know, I was getting off the Scott, I just yelled at it a few more times as it kind of ran away. So then we’re, we’re sitting there. Yeah. I still didn’t realize that he had sprayed the pepper spray. So I was, Scott’s like, how are you? And I was, I couldn’t breathe and I was just like, I can’t, I can’t breathe. I can’t, I can’t see my and you don’t know watering my skin’s burning. Yeah. And then Scott’s like, well it’s probably because I sprayed pepper spray all over the guys. Oh, okay. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. So yeah, so, so getting my breath was tough. I was bleeding, but not too horrible. It just, you know, like the fat and the flesh of my butt was basically what he’d ripped through the holes down by my knee were bleeding pretty good. But we got that wrapped up. Scott was Scott, what happened is he’s spraying everything and then the bear tossed me and came for him and just kind of ran him over. Like I said, he is a big dude and ran him over and he was on his back with his hands up and the bear was biting down on him. So he got bit on his hands and wrists mostly. So he had bites through his hands, but nothing was broken.
00:24:53:06 –> 00:25:57:07
Or at least he could, I don’t, well I don’t know. I, I hate to say that and then turn out to be wrong, but I don’t, he could use his hands essentially is what Yeah. Puncture wounds. But luckily didn’t crush. Right, right. No reconstructive. He his hands surgery or anything. How far are you guys now? You’re like, all right, the bear ran away. We, you know, you’re not going to your transect point. You’re, how far are you from a truck or something at this point? All right, back to work. Yeah. The trembles, tremble’s broken. Yeah. Did you file that on an expense report or what? No, so the lucky thing was usually as we hike, you know, we could end up being anywhere from, you know, 3, 4, 5 miles from the truck. But luckily we, the way it played out, we were only a quarter mile, maybe half a mile from the truck. And that was lucky. And I could walk, Scott could carry, Scott carried my stuff, had round everything up because it had just been thrown everywhere. So we got everything rounded up and I’m limping back. I could hardly get, I could, I couldn’t stand for a while just ’cause he’d, he just whiplash me so bad. I couldn’t, I couldn’t get dizzy really easy. Yeah, you probably maybe had a concussion or something, I don’t know. Yeah, could have been. Yeah, it could have been. Yeah, it could have been.
00:25:58:01 –> 00:26:53:25
So yeah, we were able to walk back. We got back to the truck by the time, well we got to the truck and then, oh, this was rough. Get to the truck and I lay down because I couldn’t sit. And when I laid down in the back of the truck, the sweat got that, that pepper spray going again and rolled into my eyes. And so I’m like in the back of the truck, like pawing my eyes out trying, trying to get control of that works on, works on people, you know? Yeah, yeah. All it worked. It was, yeah. And who knows, it might’ve been the difference for the bear. I mean, I, I imagine the bear was just getting out there and just rung this over as he went. But you know, maybe that was something that a deterrent like, yeah, I thought I wanted to eat this guy and now I don’t, or whatever. Yeah, yeah. Just kept him from, from staying there. Who knows. But yeah, so anyways, we finally got, we drove a little ways, was able to get service called, we met an ambulance. But by that time, you know, we’d gotten things, it, it could have been so much worse and you know, I don’t wanna make it sound like it’s, you know, one of these horrible bear attacks where people get their face mauled off or anything. But yeah.
00:26:54:06 –> 00:27:58:03
So by that time, you know, we met the ambulance, the ambulance patched us up and then the company that we worked for actually met us there and I park as well. And the company drove us to the, to the Rexburg Hospital where we So hospital. Yeah. Yeah. So that was a good time too. So the hospital, we get there and they’re ready for, they, you know, heard about this bear attack and they’re ready for, you know, people with limbs falling off. They got stretchers and a dozen and you just walked, walked in there. Yeah. So we, we hobbled in there and everything. They were great though. They at the hospital, they, they measured for me it was from the bottom holes to the top holes. It was about 14 inches was how big he was able to open the bear was able to open his mouth. Geez. Yeah. So he got his mouth 14 inches around on my leg. And then the fish and game medal there, that whole fish and game medal there, a couple officers and they were able to take my pants and from the pants they could pull enough saliva to actually get D-N-A-D-N-A off the bear. Yeah. Wow. So they could maybe, if it was a problem, bear from the past. So they had DNA, they like that number six and he, this is his last chance or whatever they use it for. Yeah, yeah.
00:27:58:03 –> 00:29:02:00
So, and they did, they had some history with them. So the bear had been caught, had been caught in yellow in Yellowstone six or seven years prior. And they estimated to be six or seven years old at the time. It was boar. They put a collar on him, but it got ripped off over the years fighting or whatever. He’d gotten ripped off and they, at the time I have, I went back and looked at my notes. The note I have written down is that they said it at the time, they weighed like 670 pounds, which seems like a lot to me, but I guess it was right before going into hibernation. So they said it was so, it was pretty, you know, bulked up at that point. That’s, but that’s a big, so that was really cool. And, and then so after that, between them catching it, it had had one other encounter with an archery hunter. An archery, an archery elk hunter in Island Park where he had done the exact same thing as us. He’d walked up on it sleeping, you know, archery, hunting, being quiet and it had bit off part of his hand. So, so that was real interesting. They didn’t do anything with the bear just ’cause neither of them were predatory. And what do you mean, all surprised? Sounds predatory to me, but I’m sure they have a Yeah, sure.
00:29:02:00 –> 00:29:59:07
They have a very specific definition of predatory when it comes to, and they were both out in the stake. Like neither of ’em was near, you know, campgrounds or residents or anything. What would you do, looking back on it, what would you do again? Like would you, would you buy it or carry a pistol, 10 millimeter or, I mean, have you learned since learned what you would do or? Yeah, you know, I think back on it, you know, I wish I, the, the main thing that I think would’ve saved us is just if we’d have been making more noise. You know, if we’d just been making enough noise and I think the bear would’ve heard us hundreds yards away and could’ve gone off and, you know, who, who knows maybe that had happened already, you know, during these, these, you know, trips, doing trips. Yeah. But you know, as far as the pepper spray and you know, a firearm goes. Yeah. I think they’re both great things that, you know, and maybe Scott, you know, getting on his pepper spray real quick, you know, something that helped. I don’t know, for me if I’d, if I’d have had time. I mean that 40 yard, nothing, it was amazing how quickly he covered it. I mean, he, he came through that brush, remember there was a log that he had to come over. I mean he just, he just bounded through it.
00:29:59:15 –> 00:30:53:27
You know, it probably just took a couple, couple three seconds for him to cover that ground. Yeah. There’s, and and you know, like I said, my hands were already kind of full. So I mean, I would say definitely practice whatever you’re gonna decide to use for, you gonna use pepper spray or your firearm, you know, practice, you know, having it handy, whipping it out, make sure some way you get to it. Yeah. Pull it out, pepper spray, you know, pull out your pepper spray and practice spraying it, you know, getting the cap off and everything. ’cause it was just the amount of time that you could have, there was no buildup to it for us where we just walked up on him sleeping. It was like a saw air from a away, well you, you might be, yeah. Being in pairs, I mean that, that might have saved your life if you’d have been alone and the pepper spray didn’t happen, he might have just stayed there and trumped, you know, like yeah, who knows, he could have left you alone. But I mean, I think that was probably a blessing there, right there too, to have another person there. Distraction or the pepper spray like you said, or just yelling or, you know, concerning the bear to some extent. You never did go meet up with the archer or anything like that? Just, just No, no. Never.
00:30:54:08 –> 00:31:45:22
The, I actually haven’t, and I haven’t called back the fish and game. I had to, so when I got that information about the bear, I called back, you know, a month afterwards or something, I should call him back again to see if everything ever came with a bear, you know? Yeah. Well maybe, maybe someone’s got him at his house and I go, yeah, that, that’s 10 years ago or 11 now. So I mean he was what, 12 or 13 or whatever at the time. And I don’t, maybe he’s still alive, but yeah, he’s probably dead. And who knows, maybe they got him, you know, one of their offices or someone’s got him somewhere and it’d be fun to go see him. So yeah, it would, wow. What’d you do with your pair of pants? Did you keep I have them actually. Did you keep em as a sooy? Yeah, I still, I, so yesterday I was going through my stuff because I was gonna look at some of these notes and yeah, I’ve got some different things from there. I got something, I have my hospital pants too. Funny. I remember at the hospital they were asking me all kinds of questions, you know, Hey, are you allergic to this? And hey, can we rinse this? Can we do this, that and the other? And this one nurse I remember, she says, Hey, can I, can I take a picture?
00:31:45:22 –> 00:32:46:12
And I said, oh yeah, go ahead and take a picture of what she whips out her, she whips out her personal cell phone and I’m like, oh geez. Of what? You just, you and a gown and a and a no. Yeah. Like my butt, the leg me up flash. I thought it was like for like the hospital, hospital like notes, like something that weep out those like selfie style. And I’m like, oh crud, you figured this was gonna be a hospital camera protected by HIPAA laws and all that. Now it’s turned it on on Facebook that night. Yeah. My butt, my, my picture of my butt’s out there somewhere. There you go. Some nerd. So yeah. Wow. Well no, it was, it was good. It ended up being so in the end it’s, you know, it’s a good story and it was a good learning experience and hopefully, you know, somebody takes it from that. But it, like you said, it, it was a real blessing. Just the way it went down could have been obviously a lot worse. For real. Yeah. Really blessed that it wasn’t, I had like a two month old kid at the time. You know, my wife was, you know, down here in Utah and everything. It would’ve been, yeah. Would’ve been, could’ve been horrible. Could been cata. Yes. Catastrophic. Yep. Absolutely. Do you have some scars to remind you? I mean, did it scar over? Yeah. Oh I’m sure.
00:32:46:16 –> 00:33:42:06
No, yeah. No, it’s got, I got a good, the, the ones that are easy to show are down by my knee. You know, if I wear a pair of shorts, just a couple holes there and then everything else is up on my butt, like I said. So it’s, geez. Yeah, it’s, but even that’s not, I don’t wanna make it sound like it’s easier you to cover it with your hand kind of thing. No, it’s, it’s just ripped where you kind of ripped through. They had to stitch it in layers. Yeah. Which didn’t all work out. What, it didn’t all didn’t all heal. And so there’s, there’s some scars there, but yeah, well overall lucky and yeah, that’s kind of what these are for. They’re, they’re kind of shock and awe stories, but they’re also learning just little learning experiences from other people. Learn something, a little bit of something. I don’t think from what you described, there’s nothing you can do at 40 yards when it just lifts its head and starts charging. There’s really just avoid Island Park. Don’t buy a Yeah, don’t buy a cabin there. Don’t buy a lot of people just buy cabins like vacation homes and cabins and things. But go there in the winter on snowmobiles. That’s what I’m, that’s what I do when they’re all end up. Alright. Well just know it can just know that it can happen, you know?
00:33:42:06 –> 00:34:41:05
And just be prepared as much as you can because you know, there was, there were things that we did that, that made a difference. Just, just realize that it could be, it could be quick if it happens. Yep. Yeah. Well we appreciate you taking some time today. I know you’re out in the field, you’re, you’re working and that’s, that’s a cool story. It’s, it’s, it’s a good one to tell your kids, I’m sure. And but appreciate you. Somebody like I said’s gonna learn something from it. And that’s kinda what today’s about learning from some of these kind of scary ordeal. So I’m glad, glad you you’re still here to tell about it. Yeah. Glad everything turned out good. All right. Well we sure appreciate you. Yep. Take care guys. Thanks Chase. Thanks Chase. Have a good day. Bye. Kind of crazy dude. I didn’t know it was that bad. Yeah, I mean it just, I thought it, they get a hold of you. It’s just pretty Well, you know, you’re just, you see all those things that do the ragdoll vulnerable, whether it be a hippo, whether it be a croc, whether it be an orca, whether it be a bear. That’s when they’re, they’re trying to just snap your neck. Oh yeah, we’re just talking. Is this your beaver people? No. Or whoever guys.
00:34:41:05 –> 00:36:02:11
So anyway, this would be, yeah, Clint Reynolds, he actually married kind of a, a cousin of mine, not first cousin, but anyway, a little, a few time or two removed. But anyway, really good dude, Clint Reynolds. And yeah, he did have an experience. Glad you reminded me, Logan. ’cause yeah, I, he came, he came to my class when I was like in middle school or elementary school and did a whole presentation on it and I don’t remember much of it, but I just remembered walking outta that classroom with my jaw dropped. ’cause like I never want to have that happen to you. Well let’s see if he’ll answer the phone. We’ll get his story real quick. Good morning, sir. Hey Clint. Jason Carter. Adam Bronson, Logan here. How are you? I’m good. How you doing? Good. It’s been a minute. Yeah. Yeah it has. How’s things going over in Minville? Oh, this is God’s country. That’s so true. That’s true. Love it. Are you shaking his head like, yep, I know. Are you, you working today? Nope. No, this is, this is day two of my, my break time. That’s nice. Yeah. Good. Well we kind of, we’ve been talking bears bear attacks and things like that today.
00:36:03:03 –> 00:37:31:16
Had a story from up in Idaho and we just kind of wanted to get your story Lo I’m glad Logan reminded me ’cause I remember we’ve talked extensively about your story, but it’s been, it’s, it must be 20 years or 15 years since you and I’ve talked about it. But anyway, thought maybe we would kind of get your version of it and how it all went down May and maybe tell us a little bit about yourself, background hunting wise and whatnot. And then let’s roll into it. Okay, so I, I wanted to make sure I was in the right ballpark. So this was ancient history ago, 1992, which dates me quite a bit, but Wow. Yeah, I graduated high school 92. I was only, I was only 14 years old. Traumatic. And my dad and I had this opportunity come to us where my dad’s brother-in-Law, which is his only brother-in-Law. My mom’s side of the family. He was kind of a geologist out of Texas. And he come to my dad and says, Hey, we’re, I’m thinking about going to Alaska. There’s some investors that want to put some money together and they, they want us to go up and see if we can get this six and a half miles of claims opened up and, and start gold mining gold. Yeah. Yep. And so I’m like, oh heck yeah. You know, this sounds better than building houses.
00:37:31:24 –> 00:38:40:23
I, I was super tired of building houses with the old man. ’cause that’s what I was doing with him was growing up as a kid, I was a general contractor’s son. And so we built houses, we poured concrete, we framed houses, we shingled houses, we sheet rocked houses. We, we was doing all that and we had to, we had to finish up all that work before we could take off and go to Alaska. And we had about four or five houses that we were doing that, that summer before we could go. So we were, we were really jamming. Me and me and my dad and a friend of ours who was working for us at the time. He, he went up there with us actually. He’s like, well if you guys are leaving, I, I need a job. So he went with us too. Now that’s, his name’s Chuck Levi. He, he went with us. Awesome. He helped us drive up there. ’cause I was 14, right? So, so 14. I was, I was not legal to drive, but I didn’t drive. Drive. Yeah. County you were legal. We’ve been driving for five years by this. That’s right. Yeah. I, I knew how to drive a stick. Could, I could back a trailer, I could do anything, could drive a semi at 14 in Beaver County. Yeah, absolutely. You’re certified whatever it takes. Especially you’re certified. So yeah.
00:38:41:22 –> 00:40:10:10
So we got all that going ready to, ready to head up there. And I’m thinking to myself, I don’t want to go up there bare handed. So my dad and I started looking around and we started at the time we, we, we met a guy and I don’t know if you remember him, but John Chambers was like a county cop or something. Yeah. That predate me a little bit. Yeah. Anyway, he, he hooked us up with a guy that, that exchanges highway patrol weapons and updates, highway patrol weapons. Okay. Don’t throw anybody under the bus that don’t get anybody fired who steer corner law. They’re pinching. I can’t remember his name. But anyway, this guy was, he, this guy was hooking us up with some, with a couple of, of highway service, highway patrol short service weapons. Yeah. Just little six six shooter revolvers. Yeah. They take 30 eights and 3 57 ammo. Both of ’em are interchangeable. And I’m like, yeah, I don’t want to go up there alone. I don’t want go up there without something. So dad and I, we started looking around and we got those for us and, and we took ’em up and I being 14, you know, you’re a little, little excited about carrying a gun and so I carried that thing everywhere. I was just wanting, I knew that there’s bears up there. I knew that there was things to shoot.
00:40:10:15 –> 00:41:24:24
I knew that it was the highlight of an adventure to go up there in the first place. And you’re driving through Canada with pistols. So back then, back then it was probably, yeah. Back then we just, no big deal. It was probably think, I think we put ’em in our cargo but they didn’t check our cargo, you know. Okay. I’m, I’m not a hundred percent certain on that one, but I do remember having a safe answer is I don’t recall. I don’t recall. I don’t recall. That’s the safe answer. Alright. I don’t, yeah, I don’t recall that information. But anyway, we got going up there and, and I took my motorcycle too. And just knowing that I wanted to have some wheels to where I could adventure out a little bit knowing that I wasn’t gonna be anywhere near anything or Yeah. You just go claim to claim to claim or whatever. Just Yeah. Good to have wheels. You get up there and I found out that tundra is a heck of a lot of fun to ride on it. It kind of opens up that wilderness area and gives you a little lead. You can go up there and ride. We were, well, let’s just say that I was prospecting for new claims Yeah. Is what I was doing. That’s right. You were living your best life. 14-year-old with a 3 57 on his hip, on a motorcycle in, in Alaska.
00:41:24:27 –> 00:42:43:05
Like what’s, there’s not much better than that for a 14-year-old. There’s not paid trip. No. Maybe even making a paid trip. I was, I was literally 177 miles northeast of Fairbanks. Wow. Which is what they call the Circle Mining District. And it, it takes forever to get there. It takes about oh five, five and a half hours to drive it. Yeah. So the best way to do it is if you’ve got one of those little bush planes is and those guys that were next to us that had claims below us, they had a bush plane and that thing could take off in about a hundred feet. Yeah. And they were amazing. Just some really cool people. And they were, they were some, they were some friends of ours. And, and I, I kind of wish that I could still make contact with those guys after all these years, but I would imagine one of ’em is dead by now. And the other one, he’s probably forgotten me a long time ago. But they were good friends. And anyway, that, that experience, I, I was on that motorcycle and I went up, I went upstream about a week before this bear attacked us. And I got up into this little sandbar and I found a pretty good size bear track right there in the sandbar. And I’m like, oh, I’m scared. That’s, that scares me right there in itself.
00:42:43:06 –> 00:44:08:29
You know, I, I hadn’t seen That’s coffee can track. Yeah. And I went back and told my dad, I says, Hey dad, I, I’m pretty sure I found a pretty good sized bear track up there. And so we started, I mean, everything we were doing at the camp, this camp was like, it’s like a man camp. I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced one of those, but we’re talking two single wide trailers with a kitchen on one end and living quarters on the sides down the, down the, down the corridor. So there was like six bedrooms or something to that nature. And, and there was kind of a, a shower room or whatever you’d call it on the one end, on the other side of the kitchen. Yeah. And so the kitchen and all the food and everything’s on the one end and we pretty much slept on the other end, which is not what we were worried about, but that’s just how the arrangements were. And in the hallway, there’s a hallway through the center of this camp and it was a plywood hallway. It was framed up with plywood and I’m not even sure what roofed it, but it was a sealed off with a window on one end and a plywood door on the other end with a stairway. And that’s the only way in and out of the trailer is the one end the plywood doorway.
00:44:09:19 –> 00:45:41:22
Or you could go through one of the, into the dining room area and then through the kitchen and out. But there’s, there’s no other way out of that area except for that plywood door. So the night of attack, it was probably 10 30, 11 o’clock at night, which to us daylight hours looks about like 5 30, 6 o’clock in the morning right now. Yeah. It’s light, but not dusky bright. Not, yeah, just dusk. You can see but you can’t see good. And I’d just gone to bed and it was kind of one of those things where I’m 14 and I couldn’t sleep. ’cause it’s just hard to turn it all off when you’re, when you’re excited about being there. So this is like, I got up there, we left here July 1st. I got up there and we were starting to gather equipment, build the SLU and everything that we were doing, putting together machinery that, that would re be required to, to get this place up and running. This is literally Parker snuggle stuff. I mean, is it, is it, yeah. This is literally Parker snuggle kind of stuff. I was literally living the gold, the gold rush dream. Only knocked no cameraman. Wow. You guys kind of thing. You, you were 30 years too late. You don’t early. I mean, you don’t have quite the attitude. He’s got, he had, I don’t have that attitude and I’m not that rich.
00:45:41:26 –> 00:47:16:21
You know, I just, so July 1st, we went up, started gathering all that equipment. Well this is the very end of July. We had gotten things up and running. We were actually running gold. We were turning material and we were coming in for the night, not operating a hundred percent at the time. ’cause we were shutting down. We had to, we were actually pumping our holes out. And my dad came back and he, he’d shut the lights down. We’d all gone to bed and the next thing I know I hear glass shatter and break. And I’m like, what on earth was that? And I get up and I hit the hallway. The same time my uncle hits the hallway and I’m in the middle of the hallway and he’s on the end of the hallway and he opens his door and he goes face to face with a bear trying to cla through the window on the end of the hallway. And the hallway had a little tiny can rack on it with boots and, and stuff on it. And my uncle, luckily that was there, he took a swat at him. And the bear lost its balance, it’s hind feet were up on the wall, lost its balance and fell back out. And he screamed bear. And I was thinking fire. I thought fire. I, I never experienced or thought, I thought we were gonna be attacked by a bear in the house or trailer.
00:47:17:07 –> 00:48:36:27
And sure enough, there he come. I mean, he was right there. He was almost into the hallway. And if he would’ve got in the hallway, we would’ve all been trapped and all of us would’ve been going out the windows of our bedrooms. Yeah. Which was on stilts. All of our rooms were on stilts. ’cause this is up off the ground trying to, trying to protect the, the camp from snow. And so luckily that bear fell out instead of getting in, which was about two seconds difference of, of being a totally different story. So soon as he yelled Bear, I ran back into my, into my bedroom, grabbed my gun. Well, at that time, my cousin and the kid that he would, he was there with this kind of a, a troubled kid from Texas that my uncle thought maybe he could save him. So this kid come outta that room, they come running screaming, just zipping out of there. Like, like the bear was on their tail. And sure enough, that bear had just attacked their window. So that’s the second window he’d already attacked. And he was in there just tearing the paneling off the wall, trying to come into there. And that’s when I met him at the window and I started to shoot at him. I shot him the pistol or rice, mean pistol ied up. This is a, a 14-year-old. This is a dream for any 14-year-old.
00:48:36:28 –> 00:50:04:23
Here’s your, I mean, I mean, it’s scary. Picture this, but you get literally this pistol now I’m, I’m literally in tidy whitey underwear. Yeah. That was, everybody wore those. And I’m standing there in broken glass. I cut my foot and I started shooting that bear with the pistol. This 3 57. Yeah. Yep. 3 57 Magnum pistol with, with, believe it or not, hollow tip lead rounds, lead tipped rounds. Had no idea that those are not the choice of they’re Yeah. You need something more solid. Yeah. So anyway, those things were flattening out and they were not going in. Yeah. And I was not hurting him at all. Ticking him off. Yep. Yep. I totally figured out real quickly that hollow tip lead LED rounds are not only but for target practice or whatever, or maybe even for cop killers or whatever, you, you use them in a crowd where you’re not gonna hurt and kill somebody. You’re just gonna hurt ’em. And that’s, that’s kinda what I figured out real fast. But I, I was using the wrong ammo and sure enough, I emptied my gun and I’m wondering what now? I didn’t hurt him. No. I didn’t even hurt him. I gotta go reload. So I ran back to my room six more rounds, not thinking I’m gonna need more. I went to a different window and I shoot six more shots. Well, that bear’s still on his feet. He’s in a bed, he’s in a bedroom.
00:50:05:06 –> 00:51:31:06
One of the other bedrooms is where he is still at. Yeah. He was just at the edge of that window. After I’d shot him six times, or at least I thought I’d shot him six times. I’m starting to wonder, you know, and he’s still standing. Yeah. And I’m like, what on earth? This thing’s not turning. He’s not going away. I didn’t scare him. I didn’t. And now I’ve got a possibly injured bear, which is what I, what was just scaring me to death. I’m like, no. ’cause those always return. And so I went, I reloaded again, shot him and emptied my gun, 12 shots. And I’m like, either this gun’s off or I don’t know what I’m doing. And adrenaline out the ying yang. I was, I was shocked, scared, barefooted. You got your dad or anybody else bringing back up or were they at this point, you know, yelling, screaming or what? My, my dad had his rifle, his 30 yacht, six rifle. Didn’t have it ready. My uncle had an empty 30 30 with no bullets in it. And in the meantime of me grabbing my gun outta my bedroom, my uncle went in and faced that bear with the butt of his rifle and hit him in the nose before I took the first shot. And yeah, that ticked him off pretty good, but at least it gave me enough time to get there.
00:51:32:06 –> 00:52:55:16
But other than that, no one else had a rifle until way after it was all said and done. After I reloaded for my, my third full set, I went outside and I was gonna meet him as he turned and was gonna go back towards the brush, which may have been 50 feet or so to the brush where he could start going uphill, which he didn’t go very far uphill. I ended up shooting one more shot and I hit him and he tumbled over backwards. And then he just laid there and just breathed. And I was like, this thing’s never gonna die. My uncle, he finally gets his gun loaded, goes out there and shoots him one more time with that 30 30 and finishes him off. And I was like, in just shock and awe of the whole thing. Couldn’t sleep for days, it seemed like, when, when can we go home? When can we go home to beaver dad? Couldn’t even close my eyes. Yeah, I can imagine. Then we hauled him off. We, we decided that the best case scenario, we had to, we had to go into town to replace windows regardless. So we ended up deciding that we were gonna, instead of just covering up the whole thing, we decided we were gonna take it in, which is my uncle was afraid we were gonna lose claims over it, you know, if things, if things went weird.
00:52:56:07 –> 00:54:14:04
So we went ahead and went right straight to the newspaper, which is what my uncle would’ve done because he’s a city guy. I would not have done that. But he went to the newspaper first and he says, we gotta tell this story. And I’m like, eh, oh, whatever. You know, lemme put my pen, lemme put my pants on, you know? Yeah. Right. So, geez, so luckily, and this is the right thing to do, we, we went to the newspaper and we told our side of the story first, and that was a lifesaver because after we finished telling our story, the newspaper knew all about it and what had happened. Then I went to the wildlife division and they’re saying, well, what did you do to provoke the bear? And we’re like, what? We were in its neighborhood, I guess, you know, that kind of thing, you know? Hmm. And other than that, they’re like, well, what? You didn’t try pepper spray? And I’m like, you’ve never been in front of a bear, have you? Yeah. This bear was not going away. This thing was almost seven feet tall, weighed almost 600 pounds. And to come to find out, and this was way afterward, come to find out he’d been in three other cabins over the mountain from us. Wow. Then they knew what rans fact, he knew his way into a double wide or single wide, or he, whatever. Yeah.
00:54:14:04 –> 00:55:31:26
He was finding his way into cabins, and he thought that was kind of fun. So he decided he was gonna try ours too. So we were the, we were number four cabin for this bear. And so I, I probably did everybody a favor by doing it. When did, where did your last, that last round you fired? Where did, did it hit him in the back of the head or where’d it hit him? Well, I tried shooting him in the head and it ricocheted off. And I was like, this is ridiculous. And when he was standing outside the window in front of me, he was, he was roaring at me like, ah, you know, big old mouth open and, and mad and everything. I shot him in the face, right in the mouth even. And it just didn’t seem like nothing was working. Yeah. And I don’t know whether it was just him getting hit in the face by the butt of that gun that did it and set him off with his own adrenaline or what. But that bear was just, I mean, he was, he was not gonna turn and go. He wanted, he wanted to fight. And I couldn’t believe, I’ve never felt that kind of fear. Never been the hunted before. I’ve always been the hunter. I’ve always killed things I’ve ate, things I’ve enjoyed, I’ve enjoyed putting up my own meat and stuff.
00:55:32:13 –> 00:57:04:12
But you’ve never felt a feeling quite like you are gonna be the victim. Hmm. Yeah. Crazy. And not only did I save myself, but I saved my aunt, my, my cousin. So, and on her side, there was a, there was a girl and about a 16-year-old boy, another 16-year-old boy, myself, my dad and Chuck, the, the guy that we took up there with us. So there was, there was about eight of us total that I kind of reacted in the right way, in the right time, was able to, to stop this bear from, from getting inside the trailer. Did you, how did you, how did you guys get into gold? You know, I mean, did you know what you were doing? Obviously you had the equipment and all of this kind of stuff. Was this the first experience up there and just kind of diving into it? Or did you do it years after that or years before that? Not my experience with, with, I’ve, I’d never gold mine, but I’d operated a lot of equipment. Yeah. Over the years. My dad had a backhoe. I’d operated some trackhoes here. I had, I had spent some time on machinery, even though I was only 14. I dug a lot of trench. I dug quite a few foundations. And so I was, I was pretty experienced. Dad taught me a lot of good things growing up as a kid. Never goldmine.
00:57:05:01 –> 00:58:55:09
So my uncle was the brains behind science of gold mining. Yeah. You have, you, you don’t know what ripples look like until you understand what a ripple looks like and what the carpet’s designed for. The angles of slo boxes, size of material and water flow, things like that all come into play when you’re gold mining. Did it ever really work out for him? Did he hit paid dirt like he was shooting for? So the first summer we mined a total of maybe 35 days. Something, something to that nature, because from the time, from the time that the river breaks open to the time that we got our machinery set up, our first year, we, we grossed maybe, maybe $150,000 worth of gold. The sec the second summer was much more profitable. We went back up a second year, but my uncle ended up having pretty bad on the job injury where he had a radiator blow up in his face. And we ended up sending him back to Utah, to the burn center to get him taken care of. And after that, we, we out and I penciled it out and we weren’t feeling like we were making enough money to do anything with it. So we bailed after the second year. Okay. Gotcha. Well, that’s interesting. Yeah. Well, 14-year-old you go up there, you know? Yeah. Being a scarred man. And then now you’re Yeah. You got Yeah. Real problems, you know? Yeah.
00:58:55:25 –> 01:00:16:06
Glad you had that. ’cause I mean, yeah, I guess you had to empty everybody. The 30 out six and the 30 30 probably was full of ammo the rest of the summer, I imagine right after that night. You know, I, I didn’t ever worry about that. ’cause I, I was taking care of myself. I, I wasn’t really worried about what anybody else was doing. Okay. Well, I bought some solids, bought some solids in town, went back at it. Yeah. At, at about $50 a box, even back then at nine in 92. Geez. Well, well, crazy story. That’s that’s, that’s a good one. Yeah. To be, to, to make it all better. You know, my brother, he was on his mission out in California. He, he got a, he got a phone call first from us, but he quickly saw the newspaper article. My brother, my other brother, he was in Rhode Island. He got the news article. I didn’t call him, but he got the news article and found out that his little brother killed a bear in Alaska and saved everybody’s lives or whatever. David Crockett found him. Yeah. So this, this actually, the story itself went nationwide due to the, due to the fact that luckily we went to the newspaper first, and I didn’t hear it, but I guess it went on talk radio too. There you go. And, and they tore it apart. They, they tore it apart.
01:00:16:14 –> 01:01:39:27
You know how Oh, liberals, you know how it gets Yeah. Because they, they have the other side of that story and they poor bear. They wanted to find out what I had done and why I had, we were burying our trash. I mean, literally every night, every day, every morning, whatever. We were taking our trash up and disposing of it properly. We were not leaving food out. We were, we were making sure that the camp was clean and pristine and nothing to provoke. Nothing to provoke. Yeah. And the barrier didn’t even attack the kitchen. Yeah. They went to the, it went to the other end and, and didn’t sniff around at all. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and so that’s, that’s kind of the story. It’s like, well, we didn’t do much. It just decided that that’s the end. It started on and it was gonna go through the whole place. Yeah. Oh. Gotta do what you gotta do. Well, Clint, we appreciate your time today. That’s a great story. It’s awesome. Well, thanks. It’s good. Thanks for giving me the opportunity. Yeah. I don’t know what you can turn of it, but, well, it’s good. It’s just these stories help people think and, and take a little something from it. Not sure what, maybe put solids in your 3 57 more than six rounds would work. Magazines definitely, definitely. Pack can be be prepared. That’s right. So, yeah. All right. Okay. Well enjoy your days off. Yeah.
01:01:39:27 –> 01:03:11:02
Thanks guys. Appreciate it. Thanks. Appreciate you, Clint. You bet. Talk to you later. Bye. Ah, that’s a good time. He’s a good dude. Clint’s a good, good people right there. So helps a lot of people around town. Alright, well, Bronson. All right. So next we’re gonna call a friend. He’s a really good friend of my brother’s. I know him too. His name’s Jason Young. He’s actually from southeast Idaho. Lives in Oregon now. I believe but’s always been a very avid hunter. I’ve done some hunts with him and my brother Aaron, he’s done other hunts with Aaron himself, and obviously a bunch on his own. But let’s give him a call. He has another wild story about an Idaho bear. Hello. Hey, Adam Bronson. Jason Carter. How you doing today? Hey, I’m doing well. How are you guys? We’re doing good. Doing good. Doing good. You got a few minutes to, to talk, I guess. I definitely do. Yeah. Well, good. Yeah, definitely. Well, you know, I’ve, I’ve heard secondhand through Aaron about this encounter and we may, we can talk about this at the end. We may or may not have taken some other steps in our own life to be prepared. No, you’ve sold a couple more pistols. Yeah, we’ve, yeah. Stuff like that. Single handed. But yeah. Anyway, this, for everybody that doesn’t know this is Jason Young grew up in what, St. Anthony, Idaho. Right. Does if I, if I’m right. Yeah. Yeah.
01:03:11:02 –> 01:04:20:24
I grew up, yeah, actually, Chester, Chester, Chester, Idaho. But is that even smaller than Saint Anthony? I haven’t even heard of it. It’s a thriving suburb. I’ve never heard of it. It’s by Saint Anthony though, right? Isn’t it? I mean, I always just associate it with St. Anthony. But anyway, south, Southeast or Idaho and, you know, Ivid Henry Life. You live in Oregon now, but why don’t you just, yeah. Tell us a little bit about yourself or listeners about who you are and kind of what, you know, you obviously been a hunter most of your life, and but where you’re at now and then that’s, we’ll lead into this, this crazy story. Yeah. So I’m, I’m just avid hunter. I love it. You know, I can’t do it enough. I don’t know. It is. I was just born that way I guess. But to start off, I gotta tell a story about Adam. Oh geez. I love it. I don’t even know what he’s gonna say. So I’m scared. There’s a lot of stories. Well, I, Adam, I don’t know the first time we met, but I can remember it. Is this the, your brother and I were getting shipped off to the middle of nowhere in Montana. Oh, okay. And you, you came to see Aaron off at the airport. Okay. At the airport. Sorry, airport. I don’t even remember this story. Okay.
01:04:21:21 –> 01:05:40:23
I, I remember going there, but I don’t remember what he’s about to say. But here we go. I hope it’s good. I hope it’s good. I was excited. I, you know, I was looking forward to meeting you, but you were there and you had, did you have white leather pants on? Oh, this is good. Leather pants with fringe. Come on with fringe. I just know you came straight from Monticello, Utah and you’re wearing white tight pants. Johnny Cash some Johnny Cash looking. They weren’t leather. I can guarantee that if they were tight, they were just because they were This is awesome. Random. Hey, this was 1995 or six. I mean, I’m just lucky to have pants. I was a broke a college student. Wow. Probably just, Hey all, all I know is that I know the year, the quarter that was in your pocket. Oh, no kidding. What? They were that tight. They were that tight. Come on. 1976. Come on my probably centennial quarter. Yeah. Was I married then? I’m trying to remember if Becky remembers any of this ai. Paint a picture of Adam Bronson in white leather. Was this 96? When was this? No, I was not married. I, this was like summer of 90, 95. I was not, I was, I was bachelor. So what do you think I was doing? I mean, juice box. What do you, what do you wear before you got your, you wear whatever you have.
01:05:41:01 –> 01:06:52:18
Yeah, I mean just, I mean, maybe not tight pants ’cause baggies come in and gone and, but I mean, it was not, whatever I had on, I can just assure you was purely random. I love this story. Yeah. And then just to, to, to segue into that, like three years later we went to Wyoming and hunted the high country. Remember that? Oh yeah. And you showed up in a white Ford ranger. Oh, I had a Ford ranger. The first, first real truck. I had it white. It was gray. With a white gray. Was it gray Luck Gray. Anyway, but I thought it was light. But I can just remember that trip. That was the worst night sleep of my life. Oh, in between you two. My pad had a leak in it. Yeah. Raining like, like crazy. Three man, three guys and a two man tent. Yeah. One of those. Usually a two. Usually you’ll a two man tents made for one guy. Yeah. Broke college kid. So you’re just doing what you could do. You’re just, you’re just, you know, surviving survival. But you just go up there and you’re all full of, you know what, and ready to hit the high country. Aaron was a resident or had been Yeah, that’s right. He was a resident then. Because we could hunt the wilderness in h Aaron was our That’s right. Resident guide for Jason and I. There. There you go. We were packed.
01:06:52:18 –> 01:07:57:16
Packed in there. And we got that. Awesome. That was a good hunt. Really. Probably saw a lot of bucks back then. We did. Jason, you didn’t killed a really cool buck. Really? It just had like six aside or something. It was nice. And that was after the winter kill by two or three years, the heavy one lost. Yeah. I’m trying, this might’ve been like early 2000. Oh, okay. It’s like 2003 by then. ’cause Aaron Aaron and Jason Aaron was outta college there. And they were living in Cheyenne Laramie. He was working for Wyoming Game of Fish. That’s why he was a resident doing that. Okay. I think it was way past 1995. So two, no, it was 2002. I bet it was 2002 drought year down here. Good year up there. Yeah. But yeah, it was, it was good fun country. I haven’t, I haven’t been back. Aaron, Aaron moved back, so we haven’t, you know, I didn’t hunt that specific spot ever again after that year. But anyway, cool story. Good stuff. That’s a, that was a couple great stories actually. Anyway, don’t know how much we can authenticate ’em, but, well, well, the white truck turned to gray is what you’re saying. So maybe the other story, not the leather. No, it’s not quite true. I’m still cut up on the leather pants that I don’t own leather. Not now. Were they not? Okay. They, it was white wranglers. I don’t know.
01:07:57:17 –> 01:09:12:03
I just remember white, they were white. Probably leather. They could have been white. Probably a little French. I’d like it. But this is, anyway, well, they clean up easy leather, cleans up easy. Alright, this is good. Well, anyway, so fast forward, I guess in, in, in life, you’re, you got kids now, you’re living in Oregon and you still like to hunt and get away and probably, I, I mean, I would imagine Idaho is probably, you know, your hometown state. You like to go back there maybe every year or, or, or often I would say. Right? Yeah. I go back every year. I got a place over there and yeah, I go over there are pretty much six, seven times a year. Yeah. So still got family and whatever. Probably it still feels like home, you know, it’s just, I have never really left Idaho, but yeah. You know, Oregon’s been a good landing spot. You know, I’m kind of getting into the black tails and That’s awesome. You know, I do a lot of fishing and some duck hunting, so it’s been good. Yeah. Yeah. Great bird hunting. Yep. Well, all right, so let’s, that’s, I guess fast forward to when, when this cool well, crazy story happened, so I’ll jump right into it. You know, I gotta go for the prior year because that’s what really saved my life, the experience I had the prior years to in. Yeah, absolutely.
01:09:12:03 –> 01:10:29:25
That’s kind of what in 2022, you know, I am just up there hunting in Idaho and you know, this particular place I hunt. I mean, I’m looking at a map right now. I knew how maps will, will indicate where there’s forest and it’s like, it’s like a green color. And then Yeah. You know, flatlands, the, the, the white color. Well, I was hunting out in the flats and it doesn’t even look like bear country. It’s where they, they, they run cattle actually. And every once in a while you could find some milk out there. And yeah, I was out there just pushing the, you know, hunting, just sneaking through the woods, the thick stuff last ge, this is in 2022, and just kind of going along, minding my business and outta nowhere, all hell breaks loose. And you know, the forest just blows up and I have a grizzly just coming right at me. Come on. Just weren’t even thinking archery weren’t even thinking grizzly country, really? Oh, well, no, no. I wasn’t even, I, fortunately I was carrying bear spray, but in years past, I wouldn’t even carry anything. I mean, I’m out in cattle country. Yeah. Wow. You’re, and, and you’re archery, archery out cu so you got a bow man. Yeah. So I’m just standing there with a bow and I got this grizzly bear, just giant, you know, this bear fortunately stopped about 10 yards.
01:10:29:25 –> 01:11:32:00
And I’m screaming at it, it’s screaming at me. Geez. And it kind of wanders off. And I grabbed my bear spray and hid the bear spray. And I think more went in my eyes than it went in the bear’s eyes. And I’m just like, dude, this stuff is not gonna work. And fortunately that bear went off and, you know, from that experience, I was just like, guys, I gotta be prepared when I go in these woods. It, it happens so fast. And I was so unprepared and, you know. Yeah. Have you ever shot the bear spray? Like most people don’t, but you buy it and have it, but you don’t, you’ve never even sprayed you test or know how to pull the pen and start using it. It’s like testing a dog, shocker collar. You’re not, you know what I mean? You don’t, or an EpiPen, which you’re not gonna test an EpiPen on you, you don’t need it. But there’s, you don’t, some of this stuff you just trust that it’s gonna work. Yeah. But one of our other callers talked about that, how getting oriented with spray and spray and, you know, maybe you’re like, well that’s, I don’t think that’s gonna work. And in this case, maybe that realization was after, fortunately the Barrett started to leave. But that prompted you to what? Think about other options before you come.
01:11:32:02 –> 01:12:45:07
Yeah, I mean, well first of all with those bears, I mean, I don’t know how big this was, but it was a, I’m sure it was a big old bore. And I mean, it, they, they run, I don’t know how fast they run 30 miles an hour. Well, probably, I just don’t think a a you got time mis the air’s going Stop this thing. A little pepper, a little mist with some pepper in it. Yeah. I mean, I could see, you know, if they, you know, if they’re gonna stop and stuff or they give you a warning or stand up and, you know, give you some, some time. I think the spray works, but man, when their, when their intent to kill you, I just don’t think it’s gonna work. Yeah. Yeah. So what did you, what’d you, the hunt ended or you left or whatever? Yeah, after that, you know, it kind of shook me a little bit and, and I was just like, I gotta figure this out. I used to carry a 500 Smith and Wesson, but you know, you got five shots and that thing weighed about, I don’t know, 15 and a half pounds probably. Yeah. Yeah. I know. And if you shot it, it just basically broke your wrist. Yeah. So I, I ended up getting one of those 10 mills, a Glock 10 mil. And I could still remember when I, I was picking up the ammo.
01:12:45:10 –> 01:13:57:22
I was at Sportsman’s and, you know, you can get the, you can get the cheap stuff or you get the good stuff. Oh yeah. And I bought that good bear load stuff. It was called like Val Co or something. It’s that hard cast lead. And I was just like, well, well, I’ll put, I’ll use it just in case. And so this year went out kind of the same, same place. It was about a mile from where that bear charged me last year. And I had a buddy with me, and it was his first time ever hunting up there. So I was just kind of showing him the ropes. And I took him into this spot. I just love, and just as we’re going into the dark stuff, I look over and I see where there’s these grizzly bears will dig these holes and they’re just these little shallow holes. And in years past, every time I find these shallow holes, I usually see a grizzly bear or, or you’ll find, you know, pretty fresh sign. Yeah. And so I wanted to show my buddy Brandon, is his name, these holes. So I walked over this hole and it’s like, okay, Brandon, you look at these holes, you know, you see these, you know, just kind of be prepared. Like these are no joke. Yep. Yeah, yeah. These are no joke. And that was just kind of my theory at the time.
01:13:59:01 –> 01:15:11:05
And at, at that time, I took my Glock out and loaded it, and I also bought a, a strap for my bow. So instead of, you know, usually you’re carrying your bow with your hands. I got a strap so I can have my gun in my hand while I’m going through the woods. And as we’re looking at this hole, we look at in front of us and there’s another hole, and then there’s another hole. So we kind of go and we’re exploring these and looking at these holes. And then I find this, this little hole that’s only about the size of a, a twice the size of a softball. And it was dug in there really deep. And I’m just like, oh, you know what, this is a badger, a badger’s been in here digging these holes. And, and I was just like, oh, I bet Brandon probably thinks I’m an idiot. Yeah. And so then we look up and I see another hole. And this one is freshly dug and a little bigger than the other ones. And it had just rained. And as we walk up to this hole, the water that was at the bottom of the hole, he could look down and there was an impression of a grizzly bear track. And I can just remember Brandon look at me and say, isn’t that a grizzly track? And I’m just like, I knew game was on. Yeah.
01:15:11:08 –> 01:16:22:11
And just, I don’t know how long it was, it just felt like almost instantly, just out of nowhere actually jumped out at 13 yards. And it was just on a dead sprint to kill me. I, you know, I just reacted and it was just like blink in my eyes. I just started shooting and I think I got two or three shots off. Did did you have the pistol in your hand when you were kind of inspecting these? I had the pistol in the hand. Yeah. Once, once I saw that, that first hole, I took the pistol out and put it in my hand and loaded it. And if it weren’t for that, I would be a dead man or I wouldn’t beat up pretty badly. Yeah. And loaded it means just jacking one it or just jacking one in the pipe. You probably had the bag loaded. Yeah. One in the pipe. Yeah. So this thing came out at 13 yards. And I mean, just, just right at me, just, I mean it, there, there was no warning, no nothing. It was just like, holy cow, just noise. Probably sleeping right there or something. Digging another hole or laying in the tree. You after the fact. Yeah, he was in a hole. Really? He batted down in that wet dirt or that stuff. They laid down just cooling school in the day and whatever. Yeah.
01:16:23:00 –> 01:17:33:29
So anyways, when this, I mean, I just reacted and this bear just, he’s coming and I get two or three shots off and it’s all dead falls in there. And I must have been stumbling backwards because I knew I fell down and it was like a glitch in the matrix. I swore time kind of stopped right there. I thought about everything. Yeah. And I just couldn’t believe I was laying on my back knowing that there was a bear just about ready to come over that log that was in front of me. And so I leaned up and I just, I just, you know, in the back of my mind, I said, you gotta make every shot count. And I can just remember focusing right on his mouth and, you know, just, just unloaded that, that 10 on him as he is coming at you again. I mean, as he’s come. Oh yeah. He’s never, he never stopped. Oh, you fell down, but, but he kept coming. Yeah, he kept coming. Yeah. And you know, I had, I don’t know, eight or 10 shots in this thing. And you could just see the bullets hit him in Ripple and there was no effect at all. And about after I got about 10 in him, and I’m shooting as fast as I can, Brandon was able to draw his weapon and load it.
01:17:33:29 –> 01:18:51:03
And he was carrying a nine and he started shooting and it sounds like a cap gun going off. And there was no ripple when he said the bear. But here, his nine millimeter go off. It was like the best noise I’ve ever heard. Just reinforcements basic bears on hold of me, basically. Yeah. He would’ve more holes in them. Yeah. And anyways, I just kept shooting and then my gun stopped. And just as this bear’s about come to come over the log where I’m on the other side, he drops dead. And yeah, I, so I mean, what is that immediate, like, threat’s over, but your adrenaline is like stilled up, maxed up? Yeah. Like, like not like nothing can get it higher in the world probably than, than your adrenaline right there. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. We were, we were, we were humming. That’s for definitely sure. I can remember getting up to the branch just like, what just happened? I was like, I have no idea. Let’s get outta here. Because, you know, you just, I mean, the bear’s like just right there and you know, you don’t know if he’s dead or not. And yeah, so we just kind of gather our thoughts. And I, the crazy thing is I looked down at my gun figuring, I dropped all eight 15 shots off and it had jammed on number 14. Oh, you had a, you had an empty cot? No, I, it jammed.
01:18:51:03 –> 01:20:07:16
So I think when I was laying on my back, you know, those, those Glocks, you gotta hold really tight Yeah. To have a cycle. And I might have limp wristed one. I have no idea. But it was jammed and didn’t kick it out, huh? Yeah, it didn’t kick it out. So, and we didn’t, I mean at that time we didn’t know if the bear was, you know, we thought he was wounded or we didn’t know he was dead dead. So, you know, I put that, that final shell in the back of his head and you know, we got out of there. Oh geez. Okay. So that ended the hunt, or it sounds like you need to do hunting. That sounds like you need to do hunting place two years in a row. And you probably did lost time a hunting buddy too, your initial Yeah, I probably did. I, it was his first, I mean, that was his first 20 minutes in this particular unit. Oh geez. And that happens to him. Geez. Yeah. Pretty crazy. So That’s crazy. Did you go back to Game and Fish? I mean, did you start making phone calls or anything? You know, a lot of things go through your mind. Let me just tell you that. And fortunately, you know, we’re just walking out and I just called the, the Fremont County Sheriff’s Office and just, you know, just said, Hey, I just killed this bear in self-defense.
01:20:08:19 –> 01:21:19:10
And they wanted me to just kind of hang out up there. And we waited around for like two hours and they called us later and said they couldn’t get an officer up there so that they’d just beat me at my place. And so they came out, interviewed me that night, and then the next morning they had a team of investigators out there, and I just showed ’em where the bear was and I went out there with ’em and, and they went in first they kept me out, kept me out of the woods and they did their investigation. And then they called me back in. And then I just kind of reenacted everything that happened. And basically they just shook my hand at the end and said, you’re free to go. Yeah. It was dead right there. It’s not like it crawled off in the night or anything. No, no. Yeah, I mean, you, I guess you put one in the, all the laying, it’s not like you shot from a hundred yards away, it’s just all the whole in the trees and I mean, it’s like, you can’t Yeah. If it’s in trees or any kind of forested area, it’s like, yeah, it’s, this happened at close quarters and Yeah. I mean, my casings were strewn all over, texted the bear, you know, nines and tens everywhere. Yeah. Yeah. But wow, what it’s, it was a crazy thing.
01:21:19:26 –> 01:22:37:13
You know, the, the biologist was out there who did the investigation and I gotta talk to him and, you know, they had that bear tagged and it was a, a 20-year-old bore 20, you know, he, he had no other prior, you know, fractions. Was it marked or tagged or anything? Didn’t none of that history. Yeah. That behavior. Yeah. Do you think there was a chance, I mean, do you have a gut feeling it might have been the bear from the year before? You know, I was almost a hundred percent sure. Yeah. And so two weeks go by and I’m thinking, Hey, that bear is now out of that, that place. I’m gonna go back. It’s not a big place. And it’s, it’s, it’s like, you know, like I said, it’s, it’s not where you’d expect a grizzly bear. And I went out there two weeks later, you know, chasing elk and parked my, my side by side and got outta the side by side and there was fresh grizzly tracks there, big old B track. No kidding. Who knows, Mary. It’s really time to find another place to go. It is. I mean, I know you probably have memories on every ridge around there, but they were all from the nineties and early two thousands and Yep. Now it’s hard to leave a place. But crazy is the crazy thing is that I did jump spots, but there’s grizzlies everywhere up there.
01:22:37:14 –> 01:23:46:19
Every spot I went had fresh grizzly tracks. Wow. Well, yeah, so in the end, I mean, yeah, it was, they got the bear, you, you were in the riot, I guess or not, not in the wrong or whatever it was. And you, you’re on your way, your story corroborated exactly what what it laid out when they were there and Yeah. But I mean, yeah, so the moral of the story, if you had pepper spray again, might be telling a whole different story. ’cause this was in close quarters. Yeah. There is no chance. There was absolutely there, there was zero chance that bear spray would’ve stopped that. No way. And, you know, that was, you know, during the investigation, that was the, the main thing is just, they were just like, well, why aren’t we, where, where’s your bear spray? I go, well, it’s in my pocket. Yeah. And it was funny because when they went out there to check on Dead Bear, you know, this team of, you know, three guys, they were all carrying ar tens and sought off shotguns and their, their, their, their spray was deep in their pockets too. So I just said, you know, the same reason you’re carrying a weapon. Well, you’ve been there, tell ’em I’ve been here before and I’ve sprayed it times. And I, I don’t trust that that’s enough.
01:23:46:24 –> 01:24:52:19
And so that’s why I have this and it, and you know, that’s, if I have the choice to go for one hip or the other, you’re usually, you’re usually gonna peel the pi pistol versus the bear. So do you, do you still, or would you still pack bear spray? And is 10 millimeter the right answer? You’ve done a lot of research since I’m sure, you know, I’ll definitely have bear spray and you know, if those bears, you know, if they’re out there giving you, you know, the boarding bark or you know, you know, doing circling you and stuff like that, I’d spray ’em. Yeah, yeah. But situations where they, I mean, those, both those situations, I mean, there was no warning. You know, you’re minding your own business. It reminds me when I was a kid in the eighties, and you’d be walking home from school and the dog, the, the neighbor’s dog would come chase you for no reason. Yeah, yeah. You know, it was just the same thing thing you got, you got reaction. Your, your reactionary time is to do one thing. And whether a dog you can maybe run, but on a bear, you’re either grabbing a pistol or you’re grabbing spray. And I know which one I would grab. If you’re in close quarters like that, you don’t have time to try one. Oh, that didn’t work. I’m gonna get the other one. You don’t. No. Yeah, you don’t. Yeah.
01:24:53:04 –> 01:26:01:29
You know, if I had a grizzly bear snapping at me at 30 yards, you know? Yep. That’s different. I’m, I’m pulling the spray out and filling the air with spray. Yeah. But when their head’s down and they’re coming at you at 10 yards, I’m using my 10. Yeah. So ten’s the right one. Well, I like the auto, mostly the auto versus six round. It worked for me. Yeah. Well, and you got more than, so I just, I mean, I don’t know how true this is. I just heard through the grapevine. Some friend of a friend knew the guy who did the investigation, and they said, I hit the bear like eight times outta and it penetrated 14 or whatever it was out of 14. Yeah. So, and it, I mean, you want to be able to fill the air with some lead. Did it penetrate good? I mean, did they say or did they I I had no, I have no idea. I, you know, it was, and again, this is from a third hand. Yeah. It actually came from my sister. She had a class, a student in her class who knew about the story, who knew the guy who did the investigation. And so she mentioned that I hit it like seven or eight times and the bear had like nine inches of fat on it or something. Wow. It was some crazy, crazy.
01:26:02:02 –> 01:27:09:06
Yeah, you gotta have, so I was looking at our bear rounds. We got, we got the tents mostly because of you and well, yeah, Aaron’s got a trip planned up north, so did some of us. And I don’t know when, when Aaron, I’ve said this many times, when Aaron does research on something, whether it’s trucks, tires, gear, whatever. I know it’s thorough enough. I, I don’t need to do any more research on it. I just, I buy, I said, all right, where’d you buy? Okay, I’m buying that too. And what am I, okay, I bought that too. But I looked at the data on the bear rounds and I, I don’t know, I was just, I mean, they’re one 90 graders and it just, the energy was, there’s some significant for being an auto, but it wasn’t, wasn’t like, like even a 3 57 was pretty impressive actually. But Yeah. But the problem is you gotta number rounds. You can’t shoot a revolver six through even eight. It’s not what you want. Yeah. You don’t, you want a 12, 15 plus. Yeah. Yeah. If I had six rounds, I mean, that bear would’ve been on me. Right. I mean, he didn’t even slow down. Well, let’s just face it, you’re, that was like 10. You’re, you’re aiming, but you’re kind of point aiming and you, and you’re just, you’re pulling the trigger and you’re hoping like you’re gonna miss over half the time. Probably.
01:27:09:09 –> 01:28:20:27
So if you have three, what if how or six, how many are you gonna hit it on? Let, let’s just one or two keep real. Yeah. I don’t care. That’s right. How, unless you’re really trained and you have like law enforcement guy and, and have been in weird situations, nerves of steel, and you have nerves of steel, but like, you don’t, you’ve ne most people have never had an encounter like that. Nerves of steel are not, not what you have. And so you just, you react and you’re gonna miss over half the time or three quarters of the time. I contend, I mean, I, myself included. Yeah, you definitely will. Yeah. Just go chucker hunting. Exactly. Spray, spray and pray. Yeah. You know, so Well the chucker hunters that, I mean, there’s a lot of chucker hunters out there that never kill a chucker. Like there’s, they’re not, they’re no joke. They’re kind of hard. Are you getting into it up there? I do a little bit of You got dogs or you just flush ’em and hunt ’em? No, I got a para of keres. The, the devil hunting The devil bird. Yeah. Squawks desert. Squaws. It’s funny, when you’re in ’em, like it’s never season when you’re in ’em. Oh yeah. It’s always hot summertime. And they’re gathered around water by the hundreds. Yeah. So. Well that’s a crazy story, Jason.
01:28:21:04 –> 01:29:28:03
I mean it’s, yeah, I mean, brings awareness and I mean, you guys are in Idaho, Southeast Idaho, wherever. I mean, or you’re in Wyoming, you’re in Montana, and there’s other places within those states, you know, even north, you know, northwest Montana, there’s a lot of places you can have these types of things happen. And I don’t know, it take precautions. That’s kind of what we’re just talking to people about. You’re second or third guy we’ve talked to and it’s, everybody can learn a little bit something different from it. But every situation, you better have, you better have it somehow mapped out in your head. Luckily, like you said, you had the year before. And I think that’s very, that’s they’re very fortunate. Had a year before that was kind of a close call, but didn’t get real, real close. Fortunately that I, you said I, I need something better than pepper spray. And then who knows, maybe bringing a buddy, I mean, you know, two people better than one. Whether you’re just making noise with a nine millimeter or whether you’re actually helping, you’re just still making noise or yelling or whatever. It’s Yeah. Not gonna happen that way very often either. A lot of times you split up, you go in an area with a buddy and you’re mile apart, but you know where you’re both at. But anyway, that was probably fortunate too. I’d imagine so. Yeah. A lot of good fortune.
01:29:28:07 –> 01:30:35:18
You know, the, the, the, the sad thing is, is, you know, I’ve been hunting out there for 20 years and you know, the thought of, you know, even people seeing a grizzly bears kind of like a, it’s kind like a unicorn. I mean, you heard about him, you never saw ’em. And you know, I, I saw four in in 2022 and you know, I had that one last year and up until then, I’ve never even seen grizzly bears up there. Yeah. And you’ve hunt there most falls of, of your life, you know. Yeah. Over half of the falls, you know, last say 20 years or 30 whatever. So Yeah. Well, crazy. I did, just so you know, we did find a picture of Adam in this white. We did. You did. God. Logan Logan found one. I had to dig deep on the internet, but I found it. Who is, dude, I’m pretty impressive. Who is that? Come on. Looks like my, my friend Adam. Come on. That looks like Vin Diesel. We’ll have to send this over to you Jason. It’s pretty, maybe I have a feeling. I see this is, and it’s in the, it’s in the hills match matches the environment. Now this is the big one when Adam had a full head of hair. No. Okay. AI shows it with bald ai. Yeah. Anyway. Well I appreciate your time. We do.
01:30:35:24 –> 01:31:49:22
And hopefully you got some hunts to look forward to this year and draw some cool tags. I know you have in the past, but be safe out there and I’m sure you’ll be packing the 10 in Idaho for long. We appreciate. Hey, hey, appreciate and Adam, you know, thank, thank you. And Aaron, you know, fortunately you two have been instrumental in me drawing a sheep tag. Yeah. Two amazing elk tags. Awesome. A moose tag. Yeah. And you know, I’m staring at some Colorado points Yeah. That need to burn here soon. And it would not have happened without you guys. It’s awesome. Well it’s, it’s maybe it just brings awareness to Yeah. Have a dream and, and start applying, you know, for you probably 20 years ago plus that, that, that, yeah. You know, you just gotta have your name in the hat. Like we always say some of these like sheep tags and you drew Nevada desert tag. I mean as a non-resident that that’s no given. Doesn’t matter how many points you have. So Yeah. Or some of the other tags. Utah Boulder. Yeah. Archery tag. So it’s fun. Good luck to you this year in the draws, so. Alright. Thank you guys. Appreciate it Jason. You bet. Thanks Jason. Bye. You bet. Bye. Geez, I don’t, that is awesome. I wanna hunt this. I’m going, I’m staying south. I don’t like these northern states. I don’t either.
01:31:49:25 –> 01:33:00:04
We got one more story come do yesterday. This is pretty intense. We, we just applied for Wyoming elk deep in bear history. No, I mean, anyway, just a little. We’re gonna amend amend. You can amend until May 8th everybody. That’s right. If you just had to get an application in yesterday for the deadline on Wyoming Elk and we talked to a lot of guys and made a lot of plans and made some plans selves. But it’s a long way. You just gotta get an application in so you can amen and choose a new unit free of charge. Yep. Many times as you want. Plug and play. Like Jason likes to say, we actually, I don’t know how much rumor there is to this, but you know, obviously Wyoming, everything else is due later. April 31st to May 31st. They’ve always liked to be the first thing to open and their elk in, in January. They used to get the results out by the end of February. That was awesome. Yeah. But the problem is tags, they were kind of going off a tag quotas from the year before and so they had to drawn non-resident tags. Yeah. And then the resident draw occurred in May. And if they had to cut tags in a unit, they still had to give us our tags. They already had drawn our tags and so the residents took all of the tag cut and they understandably they don’t want that to happen.
01:33:00:07 –> 01:34:12:13
But I’ve actually heard, I’m gonna call it a rumor. I’m not saying it’s, but that they are actually looking at maybe using moving the elk deadline later. Yeah. In the near future. Yeah. Because of those should throw things in our wrench for our business. It is the, well it is, it’s the 20, I mean it’s 2024 and we’re applying in January and we don’t find out till mid May. And they keep your money and they keep a full funds up front full deck of it. Yep. It’s another frustrating thing about Wyoming. Everybody’s frustrated with Wyoming a little bit. Nobody likes change if it’s negative change. All right everybody, well little shout out to the Hunt expo. We got that coming up. Go to hunt expo.com. You’re gonna be able to apply for 200 tags at $5 each. So up to 200 tags. There’s things on there that you might not be interested in. There’s a lot of Turkey and all kinds of different things and and whatnot. So anyway, that’s a drawing. They pull ’em and it’s pretty awesome. It’ll be February 15th to the 18th. You’ve gotta be in person. You gotta show up in person to validate your selections and you can go on to hunt expo.com and select the different hunts that you want to be in the, in the draw for. And the Hunt expo is, is one of the most impressive hunting conventions there is. Quite frankly.
01:34:12:19 –> 01:35:30:10
It’s, it’s where we would choose to go if we could choose one hunting convention to attend for Western beginning. It is for Western. Yeah, exactly right. It’s, it’s right up our alley and probably most of our listeners alleys in terms of a really good mix of Western, Western lower 48 species as well as, you know, Alaska and out and Canadian Outfitters there some Mexico Outfitters. So it’s, it’s very good coming up February 18th to or 15 to the 18th, we’ll be there in our same place as always. We’re gonna have some great deals. We’ll talk probably more before then about some of our optics deals, but we bring a bunch of optics. We want to get rid of ’em. So if you’re looking at something, wanna look at something, wanna look at our new tripods and some of that, we’ll have all those there. So yeah, hunt us down. Same pot gonna be some special deals. Awesome. Yeah, we’re looking forward to it hen expo.com Also, we wanna throw a shout out to Kenreck boots. You know, Trek’s been a long term partner of ours here at Epic Outdoors. We appreciate them. If you’re looking for a new pair of hunting boots, go to www.kenreck.com. K-E-N-E-T-R-E k.com 1 802 3 2 6 0 6 4. Hap just so happens to be on the very back cover of the newest Epic Outdoors magazine that we just barely got our first sneak peek yesterday right here. We had a box ’em show up. That’s right.
01:35:30:22 –> 01:36:53:03
The EAG live online, so if you’re anxious, there’s really nothing real pressing as far as deadlines. We cover Utah, we cover New Mexico and Oregon in that magazine. New Mexico being the earliest deadline covered in that state, which I believe is what Jason? March 20th I think. Yeah. Or somewhere around there. So yeah, we’re excited. It’s pretty fun. It know, this is kind of a fun time of year. It’s stressful here in the office ’cause we’re cranking pretty hard and and whatnot and trying to shape everybody’s plans. So Bronson, we’re talking to people about their short-term, midterm long-term strategies and how many, every single person have a different strategy. So it takes you mentally into their life and you’re doing that 20 or 30 times a day trying to put yourself in their shoes and help ’em make good decisions on where to utilize their points and whatnot. Yep, that’s right. Something we take pride doing. So yeah, March 20th is the deadline for that. And of course, inside the, the front few pages, page seven on of this one we have the, the tentative outdoors schedule for Epic outdoor schedule for all the deadlines and, and application results and things like that. That’ll drawing results that’ll come out. So anyway, it’s jam packed. Again, this is mag number two for 2024 and we’re just clicking down through, through the different states. So, alright, let’s, let’s contact a guy, a really good friend of mine.
01:36:53:20 –> 01:38:17:18
He’s actually, he was, he was a, I knew him as a young kid, watched him grow up here in Cedar City. He ended up moving away. He wrestles up north in college and, and one of the best wrestlers our town’s ever seen. And anyway, Brady Lowy and he’s an intense hunter. That’s what I like about this kid. And they were out, shed hunting, came across Grizzlies. A lot of you saw this on social media. I don’t know that he’s ever done a podcast about it, but I’d just like to, I would just like to give him a holler and kind of give his take the first time of year too spring. You know, we not out during a big game hunt where you sometimes have a weapon with you, whether it be a gun or I guess bow, but it’s not in the middle of a hunt. That’s right. I mean, hunt per se would’ve been May or I don’t know when this happened. We’ll find out. Yeah. Pretty awesome. You can google it too. Brady Lowry Barack. And there’s all kinds of news articles on it, but let’s just give ’em a holler. Hey Jason. Hey Brady. Jason Carter. Adam Bronson, Logan here. Epic Outdoors podcast. How you been doing? I’ve been doing good. How are you? Good. Just grinding away here. Course doing the hunting thing. As you know, it’s all we’ve ever done, but how are you doing? I’m doing good. Good.
01:38:17:26 –> 01:39:32:11
Have you got a few minutes? I do. I wanna, I want to just give you a minute to be able to kind of tell, tell us a little bit about yourself. Where you’re from. Obviously you’re from here in Cedar, which we’re super proud of. You’re pretty, pretty incredible talent. Talented wrestler and and whatnot and come from that background with your dad and whatnot. But just maybe tell us a little bit about, about your background, and then obviously you’re super into hunting, you’ve been a shed hunter like crazy. Shed hunted the crap outta all this stuff, and then when you got tired of this country, you headed up north. So maybe just tell us a little bit about that and then lead into our fun story. Yeah. No, I was born and raised in Cedar City. Love it. Still do. But I wrestled my whole life. My dad was the head wrestling coach at Canon View there, so I was kind of born and raised into it and ended up being a two time state champ in high school, their first one. And that was cool with my dad being the head coach, but that’s awesome. But from there, I went and wrestled in college in Wyoming and, and became a two time all American up there at Northwest College. And, and that was cool, but I’ve, shed hunted, hunted, you know, just kinda love the outdoors everywhere.
01:39:32:15 –> 01:40:47:17
So everywhere I go I, I’m attracted to the mountains and, and end up there one way or the other. So, yeah. And you went to school with my kids here in high school and whatnot, and so, you know, of course lived just down the street from me basically. But basic, yeah, pretty much neighbors. Yeah. I feel like I’ve known you since you were little, little, but that’s not necessarily the case. Maybe 10 years old and on. So anyway, tell us, you know, maybe tell us how this got going. You went up there to Wyoming. Do you, you know, maybe do you love Wyoming? There’s a lot of game and a lot of opportunity up there. Do you see yourself staying there forever? And, and maybe what do you, what do you like about Wyoming and then how this led to, to the incident? Nope. So Wyoming’s awesome. I, I do love it. Every, every part about it. The people are awesome. And when I lived there, I, I did my two favorite things in the world. I gotta a wrestle and gotta be in the mountains all the time. So, so I’ve seen a lot of cool things out there. And I’m actually living in Lewiston, Idaho now. Oh, awesome. Northern Idaho and going to plumbing school up here. But I’m in the mountains, you know, all the time up here. That’s awesome.
01:40:47:17 –> 01:42:07:12
And it’s getting to be, getting to be shed hunting, so gotta be that time of year coming up right away. Yeah. Yeah. So when did this, I mean, you were, you were wrestling at the time and, and I am, I know wrestling here is like a winter sport, but I don’t even know collegiately when it is. And so is this obviously spring or early summer? When did, when did this, when were you, this incident happen and where were you roughly at in the state? So it was fall, it was our preseason, it was actually our first week of actual wrestling practice when I got up to Wyoming. So it was in October. Okay. And we were out, you know, looking for bulls, actually, one of our buddies had tag and we were just, went out to the mountains and we started picking up sheds up there. And, and once you start finding sheds, it’s kinda, kinda takes over the day. So especially if you’re not the one with the elk tag, you’re like, well why now I can shed, I can shed, I’m gonna glass from this knob over here and I’ll be there. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So we, and I actually took three of my other wrestling buddies out with me. So it was me and, and three other wrestlers that went out. And me and Kendall go out all the time. He was kind of just like me growing up as a outdoors.
01:42:07:12 –> 01:43:17:26
Every chance he can get shed hunting full. So we kind of knew what we were doing and the other two kids were, were kind of a little fresher, didn’t spend as much time out there, so, okay. But we went and we hiked all day from, you know, eight o’clock once we got out there till five o’clock when we decided to turn around and, and found a pile of sheds. It was, you know, I had a good day. They didn’t find much. But Have you found some big, big old elk sheds up there? Yeah, I found a couple that day. We didn’t find anything big, but yeah. Yep. But I’ve, I’ve found some good ones up there. Yeah. And I’ve been to this spot multiple times before Okay. With other people. So it wasn’t my first time going to this spot, but we turned around and decide the two kids who were kind of fresher, they decided they were just gonna go to the bottom and kind of look for deer sheds on the way back and take the bottom out. And me and Kendall just looped, you know, a hundred yards down from where we just walked. And we’re just gonna walk a little bit lower elevation all the way back to the truck. We were probably five, six miles away. Oh geez. You and Kendall are, are you and Kendall what?
01:43:17:26 –> 01:44:38:15
You can, I mean, as tight as you get really good friends, he wrestled too. Yeah. So he wrestled too. He was from Evanston, Wyoming, but we didn’t know each other. We knew about each other, but we’ve only been hanging out for about two months at this time. Okay. Once we got to college. But we did become super tight. Super fast. Yeah. Kinda just our hobbies matched up. So, but we’re going, and it probably wasn’t, I don’t know, five minutes after we split up with the other two kids, we were walking down below and me and Kendall were oh, 50 yards apart, 30 yards apart. And I came kind of up on this hill and saw a big, big old pile of bear shit. Like it was everywhere. And so I look over to Kendall and said it out loud. I said, Kendall, you know, there’s a, there’s a big pile of bear shit right here. And, and simultaneously is when I heard the first branch break. And I looked over and, and the bear wasn’t 10 yards away from me. Well, are you, how open or how timbered is it where you’re at? Right here? It, I just got to the tree line. So we were walking in open Open and I had just came up on a tree line and Kendall was kind of in the trees a little bit, but he could still look back and see me.
01:44:38:25 –> 01:45:47:18
Like I could see him when I was talking to him right at the edge, walking in, just in, so the bear’s in there and he’s the bear’s in the tree line? Yep. Yeah. Okay. Yep. And so I yelled at him and hear the branch break and look over and didn’t have nothing but to yell bear. I guess the only thing I got outta my mouth before I got tackled. Really? He was coming at you right that fast? Yep, yep. Coming at me like five or five or 10 yards or how far away was it when you first saw him? Yep. When I first saw him, he couldn’t have been, you know, more than 10 yards away. It was right there. I don’t know if I jumped him out of his bed, if it was beded down right there, or Yeah. If I just was looking for sheds and not really looking ahead of me. But yeah, it just tackled me, you know, it didn’t really start biting or, or hurting me until after it tackled me. It pushed me probably 40 yards down the hill with its head throwing me with its paws. And really, geez. Was kind of just like, you know what the crap, I don’t know if it was trying to get me away from, from its cubs or Yeah. Or what it was trying to do.
01:45:47:18 –> 01:47:00:02
But it was getting me the hell out of there and, and it kind of pushed me up against these rocks and pinned me up against these rocks. And, and that’s when I looked up and, and we kinda locked eyes for a second and I was like, holy shit, this is actually happening. Yep. Like this is game on. Geez. Yep. It’s game on. And, and how, and so how long do you think that pushing, rolling, whatever down 40 yards took. And then, and what’s your buddy doing at this time? Is he fairly close? So he’s, yeah, he’s watching the whole thing. He watched the whole thing happen and he’s kind of up above a little bit and he’s coming down yelling, you know, Hey, bear throwing rocks, throwing sticks and do you guys have any protection of sorts? Me and Kendall didn’t. So we’re kind of just freehanding it at this point. You’re wrestlers, I mean that’s what they probably just, they usually have my paws or my weapon. They usually handle their own business is what they usually think. Yeah. Our our other two friends though, they had a gun that were with us, but we had just split up from them. Yeah. And Kendall’s watching the whole thing happen and, you know, not to take his words, but he said he, he couldn’t even see me. The bear was just on just over the top of you? Just, yeah. Engulfing me.
01:47:00:04 –> 01:48:12:26
He’s like, he knew I was under it, but he said he couldn’t even see me. Like Wow. And so he was throwing rocks and doing everything he could, but at this time I, you know, threw my arm up it bit my arm and broke my arm. My arm was kind of just hanging down at a 90 afterwards. And In the forearm or up in the, yeah, in the, in about my forearm in the air. Halfway down low. Not up in the upper arm, but Wow. No, my, yeah. My forearm just broke the elbow or whatever. Yeah. Yep. Yep. And so you broke my bone. Okay. And it started doing the shaking. It started shaking. I remembering with your, with your arm in it in its mouth. Yeah. Like the death, death shake. Yeah. With my arm and his mouth. And I just remember thinking, you know, there goes one of my arms, he’s gonna get it. He’s gonna tear it off. Yeah. Like a arm is not, it’s the smallest, I mean, got the molars around it and it’s going so shook you for a bit. I’m sure the pain was unbelievable ’cause it’s broken and now he’s shaking a broken arm. Your adrenaline. Yeah. Who knows. Yep. I couldn’t feel much at this point. Yeah. Or really until we got off the mountain, but broke my arm, it kind of tore up my shoulder a little bit.
01:48:13:01 –> 01:49:20:01
I just remember thinking, I gotta keep my head away from it. Yeah. That’s, you know, whatever wrestling moves I was taught since I could walk since I’ve been three, I was, you know, I was trying to keep my head. You were doing it? Yep. Everything I could. So, you know, it tore me up in a couple other places, but Kendall’s watching all this happening and he thought to himself, you know, I probably should just turn and run. Like that’s probably the best thing he could do. But we’d known each other for two months and he kinda crawled right down and he physically grabbed the bear kind of by the rough of the neck while it was on you, chewing on me, chewing on me pretty much kinda grabbed it by the rough of the neck and just did a yank. And the bear stopped chewing on me for a second, didn’t really know what was going on. And, and Kendall took off running after he broke the, he yanked on me. Yep. And the bear turned and went after him and they went into the trees. Ugh. And, and so I stood up and I don’t really know how bad I’m hurt at this point. I just know I’m, I’ve got a broken arm, I can see that my arm’s broke and there’s blood everywhere.
01:49:20:05 –> 01:50:31:06
And so I stand up and I go look for my phone, don’t have service at the time, and don’t even know what’s happening to Kendall. It’s, I don’t have really nothing to run in there to do anything. He’s like 30, 40 yards away, maybe into the tree line again. And yeah, he’s back into the trees and I can’t see him where they went. I don’t even know if the bear really got him yet at this point. So I stand up and I look down and sure as crap, the two kids who weren’t in the mountains much, they were wearing a red, bright red hoodie and they were standing about 70 yards down below us. Don’t know how they didn’t hear. They didn’t, they were just shed hunting still. They didn’t, they weren’t even know, they didn’t hear the commotion and were coming. They didn’t hear, they didn’t hear nothing. Yeah. You know what it’s like in big country? Oh yeah. But you, so you yelled those in the sound. Oh yeah. Yeah. And so I looked down and I just see the red hoodie. So I start screaming and yelling at them to come up. Help. I knew they had a gun, you know, help screaming as loud as I could. And, and I actually ran up the hill a little bit to see if I could get service. And I called nine one one on my phone while I’m yelling at them.
01:50:31:06 –> 01:51:36:25
And I think they finally got the memo like, something wrong. This isn’t a joke. Yeah. Yep. This is, this isn’t a joke. So they started running up to me and I started running down to them and I told ’em, I said, the bears got Kendall, like Kendall’s dead somewhere is what I told. He went into the trees, I don’t know where he is at. He went into the trees, I don’t know where he is at. And they just took off and started running up right into the trees where the bear was at. And I’m like, oh my gosh, here we go again. But I followed, they got a pistol or a pistol. I, yeah, they had, they, they had pistols Yep. Going into the trees. And by the time we got up to the tree line, Kendall was, he was walking back out of the trees, had got away the bear, just, it actually attacked him once and left him and he got up and kind of tried making a run for it back down. And the bear circled around and attacked him twice and really tore him up the second time. Like, like his face and his face. His, he, yeah, his head gouges in his head. His arms really tore him up the second time and kicked some dirt on him and thought it, you know, Kendall thought he was dead.
01:51:37:00 –> 01:52:47:05
And I’m sure the bear thought he was dead and, and something just got Kendall up and he walked, broke outta the trees while we were coming up to him. And I just remember seeing him and he was red covered in blood. There’s nothing to it, but just red. And it was like, oh my gosh, at least at this time, 9 1 1 had been called and Lifelight was on their way, but still we’re, because you’re, you know, six miles, we’re six miles away from the pickup. Geez. And we’re still right where we got attacked by the bear. Like, you know, it’s, there’s no, there’s still, yeah. There’s no time to really stop and be like, oh my gosh, it’s, we’re going, going, going. Did you ever see any cubs? Like you mentioned Cubs, but it was more like you just were guessing. Did you That’s never seen any cubs. Okay. Yep. We dropped our backpacks when the fishing game went back up in there. They said that there was cub tracks is what they said. But I don’t know, from what I knew, I kind of thought it looked like a bore. Yeah. From seeing bears before. I thought it was a bore and I was pretty close to it, but I’m not gonna go against You seen, you’ve seen quite a few, few bears up there. I have seen bears up there before. Yeah. Yeah. Just not that close.
01:52:47:15 –> 01:53:53:18
I’d blast them up across canyons and knew they were in there for sure. So you meet up with him, I mean, initially now you got kind of one or two of the guys with piss, but kind of maybe watching in case it comes back, but you’re kind of sussing what your injuries, his injuries and like, has it even optional to start walking outta here type thing. Right. Can he speak, is he in shock? So yeah, he comes walking out of the trees and the first thing he ask us is he says, how do I look? You know, and Gus just goes, oh, you look great. He goes, good, you know, and just keeps walking. I don’t, I don’t even know how he is walking at this point, but he’s in great spirits, just, you know, happy to be out of there. And he makes it probably about 200 yards and he is getting lightheaded. He’s like, I just need to sit down for a second. And so we’re like, okay. And we sit down and they check our necks, you know, see if anything’s really bad, bleeding really bad if life flight’s not there yet. You’re, you’re saying your buddies are checking your necks? Yeah, our buddies are checking us out, just kind of making sure, putting, they took their shirts off and wrapped their head, his head and their shirts and, and took a little break.
01:53:53:20 –> 01:55:00:22
But we still knew we needed to get Kendall down. We needed to get him outta there. He got a lot of facial wounds and bleeding that Yeah. You don’t, he’s bleeding. Don’t really know at some point. Yeah. At what point does he, he is lightheaded. He is already told you he’s getting lightheaded. Like is that the start of something really bad here or you don’t know? Yeah, yeah. We aren’t medic, so they kind of pick him up and start helping him down the hill and we’re just heading straight down. We aren’t going on the trail at this point. We’re trying to get to the farm fields, thinking where a helicopter can land, you know, you’re just going to a clear spot. Yeah. So yeah, we’re heading, is it getting evening, late evening? Is it, is dark coming up? Are you getting like that time of day? It’s, yeah, it’s getting, getting there. We probably have an hour, hour and a half till dark, but not enough time. We start heading down and just straight down and by the time we get down to the bottom, we have to cross the fence. And Kendall’s hurting pretty bad at this point. We pretty much had to pick ’em up and carry ’em over the fence. And two farmers that were out there on their side by side. And apparently when somebody calls life flight, they call and notify all the farmers around that there is a bear attack.
01:55:00:23 –> 01:56:10:10
Keep your eyes out, you know, really the kids are alive and injured. And so when we got to the bottom, these two farmers drove on their side by side and came and picked us up no way. And drove us, yeah. Drove us back to where the ambu there were ambulance there waiting, but the life flight still hadn’t showed up. It takes a while for life, life flight to, to get called, spool up all their checks and don’t know where they’re coming from up there, Cody, I don’t know where they’re coming from, but yeah. And we were moving pretty quick, you know, to get ’em down and out there. And so at least they had the ambulances there waiting to get us back and rip our clothes off. And I didn’t realize how bad I was, you know, tore up or how bad he was tore up when we were up there until they started cutting our clothes off of us. And seeing just, you start semi relaxing a little bit. Like, okay, we’re enhancing. That’s when, that’s when the pain kicked in and that’s when it was like nasty. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Nasty. Snapped. Was a compound fracture in your, in your arm or just displaced terribly. Yep. It was sticking out compound. Yeah, it was, it was nasty, but I was just running with it, not even holding it up. Was it swinging? You weren’t, yeah, it was just hanging. It was just hanging.
01:56:10:15 –> 01:57:18:24
And I looked back at it and I was like, man, I probably could have held it up a little better, could have could’ve supported it a little more, but hmm. No, with, so those one thing we say though, Kendall says it, and I say it is, we’ll go back and people ask us, well, do you wish you would’ve done this? Do you wish you would’ve done that? And, and really with the outcome of it, there was nothing I would change. And there’s nothing he would’ve changed. But other than packing a gun or pistols, like the only thing it happened, oh yeah, it happened. One with you, you, you jumped a bear at 10 or 20 hours, he was on you immediately. What did you do? You might not even have been in that situation. Even it got your pistol off. Do you feel like Kendall saved your life? A hundred percent. Yeah. If he would’ve just left me in that bear, that bear was there to kill me. Yeah. Yeah. And, and amazingly after it came after him twice and maybe, I don’t know if he actually quit moving, played dead or just, I don’t know what happened. The bear fortunately left without killing him. Right. I don’t know why sometimes you don’t know why, but that’s just had enough, you know, it’s fight or flight mode too.
01:57:18:25 –> 01:58:33:25
And so then he, he got done with you, went in, saw a dude running and took after him and then dealt with him twice. And then at some point it’s like, all right, fortunately. Wow. Wow. So those two farmers are probably on your Christmas card list for the rest of your life, huh? Probably. Yeah, for sure. Yep. Wow. All three of them will be, there are three. Yeah, that was, that’s crazy. Kind of a godsend there because who knows, I don’t know if he had a couple more miles to go, who know, who knows what happens. So the photos of you guys in the hospital went on, they’re pretty telling like he, his face and all of that. It was, it was pretty crazy. Yeah, it was, it was crazy to, you know, be in college knowing that it was a possibility, but never thinking that it would happen to you. No. And I still go out in the mountains, but I tell you what, I’m a lot more prepared every time I go out. Do you take bear spray and pistol or? Yeah, I double up if I’m in Montana or Wyoming. Yeah. If I’m in grizzly country, I saw somebody was reaching out, offering you guys, you know, free firearms or whatever. Did that ever happen and what, what, what did you learn on your research as far as your best calibers? I did. Someone reached out and bought me a 10 millimeter.
01:58:34:06 –> 01:59:37:18
Just, I like that it has the more rounds auto. Yeah. Personally. Yeah, because I think if a bear’s running at you, you’re gonna be so fricking scared. You’re gonna miss half your shots. Yeah. Yeah. We say the same thing. Yeah. Yep. Does it bother you anymore? Would it bother you to go in bear country anymore? Or you just like bring it or just No, I, I’ve been back after, I’ve had another bear run up on me and my buddy Cole Lake. Oh yeah. And Ley from here in town too. Yep. We were up at the, in Montana at the Clearwater Open and had another one run up on us after I got attacked. And it was kind of scary, but you gotta, you know, I was prepared that time. Yeah. A little bit different, but Yep. It’s a little bit different. So they obviously had to do surgery on your arm and all that, your wrestling seasons, both of you, probably that year you didn’t wrestle I’d, ima obviously you didn’t, so did you house your arm, you recovered? Did you wrestle? I mean, how did all go? Yeah, no, that’s the, I think that’s the coolest part about the story is we got attacked. We both went in for surgery and at the same hospital there in Billings.
01:59:37:18 –> 02:00:47:21
And about three months later I was, you know, back on the mat wrestling and he was cleared up just as fast as me just ’cause he didn’t break anything. He has Wow. A lot of cuts, lacerations. And so when I got back to the mat to wrestle, he was taking his red shirt ear, but it was my last year in college, so I kind of really wanted to wrestle and poor. He was my drill, he was my drill partner, getting me back, getting me down to weight and I only gotta wrestle at regionals and nationals, but made it to nationals and I came back and took fifth place and all American at nationals that year. So without a season under my belt, that was, you know, pretty big accomplishment, I guess. Awesome. Yeah, that is. Wow. But you’ve always, you’ve always had incredible genetics and natural talent. It’s pretty awesome. A lot of drive obviously. Yeah. To even to get back to that. And then Yeah, your dad was good. I mean, just, anyway. Well, anything else you want to add to all of this? No, just, you guys are awesome. We’ve always watched your stuff. Me and Kendall both, you know, it’s, you guys got a good thing going when Jason reached out. I was like, heck yeah, well we’ll hop on him talk.
02:00:47:22 –> 02:02:06:19
But I’m glad Kendall wasn’t available, so I’m Well, I’m sorry we didn’t and, and a lot of times we just don’t know when we can do ’em and whatnot. And I hit you, what, a week and a half ago. But then anyway, just, we decided today was the day we had Wyoming deadline come and go yesterday. So we’ve, we got a few minutes, you know. Yep. So well tell him we, we missed having him on here and we’re just, we’re super glad you guys are Our guys can tell the story Yeah. Alive and well. Exactly. So have you done any other podcasts on it? Not any big ones, really. We did the news articles and Yeah, kind of people come and did stories, but we haven’t done too many podcasts yet. What year was it? Was it 2022? It was, yeah, 2020 2nd of October 15th. Okay. All right. All right. Well, well bring, we appreciate it. I mean it’s, you know, we’ve had a few of these stories today and, and some of them, they prepared someone, some they couldn’t in yours. I mean, you just had to survive basically. That’s all, that’s moral. I’m getting it. Didn’t matter what they, he had at least you, you were, you were gonna get bit, you know. Yeah. You know, he, you know, ready. He was, he was had a gun, had pepper spray. You wouldn’t have probably had to do anything. Had your immediate buddy had a gun.
02:02:06:19 –> 02:03:18:18
Maybe that could have stopped part of it. But those, these stories are, they’re real inspiring and real. Yeah. Make us all maybe prepare a little bit bit and, and almost everybody said the same thing, you know, if they just said, ah, I just figured it never happened to me. Everybody has said that. So, and it, and it can. So that’s kinda what we’re trying to talk about. I idaho’s pretty, pretty good to their residents. You got a lot of good hunting there too. What, what you got any goals and aspirations big game wise or, I love the opportunity. It, it gives you to hunt in Idaho. Yeah. You know, I get to go and buy my sportsman’s pack and Yep. I get to kill, you know, kill an elk, kill a derrick, kill a wolf, a bear at Cougar every year, you know, it gives you as much opportunity as you can gonna be. Awesome. Yeah. It’s gonna be awesome. All right, Brady. Well we sure appreciate you taking some time and man, we’re, we’re glad everything turned out good. Obviously we talked prior to this and you know, right when it happened and a little bit to exchange some texts and whatnot. We’re just happy for you and, and it was just awesome. We appreciate you coming on telling your story and and allowing all the listeners to hear it firsthand. Yep. Thank you for letting me come on. That’s awesome.
02:03:18:27 –> 02:04:25:21
All you Brady, we appreciate it. Thanks man. Thanks again. You bet. See you. All right. Geez. Kind of crazy. It’s kind of a, it’s no joke. Mellow day, mellow ending. I mean like, geez, the kid’s tough man. No, yeah, well he’s one of the toughest kids in town. He’s just tough. Well honestly, probably a great reason why they were able to at least ho hobble down off the mountain. They were obviously in great shape. They’re young guys, but they’re, you know, college athletes that, you know, have been pushed through a lot of agile, a lot of tough Yep. You know, hard things. And anyway, a lot of people, you go up there, if you’re not even in shape, good luck trying to get off a mountain with your arm dangling to the side or your head bleeding all over. But anyway. Yep. Take precautions people. Well anyway, appreciate everybody been able to call today. It’s been, you know, lightning’s been, you know, you learn from it. You do. I mean we’ve, because of these stories, we’ve taken precautions with Hunts we have coming up this year, Jason. Yeah, that’s right. You know, with just stuff we didn’t have that that we’re gonna have now that, whether it’s Alaska or other places. So we appreciate the stories and the time that they’ve been able to share and hopefully everybody else maybe learns a little bit of something from too. That’s, yep.
02:04:26:07 –> 02:05:35:19
I wanna give one more shout out to one of our main advertisers here from the very start, q you q.com, whether you got backpacks, whether you got hunting gear, whether you got accessories for hunting gear, 10 sleeping bags, tent, sleeping bags, all that. They’ve been with us from the start. We appreciate Brendan Burns. Justin Schafer administer some of their Guiding Outfitter program. Been great friends of ours here at at Epic Outdoors for a long, long time. ku.com, ku iu.com, limited lifetime already on all their gear. Great stuff. Whether it’s base layers, insulation, outerwear, like I said, pack seat back, footwear, everything. Check ’em [email protected]. They sell direct only. You’re not gonna find it in stores for a unique business model. Frankly, kind of a little bit surprised it hasn’t maybe caught on more with whether it be hunting or other, I mean there’s other stuff that sells direct, but it’s not really caught on. They just avoid the middleman. Go make as far as their, their sales tactic. Yeah, the practice. Not a, not a common way to do it. No, I like it though. Usually you can go any, I do. It’s a unique online. Of course they’re gonna be at all the shows. They’ll be at. They’ve been at a bunch we’ve been to already this year and they will be at Western Hunting Conservation Expo. If you need to fit, try and check out the new stuff.
02:05:35:25 –> 02:06:40:21
You know what I like about Q you, they’re not afraid to, to say they’re pro hunting. No, absolutely. And they’re, oh they’re Hunter. It was, you know, Jason, I mean he was a hunter. Yeah. He was built, I’m building hunting gear for me and my hunts. That’s what he, they’re, they’re not afraid to show a rifle on social media. I think there’s, there’s or dead animals. Gripp grits. I in this day and age, there’s companies doing that. And I just think, anyway, I think it’s important. I think some of that kind of stuff’s not being, not being embarrassed that we’re in the hunting industry. I think it’s important anymore and it’s sad. You even have to mention it. Wouldn’t that, wouldn’t that be natural? It’s natural. Yeah. Right. But anyway, appreciate it. Just like Adam said, appreciate y’all. That’s been on here. Anybody out there that’s has crazy Barack stories, why maybe reach out to us on Instagram. Maybe we do a part two, part three. Who knows? I know there’s plenty of people out there. These are just a few of the guys that we know that came to mind last minute as we were kind of trying to prep for this. And Bronson, we’ve got one month left for our membership drive where we’re giving away incredible hunts. Yeah, it is. It’s a deadline. What, the 29th? Yep. This is a leap year. This year in February.
02:06:40:21 –> 02:07:55:18
You can’t believe it’s the 1st of February here, but the 29th that what, 1159. That night’s the last time. So you might get some mailers from us. You, you might get, you know, last, you know it’s in the February magazine, but it is our 2024 epic hunt and optics giveaway, membership drive, get away Some off awesome hunts. You know, if you haven’t seen it already, it’s all [email protected]. But I’m just gonna read through the species real quick. We got a British Columbia stone sheep hunt for 2025. Dark, dark, dark stone. Incredible. One of the outfitters that has the most tags anywhere in bc. We’ve got a 2025 Utah slash Nevada, both sides of the border on oh nine. One on the pilot Pilot peak with pilot peak ranches. Elk Hunt there. We’ve got a 2024 Nevada elk hunt. We’ve got a 2024 Nevada, 2 31 Mul Deer Hunt as well as a Utah early September one CW deer hunt. What else car do you wanna The restaurant. We got to Mexico cos deer hunt with one of our favorite guys ever. Just consistently, we kills giants. We actually sent a hunt winner on there with them. Killed a, I think I wanna say it, 150 fourteens or 20. We’ve sent multiple and that’s for two hunters actually. So we did did that a little bit different. Yeah, we actually did that for 200 Brown.
02:07:55:18 –> 02:09:01:18
And then we’re looking at each other like, why don’t we give two individuals, we could up an opportunity and maybe we do down the road, who knows? Who knows? But this would be a for a party two win, one name pulled out, take you and your buddy. We’re also doing a wolf hunt for two hunters. Again, same kind of thing. Two hunters get a go. Enjoy that five day wolf hunt with Heart X up there in Idaho. Grizzlys will probably be asleep then I’m hoping. I don’t think you have grizzly problem, but kill every wolf you frequency. That’s right. Kill the pack. That’s right. Anyway, Bronson and I have both killed wolves up there. There’s nothing like it when you sh when you shoot one, you get one in your scope. It feels like I’m about to do something wrong. It it, it doesn’t as much now. But did this, you’re gonna do federal time is what it, this was the first and second year that they became delisted. Yeah, it was. It was like a whole life. It was, these are like protected. Yeah, it doesn’t feel as much now. Not as much. But but still it’s a rough, it’s one of my favorite, favorite trophies actually. It absolutely, you killed the alpha male. Absolutely. Your brush back. So anyway, pretty awesome. Epic gear package with the Hoit Bow Fierce firearm as well as incredible optics, rifle scope fifteens, whatever.
02:09:01:20 –> 02:10:16:15
We got a whole stack of stuff in there. So actually eighteens from Vortex. But anyway, SRO Zeiss products we’re, you know, proud to give that away. $15,500 worth of gear. And then you can buy tickets to get in. We also have a bonus package where you’ll get a, what are we giving? 10 grand in for a hundred. Your choice. That’s right. So we’re putting up 10 grand for a honey of your choice. You book a hunt and we’ll give the outfitter 10, 10 grand direct. There’s no if, ands or buts. It’s not a gimmick. It’s it’s real money. And so anyway, you can buy tickets, you can refer a member, potential member, refer your buddy to join Epic Outdoors. You get a ticket in for the honey of your choice. You can join up as many of your buddies as you want. We have ticket packages. You can go online, epic outdoors.com to buy. You can call in or you can mail us. So anyway, call in at (435) 263-0777 epic outdoors.com. Or you can enter by mail. You take a photocopy of this thing in the magazine or download a form on our website and mail it in if you want. If you wanna mail in a check, that’s fine. The time of year too, even though it’s February, we’ve only really missed one deadline. That’s the Wyoming Elk. Of course, if you do points only, that’s in the summer.
02:10:17:01 –> 02:11:30:11
So if you’ve been a listener and haven’t joined our service, it’s kind of the time to do it. It’d be the time to do it, to get, but we still have January magazines. We get you January, February, get you caught up and then you’ll get ’em for the rest of the application. SE season from now through June, July. And you get a name and the ticket or ticket ticket, Ben, Ben Barrel and the hunt of your choice. That’s right. So it’s kind of time to do that. Do all three. You only got what, four weeks left at the end of February, so get it in. Looking forward to seeing everybody at the Hunt Expo that’s coming up here shortly. Basically two weeks, 15 days. We’ll be there. Hopefully you’re there too. Come by and visit us. Buy some optics. There’ll be some deals you don’t see anywhere but the Hunt Expo, just because people like SUA have authorized it. So. All right, everybody, have a good day. If you hunt in multiple states or want to expand your hunting portfolio, the Epic outdoor license and application services for you, we have dedicated hunt consultants and a team of application specialists to help you develop and achieve your short, medium, and long-term hunting goals. We do the work, you draw the tags. Epic Outdoors license app 4 3 5 2 6 3 0 7 7 7. The Utah Hunt Expo is right around the corner. Head over to the Epic Outdoors booth.
02:11:30:13 –> 02:12:52:00
Chat with us and get access to exclusive optics deals. Don’t miss out on the 2024 Utah Hunt Expo at the Salt Palace Convention Center in Salt Lake City from February 15th to the 18th. Handcrafted quality. Precision rifles from start to finish is Red Rock Precision Rifles. Many of our staff use Red Rock rifles and we are excited to announce the new Red Rock, epic Mountain Rifle 2.0. Visit red rock precision.com to learn more. If you are in the market for a hunting property, look no further than St. James. St. James Sporting Properties specialize in premier hunting properties throughout the west. Check out available hunting properties at st james sporting properties.com. Here at Epic Optics, we are a verified dealer for Swarovski Zeiss, Leica Vortex, pulsar, stealth cam and more. Call us today to visit about available optics we have and what would be right for you. Or visit epic optics.com. Good looking comfortable. Camo describes KU u. Check out the new encounter camo line for some of the best early to midseason gear out there. Check out ku u.com to learn more. Kenna Trek makes great boots for any situation. Most sheep hunters in the high rocky altitudes use these boots to keep their ankles in. Check in the rough terrain. Visit kenna trek.com to learn more. We at Epic Outdoors are a fierce firearms dealer and have many popular models in stock and ready to ship.
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Call us today if you would like help deciding which options are right for you. Fierce long range Rifles are a great rifle and many of our employees here use them. Visit fierce arms.com to learn more. Thompson’s out of the box. Thousand yard accurate rifles can’t be beat for affordable, long range rifles and shooting schools. Visit thompson long range.com for only 150 bucks a year. You get nine issues of the Epic Outdoors Magazine and unlimited access to our hunt consultants as well as to our verified research website and member experience program. To see all other member benefits, visit epic outdoors.com. Hoyt means top of the line archery equipment. Hoyt is the official bow manufacturer of Epic Outdoors. Everyone on our staff shoots a Hoyt bow call. If you’d like to visit about their different models or visit hoyt.com. Thank you to Phone Scope, the best camera optic adapter out there. Phone scope makes high quality phone cases and optics adapters. Visit phone scope.com to learn more. Stealth Cam has high quality durable trail cameras that we all love to use. Check them [email protected] or call us to order today.
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