EP 13: Hunting Giant Bears with Mike Ukrainetz

They come in at night, they come in randomly. There's guys addicted to killing giant birds. Oh, and this bear charged out and swatted that wolf. Anything to do with Western big game.

Welcome to the Epic Outdoors Podcast, powered by Under Armour. Hey everybody, Jason Carter here with the Epic Outdoors Podcast. Just sitting here today visiting with a guy by the name of Mike Ukraine. It's been the industry for a long, long time. He's up in Canada. Anyway, before we get going, I just wanted to thank Under Armour for being the sponsor of these podcasts. Of course, they sponsor a lot of different things we do. We're pretty heavy partners with them. I appreciate them and all the support they give the hunting industry. Anyway, hey Mike, how are you doing? You on? Yep, doing great, Jason. How are you? Doing good. Doing good. Anyway, Mike's one of those guys who's been in the industry. Feels like for absolutely ever. Yeah, I've been a while. I just can't believe. I can't remember being in the industry and not knowing who you are. It's been a long, long time. Yeah, yeah.

I've been guiding since about 1988. And then started my own outfitting business in 1992. I was Ukraine's guided hunts then. Okay. With my brother and my dad. But then found out that nobody could pronounce our last name. So I changed it to Mike's Outfitting. So I've been that since, I can't remember, for a while now. Wow, that's crazy. Yeah. Yeah. So I've been guiding now for 30 years. I'm 49 years old. Turning 50 in April here. Well, that's great. Yeah, you've still got a lot of good years ahead of you. Yeah, for sure. At least one or two, huh? Yeah. Well, good. And so how do most people pronounce your last name? Or is it everything? Well, Ukrainus is the right way, but people pronounce it all kinds of ways. Or they just, they see the last name and just get fear in their eyes and don't know what to say. That's great. Well, good. Let's see. And so tell us about your childhood a little bit.

Like, what brought you to 1988 or 1992? Like, what brought you to that point? Sure. Well, my dad was a bow hunter. And he got me into it when I was just a little kid. We shot archery when I was, you know, 8, 10 years old. And then I started just going with him hiking. We have a great bow hunting only zone around the city of Calgary and the mountain zone around the town of Canmore. You might have heard of it. That's where guys go to hunt bighorn sheep all the time. Yeah. So I just started hanging out with him when I was 11, 12 years old. And then we couldn't hunt until we were 14. But I did a little bit of hunting on his tags before then. And then just went to the, so I hunted lots in the mountains and just got hooked on it all. And my dad liked to hunt with other younger guys. And so we, I hiked all over the place. And I grew up hunting moose and elk and sheep.

And my first big animal I took was a bull moose when I was 14 years old. And then a bull elk that year. And then I shot a, I think a muley buck the next year. And then I shot my first bighorn sheep when I was 16 years old. Wow. That is crazy. So you get tons and tons of history. Like 16, what year are we talking? That was in 1983. Wow. In 1983, I think I was 8. We could buy sheep, we could buy sheep tags over the counter and hunt them until December 3rd. Wow. That is crazy. And we could still buy them over the counter now. And we can hunt them September and October. And then to hunt them in the rut in November, now it's a draw. And that's when all the American guys come up. And that's when they buy their hunts is to do that, that too. Not to get off on too big of a tangent there, but like, can you still find them in September, October?

I mean, is that still a good viable option to do that over the counter? It's very, it's very tough. Like in the U.S., I mean, it's hard to draw the tag, but I think in most areas, relatively easy to get the sheep or you're trying for the really big rams. In Alberta, you just buy the tag over the counter, but everybody's hunting them. It's hard to find them. It's hard to find a legal ram, hard to kill them. So, you know, I killed one in 83, another one in 92, and then I, and again in 98. And then I shot one in October in 2006. And my brother got one. I helped him get one in 2015 in the, in the general season. So it's kind of like the unlimited tags in Montana, but, but there's no quota. It doesn't get shut down. It just keeps going. Yeah, that's kind of crazy. So still, still available to you guys. Is it, you know, back then, back in, you know, the early eighties, you know,

it's probably like anywhere, just like we had over the counter Arizona strip tags, you know, for mule deer, but times changed. But back then there was probably just wasn't the emphasis on it. Plus not as many people were just, it just feels like we're overpopulated anymore. Yeah, no, there wasn't, there was still a pretty good challenge for it, but yeah, there was, it wasn't as much, you know, and I would just, my dad would drop me off on the side of the highway and I just do a big loop hike and all through the mountains and hike all day. I wouldn't stop hiking, just trying to find sheep, but be up to snow, crotch deep snow and be 20 below. And then he picked me up back on the side of the highway again at dark. That's crazy. I'd learn how to just survive in the mountains and I never had a map or compass or anything. I just hike. Yeah. Just hike and figure it out.

Well, you know, back then, you know, I remember my first GPS was, gosh, I want to say it was like a Magellan or something anyway, it was a big old box. And the first time I used it was in Oregon, you know, in the Wanaha, super thick country anyway, dang lucky to find the truck. But I mean, that was mid, I feel like it was mid nineties or so. We haven't had GPSs that long. No, no. And I'm still bad for not using them. I'm still pretty old school, but I got, so yeah, I did lots of hunting all over. And then I just, when I got a little older, I wanted to try some guiding and I got into guiding for bear hunts first when I was like 19 years old. At first we did spot and stalk baiting wasn't legal until I believe 1988. And then I also, I guided for dull sheep hunts in Northwest Territories for several years. And I just, I only did a bull hunts, just a super cub fly in and then just guided bull

hunts for that. I do a couple of hunts each year and, and that was pretty wild too, doing all those and same thing with no maps and no GPS and no satellite phone or anything. So you're talking, you, you guided the archery, like archery hunters only back in the late eighties. Yep. Yep. In the eighties and nineties there. That was before, that was before archery really took off and had these technological, you know, advances that we've had today. I mean, you, you had to hide, you know, you had to be guiding some serious guys that were spending some serious money and, and using, you know, what you and I would now call kind of marginal equipment. Oh yeah. And I mean, the biggest thing with that was, um, yeah, just, I mean, you didn't have the contact with the outside world. We'd get dropped off and it was a 12 or 14 day hunt and we had no communication out.

And then, yeah, like you say, the archery equipment, the biggest thing was no range finders. Yeah. So, you know, you're guiding guys for dull sheep, or even I've guided guys lots for spot and stock mule deer. And then you'd be stalking on a deer and you're constantly going, well, how far do you think it is? You know, whispering to each other and going, well, I think it's 55. He's really, I think it's 60. Well, we better get closer. You move into closer. Like, what do you think now? I think it's just over 40. What do you think? You know, shoot him for 40 and shoot way over his back. Jeepers. He was 30. Crazy. Crazy. Yeah. And then you got all that riding on you, the time, the expense, the, you know, the, you know, it's not like you get tons and tons of opportunities and stocks on sheep. No. So we would really watch the sheep and make sure they got in a good position and wait for

a nice sunny day and then make our move on them and, and try and really make it work on those. So, so yeah, I got to try lots of, uh, tough bull hunts, doing those and all of the Canmore bull zone. And, and then I got more into the bears guiding for those and then baiting came on and started learning the whole bear baiting, bear baiting thing. And, um, now I just, that's one of my favorite things to do, like not just outfit for the bears, but also to, uh, guide for them for myself, like hunt for them for myself. Well, that's crazy. So there must be a lot to the bears. I want to jump into that here in a minute, but there must be a lot to them. I mean, to go from sheep and, you know, and hunting pretty much any and all species and, and guiding all these different species to really, you know, be infatuated with bears.

Yeah. You know, I, I, I, uh, love the bear hunting there. Yeah. There's lots, there's lots to it. And like I say, I did lots of mule deer bull hunts. So I take 20 guys a year in my outfit for that. So we had lots of that. And then the, the, the bear hunting is a real challenge. Um, probably the biggest thing is, is judging the bears, judging big bears. Yeah. And then, um, you know, debating the bears gets a bit of a bad rap where you see TV shows all the time that show it. And, you know, a bear comes into the bait and it's a fuzzy black bear and the guy shoots it. Yeah. And people think, well, that's no big deal, you know, but you know, it's kind of poor in that they just don't try and talk about, you know, we, we should be trying to kill the bigger, older male bears and, um, not so much just shoot any bear.

Cause it, it, it isn't that much of a challenge to do that, but to get the big old ones, I mean, those, the big old boars, they're the ones that they chase other small bears out of the areas. They keep them off the bait sites. Yeah. And, uh, they're the ones that kill lots of cubs too. So. Yeah. Wow. And so, um, you know, what's it like, I mean, when you're, you're guiding, you know, you, you want to, you want your clients to be successful and, and not everybody cares about maybe the biggest bear as much as you do, but how, how do you work that out? Like, is it something where you've got, you know, a particular bears that you're after from year to year, and then you've got specific clients that are kind of coming with you because they know you're into the big bears or how does that all work? Right. I, well, a lot of it is my, my whole outfit.

Now I've gone to where I try and get everybody to try and get those bigger old bears because, you know, we'll be, we might have 30 bait sites and we'll be feeding 300 to 400 bears on those sites. No way. That is crazy. Yeah. Cause I haven't, and that's honest, that's, I haven't scattered around. I have a 1200 square mile zone and I have these baits all spread out and I put test sites in all different places and the bears, like in Northern Alberta, there's so many of them. They're a real problem for farmers, beekeepers. They're a real problem for farmers. I have a real problem for farmers. Private landowners can shoot as many as they like. Yeah. Unbelievable. Year round. And so, but if you try and, you know, it's good management. If you try and target those older bears in that, those older bears will drive the smaller bears out into the farmland.

and then they get into the beehives and all that and they cause real problems. So if you can take those bigger, older boars out, the younger bears, the females, they can live back in the big woods areas and stay out of that farmland area and then they don't have to kill so many problem bears. Yeah, that's crazy. That's quite a cycle there. So, I mean, it's got to be interesting because, I mean, if you're like me, anything I hunt, I just like hunting old, big, mature, you know, the biggest, maturest animals we can find, you know, especially mule deer, but elk or bears or anything. Right. So you kind of want to, I mean, you kind of want to save them and let them get old, but at the same time it's good, like you're saying, it's good proper management to, you know, to really target those older bears, which I guess is what we're doing down here.

It's just, it's just, I don't know, at some point you're going to, you know, you've got to take them out even though you want to keep them, you know, keep them alive and see how big a bear you can kill, you know. Yeah, and I agree for sure, Jason. Like I listened to the podcast of you and Greg Krog there talking about mule deer and how you're trying to get these very big mule deer. And it was, to me, it's, the bears can be just as challenging as that because, especially when you're trying to get those big old boars, when you're, like to get a boon and crockett bear, a bear with a 21-inch skull, it's incredibly challenging. Wow. And because the bears, even though you have a trail camera there, they're probably like, I would guess a mule deer on a water hole, you know, the biggest, oldest ones, the bears for us, they come in at night, they come in randomly, they can easily get spooked off.

And even to judge bears, to say whether he's a 19-inch skull or 20 or 21, and even judging body size, whether he's a 300-pounder or a 400 or 450-pounder, it becomes a super challenge. And it's so fun with archery because you're sitting watching all these different bears coming and going, and they can get in fights with each other. They can come up the stand and mess with you. And so it adds a fun element. You know, you get a little scared on some of it, but I don't think they're much of a threat overall. And then to go for those really big bears is, you know, we had like a big blonde bear that we tried to get. And for three years, that bear was so random and so smart, he would come into the bait site and just look up at the guy in the tree stand and turn around and leave. Crazy. And then he'd be gone for weeks at a time.

You don't realize how cautious those bears can be and how much they can move. Like we had him at one bait site and then he moved 15 miles to another site. And so I knew it just because he was a pure blonde bear. And at this point, he was five years old. Well, for my trail camera pictures, I could see that. And we had been trying to get him for three years because usually the blondes don't get very big. But this, so we will try and get them sometimes at a bit of a younger age, three or four years old. But we had been trying to get this guy and he made it to five years old. And then with the bull hunters and the tree stand, we just couldn't get them. He'd walk in, see the guy in the stand, turn around and leave. That is crazy. So finally we, yeah, finally we just, we, we put a rifle guy on it and he showed up on a bait site and claimed it first thing out of the spring.

And that's what you hope they'll do. And then that's when you have one of your best opportunities on those big bears. And he claimed it, got them on trail camera, put a guy in a stand right away. I think the second or third evening, the guy sat, the bear came in, same thing, came over this little ridge, spotted him in the stand, just turned to go. And the guy shot him with a rifle. And it was, uh, he had a 20 inch skull and he squared seven, two or seven, three and, uh, just perfectly blonde right out to the end of his claws. He get yellow. So a lot of guys will call a blonde bear. That's really a cinnamon, but the blood true blondes will have yellow claws and be yellow all the way to the ends of their nose and to their paws and just a beautiful bear. Jeez. Well, uh, you know, as you've been talking, I mean, it raises so many questions. Um, tell me about genetics and versus skull size.

I mean, you know, when we're hunting deer now coming, you could have 180 inch deer be five to six, seven, eight, nine, and never get over 180, you know, and genetics play in course feed, but play such an important part of size. Just wondering, you know, what your theory is on skull. Oh, for sure. And it does to get bears with, I mean, the record books go by the skull just of course, cause it's just like antlers. It's the most solid measurement of it. And in our area, we're fortunate in that our bears grow at a pretty linear rate along with their skulls. So when the bears say a three year old, he might have a, around an 18 inch skull. And then when he's, he's four, he'll have, you know, like a, almost a 19 inch skull and he'll square around seven feet at that point. We have really great genetics for big bodies.

And then when they're five years old, they'll generally get around that 19 and a half, 20 inch skull. And a lot of places that's a top end bear. They'll never get a bigger skull than that. And our bears would be around that 300, about 325 pound mark and square solidly over seven feet. And then there's only some bears that really get much over that. A lot of bears totally top out at 350, 360 pounds and never get a 21 inch skull. And some, some areas they'll stay under 19 inch skulls. They just won't get the big skulls and never get bodies over 350 pounds or rarely reach seven feet. But in an area like ours, they'll get all, all of our big bears, the six year old bears will get into that 20 inch skull class, well over seven foot square hides. And then most of the real upper end bears will be in that 400 to four, four and a quarter pound class. Yeah.

So, you know, that's when we're getting into the real giants and we've shot a few that are and get up to 450 pounds and we'll square just below eight feet. We only shot one that squared out right at eight foot and he was 450 pounds and 20 and three quarter skull. So they have to have that. And then if to get into that 22 inch class, it's just a freaky genetic sort of thing. And I guided for another outfitter that's only about 150 miles from our area and he could shoot seven foot bears and only had 18 and a half inch skulls. That's crazy. They'd be four, they'd be 400 pound bears, seven foot, and then they have an 18 and a half inch skull. Yeah. They're just like, he's like, they've got good feed. They're super heavy bears, but they just don't have the genetics, huh? Right. And some whole regions are like that.

Even just within Alberta, you'll get where rarely do they ever shoot 20 inch or so. So that's where the neat thing, it becomes just like a deer hunt where you're a guy that gets into bears and knows bears and you go, okay, I'd like to take a bear that's, you know, that's over 450 pounds. That's just a super rare bear or a bear that's eight foot or one that's got a skull of 21 inches. You know, I, I, I know a taxidermist, a friend of mine, he's a fanatic bear hunter. He could shoot, he shoots two bears a year and he's trying to get a 21 inch bear. That's his big thing, a Boone and Crockett bear. So it's just like getting, trying to get a 190 net mule deer or a 230 net. You know, you could shoot a lot of huge high growth scoring mule deer and never kill a 190 net typical. Yeah. Yeah. There's so, so much more to the trophy on a bear. It could be hide, the color, you know, rubbed or not.

Just a lot of different, you know, factors that come in besides just, just skull measurement. Yeah. Yeah. And that's what makes it interesting. And, you know, for him, it's been, he just, he wants to get a 21 inch bear. I think he shot 20 or 30 bears with skulls over 20 inches. Jeez. So there's, there's, there's, there's bear freaks out there. Like, like, I mean, just like we have, you know, we're addicted to mule deer or elk or different things that we have down here. Of course we have bears too. It's just, we're on draw systems and, you know, kind of tough to get a premium tag, but, but there's, there's fanatical bear hunters out there. That's what you're telling me. There's guys addicted to killing giant bears. Oh yeah. And they're into it. Rightfully so. As much as you're into mule deer, it can be equally as challenging. You know, it doesn't seem like it.

Cause you're like, well, you know, how can that be? I see you're comparing spot and stalk mule deer, but you know, it can be when you're trying to get these upper end big animals, you know, and it's, and like I say, it's a worthy goal to do. It's proper management in that those big boars, they'll come into a bait site. There could be 15, 20 bears feeding on that site and staying out of the farmland, staying away as far as being problem bears and not getting just killed by fish and wildlife officers as problem bears. And then a big boar can come into that bait site. He'll claim it, scent it all up and drive those other bears away. And the only bear he, the only other bears he'll allow at that site will be sows that he wants to breed with. And then he'll kill any cubs he comes across and keep those other bears away. So now as a hunter, you take that bear out.

He's an old bear, mature, and those other bears come back in again. So it's, you know, it's a great proper way to, to hunt them. I, you know, I think so. It's crazy. Yeah. It's quite, not just about, you know, running out there and running bait piles. It's like, it's like you're saying, it's kind of, you take it pretty serious. And, and to learn all this about bears and to, to know all this. And I can just imagine, you know, what, what it's like to grab your first trail camera pictures and wondering if this particular bear's back or that particular bear, even running a new site, you know, it's gotta be pretty exciting. And the neat thing is too, that there's kind of, to me, there's quite a bit of misinformation around, like people ask, how do you judge a big bear? And often I hear all the time, oh, you're looking for a bear with a big hanging belly.

I don't know if you've heard this stuff, but. Yeah, I've heard about, heard about all of it, you know. Or how much, I don't, have you hunted bears? Yeah, we've hunted them, not much. Two or three times, Chris that I work with, Chris Peterson, he's big time into it, loves it. Um, you know, but, and I've hunted them a few times, but never killed a giant. So yeah, just teach, teach, teach us about it. Like, how do you judge a bear? Well, yeah, like a lot of guys, you'll hear, yeah, how to judge a bear. So they'll say, okay, you look for a bear with a big hanging belly and he waddles when he walks. He's got a round head, little ears out on the side. And those are all characteristics of a big, a huge male bear. The problem is those are also characteristics of a huge sow. Yeah. But the difference is the sow is short and fat and she'll never top like 300 pounds.

The biggest sow we've ever taken was a 300 pounder. Most of them are 200 to 250 pounds. And, you know, you don't want to take out the breeding stock. And so you, you really try and avoid shooting those sows. It's not that big a deal if you do, cause you know, as I told you, we have so many bears, but more when you're going for the boars, the, the distinctive characteristics on a boar is he gets long and he gets tall in the shoulders. So especially like a lot of hunters, they want to come, a bull hunter, they want to come and shoot a Pope and young bear. They want to get a nice 18 inch bear that, uh, you know, has a hide square, you know, close to seven foot kind of thing. And actually what you're looking for then is a bear that's, that's long. And if we're in a tree stand, what we do is we'll cut a log five feet long and lay it on the ground. We'll have two or three of them around.

And when that boar is as long as that log from his nose to his butt, just a straight line drawn through them. Yeah. Then that's, that's a Pope and young bear. Yeah. Cause he, he has that length to him and a sow will never be as long as that log. The biggest sow will never be. Wow. So it's a nice, simple way to judge it. And then that's out of a tree stand. If we're hunting bear, if we're hunting on the ground, on a ground blind or something, then if you have a barrel at the bait, that's nice. Cause then if a bear is 34 inches to the shoulder, cause you can't really see a log on the ground too well, then that's the height of a good boar. He's 34 inches at the shoulder. Or if you don't use barrels, you have a pound of stake into the ground at 34 inches or have markers on the trees around there to show that.

And actually that bear that's like an 18 inch Pope and young bear, or even a 19 inch in a lot of areas, they're actually longer and lanky. They don't at all have a hanging belly. They don't have a round head and little ears. They actually have a high belly and flat and they'll just be a little heavier in the front end. And they'll have actually a longer head and a little bit longer ears. And often guys will pass up a bear like that because they'll go, well, that's a young bear. And then they'll accidentally shoot the big fat old sow that comes waddling into the bait. Now it makes total sense. It's just, if people think of it, it's just like your dog. You know, when he grows up, when he's a big, when he's a year old, he's got all his frame, but he's got big paws. He's, he's got a long head and a high belly. And then he fills out as he hits, you know, two years old sort of thing.

So they, they don't, they don't ever get that big pot belly and that huge frame and the big block he had and little ears until they're so big. Then that's when they have all the length and the shoulder height.

That's crazy. And so let's say I want to shoot a boon and crock a bear. Tell me about how long I cut my log. How am I, how am I judging him? Like let's just, let's forget Pope and young for a minute. Let's go straight to the top. How are we going to judge a giant? Well, and I mean, you are looking for a bear that has those characteristics that has that hanging belly and that big, heavy front end. And he waddles and has a round head, little ears. But the, the big thing you are looking for is that, that length and the shoulder height. And the truth is, you know, really to get say a, let's say a 20 inch bear. I mean, that's the minimum for the boon and crock at recording period. And to me, that's about as big a bear as you can judge. Like kind of say, I think that's a 20 plus inch bear. Yeah. But after that, it's practically impossible to judge whether he's a 21 or a 22 inch bear. Yeah.

You got to get the flesh off the skull and hide off the skull to really, and then just go from there. Because just like anything, you probably have meat heads. You probably, you know, longer hair on the head, shorter hair. It's just harder to judge what a skull is going to come out of. Yeah, that's exactly right. And most boon and crock at bears will actually, they'll have a long, a long head. So that's where they really get their score. Cause you could get a 15 year old bear, two 15 year old bears, and they'll just be an inch difference. But I found the main differences in the length of the head. And actually, if you get a bear with a shorter snout and just a little bit wider head, he'll look really meat headed, pumpkin headed and huge bear. But in the end, he'll, you know, maybe be a 20 inch bear sort of thing, right in the low twenties. Yeah. We've seen bears.

We've seen bears like that. And those meat heads do stand out and you think I've got a freaking giant, but you, you know, I've never thought about that on the length. Yeah. And then often the bears, our bears with the best genetics will have that length in the head. Then what they also seem to have is the length in their whole body frame. So they'll have the longer legs, longer body. So they maybe don't even look as impressive as another bear that, that has that real round head, because some of those bears will have shorter legs. Their bellies will look closer to the ground, but, um, they're, they're, they don't have that genetics to get that big boon and to get, make a boon and crock a bear or even an eight foot high, because the height of course is measured by, to do the square of the hide, you're measuring

across the, the width of the front legs and the nose to tail and taking the average of those two. So that the crazy enough leg length is a huge part of that and just body length. Well, that totally makes sense. Tell me a little bit about age. I know we talked about the blonde bear being, you know, you mentioned five years old and this and that, but you know, I've heard bears can get upwards of mid twenties or, or even more just, you know, wondering, you know, tell me about age. Yeah. When's prime. When do you really like to see a bear get harvested? Sure. What's, what's the, I, you know, the preferred age? No, that's a great question, Jason. Cause it, um, I, I guided for guys before I started my own outfit and the bio, we were sending in teeth to get them aged and we're running big outfits with lots of hunters, taking

lots of bears and those, most of the big boars would top out at about 18 years old, maybe 20 years old. So somewhere in that 15 to 20, 15 to 20 year old would be the big boars. And then the sows, some of those sows would get over 30 years old. Crazy enough. And they'd get gray hair. They get flecks of gray all in their hair. And then when you take them, they'd be missing teeth. And, and the funny thing too, is at a bait site, they're often the most aggressive bear at the site. I always tell my hunters, if you have a bear that's hanging out at the site and just keeps chasing off other bears, but she has to actively chase away other bears. That's a big dry, that's a big dry sow. So anyways, to get back to the, the boars, I mean, in a lot of areas, especially when you get into a wilderness area, it could take 10 years for a bear to grow to kind of his max

of his genetics, 10, 10 plus years old. But if you have a place that has great feed, like we do in our, cause we're in a lot of farmland and the bears can move to the farmland. And then we just have lots of good feed in the bush. Our bears all, they'll get as big as a 10 year old bear when they're six years old, maybe seven. Ours, ours get big fast. I guess you'd get the same thing on the coast to those bears. Cause they have sort of almost unlimited feed while they're out of the den with salmon and all the other animals and really lush vegetation. So it does vary quite a bit with the areas. And so we're talking, when you're talking big and maxed out, we're talking body size or, or maybe it's a weird question, but like, when does this, when does their skull quit growing? You know, and that might be. Yeah. Yeah.

I think first they'll max out body size and then the skull keeps putting on a little bit more and a little bit more. Yeah. So if you're talking to try and get a bear as big as a skull as possible, then I believe they are getting into that 15 year old class, 15 plus year old. I took one that was, uh, he, he scored 21 and a quarter. I got him with my bow myself and he was aged at 18 years old. Wow. Is that the, is that, did you net, did he net 21 and a quarter? Yep. Yeah. Yeah. He was official net Booner was 21 and a quarter. And so you've been doing this for 30 plus years. I mean, how many bears have you had an opportunity to kill that size? Well, in, well, like I only get a limited amount of time myself, but with my outfit, we might shoot a Booner like that every, sometimes every year or two might take two years and that's taken 30 guys a year. Jeez. Just shows you how tough they are.

You know, it's just not, not easy. I know outfits, no, I know outfits that have poor genetics in their areas. They still have the huge bears, which most guys don't care about the skulls. Yeah. But if you are, you know, if that's something you, you think is cool and you want to go after one, then I know guys, they might shoot a Booner, a bear over 20 inch skull. It might take them one out of every two or 300 bears they shoot. Yeah. That is crazy. I know this is another crazy question. Maybe only I would ask, but you know, like I know bear hunters that bait, you know, they just use crap, you know, just all the donuts, anything, you know, anything they can use. It's free, you know, popcorn or whatever. But I mean, I don't know, have you ever tried feeding them good quality food? And actually, does that make a difference on maybe the body size and putting on weight?

Or is it just the crap is just as good as anything else? No, no. It's funny that you know, that's a good question to ask. Because actually, guys, we will feed them all sorts of things. But I make a big effort to give them meat scraps. Yeah. So, you know, pieces, small, small pieces of meat and meat scraps. And the older mature bears, that's what they love to eat the most is meat scraps and beavers. You know, we'll get beaver carcasses from trappers. The trappers will sell the hides. And there's so many beavers in Canada, and it's such prime habitat for them, that we buy the carcasses, the beaver carcasses. And that's what the big mature bears want to eat the most is the meat scraps and the beaver. Yeah. And the younger bears want to eat more of if you have candy, popcorn, that sort of thing. They want to eat more of that.

So I guess just like a little kid, he'd rather eat candy than a steak. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we could, you know, Mike, like you and I, we could develop like the mountain ops recipe for bears and growing giant bears or something. You know what I mean? We could feed them some supplements, you know, throw a few little supplements in the feed and whatnot. Let's see what we can come up with, you know? Yeah. No, and it is, I mean, we feed them for two months of the year, and they're out of their dens here for maybe six months. Yeah. So it's a big addition to their, you know, the health of those bears. And I found over me being in the same area for years and running the same bait sites for years, my bears, they weigh a little more. Like I pretty much know when I have a three-year-old boar just from his overall size. And, you know, they used to be in that 180 to 200-pound class, most of those bears.

And now most of my three-year-olds are up around 220 to 240 pounds. Yeah. And the sows will put out more, they'll put out more cubs, have bigger litters more often. And then, you know, we grow up the bears on our bait sites and try and really stay off the sows and allow them to raise their young there. And then just take the big, old, prime boars. And that's where it's exciting to do because you're seeing bears on there. Oh, there's that big one. I think that's the same bear from the year before, the white patch on them. And we'll put hunter after hunter trying to get that bear. And it's amazing how they can evade guys. And just they're so random and come at night. And, you know, we had one bear with an ear tag. He was a problem bear and he was dumped off. And he had an ear tag. And I found out he was actually dropped 30 miles from where we took him.

But the first year he showed up, he was a nighttime hitter. Maybe a couple daylight pitchers. We put hunters on him steady. Couldn't get him. The next year, no pitchers of him. I thought he was gone. And maybe he got shot somewhere else. And then he showed up the third year, just like a deer. Shows up again. Here he is, the ear tag bear again. And he would be between two different bait sites. But random and tough to get. And then another one of our hunters, Clint Morrill from Colorado, sat on it. And here in June, he came in following a sow and had that ear tag. And he shot him. And he was a 21 and something inch skull. But he was a bear that didn't have the genetics for a huge body. You know, he was 360 pounds. And probably about a 10-year-old bear. From his teeth wear and his skulls, how his skull looked.

But cool to kill a bear like that you've been watching and knowing and basically named. Do you name your bears? We name our deer. It's easier to talk about them. Oh, yeah.

It's easier to talk about them than say, you know, blackie. Which blackie, you know? So, I mean, we're naming our deer. I don't know, you're naming bears? Oh, yeah. Yeah. We name them, you know, for sure. And we have, sometimes it'll go off the bait site name or off, say, the hunter that was trying to get them. We're like that, the ear tag bear, the blonde. I'm not too good with coming up with original names. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I have one bear, we've been after him for five years and just can't get him. And that bear will come, a few guys have seen him. And I even had a guy pass him up because he was like, oh, how's the first day, you know? And I wasn't sure, you know, a lot of guys aren't sure what they're looking at. Oh, geez. Right, right. And then you see on trail camera, there he is. Why did you shoot him? Well, I didn't know.

I wanted, you know, I didn't want to shoot a bear the first day. Yeah. I want to really enjoy my hunt. You're like, yeah, but that bear's 20 years old. It's a giant. Yeah. Well, that's cool, you know, I know you brought up a great point about proper game management. And basically, you know, you've got to look at your area like you, I mean, even though you don't own the area, I mean, you're deciding what bears get taken. You're deciding what they get fed. You're deciding who sits those sites. You know, if you take out an old bear and the whole breeding thing and the sows and, I mean, it's kind of a program. I think it's smart on your part and any outfitter's part to manage their game properly. I mean, it's just like us and Mule Deer. We could go in and, you know, I could take 20 deer hunters into one area and wipe it out and it'd be no good for the next 10 years, you know. For sure.

Proper management seems to me like pretty key for your program, what you got going. Yeah. And on the bait sites too, like, strangely enough, the bears can be sensitive to sows being taken on the baits, especially if it's a sow of breeding age. Yeah. So, you know, we don't like to shoot them because, you know, we could have, like I say, 15 bears on the bait and then you take a big sow and the bait can go dead. Wow. Bears will leave it. Super smart. I'm not sure, you know, why that happens, but you can continually take boar after boar out of the population. And I think because they're such, they roam so much and they're such random hitters, it just doesn't affect it. So it really helps us out in that we can keep up the numbers of bears on our baits and then just try and shoot the biggest, oldest boars. And like I say, it's not easy to get them.

To get those bears, like last year we had one of our best years with 30 hunters and we took 11 bears that were well over seven foot and in that 350 to 450 pound class. And that, that was a great year. No, it sounds like a phenomenal year. Sounds like you couldn't beat it, you know? Yeah. No, it was a great year, but you know, still we took 30 guys and you know, 19 of them never got a bear like that. So, but in no way is it an easy hunt to do like a lot of people think it is, you know, they think, they think it's easy to just go to some place and book a baited bear hunt and shoot one. And they, they say, well, I'd always rather do it spot and stalk. But to me, you get to miss out, you're missing out on a lot of the fun of purposely hunting for big animals, just like you would purposely hunt for big deer.

Just, you know, like you say, you name a big mule deer or you're trying to get a mule deer over a certain size. And to me, that's the greatest challenge and enjoyment. And you get to hunt the maximum, you know, as you get to hunt lots of days, then you scout lots of days, hunt lots of days for those more mature animals. Yeah. And, and it doesn't hurt the population. So it's, it's very similar with the bears to try and get those big ones like that. So do you have a, like a specific story or specific bear that you hunted for multiple years or something that stands out? I know we talked about that blonde bear and that's, that's quite an awesome story. And, and, you know, moving 15 miles and this and that. I mean, you've had a lot of different encounters with a lot of different types of bears and what they've done.

But, you know, maybe, I don't know, is there a specific instance or, or hunt that stands out? Well, yeah, yeah. No, we had a, we had a bear that, yeah, we called it, well, now we call the bait Chad's bait because we had been after one big bear on there. And for several years and putting multiple guys on him and he wouldn't come in. When a guy was sitting there, same sort of thing. He'd, he'd spot the guy in the tree and leave. And then we put this Chad, I can't, his last name escapes me, but he, he hadn't hunted bears actually before. And he said, he came and his cousin was going to film the thing. Both never seen bears before. I said, well, we're going to sit and get used to seeing the bears, but we're not going to shoot the first bear we see. Yeah. I said, well, you never know, you know, the first bear you see might be a good one. Yeah.

So they sat in the stand and, um, this bear comes in and they're whispering to each other. He's like, oh, a bear right there. And he's like, man, that bear looks big. Maybe that's a bear Mike's talking about. Well, I don't know. And then, uh, they're standing there and crazy, crazy enough. Oh, sorry. I screwed that up where they were sitting there and they looked over and here's a wolf at the, who came out and was looking at the bait site. And he's like, oh, look, a wolf. I'm going to take them. Cause we can shoot wolves. Sure. So Chad was lining up to shoot this wolf. And then he hears this growl and this bear charged out and swatted that wolf in the butt. And the wolf took off. And then the bear stood there looking around. And that's when they were like, look at that, man. That looks like a pretty good one. Maybe that's what Mike was talking about.

He goes, ah, I'm not going to shoot my first bear, but video it. So they're videoing it and everything. And then the bear comes in and stands looking around, just guarding the bait site. And like, cause it was early in the season and he was looking around, just guarding the site. And he goes, man, that looks big. Just whispering it to each other. I'm going to shoot them. And, and so he shot the bear and, uh, we got in there and found that bear. And yeah, he was just a giant seven and a half footer over 400 pounds. And he, uh, must've been killing moose calves too. Cause he had a, he had a broken jaw. He had been kicked in the head by a moose and his jaw was split right in half. And he had in the video, you could see this weird white thing in it by his mouth. And it was, his bottom jaw was broken in half and his tooth was pointed out at it straight out at you.

And then he had a big scars across his chest where he had been kicked in the chest by moose. And then he had his pad, his front pad was split right in half again from moose or fighting with other bears. And that's, what's really neat about those big old bears too. He's all scarred up in the head. He's got bite marks in his head and they'll be, their rear ends will be all scarred up from fighting with other bears too. Wow. Like how cool is that? It's unbelievable. So that's a really neat part of it too. When you can, and he was again, an old bear, they get really yellow teeth. And get broken teeth and their jaws will, because the muscles will pull so much on the skull, it'll, it'll shift their jaw over their bottom jaw. And so you can really tell when they're an old bear too. And the muscle, the muscle will pull on the bone and kind of pull the bone up.

So that's where the bear skulls are really neat. Cause you'll see the bone actually pulled up and has all these pointy ridges on it. And that's when you know, you have a really old bear. Wow. That is crazy. There's a lot to it. I mean, a lot more than I would have ever guessed. Of course, you know, that's part of the trophy to me is, is all that kind of, all that kind of stuff. I've got a few deer even that, you know, have scars across their chest, just like a, like a lion ripped at them or something. And they ended up getting away or something, just scarring. And you just want to know the history of every animal, you know? Yeah. And that's, that's neat part about bears. And like, for me personally, you know, I, I took that Booner bear and he was a colored bear. So I was really happy to get them.

And I had probably sat on a stands 50 evenings, like 54 to six hour sits before I finally took that bear. Wow. Wow. But you had in mind, you knew which bear you wanted. I mean, you were after one, one bear. Yeah. I had a bear of a certain class I wanted to get. And I would get these bears come in and look at me and leave, you know? And I'd hunt between hunters. I'd hunt before this, before I got going with all my guiding. And then I'd stay after in the later part of the season. And I'd hunt for a week or 10 days in June and go for these big bears. And so I took that bear and a couple other big ones. So now I guess my personal goal is to, I'd love to shoot just a traditional black colored bear that weighs 450 pounds. You know, whether his skull's over 20 inches or not. I mean, usually in our area we'll get them over 20 inches.

But a bear of that class will be, should be close to that eight foot square hide. Well, I know up there in Alberta and whatnot, you know, there's a lot of real thick country, which is why you guys are baiting a lot. But I mean, do you spot and stalk still? Or is that something you've kind of gone away from and just pretty much running your baits? You know, it's amazing in northern Alberta how few bears you would ever see. They've learned to stay out of open areas, stay away from people. And I'll be up there for two months running baits. I'm out all the time. I might see a handful of bears in the whole season. Yeah. You know, I might see five, six bears in two months that aren't on a bait site. And it's just nearly impossible. And even those bears, most of them are little bears. It's super rare to see a big, mature boar out in the open where you could do a spot and stalk kind of hunt.

Yeah. And so to do it, you really need to go to more of the terrain in southern Alberta and the mountainous terrain. But then often in those areas you don't get the really big bears. What's the chances of, like you said, the guy had a wolf come in like Chad did. I mean, what's the chances of killing a wolf? Or how many times a year does that happen out of 30 clients? That's really rare. You know, if we're hunting with meat, then the wolves like that more. I mean, we got more of the wolves earlier in my bear hunting career when we used lots of meat and we didn't use barrels. Yeah. Wolves are sensitive to that sort. And just guys in tree stands, in small tree stands up in a spruce tree. Then we'd, you know, we'd maybe shoot a couple wolves a year. But even that, you know, that was about the best we'd ever do. Two or three wolves in a year.

But as soon as we started getting into bigger tree stands, box blinds or ground blinds and barrels, now it's really rare. We'll shoot a wolf every two or three years. And we have lots of wolves. Tons, huh? Yeah. They just, and it's a, we can hunt wolves year round, shoot as many as we like. Yeah, that's crazy. We can even hunt wolves in the winter over bait. Have you got local guys that that's what they do? I mean, that's what they just are addicted to wolf hunting and killing, killing wolves? Yep. Yeah. There's some guys around here that do that and run some hunts like that. But even then, it's a very, it's a very challenging hunt, even in the winter over bait. It's a very tough hunt. At best, they're running a 50% success rate. Yeah, that sounds good. And that's the guys running lots of, lots of stand time. Mm-hmm. Wow. Yeah. Crazy. So it's a tough hunt.

So when guys come up and kill a bear with you, like how do they, what's it like, you know, traveling across the border and getting their bear home? Like, how do you guys go about doing that? Yeah, it's easy with that, actually. They're, like for the bears, all we do is we have coolers at our place. So as soon as we bring a bear back to the lodge, then we'll skin it, cut it up, and then we can just put a cooler with the hide and the skull in it and another cooler with meat. And then we freeze it all in freezers there. And then we just tape it up. And the guys just take it home on their flight home, actually. Wow. Is the easiest way to do it. And they just take it as checked bags. And then no one, you know, going through the airlines, it's just a couple of coolers. No one knows what's in it or anything. And black bears, they actually fall under the CITES for the trade in endangered species.

But if they're taken back as an animal, if the guy's hunting license acts as his export permit. Oh, okay. So they don't have to get any of the CITES permits. And the only reason, they're, of course, in no way in endangered species. The only reason they're even listed under CITES is, I think it's because they're a lookalike to the Asiatic black bear. So they don't want people doing some, you know, funky trading and that with Asian bears. Oh, okay. You know, there's, that's the only reason. But if we can, guys can leave them with our taxidermist. And then if you leave them with a taxidermist, he can get it mounted, do it into a rug or even a life size and then ship it to you. But then he has to go get that CITES permit to ship it like that. Okay. But even that's easy enough. The guy just gets, the taxidermist gets the permit, applies for it, gives all the license and it's all legit.

And he just sends it back to the guy. But Canadian taxidermists are generally more expensive than American ones. Yeah. And it can take a long time to get it done. So, yeah, it's easiest for guys just to take it, take it home with them on their flight home. Yeah. Well, that's interesting. You brought up the meat part of it. Like, do you legally have to eat the bear or take the meat? I mean, is that one of your regulations? No, we actually don't have to. Which, you know, we don't have to take the meat. And, you know, that again gets a bad rap and is very misunderstood because they don't make us do it. Because traditionally in the West, people, even in Western U.S. and Western Canada, they don't traditionally eat bear meat. And in our area, in most of Alberta, they have so many problem bears that before they put in baiting, problem bears were just shot on sight. Yeah.

Like if you, you know, and they were shot and left. Nothing had to be recovered. Landowners could shoot as many bears as they like and leave them. Yeah. So they said, hey, let's put baiting in, let hunters hunt these bears, and, you know, then they have to take the hide and the head, at least utilize a part of the bear, but they don't have to take the meat. Yeah. So that's the regulation on it. But lots of guys love to eat the meat. And in Eastern Canada, Eastern U.S., people eat the meat and they really like it, you know, as far as they'll do it a lot in a roast or sausage. And so it's just, it's up to our hunters whether they want to take the meat or not. Yeah. But at least it's not being, and I know in my zone, before baiting was put in, they were killing 100 problem bears a year, up to 100 problem bears a year. And just leaving them. So that's crazy. Whoa. So now they put in.

You guys are overrun with bears. There's no question about it. I hunted when I was a kid up there over bait, clear up in northern Alberta, and it was, you know, same thing. I mean, just loaded. You guys have been loaded, loaded, loaded with bears. Yeah. It just has a lot of the good feed, and especially in the northern Alberta places. And, you know, and shooting those big boars. They actually had a very interesting study in northern Alberta. It was done with a biologist there, and they studied a hunted and an unhunted area. Yeah. They had a huge, it was a big air weapons, a military base where no hunting was allowed just because it was a military base. Yeah. And they went in there and studied the bears, captured them in their dens, counted like cubs, and which bears had cubs, collared them and all that.

And then they did the same thing in a hunted area, a place actually heavily hunted by an outfitter. Yeah. And funny enough, in the unhunted area, cubs survival was 20% worse in the unhunted area compared to the hunted area. That's crazy. Because the boars will kill the cubs, and then they get, just they get sacked. The population gets saturated with bears, and they can't take any more bears. So some bears have to die. So the old die, and the young die. Yeah, they're going to thin themselves out one way or another. So it's just interesting where if you are taking out those old, mature boars, you're actually helping the cubs survive. You know, a lot of places have been shut down on baiting because they say, well, you know, guys are shooting sows with cubs, and the cubs are getting orphaned,

which just isn't true because most of the sows with little cubs, they avoid the bait sites because that's where other bears are. We don't even, we rarely see them. But actually, you know, it's a whole false anti-bear hunting propaganda because, like I say, cubs survival is better in a hunted area. Yeah, that's crazy. Well, as we wrap up here, Mike, I just want to thank you for spending a lot of time with us on this. Learned a ton. Of course, you know, it's hard to learn about bears without, you know, hunting them extensively. And, of course, you know, it's obvious you've done it and experienced about everything there is to experience with bears. Jason, yeah, just great. I'm a bear fanatic myself, even though, like I say, I've done all these other big challenging hunts, and me taking a booner bear was as exciting as any bighorn sheep or doll sheep I've shot with my bow

or any big mule deer I've taken with my bow. So, yeah, a fanatic hunter like you, a fanatic mule deer guy like yourself, you'd have to be careful if you got into bear hunting. You'd be going bear hunting every spring trying to shoot yourself an 8-footer or a 21-inch skull bear or something. You'd get addicted to it. I know, and that's the problem I've got. I mean, my personality type, I get addicted easy, and, you know, and that's the thing. I can only do so many things, and so I've often wanted to, you know, start cranking on elk, and I've killed a couple of .380s, but I want to, you know, I want to, but I can't just do it. I can't just do it half-heartedly. I've got to crank full bore, and I'd do the same thing on bears. Like, I probably would have a mountain op supplement for them. That's just my personality. I'd want to grow the biggest bear I could possibly grow and max it out.

So, anyway, but just want to thank you for your time. Appreciate Under Armour and the sponsorship they give Epic Outdoors. Of course, bringing this podcast to you with Mikey Cranitz. Mike's outfitting up there in Alberta. Appreciate you, and good hunting this year.