The Blacktail Coach Podcast
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The Blacktail Coach Podcast
Bear Hunting Part 2 with Heather Aldrich
Unlocking the secrets of successful bear hunting requires more than just good gear and patience – it demands a deep understanding of black bear behavior, particularly their feeding patterns. In this illuminating conversation with bear hunting expert Heather Aldrich, we dive into the core principles that transform occasional luck into consistent success.
The foundation of Heather's approach centers on a simple yet profound truth: "No food, no bear." Bears are opportunistic omnivores whose movements through the landscape are dictated almost entirely by seasonally available food sources. Unlike many hunters who focus primarily on finding bear sign, Heather advocates becoming something of a botanist – learning to identify the plants bears feed on throughout their growth cycles. This knowledge allows hunters to predict where bears will be with remarkable accuracy.
Perhaps most surprising is Heather's revelation about bear behavior near roads and human activity. Contrary to what many believe, bears have learned to pattern humans rather than simply avoiding them. Some of her most productive hunting spots have been within 100 yards of gravel roads – areas many hunters bypass assuming bears stay deep in the backcountry. This insight is especially valuable for hunters with limited time who might unnecessarily hike miles when bears could be much closer.
Spring and fall hunting require dramatically different approaches. Spring bears emerge from hibernation gradually, taking up to two weeks to become fully active. They travel constantly while feeding, rarely staying in one spot for long. Fall bears, by contrast, commit to rich food sources like huckleberry patches for extended periods. Understanding these seasonal differences is crucial for selecting appropriate hunting locations and strategies.
Whether you're a seasoned hunter looking to improve your bear hunting success or someone considering your first bear hunt, this episode provides actionable insights that will transform your approach. By learning to see the landscape through a bear's perspective – driven by hunger, opportunity, and adaptation – you'll develop the skills to consistently locate these fascinating predators in their natural habitat.
Welcome back to the Blacktail Coach Podcast. I'm Aaron. This week, part two of bear hunting with Heather Aldrich. Okay, so now let's get into the hunt.
Speaker 1:Sure, so we've talked, and I think it's really important always to go over a lot of the information we went over previously. It just is, you know, we're not in the day where you just go out hunting, you don't have to think about it. There are more, many more laws and rules and everything to follow. So so now we want to be successful when we if our time is going to be limited, yeah, we want to be successful in those, in those limits. And you know, while we're pursuing our trophies and one of the things we always talk about is, there's records for bear or for any animal. But then there's trophies. And what is your trophy? Because that ends up being a particular thing a bear you've been chasing for a particular amount of time. For me it was last year. I actually got my first buck, nice, and I was able to hunt him with a pistol. Oh, wow, both trophies. You know, the deer was not record book at all. But now we want to get into how do we become successful bear hunters?
Speaker 1:So let's start out Well. Let's talk about scouting for bear. Okay, so for you is scouting a year-round process. What's the year look like? Let's start off talking about what the year looks like. Okay, for e-scouting, possibly, or maybe you're traveling out. If it's an out-of-state hunt, sure, how does the year look?
Speaker 3:So I live, breathe and eat bear hunting. So there's a lot of things that go into my scouting. So basically it's year-round for me as best I can. You know, obviously there's going to be a point where they're in the den and you can't see them, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:That doesn't mean that I stop reading or paying attention to units, so I kind of come about it from am I going to be doing a spring hunt or a fall hunt? That's my first, my first dividing point for the scouting and what I will do. There's some things that are similar, but there's going to be an obvious break between the spring and the fall and where I'm going to look in the habitat for them. So that was my first question there. The next one is is this an out-of-state hunt or is it an in-state hunt? Because that might limit either my time or my ability to be there because of work and driving and all the things right.
Speaker 3:Another one's going to be is your tag good for one unit or is it good for the entire state? Okay, and that kind of puts another box on us. So what I'm looking at, I describe it as a chessboard, right, and it's the way we grew up playing chess and to me, getting that specific bear is checkmate. I've done all the things right and I've gotten to the end point, which was the goal of filling my tag. And it might not be filling my tag. Go back to your trophy. It might not be on the biggest bear in the mountain, it might be a bear that I picked out because I absolutely love their color of hide.
Speaker 3:They're just so beautiful that that's the bear I chose. So those are some considerations. So let's start with generalities. I'm going to start scouting for bear. Where am I going to begin? A lot of people, when they first start hunting bear, they're going to hunt in a unit. They've been hunting elk and deer in. Nothing wrong with that. It's a great place to start.
Speaker 3:Maybe they've seen a bear there before and now they're like I want to be a bear hunter, I'm going to start picking these up, and so they already know something about the unit and they have some starting points. That's good, and from there you know, you can let me back up a step. So when I think about those people, I think about myself and how I can get stuck in ruts and back to the being adaptable thing. It's very important that when we look at a unit for a new species that maybe we've hunted for 20, 25 years, that we open our eyes and look at it differently. So we need to be careful to not always go back the same hillside, the same ridge, the same bottom, the same meadow, the same whatever. Maybe that worked for elk because that's what you were hunting but, it might not necessarily work for bears in that unit.
Speaker 3:So looking at it with fresh eyes. If you're going to a brand new unit, that's really good a lot of times, I think, for people, because they do come into it automatically with a fresh set of ice and it's easier for them to kind of break it apart. So that's the first bit. So let's say spring hunt. I want to start learning a unit I'm going to go back through. I'm going to look at all the harvest reports and maybe I heard about this unit to the grapevine A lot of times I do. I don't know how others, but for me, you know, I'll hear there was a great bear and they took a large one, or they took a color phase, and you know some specific piece of data that piqued my interest and I went okay that's my.
Speaker 3:That's going to be a unit I'm going to look at.
Speaker 3:So I'm going to go back there, I'm going to look at all the harvest reports and I'm going to try to figure out what that's looking like and take them with a grain of salt for any kind of a spring information Because, again, you might have a really low year but it was based on access they couldn't get in, where some people might see that as a problem.
Speaker 3:I kind of laugh a little bit and this is my husband means it, I'm sure, in a good way. This is where he calls me the crazy bear hunter. But other people see a berm and they're like, oh man, I'm not going past that thing. I look at it and go okay, how far is it to the place I want to be? How many miles do I have to walk? So we're parking the truck and we're going and he's just groaning, you know, but that's a way to limit, you know, other competition that are not willing to do that. And what's funny is the guys that I talk to when we say something like that they would not do that for a bear but if it was an elk dude.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 3:Right, they're going for it.
Speaker 1:So let me ask you about this. So we talk about deer, and this is you know for scouting, that we're not looking for deer, we're looking for habitat, because if you find habitat, the deer will be there and there's a lot of guys.
Speaker 1:To get to their spot will go miles and miles past a gate or something like that, and we're like, if the habitat is right next to the gate, hunt right next to the gate. Yes, and we've proven time and time again that a lot of times you don't have to go more than a half mile in Sure, is there something similar? So and I'm asking this because all of my sets are within a half mile, some are even closer to the gate, just a couple of hundred yards to go in, and I have bear on all of my sets that have popped up Is that? I mean, is it one of those where it's kind of better to go miles and miles in if you, or is it just you go where you need to go?
Speaker 3:So there are things that I that I like to tell people about bears. The first is, and I will get to your question, here and I probably jumped ahead of like if I just waited, you'd answer that at some point.
Speaker 3:So there are generalities of what bears will do, and then there's individuals within that that will step outside the norm and do something that's just completely odd and unusual and that's pretty predictable in their unpredictability. Okay, they're very adaptable animals and it's something that I admire about them is their ability to change with weather or topography changes. You know, fires, flooding, etc. They're going to make it, they're going to find a way to survive. Having said that, they can be closer to people than people realize.
Speaker 3:So, yes, there's that mentality, I think, especially because of elk hunting, where you know they get behind a gate and oh, I got to go five miles to get away from all the people, and that bear might not be that far in Right, he just he has no need to be and because of topography and whatnot. And I know there was studies done on how roads affect elk and elk movement. What's interesting is that is not really true of our black bear. So I've got cameras set up that are literally probably 20 yards off of a gravel road, because the bears have learned how to basically pattern people is what I call it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:And so they will cross in between these streams of people at the oddest times, and that's one of their travel routes, which is why my camera's there, so they are not afraid of roads and they're not afraid to be close to roads.
Speaker 3:In fact, one of my favorite hunting spots in the whole world we've taken three bears out of it within a hundred yards of one stump is literally, oh my goodness, it's probably a hundred yards off of a gravel road and they just come right through it. So I'm not too concerned about how far I may need to travel, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, so is there a difference between spring and summer? As far as Actually? Let's go back and let me ask about e-scouting. Do you start with e-scouting, or is that even something that factors in?
Speaker 3:It does factor in. Whether I start with it or not is dependent on the unit and maybe the information. Is this a new unit or maybe this is an adjacent unit to something I've already been hunting and it piqued my interest and now I'm going to start snooping around. So in this day and age, my, my gosh, we have so many, so many things available to us for mapping. Really, you can get all kinds of stuff right. So it's pretty easy to look at the topography and start, you know, rolling through it and looking for areas of interest. And that's based on. The areas of interest are based on things that I've seen over the years of where the likelihood is to find a bear.
Speaker 3:If there's a good biologist for the area, then I would love to talk to them. And that's kind of a hit and miss when it comes to our bears. There's just not as much study put into them. So your biologist may have a really good handle of his unit, he may not, or his region, but sometimes they do. And so then I'll ask them specific questions about their density. What they expect color wise, you know is it a higher density of black bears at higher density of color bear, kind of that kind of an expectation. What size bears are they seeing coming out of that unit? And they may gave us some specific areas to go. Look. They may say I want you to go off you know half mile creek off non-mile road. Okay, great, so I'm going to go there. They may say I want you to go off you know half mile creek off non-mile road, okay great, so I'm going to go there and I'm going to. That's going to be on one of my little markers that.
Speaker 3:I'm going to put down to go check out. If there's no bears in there, we need to remember that they and this is going to go into part of our scouting it may not be because the biologist is incorrect. You just may be in there at the wrong time of year. So maybe that biologist saw them and they consistently are in there, but maybe it's a fall type habitat, so it's more of a fall area that I would hunt as opposed to a spring habitat. So again, it's not that they don't know what they're talking about, it's just you're in there at the wrong time of year, so that's something to factor in.
Speaker 3:So e-scouting is very important to me. So that's something to factor in. So e-scouting is very important to me If I can save boots on the ground to give me some more time to look at an area before I go into something very specific. I feel like that's just being smart, yes, using your time wisely. Now, once I pick spots, I'm going to go check them out. I may deploy cameras, I may not, depending on what I find and, again, if I can get in there early enough. This is really difficult to do in the spring. Most of the time I'm not going to be able to because there's snow on the ground and I'm not going to be able to get my cameras deployed before the bears are out. Right, I just can't get there. So I may set them up in the spring and then let them run through the fall, let them soak through the fall areas and try to get information on that.
Speaker 3:So if I'm going to hunt the fall, then yes, absolutely no-transcript. I may be moving several of those cameras because I am specifically setting them up where I expect them to be in the spring. They won't be there in the fall, but it gives you an idea of what the population is like in that specific unit, if that makes sense. Okay.
Speaker 1:Now this is, and I put it under my for my notes here, under scouting and just because I couldn't think of where else to put it now I've seen multiple. At times I've seen multiple bears on camera at the same time, sure, and one time it was, you know, I got my, my snapshot of some some bear porn. Is you know, daddy bear, mommy bear, we're making some baby bears. And well, there was another time, and then this was the one and I thought it was a boar and a sow, but there was a cub there, fairly young, smaller cub, not tiny, but he was small, yeah, okay, so I see two full-size bear and one cub, sure, and so I thought, okay, well, mommy, daddy and baby are there. But then I was corrected saying no, no, you wouldn't see a boar around a cub because he'd probably want to eat it. So what kind of groupings would you? If you put out cameras, what kind of groupings might you see on camera?
Speaker 3:So that's a really interesting concept and one that I have studied because it's fascinating to me. But basically, what you probably saw was a familial group. So let's say a sow has two cubs and let's say they make it to maturation, ie the bears are full grown and they're in the spring and they're going to disperse, and we'll say that one is a sow cub and one is a boar cub. So the boar cub is going to disperse a lot further away from mama. There've been documented studies of over 150 miles away from his birthplace to set up a new home range. The sow cub is going to set up a home range right next to mama. Oh, okay.
Speaker 3:So typically, when we see a bunch of bears on a camera, they're going to be a female group, so it'll be a sow, you know, whoever the original sow was. And then several of her get, and then the disbursement pattern makes it so that they don't have inbreeding. That's why they you know the boar goes so far away, so no, typically you will not see the boar. Goes so far away, so no, typically you will not see a boar unless he has ill intent and there's no way she would be calmly walking by the camera with a baby in tow.
Speaker 1:I had 200 pictures of this particular grouping hanging out over the span of a few days.
Speaker 3:Yeah so you're just not going to see that kind of yeah, so you're just not going to see that kind of behavior from them. They know they are going to. Going to. Bears are opportunists. That's the bottom line. Yeah. Food's food. You know I liken them to a teenage boy. You know he comes home and he's looking for food and he just got back from the all you can eat buffet and now he wants a snack. You know. I mean, it's one of those. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, pretty much. So yes, they are opportunists and so you're not going to see that kind of a thing typically. Could it happen? Sure, because bears would like to prove me a liar, so I always put that little proviso in there, but typically, no, okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was just. It was a purely curious thing because I'm like, okay, and it wasn't where I could tell from the pictures me being fairly new to all this it's like I know what a cub is and I knew because one of them was turned around and got a really good picture head shape and knowing it was a sow and just assuming it was a sow because a cub being there, sure, but okay, then I have this other almost full-sized bear hanging around at the same time and I had all three of them. So it was one of those like what, what am I looking at here?
Speaker 3:so my husband's actually seen that in person. He was out deer hunting on the east side of the state and he came across a sow with two young cubs I mean, it's late season, so a little bit older, not not like brand new. And then a you know, a two and a half three year old sow with them, so there's four bears on the hillside. So that was her baby from the year before. Right, okay. And so they're just hanging out. So it's not unheard of. It does happen.
Speaker 1:Okay. So when you figure out like you've done your e-scouting you've called your game biologist, all things that you know we definitely support doing. We do for hunting blacktail as well, or anything. Sure, okay, you've decided on an area and boots on the ground.
Speaker 3:Yes, boots on the ground, absolutely. Again, it's the game of chess. In order to play the game effectively, you need to understand your opponent. In this case, it's a bear. So I think basic information about the animal itself helps us to locate them in the topography.
Speaker 3:So if you know the things they like and how they function in life, you're going to be able to pick them up Anytime we move to boots on the ground. We've made some decisions based on information, data, data, data right. The more data I have, the better decisions I can make about where I'm going to start looking. And again, it's a knowledge base, but also wisdom. So the knowledge base is I know this is a food source in the spring and I may be coming back here to hunt in the fall, so I may put the camera in right to get those pictures and get an idea of what is there for the bears.
Speaker 3:But I know that's not where I'm going to be hunting in the fall. So I'll be moving those things and it's not a big deal. It's just going to move to the landscape like they do. So I think one of the most important ABCs of our bears when we're scouting is to remember they are omnivores but they're seasonal eaters, so they're going to move through the landscape eating what's seasonally available to them, and that's going to change right, just as our year changes. You'll see things in the spring that you don't see in the fall for that specific food source.
Speaker 1:So I tell people.
Speaker 3:Okay, let's do what I call a food survey. So when I go into an area and I've chosen that spot, I'm going to look at that with the idea of what is available to eat for that animal at the time. My tag is open. It's a very important question. If you have the answer of nothing, that is not the place to be, and it might be really hot right then when you're in there, right?
Speaker 3:You've got all the sign, you've got bear poop and they're on the camera and all the things are going well. But then you come back to that when your tag is open and they're not there. Well, it's not because the bears disappeared into the nothingness, right? They didn't migrate. They have just moved into another part of their habitat on a different food source. So, we need to educate ourselves on what food sources are available in the unit that we're hunting at the time that we're going to hunt.
Speaker 1:Okay, before we go further, what is the range of a black bear typically? And I know this like an average, because lots of things can determine what the size of a range, but what is the average?
Speaker 3:So average for a sow is going to be anywhere from two and a half to 10 square miles, and then our boars, you know, five to 50 square miles. I tell people that's based on a couple of factors. One's going to be your topography, the other is going to be your population density and then the third is what food is available. Those affect how they move through and how far they need to range to make a living.
Speaker 1:Okay. So when you're going back thinking about scouting, when you initially get boots on the ground, what so? The only thing that I would know to look for is scat, Sure and potentially bear peels.
Speaker 3:Sure.
Speaker 1:What else I mean, and I don't even know what that's telling me, but what are some of the signs that you're looking for when you have boots on the ground, and what are those signs telling you?
Speaker 3:So I've come about it from a little bit different perspective on how that works. I'm looking for the food sources. Okay.
Speaker 3:And once I locate the food sources, then I can start to locate the signs. If you're on something the bear's on let's say huckleberries you're going to see bear crap, right, and it's going to have huckleberries in it. Obviously he's eating here, and then you might pick up the tracks. So then you get an idea of the size of the bear, his direction to travel, et cetera. So I'm going to start with the food base first. Once I find the food base, I know I'm going to find bears specific to that unit and you need to be, again, adaptable. Like they are, they're going to move from food source to food source. So there's a time in the spring where you'll be out and gosh, the bears are everywhere. They're just they're everywhere and you're just like, oh yeah, it's hot, right.
Speaker 3:And all of a sudden they just disappear. You can look in the same spots there's no bear, and it's's not that they again moved, it's they've changed food sources and you're on the wrong food source. So typically I found there's like a week where they can smell that change in the, in the sap that's running in the trees and, boy, they're hitting the trees hard, like that's where they're at, and you'll go in and you'll see huge patches of timber where they have been stripping the trees and it's just interesting how that happens. But they have such an incredible sense of smell that they know when that particular food item is ripe, be it a berry or a specific plant type.
Speaker 3:A time of year Again, springtime, there's a really good time of year where we get the bigger bores and it's because the cows are dropping calves. So that's a great place to go and set up. We're not there for the elk, we're there for the bear that's coming for the calf, and the bears learn that behavior year after year. You know, mama bear shows baby bear. Well, this is where you go get your food. So, again, it's always food source related. If I get the food source down, I'm going to pick up the bears.
Speaker 1:So let's talk about food sources, and I kind of broke it down to spring, late summer, early fall. Those are correct season. I mean it would be important to know what their food source is, but not as important as knowing during season, because if that's where you're looking, you want to know what you're looking for. So what are they looking for in spring? What's their food sources?
Speaker 3:So you got to remember. When the bear wakes up, he's like me in the morning, it's just not pretty before coffee, you know. He wakes up out of his den and he's really slow to get started. They don't just come online and become a walking stomach. It can take upwards of two weeks before they leave the den site and so they'll be around the den site, you know, kind of groggy. Their body's coming back online. And there's also been some studies done that are quite interesting to me on foot pads. So when you look at the pad of a bear when they're fresh out of the den they're softer and they have to harden up right and so the the bears are shedding those in the den and again. So when they first come out in the spring they're a little more tender-footed. Okay, and one of the things I love about the spring bear is that's when their claws are just pristine. When they come out of the den they haven't been digging and tearing stuff up and you look at their claws and they're just absolutely pristine and beautiful. So he comes online.
Speaker 3:Now he's going to start eating food. He's going to look for simple foods to digest to start with and then, once his body is fully up and going. Boy, if it fits in his mouth it's down the hatch right. And when you watch a spring bear in the habitat, you do not see a bear just sitting in one place and feeding. He's traveling and eating, constantly traveling, and they're much more difficult, I think, in that regard, to get in front of and to try to find a good place to waylay them, because they're just flat, moving and they're much more difficult, I think, in that regard, to get in front of and to try to find a good place to waylay them, because they're just flat, moving and they're not even like trying. I mean, they're not running, they're just walking. But they can walk at a pretty good clip and so they travel through the topography really quickly, whereas our fall bear, he might be on a food source a lot longer.
Speaker 3:So if he's in a huckleberry patch, he's committed for a while be on a food source a lot longer. So if he's in a huckleberry patch, he's committed for a while. You know he's going to be stuffing his face. He's not just walking through the patch and then moving on. So there's two different feeding styles and how they're moving. Okay, so spring sources you've got the wild strawberries, any kind of green grasses. If anyone has horses they know the spring grasses are really high in sugar content and that is like bear candy, right, okay. And then anytime you're in any kind of a timber managed area, a lot of them spray the roads with clover for erosion control, and that is a huge favorite of the bears in the springtime. If you walk down an old logging road and you see clover with the center eight out of it, that's almost, you know, guaranteed to be a bear.
Speaker 3:He just can't help himself okay so he'll meander down there and stuff his face through that. And then, as you know, the seasons change, their food changes and you'll get into the oh my goodness. The huckleberry plant itself is a year-round food source it's not just.
Speaker 1:will they eat more than just the berries? Yeah, Okay.
Speaker 3:So they eat the plant, the bush itself, the leaves. They will also do stumping. So they'll tear apart a huge stump to get the bugs inside of it, or grubs, any kind of downed timber. They'll rip up for the same thing, you'll see, and it looks like a D8 cat went through. They just tear the stuff out of everything. So those are some food sources. Yes, they're still going to be predating. So when you get a big old boar, he didn't maintain that muscle mass by only eating vegetation. And yes, I know the study. I've read them too, but I've also read some studies that are quite interesting. On it was elk survival in a multiple predator environment. It was really, really a well-done paper Because usually our biologists will pick a special animal, a wolf right and they're studying the wolf and it's whatever.
Speaker 3:This was, all the predators thrown in the box and said, okay, what's taking the elk at what age group? And I found it really interesting. So the first 30 days of life, the predominant predator was the black bear, and that's because he can smell them where the other predators can't Because, remember, he has such a huge great sense of smell.
Speaker 3:So he can sniff those babies out faster. And then, from days 45 on, it became more of the cougar. But what's of interest of that? Although it's not scientific and this is where we have to be careful with observation versus science which is repeatable, it's not just observable on my game cameras.
Speaker 3:More than once I'll have, let's say, a doe with her fawn go by and this is an august camera. So right after she went by like the time stamp was about a minute difference I had a boar go by the camera and his nose is on the game trail where they just went, and so you can actively see this bear in the act of smelling out and going after that particular fawn. And then then, just by analysis, right. So you have the doe going by the camera all the time, and she was very easy to tell because she had a big slash mark on her side. So she'd go by the camera with her fawn, go by the camera with her fawn. The bear went by the camera after the fawn and then from that point on she'd go by the camera without a fawn. Yes.
Speaker 3:So the math is right. Here we are in August and it took. So it's not just a specified time of year, it's opportunistic. There's a piece of meat, I'm going to eat it, right, so bearing that in mind. So there are specific food sources that are year-round and then there's specific food sources that are only certain times of the year that they're going to want them.
Speaker 1:I've actually seen that in play. It wasn't a bear, it was a cougar Doe walking by with two fawns, walking by with two fawns multiple days, multiple times on camera. And then I caught a cougar walking through one day and then after that it was doe, walking by with one fawn. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I thought of what the thing that I forgot about their sense of smell that I was going to mention. Yeah, so somebody mentioned so putting out trail cams, the difference between, like your standard battery and lithium ion. He said that they can smell standard batteries.
Speaker 3:They can smell anything. So I do not recommend having bacon grease on your hands when you're deploying your cameras, and that's the thing is we always talk about.
Speaker 1:so one of the things is we put our cameras up high. We don't actually put them down low. Then we don't have to get the bare boxes. Yeah. And we put them, like on the arms. Hme makes some that you screw into the side of the tree and I put them there. I'm tall, so it helps.
Speaker 3:I was going to say I'm a short little person.
Speaker 1:I can put them up. Typically, mine are six and a half seven feet up and you know I go out and I'm wearing the nitrile gloves and you know making sure I've like wiped down my cameras and everything and they're still walking up. And that was the only thing that actually kind of made sense is. Oh yeah, I just kind of put whatever battery in because I would have bears and I have. I actually did a post about this. Bears are bad at selfies because I have three or four different sets with cameras up and all I have is their forehead and their eyes looking into the camera yeah, I've had several of those.
Speaker 1:But I was like, how are they still picking up on the smell?
Speaker 3:It's trace scents, it's trace Things that our nose can't pick up, or other animals.
Speaker 1:Oh, absolutely, yeah.
Speaker 3:But they can. So when my kids were little you know you make kids giggle you say something terrible, so I'd be like, yeah, yeah, bears can sniff a fart out of a whirlwind, and that's the truth of it. I mean, their, their sense of smell is so great that it's very difficult, very difficult for us to hide a scent from them. They're gonna pick it up. Yeah, I am not concerned, when I'm putting my cameras out, that they're gonna smell them.
Speaker 3:I'm worried about it, other than the standpoint of you, know, I really don't want them to eat them yes because I've had that, you know and I have as well. Yeah they've had an honorable death, that's what I call it. Or I had a bear. He left the camera alone, but he chewed up my python cable, so I couldn't get the cable back through to keep her because it's no longer round.
Speaker 3:I don't know if you've ever seen the inside of a python cable, but it's a bunch of little strands and they kind of went. So they're all pokey every which way and I'm in the middle of nowhere with no tools to. So I'm looking for rocks to try to beat it back into round somehow to get it back to the keeper. So I get my camera. But that wasn't interesting. So things like that happen. But I'm not concerned about my scent. Putting cameras in and scent control, that kind of thing, I'm not really worried about it. I am concerned when I go into my set which we can talk about later about that kind of a deal for scent control.
Speaker 3:Bears are so stinking curious, like they're going to check your stuff out.
Speaker 1:And I would say, when I'm putting out cameras, I'm less, it's more of. I don't want this bear to eat my camera. I don't. I don't need to buy more cameras.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they're not getting any cheaper.
Speaker 1:And that's why it's not so much that they're checking things out, it's just I don't want to buy more cameras.
Speaker 3:Exactly.
Speaker 1:To replace the cameras that are constantly getting destroyed. So I do have the fortunate luck of where I hunt. I have no cell service, so I can buy the cheap cameras, because I have to go out there anyway and pull the SD cards.
Speaker 3:Most of the places that I am deploying cameras, there's no cell service. There's none. So I always laugh when I go in and I need more cameras. They will. Oh, here's our cellular. I can't use those.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I have no cell service and they look at you like you're crazy. I'm like look, this is not the city. Yes, I'm in the middle of nowhere and deploying cameras, so cellular service does me no good.
Speaker 1:But they're great because the batteries last longer anyway. Yes, true so going back to food. So spring, late summer, early fall. So when we're getting into those seasons, what are they looking for?
Speaker 3:You're going to see. You know our August 1 opener and again it's dependent on where you're at in Washington State. But I've picked huckleberries as soon as July and done really well. We usually pick enough to make a pie every year for Christmas. That's just family tradition. So I try to keep a constant eye on when the berry crop is ripening. So August is really good a lot of times for our berries and as it progresses you'll see the more hotter areas they'll start to burn up. The berries become like raisins, right, they're not so good.
Speaker 3:Then I'm going to move more towards the creek areas where there's constant water and cooler temperatures, and you'll see fresh berries there, so clear into September, we'll have berries. And what kind of berries? Well, where are you at? You know? We're talking blackberries, the evil blackberry. It grows everywhere. So blackberries, thimbleberries, chokecherries, pick a berry. So when I'm talking to people that are new about going out into the field and looking for food for bears, we'll call it we're not just looking for bears, we're becoming more of a science. So we're a botanist. We're going to be a botanist for a while, so I'm going to take some tools with me. Old school I probably have a couple books on plant identification so that I know what it looks like throughout the year. I might know what a huckleberry plant looks like because the berries on it, but do I know what it looks like without the berry?
Speaker 1:on it Without the berries.
Speaker 3:Do I know what the flowers look like, et cetera.
Speaker 1:And the red versus purple because they look different.
Speaker 3:And they have different varieties. And then currants Do I know what a currant looks like? Do I know what they look like when they're not ripe yet? Th a currant looks like. Do I know what they look like when they're not ripe yet? Thimbleberries same thing you pick a food source and learning what it looks like throughout. So books are one. The other one that they have is, of course, this modern age. I have an app on my phone called Picture this. I can take a photo of a particular plant.
Speaker 1:Yes, I actually have that app.
Speaker 3:And I can take a picture of it. And a lot of times I don't have cell service, so I have to wait till I get back in cell service and then I can upload the photo and I can determine what that plant was and then find out is that really something a bear would eat, or is it a they're not touching?
Speaker 3:that you know. So sometimes that process starts because I've seen bear scat and I'm trying to figure out what it was that they ate Like. What is that thing that's in their scat? And then that helps me determine where I'm going to pick them up in the landscape. So there's a place where they like to eat this mountain ash, and I took this picture of it and I use it in my seminars because it's really important that people realize how far they can travel. The nearest source of mountain ash to that pile of poo was a quarter mile away. So what that told me was I'm not in his feeding area, I'm in his travel area. Okay.
Speaker 3:So I'm going to mark this as a place to watch him and maybe put a camera up or find a place to place a stand, because a lot of times in the fall, some of the topography is so thick you may not be able to get them in the food source. Yeah, it's great when you can find them in the big huckleberry fields. You know I'm talking the big ones, but when you think about how tall they are, they can disappear, like all you see is a swath as they go through the food. Yeah, right, you can't see the bear. And there's other places where that's not true. There's little openings and whatever, and they just happen to step out and, okay, there's your shot opportunity. But again, it's a changing it from an incidental and an accidental to a 100% targeted. I know he's going to come through here. So this is a place and it's because I based it on the food source that was available to him at that time to him at that time.
Speaker 1:Okay, do they and this could be true for both spring and fall mushrooms Do they eat mushrooms? Sure, okay, sure, any particular kind that they might favor, or is it just?
Speaker 3:You know it's an interesting question. I think that again, it's a seasonal thing, what's available at the time, and then a bear preference. So it's just like us I prefer a mocha, my husband prefers sugar-free vanilla latte. Okay, we both like coffee, okay, but a little bit different, and I think it's the same with the bears. There's individuals in there that they're going to prefer. They have a taste for a specific food source over another source over another.
Speaker 1:Okay, and I wondered about that, one of my deer sets. I went in there to brush in my ground blind, and I started looking around and all of a sudden I noticed that I was in a field of chanterelles.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And no animal came in to eat them. I'd never caught a bear, so I just kind of wondered. In spring, I would imagine, morels are out. Sure there's other ones, so it didn't seem to attract them. So but I don't know if, because when I saw them in that particular set it was, I would say, late july, early august, and they were coming to smell the. Actually it might have been early early july or j or June, but they were coming in to smell the minerals and all of that stuff that I put out, protein powders, but not particularly that Okay, and I know, and we kind of can end on this part, the weather will cause them to go down. Is lack of food source also something that could push them to go down and go into their dens?
Speaker 3:So denning is an interesting another one. I think it's all interesting so I have to pardon me on that, but I'm fascinated by these creatures. So not all bears hibernate. It's going to be based on where they're at and there's other places where they're hibernating for six months, so long, long time and in its topography based. You think of a bear where it's always warm, right, it just doesn't get very cold he has he has no reason to go den, yeah, unless, unless it's like a sow, and then she'll den.
Speaker 3:But that's only to give birth to her cubs. It's not to go lay down for her winter sleep, right, yeah, and then there'll den, but that's only to give birth to her cubs. It's not to go lay down for her winter sleep, yeah, and then there's other places where there's just no food for those six months. So the wisest and smartest way to survive is to go den and hibernate, and so that's part of it, and I lost the first part of your question.
Speaker 1:As far as with weather, and we'll get into more talking about the weather but if does food source and you answered that that food source can push them into their den, if there's just nothing left to eat, which I mean that's almost an instinctual thing with where they're at. And I know also, like I would imagine, time of year changes depending on yeah, like with weather, so thinking, and when the food sources are available, because I've gone down to Northern California and blackberries are. They're not even close to being ripe up here, and then I'm traveling 300 miles south and there's blackberries everywhere you know they've started, started to ripen. So I would imagine, yeah, depending on where you are, what parallel?
Speaker 3:or yes, you know, yes. So that's what brings up the question of elevation. I get asked that a lot. What elevation do I look at? What elevation do I look at? I mean, it's constant and and I always kind of cringe a little bit because it's okay, let's say, let's say it was, they're always going to be at 2,000 feet. Well, is 2,001 too far? 2,010 feet right? Yeah. There's no perfect litmus test. I think of elevation, where you're going to find the bear. It's based on the food.
Speaker 1:So food is like the consistency.
Speaker 3:Absolutely the consistent variable.
Speaker 1:There's no bear Bottom line Consistency.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. If there's no food, there's no bear. Bottom line no food, no bear. That is a rule that you can take home with you. He might be traveling through an area that doesn't have food to go get to food, but his definitely. I mean, they're very simple creatures, right? They need food, they need water, they need a friend now and then. Yeah. Okay At a specific time of year. Other than that they're fine on their own. So very much food related in how I scout.
Speaker 1:Okay. Now, actually, that raises a question Will the boars breed multiple sows? Yes, okay, yes, they will.
Speaker 3:So it's not just they pair up and no, no, no. They have no moral compunction whatsoever, none, no.
Speaker 1:Does it? Will it drive their behavior as far as? Because you said that a boar will have a bigger range? Yes, he will. So is that them looking for sows during the breeding season or are they driven? Does that help drive their instincts?
Speaker 3:Absolutely so. They will do things they just shouldn't normally do. Okay, you know, just like a deer and rut, they'll. They'll do behavior that normally, when their brain is fully operational, they're not gonna, they're just not gonna do that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, start getting stupid, yeah so they might be out more in the opens. A sow can lead them into a place that they normally would not maybe step into. They might be on the fringes, but their instinct is such right they don't want to be seen by people and messed with. They want to be left alone. So they might let's call it a clear cut. We'll just take an example. So a sow might be in, you know, in the springtime, stuff her face in a clear cut that the boar usually would walk around the edges of, and he might filter in a little bit and you catch him on the edges of it. But because she's in the center, he's in the center. So it gives us another opportunity to size him up and look him over, and the same is true of ridgelines or any kind of an opening. She'll draw him into those openings for us. So there's two things happening in the spring. One is the sow leading him in the openings. The other one's going to just be his hunger.
Speaker 3:When you look at the habitat in the springtime and you look into the trees, there's nothing, it's just like an empty zone. There's no bushes, nothing's greened out yet, and so those bears are forced to come to openings or south-facing slopes, these kinds of things to get that early forage. That's why I prefer this is just me. I prefer really dense habitat. I love the thicker the better, because it's just again that game of chess. It forces them to certain regions that they have to come to to eat. They're going to be there, they have no choice. That's the only food that's available to them.
Speaker 1:Which is why we're probably seeing a lot, because we are looking for the thick, thick, nasty stuff, looking for deer, and that's probably why we're finding a lot of bears on ours. Yeah, thanks everyone for joining us for part two of Bear Hunting with Heather Aldrich. Join.
