I have been out scoping the areas and, set some game cams out.
We got a little bit of bear on the camera.
This time of the year definitely is a good time
to get a bear if you're gonna eat it.
We're gonna see how it turns out, hopefully that bugger is still in the area.
Breanna is the one who is going to be pulling the trigger.
She, she's definitely capable of it, I'm not really worried about it.
As long as we see one, I'm pretty sure she's going to be able to put a hole in it
and put it down.
I'm making my own rounds just kinda, you know,
not buying from the factory, you know, saves you money and, you know,
you barely get a little better bullet, little more accurate bullet.
Banged out right. There we go.
Yeah, yeah.
Bullet made, ready to go, bang.
Black bears are definitely something to respect,
they can definitely end you if they want to.
Think I might have jerked a little bit on that one.
Yeah, just relax and take another shot it,
you might, I saw you pull that one.
Yeah. I'm definitely an experienced hunter,
I've been doing it since I was really little.
My dad would take us up on mountains.
We'd go down through muskegs and always get deer
so I definitely feel the pressure that we need to go get a bear.
Get out of the way Bo. Go.
- Come on. - Go.
Come on, you got this.
I figure I can do it.
I think you're hitting man.
Bullseye.
This one will shoot a bear.
All right, let's try to get the hell out of here.
All right.
First bear hunt. Yeah, hope it's a good one.
Hell yeah.
There ain't no other place I could ever live, you know, other than here.
It's so beautiful but yet brutal at the same time
and reminds me how lucky I really am.
Get all of them chips out.
Yeah, I can see it now.
This one's a really dull one right here I can see it's been rocked.
Yeah.
I'll have you try it now, go to this one right here.
Like this?
From the moment that I moved here I've heard that curly was an amazing logger.
It's exciting to be able to actually hear about someone that's this good
and now getting taught by him.
Even strokes, go all the way through.
And don't worry about being slow or anything, it'll come with time.
Chainsaw is very, very dangerous piece of equipment,
it has no mercy on anything.
With me probably having more chainsaw experience than anybody around here,
I mean it kind of makes sense for me to teach her and teach her right.
It's been amazing finding a new friend out here.
Yeah.
Well, we'll check your homework and see if you pass.
Ooh, damn, by god you better be careful there,
they'll put you on full time.
Very good for your first time.
I'm excited for this.
Yeah, well next thing to do is load all this stuff up in the back of the truck
and head out and go see if we can find some standing dead trees.
Yeah.
Are you ready for this?
No. But we'll find out.
I've got two different types of cabbage
and I do believe I have a couple of
little Brussels sprouts here; These are Brussels sprouts.
They look identical, see cabbage, Brussels sprouts, can't tell the difference.
That's why I have the labels still in them.
With their seeds.
These are gonna be going in the, in the ground here pretty soon.
If I can get enough soil to plant them in and the dirt,
I'm gonna be using is dirt that I've freshly made it's similar
to this dirt right here, but it's never been adjusted and
it needs, it needs to have its ph adjusted. Morning, morning.
Morning, morning. I was just talking to my babies here.
Right. They're gonna get new homes pretty soon,
they'll be happy. Yeah, I think that the tide is climbing now
so we should probably get, get cooking. Absolutely,
- we need to get the heck out of here. - Cool.
Matt's my oldest son and he's back in country now for the summer
so we're gonna take a little joyride down the coast
to a little rock pile that's about fifteen miles south of here,
on a nice day it kind of reminds me of a atoll in the south pacific.
This is my absolute favorite time of year because everything is growing now
and it's not too warm.
Perfect working weather. Absolutely.
It's real important to me to be able to source my, garden vegetables locally.
However, most vegetables don't grow here naturally
so you have to harvest this bounty of shells
that happens to exist down there, put that in my garden
and recreate the environment that they need to be productive.
That looks like a good spot right there dude.
Extremely approachable.
I can't see my feet.
Yeah, I feel kind of funny walking through this much, Indian celery.
Good to see how lush this growth is, it's gonna be good for your vegetables,
I can tell you that much.
I'm thrilled.
Have you ever seen what they look like under a microscope?
- Sandy beaches? - No, I have not.
It's amazing. Looks like the cosmos.
These seem, seem thicker than the standard
butter clam shells that I'm used to digging
so I'll betcha these are just really old.
Back from prehistoric times.
I, you know, I never did the paleontology thing.
Well, I had a little epiphany one night when I was laying in bed,
just thinking about, you know, the upcoming gardening season
and a little bell went off in my brain, went ding, ding,
hey you don't have to buy lime anymore.
You can just gather up enough buckets of crushed barnacles,
blue mussel shells, a wide variety of clam shells,
remove all the moisture, put that in my garden and raise the ph,
so in the future I'll have, you know, probably a lifetime supply.
All right, let's head home.
There's something about this place that's unexplainable.
I don't want to sound like a weirdo or a hippy something
and say it's magical but there's just something.
Okay, I wasn't gonna start this early, but we got a pot of bait jumping in here.
Something's chasing it so, we're gonna give it a shot.
Okay, I am gonna troll for cohos, which are silver salmon.
I got a plan to build a cold smoker so what I want to do is,
is catch enough fish to fill that smoker and,
hopefully I can get this done before it starts raining.
Well, it actually just started, I should have never said that.
Before it stops raining.
Yeah, they're jumping right in front of the boat.
I'm gonna go right through them.
Get into the kill zone up here.
Okay, I have no idea how deep I am.
Yeah.
This feels like salmon maybe.
Definitely bigger.
A rock fish.
You gotta be kidding me.
The rock fish definitely like my presentation.
But I need the salmon to come after it.
Do me right, god. Give me a salmon.
I want to fight a real fish.
Ooh, that's a salmon. That is a salmon.
I think I missed him.
He's there, he's there. He's there!
Ooh hoo, hoo, there he is, there he is, there he is.
He's going under the boat. I'm gonna lose him!
I'm gonna lose him!
He's pissed.
We have salmon on the boat.
That hurt.
Well cool. That got the blood moving again.
Let's get right back at that.
It was raining, and wet and some wind here and there.
Pretty soggy but I stayed, and I made it pay.
Man, that's fun.
Son of a I got another already. Woohoo!
I barely got to sit down.
Don't you dare go away, man.
You're going in the boat, bro.
Boy, they are down there thick today.
Yay! More meat. Right on.
My fishing trip went from dead to red hot.
Woohoo! I found the spot.
We're in them.
What I have found living out here, you know,
you just gotta learn to not be discouraged and just stick with it
because it's trial and error and one day you're gonna be successful.
Hey, chill.
I gotta get these fish cleaned and brined
and ready for the new smokehouse.
I got plenty of fish now.
Peanut butter and crackers are my favorite.
Ooh, I just did that last night actually.
That's why I opened these.
I'll eat a whole pack of them. Yeah.
All right, we're here.
Me and Breanna definitely have,
years of experience, hunting deer.
This is kind of how we feed ourselves and get our meat
but when it comes to black bear,
we definitely don't have any experience with that.
This hasn't even turned black yet, this is today,
it's fresh, feel it.
It's not warm yet anymore but it's fresh.
Yeah. That's today.
It hasn't turned black yet, that's a huge good sign.
All righty. The work starts here.
I want to be able to hang the whole fillets
of fish in there like you see the natives do it
that been doing it for years and they fillet them down to the tail
like this, that way they just hang in the smoker like that.
I gotta get these fish smoking.
Well, there she is.
This is my retort vessel for going inside the incinerator.
You put your product in here, whether it's wood.
This case it's gonna be ocean seashells.
And I'm gonna bake them hot enough, I might have to fire it a couple of times
to get them to turn into powder
and add it to my garden to sweeten the garden,
help bring the ph up in the soil.
It's time I get this old girl into the shop.
I built basically a homemade device here a while back
so I could cook myself up some charcoal.
I'm gonna take that technique and I'm gonna super heat a big batch of shells.
But the last time I fired up the retort furnace,
the base got really warped out of shape,
so I'm gonna have to cut that off, put some legs on that.
Bingo, I'll have a new furnace.
There we go. Sometimes you just need to have a bigger hammer.
Property of oil company Kansas City ammo.
This thing came from Kansas City.
All the way to Alaska, god knows how long it was floating around before I found it
and now it lives on.
When I look at trash, I see, valuable things
and I think when the bulk of society looks at trash,
they don't see the value that I see.
Every time I repurpose a piece of junk it, it makes me think of my dad
because my folks were products of the great depression so even from a real early age
you didn't throw anything away that you could repurpose.
This is just all by guessing by golly, I just want to make sure it'll stand up.
I'm in the process of doing the same thing that the old timers did,
and I think we should all teach the, the younger generation, you know,
how to keep a weather eye out for, just about anything that you can repurpose.
This is going inside the incinerator.
Want to make sure.
Look at that, it fit right in there.
That fits in there just the way I wanted it to.
I guess it's time for me to start a burn here.
This is the spot.
This is it.
There's a couple yellow cedars right here.
Is that one of the ones you were thinking about cutting?
Yup.
Perfect. Sounds good to me, I'm gonna watch you do it and
- learn a thing or two. - Okay.
Cool. This thing's almost bigger than me.
Yes, it is. Thank you.
Yup. Firewood is the never-ending story.
We're always gonna need firewood year round.
Freaking nasty out, man. I know.
Raining like a cow pissing on a flat rock.
I am looking forward to being able to go out
and cut down a tree myself to be able to get firewood myself when Carl is gone.
This lifestyle does not afford us to be able to wait and do things.
This one looks like it'll go right where we want.
Looks a lot bigger from right here. Yup.
I've seen my dad grind and sharpen many chainsaws;
I do know the potential for danger of running these things.
It's not a toy.
Curly is gonna walk me through what I need to know
and correct the mistakes that I need to be corrected.
Curly is one of those ones that has been doing it so long
he knows what he's doing.
Yay. There's our undercut.
Yeah, that's the, the start of her.
So, it's gotta be that way to pull the tree where we want it to go?
- Yup. Yup, absolutely. - Okay.
I guess we're ready to let this tree fly.
Here we go.
I've taught several newbies, I really don't do it too often, I mean it's,
want to feel responsible if that person did ever get hurt.
Logging is a very dangerous occupation;
it's like one of the most deadliest in the world and that.
You gotta respect that fact
otherwise you ain't gonna come home one night if you don't.
Woo! Damn curly.
Done deal, it went where we wanted it.
Yeah, you did that amazing.
That went exactly where you said it was gonna go.
That's my favorite smell in the world.
Don't get any better than that. Yeah, I know,
this is amazing.
- There's one down. - Yeah.
The next one's yours too.
Okay, I am down with that.
Good lord.
Little hard work you get her done.
Woo!
This is my chest freezer
and it's not energy efficient
so I'm gonna convert it into a cold smoker
because having a freezer that runs all the time zaps my battery bank
and basically all I need is a box that holds smoke
so I think this is all usable and it's gonna be easy to clean
with that surface on there. Let's get busy rox.
If this works out it'll be huge for me
'cause this will add to my ways that I can preserve fish.
It's kind of what you do out here, you use what you got and figure it out.
Beautiful.
Now what I need to do is
have my fire here, and then run a pipe into here
so that way when the smoke goes in there it's cold.
That is what I'm shooting for here.
My plan is to cut a hole in here
and a hole in here so that marries this burner
and how I'm gonna cut through that metal is gonna be another,
thing I have to figure out but where there's a will there's a way roxy.
There's lots of ways that you can preserve your meat out here.
Ha, ha. The difference between a cold and a hot smoker is my hot smokers
I have the heating unit right inside the smoker so it cooks the fish.
This, I'm going to put my heat source outside the smoker
then it's just the cold smoke coming in and flavoring my fish.
Hell, I was going places there for a minute.
We did it; We did it rocky.
Good enough for government work.
Who gives a what it looks like as long as it works?
I like it and it doesn't even look half assed.
Well, I think all I need now is some alder
and I'm gonna fire this thing up and see how she works.
I love it when a plan comes together.
Your heart's definitely pumping when you're kind of walking up
on this spot where you don't know if at any turn you might see a big bear
sitting there and so the adrenaline was definitely pumping.
Bear tracks, right here.
That's either bear foot tracks or big foot tracks.
It's a good, good sign.
With this bear hunt I guess I'm just trying to prove to myself that
I can go out there and do something I've never done before
and be successful at it even if I'm a little bit scared.
Kind of weird.
I wonder what that's all about.
Looks like a dead eagle or something.
Yeah, it's big wings so. Yeah definitely.
- Huge wings. - Eagle.
America's crying.
There is so much sign back there, there's definitely a bear in the area.
It gives me hope that we'll get something maybe.
What's that?
Now my left eye is messing with me.
Holy, man!
I see a bear right there! I see his back right over there edge.
All right, let's going, go.
Leave our here. Get the guns and go.
Just grab your gun.
See a bear, we see a bear, let's go, let's go.
See a bear, we see a bear, let's go, let's go!
We got a bear! We see a bear; We see a bear.
Wait forever and we finally see one.
He has no idea that we're here and we gotta be really quiet
and make sure that we just sneak up on him.
Go on the other side of this island and he has no idea that we're here,
he's just lumbering around happy as a bear.
And so, we're gonna try and sneak up and get a shot out of him,
only stop over at those islands on the way and, see how far that range is.
Okay.
Well, we've been scoping out the whole bay from this little rock out here and,
finally saw a nice size bear over there on the beach
right where we were seeing 'em lately.
And so we're gonna try and sneak up on him and see, hopefully we can get a shot,
hopefully he show, he shows himself to us.
Yeah, this stuff will torch off really quickly.
Get some heat going.
I've got the retort furnace rebuilt, I got the shells,
I'd say now it's time to torch her off
and I'll have all the calcium and lime and whatever I need to tune my garden up.
Now for the kindling.
When you fire this retort furnace off you want as much wood packed in there
as you can possibly fit, it's imperative that you get it up to a certain temperature
and keep it that way for several hours.
A little layer on the bottom, little areas on the top
and all the loose ones in the middle.
There we go. Have a little go juice.
Well let's see if we can get ignition.
It's gotta get up to a certain temperature then that waste oil will get hot,
and it'll start burning the gas and get real flammable real quick.
Houston, I think we've achieved liftoff.
And that my friends...
Is how to bake some clam shells.
So, I don't know where the he is.
Probably he went right here.
Keep in mind we're going into the woods after a bear so
- just be alert. - I know.
Okay, take it off.
And then hit, one, once it fires off again hit the trigger real fast.
Okay.
Take your chain brake off.
Chain brake!
I'm, I'm gonna call it, I'm not gonna with this right now.
It's starting to frustrate me really bad.
Man. I don't know where he went.
I don't know where he went either and I feel like we kind of came
into the timber. I don't really know what to do here now.
You think he might have stayed down like on the beach?
Like inside of the beach?
Is that what you think he did? Maybe.
So, you're saying we came all the way back here for nothing?
Well I don't know, obviously came up this way.
Or he's gone.
Damn it, one got away man.
I got some alder back here close
this just lends itself well to the salmon
because it's a very mild wood.
It just is great flavor for the fish because you can still taste the fish,
it doesn't over power it.
Got my wood now I can fire up the smoker.
Yeah, it's easy to get frustrated, you know,
you just adrenaline rush wears a person out.
And you are doing great, you're doing a very good job Morgan I mean no.
Thank you, I appreciate it, it's. I mean you really are.
It's a little weird for me.
You pay attention, I like that.
Kind of scary sometimes even though this is the easiest part right here.
Take a break and come back to it and it'll be all good, you know.
I had a couple of minutes, I'm just waiting for that thing to burn down
and well I could have, I could curl up and take a nap but the sun's shining
so I conned myself into singing.
Singing the blues.
The only way I could, you know, be the most accurate description of, of what I am,
or who I am in this community is kind of a little bit about everything.
I hear a lot of people refer to me as the mad scientist.
There isn't hardly anything I haven't tried doing out here, you know.
You name it, I've done it.
I don't have an ego, you know, the size of
a Volkswagen mini bus or anything like that,
I just know what I know.
Unfortunately, that makes me a know-it-all so.
I'm the village know-it-all.
Fire looks like it's burning down a little bit
and I'm gonna let it go out, cool off,
tomorrow morning maybe I'll come out and see if I got some, some product
but actually kind of comfortable right here.
Maybe I'll just sit and watch it a little bit longer.
All right? Are you ready for this?
No, but we'll find out.
Well, there's your tree. Your tree is ready to be cut.
Okay, you want to walk me through these real quick?
Lift up on your trigger.
Yeah, that's right.
Gotta push it all the way down.
Okay, now let her rip.
You're gonna have to cut, come clear around right where my finger is.
So how am doing that? I've never done a.
Try to keep it as straight, as level as you can,
you're gonna aim it right for that bull pine.
Go ahead and start cutting.
That adrenaline rush that you get when you're running a chainsaw,
there's nothing like it.
She's shaking like a dog. Prune pits and
it'll get better it's just part of learning, you know.
That's it. Now come here.
Go ahead and put it up like I showed you.
Just like that, go for it.
This is my first tree.
Curly's letting me do it but I'm on my own so it's kind of scary.
You did it!
So now you're, you're ready for your back cut. Yeah, okay.
- I'm going. - Yup.
Hey, hey!
Okay.
Pull, pull your saw out. Pull it out.
- Damn. Holy. - There you go.
- Congratulations. - Thank you.
I got the shakes now.
I think your lip was quivering.
Well, it's vibrating me and I'm just sweating
and it's just honestly this thing is still heavy for me.
Yeah, it is.
Just cut a nice smooth cut off the butt of
that, always leave that stuff out in the woods.
I'm still very nervous using the chainsaw.
But the more I do it, the more I get out there,
the better I am able to run it and the more comfortable I feel.
Beautiful.
Look how nice them, you're throwing some big ass chips too.
- I'm sweating. - I bet.
I mean little tree but I can't even keep this.
That's funny.
For a first time it's a beautiful stump.
The, the beauty of it is, is it went exactly where you wanted it.
Well, let's see what we got.
Cooling overnight.
Look at that.
See how tough this stuff is, yeah see, that's what you're looking for right there,
you can just crunch that in your hands, this'll turn into small pieces and powder.
The consistency of these shells is just perfect,
I can grab onto them and crush them and that tells me
that there's gonna be lots of fine powder that'll be quick release,
this is exactly what I was shooting for.
Things don't get lighter as you get older, they only get heavier.
There we go.
But right now, I'm gonna be screening my lime from these shells
so I can get all the fine stuff and that's what I'll use immediately.
My goal was kind of having a lifetime supply of this stuff and I think
I probably achieved that goal.
Basically, any time you add crushed shells to your soil it raises the ph
and allows your plants to accumulate the correct amount of nutrients.
Yeah, I can just tell by the way it crumbles it's, it's the stuff.
If it's too acidic it can't do it, if it's too alkaline it can do it so you want to,
a balance in between.
Well, I'd almost call that enough, more than enough
to probably do my whole damn garden.
It's pretty common place it's,
I think some well documented science behind that.
I think that's gonna be good for now, gonna take what I need.
Now, get a couple buckets of this, pack it over to the green house,
mix it up and we'll go from there.
Sammy's secret recipe.
Hey, rox. Here we go.
I am excited to see how this thing works.
I got me some edible fire starter.
Throw some corn chips in here and get this done.
The trick is, is don't eat them all.
I think there's probably a lot of people don't know it but when you're camping
and can't start your fire, corn chips, potato chips
anything with a lot of oil start your fire instantly, it's like fire starter.
These are my alder biscuits that I cut earlier;
this is where my flavor is gonna come from.
Now that I got this smoking pretty good,
I'm gonna just see what's going on with my smoke pit.
Yeah.
That's what I'm talking about.
I think it's time to put that salmon in there now.
The smoker's filling with smoke, I can fit a whole lot more fish in there and
salmon smoked in this alder unbelievably good.
It is just delicious.
I'm very pleased.
Not bad for a bunch of junk I needed to throw away.
It's gonna work.
Well from here we can just scope out pretty much three cricks.
- Yeah. - So.
- It's a good spot. - Yeah.
Yeah. Let's look out.
Yeah, well let's find a spot to post up.
With this bear hunting it seems that it's a lot of just sitting and waiting
and letting them decide when they're gonna come out for you
and you just gotta be present and, clear headed in that moment.
The bears wrote you in the sand over there.
Bear, bear, bear!
I think that might be the one you want to take Breanna, it's got a nice brown face,
that's the bear you want.
It's three hundred yards, dude.
He's moving, do you want to try and make a shot on him?
, sorry I'm back.
I can't even see it now.
- You can't see him. - Nuh.
Unload your gun.
Let's go, let's leave everything here, we gotta go take a walk 'Anna.
Breanna took a shot at him, we're not sure if she's hit him or not,
I've thought that Breanna's missed before but several times I've been proven wrong.
I'm not know what's going on exactly. I gotta get up here and see.
All right.
Tore up the creek here.
Damn it, damn it.
Damn it.
Oliver's out there on a mission to like keep looking
and see if I wounded it because I have made shots
where we think we, it got away but really it's just laying back there but
I really don't think that's the case, I don't see any blood anywhere.
Yeah, now I just want to kind of lick my
wounds I'm kind of just bummed out about it,
I never like when I make a bad shot so.
I don't know what the I'm looking for dude.
A little bit of hope.
I've shot it up over here so we're probably not gonna see another bear.
I'm really hard on myself when I miss an animal just because
that's one thing I feel very confident.
I pride myself in my shooting abilities, so it definitely hurts my ego a little bit.
It just makes me realize that like I'm not perfect and I have to just keep trying,
it's our first bear hunt.
Well, since we didn't get this bear today just means we gotta go home
and regroup and, decide whether we're gonna try again for bear or we're gonna have
to find another food source for the fishing season.
I'm definitely more concerned about Breanna,
I really just want to go give her a big hug
and tell her it's okay that she's still a bad ass to me.
Sometimes you win some, sometimes you lose some.
Come here. I wanna go home. It's okay.
To find success here, you just gotta work smart
and find easier ways to do everything.
And I keep getting better and better at it.
Well now rox we get to find out how our smoker really worked.
Yeah.
We did good rox, rox, sorry you can't have it.
I think by me passing on my knowledge to the younger generation
and that you know that's gonna help port protection survive down the line,
she's not gonna have any problem getting her firewood I don't think.
Woo! I cut down my first tree!
Yes, you did. You did a good job.
It's a good first experience.
Yes. Yes.
This is the Gary muehlberger method.
I about crapped myself one time I went over there
and by god if he didn't have some of the nicest cabbage I'd ever seen.
Boy, it sure be nice if he could come over here and see me doing this.
I could just see him nod and wink, you know, that's how you do it.
He'd, he'd be proud of me.
Hell, I'm proud of me.
I'm not a bear hunter.
Not yet, not yet, okay?
I've made shots like that before so that's what's like frustrating,
it upsets you 'cause it's just like I've made shots like that so.
I'm sorry, man.
Come here. Breanna's not done hunting bear until she gets a bear.
The bear should have just let her, her shoot it 'cause really,
she's got a grudge against him now.
They're all in trouble, they all need to watch out.
I'm really stubborn so definitely determined to keep trying.
The second you lose is when you stop trying.