Canada's Western Hunts

On this episode of The Nomadic Outdoorsman Dan talks with Ron Brown, an Alberta archer that loves hunting the Canadian Rocky Mountains and front range.

Ron has quite the resume when it comes to hunting animals in Canada. He has successfully hunted black bears, whitetails, mule deer, a B&C pronghorn and elk with his bow as well as feral hogs and moose. Ron also loves to small game hunt but bow hunting is his sweet spot. Ron is a staff shooter for a couple of archery related companies and loves competing in 3D shoots. Dan and Ron discuss the variety of hunting opportunities in Canada as well as some very unique treestand encounters.

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[00:00:00] Go Wild is a free social community created for and by Hunters. This means that unlike mainstream social media, your trophy pictures won't be censored. They're encouraged. As you spend time on Go Wild. You will earn awesome rewards such as gift cards, free swag, and big discounts on brands like Garmin and Vortex.

You will even earn $10 just for signing up. Visit download go wild.com and sign up today. All right guys. Welcome to today's show, and joining me on the show today is Ron Brown. Now, Ron Brown is an archery enthusiast and he sees everything from his whitetail stand. It's insane the amount of animals that walk right under him, the videos that he's got, and I guess that's what you get when you're hunting the front range of the Rocky Mountains in Canada.

So I'm really excited about this episode. I will let you know that in this episode there is a ton of audio issues. . I had a serious malfunction of my [00:01:00] podcast board outta nowhere, and it completely reset. Went to my computer, microphone and speakers and all of that. And so near the end of this episode, it gets pretty crazy, although you can't still hear all the content, which is a good thing if you can get past the low audio quality on my end.

Continue to listen and there's some good stuff in there for you. So let's jump into this episode with Ron.

Like he was doing things that were just bad apps. That was one of the coolest moments of my life. I was really scared, but knowing that Dan had the gun, I did have the rifle, like we would be okay.

All right guys. Welcome to today's show and joining me on the show today I have got, actually, this is two days in a row that I've had someone from Canada on the show. Totally different parts. Yesterday was Ontario and Southern Ontario at that. Far from where you're at, Ron. But Ron [00:02:00] Brown is joining me from Alberta and I'm really excited for this episode cuz we've been sitting here talking for 10, 15 minutes and just hearing a few of the stories, a few of the things that you get out and hunt.

I'm pretty pumped to talk. Ron, thanks for hopping on. Yeah, no problem. Like I say I'm , just a fellow that likes to hunt and been doing it for a long time and always enjoyed it. Really enjoy the archery piece. That's been my my gig for the last few years since my kids got a little older.

Don't really still pick up the rifle once in a while when it's getting close to the end of the season or I'm competing against all those rifle guys. It gets a little hard to make it happen. So in November, I tend to pick up the gun and maybe get it done. Nice. So why don't you share with the listeners a little bit about yourself, maybe hunting history, like you mentioned you recently got into archery, but what did hunting look like for you in the early days and how has that kind of progressed over time?

I think I started. , [00:03:00] when I was a kid, we grew up on an acreage not too far from a major city. So pellet guns. I think I, I remember hearing you talking about shooting songbirds in the yard. , it might have been Me too, . I'm pleading the fifth on that one. . Yeah. Basically I think I went as far as shooting flowers or shooting bees off my mom's flowers at one point.

They're just my mom had these questions about why there was holes in some of the flowers and . I was basically just experimenting with, getting on target and shooting things. Yeah. Graduated a. To 20 twos and shooting ground squirrels, basically. There was lots of ground squirrels where I lived.

And then as a kid started into trapping and doing stuff like that, outdoorsy, like my parents were both from pretty I guess outdoor families, farming based some of them remote where farming was, or sorry, hunting was a way of life to supplement your, I guess freezer or your food for the year.

Yeah. And I continued with that [00:04:00] until I had some kids, my kids were young. I took a bit of a break. And I lived in an area where I only ar rifle hunted because, it was a pretty adequate season. We could start shooting animals or hunting in mid-September, basically. And we had lots of time to make it happen till the end of November, basically.

Geez. So when I relocated in, actually it was 2001, I moved down to where I live now, which is about three and a half hours south of there. And I was sitting on the porch basically in September listening to the elk bugle on the property that I lived on. My father-in-law had a core section of land and there was three creeks that kind of traversed in there, and alfalfa fields surrounded it.

So it was a natural bedding area and kind of the elk were there. The wildlife was there and I'd be sitting there cooking a steak or something like that and I'd hear an elk bugle and it's what do you mean I can't hunt until November ? So the natural [00:05:00] thing was to, I guess the first bowl I had was an old York, it was a loner.

Probably like an eighties, mid eighties version, cables were metal. String was, but just an antique 50 inches long end to end. And trying to walk through the bush there, , it was not very convenient. Graduated up to, get upgraded my equipment, started having some successes because it was difficult to make it happen.

There's a real learning curve to that archery hunting and got my first elk, which was a cow. In Alberta you can hunt elk male or female in a lot of zones. There is some zones where it's specific might be a six point zone, but typically it's a cow or a three pointer. Better bull.

Okay. There's a little bit of regulations around. enjoyed the archery hunting, still picked up the rifle because we had some kids that were living at home and we needed to make sure that the freezer had lots of meat in their blended family, lots of kids. So [00:06:00] we had to supplement that.

Other than that I live right now in a small town, about 10,000 people. There's lots of rivers. We're not very far from the mountains. We're about an hour and a half by road from the e east side of the Rocky Mountains. Right where the Boreal Forest, if you're heading north, you hit the Boreal Forest and to the south and east is farmland.

So it's pretty, it's a pretty good little area cuz with all the, intermingling of those different terrains it's pretty. game Rich, honestly yeah, you can hunt moose, elk, mule, deer, whitetail, deer, bears, cougars the air that I hunt now, currently, like I said it's a zone where rifle hunting is only from November 1st till November 30th.

So I can start archery hunting September 1st. [00:07:00] Yeah. Last year I got my elk on September 2nd, first hunt of the year. Oh my. Walked under the bush, called in a bull. Got it done. Was, it was actually, so we work in Celsius, so it was plus 27, I think, when I killed that bull. And that would've been probably right around 90.

So it was actually pretty warm now to get it in the freezer quick or in the cooler right away. But . Canada's an interesting place. Alberta's a really interesting place to live because there's such a variety of game that you can pursue. I got a draw tag for pronghorn a few years back in 2017.

Went down there and actually killed a stud. I got an 80 and four eights with archery equipment. Oh. And that say that was about four and a half hours drive south of us. Alberta's huge, right? It's just a little bit smaller than Texas. Oh man. When you actually look at it.

So it's a pretty big place. But I've really enjoyed the archery bit. Say, now that the kids are grown, I don't need to worry [00:08:00] about keeping the freezer as full. They still come to me with their hands out every year, with pepperoni and garlic sausage. Yeah. But they all have their own jobs.

They buy groceries, but I do try to. , make sure there's a little bit of pepperoni or something I can share from the harvest. And yeah, it's, it's not as big a deal if I don't get a deer I try to target an animal that maybe is a little bit more mature. I typically hunt deer and elk.

I, I buy a moose tag every year because it's an there's a specific time I can hunt from basically that I'll give you a little bit more background. So north of town, is that September, like within 15 minutes of my door, is that September 17th? You can hunt with a rifle. Okay. But as soon as I go south of the river, I'm actually in that November 1st rifle season.

So I prefer to hunt with a bow. So I stick to the to the [00:09:00] bow area. Zones. It's just, yeah, there's less pressure. I'm only an hour and a half from a major center, so we get a lot of pressure from the big city hunters that come out every weekend and they just bomb down the roads pollute the area.

The animals get pushed back into the corners of everything far away from the roads and the hunt's that much harder. Yeah, I stick to the archery zone and have a little more relaxed, quiet time. While I'm sitting in the tree stand or walking around. Trying to call in and out. It sounds like you gotta figured out if, season opens September 1st and you went out September 2nd and got it done it's funny to experience honestly. Yeah, honestly. . It's never been like that. I usually do a lot of bow hiking. We call it we call it hunting, but it's really just hiking around with a bow over your shoulder. You get a lot of exercise. I'm not a young guy anymore, so I really rely on that that little bit of activity every year to help me maintain my [00:10:00] physical fitness.

And last year I didn't get my exercise , I went from elk hunting to climbing into a tree stand and sitting there for a whitetail. And I wish the whitetail were as cooperative this last year, but they weren't. I've killed some decent ones. I've got three Pope and Youngs. In 2021 I killed 131 inch white tilt with a bow, 25 yard shot out of a tree stand that I set up a few years ago in 20, I think the.

First time I got up Popo Young was 2015. I shot 145 and zero eights with a bow. Geez. My buddy had passed it the day before and he said, yeah, I got a pretty nice whitetail. I let it go. And so I came and sat with him and I killed it the next day, . And then a few years later, in 2017 again, I actually killed 151 inch with a bow.

I, I sat on the edge of the field the day before patterned him, watched where he came out of the bush. And I, the next day I went up, set up a ladder [00:11:00] stent, and he literally came out 10 yards in front of me and I killed him. Like he came out on the same trail. So it's geez. That's why I like archery hunting.

You just, they're not pressured. Yep. They're a little more naive. And if you can get in on 'em, pattern 'em like that it's awesome. Awesome. Yeah. Bow hunting's for me, bow hunting's, where it's at I don't get me wrong, I still carry a rifle. I still do a lot of different rifle seasons, but the more and more I hunt, the more I just fall in love with bow hunting.

I didn't actually get out, I don't think. I hunted for myself a single day here in Missouri with my rifle. I took my son out, but every hunt that I did this year was with my bow. And even looking forward to Turkey hunting coming up here soon, I think I'm gonna try to specifically target a Turkey with my bow this year.

I've never done that before. So we'll see how it goes. Yeah I'd love to do that. So in Alberta, there is only a very small [00:12:00] area in southwestern Alberta. Basically up against Montana and British Columbia to the west, where we have a population of Huntsville, turkeys. And it's actually about a 12 year draw tag.

Geez. 12 year draw tag might be longer than that. Turkey, it might be longer than that because a lot of people are after that tag. I think I'm a priority 12 or 13. So it basically, you get priority points every year. Okay. And eventually, same thing as moose. If you're a rifle hunter depending on the zone, you can go to some of the far north zones and you can get drawn every year or every two.

But if you're hunting in the more popular zones, it can take you 5, 6, 7, 8 years to get a draw tag for a moose. Oh man. Whereas the archery tag in some of those zones, you can buy that tag every year and you can hunt from basically that August 25th to September 22nd or 23rd. I can't recall the exact date.

And that's archery, [00:13:00] like straight up. Yeah. If you see one with a bow, you can take it. If you can get closer, obviously. Yeah. Moose, Five to six years. That doesn't seem like anything. And then obviously the over-the-counter option with a bow, that would be incredible cuz I don't think there's anywhere here in the US that you can get an over-the-counter moose tag.

I think every single moose tag that you get here is a draw tag. Maybe with the exception of Alaska, but I think every other Alaska state. Yeah, every one of the lower 48, I think you have to draw and most of them take a long time. Like 15, 16 plus years. Yeah. Yeah. I know. I actually, where I was hunting this last fall, I sit and waiting for a white tail.

I actually. Three leg legal bulls. I had 'em at 30 feet, 10 yards from my tree stand. Two of them. I saw that on your Instagram. I was like, is he white? He's gotta be whitetail hunting. And these [00:14:00] moose that is whitetail hunting. That is a wild way. I can't imagine there's a lot of people who have shot a moose with their bow from a tree stand.

But that would be pretty No, pretty. These guys do it on the ground. Yeah. Yeah. But it's funny because the farmer was pulling bales while I was sitting in the trees stand. He was actually Dr, he had a tractor trailer out there and then John Deere with a, a fork on it. He was loading bales and the moose could care less that he was there.

And they were watching me watch the moose and I ran into the farmer cuz I got permission there the next day and he said, yeah, we figured you didn't have a moose tag. , . Cause they were just feeding all around me. I had like I said, five or six cow calf pears and . I think I counted 11 moose in the field that night.

Oh my gosh. It was crazy. It's a nice little piece of land. There's, it's alfa right on the edge of a, basically a pothole lake. So that lake, it's not farmable obviously, the farmers just let [00:15:00] it be and it just, it's a natural magnet in that farmland area for all the moose in the area to congregate there.

And of course it was the rut for the moose wrap. There was, yeah. Probably last week of September. First week of October was just crazy. Like they were pretty vocal. You could hear them in the bush behind me. The bad thing was, is that the deer were coming from the, across the road, so across the county road and it was probably 400 yards to the tree line where I was sitting.

And they would never get close before I'd lose light. Yeah. But there was a dandy in there. I bet you he was close to 160 inches. I was. waiting for him. I passed a few younger deer. I had one 10 point, like he's five by five. I don't think he would've been more than 140 inches, but I passed him because I had that one deer in mind.

Yeah. I come r rifle season, actually hunted for a week with my bowl and the rifle season, hoping he'd come by. I kept the rifle in the tree [00:16:00] with me in case he came out at 250 yards. I probably would've dumped them. Yeah. But I didn't see him once rifle season started, so I thought, oh, maybe some road hunter got him.

So I gave it a week and then I went to the other side of the field and took my number too. He was a five by four. He's probably, I'm gonna say he's a hundred thirty, five hundred forty inches. Nice mature deer. Heavy hunts. But just, it's one of those things, man, that's the other thing about the hunt, the farmland the farmers and everybody get to know what's moving you're hunting that last week of archery season and all the rifle guys are prepping for the next week. So they're driving around like crazy with binoculars. The roads are just covered with people cruising. Yeah. Looking for bucks. Man, but I think it is what it is.

Sometimes that works to your benefit. Cause they, they bust the deer from the edge of the road and they push 'em closer to you. , yeah. Go ahead and stop on that side while it's 400 yards from me. Just push it my way. No, I was gonna say typically trying to get on that buck, it [00:17:00] would've been awesome if you could just have had a a moose.

Decoy or something to carry with to walk towards the buck. And he'd probably be like, oh, I see these moose out here every day. But to close the distance. And then I was thinking no, those moose are pretty aggressive and territorial during the ru. I don't know that I'd wanna be on those.

They are absolutely. Yeah. The deer definitely gave him some space. Yeah. At that time of the year, you could tell that the moose weren't, they weren't feeling it. Let's say that , they, if you weren't another moose or female moose even I remember watching two female moose were fighting over a bull.

Like the one was just mad as heck chasing this other cow off every time. So it's I don't know. Geez. It's almost like. , women , . Yeah. I don't know if I've had that problem before having to fight over me . Yeah, I totally get that too. I guess that was a stretch, but every man's dream, right? Yeah, absolutely.

Dang. That's [00:18:00] just it's crazy to think about being up in a tree sand and having a field where you've got moose and whitetail all in one spot. Are you getting mule deer right there and elk coming down also? Actually I, the one night I did have a herd elk come in right at last light, but they weren't, so they're pretty sought after.

The locals chase them pretty hard. Okay. Because you can take a cow bull, so even the archery guys are out there trying to make it happen. And the elk, because it's farmland, they congregate and then into areas and they tend to find a spot where, , maybe the landowner isn't happy to let hunters on.

Yeah. Or maybe they got family and they're rifle hunters and they just, Nope, we don't have anybody hunting there until till rifle season in and they go in there and they take their bull and they could care less. So that's what happens when rifle seasons opens the cows, you're not allowed to take a cow anymore.

You have to take a bowl three pointer better. Okay. So it's only an archery.[00:19:00] You can take a cow or an analytical, you can take a calf if you want to but yeah, they get pushed pretty hard. And if they're not on a spot where people can, or if they are at a spot where people can access them, they won't be there for long.

They'll get pushed out. Yeah. It's, they tend to stay on the move. But yeah, the mule deer were actually a couple miles east of me. Like I had a field that I was hunting. I had some pretty good deer there. They were probably like, because of the farmland and area, it's a draw tag for rifle that usually takes five years.

But in archery season, you take a orach and a hundred forty, a hundred and forty five inches average per meal doing it here and there. There was a fella that took a slammer out there this year, I think it was 170 plus, but oh geez, that's nothing compared, you go a few hours south in Alberta towards Badlands and[00:20:00] it's just like hunting Montana, right?

It's like there's, the mules get bigger, they get wider because there's no trees, so their atler tend to grow. It's funny how the landscape makes the animals grow in a certain way, right? Yeah, definitely is, the white tails. Farmland. White tails obviously are bigger. The elk seem to have tighter rocks in the farmland just because they're or sorry, in the bush because they gotta walk through the trees. It seems like genetically they just grow a little bit different. A couple years ago, I think 2019 world record, non-typical archery elk was taken probably about four hours east of me. I think it's 449 inches in change.

World record. Mule deer was killed probably about an hour south of me, 355 and change. Oh my gosh. And that was, gosh, actually killed in the probably 75, 80 years. Ready. All right, guys. If you've been listening to the podcast, I'm sure you've heard me talk about the helicopter hog hunt that [00:21:00] I did down in Texas.

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We got some animals. . Yeah, just seeing like the different TV shows from Canada, I mean there's plenty of TV shows where [00:22:00] they're killing monster bucks, whether it be whitetail or mule deer every single year. But then, yeah, to think about the elk up there.

Everything, even in the States, you can see that progress as you go from the southern states, say Florida and Texas and Arizona, and you work your way up as you go farther north. The animals are just bigger, both antler wise and body-wise. And then it makes sense for that progression to naturally continue up through Canada.

But seeing the body size on some of those whitetail that are killed up there, I'm like, are you sure that's, do whitetail breed with elk? Because that looks like a whitetail elk hybrid. The bodies are a huge. No totally. I've killed some whitetails that were probably on the hook. I would guess they'd be like 2 60, 2 70.

Oh, you get 'em dressed and hanging on the hook there with the hide on. They're probably still close to 180 or 190 pounds, [00:23:00] but it's all you can do to get them hung up on the meat hook without a, a come along and some, or maybe a buddy named Bubba, right?

yeah. A buddy named Bubba. Somebody with a tractor or a forklift, yeah, it's, they get challenging. We've had people come up to Wisconsin and hunt with us and they've seen some of the whitetails up there, and they might be coming from a southern state, Illinois or Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, something like that.

And they come up and they're like, dude, these deer huge. And I'm like, that's just a yearling bell. That's not even a big deer, that's gonna be the smallest one you shoot out here. And we've killed some up there. I wish we had taken kept record all throughout the years of all the animals that we've killed in our family.

Cuz we used to go to the corner store, just the gas station right down the street and get 'em weighed. They had a scale out there and everybody, it was a big tradition. Everyone used to do that type of stuff. And now it's all electronic and nobody does it anymore. But to look back and see how big some of the deer were and how much they [00:24:00] weighed, I feel would be cool.

Yeah, no, absolutely. You get an elk, they're probably, cow's gonna be between 500 and maybe six 50 on the hoof. You get a bowl, he can be up to 900, maybe even a little better. And then you get a moose and. top a thousand pounds. But yeah. Yeah. It's pretty crazy. They're just massive animals, right?

And I think probably like I'd mentioned when we were having our low chat before the fact that it's so cold up here, the animals have to have body mass just to stay alive. They gotta have that calorie reserve or whatever it is, be able to sustain themselves.

Cuz I, I mentioned to you, we use the centigrade scale here. Today it's minus 29 Celsius, which works out to be about minus 20 Fahrenheit with the wind. , I think I read minus 37 was our windchill, which works out to minus [00:25:00] 34.6 Fahrenheit today. And it's, geez, it's almost noon and it's still cold.

Our day, our light fluctuates so much. They talk about you go to Alaska and there's no sundown in the summer. Yeah. So for us, we'll have daylight through till past 11 o'clock. Where I live, the farther north you go, the longer it stays light and then sun will be rising by 4 30, 5 o'clock in the morning.

You can see that glow off in the east. In winter. So great hunting season. We actually follow daylight savings time here. So it's funny comes around to. , Halloween, basically one day you're hunting until five 30 at night. The next day it's four 30 and you gotta, you're done.

The guys that are maybe trying to get a half hour or 45 minute road hunt in, at the end of the day, workday just all of a sudden, nope. Now you gotta wait until Saturday and sun. Oh man. But when we start hunting in September, it's light till nine 30. We'll be out [00:26:00] there in the tree, stand late, and then, by October it's seven 30, November.

Like I said, it's five 30 and it's just, we lose two or three minutes on the, each end of the day, every day. Wow. As the fall progresses. But it's pretty, pretty frustrating to be honest with you, cuz a guy likes to be out there getting it done and yeah the more time you can spend in the tree I just enjoy it.

It's . It's just so peaceful and quiet. I bear baited for a long time here in Alberta too. I did actually probably for about 13 or 14 years I ran baits and I didn't always hunt to bear, I would basically run the bait, put the cameras up, see what would come in, and then make a decision about whether I would actually hunt.

Okay. I ended up taking four bears myself personally, I got a really nice color phase back in 2015 and but I actually mentored, like I was involved with my local fish and game club significantly did junior archery training. So [00:27:00] the kids that were of age where they could start hunting, we would basically I'd say if you can pull 50 pounds and you wanna come hunt to.

I've got some bears on the bait. You come sit and I actually helped three kids get their first archery kills with a bowl. That's cool. All taken black bears. You'd be sitting in the tree stand and I remember sitting myself one time and having seven bears circling around below me. . All, it was basically end of me.

There was a bo a so and a bo a so and a bo. And then there was a solo boar because they pair off, right? Yeah. But there was no dominant boar, so I didn't wanna hunt, but I let somebody else, come in and make a play on one. And yeah. Like they got some breakfast sausage and a really nice rug or if they wanna do a mount, they could, whatever they wanted to do.

You have to take the hide. You don't have to take the meat in Alberta when you hunt bears. Okay. And that would be so wild to just have a bunch of, having deer under my stand is exciting. [00:28:00] To have a bear or even wolves, like to have some type of predator. Even though, they're not preying on people typically, they're typically not even attacking people, but to have something that big, that has teeth and claws, right underneath my sand.

Not to mention the fact that they can climb those trees those videos always crack me up when the guy's sitting there hunting and a bear climbs up his tree and he's almost kicking it. Hey, get down, get outta here. And of course you guys up in Canada are so polite, you're like saying, please to the bear.

I'd be like, get outta here. Yeah, no it's funny because I remember walking up to one of my barrels one time, one of my first bear baits, and it was laying down. So I thought, okay, bear knocked it over. It's empty. I'm walking up there with, I used to use stale bread, so I'd walk up with bags of bread in my hand and when I got to the barrel, , there was a young bear with his head stuck in the hole.

And he was actually there, like he, he was maybe 150 pound bear, [00:29:00] but he saw me at the same time and his hair head popped out of that barrel, like cork, just . And he took off one way. And I took off the other because I was still pretty pretty green to that bear hunting thing and I didn't know what to expect.

Yeah. We've actually, so the area that I hunt, we have never, we haven't had grizzly bears there for probably over a hundred years. Wow. But recently they shut down the grizzly bear hunt in Alberta. Probably about, I'm gonna say, at least a dozen years ago, maybe 15. And the bears are actually expanding quite a bit.

And a dominant grizzly bear boar will not tolerate another boar, so they actually spread. So we've actually got where I hunt there, I know there was a big sow and she had twins. And that was three years ago. So those twins are now two grown bears. Geez. And there's grizzly bears where we haven't seen grizzly bears for a long time, and they still won't open up the hunt.

Yeah. Somebody's gonna have to get eaten [00:30:00] before, before they decide to do something about the number of grizzly bears that just showing up. Same thing with mountain lion like cougars. We've, I live on a, on the edge of a green zone right in town, and I have mule deer walk down my street every day in the winter in the summer.

we get reports of Bears, Raiden Gardens on the edge of the Green Greens own. They're eating apples outta apple trees. They're in people's fruit patches. And we had some cougar's scene in town as well up a few years back. So we got a Tim Horton's that's the coffee place in Canada.

Okay. So it's I'm trying to think. Starbucks, it's equated to Starbucks, right? Okay. So there's a, it's in between there's a major, two major access points to the lower part of town and the Tim Hortons is in the middle of that and the highway runs straight beside it. And a fellas, I dunno, he was traveling, he stopped and he was walking his dog or along the edge of the bush by the Tim Mortons on a [00:31:00] cougar actually came out and grabbed his dog.

and that's in town, geez. And he literally had to punch it and it let go of his dog . But yeah there's cougars in town, so , you roll your window down real quick and write back up at a drive-through just in case , man that's wild . Yeah, no, to say it's a small town, 10,000 people. I think, I don't know if I mentioned it on other than the pre-interview there, but seven and a half hours roughly north of Montana is where I live.

Okay. Say just east of the Rockies, about an hour. So it's a beautiful place, but it's wild. . Yeah. So you're number one and number two, passions are basically whitetail and elk. Is that right? Yeah. That's typically what I pursue with the most passion every year. Okay. I do buy the the Muli tag because it's an incidental archery tag.

I can take a mule with my bull. So I buy that and the move tag just in case I'm [00:32:00] like, I'm actually an outside salesperson, industrial sales guy. Okay. So I travel a lot, so I get a lot of scouting in, shall we say. Yeah. Like it's nothing for me to drive 4, 5, 6 hours a day. So I get to see where the game's hanging out.

I'll throw cameras up occasionally and come back and check them a month later. And yeah, just, it's part of what I do when I'm, in my personal life, I, everybody knows me at work that, yeah. Come September, Ron's gonna be hunting , but That's, yeah. No, we what is it like in your area?

Is that pretty typical, like whitetail and elk or king around there? Or are more people focused on mule deer on moose? What is the hunting culture like there in your town? So yeah, typically so there's a lot of moose hunting that happens, but it is a draw tag for rifle hunters.

Yeah. So it takes a few years to get a draw tag, but there's, enough, there's a quota [00:33:00] for animals who are taken. So every year somebody gets hunt moose. It's not like they don't, they just shut it down. Yeah. But For instance say between the moose there, there's elk, which is another one that's pretty, pretty sought after.

And then whitetails typically the mule deer is a little more for the southern areas. Yeah. Although some of the bigger ones are taken further north, but those are draw tags. They take, eight to 10 years to get in those zones because the animals are known to be big. So there's a, you can go to a place where maybe the draws not quite as active and draw tags sooner, but the quality of animal's gonna be less.

Yeah. So is, but the archery really gives, opens the door. Oh yeah. Because the archery, it doesn't in every zone. Like I say, every zone is different. So you can hunt in some zones with a general tag block or. We're talking about mul deer, whereas other zones, it's like straight up draw. You have to have a draw to hunt even with an archery type.[00:34:00]

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What does that look like for non-residents? Do you have to be a resident of Alberta or, can you travel there from outta state and still potentially get a tag every year for certain species? So just to give you a little bit of an idea so we have this thing called a Class C guides license.

So as a non-resident, I can, or as a resident, I can host it's Class C or Hunter Host. Can you still hear me all right? Yep, I got you. Okay, perfect. So I can actually host a non-resident family member or friend. I think it's I'm not sure if it's every year, but I think every two years. [00:36:00] And you can buy the over the counter tax, but you still have to get an Alberta wind number.

So that's a wild dive for identification number. It's basically a plastic card. Okay. That allows you to get into the draws draw system allows you to buy your licenses, et cetera. But anyway so if you wanted to get a an over the counter, I think you can get bears for sure. Gives you two bears and whitetail tilt eggs.

And I think you're allowed to take a buck in two those, but Wow. Depending on the zone you're hunting. Yeah. And that's basically for the non-resident fee without a guide fee. So I think if you're hunting moose, you definitely need an outfitter unless you get into the, to the draws and then you can actually potentially come back in 5, 6, 7 years, whatever it is in Hunter Moose with your hu, with your hunter host if you get drawn right.

Nice. So I, I believe there's an over-the-counter elk tag as well, [00:37:00] but I can't. Be sure of that. I'd have to double check that. Basically the Bears and the Whitetails are pretty open. Mule deer would be a draw tag most likely, because most of them are, John Dudley comes up and hunts not far from here.

Actually, he drives right through town on his way to go north. Oh, sweet. He does that. Yeah, he does that hunt up north by Valleyview, grand Prairie area every year. Or he did before Covid. I know that he is been out for a while, but man, yeah, no, it's, that's cool. The Hunter host concept, I know in certain places like Alaska if you go up with an immediate family member, it, you can legally go and hunt with them.

But as far as just being a hunter host, so it's not necessarily a guide. But more of a chaperone while you go up there and hunt. I like that idea. I like that concept a lot better than having to be, you do have to have, you do have to have proof of a hunter training certificate though. Oh, okay. [00:38:00] Keep that in mind, right?

They need to see that you are I guess a safe hunter. That's the one stipulation to that. Yeah. So wherever the jurisdiction that you hunt in currently, as long as you have your hunter training, you'd be good to basically get in involved in hunting in Alberta. Okay. Say there, there is some stipulations where you have to use a, an outfitter and then the cost is gonna be significant.

But I've actually offered I actually did actually do a hunter host for Bears with a buddy of mine because he actually was an official wildlife officer and he was looking for a, an additional host because he had a family coming up from Florida that he had basically swapped gator hunts with.

Gators for bears . So that's a pretty awesome swap , right? So yeah that's pretty interesting. I'd probably be lined up to do some Turkey hunting if if somebody wanted to bear hunt, I'd probably be able to make that happen. Oh hey, listen, there's not a lot that I would rather trade than a Turkey hunt [00:39:00] because I Turkey hunt and like you said, you've listened long enough.

I am not a diehard Turkey hunter. I have been getting pretty excited about it this year. But I would swap a Turkey hunt for just about any other type of hunt . I'd swap a Turkey hunt for a good squirrel or rabbit hunt . Yeah, no it's because of that, like I

To bridge Columbia. I can hunt that with a small game license over there, and they have a lot more of them. Okay, to travel away from Alberta to do it. But I would almost want to have somebody with me that knew where I was allowed to hunt, because you go there and there is the zone that I checked out, there's pulp mills and some certain, I guess road co corridor, non-hunting areas that if you're not familiar with the area, you can get yourself into trouble.

So yeah, I would almost prefer to do it with somebody that knew the area kind of thing. Yeah. But yeah, no, the bears is [00:40:00] fun. Lots of guys do spot and stop. Some guys do the bait thing. Come May, they're, you can hunt till I believe June 15th in some of the zones north of town here.

You gotta watch for, Coke. It deteriorates after it starts to warm up. We'll get, high seventies, eighties, in late May, beginning of June. It's warming up and they're rubbing their coats. So they tend to start showing, rubbing the hair off and showing a lot of skin.

So you wanna a good quality coat if you're gonna come up for a rug or something like that. Awesome. Yeah. Alright. Do you, do they allow hound hunting for barren mountain line? There? For mountain line? Yes. And that's a winter hunt. It's usually for December till February but not for bears.

You go to BC you can hunt bears with dogs. Okay. So British Columbia. Yeah. That's with pc, right? Yeah. So that's west of us on along the coast or on the other side of the Rockies. [00:41:00] Okay. Yeah, I don't have any, but the more I hunt with dogs, the more I want to own a lot of dogs for different types of hunts, because I don't know why.

There's just something about it, like hunting over bait. Don't get me wrong. I've done it. I will do it again. But there's something about like spot and stock hunting that's really gripped me lately. I still sit in a tree stand every year with my bow trying to shoot a big whitetail.

I'll forever do that, but for some reason, just like being on foot, the closer to the level. that the animal is, I feel like the more adrenaline I get, the more exciting the hunt is. And then obviously if you're actually pursuing them, like chasing them down with dogs or tracking them through the snow, for some reason, the more primitive Matthew you hunt, the more exciting it is to me.

So we're not allowed to use dogs for in, in any way for hunting other than the [00:42:00] cougars. Okay. In Alberta bait, you can't bait anything except for bears. And feral hogs, actually we do have feral hogs up here, believe it or not. Dang. Really? They're the Eurasian varieties, so they're the big Russian bores.

They're starting to become a little bit of a problem. I've been hunting for about 20 years just because when I moved down here, we were too far from a , a fellow that was farming them and his fences weren't the greatest. And pigs, they're famous for getting out fences, any fences anyway.

Yeah. So there's a natural and it's a natural population now, but it never was obviously. But yeah, they're doing quite well in some areas in the province. So is there a management plan to take care of those? Because I know once you get 'em it's very hard to fully eradicate them, but is that something that fish and games working towards up there is trying to take them completely outta, are they Yeah, no, the government's definitely after them.

Yeah. They, the, they got government's hired trappers to take out Sounders. Yeah. Typically [00:43:00] the government folks are saying that hunting actually spreads them. It breaks the sounders and it fractures them up and they become multiple small groups instead of one large group. So it's funny, the. , some landowners are fine with it, some aren't.

Yeah, with the hunting part of it I, like I said, I've always hunted where I have permission and been fine. And it's usually an incidental thing for me. I'm out hunting whitetails and all of a sudden there's a hog. When you take it, he goes into the pepperoni too. It's no big deal

Man, the fat on those things is a different level. And I would imagine you guys get some really thick pigs up there with a lot of fat on them. Especially with, actually they, they're not very fat. They're very lean because I think the temperature extremes and that's the thing is that I find the best time to hunt is when it's super cold.

Like today would be a great day, or when it's super warm and they gotta travel the water. Yeah. , they tend to stay outta sight. They go nocturnal as soon as you shoot at 'em. There's no hunting a half hour [00:44:00] before sunrise, or a half hour, half sunset. There's no such thing as night hunting up here. Okay.

So we're pretty confined. So trapping seems to be the best way to deal with the wild hogs. Okay, man, that's interesting. I would've guessed that they were, they had a thick layer of fat up there because of how cold it gets. But I wonder if, their fat reserves just don't last very long cuz they're constantly af having to burn it off.

Traveling that far from water. I think it's the, I think it's the breed specifically. The eurasians are actually less interbred with the masics. Okay. So actually, and it their meat is very red. It's almost elk or deer and they're lean. Everybody says, oh, bacon. Yeah, no, there's no bacon there.

Dang. Yeah I've killed a few. You've probably see them on the Instagram page. Yeah, I'll that's crazy. I I would've guessed the opposite. And what's funny is now thinking about that, the hunt that I went down on to Georgia on, I would've guessed that the pigs down there were gonna be pretty lean, but they had more fat [00:45:00] than any pigs I've killed up here.

And so maybe it's like a, an adverse effect that from what you would normally think. But then again, like you said, the breeding side of it if they're more of like a pure Eurasian pig versus a domesticated that's been bred with wild hogs naturally they're probably not gonna carry as much fat as the domestics.

Yeah. That seems to be my take on it. Anyway. They're super lean. It could be just the calec demand because of the weather. The it's harsh, right? Yeah. So this time of the year, When it's minus 30 like it is today, they'll be moving to feed a lot earlier and they they need to just to stay alive.

Like they go into silage pits or haystacks, or they get into grain bins. They're a problem this time of year for the farmers for sure. Yeah. They just, every, everyone I talk to, everywhere I look, it seems like there's either a pig problem or they're just [00:46:00] started to become a pig problem.

And I'm curious to see what's gonna happen with it. Because hearing the guys down in Texas talk about it, especially those southern states here, they've got the worst of it from what I understand. But the billions of dollars of damage in crops and vehicle collisions and just everything seems to be destroyed or disrupted by these pigs and.

I don't know what it's gonna take, but there's gotta be something drastic that happens in order to solve that problem. Yeah. There, there's a bit of a bit of that concern up here, but I, like I said, I've been hunting 'em for a long time and it seems like the population, ebbs and flows based on whether this year we have all the farmers got all of their crops in the bins.

They're not, there's nothing laying on the fields left there for them to eat. Yeah. So I think it's been a pretty challenging year. So even though the numbers are up, because we had a couple of wet falls in the last probably three or four years where there was lots of [00:47:00] swaths left, barley fields that got cut but never got combined.

Things like that where there was lots of feed and, maybe that boosted the population numbers. But this year, because everybody got everything into the bins, there's very little feed. , I think. And then we've had, this'll be the third cold snap where it's been below minus 30. We had one rate at the beginning of December, one rate just right after, right around the new year.

And now we're having this one, and it's hard on the population, n not only the feral animals, but we get a lot of deer winter kill too. Yeah. Coyote numbers, the deer, the coyotes are fed, fed well as well because the deer, they take a bit of a hit when it gets cold like this to stress on them.

Yeah, I would imagine, especially right after the rut, that's gotta be double-edged sword, losing all of that weight during the ru chasing doze around, fighting off other bucks, and then you get hit with severe cold like that. Yeah, I could see that. The thing that, that I think is harder on [00:48:00] them up here is we get that thaw.

Like we, we actually have some days where it's, the snow's melting. It's a beautiful day. Like you can. For us, you can run around in a light sweater, whereas, probably you'd still be cold , . But the snow melts, you get a crust on it because it freezes again. And then the predators can run on top of that, the deer can't and they have to paw through that crust to get to their, their food source.

Yeah. So they get less quality feed or less feed in general, and then the coyotes and everything else can run on top of that crust of snow and run 'em down. It's, I think it's a little harder as the winter closes for us, depending on that freeze thaw cycle that you get and then these cold snaps.

So yeah, man, that's just my take on it anyway, but no, that makes sense. It seems like just a wild place to hunt. Being that close to the mountains, that close to [00:49:00] farmlands and rivers, and to have the variety of game, you're in a sportsman's paradise up there.

We, we actually have some species that you can't, like we have bison north of me there's mountain caribou to the west, probably within an hour or two of home, I'd say two hours. There's mountain caribou, but there's no, no season for those. Yeah, you can hunt rocky Mountain sheet with a draw tag.

There's some actually zones that are actually open for rifle hunts, general tags, but you gotta go after 'em. You gotta get in there and it's, there's no way to go in horses, but, that's a resident thing again. But yeah. Yeah, the variety game is crazy. , man, that's, yeah. That's insane.

It's cool place to live. Yeah. Bison, caribou, elk, mule, deer, sheep. Oh my goodness. You're getting me excited. And all I've got coming up in my near feature is Turkey hunting. . Yeah.[00:50:00] This May was not the most timely. I I should have done this right before November when I'm actually heading out to do some of these big hunts, but , yeah.

Now I'm just gonna be dreaming. Maybe this will hold me over until we get after some big game stuff. But Paul Bears is coming up we can start putting Bates out in I think we can put 'em out the last two weeks of March, because I think the season opens April, even though there's usually still snow on the ground.

The bears aren't moving around much. But I've had bears on. , when there's lots of snow on the ground they're coming out of their dens. They're not going far from their dens, but they really need the, and they come to the bates because typically they're omnivore. So they're eating, clovers and grasses, but there's no clover in grass in April, not until May.

Yeah. Yeah, I heard that a l a large majority of a bear's diet actually isn't any type of meat. It's plant-based and then obviously they'll supplement with rodents, with [00:51:00] calves and fawns in the spraying with fish if if there's a big fish run, salmon or trout or whatever. But as far as, even grizzlies I was looking at videos of that, or maybe I was listening to a podcast about that.

And it's surprising how much of their diet actually comes from plants. Yeah, absolutely. They're, I would say that 90% of it is plant-based. People that, that prefer to eat bear, they usually wait for a fall bear because you can hunt 'em spring and fall, but they've been eating berries all summer, so it's like they're sweet, right?

Like they, yeah, they tend to start to taste like the food that you or whatever they're eating. And yeah. It's funny because, when we're bait 'em in the springing, usually we for instance, we do mice, fish in and we keep all our skins and our fish and trails and whatnot that we put 'em in a pail and we hang onto 'em until spring and we put 'em out there to bring the bears in and you're feeding 'em basically waste, like we use chicken fried grease and stuff like that.

Yeah. [00:52:00] Boats or dog food or whatever. And you're feeding them some not prime food. And it seems like the further you get into the season, once the grasses start growing, they're less cracked to. Spoiled food. So you gotta make sure your bait has got some good fur stuff in there, or they're not even gonna bother, they're just gonna eat grass.

Wow. So it, there's a bit of an art to it. You want it to smell a little bit first thing in the year, bring 'em in. But when when it's getting closer to May, when you want the big ones to come around, like typically you get the s in and then the bores come. Yeah, because that's their breeding season at the, a beginning of June and you get a few s in and then the bores come around, but if you don't have good, fresh food, you won't get any bears.

I, so it's, there's a bit of a trick to it. See, I, if I was up there, I'd like to do a study and for one whole year, you feed 'em a certain type of food, the next year you change it, one year you just do [00:53:00] like really sweet food. I know my mom she can bait on her property up in Wisconsin and she would go and get like a bunch of old cookies and stuff.

Just a lot of sweet treats, donuts, things like that. And I'd be curious, side by side, if you could take a steak from multiple bears and then based on the flavor or based on the food that they're eating, if, how much it changes that flavor of 'em.

I know that if I'm cooking bear myself, it's typically in sausage. But if I'm gonna cook bear, I'll cook it on an open flame. I'm not a fan of the the fat on the bear. Okay. So I like it barbecued on, charbroiled kind of thing to make sure that it cooks that fat off.

Yeah. Okay. Interesting. That's just my personal preference. Lots of guys like they harvested just for the fat alone and they'll render the fat. It's supposed to be the best thing for making pastry, interesting. Yeah, I have almost zero experience bear hunting. I've got a couple tags, zero success, never even [00:54:00] seen one while hunting.

But it is something that I'd like to do in the future and I always buy one when I go out to Colorado cuz you can get an over-the-counter tag for the unit that I hunt in or for a lot of the units during second rifle season. Who knows, maybe one day I'll have to try some rendered bare fat and use 'em in pastries or use 'em, use it to cook with.

That sounds pretty cool. Great. Ron, I appreciate you hopping on, man. This is, this was a really fun conversation. Sorry for the technical issues. But before we hop off, I want to give you a chance to share with the listeners where they can find you, because I'm telling everybody who's listening to this, you gotta go on his social media pages and just look at some of the pictures and tell me that's not cool.

Moose from a tree stand. There's videos of it. Like he said, the pigs fish, mule, deer, target, shooting, everything. He's got it all on his social media pages. So Ron where can they go and find you? [00:55:00] So I do have a Facebook page, but there's a lot of Ron Browns out there, so it'd be difficult to find me there.

But Instagram, it's Ron Brown, 40 62. And yeah, that's basically probably the most I guess the easiest way to catch me is on Instagram and yeah, no, I appreciate that. I'm just out there trying to do my thing. I'm a pro staff shooter for a couple of archery companies, so I tend to do the Instagram thing just to support that.

Yeah, no, that's awesome, man. I definitely appreciate it and we'll have to keep in touch, see how this season goes. And for real, I'm down to swap some Turkey tags. I will let you know. A non-resident Turkey license is pretty expensive down here. It's 224 bucks for a Turkey, which I didn't even realize it until this last year when I invited somebody and then they found out the price and they were like, dude, do you realize how expensive it is?

And I was like, Nope. I would never pay that much to Turkey [00:56:00] hunt. So it depends on how die hard you are about coming into Turkey. Yes. Sometimes it's about the experience, right? So you'd have to basically Google the Alberta regulations yourself, to f find out what the non-resident alien tag prices are.

But if you're coming up for a whitetail for a bear, I think bear's pretty, pretty affordable. Yeah. For me, I think my first tag is 35 bucks in the second one. If I, I have the option to buy a second tag, but as a non-resident, you automatically get two. Nice. Yeah. And I mean I can kill two bears for under $60 Canadian.

Geez. Yeah, that'd be a nice problem to have. It's like that for us here with deer in Turkey. Deer's 20 something bucks. You get a buck a couple doughs Turkey, you get two Toms in the spring and then you can shoot Tom's Orhan in the fall. And so resident prices here are great, but I just had no idea that much or they charge that much for non-residents for Turkey.

Cuz you can hunt almost every other species in Missouri for cheaper than you can hunt [00:57:00] turkeys. You get more bang for your buck with your buck up here too. I think it's a dollar 35 right now. . Oh my gosh. Keep that in mind, . All right, settled Turkey for whitetail. Let's do it.

Yeah, no, we can talk about that. Yeah. Sweet man. I appreciate it. You have a good rest of your day. Stay warm. Yeah, negative 20. Hi. I'm not envious of you right now. Yeah, I gotta drive a couple hours to the city here this afternoon, so we'll see how that goes. Nice. Thanks man. And we'll keep in touch.

You bet. Take care.

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