BHA Campfire Stories: Ryan Callaghan

thoughts go on stage here for BHA a lot of these guys found I mean it's that it is the core of what will get done like this is this is like the fiery ember in the center of the earth these people are going to go out and make stuff happen and that's why I was being hello my name's Ryan Callen I learned a long time ago that the key to public speaking is self-depreciation so I'm going to take this hat off and at this point it should be thinking my god how bald that man is and I went home specifically to get my rain boots because they're my most comfortable boots and I thought man one of my buddy stands up in the middle of my story and says that's I was there it didn't happen that way at least I go down wearing comfortable boots if you take something away from this it really should be that what we do out there the things that we enjoy that passion that we have and everybody here has some spot that they think of what they come and interact with people here and it may be very very small maybe some you know little runoff tributary on Rattlesnake Creek that you just don't think anybody else goes to maybe a variety of things but you need to share those places with people and get them fired up right you got to be fired up and people get attracted that passion and it is a really cool thing and that's exactly what we need and that's how we make change out there so public lands have always done that for me that's that's all I have had and truly when I've been invited on a private ground I think it's great and i apprec-- data and I write around and asked a bunch of questions but the challenge isn't there it's all on these big chunks of public ground where I don't eventually bump into a fence right and that's what it's about for me so we've had an incredible lineup of speakers tonight and unfortunately they've stolen so many good topics like you something in the first kill and poop and that takes a lot out of my repertoire so I'm going to tell you about this story up in British Columbia and I'm not sure if everybody's familiar with this TV show called meat-eater if you're not the message is amazing and it's near and dear to my heart and you know the this part the pole in the trigger part is such a teeny tiny part of your season even if you have the most incredible season of your life that you better appreciate all those little teeny tiny other parts that make up the real story and that's that's what this is about so it's kind of cut to the end we got charged by a bear but that's not the story you know the stories and the people and it's exposing people who haven't had experiences to these wild places and making them appreciate it so you know these are on a backpack hunt these TV shows can kind of be big productions you know what you see is the reason that I send editors cases a beer because they don't want to look like jackass if you know a couple of guys having a great time out there but you know there's a lot going on behind the scenes and those people are incredible people and they're super talented and and I just kind of want to tell you about this story so this is the second time I worked with the meat-eater crew and we just kind of had very nonchalant conversation one time and hey what are you gonna do this fall said oh I'm gonna guide up in British Columbia for your grizzly bears and what we want through that but okay well let's make it happen and a couple of months go by and say oh you serious I'm like yeah I'm serious are you guys here is yeah let's make it happen and so I start conversating with this person named Yanis Patel US and beyond us to tell us is now in Bozeman Montana but interesting thing about Yanis amongst many many is he is Latvian and Yanis is spelled J a and I F and even though I feel like I am a worldly individual all I did was contact Yanis through email and I was like wow he's yet you know we got a gal coming on this trip I hope she's cute and another character in this story is this new name Dom and Dom was a cameraman on this trip and Dom is this anomaly in the backcountry from what I've seen he is like this chiseled gorgeous tanned Italian man the beautiful doll and prior to he was running cameras literally running cameras up and down the sideline for ESPN he'd never been in the backcountry so one week in New Jersey with ESPN the next week in British Columbia on a self-sustaining 10-day backpack trip and so I had a lot of curiosities with Don how did you get here did did they tell you what this was about but like I said these are very capable people and so please don't take away from this that anybody is not but to make this a short story I'm going to keep it to three characters because I anybody who knows me know that I tell a very long story that often does not have a point so we we head up the mountain and we are carrying you know they use a outfitter terms we're carrying packs that could choke a mule and we get up into the first Basin and if it is a beautiful day one of the things I love about BC is you see every type of weather you hike in and t-shirt you come out wishing you had more clothes it is amazing and Yanis points up on the mountain grizzly bear and so we all drop down sit and watch and here is this big beautiful grizzly bear and to try to paint this picture this valley that we're in is essentially like if you were floating a river right like upper Blackfoot where your valley floor would be the river the canyon walls would would be the valley walls so it's very steep it's very contained so the distance between the valley walls is is pretty darn arrow and we stop and we're watching what turns out to be a incredible mama bear in her prime an incredible mama because she has three Cubs of the year that are in absolutely I mean just fat rolling off of them they're having the time of their life they are set for the winter right so you know she is a good mother and that bear kinda made my heart sink a little bit because I knew we were up there hunting grizzly bears and I was like boy if she's in this valley there's not going to be another Big Bear in this valley because she is going to be the dominant bear here but we sat there in lobster and was beautiful and we wasted not waste but we did go through quite a bit of the day there watching mom and eventually jana says hey I've got a little bit of bra camera breaks and this is why I'm nervous to tell this story in Missoula is I've always said in Missoula you can't throw a rock without hitting a real estate agent a lawyer guide sometimes there are one and all one in the same so there's going to be some scrutiny here but I made a poor decision there's several poor decisions and I think about this locks I'm highly critical but Yanis has a broken camera we have a spare camera about two and a half miles down the trail at the trailhead in the truck and I make the decision say hey no big deal drop your pack ticks can of bear spray crews on down the trail grab that other camera we're going to be right here like I said it's a very confined valley just upriver we're going to be right here we have radios just in case you'll find us mistake number one the rest of us move up River up valley onto the small plateau where I would like to camp you have excellent vantage point on these valley walls and you know while we were watching mom she was very clearly aggressive she was aggressively eating she would grab a berry bush and just be like aah and eat it and kind of look pissed for a second and grab another one and grab it and rah and like that's aggressive berry eating and he's covering a lot of ground and the kids are just kind of popping along behind her and she starts working her way up this very very steep valley valley the sidewall of the valley and starting to feel a little bit more comfortable about that and we kind of get to drop dropper packs and camp there's a ton of day left I want to stay there for a few days so everybody starts relaxing a little bit and I just can't get mom out of my head so I decide I tell the rest the crew that I'm going to go watch mom for a little while and along with me comes the beautiful doll and it is a gorgeous day there's just like a little bit of mist in the sky but it's blue primarily so there's like a natural filter the Sun is starting to get a little low but it's just hitting the slope perfectly and it is a gorgeous gorgeous beautiful BC day and I'm watching mom and she's just at the top of that ridge line but like I say the sun's hitting that thing the thermals are ripping up and along comes a black bear right in between me and mom or the beautiful diamond iron probably be more pleasurable to think a dog and as soon as the sense of that black bear hits mom she drops 1,500 vertical feet in the blink of an eye and all of a sudden she's a hundred and fifty yards away from us because she wanted to eat that black bear all of a sudden that's pretty close for comfort and Dom's just he's the camera guy he's like this is the best thing that's ever happened I got beautiful white it's a beautiful seed giant bear right in front of me and here come the kids everybody's partying and I'm like we're going to get up and come watching mom and I said you know mom misses the black bear the black bear gets out of there kids made a lot of noise coming down the mountain wasn't her fault and ground squirrels are popping off so if she starts chasing ground squirrels and if you've ever seen one of these things around they can cover country like you would not believe it is amazing I love more than anything watching these bears and she's chasing ground squirrels and I know if all the sudden a ground squirrel peeps off next to us she's going to come chase one write to us or write to us and I say Dom beautiful Dom like hey we gotta go says yeah yeah just let me get this shot oh my god my god no Dom we got to go yeah you know just give me two more seconds give me 30 more seconds right I got to get this shot like DOM we got to go okay okay so he picks up and she's you know doing her thing that has no clue were there 150 yards away and so we start picking our way back down the ridge because I'm like I got to pick up the rest of crew it's just too close for comfort the brush is super thick I want to move us to the opposite side of the valley as we're coming down the ridge as hunters knowing kind of you want to take stock and where you are you want to know your landmarks it always comes in handy at some point and in that high alpine BC country there's all this subalpine fir that is very hard to navigate around you can't walk through it it's tough stuff and so there's you're going to take kind of a single path but as I'm coming down this path I'm like okay there's that tree there's that boulder there's that huckleberry bush and we go through those bushes go down and meet the guy ISM and they're making TV and they're coming in their own world because this is a phenomenal spot and there are seven woodland caribou about 50 yards away all of a sudden which takes me back so I'm like well I've never seen woodland caribou look at that and then up a mountain there's another grizzly bear that just came over the top and there's a black bear over there and so everybody's just like we're in TV heaven and I got to be the bad guy and I'm like hey yeah listen we got to move are you sure like yeah we got to move like right now right now and so everybody's kind of putting on their stuff and we're not moving real sharp and this is mistake number two for me right this is a wild place the mountain range you can't fly over because these woodland caribou are protected they do not see foot traffic whatsoever the only barriers up there that no people associate them with logging trucks essentially right if there's a vehicle it's people if it's a people on foot it's just food and you know these guys like is that very educated very capable people in the woods I put my life in their hands any day but this spots just a little bit different and the type of year is a little bit different you know like these bears are hyper fabric they're getting as many calories as they can you can see it on their faces they are aggressively getting food and so everybody's kind of moving a little bit slow and I should a little bit more on top of that but as we're picking up our gear I hear I look up and I'm like alright this is happening and I see this brown patch moved past that tree and I see it move past that rock like hey we got to make some noise here who's got their bear spray well Yanis had the bear spray because I neglected to bring mine that's mistake number three be critical now and you know long story short there's a youtube video everybody safe and sound bear got very close and we're all we're all good to go how's that bear takes off down the mountain with three little butts falling behind or not really even sure what's happening I hear hey hey I think Oh Yanis I have left them out on the mountain all by himself probably shouldn't have done that so we pile over the top of the hill just to see these four bucks go into the bush and Yanis to tell us who is a man by the way as is bear spray extended unfired and everything safe and south we decided to maintain our camp we don't move to the other side of the valley because we don't think mom's probably going to come back at this point we kind of marked our territory like I say I'm kind of highly critical and I'm thinking through this encounter and it's kind of an interesting deal and I'd kind of quiz Dom earlier on like how much time he's had out there and the beautiful Dom would respond like oh I've never been camping like Iran like what do you think about this stuff he's like oh you know I watched a bunch of YouTube videos and we're down just below camp on you know this little trickle of stream coming out and we're filling up fire jet boils and we're starting to boil water for the evening meal and it's just this beautiful dusky light and it's very quiet abnormally quiet you could say and I say doc what do you think about being out here now all yells it's uh it's pretty cool Sadam you just got charged by a big freaking grizzly bear well yeah that's supposed to happen right thank you guys very much [Music] [Applause]

Channel: Backcountry Hunters & Anglers

Views: 64,518

Keywords: hunting, british columbia, meateater, grizzly bear

Id: qkMw1LcweO4

Length: 20min 15sec (1215 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 09 2017