1
00:00:00,600 --> 00:00:03,760
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Sportsman's Nation podcast network, brought to

2
00:00:03,760 --> 00:00:07,880
Speaker 1: you by go Wild. Now. The go Wild app has

3
00:00:07,960 --> 00:00:11,800
Speaker 1: added some really cool and exciting functionality to their app,

4
00:00:12,200 --> 00:00:14,480
Speaker 1: and the first one I want to talk about is

5
00:00:14,600 --> 00:00:18,319
Speaker 1: the near me function and basically what this does. It

6
00:00:18,360 --> 00:00:21,800
Speaker 1: allows you to engage and connect with people in your area.

7
00:00:22,280 --> 00:00:25,000
Speaker 1: You guys can talk about gear you guys can talk

8
00:00:25,040 --> 00:00:27,720
Speaker 1: about hunting areas, you guys can talk about what's going

9
00:00:27,760 --> 00:00:30,840
Speaker 1: on in the woods, and it just allows the users

10
00:00:30,880 --> 00:00:34,839
Speaker 1: to be more of a community and connect easier. The

11
00:00:34,920 --> 00:00:38,440
Speaker 1: second part is the gearbox and what the gearboxes. It

12
00:00:38,720 --> 00:00:43,040
Speaker 1: is a an opportunity for the users to not only

13
00:00:43,800 --> 00:00:48,360
Speaker 1: see reviews on products and see what the go wild

14
00:00:48,400 --> 00:00:51,560
Speaker 1: community is using in the field, what products they're using,

15
00:00:51,800 --> 00:00:55,000
Speaker 1: but it also allows you guys to purchase up to

16
00:00:55,560 --> 00:00:59,800
Speaker 1: a hundred and fifty thousand products. There's there's a shopping

17
00:01:00,000 --> 00:01:03,240
Speaker 1: action on it. So check out the go Wild app.

18
00:01:03,360 --> 00:01:05,760
Speaker 1: If you haven't downloaded it to your phone yet, you

19
00:01:05,880 --> 00:01:08,960
Speaker 1: need to and you can do that at any app

20
00:01:09,040 --> 00:01:14,280
Speaker 1: store that is currently available. Go Wild It's an awesome app.

21
00:01:14,560 --> 00:01:22,520
Speaker 1: Check them out. My name is Clay Nukeleman. I'm the

22
00:01:22,560 --> 00:01:26,480
Speaker 1: host of the Bear Hunting magazine podcast. I'll also be

23
00:01:26,600 --> 00:01:29,960
Speaker 1: your host into the world of hunting the icon of

24
00:01:30,000 --> 00:01:35,679
Speaker 1: the North American Wilderness fair. We'll talk about tactics, gear conservation.

25
00:01:36,240 --> 00:01:38,480
Speaker 1: We will also bring you into some of the wildest

26
00:01:38,560 --> 00:01:50,840
Speaker 1: country on the planet chasing far Keith Catfish Sutton is

27
00:01:50,880 --> 00:01:54,640
Speaker 1: a long time outdoor rider. He wrote for ESPN for

28
00:01:54,760 --> 00:01:58,160
Speaker 1: ten years, traveled all over the world fishing. But the

29
00:01:58,200 --> 00:02:01,680
Speaker 1: way I knew Keith was as as an Arkansas kid.

30
00:02:02,320 --> 00:02:07,000
Speaker 1: He always saw his name in every sporting magazine that

31
00:02:07,040 --> 00:02:09,359
Speaker 1: had anything to do with Arkansas. You'd see Keith Sutton.

32
00:02:09,800 --> 00:02:12,519
Speaker 1: He was a hunter, but primarily he was a fisherman,

33
00:02:12,919 --> 00:02:15,840
Speaker 1: and he is known as one of the country's top

34
00:02:16,120 --> 00:02:22,480
Speaker 1: cat fisherman. This conversation with Keith very interesting. You'll hear

35
00:02:22,560 --> 00:02:28,120
Speaker 1: about how he caught a giant undiscovered fish in the

36
00:02:28,200 --> 00:02:32,360
Speaker 1: Amazon River. You also hear about a shootout that he

37
00:02:32,400 --> 00:02:35,760
Speaker 1: was involved in, and you'll also hear about how he

38
00:02:35,840 --> 00:02:40,079
Speaker 1: was mauled by an animal, a very large animal. I'm

39
00:02:40,080 --> 00:02:43,400
Speaker 1: not gonna give it away, but I felt like uncovered

40
00:02:43,400 --> 00:02:45,480
Speaker 1: to jewel what I was talking to Keith. Right, I

41
00:02:45,480 --> 00:02:48,200
Speaker 1: didn't uncovered. I just didn't know Keith that well. I

42
00:02:48,240 --> 00:02:50,519
Speaker 1: knew his writing. This is the first time I met

43
00:02:50,639 --> 00:02:57,160
Speaker 1: Keith and uh, really interesting conversation was a great man

44
00:02:58,440 --> 00:03:03,200
Speaker 1: w Hound Supply. These guys are up in Yacole, Washington,

45
00:03:04,200 --> 00:03:08,440
Speaker 1: and they are the nation's top hounds supply company. Anything

46
00:03:08,520 --> 00:03:12,480
Speaker 1: you need for hounds, for any sporting dogs, for your labs,

47
00:03:12,560 --> 00:03:16,320
Speaker 1: for your beagles, for your squirrel dogs, for whatever you need.

48
00:03:16,400 --> 00:03:19,880
Speaker 1: They've got your hound stuff. They specialize in garment equipment.

49
00:03:20,280 --> 00:03:21,960
Speaker 1: You call these folks on the phone, you're gonna be

50
00:03:21,960 --> 00:03:24,919
Speaker 1: talking to one of them. They're gonna know the products

51
00:03:25,200 --> 00:03:28,160
Speaker 1: and they're gonna be able to help you. Check out

52
00:03:28,800 --> 00:03:32,800
Speaker 1: our buddies at w Hounds Supply. We're actually going up

53
00:03:32,840 --> 00:03:36,720
Speaker 1: there to visit them and you're gonna hear some future

54
00:03:36,720 --> 00:03:40,640
Speaker 1: stuff they're when we're doing with w north Woods bear products.

55
00:03:40,720 --> 00:03:44,720
Speaker 1: It's time, it's go time. Fall bear hunting is upon

56
00:03:44,920 --> 00:03:47,440
Speaker 1: us and I just talked to my old buddy James

57
00:03:47,520 --> 00:03:52,160
Speaker 1: Lawrence today and we're getting we're getting queued up to

58
00:03:52,280 --> 00:03:57,160
Speaker 1: start our fall bear baiting routine. And it doesn't make

59
00:03:57,200 --> 00:03:59,600
Speaker 1: any sense to not use north woodspear products. We've used

60
00:03:59,600 --> 00:04:03,480
Speaker 1: this stuff for years. It's the best bear scent products

61
00:04:03,520 --> 00:04:06,720
Speaker 1: that I have used. I like their gold Rush You've

62
00:04:06,720 --> 00:04:08,840
Speaker 1: heard me said that a thousand times. But they also

63
00:04:08,880 --> 00:04:12,680
Speaker 1: have powder based sense. They have other type spray sense,

64
00:04:13,400 --> 00:04:18,000
Speaker 1: and you'll want to check those guys out. C v

65
00:04:18,160 --> 00:04:24,080
Speaker 1: A muzzloaders. Muzzleloading is one of the probably most overlooked

66
00:04:24,080 --> 00:04:28,040
Speaker 1: weapons that gives you a very good opportunity to take game.

67
00:04:28,480 --> 00:04:31,080
Speaker 1: Whether you're hunting deer, whether you're hunting bear, whether you're

68
00:04:31,120 --> 00:04:34,279
Speaker 1: hunting elk. The muzzleloader season is a great time to

69
00:04:34,279 --> 00:04:37,360
Speaker 1: harvest an animals. C v A has been in business

70
00:04:37,400 --> 00:04:41,080
Speaker 1: since nineteen. They make the best muzzloaders on the market,

71
00:04:41,320 --> 00:04:44,719
Speaker 1: all the way up from some super high end, very

72
00:04:44,760 --> 00:04:49,239
Speaker 1: accurate models, all the way down to their entry level models,

73
00:04:49,279 --> 00:04:53,160
Speaker 1: which are which are very high quality. They have Brigarda

74
00:04:53,240 --> 00:04:56,320
Speaker 1: barrels and check out c v A. They've got some

75
00:04:56,400 --> 00:04:59,560
Speaker 1: great stuff and that's what I'm gonna be shooting this fall.

76
00:05:00,960 --> 00:05:04,680
Speaker 1: And lastly, leave us a review on iTunes and take

77
00:05:04,720 --> 00:05:07,280
Speaker 1: a screenshot and you'll have a chance to win some

78
00:05:07,440 --> 00:05:10,760
Speaker 1: north Woods Bear products we sent out. We had two

79
00:05:10,800 --> 00:05:14,479
Speaker 1: winners this last time that we did this, So leave

80
00:05:14,600 --> 00:05:18,520
Speaker 1: us a review. We're gonna nudge you towards the more

81
00:05:18,680 --> 00:05:23,599
Speaker 1: stars and less stars. But that's your decision and screenshot

82
00:05:24,080 --> 00:05:28,160
Speaker 1: and send that screenshot to us through Instagram or through

83
00:05:28,240 --> 00:05:31,800
Speaker 1: Facebook Messenger or through info at Bear half Hunting dot com,

84
00:05:31,839 --> 00:05:34,640
Speaker 1: and we're gonna send somebody some north Woods Bear products.

85
00:05:34,839 --> 00:05:39,480
Speaker 1: You're gonna enjoy this podcast with my buddy, Keith Catfish Sutton.

86
00:05:44,160 --> 00:05:47,440
Speaker 1: Keith Catfish Sutton. Is that what they call you? Keith?

87
00:05:47,600 --> 00:05:51,440
Speaker 1: That's what the That's what all my friends called me.

88
00:05:51,960 --> 00:05:54,440
Speaker 1: How did how did you get the name catfish? Back

89
00:05:54,480 --> 00:05:56,720
Speaker 1: when I was working for the Game and Fish Commission

90
00:05:56,839 --> 00:06:01,479
Speaker 1: here in Arkansas, my boss was Steve wild Man Wilson,

91
00:06:02,120 --> 00:06:06,400
Speaker 1: and he started coming ye yea. He knew I liked

92
00:06:06,440 --> 00:06:09,839
Speaker 1: the catfish, and he just started calling me that and

93
00:06:09,880 --> 00:06:16,080
Speaker 1: it stuck. Uh and UH as I built my writing career,

94
00:06:16,120 --> 00:06:19,280
Speaker 1: I thought that's pretty good, Uh, way to get my

95
00:06:19,400 --> 00:06:22,800
Speaker 1: name out there. People don't remember Keith Sutton, but they

96
00:06:22,839 --> 00:06:27,600
Speaker 1: remember catfish catfish, And I learned that wherever I went.

97
00:06:27,760 --> 00:06:30,480
Speaker 1: Back then, I was traveling a lot, going all over

98
00:06:30,520 --> 00:06:34,400
Speaker 1: the world, fishing mostly, and it didn't matter if I

99
00:06:34,480 --> 00:06:36,960
Speaker 1: was in Mexico or South America. If I told the

100
00:06:37,000 --> 00:06:39,480
Speaker 1: people my name was catfish, they get a big grin

101
00:06:39,560 --> 00:06:42,640
Speaker 1: on their face, and even when I go back ten

102
00:06:42,720 --> 00:06:45,599
Speaker 1: years later, they remember, they remember catfish, and so it

103
00:06:45,720 --> 00:06:49,000
Speaker 1: was good. Hey. When I pulled up here, I was

104
00:06:49,360 --> 00:06:50,919
Speaker 1: wanting to make sure I was the right place, and

105
00:06:50,920 --> 00:06:52,440
Speaker 1: I saw a big sticker on the back of a

106
00:06:52,480 --> 00:06:55,000
Speaker 1: truck that said catfish Fear Me. And I was like,

107
00:06:55,040 --> 00:06:57,680
Speaker 1: I'm at the right place. You knew you were here there, Yeah,

108
00:06:57,680 --> 00:07:01,800
Speaker 1: that's right, a lot of catfish stuff. Tell me, Well,

109
00:07:01,920 --> 00:07:05,320
Speaker 1: let me let me let you know how I know you.

110
00:07:06,040 --> 00:07:09,040
Speaker 1: I know you from years and years since I was

111
00:07:09,080 --> 00:07:14,400
Speaker 1: a kid reading your stuff in Arkansas outdoor magazines for real,

112
00:07:14,600 --> 00:07:19,000
Speaker 1: like you're in my mind, You're You're a legend around here.

113
00:07:19,360 --> 00:07:23,800
Speaker 1: You know, you've probably written more about Arkansas outdoor stuff

114
00:07:24,440 --> 00:07:27,560
Speaker 1: than anybody that I know, at least in the mainstream

115
00:07:27,600 --> 00:07:30,760
Speaker 1: media stuff. And I know that your outdoor career was

116
00:07:30,800 --> 00:07:34,119
Speaker 1: bigger than just Arkansas. But for a lot of years,

117
00:07:34,160 --> 00:07:36,880
Speaker 1: that's really all I was focused on was Arkansas stuff,

118
00:07:36,920 --> 00:07:41,880
Speaker 1: and I knew you from that. UM walk me through

119
00:07:41,960 --> 00:07:45,640
Speaker 1: like your career, like just kind of what you've done

120
00:07:46,360 --> 00:07:49,600
Speaker 1: and just kind of an overview. I'll try to give

121
00:07:49,640 --> 00:07:55,080
Speaker 1: you the short view, which is pretty long. I just

122
00:07:55,200 --> 00:07:58,600
Speaker 1: told you I'm sixty four years old. When I started writing.

123
00:07:59,200 --> 00:08:02,720
Speaker 1: When I was in my twenties, I didn't know I

124
00:08:02,800 --> 00:08:05,760
Speaker 1: wanted to be a writer. I went to college at

125
00:08:05,840 --> 00:08:09,520
Speaker 1: Arkansas State University and got a degree in wildlife management.

126
00:08:10,120 --> 00:08:13,640
Speaker 1: And uh I finished my degree in nineteen seventy eight

127
00:08:14,320 --> 00:08:17,640
Speaker 1: and went to work for Arkansas Parks and Tourism as

128
00:08:17,680 --> 00:08:21,720
Speaker 1: a naturalist. And uh took people out and taught him

129
00:08:21,760 --> 00:08:26,600
Speaker 1: about nature and did nature hikes and programs. And while

130
00:08:26,640 --> 00:08:30,640
Speaker 1: I was doing that, gentleman I worked with named Larry Longman.

131
00:08:31,240 --> 00:08:33,960
Speaker 1: He was a botanist on the staff. I was more

132
00:08:34,000 --> 00:08:37,960
Speaker 1: of a zoologist, but he did a local newspaper column

133
00:08:38,080 --> 00:08:42,480
Speaker 1: on edible and medicinal plants that everybody just loved and

134
00:08:42,559 --> 00:08:46,280
Speaker 1: I loved it. And uh I went to the editor

135
00:08:46,320 --> 00:08:48,720
Speaker 1: at that paper and said, how would you like to

136
00:08:48,720 --> 00:08:52,480
Speaker 1: have a column on wildlife and not just plans. I'd

137
00:08:52,480 --> 00:08:55,000
Speaker 1: like to do one on wildlife and he said, sure,

138
00:08:55,440 --> 00:08:57,480
Speaker 1: you know I can't pay anything, but if you'd like

139
00:08:57,640 --> 00:08:59,880
Speaker 1: to do it. So what I did. I worked out

140
00:08:59,880 --> 00:09:02,600
Speaker 1: a deal with my boss at the park where every

141
00:09:02,600 --> 00:09:04,880
Speaker 1: week I do a column as part of my job

142
00:09:04,920 --> 00:09:08,199
Speaker 1: at the park, and my columns would include the programs

143
00:09:08,240 --> 00:09:10,760
Speaker 1: we had in the park that week. What I did

144
00:09:10,920 --> 00:09:13,800
Speaker 1: was a penny in drawing of a different animal every

145
00:09:13,840 --> 00:09:18,400
Speaker 1: week and just wrote about that animal. Artist not so

146
00:09:18,480 --> 00:09:21,920
Speaker 1: much but fair I was back then. I just don't

147
00:09:21,960 --> 00:09:25,959
Speaker 1: do it much now, but it got me started and

148
00:09:26,280 --> 00:09:29,600
Speaker 1: a lot of people just loved that column. And while

149
00:09:29,640 --> 00:09:33,040
Speaker 1: I was doing it, I did it for several years. Uh.

150
00:09:33,160 --> 00:09:37,560
Speaker 1: A magazine called Fins and Feathers came to Arkansas. Uh,

151
00:09:37,600 --> 00:09:41,559
Speaker 1: you have to be the current. What's the finn feather

152
00:09:41,600 --> 00:09:46,720
Speaker 1: and fur? It'sferent one now different magazine. Uh gone now.

153
00:09:47,280 --> 00:09:50,680
Speaker 1: But back then they had magazines in fifty states and

154
00:09:50,720 --> 00:09:54,600
Speaker 1: they had just started in Arkansas. Somebody told them I

155
00:09:54,760 --> 00:09:57,760
Speaker 1: wrote outdoor stuff, and they asked if i'd be interested

156
00:09:57,800 --> 00:10:00,960
Speaker 1: in writing money and fishing stories. And that's how I

157
00:10:01,000 --> 00:10:05,760
Speaker 1: got my start, uh in the magazine. YEP, I was

158
00:10:05,840 --> 00:10:10,400
Speaker 1: in my twenties. Uh. I started doing that. They paid

159
00:10:10,480 --> 00:10:12,840
Speaker 1: me and I was like, Wow, you can get paid.

160
00:10:13,480 --> 00:10:17,920
Speaker 1: Uh that was pretty awesome. And I started writing about

161
00:10:18,000 --> 00:10:22,880
Speaker 1: hunting and fishing because it was an Arkansas based magazine

162
00:10:23,000 --> 00:10:28,040
Speaker 1: that edition. Uh, I wrote about the Arkansas outdoors and

163
00:10:28,240 --> 00:10:31,160
Speaker 1: uh that was about the time I went to work

164
00:10:31,200 --> 00:10:34,640
Speaker 1: at the Game and Fish Commission as well, I was

165
00:10:34,800 --> 00:10:39,080
Speaker 1: the publications editor there when I started and became the

166
00:10:39,160 --> 00:10:42,120
Speaker 1: magazine editor, and I spent twenty years at the Game

167
00:10:42,160 --> 00:10:48,000
Speaker 1: of Fish Commission doing all sorts of publications, primarily Arkansas

168
00:10:48,080 --> 00:10:53,160
Speaker 1: Wildlife Magazine. I edited that for I was the editor

169
00:10:53,240 --> 00:10:56,120
Speaker 1: for about ten years. Now, did you have a background

170
00:10:56,200 --> 00:11:00,160
Speaker 1: in uh, journalism or anything? No background. I didn't know

171
00:11:00,240 --> 00:11:04,040
Speaker 1: what I learned. I was lucky when I started with

172
00:11:04,080 --> 00:11:08,240
Speaker 1: that newspaper. The editor there was a very good mentor.

173
00:11:08,440 --> 00:11:12,320
Speaker 1: He taught me a lot. And then, UH, when I

174
00:11:12,360 --> 00:11:15,040
Speaker 1: got in magazines, that was a little bit different, and

175
00:11:15,559 --> 00:11:17,839
Speaker 1: I always felt like I was out of place, like

176
00:11:17,880 --> 00:11:21,440
Speaker 1: I didn't know really if I was doing right or not.

177
00:11:22,200 --> 00:11:25,080
Speaker 1: And so I started looking for mentors, and it took

178
00:11:25,120 --> 00:11:27,400
Speaker 1: a while to find some good ones, but I got

179
00:11:27,520 --> 00:11:31,319
Speaker 1: some good mentors. Uh. Several of the guys that worked

180
00:11:31,400 --> 00:11:34,520
Speaker 1: with me at Game and Fish had been through journalism school.

181
00:11:35,200 --> 00:11:38,400
Speaker 1: They shared what they knew and taught me a lot,

182
00:11:39,240 --> 00:11:41,800
Speaker 1: and I just decided, you know, I really love this

183
00:11:41,920 --> 00:11:45,880
Speaker 1: and writing is my deal. I like it. Uh. It

184
00:11:45,920 --> 00:11:48,800
Speaker 1: was hard to find a job and wildlife management then

185
00:11:49,200 --> 00:11:51,800
Speaker 1: all those jobs were taking up and those people stayed

186
00:11:51,840 --> 00:11:53,959
Speaker 1: in them for thirty years. And there weren't a lot

187
00:11:54,000 --> 00:11:58,319
Speaker 1: of opening. So the writing got me in kind of

188
00:11:58,400 --> 00:12:02,000
Speaker 1: through the back door where I could teach other people

189
00:12:02,600 --> 00:12:06,000
Speaker 1: what I knew. And uh, I worked real hard to

190
00:12:06,120 --> 00:12:11,439
Speaker 1: learn writing. What what did your mentors because what did

191
00:12:11,440 --> 00:12:13,679
Speaker 1: your mentors talk to you about? I mean, like was

192
00:12:13,760 --> 00:12:17,599
Speaker 1: it like a practical stuff like grammar? Was its structure

193
00:12:17,760 --> 00:12:20,920
Speaker 1: of how to communicate? Like what what would they what?

194
00:12:21,000 --> 00:12:24,160
Speaker 1: Kind of? So I did pretty well in English and

195
00:12:24,360 --> 00:12:27,800
Speaker 1: high school and all, but I just felt like I

196
00:12:28,400 --> 00:12:31,120
Speaker 1: didn't know all the mechanics, and they taught me a

197
00:12:31,160 --> 00:12:33,960
Speaker 1: lot of that. They what I did. I would sit

198
00:12:34,040 --> 00:12:38,000
Speaker 1: with them and hand them an article and say, edit this,

199
00:12:38,120 --> 00:12:40,360
Speaker 1: and then tell me why you did what you did.

200
00:12:40,960 --> 00:12:43,880
Speaker 1: And so they would hand back some of my stories

201
00:12:43,920 --> 00:12:48,600
Speaker 1: just read pencil doll over and they were honest with me.

202
00:12:48,920 --> 00:12:53,000
Speaker 1: Fortunately for me, they were brutally honest. This is terrible,

203
00:12:53,040 --> 00:12:55,920
Speaker 1: you gotta quit doing this, or this is good, you

204
00:12:56,000 --> 00:13:00,280
Speaker 1: need to do that. And I always like critique and

205
00:13:00,320 --> 00:13:03,120
Speaker 1: I and I got a lot of it from those guys.

206
00:13:03,200 --> 00:13:06,520
Speaker 1: They enjoyed doing it, and I tried to listen. You know,

207
00:13:06,720 --> 00:13:12,079
Speaker 1: these guys were good writers themselves. Uh. Jim Spencer, for example,

208
00:13:12,320 --> 00:13:15,240
Speaker 1: is one of my favorite writers and one of my

209
00:13:15,320 --> 00:13:19,400
Speaker 1: best friends. Uh, Jim didn't have any qualms about sitting

210
00:13:19,440 --> 00:13:22,640
Speaker 1: down and read, penciling my stuff and showing me how

211
00:13:22,679 --> 00:13:25,720
Speaker 1: to do better. But what I really did was trying

212
00:13:25,720 --> 00:13:29,080
Speaker 1: to read good writings. I tried to. When I found

213
00:13:29,160 --> 00:13:33,080
Speaker 1: something that I enjoyed I knew other people enjoyed, I

214
00:13:33,160 --> 00:13:36,240
Speaker 1: tried to study it and learn why Why did I

215
00:13:36,360 --> 00:13:38,960
Speaker 1: enjoy that? What? What was it about that that made

216
00:13:38,960 --> 00:13:43,600
Speaker 1: it good? And I would break an article apart like

217
00:13:43,679 --> 00:13:46,400
Speaker 1: that and try to see what, what is it it

218
00:13:46,440 --> 00:13:49,640
Speaker 1: makes this guy so good? How would you characterize your

219
00:13:49,640 --> 00:13:55,079
Speaker 1: writing based upon like this knowledge that you were very

220
00:13:55,120 --> 00:14:00,360
Speaker 1: intentional and observed others and introspective, like, how would you

221
00:14:01,160 --> 00:14:03,400
Speaker 1: How would you describe your writing? I think I could

222
00:14:03,400 --> 00:14:05,600
Speaker 1: describe it, but I want to hear you describe it well.

223
00:14:05,880 --> 00:14:08,400
Speaker 1: One of the things I always tried to do was

224
00:14:08,800 --> 00:14:12,840
Speaker 1: find stories and nobody else had ever written. I felt

225
00:14:12,920 --> 00:14:18,679
Speaker 1: like that was important. Uh. When I started working with magazines,

226
00:14:18,760 --> 00:14:22,000
Speaker 1: I saw the same kind of stories all over again,

227
00:14:22,120 --> 00:14:25,560
Speaker 1: all the time. How to catch bass on a spinner bait?

228
00:14:25,680 --> 00:14:29,200
Speaker 1: And what guns should you use for deer honey? And

229
00:14:29,480 --> 00:14:31,640
Speaker 1: they were done over and over and over again, and

230
00:14:31,680 --> 00:14:35,200
Speaker 1: I got bored with that. I always was looking everywhere

231
00:14:35,240 --> 00:14:39,400
Speaker 1: I went for some type of story nobody had written.

232
00:14:39,640 --> 00:14:42,960
Speaker 1: That's what I wanted to write. I wanted my writing

233
00:14:43,080 --> 00:14:48,720
Speaker 1: to stand out from everybody else, and uh, catfishing kind

234
00:14:48,720 --> 00:14:52,320
Speaker 1: of got me in that door too, because back then,

235
00:14:52,440 --> 00:14:57,760
Speaker 1: nobody was writing much about catfish, and I decided, well,

236
00:14:57,800 --> 00:15:01,400
Speaker 1: I need some kind of a niche to to be mine.

237
00:15:01,840 --> 00:15:04,760
Speaker 1: You know. Uh. There were guys who were great deer

238
00:15:04,840 --> 00:15:07,760
Speaker 1: hunting writers, and there were guys who were great writers

239
00:15:07,800 --> 00:15:12,040
Speaker 1: about other things, bass fishing or whatever. Nobody was writing

240
00:15:12,080 --> 00:15:15,440
Speaker 1: about catfish. And I loved catfishing. It was an Arkansas

241
00:15:15,640 --> 00:15:18,680
Speaker 1: thing I grew up doing, and so I thought, that

242
00:15:18,720 --> 00:15:21,240
Speaker 1: can be my niche. And I think it'll be a

243
00:15:21,240 --> 00:15:26,440
Speaker 1: good niche because I had enough foresight to to think ahead,

244
00:15:27,120 --> 00:15:31,560
Speaker 1: that's gonna be more popular someday. And unfortunately I was right.

245
00:15:32,120 --> 00:15:35,200
Speaker 1: Uh when I started doing it, trying to sell a

246
00:15:35,280 --> 00:15:40,160
Speaker 1: story on catfishing just it was almost impossible. Nobody wanted

247
00:15:40,200 --> 00:15:44,520
Speaker 1: to buy those stories. But then, uh, it kind of

248
00:15:44,520 --> 00:15:49,800
Speaker 1: started changing and we started seeing more and more writing

249
00:15:50,000 --> 00:15:56,080
Speaker 1: and TV shows and uh just all sorts of things. Yeah,

250
00:15:56,240 --> 00:15:58,760
Speaker 1: the interest grew. I don't think it's so much grew

251
00:15:58,920 --> 00:16:02,800
Speaker 1: as it became were visible. Uh, people were doing it,

252
00:16:02,880 --> 00:16:05,360
Speaker 1: but the media wasn't covering it. And I bet your

253
00:16:05,440 --> 00:16:07,560
Speaker 1: work had a lot to do with that. Well, I

254
00:16:07,600 --> 00:16:10,200
Speaker 1: hope it did, and I feel like maybe it did.

255
00:16:10,360 --> 00:16:14,720
Speaker 1: I had a good opportunity early on to write a

256
00:16:14,720 --> 00:16:19,360
Speaker 1: book about catfishing. It's sold really well. The publisher was happy,

257
00:16:19,440 --> 00:16:23,520
Speaker 1: and I was happy, and then eventually wrote five books

258
00:16:23,560 --> 00:16:27,800
Speaker 1: about catfishing. And you know, there's a lot of other

259
00:16:27,840 --> 00:16:31,600
Speaker 1: guys doing that now. I hope I kind of ushered

260
00:16:31,640 --> 00:16:36,160
Speaker 1: in a lot of that era where people quit looking

261
00:16:36,240 --> 00:16:39,880
Speaker 1: at not just catfish, but a variety of other species too.

262
00:16:40,080 --> 00:16:43,640
Speaker 1: Is trash fish. People always thought of them kind of

263
00:16:43,680 --> 00:16:47,640
Speaker 1: as trash fish. That's not the case anymore. And for

264
00:16:47,760 --> 00:16:52,440
Speaker 1: good reasons. We realize those fish get big, they're abundant,

265
00:16:52,480 --> 00:16:55,640
Speaker 1: they're good to eat. There's all kinds of reasons to

266
00:16:55,760 --> 00:16:58,720
Speaker 1: enjoy catfishing, and now more and more people, I think do,

267
00:16:59,280 --> 00:17:02,560
Speaker 1: And I hope I did help. You know, as you're

268
00:17:02,560 --> 00:17:05,040
Speaker 1: telling me the story, it reminds me a lot of

269
00:17:05,080 --> 00:17:08,719
Speaker 1: my own story with Bear Keith. For real, Like you know,

270
00:17:08,920 --> 00:17:11,960
Speaker 1: ten years ago, when when I started writing and talking

271
00:17:12,000 --> 00:17:15,800
Speaker 1: about bears, especially here in Arkansas. And now you had

272
00:17:15,840 --> 00:17:18,240
Speaker 1: written about bears, and I want to get to that later.

273
00:17:19,840 --> 00:17:22,080
Speaker 1: So I'm not saying I sure wasn't the first one,

274
00:17:22,680 --> 00:17:25,919
Speaker 1: but you know, it was kind of like this animal

275
00:17:25,960 --> 00:17:30,200
Speaker 1: that not many people paid much attention to in in Boy.

276
00:17:30,280 --> 00:17:35,080
Speaker 1: Today there's a lot of national outdoor media focused on bears,

277
00:17:35,119 --> 00:17:38,639
Speaker 1: and it's partly because they're doing so well ecologically, I mean,

278
00:17:38,680 --> 00:17:41,919
Speaker 1: bear populations are expanding. What But anyway, I just I

279
00:17:41,960 --> 00:17:45,639
Speaker 1: connect with your story that you and for that reason,

280
00:17:45,760 --> 00:17:48,480
Speaker 1: I've read a lot of what you've written about bears,

281
00:17:48,600 --> 00:17:53,240
Speaker 1: and uh, you're one of those guys that immediately comes

282
00:17:53,280 --> 00:17:55,800
Speaker 1: to man when I think about bears, and you're one

283
00:17:55,840 --> 00:17:59,920
Speaker 1: of those few people who have made that your an edge. Yeah,

284
00:18:00,040 --> 00:18:03,560
Speaker 1: and uh, I think it's important as a writer that

285
00:18:03,640 --> 00:18:05,560
Speaker 1: you do have some kind of a niche if you're

286
00:18:05,560 --> 00:18:08,800
Speaker 1: gonna make a living at it. And I did for

287
00:18:08,840 --> 00:18:15,840
Speaker 1: a lot of years. Uh it's uh, it's changed a lot.

288
00:18:15,960 --> 00:18:19,120
Speaker 1: I I worked with Game and Fish for about twenty years.

289
00:18:19,280 --> 00:18:21,879
Speaker 1: Let's get back on the career track there. Yeah. I

290
00:18:22,000 --> 00:18:25,440
Speaker 1: retired there after about twenty years because I was working

291
00:18:25,480 --> 00:18:29,760
Speaker 1: toward a full time freelance career and I started freelancing

292
00:18:29,840 --> 00:18:35,560
Speaker 1: full time uh in early two thousand's and uh I

293
00:18:35,640 --> 00:18:39,080
Speaker 1: freelance full time for about seven or eight years. And

294
00:18:39,240 --> 00:18:45,399
Speaker 1: uh um during those years, uh, I've really had a

295
00:18:45,400 --> 00:18:49,120
Speaker 1: lot of fun. I traveled a lot. Uh you would

296
00:18:49,119 --> 00:18:52,320
Speaker 1: have been writing for National Magazine. I was what really

297
00:18:52,359 --> 00:18:54,880
Speaker 1: got my name out there. Probably was. I spent about

298
00:18:54,960 --> 00:19:00,480
Speaker 1: ten years writing a travel adventure column for ESPN dot com,

299
00:19:02,080 --> 00:19:06,080
Speaker 1: just published online. Yes, it was all online. Uh. I

300
00:19:06,200 --> 00:19:11,159
Speaker 1: was real fortunate. Uh. Steve Bowman here in Arkansas was

301
00:19:11,400 --> 00:19:13,680
Speaker 1: one of the people who I worked with a lot.

302
00:19:13,840 --> 00:19:17,200
Speaker 1: He was our local newspaper guy, one of the papers,

303
00:19:17,240 --> 00:19:20,840
Speaker 1: and we got to be friends and uh. He eventually

304
00:19:20,920 --> 00:19:23,879
Speaker 1: went on to do a lot of work with ESPN,

305
00:19:24,560 --> 00:19:27,480
Speaker 1: and when they started their website, he was looking for

306
00:19:27,600 --> 00:19:30,160
Speaker 1: writers and he called me up and said, hey, I'd

307
00:19:30,240 --> 00:19:35,680
Speaker 1: like you to do something every week if possible, for ESPN.

308
00:19:36,320 --> 00:19:40,359
Speaker 1: And it was like this amazing opportunity. I said, what

309
00:19:40,400 --> 00:19:42,439
Speaker 1: do you want? He said, I don't know, come up

310
00:19:42,480 --> 00:19:47,240
Speaker 1: with an idea. That's what It's exactly what you want.

311
00:19:47,320 --> 00:19:49,000
Speaker 1: And I said, I went back to and said I

312
00:19:49,040 --> 00:19:53,199
Speaker 1: want to do a travel column. I had read a

313
00:19:53,280 --> 00:19:58,160
Speaker 1: lot of stuff by some guys who wrote with Outside magazine,

314
00:19:58,680 --> 00:20:02,440
Speaker 1: and I remember them talking about when they started Outside,

315
00:20:02,520 --> 00:20:05,520
Speaker 1: they sat down and tried to decide what was going

316
00:20:05,560 --> 00:20:07,120
Speaker 1: to be in it, and one of the guys said,

317
00:20:07,320 --> 00:20:09,760
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be the guy that travels to all these

318
00:20:09,760 --> 00:20:15,400
Speaker 1: exotic destinations and writes about that. And I thought, now

319
00:20:15,440 --> 00:20:17,320
Speaker 1: it would be cool if I could do that hunting

320
00:20:17,359 --> 00:20:20,439
Speaker 1: and fishing wise. So I went back to Bowman and

321
00:20:20,480 --> 00:20:22,439
Speaker 1: I said, how about let me do this? And he

322
00:20:22,480 --> 00:20:25,520
Speaker 1: said sure, He said, I can't pay for all you travel.

323
00:20:25,960 --> 00:20:28,400
Speaker 1: I said, tell you what, you give me some ESPN

324
00:20:28,520 --> 00:20:31,840
Speaker 1: stationary and let me use that to line up my

325
00:20:31,880 --> 00:20:35,439
Speaker 1: own trips and I could make it work. And for

326
00:20:35,560 --> 00:20:41,320
Speaker 1: ten years I did, and it was amazing what exposure

327
00:20:41,760 --> 00:20:44,520
Speaker 1: that gave me that I never dreamt I could have.

328
00:20:45,080 --> 00:20:49,800
Speaker 1: There were days when I would get thousands of views

329
00:20:49,880 --> 00:20:55,640
Speaker 1: on a story, tens of thousands, and UH people would

330
00:20:56,280 --> 00:20:58,760
Speaker 1: stop me on the street because they saw that little

331
00:20:58,800 --> 00:21:02,840
Speaker 1: postage stamps picture of my face on my columns and

332
00:21:02,920 --> 00:21:06,960
Speaker 1: they would recognize me. And I couldn't dream that could happen,

333
00:21:07,720 --> 00:21:13,080
Speaker 1: but it did. It was amazing the amount of UH

334
00:21:13,320 --> 00:21:17,080
Speaker 1: popularity that column. What was the column? It was called

335
00:21:17,440 --> 00:21:20,560
Speaker 1: out there with Keith Sutton out there, there was Keith

336
00:21:20,640 --> 00:21:24,080
Speaker 1: catfish Son. It was out there. So that was from

337
00:21:24,119 --> 00:21:29,000
Speaker 1: two thousand about somewhere in that neighborhood when I did

338
00:21:29,040 --> 00:21:34,400
Speaker 1: all that. Eventually, Uh, ESPN got bought out by Disney

339
00:21:34,640 --> 00:21:39,840
Speaker 1: and bigger companies. Yeah, during that time I also got

340
00:21:39,880 --> 00:21:44,800
Speaker 1: to do about how I did fifty six TV shows

341
00:21:44,840 --> 00:21:48,800
Speaker 1: with them as well, short TV shows in between the

342
00:21:48,800 --> 00:21:52,119
Speaker 1: bigger ones. But that also got me a lot of

343
00:21:52,160 --> 00:21:55,480
Speaker 1: exposure and it was fun to do. And is there

344
00:21:55,520 --> 00:21:58,399
Speaker 1: any place people could go look at those? Now? Are

345
00:21:58,480 --> 00:22:01,880
Speaker 1: they online anywhere? There? A longer? And I wish they were.

346
00:22:02,600 --> 00:22:07,600
Speaker 1: Sometimes they cataloged that stuff on YouTubers. Now the columns

347
00:22:07,640 --> 00:22:11,200
Speaker 1: I wrote you can probably still find. They still have,

348
00:22:11,600 --> 00:22:14,800
Speaker 1: uh some of those up on the ESPN website, but

349
00:22:14,840 --> 00:22:18,439
Speaker 1: you gotta dig deep. Final But where where did you

350
00:22:18,440 --> 00:22:22,480
Speaker 1: get to travel too? I traveled all over the Western Hemisphere,

351
00:22:22,640 --> 00:22:28,280
Speaker 1: from Alaska and Canada down to Brazil and Venezuela. Uh,

352
00:22:28,440 --> 00:22:31,119
Speaker 1: spent a lot of time to see. I didn't know that, kedn't.

353
00:22:31,480 --> 00:22:34,720
Speaker 1: I didn't know that. It was the glory years I

354
00:22:34,800 --> 00:22:37,000
Speaker 1: called them. I was younger then and I could do

355
00:22:37,080 --> 00:22:40,040
Speaker 1: all that. You know, it was grueling sometime I'd be

356
00:22:40,119 --> 00:22:44,920
Speaker 1: gone for weeks A lot of times. Uh, people came

357
00:22:44,960 --> 00:22:47,879
Speaker 1: to me and offered me opportunities that were once in

358
00:22:47,960 --> 00:22:51,960
Speaker 1: a lifetime. A guy met down in Mexico said where

359
00:22:52,040 --> 00:22:54,160
Speaker 1: would you go? We were fishing in Mexico, and he said,

360
00:22:54,160 --> 00:22:55,760
Speaker 1: where would you go if you'd go anywhere in the

361
00:22:55,800 --> 00:22:58,760
Speaker 1: world tomorrow? And I said, oh, I always want to

362
00:22:58,760 --> 00:23:02,159
Speaker 1: go to Amazon and zeal And. Within a month he

363
00:23:02,240 --> 00:23:05,160
Speaker 1: had us a triplane went to Brazil and I just

364
00:23:05,200 --> 00:23:09,240
Speaker 1: fell in love with it. Peacock bass fish, peacock bass.

365
00:23:09,400 --> 00:23:14,120
Speaker 1: But more than that catfishing really it was Amazon River. Yeah,

366
00:23:14,359 --> 00:23:18,800
Speaker 1: huge catfish. Fishould get several hundred pounds. Did you catch

367
00:23:18,800 --> 00:23:21,160
Speaker 1: a big one down there? I caught several big ones

368
00:23:21,200 --> 00:23:24,080
Speaker 1: were big down there. The biggest is landed was around

369
00:23:24,080 --> 00:23:27,520
Speaker 1: a hundred pounds. I've had something that were a lot bigger.

370
00:23:27,600 --> 00:23:29,680
Speaker 1: Would that be bigger? That would be bigger than anything

371
00:23:29,720 --> 00:23:31,960
Speaker 1: you would have caught here? Yeah? I mean that? What? What?

372
00:23:31,960 --> 00:23:36,720
Speaker 1: What catfish here getting that? Big? Bluecats and flatheads both

373
00:23:36,760 --> 00:23:40,080
Speaker 1: get that big here? Uh? But down there, these fish,

374
00:23:40,320 --> 00:23:44,920
Speaker 1: the hundred pounders, they call them fry babies. They that

375
00:23:45,119 --> 00:23:49,600
Speaker 1: species gets over six hundred pounds. You just can't hardly

376
00:23:49,640 --> 00:23:52,880
Speaker 1: catch that fish on ron Real CanYa. It's almost impossible,

377
00:23:52,920 --> 00:23:56,639
Speaker 1: to be honestly, it's the hardest fighting thing I've ever experienced.

378
00:23:56,680 --> 00:23:58,680
Speaker 1: And and I've caught a lot of big fish. I

379
00:23:59,280 --> 00:24:01,560
Speaker 1: spent a lot of years that that got to be

380
00:24:01,680 --> 00:24:06,920
Speaker 1: my deal. I wanted to catch big fish, mostly freshwater. Uh.

381
00:24:07,080 --> 00:24:11,280
Speaker 1: I've caught sturgeon that were ten feet long, and um,

382
00:24:11,800 --> 00:24:14,040
Speaker 1: you know, I fished for a lot of big fish

383
00:24:14,240 --> 00:24:17,400
Speaker 1: and uh uh fished a lot in salt water too.

384
00:24:17,960 --> 00:24:22,320
Speaker 1: Uh and uh it was just awesome catching those giants.

385
00:24:22,400 --> 00:24:25,240
Speaker 1: And that was kind of my deal, was being able

386
00:24:25,320 --> 00:24:28,320
Speaker 1: to do that. So I went to Brazil I think

387
00:24:28,760 --> 00:24:32,560
Speaker 1: five times. Uh spent some time in Venezuela and really

388
00:24:33,240 --> 00:24:37,800
Speaker 1: tried to develop a business where we were carrying people

389
00:24:37,920 --> 00:24:41,600
Speaker 1: down there to try to catch some of these monster fish.

390
00:24:42,000 --> 00:24:45,159
Speaker 1: We'd take sixteen anglers at a time. I had an

391
00:24:45,240 --> 00:24:48,440
Speaker 1: agreement with a company that had a boat in Brazil.

392
00:24:49,160 --> 00:24:52,480
Speaker 1: Uh they would let me book my clients. And uh,

393
00:24:52,600 --> 00:24:54,960
Speaker 1: so you were were your booking agent or an out

394
00:24:55,080 --> 00:24:59,480
Speaker 1: would booking agent. It would be the best way of

395
00:24:59,560 --> 00:25:03,919
Speaker 1: saying but uh, I would uh write stories and say, hey,

396
00:25:04,000 --> 00:25:05,640
Speaker 1: you want to go with me to Brazil and try

397
00:25:05,680 --> 00:25:09,000
Speaker 1: to catch a six hundred pound catfish. We booked the

398
00:25:09,000 --> 00:25:14,600
Speaker 1: trips full, but what happened was nine eleven. UH just

399
00:25:14,840 --> 00:25:18,919
Speaker 1: ended it, just abruptly. Uh I had a trip lined

400
00:25:19,000 --> 00:25:22,320
Speaker 1: up with sixteen people to go down, and when nine

401
00:25:22,400 --> 00:25:29,200
Speaker 1: eleven happened, everybody canceled their trip and then kinda put

402
00:25:29,240 --> 00:25:33,800
Speaker 1: a damper on the whole industry. For several years, nobody

403
00:25:33,880 --> 00:25:37,480
Speaker 1: really wanted to go on those trips until things kind

404
00:25:37,480 --> 00:25:41,560
Speaker 1: of got back to normal. UH So I quit doing that,

405
00:25:41,680 --> 00:25:44,879
Speaker 1: and in the meantime, uh I went to work with

406
00:25:44,920 --> 00:25:52,000
Speaker 1: the Future Fisherman Foundation. Uh was executive director of that organization,

407
00:25:52,119 --> 00:25:55,640
Speaker 1: which has programs like Hooked on Fishing, Not on Drugs.

408
00:25:55,720 --> 00:25:59,040
Speaker 1: Most people have heard of that, and uh it was

409
00:25:59,080 --> 00:26:02,840
Speaker 1: a temporary from the beginning. I helped move it under

410
00:26:02,880 --> 00:26:07,240
Speaker 1: the umbrella of another organization and then uh I wasn't

411
00:26:07,240 --> 00:26:10,159
Speaker 1: sure what I was gonna do, and uh I took it.

412
00:26:10,359 --> 00:26:13,080
Speaker 1: That would have brought us up to that brings up

413
00:26:13,119 --> 00:26:16,239
Speaker 1: to ten years ago, and I went to work with

414
00:26:16,440 --> 00:26:20,879
Speaker 1: Arkansas Farm Bureau, working in their PR department, doing photography

415
00:26:20,880 --> 00:26:24,520
Speaker 1: and writing. And that's where I'm at now and hopefully

416
00:26:24,600 --> 00:26:27,120
Speaker 1: in a couple of years, I'll retire there and get

417
00:26:27,160 --> 00:26:30,440
Speaker 1: back to traveling and fishing and hunting a little bit more.

418
00:26:30,600 --> 00:26:34,680
Speaker 1: Yeah wow, that's uh, that's the short version of all this,

419
00:26:34,800 --> 00:26:38,600
Speaker 1: and yeah best I can. Well. The the international travel

420
00:26:38,640 --> 00:26:41,600
Speaker 1: I didn't know about, because like I said, I knew

421
00:26:41,640 --> 00:26:46,040
Speaker 1: you as uh just the Arkansas guy I when it

422
00:26:46,119 --> 00:26:50,600
Speaker 1: came to fishing and hunting story. Arkansas's Warkansas folks are

423
00:26:50,640 --> 00:26:54,760
Speaker 1: the ones that were my folks, you know. They they

424
00:26:54,880 --> 00:26:58,240
Speaker 1: stuck with me all those years and enjoyed reading what

425
00:26:58,280 --> 00:27:01,560
Speaker 1: I was doing, but largely because was most of what

426
00:27:01,680 --> 00:27:03,960
Speaker 1: I did, and even now, most of what I still

427
00:27:04,000 --> 00:27:08,040
Speaker 1: do is about Arkansas, and uh, you know, I just

428
00:27:08,160 --> 00:27:12,959
Speaker 1: love this state. We've got some wonderful opportunities for hunting

429
00:27:13,040 --> 00:27:17,080
Speaker 1: and fishing and all other kinds of outdoor recreation. And

430
00:27:17,119 --> 00:27:19,399
Speaker 1: I guess it goes back to those years with parks

431
00:27:19,440 --> 00:27:23,359
Speaker 1: and tourism. You know, I always enjoyed sharing with other

432
00:27:23,440 --> 00:27:27,560
Speaker 1: people the outdoor stuff and uh teaching them how to

433
00:27:27,840 --> 00:27:31,760
Speaker 1: enjoy it as well. In Arkansas's my place. You know.

434
00:27:32,040 --> 00:27:34,199
Speaker 1: I want to. I want to come back to Arkansas,

435
00:27:34,520 --> 00:27:37,760
Speaker 1: but I can't. I can't skip over the Amazon River.

436
00:27:37,960 --> 00:27:40,320
Speaker 1: I got one more question, did you ever as much

437
00:27:40,359 --> 00:27:42,240
Speaker 1: as you were down there, did you ever running any

438
00:27:42,400 --> 00:27:46,919
Speaker 1: sketchy situations on the river with with I mean just

439
00:27:47,000 --> 00:27:50,080
Speaker 1: any like some exciting wild thing that happened on there

440
00:27:50,800 --> 00:27:54,600
Speaker 1: in in the Amazon? Really not so much. Uh. The

441
00:27:54,680 --> 00:27:58,960
Speaker 1: places we went were very remote, Um, not a lot

442
00:27:59,000 --> 00:28:04,240
Speaker 1: of people around. Uh. I never really had anything out

443
00:28:04,240 --> 00:28:08,480
Speaker 1: of the ordinary happened down there. But in Mexico I

444
00:28:08,920 --> 00:28:12,680
Speaker 1: had a lot of crazy things happened. Uh. We got

445
00:28:12,720 --> 00:28:16,040
Speaker 1: held up by bandits one time, coming out from a

446
00:28:16,119 --> 00:28:20,480
Speaker 1: remote lake down there. Uh. They stopped your car and

447
00:28:20,480 --> 00:28:23,840
Speaker 1: stood you up. They rolled boulters into the road and

448
00:28:23,920 --> 00:28:26,840
Speaker 1: stopped the whole caravan, all of us coming out of

449
00:28:26,880 --> 00:28:29,760
Speaker 1: this lake in the middle of the night, the road

450
00:28:30,119 --> 00:28:35,720
Speaker 1: boulders by. They rolled boulders down in the road. Fortunately

451
00:28:36,080 --> 00:28:40,000
Speaker 1: we had some armed guards with us, which they didn't know.

452
00:28:40,480 --> 00:28:45,200
Speaker 1: But there was a shootout. It got really sketchy. We

453
00:28:45,880 --> 00:28:48,360
Speaker 1: gotta stop there. We just say, so, you're how many

454
00:28:48,440 --> 00:28:53,040
Speaker 1: vehicles are in this four vehicles? I think, so you're

455
00:28:53,080 --> 00:28:56,000
Speaker 1: not driving us, So you're riding one of the cars.

456
00:28:56,520 --> 00:29:02,880
Speaker 1: The cars stop, yeah, and then they better yeah they Uh.

457
00:29:03,040 --> 00:29:05,560
Speaker 1: We were coming out of the lake at an unusual

458
00:29:05,680 --> 00:29:08,520
Speaker 1: time usually they come out in the daytime, but the

459
00:29:08,600 --> 00:29:12,120
Speaker 1: fishing had been so good. Our group agreed, let's stay

460
00:29:12,160 --> 00:29:14,240
Speaker 1: as late as we can and we'll drive out in

461
00:29:14,280 --> 00:29:16,680
Speaker 1: the middle of the night. We can sleep on the

462
00:29:16,680 --> 00:29:20,200
Speaker 1: way to the airport. And so it was literally the

463
00:29:20,200 --> 00:29:22,680
Speaker 1: middle of the night. It was one or two o'clock

464
00:29:22,720 --> 00:29:28,640
Speaker 1: in the morning problem and we headed out, and uh,

465
00:29:28,680 --> 00:29:31,040
Speaker 1: of course I knew we had these two guys with

466
00:29:31,120 --> 00:29:34,360
Speaker 1: us who were armed. I had asked when I first met.

467
00:29:34,360 --> 00:29:36,400
Speaker 1: In fact, I had fished with them all week. They

468
00:29:36,480 --> 00:29:42,880
Speaker 1: liked to catfish. Believe their names were Julio and Julio. So, uh,

469
00:29:43,360 --> 00:29:47,040
Speaker 1: as we were coming out, the whole caravan just stopped

470
00:29:47,040 --> 00:29:50,360
Speaker 1: and I asked the driver, why are we stopping? And

471
00:29:50,480 --> 00:29:56,880
Speaker 1: then gunshots they were up. He said, bandidos. So he

472
00:29:57,040 --> 00:30:02,400
Speaker 1: told that's a. That's a. He told everybody to get

473
00:30:02,440 --> 00:30:04,920
Speaker 1: down in the floorboard. You know, he didn't know what

474
00:30:05,080 --> 00:30:08,960
Speaker 1: was gonna happen either, And uh, I mean my first

475
00:30:09,040 --> 00:30:11,200
Speaker 1: instinct was to grab my camera see if I could

476
00:30:11,200 --> 00:30:15,840
Speaker 1: get pictures, and then under so many bullets flying around,

477
00:30:15,840 --> 00:30:18,600
Speaker 1: I decided that wasn't a good idea, and we all

478
00:30:19,000 --> 00:30:22,600
Speaker 1: got down in the floorboard and a lot of shots

479
00:30:22,800 --> 00:30:26,360
Speaker 1: rang out and we didn't really know what was happening,

480
00:30:26,840 --> 00:30:30,680
Speaker 1: and then suddenly somebody tapped on the window with a

481
00:30:30,760 --> 00:30:35,920
Speaker 1: gun barrel. Unfortunately, yeah, but fortunately it was one of

482
00:30:35,960 --> 00:30:41,480
Speaker 1: our armed guards and he said, Senior Catfish, it's very exciting. Huh.

483
00:30:42,840 --> 00:30:46,800
Speaker 1: He said, we scared the bandidos away, so unfortunately they did,

484
00:30:46,840 --> 00:30:49,040
Speaker 1: but we all had to get out, so nobody got shot.

485
00:30:49,080 --> 00:30:52,560
Speaker 1: Nobody got shot that we know it luckily weren't very

486
00:30:52,560 --> 00:30:55,440
Speaker 1: good shot. Yeah. Yeah, So you know, those were the

487
00:30:55,520 --> 00:31:00,960
Speaker 1: kind of stories, uh that made my ESPN callum over

488
00:31:01,000 --> 00:31:03,760
Speaker 1: the years. There were all kinds of probably see and

489
00:31:03,800 --> 00:31:07,600
Speaker 1: find that story. Yeah, probably so Senior Catfish in the

490
00:31:07,680 --> 00:31:13,280
Speaker 1: Mexican Bandidos, I'm totally gonna search for that. Yeah, it's

491
00:31:13,320 --> 00:31:17,800
Speaker 1: out there somewhere, I'm sure most of the time. Um,

492
00:31:18,400 --> 00:31:22,440
Speaker 1: you know, people always asked about Brazil, weren't you scared

493
00:31:22,600 --> 00:31:26,040
Speaker 1: being in those remote places? I was never scared. It

494
00:31:26,080 --> 00:31:30,840
Speaker 1: was totally the opposite. Really, I'm scared going downtown a

495
00:31:30,880 --> 00:31:33,840
Speaker 1: little rock at night, but I'm not scared being on

496
00:31:34,080 --> 00:31:38,360
Speaker 1: the Amazon six hundred miles from nearest town because there's

497
00:31:38,400 --> 00:31:43,160
Speaker 1: nobody there. That's what made it exciting. You're in a place.

498
00:31:43,560 --> 00:31:46,800
Speaker 1: A few people visit, a few people are there, a

499
00:31:46,840 --> 00:31:50,320
Speaker 1: few people live there, and so you have all these

500
00:31:50,360 --> 00:31:57,640
Speaker 1: amazing opportunities, especially fishing, Lise, uh, that are just incredible,

501
00:31:58,280 --> 00:32:01,520
Speaker 1: and uh, I will, I will never I never felt

502
00:32:01,640 --> 00:32:05,080
Speaker 1: in danger. I mean we saw things that could have

503
00:32:05,160 --> 00:32:11,040
Speaker 1: been dangerous. We saw fifteen foot anacondas and things like that,

504
00:32:11,120 --> 00:32:14,640
Speaker 1: but I never felt like we were ever in any

505
00:32:14,760 --> 00:32:18,360
Speaker 1: danger down there. I loved going to Brazil. The people

506
00:32:18,440 --> 00:32:22,200
Speaker 1: down there really wonderful, and there's nowhere in the world

507
00:32:22,240 --> 00:32:27,080
Speaker 1: got better fishing. I mean, it's incredible peacock mass. At

508
00:32:27,120 --> 00:32:32,440
Speaker 1: the time, nobody was really promoting the catfishing down there,

509
00:32:32,640 --> 00:32:35,560
Speaker 1: and I didn't know my first trip down there that

510
00:32:35,600 --> 00:32:39,160
Speaker 1: there were huge cat fishing. And when I found out,

511
00:32:39,200 --> 00:32:42,240
Speaker 1: it's like, why am I fishing for peacock mass when

512
00:32:42,240 --> 00:32:49,160
Speaker 1: I can catch us exactly. So my second trip, on

513
00:32:49,320 --> 00:32:52,800
Speaker 1: my first trip, something happened that was kind of incredible.

514
00:32:53,120 --> 00:32:56,560
Speaker 1: I was in the boat with a friend from Brazil

515
00:32:57,160 --> 00:33:00,920
Speaker 1: and we saw this massive fish that was probably seven

516
00:33:01,000 --> 00:33:06,360
Speaker 1: or eight feet across, round as a circle, that swam

517
00:33:06,480 --> 00:33:09,480
Speaker 1: under the boat and I'm like, what the heck was that?

518
00:33:10,400 --> 00:33:13,000
Speaker 1: And he called it Ohia, and I didn't know what

519
00:33:13,120 --> 00:33:16,400
Speaker 1: that men at the time, but it means ray. But

520
00:33:16,480 --> 00:33:19,440
Speaker 1: it was seven or feet seven or eight feet around,

521
00:33:19,760 --> 00:33:27,960
Speaker 1: and I didn't had those in freshwater three thousand miles

522
00:33:28,000 --> 00:33:31,640
Speaker 1: from the ocean, And so when I got back, I

523
00:33:31,680 --> 00:33:36,560
Speaker 1: started trying to find out what could that be. Nobody knew.

524
00:33:36,600 --> 00:33:39,800
Speaker 1: There was no information about a fish like that, So

525
00:33:39,840 --> 00:33:42,600
Speaker 1: I decided, I know where I saw it, I'm gonna

526
00:33:42,640 --> 00:33:45,880
Speaker 1: go back and try to catch it. So my second trip,

527
00:33:46,920 --> 00:33:49,680
Speaker 1: an Arkansas boy named Catfish down there to do a

528
00:33:49,680 --> 00:33:53,520
Speaker 1: man's job. I went to the same place my second trip,

529
00:33:53,600 --> 00:33:57,560
Speaker 1: and I caught that fish. And it's called the discus ray.

530
00:33:57,880 --> 00:34:01,880
Speaker 1: It had not been seen or described since the early

531
00:34:01,960 --> 00:34:06,320
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds, and it turns out there there's more of

532
00:34:06,360 --> 00:34:12,680
Speaker 1: them than people really knew. Uh. Anybody catch it? Well? Uh,

533
00:34:12,840 --> 00:34:15,160
Speaker 1: I figured it's a ray. I'd caught a lot of

534
00:34:15,320 --> 00:34:22,880
Speaker 1: big rays, and I'd caught southern sting rays that were

535
00:34:22,920 --> 00:34:26,480
Speaker 1: seven or eight feet across and they lay on the

536
00:34:26,520 --> 00:34:29,799
Speaker 1: bottom and eat dead stuff. So I put a dead

537
00:34:29,880 --> 00:34:31,920
Speaker 1: fish on the hook, threw it out on the bottom

538
00:34:31,920 --> 00:34:35,000
Speaker 1: where I had seen this fish before, and within fifteen

539
00:34:35,040 --> 00:34:38,239
Speaker 1: minutes I had it on Why didn't something else even.

540
00:34:38,280 --> 00:34:41,600
Speaker 1: I mean, like if that well fish so full of fish,

541
00:34:41,640 --> 00:34:45,480
Speaker 1: I mean they are amazing difficult fishing with those kind

542
00:34:45,520 --> 00:34:48,279
Speaker 1: of baits. But I was just determined, you know, I

543
00:34:48,360 --> 00:34:51,400
Speaker 1: was gonna try to hit the right spot, and just

544
00:34:51,560 --> 00:34:53,759
Speaker 1: fortunately I caught it, and it was like the most

545
00:34:53,800 --> 00:34:57,239
Speaker 1: incredible fish I've ever seen. When I got back, I

546
00:34:57,360 --> 00:34:59,560
Speaker 1: just said it, well, it needs to be a world record.

547
00:34:59,600 --> 00:35:02,279
Speaker 1: I want to enter it in the record book, and

548
00:35:02,320 --> 00:35:07,120
Speaker 1: you have to have the fish identified by an expert. Uh.

549
00:35:07,200 --> 00:35:09,279
Speaker 1: I couldn't find an expert knew what it was. I

550
00:35:09,320 --> 00:35:12,000
Speaker 1: had all these great photos of this fish. None of

551
00:35:12,040 --> 00:35:15,080
Speaker 1: the ray experts had never heard of it. Finally I

552
00:35:15,120 --> 00:35:18,080
Speaker 1: found a guy in Germany who's a ray expert, and

553
00:35:18,080 --> 00:35:21,520
Speaker 1: he said, this fish is painted in a book from

554
00:35:21,600 --> 00:35:24,840
Speaker 1: the very early eighteen hundreds. It's the same fish, I

555
00:35:25,320 --> 00:35:28,200
Speaker 1: have no doubt. In this book it was called a

556
00:35:28,320 --> 00:35:33,160
Speaker 1: spine tailed the leposaurus, and the picture was identical. It

557
00:35:33,239 --> 00:35:38,840
Speaker 1: had a short tail covered with spikes, Like yeah, for sure,

558
00:35:39,480 --> 00:35:42,879
Speaker 1: it's Uh. It was an incredible fish, and uh it's

559
00:35:42,920 --> 00:35:47,360
Speaker 1: still the world record. That particular fish was about six

560
00:35:47,400 --> 00:35:52,560
Speaker 1: feet across, weighed almost two hundred pounds. Uh, and I

561
00:35:52,640 --> 00:35:57,319
Speaker 1: caught several more while I was down there. How I

562
00:35:57,360 --> 00:35:59,560
Speaker 1: can't even imagine real in a fish like that, Like

563
00:36:00,040 --> 00:36:03,440
Speaker 1: it was. Did they fight? Well, it's kind of like

564
00:36:03,560 --> 00:36:06,600
Speaker 1: dragging a barn door, you know. It's it's like most

565
00:36:06,719 --> 00:36:09,440
Speaker 1: raised you know a lot of people who hook a

566
00:36:09,600 --> 00:36:13,200
Speaker 1: ray here in saltwater. I just want to cut the

567
00:36:13,280 --> 00:36:17,239
Speaker 1: line because it's so difficult to actually land one. You know,

568
00:36:17,400 --> 00:36:20,239
Speaker 1: they're huge and they're flat, and they suck up on

569
00:36:20,360 --> 00:36:23,560
Speaker 1: the bottom and don't want to come up. Uh. This

570
00:36:23,640 --> 00:36:26,520
Speaker 1: one was on the bottom and the eight feet of water.

571
00:36:26,600 --> 00:36:29,239
Speaker 1: I had to sit there and strum my fishing line

572
00:36:29,280 --> 00:36:32,120
Speaker 1: to make him mad enough to get off the bottom.

573
00:36:32,200 --> 00:36:34,680
Speaker 1: And what do you mean, like vibrate the fishing Yeah,

574
00:36:34,719 --> 00:36:37,759
Speaker 1: you kind of vibrate like a guitar string and it

575
00:36:37,880 --> 00:36:41,320
Speaker 1: aggravates them and they eventually come up. And is that

576
00:36:41,400 --> 00:36:45,960
Speaker 1: a trick or just that's that's a ray trick I

577
00:36:46,120 --> 00:36:50,719
Speaker 1: learned in Virginia with some anglers out there. Uh. But

578
00:36:50,840 --> 00:36:53,000
Speaker 1: when it came up then I knew I had him,

579
00:36:53,200 --> 00:36:57,960
Speaker 1: and it was incredible dish. No, they don't eat them

580
00:36:58,000 --> 00:37:01,719
Speaker 1: at all. I wanted to release, says fish alive, but

581
00:37:01,840 --> 00:37:05,759
Speaker 1: by the time we could get it weighed I took

582
00:37:05,800 --> 00:37:08,680
Speaker 1: a certified scale with me. By the time we could

583
00:37:08,680 --> 00:37:11,560
Speaker 1: get to the boat, uh, it had expired, so we

584
00:37:11,560 --> 00:37:14,640
Speaker 1: couldn't release it. And I asked, you know, can we

585
00:37:15,040 --> 00:37:17,719
Speaker 1: can you eat it? And they're like, no, we're not

586
00:37:17,760 --> 00:37:22,759
Speaker 1: gonna eat the piranhas ad, which was pretty incredible to

587
00:37:23,280 --> 00:37:25,560
Speaker 1: all the anglers on the boat came and watched it.

588
00:37:25,680 --> 00:37:28,120
Speaker 1: We cut it up and fed it to the Piranhas

589
00:37:28,680 --> 00:37:33,040
Speaker 1: and that was pretty incredible. And that's an incredible story.

590
00:37:33,320 --> 00:37:35,839
Speaker 1: Wasn't say the name of that fish again? Well? Now

591
00:37:37,160 --> 00:37:41,400
Speaker 1: discus Ray is the name? Uh? And before there had

592
00:37:41,440 --> 00:37:44,279
Speaker 1: been some small ones in the record book I think

593
00:37:44,880 --> 00:37:50,000
Speaker 1: eleven pounds something like that prior to you. Yes, but

594
00:37:50,080 --> 00:37:56,640
Speaker 1: it was they were small, yeah, almost two hundred pounds. Uh.

595
00:37:56,800 --> 00:38:01,080
Speaker 1: It was. The whole story was really incredible because it

596
00:38:01,200 --> 00:38:03,879
Speaker 1: was such a rarity to you know, to be able

597
00:38:03,920 --> 00:38:07,840
Speaker 1: to find something nobody knew anything about. I was just

598
00:38:08,040 --> 00:38:11,439
Speaker 1: dumbfounded when I got back and I'm talking to all

599
00:38:11,440 --> 00:38:16,840
Speaker 1: these Uh. I can't remember for sure, but I believe

600
00:38:16,880 --> 00:38:19,640
Speaker 1: it was two thousand one. I mean, that's like, is

601
00:38:19,680 --> 00:38:22,440
Speaker 1: it We're not talking about like the nineteen sixties or something.

602
00:38:22,960 --> 00:38:24,759
Speaker 1: I mean, so that's amazing. To me that in two

603
00:38:24,760 --> 00:38:27,720
Speaker 1: thousand and one that we can still go to Brazil.

604
00:38:27,840 --> 00:38:31,640
Speaker 1: My last trip, I went to the Shingoo River in Brazil,

605
00:38:31,840 --> 00:38:35,280
Speaker 1: which is in a different area, and uh, we actually

606
00:38:35,320 --> 00:38:38,399
Speaker 1: caught some catfish there that had never been described by

607
00:38:38,480 --> 00:38:43,200
Speaker 1: science at all. Uh. I came back with uh photos

608
00:38:43,239 --> 00:38:46,799
Speaker 1: of fish that I needed to get identified. And I

609
00:38:46,840 --> 00:38:53,000
Speaker 1: found an expert in Massachusetts at Cambridge University who spent

610
00:38:53,239 --> 00:38:57,520
Speaker 1: his lifetime down their studying fish, and he found out

611
00:38:57,560 --> 00:38:59,720
Speaker 1: I was going down and he learned about this big

612
00:39:00,120 --> 00:39:02,719
Speaker 1: and he said, if you go to Brazil and you

613
00:39:02,719 --> 00:39:05,640
Speaker 1: could photograph fish, send send me the pictures. I'd like

614
00:39:05,719 --> 00:39:08,520
Speaker 1: to see what you're catching. And it turned out some

615
00:39:08,600 --> 00:39:12,240
Speaker 1: of the fish we caught had never been described by science.

616
00:39:12,560 --> 00:39:16,839
Speaker 1: The local people knew about them, but science didn't know

617
00:39:16,920 --> 00:39:19,960
Speaker 1: about it. They didn't have a name. A lot of

618
00:39:19,960 --> 00:39:25,600
Speaker 1: them were unusual armored catfish. I mean to imagine you

619
00:39:25,640 --> 00:39:28,720
Speaker 1: can go out this day and age and catch something

620
00:39:29,960 --> 00:39:34,280
Speaker 1: science doesn't know about me. That's incredible, you know, if

621
00:39:34,360 --> 00:39:37,880
Speaker 1: you think about it. Though, we live in such a

622
00:39:38,080 --> 00:39:44,640
Speaker 1: unique time as humans, because hundred years ago that would

623
00:39:44,640 --> 00:39:49,560
Speaker 1: have been kind of normal. Maybe, I mean, so we yeah, well,

624
00:39:49,719 --> 00:39:52,879
Speaker 1: well normal in the sense of so much had yet

625
00:39:52,920 --> 00:39:55,960
Speaker 1: to be discovered, but in the last hundred years, it's like,

626
00:39:56,640 --> 00:39:58,279
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, we're sitting in your living room

627
00:39:58,320 --> 00:40:01,120
Speaker 1: in Arkansas. We've got the world at our fingertips, and

628
00:40:01,200 --> 00:40:05,040
Speaker 1: we feel like everything's been discovered. Yeah, and and it hasn't.

629
00:40:05,200 --> 00:40:09,240
Speaker 1: And to me, that was always one of my things

630
00:40:09,280 --> 00:40:13,560
Speaker 1: I loved doing the most, was finding what's out there

631
00:40:13,560 --> 00:40:17,160
Speaker 1: here in Arkansas. Even I found things over the years

632
00:40:17,200 --> 00:40:21,360
Speaker 1: and nobody knew was here in Arkansas. Salamanders and birds

633
00:40:21,520 --> 00:40:27,560
Speaker 1: and and snakes, even that nobody knew we're here. Uh,

634
00:40:27,600 --> 00:40:32,160
Speaker 1: they're kind of obscure animals. But Uh, there was a

635
00:40:32,440 --> 00:40:37,800
Speaker 1: type of worm snake I found when I was nobody

636
00:40:37,880 --> 00:40:41,480
Speaker 1: knew it was here. And back then I would publish

637
00:40:41,520 --> 00:40:45,560
Speaker 1: those findings in scientific journals so people wouldn't know. Uh,

638
00:40:45,600 --> 00:40:49,359
Speaker 1: there was a salamander called a mole salamander. Nobody knew

639
00:40:49,400 --> 00:40:54,120
Speaker 1: we had those here. Uh. Even today, Uh, if you

640
00:40:54,880 --> 00:40:58,719
Speaker 1: dig and read on the internet, every year, there's literally

641
00:40:59,080 --> 00:41:03,400
Speaker 1: hundreds of animals being discovered. Nobody knew about it at all.

642
00:41:04,000 --> 00:41:08,520
Speaker 1: I just did an article recently about just new fish

643
00:41:08,680 --> 00:41:14,080
Speaker 1: that have been discovered every year worldwide. Yes, and every

644
00:41:14,160 --> 00:41:19,399
Speaker 1: year there's several hundred new species being described, so we're

645
00:41:19,480 --> 00:41:21,640
Speaker 1: learning more and more. A lot of it has to

646
00:41:21,680 --> 00:41:26,600
Speaker 1: do with DNA and genetics. We're finding out fish that

647
00:41:26,640 --> 00:41:29,520
Speaker 1: we thought were all one type of fish are really

648
00:41:29,960 --> 00:41:34,320
Speaker 1: several species. But sometimes it's something brand new we didn't

649
00:41:34,360 --> 00:41:38,840
Speaker 1: know about. And to me, those adventures when I was

650
00:41:38,920 --> 00:41:43,080
Speaker 1: able to find something nobody knew about, that's the coolest

651
00:41:43,120 --> 00:41:51,080
Speaker 1: thing in the world. It's really fun. That really is well, Okay, Seguaine,

652
00:41:51,200 --> 00:41:57,160
Speaker 1: back into Arkansas. You have I've heard the lower White

653
00:41:57,239 --> 00:42:00,719
Speaker 1: River drainage described as the Amazon of the South. Have

654
00:42:00,800 --> 00:42:02,960
Speaker 1: you ever heard that? Am I saying that? Right? Yeah?

655
00:42:03,000 --> 00:42:06,279
Speaker 1: I've heard that the Lower White River drainage would be

656
00:42:07,320 --> 00:42:11,760
Speaker 1: in eastern Arkansas be the White River National Wildlife Refuge?

657
00:42:11,840 --> 00:42:14,200
Speaker 1: Is that right? If you hit the lower part, that

658
00:42:14,400 --> 00:42:18,400
Speaker 1: lower ninety miles is all within the White River National

659
00:42:18,440 --> 00:42:25,959
Speaker 1: Wildlife I've spent thousands of hours. I spent a good

660
00:42:26,000 --> 00:42:31,560
Speaker 1: part of my career writing things to help protect that.

661
00:42:33,160 --> 00:42:35,960
Speaker 1: One of the things that opened my eyes going to

662
00:42:36,160 --> 00:42:41,720
Speaker 1: the Amazon was I think probably our rivers here, the Mississippi,

663
00:42:41,840 --> 00:42:46,120
Speaker 1: the White St. Francis. I think a hundred years ago

664
00:42:46,520 --> 00:42:51,560
Speaker 1: they were like those rivers are down there now. They've

665
00:42:51,600 --> 00:42:57,520
Speaker 1: been changed so much by damn building, uh by channelization,

666
00:42:58,000 --> 00:43:03,160
Speaker 1: that we almost lost a lot of the flora and

667
00:43:03,280 --> 00:43:06,479
Speaker 1: fauna in those areas. Because of all that, I spent

668
00:43:06,560 --> 00:43:09,759
Speaker 1: a great part of my career trying to protect the

669
00:43:09,800 --> 00:43:12,919
Speaker 1: Lower White River, in particular. I grew up down there

670
00:43:13,239 --> 00:43:16,800
Speaker 1: hunting and fishing. I grew up in cross Canty, in

671
00:43:16,840 --> 00:43:21,600
Speaker 1: a little town called Cherry Valley. Almost everything we did

672
00:43:21,719 --> 00:43:25,279
Speaker 1: outdoors was along the Lower White River. I didn't know

673
00:43:25,320 --> 00:43:27,680
Speaker 1: that I wanted to ask you earlier exactly where you

674
00:43:27,680 --> 00:43:31,560
Speaker 1: were from in Arkansas. I grew up in that little town,

675
00:43:31,760 --> 00:43:35,360
Speaker 1: and all my uncles like to fish. I grew up

676
00:43:35,360 --> 00:43:38,160
Speaker 1: in the household without a dad around, but I had

677
00:43:38,160 --> 00:43:41,120
Speaker 1: a lot of great uncles who took me everywhere and

678
00:43:41,200 --> 00:43:44,799
Speaker 1: then taught me to be an outdoorsman. And most of

679
00:43:44,800 --> 00:43:48,760
Speaker 1: the time when we went somewhere, it was somewhere along

680
00:43:48,800 --> 00:43:52,400
Speaker 1: the White or Mississippi rivers. They liked to crappie fish

681
00:43:52,440 --> 00:43:55,560
Speaker 1: and catfish. And we spent a lot of time on

682
00:43:55,600 --> 00:43:59,080
Speaker 1: the Oxbow Lakes fishing, uh and a lot of time

683
00:43:59,160 --> 00:44:03,160
Speaker 1: that on the big river to the Mississippi. Figured big

684
00:44:03,200 --> 00:44:07,520
Speaker 1: time into our outdoor exploits, and so I spent a

685
00:44:07,520 --> 00:44:10,960
Speaker 1: lot of time on those rivers. And when I got

686
00:44:10,960 --> 00:44:15,520
Speaker 1: older and did become a rider and got conservation minded,

687
00:44:15,920 --> 00:44:18,640
Speaker 1: there were a lot of things happening that could have

688
00:44:20,160 --> 00:44:24,920
Speaker 1: really created havoc, particularly along the lower Wadi. What were

689
00:44:24,960 --> 00:44:27,319
Speaker 1: they trying to do well, Mostly they were trying to

690
00:44:27,400 --> 00:44:31,319
Speaker 1: channelize the river. They that means where there's where there's

691
00:44:31,400 --> 00:44:34,120
Speaker 1: bens in the river, they're cutting out those bins to

692
00:44:34,200 --> 00:44:37,640
Speaker 1: make it easier to travel with barges and whatnot. More

693
00:44:37,680 --> 00:44:41,359
Speaker 1: in in that case, they were trying to deepen the

694
00:44:41,480 --> 00:44:45,920
Speaker 1: river so bart traffic could go up and down. Uh.

695
00:44:46,040 --> 00:44:50,960
Speaker 1: And the lifeblood of that river is the flooding that

696
00:44:51,040 --> 00:44:56,960
Speaker 1: occurs every three out of five years. The river's flood

697
00:44:57,320 --> 00:45:00,759
Speaker 1: and uh they overflow their banks. Of course, that's not

698
00:45:00,840 --> 00:45:03,680
Speaker 1: good if you're a farmer or a landowner or have

699
00:45:03,800 --> 00:45:08,400
Speaker 1: a home. But in those areas like White River National

700
00:45:08,440 --> 00:45:16,040
Speaker 1: Wildlife Refuge, that flooding rejuvenates that whole ecosystem every time

701
00:45:16,080 --> 00:45:23,360
Speaker 1: it happens. Good for instance, is catfish when the river's

702
00:45:23,440 --> 00:45:27,200
Speaker 1: flood every year, they go up into the flooded woods

703
00:45:27,200 --> 00:45:31,040
Speaker 1: and they gorge on crawfish. There's millions and men's of

704
00:45:31,160 --> 00:45:34,680
Speaker 1: crawfish that are inaccessible to them. During a normal year,

705
00:45:35,200 --> 00:45:37,760
Speaker 1: when it floods, the catfish go up and they gorge

706
00:45:37,800 --> 00:45:43,160
Speaker 1: on these crawfish and they have these huge spawns. They

707
00:45:43,280 --> 00:45:46,640
Speaker 1: lay ten times as many eggs during the flood of

708
00:45:46,760 --> 00:45:51,000
Speaker 1: years because they're able to reach that food source. And

709
00:45:51,080 --> 00:45:56,640
Speaker 1: so you take that away, and that doesn't happen the

710
00:45:56,680 --> 00:46:02,640
Speaker 1: whole ever things. So so by deepening the river, you

711
00:46:02,680 --> 00:46:06,279
Speaker 1: would reduce the flood increasing the volume of that river

712
00:46:06,400 --> 00:46:09,520
Speaker 1: channel exactly. You're you know, the bart traffic is a

713
00:46:09,520 --> 00:46:14,719
Speaker 1: good thing, I guess for being able to carry goods,

714
00:46:14,960 --> 00:46:18,840
Speaker 1: you know, from one point to another, particularly farm commodities,

715
00:46:19,520 --> 00:46:23,960
Speaker 1: but it also it changes that and you know, I

716
00:46:24,040 --> 00:46:29,680
Speaker 1: work for a farm organization. Now I understand why that's necessary,

717
00:46:29,719 --> 00:46:33,520
Speaker 1: but there's there should also be places that we don't

718
00:46:33,680 --> 00:46:37,440
Speaker 1: change for that reason, and I've always felt like that

719
00:46:37,560 --> 00:46:42,360
Speaker 1: lower White River basin it's one of those places. Eventually,

720
00:46:42,640 --> 00:46:45,359
Speaker 1: they wound up building a dam at the mouth of

721
00:46:45,400 --> 00:46:49,680
Speaker 1: the White that really changed the lot, but the channelization

722
00:46:49,800 --> 00:46:52,400
Speaker 1: didn't occur, so the damage wasn't as bad as it

723
00:46:52,440 --> 00:46:55,439
Speaker 1: could have been. It was a hard fight, though, I mean,

724
00:46:56,320 --> 00:46:59,120
Speaker 1: is any of that still going on yeah, I know,

725
00:46:59,239 --> 00:47:01,239
Speaker 1: you gotta why. I guess once they made it a

726
00:47:01,320 --> 00:47:05,440
Speaker 1: National Wildlife Refuge, it protected it in some way. Mostly, yeah,

727
00:47:05,600 --> 00:47:07,800
Speaker 1: for the most part. And like I said, there's about

728
00:47:07,880 --> 00:47:11,919
Speaker 1: ninety miles river within the refuge, and uh, and it's

729
00:47:12,160 --> 00:47:14,839
Speaker 1: fairly well protected. You know. The way you just said

730
00:47:14,880 --> 00:47:20,440
Speaker 1: that was really good because the way I view it

731
00:47:20,680 --> 00:47:23,759
Speaker 1: and so many people would but some people wouldn't, is

732
00:47:23,800 --> 00:47:27,640
Speaker 1: that we live in such a time of the massive

733
00:47:27,680 --> 00:47:30,960
Speaker 1: spread of civilization and in the need to fuel these

734
00:47:31,040 --> 00:47:34,359
Speaker 1: economies that we've kind of propped up, and so like

735
00:47:34,400 --> 00:47:38,280
Speaker 1: there's there's there's these voices that are like the top

736
00:47:38,360 --> 00:47:44,800
Speaker 1: priority is you know, finance and and you know, making

737
00:47:44,800 --> 00:47:48,080
Speaker 1: the river deeper so we can transport our our our goods.

738
00:47:48,120 --> 00:47:52,200
Speaker 1: But and there's there's some of that that's got to happen,

739
00:47:52,880 --> 00:47:59,040
Speaker 1: and it's and it's already happened in about ninety of

740
00:47:59,120 --> 00:48:02,880
Speaker 1: these places. And so it's like in it feels like

741
00:48:02,920 --> 00:48:06,560
Speaker 1: to me that we've we've got to have some places

742
00:48:06,600 --> 00:48:10,920
Speaker 1: that are seriously protected and that's a that's uh, you know,

743
00:48:11,040 --> 00:48:14,040
Speaker 1: I I love wilderness areas all over the country, you know,

744
00:48:14,080 --> 00:48:16,919
Speaker 1: and there's there there's some controversy around wilderness areas, which

745
00:48:16,960 --> 00:48:21,680
Speaker 1: to me is crazy that people wouldn't want some designated wilderness.

746
00:48:21,800 --> 00:48:26,800
Speaker 1: You know, well, I think we have to compromise. Sometimes

747
00:48:27,080 --> 00:48:30,239
Speaker 1: you try to find the middle of the roadway to

748
00:48:30,800 --> 00:48:35,200
Speaker 1: allow this to happen while that also happens. I wouldn't

749
00:48:35,239 --> 00:48:38,879
Speaker 1: want to say there should never be a barge down

750
00:48:38,880 --> 00:48:43,520
Speaker 1: to White that's crazy. But uh, by the same token,

751
00:48:43,640 --> 00:48:48,480
Speaker 1: I don't want to see those ecosystems destroyed. One of

752
00:48:48,520 --> 00:48:52,160
Speaker 1: the things that happened that came along for a while

753
00:48:52,760 --> 00:48:58,000
Speaker 1: that really helped protect that was supposed sightings of ivory

754
00:48:58,080 --> 00:49:01,200
Speaker 1: build woodpecker. Yeah. Uh, that would have been in the

755
00:49:01,239 --> 00:49:04,800
Speaker 1: early two thousand's. Yeah, and that was in the lower

756
00:49:04,800 --> 00:49:08,160
Speaker 1: White River area. Those straight anything ever come of that.

757
00:49:08,280 --> 00:49:11,560
Speaker 1: They decided that it was not a rebuild. Nobody really

758
00:49:11,600 --> 00:49:15,480
Speaker 1: ever decided. There were thousands of people just looking and

759
00:49:15,520 --> 00:49:18,359
Speaker 1: looking and looking at so just to give a little

760
00:49:18,360 --> 00:49:21,000
Speaker 1: bit of history. Got people outside of Arkansas wouldn't remember that.

761
00:49:21,000 --> 00:49:23,640
Speaker 1: Many people may not, But there was there was a

762
00:49:23,680 --> 00:49:27,880
Speaker 1: guy that video did he have video of a big

763
00:49:27,920 --> 00:49:32,800
Speaker 1: woodpecker that I remember, just like Granny wood this Granny

764
00:49:32,920 --> 00:49:36,080
Speaker 1: film or maybe it's a photo, it was video. There

765
00:49:36,120 --> 00:49:39,600
Speaker 1: were there were two brothers, good friends of mine. I

766
00:49:39,719 --> 00:49:43,759
Speaker 1: know him very well. I actually helped take them out

767
00:49:43,920 --> 00:49:46,520
Speaker 1: so they could look for ivory bills in the White

768
00:49:46,600 --> 00:49:50,400
Speaker 1: River riff a group of people, and so they had

769
00:49:50,480 --> 00:49:53,319
Speaker 1: reason to believe that there was something still around some

770
00:49:53,400 --> 00:49:57,200
Speaker 1: of those remote areas. Uh, there was always hope maybe

771
00:49:57,360 --> 00:50:00,439
Speaker 1: there was a last one had been side and seven

772
00:50:00,600 --> 00:50:03,320
Speaker 1: years ago. Yeah, well a long time. I can't remember

773
00:50:03,320 --> 00:50:06,000
Speaker 1: the exact number of years, but it had been decades. Uh,

774
00:50:06,200 --> 00:50:09,480
Speaker 1: they're the last ones were seen down in Louisiana and

775
00:50:09,520 --> 00:50:13,319
Speaker 1: a refuge down there. But there was always hope maybe

776
00:50:13,360 --> 00:50:18,280
Speaker 1: there's some more somewhere. And uh, because I knew White

777
00:50:18,400 --> 00:50:21,320
Speaker 1: River so well, there was a big group that came

778
00:50:21,480 --> 00:50:26,000
Speaker 1: with these gentlemen uh to to look and I actually

779
00:50:26,040 --> 00:50:28,560
Speaker 1: helped take them out to a remote area where they

780
00:50:28,560 --> 00:50:32,239
Speaker 1: could spend some time looking. And then eventually what happened was,

781
00:50:32,640 --> 00:50:35,960
Speaker 1: first of all, there was a guy kayaking who uh

782
00:50:36,360 --> 00:50:39,880
Speaker 1: said he saw an ivory bill. He was just certain,

783
00:50:40,520 --> 00:50:43,520
Speaker 1: and he took people back there. And these two brothers,

784
00:50:44,200 --> 00:50:47,239
Speaker 1: they had looked a lot of places, they'd spent a

785
00:50:47,360 --> 00:50:51,160
Speaker 1: lot of time, thousands and thousands of hours looking in

786
00:50:51,280 --> 00:50:54,480
Speaker 1: different areas of the country. What they would do. They

787
00:50:54,480 --> 00:50:56,600
Speaker 1: would get in a boat and they would turn a

788
00:50:56,719 --> 00:51:00,520
Speaker 1: video camera on and they would travel and then they

789
00:51:00,560 --> 00:51:04,480
Speaker 1: would see what was captured by the video during their

790
00:51:04,600 --> 00:51:08,879
Speaker 1: days out. And what happened was they saw something one

791
00:51:09,000 --> 00:51:12,080
Speaker 1: day that they weren't sure that could be an ivory bill.

792
00:51:12,480 --> 00:51:17,239
Speaker 1: They sent that video like they'd been doing to Cornell University.

793
00:51:17,800 --> 00:51:21,080
Speaker 1: Some people there said, yes, that's an ivory bill. Now

794
00:51:21,120 --> 00:51:23,759
Speaker 1: there's a lot of controversy. Was it there wasn't it.

795
00:51:23,760 --> 00:51:26,919
Speaker 1: It's a short little clip and it could have been.

796
00:51:28,000 --> 00:51:32,480
Speaker 1: But uh, you know, and people have said during that

797
00:51:32,560 --> 00:51:36,520
Speaker 1: time they saw ivery bills as well. Maybe they did.

798
00:51:36,640 --> 00:51:41,600
Speaker 1: I don't know. Uh, it's presumed. They kind of looked

799
00:51:41,640 --> 00:51:46,839
Speaker 1: like a piloted woodpecker and there's some differences in them.

800
00:51:47,080 --> 00:51:50,560
Speaker 1: But uh, you know, I was always skeptical. I mean,

801
00:51:51,360 --> 00:51:55,120
Speaker 1: hunters and fishermen been running those bottom for years. Most

802
00:51:55,160 --> 00:51:58,799
Speaker 1: of them were good wildlife watchers too. Nobody had ever

803
00:51:59,080 --> 00:52:02,360
Speaker 1: seen one before for and I always thought it was doubtful.

804
00:52:02,760 --> 00:52:05,960
Speaker 1: During that time, I was freelancing full time. I actually

805
00:52:07,120 --> 00:52:11,200
Speaker 1: got work taking people out looking people from all over

806
00:52:11,239 --> 00:52:16,120
Speaker 1: the world. I took people from England, Africa. Yeah, we'd

807
00:52:16,160 --> 00:52:18,440
Speaker 1: go out I'd tell them I don't think you'll see one.

808
00:52:18,480 --> 00:52:21,880
Speaker 1: I'll be glad to take you out and uh and

809
00:52:22,040 --> 00:52:25,399
Speaker 1: look and we'll look hard. Uh an idead. I took

810
00:52:25,840 --> 00:52:30,800
Speaker 1: groups out all the time, but uh, nothing ever solid

811
00:52:31,080 --> 00:52:34,200
Speaker 1: came from all that. What happened was though for a

812
00:52:34,239 --> 00:52:36,640
Speaker 1: few years it was like, we got to protect this

813
00:52:36,760 --> 00:52:40,359
Speaker 1: area because there could be ivory bills, and that kind

814
00:52:40,360 --> 00:52:46,960
Speaker 1: of slowed the rush to channel line and change that area.

815
00:52:47,239 --> 00:52:49,680
Speaker 1: Was there any political motivation in that, because I can

816
00:52:49,719 --> 00:52:53,840
Speaker 1: just hear people saying that that was a hoax or something. Yeah,

817
00:52:54,000 --> 00:52:57,160
Speaker 1: you know, there were people who literally sat up and

818
00:52:57,239 --> 00:53:00,640
Speaker 1: tree stands out in those woods for day and days

819
00:53:00,640 --> 00:53:08,160
Speaker 1: and days watching and I felt like they they thoroughly looked,

820
00:53:08,960 --> 00:53:12,200
Speaker 1: and nothing solid came from it. I wish and nobody

821
00:53:12,280 --> 00:53:15,200
Speaker 1: wishes there were ivory bills there more than me because

822
00:53:15,280 --> 00:53:20,720
Speaker 1: that would be caused to to definitely protect that area forever.

823
00:53:22,280 --> 00:53:26,280
Speaker 1: But I don't believe there actually were. But it doesn't

824
00:53:26,400 --> 00:53:29,879
Speaker 1: change the fact it's an amazing area and it needs

825
00:53:29,920 --> 00:53:33,719
Speaker 1: to be protected. So what what were you fishing for

826
00:53:33,840 --> 00:53:35,880
Speaker 1: men on the White River? Or I know you did

827
00:53:35,920 --> 00:53:39,080
Speaker 1: a lot of hunting too, but but like, what would

828
00:53:39,120 --> 00:53:41,279
Speaker 1: you were you cat fishing on the first of the time.

829
00:53:41,480 --> 00:53:44,960
Speaker 1: We spent cat fishing on the lower Wide in uh

830
00:53:45,160 --> 00:53:49,360
Speaker 1: parts of the Mississippi. I had some friends who actually

831
00:53:49,400 --> 00:53:52,840
Speaker 1: had shanty boats. Uh, some of them actually lived in

832
00:53:52,920 --> 00:53:57,480
Speaker 1: the old shanty boats. That a shanty boats like a

833
00:53:57,480 --> 00:54:00,760
Speaker 1: house boats sort of. It's not a boat eat another

834
00:54:01,200 --> 00:54:05,839
Speaker 1: socioeconomic status lower Yeah, yeah, sort of. Uh. You know

835
00:54:06,000 --> 00:54:09,280
Speaker 1: that we call the shanty boat folks are river rats.

836
00:54:09,360 --> 00:54:12,080
Speaker 1: You know, they live on the river. They make their

837
00:54:12,120 --> 00:54:14,840
Speaker 1: livings on the river. Um. A lot of them are

838
00:54:14,920 --> 00:54:20,759
Speaker 1: commercial fishermen. Uh they trap. Uh they're there to the

839
00:54:20,880 --> 00:54:25,279
Speaker 1: last folks I think who are out there making them

840
00:54:25,280 --> 00:54:32,200
Speaker 1: living off of mother nature. They're almost gone. Eventually, the

841
00:54:32,239 --> 00:54:37,120
Speaker 1: federal the Fishing Wildlife Service, uh told those people that

842
00:54:37,160 --> 00:54:41,240
Speaker 1: couldn't stay commercial fishing. Yeah, most of it was commercial fishing.

843
00:54:41,280 --> 00:54:45,560
Speaker 1: But eventually, Uh, there was people who came in charge

844
00:54:45,560 --> 00:54:47,960
Speaker 1: of White River Refuge that said, y'all got to move

845
00:54:48,040 --> 00:54:51,879
Speaker 1: these boats out. They gotta go, and they made them leave.

846
00:54:52,320 --> 00:54:55,120
Speaker 1: And uh, there's some of those boats still around, but

847
00:54:55,440 --> 00:55:00,200
Speaker 1: not many. Most of those people have passed away. It's

848
00:55:00,239 --> 00:55:03,560
Speaker 1: a culture. I mean, we could talk for hours just

849
00:55:03,680 --> 00:55:06,879
Speaker 1: about the shanty boat culture. When I was a kid,

850
00:55:07,040 --> 00:55:10,520
Speaker 1: there were thousands of people lived in shanty boats on

851
00:55:10,600 --> 00:55:15,879
Speaker 1: the river. Should have been across rivers all across the South. Yeah,

852
00:55:16,040 --> 00:55:20,960
Speaker 1: but yeah, particularly the white I knew, and they were

853
00:55:21,040 --> 00:55:24,000
Speaker 1: literally almost every little town you came to had its

854
00:55:24,000 --> 00:55:28,160
Speaker 1: own shanty boat town. Shanty boats are like house boats,

855
00:55:28,200 --> 00:55:31,520
Speaker 1: but people don't. They motor them to a place and

856
00:55:31,560 --> 00:55:34,919
Speaker 1: they stay there, they don't move, and people actually live

857
00:55:35,000 --> 00:55:37,640
Speaker 1: on them, you know, they come and go off. That's

858
00:55:37,640 --> 00:55:39,600
Speaker 1: the boat they'd fish off of, though, I mean they

859
00:55:39,600 --> 00:55:41,759
Speaker 1: were pulling it out and going down the river. Well

860
00:55:41,920 --> 00:55:46,080
Speaker 1: mostly they fish off a smaller boats that that. You know,

861
00:55:46,120 --> 00:55:48,280
Speaker 1: they have a dock on the end of those shanty

862
00:55:48,320 --> 00:55:51,439
Speaker 1: boats and and the boat stays in the water all time.

863
00:55:51,760 --> 00:55:54,319
Speaker 1: You just jump into your john boat and take off

864
00:55:54,360 --> 00:55:59,880
Speaker 1: to go fishing. So when I got older, some of

865
00:56:00,000 --> 00:56:03,239
Speaker 1: those people I knew, and uh we spent a lot

866
00:56:03,280 --> 00:56:06,080
Speaker 1: of time on those shanty boats. A lot of my

867
00:56:06,480 --> 00:56:09,960
Speaker 1: time down there was spent working on some of my books. Uh.

868
00:56:10,200 --> 00:56:13,880
Speaker 1: Those shanty boat folks, the old river b rats, helped

869
00:56:13,880 --> 00:56:17,400
Speaker 1: me uh uh with a lot of the photography and

870
00:56:17,440 --> 00:56:21,240
Speaker 1: stuff we did for books. And uh, I really hated

871
00:56:21,280 --> 00:56:25,120
Speaker 1: to see that that culture just I was kind of

872
00:56:25,160 --> 00:56:28,440
Speaker 1: there for the end of it was sad. Uh. There

873
00:56:28,440 --> 00:56:32,240
Speaker 1: were still some of those guys that lived year rounds

874
00:56:32,400 --> 00:56:36,200
Speaker 1: on the boats and commercial fished and trapped and uh

875
00:56:36,360 --> 00:56:39,160
Speaker 1: they just got pushed out by the federal government and

876
00:56:39,280 --> 00:56:41,960
Speaker 1: uh and they're gone there. I don't think there's many

877
00:56:42,080 --> 00:56:46,760
Speaker 1: places left. There's a few boats people still use, uh

878
00:56:46,920 --> 00:56:50,600
Speaker 1: for weekends stuff, but they don't live on them like

879
00:56:50,680 --> 00:56:54,960
Speaker 1: they used to. Uh. It's a whole other story. You know.

880
00:56:55,160 --> 00:56:59,319
Speaker 1: That's incredible stuff. Yeah, have you written much about that?

881
00:56:59,800 --> 00:57:03,680
Speaker 1: I so you know, folks can find some stories uh

882
00:57:03,960 --> 00:57:07,520
Speaker 1: it Uh. I spent quite a bit of time researching

883
00:57:07,560 --> 00:57:11,680
Speaker 1: the history of those folks and in telling that story

884
00:57:11,760 --> 00:57:16,800
Speaker 1: of how that culture died. I remember, uh, down on

885
00:57:16,880 --> 00:57:19,720
Speaker 1: the lower White River, there's a bridge don there called

886
00:57:19,720 --> 00:57:25,360
Speaker 1: Benzal Bridge. It's an old railroad bridge. And uh, when

887
00:57:25,400 --> 00:57:28,560
Speaker 1: the Feds moved them all out, somebody set that bridge

888
00:57:28,600 --> 00:57:32,080
Speaker 1: on fire the railroad tires. You could see it. They

889
00:57:32,120 --> 00:57:36,720
Speaker 1: said for h And it was just that kind of

890
00:57:37,080 --> 00:57:41,680
Speaker 1: end game, you know, uh, kind of an end protest

891
00:57:42,240 --> 00:57:47,400
Speaker 1: having to move away from there those river that. I mean,

892
00:57:47,440 --> 00:57:49,560
Speaker 1: would that be in the eighties or seventies or no,

893
00:57:50,520 --> 00:57:57,640
Speaker 1: that was still in the early two thousands quite a while. Uh,

894
00:57:57,680 --> 00:58:01,320
Speaker 1: but finally those federal guys just got tired of those

895
00:58:01,360 --> 00:58:05,160
Speaker 1: boats being down there. They made excuses to try to

896
00:58:05,200 --> 00:58:08,800
Speaker 1: push them out, and they eventually won. It actually went

897
00:58:08,840 --> 00:58:12,520
Speaker 1: through the court system. Even those guys tried to stay

898
00:58:12,560 --> 00:58:18,240
Speaker 1: and I just couldn't make it happen. Wow, man, that's

899
00:58:18,360 --> 00:58:23,240
Speaker 1: that's interesting. I I've focused so much of my well,

900
00:58:23,280 --> 00:58:25,280
Speaker 1: it's it's where I grew up in western Arkansas, in

901
00:58:25,360 --> 00:58:29,480
Speaker 1: the highlands, you know, and so the Delta world is

902
00:58:29,520 --> 00:58:32,760
Speaker 1: like a different planet to me. The highlands are the

903
00:58:32,840 --> 00:58:37,280
Speaker 1: different for me. The Delta's home, and that's where I've

904
00:58:37,280 --> 00:58:41,360
Speaker 1: spent most of my outdoor life is is in the Delta,

905
00:58:41,560 --> 00:58:45,920
Speaker 1: in those river bottoms. I love going to the river bottoms.

906
00:58:45,960 --> 00:58:50,880
Speaker 1: I love places that have cypress trees, and I like

907
00:58:51,080 --> 00:58:55,080
Speaker 1: getting out on the big rivers like the Mississippi. Are

908
00:58:55,080 --> 00:58:58,240
Speaker 1: you still fishing a lot? No? Probably not near as

909
00:58:58,320 --> 00:59:00,680
Speaker 1: much as I used to it As a work or

910
00:59:00,720 --> 00:59:02,720
Speaker 1: is it? Is it kind of like you focus so

911
00:59:02,800 --> 00:59:06,080
Speaker 1: much on that combination of things. You know, I'm getting

912
00:59:06,120 --> 00:59:10,360
Speaker 1: older and my friends are getting older, and uh, work

913
00:59:10,480 --> 00:59:12,840
Speaker 1: takes it does take up a lot of time. I

914
00:59:13,240 --> 00:59:15,280
Speaker 1: just don't go as much as I used to. I

915
00:59:15,280 --> 00:59:20,200
Speaker 1: still enjoy going, but just to be honest, I'm getting

916
00:59:20,320 --> 00:59:25,000
Speaker 1: old and falling apart. Uh. I had an accident a

917
00:59:25,040 --> 00:59:28,480
Speaker 1: couple of years ago. And this is a whole another story,

918
00:59:28,640 --> 00:59:34,360
Speaker 1: but during work, I was doing photography on a bison ringe.

919
00:59:34,640 --> 00:59:40,360
Speaker 1: I read about that hurt pretty bad by a big bison.

920
00:59:41,040 --> 00:59:44,560
Speaker 1: It was just a total accident, but I got hurt

921
00:59:44,640 --> 00:59:51,640
Speaker 1: really bad. And I read about that and UH, rural Arkansas. Yeah, yeah,

922
00:59:54,640 --> 00:59:58,960
Speaker 1: you were These were like domesticated yea, and the hooked

923
00:59:59,000 --> 01:00:02,560
Speaker 1: you in the back. Well what happened? Was uh guy?

924
01:00:02,640 --> 01:00:06,120
Speaker 1: And we I just keep uncovering his incredible stories. There's

925
01:00:06,200 --> 01:00:10,320
Speaker 1: so many fun stories. But I was just the first

926
01:00:10,320 --> 01:00:13,800
Speaker 1: person of interviewed that's been multi bison. Congratulations. I sure

927
01:00:13,920 --> 01:00:17,360
Speaker 1: didn't want that to happen. I was on this ranch

928
01:00:17,560 --> 01:00:20,800
Speaker 1: and UH doing a story about the guy that raised

929
01:00:20,800 --> 01:00:23,760
Speaker 1: the bison, and he wanted to take me to to

930
01:00:23,920 --> 01:00:28,840
Speaker 1: take a picture of me with his biggest bison, and

931
01:00:29,200 --> 01:00:32,360
Speaker 1: I was like, I'd already had some trouble with bison

932
01:00:32,520 --> 01:00:35,840
Speaker 1: before out West. I'd been run up on my truck

933
01:00:35,960 --> 01:00:39,280
Speaker 1: one time by a big bull. And I kept telling

934
01:00:39,320 --> 01:00:41,640
Speaker 1: this guy I really don't want to do this. Get

935
01:00:41,680 --> 01:00:45,600
Speaker 1: my picture made, and he just kept oh, everybody gets

936
01:00:45,640 --> 01:00:47,800
Speaker 1: your picture made. I wouldn't want you to be here

937
01:00:47,800 --> 01:00:50,400
Speaker 1: and not get your picture made. So I finally agreed

938
01:00:50,440 --> 01:00:55,120
Speaker 1: to do it. He's feeding the bison range cubes out

939
01:00:55,160 --> 01:00:58,000
Speaker 1: of his hand and she's standing right in front of me,

940
01:00:58,600 --> 01:01:00,880
Speaker 1: and she put her head down so he could scratch

941
01:01:00,880 --> 01:01:03,400
Speaker 1: her on the head. I mean, she was tamish, she

942
01:01:03,440 --> 01:01:07,600
Speaker 1: could be. But what happened was she accidentally when she

943
01:01:07,760 --> 01:01:12,040
Speaker 1: lifted her head up, she hooked my belt loop with

944
01:01:12,160 --> 01:01:15,360
Speaker 1: a horn, and I mean I saw it happen. I

945
01:01:15,440 --> 01:01:19,000
Speaker 1: knew what was fixing to happen. It really horrified me.

946
01:01:19,680 --> 01:01:23,160
Speaker 1: And when she felt my weight on her head, she

947
01:01:23,160 --> 01:01:25,800
Speaker 1: she went crazy. She threw me up in the air

948
01:01:25,960 --> 01:01:31,920
Speaker 1: for a long time, and unfortunately my wrangler jeans the

949
01:01:32,000 --> 01:01:34,560
Speaker 1: belt loop wouldn't break. I was trying to break it

950
01:01:34,640 --> 01:01:38,840
Speaker 1: the whole time, and she's throwing me around. No, no,

951
01:01:38,960 --> 01:01:42,200
Speaker 1: it's funny now. It wasn't funny at the time. I

952
01:01:42,240 --> 01:01:44,440
Speaker 1: when when she got me up in the air on

953
01:01:44,480 --> 01:01:47,520
Speaker 1: her head and she had two horns in my back,

954
01:01:47,720 --> 01:01:51,400
Speaker 1: one on each side, I just figured I was gone.

955
01:01:51,600 --> 01:01:55,800
Speaker 1: I mean, it lasted a long time. The guys she couldn't,

956
01:01:56,080 --> 01:02:00,320
Speaker 1: she couldn't, she couldn't get me off. Uh, that horn

957
01:02:00,640 --> 01:02:04,200
Speaker 1: got under my bell in my belt wouldn't break, and

958
01:02:04,240 --> 01:02:07,920
Speaker 1: I'm trying to get it off, and these two guys

959
01:02:08,000 --> 01:02:10,760
Speaker 1: both got me by my legs trying to pull me off,

960
01:02:10,840 --> 01:02:14,520
Speaker 1: and it just wouldn't happen. And uh, I thought I

961
01:02:14,560 --> 01:02:17,280
Speaker 1: was okay. After it happened, she beat me up pretty bad.

962
01:02:17,400 --> 01:02:21,920
Speaker 1: But we looked at all my injuries and I said, man,

963
01:02:21,960 --> 01:02:25,120
Speaker 1: I'm just lucky. I think I'm okay. And I actually

964
01:02:25,600 --> 01:02:28,600
Speaker 1: went back to work and shot more photos and drove

965
01:02:28,680 --> 01:02:32,160
Speaker 1: home hundred miles back home. But as I got close

966
01:02:32,200 --> 01:02:37,120
Speaker 1: to Little Rock all these injuries, I went into shock.

967
01:02:37,200 --> 01:02:40,160
Speaker 1: I had to call my wife, said I'm gonna come back.

968
01:02:40,200 --> 01:02:45,280
Speaker 1: You're gonna have take me to the emergency bron And

969
01:02:45,480 --> 01:02:53,080
Speaker 1: that was seventeen was just seventeen, yeah, yeah, And it

970
01:02:53,240 --> 01:02:56,280
Speaker 1: was both good and bad. The bad news was I

971
01:02:56,840 --> 01:03:00,080
Speaker 1: was wrecked. I mean uh, I was laid up for

972
01:03:00,200 --> 01:03:04,280
Speaker 1: four months recovering from that. The good news was when

973
01:03:04,280 --> 01:03:06,880
Speaker 1: they took me in and scanned me, and the doctor said,

974
01:03:07,840 --> 01:03:11,600
Speaker 1: you should go kiss that buffalo because she saved your life.

975
01:03:11,600 --> 01:03:14,320
Speaker 1: And I said, I really don't feel that way. Explain that.

976
01:03:14,480 --> 01:03:17,480
Speaker 1: He said, well, you've got cancer on one of your kidneys.

977
01:03:17,520 --> 01:03:20,560
Speaker 1: You probably never would have known if you had come

978
01:03:20,640 --> 01:03:23,919
Speaker 1: in here. So I said, okay, what does that mean?

979
01:03:23,920 --> 01:03:26,439
Speaker 1: He says, I we'll pop that kidney out and you'll

980
01:03:26,480 --> 01:03:29,080
Speaker 1: be good as new. But he said, if you had

981
01:03:29,160 --> 01:03:33,600
Speaker 1: not come in here for some reason, you'd probably never known,

982
01:03:33,800 --> 01:03:37,400
Speaker 1: and you have died from that cancer. And so you know,

983
01:03:37,520 --> 01:03:42,600
Speaker 1: it's good news bad news. Uh, they saved by buffalo exactly.

984
01:03:42,920 --> 01:03:45,600
Speaker 1: They took that kidney out, and I'm good as news now,

985
01:03:45,920 --> 01:03:48,880
Speaker 1: but I'll be honestly, I'm not quite as good as

986
01:03:48,920 --> 01:03:53,000
Speaker 1: I was. Traumatic. Did you break your bones? No? I

987
01:03:53,120 --> 01:04:01,160
Speaker 1: didn't break any bones, but I was in pretty bad. Yeah, yeah,

988
01:04:01,520 --> 01:04:04,160
Speaker 1: one in each side. Uh, it could have been a

989
01:04:04,160 --> 01:04:07,760
Speaker 1: lot worse. I saw all this happening in my head

990
01:04:08,200 --> 01:04:10,120
Speaker 1: and I was able to get ahold of those horns,

991
01:04:10,160 --> 01:04:14,640
Speaker 1: and I rode it in, just kept her from gordon me,

992
01:04:15,200 --> 01:04:18,680
Speaker 1: you know, just by sheer. How like? Was it ten

993
01:04:18,800 --> 01:04:22,200
Speaker 1: seconds that I went back and asked the guys that

994
01:04:22,240 --> 01:04:24,520
Speaker 1: were holding on my legs trying to get me off,

995
01:04:24,600 --> 01:04:27,040
Speaker 1: I said, it felt to me like it was an hour,

996
01:04:27,120 --> 01:04:30,760
Speaker 1: and they said it was way longer than eight seconds

997
01:04:31,000 --> 01:04:34,040
Speaker 1: rodeo that. I said, well, how long do you think

998
01:04:34,040 --> 01:04:35,880
Speaker 1: it was? And they said you were probably up there

999
01:04:35,960 --> 01:04:40,280
Speaker 1: for a whole minute at least. And I mean she

1000
01:04:40,440 --> 01:04:44,360
Speaker 1: was beating me up pretty bad. So it was just

1001
01:04:44,440 --> 01:04:47,720
Speaker 1: a pure accident. But you know, thank God, or I

1002
01:04:47,720 --> 01:04:51,080
Speaker 1: wouldn't be here now. Maybe that's what the doctors think.

1003
01:04:51,240 --> 01:04:56,280
Speaker 1: So something's happened for a reason. But I'll be honest

1004
01:04:56,280 --> 01:04:59,000
Speaker 1: with you, I had never felt quite the same. It's

1005
01:04:59,120 --> 01:05:02,560
Speaker 1: it's a little more. Are difficult doing stuff. Uh it's

1006
01:05:02,600 --> 01:05:05,680
Speaker 1: hard sitting the boat all day. You know, my back

1007
01:05:05,800 --> 01:05:09,760
Speaker 1: causes me problems. But I'm okay really, you know, the

1008
01:05:09,880 --> 01:05:13,480
Speaker 1: doctors say I'm all healed up, but that has slowed

1009
01:05:13,520 --> 01:05:16,120
Speaker 1: me down. So I'm just getting old. I really have

1010
01:05:16,280 --> 01:05:20,560
Speaker 1: played hard all my life. I've done all this wonderful stuff.

1011
01:05:21,240 --> 01:05:24,520
Speaker 1: I got no regrets. You know. I decided years ago

1012
01:05:24,720 --> 01:05:28,520
Speaker 1: I want to live life to the fullest. My mother

1013
01:05:28,680 --> 01:05:31,680
Speaker 1: died when she was forty. My dad died when he's

1014
01:05:31,760 --> 01:05:35,480
Speaker 1: in his early fifties. Always thought I got and tell

1015
01:05:35,560 --> 01:05:38,320
Speaker 1: him forty. Maybe her dad died when he was forty,

1016
01:05:38,800 --> 01:05:41,160
Speaker 1: and I thought I better get everything done by time

1017
01:05:41,200 --> 01:05:44,720
Speaker 1: I'm forty because my genetics is not so good. So

1018
01:05:45,240 --> 01:05:47,720
Speaker 1: that's one reason I did all these things and I

1019
01:05:47,800 --> 01:05:51,880
Speaker 1: went all these places. And I'm just fortunately I've lived

1020
01:05:51,880 --> 01:05:55,480
Speaker 1: a lot longer than my parents did, but I've gotten

1021
01:05:55,520 --> 01:06:00,760
Speaker 1: to do so many incredible things. And uh, it's just

1022
01:06:00,880 --> 01:06:04,720
Speaker 1: been a wonderful life. And a lot of it happened

1023
01:06:04,800 --> 01:06:08,960
Speaker 1: because of my writing and being able to meet the

1024
01:06:09,040 --> 01:06:13,640
Speaker 1: right people. And uh, I've had really good friends that

1025
01:06:13,680 --> 01:06:17,520
Speaker 1: have taken me lots of good places. I've explored all

1026
01:06:17,600 --> 01:06:21,520
Speaker 1: over this hemisphere and I've even been some in Europe

1027
01:06:21,560 --> 01:06:25,120
Speaker 1: and Asia. I hadn't made it to Africa or Australia yet,

1028
01:06:25,240 --> 01:06:29,960
Speaker 1: but someday maybe. Uh. I've got sons now. My wife

1029
01:06:29,960 --> 01:06:36,720
Speaker 1: and I have six sons together. Yeah they're one of yours. Well,

1030
01:06:36,880 --> 01:06:39,200
Speaker 1: maybe multiple sons. But over the years, I would have

1031
01:06:39,240 --> 01:06:42,479
Speaker 1: told you that you had a son, because I've seen

1032
01:06:42,600 --> 01:06:45,160
Speaker 1: picture of you with one boy, you know, one of

1033
01:06:45,200 --> 01:06:49,200
Speaker 1: the boys. Yeah. Yeah, they they're all grown now to

1034
01:06:49,320 --> 01:06:51,920
Speaker 1: six boys. Of two of them live next door, but

1035
01:06:52,400 --> 01:06:55,400
Speaker 1: two of them have really spent a lot of time

1036
01:06:55,480 --> 01:06:58,200
Speaker 1: all over Asia. One of my sons right now lives

1037
01:06:58,240 --> 01:07:03,120
Speaker 1: in Bangkok, Thailand. Uh. One of my other sons has

1038
01:07:03,200 --> 01:07:07,080
Speaker 1: been to close to twenty countries. I think in Asia.

1039
01:07:07,280 --> 01:07:10,360
Speaker 1: He married a young lady from China and they travel

1040
01:07:10,520 --> 01:07:15,120
Speaker 1: all over the world. Uh, so they're they're travelers too.

1041
01:07:15,560 --> 01:07:19,640
Speaker 1: Somehow that bug met them and it's fun seeing what

1042
01:07:19,760 --> 01:07:25,160
Speaker 1: they do. They enjoy, uh, going to all these exotic destinations.

1043
01:07:25,160 --> 01:07:27,560
Speaker 1: So my goal is I hope I can retire in

1044
01:07:27,600 --> 01:07:30,439
Speaker 1: a couple of years, maybe I can spend more time

1045
01:07:30,480 --> 01:07:33,160
Speaker 1: with them seeing some of the things they're seeing now

1046
01:07:33,600 --> 01:07:38,320
Speaker 1: that I haven't seen. What do you so? What? What?

1047
01:07:38,320 --> 01:07:40,360
Speaker 1: What do you want to do that you haven't done? Keith,

1048
01:07:40,800 --> 01:07:45,320
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, there's so much. Uh, there's so many

1049
01:07:45,360 --> 01:07:48,600
Speaker 1: places in the world I'd like to go see. I

1050
01:07:48,760 --> 01:07:52,320
Speaker 1: love South America, I really do, and I'd like to

1051
01:07:52,360 --> 01:07:57,880
Speaker 1: spend months and months down there exploring. I'd like to

1052
01:07:57,960 --> 01:08:01,960
Speaker 1: go back to Brazil. Uh. I love the Amazon in

1053
01:08:02,000 --> 01:08:05,400
Speaker 1: Brazil and some of those rivers, and I've made some really,

1054
01:08:05,440 --> 01:08:08,959
Speaker 1: really good friends down there during my time down there.

1055
01:08:09,200 --> 01:08:11,920
Speaker 1: I want to go back and spend time with them. Uh.

1056
01:08:12,000 --> 01:08:15,120
Speaker 1: Some of them are big fishermen that that that's all

1057
01:08:15,160 --> 01:08:18,160
Speaker 1: they do all the time. Now, would your these future

1058
01:08:18,720 --> 01:08:23,599
Speaker 1: travels after retirement, would they involve fishing. Oh yeah, definitely. Okay,

1059
01:08:23,640 --> 01:08:28,080
Speaker 1: so that's still still drive Oh yeah, yeah, you know. Uh,

1060
01:08:28,360 --> 01:08:31,360
Speaker 1: work keeps me from going as much as i'd like

1061
01:08:31,439 --> 01:08:34,880
Speaker 1: to now. Um, But when I took this job at

1062
01:08:34,880 --> 01:08:37,320
Speaker 1: farm Bureau, I was able right off the bat. I

1063
01:08:37,400 --> 01:08:40,439
Speaker 1: went down and spent some time in Costa Rica, which

1064
01:08:40,520 --> 01:08:45,160
Speaker 1: was amazing a whole another amazing place. Uh. And there's

1065
01:08:45,200 --> 01:08:49,080
Speaker 1: a lot of places, you know, from Mexico South that

1066
01:08:49,280 --> 01:08:52,479
Speaker 1: I'd like to spend more time, Some that I've been

1067
01:08:52,520 --> 01:08:56,360
Speaker 1: to and something that I haven't. Uh. It's just an

1068
01:08:56,400 --> 01:09:02,200
Speaker 1: incredibly different world down there. Uh. And uh it's more

1069
01:09:02,280 --> 01:09:06,200
Speaker 1: difficult now maybe. And now with COVID nineteen, who knows,

1070
01:09:06,320 --> 01:09:09,920
Speaker 1: you can't really go places for a while. Uh. So

1071
01:09:10,040 --> 01:09:12,840
Speaker 1: I don't know what will happen, how to all shake out.

1072
01:09:13,400 --> 01:09:15,840
Speaker 1: But it's kind of like nine eleven when it came

1073
01:09:15,880 --> 01:09:19,360
Speaker 1: along and it stopped so much, well, it changed the

1074
01:09:19,400 --> 01:09:24,040
Speaker 1: whole world. I mean nine and eleven was a big

1075
01:09:24,160 --> 01:09:29,000
Speaker 1: disaster for so many people, and it changed everything and

1076
01:09:29,280 --> 01:09:32,760
Speaker 1: how we do things. But eventually we got past it.

1077
01:09:33,360 --> 01:09:37,800
Speaker 1: I think COVID nineteens changed the world. We're gonna do

1078
01:09:37,920 --> 01:09:41,280
Speaker 1: things different afterward, but we'll get to a point. We

1079
01:09:41,400 --> 01:09:44,479
Speaker 1: all want to be able to do those things. We

1080
01:09:44,600 --> 01:09:49,360
Speaker 1: want to be connected to our friends and people that

1081
01:09:49,560 --> 01:09:52,599
Speaker 1: even that we don't know in other countries. So it

1082
01:09:52,600 --> 01:09:56,280
Speaker 1: we'll get past it eventually. And uh, I hope by

1083
01:09:56,320 --> 01:09:59,760
Speaker 1: that time I'm retired and maybe I can spend some

1084
01:09:59,800 --> 01:10:04,679
Speaker 1: more our time traveling around and doing some fishing. Well,

1085
01:10:05,040 --> 01:10:07,400
Speaker 1: I've got Uh, I've got two things I want to

1086
01:10:07,400 --> 01:10:10,000
Speaker 1: do before we before we close, I want to talk

1087
01:10:10,000 --> 01:10:11,880
Speaker 1: to you a little bit about catfishing, and then I

1088
01:10:11,880 --> 01:10:14,920
Speaker 1: want to hear your bear story. Okay, okay, here, I've

1089
01:10:14,920 --> 01:10:17,960
Speaker 1: got some a couple of specific catfish questions. What's the

1090
01:10:18,000 --> 01:10:22,280
Speaker 1: biggest catfish you've ever caught? Well, in in in the States.

1091
01:10:22,280 --> 01:10:25,360
Speaker 1: In the US, the biggest one I've ever caught is

1092
01:10:25,680 --> 01:10:30,040
Speaker 1: uh close to fifty pounds. In Alabama, I was with

1093
01:10:30,120 --> 01:10:33,680
Speaker 1: my wife Theresa, and uh we were fishing with a

1094
01:10:33,800 --> 01:10:37,919
Speaker 1: young man named Mike Mitchell, who at the time nobody

1095
01:10:38,040 --> 01:10:42,240
Speaker 1: knew who Mike was, but some friends and UH got

1096
01:10:42,320 --> 01:10:45,040
Speaker 1: hitched up with him. He was getting started in the

1097
01:10:45,120 --> 01:10:48,800
Speaker 1: guiding business. And Mike took three San nigh out and

1098
01:10:49,000 --> 01:10:54,559
Speaker 1: uh we fished on Wilson and UH, oh gosh, I'm

1099
01:10:54,600 --> 01:10:59,000
Speaker 1: gonna go blank another big Tennessee river lake down there

1100
01:10:59,040 --> 01:11:02,800
Speaker 1: that Mike like to fish. Uh. And he put me

1101
01:11:02,840 --> 01:11:05,360
Speaker 1: on a big blue cat while we were down there

1102
01:11:05,439 --> 01:11:07,640
Speaker 1: that it was right at fifty pound. I think it

1103
01:11:07,760 --> 01:11:12,760
Speaker 1: was a riding rail. Yeah, this was riding rail. Uh.

1104
01:11:12,880 --> 01:11:18,320
Speaker 1: Caught it on a big skip jack. We were using

1105
01:11:18,360 --> 01:11:23,439
Speaker 1: dead bait that day for Theresa. Caught some big blues

1106
01:11:23,479 --> 01:11:27,800
Speaker 1: that day to including several over thirty pounds. What would

1107
01:11:27,840 --> 01:11:30,000
Speaker 1: you say, just and I realized, You've spent your whole

1108
01:11:30,040 --> 01:11:32,719
Speaker 1: life writing about this stuff, so it's hard to narrow

1109
01:11:32,720 --> 01:11:35,920
Speaker 1: it down. But what would you say on a river

1110
01:11:37,080 --> 01:11:42,080
Speaker 1: where you're gonna catch catfish Mississippi? Well, no, no, no, uh,

1111
01:11:42,280 --> 01:11:46,080
Speaker 1: like a river feature like like like if there's a

1112
01:11:46,120 --> 01:11:48,920
Speaker 1: five mile stretch of river or a mile stretch, where

1113
01:11:48,920 --> 01:11:52,759
Speaker 1: are you gonna catch a catfish? Well, probably the best

1114
01:11:52,800 --> 01:11:55,839
Speaker 1: place in my mind, from what I've learned, is fishing

1115
01:11:55,840 --> 01:12:00,080
Speaker 1: those outside bends of the river where trees toppling in.

1116
01:12:00,240 --> 01:12:04,280
Speaker 1: You know, Yeah, a big cut bank on the outside

1117
01:12:04,320 --> 01:12:07,679
Speaker 1: bend where trees are toppled in the water. It's hard

1118
01:12:07,720 --> 01:12:11,280
Speaker 1: to beat that most of the time because the currents

1119
01:12:11,360 --> 01:12:14,000
Speaker 1: hitting that pretty hard carrying in. He hits it, carrying

1120
01:12:14,680 --> 01:12:18,080
Speaker 1: and stuff in there, and they got covered to lion.

1121
01:12:18,439 --> 01:12:21,880
Speaker 1: So you can catch both big blues and big flatheads.

1122
01:12:21,880 --> 01:12:24,360
Speaker 1: What would you do, you'd you'd go in there and

1123
01:12:25,040 --> 01:12:27,479
Speaker 1: fish with the bomber fish on the bottom. It's hard

1124
01:12:27,520 --> 01:12:30,720
Speaker 1: to fish those areas a lot of times because of

1125
01:12:30,760 --> 01:12:33,439
Speaker 1: that current and everything. But I like to fish with

1126
01:12:33,479 --> 01:12:37,000
Speaker 1: a barber that's about the side of the orange and

1127
01:12:37,439 --> 01:12:40,960
Speaker 1: put a dead baite under that, and that way I

1128
01:12:41,000 --> 01:12:44,360
Speaker 1: can see what my baites doing and get it in

1129
01:12:44,439 --> 01:12:47,720
Speaker 1: the spots I want it, and that barber keeps it

1130
01:12:47,760 --> 01:12:51,719
Speaker 1: from getting tangled so bad. That's me, you know. That's

1131
01:12:51,840 --> 01:12:58,559
Speaker 1: the about just ideal. It wouldn't put out five or

1132
01:12:58,560 --> 01:13:01,559
Speaker 1: six so it's hard to do that. Now, you can

1133
01:13:01,680 --> 01:13:05,719
Speaker 1: drift fish or uh do what people call bumping now,

1134
01:13:05,920 --> 01:13:10,040
Speaker 1: which is drifting a bait along those rough river bottoms

1135
01:13:10,080 --> 01:13:13,559
Speaker 1: where you're moving and drifting all the time. Then you

1136
01:13:13,560 --> 01:13:16,400
Speaker 1: can fish multiple poles, But if you want to fish

1137
01:13:16,439 --> 01:13:19,439
Speaker 1: those areas, that's got to cover in it. If you

1138
01:13:19,520 --> 01:13:21,840
Speaker 1: fish more than one, you're just gonna get hung up

1139
01:13:21,880 --> 01:13:24,679
Speaker 1: all times. So I'd like to fish with one pole.

1140
01:13:24,800 --> 01:13:27,120
Speaker 1: Keep it in my hand, don't put it in the

1141
01:13:27,200 --> 01:13:31,680
Speaker 1: rod holder. But there there's literally dozens and dozens of

1142
01:13:31,800 --> 01:13:34,680
Speaker 1: places we could talk about that are good right, Well,

1143
01:13:34,720 --> 01:13:36,800
Speaker 1: that that's you did exactly what I wanted. And I've

1144
01:13:36,840 --> 01:13:40,400
Speaker 1: got a confession here when uh So, growing up Hank

1145
01:13:40,439 --> 01:13:43,240
Speaker 1: Williams junior song Country Boy Can Survived. There's a line

1146
01:13:43,240 --> 01:13:45,920
Speaker 1: in there what says we can catch catfish all day long.

1147
01:13:46,600 --> 01:13:48,800
Speaker 1: Me and my buddy Chris Roberts in high school, we

1148
01:13:48,920 --> 01:13:51,400
Speaker 1: always we we could fulfill a lot of that song,

1149
01:13:51,520 --> 01:13:54,200
Speaker 1: but we could not catch catfish all day long, and

1150
01:13:54,240 --> 01:13:56,800
Speaker 1: that was always like a thorn in our side. I

1151
01:13:56,880 --> 01:13:59,840
Speaker 1: love to catfish, and I've never really dedicated a lot.

1152
01:14:00,080 --> 01:14:02,960
Speaker 1: Uh I've never dedicated a lot of times. So much

1153
01:14:03,000 --> 01:14:06,479
Speaker 1: of my outdoor world has been dedicated a big game hunting.

1154
01:14:06,520 --> 01:14:09,560
Speaker 1: You know that I've never but I've always been fascinated

1155
01:14:09,560 --> 01:14:12,000
Speaker 1: with catfish. Love catfish, love to eat as much as

1156
01:14:12,000 --> 01:14:14,960
Speaker 1: I love to fish, I love to eat catfish. Oh yeah, definitely,

1157
01:14:15,360 --> 01:14:19,200
Speaker 1: I'm wanting to do more big game hunting. I haven't

1158
01:14:19,320 --> 01:14:21,680
Speaker 1: done a lot of big game, honey, I never was.

1159
01:14:21,880 --> 01:14:25,920
Speaker 1: I'd like to someday say I've killed a pronghorn. That's

1160
01:14:26,040 --> 01:14:29,480
Speaker 1: number one on my list. Maybe moose is number one.

1161
01:14:30,040 --> 01:14:34,720
Speaker 1: I'd like to, uh to hunt elk. I've never done that,

1162
01:14:35,160 --> 01:14:37,760
Speaker 1: you know. I keep hoping I'll get that tag here

1163
01:14:37,760 --> 01:14:42,280
Speaker 1: in Arkansas. I just got another of my second alligator

1164
01:14:42,720 --> 01:14:47,200
Speaker 1: tag here in Arkansas, and I'll do that in September. Uh,

1165
01:14:47,479 --> 01:14:50,559
Speaker 1: some friends and I are lining up trip. I got

1166
01:14:50,560 --> 01:14:53,840
Speaker 1: a tag several years ago. It's it was during one

1167
01:14:53,880 --> 01:14:57,000
Speaker 1: of the first hunts and got about an eight gator.

1168
01:14:57,160 --> 01:15:00,160
Speaker 1: But we're gonna hunt again this year, so that's kind

1169
01:15:00,160 --> 01:15:03,759
Speaker 1: of exciting to give a second opportunity. I never dreamt

1170
01:15:04,360 --> 01:15:11,200
Speaker 1: that would happen. But that's great. Um bear story now,

1171
01:15:11,240 --> 01:15:16,360
Speaker 1: I said, Okay, I have probably well, I think this

1172
01:15:16,479 --> 01:15:19,759
Speaker 1: is true. As a kid growing up in Arkansas reading

1173
01:15:19,840 --> 01:15:24,320
Speaker 1: Arkansas Sportsman Magazine, which is pretty much the only at

1174
01:15:24,360 --> 01:15:27,080
Speaker 1: least mainstream. Maybe there are other publications. I wasn't aware

1175
01:15:27,080 --> 01:15:28,960
Speaker 1: of it. When I went to Walmart in the town

1176
01:15:29,000 --> 01:15:32,120
Speaker 1: I lived in, I would see Arkansas Sportsmen's Magazine and

1177
01:15:32,200 --> 01:15:34,400
Speaker 1: you wrote a lot for them. Yeah. I started with

1178
01:15:34,520 --> 01:15:37,719
Speaker 1: them when they first came out. That was my second

1179
01:15:38,200 --> 01:15:41,880
Speaker 1: place I ever sold a magazine Artisle. They came out

1180
01:15:41,920 --> 01:15:45,640
Speaker 1: in the early eighties, and uh, they stuck with me

1181
01:15:45,720 --> 01:15:48,080
Speaker 1: ever since and let me write for them. I still

1182
01:15:48,120 --> 01:15:51,880
Speaker 1: do some writing for them. That was the first organization

1183
01:15:51,960 --> 01:15:56,280
Speaker 1: I ever sold an article too. And eight or oh

1184
01:15:56,360 --> 01:16:00,360
Speaker 1: nine or something. Folks love Arkansas Sportsman. That's game and

1185
01:16:00,439 --> 01:16:06,400
Speaker 1: fish now and fish. But it's a great magazine. Yeah. Well,

1186
01:16:06,439 --> 01:16:08,200
Speaker 1: I remember seeing a picture and I think it was

1187
01:16:08,240 --> 01:16:11,320
Speaker 1: in that magazine of you with a bear, that you

1188
01:16:11,400 --> 01:16:15,000
Speaker 1: killed a bear in Arkansas. No, not in Arkansas, was

1189
01:16:15,040 --> 01:16:17,960
Speaker 1: it not? It was in the New Brunswick, Canada. I'll

1190
01:16:18,000 --> 01:16:21,080
Speaker 1: be darn well. Maybe okay, Well tell me that story.

1191
01:16:21,520 --> 01:16:25,320
Speaker 1: See as a little kid, I guess I associated you

1192
01:16:25,360 --> 01:16:27,680
Speaker 1: with Arkansas. I saw you with a bear, and I

1193
01:16:27,720 --> 01:16:30,120
Speaker 1: knew you wrote about bear. I actually bought one of

1194
01:16:30,120 --> 01:16:32,280
Speaker 1: your books the other day for a reference and something

1195
01:16:32,280 --> 01:16:36,200
Speaker 1: that I'm writing. I bought the Arkansas Hunting Book. Uh.

1196
01:16:36,280 --> 01:16:40,680
Speaker 1: That just has all the different different sections about every

1197
01:16:40,840 --> 01:16:44,280
Speaker 1: game species that we can hunt. I've always been interested

1198
01:16:44,360 --> 01:16:47,080
Speaker 1: in the history of bear hunting in arts. That's why

1199
01:16:47,080 --> 01:16:50,760
Speaker 1: I bought the Bear State, you know, And uh, there's

1200
01:16:50,800 --> 01:16:54,519
Speaker 1: some interesting stories that go along with it. I used

1201
01:16:54,520 --> 01:16:57,639
Speaker 1: to read that there were fifty thousand bears in Arkansas

1202
01:16:57,720 --> 01:17:01,560
Speaker 1: at one time, and I thought that's kind of I

1203
01:17:01,600 --> 01:17:05,599
Speaker 1: don't think that's right, there's only fifty thousand square miles

1204
01:17:05,640 --> 01:17:08,439
Speaker 1: in Arkansas that would be a bear every square mile.

1205
01:17:09,120 --> 01:17:11,599
Speaker 1: And I asked Jim Spencer, who worked with me at

1206
01:17:11,640 --> 01:17:15,080
Speaker 1: Game of Fish one day, you ever thought about that.

1207
01:17:15,080 --> 01:17:17,800
Speaker 1: That can't be right, And he said, it's not right.

1208
01:17:17,880 --> 01:17:20,120
Speaker 1: I made that up a long time ago. I said,

1209
01:17:20,120 --> 01:17:22,000
Speaker 1: but why would you make that up? He said, I

1210
01:17:22,040 --> 01:17:24,840
Speaker 1: had had a reporter that wanted me to tell him

1211
01:17:24,880 --> 01:17:27,080
Speaker 1: how many bears were in the state, and he wouldn't

1212
01:17:27,160 --> 01:17:30,599
Speaker 1: leave me alone, So I just made something up. You've

1213
01:17:30,640 --> 01:17:33,800
Speaker 1: just crushed my dreams here. I'm sorry, but that's true.

1214
01:17:33,880 --> 01:17:39,760
Speaker 1: That's a trude that well. I think there's some validity

1215
01:17:39,800 --> 01:17:43,280
Speaker 1: to that. Though there were lots of bears in Arkansas.

1216
01:17:43,560 --> 01:17:47,160
Speaker 1: They were a big commodity when during the time of

1217
01:17:47,240 --> 01:17:51,800
Speaker 1: settlement in this state. Uh, people killed bears for for

1218
01:17:51,880 --> 01:17:55,800
Speaker 1: their meat, but more for their oil they used they

1219
01:17:55,840 --> 01:18:01,000
Speaker 1: rendered that what's on my hat here? Yeah, yeah, you know,

1220
01:18:01,160 --> 01:18:04,559
Speaker 1: bear grease is something really good. You know, Folks say

1221
01:18:04,600 --> 01:18:06,920
Speaker 1: that's the best thing there is to make pies and

1222
01:18:07,040 --> 01:18:14,960
Speaker 1: biscuits and all that. Yeah, lubing your muzzleloader patches. You know,

1223
01:18:15,080 --> 01:18:17,240
Speaker 1: there's all kinds of things that we used for back

1224
01:18:17,280 --> 01:18:21,320
Speaker 1: then oil Trough in Arkansas got its name from them

1225
01:18:21,400 --> 01:18:25,519
Speaker 1: shipping the oil out in logs out of that town.

1226
01:18:26,439 --> 01:18:29,880
Speaker 1: My bear story is a little bit different. Uh. I

1227
01:18:30,040 --> 01:18:32,840
Speaker 1: never dreamt I could even hunt them in Arkansas because

1228
01:18:32,840 --> 01:18:36,479
Speaker 1: when I was first hunting, there weren't any bears. Now

1229
01:18:36,520 --> 01:18:40,599
Speaker 1: we've got thousands, and uh, I haven't really hunted them

1230
01:18:40,640 --> 01:18:45,240
Speaker 1: here in Arkansas, not intentionally. I've seen a lot of bears.

1231
01:18:45,439 --> 01:18:49,200
Speaker 1: I photographed bears, but I've never hunted a lot. But

1232
01:18:49,520 --> 01:18:52,280
Speaker 1: my wife, the Resa, when we got married, one of

1233
01:18:52,280 --> 01:18:54,400
Speaker 1: the things she told me is I want a bear

1234
01:18:54,439 --> 01:18:58,800
Speaker 1: skin rugs someday. I said, well, if I ever get

1235
01:18:58,840 --> 01:19:01,840
Speaker 1: a chance, i'll I'll go. And I don't know. I

1236
01:19:01,920 --> 01:19:03,920
Speaker 1: mentioned it to a friend on time. He said, well,

1237
01:19:03,920 --> 01:19:06,680
Speaker 1: I'm fixing to go to New Brunswick. What on I

1238
01:19:06,800 --> 01:19:09,320
Speaker 1: see if you can go with me? And I said,

1239
01:19:09,400 --> 01:19:13,960
Speaker 1: let's do it. And so he had connections through the

1240
01:19:14,040 --> 01:19:17,519
Speaker 1: tourism agency up there that got us up to New

1241
01:19:17,520 --> 01:19:21,559
Speaker 1: Brunswick on a hunt. Gosh, I can't remember how long

1242
01:19:21,560 --> 01:19:25,160
Speaker 1: ago it's been, It's been quite a while, but we

1243
01:19:25,200 --> 01:19:27,400
Speaker 1: went up as the hardest hunt I ever been on.

1244
01:19:28,400 --> 01:19:32,720
Speaker 1: Bears were the hunt hardest animal I've ever hunted by

1245
01:19:32,880 --> 01:19:36,519
Speaker 1: far Uh. Now I've only been on the one hunt,

1246
01:19:36,600 --> 01:19:41,479
Speaker 1: though I went up and we spent gosh, I don't know.

1247
01:19:41,560 --> 01:19:45,439
Speaker 1: We were up there for days, uh, and we were

1248
01:19:45,520 --> 01:19:49,760
Speaker 1: hunting over bait. I saw a lot of bears, but

1249
01:19:49,920 --> 01:19:52,360
Speaker 1: getting a shot at one was a whole another story.

1250
01:19:52,400 --> 01:19:58,400
Speaker 1: They're so keenly and tuned to everything. Every time I'd

1251
01:19:58,439 --> 01:20:00,679
Speaker 1: see a bear, it was a heard of a bear.

1252
01:20:00,800 --> 01:20:04,120
Speaker 1: It was a pall or an ear or a little

1253
01:20:04,160 --> 01:20:07,439
Speaker 1: patch of fur, and then they'd be gone, and I

1254
01:20:07,520 --> 01:20:12,000
Speaker 1: just had the hardest time. I was smoking during that time,

1255
01:20:12,000 --> 01:20:14,280
Speaker 1: and I quit smoking just so I could get her

1256
01:20:14,320 --> 01:20:18,800
Speaker 1: a bear skin rug. But I still I couldn't get

1257
01:20:18,840 --> 01:20:21,719
Speaker 1: a shot on these bears. And finally, on my last

1258
01:20:21,800 --> 01:20:28,080
Speaker 1: day up there, I was in a stand in this

1259
01:20:28,160 --> 01:20:32,960
Speaker 1: bear finally presented a shot. At first, I didn't feel

1260
01:20:33,000 --> 01:20:35,760
Speaker 1: like it was a good shot, and I didn't want

1261
01:20:35,760 --> 01:20:39,639
Speaker 1: to injure an animal. I never do, and so I

1262
01:20:39,720 --> 01:20:44,919
Speaker 1: passed and I sat literally watching this bear for almost

1263
01:20:44,960 --> 01:20:48,200
Speaker 1: an hour before I felt like I had the right shot.

1264
01:20:49,200 --> 01:20:52,559
Speaker 1: And one night I was hunting with a muzzleloader fit

1265
01:20:52,640 --> 01:20:56,040
Speaker 1: to caliber muzzleloader. That's what I took to hunt with

1266
01:20:56,240 --> 01:20:59,880
Speaker 1: because I wanted to kill the bear when I shot it,

1267
01:21:00,000 --> 01:21:01,920
Speaker 1: and I thought, that gives me a good chance. And

1268
01:21:01,960 --> 01:21:05,439
Speaker 1: I was comfortable with that rifle, and I had about

1269
01:21:05,479 --> 01:21:08,960
Speaker 1: a hundred yard shot on this bear, and uh, she

1270
01:21:09,400 --> 01:21:13,720
Speaker 1: presented finally a good shot, and I shot and she

1271
01:21:13,880 --> 01:21:17,240
Speaker 1: dropped in her tracks, and I was just extatic. I

1272
01:21:17,280 --> 01:21:20,320
Speaker 1: was just like, oh my God, thank goodness, because it

1273
01:21:20,439 --> 01:21:24,400
Speaker 1: was my last day. And so the first thing I

1274
01:21:24,439 --> 01:21:26,920
Speaker 1: did was light a cigarette and sat there and smoked

1275
01:21:26,960 --> 01:21:30,120
Speaker 1: it and looked at that bear, and I was just proud, proud, proud,

1276
01:21:30,320 --> 01:21:33,640
Speaker 1: and I lit another cigarette and setting that stand and

1277
01:21:33,720 --> 01:21:38,280
Speaker 1: watch she didn't move, and then suddenly she came back

1278
01:21:38,360 --> 01:21:41,640
Speaker 1: to life. But she was gone, and it's dark and

1279
01:21:41,720 --> 01:21:45,200
Speaker 1: I gotta leave at six in the morning, and I said,

1280
01:21:45,240 --> 01:21:48,000
Speaker 1: we gotta find this bear. I know that bear's got

1281
01:21:48,000 --> 01:21:51,760
Speaker 1: to be dead, and so we walked around with flashlights.

1282
01:21:51,840 --> 01:21:55,360
Speaker 1: The bear wasn't dead, and when I shined the light

1283
01:21:55,439 --> 01:21:57,880
Speaker 1: in this brush, she jumped up at me and scared

1284
01:21:57,920 --> 01:22:00,080
Speaker 1: me half to death, and I shot her again. It

1285
01:22:01,400 --> 01:22:04,519
Speaker 1: that time I killed her, but it just boggled my

1286
01:22:04,640 --> 01:22:08,160
Speaker 1: mind that could happen. And so I wrote this story.

1287
01:22:08,360 --> 01:22:11,639
Speaker 1: It was called the Iron Bear, and It's about how

1288
01:22:11,840 --> 01:22:17,360
Speaker 1: you as a hunter. If you're gonna hunt, eventually, you're

1289
01:22:17,400 --> 01:22:20,840
Speaker 1: gonna have an animal that doesn't die. We all had

1290
01:22:21,000 --> 01:22:24,679
Speaker 1: picked up a quail and felt its heart still beating,

1291
01:22:24,800 --> 01:22:28,080
Speaker 1: or a rabbit that screamed, and you know, but if

1292
01:22:28,120 --> 01:22:30,040
Speaker 1: you're a hunter, you gotta you're gonna have to deal

1293
01:22:30,080 --> 01:22:33,160
Speaker 1: with that eventually. I spent that all that time trying

1294
01:22:33,200 --> 01:22:37,120
Speaker 1: to be sure that didn't happen. But it happened, and

1295
01:22:37,240 --> 01:22:42,400
Speaker 1: it and it just was a horrible thing. But as

1296
01:22:42,479 --> 01:22:45,320
Speaker 1: a hunter, you're gonna have to deal with that eventually.

1297
01:22:45,880 --> 01:22:49,839
Speaker 1: And unfortunately that bears what happened to me, the bears

1298
01:22:49,920 --> 01:22:52,679
Speaker 1: laying in there in front of the fireplace. She got

1299
01:22:52,720 --> 01:22:55,960
Speaker 1: her rug. But it was the hardest hunt I've ever

1300
01:22:56,040 --> 01:22:58,680
Speaker 1: had in a lot of ways, and one of the

1301
01:22:58,800 --> 01:23:02,960
Speaker 1: most memorable. Yeah, so I'm glad I gotta do it,

1302
01:23:03,280 --> 01:23:05,280
Speaker 1: got to do it. I don't know. If I had

1303
01:23:05,320 --> 01:23:08,120
Speaker 1: an opportunity, I'd probably hunt here in Arkansas. I'd love

1304
01:23:08,200 --> 01:23:11,760
Speaker 1: to say I got an Arkansas bear. Yeah, but it's

1305
01:23:11,800 --> 01:23:14,640
Speaker 1: hard to hunt Arkansas bears. I know you've done it,

1306
01:23:14,800 --> 01:23:21,639
Speaker 1: you know more than most folks. That's a tough hunt. Yeah, yeah, well, hey,

1307
01:23:21,720 --> 01:23:24,840
Speaker 1: it's it's really been a pleasure, been very much so

1308
01:23:24,920 --> 01:23:27,400
Speaker 1: pleasure talking with you. And I think we uh, I

1309
01:23:27,439 --> 01:23:30,720
Speaker 1: think we discovered uh, or at least I discovered a

1310
01:23:30,720 --> 01:23:33,000
Speaker 1: bunch of stuff I didn't know about you and some

1311
01:23:33,479 --> 01:23:36,600
Speaker 1: great stories and they will do it the opposite, and

1312
01:23:36,640 --> 01:23:39,679
Speaker 1: I gonna learn some more about you. Claim I've enjoyed

1313
01:23:39,800 --> 01:23:42,400
Speaker 1: visit it with you for sure. Well, I I feel

1314
01:23:42,400 --> 01:23:45,120
Speaker 1: like I've been in rich talking with you. I mean

1315
01:23:45,200 --> 01:23:50,720
Speaker 1: you've you've you've dedicated your life to the outdoors and

1316
01:23:50,760 --> 01:23:55,479
Speaker 1: communication and and um and uh, you've dedicated your life

1317
01:23:55,479 --> 01:23:58,160
Speaker 1: to a craft, you know, and that's easy for me

1318
01:23:58,240 --> 01:24:01,440
Speaker 1: to see. And uh, that's I think that's a valuable,

1319
01:24:01,720 --> 01:24:06,719
Speaker 1: valuable thing. And I haven't told anybody else this yet,

1320
01:24:06,760 --> 01:24:11,080
Speaker 1: But in two weeks COVID really messed my year up

1321
01:24:11,240 --> 01:24:15,000
Speaker 1: because I just learned I was fixing to be inducted

1322
01:24:15,120 --> 01:24:18,880
Speaker 1: into the Legends of the Outdoors Hall of Fame. That's

1323
01:24:18,880 --> 01:24:22,040
Speaker 1: a big deal to me, but it's been canceled this

1324
01:24:22,120 --> 01:24:27,680
Speaker 1: year because of COVID nineteen. So for for Arkansas, it's

1325
01:24:27,680 --> 01:24:31,679
Speaker 1: a national organization. Uh, it's a run by a friend

1326
01:24:31,720 --> 01:24:35,920
Speaker 1: of mine named Gary Mason, who's from Tennessee and man

1327
01:24:36,000 --> 01:24:40,320
Speaker 1: there's just some incredible folks who have been inducted before.

1328
01:24:40,439 --> 01:24:44,599
Speaker 1: And when I found out, I found out before COVID

1329
01:24:44,840 --> 01:24:47,320
Speaker 1: and then we just found out they got to cancel.

1330
01:24:47,479 --> 01:24:51,360
Speaker 1: But that's a huge, huge honor to me. A lot

1331
01:24:51,400 --> 01:24:56,920
Speaker 1: of my mentors and people I look up to are

1332
01:24:57,080 --> 01:25:00,840
Speaker 1: part of that Hall of Fame. And to find out

1333
01:25:01,160 --> 01:25:05,080
Speaker 1: next year, if everything goes well, I'll get inducted into that,

1334
01:25:05,200 --> 01:25:10,400
Speaker 1: that'll be congratulate a huge deal. Yeah, well deserved, well deserved. Well,

1335
01:25:10,560 --> 01:25:14,120
Speaker 1: thank you Keith. It's uh, it's been a pleasure and

1336
01:25:14,240 --> 01:25:17,720
Speaker 1: uh look forward to talking with you more in the future. Well,

1337
01:25:17,720 --> 01:25:22,600
Speaker 1: thanks for coming to visit and uh really enjoying the conversation.

1338
01:25:23,439 --> 01:25:25,960
Speaker 1: Keep the wild places wild and that's where the Bears live,

1339
01:25:26,320 --> 01:25:28,800
Speaker 1: you bet you for sure. Thanks to playing