Speaker 1: Let me do the math here, forty eight hundred dollars
Speaker 1: average sized female that you caught it be worth five
Speaker 1: grand yep on bear grease. We've made a living telling
Speaker 1: the gritty stories of rural America, of backwoodsmen and long hunters,
Speaker 1: cowboys and Native American leaders, law men and outlaws. I
Speaker 1: hate to admit it, boys, but I've completely turned the
Speaker 1: helm of the ship to something bizarrely off topic on
Speaker 1: this episode. Caviar salted fish eggs of certain species are
Speaker 1: some of the most expensive per ounce food in the world.
Speaker 1: They're a status symbol of wealth and luxury. But is
Speaker 1: that really why I'm interested? Have I derailed us? Or
Speaker 1: could this be a story where rural America collides with
Speaker 1: a global caviar trade in a bizarre crime ring. I
Speaker 1: guess you'll have to wait and see. But this story
Speaker 1: from the heartland of Oklahoma is full of giant fish
Speaker 1: net poachers, undercover agents, and a region turned upside down
Speaker 1: by black market caviar. I really doubt that you're gonna
Speaker 1: want to miss this one, if you can even believe
Speaker 1: it at all.
Speaker 2: All these wardens converged on them. We had chuck guns and.
Speaker 1: It did you lead the chart you called the what'd
Speaker 1: you say to them?
Speaker 2: State?
Speaker 1: Game warden state, that's not what you want to hear
Speaker 1: in the in the dark anytime, is it not?
Speaker 2: With a batch of eggs.
Speaker 1: My name is Klay Nukem, and this is the Bear
Speaker 1: Grease Podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search
Speaker 1: for insight and unlikely places, and where we'll tell the
Speaker 1: story of Americans who live their lives close to the land.
Speaker 1: Presented by f HF gear, American made, purpose built hunting
Speaker 1: and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as
Speaker 1: the places we explore. Phil We're gonna have to start
Speaker 1: from the top. I think we just have to tell
Speaker 1: them about Caviar. There's just not another starting point. Here
Speaker 1: we go.
Speaker 3: I'm Alan Morris at Sterling Caviar. We're just outside of Sacramento, California.
Speaker 1: I'm assuming this is catching the average bear Grease listener
Speaker 1: a little left guard Caviar, But I'll tell you this
Speaker 1: is a foundational piece of understanding for this story.
Speaker 3: The history of Caviar is generally thought of as based
Speaker 3: around the Caspian Sea, where the beluga, the et cetera,
Speaker 3: the sort of old world species live where folks were
Speaker 3: catching it. At some point they realized, hey, if we
Speaker 3: salt these eggs, they taste pretty good. And then at
Speaker 3: a point in time it became fashionable in the imperial
Speaker 3: courts of Europe, and that's when it kind of took
Speaker 3: off with the rich set. But we know people who've
Speaker 3: been in the business who grew up in that area say, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: we had when I was a little kid, we had
Speaker 3: caviar for breakfast every day in Russia, and so that's
Speaker 3: kind of where it started.
Speaker 1: The Persians first called salted fish eggs kaviar, which means
Speaker 1: cake of strength. Aristotle mentioned sturgeon caviar as being quote
Speaker 1: heralded into banquets amongst trumpets and flowers unquote. He said
Speaker 1: that three centuries before the birth of Christ. But it
Speaker 1: really got its start as a widespread delicacy by the
Speaker 1: sixteen hundreds, when the Russian Orthodox Church decided that even
Speaker 1: though they required fasting from meat for as many as
Speaker 1: two hundred days a year, caviar would be acceptable for
Speaker 1: people to eat in lieu of meat. Russia was a
Speaker 1: land rich with giant sturgeon filled rivers, and similar to
Speaker 1: the ideas of Europeans around the American bison. In the
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds, the supply of sturgeons seemed endless. Beluga an
Speaker 1: etcetera sturgeon fish native to wider Europe, is the best
Speaker 1: caviar in the world period. Beluga sturgeons sometimes only reproduce
Speaker 1: every twenty five years, and after centuries of commercial pressure,
Speaker 1: sturgeon are endangered in Europe, and today it's illegal to
Speaker 1: sell beluga caviar in the United States. Who knew Russia
Speaker 1: was that big into caviar, but why would we We'll
Speaker 1: be back for the Russians to just put them aside
Speaker 1: for now. In Middle America, eating caviar is about as
Speaker 1: common as an albino emu. It's just not in the
Speaker 1: cultural rolodex, but in the ultra wealthy part of American culture,
Speaker 1: caviar is alive and well.
Speaker 4: It's another jazzling Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.
Speaker 2: Thank you for joining us.
Speaker 3: I'm Robin Leach with those champagne wishes and caviadres.
Speaker 1: Robin Leech hosted the television show Lifestyles of the Rich
Speaker 1: and Famous from nineteen eighty four to nineteen eighty five,
Speaker 1: and coin the phrase champagne wishes and caveat dreams. But
Speaker 1: what's all the fuss about? Does this stuff really even
Speaker 1: taste good?
Speaker 3: Here's alan Caviar is a unique flavor and texture that
Speaker 3: you don't get from any other product, any other food
Speaker 3: in the world. So the experience. First, you put on
Speaker 3: your tongue and sort of crush it against your palette.
Speaker 3: And what you want to do is you're feeling those
Speaker 3: individual beads and then as they pop, you'll get a rich,
Speaker 3: buttery flavor and then a cascade of flavors. There's going
Speaker 3: to be some bright accidity to it. I want some minerality.
Speaker 3: I want a breath of the sea or a hint
Speaker 3: of the sea, and also some earthiness. We call it merwar,
Speaker 3: just like tear war and wine. You can taste that
Speaker 3: it's something that came from the earth. And again, those
Speaker 3: fats kind of let those flavors cascade. You know, you
Speaker 3: swallow it, and you just got this fog left in
Speaker 3: your head. As it is when you've tasted anything great,
Speaker 3: it kind of leaves you a little bit dizzy.
Speaker 1: I'm sitting in the police station in Vanita, Oklahoma. I've
Speaker 1: not been arrested, but rather I've made arrangements to meet
Speaker 1: someone here that probably knows more about caviar than anyone
Speaker 1: in Oklahoma. He's traveled to Europe for seafood symposiums and
Speaker 1: dealt in the global caviar trade. But why does this
Speaker 1: sky live in Venida, a town of fifty one hundred
Speaker 1: people in northeast Oklahoma. Venita has a handsome main street
Speaker 1: and a good Chinese restaurant. This is flat country mixed
Speaker 1: with thick forests and open grass pastures, good cattle country.
Speaker 1: The landscape cradles big, slow moving rivers flowing out of
Speaker 1: the Great Plains of Kansas to the north. All these
Speaker 1: rivers are damned, creating incredibly fecunned lakes like Grand Keystone
Speaker 1: and you fallow. Does this sound like caviar country? I
Speaker 1: don't know. I'm meeting with retired Oklahoma game board and
Speaker 1: Keith Green. He's in his early seventies, wiry, full of energy,
Speaker 1: and grin's ear to ear. At the conclusion of each sentence,
Speaker 1: will learn that Keith is a bona fide hero of
Speaker 1: Oklahoma conservation, a pioneer. I assume this is rare for
Speaker 1: a caviar expert, but in his prime he was as
Speaker 1: good an Elk bowhunter as existed. He owns a string
Speaker 1: of pack mules and nine bird dogs. Today he does
Speaker 1: Keith is also an accomplished fisherman.
Speaker 2: My dad when we were in the late sixties, he
Speaker 2: was loading us up with his boat and go into
Speaker 2: Mexico to all the old Mexico lakes bass fishaw And
Speaker 2: in seventy three I won the Oklahoma State Basque Championship
Speaker 2: and beat Jimmy Houston. He was second. I was I
Speaker 2: was eighteen seventeen or eighteen, so we bass fish.
Speaker 1: Keith is one of those guys when you shake his hand,
Speaker 1: you know you're talking to a legend. But he's got
Speaker 1: some foundational information on global trade he needs to share.
Speaker 1: This is where we'll start to stitch the lifestyles of
Speaker 1: the rich and famous with Oklahoma Rednecks. This is part
Speaker 1: two of the foundation of our story. Learning about caviar
Speaker 1: was part one.
Speaker 2: In eighty seven. It was an Iranian embargo with the
Speaker 2: United States, and ninety percent of our caviar came from Iran,
Speaker 2: our black caviar, so our caviar quit, we lost it,
Speaker 2: So there was a they started looking for a substitute.
Speaker 1: And caviar coming into the United States yes, was gone,
Speaker 1: was gone. So the people that were wanting caviar was
Speaker 1: looking for another.
Speaker 2: Source absolutely, and come to find out, paddlefish had dark
Speaker 2: black eggs, their kin to a sturgeon and their cartilage.
Speaker 2: Fish and paddlefish caviar is number three in the world
Speaker 2: as caviar three to four. It can be really, really good,
Speaker 2: and there's some pluses to it. Sturgeon caviar you can't
Speaker 2: freeze it. Battlefish caviar you can freeze, and you can
Speaker 2: also pasteurize.
Speaker 1: Now some of the pieces are starting to take shape.
Speaker 1: Caviar is extremely sought after in some circles. The supply
Speaker 1: chain was cut off by Ronald Reagan's embargo, but lo
Speaker 1: and behold. Keith mentioned an American species, the paddlefish polydn spathula,
Speaker 1: also known as the spoon bill, and it has black
Speaker 1: row and is one of the top caviars in the world.
Speaker 1: Who knew The truth is that very few people in
Speaker 1: Oklahoma knew anything about it nor cared anything about caviar.
Speaker 1: Fish eggs were usually left on the bank. High demand
Speaker 1: and Low's supply had begun to create the backdrop for
Speaker 1: some serious illegal activity for our final foundational piece to
Speaker 1: begin to tell the story, we need to understand what
Speaker 1: a paddlefish is, where they live, and how they've survived
Speaker 1: on this continent since before t Rex was leaving tracks.
Speaker 1: This is retired Oklahoma game Warden Jeff Brown, also an
Speaker 1: incredible man. He'll be a huge player in this story
Speaker 1: later on.
Speaker 4: Paddlefish are a very unique fish and that they're prehistoric,
Speaker 4: the cardilaginous. They don't have any hard bones in them.
Speaker 4: The only scaleful structure is their rostrum, which is a
Speaker 4: long snout. Other than that, they have a cartilage encased
Speaker 4: final cord that runs the length through their body. And
Speaker 4: other than that, there's no bone. Town They have a
Speaker 4: thick hide. They have a really big area or a
Speaker 4: streak that runs from them of red meat. They grow
Speaker 4: to be real big world record came out of Oklahoma
Speaker 4: for several years, but it just recently was broken in
Speaker 4: Missouri just this spring, I think.
Speaker 1: On March seventeenth, twenty twenty four, first time paddle fisherman
Speaker 1: Chad Williams broke the world record by snagging a one
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty four pounds thirteen ounce paddlefish in Missouri's
Speaker 1: Lake of the Ozarks. The former world record was one
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty four pounds even and came out of
Speaker 1: Keystone Lake near Tulsa, Oklahoma. The age of natural systems
Speaker 1: of the Earth is bizarre to comprehend from inside the
Speaker 1: cockpit of the small sliver of time that humans live.
Speaker 1: And according to the fossil record, ninety nine percent of
Speaker 1: this species that have ever existed are now extinct. So
Speaker 1: when a species outlast is peers and critics, it's worth
Speaker 1: taking a note and tipping your hat. Here is Oklahoma
Speaker 1: Department of Wildlife Fisheries biologist Brandon Brown.
Speaker 5: You know, paddlefish are such a bizarre looking fish. They're primitive.
Speaker 5: They are an ancient species. They were around, or at
Speaker 5: least the relatives were around well before the dinosaurs. Probably
Speaker 5: the most bizarre thing about them is their rostrum, their bill,
Speaker 5: and a lot of people used to think that they
Speaker 5: use that to stir up the mud and then kind
Speaker 5: of eat what they stir up. But the fact is
Speaker 5: that's really a specialized appendage. You can really think of
Speaker 5: that as a plankton seeking antenna. Work done at Missouri
Speaker 5: years ago found that within juvenile paddlefish, they put them
Speaker 5: in a round tank, but they glued basically plankton to
Speaker 5: the end of wires, and those little paddle fish could
Speaker 5: basically detect the electrical field of one individual plankton. So
Speaker 5: they're amazing critters. You know, another cartilaginous fish is a shark,
Speaker 5: and paddlefish are related to sharks. And you know, if
Speaker 5: you ever see a paddlefish with this rostrum cut off,
Speaker 5: really it looks basically like a basking shark.
Speaker 1: That's pretty wild. But here's where paddlefish start to stand
Speaker 1: out as caviar producing machines.
Speaker 5: One of the really neat things about paddlefish, especially when
Speaker 5: we start talking about their life cycle and reproduction and
Speaker 5: especially their management, is when you clean a bass or
Speaker 5: a crappie, you know, you know, they have eggs in them,
Speaker 5: and it's maybe a handful of eggs. But when you
Speaker 5: clean a mature female paddlefish, you might get fifteen or
Speaker 5: twenty pounds of eggs out of her. So she's producing
Speaker 5: about a third of her body weight sometimes into reproduction.
Speaker 5: That is a huge metal bolic investment to think every year,
Speaker 5: every other year, whatever happens to be, that she's literally
Speaker 5: producing a third of her body weight into eggs.
Speaker 1: Culsta VARs of corn with big ears make for big yields,
Speaker 1: and giant fish with huge volumes of black eggs create
Speaker 1: incredible caviar.
Speaker 4: They're long lived. They'll live maybe to fifty years old
Speaker 4: or so. They don't reproduce till they're anywhere between six
Speaker 4: and twelve years old, and they only reproduce when the
Speaker 4: conditions are just right. So we'll go years maybe without
Speaker 4: a reproduction. So we have what's called what we call
Speaker 4: and referred to as as your classes. We'll have a
Speaker 4: pretty good good idea when the fish spond, and you
Speaker 4: can mark that on a calendar. In about six seven years,
Speaker 4: we'll have a good fishery. But then at the same time,
Speaker 4: all those fish that people are kitching are from one
Speaker 4: year class, and so they can wipe that year class out.
Speaker 1: Here's Brandon on paddlefish spawning.
Speaker 5: So we consider paddlefish episodic spawners, meaning they spawn in
Speaker 5: these big boom or bust episodes. It's not unusual to
Speaker 5: see at eight or even a ten or fifteen year
Speaker 5: gap in between those spawning events. Significant spawning events episodic spawners.
Speaker 1: That's an insightful biological descriptor.
Speaker 5: I like that paddlefish are native to North America. They're
Speaker 5: native to the Mississippi River system. Oklahoma is actually on
Speaker 5: the western fringe of the range. We're not in the
Speaker 5: heart of a paddlefish country, so to speak. They once
Speaker 5: range from Louisiana all the way up into Canada in
Speaker 5: some places. But over the last fifty years or so,
Speaker 5: paddlefish have declined significantly in the United States, both in
Speaker 5: range and number, but Oklahoma has been the exception to that.
Speaker 5: Our paddlefish are doing well. They're doing very well. We
Speaker 5: almost certainly have more paddlefish today than we did fifty
Speaker 5: years ago. They're expanding both in the range within the
Speaker 5: state and also in population size and in numbers. Oklahoma
Speaker 5: really won the paddlefish lottery, so to speak, and it
Speaker 5: wasn't anything that we did as a state or as
Speaker 5: an agency. We just got really lucky. We've got enough
Speaker 5: river miles between those dams that those fish can move
Speaker 5: and go and get a spawn off. And we have
Speaker 5: very fertile, very fertile watersheds. You know, if we look
Speaker 5: at that grand system that water's coming out of Kansas, well,
Speaker 5: there's probably not anywhere in the US more fertile, you know, than.
Speaker 1: Kansas paddlefish in general are not doing good, but in
Speaker 1: Oklahoma they're doing very well. This is really where the
Speaker 1: human side of the story begins. Here's Jeff Brown tell
Speaker 1: me about the caviar.
Speaker 4: The caviar is, it makes a high grade caviar. The
Speaker 4: row from the paddlefish. There's a window of time there.
Speaker 4: The eggs in the paddlefish are viable as far as
Speaker 4: caviar goes all the way back into November December. You
Speaker 4: know that they don't spawn until March April, but the
Speaker 4: row is you can make caviar out of it earlier
Speaker 4: than what they spawn. The beluga sturgeon population in the Russia,
Speaker 4: the Old Soviet Union collapsed from overfishing, and that caviar
Speaker 4: market went away for the most part. And that is
Speaker 4: one of the reasons, if not the biggest reason, why
Speaker 4: so much pressure was put on paddlefish caviar. And I
Speaker 4: looked online last night of what paddlefish caviar was selling
Speaker 4: for and it's about a dollar a gram, so roughly,
Speaker 4: depending on where you buy it, from twenty five to
Speaker 4: thirty five dollars an ount, So that makes one fish
Speaker 4: worth potentially quite a bit of money. It wasn't uncommon
Speaker 4: for a fish to produce ten pounds of caviar.
Speaker 1: Let me do the math here, forty eight hundred dollars
Speaker 1: and yeah, an average, average sized female that you caught
Speaker 1: that had ten pounds of caviar would be worth five
Speaker 1: grand yep.
Speaker 2: Wow. And that's just the caviar.
Speaker 4: And some people would sell the meat on top of that,
Speaker 4: you know, for another couple of dollars a pound, So
Speaker 4: a really big fish could potentially be worth you know,
Speaker 4: five six thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: That's a big money for a fish. And coming from
Speaker 1: the hunting world, it's hard to imagine the meat or
Speaker 1: consumable products of an animal we hunt being worth that much.
Speaker 1: We also learned another influence on the global market was
Speaker 1: the depletion of Russian sturgeon fisheries additional to the trade
Speaker 1: embargo with Iran in the nineteen eighties. So here's what
Speaker 1: we know. Caviar is in demand glow, but most Oklahoma's
Speaker 1: I know would starve before they'd eat it, So there
Speaker 1: was an untapped resource, kind of like when the Beverly
Speaker 1: Hillbillies discovered oil on their land. It was worthless to them,
Speaker 1: but some other folks wanted it pretty bad. So how
Speaker 1: did paddlefish caviard get discovered. Jed's oil got discovered when
Speaker 1: someone shot a gun into the ground. Here's game Warden
Speaker 1: Keith Green.
Speaker 2: There was a guy in Tennessee named Frank Hale, and
Speaker 2: he was really one of the very first people that
Speaker 2: it was legal to net him. He went up to
Speaker 2: Missouri and set up a program on the Missouri River.
Speaker 2: The guy that I caught here in Oklahoma Billy Wishard,
Speaker 2: and he's deceased now and we become super super friends.
Speaker 2: But he got hooked in with Frank Hale through muscle picking,
Speaker 2: and he brought it back to Oklahoma and there was
Speaker 2: commercial fishermen on Grand Lake, and he got with that
Speaker 2: commercial fisherman and we thought nothing about it. They were
Speaker 2: they had always been able to take paddlefish commercially on
Speaker 2: Grand Lake with nets, and we started seeing them really
Speaker 2: targeting paddlefish. They never targeted it before because it's not
Speaker 2: it's not that it's not as good as flat it's okay.
Speaker 2: It's really okay if it's taken care of, but it's
Speaker 2: not like being a flathead or a blue cat. We
Speaker 2: we kind of caught window of it here in Oklahoma
Speaker 2: that there was some stuff going on, and I was
Speaker 2: the supervisor for this area, and so we started working
Speaker 2: it and we ended up catching a bunch out of
Speaker 2: Illinois coming in. There was some people that I know,
Speaker 2: those people at Claremore and and they were pretty well
Speaker 2: going to the same market that we found out.
Speaker 1: Over these these are just Oklahoma's.
Speaker 2: Yeah, these were, but they were connected for out of
Speaker 2: state because of the muscle picking, and the muscle pickers
Speaker 2: were the netters, and so it happened nationwide.
Speaker 1: This Frank Hale out of Tennessee was one of the
Speaker 1: first major paddlefish caviar kingpins in the US, and he
Speaker 1: started in the late nineteen eighties. In two thousand and four,
Speaker 1: he'd be convicted of eleven charges in relation to the
Speaker 1: Lacy Act. There was an article written about Frank Hale
Speaker 1: and his caviar in the New York Times in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety and Oklahoma and Billy Wishard was a muscle picker
Speaker 1: who commercially gathered muscles and learned about paddlefish caviar from Frank.
Speaker 1: You gotta remember Billy, he'll be a major player in
Speaker 1: this story. But also know that commercial fishing was outlawed
Speaker 1: in Oklahoma in nineteen seventy four. This is also an
Speaker 1: important part of the story, so there was no legal
Speaker 1: way to sell paddlefish eggs in Oklahoma.
Speaker 4: In Oklahoma, we do not have commercial fishing like they
Speaker 4: do up and down the Mississippi River Ohio River areas,
Speaker 4: and those commercial fisherman will target paddlefish, and in those states,
Speaker 4: from what I understand, they are tightly regulated, even the
Speaker 4: commercial fishing, but that is kind of what led the problem.
Speaker 4: Part of the problem in Oklahoma is that you can
Speaker 4: come to Oklahoma and catch all the paddlefish you could
Speaker 4: ever want to catch, and in other states you can't
Speaker 4: do that.
Speaker 1: So there was no regulation on how many you could take.
Speaker 4: It's been kind of a progression when I first moved
Speaker 4: to this area and we started really working them hard
Speaker 4: that we had a fish a three fish limit per
Speaker 4: day per day, okay, but you had the first three
Speaker 4: fish you caught, you had to keep them. There was
Speaker 4: no calling, there was no throwing, catching release. That in
Speaker 4: and up self led to problems. If a person caught
Speaker 4: a paddlefish and he was just that long, you had
Speaker 4: to keep him and once you caught three, you were done. Well.
Speaker 4: People didn't want to do that, and they would catch
Speaker 4: and release and that's kind of what we watched for.
Speaker 4: And then as we learned more, I say we, as
Speaker 4: the waldleyfe Department learned more about the paddlefish, some rule
Speaker 4: changes were made to restrict sport take. You know, all
Speaker 4: we have is sport fishing, and it's progressed up to
Speaker 4: today where it's a two fish limit per year and
Speaker 4: that's all you can take is two fish per calendar year.
Speaker 1: There are seven states that allow commercial paddlefish harvest Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee,
Speaker 1: and Mississippi. However, these markets for that caviar is highly regulated.
Speaker 1: So that's exactly why a place like Oklahoma, without the
Speaker 1: pressure of commercial fishing, became a holy land for black
Speaker 1: market spoonbilt caviar. Now, my friends, we have a solid
Speaker 1: foundation to understand the dynamics for the early years of
Speaker 1: this illegal activity. I now want to get to know
Speaker 1: game Board and Keith Green a little better. And here's
Speaker 1: some story of busting egg poachers. And not to foreshadow
Speaker 1: too much, but his law enforcement career would be the
Speaker 1: backdrop to establish one of the most creative conservation programs
Speaker 1: ever created. Here's Keith with some family history.
Speaker 2: The best thing that probably ever happened to me was
Speaker 2: my game warning career. I loved every minute of it.
Speaker 2: I was My dad was pretty much of a poacher,
Speaker 2: he really, Yeah, he got to hunt one day a
Speaker 2: week and that was on Saturdays, and he would be
Speaker 2: quill hunting. We'd started in the morning, quit in the evening.
Speaker 1: He took advantage of that day of that day and.
Speaker 2: We're hunted the same places for thirty years, you know,
Speaker 2: and never heard. He knew what he would The last
Speaker 2: thing he'd ever wanted to do was would hurt a population.
Speaker 2: So I was raised on the other side a little bit.
Speaker 2: So it really helped me in when I become a
Speaker 2: game warden and I got a degree in wallife. He
Speaker 2: called you from an Oklahoma university and you think, well,
Speaker 2: it helped you catch them, And it did that, but
Speaker 2: it also helped my mental state towards somebody doing a
Speaker 2: violation just because they were doing a violation, they were
Speaker 2: in a no good sorry center of it, and so,
Speaker 2: and that's that's what happens to a lot of game wardens.
Speaker 2: You're lied to by everybody, and you see these guys
Speaker 2: doing things wrong, and and they get the mentality that
Speaker 2: they're a bad person because they're violating the game law.
Speaker 2: And that's not always. That's not always. Sometimes it's true,
Speaker 2: but that's not always true. And that kept me from
Speaker 2: developing that. My background kept me from developing that. So
Speaker 2: I had lots of respect, even even the guys that
Speaker 2: I caught. And you'll find out in this story here
Speaker 2: the guy that I ended up hiring with the guy
Speaker 2: that I had caught twice doing eggs illegally, and I
Speaker 2: took a beating from the other game wardens across the
Speaker 2: state because I'd work to catch this guy thousands of ours,
Speaker 2: night after night after night after night after night. Finally
Speaker 2: got him and his brother had done some other stuff
Speaker 2: and was on probation. He said, if you'll keep my
Speaker 2: brother out of jail, he said, I'll teach you how
Speaker 2: to catch these guys. And for two years, any time
Speaker 2: I ever called him, he went with me, would spend
Speaker 2: the whole night with me, we'd go work together, and
Speaker 2: I felt like I had completely converted him.
Speaker 1: The man whom Keith would later hire to help him
Speaker 1: catch Oklahoma poachers was Billy Wisherd, the one who initially
Speaker 1: started the black market trade in Oklahoma before nineteen seventy four,
Speaker 1: Billy was a commercial fisherman and a muscle picker on
Speaker 1: Grand Lake, and his livelihood was pulled out from underneath
Speaker 1: him with the law change. So he took to the
Speaker 1: world of illegal wildlife trade. But by the time Keith
Speaker 1: caught him, the agency was way behind.
Speaker 2: And we were so far behind eight ball. The poachers
Speaker 2: got on it. You know, they say, let's say it
Speaker 2: started in eighty seven, maybe it was ninety five before
Speaker 2: we knew it was ever raping our legs.
Speaker 1: So in eighty seven is when the embargo happened and
Speaker 1: caviar wasn't coming into the United States, and that for
Speaker 1: like eighty years, it was like the wild West. It
Speaker 1: wasn't a lot of regulation.
Speaker 2: That's right here in Oklahoma at that time. I think
Speaker 2: the limit was five and you could there wasn't any
Speaker 2: limit on how many how many eggs thatts of eggs
Speaker 2: you could have. Yeah, you could take it out of
Speaker 2: the eggs out of state.
Speaker 1: There's just anything goes. For eight years, the black market
Speaker 1: caviard trade ran wild and pretty much unnoticed in Oklahoma.
Speaker 1: Then in nineteen ninety five the Department caught on and
Speaker 1: these eggs were being sold primarily to American buyers, selling
Speaker 1: to American folks. But in the next episode you'll see
Speaker 1: that the players and their nationalities will shift. I want
Speaker 1: to ask Keith about one of his most memorable egg busts.
Speaker 1: It happened to be on Fort Gibson Lake. This is
Speaker 1: the story of catching Billy ray Wishard.
Speaker 2: Him and his brother. They had nets out and they
Speaker 2: would go they were on Fort Gibson Lake, you know
Speaker 2: Fort Gibson. Well, they would go in and put in
Speaker 2: with a little boat out of the back of their truck,
Speaker 2: a V bottom with a little ten horse fifteen horse motor,
Speaker 2: and he would cross the lake and go to where
Speaker 2: they had their nets out, and one guy would run it.
Speaker 2: The other guy would drive the truck around almost forty
Speaker 2: miles to the other side of the lake and he
Speaker 2: could watch and see if anybody was following him. He'd
Speaker 2: stop and start and go down a road to dead end,
Speaker 2: and there was just no way to follow him without
Speaker 2: getting caught. And then they would load up on a
Speaker 2: gravel bar, load that V bottom up, stick it in
Speaker 2: the back of their pickup and uh it would it. Actually,
Speaker 2: they kept left the tailgate up and the would set
Speaker 2: it in there like that.
Speaker 1: Uh, with their fish. They would have their fish in
Speaker 1: the back of the truck.
Speaker 2: Gigs. They were throwing the fishing with eggs.
Speaker 1: Oh, they were just taking the eggs, chunking the fish.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and uh, there's a guy there that they were
Speaker 2: on a real real road down the east east side
Speaker 2: of Fort Gibson Lake. Well, there was one house down.
Speaker 2: Then the guy got off at twelve to one o'clock
Speaker 2: and he was coming home and he called another game
Speaker 2: warding down in district too. He said, hey, there's been
Speaker 2: a boat. I've seen it twice in the back of
Speaker 2: a pickup come out of here. So he called me
Speaker 2: and I said, well, I'll go down.
Speaker 1: And now why was he suspicious of that boat?
Speaker 2: One one at one am, two am in the morning.
Speaker 1: That wouldn't be unusual for just a cat fishermen or something.
Speaker 2: Not a boat stuck in the back of a pickup,
Speaker 2: not on a trailer. No, it was just it was
Speaker 2: just it was out of place, okay. And so I
Speaker 2: went down the next night and got in there before daylight,
Speaker 2: and I had another game. Wouldn't go with me? And
Speaker 2: we hid the truck off on a on a road.
Speaker 2: We're sitting there and we're on the back tailgate of
Speaker 2: the truck just being quite listening, and you're a motor
Speaker 2: And we sat there and he was idling that little
Speaker 2: tin horse for about the last mile and his brother
Speaker 2: come in on the on the with the pickup and
Speaker 2: he pulled in and he drove all the way down
Speaker 2: where we hid, but he didn't catch our truck. We'd
Speaker 2: heard the motor. We had crawled out through these cucko
Speaker 2: burr flat and the cucko birds were about this tall
Speaker 2: the guy and we're pretty big. And this road comes
Speaker 2: down and circles around just like this, right in front
Speaker 2: of this kucko bird patch, and here's this point over
Speaker 2: here where they're going to load the boat up. We
Speaker 2: didn't know what was going on at the time, but
Speaker 2: so here comes the truck and and we've called. We've
Speaker 2: gone and gotten the open and we laid down on
Speaker 2: those cucko birds and I know his butts sticking up
Speaker 2: above those cucobirds about that high. And we lay there
Speaker 2: and his pickup lights come across us, and he does
Speaker 2: not see us. He pulls on down and the guy
Speaker 2: is stopped out about. The water was real shallow flat,
Speaker 2: and he'd stopped out about seventy five yards from the
Speaker 2: bank and was walking wading the boat to the bank
Speaker 2: without the motor running. And so we're watching him, and
Speaker 2: we're watching the pickup pull down, and they kind of
Speaker 2: get together, and we've gotten to about we're about forty
Speaker 2: five yards from them, and they're they're getting stuff and
Speaker 2: loading the boat up and putting the motor in underneath
Speaker 2: the boat. And I didn't see I didn't see anything
Speaker 2: that I thought that they could have had eggs in
Speaker 2: and the Gordon, I was with you, because you want
Speaker 2: to get him I go. No, I said, we're going
Speaker 2: to let him go. And that's a hard thing to do.
Speaker 1: And you suspected they were getting eggs.
Speaker 2: Though, no question about it. Yeah, yeah, there's no reason
Speaker 2: for him to be out and no rods, no tackle,
Speaker 2: there's no doubt they're net and they've got ice boxes
Speaker 2: that they didn't have eggs. The boxes they lifted them,
Speaker 2: they were light and we let them drive off. That's
Speaker 2: that was really hard not to hopefully you might get
Speaker 2: something on them, you know. Yeah, So the next night
Speaker 2: Jeff I took Jeff Brown y'all just talk to We
Speaker 2: had about seven wardens there, and I sent Jeff down
Speaker 2: to where the boat where I thought it came from,
Speaker 2: and it was about a half three quarters of my
Speaker 2: walk down the bank. They come in and unload the
Speaker 2: boat right there, which they never did. And I find
Speaker 2: I find this out later. You know, something spooked them
Speaker 2: from the night before. Somehow or other. We spooked them
Speaker 2: a little bit, but that not enough that they didn't
Speaker 2: go get their nets. They had about I think they
Speaker 2: had about seven or eight batches of eggs. And I've
Speaker 2: called out in there's a willow tree in the water.
Speaker 2: It's about this deep, and I've called out in by
Speaker 2: that whillow tree. And uh, you got to have your
Speaker 2: walkie talkie turned off if it makes it sound, you
Speaker 2: know that. So we're sitting there and I watch them
Speaker 2: bring the nets out the out of the boat. They
Speaker 2: set them on a big rag and then they just
Speaker 2: tied the four corners together. And he reached in and
Speaker 2: got an ice chest and he could just it's a
Speaker 2: big old these are big old guys. He could barely
Speaker 2: lift it over the side of the boat.
Speaker 1: You know. It's full eggs, no doubt.
Speaker 2: And so I'm just whispering. I turned them knocked down whispering.
Speaker 2: I said, okay, we're going to take them down. And
Speaker 2: still don't know who it is for sure. These guys,
Speaker 2: we knew them. If it was them, they I didn't
Speaker 2: feel like they would try to hurt us. There are
Speaker 2: some guys I felt like that would that would come
Speaker 2: from out of state, that would try to hurt us. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so all these wardens converged on them with shot and
Speaker 2: we had shotguns and you know it.
Speaker 1: Did you lead the chart? You called the Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: what'd you say to them?
Speaker 2: State game warden?
Speaker 1: Stay? That's not what you want to hear in the
Speaker 1: in the dark anytime, is it not?
Speaker 2: With a batch of eggs? And so I ended up
Speaker 2: going back. They let us search where they live.
Speaker 1: They had an okay, so you confront them and they
Speaker 1: just gave up absolutely again And what did they have.
Speaker 2: They're sick. I mean, they're just they're sick because we
Speaker 2: know them. These are the commercial fishermen that I've dealt
Speaker 2: with for a long time.
Speaker 1: These are friend I mean people you're acquainted.
Speaker 2: With absolutely and know them well.
Speaker 1: So you walk up in the dark and shine your
Speaker 1: light and you're like Bill.
Speaker 2: They knew my voice when I said, state game Ward.
Speaker 1: Wow, how much value did the eggs they had right
Speaker 1: that day? You think they had a couple thousand dollars
Speaker 1: worth of.
Speaker 2: Egg Oh yeah, yeah, at least that. But let's say
Speaker 2: they had seven or eight fish and seventy or eighty
Speaker 2: pounds of eggs.
Speaker 1: So the finished product of that caviar would have been
Speaker 1: like thirty five bucks an ounce, But for them, like
Speaker 1: the raw caviar would have been less. Been like a farmer,
Speaker 1: like an absolutely and there was a cornfield. He's not
Speaker 1: getting the little.
Speaker 2: Eggs, so the buyer could kind of rake them over
Speaker 2: the coal anyway. They wouldn't tell us who their buyer was.
Speaker 1: Now, how did you did you interrogate them?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 2: Absolutely, yeah, I question them and and he wouldn't get
Speaker 2: give up his buyer.
Speaker 1: So Keith has now caught Billy Wishard, the Oklahoma caviar kingpin,
Speaker 1: but now he wants to get Billy's buyer. But Billy
Speaker 1: won't talk. But Keith has a trick up his sleeve.
Speaker 2: I was dealing with a couple of caviar buyers that
Speaker 2: we had worked and there was two women and this
Speaker 2: one woman called the other woman and.
Speaker 1: Said, hey, said a legal caviar buyers buyers, So you're
Speaker 1: working undercover, you know them.
Speaker 2: I'm putting word out to somebody that I think they'll
Speaker 2: get back to them.
Speaker 1: Okay, And what did you what did you want them
Speaker 1: to hear?
Speaker 2: Yeah? And I I actually told Billy about something. And
Speaker 2: I was at a national symposium Chattanooga and sat down
Speaker 2: with one of these and I said, this buyer was there,
Speaker 2: and I went over sat down with her, and she goes, hey,
Speaker 2: I got a bone to pick with you. And she said,
Speaker 2: a lady from Chicago called me about saying that we
Speaker 2: were taking illegal legs. It was the exact thing that
Speaker 2: I'd told Billy, no question. Now I know who his
Speaker 2: buyer is.
Speaker 1: To be crystal clear, Keith is at a fancy dancy
Speaker 1: caviar symposium representing the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife as they
Speaker 1: have interest in caviar, and he'd made a unique accusation
Speaker 1: about a specific buyer to Billy Wishered, and later this
Speaker 1: lady relayed the secretly coded information back to Keith, which
Speaker 1: indicated to him that she was in contact with Billy.
Speaker 1: That's some fancy lawwork, brother. Here's more with Billy's route
Speaker 1: to justice and redemption.
Speaker 2: And so the fans are working them anyway, and I
Speaker 2: didn't know this. So we get with them, and I
Speaker 2: fly Billy down to Tennessee. We do a profer with
Speaker 2: the US attorney. He goes, uh, And a proffer is
Speaker 2: that you tell me everything and I won't arrest you
Speaker 2: for any of it. You don't.
Speaker 1: This is the guy that you caught yes on Fort
Speaker 1: Gibson Fort Gibson.
Speaker 2: And if you miss something, then we're going to come
Speaker 2: back on you. So he spilt the beans.
Speaker 1: He told who his who was buying the caviar from him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And like I say, I got to be really
Speaker 2: good friends with him, and and and he and he changed.
Speaker 1: Were they making a lot of money like this? Billy goes, okay,
Speaker 1: I can tell you.
Speaker 2: When we went down and did the proffer, Billy the
Speaker 2: first question he asked, He goes, iris going to come
Speaker 2: back on me? He goes, well, how much we talking about?
Speaker 2: And this was for about half of the spring. He goes, oh,
Speaker 2: maybe two hundred thousand.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, So he had made two hundred thousand like
Speaker 1: that year.
Speaker 2: Half of the spring half?
Speaker 1: Ah wow, this is like big money.
Speaker 2: No, it's it's it's a lot of money.
Speaker 1: Wow. So this is just some old Oklahoma country boy
Speaker 1: absolutely making maybe half a million dollars, so he would
Speaker 1: be very motivated to be a good to get away
Speaker 1: with it.
Speaker 2: Oh absolutely, And my mouth kind of dropped a little
Speaker 2: bit because I didn't know it was that much.
Speaker 1: The reason Keith is so open about this convicted poacher
Speaker 1: is they became very good friends and they work together
Speaker 1: in more ways than just catching poachers. This part of
Speaker 1: the story is really more wild than the first. I
Speaker 1: hope you're ready for this. But later Billy Wishard would
Speaker 1: work for the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife in their state
Speaker 1: of the art Paddlefish Research Center. Yes, that's right, I said.
Speaker 1: They built a paddlefish center in two thousand and eight.
Speaker 1: And guess who was the lead man that pioneered that
Speaker 1: whole program. It was our man, Keith Green. The next
Speaker 1: part of the story is almost unbelievable and one of
Speaker 1: the most gutsy conservation strategies I've ever heard. This is
Speaker 1: the kind of stuff that makes me love Oklahoma. Buckle
Speaker 1: up for some twists and turns.
Speaker 4: Here's Jeff Brown the Paddlefish Research Center. Affectionately we called
Speaker 4: it the Paddlefish Palace, but the Paddlefish Research Center was
Speaker 4: something completely independent of enforcement and our enforcement efforts. But
Speaker 4: about it the same time, the Wildlife Department wanted to
Speaker 4: initiate a study on these paddlefish because their uniqueness, because
Speaker 4: of their value, needed to know more about it. So
Speaker 4: Keith Green, who was a game warden, and him and
Speaker 4: I worked hand in hand and worked arguably more than
Speaker 4: anybody on the enforcement end of it. To start with,
Speaker 4: they put Keith in charge of setting up this Paddlefish
Speaker 4: Research Center and he's the only person that could have
Speaker 4: done it. So he built this research center from the
Speaker 4: ground up and its sole purpose was to have an
Speaker 4: opportunity to study these fish.
Speaker 1: So what people caught them.
Speaker 4: So when people caught them in the Grand River system,
Speaker 4: and it was completely voluntary on the fishermen's part, and
Speaker 4: when they caught these fish, if they wanted to, they
Speaker 4: could bring the fish to these Paddlefish center and the
Speaker 4: guys working the Paddlefish Center would clean.
Speaker 2: Them for them.
Speaker 4: Well, a byproduct to that is all these eggs which
Speaker 4: people can't have. You know, they can have some, but
Speaker 4: they can't have a whole lot. So a byproduct it
Speaker 4: was all these eggs. Well, okay, so let's make caviar
Speaker 4: out of the eggs as a byproduct of this research
Speaker 4: that we're doing, and we'll sell the eggs. We mean,
Speaker 4: in the wallet department, we'll sell the eggs to pay
Speaker 4: for the facility and the research. And it was really controversial.
Speaker 1: To make again crystal clear what's happening here and its significance.
Speaker 1: Here's the layout. Commercial fishing is a leg in Oklahoma,
Speaker 1: so you can't sell eggs. New regulations permit each license
Speaker 1: holder to only three pounds of eggs per year. Remember
Speaker 1: that you can have only three pounds in your possession
Speaker 1: for the year. However, they've got a huge paddlefish fishery.
Speaker 1: Catching them is becoming popular simultaneous to a global demand
Speaker 1: for caviar. The Wildlife Department had the idea to process
Speaker 1: the giant fish for free of charge in return for
Speaker 1: the anglers donating their eggs to the department to be
Speaker 1: processed into caviar and sold legally on the market by
Speaker 1: the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife. This had never been done
Speaker 1: before by a state agency. Here's Keith on the first
Speaker 1: year of running the Paddlefish Palace.
Speaker 2: We got it built and run the first year, and
Speaker 2: we did it for five hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: We told them it would take a year and a half.
Speaker 2: We told the Walife Commission that it would probably take
Speaker 2: about a year and a half to break even on it. Well,
Speaker 2: the first year it produced one point five million and
Speaker 2: so from the sell of eggs, and it was a
Speaker 2: pretty hard deal. He wanted, the director wanted me to
Speaker 2: go around to the department employees and explain what we
Speaker 2: were doing. And it was boy, it was not like
Speaker 2: I got hammered. And finally I tried to bring the
Speaker 2: point that this is a salvage operation. All these eggs.
Speaker 2: It's illegal for anybody to sell their eggs. They could
Speaker 2: use them for fish bait, they could make caviar at
Speaker 2: them if they wanted. This was a volunteer program. But
Speaker 2: they would bring their fish in and donate the eggs
Speaker 2: to the Waife Department. But while while they were doing that,
Speaker 2: we were going to pull both jaws out of the fish.
Speaker 2: We're going to get the link of the fish. We're
Speaker 2: going to get the weight of the fish. With the jaws,
Speaker 2: were to be able to age them, and we can
Speaker 2: start looking at our population of fish in the lake
Speaker 2: a lot better and explain that to him, and it
Speaker 2: was still that, well, we're the Walleffe Department. We shouldn't
Speaker 2: be selling commercial stuff eggs. Yeah, And finally I brought
Speaker 2: the point up that every penny's going back into the
Speaker 2: general fund of the Walleff Department. It wasn't going anywhere else.
Speaker 2: Every deer that we have in Oklahoma, we sell it
Speaker 2: for twenty dollars apiece. You go buy your license for
Speaker 2: twenty dollars. You go buy your turkey tag for ten dollars.
Speaker 2: And when these people are bringing these fishing or we're
Speaker 2: picking them up, we're getting to talk to him. Every
Speaker 2: angler we got to talk to him, and that's pretty unusual.
Speaker 1: Keith, and the program took a lot of persecution from
Speaker 1: all sides. Here's Jeff.
Speaker 4: It was really controversial, and I can imagine it was
Speaker 4: really device not only with the public, but also within
Speaker 4: the Wallet Department.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of because people were like, hey, you're
Speaker 1: making this illegal for us, but y'all are doing absolutely
Speaker 1: what we can't do absolutely, And how did that go down?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 2: Who?
Speaker 4: The best way I know to explain that is, look, okay,
Speaker 4: if you go catch. Clay Newcombe goes and catches a
Speaker 4: paddlefish and processes the eggs and sells it. You profit
Speaker 4: from that. You profit from a fish that everybody owns.
Speaker 4: The wildlife in Oklahoma under the North American model is
Speaker 4: all the wildlife is owned by the people, by the people,
Speaker 4: but it's managed by the state. Okay, so if you
Speaker 4: process the eggs and you're pocketing all the money. If
Speaker 4: the Waldleife Department processes the eggs and sells them, everybody's
Speaker 4: benefiting from it.
Speaker 1: So they take this caviaar and every day they're getting
Speaker 1: all this caviart. So they have got to have like
Speaker 1: government sanctioned processing facilit these ye like you know, if
Speaker 1: they were butcher me to be the USDA, maybe it's
Speaker 1: the USDA. And then how are they selling it? They
Speaker 1: got a little roadside shop on the are No.
Speaker 4: It was all. It was all sent out for bid,
Speaker 4: just like any other just like any other state generating commodity.
Speaker 4: It was Okay, we've got x x number or x
Speaker 4: pounds of caviar and we're going to sell it to
Speaker 4: the highest bid.
Speaker 1: So so it went up to open bid, and who
Speaker 1: would who would buy this? Would it be like New
Speaker 1: York Caviar House.
Speaker 4: Or Japanese bought most of it. Really, the Japanese, I
Speaker 4: think right up to the end they were the biggest
Speaker 4: purchasers of it.
Speaker 1: So how much do you have any numbers on like
Speaker 1: how much caviar and how much money was being generated.
Speaker 1: I mean it was like a substantial amount of money.
Speaker 4: The first year, it was just it blew everybody's mind away.
Speaker 4: It was like just short of twenty pounds, I think, Wow.
Speaker 1: And all this money goes back into.
Speaker 4: All that money, all that money went back into the
Speaker 4: into the research.
Speaker 1: Like specifically paddlefish.
Speaker 4: Research, and and so the paddlefish research didn't cost that much. Yeah,
Speaker 4: So with that money, they put in access areas for fishermen,
Speaker 4: they built boat ramps. I mean, it went back into
Speaker 4: the fishermen.
Speaker 1: In Oklahoma. This was revolutionary, like no game agents.
Speaker 2: Never been done before with a game agency. And you
Speaker 2: wouldn't believe the perception how it changed in the wal
Speaker 2: Off Department. After three or four years, it saw what
Speaker 2: we were doing for the public. The public absolutely loved it.
Speaker 2: It was a hands on they were helping. They wanted
Speaker 2: to get their fish there. So we could get the
Speaker 2: eggs out of it they could get the meat and
Speaker 2: it would they were helping the Walleffe Department, but it
Speaker 2: was hunters and fishermen's money would have been going out
Speaker 2: to do all this management on these paddlefish, and this
Speaker 2: way it was free. Yeah, and these fish were being
Speaker 2: killed anyway. And after the people in the department completely changed.
Speaker 1: Like overall. Do you know how much money that generated
Speaker 1: for wildlife?
Speaker 2: I heard a figure hero a while back that it
Speaker 2: had it had produced over ten million. I know that
Speaker 2: I had one year that it produced two point eight
Speaker 2: million when I was there, and another year was over
Speaker 2: two million.
Speaker 1: The success of the program was undeniable, raising a ton
Speaker 1: of money for Oklahoma fisheries. But I still haven't told
Speaker 1: you the whole story. This thing just keeps unraveling. This
Speaker 1: is the ultimate boomerang might drop ending. Keith and the
Speaker 1: Paddlefish Research Center from day one had to have an
Speaker 1: expert in making caviar, which is a delicate process to
Speaker 1: make the raw eggs into these caviar dreams. Because this
Speaker 1: stuff had to be world class and worth top dollar
Speaker 1: on the global market, they needed expert. So who do
Speaker 1: you think Keith hired. Do you remember old Billy Ray Wishard.
Speaker 1: Here's Keith.
Speaker 2: This was the deal. When we brought him in. I
Speaker 2: did a nationwide search because we wanted the best eggs
Speaker 2: we could get. I knew he'd been doing eggs for
Speaker 2: a long time and he'd sold eggs in New York
Speaker 2: and but I did a nation white search and interviewed
Speaker 2: I think of four or five people to come and
Speaker 2: do our eggs in Oklahoma. I knew how to do them,
Speaker 2: but I didn't I did I was, I wasn't a processor,
Speaker 2: and Billy was the best screener that.
Speaker 1: I So Billy came to work for you at the
Speaker 1: Paddlefish Research Center.
Speaker 2: Yeah, after after interviewing on nationwide.
Speaker 1: And he was the best.
Speaker 2: He was the best.
Speaker 1: Now, if that ain't a full dose of that Bear
Speaker 1: Grease redemption that we all love, I don't know what
Speaker 1: is this Oklahoma caviar kingpin that ed introduced the black
Speaker 1: market Oklahoma ended being the lead X processor in the
Speaker 1: state for years. As Keith said earlier, Billy has since
Speaker 1: passed away that he and Keith were good friends right
Speaker 1: to the end. I can't thank you enough for listening
Speaker 1: to bear Grease. On the next episode, we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about a sting operation in Oklahoma called Operation Russian Snack.
Speaker 1: It has to do with Eastern Europeans and it's even
Speaker 1: more wild than this story. Please share our podcast with
Speaker 1: your friends and families, outlaws and in laws, and tell
Speaker 1: them about the gritty American stories that you're hearing on
Speaker 1: bear Grease in this country life. Thanks to all of you,