Speaker 1: It is almost overnight, So they just showed up. They
Speaker 1: just showed up.
Speaker 2: Were y'all immediately suspicious of that?
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: On the last episode of Bear Grease, we learned about
Speaker 2: the black market caviar trade in the United States and
Speaker 2: how the number one source is the American paddlefish, an
Speaker 2: ancient beast older than the dinosaurs that can reach up
Speaker 2: to one hundred and sixty pounds, and females often produce
Speaker 2: up to twenty percent of their body weight in black eggs,
Speaker 2: almost worth their weight in gold. We've learned about how
Speaker 2: the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife created a controversial program that
Speaker 2: allowed anglers to donate their eggs to the state. Then
Speaker 2: caviar was made and sold on the legal market to
Speaker 2: raise money for conservation, and it raised over ten million dollars.
Speaker 2: But this week we're transitioning in the chronology of the
Speaker 2: caviar black market, and the players were completely shocking to me.
Speaker 2: It was none other than the Russians. This is a
Speaker 2: wild story about the cultural value of caviat and what
Speaker 2: some people were willing to do to get it. I
Speaker 2: really doubt that you're gonna want to miss this one,
Speaker 2: and I want to let you know that soon you'll
Speaker 2: be able to watch video. That's right, video of the
Speaker 2: Bear Grease Render Podcast, which is our every other week
Speaker 2: podcast where we dissect the actual bear Grease podcast. I
Speaker 2: know it's confusing. All this you'll be able to see
Speaker 2: on meat Eater's new YouTube channel with just podcasts on it.
Speaker 2: Brent will be there in his overalls, and I'll probably
Speaker 2: be wearing a coonskin cap, probably even have some music too.
Speaker 2: It's gonna be a lot of fun. Onto the episode.
Speaker 3: They knew we were watching them, We knew they were
Speaker 3: watching us, and we'd go down and sit down on
Speaker 3: the bank and just talk to them. You know, they
Speaker 3: are jolly people, a lot of them.
Speaker 1: It's just a man. They wanted them paddlefree schick.
Speaker 3: They wanted that caviar at all costs, and it's kind
Speaker 3: of like we ever doing it. Catch us if you can.
Speaker 2: My name is Klay Nukem, and this is the Bear
Speaker 2: Grease Podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search
Speaker 2: for insight and unlikely places, and where we'll tell the
Speaker 2: story of Americans who lived their lives close to the land.
Speaker 2: Presented by FHF gear, American made purpose built hunting and
Speaker 2: fishing gear as designed to be as rugged as the
Speaker 2: place as we explore. On November twenty seventh, nineteen eighty five,
Speaker 2: America's awareness of the Cold War with the then Soviet
Speaker 2: Union reached an all time high after almost forty years
Speaker 2: of jockeying for global power in this ideological and geopolitical struggle.
Speaker 2: That November date was the release of a hit box
Speaker 2: office movie, bo Gets out of the Corner Island.
Speaker 4: Now, What's moves?
Speaker 5: Driver backing Rocky Babo up with a jab, and Balbolla
Speaker 5: is not staying on.
Speaker 2: That is because in a long job of.
Speaker 1: The Russian.
Speaker 2: Tiger, Rocky four starred Sylvester Stallone as Rocky, the virtuous, simple,
Speaker 2: tough as nails American hero pitted against the villainous antagonists.
Speaker 2: Actor Hans Lundgren planned the tall, ridiculously good looking and
Speaker 2: jacked Russian boxer Ivan Drago, who had killed Apollo Creed.
Speaker 2: It was an epic battle portrayed as good versus evil,
Speaker 2: especially if you lived in America.
Speaker 5: Driver, continuing to punish Rocky balbois the throng. Rocky Balboa,
Speaker 5: who's on the corner like a rag tod on to
Speaker 5: firstwe minutes to Rocky Balboa. He's not only fighting what
Speaker 5: appears to be an invincible opponent, he's.
Speaker 2: Also fighting a very hostile cloud. It's been a one
Speaker 2: sided fight so far.
Speaker 6: You need to take more than that.
Speaker 2: If you recall, Rocky had agreed to fight the Russian
Speaker 2: in Moscow. Adrian. Rocky's wife knew that that was a mistake,
Speaker 2: and most of us did too. The viewer spends most
Speaker 2: of the film anxious about Rocky fighting this guy in Russia,
Speaker 2: wondering how he's going to pull it off. Now, it
Speaker 2: might be a stretch to say that this scene played
Speaker 2: out in real life in Oklahoma in the two thousands,
Speaker 2: just the roles were reversed. The fight took place in
Speaker 2: the USA, But the boxers in the Ring of the
Speaker 2: Black the Arctic Caviar World were from the former Soviet Union,
Speaker 2: and we'll learn that often the Oklahoma game wardens and
Speaker 2: federal agents pitted against these Russians in this boxing match
Speaker 2: on the River felt like they were box and Ivan
Speaker 2: Drago an almost unbeatable foe. But to go back a
Speaker 2: little more into real history, not Hollywood history, the Soviet
Speaker 2: Union would collapse in nineteen ninety one, and the ripples
Speaker 2: would roll into Oklahoma's fisheries.
Speaker 7: Behind me stands a wall that encircles the free sectors
Speaker 7: of this city, part of a vast system of barriers
Speaker 7: that divides the entire continent of Europe. General Secretary Gorbachev.
Speaker 8: If you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the
Speaker 8: Soviet Union in Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come
Speaker 8: here to this gate, Mister gorba Open this gate. Mister
Speaker 8: Gerbashov teared down this wall.
Speaker 2: The last thing on Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev's mind
Speaker 2: was how tearing down the wall and the collapse of
Speaker 2: the Soviet Union would affect the biologically rich American rivers
Speaker 2: of the Midwest, teeming with the ancient polydon spathulah, the
Speaker 2: majestic spoonbill, or the paddlefish. It seems like it might
Speaker 2: have been the first thing they considered, but it wasn't.
Speaker 2: I'm joking, But it's interesting when global politics intersect wildlife management,
Speaker 2: and it did just that. We learned that a trade
Speaker 2: embargo with Iran and the collapse of the Soviet Union
Speaker 2: essentially shut down the sturgeon caviar coming into the United States.
Speaker 2: Sturgeon caviar is the best in the world. K caviar
Speaker 2: had been important cultural staple in much of Europe for
Speaker 2: over one thousand years. Their rich, sturgeon filled rivers had
Speaker 2: made caviar as common on the tables as butter in
Speaker 2: many areas. That's true, and because of that, it made
Speaker 2: its way deeply into the culinary and even religious culture
Speaker 2: of Europe. But the rivers were overfished, sturgeon populations collapsed,
Speaker 2: trade embargoes came on the world, the Soviet Union collapsed,
Speaker 2: and the world was now looking for a new source
Speaker 2: of black caviar. That is the pivot point of this
Speaker 2: whole story, and it didn't take them long to learn
Speaker 2: about our unexploited Midwestern rivers rich with caviar. But these
Speaker 2: Europeans weren't the first ones to illegally trade paddlefish eggs
Speaker 2: in Oklahoma. On the last episode, we heard about a
Speaker 2: bunch of good old boys from Oklahoma doing it. The
Speaker 2: stuff can be worth up to thirty five dollars an ounce,
Speaker 2: which adds up to over five hundred dollars a pound.
Speaker 2: This stuff is expensive. We also learned that paddlefish caviar
Speaker 2: is in the top three to four caviars in the world.
Speaker 2: The demand was there. This black market American story starts
Speaker 2: in the late nineteen eighties when paddlefish caviar first began
Speaker 2: to be exploited and illegally sold to fill in the
Speaker 2: gaps left by this global caviar vacuum. You'll remember game
Speaker 2: Warden Keith Green on the first episode talking about catching
Speaker 2: Billy Wishart on Fort Gibson Lake and the incredible story
Speaker 2: of redemption of Billy later working with the Department as
Speaker 2: their lead legal egg producer. That was just part one
Speaker 2: of our story. Jeff Brown is a retired Oklahoma game warden.
Speaker 2: He's an incredible guy and a legendary lawman in the
Speaker 2: Sooner State. He spent his career protecting Oklahoma wildlife, but
Speaker 2: in Eastern Oklahoma, a paddlefish were the dominant player in
Speaker 2: his career. Here's Jeff introducing us to Operation Russian Snag.
Speaker 3: We really got ramped up and started and started Operation
Speaker 3: Russian Snag. That was that was the you know the
Speaker 3: federal government, federal agencies, they like to put names on everything.
Speaker 3: So we come up with with Operation Russian Snag and
Speaker 3: that started in about two thousand and eight. It had
Speaker 3: been going on we'd been working on for a couple
Speaker 3: of years, so let's say two thousand and five through
Speaker 3: twenty fifteen.
Speaker 2: So from for about a decade. Yep, it was hot
Speaker 2: and heavy.
Speaker 3: It was eighteen it was eighteen twenty hours a day
Speaker 3: as far as I know, with the exception of one
Speaker 3: fishery up on the Missouri River. And there's no other
Speaker 3: place you can sport fish for paddlefish like you can
Speaker 3: here in Oklahoma.
Speaker 2: So it all had to do with the regulation. And
Speaker 2: this is kind of the paddlefish hub of the US,
Speaker 2: is that right?
Speaker 3: Yeah, at the time, we had a we went through
Speaker 3: a progression of limits, so there was a period of
Speaker 3: time there where you could catch a fish a day,
Speaker 3: so you could care if you fished every day, you
Speaker 3: catch three hundred and sixty five fish. Well, they would
Speaker 3: show up with ten or fifteen people and that's how
Speaker 3: many fish they took.
Speaker 6: That.
Speaker 1: It was a.
Speaker 3: Collaboration between the US Fish and Wildlife Service and the
Speaker 3: ODWC Oklham Department Wildlife or Enforcement Division. It was just
Speaker 3: a concerted effort to address this group of fishermen and
Speaker 3: try to figure.
Speaker 1: Out just exactly what was going on.
Speaker 3: We knew that there was commercial nexus there, we weren't
Speaker 3: one hundred percent sure what it consisted of.
Speaker 2: It's tricky business in modern times telling the true stories
Speaker 2: of how things actually happen, especially when it involves other nationalities. Oddly,
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty four, telling the story that places Russia
Speaker 2: in a fairly negative light is socially acceptable because of
Speaker 2: the general disapproval in the West of Vladimir Putin and
Speaker 2: Russia's war against Ukraine. I've even heard that Brent Reeves'
Speaker 2: squirrel hunted with Putin. That's not true, but you should
Speaker 2: see my Instagram meme. It's hilarious. But seriously, it's not
Speaker 2: lost on me that if this story was about another nationality,
Speaker 2: perhaps it would be viewed as inappropriate to directly talk
Speaker 2: about the offenders and make assumptions about their culture. I'd
Speaker 2: just like to say from the start that I'm certain
Speaker 2: I don't fully understand the dynamics of the situation, these
Speaker 2: people's culture and their motivations, And my starting place is
Speaker 2: an assumption that the majority of Russians residing in the
Speaker 2: United States today are hardworking, honest people. But in this story,
Speaker 2: a select group of them, we're breaking the law, and
Speaker 2: that's an interesting story, so we're going to talk about it.
Speaker 2: Here's Jeff.
Speaker 3: I started September one, nineteen eighty five, went to work
Speaker 3: as a game warden for the Wildlife Department. They shipped
Speaker 3: me to western Oklahoma and I stayed out there five years.
Speaker 3: I'm from this part of the state, from down around Tulsa,
Speaker 3: So the first opportunity I got, I moved back close
Speaker 3: to home. I've been here in this area since September
Speaker 3: of ninety and immediately was immersed into the paddlefish wars.
Speaker 1: As we officially called them.
Speaker 3: We spent and I say we, I mean game wardens
Speaker 3: in this district overall in the springtime. That's all we
Speaker 3: did was paddlefish work. That's all we did. You know,
Speaker 3: we'd make literally thousands of cases a year just on paddlefish.
Speaker 3: You know, people not tagging their fish. You have to
Speaker 3: tag your fish, you have to fill out a recorded game,
Speaker 3: you have to check in your fish, people catching over limits,
Speaker 3: the whole gamut. But most of our work was done
Speaker 3: on paddlefish enforcement in this district. At full Staff District one,
Speaker 3: which includes northeast Oklahoma. Here ten counties in the northeast,
Speaker 3: which ninety percent of the paddlefish resources and where the
Speaker 3: sport fishing takes place. At full staff, they're including the
Speaker 3: district captain. There was seventeen of us and man, it
Speaker 3: was all hands on deck for three months. That's all
Speaker 3: we did. There was one one year there where we
Speaker 3: I want to say, there was like twenty some thousand
Speaker 3: paddlefish permits were issued and the very next year that
Speaker 3: doubled in size in the number of battlefish.
Speaker 2: In the nineteen nineties and.
Speaker 3: Eight it is when we really saw the paddlefish caviard
Speaker 3: deal really coming into play.
Speaker 2: So in the nineteen nineties, most of your violations with
Speaker 2: paddlefish were just just recreational fishermen, just like catching too
Speaker 2: many fish. Yeah, then you started to see actual poachers
Speaker 2: taking their paddlefish into Arkansas.
Speaker 3: In the nineties, we saw that going on too, but
Speaker 3: it was local people doing it. So we started really
Speaker 3: paying attention to people poaching paddlefish for their caviar and
Speaker 3: caught several groups resident people who were doing just that.
Speaker 3: We had some laws introduced and passed that were made
Speaker 3: it illegal to possess over so many pounds of caviar.
Speaker 3: And when that happened, we didn't have to wait for
Speaker 3: them to leave the state. As soon as they loaded
Speaker 3: a vehicle up and looked like they were running, as
Speaker 3: soon as they got on the interstate like they were
Speaker 3: headed out. We would stop them anywhere from an eighteen wheeler.
Speaker 3: We've stopped eighteen wheelers and gone through them, and they'd
Speaker 3: have the caviar hidden underneath the vegetables and a roofer
Speaker 3: truck or whatever. We just unload them on the side
Speaker 3: of the highway and take their caviar and ride them
Speaker 3: a bunch of tickets and let them go. There's a
Speaker 3: whole progression there when we kind of waded through the locals.
Speaker 3: We called them above is affectionately, just for lack of
Speaker 3: anything else, you know, the local guys we kind of
Speaker 3: got all. So that waded through, caught all of those
Speaker 3: that we knew the players, and sent some of them
Speaker 3: to prison. Some of them were some bad actors, but we.
Speaker 2: Went some to prison. So some of these guys were violating.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, or or put so many restrictions on
Speaker 3: them that they couldn't fish anymore, maybe suspend their fishing license,
Speaker 3: you know, made it so that if they showed back
Speaker 3: up on the riverbank, they could get in trouble.
Speaker 2: In the nineteen nineties, most of the paddlefish violators, including
Speaker 2: egg poachers, were locals, and the department felt like they
Speaker 2: had the situation under control. But in the early two
Speaker 2: thousands they took notice of an interesting change in demographics.
Speaker 3: In one year, it went from like twenty some thousand
Speaker 3: paddlefish permits issued to like fifty thousand. It doubled in
Speaker 3: one year. Wow, we went through the through all the
Speaker 3: paddlefish permit holders. It's one thing good about it. We
Speaker 3: go through there and compared our numbers to the number
Speaker 3: of Eastern Europeans that had a paddlefish permit, and it
Speaker 3: was like at one time its high as like five
Speaker 3: hundred Eastern Europeans had paddlefish permits from all from various
Speaker 3: states all over all over the United States are coming here.
Speaker 3: So you know, that's something we realized we was up against.
Speaker 2: How did you first did you come aware? I mean,
Speaker 2: is it just like a game ward and walking down
Speaker 2: the bank checking fishing license talking to people And for
Speaker 2: decades since the dawn of time, it was people from
Speaker 2: Oklahoma that your meeting, and all of a sudden you
Speaker 2: shake hands with the guy from Russia.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and they and they've got Russian sounding names. I mean,
Speaker 3: for lack of a better way of.
Speaker 2: Having, did that like phase in or was it just
Speaker 2: like all of a sudden, It's just like the officer,
Speaker 2: did you realize that half the people we talked to
Speaker 2: they were Russian?
Speaker 1: It was almost overnight.
Speaker 2: So they just showed up, They just showed up. Were
Speaker 2: y'all immediately suspicious of that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, And it's a cultural thing to them, you know,
Speaker 3: it's a big deal. And they they would and we
Speaker 3: talked to several of them, and they tell us all
Speaker 3: the all the healing properties and and how all the
Speaker 3: great things that that, how good they were for your body,
Speaker 3: you know, to eat these eat these fish eggs, and
Speaker 3: they loved it.
Speaker 2: It's just it's clear that it meant more to them
Speaker 2: in their culture than it did in ours.
Speaker 1: Oh.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, So they were willing to sacrifice anything they found,
Speaker 2: like a bird nest on the ground when they came up.
Speaker 3: And up until then, all the all the local people
Speaker 3: we dealt with was taking the pattlefish and and running
Speaker 3: it through uh commercial fishermen in other states. They weren't
Speaker 3: using it themselves. The Eastern Europeans. Not only were they
Speaker 3: catching it for themselves, but they were catching it for
Speaker 3: all their extended family. There were there were big Russian
Speaker 3: communities and cities. And the way it was put to
Speaker 3: us by other federal agencies that we contacted to help
Speaker 3: us with this was that you know, they were as
Speaker 3: a community, they were real tight. All the Eastern European
Speaker 3: community in Tulsa had real tight connections to all the
Speaker 3: other Eastern European communities and vice versa. And when the
Speaker 3: when the Soviet Union disintegrated as as a block, a
Speaker 3: lot of these people were displaced. They immigrated to the
Speaker 3: United States to get away from persecution or whatever whatever
Speaker 3: they were doing, and the old Soviet Union wasn't going
Speaker 3: to work for them anymore. And they immigrated to the
Speaker 3: United States and with that they brought their culture, and
Speaker 3: part of that culture was with caviat and they found
Speaker 3: a really ready source for it, and man, they started
Speaker 3: exploiting it just overnight.
Speaker 2: I wonder how much awareness they would have had, because
Speaker 2: you know, people coming out of the Soviet Union going
Speaker 2: to different big cities in the US, and these people
Speaker 2: end up in Tulsa and they and they start working
Speaker 2: and doing what they do and maybe have business or whatever.
Speaker 2: And then I wonder how aware they were if they
Speaker 2: were like, man, spoon bill populations are good in the Midwest,
Speaker 2: especially over there in Oklahoma, let's move there, I mean,
Speaker 2: or if it was like they just ended up in
Speaker 2: Tulsa by random chance, let's say, and then they're like,
Speaker 2: holy cow, the hill abilities aren't using the eggs?
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, no, And that was a big part
Speaker 3: of It's kind of like all of a sudden, somebody
Speaker 3: threw a light switch on and they realized what they
Speaker 3: had or what they were close to.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, then the Eastern European community in Tulsa would bring
Speaker 3: in members from other Eastern European communities and other states,
Speaker 3: and we started seeing lots of Colorado people, lots of
Speaker 3: people from Minnesota.
Speaker 1: We made some good cases on those from the Northwest.
Speaker 3: These people had relocated in various big cities, and when
Speaker 3: they realized that Oklahoma had caviar and the game was on,
Speaker 3: they were on it.
Speaker 1: They were on it.
Speaker 3: A lot of it was for their own personal consumption,
Speaker 3: but then they started peddling it amongst themselves.
Speaker 1: A lot.
Speaker 3: We noticed that when they would come here and they
Speaker 3: would they would line the bank and be fishing and
Speaker 3: say a local person down the creek there, down the
Speaker 3: bank there caught a paddlefish, and they'd go over there
Speaker 3: and try to buy it from him. We knew that
Speaker 3: we had a problem, and we was trying to get
Speaker 3: ahead of it, and and it took a long time.
Speaker 3: And what we found out is that we were fighting
Speaker 3: a losing battle and the only way we were going
Speaker 3: to get this stop probably was to legislate it to
Speaker 3: the point of where it would make it too hard
Speaker 3: for him to do it.
Speaker 2: Like Rocky Balboa, by the start of the second round
Speaker 2: with Drago, he knew he was in trouble. So did
Speaker 2: the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife. Here's some more details on
Speaker 2: how the paddlefish wore proceeded.
Speaker 3: Starting out, there were we identified three different groups or
Speaker 3: family groups that we felt like we're really involved in it,
Speaker 3: and they were in the Tulsa area, and even to
Speaker 3: the extent that people would not come, people that came
Speaker 3: from out of state would go through them. They would
Speaker 3: either either stay with them while they were here or
Speaker 3: or took direction from them, and we would we would
Speaker 3: just sit and watch them fish. And one particular group,
Speaker 3: there were several family members they would show up on
Speaker 3: the river bank and it was all business. They had
Speaker 3: some of the Somebody was in charge of fishing. Somebody
Speaker 3: was in charge of checking the fish when they got
Speaker 3: it to the bank to see whether it had eggs
Speaker 3: in it or not. Another one was in charge of
Speaker 3: ripping the eggs out of the fish. Another one was
Speaker 3: in charge of getting the eggs to the truck. I
Speaker 3: mean it was an assembly line. Once those eggs made
Speaker 3: it to a vehicle, man, boom, they're gone. And they
Speaker 3: had counter surveillance. They would have vehicles that would run interference.
Speaker 3: They knew that we were watching them, and they would
Speaker 3: have vehicles that would cut us off when we were
Speaker 3: trying to follow them. They went out of their way
Speaker 3: not to get caught. When all this started, we went
Speaker 3: to the FBI to see if we could get some help,
Speaker 3: and they weren't interested in helping us because there wasn't
Speaker 3: enough money involved.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a big.
Speaker 3: Enough fish for them to fry, so to speak. But
Speaker 3: they did tell us say, look, we're not surprised at
Speaker 3: all because and it had to do with the system
Speaker 3: they were brought up in, you know, the old Soviet block.
Speaker 3: That's how they if they wanted to be affluent and
Speaker 3: have money in the old Soviet block, they had to
Speaker 3: learn how to scheme the system. And they brought that
Speaker 3: with them to the United States.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: And you know, and we go back to talk about
Speaker 3: how organized they were. There was one particular ular guy
Speaker 3: that we kind of recognized as the king pin out
Speaker 3: of the whole thing. And there may be some Eastern
Speaker 3: Europeans that would come down here from Minnesota or whatever,
Speaker 3: and so and so would be on the bank down there.
Speaker 3: Every Eastern European who was here fishing would go and
Speaker 3: for lack of a better word, and pay homage to him.
Speaker 3: They would go up to him and someone would bow
Speaker 3: to him. Really yeah, And and come to find out
Speaker 3: that a lot of these people were real big in
Speaker 3: the Russian Orthodox Church. And I think this guy was
Speaker 3: a church leader.
Speaker 2: And and so y'all noted like from your surveillance, like
Speaker 2: that guy, everybody that comes here is going to that guy,
Speaker 2: going to go watch how they treated him.
Speaker 1: He was.
Speaker 3: He was the daddy rabbit for somehow, some way, you know,
Speaker 3: he either found.
Speaker 2: Was he not a focal point of the investigations?
Speaker 3: Yes, absolutely, did you ever catch him? No, Some of
Speaker 3: this people, some of the people. Now, no, he probably
Speaker 3: got some citations for doing He probably got some citations
Speaker 3: for violations. But as far as he facilitated everything, as
Speaker 3: far as we could tell, the eggs that went to
Speaker 3: Seattle were his group.
Speaker 1: Yeah, his group.
Speaker 2: There was a big paddlefish caviar bust in Seattle that
Speaker 2: had a lot of Oklahoma eggs in it. Okay, let's
Speaker 2: play a little game here. So Eastern Europeans come to
Speaker 2: rural Oklahoma. Game wardens are watching them that they stand
Speaker 2: out because they're from a different culture.
Speaker 3: Oh, you could, you could, you could see them. We
Speaker 3: would look. Our vantage point was across the river. The
Speaker 3: river right there was real wide, so they're a half
Speaker 3: mile away. We'd have to watch them with binoclars. You
Speaker 3: could pick everyone of them simply by the way they
Speaker 3: were dressed.
Speaker 2: Oh really, yeah, really yeah, how would they dress?
Speaker 3: A lot of them wore workout clothes, jogging apparel, cut suits,
Speaker 3: or they'd be mismatched, badly mismatched.
Speaker 2: Really yeah, you could just you could just peek.
Speaker 1: Pick them out.
Speaker 3: Very rare, very rarely, very rarely could we not wow,
Speaker 3: But but you could look across there and say, yep.
Speaker 2: Rush, and you just you just knew it is it? Okay,
Speaker 2: So let's let's this plays right into my game. So
Speaker 2: let's say the roles were reversed and that people from
Speaker 2: rural Oklahoma went to Russia and we're doing something some
Speaker 2: illegal fishing in Russia. Okay. So when you're watching these
Speaker 2: guys through binos, they're going to this kingpin and like
Speaker 2: kissing his ring and bowing to him, and you know,
Speaker 2: they're doing whatever, and their culture makes sense for them
Speaker 2: to do to the big dog. What would what would
Speaker 2: how would the Russians pick out the rural Oklahoma's over there.
Speaker 3: There again, probably by the way they were dressed. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: camo and yeah, real real tree camo. It's it's funny
Speaker 3: and this that that made me think of something. So
Speaker 3: when all this was first really getting ramped up and
Speaker 3: went to the Feds, and when we got to have
Speaker 3: some help, well they brought in Feds from all over
Speaker 3: the country, and there was about ten or so of
Speaker 3: them showed up one day that the federal agents, and
Speaker 3: they're going to go down and go fishing with them.
Speaker 3: I kind of see what's going on. They picked everyone
Speaker 3: on them mount.
Speaker 2: The Russians picked out the agents.
Speaker 3: Every one of them really to the point that they
Speaker 3: finally said, we're doing no good here, We're leaving.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, even went up to them and said, we know
Speaker 3: you're the police.
Speaker 2: Picked them out, picked them out.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's right. We corned. The phrase sticks out like
Speaker 1: a fed at a.
Speaker 2: Snagging hole, sticks out like a fed at a snagging hole.
Speaker 2: I like that. That's funny. That's what we'd call getting
Speaker 2: the tea, as the young kids say these days. And
Speaker 2: I don't want to generalize too much, but it seemed
Speaker 2: clear from all the information they were getting, even from
Speaker 2: the federal government, that this group of people knew how
Speaker 2: to get around systems.
Speaker 3: The Eastern Europeans. They knew what they knew. We were
Speaker 3: watching them, and they were watching us. One incident in particular,
Speaker 3: we were going to try to set a pole camera
Speaker 3: up on one of the places in Tulsa, and a
Speaker 3: lady come outside and she knew exactly what was going on.
Speaker 1: She knew what we were doing.
Speaker 3: It was a utility company out there putting this pole
Speaker 3: camera which looked like I mean, you can't tell it's
Speaker 3: a camera to look at it. It was a camera
Speaker 3: made it look like a actually made it look like
Speaker 3: an electric transformer or something.
Speaker 1: Anyway, she picked up on it immediately.
Speaker 2: What'd she say?
Speaker 3: She come outside and looked up here and said, what
Speaker 3: are y'all doing? And you know that business dried up?
Speaker 3: I think we used it, just maybe some background. We
Speaker 3: were told by the FBI that some of these people,
Speaker 3: if they've got a hand in it, they have made
Speaker 3: their living getting around the rules, and they come by
Speaker 3: it honestly because that's what they had to do. In
Speaker 3: the old Soviet Union. We had spreadsheets of phone numbers
Speaker 3: and there would be a phone. There'd be a phone
Speaker 3: that's registered to this your eastern year pen, but this
Speaker 3: guy uses it and seemingly they're not connected, but yet
Speaker 3: he's using a phone that this guy pays for.
Speaker 1: And there's a lot of that.
Speaker 3: And I had a whole bunch of names at one
Speaker 3: time that was using an analyst in Washington, d C.
Speaker 3: She worked for one of the federal agencies. And I
Speaker 3: called her on the phone. I don't remember her name now,
Speaker 3: and I said, can you check these peoples out for me?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: So she called me back. She goes, what are y'all doing?
Speaker 3: And I told her. She goes, this is the bad
Speaker 3: of the bad. So I don't know what y'all are
Speaker 3: getting into. So, but these people are on lots of
Speaker 3: different agencies, you know, radars. She knew, she didn't know them,
Speaker 3: but she knew the names.
Speaker 2: And these were people down here Capilar fishing. Yeah, that's interesting.
Speaker 2: Here's Jeff describing the overall strategy of Operation Russian Snag.
Speaker 3: The US Fish and Wildlife Service had been brought in
Speaker 3: as a partner on this, and they took the lead.
Speaker 3: And what they wanted to do was let these eggs
Speaker 3: go and hoping that they could find where they were
Speaker 3: going on the other end, to kind of cut the
Speaker 3: head off the snake, so to speak, which was a
Speaker 3: good idea in theory, but it was so hard to
Speaker 3: be able to get that done. When I say we,
Speaker 3: I mean that I was in charge of Loose Lee
Speaker 3: along with Matt Bryant, the federal agent here in the
Speaker 3: state at the time. Together we kind of ran this
Speaker 3: task force and followed eggs all the way to the
Speaker 3: Seattle area Portland, followed eggs to Denver area, trying to
Speaker 3: figure out where they were ending up. Where they were
Speaker 3: going had some success. Followed one group of eggs all
Speaker 3: the way to New York City, got up there lost them,
Speaker 3: but we knew that's where they ended up. Well, just
Speaker 3: a few days later, that same group of eggs we knew,
Speaker 3: We knew right down to the pound, how many eggs
Speaker 3: they should have, knew how many fish they caught, how
Speaker 3: many eggs, how many pounds of eggs those fish should
Speaker 3: have produced. The Canadian government confiscated those eggs going over
Speaker 3: into Canada. We weren't able to make the case on it.
Speaker 3: The Canadian government wasn't interested in it. They took the
Speaker 3: guy's eggs, but they didn't fall charges on him, and
Speaker 3: the US attorney was reluctant to fall charges on them
Speaker 3: under whatever circumstances.
Speaker 2: Was there any pinnacle charges brought on any one particular
Speaker 2: person that would be like the hallmark of Russian snag,
Speaker 2: just like we got these guys.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there were.
Speaker 3: Like I said, when we finally started side decided that
Speaker 3: we were not going to start keep letting these eggs
Speaker 3: go out of state. We started stopping when we got
Speaker 3: some substantial fines off of some of them. We stopped
Speaker 3: a vehicle over on I thirty five, headed up into
Speaker 3: Kansas and eventually over the Denver area. They had three
Speaker 3: hundred and some pounds of processed eggs of caviaar if
Speaker 3: they ended up.
Speaker 2: Paying over one hundred thousand dollars rough the caviar.
Speaker 3: And they ended up they ended up paying almost twenty
Speaker 3: thousand dollars in fines and restitution.
Speaker 2: What happened to the caviar? You confiscate that three hundred
Speaker 2: punds of what happened to it?
Speaker 3: As far as I know, it was kept as evidence
Speaker 3: for a long time and then it was disposed of. Really, yeah,
Speaker 3: we couldn't.
Speaker 2: Not even a single dip of the cracker into it.
Speaker 1: H No, you know, and I wouldn't.
Speaker 2: What would become instrumental in actually being able to catch
Speaker 2: and convict paddlefish egg violators would come down to a
Speaker 2: simple change in the law, which was spearheaded by Jeff.
Speaker 2: It seems like stuff like this would be easier to do,
Speaker 2: but sometimes the systems just aren't that nimble. However, the
Speaker 2: problem was almost completely solved with one simple change.
Speaker 3: At that time, if you wanted to catch a paddlefish,
Speaker 3: you had to go to the Grand River System to
Speaker 3: do it. At the same time, all this was going
Speaker 3: on in the Wildlife Department and the US Fish Wildlife
Speaker 3: Service was reintroducing paddlefish into a lot of different lakes.
Speaker 3: Ulagall Lake, which is right here close, was one of them.
Speaker 3: But all the lakes in northeast Oklahoma now have viable
Speaker 3: population and paddlefish in them. So now that pressure is
Speaker 3: being spread out over the whole northeastern part of the
Speaker 3: state as opposed to just one river system. Well what
Speaker 3: that did is maybe take some of the pressure off
Speaker 3: that Grand River system, but it made Game Warning's life
Speaker 3: that much harder because now instead of us being able
Speaker 3: to concentrate on a particular river system, now we had
Speaker 3: it going on all over at Call Lake, at Uligul Lake,
Speaker 3: at Keystone Lake, you follow lake just everywhere Navigation Channel.
Speaker 3: I went to the Wildlife Department in about two thousand
Speaker 3: and thirteen or fourteen, said we got to have some help,
Speaker 3: so we can't do this anymore, and I met a
Speaker 3: lot of resistance. My proposal was we shut snagging down
Speaker 3: at nighttime, after dark, we don't want any snagging. Well,
Speaker 3: we can't do that because you know, we're taking away
Speaker 3: opportunity from Joe fishermen. So there's no family out there
Speaker 3: at midnight paddle fishing, so it's not happening. If they're
Speaker 3: doing it. You know they old adage if it's if
Speaker 3: it's happening after midnight, there's no good in it. There's
Speaker 3: a lot of truth to that, man. They just really
Speaker 3: really fought against it, and finally we come up with
Speaker 3: a compromise. We're in northeast Oklahoma. We made it illegal
Speaker 3: to fish snag for paddlefish from ten o'clock at night
Speaker 3: to I think at six o'clock in the morning, with
Speaker 3: the exception of one place. That one thing did more
Speaker 3: than anything to shut this down or at least at
Speaker 3: least keep it where we could keep a keep a
Speaker 3: lid on it. Because if they couldn't do it under
Speaker 3: the cover of darkness, they were.
Speaker 1: Going to do it.
Speaker 3: That validated our already suspicion or what we knew to
Speaker 3: be is that they weren't sport fishing. They were doing
Speaker 3: it for the eggs and the egg only. That's how
Speaker 3: important it was to us. It's a unique fish, it
Speaker 3: can and is exploited, and that's one way that I
Speaker 3: really pushed this rule, this regulation change to our fisheries people.
Speaker 3: As look said, historically, the game ardens in this part
Speaker 3: of the state. We've dedicated our life to protecting these fish.
Speaker 3: If you want that level of protection to continue, we've
Speaker 3: got to make some real changes because we cannot as
Speaker 3: a group keep up this pace. That's all we did
Speaker 3: for twenty hours a day for sixty ninety days out
Speaker 3: of every spring, and I went ten fifteen years and
Speaker 3: never got into the Turkey woods because it happens at
Speaker 3: the same time in Oklahoma, we've got big sam bass
Speaker 3: fisheries and sambas fishermen went several years without ever seeing
Speaker 3: a game arden because we were concentrating on powdlefish because
Speaker 3: they are so susceptible to exploitation. Anytime, and this is
Speaker 3: my belief wholeheartedly. Anytime wildlife and money are involved, wildlife
Speaker 3: loses every time. I mean, you go back to the
Speaker 3: turn of the century, and that's what got us in
Speaker 3: the position we were in. It was the commercial harvest
Speaker 3: of wildlife and that still goes on today, not on
Speaker 3: that scale, but absolutely if left unchecked, you know, the
Speaker 3: wildlife comes out on the short end of stick every time.
Speaker 3: So finally we got some rules changed, and the biggest
Speaker 3: thing is that they now could not do it under
Speaker 3: the cover of darkness. Now what that did for is
Speaker 3: is for the game warden is before we'd have to
Speaker 3: sit on them all night long and wait for them
Speaker 3: to make a violation. Well, if they couldn't be there
Speaker 3: to begin with, that made our job easier because and
Speaker 3: it happened some.
Speaker 1: We still worked all night.
Speaker 3: But if we saw somebody snagging and we didn't have
Speaker 3: to wait for them to violate, they were already, they
Speaker 3: were already in violation, we just go get them. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and it didn't take very much you that, I'm gonna
Speaker 3: say two years in.
Speaker 1: We've got good. We had good compliance.
Speaker 3: A lot of a lot of those Eastern Europeans there again,
Speaker 3: they knew we were watching them. We knew they were
Speaker 3: watching us. And we go down and sit down on
Speaker 3: the bank and just talk to them and they you know,
Speaker 3: they are jolly people, a lot of them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just a man. They wanted them Battlefie sings.
Speaker 3: They wanted that Cavia at all costs, and it's kind
Speaker 3: of like, yeah, we're doing it. Catch us if you can.
Speaker 3: And you know, we finally got to where we could
Speaker 3: in it and it hurt them some.
Speaker 2: I want to ask Jeff a question I'm compelled to
Speaker 2: ask almost every law enforcement officer. I encounter. Did you
Speaker 2: ever feel in danger or anything and doing your undercover
Speaker 2: work with any of this.
Speaker 3: Not with the Russians, so to speak, they always felt
Speaker 3: like they had their apprehend and they did actually. But
Speaker 3: with the Bubba's there was some some of that bunch
Speaker 3: with that were dangerous and there was there was one
Speaker 3: particular guy that I had a big party in arresting.
Speaker 3: We put him in prison. He had been arrested a
Speaker 3: few times before for the same thing over the years. Uh.
Speaker 3: We followed him the Sylum Springs. As soon as he
Speaker 3: crossed the line at Sylum Springs, we arrested him. He
Speaker 3: was a convicted felon, and we knew everybody knew that
Speaker 3: was one person that if we ever if he ever
Speaker 3: caught you right by yourself, it.
Speaker 1: Was a gunfight. But we what'd you get him for? Paddlefish? Oh?
Speaker 2: He was dealing in eggs?
Speaker 1: Yeah, he I was. I was sitting I was sitting
Speaker 1: on his house. One night. I sat on his house.
Speaker 3: He lived in an area and and I got dumped
Speaker 3: out along with other people several several nights over two
Speaker 3: or three years, until finally one morning I was sitting
Speaker 3: on his house and here comes a pickup and they
Speaker 3: start loading ice chests in the back of it, and
Speaker 3: I radioed Keith and I said, we're on and we
Speaker 3: got everybody. We got everybody rounded up and followed him
Speaker 3: the Ring Spring or Silent Springs. As soon as he
Speaker 3: crossed the line in Thesylum Springs, we stopped him. He
Speaker 3: was a convicted felon and what we ended up sending
Speaker 3: him to prison for is that he had one shotgun
Speaker 3: shell in his vehicle, which violated his probation.
Speaker 1: Oh wow.
Speaker 3: And even though all that stuff and he wouldn't get
Speaker 3: him on anything, he went to prison because of that
Speaker 3: one shotgun shell. Really, well, we didn't care and we
Speaker 3: didn't care how we caught him, as long as we
Speaker 3: caught him.
Speaker 2: What's what's wrong with the system when you can't really
Speaker 2: prosecute real criminals? I mean, like as a as a
Speaker 2: game board, and who has committed your life?
Speaker 3: And you know, and and I can make sense of
Speaker 3: it only this way. Why life isn't that big of
Speaker 3: a deal to most prosecutors and judges.
Speaker 1: And I understand it.
Speaker 3: You know, you've got people that are murdering, raping, you know, robbing, stealing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you're looking at the high.
Speaker 1: If you're looking at the high, if you're.
Speaker 3: Looking at the hierarchy, powder fish smuggling is what down here.
Speaker 1: I get cut. I get that.
Speaker 3: Over the years, we've had some good prosecution locally when
Speaker 3: we would catch some of these these guys with eggs
Speaker 3: and we would stop them, you know, we quit letting
Speaker 3: them go out of state, and we would stop them
Speaker 3: and and take their eggs and stuff. We got some
Speaker 3: good prosecution on them. But on a big scale, if
Speaker 3: that is my opinion, if that attorney needed to was
Speaker 3: going to have to invest a lot of time in
Speaker 3: figuring it out, it.
Speaker 1: Wasn't worthing to really.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Now, if we brought if we brought him up,
Speaker 3: if we brought him a case that was locked solid,
Speaker 3: we caught him, here's the eggs, we wrote him these tickets,
Speaker 3: max him out.
Speaker 1: He's all about it.
Speaker 3: But if it was something like a conspiracy deal or
Speaker 3: some big long investigation that he was going to have
Speaker 3: to weed through a stack of papers.
Speaker 1: That thick, it wasn't gonna happen. Wow Wow, And.
Speaker 3: It's still that way today, And it wasn't only pati
Speaker 3: fishs just that way.
Speaker 2: Think that's an injustice or do you feel like that's
Speaker 2: just part of the game.
Speaker 1: That's just part of it.
Speaker 2: So you don't get your feelings hurt by that.
Speaker 1: No you can't, Yeah you can't.
Speaker 2: But people that like us, that like you, like like me,
Speaker 2: like the people that value wildlife so much and have
Speaker 2: dedicated a big section of their life. Like when I
Speaker 2: hear about a paddlefish criminal, I mean, that's like high
Speaker 2: level offense.
Speaker 3: You know, it is.
Speaker 2: It is a game. It's interesting to hear you say that.
Speaker 2: I've never had anybody sell me that as good as
Speaker 2: you just did. Yeah, most people's radar, this is not
Speaker 2: that big of a violation to society. And yeah, and
Speaker 2: that's hard, that's hard for me to hear because you know,
Speaker 2: we love all this stuff so much. It's a big
Speaker 2: part of our lifestyle.
Speaker 3: There are some prosecutors and some judges that are wildlife
Speaker 3: or outdoor people.
Speaker 1: They're hunter and fishermen.
Speaker 3: They get it, and consequently we would get better cooperation
Speaker 3: from them. Honestly, there's not that many of them that
Speaker 3: are like that, And especially on the federal side, they've
Speaker 3: got they've got so many on the federal side. They're
Speaker 3: dealing with the bad or the bad and uh and
Speaker 3: a paddlefish. It's like the guy that we caught in
Speaker 3: Sylum Springs with the eggs and he had that one
Speaker 3: shotgun shill that that used attorney was all over that
Speaker 3: because that's a that's a big deal. He by a lady,
Speaker 3: just federal probation. So we're sending him back to the pen.
Speaker 3: Eggs that is, that's immaterial, you know. And we didn't
Speaker 3: care why he went back to the pen. We just
Speaker 3: don't even went back to the pin. Got him out
Speaker 3: of our hair for a little bit. Yeah, and he
Speaker 3: came out of the pen. So he come out of
Speaker 3: the pen too old to paddlefish anymore, and that was
Speaker 3: a blessing to us. But he was he was a
Speaker 3: dangerous individual.
Speaker 2: It's hard for me to wrap my mind around serious
Speaker 2: wildlife criminals not being treated by the judicial system as
Speaker 2: legit criminals. But really, I don't know if that's good
Speaker 2: or bad. Should someone be able to have, let's say,
Speaker 2: a life sentence for a wildlife violation, and with all
Speaker 2: the problems in the world, and as thinly stretched as
Speaker 2: all our law enforcement and judicial systems are, I guess
Speaker 2: it makes sense. I just don't really like it, because
Speaker 2: wildlife is so important to me and my culture, our culture.
Speaker 2: Probably if you're listening to this, I'd like to wrap
Speaker 2: up this series by one last conversation about caviar. I'm
Speaker 2: really intrigued by and at the time of this recording,
Speaker 2: I've never eaten caviar. It's scarcity, it's financial cost, its
Speaker 2: perception is a status symbol of wealth and luxury. Is
Speaker 2: endlessly fascinating to me, kind of like mules in my culture.
Speaker 2: Mules are kind of like the caviar of the hillfolk.
Speaker 2: But I have one more question. Let me ask you
Speaker 2: about consumption of caviar kind of in the United States.
Speaker 2: That would be when I think about wildlife resources and
Speaker 2: eating wild game and eating fish we catch, there is
Speaker 2: not caviar in my cultural rolodex of stuff that we
Speaker 2: would eat like It wouldn't even if I caught a
Speaker 2: big fish that had a bunch of fish eggs in it,
Speaker 2: that would be the last thing that I would want
Speaker 2: to eat. Are there people in Oklahoma that is that
Speaker 2: somewhere in the cultural knowledge of people to eat caviar.
Speaker 2: So basically the Eastern European and kind of the wealthy
Speaker 2: elite that ate caviar have influenced absolutely people where they
Speaker 2: get it. And so you think there's a lot of
Speaker 2: caviar fans in Oklahoma.
Speaker 3: No, No, it's the more influential crowd. Kind of a
Speaker 3: status deal, I guess, and that would be clear. But
Speaker 3: people who are like that have the money to go
Speaker 3: buy it anyway. You can buy paddlefish caviar on the
Speaker 3: legal open mark all day long. Most of it comes
Speaker 3: from legal sources. Some of it is illegal sources that's
Speaker 3: been laundered through legal.
Speaker 2: Where could you go buy paddlefish caviar?
Speaker 1: Could?
Speaker 2: In New York City? Could you buy paddlefish caviar?
Speaker 1: Yes, there are caviar shops.
Speaker 3: One of them is I've been to New York City
Speaker 3: one time in my life and it just so happened
Speaker 3: accidentally walking down the street and I look and there
Speaker 3: is a caviar shop, and I recognize the name on
Speaker 3: it because it was one of the names that had
Speaker 3: come up in our investigation and stuff. Even a lot
Speaker 3: of this unlawful caviar ended up in legal caviar shops,
Speaker 3: and the Fish and Wildlife Service has been working on
Speaker 3: a way to do DNA testing on caviar to tell
Speaker 3: where it comes from, to tell what watershed did it
Speaker 3: come from?
Speaker 2: You'll remember retired Oklahoma game board and Keith Green from
Speaker 2: the last episode. He's a caviar expert. I had one
Speaker 2: last question for him. How do you eat it?
Speaker 1: What do you what?
Speaker 2: Do you eat it on a cracker?
Speaker 4: Yeah, if you really taste you have.
Speaker 2: To put your pinky up in the air when you
Speaker 2: hold the cracker.
Speaker 5: If you're really tasting testing it, and you want to
Speaker 5: know what it's really tasting like.
Speaker 4: But take this a little bit out and put this
Speaker 4: a little bit right.
Speaker 2: Here and put it on your thumb.
Speaker 4: Yeah, maybe fifteen eggs.
Speaker 2: Do you think that caviar it has become a cultural
Speaker 2: phenomena here with the local people?
Speaker 4: No? Why we're just too redd in it? You know,
Speaker 4: I've bet.
Speaker 2: If it's so good? Does it not? Would I? I've
Speaker 2: never had it? Would I not? Like why it seems
Speaker 2: like it's people make such a fuss about it. It
Speaker 2: would be good anywhere, you know what I mean?
Speaker 5: Yeah, but here you got people cleaning fish every day
Speaker 5: and they're throwing away all the eggs, and they've seen
Speaker 5: those eggs thrown away, And how can you eat fish eggs?
Speaker 4: How can are you? Are you kidding me?
Speaker 2: I'm really interested in this caveat. We're going to try
Speaker 2: to get some Oklahoma caveat. Where can we get it? Well,
Speaker 2: it's ending right now, can we buy it something? It
Speaker 2: doesn't exist anymore. There is no Oklahoma caviar anymore. Really,
Speaker 2: so right, we can't buy it anywhere now.
Speaker 4: You could have last year at this time.
Speaker 2: How do I get it?
Speaker 4: Then you don't?
Speaker 5: You got to catch you catch a fish and make
Speaker 5: it yourself.
Speaker 4: Really yeah.
Speaker 2: What Keith means by it ended last year is that
Speaker 2: they've shut down the Paddlefish Research Center, so the state
Speaker 2: no longer deals commercially in paddlefish eggs. Their creation of
Speaker 2: the program was never about money, and after almost fifteen
Speaker 2: years of research, they had all the data they needed.
Speaker 2: So the program that Keith pioneered has come to an end.
Speaker 2: It only seems appropriate to me to end this series
Speaker 2: with one of the greatest American speeches of reconciliation ever made.
Speaker 6: I came here tonight. I didn't know what to expect.
Speaker 6: I wish it can get your mate a dream. I
Speaker 6: see a lot of people hating me, and I didn't
Speaker 6: know what to feel about that. So I guess I
Speaker 6: didn't like you much.
Speaker 1: Not either.
Speaker 6: During this fight, I've seen a lot of changing.
Speaker 1: The change.
Speaker 6: The way you felt about me and the way I
Speaker 6: felt about you.
Speaker 1: Is meaningless.
Speaker 6: In here there were two guys showing each other. But
Speaker 6: I guess that's better and twenty.
Speaker 1: Million, So you have to move? What's dollars? What else?
Speaker 6: Trying to say it? If I can change, you have
Speaker 6: to move, and you can change.
Speaker 1: We move.
Speaker 6: Everybody to change.
Speaker 2: I can't thank you enough for listening to bear Grease.
Speaker 2: Please leave us a review on iTunes and share a
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Speaker 2: the wild stories you're hearing on Bear Grease and Brent's
Speaker 2: This Country Life. Truly, we appreciate you guys listening to us,
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