Speaker 1: Welcome to this country Life.
Speaker 2: I'm your host, Brent Reeves from coon hunting to trot
Speaker 2: lining and just general country living.
Speaker 1: I want you to stay a.
Speaker 2: While as I share my experiences in life lessons. This
Speaker 2: Country Life is presented by Case Knives on Meat Eaters
Speaker 2: Podcast Network, bringing you the best outdoor podcast the airwaves
Speaker 2: have to offer. All right, friends, grab a chair or
Speaker 2: drop that tailgate.
Speaker 1: I've got some stories to share.
Speaker 2: North Carolina a place in Alabama. I know North Carolina
Speaker 2: ain't in Alabama, but a new friend of mine was
Speaker 2: paying his respects to both places, which will become more apparent.
Speaker 1: Before I'm done today.
Speaker 2: There's no opening story because this story is the whole show,
Speaker 2: and I think you'll enjoy it. I did so without
Speaker 2: further ado.
Speaker 1: Here we go.
Speaker 2: It was a funny little song about a lady dropping
Speaker 2: an apple watch in a public access toilet near a
Speaker 2: boat ramp in Michigan that first made me aware of
Speaker 2: Reed Bargaineer. Reed is a security software guy by trade who,
Speaker 2: as a child, was forced to learn the piano by
Speaker 2: his mother. I hated piano lessons, he told me. He
Speaker 2: added to the contrary that hear and how beautiful the
Speaker 2: music was that his mother, Miss Karen, filled their home
Speaker 2: with and what that instrument was capable of producing by
Speaker 2: someone who knew how to play. It was the only
Speaker 2: thing that kept him from resisting the lessons more than
Speaker 2: he did so, like a lot of the seemingly born
Speaker 2: but innocuous things our parents insist we do as children,
Speaker 2: bolstered by that painfully prophetic you'll be glad you did it. Someday,
Speaker 2: she was right and it paid dividends in the long run.
Speaker 2: Stephen Nelle had talked about the woman falling into the
Speaker 2: public access outhouse on the Meat Eater podcast in Red,
Speaker 2: being a faithful listener, had written a little ditty about
Speaker 2: the woman falling in the duty and her subsequent rescue.
Speaker 2: Now I started following at Reed's piano news on Instagram
Speaker 2: from that very moment, and aside from his humorous, taking
Speaker 2: unique way of expressing his observations, I also saw this
Speaker 2: guy is really good. Artistically gifted. People can be perceived
Speaker 2: as being a little different by those of us who
Speaker 2: are so blessed.
Speaker 1: Now I found that belief validated.
Speaker 2: After spending a few days with Red last week chasing
Speaker 2: turkeys in his home state of Alabama. He's different alright,
Speaker 2: but in a good way. Playing the piano and write
Speaker 2: in original two are just two of the things he's
Speaker 2: good at. But I'm getting ahead of myself more on
Speaker 2: the other ones in a minute. In February of last year,
Speaker 2: we connected through social media and I learned he listened
Speaker 2: to This Country Life. I've been following his content since
Speaker 2: he made his appearance on Meat Eater a few months prior,
Speaker 2: after Steve heard his song about the unfortunate lady who
Speaker 2: went headfirst into the chamber pot. Now, I always think
Speaker 2: it's somewhat surreal to discover the many talented folks that
Speaker 2: find amusement in this weekly struggle of mine. In the
Speaker 2: wide variety of those who do general conversations back and
Speaker 2: forth through the winter about each other's content, turned into
Speaker 2: a genuine invitation to be his guest and come turkey
Speaker 2: hunting with him in the spring on his family's land
Speaker 2: near Fort Deposit, Alabama. Now I've said before that I
Speaker 2: always hesitate when asked what my favorite type of hunting is,
Speaker 2: But after a couple of mental hurdles of decision, I
Speaker 2: settled on spring turkey hunting always, And it's not even close,
Speaker 2: just because the scenario I just laid out. I get
Speaker 2: to share it with others who feel just like I do.
Speaker 2: It doesn't take a long, detailed conversation with someone to
Speaker 2: get a good feel of how genuine they are about things.
Speaker 2: And I could tell that Reed was a turkey hunter
Speaker 2: who in his early forties had come to the realization
Speaker 2: of sharing the experience was better than keeping it to yourself.
Speaker 2: Like I always say, sharing a burden will lighten the load,
Speaker 2: and sharing a joy will amplify it. It was with
Speaker 2: that in mind that I accepted his invitation and scheduled
Speaker 2: to meet hum at his friend's family's old home place,
Speaker 2: ten minutes from Reed's family's ancestral land and the place
Speaker 2: we'd be chasing turkeys.
Speaker 1: I arrived in the.
Speaker 2: Middle of the afternoon to an old farmhouse that was
Speaker 2: painted white, its tin roofs shaded by hardwoods, surrounded by
Speaker 2: a manicured yard.
Speaker 1: The front porch was adorned with.
Speaker 2: Rocking chairs and a swing where I imagine generations.
Speaker 1: Of folks that sat in the cool.
Speaker 2: Of the evenings when the work was finished, passing the
Speaker 2: time and enjoying each other's company until time to go
Speaker 2: to bed. Long before all the distractions that keep a
Speaker 2: person's attention elsewhere. Today, even in a room full of
Speaker 2: family and friends, Reed was out back stoking a fire
Speaker 2: in a large pit with stove wood that was producing
Speaker 2: the coals that would cook our supper.
Speaker 1: Later that evening, I.
Speaker 2: Shook his hand and we started talking. As I remember,
Speaker 2: it wasn't initially about turkey hunt. There was plenty of
Speaker 2: time to talk about that later. I wanted to know
Speaker 2: about Reed and get to know who he was. Away
Speaker 2: from that piano, we shared a lot in common. We
Speaker 2: have better wives and kids than we deserve, are blessed
Speaker 2: with giving friends and careers that allow us opportunities to
Speaker 2: share adventures such as the one we were about to undertake.
Speaker 2: The old house we stayed at belonged to a friend
Speaker 2: of Reed that was built in nineteen o two. There
Speaker 2: had been an addition in the last few years to
Speaker 2: allow for a more comfortable stay when family and hunters gathered,
Speaker 2: but the addition, while very modern, held on to the
Speaker 2: simplistic nature of an old farmhouse. I felt at home
Speaker 2: before I ever walked through the door. Old deer, waterfowl,
Speaker 2: coon and bobcat mounts decorated the walls of the sitting room.
Speaker 2: In the kitchen, the vibe felt as good as when
Speaker 2: your grandma hugged you, and the wood floor creaked just
Speaker 2: enough when you walked in the original part of the
Speaker 2: home to remind you that several grandmas had occupied this space.
Speaker 2: Just inside the front door, on the walls, the four
Speaker 2: year hung old pictures and mementos of the legacy of
Speaker 2: the family that owned this house and the land it
Speaker 2: sat on, one such item being the original land grant document,
Speaker 2: dated February first, eighteen twenty two and designed by then
Speaker 2: President James Monroe. A historically important reverence that I would
Speaker 2: see on the land we were to hunt the following morning,
Speaker 2: land adjacent to the small community of Fort Deposit that
Speaker 2: has had bargaineers roaming on it since eighteen nineteen, land
Speaker 2: that three years prior, Old Hickory himself, the future president,
Speaker 2: but then General Andrew Jackson ordered constructed and sequestered provisions
Speaker 2: for supplying troops during the Creek Indian War. A depository
Speaker 2: Fort a very descriptive term from which the town would
Speaker 2: eventually draw its name. The land itself was a bit
Speaker 2: of a novelty to me. I wasn't expecting a diverse topography.
Speaker 2: The terrain fluctuated from bottomland to rolling hills, and some
Speaker 2: of them as steep as any hills I'd climbed in
Speaker 2: the Washittall Mountains or the Ozarks, but not as tall,
Speaker 2: but definitely just as steep. The first morning, I followed
Speaker 2: Rid away from the truck and we climbed and stood
Speaker 2: atop Gills Hill, a steep grated knob that tired four
Speaker 2: hundred and seventy feet above sea level, which coincidentally lay
Speaker 2: less than one hundred and ten miles due south.
Speaker 1: From where we were waiting to hear a turkey gobble.
Speaker 2: Redbirds started singing, and after I caught my breath, I
Speaker 2: out and a gobbler nearly cut me off. We were
Speaker 2: way too close to him. His gobble initially sounded like
Speaker 2: a jake to me. It was like only the back
Speaker 2: half of a normal gobble, but I think it was
Speaker 2: because I scared him more than anything else. Eventually he
Speaker 2: let out a couple more gobbles, but he went silent
Speaker 2: after he flew down. Luckily, we had two others that
Speaker 2: were in a goblin contest a little over a quarter
Speaker 2: of a mile away. It was a steep grade down
Speaker 2: to where they were, and we would need to pick
Speaker 2: a path and head that way, gambling that we'd chosen
Speaker 2: wisely to try and get ahead of them, And once
Speaker 2: they picked their main course to travel, by eight thirty
Speaker 2: that morning, we figured we had them scoped out and
Speaker 2: made a move trying to get to a spot to.
Speaker 1: Cut them off. And they never gobbled again, no worries.
Speaker 2: We gave them plenty of time to respond, and when
Speaker 2: they didn't, we lit a shuck for the north end
Speaker 2: of the property, a place Red said was the location
Speaker 2: turkeys sometimes wound up during the middle of the morning.
Speaker 2: Making our way down the long ridge, we stopped to
Speaker 2: listen and for Red to share memories of certain places
Speaker 2: or events that had taken place there during his lifetime
Speaker 2: of making tracks on this part of the planet. Eventually
Speaker 2: we found our way to the edge of a big
Speaker 2: open field at the bottom of several ridges. I'm not
Speaker 2: sure I could have taken a pencil and a piece
Speaker 2: of paper and drawn a more turkey looking place. I
Speaker 2: called loudly and bound A turkey gobbled back about three hundred.
Speaker 1: And fifty yards away.
Speaker 2: Now we moved as close as we couldn't set up,
Speaker 2: he answered, and twice got a little closer, and eventually
Speaker 2: we realized there were two gobblers answered us, but neither
Speaker 2: ever got within sight. We stayed for nearly another hour
Speaker 2: after the last goble and decided to head into Ford
Speaker 2: Deposit for a bite to eat. Driving past a house,
Speaker 2: Reed saw an elderly couple standing on the carport. That's
Speaker 2: one of my grandfather's good friends. You have to meet him.
Speaker 2: Read back to side by side down the street and
Speaker 2: we pulled into the yard. There I met mister lee
Speaker 2: Ernest Steiner and his wife, Miss Minnie. The connection between
Speaker 2: all three of them was immediate and heartfelt. Reid would
Speaker 2: tell me later that he stops some visits with them
Speaker 2: at their house when he sees them out and about
Speaker 2: when he's down at the family land from his home
Speaker 2: in Birmingham.
Speaker 1: Reed's father does the same.
Speaker 2: Mister Steiner was nearly ninety according to Reid, and while
Speaker 2: we visited, I learned from him that he'd lost the
Speaker 2: sight in one of his eyes and some of the
Speaker 2: use of his right arm due to a stroke. But
Speaker 2: he never stopped smiling while we talked or when he
Speaker 2: looked at Reed. He may have had some trouble communicating
Speaker 2: words as a result of his condition, but his tired
Speaker 2: old liae spoke volumes when he talked read about reading
Speaker 2: his Bible and saying, without any trouble at all, that
Speaker 2: Reed had finally grown up big enough to eat.
Speaker 1: A whole chicken by itself, a.
Speaker 2: Comment Miss Minnie and I both found pretty funny. Our
Speaker 2: visit done or sandwich is eating. We drove back to
Speaker 2: the property that afternoon with the game plan that we
Speaker 2: wouldn't pressure anything. We'd make a drive down through the
Speaker 2: access road that bordered the eastern edge, and if we
Speaker 2: could strike a gobbler from the road, we'd dive in
Speaker 2: after him. Long story short, It didn't happen, but it
Speaker 2: was only the first day. I should point out that
Speaker 2: we did see a gobble across the road in front
Speaker 2: of us on the way in that afternoon, but the
Speaker 2: terrain wasn't optimal for us to get in front of
Speaker 2: him without him seeing this. No pressure, it's only the
Speaker 2: first day. Remember me saying that artistic folks are usually
Speaker 2: good at more than one thing.
Speaker 1: Well, Reed is also quite a shift.
Speaker 2: In fact, he told me he'd liked to go to
Speaker 2: Jesse Griffiths's new school a traditional cookery. Now, I think
Speaker 2: you might teach Jesse a thing or two. Who knows,
Speaker 2: I know he turned the fire up on that pork
Speaker 2: shot we had for supper that night and the duck
Speaker 2: we had the following night. That boy can cook, Jesse.
Speaker 2: You got to save that boy spot.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: That night, after supper, we made our plans for the
Speaker 2: next day. We would start out between the two sets
Speaker 2: of turkeys we heard that morning, the two that were
Speaker 2: in a goblin contest to daylight, and the two that
Speaker 2: we got on later in the day. We laid out
Speaker 2: almost four miles of tracks on Alabama that day, and
Speaker 2: in the morning we'd cut that in half by starting
Speaker 2: in the sweet spot right between them both. Now I
Speaker 2: finished up our plan that night with of course, neither
Speaker 2: group will gobble in the morning, and the whole day
Speaker 2: will start off like this one, with us not knowing.
Speaker 1: Which way to go or what to do.
Speaker 2: We laughed and laughed until the next morning, when that
Speaker 2: was exactly what happened. Over four miles later, we were
Speaker 2: back at the truck, having only heard the faintest of
Speaker 2: gobbles that was in another zip code from ours, and
Speaker 2: on our way out for a bite to eat, both
Speaker 2: of us whooped as pups let's stop where we saw
Speaker 2: that turkey in the road yesterday, just stopped there reading
Speaker 2: I'm gonna call and see what happens.
Speaker 1: He pulled over, and.
Speaker 2: I jumped out of the truck and sent a series
Speaker 2: of yeps down through the woods.
Speaker 1: God Turkey answered I.
Speaker 2: Reid looked over at me and smiling and said, we're
Speaker 2: back in. I looked at my watch. It was ten twenty.
Speaker 2: He was less than three hundred yards away. I would
Speaker 2: have bet my paycheck that Turkey was as good as dead.
Speaker 2: I'm glad I didn't, because, as far as I know,
Speaker 2: and I talked to Reed today, that joker is still
Speaker 2: amongst the living. I had him within one hundred yards
Speaker 2: two different times, but I never have laid my peepers
Speaker 2: on him.
Speaker 1: He could have been invisible for all I know.
Speaker 2: We walked out of the woods, scratching our heads, wondering
Speaker 2: how we've messed that up. We replayed step by step
Speaker 2: every move we made an outside of chunk of a
Speaker 2: grenade at him. I wouldn't have done anything any different.
Speaker 2: It just wasn't meant to be. That Evening, Read's oldest son, Barnes,
Speaker 2: rode in with Reed's father, doctor Paul Bargaineer. We planned
Speaker 2: to divide up the next morning into two teams going
Speaker 2: in different directions, doubling our chances of slinging some lead.
Speaker 2: Doctor Bargineer and I would hunt the south end, and
Speaker 2: Reading Barnes would take care of the norse. Unfortunately, Barnes
Speaker 2: took sick during the night and didn't make our morning
Speaker 2: formation at five am the next day, so while he
Speaker 2: stayed in bed, we struck out for one last strikeout,
Speaker 2: and that's just what we did. We struck out. We
Speaker 2: heard three turkeys that morning, but they were so far
Speaker 2: off and only gobbled a few times, making it really
Speaker 2: difficult to come up with a workable plan of attack.
Speaker 2: Before we left the woods, we tallied up another four
Speaker 2: miles of hiking through the mountains of Lounges County, Alabama.
Speaker 2: Now what we did do was stop along the way
Speaker 2: at different places to listen to turkey stories, mostly told
Speaker 2: Reed's father, a dentist by trade for the past forty
Speaker 2: one years. This spot right here is called North Carolina
Speaker 2: because it reminds me of a place I saw there once.
Speaker 2: It's my most favorite place on the planet. I've caught
Speaker 2: a lot of turkeys up right here, I could have
Speaker 2: killed a lot more than I have. Sometimes I just
Speaker 2: let him go. I'd rather see you get one than me.
Speaker 2: I just enjoy working this land for the betterment of
Speaker 2: turkeys and for my children and grandchildren.
Speaker 1: Which in turn is good for everything. That's what he said.
Speaker 2: He looked at that place he called North Carolina not
Speaker 2: like it was a member of his family. Now he
Speaker 2: looked at it like he was a member of its family.
Speaker 2: And I truly think he believes it. I certainly do.
Speaker 2: After watching him talk about it and share his experiences
Speaker 2: with me, Red asked me the next day when he'd
Speaker 2: stop wondering why we didn't call that turkey in that
Speaker 2: we let get away from us. I was driving down
Speaker 2: the road headed home when he asked at that exact
Speaker 2: same time, I was wondering the same thing. Now, had
Speaker 2: we got him, it would have been a great story
Speaker 2: of how we'd caught him off guard and tricked him
Speaker 2: during the middle of the day when they're supposed to
Speaker 2: be a lot easier to trick. And after a while
Speaker 2: it would just turned into a turkey that we killed
Speaker 2: in Alabama. But now we had a shared experience of
Speaker 2: highs and lows in the two hours, we each moved
Speaker 2: around that turkey, calling chessboard, attack and counterattack, stick and move,
Speaker 2: bob and weave, with eventually both of us walking out
Speaker 2: with a story to telling. By us, I mean read
Speaker 2: me and the turkey. I asked Reid, why didn't he
Speaker 2: just load up on that fire lane and walked straight
Speaker 2: to us? But you know what, that gobbler was probably
Speaker 2: wondering the same thing about the hen he was answering.
Speaker 2: So I didn't bring a turkey home, but I didn't
Speaker 2: come home without something. I made some new friends, I
Speaker 2: saw the sight of some early American history. I was
Speaker 2: welcome to a place revered by those who shared it
Speaker 2: with me, a place that sits at the epicenter of
Speaker 2: a tumultuous times at the beginning of Alabama statehood two
Speaker 2: hundred and six years ago, when it was the jumping
Speaker 2: off point for conflict with Native Americans, and a place
Speaker 2: around the time of my birth in the mid sixties
Speaker 2: that would have had read and I questioned for stopping
Speaker 2: to visit with people that the bargaineers considered family, who
Speaker 2: didn't look like we did on the outside, but are
Speaker 2: indistinguishable on the inside. And that's where it counts the most.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for listening to us here on
Speaker 2: the Bear Grease Channel. Claive Bow and I appreciate it
Speaker 2: very much. And good luck chasing those turkeys until next week.
Speaker 2: This is Brent Reeves signing off. Y'all be careful