Speaker 1: My name is Clay Nukleman. This is a production of
Speaker 1: the bear Grease podcast called The bear Grease Render, where
Speaker 1: we render down, dive deeper, and look behind the scenes
Speaker 1: of the actual bear Grease podcast presented by FHF Gear,
Speaker 1: American Maid, purpose built hunting and fishing gear that's designed
Speaker 1: to be as rugged as the place as we explore.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the bear Grease Render Podcast, where we break
Speaker 1: down the actual bear Grease podcast. Our documentary style audio
Speaker 1: podcast that is in depth, research polished, produced intriguing stories
Speaker 1: about rural American life and on the bear Grease Render,
Speaker 1: we gather around an eclectic group of people to discuss
Speaker 1: the previous week's podcast. So welcome to all you knew
Speaker 1: people I have with me today. Brent Reeves, Lauren Molton
Speaker 1: of Meat Eater, longtime Meat Eater videographer, and Big Dirty
Speaker 1: Dave Gardner also pretty long time videographer of meat Eater.
Speaker 1: Great to have everybody.
Speaker 2: Great to be here.
Speaker 1: How does it feel to be here?
Speaker 2: It feels wonderful, especially when you have freshly killed the
Speaker 2: big old Missouri turkey.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, we're going to get into that. Brent was
Speaker 1: telling me just a minute ago. He was singing a song,
Speaker 1: And I asked him how many live concerts he's been
Speaker 1: to in his life? Give me the top three best
Speaker 1: concerts that you've ever been to?
Speaker 2: Oh, my gosh, I would have to say Whaling Jennings
Speaker 2: Win and where nineteen eighty two, Pine Bluff Convention Center,
Speaker 2: Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Wow. Uh? Eagles really when the Eagles
Speaker 2: came back ninety something? I don't remember, okay, but that
Speaker 2: was at war Men Worial Stadium in Little Rocky Eagles.
Speaker 1: So Whaling Jennings Eagles number three. I'm going to ask
Speaker 1: you guys this gosh on three.
Speaker 2: Maybe Tom Petty, Man.
Speaker 1: Tom Petty, When did you see Tom Petty?
Speaker 2: Saw Tom Petty the last year he was touring. I
Speaker 2: may be partly responsible for him dying, but.
Speaker 1: Tom Petty's dead is a hammer, Okay, he is, Okay,
Speaker 1: And now tell me about I asked Brent if he'd
Speaker 1: ever been if he'd ever seen Elvis, and he said no.
Speaker 2: We had the chance to see him a year before
Speaker 2: he died, and tickets were left dollars and mamas that
Speaker 2: she couldn't afford tote all of us, so we didn't
Speaker 2: get to go. But I'm thinking she could have left
Speaker 2: everybody home with me and her. How old were you
Speaker 2: I would have been, that would have been in I'd
Speaker 2: have been eleven eleven? Okay, cool?
Speaker 3: Lord, Yeah, that's cool.
Speaker 1: Live concerts do you go? Have you been to some
Speaker 1: live concerts?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Uh top two.
Speaker 3: As I was a younger guy, I went to a
Speaker 3: lot of concerts, and then I've worked the concerts scene
Speaker 3: through the last fifteen years. Work at the venue venue
Speaker 3: at the brewery that I worked at, so we had
Speaker 3: tons of big names come through there. Crosby, Stills, nashuh,
Speaker 3: Widespread Panic. I don't know, millions of decembris, a ton
Speaker 3: of concerts. But if you're asking me favorites, I don't know, Man,
Speaker 3: this is gonna shed some light on me.
Speaker 1: Uh oh, I'll just.
Speaker 3: I don't know if I can pinpoint favorites. Ok, favorites,
Speaker 3: That is hard. But the first show I ever saw
Speaker 3: with Steve Miller band that was pretty cool. I think
Speaker 3: I was about fourteen years old.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 3: Then saw Eric Clapton and Stevie ray Bond's last show
Speaker 3: there at Elpine Valley, Wisconsin. That was pretty incredible. Went
Speaker 3: to a bunch of Grateful Dead shows when I was
Speaker 3: in high school. Okay, that was fun, Dave. So they say,
Speaker 3: I don't remember.
Speaker 4: It the best concert I've ever met, too, it was
Speaker 4: probably I don't remember it much because I I think
Speaker 4: I was only three years old, wow, three, and my
Speaker 4: parents were real into country music and Garth Brooks came
Speaker 4: to the state Fair. My parents had me decked out.
Speaker 4: I was reel into Garth at the time. Parents had
Speaker 4: decked me out and you know, my little cowboy uniform,
Speaker 4: and we had like really good seats, like fifth or
Speaker 4: sixth row. Some lady gave me a rose to give
Speaker 4: to Garth, and my parents put me on the shoulders
Speaker 4: some bodyguard that was about seven feet tall, and he
Speaker 4: walked me up to the stage and everybody's like giving
Speaker 4: Garth gifts and stuff. And I hand him this rose
Speaker 4: and he waves to somebody on the side of the
Speaker 4: stage and the guy brings out a guitar. He signed
Speaker 4: it and gives it to me.
Speaker 3: No wow, yeah, yeah, that's still got it.
Speaker 1: This feels like a setup for Dave to tell.
Speaker 5: You, man, my wife, if we kill for that guitar. Yeah,
Speaker 5: well it's for sale some loans, you know, for the
Speaker 5: right price.
Speaker 1: So when you were three years old, decked out in
Speaker 1: your your western wear. Yeah, Garth Brooks gave you a
Speaker 1: sign of guitar.
Speaker 4: Yes, sir, that's money. Yeah, still at my parents' house.
Speaker 1: Is it for real?
Speaker 2: For so?
Speaker 4: I'd sell it for the right price, right give ballpark.
Speaker 4: Garth's got to retire though, you know, I think he's
Speaker 4: probably still giving out guitars, so I gotta make sure he's.
Speaker 1: Now we're looking at ten grand plus.
Speaker 4: Probably, yeah, whatever it is.
Speaker 1: I would you take nine?
Speaker 4: I don't know, probably not, Probably wouldn't take.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, would you sell it for twenty?
Speaker 4: Probably?
Speaker 1: So we're looking okay, folks between ten and twenty thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: There, specifically to my wife, So you might as well
Speaker 2: say alexis.
Speaker 3: Instead of okay, Oh highest better.
Speaker 1: That's good. That's good. So later we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about the new the new Burgers series called con Man.
Speaker 1: That's what we're that's the direction that we're going. But
Speaker 1: before we get there, Brent Reeves, longtime longtime burg Grease
Speaker 1: Render guy and friend of mine. You have a new
Speaker 1: Meet Eater podcast out.
Speaker 2: Is that crazy?
Speaker 1: It is crazy?
Speaker 2: What were they thinking?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, this country life with me? Brent Reeve, Brent Reeves.
Speaker 1: Yeah, tell so tell us what this country life is
Speaker 1: a Well.
Speaker 2: It's gonna be about just hunting, fishing, just general country living.
Speaker 2: Everything that goes on, if it can be thought of
Speaker 2: or it's happened in rural America, it's on the list
Speaker 2: and it's fair game and we're gonna be talking about
Speaker 2: that and we're gonna be talking about things that will
Speaker 2: air quotes help you beat the system.
Speaker 1: So tell me the structure of the podcast, because it's great.
Speaker 1: I love the structure of it.
Speaker 2: It'll start out with like I'm gonna do a little
Speaker 2: intro and talk about tell folks what we're going to
Speaker 2: talk about in the main subject, and then I'm gonna
Speaker 2: tell a story, like a five minute story, something happened
Speaker 2: in my life to me or about me or someone
Speaker 2: I know, and it may relate to the subject we're
Speaker 2: talking about, it may not. It may just be a
Speaker 2: story I like to tell, and then we'll get into
Speaker 2: the main subject and get that covered. The whole thing's
Speaker 2: gonna last about twenty minutes, so.
Speaker 1: It's a very short listen and it's a monologue monologue
Speaker 1: with the Brent, and it's going to cover country skills.
Speaker 1: So when you listen to it, you're going to gain
Speaker 1: a country skill, but you're also going to get a
Speaker 1: lot of great stories. And it's funny. It's not a
Speaker 1: comedy bit, but it's designed to be funny, entertaining stories
Speaker 1: that teach you a country skill that will help you
Speaker 1: beat the system.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's uh, and they're all true. I'm not
Speaker 2: making up any of it. It all happened to me
Speaker 2: or someone I know.
Speaker 1: I think we should go ahead and tell them what
Speaker 1: some of the episodes are. I think we can leak
Speaker 1: that information. What do you think?
Speaker 2: Sure?
Speaker 3: Uh?
Speaker 2: Some of them be like how to train, how to
Speaker 2: pick out a squirrel dog where you go to do that,
Speaker 2: how to catch catfish on the troidline.
Speaker 1: So one episode is how to transcroll Dog. So that's
Speaker 1: what you'll see, how to transcrod off. But when you
Speaker 1: listen to it, you're gonna hear us some great couple
Speaker 1: of unique story worries about Brent's life in the in
Speaker 1: the squirrel dog world and his dad's stories. And then
Speaker 1: he's going to go into how to find a squirrel
Speaker 1: dog how to train it.
Speaker 2: You know, I've had a habit. I can remember everything
Speaker 2: but math and anything time but that we're talking, you
Speaker 2: and I are talking, I'll remember a story. I'll be
Speaker 2: reminded of a story, and then we go off on
Speaker 2: a tangent and I'll tell a five minutes story about
Speaker 2: something that happened. That's more or less how that thing's
Speaker 2: going to go. I'm going to start out with the story,
Speaker 2: and then we're going to start Then we're going to
Speaker 2: start with the subject of what we're going to talk about,
Speaker 2: Say it's finding a squirrel dog where you go to
Speaker 2: do that, and I'm gonna give you tips on how
Speaker 2: to do that, and then through there, I'm going to
Speaker 2: throw in some anecdotal stuff that has happened to me
Speaker 2: or my dad or my friends or something that will
Speaker 2: relate to it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So another episode is how to run a trot line,
Speaker 1: so country skills. You need to know how to run
Speaker 1: a trot line. There's a podcast on duck camp etiquette,
Speaker 1: so how to handle you yourself if you're in a
Speaker 1: duck camp because Brent was an outfitter for twenty six years.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: There's a podcast on what a country man needs to
Speaker 1: carry in his pockets and it's a whole podcast is
Speaker 1: about what you have in your pockets. Very interesting. We
Speaker 1: have a podcast about how to buy a pickup truck, Lauren,
Speaker 1: your one day, your son is going to be like,
Speaker 1: he's going to need a truck, and if he listens
Speaker 1: to this podcast, he's going to have a leg up
Speaker 1: on knowing the ins and outs, what the way people
Speaker 1: treat their trucks, the way they handle selling a truck,
Speaker 1: and this is going to give him a skill that
Speaker 1: he's going to need. Very valuable. Okay, So yeah, that's
Speaker 1: the kind of stuff it is. But it's fun. It's
Speaker 1: a lot of fun.
Speaker 2: And so and if you subscribe to beggar As, you're
Speaker 2: automatically going to get it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's on this feed. So if you're listening
Speaker 1: to this, you're subscribe most likely to the Bear Grease
Speaker 1: podcast feed and it'll be on there.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: So this is this is big news.
Speaker 2: It's been a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: Big news, big news.
Speaker 4: Soon it might be Bear Grease on the This Country
Speaker 4: Life feed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's probably what's gonna happen. Probably what's gonna happen, Brent,
Speaker 1: how do we come up with the name of This
Speaker 1: Country Life?
Speaker 2: Do you remember we were sitting in a restaurant you're.
Speaker 1: Sitting at Herman's Steakhouse and Fville, So.
Speaker 2: You missed in in my wife tablecloths.
Speaker 1: This this place is a famous steakhouse. It's in Fayetville, Arkansas.
Speaker 1: Fable is a nice town. You would drive past Herman's
Speaker 1: and you would think that it was an abandoned building.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it looks like a bomb shelter.
Speaker 1: It's a it's an old house. Yeah, that sets in
Speaker 1: a part of town that has now been developed. But
Speaker 1: then there's just this old house sitting on the road
Speaker 1: and they've actually fixed it up a lot from what
Speaker 1: it was like, yeah, twenty years ago.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's been on a staple for people going to
Speaker 2: razorback games for years.
Speaker 1: You would think that you would drive past it and
Speaker 1: it's clear that it was once a residential house and
Speaker 1: now all this big stuff is growing up around it.
Speaker 1: And they have, you know, this like neon sign that
Speaker 1: says Hermans, and the parking lot will just be full
Speaker 1: of cars. And it's a steakhouse. And you go in
Speaker 1: there and there's these red table red checker tablecloths and
Speaker 1: they give you salting crackers and salsa. Have you ever
Speaker 1: heard that? Have you ever had that before?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: Sir, I never have either. Have you ever had it before?
Speaker 2: Hermans is only place I've ever done.
Speaker 1: They give you a big bowl of fresh salsa and
Speaker 1: salting crackers like a Mexican restaurant. We give you chips
Speaker 1: and sausage, and then you order steaks and whatnot. And
Speaker 1: Missy and I were eating dinner with Brent and his
Speaker 1: wife at Herman's yep at Herman and then what happened Brent.
Speaker 2: Well, you looked up and said you ought to do
Speaker 2: a podcast, and I thought, what in the world about?
Speaker 2: And that's all I know is just country living is
Speaker 2: all I know about? And you said, there it is
Speaker 2: right there. It kind of evolved from that in that conversation,
Speaker 2: and then we started putting some stuff together, getting some ideas,
Speaker 2: and it came together pretty pretty quick.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, we we had we had an idea of
Speaker 1: this country life and yeah it all. I bet the
Speaker 1: podcast is pretty close. The finished version of it is
Speaker 1: pretty close to what we developed at that table that night.
Speaker 1: Oh and I can't take Misty and Alexis were.
Speaker 2: Very much, so, very much so. Yeah, it wasn't just
Speaker 2: me and you. No, they had the ideas about just
Speaker 2: like the format and the length and whether or not
Speaker 2: I'd be talking to people or just talking, and it
Speaker 2: just it grew from that. It didn't grow much from that.
Speaker 2: We just kind of refined it a little bit.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, So let us know what you think of
Speaker 1: the podcast. It's going to come out every Friday, So
Speaker 1: it's going to be weekly every Friday.
Speaker 3: We got a sneak peek on the boat yep, and
Speaker 3: I thought it was all. It was great. You should
Speaker 3: take a listen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you, man. It's a lot of fun doing it.
Speaker 2: Got a lot of good folks working on it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So we're in Missouri at Turkey Camp. We've come up
Speaker 1: to a place that Brent has hunted for last twenty
Speaker 1: five years, five plus years.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a long time.
Speaker 1: You got some family, you got some friends up here
Speaker 1: that's been kind of like family to you for a
Speaker 1: long time.
Speaker 2: Long time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And this morning you killed a turkey. You and
Speaker 1: Big Dirty We did tell me about.
Speaker 2: It, man, Win. As you know, the wind was blowing
Speaker 2: this morning as hard as it could blow, I think.
Speaker 2: And on our fourth setup, on the second turkey that
Speaker 2: we sat down on, we finally got him to hear us.
Speaker 2: We had we'd snuck into a place and in this
Speaker 2: field where this turkey was, and he was just kind
Speaker 2: of just over a terrace row from us. There's a
Speaker 2: little bit of a little bit of topo up here,
Speaker 2: so it allowed us to get up to the edge
Speaker 2: to where we thought this turkey was. And Dave actually
Speaker 2: slipped up around some cedar trees and looked over that
Speaker 2: ter stroke and see that turkey down in there. This
Speaker 2: is nine twenty at that time, and he said he
Speaker 2: was just gobbling his brains out. And he come back
Speaker 2: and sit down and grabbed a camera and we started
Speaker 2: calling it. We had a lull in the wind enough
Speaker 2: that I could get some called out to him, and
Speaker 2: he answered, and then it was just as fast as
Speaker 2: he could struck coming to us. And of course he
Speaker 2: seen the decoyd and he came right on in there
Speaker 2: and went They had a little boxing match out there.
Speaker 2: And I told Dave when I shot him, you know,
Speaker 2: he was boxing that Jake Decoy. The bad thing about
Speaker 2: it is that he went to glory thinking that that
Speaker 2: Jake killed him.
Speaker 4: Hmm.
Speaker 1: That's good. So Lauren and I this morning had a
Speaker 1: we should have been in the same situation. We were
Speaker 1: hunting the edge of a big cor cornfield and the
Speaker 1: birds they roosted in the spot we didn't think they were,
Speaker 1: and so we were kind of set up in the timber.
Speaker 1: They weren't in the timber. They were out on the
Speaker 1: edge of this cornfield. So right at daylight, you know,
Speaker 1: just about fly down time, we kind of got out
Speaker 1: and put a decoy out about twenty yards in the
Speaker 1: edge of this big field. Two adult gobblers and several
Speaker 1: jakes go out into this cornfield and they're just around
Speaker 1: a little hump from us. We can't see them, but
Speaker 1: they're goblin. And I start and I've got decoys out
Speaker 1: and we're on the edge of the timber and everything's good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I start calling. They answered, They answer, the answer,
Speaker 1: the answered. Just the harder I called, the more I called,
Speaker 1: I was calling my mouth calling a slate call, the
Speaker 1: more they got fired up. And sure enough we just
Speaker 1: hear him getting closer and closer, big gobbler, and finally
Speaker 1: we see him strutting out there at probably two hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty yards and he sees the decoy and here
Speaker 1: he comes, just running, and I mean, we just think, well.
Speaker 2: Here we go.
Speaker 1: We've got a jake, a half struck jake, in a
Speaker 1: sit down hen and he sees him and everything's good,
Speaker 1: and he comes up over the hill and is running
Speaker 1: and then but directly behind him are four jakes about
Speaker 1: fifty yards behind him. That the closer he gets to us,
Speaker 1: he comes into one hundred yards, and I think those
Speaker 1: jakes spooked him because he stopped and he kind of
Speaker 1: started looking behind him, and then he cut hard and
Speaker 1: made a big loop and just kind of disappeared, and
Speaker 1: those jakes ended up coming in. Uh, they didn't come
Speaker 1: all the way in, but Uh, Anyway, the more I
Speaker 1: think about Lauren, I think that it's possible that they
Speaker 1: they saw us. What do you think, or just didn't
Speaker 1: like we were head pretty good. We were by some
Speaker 1: falling logs and whatnot.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think we were concealed pretty well. I don't know.
Speaker 3: I mean, who knows. It could have been any but
Speaker 3: this bird.
Speaker 1: So the big gobbler peels out and then the jakes
Speaker 1: come in to probably one hundred yards and just and
Speaker 1: I'm not really trying to call them in, and they
Speaker 1: kind of fade off, and then we start calling again
Speaker 1: and that same gobbler comes back. The jakes are gone,
Speaker 1: and so now he's coming back alone, and I think, oh, good, well,
Speaker 1: he'll got him, got him. He comes back in to
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty yards and stands in the same
Speaker 1: spot for no less than twenty five minutes and just
Speaker 1: gobbles every time I call, every time a crow calls,
Speaker 1: every time another turkey gobbles and just stands there and
Speaker 1: watches our decoys for thirty I mean, for so long.
Speaker 1: I thought to myself, this is going to be this
Speaker 1: is going to take a long time for him to
Speaker 1: ever get here. And he finally skirted off and around
Speaker 1: got onto this other field. We circle all the way
Speaker 1: around him, like walk probably close to a half mile
Speaker 1: to get complete the opposite side of him, and I'm
Speaker 1: losing the jake. I think he's afraid of the Jake decoy,
Speaker 1: That's what I think. So I just stake out the
Speaker 1: single hen and think, oh man, he'll come now, and uh,
Speaker 1: because I'm on the opposite side of him the way
Speaker 1: he kind of was wanting to go, it was great
Speaker 1: called and uh he gobbled, gobbled, gobbled, gobbled, but never
Speaker 1: would move an inch, just sat on the edge of
Speaker 1: that field, just watching where we were, and we're just
Speaker 1: gobble at us. And then he just walked away.
Speaker 2: I don't there's a hard to kill right there.
Speaker 1: Two year old turkey probably that's been roughed up by
Speaker 1: Jake's I mean it's on private land, so it's not
Speaker 1: like he's been messed with. We're the first part people
Speaker 1: to hunt that place this year, right, So I can't
Speaker 1: understand it, but uh yeah, these field turkeys to kill
Speaker 1: him in the timber Man.
Speaker 2: It's hard. It's really hard. It's fine to see him,
Speaker 2: it isn't. And if you're calling, you know a lot
Speaker 2: of times, you know, I'm not a fan of decoys,
Speaker 2: but if you're hunting fields, got to have them. Yeah,
Speaker 2: because when they get to where they can see where,
Speaker 2: they know where that calling is, and they can tell
Speaker 2: within you know, a turkey can tell within a foot
Speaker 2: where that racket's coming from. And they don't see a
Speaker 2: hen there. Yeah, they ain't coming. Lots of times they ain't. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So we got one more day here, we got
Speaker 1: one more day.
Speaker 3: We'll get it done.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're gonna talk about it. Wendy Tuesday. You don't
Speaker 2: want to talk about Tuesday night.
Speaker 1: I wasn't gonna embarrass you.
Speaker 2: You ain't gonna embarrass me.
Speaker 1: Go ahead, tell them.
Speaker 2: Well, Tuesday morning, it all worked out, worked out great,
Speaker 2: just like we thought it was going to. Had turkey
Speaker 2: goblin on the roost. He answered us from the roost,
Speaker 2: flew down from the roost, and we watched him on
Speaker 2: film walk two hundred and fifty yards, gobbling and strutting
Speaker 2: every step of the way, all the way into thirty
Speaker 2: five yards. I'm having a flashback right now and when
Speaker 2: I pulled the trigger the first time and the second time,
Speaker 2: what's he doing? As far as I know, he's still
Speaker 2: doing it.
Speaker 1: I think he flew to Mexico.
Speaker 2: I think he did.
Speaker 4: I think we spoke him this morning.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, we walked under one this morning, and I
Speaker 2: mean on the same limb.
Speaker 1: So so I was up about thirty yards in the
Speaker 1: woods let's just say north of Brent because it was uphill,
Speaker 1: and the idea was I was going to call a
Speaker 1: little bit back in the timber and this bird was
Speaker 1: going to come through this field. And it worked out
Speaker 1: incredibly well.
Speaker 2: Hey, we couldn't have drawn it up any better.
Speaker 1: And I would, I would learn that Brent thought I
Speaker 1: was overcalling way too much.
Speaker 2: I was. I was about to have a stroke.
Speaker 4: I was sitting there just shaking no stop.
Speaker 2: No, I was thinking about being miked up. I thought, well,
Speaker 2: they're going to listen to this and I'm not just
Speaker 2: shaking my head.
Speaker 1: No, no, you know that's the problem with turkey hunting
Speaker 1: with people. There are about one hundred ways to skin
Speaker 1: a cat. And you know who the person that I've
Speaker 1: hunted with that calls, he would call more than my
Speaker 1: If I had a ten year old Baron Neukem with
Speaker 1: a box call, Yeah, you know.
Speaker 3: Who that was.
Speaker 2: You told me this morning.
Speaker 1: Wilber Primo. They down there, they say that he'll leave
Speaker 1: yelp marks on one after he kills him.
Speaker 2: Well, you know that's how they when they started out,
Speaker 2: and there's some of their first videos of what they said.
Speaker 2: You know, the people are going to say, we called
Speaker 2: too loud and we called too much. Well.
Speaker 1: I was raised by or I was mentored by some
Speaker 1: really well Scott Brown's really who I would say, taught
Speaker 1: me a lot about turkey. Henton Gary Nukomb taught me
Speaker 1: the foundations of turke Inton. But Scott Brown taught me
Speaker 1: a lot about turke Hinton. And man, he'd he'd rather
Speaker 1: yelp a three note yelp and sit there and have
Speaker 1: him come in. I mean, but we're hunting public land
Speaker 1: tough turkeys. Yeah, and I mean pretty much. He says,
Speaker 1: if a turkey knows where you're at, you don't need
Speaker 1: to be calling to me.
Speaker 2: Yeah. My dad, my brother's dad and law mister Billy Bryant,
Speaker 2: who mentored all of us on how to on how
Speaker 2: to kill turkeys, and he's killed a passle of them.
Speaker 2: It was three yips and lay your call down.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: He said, you know, if that turkey ever answers you,
Speaker 2: you stay at that tree sometime during the day, he's
Speaker 2: going to come by there.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And he's Keith killed a lot of turkeys just like that.
Speaker 1: Uh. Well, I knew you. I knew you thought I
Speaker 1: was calling too much. And then word on the street
Speaker 1: is I don't call enough.
Speaker 2: Yeah I heard that too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's another hunts in Missouri.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, he was like that dude doesn't call enough. Man,
Speaker 1: I was calling at that turkey like crazy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you were Wilbury and Primost this morning.
Speaker 1: We did that morning before when our friend was with us.
Speaker 1: Great guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Uh and so you know, anyway, me.
Speaker 2: And Dave did that this morning. We were letting it rip.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh like it. Hey, oh really, So we had
Speaker 1: this conversation yesterday because Brent said you called way too
Speaker 1: much and it worked great except for his shooting exactly.
Speaker 1: And then and then the next day the word on
Speaker 1: the street was I didn't call enough. That's all I
Speaker 1: can say about that, And so Brent was like, uh,
Speaker 1: Brent was what did you say? You h I'm trying
Speaker 1: to remember how it all went down. Anyway, we were
Speaker 1: talking about calling and anyway about the reason why you
Speaker 1: called so much up here. Well, somebody told you at
Speaker 1: the gas station that, oh, you got to call these turkeys.
Speaker 2: Up Oh yeah, he did. I was getting a tire
Speaker 2: fixed he told me.
Speaker 1: That's what he said, you got to call these turkeys
Speaker 1: up here. Well, this morning, when those birds were out
Speaker 1: in that cornfield, I've never called so much of my life.
Speaker 1: I was calling with two calls at the same time.
Speaker 1: I wasn't even waiting for one to finish. I mean,
Speaker 1: they thought something bad was going on. And the more
Speaker 1: I did it, the more they got fired up and
Speaker 1: came yeah. I mean maybe they're.
Speaker 2: Right, that's some truth to it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Anyway, so you missed the turkey at thirty five yards.
Speaker 1: We're not exactly sure what happened.
Speaker 2: No, I think my shotguns shooting a little local.
Speaker 1: Well, and you were using some shells that we decided
Speaker 1: we don't like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't like them. I'm shooting. I went back
Speaker 2: to my old favorites this morning.
Speaker 1: You're shooting some number nine bismuth. Yeah, and in there
Speaker 1: it's not tungsten tungsten. Yeah, And it was just a
Speaker 1: that number nine is a very small pellet and I
Speaker 1: mean you yeah, anyway, we did, we decided after we
Speaker 1: we decided we didn't like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I like the number five. That's what I went
Speaker 2: back to this morning and it worked. Five.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. Con Man, Lauren? What does so? The title
Speaker 1: of this series is, it's called con Man, and it's
Speaker 1: about a man named Asa Carter. If you hadn't listened
Speaker 1: to the podcast, this isn't gonna make any sense. You
Speaker 1: need to go back and listen to the episode titled
Speaker 1: con Man The Education of Little Tree And what what
Speaker 1: does con Man mean? Lauren?
Speaker 3: Con Man is a confidence man short for confidence man,
Speaker 3: but the definition is a man who cheats or tricks
Speaker 3: someone by gaining the trust or persuading them to believe
Speaker 3: something that's not true. Mm hmm ah. Lots of fun
Speaker 3: little other words that go along with con Man, like
Speaker 3: what was it? Uh, they're all listed here. Another word crook, hustler, swindler, bunko, bilker, bilkerker.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you ever heard that day like you built somebody
Speaker 2: out of some money. You gotta watch those.
Speaker 3: Old grift hustle, bunko. I've never heard of bunko either, swindle,
Speaker 3: flim flam, gaffle, bamboozled. And then the victims of those
Speaker 3: people are mark suckers, stooges, mugs, rubs, or gulls. Okay, okay,
Speaker 3: but confidence man is kind of the deal confidence man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so so as Carter. He could have been called
Speaker 1: a lot of things, but con man is a pretty
Speaker 1: good description of what he did the last part of
Speaker 1: his life when he became Forrest Carter. And on the
Speaker 1: next episode, the whole thing is about Forrest Asa Carter,
Speaker 1: and it's about why he did what he did, some
Speaker 1: of the details of his life, the details of the ruse.
Speaker 1: It wasn't just a pen name, and I think that's
Speaker 1: what this first episode gave a little bit of information
Speaker 1: on the author of the Education of Little Tree, Forrest Carter,
Speaker 1: who wasn't Forrest Carter at all, but was actually Aci Carter.
Speaker 1: And then we revealed that Asad Carter was a vehement
Speaker 1: white supremacist and had a radio broadcast produced over one
Speaker 1: hundred radio episodes that were very kind of wild, you know,
Speaker 1: racial stuff. And he had a print publication he led
Speaker 1: his own sect of the KKK that was called the
Speaker 1: Original Sons of the Confederacy. So it was like he
Speaker 1: was like saying, hey, the normal guys, aren't that aren't
Speaker 1: the real deal, Like we're the real deal. And he
Speaker 1: was a speechwriter for George Wallace, which we revealed on
Speaker 1: the podcast. And but he wrote this book under this name,
Speaker 1: Forrest Carter, and it wasn't just a pen name. We'll
Speaker 1: learn that wasn't just a pen name. He actually turned
Speaker 1: into Forrest Carter. It changed his life, changed the way
Speaker 1: that he talked, changed, the way that he dressed. Was
Speaker 1: Forrest Carter to everyone. And then he died when he
Speaker 1: was fifty four. But he wrote The Education of Little Tree,
Speaker 1: which is essentially an adolescent book. It's kind of like
Speaker 1: a where the Red Fern Grows book, and it was
Speaker 1: really a unique situation that rarely happens in literature, very
Speaker 1: rare that a book would posthumously, like after the death
Speaker 1: of the author, would go on the New York Times
Speaker 1: bestseller list. So the book was published in nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: six originally and it just had minimal fame or minimal
Speaker 1: it didn't do that well. I think they printed five
Speaker 1: thousand books at some university press, and then the book
Speaker 1: began to just have this like grassroots grassroots exposure. And
Speaker 1: then it was reprinted in nineteen eighty eight somebody else,
Speaker 1: and then in nineteen ninety one it went on the
Speaker 1: New York Times bestseller list and was put on Oprah
Speaker 1: Winfrey's Book club list, and it was on trajectory to
Speaker 1: be an American classic, American adolescent classic, like Where the
Speaker 1: Red Fernt Grows. Kids were reading it in schools all
Speaker 1: across the country. It was this book that was just
Speaker 1: full of wisdom, moral lessons, and it was intriguing to read.
Speaker 1: And it was written by this man that was a
Speaker 1: Cherokee Indian that was believed and so the story was
Speaker 1: just fantastic and people loved it. And then I'll give
Speaker 1: you a little spoiler alert. Doctor Dan T. Carter, my
Speaker 1: guest on the podcast Relation No relation to Asa Carter.
Speaker 1: You guys thought that was a little confusing, all the
Speaker 1: Carter's card this Carter that, which is true. But Dante Carter,
Speaker 1: I went to his house in North Carolina. Incredible guy,
Speaker 1: very very nice guy. He's eighty one years old, sharp
Speaker 1: as attack, like just very very intelligent, very you know,
Speaker 1: he's just he's just all there. And he he is
Speaker 1: the one who exposed Forrest Carter in nineteen ninety one
Speaker 1: with an op ed that he wrote in the New
Speaker 1: York Times, and and it was it was like, what
Speaker 1: who is this guy?
Speaker 2: Hold the phone?
Speaker 1: Yeah? And it was before internet, so it was easier
Speaker 1: to do that because there was this you know, there
Speaker 1: were a lot of people that knew, people that knew,
Speaker 1: really knew as of Carter, knew what was going on.
Speaker 1: But it's not like they could go on Facebook and
Speaker 1: tell everybody, oh yeah.
Speaker 2: What you mean. It easier to keep it quiet, yeah.
Speaker 1: Or or they were telling you know. So he said
Speaker 1: that when Barbara Walters in the nineteen seventies interviewed Forrest Carter,
Speaker 1: which is wild and there are Dan T. Carter says
Speaker 1: that there are zero audio recordings or video of that.
Speaker 1: Because I asked him I said, hey, where can I
Speaker 1: find that? And he said it doesn't exist. He said,
Speaker 1: back during the seventies, the Good Morning America Show, they
Speaker 1: literally were erasing tape. They would film something and after
Speaker 1: a certain period of time they would erase the tape
Speaker 1: and like reuse it again. And you can't go on YouTube.
Speaker 2: You can do.
Speaker 1: I mean, somebody find it. It's not there, but there's
Speaker 1: no video because I was gonna look at that interview
Speaker 1: and it was Forest Carter, the Cherokee Indian talking to
Speaker 1: Barbara Walters.
Speaker 3: Yeah that was before VCRs, before any of that recording
Speaker 3: capability at home.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and it was there that he uh uh
Speaker 1: like they said Dan Tea Carter said that the lines
Speaker 1: lit up at at the Good Morning America Show saying hey,
Speaker 1: that's not Forrest Carter, that's Ace of Carter. And they
Speaker 1: were just like, nah, that's not true. This guy's legitimate
Speaker 1: and there's no way for them to type it in
Speaker 1: and check this guy out. What do you think of that?
Speaker 1: What do you think of that day?
Speaker 4: It's pretty wild, can't help it couldn't happen today, that's
Speaker 4: for sure.
Speaker 1: What are the implications do you think of This is
Speaker 1: a question everybody. Never before have We've never lived in
Speaker 1: a world where people had this much access to information.
Speaker 1: I mean it makes you wonder what kind of stuff
Speaker 1: has gone on forever before about the year two thousand, with.
Speaker 2: People anything that anybody could get away with. Yeah, that's
Speaker 2: what's gone on. I'm sure it's since the first fellow
Speaker 2: wanted to trick the other one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm sure it's much much more difficult to be
Speaker 3: a confidence man now.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're gonna do a new show called Modern con Man.
Speaker 2: H wild.
Speaker 1: Well, what stood out to you guys about this episode?
Speaker 1: So many wild things and and I'm I'm I'm talking
Speaker 1: a lot here. You know, the section of the speech
Speaker 1: from George Wallace. I debated on putting that in there.
Speaker 1: I asked a couple of people if I should put
Speaker 1: it in there, and they were like, yeah, put it
Speaker 1: in there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a historical rights.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's it's it's historical, and this is
Speaker 2: these are tales that need to things that need to
Speaker 2: be talked about and discussed. Yeah, I'll tell you what
Speaker 2: I got from that from from the first part. Now,
Speaker 2: I think it'll only be solidified by the second part. Obviously,
Speaker 2: I hadn't heard it yet, but people, for that guy
Speaker 2: to be to live that double life, for him to
Speaker 2: write such a poignant story and touching, heartfelt story. People
Speaker 2: are inherently good, and they choose to be bad. He
Speaker 2: chose to hate other races other than his own. He
Speaker 2: chose to be that way. But he obviously had something
Speaker 2: inside him that would fuel that story his mind to
Speaker 2: be able to create such a such a great story,
Speaker 2: and it was a great story.
Speaker 1: That's a that's a great that's a great way to
Speaker 1: say it.
Speaker 2: It is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree. And the big question in my mind
Speaker 3: the whole time was is are they seeking some sort
Speaker 3: of redemption? Like are you in repentance for all the
Speaker 3: negative things that you were doing before? Because he wasn't
Speaker 3: the only one, right, I mean, Wallace kind of repented
Speaker 3: after as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so yourself back.
Speaker 3: A lot of his. He's trying to like fix his wrongs.
Speaker 1: Right, So you're saying a question in your mind is
Speaker 1: was Forrest Carter quote unquote the way for Asa Carter
Speaker 1: to repent for what.
Speaker 3: He did a little bit? Yeah, I mean to go
Speaker 3: as far as changing your identity and talking differently and
Speaker 3: pretending to be someone completely different you're looking to to
Speaker 3: get rid of that past life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that's the question that we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about on the next episode a lot. Because so where
Speaker 1: this came from was when Steve Vanella listened to our
Speaker 1: Where the Redferns Grows podcast where we talked about Wilson Rawls,
Speaker 1: who was the author, this incredible author of Where the
Speaker 1: Red Fern Grows. He was kind of a one hit
Speaker 1: wonder author and he in the research I've I've found
Speaker 1: that he had gone to prison more than once. Was
Speaker 1: wild and that was not talked about when that book
Speaker 1: came out. It was not talked about at all. And
Speaker 1: and the crimes were were minor, I mean it was
Speaker 1: not It was larceny of domestic stock, domestic chickens, which
Speaker 1: that may not be the full story. You typically don't
Speaker 1: send someone to prison for stealing chickens. So and there
Speaker 1: were and then there was an armed up, not armed
Speaker 1: but there was some burglary, so you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: it was clear the guy had a rough early life.
Speaker 1: It was when he was in his twenties, but then
Speaker 1: he ends up writing this book. And so the question
Speaker 1: was was this book away for him to kind of
Speaker 1: fix his past? And it seemed possible this one, I
Speaker 1: don't I don't want to. I don't want to give
Speaker 1: away too much. But it's way more complicated when you
Speaker 1: hear the whole story. And that's why it's called con
Speaker 1: Man and not redemption Man, because it gets pretty wild.
Speaker 1: It gets pretty wild the more you look into you know.
Speaker 1: But that is a great question, great question. What stood
Speaker 1: out to you, Lauren about the about the podcast?
Speaker 3: It was a giant twist. You know, I wasn't anticipating
Speaker 3: that he was part of a the KKK, you know,
Speaker 3: that was what are you talking about? Like, how do
Speaker 3: you bridge the gap from an author of Cherokee supposed
Speaker 3: Cherokee Nations to KKK? What are you talking about?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, it is a wild twist, isn't it?
Speaker 3: Wild twist?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: And you gotta wonder about the motivations, like I don't
Speaker 3: you know, like everybody's got their their motivations. So that
Speaker 3: was the big takeaway. What what in the world motivated
Speaker 3: this guy? And and you know, obviously it was a
Speaker 3: pretty uh well renowned writer ahead of time. It's writing
Speaker 3: speeches and so movies. Yeah, it's mind blowing.
Speaker 2: That was crazy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, were you expecting that no, So he wrote The
Speaker 1: Outlaw Josee Wales, which he titled his book Gone to Texas.
Speaker 1: But Clint Eastwood took the book and turned it into
Speaker 1: a movie called The Outlaw Josee Wales, And that was
Speaker 1: Clint Eastwood's breakout movie. Which is wild because it to
Speaker 1: be a screenwriter and to write a movie. And he
Speaker 1: didn't write the movie, but to have a book made
Speaker 1: into a movie, it's a big deal. There was presumably
Speaker 1: a fair bit of money he made from that. And
Speaker 1: then but The Outlaw Josee Wales is an interesting story
Speaker 1: because the protagonist, the guy that you can't help but love,
Speaker 1: is a Confederate soldier. Do you remember the story, Brent?
Speaker 1: Did you ever watch that movie?
Speaker 2: The movie? Yeah, one hundred times.
Speaker 1: Do you remember the Do you remember the story?
Speaker 2: Yeah? So I remember the story. Yes.
Speaker 1: Basically, it's the end of the Civil War and there
Speaker 1: is like one band of Confederates that are hiding out
Speaker 1: that haven't haven't haven't given up, uh, and they're the
Speaker 1: Union army is trying to hunt down these these rebels
Speaker 1: and there's a the captain comes to all these Confederate
Speaker 1: rebels and says, hey, guys, the war's over, like, we
Speaker 1: got to give ourselves up. If we give ourselves up
Speaker 1: to this camp down here, everything's gonna be okay. They're
Speaker 1: gonna let us go. It's not gonna be a big deal.
Speaker 1: And all the guys agree to go except for Josie Wales,
Speaker 1: and you know, he's like, I ain't going. And well,
Speaker 1: all those guys go down there, and it turns out
Speaker 1: it's a trap. Yeah, the the Confederate General that all
Speaker 1: these guys trusted had been paid off. And they go
Speaker 1: down there and rather than giving them what do you
Speaker 1: call it when you're you're forgiven of crime, clemency brether
Speaker 1: giving them clemency, they kill him. They kill all these guys.
Speaker 1: And Jesse Wales is up in the mountains and he
Speaker 1: hears the gunfire and he sees what's happening and he
Speaker 1: goes down and anyway, the whole thing is this Confederate
Speaker 1: soldier that you know has been burned by the system
Speaker 1: and everybody cheated him, and he goes into Comanche country.
Speaker 1: So and and it's always about the hating the establishment.
Speaker 1: That was that that's in everything that Ace had touched
Speaker 1: was that the government will burn you. And oh, it
Speaker 1: gets so wild in this next episode because you're going
Speaker 1: to see how that fits back into this deep racism
Speaker 1: that he he bought into. It'll all make sense. But Dave,
Speaker 1: what stood out to you about it?
Speaker 4: I thought, Yeah, I mean I had the same question
Speaker 4: these guys. Was his uh was in this looking for redemption?
Speaker 4: But the story with I'm totally spacing on the guy's name. Now,
Speaker 4: who had the key to the songbox?
Speaker 3: Uh?
Speaker 1: Coon Jack?
Speaker 4: Coonjack?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 4: And I wonder if in a way, like he was
Speaker 4: trying to use coon Jack as like a metaphor for.
Speaker 1: Himself, tells tell us about Coonjack?
Speaker 4: He you know, uh, he had been fighting his whole
Speaker 4: life and and.
Speaker 1: This was a story that this is inside the book
Speaker 1: The Education of a Little Bit. Yes, the grandfather was
Speaker 1: telling little Tree, who's the little grandson, a story from
Speaker 1: his childhood, and he tells the story of this old
Speaker 1: man named coon Jack.
Speaker 4: So go ahead then, Yeah, and Konjack had been fighting
Speaker 4: his whole life and now was just and uh, the
Speaker 4: end of it was, you know, you have to know
Speaker 4: someone or he loved him after that because he knew
Speaker 4: who he was, right, you know, knew where he came
Speaker 4: from and kind of understood him and so and that
Speaker 4: was the whole uh yeah, trying to put that thought
Speaker 4: together now, you know. So then it was really interesting
Speaker 4: that he put that in there, being this clan leader, right,
Speaker 4: like you have to know somebody to love him. And
Speaker 4: then like so it was just like I wonder if
Speaker 4: Konjack was kind of a metaphor for himself. But then
Speaker 4: also like yeah, so, yeah, he's really interesting.
Speaker 1: He thinks Koonjack basically grew up in the Civil War
Speaker 1: and then the government took his land and he stayed
Speaker 1: and fought for his land. And so Konjack is this
Speaker 1: old man embittered that wants to fight everybody, and he
Speaker 1: wants to fight the He pulls a he basically shows
Speaker 1: a pistol at church when the guys he said, there
Speaker 1: have been people talking bad about him. By the way,
Speaker 1: picked up he had the key to the songbook box.
Speaker 1: And so coon Jack flashes a pistol in church and says, hey,
Speaker 1: I'll use this on anybody that says I'm doing this wrong.
Speaker 1: And Grandpa's dad, Little Tree's great grandfather stands up and
Speaker 1: just just smooths the situation over, gives a lot of
Speaker 1: dignity the coon Jack and says we're so sorry. You've
Speaker 1: done a fantastic job at the songbook box, you quepe
Speaker 1: doing it, and the way that he handles it with
Speaker 1: such wisdom and grace and empathy is pretty touching. And
Speaker 1: that's why it's so wild to read all this stuff
Speaker 1: from that written basic carter because this guy, I mean,
Speaker 1: I couldn't have made up that story. That would have
Speaker 1: shown the deep intricacies of somebody that's really broken and hurt,
Speaker 1: and a very understanding, empathetic response to that brokenness that
Speaker 1: actually should help the broken person. Because the great grandfather
Speaker 1: stands up and goes, coon Jack, you're doing a great job.
Speaker 1: We love you, and then Grandpa, great Grandpa. It's kind
Speaker 1: of confusing, but basically the old man then tells the
Speaker 1: young boy, we love people. You can only love someone
Speaker 1: if you understand him. So this is what's going on
Speaker 1: with coon Jack, and we love him.
Speaker 2: It's like and it made a statement that that you know,
Speaker 2: why why did he get to upset over that? And
Speaker 2: he's he said that the key to this home box
Speaker 2: is all he has. Yeah, so that was his that
Speaker 2: was his reason for being his his focus in life
Speaker 2: and something that he could call his own and have
Speaker 2: have power over it because he he lost his land,
Speaker 2: he lost the war, you know everything, He had lost everything,
Speaker 2: his whole life, and you know it would be different
Speaker 2: if this was a true story. But this can't mate
Speaker 2: all that stuff up. Yeah, that's that's what gets me.
Speaker 2: Yeah that, I mean, a beautiful way to explain something
Speaker 2: like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in the book, I was the hardest part of
Speaker 1: a podcast like this is trying to find you know,
Speaker 1: I can't read the whole book on the podcast. That
Speaker 1: would have been cool if just every single person that
Speaker 1: listened to this podcast had read the whole book. Couldn't happen.
Speaker 1: So I just cherry picked maybe like four or five
Speaker 1: sections to read that stood out to me. If you'd
Speaker 1: have read it, Brent, I promise you, you wouldn't have picked
Speaker 1: the ones that I picked. Like those weren't even the
Speaker 1: high points. Because when I interviewed Steve Ranella, who's a
Speaker 1: guest on the podcast and a main player on the
Speaker 1: next podcast too, he was talking about stuff that I
Speaker 1: didn't even remember in our talk. He would go, but
Speaker 1: what about the story about that? And I'd be like, oh,
Speaker 1: I forgot about that, Like you know, so you just
Speaker 1: pick up on different things and so I was just
Speaker 1: trying to like highlight these places where you see that
Speaker 1: this author was connected authentically to human nature and what
Speaker 1: appeared to be really genuine love and empathy for people.
Speaker 1: And I mean, there's our wild question is how do
Speaker 1: you get access to that? I thought it was such
Speaker 1: a great to me. It made sense because Steve said
Speaker 1: when he reads the book the Things about Nature, it's
Speaker 1: full of really great stuff. Fox hunting, you know, they
Speaker 1: trap turkeys. They there's a lot of stuff about nature
Speaker 1: and the mountains and predation and the way. I read
Speaker 1: the part about the Way on the podcast. There's a
Speaker 1: section called the Way, and the Way is the Cherokee
Speaker 1: descriptor of the way of life. And he talks about
Speaker 1: how the hawk catches the slow quail so that the
Speaker 1: slow quail doesn't make more slow quail, so only the
Speaker 1: fast quail survive. And then the hawk most of the
Speaker 1: time catches the mice and the rodents that raid the
Speaker 1: nests of the quail, and so talcon the hawk it
Speaker 1: actually helps the quail. And that's the way. The way
Speaker 1: he talks to Little Tree about white tailed deer management,
Speaker 1: which totally goes against what we would do today, but
Speaker 1: he told. He told little Tree to not shoot the
Speaker 1: biggest deer, but to shoot the smallest one, to shoot
Speaker 1: the smaller, weaker deer, and let the let the big
Speaker 1: ones go, he told, he said, only take what you need.
Speaker 1: And he said the reason there are wars and their
Speaker 1: strife in the world is because people take more than
Speaker 1: they need, and they spend their lives trying to protect
Speaker 1: the excess. And he said, if people only took what
Speaker 1: they needed, we wouldn't have all these problems.
Speaker 2: In the world. Who can argue with that?
Speaker 1: And and and they call that the way and and
Speaker 1: and then this is like a writing thing that when
Speaker 1: you see it, you're just like you want it, Little
Speaker 1: Tree says, And I knew that, Grandpa, and I knew
Speaker 1: something that most people didn't. He always was throwing that
Speaker 1: in there, that they just kind of had this thing
Speaker 1: that like they had this thing figured out and the
Speaker 1: rest of the world didn't. And h and so Steve
Speaker 1: had said, I'm kind of on a rabbit trail there.
Speaker 1: But in that as as Asa Carter described the natural world,
Speaker 1: he Steve was like, that guy had been in the mountains,
Speaker 1: that guy had been fox hunting, that guy had plowed
Speaker 1: with a mule. That guy had grown corn, That guy
Speaker 1: had had picked ripe watermelons to understand what they're ripe.
Speaker 1: That guy had made moonshine or been been around moonshine,
Speaker 1: and he's he said that was authentic. Well, when I
Speaker 1: read the stuff about empathy and human nature, it's like
Speaker 1: this guy was deeply in touch, more probably than most,
Speaker 1: more than me, with with with how people operate, which
Speaker 1: Darren lots of questions. It's kind of fascinating. Who is
Speaker 1: this guy? Why was he so crazy? How could he
Speaker 1: do that? How was he connected to that kind of
Speaker 1: authenticity but still connected with all this wild stuff?
Speaker 2: He was.
Speaker 1: Very intriguing, very intriguing, Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 4: And then how do we grapple with that today?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 4: Like, how do we take that book today? And like
Speaker 4: do we just blacklist it or do we you know,
Speaker 4: take the book for what it is, but you know,
Speaker 4: recognize that it's not autobiographical and.
Speaker 2: It was very who was it?
Speaker 4: Look at who was written by?
Speaker 1: So yeah, so what do you think, Dave, if you
Speaker 1: had kids, what do you let your kids read it?
Speaker 1: Knowing what you know?
Speaker 4: I mean, yeah, probably, but you know I'd like to
Speaker 4: wait until they're maybe a little bit older, and then
Speaker 4: they can kind of so you can kind of understand
Speaker 4: and start to explain some of the complexities of it. Yeah,
Speaker 4: you know, explain like who this guy was in what
Speaker 4: this book is and what it's not. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 4: it's not a historical piece. It's not. But it's a
Speaker 4: story and it has good lessons in it. But this
Speaker 4: guy that wrote it did some terrible things.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah. What about you, Lauren? What do you think?
Speaker 3: That's a good question, you know, do you tell him
Speaker 3: who the author really was? Do you give him the
Speaker 3: book and just have them experience it for what it
Speaker 3: is and don't say anything. Yeah you know, I mean
Speaker 3: and maybe later bring that up or share the podcast
Speaker 3: with him, so that that is their education and enlightenment
Speaker 3: after reading the book. Yeah, you know, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what do you think, Brent?
Speaker 2: What? To me, a good story is a good story,
Speaker 2: And I don't have to buy into his politics or
Speaker 2: his philosophy on life, or his judgment of other people's
Speaker 2: if I'm if if that story is a good story
Speaker 2: and entertaining, I don't care who wrote it, because I
Speaker 2: don't go anything further than the last page. That's that's
Speaker 2: the time to put that book down and pick up
Speaker 2: another one. To me, that is, and I wouldn't have
Speaker 2: any problem at all reading it to my children because
Speaker 2: anything that if that book is the way you say
Speaker 2: it is, and I trust your judgment that it's a
Speaker 2: poignant story about life of a little person. It's fictional.
Speaker 2: It's not made out to be autobiographical. That I is
Speaker 2: that correct?
Speaker 1: Well, it's he wrote it as like based on a
Speaker 1: true story.
Speaker 2: Okay, well then then then then I would start the
Speaker 2: book off that this is not true, this is this
Speaker 2: is just a this is just a fun story, and
Speaker 2: we're going to read it.
Speaker 1: Sweetie, I want you to read this book. It was
Speaker 1: written by a con man.
Speaker 4: Podcast.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's how I look at it.
Speaker 1: You know, the bigger question we get into into the
Speaker 1: second episode. You should have just skipped this render and
Speaker 1: listened to the second. But we talk about does character
Speaker 1: matter because and the bottom line is that in some
Speaker 1: places it does. In some places, well, well, the character
Speaker 1: matters everywhere. What I'm saying is, could you get something
Speaker 1: from a source that lacked character because the the book
Speaker 1: standing alone and somebody might read it and have problems
Speaker 1: with something, you know, uh, that other people wouldn't. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, it's not like I buy into the the
Speaker 1: cosmology of the Native Americans. I mean that's there, that's
Speaker 1: their stories and stuff just about the creation of the
Speaker 1: earth and all this stuff. Like I'm not I'm not
Speaker 1: getting behind that. But what I am saying is that
Speaker 1: it there. The book has legitimately got some great stuff
Speaker 1: in it, but there are places in life where you
Speaker 1: don't want anything from something that comes from a very
Speaker 1: flawed source. And we're going to talk about that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff on the next podcast. Lots of foreshadowy, lots
Speaker 1: of foreshadowing on this one, lots of foreshado. But no
Speaker 1: I would. I would let my kids read the book. Now,
Speaker 1: whether I would tell them about it right away or not,
Speaker 1: I don't know, because it's so hard to read the book,
Speaker 1: and I've spoiled it for everyone. But it's so hard
Speaker 1: to read the book with this knowledge and really take
Speaker 1: in the book as you would if you knew nothing,
Speaker 1: if you didn't know anything, you just read it, you
Speaker 1: would you would might come away with with different conclusions
Speaker 1: about it. But but nobody was. You don't be mad
Speaker 1: at me because you weren't going to read this book
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty three, because that's a joke. You're supposed
Speaker 1: to laugh. Yes, it was on my book list. No
Speaker 1: it wasn't, because it was the blacklisting of that book
Speaker 1: when Oprah took it off her book list in two
Speaker 1: thousand and seven, and when which was years after it
Speaker 1: came out, which is kind of interesting. It took a
Speaker 1: while for it to like trickle through the world. It
Speaker 1: people just haven't read it. And so I on the
Speaker 1: podcast talked to Steve about how I had a difficult
Speaker 1: time finding an academic person that would talk to me. Now,
Speaker 1: now Dan T. Carter talked to me about Asa Carter.
Speaker 1: But Dante Carter is not necessarily an expert on the
Speaker 1: book The Education at Little True. Typically you can find
Speaker 1: an academic expert on a piece of literature, for instance,
Speaker 1: on Where the Red Fern Grows. I interviewed a guy
Speaker 1: at the University of Arkansas that was like, heck, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is this is in my field of literature. You know,
Speaker 1: have students read this book, Yes, I will talk to you.
Speaker 1: We sent out emails everywhere and just got nothing from anybody.
Speaker 1: And at first, well the one person that did respond said, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, this book has been blacklisted, right, And I
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, that's why I want to talk about it.
Speaker 1: And but so I couldn't understand if people didn't want
Speaker 1: to do it because it was blacklisted, or if because
Speaker 1: it was blacklisted nobody read it and knew about it.
Speaker 1: There's two reasons why people wouldn't have emailed me back.
Speaker 1: You understand.
Speaker 2: Did you resolve that in any fashion? None?
Speaker 1: And it's it's totally anecdotal because you know that there'll
Speaker 1: probably be people that write in and be like, well,
Speaker 1: I'm a literature professor and would have been glad to
Speaker 1: have talked to you. But the typical amount of work
Speaker 1: that we put into trying to find the best sources
Speaker 1: for interviewees about topics and and we do, me and
Speaker 1: me and Isaac, We put a lot of work into
Speaker 1: finding really great guests. We could not find on this one.
Speaker 1: We were like scratching our heads. Steve was actually like
Speaker 1: option B. Steve Vanella was like the B team. I
Speaker 1: was like, well okay, Steve, go ahead, No he and
Speaker 1: he was fantastic. Was Steve's idea originally this podcast. Steve
Speaker 1: read this book back in college and then he he
Speaker 1: after listening to Where the Red fern Grows said, Hey,
Speaker 1: you ought to do one on educational litlty. I didn't
Speaker 1: know about the book. Steve knew you. I never heard
Speaker 1: of it, and uh no, Steve was great man. He read,
Speaker 1: he re read the book, and so he was coming
Speaker 1: hot off of rereading the book and he did better
Speaker 1: than an academic. Well he Steve is a literary I'd
Speaker 1: call him a literary expert in most most most types
Speaker 1: of literature. He's able to critique it and so anyway,
Speaker 1: he was fantastic. H Well, guys.
Speaker 2: Closing thoughts, looking forward to the next episode. If if
Speaker 2: there is a bigger twist coming in the second episode
Speaker 2: as there was in the first, if it was three episodes,
Speaker 2: I wouldn't be able to.
Speaker 1: Take it, wouldn't be able to take it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was It was cool. It's definitely got me
Speaker 3: hooked and wanting to listen to the second.
Speaker 2: Great.
Speaker 4: I'd like to read the book too. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 4: wonder if is it hard to find?
Speaker 1: No You get by on Amazon.
Speaker 4: It's going to be on the New York Times bestseller
Speaker 4: list again.
Speaker 1: Podcast No shoot Man, you can get it on They're
Speaker 1: giving them away for free on paperback man on Amazon
Speaker 1: we're trying to get we're trying to liquidate these things. Well, hey,
Speaker 1: listen to this Country Life with Brent Reeves. It's going
Speaker 1: to be great. You've already heard one episode that's come
Speaker 1: out before this one, but it's going to be every
Speaker 1: Friday we'll be able to hear it. Thank you guys
Speaker 1: for listening to the bear Groase Render, and we'll see
Speaker 1: you next time.
Speaker 4: It's gonna eat some catfish.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're about to fry some catfish and turkey breasts.
Speaker 2: Get the grease Hig