Speaker 1: Welcome to This Country Life. I'm your host, Brent Rieves
Speaker 1: from coon hunting to trot lining and just general country living.
Speaker 1: I want you to stay a while as I share
Speaker 1: my stories and the country skills that will help you
Speaker 1: beat the system. This Country Life is proudly presented as
Speaker 1: part of Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you the best
Speaker 1: outdoor podcast the airways have to offer. All right, friends,
Speaker 1: pull you up a chair or drop that tailgate. I
Speaker 1: think I got a thing or two. The Teacher Deer
Speaker 1: Cam Deer season is what the majority of the hunters
Speaker 1: in America look forward to every year. With over fifteen
Speaker 1: million license hunters in the US, y'all know over eleven
Speaker 1: million of them are chasing deer. One of those statistical
Speaker 1: digits belongs to me, and for the better part of
Speaker 1: my existence on this in order we call home Dear
Speaker 1: Camp was what I look forward to most of all.
Speaker 1: Tradition and legacy are a big part of the outdoor culture,
Speaker 1: and believed or not, it's never too late to start
Speaker 1: your own. We're gonna talk about that and a whole
Speaker 1: lot more on this week's episode of This Country Life.
Speaker 1: But first I'm gonna tell you a story. My nephew,
Speaker 1: Matthew was seventeen. That's the same Matthew that I let
Speaker 1: get lost in the woods on a windy coon hunt
Speaker 1: a few years before with his little brother Will. If
Speaker 1: you miss that story, skip back to episode one forty
Speaker 1: one and hear that tale of miscommunication and buffoonery. But
Speaker 1: Matthew will be forty five this December. His oldest is
Speaker 1: in her first year of college. But on this day
Speaker 1: he was still young, and it was the middle of
Speaker 1: the morning, way past the golden ire of morning deer
Speaker 1: hunh And I don't remember if it was hunger or
Speaker 1: boredom that got me off the stand earlier that day.
Speaker 1: It was a safe bet that it was one or
Speaker 1: the other. I love to deer hunt, and by deer hunting,
Speaker 1: I mean that I like to be where the deer
Speaker 1: hunting is taking place, not necessarily literally taking part in it.
Speaker 1: And at that time it was taking place at the
Speaker 1: b and Our deer camp. More on that place than
Speaker 1: just a minute. But I remember getting back early and
Speaker 1: sitting on the front porch of the deer camp in
Speaker 1: a cool breeze, while everyone else was still scattered to
Speaker 1: the wind, still sitting on the stands. I was eating
Speaker 1: a Blogna sandwich that was sporting a mule lip thick
Speaker 1: piece of bologna and covered with Miss Mickey Bryant's famous
Speaker 1: pepper rellish. Now, folks, I like stories that are descriptive.
Speaker 1: I like to read or listen to someone telling me
Speaker 1: about an experience with the clarity that makes me feel
Speaker 1: like I am the person experiencing the event, or that
Speaker 1: I can see it played out in color like a
Speaker 1: little movie in my head. I had a freshman com
Speaker 1: professor that told me I was a very descriptive writer.
Speaker 1: Well that's cool, I guess, But let me tell you,
Speaker 1: William Shakespeare himself couldn't gather the pros necessary to come
Speaker 1: close describing how good her homemade pepper relish was. I
Speaker 1: can taste it right now, and I ain't had a
Speaker 1: bite of it in many, many moons. But I had
Speaker 1: my sandwich and some reheated coffee from the stove, and
Speaker 1: it was enjoying just sitting on the porch waiting for
Speaker 1: someone to come rolling in with a deer, or at
Speaker 1: least a deer story. And then all of a sudden, bam,
Speaker 1: my sandwich date was interrupted by a rifle shot, just
Speaker 1: a little south of due west. Well, that's Matthew stand.
Speaker 1: I decided i'd give him a minute or two before
Speaker 1: I go checked on him, mainly because I wanted to
Speaker 1: finish that sandwich I was eating before us. I ordered
Speaker 1: walking from the camp down to the creek bottom where
Speaker 1: he was hunting, about a quarter of a mile away.
Speaker 1: That first sandwich was so good, I fixed me another
Speaker 1: one and I let out across the yard, making my
Speaker 1: way toward Matthew's stand. It was cool walking in the
Speaker 1: sunlight with the wind out of the north, but down
Speaker 1: right chilly once I stepped into the woods, where all
Speaker 1: the direct sunlight was hidden by some old growth timber.
Speaker 1: The canopy was so thick that the ground was pretty
Speaker 1: well absent of brushing briars, and you could see a
Speaker 1: pretty good ways down through that bottom. I was taking
Speaker 1: my time and wearing my hunt orange, so when Matthew
Speaker 1: eventually saw me walking, he wouldn't bust a camp in
Speaker 1: my direction. I was also gnawing on that sandwich was reckless, abandoned.
Speaker 1: It had been a long time since we'd all let breakfast,
Speaker 1: and I knew he'd be hungry too, So the last
Speaker 1: thing I wanted to do before helping him gut and
Speaker 1: drag a deer back to camp. Was share my sandwich
Speaker 1: with him. I know that's terrible, but don't get me wrong.
Speaker 1: I loved my nephew just like he's my son, and
Speaker 1: I would have give that rascal both of my kidneys
Speaker 1: to this very day. But I wouldn't have shared a
Speaker 1: body of that pepperrellish and mule lip sandwich with Saint
Speaker 1: Peter if he asked for it. The precious few folks
Speaker 1: on this planet that have eaten it, they understand. Anyway.
Speaker 1: I finally swallowed that last body as I came into
Speaker 1: view of Matthew stand. We call it the Corner Stand,
Speaker 1: and it sits in a little oak flat that at
Speaker 1: the time could have doubled for a state park. Now,
Speaker 1: with the timber having been cut in there, there's more
Speaker 1: undergrowth than brows, which is better for deer anyway, But
Speaker 1: it just don't look as pretty, not as it did then.
Speaker 1: It was a great spot that it still is a
Speaker 1: natural transition from a big overgrown clearcut that funneled deer
Speaker 1: along a creek bottoming into that old flatward where that
Speaker 1: stand was located. I looked at the standards that got closer,
Speaker 1: and when I was within sixty yards or so, I
Speaker 1: could see that he wasn't in it. I continued on,
Speaker 1: and as I rounded a set of holly bushes that
Speaker 1: was growing on the bank of the creek, I could
Speaker 1: see matthew sonning there. He just crawled up out of
Speaker 1: the creek as I rounded the corner, barefooted as a goose,
Speaker 1: dripping wet from the waist down and grinning with a
Speaker 1: mouthful of choppers that even that fifth Dentist were approved of.
Speaker 1: He was looking in the creek and smiling back at
Speaker 1: me in his underwear. They were the whitey tidy kind,
Speaker 1: but purple, and I was confused, Boy, what in the
Speaker 1: world are you doing? It was a rhetorical question. I
Speaker 1: could plainly see what he was doing. He was standing
Speaker 1: on the bank of the creek in his drawers. I
Speaker 1: just didn't know why. Uncle Brient a buck walked up
Speaker 1: here from down the creek, and I shot him. When
Speaker 1: I did, he fell in the creek and I couldn't
Speaker 1: see him after I shot, so I got down. I
Speaker 1: came over here and I looked in the creek and
Speaker 1: I still couldn't find him. I had to get in there.
Speaker 1: We had a check, and sure enough that's where he was.
Speaker 1: He had pulled him up on a little sandbar, and
Speaker 1: he was proud, and I was proud. After he got
Speaker 1: his breeches back on, we pulled him up on the
Speaker 1: bank and we drug him back to camp. I fixed
Speaker 1: him with a Blonga sandwich. And that's just how that happened.
Speaker 1: Our first deer camp structure, if you could call canvas.
Speaker 1: The structure was an old war surplus army tent that
Speaker 1: would sleep a dozen folks if you scooted everyone's cots
Speaker 1: close together. It was miserable hot during the day and
Speaker 1: cold as a steel wedge at night. The only sustainable
Speaker 1: feature that carried on day and night was the relaxing
Speaker 1: smell of moth balls that permeated that thick canvas fabric.
Speaker 1: That may have deterred malls, but it seemed to have
Speaker 1: no effect on the miss chewed on it. From year
Speaker 1: to year. Every year saw new patches and areas that
Speaker 1: had to be sewn back together from the previous eleven
Speaker 1: months of storage. We would put it up about a
Speaker 1: week before the gun season opened in November and take
Speaker 1: it down a week or so after it went out
Speaker 1: back then, which is a phrase my eleven year old
Speaker 1: daughter Bailey, references often that includes anything that happened before
Speaker 1: cell phones and yogurt breeches. Gun deer season was a
Speaker 1: week long in Arkansas, with a few additional days scattered
Speaker 1: here and there around the holidays. But for the serious
Speaker 1: rifle hunters that were chasing bucks, that first week of
Speaker 1: gun deer season was what we had waited for. The
Speaker 1: other fifty one weeks out of the year. We ran
Speaker 1: deer dogs for several years, beagles mostly, But as the
Speaker 1: time went on, running dogs became more and more of
Speaker 1: a burden as previously free Timber Company land that we
Speaker 1: hunted became lease land. Folks weren't as interested in pushing
Speaker 1: their deer over on the neighboring lease for someone else
Speaker 1: to let the air out of. We were paying for
Speaker 1: the opportunity to shoot the deer on ire lease and
Speaker 1: I move them somewhere else. Now. I understand why the
Speaker 1: Timber Company started leasing, but it literally and figuratively changed
Speaker 1: the landscape of deer hunting in Arkansas from the onset.
Speaker 1: But that, as I say, is a whole other podcast.
Speaker 1: Today we're talking about deer camps, specifically the one that
Speaker 1: I hunted in for many years, the ben Our Deer
Speaker 1: camp that stood for Bryant and Reeves. The Brian was
Speaker 1: the family that my brother Tim married into, and when
Speaker 1: he did, they got me by default. Not sure if
Speaker 1: I was part of the diary or more of a
Speaker 1: consolation prize, but regardless, there I was. Now My brothers
Speaker 1: in laws that I referenced many times on this podcast
Speaker 1: are all just like my family. His father in law,
Speaker 1: mister Billy Brian was my turkey hunting mentor his mother
Speaker 1: in law, Miss Mickey. That was a nickname for her.
Speaker 1: Her real name was Amelia Ruth and that lady was
Speaker 1: something special in her own right. In all the years
Speaker 1: I knew her, I never saw her when she wasn't
Speaker 1: sporting a smile. Don't even get me started on her cooking.
Speaker 1: For the love of humanity. She was in the league
Speaker 1: of her own. Joe, their son was four years older
Speaker 1: than Tim and he was a big brother to us all.
Speaker 1: Initially in the camp it was Joe, Tim and a
Speaker 1: cousin of ours. Then as a kid of eleven, I
Speaker 1: was allowed in that events that grew to include other
Speaker 1: family members, our children and now the children of our children.
Speaker 1: That's heritage, that's tradition. That's how you build a legacy.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't done with the deer that we killed
Speaker 1: one week out of the year. I mean, that's South Arkansas.
Speaker 1: Not a lot of folks longing to hunt that area
Speaker 1: like they are Southeast Kansas. Not. Then, for sure, it's
Speaker 1: gotten a lot better because people are educating themselves more
Speaker 1: on growing there deer to maturity and maximizing the age
Speaker 1: of deer to growing bigger. But back then, there's bailey
Speaker 1: slanging again. For ancient times. Back then it was a
Speaker 1: sin to shoot a dough. Now why you asked, because
Speaker 1: every old head would stand on a soapbox and tell
Speaker 1: you that dead mama deer don't have baby buck deer.
Speaker 1: That's how I think the buck to dough ratio got
Speaker 1: so out of whack. But that's a whole other podcast.
Speaker 1: A small buck would get smashed because the prevalent thinking
Speaker 1: was if I didn't shoot him, the next fellow would. Anyway,
Speaker 1: that's all changed now and changed for the better. But Brent,
Speaker 1: stay on track. After a few years of sleeping in
Speaker 1: a tent and losing the battle against the forces of
Speaker 1: mice and moth balls, we decided a building was in order,
Speaker 1: so we procured several bunks of lumber, mostly hardwood slabs,
Speaker 1: and build a thirty two or sixteen cabin with a hammer,
Speaker 1: a chainsaw, and a square. The tin roof was scrapped
Speaker 1: from a chicken house, and after a few weekends and
Speaker 1: the blistering heat, the be and our deer camp had
Speaker 1: a deer camp. Our stove was an old barrel cut
Speaker 1: out with doors and stovepipe attached. It sat in a
Speaker 1: big sandbox that would catch any fallen embers or coals
Speaker 1: when the door was opened, and to keep from heating
Speaker 1: the floor to the point of combustion when the stove
Speaker 1: was full of wood and the damper opened. I've seen
Speaker 1: that thing glowing red as we laid in the darkness,
Speaker 1: Smoke building out of the stack like a steam engine,
Speaker 1: the temperature fluctuating from the surface of the sun on
Speaker 1: the side that was facing the stove the absolute zero
Speaker 1: on the side that wasn't. We turned back and forth
Speaker 1: all night, trying to find the sweet spot between being
Speaker 1: scalded and frostbite. The fire pit outside was where we gathered.
Speaker 1: It's where we told stores and revisited the day's events.
Speaker 1: There was no electricity. The fire was our TV, a
Speaker 1: ballgame might be played from a truck radio in the background,
Speaker 1: and peeling off the porch was acceptable, except for the
Speaker 1: no peas on where the steps led you in and
Speaker 1: out of the front door. We had a gas stover
Speaker 1: that we cooked on in it. It ran off a
Speaker 1: big bottle that was kept out back. We took turns
Speaker 1: getting up early to start the coffee and stoke up
Speaker 1: the fire and the stove, and my work eventually took
Speaker 1: me away from this place, making it troublesome to continue.
Speaker 1: But the tradition is kept alive by everyone else, and
Speaker 1: I miss it dearly. The adults that were only kids
Speaker 1: when we built that camp now have kids that are
Speaker 1: older than they were when we started. We built it
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty eight, thirty five years ago, and it
Speaker 1: stands today not unlike it stood then. A rectangle of
Speaker 1: mismatched furniture out of plumb walls, creaking floor, and the
Speaker 1: occasional adventurous field mouse that would dare to run the
Speaker 1: gauntlet after everyone finally quieted down when the lannings were
Speaker 1: turned off. I miss all of that except the mouse part.
Speaker 1: I hate them now. Outside of someone killing a big
Speaker 1: deer Family Night was the highlight of the week. Wives,
Speaker 1: mothers and friends would cook and bring a big pot
Speaker 1: luck supper to the camp and it was way more
Speaker 1: food than we could eat in anyone setting, So the
Speaker 1: leftovers would stay and we'd work on them the rest
Speaker 1: of the week. Deer chili, chicken, corn bread, beans, peas cakes,
Speaker 1: pious cookies, you name it. It was there and it
Speaker 1: was good, every bit of it. And some of y'all
Speaker 1: going to hear this, and I think, ma'am, I wish
Speaker 1: I had that in my life. Well, let me tell
Speaker 1: you you can. You don't have to from where I'm
Speaker 1: from to have something like that. It's never too late
Speaker 1: to start a tradition. Traditions don't have to be old,
Speaker 1: They just have to have value to the folks that
Speaker 1: are participating. The value can't come from the success of
Speaker 1: the endeavor. It can't rest on the shoulders of a
Speaker 1: successful hunt either. A successful hunt is a fleeting wind
Speaker 1: that fades away quicker than the deer meat in the freezer.
Speaker 1: It has to be organic, can come from the people
Speaker 1: that gather there together for the shared experience. Each person
Speaker 1: and family represent a crucial part that makes the whole experience,
Speaker 1: a tangible entity. That's what creates the basis for tradition,
Speaker 1: and tradition is what builds the legacy. It ain't hard
Speaker 1: surround yourself with folks you love and enjoy being with
Speaker 1: and doing something you all love to do, and the
Speaker 1: next thing you know, you'll look around and there's a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of little folks that resemble you and the
Speaker 1: rest of the old g's standing in line to carry
Speaker 1: the torch. Dear Camp, It's more than just dear a
Speaker 1: whole lot more. The time to be at the camp
Speaker 1: is fast approaching. You, folks. Make sure you've got those
Speaker 1: washed nests taken care of and your stands inspected, and
Speaker 1: for the love of humanity, wear safety strap. You can't
Speaker 1: help build the tradition if you ain't there. If you
Speaker 1: ain't there, there's gonna be some folks missing. I sure
Speaker 1: appreciate y'all listening. And until next week, this is Brent
Speaker 1: Reeves signing off. Y'all be careful