Speaker 1: My name is Clay Nukeleman. 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 looked behind the scenes
Speaker 1: of the actual bear Grease podcast, presented by f HF Gear,
Speaker 1: American made purpose built hunting and fishing gear that's designed
Speaker 1: to be as rugged as the places we explore. I
Speaker 1: always feel like a kid in here, like I'm just
Speaker 1: poking around to see what man. I really wanted to
Speaker 1: clean this place up before we all came, because like,
Speaker 1: when this death starts looking like this, it's like time
Speaker 1: to do something. But you know what I got, I
Speaker 1: got something to say about this where there are no
Speaker 1: when the stables are clean, that's right, But you need
Speaker 1: you need a big ox to have a great yeah,
Speaker 1: and you need a big one every one of these.
Speaker 1: This is in here because I traveled to Tennessee to
Speaker 1: meet a special undercover agent and I had to take
Speaker 1: this right from the truck. This is in here because
Speaker 1: when I first started uh using mules like years ago,
Speaker 1: somebody told me Vicks vapor rub. If you put Vix
Speaker 1: vapor rub in the nostrils of your mule, that you
Speaker 1: could put any type of wild game on their back
Speaker 1: because they couldn't smell it. It turns out sure didn't
Speaker 1: work for me, but I still have to Vicks vapor
Speaker 1: rub So I had to take this out of the
Speaker 1: destroy the other day because the drawer wouldn't shut because
Speaker 1: of it. So that's why that's there. That was vapor ses.
Speaker 1: I don't know why those are there. It's like a
Speaker 1: bad pawn shop in here, because it's like nothing's organized,
Speaker 1: like you know what you're go into the pawn shops
Speaker 1: and you've got kind of rifle through things. That makes
Speaker 1: me feel like you're getting a deal. Like somebody's passed
Speaker 1: over this because they didn't want to go through it
Speaker 1: and you and you pick up things and outside of
Speaker 1: the case, you know, like the glass case and the pawnshop,
Speaker 1: exactly pick it up and exactly. I got to introduce
Speaker 1: some some international folks that are staying with us for
Speaker 1: a wedding. What mass pro looks like their mind was blown?
Speaker 1: Really did you go there with him? I took them
Speaker 1: there yesterday. They were also surprised that you carried a
Speaker 1: pocket knife, yes, and they assumed it was a weapon
Speaker 1: and I was like, absolutely not, this is a tool.
Speaker 1: Just a tool. You've got a I got a good
Speaker 1: pocket knife to you when we were you'all know, I
Speaker 1: work at a school and I got a call from
Speaker 1: a parent one time trying to see if they should
Speaker 1: arrange for us too. There's some pocket knife train that's
Speaker 1: a little distracting. They to see if they needed to
Speaker 1: arrange for my son to meet their son off campus
Speaker 1: for a purchase of a pocket knife, or if I
Speaker 1: was okay with it if they sold this pocket knife
Speaker 1: on campus. The two boys wanted to sell, one being
Speaker 1: my our son, and I was like, well, hold on
Speaker 1: just a second. I don't know much about this. Let
Speaker 1: me get the details. Bear Nucom had had been taking
Speaker 1: pieces of steel, metal, fingernail clippers, anything he could find.
Speaker 1: Old story and right, yeah, he's young. I thought this
Speaker 1: happened like this week. No, no schools out. Uh, this
Speaker 1: is like a long time ago. And Bear was taken
Speaker 1: like gathering up any spare piece blades and stuff or
Speaker 1: fingernail clippers that was a pretty popular one. And he
Speaker 1: what did he have? He had a grinder, electric grinder
Speaker 1: that like a wheel grinder. He was like nine years
Speaker 1: old and making Yeah. Actually I had to talk to
Speaker 1: him about ethics inside of business ownership, because I'm pretty
Speaker 1: sure he's sold a pocket knife that he'd ground out
Speaker 1: of a saws all blade and wrapped para cord around
Speaker 1: the handle some kid at school for like twenty bucks.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure that, Yeah, I say, principal of the school.
Speaker 1: So I have to write all these parents and say hey, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is years ago. And I had to write him
Speaker 1: and say, hey, I'm really sorry about there's apparently like
Speaker 1: an off market deal going on. We weren't aware of it.
Speaker 1: We were aware that Bear was making knives. We thought
Speaker 1: it was a cute thing for him to do at
Speaker 1: the house. We are not encouraging enterprise at the school.
Speaker 1: We will refund you your money. How are these transactions happening? Okay,
Speaker 1: you're bringing cash to school. Talk to him about it,
Speaker 1: as I said, I said, Man, I said, don't you
Speaker 1: think that's pretty high for the what you the amount
Speaker 1: of time you had making this, and what you've paid
Speaker 1: to get the raw materials. You know, you kind of
Speaker 1: got to take into consideration. Your customer, too, likes is
Speaker 1: pretty pretty pride. He's like, Dad, they mean they're paying it,
Speaker 1: they'll pay that. And I said, I said, Man, I
Speaker 1: don't know what to tell you. I'm out of stock. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't pay for them out of hair. Cut out
Speaker 1: that that's cut off your head. You pay for the
Speaker 1: expertise of the man cutty. So was it like, hey,
Speaker 1: meet me around back and it was the play. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: Bear thought I'd be proud of him, and it wasn't.
Speaker 1: There was a little bit in me that was like,
Speaker 1: well that's kind of entrepreneurial, you know. I wasn't a
Speaker 1: little proud, And I told Clay, I don't really know,
Speaker 1: Like I clearly have a responsibility as a school administrator
Speaker 1: to not let there be the cell of weapons and
Speaker 1: our property. Yeah, well, welcome to the Bear Grease friender man.
Speaker 1: This is a exciting one we have. I have with me.
Speaker 1: I have Josh Langbridge, filmmaker to my left wearing a
Speaker 1: nice believer hat. Yeah it looks good. It looks good. Uh.
Speaker 1: To his left, my wife Missy Newcombe always good to
Speaker 1: be here. To your left, Brent Reeves shout out on
Speaker 1: the podcast this week, Did I did? I liked that
Speaker 1: it was good and used accurately. Yeah, I thought it was.
Speaker 1: It really was. Brent's beards a little trimmer, a little
Speaker 1: close cropped summer I did yesterday and Bailey walks downstairs, Daddy,
Speaker 1: your glasses are bigger, same glasses, beard smaller. I had
Speaker 1: this revelation just a second ago about Brent Reeves. He
Speaker 1: has a way of making you feel like you're with
Speaker 1: him when you're just listening to him. I was thinking
Speaker 1: about seeing him today, are with him today? But I
Speaker 1: was like, I had this feeling of like very familiar
Speaker 1: about this yesterday, no earlier today, anticipating seeing Brent, thinking
Speaker 1: it didn't feel like it had been two months since
Speaker 1: i'd seen him. You know what I mean, what do
Speaker 1: you attribute this to? I don't know, velvet pipes. Oh,
Speaker 1: it just brings you right into the moment, to these feelings.
Speaker 1: Now to bricelet not Isaac Neil Isaac. We now we
Speaker 1: introduced you back in February as the assistant producer Beargrease.
Speaker 1: Now we could I think I have the authority to
Speaker 1: change your title. You could be assistant to the producer
Speaker 1: Man Isaac. Isaac has a lot of fingerprints all over
Speaker 1: the bar Grease podcast. Um. Isaac does a whole lot,
Speaker 1: a whole lot for meataturing for us, but on this
Speaker 1: one in particular, and we'll go. I think we'll go
Speaker 1: into the origins of why h how this came about
Speaker 1: that we decided to tell the story that we told
Speaker 1: over the last three episodes. Um, but Isaac was there
Speaker 1: right in the middle of it, and Isaac was actually
Speaker 1: the one who said you could do it like this anyway.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about that later. To your left, Gary newcom Gary,
Speaker 1: good to see man. Yeah, I'm looking forward to see
Speaker 1: what Gary has to say about all this. Um oh,
Speaker 1: my lands, I look forward to anything. Yeah, me too. Hey,
Speaker 1: I want to before we dive into deep here, and
Speaker 1: I really wanted just like straight up talk about the podcast.
Speaker 1: So last time you guys got weren't involved in the
Speaker 1: Render because we were in Montana and so we didn't
Speaker 1: really talk about you know, there were just three of
Speaker 1: us there. Bear was there, and so we didn't talk
Speaker 1: about episode two. So I want to get I want
Speaker 1: to do like a full encompassing, full encompassing conversation, have
Speaker 1: one about episode two. We had a really good Render
Speaker 1: about episode one where we where we we talked, well
Speaker 1: we can we can come. Can we just say something
Speaker 1: about the Render crew last time? Because I feel like
Speaker 1: we always get to evaluate them I'd like to evaluate
Speaker 1: Clay Nuclam's statements in that podcast. I learned that Clay
Speaker 1: sent our barely walking Sun. I'm Tod and it's chef,
Speaker 1: and I in Yeah, just news to me. Your parenting
Speaker 1: tactics always amazing me. I trust you, and then I
Speaker 1: hearn't isn't it? Isn't it? A proverb says training train
Speaker 1: a child up in the way he should go, and
Speaker 1: then send him towards the bear. It's something like that,
Speaker 1: is what were you thinking? Though? I think about how
Speaker 1: how much I trust there, and I tell people all
Speaker 1: the time, like we don't have to worry. I try
Speaker 1: Clay if he says it's okay, it's okay. And then
Speaker 1: I hear that story and I'm thinking, well it ended
Speaker 1: up being okay. It was it was just a small bear,
Speaker 1: and that a small innocuus bear. Yeah, I think about
Speaker 1: this here here, take comfort in this. That's the story
Speaker 1: that you know about. I know, yeah, you shouldn't let
Speaker 1: that go. Let well where I was going to go though,
Speaker 1: before we get into our big discussion, you'll see these
Speaker 1: books right here, the stack of books yesterday, a couple
Speaker 1: of days ago, I looked across all my bookshelves and
Speaker 1: was trying to It all started just when I I
Speaker 1: saw a book. I saw this book Biophilia. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: book right here, and I was like, oh man, I
Speaker 1: hadn't seen that book in a while, and it's got
Speaker 1: all kind of handwritten notes in it and stuff. And
Speaker 1: I was like, this book was really influential to me.
Speaker 1: And I was like, you know what, there was another
Speaker 1: book that was really influential. And I started looking for
Speaker 1: Ian Tattersall's Becoming Human and I was like, you know what,
Speaker 1: another three books that we're influencing. Anyway, I started, I
Speaker 1: made a stack of what I think is the most
Speaker 1: influential books to date. Yes, Josh, where's the Bible? That
Speaker 1: was gonna be the thing I was gonna say next
Speaker 1: aside from the Bible here, okay, yeah, would it make
Speaker 1: you feel better? It would make you feel more comfortable? Yeah? Yeah, Okay,
Speaker 1: definitely very true story books not written by you know
Speaker 1: that aren't the Bible are inspired? Okay, but all these books.
Speaker 1: So there's Wild Sports, there's Boone by Robert Morgan, there's
Speaker 1: my father Daniel Boone, which those two books together we're
Speaker 1: really unique. And as I just always thought that book
Speaker 1: written by Nathan Boone, was about his father. The interview
Speaker 1: that he did Nathan Boone did with his dad was
Speaker 1: really wild. Uh. There's a couple of non history hunting books.
Speaker 1: This book Atomic Habits. This is like a pop culture
Speaker 1: like New York Times bestselling self help, quick self help
Speaker 1: kind of book that I typically wouldn't read. But man,
Speaker 1: I think about this book all the time. Atomic Habits. Man,
Speaker 1: it was really good. Tiny changes. And then Sand County
Speaker 1: Almanac by Aldo Leopold, which I read in college. Dr
Speaker 1: David Miller who was on the Barker's podcast one time
Speaker 1: he had us read that and little did I know
Speaker 1: that that book would be influential. And then uh, Boys Adrift, man, goalie,
Speaker 1: if you have if you have boys, you got to
Speaker 1: read that book, Boys Adrift, And it talks about five
Speaker 1: factors driving the growing epidemic of unmotivated boys and underachieving
Speaker 1: young men. It's a really good book. Um. And then
Speaker 1: this book right here, the account of Cabeza de Vaca.
Speaker 1: These guys wash your mouth. That was so so this
Speaker 1: is the account of the first Europeans that made it
Speaker 1: in land into North America. So uh, it was Cabeza
Speaker 1: dive and Uh. I mean they were the first guys
Speaker 1: that like went in land, and he describes It's been
Speaker 1: a while since I've read it, but they described the
Speaker 1: tribes that they encountered, but they described the topography and
Speaker 1: the land, and that's This book is a document that
Speaker 1: tells current biographers of the of of the just what
Speaker 1: this place looked like in terms of vegetation and stuff.
Speaker 1: And it's really interesting. You know, I hadn't read this
Speaker 1: book in several years. Um, I know, I'm just saying
Speaker 1: I've kind of forgotten exactly Cabeza de Vaca landed in
Speaker 1: Florida in fifty Yeah, first guys, pretty wild man. I
Speaker 1: remember there was a story in here about a man
Speaker 1: getting killed crossing the river. Oh, I do remember. They
Speaker 1: came to this raging river. So they had this like
Speaker 1: regiment of men that they had had animals with them
Speaker 1: and pigs with them, and like they had to carry
Speaker 1: everything they would need to survive. And they came to
Speaker 1: this raging river and there was this young guy that
Speaker 1: was like, we can cross here, and everybody else was like, man,
Speaker 1: I don't think we can. And this dude jumped in
Speaker 1: the river with his horse and tried to cross this river,
Speaker 1: and he drowned. He and his horse drowned, and they
Speaker 1: went and found his body like a mile and a
Speaker 1: half downstream. Buried the man and ate the horse. Pretty serious.
Speaker 1: Um so these two books by beargreas Hero and Alumni
Speaker 1: Brooks Blevins, The History of the Ozarks The Old Ozark's
Speaker 1: Part One. Isaac's read it so it really is it?
Speaker 1: It's so good. Yeah, wherever you live, you ought to
Speaker 1: know about the history where you live. This one is
Speaker 1: really one of my favorites. Arkansas, Arkansas by Brooks Abilies
Speaker 1: and good Old Boys defined the state really incredible, good yep.
Speaker 1: And then we're almost done. And then uh, Wild Sports
Speaker 1: by Frederick Gerstalker and then Against the Grain Richard Manning.
Speaker 1: This book is uh, kind of controversial, but guess what,
Speaker 1: So it's Burgher's podcast he forgot too really important. But
Speaker 1: oh yeah, this one, Dad Took Off Meat Eater by
Speaker 1: Steve Rinella. I read this years ago, long before I
Speaker 1: would have known Steve. This was in my list and
Speaker 1: it was just it's just a kind of a memoir.
Speaker 1: It's just like stories from his past. And I remember
Speaker 1: really being impacted by this book and just kind of
Speaker 1: the the musings inside of it. And then the last
Speaker 1: book that was in the stack was this book called
Speaker 1: The Life of Elijah by A. W. Pink. So Elijah
Speaker 1: a guy in the in the Bible, wild guy man.
Speaker 1: I love to lie you because he was he was
Speaker 1: from he was from a region. Basically, he was like
Speaker 1: a hillbilly in the Middle East for real, like they
Speaker 1: they were. They They're very little known about where he
Speaker 1: came from, except that the place he came from was
Speaker 1: like a wild, rural, rugged place. And he in the
Speaker 1: indication is that like he was like that, you know,
Speaker 1: the people of the hills reflected the nature of their environment.
Speaker 1: They were rough and rugged. Solomon Stern, dwelling in rude villages,
Speaker 1: subsisting by keeping flocks of sheep, hardened by an open
Speaker 1: air life, Dressed in a cloak of camel's hair, accustomed
Speaker 1: to spending most of the time in solitude, Possessed of
Speaker 1: a sinewy strength which enabled him to endure great physical strain,
Speaker 1: Elijah would present a market contrast with the town dwellers
Speaker 1: in the Lowland valleys, and especially he would be distinguished
Speaker 1: from the pampered courtiers of the Palace because he interacted
Speaker 1: with the King's so old. Elijah W. Pink. I don't
Speaker 1: really know where to start other than to say this
Speaker 1: series has been the most enjoyable of any podcast series
Speaker 1: I've ever built. And it's been because I have always
Speaker 1: been had a deep sense of place inside of my life,
Speaker 1: like I like being from somewhere that we've kind of
Speaker 1: just been from there a long time. And so the
Speaker 1: fact that this is these were not stories that I
Speaker 1: was reading about in a book, even though I wasn't there,
Speaker 1: and I didn't know these men well. I mean on
Speaker 1: a personal level, I did not know these men. Well.
Speaker 1: I was just a kid growing up while these guys
Speaker 1: were kind of in their prime. And I mean I
Speaker 1: probably haven't seen these men since I was eighteen years
Speaker 1: old or something, you know, So it's not like I
Speaker 1: was close to these guys. What it kind of felt
Speaker 1: like and and and and and what and I think
Speaker 1: and I've attributed this to Dad this so many times,
Speaker 1: but when Dad would so Dad was a banker, and
Speaker 1: I remember he used to take us all over to
Speaker 1: sea customers that had killed a big deer or for
Speaker 1: whatever reason. We remember multiple times going to people's houses
Speaker 1: way out in the country and it was just I mean,
Speaker 1: you probably wouldn't have known that that was impacting, and
Speaker 1: I probably didn't know it was impacting until later in
Speaker 1: my life. But you know, you were kind of you
Speaker 1: enjoyed these rural people and these stories. And then you
Speaker 1: told me stories about Charlie and Louis Dell and and
Speaker 1: we we You did take me to a bowshoot out
Speaker 1: at their house when they had a catfish fry and
Speaker 1: a bow shoot in a mule ride one time. Now
Speaker 1: that was when you were an adulto, not with Louis
Speaker 1: del Yeah. Yeah, it just so I enjoyed going back
Speaker 1: to where I'm from and minding out these stories for
Speaker 1: these guys. So no, and I'm very interested in Like
Speaker 1: I thought it was great last time when Brent was like, no,
Speaker 1: I'm not endeared to these guys. Um, that's why I
Speaker 1: have you here. I don't have you. I don't have
Speaker 1: you here too. You know, tell me something I want
Speaker 1: to hear, um. But I think it would be good
Speaker 1: to have a discussion about the different components of it,
Speaker 1: because I think sometimes it's easy to hear one well
Speaker 1: I don't think this. I know this, and I'm not
Speaker 1: saying that's the case here, but a lot of times
Speaker 1: inside of a robust story, people get you can get
Speaker 1: hung up on one thing and you hear that throughout
Speaker 1: the whole thing, when maybe that's not even exactly what
Speaker 1: you're even talking about. Do you understand what I'm saying?
Speaker 1: And inside of this series, I tried to make a
Speaker 1: distinction between two different things. We use the words differently,
Speaker 1: but poachers and then this outlaw archetype. You know, so
Speaker 1: there's a there's a difference, Like I don't I'm not
Speaker 1: endeared to poaching at all. Yeah, I mean, like, that's
Speaker 1: that's not what this is about. It was more about
Speaker 1: why an endearment to an outlaw archetype, which in my
Speaker 1: opinion is an undeniable thing that's inside of our culture,
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean that every single person responds to that
Speaker 1: the same way. So I just want to yeah, so
Speaker 1: it's like not everybody's Yeah, there might be something inside
Speaker 1: of someone that really responds to that, and maybe less
Speaker 1: than something else, but pretty much undeniable that in our culture,
Speaker 1: that that is something that's happening. How do we start this?
Speaker 1: I sent a message to Clay and said Part three
Speaker 1: was fire fire Fire with a side of fire fire
Speaker 1: fire and that It's like I felt like I was
Speaker 1: watching the c s I on on on podcasts, But
Speaker 1: what a fascinating, fascinating, fascinating story. It always amazes me
Speaker 1: that that these kind of stories happen and nobody really
Speaker 1: knows about it. You know, who whatever known about Louis
Speaker 1: Dale and Charlie Edwards and the game and fish staying
Speaker 1: operation that was going on with them. I love that
Speaker 1: someone reached out to you and said, listen, I got
Speaker 1: a little insider information for you that that was that
Speaker 1: was pretty cool. But just to listen to him talk
Speaker 1: about his interactions with Louis Dale, I mean it was
Speaker 1: it was clear that that I love the relational aspect
Speaker 1: of Louis Dale. I mean, even even with someone like that,
Speaker 1: he he legitimately just wanted to help this guy. You know,
Speaker 1: there's a side of I've met guys like Louis Dale,
Speaker 1: and there's a side of that wants that they want
Speaker 1: to take you under their wing. And at the same
Speaker 1: I knew a guy in the construction business that that
Speaker 1: that kind of took me under his wing when I
Speaker 1: when I had a construction company, and uh, I knew
Speaker 1: I didn't want to necessarily be like him, but I
Speaker 1: appreciated what he had to offer me. And I think
Speaker 1: there's a lot of people that that's part of the
Speaker 1: thing that they appreciated about Louis Delle is his his
Speaker 1: care and consideration and his his taking people under his wing.
Speaker 1: I mean, he was he was a he was an
Speaker 1: essence of provider for the for a lot of people
Speaker 1: in some way or another. But I thought, I thought
Speaker 1: this last part of the podcast was really really fascinating
Speaker 1: to hear um. I forgot what's the gentleman's name us, Yeah,
Speaker 1: rust Um talk about his interactions with them, and and
Speaker 1: also the game and fishes desire to just really they
Speaker 1: really wanted to catch them red handed with something that
Speaker 1: just couldn't seem to to do it. Clearly something was
Speaker 1: going on there that that there were kind of protected
Speaker 1: somehow from from that ever happening. Well, it was to
Speaker 1: me it was so interesting talking to Russ because there
Speaker 1: was actually another story that was told about a totally
Speaker 1: different story of them and an undercover guy that Louis
Speaker 1: Dell took and it we know there was multiple stings
Speaker 1: and so I only talked to one guy. So this
Speaker 1: this you know, happened according to the family, Louis Dell
Speaker 1: took a guy and he called up a gobbler for
Speaker 1: the guy before a season, and the guy wouldn't shoot it,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, he made in Louis Dell's mind,
Speaker 1: made an excuse why he wouldn't shoot it, and that
Speaker 1: all of a sudden was a red flag that this guy,
Speaker 1: you know, all the different circumstances that surrounded it. And
Speaker 1: Louis Dell came out of that one confident that he
Speaker 1: had entertained an undercover officer. And uh, and then in
Speaker 1: this situation with Russ, you know, clearly he was tipped
Speaker 1: off by someone on the inside about it, which was
Speaker 1: it was reason to believe, but he also came out
Speaker 1: of it apparently extremely confident that Russ was an undercover agent,
Speaker 1: because he he told that to Andy just so strongly,
Speaker 1: just like, yeah, for sure this guy was another coover agent.
Speaker 1: And the way that I thought about it is you
Speaker 1: only get so many strikes at somebody. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: just like, do they just keep sending the guy from
Speaker 1: another state. I'm from Kentucky in March, where you only
Speaker 1: get so many strikes at these guys and pretty soon
Speaker 1: you just run out of options. And what Russ said though,
Speaker 1: was so valuable. I felt like when he said, how
Speaker 1: hard is it to to to not be able to
Speaker 1: catch a a guy that's got so much land and
Speaker 1: got and wardens with so many limitations, And basically he
Speaker 1: said off air, he said, guys like that are almost
Speaker 1: impossible to catch. I mean, he just said, he just
Speaker 1: straight up said, you just almost can't catch these guys,
Speaker 1: and so you get a couple of couple of shots.
Speaker 1: You know. The thing that that hit me in a
Speaker 1: little hesitant to say it because I really respect this
Speaker 1: Russ and I really feel like he's probably top echelon.
Speaker 1: I mean, you couldn't have gotten a better guy, So
Speaker 1: I'm not taken away from his professionalism. But undercover on
Speaker 1: a Turkish thing, you're probably okay. But undercover in another
Speaker 1: situation you get killed. So if you contact me and go,
Speaker 1: you won't go undercover. I'm gonna go. Who knows about this?
Speaker 1: You know? If I go, you and I are the
Speaker 1: only two that know about it. Your wife doesn't know
Speaker 1: about it. My wife doesn't know about it. So probably
Speaker 1: because it was a Turkey operation, it was handled a
Speaker 1: little too loosely, I would say, because that should have
Speaker 1: never gotten out. See I have a feeling that that's
Speaker 1: just the structure of because see they would have to
Speaker 1: let the game and fish know, they would have to
Speaker 1: let other people in enforcement. No, I was thinking about
Speaker 1: it because what happens if Russ Arthur is out with
Speaker 1: Louis Dell and get stuffed by the game warden, or
Speaker 1: if the other one other person he knows something happens
Speaker 1: to him and he dies and Russ Arthur's out there
Speaker 1: doing illegal stuff and no one knows but him and
Speaker 1: this other you know, the like say a person has
Speaker 1: a heart at that say the other person he knows
Speaker 1: has a heart attack. Like if it's you and one
Speaker 1: other person that knows and that person has a heart attack,
Speaker 1: this could be a movie. But it is a movie.
Speaker 1: I mean it's there's a couple of different like where
Speaker 1: it's an undercover sting. They're trying to keep it tight.
Speaker 1: Two people know. One guy dies, so the other guy
Speaker 1: is out, yes, and no one knows it sanction. Oh
Speaker 1: you didn't think this through, Gary? Did you understand what
Speaker 1: she just said? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, Well I don't buy
Speaker 1: any of that. I mean, you know, I can tell
Speaker 1: you what happens. Yeah, here's our man. That's you. What
Speaker 1: I wanted to hear, you go to jail. So that's
Speaker 1: what I did. When you're out with the folks and
Speaker 1: you're you're playing the game, and I'm using air quotes
Speaker 1: for game because it's not a game. Yeah, you're literally
Speaker 1: putting your life on the line for your paycheck, and
Speaker 1: what happens when you go In my case, it was
Speaker 1: to tell us what you did because people wouldn't know
Speaker 1: is he allowed to do that? Well, I can tell
Speaker 1: this has all been adjudicated, and it's been real nervous
Speaker 1: about all the people involved in this post A long
Speaker 1: time ago. But I was in a in a place
Speaker 1: in South Arkansas, in a bar. We were in there
Speaker 1: buying drugs and the local place didn't ye aren't just
Speaker 1: I can tell you my name. My name was James
Speaker 1: Jay David Miller. I've got an Arkansas driver's license at
Speaker 1: home that has its own number and law enforcement. We
Speaker 1: were in this place that's known to be selling drugs
Speaker 1: and that's that's why I was in there. Me and
Speaker 1: another agent were in there and we were working and
Speaker 1: then the local police comes in and they they running
Speaker 1: folks out left and right, and people are getting arrested,
Speaker 1: and we fell right in there with the rest of them.
Speaker 1: So and you don't tell anybody, Hey, you don't arrest me.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm really I'm really a policeman. Now, you
Speaker 1: don't do that. You just go with the flow, is yeah,
Speaker 1: and when it's all over with you because they're not
Speaker 1: gonna get the right guy anyway. So but that that's
Speaker 1: that's what happens. That's what you do. And that's that's
Speaker 1: exactly what Russ would have done the local game warden
Speaker 1: unless he walked up, you know, and recognized him, like us,
Speaker 1: what are you doing here? Why don't you know those guys?
Speaker 1: And out you know it was But but that's that
Speaker 1: happening to him, somebody, no one and and talking when
Speaker 1: they shouldn't have talked. Is the very thing that the
Speaker 1: reason why nobody knew that we were working in that
Speaker 1: in that bar, it's because loose lips sink ships. That's
Speaker 1: that's the old saying, you know, General War two. So
Speaker 1: you you and I'm not saying I disagreed with him,
Speaker 1: I'm just saying so you obviously, well even Russ said it.
Speaker 1: He said the structure of the Forest Service came back
Speaker 1: to bite him. Yeah, that's what he said. And he
Speaker 1: actually went into a lot of detail with me about
Speaker 1: the structure of the Forest Service today and how it's
Speaker 1: much different like basically back then there was a lot
Speaker 1: of room for He went into a lot of detail
Speaker 1: that was was basically was like most of the stuff
Speaker 1: these days is now all self contained. It's kind of
Speaker 1: operates autonomously without it's all on the need to know basis,
Speaker 1: and that that's the way that we we did it
Speaker 1: in the drug culture and the drug enforcement was we
Speaker 1: would talk. Normally, the prosecutor in the district would be
Speaker 1: the only person that knew that we were in there working,
Speaker 1: and it would usually be at the request of them
Speaker 1: that we were there. Anyway, did Rust say that only
Speaker 1: four or five people knew though? Didn't he save that
Speaker 1: on the podcast? Well, I don't remember how many he
Speaker 1: said new he said very few. You're like a handful
Speaker 1: of the way I took it, And he may have
Speaker 1: said that it wasn't very many. What do you think
Speaker 1: of the sting operation part? I mean, not not dissect
Speaker 1: and how they did, but just it was it he
Speaker 1: called him, yeah, he called him yeah, yeah, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: and uh had it not been for the person that
Speaker 1: they gave him the warning, I think they would have
Speaker 1: got him even more so. So, I mean he he
Speaker 1: was caught and and his to his point about uh evading,
Speaker 1: you know, most counties in Arkansas have two wildlife officers,
Speaker 1: some of them even back then, only had one, and
Speaker 1: some counties back then didn't have any. So you have
Speaker 1: one wildlife officer spread thin, you know, between two counties,
Speaker 1: and he's got you know, the Edwards guys. They had
Speaker 1: to look out for Mr Martin. Mr Martin had to
Speaker 1: look out for everybody. It's a lot easier for them
Speaker 1: to do what they did. And because they did not,
Speaker 1: because he didn't catch him, didn't make him not a
Speaker 1: good game boarden. One of the I think a really
Speaker 1: interesting thing to that point is the idea that uh,
Speaker 1: their their community connections were not happenstance part of this.
Speaker 1: But it seems like if you keep running back to it,
Speaker 1: it's like it's not that nobody knew, it's that they're
Speaker 1: they're standing in the community and people's fondness for them
Speaker 1: kept protecting them. If you think about like, there are
Speaker 1: plenty of poachers to get caught all the time, and
Speaker 1: they're usually pretty. There's there are scoundrels. You know, they're
Speaker 1: they're not they're not upstanding citizens or whatever in these
Speaker 1: other aspects of their lives. But the reason this is
Speaker 1: so unique is probably the reason that it's so unique.
Speaker 1: I cannot argue with that, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: Like it's it's it's it's not it's not that they
Speaker 1: were great uh ativating the law in a in a
Speaker 1: in a vacuum. It's that these these facets of their
Speaker 1: life work together too continually pull them out of the fire.
Speaker 1: And I know, and I when I was thinking about
Speaker 1: it this last podcast, I was thinking that all that
Speaker 1: you know, they if they've been one out and killed
Speaker 1: three turkeys or whatever the limit was back then, and
Speaker 1: those other twenty thirty or forty or however many it's
Speaker 1: supposed to be. If they would have took that many
Speaker 1: kids out and let them kill their first turkey, how
Speaker 1: much we wouldn't be having this podcast today, will be
Speaker 1: talking about some criminal. These guys would be beyond a pedestal,
Speaker 1: beyond anything we could see, because that that would have
Speaker 1: that would have endeared me to them. So that that
Speaker 1: was that was my only my biggest takeaway and like,
Speaker 1: and I want to reiterate, I'm not saying these guys
Speaker 1: are bad people there. They can't. If Gary Newcom thinks
Speaker 1: of them, then I've got to because I respect him
Speaker 1: that much. You not so much, but Gary. Yeah, But
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm just saying that there was a lot
Speaker 1: of what's the what's theyll saying one one mess up
Speaker 1: will take away a whole bunch of ada boys, and
Speaker 1: that just I couldn't be endeared to it. That was
Speaker 1: just my take on it. When when I listened to
Speaker 1: that render after the first episode, I wondered if your
Speaker 1: experience and law enforcement in some of the conversations we
Speaker 1: had had helped to inform your understanding of that dog story.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, well it's just I can. To me, that
Speaker 1: was a no brainer. There's there's no way I love
Speaker 1: that coon dog in my house. My wife would give
Speaker 1: one of her kidneys in both of mine for it.
Speaker 1: And I love that dog, but there's no way I
Speaker 1: would put that dog in front of your lot or
Speaker 1: somebody I don't even know. Well, so, like in in
Speaker 1: my brain, I hear that anecdote and I go, that's
Speaker 1: a funny anecdote. But I've never been on the receiving
Speaker 1: like in a legitimate position where like, am I gonna
Speaker 1: get killed right now? Like? Does this guy really mean
Speaker 1: that he'll shoot me if I shoot his dog? Takes
Speaker 1: somebody at your word when it comes to that, So
Speaker 1: you know, it's a. It's a. It's a. It's really a.
Speaker 1: To me, it's black and white. Yeah, that's it's not right,
Speaker 1: that's wrong. It's the wrong way to look at it.
Speaker 1: And I will go so far as to I don't
Speaker 1: want to upset anyone in the room or anybody that's
Speaker 1: been on this podcast before, but those guys were allly
Speaker 1: successful doing that because people didn't talk about it or
Speaker 1: they wouldn't talk about it, and if they had, you know,
Speaker 1: the way I look at it, in the way the
Speaker 1: law looks at it. If you if you witness something,
Speaker 1: witness them do something wrong, and you don't talk about
Speaker 1: it and you don't report it, well then you're just
Speaker 1: as culpable as they are in some form, you know.
Speaker 1: I just think it was going back to the reason
Speaker 1: why we did this, because it certainly would be maybe
Speaker 1: unusual inside the outdoor space to talk about outlaws, poachers
Speaker 1: and put any kind of positive light on them. And
Speaker 1: I'll tell you the reason I did it is because
Speaker 1: the real world of my like, I wanted to explore
Speaker 1: this thing that I experienced, which was, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: we liked these guys, but their notorious turkey outlaws. And
Speaker 1: then to hear Russ say that this is very common
Speaker 1: and man, hey all foreshadow, we're probably gonna have us
Speaker 1: back on because he's got some stories. Man, And and
Speaker 1: he did. Y'all think it was wild? What the list
Speaker 1: of things he pulled out of the air about the
Speaker 1: type of people that these would be. He he intentionally,
Speaker 1: he told me, he said, Clay, I did not listen
Speaker 1: to these podcasts before, he said, I didn't want to
Speaker 1: be fed any kind of narrative about who these guys were.
Speaker 1: And so, I mean, these would have been one of
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know if hundreds, probably not hundreds,
Speaker 1: but of undercover operations. So like, it's not like these
Speaker 1: guys even would have stood out much to him. Probably
Speaker 1: inside of his career, there has just been some guys
Speaker 1: that he worked, you know, So it's not like he
Speaker 1: knew them. He was just involved in their life for
Speaker 1: about a month. And then for him to say what
Speaker 1: he said and then at the end him saying like
Speaker 1: this is a Southern phenomena, which he and you know,
Speaker 1: there's only so much you can do in a twenty
Speaker 1: minute conference, Like I talked to russall Arthur for two hours, solid,
Speaker 1: NonStop action packed two hours. Y'all heard twenty two minutes
Speaker 1: of it. And what he said was that this thing
Speaker 1: is a phenomena of the Southern United States. And it's
Speaker 1: not that there aren't there's poachers everywhere, so it's not
Speaker 1: to say that poaching only happens here, but this these
Speaker 1: deeply entrenched families and they have a lot of similarities
Speaker 1: to the situation. We're talking about. People that live of
Speaker 1: and way back in the in some area. They usually
Speaker 1: have a very tight geographic area that they're working, they've
Speaker 1: been there for a long time, a lot of community
Speaker 1: support um and and I just thought that was so
Speaker 1: interesting because I was a part of that, Like I
Speaker 1: was in that community, and so it's like, I want
Speaker 1: to talk about this. I think it's interesting that you're
Speaker 1: saying that as well as if if you combine it
Speaker 1: with what Daniel talked about inside of inside of that,
Speaker 1: because if you look at the South, the South has
Speaker 1: a long history of being the inferior to the North
Speaker 1: inside as as a function of its identity. Um, if
Speaker 1: you look at in even as early as like the
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds, you'll see that all of the people, the writers,
Speaker 1: the intellectuals of the day, the influencers of that day,
Speaker 1: would talk about the South as like the other and
Speaker 1: they even had other names for the South. And this
Speaker 1: is pre Civil War, this is this was like a beginning.
Speaker 1: So there was a sense of inferiority. And I think
Speaker 1: that that kind of connects a little bit to what
Speaker 1: Daniel was talking about with the outlaw. And even like
Speaker 1: you you play a clip of The Godfather and there's
Speaker 1: this there's a but there was a sense of we
Speaker 1: have to pursue justice on our own because we are
Speaker 1: on the outs of society. In the instance of the Godfather,
Speaker 1: you're talking about a family that would be newly migrated
Speaker 1: to this nation. In the instance of the South, you're
Speaker 1: talking about people who are separated for all sorts of
Speaker 1: reasons and perceive themselves as inferior. And if that's a
Speaker 1: Southern phenomenon, that that is interesting to me. How it
Speaker 1: goes along with the that that theoretical belief that your
Speaker 1: outlaws exist when people don't trust the authority structures in place,
Speaker 1: and a lot of times you don't trust because you
Speaker 1: feel on the outskirts of Yeah. So the genesis of
Speaker 1: like figuring out how to tell this story came on
Speaker 1: a road trip, right, and you were just sort of
Speaker 1: talking about this story that you wanted to tell, talking
Speaker 1: on the phone with mob buddy. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: And he was telling for whatever reason that Louisville came
Speaker 1: up like just naturally on the phone, and then you
Speaker 1: told me a little bit about the story. And we're saying, like, man,
Speaker 1: I want to tell this story about how do we
Speaker 1: get there? We just started kicking around ideas and I
Speaker 1: was really enamored by the nuance of the story, the
Speaker 1: idea that like, we we have these people in our lives.
Speaker 1: I can think of somebody in a totally different sphere,
Speaker 1: but like really endeared to them, they're really good to
Speaker 1: us or whatever, and also have this part of their
Speaker 1: being that you don't like. And so like in the
Speaker 1: like um popular site guys today, uh, not just with
Speaker 1: people but all things, we wanted to distill it down
Speaker 1: to a binary operation good or bad, black or white. UM,
Speaker 1: And I thought it would be really interesting to take
Speaker 1: a look at it from a perspective of like I
Speaker 1: just just basically like a peek behind the curtain. I
Speaker 1: really like these guys, and I really don't like this thing.
Speaker 1: What's that about? Right? And I think like that the
Speaker 1: aspect of their personalities, that outlaw aspect that you like,
Speaker 1: is really interesting and nuanced because in this case it
Speaker 1: manifests in a way that is abhorrent, which is poaching. Like, uh, my,
Speaker 1: my dad brought up I was talking to him about
Speaker 1: the podcast, and he brought up the irony of doing
Speaker 1: a podcast series about turkeys and how they're all disappearing
Speaker 1: and how your kids aren't going to get latched on
Speaker 1: because the turkeys aren't here, and then following it up
Speaker 1: with like this podcast about guys who are killing too
Speaker 1: many turkeys. So um, but in this case, the outlaw
Speaker 1: predilection manifests in a very negative way. But um. Talking
Speaker 1: about Brooks Blevins and the history of the Ozarks, I'm
Speaker 1: reading the third installment of it that now. And one
Speaker 1: of the things that he touches on is the s
Speaker 1: Forest Service erecting watch towers for wildfires. Right, well, one
Speaker 1: of the main reasons that they did that was to
Speaker 1: prevent locals from doing controlled burns on their lands, and
Speaker 1: people continue to do it even after they outlawed it.
Speaker 1: So they erected these things to watch for it and
Speaker 1: basically knock on their neighbors. Well, history has looked back
Speaker 1: on that and said controlled burns are really good and
Speaker 1: they actually helped prevent forest fires, and so that outlaw
Speaker 1: manifestation was right. And so like, what do you do
Speaker 1: with this thing that like is endearing, but like sometimes
Speaker 1: it has really negative and bad consequences and sometimes in
Speaker 1: the course of time it's proven to be correct. You know,
Speaker 1: what do you do with that? That's an interesting tension
Speaker 1: that you just have to kind of sit with. And
Speaker 1: that's kind of what we were getting that with the
Speaker 1: conversation with Daniel Route, is that the archetype of the
Speaker 1: outlaw is very valuable. Yeah, and there's artifacts of it
Speaker 1: inside of all of our lives. Like, you know, we
Speaker 1: were joking about our neighbor down here being a tomato
Speaker 1: plant outlaw because because he does he does stuff a
Speaker 1: little different than other people, and so it's like and
Speaker 1: and and it's like, yeah, he's he's he's a bad guy.
Speaker 1: He's doing it different, he's pioneering a new way to
Speaker 1: do it. It's like that is a that is a
Speaker 1: Western culture thing with where we hat tip to the
Speaker 1: guy that's outside the systems calls the system out. And
Speaker 1: so the fact that again, if Louis l and Charlie
Speaker 1: had just been poachers, I wouldn't be that interested in them.
Speaker 1: It wasn't it's that, it's that they were outlaws, like
Speaker 1: that that was the idea that they had. They they
Speaker 1: showed that in the way that they just like everything
Speaker 1: that they did, like they and and and I think
Speaker 1: there's a nuance thing because, like you said, like so
Speaker 1: much of what they did, like I don't condone fighting,
Speaker 1: I don't condone making the legal moon shot. I don't
Speaker 1: condone all this stuff. I think it's interesting. It's not
Speaker 1: just that they're outlaws though, right, it's the enigma of
Speaker 1: like everybody has so many good things. They paid off
Speaker 1: the farm, they helped with my medical bills, they whatever,
Speaker 1: and their outlaws, right, just a straight up outlaw. You know,
Speaker 1: you can think of instances of people in the wild
Speaker 1: West where guy just goes from town to town murdering people.
Speaker 1: That's I don't find that endearing. But like the guy
Speaker 1: who sees injustice and is willing to trespass the the
Speaker 1: balunds of the law in order to bring that into
Speaker 1: alignment is fascinating. The guy who's sort of doing good.
Speaker 1: It's in the context of like poaching that you go, So,
Speaker 1: so are you saying poaching is okay? Is that? Were
Speaker 1: they doing the right thing there? Right? Yeah? They were
Speaker 1: not doing the right thing. But and I think that's
Speaker 1: the whole thing that you said in our initial conversation
Speaker 1: in the truck, is that it's like Sue, it would
Speaker 1: be super nuanced. Yeah, so like, yeah, you could go, oh,
Speaker 1: they made a podcast and they're soft on poaching. If
Speaker 1: you say that, you're idiot. Go ahead, you just didn't listen.
Speaker 1: You didn't go listen to someone else's podcast. Um, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's it's nuanced, and it's deep and it's and
Speaker 1: this is this is what I was gonna say a
Speaker 1: minute ago. There's something inside of it about personal relationship
Speaker 1: with someone. Because I promise you if this was a
Speaker 1: story about some guys from Alabama that I didn't know,
Speaker 1: I wasn't connect to that community, I didn't I would
Speaker 1: probably just be like what a bunch of thugs. Well,
Speaker 1: I can I can tell you from firsthand. I didn't
Speaker 1: know these guys. So when you talk, I'm like, man,
Speaker 1: I like these guys. And then when Brent talks, I'm like, man,
Speaker 1: I don't know about these guys, Like I don't have
Speaker 1: anything personally invested. But there's something about And again I'm
Speaker 1: not saying it's right. I'm not what I said on
Speaker 1: the podcast that it probably makes me a hypocrite. So
Speaker 1: like on the record, like I realized, but there is
Speaker 1: something about knowing someone that makes you more compassion and
Speaker 1: Russ said it. You know, Russ actually scripted out real well.
Speaker 1: He said, if you know these people in your community
Speaker 1: that are generous and compelling people, and you like them like,
Speaker 1: you don't want to get them in trouble. In these
Speaker 1: tight knit communities function off of personal relationships. I mean,
Speaker 1: but before we made this podcast, I didn't think I
Speaker 1: could get people to talk. I went to my dad
Speaker 1: and another friend and I said, would y'all talk about
Speaker 1: Charlie Louis Dell And basically, I mean without the families permission,
Speaker 1: I don't think Dad would even open his mouth about
Speaker 1: any of this. Like but It's like I was like, no,
Speaker 1: they're okay with this, They said we could do this.
Speaker 1: They like this. That's the only way that Like I
Speaker 1: had people that I interviewed, calling the family to make
Speaker 1: sure that I was telling the truth. You know, just
Speaker 1: like like that personal relationship is super meaningful, and it's
Speaker 1: just interesting how how that that personal connection could make
Speaker 1: you see something not different because again we're not talking
Speaker 1: about where the poaching is right or wrong. We're just
Speaker 1: talking about it. Really it really shows the effect of
Speaker 1: being that being cared for produces in someone, because I
Speaker 1: think a large portion of the community there felt cared
Speaker 1: for by Louis like and because of that. I mean,
Speaker 1: think about it in your marriage. If you love your wife,
Speaker 1: you're gonna overlook things. You know, you're gonna you're gonna
Speaker 1: overlook things because you love her and you care and
Speaker 1: and you see the side of her that makes that
Speaker 1: other thing a moot point. And so I think in
Speaker 1: people's minds as they felt very cared for and that
Speaker 1: is just a natural response to that, to that expression
Speaker 1: to them. Well, also, the community was not reporting these
Speaker 1: guys for killing too many turkeys. I don't I would
Speaker 1: be willing to bet all the people that wouldn't snitch
Speaker 1: on them for that. If they drove by the house
Speaker 1: and they were beating the young un out there with
Speaker 1: a stick, thea called some Well do you think dad, Well,
Speaker 1: it's it's really too complicated for me. I like um
Speaker 1: Rest's ability of mouth call, which is what I the
Speaker 1: rest of this stuff to me. You know, you you
Speaker 1: can you can tell what you think. You can study this.
Speaker 1: We don't really know why we like certain things, but
Speaker 1: we like entertainment. I like Michael Jordan's he's different, he's special,
Speaker 1: He's worked hard. Jesse James, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: I like to hear the stories entertaining Charlie and Louis.
Speaker 1: There'll be a nice guys, man. Our whole community has
Speaker 1: made up a nice guys, but they were a little different.
Speaker 1: And um you can go anywhere you want and pick
Speaker 1: one guy out of the community and you probably could
Speaker 1: make an interesting podcast out of it. You know, you
Speaker 1: look at we need to do that. We need to
Speaker 1: just pick a guy. You probably could you look through
Speaker 1: history and Kick Carson and you know, Daniel Boone and
Speaker 1: you know, these guys made a name for themselves, but
Speaker 1: there was probably a thousand other guys that were really
Speaker 1: vital to what happened. And you know, but you didn't
Speaker 1: have somebody, you know, so I don't know. There may
Speaker 1: have been somebody else down there and made a smashing
Speaker 1: turkeys more than they were, but they just didn't talk
Speaker 1: about Jimmy Martin's what I said. Were Louis and Charlie
Speaker 1: like the most notorious guys you ever caught. And he
Speaker 1: just said or chased and he said, oh not really.
Speaker 1: I mean they weren't they they were they were they
Speaker 1: were Russ. Russ was just he was just like, oh yeah, Diamond,
Speaker 1: dozen guys like this. I mean he really said that.
Speaker 1: You know, I didn't like them because they were Turkey Poacher.
Speaker 1: Had nothing to do with me liking those guys. I'm
Speaker 1: telling you I might be different. It had nothing to
Speaker 1: do with it. It. It was intriguing, you know, like
Speaker 1: if if you walked in the bank and you were
Speaker 1: involved in some criminal activity that everybody in Mina knew about,
Speaker 1: like the Mina connection deal. Yeah, I mean it was
Speaker 1: really I mean, you just wanted to sit down and
Speaker 1: talk to him maybe what happened, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just intriguing. But these were just good people that
Speaker 1: we liked. And every now and then it would come
Speaker 1: up that they were turkey poachers, you know, and you go, well,
Speaker 1: they're good turkey hunters, you know. I mean, you didn't
Speaker 1: think of it as turkey poaching. You they were good hunters.
Speaker 1: And and you know, I don't know, it's you know,
Speaker 1: maybe I'm a little too close to it, but um,
Speaker 1: I just think about people. I like heroes, man. I
Speaker 1: like Sergeant York. You know, I enjoy Bonnie and Clyde.
Speaker 1: I've watched that movie so many times. H Jesse James.
Speaker 1: I mean, I just like the tough guys. I like
Speaker 1: to hear stories that happened at the bars in Oklahoma.
Speaker 1: Where did you like those stories? I did? And I think, yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean a buddy of mine walked in one day,
Speaker 1: pulls a shirt up. I might have told these guys
Speaker 1: about it, pulled his shirt up. I say, a buddy
Speaker 1: is acquaintance, how close worried? And he got he said
Speaker 1: look here one, two, three, four or five, six, seven,
Speaker 1: seven bullet holes in his chest. I mean, I like
Speaker 1: this guy, but because of the bullet holes and the
Speaker 1: stories that he had, I mean, you know, it's pretty cool. Entertaining,
Speaker 1: entertaining of of all the things, like I am never
Speaker 1: gonna tell much of a story on a on this
Speaker 1: podcast that isn't entertaining, Like that's part of this thing,
Speaker 1: Like people don't listen to the Burgers podcast because their
Speaker 1: mama makes them, you know, like you're not going to
Speaker 1: do it. Yeah, not anymore. You know. The other thing
Speaker 1: about the off the list, if they had not been
Speaker 1: chased by the law so hard, you know, they would
Speaker 1: have just been There's I can name two or three
Speaker 1: other guys in that community that killed lots of turkeys.
Speaker 1: That's kind of what's interesting to me is in all
Speaker 1: these stories, it's like, wow, this is a lot of
Speaker 1: resources they kind of drew attention to because they drew
Speaker 1: attention to themselves. Yeah. I think so. Probably just flouting convention,
Speaker 1: flouting though the law, showing up in front of the
Speaker 1: check station with your three birds unchecked. Yeah, that type
Speaker 1: of thing. Well, and you can't take out the human
Speaker 1: component of it, of like Jimmy Martin saying his supervisor
Speaker 1: wanted to catch these guys. Yeah, they're there there. I mean,
Speaker 1: humans make decisions. It's not like just the government has
Speaker 1: you know, drones out that they killed thirty six turkeys.
Speaker 1: They will now have an ndercover operator. No. I was like,
Speaker 1: somebody heard that. I was like, these guys, are you
Speaker 1: know they deserve this in the community that maybe weren't
Speaker 1: thrown around as much, probably killing as many. There's something
Speaker 1: somebody didn't like it, Yeah, or they would have never
Speaker 1: known about it. Yeah, because they wasn't talking that way
Speaker 1: in front of Jimmy Martin. So somebody in the community
Speaker 1: thought what they were doing was no bueno enough that
Speaker 1: they talked to somebody about it. It kind of makes
Speaker 1: them an underdog when they say I'll give an you
Speaker 1: a stake dinner. Who gets these people like it? It
Speaker 1: makes you almost root for him. Yeah, I mean I
Speaker 1: feel like it's a terrible way because America also lives underdog.
Speaker 1: I mean, at least and I don't think that would
Speaker 1: have been stuff that was known. You don't think so, No,
Speaker 1: I don't know, But I mean, like now listening to
Speaker 1: the story, it is a It is another thing that
Speaker 1: endears them, Like, all right, you got the whole force
Speaker 1: of the law breathing down your neck. Can you do it?
Speaker 1: Can you pull it out? You know? It's like that
Speaker 1: when you watch the movies about these guys, and and
Speaker 1: you find yourself just in your heart, not about louis
Speaker 1: Dale and Charlie, but about outlaws rooting for them. Like
Speaker 1: when there's it's time, you know, the law gets close
Speaker 1: to him and you're kind of wanting them to Britain,
Speaker 1: doesn't Gary does you kind of wanted to get away?
Speaker 1: You want them to your And and of course it's
Speaker 1: the directing, it's the producing, it's all that. But it's
Speaker 1: Bunny and Claude. They were murderers and robbers. I ain't
Speaker 1: seen the movie yet where I was cheering for them
Speaker 1: to win, not wonder them. I'm always like, go police, amen.
Speaker 1: And you know what, I didn't shoot. I've said this
Speaker 1: before in this podcast. I did not cheer for these guys.
Speaker 1: You know, if I don't know, you know when you
Speaker 1: turn on me and it's not gonna doing good. M
Speaker 1: you nobody already knew. Yeah, well, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: how are you gonna cat? You know? You you gotta
Speaker 1: catch them, so calling the game and fish and going,
Speaker 1: hey man, these guys killed a couple of little little
Speaker 1: bird Well, forget it. You ain't gonna catch him on
Speaker 1: a deal like that. Uh, but you know, they were
Speaker 1: just good. They were just good guys. I think most
Speaker 1: people enjoyed being around and um, they loved the notoriety though,
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, and that's what Russ called ego, which
Speaker 1: I thought was good that he did. I mean, just
Speaker 1: if we're being fair, I mean, you know, and when
Speaker 1: I went to the family, I told him, I said,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna tell both sides of this story. So I
Speaker 1: mean we we gave we gave him a lot of
Speaker 1: room to to tell the good parts of their story.
Speaker 1: And then I really liked that Russ just came in
Speaker 1: and said, these guys a lot of ego, which his
Speaker 1: definition of ego was exactly what they all said Louisville did,
Speaker 1: which was he wanted to be the guy that couldn't
Speaker 1: be caught. You know, it was a game to them.
Speaker 1: That equals ego. You know, we all like to be good.
Speaker 1: It's something known for something. You know, fly fisherman, great teacher.
Speaker 1: You know, all of us have something that we're a
Speaker 1: little better at than other people. Isaac tattoos, leg tattoos, Yeah,
Speaker 1: into a building or a room, you know, they had
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, I'm louis Dale, you know, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: I'm the best hunter in the county. I mean, it
Speaker 1: was something to be proud of it, except it was
Speaker 1: illegal what he was doing anyway. Yeah, I mean, so
Speaker 1: much of what all of us do is motivated by ego, Like,
Speaker 1: so much of what I do is motivated by ego,
Speaker 1: And on my best days, I recognize that and try
Speaker 1: not to be motivated by that. Did you think about
Speaker 1: that when you get that cow faced drawn on there?
Speaker 1: You gotta talk to John the Revelator about that. But like,
Speaker 1: you know, like we we like to be liked, we
Speaker 1: like to be known, we like to be like, and
Speaker 1: and if that is our sole motivator, it can trend
Speaker 1: towards negativity. But if we recognize it and sort of
Speaker 1: react to it and say like, hey, maybe that's not
Speaker 1: totally healthy, Like that's when we're we're thriving as humans. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So like when he said that, I was like, it
Speaker 1: didn't feel like an insult to me. It felt like, yep,
Speaker 1: I can identify with that. I can identify with sort
Speaker 1: of getting caught up in uh when when we when
Speaker 1: we get to drink in our own medicine or whatever,
Speaker 1: it sends us maybe down a less healthy path. M h. Correct.
Speaker 1: I still go back to just the idea of you
Speaker 1: had to know in their mind they felt these this
Speaker 1: sense of restrictions being put on them by game laws,
Speaker 1: and I think they had to they had to justify
Speaker 1: things in their minds. You know, I think about like
Speaker 1: bonding Clyde. There's no justifying just murdering people. But when
Speaker 1: it comes to like game laws and that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: And I guarantee that if you had confronted them on
Speaker 1: on violent tendencies, they'd probably say, well, I ain't never
Speaker 1: done anything to anybody that they didn't didn't do to me.
Speaker 1: But when it came to poaching, I'm sure they in
Speaker 1: their mind they thought, well, I'm not hurting anybody, and
Speaker 1: I'm actually helping people. And you know, Russ had a whole,
Speaker 1: a big part of what he talked about, and we
Speaker 1: may talk about this more at some point, but just
Speaker 1: about the damage that's done by recreational poaching, and in
Speaker 1: his mind, it all goes back to the opportunity lost
Speaker 1: to other people, which is like entirely true. I was
Speaker 1: saying a minute ago, and um, and so it's easy
Speaker 1: to say, you know, well, nobody's getting hurt from this
Speaker 1: or that. But but if you if you have, if
Speaker 1: you have a bigger picture of mine, you know, I
Speaker 1: mean it's like incredibly it is incredibly detrimental taking away
Speaker 1: and now in a time of great surplus, it's different.
Speaker 1: It does feel different. I mean like in the time yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and and uh but and what I'm saying is surplus
Speaker 1: of wildlife, you know, so like in a time. And
Speaker 1: I thought it was interesting and I thought it tied
Speaker 1: back into the other turkey podcasts that most of this
Speaker 1: went down during a massive blow up of turkeys in
Speaker 1: this part of the world. And so I mean, like
Speaker 1: that coincided. It's kind of interesting when you think about it,
Speaker 1: because we talked about Will Primos, who built his business
Speaker 1: and I and we made the connection that his the
Speaker 1: primost blowing up like it did corresponded with wild turkeys
Speaker 1: blowing up, and uh, and so this was the same thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, they were kind of riding a wave. And
Speaker 1: they weren't the only ones doing it. I mean they
Speaker 1: were you know, I told you I talked to a
Speaker 1: guy meat eater that knew some people in in uh,
Speaker 1: another state, in Missouri. Last time I was afraid the
Speaker 1: same Missouri I don't know why. Um, I didn't want
Speaker 1: to disclose too much. But yeah, anybody's done anything wrong
Speaker 1: in Missourian. Yeah, that's what I heard. The guys that
Speaker 1: were killing turkeys for every year of their how old
Speaker 1: they were killed turkeys up until they were forty, you know,
Speaker 1: kill that they try to kill as many turkeys in
Speaker 1: a year as their age and like that. You just
Speaker 1: couldn't do that today, I mean, job well, but then
Speaker 1: how detrimental that that would be. But it corresponded with
Speaker 1: this surplus of animals, you know. Um, But no, I
Speaker 1: think deep down the story it was just a it's
Speaker 1: a good story. And you know what, we've got to
Speaker 1: believe that. We don't have to believe this. I'm not
Speaker 1: saying this is something you choose to believe or not.
Speaker 1: This is just the architecture of human life. It's that
Speaker 1: we we learned about the present by connecting the stuff
Speaker 1: from the past. It's a matter of fact. In uh,
Speaker 1: this book by Alphelia, the author Edward Edward O Wilson.
Speaker 1: E O. Wilson is talking about he's trying to He's
Speaker 1: talking about humans ability to of of memory, historical memory
Speaker 1: is unprecedented in the animal kingdom, and that's what it is,
Speaker 1: something that distinctly makes as human as an ability to
Speaker 1: remember back fifty years to an incident. And by all indications,
Speaker 1: there's no other animal that has that clear of a memory,
Speaker 1: or most animals don't live as long as humans. But
Speaker 1: he said the subject of greatest immediate interest is long
Speaker 1: term memory. We are essentially what he said, we are
Speaker 1: essentially what we remember or can remember at some time
Speaker 1: in the future. Literally what we're standing on right now.
Speaker 1: The platform of consciousness that we stand on is what
Speaker 1: we remember. Like, we don't know what's going to happen
Speaker 1: a minute from now. We we cannot forecast that very act,
Speaker 1: very clearly. And he said people build memory by linking
Speaker 1: new images and concept two old ones. In its size
Speaker 1: and the space it feels, the mind expands like a
Speaker 1: coral reef, adding new branches and cross ties out from
Speaker 1: the edge of those parts already established and anchored, while
Speaker 1: it's central body sets aside and coalesces. Point being, why
Speaker 1: would we tell a story that obviously we're saying is
Speaker 1: negative in some ways, but looking at it through any
Speaker 1: positive lens that we can pull from it, It's like
Speaker 1: we got to look back at our history to learn
Speaker 1: what we should do in the future. And and it
Speaker 1: is my that that's my my biggest hope inside of
Speaker 1: all this as we talk about coaching and the culture
Speaker 1: around hunting and protection of wildlife wild resources, is that
Speaker 1: this wouldn't happen again. I mean that that we would
Speaker 1: just say, hey, don't part part of my driving inside
Speaker 1: of this is where are we driven by things we
Speaker 1: don't understand? And if I we're back inside, if that
Speaker 1: happened today in the community I live in now, I
Speaker 1: would be like, wait a minute, I'm being in there
Speaker 1: to a guy that maybe yeah, I shouldn't be or
Speaker 1: there are you know however it played out and just
Speaker 1: like not to get caught in something I think, I
Speaker 1: think it's maybe important, you know, when this gets locked
Speaker 1: in the vault, nuclear fallout has happened. They dig out
Speaker 1: this episode to learn how to manage game species and
Speaker 1: not poach in the future. To talk about the North
Speaker 1: American model of wildlife, and that is to say that
Speaker 1: the game is a collectively owned thing that needs to
Speaker 1: be managed at a community level so that all people
Speaker 1: have access and opportunity, as opposed to previous models in
Speaker 1: which um the aristocracy would fence off their land, manage
Speaker 1: their game, and get hunt and the proletariat would be
Speaker 1: able to do nothing. And so the problem with poaching
Speaker 1: is to say, no, I know better. I know you're
Speaker 1: telling me this is what we need for the herd health,
Speaker 1: but I know better and I'm going to take what
Speaker 1: I want. So when we distill it down, that's really
Speaker 1: the problem with poaching. And and that's the rub when
Speaker 1: you get into people like Charlie and Louisdell who are
Speaker 1: looking at the turkeys in their area and going like,
Speaker 1: we've got more than enough. This is not a problem.
Speaker 1: I got this like, and if they perceive the game
Speaker 1: laws as someone fence it off saying you can't, yeah, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: And that's part of the that's it's not true, but
Speaker 1: it's part of the problem. Absolutely. The thing is the
Speaker 1: thing about this the system that we have is it's
Speaker 1: not necessarily perfect, but it's the best system we've got.
Speaker 1: I've not seen a better system. Like, yeah, you can't
Speaker 1: kill as many turkeys as you used to be able to,
Speaker 1: but this is so that everyone can have an opportunity
Speaker 1: to kill a turkey or whatever. Hey, yeah, I've got
Speaker 1: a question for you. All, if this were made into
Speaker 1: a movie, who would be the star player, who would
Speaker 1: be the Tom selle Ach or who would act? Who
Speaker 1: would be the lead? Okay, I mean who would be
Speaker 1: the who would be the protagonist? Who would be the
Speaker 1: main guy, Louis Dale? Louis Dale, I say it would
Speaker 1: be Russ Oh, okay, that's who I say it would.
Speaker 1: I mean, I could go either way. But you know,
Speaker 1: that's what makes this story interesting is the law enforcement
Speaker 1: chasing these guys. If you didn't have that, it's not
Speaker 1: a movie. Yeah. So, I mean, you know, behind the scenes,
Speaker 1: you know, you're you're sitting it around the desk and
Speaker 1: you're going, Okay, here's you know, I really want to
Speaker 1: see Billy Bob Thornton in this movie. You'd be a
Speaker 1: good chip. I'd like Kevin Costar to play rest. It
Speaker 1: would be good. Yeah. I could be involved in the casting. WHOA,
Speaker 1: That is a bombshell. If you know what every one
Speaker 1: of your favorite scenes is going to be is when
Speaker 1: they get caught when they're young and the game warden goes, hey,
Speaker 1: would you give me a ride back to my truck?
Speaker 1: And yeah, and then they take off down that skid
Speaker 1: trail that that brings me back to something I wanted
Speaker 1: to say about russ earlier. One of the things that
Speaker 1: I loved about us. Wait a minute, hold on, I
Speaker 1: say one more thing, and that's why you're all hypocrites
Speaker 1: if you didn't like this, because that would be your
Speaker 1: favorite scene. Go ahead, russ I. One one reason that
Speaker 1: I loved him on the top level was that it
Speaker 1: validated the story. When you go into this, it can
Speaker 1: be easy to be like, oh, yeah, it's like every
Speaker 1: all these stories get inflated or whatever over time, because
Speaker 1: it's a community, Like you want your community to have
Speaker 1: this thing, and then to go to this guy who
Speaker 1: hasn't listened to it, who hasn't been there, only spent
Speaker 1: a month there, and then like basically corroborates it overall.
Speaker 1: It corroborates the story worries. But also I feel like
Speaker 1: what I really liked was that he mitigates the stories
Speaker 1: in which, like the beginning narrative is like they never
Speaker 1: got caught, and then as you like pars it out,
Speaker 1: it's like, well they got caught when they were young,
Speaker 1: Well there was that one time that they and then
Speaker 1: he's like, well we had them on a few things.
Speaker 1: But it just really didn't warrant breaking cover or whatever.
Speaker 1: And so all of these things together come together to
Speaker 1: paint a more organic picture of a human being as
Speaker 1: opposed to like a Robin Hood style legend or whatever.
Speaker 1: That was one thing that I really liked about Russ's
Speaker 1: you know, even Russ's thing about um, he could have
Speaker 1: caught him, but they didn't. It's like they didn't do it. Yep,
Speaker 1: they didn't get caught. They still didn't. They didn't get caught.
Speaker 1: I mean, now in Brent's I understand, yes, they did
Speaker 1: get caught, they just didn't get prosecuted. They didn't get prosecuted.
Speaker 1: You know, they lost, is what you're saying. They didn't
Speaker 1: win the game. They did not win the game. Um,
Speaker 1: I don't think that would go down like that today.
Speaker 1: I think they would, they would prosecute. I don't know
Speaker 1: the circumstances of that, but the mitigating factors that tell
Speaker 1: me that the reason they didn't because they we're planning
Speaker 1: to do it again. They were gonna send somebody else
Speaker 1: or yeah, to get something bigger. Yeah. It wasn't like
Speaker 1: all right, well just forget it, let's go home. No,
Speaker 1: there was something else happened there and that may have
Speaker 1: been the first one. It could have been, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, because they were there were multiple attempts.
Speaker 1: But also wouldn't you agree that there would kind of
Speaker 1: be a shelf life like you can't just like eventually
Speaker 1: you'd be like, Okay, I wonder what guy is going
Speaker 1: to show up this year and once with me? Yeah,
Speaker 1: And that's hard, man, that is so that is so hard.
Speaker 1: It's not. It's different than the drug culture. Becausing the
Speaker 1: drug culture. They're either addicted to the money or they're
Speaker 1: addicted to the drugs, and one of the others going
Speaker 1: to get them. It always does. This is a totally
Speaker 1: different drug, a totally different addiction of being able to
Speaker 1: sneak back into the house with a turkey before the
Speaker 1: season or or whatever. So it's that makes it twice
Speaker 1: or ten times. It's hard to get somebody doing that
Speaker 1: because they while they feel the need because it's spring
Speaker 1: time and turkeys are gobbling, they need to go kill one.
Speaker 1: It's not going to physically keep them from functioning if
Speaker 1: they don't because they think the police are getting close.
Speaker 1: We've had I had an undercover operation one time where
Speaker 1: I sent a guy in with a wire and he
Speaker 1: walked up to the door and knocked on the door,
Speaker 1: and the guy comes to the door and he calls
Speaker 1: him by name, and he says, Bob, I know you're
Speaker 1: working for the police. And Bob, not his real name,
Speaker 1: pulls a hundred dollar bill out of his pocket and
Speaker 1: you can hear the guy say, but I see you've
Speaker 1: got that money in your hand, and I'm gonna sell
Speaker 1: it to you. And he did, Wow, Uh, I know
Speaker 1: you're working for the police, but I said, you get
Speaker 1: that money, so almost sell it to you anyway, and
Speaker 1: he did and he went to prison. Well, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I suppose that's another interesting, uh factor that rest brings
Speaker 1: up is there's no like commercial side to it, Like
Speaker 1: there's no walking up to these guys and pulling out
Speaker 1: a hundred dollar bill and saying, kill me a turkey,
Speaker 1: take me to kill. That makes it also harder. It
Speaker 1: has to be off of that personal connection. And we
Speaker 1: could have a whole podcast just talking to Brand about
Speaker 1: cover work. That's why, and that's what people are gonna want.
Speaker 1: They're gonna be why were you all talking about all
Speaker 1: that sly stuff when you could have talked to Brand
Speaker 1: about undercover? Tell us your best undercover story brand I can't.
Speaker 1: Oh you can't. What do you mean? I can't tell
Speaker 1: you about it? It's happening right now. There's still working
Speaker 1: out protective services. Hey didn't surprise you that Russ was
Speaker 1: able to talk to me. No, it's something that had
Speaker 1: been adjudicated and he's retired, so I mean it wasn't
Speaker 1: owngoing operation. Those guys are you know, passed away? So well,
Speaker 1: what I what I asked him as I as I said,
Speaker 1: why would because he got clearance from where he needed
Speaker 1: to get clearance before he talked to me, and they
Speaker 1: were like pretty much whatever, And and I was trying
Speaker 1: to figure out how that would be good for the
Speaker 1: whole system, for the whole world to know that there
Speaker 1: are undercover agents out there that are working well because
Speaker 1: it and what his I'll tell you his response is
Speaker 1: he said, Clay, he said, us talking about what happened
Speaker 1: thirty years ago is irrelevant at today because he said,
Speaker 1: the tactics that we use back then are not even
Speaker 1: in the same ballpark. Basically, he said, today you've got
Speaker 1: to have a digital history. Like if I come to
Speaker 1: you and say my name is Bill Jones, I'm from Tennessee,
Speaker 1: I'm a bricklayer. Like you gotta have a Facebook account?
Speaker 1: You got was not started yesterday. They could go to Google.
Speaker 1: They can go to Google. Was a bill fold I
Speaker 1: had a bill folding and I had receipts in it
Speaker 1: from a transmission place in my undercover name. I had
Speaker 1: an arrest record that if like if you had a
Speaker 1: friend that was in law enforcement and said, hey, man,
Speaker 1: I met this guy, J David Miller, and he's from
Speaker 1: wherever I was. Wherever it? I said, I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: say that wherever this guy is from, this is date
Speaker 1: of birth. Will you run him see if he's legit
Speaker 1: or and he may give that officer or that someone
Speaker 1: who had access to that information a totally false story.
Speaker 1: It's somebody but that they trusted and they run a
Speaker 1: check on it. That check is gonna come up that
Speaker 1: me Brent Reeves also known as J. David Miller. All
Speaker 1: this is gonna say is Jay David Miller, dat of
Speaker 1: birth addresses on there in my criminal history. I had
Speaker 1: a fake criminal history on their violence with the police, Uh,
Speaker 1: resisting a wrist, all that kind of stuff, and that's
Speaker 1: that was how they did. Yeah, but that's just photo.
Speaker 1: I've said this before. I've said this before, I'll say
Speaker 1: it again. I am still not entirely convinced that Brent
Speaker 1: Rate is not an undercover agent sent by whoever. I
Speaker 1: don't even know who to come bust me, because if
Speaker 1: they make a podcast one day about my life and
Speaker 1: it turns out he is undercover, go down, It'll be
Speaker 1: like man, I called him and I played on his ego.
Speaker 1: And then because Brent called me just out of the blue,
Speaker 1: I don't even know how I got my phone number.
Speaker 1: It was like, hey, man, I really like what you're doing.
Speaker 1: I'd like to come film for you. Really, I'm film
Speaker 1: for it. That's weird. Uh. And then he was got
Speaker 1: that camera, so I'm gonna let you. And then so
Speaker 1: Brent's been like compiling video footage of me tried, waiting
Speaker 1: for me to break the law for all these years
Speaker 1: and just we're still waiting. You think three part series
Speaker 1: is something it's going to be. Would it be to
Speaker 1: be a double double agent? Yeah? Like what if Russ
Speaker 1: Arthur had come in and been like man, Louie Dell,
Speaker 1: I used to work for the government. I used to
Speaker 1: be an undercover agent. That would have been like getting
Speaker 1: trust you let's go uh revisiting a podcast series from yesteryear.
Speaker 1: Was Wilson Rawls an undercover agent? Oh? He might have been? Oh,
Speaker 1: and he just never surfaced and he just went to Oh,
Speaker 1: I guess I have to as handler done construct a
Speaker 1: nuclear power plant. Um. Okay, So I feel like we're
Speaker 1: we we've given some justice to the series. Uh. I
Speaker 1: would like to go around like what was the most
Speaker 1: if you don't if you choose not to have there's
Speaker 1: some of us that may choose not to have a
Speaker 1: favorite part because they don't want to have anything to
Speaker 1: do with this because they're that good at people. Well,
Speaker 1: I feel some conscious interesting part. So we'll say what
Speaker 1: was the most interesting story in all the series? Josh,
Speaker 1: I think you gotta go with with Russ. I mean
Speaker 1: just listening to his interactions with Louis Dale and just
Speaker 1: the covert nature of it. I mean, it's that's Hey,
Speaker 1: did you like the intro? How I had Andy tell
Speaker 1: the story and then I had him al who did
Speaker 1: you like that? I also I also thought what Daniel
Speaker 1: talked about. I also thought what Daniel talked about was
Speaker 1: very interesting. Talk to about what Daniel talking about because
Speaker 1: very interesting, I you know, in his conversation sation, I thought,
Speaker 1: you know, people always want some someone to blame to
Speaker 1: for my law, for my freedoms being taken away and
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff, which which always fuels fuels
Speaker 1: the outlaw nature. So yeah, I thought that was very
Speaker 1: really interesting. But the whole, the whole part with Russ
Speaker 1: listen to that was just cool. Man. I can't wait
Speaker 1: to for y'all to hear some more arrust the stories.
Speaker 1: I can't even tell you the punch lines to them,
Speaker 1: because there there's two of them that are pretty incredible.
Speaker 1: So Russ go around this way. Okay, Misty wants to
Speaker 1: go last. What what was your Misty? I'm not ready.
Speaker 1: H Turkey calls next Russ. Arthur Turkey calling yeah, him called, yeah,
Speaker 1: that was all this way. I'm really just kidding. I mean,
Speaker 1: I like the whole thing. I enjoyed the whole thing. Uh,
Speaker 1: I'm with Josh on his part validated it made it
Speaker 1: really special. Um, no one made it special, but uh,
Speaker 1: I mean just I'm just the whole thing was high quality,
Speaker 1: you know, I just I enjoyed every bit of it.
Speaker 1: And uh, you know, Dr Dan's take was interesting. But
Speaker 1: I think you've created a scenario where you could actually
Speaker 1: make a movie out of this thing, like you could
Speaker 1: many lives. This guy right here, probably we need a
Speaker 1: movie out of him. Brent will be the guy. They'll
Speaker 1: make it. They'll have a podcast scene at the end
Speaker 1: the movie and Brent will be on there and the
Speaker 1: end of it will just be him just nursing Whalen
Speaker 1: back down every week. That's what I do every week.
Speaker 1: And you know, it's just it was just any of
Speaker 1: those stories surprise you, like, because I would not have
Speaker 1: known the specifics of the the fighting stories and all that,
Speaker 1: and I know you're usually kind of intrigued by that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. Yeah, no, I didn't know that stuff.
Speaker 1: And uh, him getting his rifle when he was in
Speaker 1: on that sky lift and in Texas putting the ceilings
Speaker 1: in probably at Walmart. You know, you know that I
Speaker 1: kind of enjoyed it. I mean, it's entertaining. I don't
Speaker 1: condone that stuff, but man, I love a good fist fight.
Speaker 1: I'll I'll walk along ways to see two kids fight.
Speaker 1: I'm not really not kids, but yeah, that's our nature.
Speaker 1: I mean, you can say whatever you want, but I mean,
Speaker 1: anything unusual, out of the ordinary. We're attracted to it.
Speaker 1: I thought it was a heavy play of Daniel to
Speaker 1: bring up Marks, because you can't be like, that's not
Speaker 1: what he wrote, because then you read Marks and then
Speaker 1: you're a communist. You can't fact check him. Right, It's true,
Speaker 1: always need Daniels a communist a communist. I think the
Speaker 1: most interesting thing for me was the context of their
Speaker 1: history moonshining, which I think is important to talk about
Speaker 1: because on on our side, like moonshining has always been
Speaker 1: viewed as an illegal or a listit activity. But it
Speaker 1: started as just a way to get our crop out
Speaker 1: of the holler, Like how many wagon loads am I
Speaker 1: going to have to take this corn out? But if
Speaker 1: I distill it into whiskey, I can take it out
Speaker 1: in one load, right, And that evolves into you can't
Speaker 1: do this anymore, evolves into a circumstance where one of
Speaker 1: their uncles gets murdered, one of their whatever, we don't
Speaker 1: really know. This is not to excuse their behavior, you know,
Speaker 1: fifty years of poaching turkeys from there, but it helps
Speaker 1: contextualize it from me that it wasn't just like a
Speaker 1: group of guys waking up one day going you know
Speaker 1: what I think I'm gonna go kill all the turkeys.
Speaker 1: I think that history and like to have the newspaper
Speaker 1: articles to like to know that this is such a
Speaker 1: part of the identity of the family, and that that
Speaker 1: I think makes makes it so interesting. And I think
Speaker 1: that's part of why I wanted to tell the story,
Speaker 1: is that people don't just pop out of the box
Speaker 1: and act the way they act because they decided to.
Speaker 1: Most people have a long and robust history that led
Speaker 1: them to a certain place. And inside of saying that,
Speaker 1: also say that we have the ability to change that,
Speaker 1: like we're not muzzled by the narrative of our past.
Speaker 1: But it's interesting. But but to not be muzzled by
Speaker 1: you have to be aware of its driving force. I
Speaker 1: don't know if it's Brent that said it or somebody
Speaker 1: else that said it that. Uh, now I have somebody else,
Speaker 1: somebody else a good friend of mine, uh message me
Speaker 1: and uh he said, no, I'm not endeared to these guys.
Speaker 1: He said, I'm endeared to people that have a bad
Speaker 1: history and wake up and do something different than their
Speaker 1: forefathers did. It was a great comment, one percent, and like, yep,
Speaker 1: I mean that's like all we ever talked about on
Speaker 1: this podcast is people that do something different. Do you
Speaker 1: remember when we talked about Clark who whose family they
Speaker 1: were they were there big into alcohol and he just
Speaker 1: was like that and we were like, that is good.
Speaker 1: That's what we're talking about. So, you know, we're not
Speaker 1: trying to encourage people to be to to be dominated
Speaker 1: by their past, but to not be dominated by your past.
Speaker 1: You gotta have you gotta be able to see it
Speaker 1: and understand it and to see the track. And so
Speaker 1: I thought that was really interesting, very interesting. Brent ris
Speaker 1: like nothing was interesting. That's not true. I thought there
Speaker 1: was a lot of interesting parts um Rus talking about
Speaker 1: the operation because I just when he was talking about it,
Speaker 1: I was seeing it in my head. That's exactly, you know,
Speaker 1: he was verbatim exactly how it happened. I know the stories.
Speaker 1: I spent the better part of the thirty one years
Speaker 1: living and chasing folks that were, you know, on the
Speaker 1: other side of the law, so it wasn't as intriguing
Speaker 1: to me as it was. I'm sure I'll people because
Speaker 1: any time I get around another person that I've worked
Speaker 1: with over the past, old war stories always come up,
Speaker 1: you know, and I've seen a million people like that.
Speaker 1: A million people. And and I've said it before, you know,
Speaker 1: the in my career, everywhere I went, I was seeing
Speaker 1: more than likely good people on their worst day. And
Speaker 1: it's I know these guys were good people, and I
Speaker 1: know that what they were doing was not a mass
Speaker 1: up there with who we've mentioned by and Clyde and
Speaker 1: those kind of folks up there. But I've seen a
Speaker 1: jillion folks make poor decisions, and so it and I
Speaker 1: say all that to say I wasn't endearing endeared to
Speaker 1: them in any way. I was intrigued by their story
Speaker 1: because it's just one of a million that I've heard
Speaker 1: that's very similar. And they were authentic people, no doubt
Speaker 1: about that, and you got to I gotta give them
Speaker 1: props for that, for being who they were. I think
Speaker 1: that's been brought up a couple of times, but I do.
Speaker 1: I also think about, you know, Jimmy Martin's viewpoint on it,
Speaker 1: and his supervisor, whoever he was, and the things that
Speaker 1: they were up against, and probably the ridicule that they
Speaker 1: probably got, you know, behind closed doors or when he
Speaker 1: got up he walked out of the coffee shop that
Speaker 1: you know, they can't they couldn't catch those two guys. Well,
Speaker 1: if that's all they had to do, they've probably come
Speaker 1: a lot closer. And that's what I took out of it. Yeah, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I think the most interesting part of this
Speaker 1: is some of the responses we've had heard from people
Speaker 1: in response to you doing this podcast. And so I feel,
Speaker 1: as your wife, like I need to summariz us a
Speaker 1: little bit what we've what we've gained from UH and
Speaker 1: and help help people claim Nucom is not a poacher.
Speaker 1: He does not glorify poaching, he doesn't like poaching. And
Speaker 1: in fact, I think you're one of the most upright people,
Speaker 1: I mean really that I've ever met in terms of
Speaker 1: like ethical right and wrong. You know, very clear rights
Speaker 1: or wrong. I'm not talking to brit Britain. Brittain knows
Speaker 1: he you know. I mean, it's been documenting that for
Speaker 1: a decade, wasting his life first first time, the first
Speaker 1: time around. But I think what what you were just
Speaker 1: trying to understand, like your whole podcast is just trying
Speaker 1: to answer questions because you yourself felt conflicted, because there's
Speaker 1: things about these guys that you see as unambiguously wrong
Speaker 1: and yet you were near to him, and the whole
Speaker 1: community around you was, and you're just trying to answer
Speaker 1: the question why. And part of that answer came through
Speaker 1: looking at him, not through the lens as poachers, but
Speaker 1: looking at this dynamic of outlaws and the outlaw archetype
Speaker 1: and trying to understand why are we culturally drawn to that.
Speaker 1: Not every culture is drawn to the outlaw architect type.
Speaker 1: And that's interesting to us. And that's an interesting dynamic,
Speaker 1: and that Russ pointed it out as a Southern phenomenon.
Speaker 1: That's interesting to us because we look at a lot
Speaker 1: of rural, Southern types of people. I mean, even like
Speaker 1: the little book you just read about Elijah, I thought
Speaker 1: how interesting. I mean that that is written by a
Speaker 1: theologian and he's kind of describing the types of people
Speaker 1: that that you you find interesting a long long time ago.
Speaker 1: And and you're just trying to answer those questions. And
Speaker 1: we're really comfortable living with that, those questions and asking
Speaker 1: those questions. And we don't by by saying why we're
Speaker 1: not we're not shifting our views on morality here. We're not.
Speaker 1: That's not up for grabs. We're not shifting. No one
Speaker 1: in this room is we we believe in morality, we
Speaker 1: believe in right and wrong. We're not glorifying wrong. We're
Speaker 1: trying to understand why do we cheer for that guy
Speaker 1: in the movie. Why do we find them endearing in
Speaker 1: the community. What attributes make this guy in daring but
Speaker 1: other bad guys not endearing? What makes it interesting? That's
Speaker 1: all we're trying to do. Just have you been getting
Speaker 1: some of that? Like you, you guys are condonedt poaching
Speaker 1: very little. You know, if you are, they're not listening
Speaker 1: right right right now. I would say, I would say
Speaker 1: the vast majority of the commentary I've gotten has been positive,
Speaker 1: but for sure a few a few people have just
Speaker 1: outright been like, got it out and you know that's okay.
Speaker 1: The way I look at it is, if you, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's the truth. If you if everybody likes what you're doing,
Speaker 1: you're probably doing something wrong. You know. One thing I've
Speaker 1: noticed is that we use that word outlaw. It's a
Speaker 1: marketing tool. You know, you've cree aided a heading there
Speaker 1: that people look at it and go and I'm gonna
Speaker 1: listen to this. We never viewed those guys as outlaws.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, they were just people in the community. Socially,
Speaker 1: it wasn't really socially accepted. But you know, half the
Speaker 1: guys I knew in that town. I mean, they're gonna
Speaker 1: shoot a deer out of season. They're gonna shoot an
Speaker 1: extra turkey or two. You know. It's just it's not
Speaker 1: like some major crime like we've just read or seen
Speaker 1: on TV where a guy d w I is driving
Speaker 1: down the highway. You know when he gets picked up, Well,
Speaker 1: he could have killed your kids. You got a neighbor
Speaker 1: down here that's a drunk and he's you got kids,
Speaker 1: you know. So it's not like death defying outlaws here.
Speaker 1: You know, they're uh, they're breaking the loss that they
Speaker 1: are outlaws, but it's socially not criticized as bad. I mean,
Speaker 1: we never just said around to go, man, these are
Speaker 1: terrible people. We didn't even talk about it. You know,
Speaker 1: you just knew that they were killing turkeys. It wasn't like, um,
Speaker 1: they rubbed some levins or you know, shooting up the neighborhood,
Speaker 1: dealing in drugs. Anyway. Yeah, well, I love telling the
Speaker 1: story that's not really been told, you know in a
Speaker 1: big way. And uh so i'd tell stories I'd tell
Speaker 1: stories like this every week if we could, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean not not not breaking the law stories, but
Speaker 1: stories that are hidden kind of behind the scenes of
Speaker 1: unique stuff happening, and just like you know, common common
Speaker 1: little places, you know, And so it was. It was
Speaker 1: a lot of fun. And I think Andy Brown deserves
Speaker 1: some form of a word. I mean, if I could
Speaker 1: have a co host on the Burrigaries podcast, it would
Speaker 1: be Andy Brown. He oh my gosh and the uh
Speaker 1: and the h. He has the most contagious laugh when
Speaker 1: the story that that I put in there of him
Speaker 1: telling about the squirrel jumping out onto and it just
Speaker 1: so happened that the other insurance agent he was with
Speaker 1: was named Charlie. That story, if you didn't really listen,
Speaker 1: it could have been confusing. You might have thought the
Speaker 1: squirrel jumped on Charlie Edwards. The squirrel jumped on Charlie
Speaker 1: the insurance agent. I've sat in this chair in this
Speaker 1: office at night when I was working on that podcast
Speaker 1: and would just belly laugh out loud and listening to
Speaker 1: Andy tell that story. But now and he made the podcast. Man,
Speaker 1: you know, it wasn't necessarily his stories, It was him laughing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, you just get caught up in the moment.
Speaker 1: I did the same thing you're talking about. Oh man,
Speaker 1: you know what I learned so much by talking to
Speaker 1: all these different people, like uh yeah, and he's just yeah,
Speaker 1: he that's just the way he He's always like that.
Speaker 1: And he's just always uh always. As somebody told me
Speaker 1: the other day, he's always happy, always laughing, you know.
Speaker 1: But yeah, Andy Brown, he'll be he'd be my Coast
Speaker 1: the Burger's podcast. He make a good one. I've had
Speaker 1: a couple of people come up that I've known for years.
Speaker 1: I've actually hunted with a couple of these guys and go,
Speaker 1: you know, I killed fifteen turkeys four season one time.
Speaker 1: You know, it's just like you can talk about, yeah,
Speaker 1: walk in the big restaurant and mena and pull out
Speaker 1: of water turkey beards and I mean, you know those
Speaker 1: guys would kill him and go home. You know. In
Speaker 1: Charlie and Louis hill Man, they're they're entertainers. Man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you did a good job play. I have to say,
Speaker 1: well I appreciated. Yeah, Well that's fun. I think I
Speaker 1: think there's I think as we move more into whatever
Speaker 1: direction the world's going, these stories like this are are
Speaker 1: meaningful in some ways. They give us like markers for
Speaker 1: something and and uh so, yeah, I don't know why,
Speaker 1: but I like I like these kind of I like
Speaker 1: a good story. Gary, you got a story about black panthers.
Speaker 1: Do you know? You guys are not gonna believe this,
Speaker 1: but I'm telling you right. I mean, I walked out
Speaker 1: of the garage the other night and a black panther
Speaker 1: was in my yard and jumped into the shrubs. And
Speaker 1: you want to know why. I know it's a black panther.
Speaker 1: It was young. You know, it was a baby, So
Speaker 1: you know there's gotta be I mean, I swear I
Speaker 1: saw it black panther jump in to disrupt, So you
Speaker 1: know there's got to be kem yoke. There's a breeding population.
Speaker 1: About five pounds, yeah about probably less, run through the
Speaker 1: kiddy door of your neighbor's house. I don't know, but
Speaker 1: it had the long tail, just like we talked about.
Speaker 1: It just was young. I thought it was a black panthers.
Speaker 1: I think I think Gary has taking possession of old
Speaker 1: great Uncle's steel. Yeah, baby, so I think he's moved
Speaker 1: the baseline saying not only did they exist, there is
Speaker 1: a breeding population he needs to have a have a
Speaker 1: biological conference about the breeding population outline black panthers in
Speaker 1: western Arkansas. Pretty soon we're gonna have Thank you so much, guys,
Speaker 1: everybody really great. Keep the wild place as wild. That's
Speaker 1: where the pants that's where the poaching takes. Keep the
Speaker 1: domestic places domesticated because that's where the black panthers are.
Speaker 1: That's where the poaching takes