Speaker 1: My name is Clay and Nukeleman. This is a production
Speaker 1: of the bear Grease podcast called The bear Grease Render,
Speaker 1: where we render down, dive deeper, and look behind the
Speaker 1: scenes of the actual bear Grease podcast, presented by f
Speaker 1: HF Gear, American made purpose built hunting and fishing gear
Speaker 1: that's designed to be as rugged as the places we explore.
Speaker 1: I've had people contact me and they're like, did you
Speaker 1: guys quit singing? Singing? Yeah, so there's probably a group
Speaker 1: of people that are glad we haven't sang in several months.
Speaker 1: And then some just like think that, like our spirits
Speaker 1: just shut down. They're like, are are y'all quitting the
Speaker 1: Burger's podcast? You hadn't saying recently. It's like a rubric
Speaker 1: of whether the podcast is working. Yeah. I think it
Speaker 1: has some validity inside the idea because where there is
Speaker 1: energy and spirit and life happening, what happens. Music, music
Speaker 1: is written. People are inspired for millennia. So almost so.
Speaker 1: My my wife, Miss Nucome, is here on my left
Speaker 1: and almost if you'd gotten here just a little bit earlier,
Speaker 1: I would have said, we're gonna play. But this is
Speaker 1: what I'm going to guarantee next Burgary's render that we're here,
Speaker 1: We're gonna play. Okay. I had a song request. I
Speaker 1: can't remember what it was, but the guy sent me
Speaker 1: a video and it was a bunch of otters singing
Speaker 1: about barbeque that work. Oh man, it's fabulous. This is
Speaker 1: a this is a fantastic stick afternoon. And it has
Speaker 1: been a long time since we've had a barger surrender
Speaker 1: here at the Meat Eater South World headquarters here in Arkansas.
Speaker 1: Is it sanctioned? Is it sanctioned for you too? I mean,
Speaker 1: like you call it Meat Eater South? Is that I mean?
Speaker 1: Has there been I mean papers filed? Of course it's been.
Speaker 1: It's been. Yeah, there's been a declaration. So it's been
Speaker 1: a while since we've all been here. And we always
Speaker 1: have these with the with the kind of the standard
Speaker 1: crew in my office. I wish I could show everybody
Speaker 1: in my office. This is like, it's great. It's a
Speaker 1: great place to hang out. I love I love this office.
Speaker 1: It's a visual Smorgess board I like to peel for
Speaker 1: It reminded me of Will Primo's office. Yeah, hey, I'll
Speaker 1: tell you what. Will Primos had an incredible office. It's
Speaker 1: hard to describe he's got I believe it's walnut wood
Speaker 1: lined walls. Really it's kind of dark and it's just
Speaker 1: kind of like yeah, kind Oh. He had a he
Speaker 1: had a huge original painting of a spring Turkey scene
Speaker 1: with lights on it, just like super classy. And then
Speaker 1: he had a bunch of freedom mounts, you know European
Speaker 1: mounts of white tails that you know, he killed most
Speaker 1: of them in Mississippi. And he had his collection of
Speaker 1: like handcarved decoy's. It was like a museum you could
Speaker 1: just walk around. He had a wall that was full
Speaker 1: of the original prints from the negatives of the photographer
Speaker 1: who shot still photos. Stay with me on the Jeremiah
Speaker 1: Johnson films, Will Premos Will Primos is like Lake Pickle
Speaker 1: told me, and he told it for truth. He said,
Speaker 1: Clay will Primos has watched Jeremiah Johnson over five thousand times.
Speaker 1: And I said, and I laughed, and I said, oh man,
Speaker 1: that's cool. And I said, how many times do you
Speaker 1: really think he's watched it? And he said no, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm being serious, Like he's calculated. He believes he's watched
Speaker 1: it five thousand. What do they say about ten thousand?
Speaker 1: An expert and if the movies two hours long? He is,
Speaker 1: I mean he has a PhD. Basically, I don't. I
Speaker 1: don't know where. I never quizzed him on it, but
Speaker 1: Mr Will told me that on his farm there were
Speaker 1: different roads on the farm and they named him after
Speaker 1: the characters and Jeremiah Johnson and he had Oh he
Speaker 1: was saying stuff. I didn't even know what he's talking
Speaker 1: about about the movie, like like h memorabilia that he had. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: I really need guys, he probably does. Yeah. So we're
Speaker 1: back in my office, which I think my office would
Speaker 1: be maybe noteworthy for the for all the bear hides
Speaker 1: and the bear chaps. I do have a let me
Speaker 1: give you just a just a quick like audio tour.
Speaker 1: Right behind my dad Gary here, I've got Oscar Nukeam's shotgun,
Speaker 1: James Lawrences Hawkins rifle, and a cane that Adam Dean
Speaker 1: gave me from Europe that he made me. I've got
Speaker 1: a picture of a Bob white quail that hung in
Speaker 1: my home where I was raised. Gary's home for years.
Speaker 1: That was a picture of Bob Whacke quail. That picture
Speaker 1: of that dog is a dog that dad owned, a
Speaker 1: bird dog named snipper. I painted that when I was
Speaker 1: in high school. Gave it to my grandfather that hung
Speaker 1: in his office till he died. You swing slightly to
Speaker 1: the right, and I have all my stone points, most
Speaker 1: of those I found on my property on the window
Speaker 1: sill um. This is where I got my computers. Here
Speaker 1: I'm just kind of swinging around, and then I had
Speaker 1: my white tail wall. I've got, you know, I kind
Speaker 1: of quit a mountain deer, but I've got maybe six
Speaker 1: white tails mounted and then probably fIF you know, twelve racks.
Speaker 1: But this is the this is the coolest part to me.
Speaker 1: This is the the legacy section. And there are three
Speaker 1: photos up here. They're sixteen by twenty high quality photos
Speaker 1: with lights on them, and the far left image is
Speaker 1: James Lawrence in the late nineteen seventies. It's that yes,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a it's a hawk and muzzloader as
Speaker 1: I understand it. And James Lawrence is somebody that I've
Speaker 1: just always really looked up to, and I consider him
Speaker 1: a mentor and somebody that's kind of like family to me.
Speaker 1: So there's a big picture of James and then that
Speaker 1: rack right there beside it is a deer that James
Speaker 1: killed on public land in the nineteen sixties. And man,
Speaker 1: it's not a huge rack. I mean, it's a beautiful
Speaker 1: rack with big old brow times. But when I go
Speaker 1: to James's house I was there two days ago and
Speaker 1: I see his wall full of white tail antlers, I
Speaker 1: am mesmerized when I think about the hours in time
Speaker 1: that he's spent hunting to kill those deer back in
Speaker 1: that time where he did in National Forest in Arkansas.
Speaker 1: So there's James. The middle picture is my father in law,
Speaker 1: Steve Schultz, who has been one of the most influential
Speaker 1: ever in my life. He really is Steve is Are
Speaker 1: also are Are the pastor of our church. Steve was
Speaker 1: a falconer and that picture was taken when Steve was
Speaker 1: I think in nine in nineteen eighty, so basically the
Speaker 1: same time period as James. He's holding. It's a red
Speaker 1: tail with a Mallard hen duck. And this is a
Speaker 1: super cool photo and it's real neat for me to
Speaker 1: see these guys when they were like my age, you know.
Speaker 1: So there's Steve Schultz and then the picture to the right.
Speaker 1: Many people have said that this man looks like Elvis Presley,
Speaker 1: have you heard that picture. It's the coolest picture of
Speaker 1: Gary nucom And it was the first dear that Dad
Speaker 1: ever killed. And he's got this buck in the back
Speaker 1: of the truck. He's got his old bow, what tad,
Speaker 1: And he's mustachio he's got a nice mustache. And then
Speaker 1: that deer is right there that I've got a mounted
Speaker 1: deer right beside that photo. And that deer is the
Speaker 1: deer that Dad killed. What did Brett and I have
Speaker 1: to do to get our pictures up there? Could be? Yeah? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Now what do you remember about that dear Dad? Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I wouldn't tell people about it, but I'm
Speaker 1: telling you, for months, i'd be in a room with
Speaker 1: a group of guys I just say, I wish somebody
Speaker 1: would just ask me if I killed a deer this year,
Speaker 1: And no one ever would, But I tell you it
Speaker 1: meant so much to me because you know, it was
Speaker 1: a bow kill, and back then that was kind of different. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was way different in South Arkansas office sure, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there weren't a lot of people killing deer with a
Speaker 1: bow very consistently. Yeah, you know, and I was pretty
Speaker 1: lucky on that dear. He was trailing a dough and
Speaker 1: I was on the ground. Are you killed it from
Speaker 1: the ground? I killed it on the ground, not in
Speaker 1: a stand quite the deer. Yeah, so that's a twur
Speaker 1: of the office. And then I've got bear hides hanging
Speaker 1: from hooks. Yeah, some bear big bear skulls. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: then I have one big mounted bear in the office,
Speaker 1: which is it's not the biggest bear I've ever killed,
Speaker 1: but probably the most valuable bear to me personally, I've
Speaker 1: ever killed. Killed one, uh, National Forest, public Land the
Speaker 1: last day of the season, shot the bear in the head,
Speaker 1: snook up on it while I was asleep. Not a joke. Um,
Speaker 1: pretty incredible deal. But anyway, a couple of things we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about. We're gonna talk about this Turkey podcast,
Speaker 1: but I also want to give you guys an opportunity
Speaker 1: to talk about the Clower podcasts because brit was the
Speaker 1: special game. Yeah. Yeah, so we're gonna talk about We're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about Clara. We're gonna talk about turkey hunting.
Speaker 1: We've covered a lot of ground. What y'all think the
Speaker 1: last render crew they did? Okay, B team, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: get my B plus because they recognized all over us
Speaker 1: on here. They got funny accents from Michigan. Your people
Speaker 1: are from my people are. I've spent way more time
Speaker 1: in this, Hey, I was. I was pretty happy that
Speaker 1: Steve Vernella knew who Clouder was, and he didn't just
Speaker 1: know who Clouder was, he was he was passionate about Clower,
Speaker 1: which I was impressed with. I was. I actually thought
Speaker 1: they I thought they did a good job. I thought
Speaker 1: that it was a very entertaining podcast. They did a
Speaker 1: great job. I was a little hurt when Britt got
Speaker 1: the call out and Josh and I got the shaft. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: That is the price you pay for fame, gross celebrity.
Speaker 1: When you're in this circle, you gotta be CONTs. Hey,
Speaker 1: you talk about micro celebrity. Did you guys know that
Speaker 1: Misty Newcomb works for Wild and Whole, which is a
Speaker 1: brand inside of Meat Eater. We've never we've never true story,
Speaker 1: We've never officially said this on the podcast, but so
Speaker 1: wild and Hole is like a sector inside of meat
Speaker 1: Eater that how would you describe Wild and Whole? Wild
Speaker 1: and Hole focuses on in this sense that media focuses
Speaker 1: on hunting, is primarily focused on hunting. Wild and hole
Speaker 1: is more focused on preparation of food and sourcing of food,
Speaker 1: and so they look at farming, homesteading, foraging, gardening, gardening. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so Misty she works for them, and she does
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff about her garden, about cooking, just
Speaker 1: about feeding our family. Yeah. So you can follow Missy
Speaker 1: at Newcombe Farm. At Newcomb Farm. That also reminds me
Speaker 1: of one of my favorite George Bush junior isms when
Speaker 1: he was talking about he was giving this speech and
Speaker 1: he said, we got people out there working hard to
Speaker 1: put food on their family, putting food on Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's great. While speaking of food, while we were
Speaker 1: out just before this, Brent was telling me a story
Speaker 1: about his turkey hunting mentor Mr. Leon. And now, so
Speaker 1: Brent's gonna tell a story, and let me just say,
Speaker 1: you're just gonna have to hold your horses until you
Speaker 1: come to too many judgments about in the direction this
Speaker 1: story is going. Okay, Grant tell them about Mr Leon. Well,
Speaker 1: let me let me let me tell him first. While
Speaker 1: we were talking about that, I was telling Brent about
Speaker 1: two kumps. Okay, this is potentially some foreshadowing, but I'm
Speaker 1: doing a little research on a Native American leader named
Speaker 1: to kumps who was arguably one of the most prominent
Speaker 1: skilled indigenous leaders of at least modern history that we
Speaker 1: can record of Native American stuff. Twokumpsa was kind of
Speaker 1: a peculiar guy and he broke He broke his leg
Speaker 1: when he was like sixteen years old riding a horse
Speaker 1: shooting a buffalo, and he walked with a limp. And
Speaker 1: he was always real weird with taking on a wife.
Speaker 1: And he he had three wives, different ones, but he
Speaker 1: he never stayed with him and he was always just
Speaker 1: to kind of like take a wife and be like ah.
Speaker 1: And his second wife Mamita. One time he had killed
Speaker 1: a wild turkey. And this is why this is relevant
Speaker 1: to this podcast. This is April where there was a
Speaker 1: goblin turkey, I don't know. He killed a wild turkey
Speaker 1: and he took it back to Mamita to take care
Speaker 1: of and she plucked the turkey, which is interesting that
Speaker 1: she plucked it, she didn't breast it, and she served
Speaker 1: it to Twokumpsa and the family. This isn't a joke,
Speaker 1: this is a real story. When when it was served
Speaker 1: there was still some pin feathers on the plucked bird,
Speaker 1: and it embarrassed and made two comes to so mad
Speaker 1: that when dinner was over, he got up and he said,
Speaker 1: you're gonna have to leave. He said, we're done. Actually,
Speaker 1: he said, you've brought shame on me, and I cannot
Speaker 1: tolerate this, and he essentially divorced her. What was wrong?
Speaker 1: What was wrong with that? His actions better? Oh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I could actually read it. Go ahead, and Clay is
Speaker 1: reading this book somewhere and he clips that part out,
Speaker 1: takes a picture of it, and sends it to me.
Speaker 1: And I read this whole story and I get to
Speaker 1: the bottom and see that he send her away for,
Speaker 1: you know, not proficiently plucking a turkey. And I wrote
Speaker 1: back and I said, hey, Clay, is this a threat?
Speaker 1: Here's the exact section that says to comes to discovered
Speaker 1: a few small feathers still stuck to it. After his
Speaker 1: friends left, he handed his wife her clothing and told
Speaker 1: her to leave. The astonished woman asked to come to
Speaker 1: why he was banishing her because of the turkey feathers.
Speaker 1: He replied her entreaties to stay met with a cold rebuke. No,
Speaker 1: you must go. I'm ashamed of you. We may separate forever.
Speaker 1: And he drove her out so after I told Brent
Speaker 1: that story. Brent tells me this story. But before you go,
Speaker 1: if you like, stop the podcast and you go these
Speaker 1: misogynistic you know, people don't think that, But just listen
Speaker 1: to Brent's story. This was a nineteen This happened in
Speaker 1: nineteen forty six. It could it was either forty five,
Speaker 1: late forty five or forty six when Mr Leon got
Speaker 1: home from the war. This was a guy Brent worked
Speaker 1: I worked with. He was He was a turkey hunter.
Speaker 1: And you know, we all said something about Colin Turkey's
Speaker 1: with a briar leaf for a green leaf. Mr Leon
Speaker 1: could do that. He used to used the green briar leaf.
Speaker 1: He sound just like a turkey. Anyway. He told me
Speaker 1: that one time. We'll right after he got married, so
Speaker 1: they spent they had a one night honeymoon. They went
Speaker 1: to the house that they lived in. This would have
Speaker 1: been in nineteen eighty eight or eight or nine when
Speaker 1: he told me the story. And they've been living there
Speaker 1: since they got married. And he's the first morning after
Speaker 1: their honey went when the first night they spent there,
Speaker 1: he got up and she was in the kitchen cooking breakfast.
Speaker 1: She said, what do you want for breakfast, and he
Speaker 1: was walking outside to bust some wood up. He said,
Speaker 1: I want two eggs over easy. I want some grits.
Speaker 1: I want some ham and the eggs. I don't want
Speaker 1: no pepper on him and in a cup of coffee,
Speaker 1: and out the door he went. He went out and
Speaker 1: he starts busting wood. She calls him, lean, your your
Speaker 1: breakfast is ready. He comes back in the house and
Speaker 1: sets down to the table forwards yourself a cup of coffee.
Speaker 1: And she sets the plate down in front of him,
Speaker 1: and it's got everything he wanted, except it had pepper
Speaker 1: on the eggs. And he said, he said, I thought
Speaker 1: to myself if I should say something about the about
Speaker 1: the pepper, But then he said, no, I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: I'm gonna start this off right. I'm not gonna let
Speaker 1: her get away with this. And I picked that plate up,
Speaker 1: I held at an arm's length and just slowly dumped
Speaker 1: it out in the floor. He says. She was standing
Speaker 1: behind him, and he handed her the plate, and he said,
Speaker 1: my intention was to tell her, I said, don't put
Speaker 1: any pepper on my eggs. He said, I think I
Speaker 1: got to like the first p in pepper when I
Speaker 1: assumed she turned up played up edgeways. It hit me
Speaker 1: on the top of the head with it, because the
Speaker 1: scar when I woke up, Matt's like the edge of
Speaker 1: the plate. He said, it in the morning had gone.
Speaker 1: It was up midday, and I had laid there and
Speaker 1: knocked out unconscious in the floor so that the yellow
Speaker 1: on them eggs that stuck to his face and dried,
Speaker 1: and he said it sounded like duct tape when he
Speaker 1: raised his face up off the floor. He said, I
Speaker 1: stumbled around in the house, and I looked and all
Speaker 1: her clothes were gone, said, we didn't have it one car,
Speaker 1: and it was there, so but we did have a phone,
Speaker 1: but her mom and daddy didn't have one, he said,
Speaker 1: and they lived in town. He said, I assume that's
Speaker 1: where she went, he said. So I got in the
Speaker 1: car when I could see, and I drove to town,
Speaker 1: and sure enough, that's where she was at. And her
Speaker 1: daddy told me, said she ain't coming right now, but
Speaker 1: she says she'll be home and when she gets ready,
Speaker 1: he said. A couple of days go by and she
Speaker 1: comes home and it's right for supper time to start
Speaker 1: cooking supper, and she come in, didn't say a word.
Speaker 1: They cooked supper, they went on like nothing had happened,
Speaker 1: went to bed gaps. The next morning, the same routine
Speaker 1: played out. He started to go outside to do his chores,
Speaker 1: and she asked him what he wanted for breakfast, and
Speaker 1: he told her the exact same thing. Grits, ham, eggs,
Speaker 1: no pepper. He said, I went outside, done my chores.
Speaker 1: She called me back in to eat breakfast. I sat down,
Speaker 1: poured a cup of coffee. So she set that plate
Speaker 1: down in front of me, and he said, it looked
Speaker 1: like a can pepper poured on top of them two eggs.
Speaker 1: So I and I had know Mr Leon was not
Speaker 1: an easy I loved him, absolutely loved him, but he
Speaker 1: was not an easy guy to get along with. So
Speaker 1: I know this this story where this is going. He's
Speaker 1: fixing the dump this in the in the in the
Speaker 1: floor again And I said, well, what you do? He said,
Speaker 1: I've been eating pepper on my eggs ever since. So
Speaker 1: the lesson there, I mean, there's lots of lessons in
Speaker 1: that story, but adapt and overcome. I think I like
Speaker 1: that held you that story in nineteen two. No, that
Speaker 1: would have been like nine and he was still married
Speaker 1: to the apparently they worked. Tell tell me about the
Speaker 1: way Leon about his entry and exit routes. He uh.
Speaker 1: We worked in the woods. We managed timber for George Pacific,
Speaker 1: and our office was in Florida Ice, Arkansas at the
Speaker 1: mill where the meal was at and we'd go in
Speaker 1: every morning we get our orders from the forester, which
Speaker 1: tracked UH to go either mark for cutting or whatever
Speaker 1: we were doing, we had to leave and go out
Speaker 1: in the woods to do it. And every time we
Speaker 1: would come back in, if we went out one direction,
Speaker 1: he would make us come back another way. We never
Speaker 1: took the same route back to the office, even if
Speaker 1: it was the quickest way. And this went on four
Speaker 1: I was just a young fellow now, and he was,
Speaker 1: like I said, of war two vets, so he was older,
Speaker 1: and he just he put the orders out there and
Speaker 1: I said, yesterday, and we did them. But this particular day,
Speaker 1: it was in August, and it was so hot, and
Speaker 1: we've been out in marking timber all day and we
Speaker 1: think there was no reconditioning in the truck. We got
Speaker 1: through with work and he said, all right, let's go home.
Speaker 1: We got in the truck and we started home and
Speaker 1: I said, I'm just gonna go straight down the highway
Speaker 1: like we come up here, be quicker, go back home.
Speaker 1: He said, no, when you get down here and take
Speaker 1: a ride on such and such road, we're gonna go
Speaker 1: the back way. I said, Mr. Lee, And I'm hot,
Speaker 1: I'm tired. I smell it's hot in this truck. I
Speaker 1: want to go home. He said, no, take that road
Speaker 1: up there. So I took the road. And I was
Speaker 1: taking the road, I asked him. I said, we have
Speaker 1: been doing this every day, not one time, and would
Speaker 1: come back the same way, even even when it would
Speaker 1: be quicker. Why are we coming back a different way
Speaker 1: than we went out? And he reached in his pocket
Speaker 1: and I'm driving, I'm watching him over there. He never
Speaker 1: even looked at me. You're reached in his pocket and
Speaker 1: he took out a cool menthor cigarette and he did it.
Speaker 1: He took a puff off of it, and he's staring
Speaker 1: out the window. He's that son. Have you ever been ambushed?
Speaker 1: And I thought ambushed? Uh no, sir, he said, well
Speaker 1: I have, and we ain't going back the same way
Speaker 1: we came out. So that was a habit he got
Speaker 1: into in the South Pacific fighting World War two, and
Speaker 1: it served him, Well, we never got ambushed. Never go
Speaker 1: back the same way you came. Science is good. That's
Speaker 1: pretty incredible. Well, hey, it's uh. We're recording this in
Speaker 1: early April. The Arkansas Youth Turkey Hunt and season is
Speaker 1: this coming weekend, and so the people I have here
Speaker 1: are missing Newcomb. To my left, Brent Reeves, Josh Lambridge, Spillmaker.
Speaker 1: Good to see you, Josh, Gary knwcom So we were
Speaker 1: twenty minutes then. I'm just not introducing you, but I
Speaker 1: wanted to so me and Josh we have been youth
Speaker 1: turkey hunting with our kids for long. I mean last
Speaker 1: year was the first year that I think you didn't
Speaker 1: go because you kind of had kids that kind of
Speaker 1: crested crested out of it. But me and Josh had
Speaker 1: some pretty incredible years of youth turkey hunting, and I
Speaker 1: wanted to tell one of my favorite stories we where
Speaker 1: we're hunting. It's pretty it's it's pretty cool because during
Speaker 1: the youth hunt, you can find birds because when birds
Speaker 1: are are not thick, which in Arkansas. You know, if
Speaker 1: you listen to the last podcast, you heard us say
Speaker 1: that six of our birds are gone. So back in
Speaker 1: the heyday, we had a lot of birds are easy
Speaker 1: to find, but what happens across the landscape when birds
Speaker 1: die out is that there'll be pockets of them that
Speaker 1: they're fairly thick. So that's why it's kind of confusing
Speaker 1: to some people, because you might be in a pocket
Speaker 1: a good turkey hunting and be like, what's the big deal.
Speaker 1: We still kill turkeys, and it's like, well, but every
Speaker 1: other place doesn't. Well, on public land, everybody knows where
Speaker 1: these little pockets of turkeys are, and during the youth
Speaker 1: season you can usually slipping there, especially if you camp there,
Speaker 1: you can go in there. So me and Josh and
Speaker 1: the kids did that for for years and had great
Speaker 1: turkey gun I mean we could just walk out from
Speaker 1: our camp and expect to hear a turkey and killed
Speaker 1: a few. But the best story, well there's two stories
Speaker 1: the act three. The best one was the kids were
Speaker 1: I want to say Willow and Mallory, our oldest daughters
Speaker 1: were probably like was probably eleven or twelve, and Willow
Speaker 1: would have been ten, and we had we had two
Speaker 1: little girls, and I think David was with us and
Speaker 1: me and Josh, so there's there's five of us and
Speaker 1: we we hear turkey gobble. It's like late in the morning.
Speaker 1: And on this one rivers there's six of us, six
Speaker 1: of us, two kids, and well who had the gun? Willow.
Speaker 1: It was Willow's year. David had to go. David had
Speaker 1: the gun. There were seven of us were we were
Speaker 1: all there, David, Mallory, Willow, River, Clay, Jock, Okay, six
Speaker 1: of us, six of us. Anyway, nine o'clock in the morning,
Speaker 1: late in the morning. I yelp here, turkey gobble. We've
Speaker 1: got the kids all camoed up on the you know,
Speaker 1: face paint, and that we're just ready to go. And
Speaker 1: and and our kids were pretty good at being still
Speaker 1: and quiet. Yeah, we've trained them pretty good. And this
Speaker 1: turkey gobb was so close that I'm just like, get down, everybody,
Speaker 1: you know, and we're giving orders like you two sit here,
Speaker 1: you two sit here. And the person with a shotgun
Speaker 1: maybe was right with me and you were sitting back behind. Yeah,
Speaker 1: David was right with me. Well man, directly here comes
Speaker 1: two big long beard gobblers. I see him from sixty
Speaker 1: seventy yards and they're kind of walking up to our left.
Speaker 1: And I've got Mallory and Willow at a tree like
Speaker 1: arms reached from me, David the gun man, in between
Speaker 1: my legs right here. These birds are coming up like this.
Speaker 1: And we had told the kids, you know, over the
Speaker 1: campfire all these years, we'd say stuff that Dad used
Speaker 1: to tell me, which turns out was probably a lie.
Speaker 1: He would say, these turkeys can see the whites of
Speaker 1: your eyes. I mean a dad that when he's trying
Speaker 1: to inform his kid about turkey hunting, you're trying to
Speaker 1: scare them into then still and you know, these turkeys
Speaker 1: can see the whites of your eyes. We told the
Speaker 1: girls that in David, Well, these turkeys come in and
Speaker 1: they played gobble out in front of us, and they
Speaker 1: they never strutted, but they were just beautiful coming up
Speaker 1: the ridge. The turkeys come in, and David was just
Speaker 1: a little kid, and I couldn't get him on the turkeys.
Speaker 1: And they stayed out at maybe thirty yards and they
Speaker 1: were kind of in a weird at a weird angle too,
Speaker 1: if you remember it. Just it's just one of those deals.
Speaker 1: I just couldn't get him on it. But the birds
Speaker 1: were really enraged and close and and they missed. They
Speaker 1: circled back around the tree almost I remember it was.
Speaker 1: I mean they weren't ten fiftet, but the way they
Speaker 1: were at we couldn't get a shot on him. And
Speaker 1: so the bird finally goes off, and I mean he's
Speaker 1: gobbled and we've seen him. And the kids are just like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's great. And so we after they leave, we're all
Speaker 1: standing up and I say, man, wasn't that beautiful. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to interpret for them. This is like a
Speaker 1: magnificent thing that's just happened. We didn't get in, but
Speaker 1: that's okay. And Mallory, Josh's oldest daughter, goes, oh, man,
Speaker 1: and I said, Mallory, what do you think do you
Speaker 1: see those turkeys? And she said, no, I never saw him.
Speaker 1: And she said, you told me to keep my eyes closed,
Speaker 1: And when she heard those she shut her eyes tight. Man.
Speaker 1: She never for the shooter. Sheer one thing you can't
Speaker 1: say about I mean, she is straight like an arrow. Right.
Speaker 1: It was. It was so funny because she was dead serious.
Speaker 1: I mean she was like, I didn't even I didn't
Speaker 1: even see him. And she's so happy knowing Mallory. She's
Speaker 1: so happy. And then as the kids got older, the
Speaker 1: next year, David was again the shooter. We heard birds,
Speaker 1: but we had a different strategy. Me and David went
Speaker 1: in kind of like yards ahead, and all the kids
Speaker 1: set back, and so we called in a gobbler and
Speaker 1: David had a single shot four ten, break open single
Speaker 1: shot four ten, and we call a big gobbler and man,
Speaker 1: he comes in, dude shooting range and I'm just like,
Speaker 1: he's probably twenty five yards, which is you know, but
Speaker 1: he wasn't coming closer. He would not. I mean, he
Speaker 1: was there for twenty minutes. Probably he will come well.
Speaker 1: But but when he finally came in, David gets on him,
Speaker 1: and you know, David's probably ten ten years old. Boom shoots,
Speaker 1: and that turkey just kind of like jumps up in
Speaker 1: the air and hits the ground. And I start calling,
Speaker 1: mind you, this is a single shot, and I think
Speaker 1: it's the Hunts over. But when I call that turkey
Speaker 1: just kind of looks at me and starts kind of
Speaker 1: just doesn't run off. And so I say, David up
Speaker 1: another showed up another shell, and so I'm you're trying
Speaker 1: to break this gun over and David scrambling for a
Speaker 1: bullet and he puts another bullet in and I say,
Speaker 1: shoot him again, and so he pulls up that four
Speaker 1: to him, boom, shoots the turkey kind of jumps up
Speaker 1: and I work, work, work, work, work. How many times
Speaker 1: did he shoot? Four times that he shot at the time,
Speaker 1: I mean a long beard gobbler and four times just
Speaker 1: didn't have enough. All the other kids, Josh and the
Speaker 1: little girls are all back there and they hear him
Speaker 1: shoot and they're like, yes, David got one. And then
Speaker 1: and then he shot again and they go, oh, I
Speaker 1: wonder if we got it? And then boom and shoot again.
Speaker 1: He has to kill two and then the fourth time.
Speaker 1: You you guys had to be like something. You and oh, man,
Speaker 1: we walked up, I remember David, and I walked back
Speaker 1: to him, you know, and we're just like, man, exactly,
Speaker 1: anybody got an extra box show. He's still waiting for
Speaker 1: us something. And he shot at another turkey that same day.
Speaker 1: Do you remember that good he We were in him
Speaker 1: thick man that hunting might not be David's game when
Speaker 1: he was sixteen. He killed when he was sixteen. Some
Speaker 1: of the most beautiful pictures that I have remember when
Speaker 1: he had turkey camp. We had a backcountry turkey camp
Speaker 1: where we went back in took a mule and took
Speaker 1: all the boys and David and man, we walked up
Speaker 1: on top of the mountain daylight opening day, when Howling
Speaker 1: hadn't been in there to scout, just kind of thought
Speaker 1: there might be one in there, and I mean no more,
Speaker 1: sat down and called up two big gobblers and so,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, pretty cool. Yeah, why didn't you take
Speaker 1: me youth hunting? I didn't like, you know, it's funny
Speaker 1: back in the day, like, uh, I don't know, we
Speaker 1: just didn't have maybe we didn't have you. You know,
Speaker 1: you didn't show any interest in turkey hunting. I mean
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff I did. You know, you're like going,
Speaker 1: I'm too cool for that. But the whole time you
Speaker 1: were sore being all these little stories I was telling.
Speaker 1: And as you got a little older, you know, you
Speaker 1: were going like, yeah, man, it's I want to do
Speaker 1: some of this stuff. Do you remember that year when
Speaker 1: when you first took me hunting down Polk County and
Speaker 1: went out hunting. We found it? You know what when
Speaker 1: when I was listening to this podcast, do you remember
Speaker 1: us finding that nest with eggs in it? And then
Speaker 1: we proceeded to get lost for hours and hours and
Speaker 1: walking miles and miles before smartphones. Yeah yeah, we camped
Speaker 1: out there. Yeah yeah, yeah, that was pretty fun. You know,
Speaker 1: I've seen a nest just right out in the middle
Speaker 1: of the woods. I'm sure everybody that's probably Turkey had
Speaker 1: a lot is running into that, but I'd only encountered
Speaker 1: it one time. I mean, I'm just thinking, I think
Speaker 1: I would have put it over around some brush or something.
Speaker 1: I was just like, not, yeah, just on the side
Speaker 1: of a hill and right there. I mean, you could
Speaker 1: see how many turkey nests you think you found one?
Speaker 1: Just one one? I mean I've seen where I just
Speaker 1: knew there was a nest because I could tell the
Speaker 1: way the hen was acting, and I'd go in and
Speaker 1: I never could find it. It's like they kind of
Speaker 1: hied them. This this bird was I think I think
Speaker 1: some some statistical group of hen turkeys will do that.
Speaker 1: I mean, they might just put it right out in
Speaker 1: the open, and then some others are real clever with
Speaker 1: the way they hied them, you know. But I think
Speaker 1: I found two turkeynests. How many Turkey nts have you found?
Speaker 1: Brand Well, I worked in the woods, so I was
Speaker 1: in the woods every day. I have a bunch yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: a bunch of them. Would you find kind of in
Speaker 1: the brush or the open or what it would be
Speaker 1: mainly in like wood lots. You know, you'd get a
Speaker 1: group of our stand of timber or in the edge
Speaker 1: of a edge of a like a pasture. I mean
Speaker 1: it wouldn't really be hidden. I mean a lot of
Speaker 1: the A lot of them I would find only because
Speaker 1: I got so close to the hen she jumped up,
Speaker 1: and she jumped up and flew, or if she stayed set,
Speaker 1: I'd probably never seen it. What doesn't make any sense
Speaker 1: to me from a biological perspective is why those eggs
Speaker 1: are so bright. Would it not make sense for those
Speaker 1: things to be just brown camouflage. I don't know. Maybe
Speaker 1: it's something for the for the turkeys to identify to
Speaker 1: find them back. You know, I don't know, but I
Speaker 1: thought about that too, you know, like different colors of eggs,
Speaker 1: Like you know, some chickens lay brown eggs, And if
Speaker 1: I were President of the Turkeys, I'd suggest that we
Speaker 1: need different color eggs. I think for s Minister, maybe
Speaker 1: that would be a way that we could help the
Speaker 1: turkey populations. We could, uh, we could have different colored
Speaker 1: Turkey Giggs. MISTI have you ever seen Turkey Giggs? What
Speaker 1: what Mike? Dr Mike Chamberlain wild Turkey doc on Instagram.
Speaker 1: He he has a pretty interesting well he has He
Speaker 1: has a real interesting story. Um. He works for the
Speaker 1: University of Georgia and as a as a Turkey researcher,
Speaker 1: and he went on the Mediator podcast a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago and all of a sudden just rose to
Speaker 1: national prominence in a lot of circles. Now in the
Speaker 1: academic circles, he was always kind of where he was at,
Speaker 1: and there's there's lots of other incredible Turkey biologists that
Speaker 1: are around the country that you know are his peers.
Speaker 1: But he kind of was in a unique situation and
Speaker 1: that he kind of rose to like some have some
Speaker 1: influence in kind of the mainstream culture world, which is
Speaker 1: kind of interesting because usually academia has a hard time
Speaker 1: reaching kind of pop culture. And that's what Dr Amberland
Speaker 1: has kind of done and he and he did it
Speaker 1: through being on the Meteor podcast. He'll tell you that
Speaker 1: I asked him while I was there and he was like, oh,
Speaker 1: being on the Meteor podcast is what you know got
Speaker 1: us this? And but he is a very articulate, passionate,
Speaker 1: very knowledgeable, neat guy, and he's the one that introduced
Speaker 1: to many of us. You know, lots of people would
Speaker 1: have known this, but I knew a fair bit about turkeys,
Speaker 1: and I would not have known the details of the
Speaker 1: predation stories on these turkeys. But I mean, turkeys are
Speaker 1: just designed to die. They're born to die. And the
Speaker 1: the to hear him talk about the he tells a
Speaker 1: story of this great horned owl. And I didn't go
Speaker 1: into all the detail, but he he had he did
Speaker 1: a research project on where he had callers on a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of small game animals in a certain wood lot.
Speaker 1: He I believe he did the while he was in college.
Speaker 1: So he had like possums, collard, pair of raccoons collard,
Speaker 1: He had like a banded mallard. He had some kind
Speaker 1: of birds that he was measuring, and he was trying
Speaker 1: to measure how these animals interacted in this kind of
Speaker 1: wild space. And he said that a male and female
Speaker 1: great horned owl moved into that area and and so
Speaker 1: they would get a dead signal when one of their
Speaker 1: animals died, you know, if it didn't move for four
Speaker 1: hours or something it would send a signal. And he
Speaker 1: said that a male and female great Horndel killed every
Speaker 1: single one of his research animals. I'm not kidding, killed
Speaker 1: them all dead. I mean it wiped out his research project.
Speaker 1: He said it actually made him happy because it was
Speaker 1: like a two hour drive to get over there, and
Speaker 1: he had to go over there like four times a
Speaker 1: week to do his radio work or whatever. And uh,
Speaker 1: they're voracious. Forty miles an hour. They for they weigh
Speaker 1: three pounds, but they killed turkeys. They killed goblin turkeys.
Speaker 1: I mean, you come in at forty hit him. But
Speaker 1: he had a had a a coons squaller snatched out
Speaker 1: of his hand one time. Yeah, by who are you serious? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And he got it was on a leather. It actually
Speaker 1: wasn't a coon's quald. It was a predator call. And
Speaker 1: he and my brother were standing on the end of
Speaker 1: on in front of the truck, and they were trying
Speaker 1: to get a coat to run upens right at dusk,
Speaker 1: trying to call a coat up into the road where
Speaker 1: they could shoot it. And so he was sitting up
Speaker 1: there blowing that predator call, blowing, blowing, blowing, old Johnny
Speaker 1: Stewart call he's said in the next thing, he knew
Speaker 1: he's my brothers at the back of the truck watching
Speaker 1: that way, and said he could hear flopping in and
Speaker 1: Joe Tiree sitting up for the cussing and having a
Speaker 1: fit and scared and holler. And he looked and he said,
Speaker 1: and it was a al trying to drag him, and
Speaker 1: that Pretri called out. He had a big old cuts
Speaker 1: on his hand from them talents. So it heard, so
Speaker 1: it comes, it comes to something in distress, and thought
Speaker 1: that it was a dying rabbit. Wow, that's I believe it.
Speaker 1: I believe it. Voracious predators, man, They and these turkeys
Speaker 1: are just born to die. What was so interesting to
Speaker 1: me about the whole story of this podcast because I
Speaker 1: I interviewed you know, Mr Will Primost, who's just a legend,
Speaker 1: and I can't say enough cool things about being around Will.
Speaker 1: He's one of those people that you meet and you
Speaker 1: kind of will never forget him, this kind of the
Speaker 1: way he is and the he impacts everybody's around he's
Speaker 1: around just by how disciplined, how focused, And I wouldn't
Speaker 1: have seen that. You wouldn't have seen that with him
Speaker 1: out in the turkey woods. But when you're sitting with
Speaker 1: him in a room for a couple hours and you
Speaker 1: kind of get to know him, it is very focused,
Speaker 1: very disciplined, very passionate, passionate, very teaching oriented. Everything he
Speaker 1: does like he'll tell you about it. You know, he'll
Speaker 1: be like, he'll he'll like it. With his eating, I
Speaker 1: had met him for like forty five minutes and already
Speaker 1: knew what he ate for breakfast and why it was
Speaker 1: so healthy. And he does it everything. You know, he's
Speaker 1: really passionate about everything he does. And it's it's hard
Speaker 1: not to be impacted by people like that because you
Speaker 1: see the intentionality with which they live. That sound bite
Speaker 1: that that you played on there with the guy who's
Speaker 1: killing the turkey, was that him? Yeah? Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: yeah it It said josh uh in a voice over.
Speaker 1: It said, this is Mr Will primost Okay, somehow miss
Speaker 1: attention got a little bit tense in here. Sometimes sometimes
Speaker 1: my friend, well, I had a good run. You see
Speaker 1: yourself out. So I interviewed Mr Will And as I
Speaker 1: go into some of these stories, I don't really know
Speaker 1: exactly the direction that's gonna take. It's not like I
Speaker 1: had this totally scripted out in my mind. I knew
Speaker 1: he was a turkey expert. I knew that Dr Chamberlain
Speaker 1: was a turkey expert, and I knew I wanted to
Speaker 1: bring them together, not physically, but have them in the
Speaker 1: same podcast. And as I'm talking to Mr Will, it
Speaker 1: becomes crystal clear that his part of a component of
Speaker 1: his success in the game call industry and the video
Speaker 1: industry came because of the resurgence and these very good
Speaker 1: populations of turkeys and the innovation and all that that spawned.
Speaker 1: And it's it's like it all, it kind of all
Speaker 1: came clear. And then here in Mike Chamberlain talking about
Speaker 1: and he didn't know about the conversation I had with Will,
Speaker 1: you know, I was just talking to him about turkeys,
Speaker 1: and he was like, man, our turkeys in the Southeast
Speaker 1: populations peaked in mid nineties and two thousand's it was.
Speaker 1: And then it became clear to me that my ideas
Speaker 1: in the foundations of the way that I think turkey
Speaker 1: hut not a b came about during that time. While
Speaker 1: I learned when I learned the turkey hunt back in
Speaker 1: the nineties, and you remember me, you heard me say
Speaker 1: that that place that you heard ten or twelve birds
Speaker 1: in the same morning. You knew where I was talking about.
Speaker 1: You didn't where I killed my first turny. See. The
Speaker 1: reason I went in there was because, like the Saturday before,
Speaker 1: you came out of there and you said, man, I
Speaker 1: bet I heard ten or twelve turkeys just you know,
Speaker 1: throughout the whole morning. And so you have these ideas
Speaker 1: of what Turkey should be like. And then when it's
Speaker 1: not like that, everybody's upset about it. I mean, like
Speaker 1: everybody in this part of the world, just like, oh man, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, just they're they're they're upset about it. They're
Speaker 1: blaming agencies and all this. It kind of helped me
Speaker 1: to see that there's a there's a bigger thing going on.
Speaker 1: That's that is, it is inside of our control. But
Speaker 1: the control is gonna be kind of it's gonna be
Speaker 1: harder to wrangle the control than it would have been
Speaker 1: thirty years ago. I mean, partly due to there are
Speaker 1: vastly more people on the landscape today than there was
Speaker 1: thirty years ago. It's kind of hard. It's kind of
Speaker 1: like a slow burn. But I mean, think about anywhere,
Speaker 1: think about where you're from, Dad, think about this little
Speaker 1: community we live in here. I mean there's a Dollar
Speaker 1: General there and there used to be a wood lot.
Speaker 1: There's five different landowners where it used to be one
Speaker 1: big farm. And those five different new pieces of property
Speaker 1: all have new houses built on them. And they cut
Speaker 1: their grass with lawnmower and they do this, and they
Speaker 1: do that. UM, timber companies in National you know, the
Speaker 1: timber harvest and National Forest here is different than it
Speaker 1: used to be. UM. And then this is the main
Speaker 1: takeaway that I would say to people, is that, and
Speaker 1: Dr Dr Chamberlain said it. But predator communities are so
Speaker 1: different than they used to be. And the rise of
Speaker 1: the Messo predator, the Messo predator, which is a mid
Speaker 1: sized predator, misty, skunks, possums, coons, foxes, kids of my existence,
Speaker 1: the Messo predator. And and in the big the giant picture,
Speaker 1: the reason there's so many Messo predators here is because
Speaker 1: all most of the apex predators are gone. The black
Speaker 1: panthers are gone, the wolves are gone. Now the bears
Speaker 1: are back. And I know a barrel eat a turkey
Speaker 1: nest around here. Um. But really it's like there's so
Speaker 1: much space for predators inside of the ecosystem, and if
Speaker 1: one of them leaves, other ones rise up and and
Speaker 1: and man, I mean, which didn't have coyotes thirty years
Speaker 1: ago like we have today? Um, and they're just wearing
Speaker 1: the turkeys out and my chickens. Man, tell them about
Speaker 1: your chickens. I mean, no, no no, it's it's kind of
Speaker 1: an emotional topic. Fit's perfectly into me. Never trust in
Speaker 1: the ground nesting bird, even a chicken. Tell him. I mean,
Speaker 1: we lost nineteen in one one night this week? Or
Speaker 1: did they just kill them? So there's there's two stories here, Josh.
Speaker 1: We we lock up our coup like it has an
Speaker 1: actual lock. And I had some young chickens in there
Speaker 1: and it was icy, and it was icy for four days,
Speaker 1: and I put some grain in there. I usually just
Speaker 1: let them, you know, roam around. But because I knew
Speaker 1: the predators were out, because whenever you get really low
Speaker 1: temperatures like that nice for days, they come out. And
Speaker 1: so I put the grain in the coop and then
Speaker 1: I put a wood box in front of the door,
Speaker 1: so that if we won't say who, but is he?
Speaker 1: The mule decided she wanted that grain and went over
Speaker 1: gonna unlock the chicken coop. Is he can unlock the
Speaker 1: chicken coop with her nose, she can undo the lock.
Speaker 1: So is he went in, That's what she did. She
Speaker 1: unlocked the coup and then those predators came. And because
Speaker 1: Izzy can't move the box, you know, like she just had,
Speaker 1: they moved the box. I think it was one of
Speaker 1: the predators moved a box. They lack opposable thumbs. I
Speaker 1: don't think that. I don't think that. I think with
Speaker 1: their body you can see it's scraped. My coup was
Speaker 1: scraped around the edges. Point being something. We lost nineteen
Speaker 1: chickens and one night most of their whole bodies were gone,
Speaker 1: most of their whole I mean they were gone was feathers. Well,
Speaker 1: so the only reason we know what it was I
Speaker 1: was I was gone that at that time. Is My
Speaker 1: neighbor has a cell camera kind of on the edge
Speaker 1: of our property, on his property, and I told him,
Speaker 1: I said, man, something's after my chickens. Well, the reason
Speaker 1: he knew something was after my chickens because one night
Speaker 1: I turned loose my dogs on it right after it happened,
Speaker 1: like I went out that was that was actually a
Speaker 1: different time. It was a multiple chicken kills. And one
Speaker 1: night I went out there and it happened, and I
Speaker 1: knew it happened since dark. And I turned Fern loose,
Speaker 1: who is a top notch coon dog that won't bark
Speaker 1: at anything but a coon. And I turned a loose
Speaker 1: on a coyote, and turns out she'll bark on a
Speaker 1: coyote if I encourage her too, And she and Tim
Speaker 1: trailed that coyote and then made a big loop out
Speaker 1: in front of the house circle rat Well already told
Speaker 1: the story of this podcast. Text my neighbor and he says,
Speaker 1: I'll you know, I'll be on the porch with a
Speaker 1: and uh. Anyway, he got a picture of a code.
Speaker 1: It was a long way to say that. Let me
Speaker 1: also say this. I had I got fifteen more baby chickens,
Speaker 1: and I was super proud of them because they made it.
Speaker 1: You know, it was a rough winter and these chickens
Speaker 1: made it a long time. And I was out there
Speaker 1: looking at them one day and Clay and you guys
Speaker 1: all went scrawn and Clay decided to take Tim with him,
Speaker 1: and the day y'all left, I said, look, that's fifteen
Speaker 1: eight week old chickens right there. That means none of them.
Speaker 1: I ordered fifteen, I got fifteen. Yeah, fifteen were alive.
Speaker 1: Not the coyotes, Josh. The hawks. Every day that Tim
Speaker 1: was gone, every single day. I would go in at
Speaker 1: night and I count them every day. I had one
Speaker 1: lesson the day before and it stopped when he came back.
Speaker 1: So I think that Tim keeps the hawks away. He does.
Speaker 1: Tim will tree buzzards and hawks that land out in
Speaker 1: the trees. He'll see him from in the house and
Speaker 1: stand up on the window sill and we'll let him
Speaker 1: out and he'll just take off running and he'll go
Speaker 1: tree underneath that tree, and you know, the hawk, they'll
Speaker 1: fly and he'll chase him off our property. He's kind
Speaker 1: of like a cartoon, you know how they run in
Speaker 1: place for a second. Are he gets so excited. He
Speaker 1: just runs in place and just like screams. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: really fun on our heart. Well, what do you guys
Speaker 1: think of the podcast? Awesome? Tell me give me your takeaways.
Speaker 1: I loved it. It was killed my first turkey. That
Speaker 1: would have been when you know, we all was talking
Speaker 1: about when he arty. When it started going up. I
Speaker 1: saw those video the late fees I paid to the
Speaker 1: video store on his taste would fill up a car
Speaker 1: with gas at today's prices premost in the Southern boys
Speaker 1: or whatever. I saw him all and he uh they
Speaker 1: sold his calls in a little uh store there, Savage
Speaker 1: Carls one stop. Mr Cross Savage had had a bait
Speaker 1: shop and sport and good store there and and Warren
Speaker 1: and they his calls were in there when when they
Speaker 1: were going out those tapes you know, we're in there,
Speaker 1: the cassette tapes, and it was, you know, it was
Speaker 1: a big deal to watch that. And I started turkey
Speaker 1: hunting when turkey started, and he got better and better
Speaker 1: every year. I saw what Dr Chamberlain was talking about
Speaker 1: in the growth and the turkeys. I'm sure I'm sure
Speaker 1: Gary did too. And it went when it started falling off,
Speaker 1: it was, you know, it was pretty quick. And we
Speaker 1: all said something about about the older he gets and
Speaker 1: and sacrifice and backing up on killing turkeys. Now, so
Speaker 1: kids in the future. Kid, I got a three year
Speaker 1: old grandson, I would hate to him miss out on
Speaker 1: what we all talked about and the recording that you played.
Speaker 1: I would hate for him not to have the opportunity
Speaker 1: to experience that and what you talked about David c
Speaker 1: and then on y'all's trip. So man, if it's uh,
Speaker 1: it's gonna hurt right now. To back up off of that,
Speaker 1: but how how good is as we say that? As
Speaker 1: and as I said that on the podcast about sacrifice,
Speaker 1: and that's kind of kind of what I ended with.
Speaker 1: You know, I wanted to functionalize that because I mean, like,
Speaker 1: what does it mean for me to sacrifice for turkey hunting?
Speaker 1: I mean, it's kind of a kind of a abstract
Speaker 1: statement that sounds good to say, but I tried to say,
Speaker 1: it's gonna mean something different for everybody. It may mean
Speaker 1: burning and managing just a small acreage that you have.
Speaker 1: And Dr Chamberlain I just wasn't able to include it
Speaker 1: on the podcast because it just was it just didn't
Speaker 1: fit right. He I asked him, I said, what do
Speaker 1: we need to do? And you know, part of his
Speaker 1: answer was just everybody needs to do what they can.
Speaker 1: You know, if you have turkeys, make your habitat as
Speaker 1: good as possible, even if it's just one or two
Speaker 1: things that you do to your property that helps that
Speaker 1: that's going to be meaningful. It could be as simple
Speaker 1: as not shooting a jake turkey when you can when
Speaker 1: it's legal, you know, may maybe you back it off
Speaker 1: and and and there's there's lots of guys that won't
Speaker 1: shoot Jake's, but there's lots of guys that will and uh,
Speaker 1: and there's nothing wrong with it if it's legal. I mean,
Speaker 1: but maybe that's a choice that we would make. And
Speaker 1: then I've gotten to the age where I can see
Speaker 1: that we're now talking to a generation of kids that
Speaker 1: is one day going to be the leaders conservation leaders
Speaker 1: and stuff. And you know, maybe there's maybe there's kids
Speaker 1: that are listening or that are influenced by this time
Speaker 1: period that will be leaders of conservation groups that have
Speaker 1: to make wise decisions. But you know, so it's kind
Speaker 1: of like what can you do and do it where
Speaker 1: you can. And then there's there are people that that
Speaker 1: have big, huge properties, you know, that could really make
Speaker 1: a den and something the habitat. I think that's the
Speaker 1: importance of taking kids out hunting, because you know, we've
Speaker 1: got four kids and some of the one of those
Speaker 1: girls that you took really loved hunting and one didn't.
Speaker 1: So we've got pictures of Willow with with a turkey.
Speaker 1: But I think that all of our kids have a
Speaker 1: real appreciation for it. And when you think about like
Speaker 1: I think about here and Gary say that Clay wasn't
Speaker 1: really into turkey hunting, which is, well, it's a lie now.
Speaker 1: But I think that sometimes we gauge what we do
Speaker 1: with our kids based off of what they're what they
Speaker 1: show emotional interest in, you know, and it's like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: they like this or they don't like this. I was
Speaker 1: gonna say kids like go karting, but maybe they don't anymore.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's like maybe I'm majoring myself. They like playing
Speaker 1: video games or whatever, and so those are like easy,
Speaker 1: so we we put the video game in their hand
Speaker 1: because that's the thing they like. But sometimes you gotta
Speaker 1: get your kids involved in things they don't necessarily just
Speaker 1: just love. Because I think about the experiences that Clay
Speaker 1: had kind of caught up with him later on, Like
Speaker 1: he was exposed to turkey hunt and he was exposed
Speaker 1: to all these things. They might not have been super
Speaker 1: fun for Clay at the time or emostly rewarding, but
Speaker 1: Clay baby is an adult. Is remember Dad telling us
Speaker 1: that if you dropped the chain in the back of
Speaker 1: your truck, you can get on the shot gobble. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I still believe that. Hey, hey, let me just tell
Speaker 1: the group how Clay got started turkey And I mean
Speaker 1: he was a basketball player. He was, you know, just
Speaker 1: a normal kid running around coon hunt and I'm going,
Speaker 1: what coon hunting? And uh uh you know, uh, he
Speaker 1: just had so many hobbies and so many activities and
Speaker 1: I'm out turkey hunting. Of course he was here in
Speaker 1: these stories, you know, but he would never act like
Speaker 1: he was too interested. It's just being a cool guy.
Speaker 1: And so he was really one of the better basketball
Speaker 1: there's and mina. But when he got in high school,
Speaker 1: one of Zach Knucolm's very best friends just whipped Clay's
Speaker 1: fanny every day. And even my buddies would say, Clay
Speaker 1: Nuclem is gonna be the best point guard come through
Speaker 1: me in a long time. Well, Clay kind of believed that.
Speaker 1: He got in high school and the fastest guy I
Speaker 1: believe I've ever seen would just pick his pocket intentionally
Speaker 1: because I think he heard all this stuff here. You know,
Speaker 1: Clay Nuclem is gonna come in. You're gonna take over
Speaker 1: this thing, man, This guy whooped him every day. Clay
Speaker 1: came home one day and he goes dead. I know,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna play college ball, but I'm gonna stay
Speaker 1: with the team, and I'm gonna go to practices and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna just monkey around. But I want to be
Speaker 1: the best hunter in Pope County. And I said, if not,
Speaker 1: right then, I said it within a few days, you
Speaker 1: gotta learn how to turkey hunt. And so we went
Speaker 1: out and it was just blind. Look. Of course I
Speaker 1: really knew there's turkeys in there. But the first place
Speaker 1: we stopped and you probably remember where it was, and
Speaker 1: we got out. You remember if we called or who
Speaker 1: we just out at him, I think, okay, and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, just you know, to two gopers right there,
Speaker 1: and I mean, he was hooked and with it. About
Speaker 1: two weeks, I felt like he was a better hunter
Speaker 1: than I will. I mean, you know, I mean he
Speaker 1: could call, he had a good ear fort, but uh
Speaker 1: showed no interest in turkey hunting. I mean, he was
Speaker 1: interested in basketball, being a cool guy at school, having
Speaker 1: a nice truck, all this stuff, you know, telling me
Speaker 1: that his truck had a hole in our that his
Speaker 1: truck leaked, water would come in the bottom of this truck.
Speaker 1: And then one day I find this disclosed picture. I'm
Speaker 1: going through some stuff and he's going through a mud hole.
Speaker 1: You can't even see the truck, just maybe a one greet.
Speaker 1: It did have a holding floor in there. But anyway,
Speaker 1: that that's how I was sixteen when I killed my
Speaker 1: first turkey, and so we started turkey hunting probably the
Speaker 1: year before. I mean, now, I had been with you
Speaker 1: when I was a kid. I mean I vividly remember
Speaker 1: going with you, but I wouldn't have taken it serious
Speaker 1: until But that's also about the time that we started
Speaker 1: really feeling like we had a lot of turkeys, you know,
Speaker 1: mid nineties, and then uh yeah, and then I'd ended
Speaker 1: up killing one of sixteen, and we had a we
Speaker 1: had a little pocket of turkeys that they were just
Speaker 1: as thick as thieves man, and real good turkey hunters
Speaker 1: would be you know, a mile or two away, or
Speaker 1: even one guy was three four yards down the road,
Speaker 1: and I mean they're having a tough time killing them,
Speaker 1: and we'd go in here. I mean it was just
Speaker 1: like walking in a turkey zoo. You know, it's hard
Speaker 1: to keep a kid interested in something, too, because I mean,
Speaker 1: how many times you've been turkey hunting that you hadn't
Speaker 1: seen a turkey bunch, and it's hard. It's hard to
Speaker 1: introduce somebody to that, especially at a young age that
Speaker 1: there's not a lot of action. You know, it's not
Speaker 1: it's not happening every time you go out, and so
Speaker 1: it's it's a challenge. Dad. What stood out to you
Speaker 1: about the podcast? You learn anything? He probably wouldn't have
Speaker 1: been up too much on turkey biology. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I thought about that on the way up here. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's not really one thing. I enjoyed every bit of
Speaker 1: it because I could relate to everything he said. Now
Speaker 1: I learned quite a bit, especially from Dr Chamberlain, you
Speaker 1: know when he started going through those five things. Uh,
Speaker 1: but uh, you know, primost was a big deal. But
Speaker 1: I go back he's talking eighty three. I go back
Speaker 1: to seventy six, seventy seven, and I was getting a
Speaker 1: little customed tapes from guys around Polk County that were
Speaker 1: good hunters and they pass them out and you probably
Speaker 1: remember me going around the house all time calling and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I was one of those guys, kind of stupid,
Speaker 1: but I didn't want someone to take me out and
Speaker 1: show him we how to turkey out. I just want
Speaker 1: learning on my own. And I went a long time
Speaker 1: and I'd get him in close, and you know why,
Speaker 1: no one day I was bored and I tore my mouth,
Speaker 1: call up, had to me reads and I would just
Speaker 1: just going, just making noises. You know, It's ten eleven
Speaker 1: o'clock in the morning. Hunt was over, I thought, And
Speaker 1: they got the goblin at that so uh but but uh,
Speaker 1: I tell you, Will is such a tremendous individual. I
Speaker 1: mean I didn't realize that at the time. You had
Speaker 1: all these little I don't want to say heroes, but
Speaker 1: they were the leaders of the sport ben Lee and
Speaker 1: you know, you just go on and own and uh
Speaker 1: not in hell. Uh but he is such a quality guy.
Speaker 1: There's so much to learn from him. It's just incredible.
Speaker 1: You know, you just take what was his three passion, focus, discipline.
Speaker 1: I mean he runs his whole life on that. I mean,
Speaker 1: if someone just listened to that podcast and had any
Speaker 1: desire to be successful at life, that's I mean, he
Speaker 1: hit on everything. And you know he makes it sound
Speaker 1: like well, he didn't necessarily make it sound like a blood.
Speaker 1: These guys just you know, I got lucky. If you know,
Speaker 1: the time was right, there were a lot of birds,
Speaker 1: but he might wanted me to make a call. Well,
Speaker 1: guess what. He was passionate, he was focused, he was disciplined.
Speaker 1: You know, he was gonna be successful picking up trash.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter what he did. He and you could
Speaker 1: tell that. Probably his family had five restaurants, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean they're they're they're smart people, they're disciplined, they're focused.
Speaker 1: He could see it. He had a he had mentors
Speaker 1: in his family. I mean, they didn't wake up and
Speaker 1: try to be successful. That was in their DNA, in passion.
Speaker 1: You know. That's one reason I think these podcasts are
Speaker 1: pretty successful is I mean there's a lot of passion
Speaker 1: that goes into him. So I have really enjoyed that
Speaker 1: about Will, finding that what a quality guy he is.
Speaker 1: And then Chamberlain, I mean, twenty five years of research
Speaker 1: on Turkey's Holy Cow, and when I drove up here,
Speaker 1: I saw this hardwood forest and I thought this kind
Speaker 1: of just shoots a hole not really follow me through on.
Speaker 1: I mean, we got all this hardwood. I mean forty
Speaker 1: miles of hardwood. Okay, so rule that out. It's not
Speaker 1: hardwood here. Huh? Are you saying it's not hardwood. I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know he's saying the hardwood's gone. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm driving and I'm looking around going what you know,
Speaker 1: there's hardwood everywhere. So so it's you know, here in
Speaker 1: this area, it's gotta be predators, it's got to be disease,
Speaker 1: it's gotta be weather. And so like where we are,
Speaker 1: we got a lot of clear cuts. You know they've
Speaker 1: taken they've taken Yeah, they've taken it away from us.
Speaker 1: But it looks to me like up here, it doesn't
Speaker 1: make any sense at all. Why this in incredible Turkey
Speaker 1: woods And it's well, it's it's a combination of a
Speaker 1: bunch of stuff. I could I could nerd out on it,
Speaker 1: but that you're right. What you said is right. And
Speaker 1: what what Dr Chamberlain said in a part that I
Speaker 1: couldn't include, was that every almost like micro region is different.
Speaker 1: So the difference between here and eighty miles away where
Speaker 1: you live dat it's really could be vastly different, even
Speaker 1: though you the average person would drive between here and
Speaker 1: there and think it's the same kind of country, but
Speaker 1: it's but it's actually fairly different. So it's man, these
Speaker 1: dang ground nesting birds. I'm telling you, if turkeys would
Speaker 1: just build a nest like a normal bird in a tree,
Speaker 1: we wouldn't have all these problems. Do you remember when
Speaker 1: we went to uh too Falsome m hmm. We got
Speaker 1: into Falsome It like t o'clock at night when we
Speaker 1: went to to do the podcast next morning, we we
Speaker 1: stayed in this little airbnb that that uh, that Matt's
Speaker 1: mother has. When we got up the next morning, we're
Speaker 1: driving along and all of a sudden we looked through
Speaker 1: town and this mind mind you, this is a town
Speaker 1: of fifty people. The the entire town is covered in
Speaker 1: wild turkeys. I bet we saw at least a hundred. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's some big, big flocks, man. And that's what's that
Speaker 1: Also is an interesting component of talking about turkeys in
Speaker 1: decline because out west, all people see as turkeys increasing.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, And so I mean that's a good thing.
Speaker 1: But they're in places that they've never been before. So
Speaker 1: the same thing that happened here is kind of and
Speaker 1: now we've we always had turkeys in the East, but
Speaker 1: the reintroductions of the sixties, seventies, eighties, and nineties kind
Speaker 1: of put them into these landscapes that essentially had a
Speaker 1: vacant vacant spot for turkeys and and so out west.
Speaker 1: They've introduced them in like the predators haven't caught up
Speaker 1: to them yet. The habitat is still really good and
Speaker 1: maybe they'll thrive out there for the next three thousand years.
Speaker 1: Who knows. But well, I just want to say one
Speaker 1: thing about having people change their desires and interest in all.
Speaker 1: I think it's got to be regulated myself. I mean,
Speaker 1: I just don't think your average person. I mean, you
Speaker 1: gotta you've got a different Yeah, I mean, you know, heck,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna do anything different. I mean because I'm
Speaker 1: not hunting them right now. But I mean, if I'm
Speaker 1: a kid, I could care less. What do you think.
Speaker 1: I mean, it might have some impact, but not even
Speaker 1: of those kids could care less. If they can kill
Speaker 1: a bird and go to school and tell their buddies,
Speaker 1: that's all they care. So you know, you gotta cut
Speaker 1: it back to one bird. You gotta cut seasons down.
Speaker 1: I mean I would think, I mean, there's something well
Speaker 1: and and that and that's happening and in part of
Speaker 1: what we I can't remember this In this Podcas asked
Speaker 1: the one y'all hadn't heard yet, but I talked about
Speaker 1: how we've got to give room for state agencies to
Speaker 1: do what they need to do because people love to
Speaker 1: dog on state game agencies and blame everything on them,
Speaker 1: and man, it's just nine of what goes on in
Speaker 1: state agencies I believe is from a good heart. I mean,
Speaker 1: but way way more than that. But but the point
Speaker 1: is is that if we all kind of were on
Speaker 1: the same team and we cut it back to one,
Speaker 1: would just be like, great, we can just kill one
Speaker 1: turkey in Arkansas this year. Fact that's great, and not
Speaker 1: throw a fit about it. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1: In education so important and what you're doing here, it
Speaker 1: is part of that. But uh, you know, they could
Speaker 1: expand their budget, go to schools and you know, if
Speaker 1: you're interested in the game fish, you know, talking about turkey,
Speaker 1: and come in and you know, explain what's going on.
Speaker 1: I mean, education is so much, so important, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know kids would listen to that. I think, Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: there's also a lot of people that are I think
Speaker 1: in this modern era of wildlife management and what's even
Speaker 1: happening inside outdoor media, Like back in the nineties, we
Speaker 1: were watching Will Primos and the Juries and Night in
Speaker 1: Hell and all these guys you know, kill twenty turkeys
Speaker 1: and twenty minutes you know on a VHS tape. Anymore,
Speaker 1: if you watch a lot of the media, it's a
Speaker 1: lot more education focused, conservation focus, and it's still entertaining.
Speaker 1: It's got to be and you know, we'd like seeing
Speaker 1: turkeys get killed. Um, but there there are people that
Speaker 1: are like, yeah, to be a sportsman is to be
Speaker 1: a conservationist and a biologist and understand what's going on.
Speaker 1: And the landscape is shifting where people want to be like,
Speaker 1: it's it's cool to be in the know. It's cool
Speaker 1: to know what's going on. It's cool to see the
Speaker 1: macro picture. I think that's a good thing and I
Speaker 1: think that's happening. And so there are their private land
Speaker 1: on well. And what's interesting too when you talk about
Speaker 1: what you can do which can't be regulated, is private
Speaker 1: land stuff. I think indy percent the state of Arkansas
Speaker 1: is um it's private land, and that's that's fairly good.
Speaker 1: I think less than one percent of the state of
Speaker 1: Texas is is uh public land. I mean, there's having
Speaker 1: ten percent of your state being public lands. It's decent.
Speaker 1: Some of the Western states are a lot more. Point being,
Speaker 1: most turkeys in Arkansas live on private land, and if
Speaker 1: if you can do things for them, you know, selective
Speaker 1: timber cut burns um the way you manage your grasslands.
Speaker 1: Burns help the turkey population, oh Man. Burns are like
Speaker 1: almost a miracle cure for a whole lot of stuff.
Speaker 1: Kills a lot of the saplings and invasive plants that
Speaker 1: want to grow up and crowd out sunlight for hitting
Speaker 1: forest floor. It regenerates um a lot of different plants
Speaker 1: that are that are that are fire induced for them
Speaker 1: to germinate. It also fertilizes soil with different things that
Speaker 1: happen when it burns. Turkeys love burn. We'll see all
Speaker 1: of guys that I hung around at turkey hunting, I
Speaker 1: mean we go, why are they burning right now? I
Speaker 1: mean they're nesting, And I mean see, they could educate us.
Speaker 1: They could put a little clip in the you know,
Speaker 1: in a little folder. We get the first you know,
Speaker 1: the hunting deal and and go look, hey, hey boys,
Speaker 1: we're burning for these five reasons. Man. The burning is
Speaker 1: so interesting because growing up in an area with a
Speaker 1: lot of national forest. Every year just before turkey season,
Speaker 1: they'd burn the woods and you know, smoke would come
Speaker 1: into town, and it was just kind of common knowledge
Speaker 1: that turkey hunters will be like, that's what we don't have,
Speaker 1: mean turkeys. They're burning the woods now, burning up all
Speaker 1: the turkey eggs, and that sounds really reasonable and it
Speaker 1: is absolutely false. But see, why don't they tell us?
Speaker 1: And they probably do and we just don't. That's it,
Speaker 1: It's just like they the mechan is just not a
Speaker 1: perfect world. I mean, in a perfect world, we would
Speaker 1: have access to every single hunter and they would actually
Speaker 1: listen to us without a lot of the burden falls
Speaker 1: on us. To educate yourself, Yeah, waiting on somebody to
Speaker 1: tell you about it. You gotta get out there and
Speaker 1: find the answer. Because I was the same way you are, Gary,
Speaker 1: Why is this going on? Now? Why is this happening?
Speaker 1: And then when I found out when somebody actually told me,
Speaker 1: I thought, you know, it's it makes sense. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: a biologists could talk to you about the burns and
Speaker 1: the timing of them, but oh man, the burns dramatically
Speaker 1: increased pult revival. It's the best thing you could possibly
Speaker 1: do at that time. And yeah, there's a minuscule amount
Speaker 1: of nests that might get burned, but it's so miniscule
Speaker 1: it doesn't even matter. I mean, it's just insignia, statistically insignificant.
Speaker 1: And but the positives of a burn are just through
Speaker 1: the roof helping these birds as really you know, I yeah,
Speaker 1: bear grease, render educating America. That's the new tagline. There
Speaker 1: you go, Mr hucom any thoughts, just quick thought, how
Speaker 1: do we do? I thought you did pretty good. I
Speaker 1: felt like the Turkey podcast was lacking one specific story
Speaker 1: that I think is the greatest turkey story of all time.
Speaker 1: Just to be real, honest, that turkey story isn't a
Speaker 1: it's more of a visual story. That's spring turkey story.
Speaker 1: That's a spring turkey story. It's not a spring turkey story. Well,
Speaker 1: it's one of the greatest turkey turkey out and stories
Speaker 1: of all time. It is about of the reason I
Speaker 1: married you is Hey, I want to tell you guys something.
Speaker 1: The next I'll give you I want foreshadow, I will shadow.
Speaker 1: He didn't tell the story. No, No, The next bargrease
Speaker 1: after this one is full. It's a it's a it's
Speaker 1: a storytelling podcast. Eight storytellers, one after another. Bam, bam,
Speaker 1: bam bam. Big names in the outdoor industry, big names
Speaker 1: in the Clay Nukem back Woodsmen Real Deal book too. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Is it gonna be incredible? Yeah? Next podcast all about Turkey?
Speaker 1: Is this story on that? Okay, I'll tell the story.
Speaker 1: It's a good one. We'll end with this one, okay. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So let me just say this. I I don't know
Speaker 1: if everyone knows this. The night before I met Clay,
Speaker 1: this is a true story. I don't know why we
Speaker 1: were even having the conversation. I was too young to
Speaker 1: be talking about getting married or anything. And I said
Speaker 1: the one, the one like absolutely no factor on marriage,
Speaker 1: would be a hunter. Did y'all know that I would
Speaker 1: not marry a hunter? This is a true story. The
Speaker 1: next day I met Clay Newcomb, and I remember when
Speaker 1: he told me, I mean, the first like conversation we
Speaker 1: ever had, he hunting came up and I remember looking
Speaker 1: at him going, oh, you're a hunter, and it was
Speaker 1: like really sad to me. I'm sorry. I thought you
Speaker 1: were a nice guy. And he won me over with
Speaker 1: the stories. I mean, like I remember I remember him
Speaker 1: telling the stories and I was like, this can't be
Speaker 1: all that better Me and Joy when the story. Do
Speaker 1: you remember this story? Well? I think so, I think,
Speaker 1: I think I do. And Clay came to my house
Speaker 1: right after this happened and told the story. And it
Speaker 1: has been a a newcom family thriller at that time.
Speaker 1: For what are you gonna say, Dad, Well, I go
Speaker 1: ahead and till kill that story. Well, so, okay, it
Speaker 1: was the fall of I was twenty one years old,
Speaker 1: so whatever fall. That was late nineties, and I was
Speaker 1: going bow hunting on top of a big mountain over
Speaker 1: there on public land one bow hunting, and I remember
Speaker 1: I got off work. I'd been Weldon for mc McDonald
Speaker 1: building a house made a metal and I was built
Speaker 1: driving to go. I was driving to go deer hunting
Speaker 1: in this place that Dad had a stand. And on
Speaker 1: the way there, I was driving on an old basically
Speaker 1: a two track logging road and unma maintained road that
Speaker 1: at the time this would have been like, Okay, I
Speaker 1: see a deer jump the road. I get out of
Speaker 1: the truck and I'm going deer hunting and I grabbed
Speaker 1: my bow and I this deer is just kind of
Speaker 1: standing out there. Long story short, I get out of
Speaker 1: the truck walk off side of the road and I
Speaker 1: shoot this deer with a bow and uh, the deer
Speaker 1: takes off run and I had just ten ringed it.
Speaker 1: And I don't wait for it to die, you know,
Speaker 1: usually you wait thirty forty minutes. But I had to
Speaker 1: go hunting, so I just fell in right behind it.
Speaker 1: And about the time it hit the ground, I grabbed
Speaker 1: its back hoofs drug it to the truck, put it
Speaker 1: in the truck, and I go deer hunting. I get
Speaker 1: up to the top of the mountain, parked the truck,
Speaker 1: walk to the stand, his dad's old ambusher, I believe
Speaker 1: ambusher tree stand. Climbing the tree stand and you can
Speaker 1: you can see that there's a big draw that comes
Speaker 1: up right in front of me. Well bye, was it
Speaker 1: a log you by? Okay? Log you by? And the
Speaker 1: big draw coming up here? And I've been sitting there
Speaker 1: in an hour maybe, and I see a big swinging
Speaker 1: beard gobbler turkey walking up the other side of the
Speaker 1: draw from me. And at the time, there's a fall
Speaker 1: turkey season in Arkansas, and so he's walking and he's
Speaker 1: gonna be twenty five yards, so I draw back and
Speaker 1: when he comes into an opening, twenty five yards torch
Speaker 1: off an arrow the air, sails right under his beard
Speaker 1: and hits the side of the bank opposite him. So
Speaker 1: he hears something to his right, you know, hit the bank.
Speaker 1: I'm to his left. He jumps straight up in the
Speaker 1: air about two wing flaps, you know, and just jumps
Speaker 1: straight about twelve feet up in there, lands on the
Speaker 1: ground and and start to trot right towards me. So
Speaker 1: I grab another era, and he's just coming right towards me,
Speaker 1: and he gets about ten yards and I I just
Speaker 1: nail him. Just I see the Arab pass all the
Speaker 1: way through him sticking the ground. The turkey. I'm kind
Speaker 1: of on a ridge that kind of slopes off, and
Speaker 1: I can kind of see a bigger kind of holler
Speaker 1: over here, and that turkey turns and just just takes
Speaker 1: two big wings flaps and just just puts his wings
Speaker 1: out and just sails, just sails off the side of
Speaker 1: that mountain. And I go, oh, dang. I just remember
Speaker 1: seeing a silhouette up against the other mountain over there,
Speaker 1: and so I go, oh wow, that it's gonna be
Speaker 1: hard to find that turkey. So I sit there for
Speaker 1: a little while, and it's starting to get dark, and
Speaker 1: I think, man, I better go find that turkey. And
Speaker 1: I've already got a deer in the truck, you know,
Speaker 1: And so I get out and I just start making
Speaker 1: loops off the side of the mountain and I just
Speaker 1: knew the direction it went, you know, start making just
Speaker 1: big horseshoes, you know, off down there and make a
Speaker 1: big circle. And it's just almost dark, and there's no
Speaker 1: way I'm gonna find this turkey. The leaves were real wet,
Speaker 1: it was. It's wet, had been raining. I end up
Speaker 1: making it back to the truck and I put my
Speaker 1: bow in the truck and I'm gonna leave, and I think, man,
Speaker 1: there's one little section I didn't look in. I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna walk back up there. So I decided I didn't
Speaker 1: take my bow, which was a key component of this story,
Speaker 1: and I started walking up the road. Well, I don't
Speaker 1: get probably a hundred yards from my truck, walking on
Speaker 1: a road just lined with pine needles, you know, and
Speaker 1: like a gravel road. So I'm walking real quiet, and
Speaker 1: I come around like a little thicket and just walking.
Speaker 1: And I come around and I can see something new
Speaker 1: area and bam, I see a turkey. Laying on the
Speaker 1: ground like a hen with its head up, and it
Speaker 1: is probably eight or nine feet for me, like from
Speaker 1: here to that bucket, and it is laying there and
Speaker 1: it doesn't see me. It has its eyes closed, and
Speaker 1: I just freeze and I go, what do I do?
Speaker 1: And I knew that that was the turkey EDD shot
Speaker 1: and that it was laying there, and I actually wanted
Speaker 1: to go back to the truck and get my bow
Speaker 1: and come back and shoot it again. Well about the
Speaker 1: time that I started to do something, the decision was
Speaker 1: made for me what was gonna happen When I saw
Speaker 1: that turkey's eyes pop open and I could, I could?
Speaker 1: I mean, I just saw his eyes pop wide open.
Speaker 1: He sees me, and he jumps up and proceeds to
Speaker 1: run as fast as a turkey can run down the mountain. Well,
Speaker 1: I was wearing my big lacrosse green boots that all
Speaker 1: the bow hunters wore back during that time, and man,
Speaker 1: I had one option, and that was to chase him.
Speaker 1: And so I just take out after him, and I
Speaker 1: remember just crashing through briars and brush and limbs, and
Speaker 1: I'm running as fast as a twenty one year old
Speaker 1: claim nucomb can run in the rain with all his
Speaker 1: hunting gear, chasing this turkey down the hill, and man,
Speaker 1: he is losing me. I'm running as fast as I can.
Speaker 1: He's getting further and further away, and I just remember thinking, no,
Speaker 1: I cannot lose this turkey. And we get to the
Speaker 1: bottom of the hill and one day I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: back up there and see how far it is. It
Speaker 1: probably wasn't that far. It felt like I ran a
Speaker 1: quarter of a mile. I'm sure I didn't. If we
Speaker 1: get to the bottom of the hill and he goes
Speaker 1: down through it and he starts to pull up the
Speaker 1: ridge on the other side, well, I fall in just
Speaker 1: right behind him, except he's now pretty good ways out
Speaker 1: in front of me. We start going up the hill,
Speaker 1: and man, I start gaining on him. I started gaining
Speaker 1: on him, and all that does adrenaline, adrenaline, and I
Speaker 1: know that I'm about to just run out of steam.
Speaker 1: I don't have much left, but I'm gaining on him,
Speaker 1: gaining on him, gaining on him, gaining, And I remember thinking,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna catch that sucker. I mean, that was the
Speaker 1: words that were formed in my head. I'm gonna catch
Speaker 1: that sucker. And man, I got up about five ft
Speaker 1: from him, and I just dove on that sucker and
Speaker 1: just just wrapped him up and we boom hit the ground,
Speaker 1: and we were both so out of breath that I
Speaker 1: just laid there breathing, and I remember seeing his head
Speaker 1: pop up, and I remember his eyes looking at me
Speaker 1: just like this right here if when I caught my breath,
Speaker 1: and I guess he caught his too, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I reached over and just wrung his neck, carried him
Speaker 1: out of there, threw him in the back of the
Speaker 1: truck with the nubbing buck I just killed and went
Speaker 1: to Misty Shreeve's house. True story, told me the story.
Speaker 1: I took it to your house. No, I remember, just
Speaker 1: the story. Yeah, you took it to the house. Remember
Speaker 1: your beautiful blonde, swaying, shaggy hair the l nineties. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember that that story didn't qualify for a Spring
Speaker 1: Turkey story. Okay, well, so yeah, I don't care. It's
Speaker 1: a good story, great, great render, guys, Josh closing thoughts,
Speaker 1: closing comments. I just remember the last are the one
Speaker 1: of the first times I went hunting with y'all. Do
Speaker 1: you remember We're sitting around the campfire. Clay is telling
Speaker 1: that story. You've probably heard that story twenty times. I
Speaker 1: love it every time. Though. Are looking at each other,
Speaker 1: breathing real hard. That's the best part. We're sitting around
Speaker 1: the campfire. You probably remember this, and uh. And these
Speaker 1: two guys pull up in this in this actually was
Speaker 1: a little earlier than the campfire. I think we've just
Speaker 1: gotten none are hunting for the day. This guy comes
Speaker 1: walking out and he goes, is a dog hare and
Speaker 1: we're like, yeah, Gary, one of Gary's close friends as
Speaker 1: a doctor, And uh, he said, I just got shot.
Speaker 1: Some guy had shot him in the woods, saw the
Speaker 1: white of his hair and just instinctively just shot and
Speaker 1: peppered his back with shotguns. Yep. And then it was
Speaker 1: Dr John Mesco was with us. Well, it might have
Speaker 1: we might have blended two stories together, but that that
Speaker 1: exactly what you said happened. And this guy knew that
Speaker 1: I hunted with Mesco. We're in a We went out
Speaker 1: and every place I had picked out somebody was there.
Speaker 1: And we just went back to camp drank coffee. And
Speaker 1: this guy pulls up and he goes, man, hey, Gary,
Speaker 1: you got that dock with it? And I go, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's here, and he came down and took his shirt off.
Speaker 1: He hold back seven out his knife and he like
Speaker 1: licked it and ran it under his arms and he
Speaker 1: started he started poking him on the back, and he goes,
Speaker 1: you'll be okay, man, don't do anything. I don't even
Speaker 1: go to the doctor. They'll work themself out. What kind
Speaker 1: of pattern? It was pretty wide, you know, it wasn't
Speaker 1: It wasn't. He probably had twenty pellets in his backproof cylinder. Anyway,
Speaker 1: you were there for that, Yeah, yeah, I think I
Speaker 1: was hunting. You must have been some reason I was.
Speaker 1: I don't remember. Yeah, a lot. You know, we're all
Speaker 1: hunting him by Route Arkansas. Wow. But anyway, I appreciate
Speaker 1: the podcast is I think I think the way you
Speaker 1: left it was good just for people to think and
Speaker 1: do what they can, you know it. It I felt
Speaker 1: a little sad thinking about generations that may not have
Speaker 1: the turkey hunting that we've had and it it was
Speaker 1: such good times and good memories for me, especially with
Speaker 1: our kids, that I want people to be able to
Speaker 1: have that experience in the future too. So yeah, the
Speaker 1: death by a thousand cuts that was very accurate. So
Speaker 1: we can just do the opposite. We put a thousand
Speaker 1: band aids on it, maybe it'll get better. Podcast is
Speaker 1: over drop thousand band aids and hissvation. We're starting a
Speaker 1: foundation thousand Brent Reeves and his thousand band aids. They'll
Speaker 1: probably make up they'll probably make up bronze monument him
Speaker 1: and his overalls one day with holding the Gattler turkey
Speaker 1: and it's and Dad and Johnson and Johnson. Oh, thank
Speaker 1: you guys. Hey, there are some burgeries hats on the website.
Speaker 1: A tan Burgaries hat there there for sale. Hand Burgeries
Speaker 1: hat look pretty good, I mean, so you can check
Speaker 1: that out. And uh, we should have Burgaries hats and
Speaker 1: may starting pretty quick and there'll be a lot of them,
Speaker 1: but they'll still probably set out you buy. You should
Speaker 1: buy them as quick as you can. And um, anyway,
Speaker 1: thanks guys and gals. Is that what it sounds like.
Speaker 1: H