Speaker 1: You're listening to the Sportsman's Nation podcast network, brought to
Speaker 1: you by go Wild. Now. The go Wild app has
Speaker 1: added some really cool and exciting functionality to their app,
Speaker 1: and the first one I want to talk about is
Speaker 1: the near me function and basically what this does. It
Speaker 1: allows you to engage and connect with people in your area.
Speaker 1: You guys can talk about gear you guys can talk
Speaker 1: about hunting areas, you guys can talk about what's going
Speaker 1: on in the woods, and it just allows the users
Speaker 1: to be more of a community and connect easier. The
Speaker 1: second part is the gearbox and what the gearboxes. It
Speaker 1: is a an opportunity for the users to not only
Speaker 1: see reviews on products and see what the go wild
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Speaker 1: action on it. So check out the go Wild app.
Speaker 1: If you haven't downloaded it to your phone yet, you
Speaker 1: need to and you can do that at any app
Speaker 1: store that is currently available. Go Wild It's an awesome app.
Speaker 1: Check them out. My name is Clay Nukeleman. I'm the
Speaker 1: host of the Bear Hunting Magazine podcast. I'll also be
Speaker 1: your host into the world of hunting the icon of
Speaker 1: the North American wilderness prepare. We'll talk about tactics, gear, conservation.
Speaker 1: We will also bring you into some of the wildest
Speaker 1: country on the planet chasing fair. This week we're putting
Speaker 1: it in a little bit different gear and I've got
Speaker 1: my buddy Josh, filmmaker, Malichi Nichols, and Ben Lagron at
Speaker 1: the Global Headquarters. We have a pretty enlightening discussion about
Speaker 1: how Maliki gave me the stiff arm on going in
Speaker 1: partners on a boat. We talked about the Gary Newcom
Speaker 1: Hunting School of Hard Knocks summer camp that Josh Spillmaker attended,
Speaker 1: and we talked about building family culture. Building family culture
Speaker 1: in the time of crisis and instability. I think the
Speaker 1: response of of anybody to the people that they love
Speaker 1: is to to build stability for them. And so we
Speaker 1: have a really fun conversation about building family culture and
Speaker 1: what that means, values, philosophies, culture, and I think you're
Speaker 1: gonna enjoy this podcast. We just went to print with
Speaker 1: the July August issue of Bear Hunting Magazine. It is
Speaker 1: a great issue. A lot of great articles, some Lama articles,
Speaker 1: some hound a lot of hound stuff. Uh. We even
Speaker 1: teach people how to make some bear hide chaps. Anyway,
Speaker 1: check out Bear Hunting Magazine. You can subscribe to Bear
Speaker 1: Hunting Magazine. Get it six times per year, mailed to
Speaker 1: your door. Incredible, incredible thing. Hey, I hope you enjoyed
Speaker 1: this podcast. We are at the Bear Hunting Magazine Global headquarters.
Speaker 1: I think I know all of you have been here before. Yes,
Speaker 1: at one time or another. This has been the first
Speaker 1: time on the podcast. Well and Malachots first time, but
Speaker 1: not Josh's first time. Well, hey we are We're at
Speaker 1: the Bear Hunting Magazine Global headquarters. Do you guy? Did
Speaker 1: you guys notice anything new in here? It's kind of
Speaker 1: smells like mothballs. Okay, that is new. That is that
Speaker 1: snake deterrent. It's I feel like the mobs are trying
Speaker 1: to get to my bears. Okay, guys, it's a little
Speaker 1: more obvious than what you're feeling. The table, Look at
Speaker 1: that n at that This is like a This is
Speaker 1: like a card table. I bought this at an antique
Speaker 1: store and it's it's a like probably a two by
Speaker 1: two two and a half by two and a half
Speaker 1: square table with fold out legs, and it's old, it's
Speaker 1: very old, and it has this beautiful old painting of
Speaker 1: a fox hunting scenes certainly from Europe. And it's like
Speaker 1: it's like got all these running walkers and these guys
Speaker 1: on horses, and I like that this This lady's like
Speaker 1: bringing her man some food here. I told Mr. I said,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, you could bring me food while
Speaker 1: I was riding my mule if you wanted to do do.
Speaker 1: Are you gonna put a thatched roof on your house?
Speaker 1: That roof? But so when I saw this, like I
Speaker 1: was like, this is the foundational stuff from where we
Speaker 1: get our hound hunting culture in North America is from
Speaker 1: the European hunting culture. And I'm sitting there in this
Speaker 1: uh in this antique store looking at this and and
Speaker 1: it's like this rich cultural scene. I mean, I like it.
Speaker 1: Like families are involved. You know, think about the guys
Speaker 1: that bred. I mean, there's like twenty five dogs there
Speaker 1: that those horses had to be trained. Those didn't just
Speaker 1: they weren't just born trained. Somebody trained those horses. Somebody
Speaker 1: developed a craft, somebody bred those dogs. That the families,
Speaker 1: you know, the how and that, my friends, is no
Speaker 1: longer in existence. For the most part, the European hound
Speaker 1: hunting culture is gone, essentially gone there there, it's still there.
Speaker 1: I have people right in and say, no, we still hunt,
Speaker 1: and they do. There's a few, but in general it
Speaker 1: is gone. So I came back talked to Kolbe about
Speaker 1: I told him what I saw, and uh, I went
Speaker 1: back and I bought this. And you know what I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do with We're actually using it as a table
Speaker 1: here today. I got all my podcast stuff set up
Speaker 1: on it. It looks like a picture frame, though, doesn't it?
Speaker 1: Like to the tabletop looks like a picture frame. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna take the legs off of that thing because I
Speaker 1: don't really need a table in here, even though it's
Speaker 1: kind of convenient. And I'm gonna put it as a
Speaker 1: picture right above your head. Do you see that? If
Speaker 1: the guys are looking up right right there on the
Speaker 1: ceiling of the loft here. So there's gonna be a
Speaker 1: a big painting of this European hound hunt on the
Speaker 1: ceiling the bare Honey Magazine Global Headquarters. Oh you teach
Speaker 1: me up, Like I was like confused, like why did
Speaker 1: you see it? So that people walk in here and
Speaker 1: say why is that painting on the ceiling, And I'm
Speaker 1: gonna say, as they didn't guard the gate. They didn't
Speaker 1: guard the gate. That that scene is no longer on
Speaker 1: the earth, It's not on the flat walled. I got
Speaker 1: pictures all in here of all this honey, all this culture,
Speaker 1: all this life, all this shared experience, and this is
Speaker 1: still here. You know. We can still hunt deer, we
Speaker 1: still quail hunt, we still ride our mules and bear hunt,
Speaker 1: but that they don't and I want my children to
Speaker 1: be able to jumpana mule go coon hunting. So it's
Speaker 1: gonna be there is a symbolic as a symbolic gesture too,
Speaker 1: we better guard the gate. Do you know what guarden
Speaker 1: get means? Malichi been been in? Malachi are okay? Essentially,
Speaker 1: guard the gate is a phrase that we use Bear
Speaker 1: Hunting Magazine to say that the bear hunting is the
Speaker 1: entry point for the anti hunting community to come into
Speaker 1: to the North American space of hunting. Like they're not
Speaker 1: after the quail hunters, They're not after the deer hunters.
Speaker 1: It's the bear hunters, and it's also the hound hunters.
Speaker 1: Like hound hunting is an easy narrative for people to
Speaker 1: twist and for someone to not understand. And so that
Speaker 1: is the easy place for the anti hunting community to
Speaker 1: come in and twist the narrative and say these are barbarians,
Speaker 1: this is an outdated, irrelevant practice, and so and the
Speaker 1: anti hunting communities whole strategy is incrementalism, like they're picking
Speaker 1: off one thing at a time so much so like
Speaker 1: a frog and boiling water. You know, you don't realize
Speaker 1: it until you wake up in your seventy and you
Speaker 1: can't do what you used to could do. And so
Speaker 1: it's a it's a it's a pretty big We talked
Speaker 1: about that a lot because the hunting the hunting world
Speaker 1: has sort of been ignored or the bear hunting world,
Speaker 1: excuse me. And so what we're trying to do is
Speaker 1: build this strong narrative of ethics, conservation, humane harvests, like
Speaker 1: all these things like why bear hunting is no different
Speaker 1: then the other top of hunting, and how harvesting wild
Speaker 1: game is no different and in in in fact more
Speaker 1: humane than the bacon that we just ate in there.
Speaker 1: I mean, you live in a glass house if you
Speaker 1: think that that bacon was was ethically and honorably raised
Speaker 1: and harvested, and people people don't have a problem with that.
Speaker 1: I mean, like, but then they might say they have
Speaker 1: a problem with me going and killing the bear, and
Speaker 1: it's like, nah, we gotta guard the gate. That makes sense.
Speaker 1: And to your point, Clay, just thinking about the origins
Speaker 1: of of kind of our hunting tradition even to date,
Speaker 1: when you look back at at historical references like this,
Speaker 1: it's not there anymore, and all those things have died off.
Speaker 1: So if we don't do something now, we're gonna we
Speaker 1: would logically have to expect that the traditions we have
Speaker 1: now will die off. Right. Well, we live in a
Speaker 1: the very nature of the earth today is one of
Speaker 1: massive increase of communication. Used to things could hide in
Speaker 1: the shadows and kind of just be out of sight.
Speaker 1: Not anymore. Social media is called is wreaking havoc on
Speaker 1: a whole lot of stuff, not just hunting. But it's
Speaker 1: like it's like showing the world and so globalization, like
Speaker 1: people from all over the world follow social media from
Speaker 1: North America. And the answer is not to quit putting
Speaker 1: stuff on social media. Part of the answer is don't
Speaker 1: put stupid stuff on social media. Don't put fringe stuff
Speaker 1: that doesn't happen very often, and that's just a very
Speaker 1: nature of the problem is that when something sensational happens,
Speaker 1: like in a hunting situation, like say, you know, that's
Speaker 1: what you want to talk about, because the other four
Speaker 1: hundred days that you went hunting that didn't happen, and
Speaker 1: and so you put this sensational thing on the internet,
Speaker 1: and then that brands the whole scene. So you know,
Speaker 1: we we do have to part of guard in the
Speaker 1: gate is having wisdom with what you put on social
Speaker 1: media about hunting, because every facet of hunting, every facet
Speaker 1: of farming, every facet of driving a car down the road.
Speaker 1: Driving a car down the road can have a bad
Speaker 1: narrative people dyeing crash, So be like putting a picture
Speaker 1: of a crash car and someone injured in a photo
Speaker 1: and put it on social media and then the world
Speaker 1: saying cars are terrible, cars kill people. Well, yeah they do,
Speaker 1: but most of the time they don't. You're with me, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's so much there's just there's just okay, there's so
Speaker 1: much information out there that it's like anything we see
Speaker 1: now has to be sensationalized for us, for it to
Speaker 1: get our attention. Yeah it's true. Yeah, yeah, well okay,
Speaker 1: I didn't I really didn't intend for I love it.
Speaker 1: I had to tell you about my table though. This
Speaker 1: is this is gonna be major, This is gonna be
Speaker 1: a major addition to the fair. So hey, let me
Speaker 1: introduce my guests. Okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna give a
Speaker 1: short introduction, then come back and give a longer introduction.
Speaker 1: So I have Josh Spillmaker. Josh has been on the
Speaker 1: podcast before. Josh is like, well, I'm not gonna talk.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna give you introduction. And then we have Malichi
Speaker 1: Nichols like a long time friend, but you've never been
Speaker 1: on the podcast, okay. And then to my left, Benjamin
Speaker 1: Lagron Um, it's been waving to the crowd. I've been
Speaker 1: been has never been on the podcast, And there's different
Speaker 1: reasons why I've I've I have you guys on this
Speaker 1: podcast because we're all at different stages of life, except
Speaker 1: for Josh and I are kind of in the same stage.
Speaker 1: Um but uh, but so we're gonna we'll talk about Well, so,
Speaker 1: Ben you have three daughters. How old are they? Six?
Speaker 1: Four and two? So you're like in the heat at
Speaker 1: the moment. Okay, So and then Malachi, how many kids
Speaker 1: do you have? No kids? Doesn't have any kids? Is
Speaker 1: pretty newly married. How old are you, Malachi? How have
Speaker 1: you been? Thirty two? Okay, and Josh, you have three kids?
Speaker 1: I have three children. Oldest is twenty, my middle one
Speaker 1: is eighteen, and my youngest is fourteen. Yeah, girl, boy, girl. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So what we're gonna talk about today is is uh
Speaker 1: is building family culture. We may find a different phrase
Speaker 1: to use, but that's the way that I would describe it.
Speaker 1: So I wanted to. I wanted to here's some stuff
Speaker 1: from the guy who is future casting of what with kids.
Speaker 1: But I mean, you're already building family kid I've been
Speaker 1: for about three and a half years. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: So you're not future casting, but you're you're building foundation
Speaker 1: big time for when you do have kids. And then
Speaker 1: and then Ben is right in the heat of it.
Speaker 1: So just different stages. But before we do that, I
Speaker 1: wanted to. I wanted to so, Josh, I don't think
Speaker 1: these guys know that you used to be the assistant
Speaker 1: assistant to assistant to the editor of a small regional
Speaker 1: publication that I used to vaguely put together. It was
Speaker 1: called the Arkansas Bear and Buck Journal. It was a
Speaker 1: very classy publication. Listen, one day, one day I was,
Speaker 1: I was, I was building this magazine. I mean it
Speaker 1: was I published the magazine. I mean like I didn't
Speaker 1: have a boss, you know, and uh, we were going
Speaker 1: to print like that day or something, and I was like,
Speaker 1: it'd be funny to put Josh's name in there. So
Speaker 1: I put Josh's name. And I put Josh's name in
Speaker 1: like the like right beneath mine and our other buddy,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Rose put you know, Clay nucom editor, publisher, Josh Spillmaker,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Rose, assistant editors, and then just went right down
Speaker 1: the line. Nobody ever said away prove freed a few
Speaker 1: articles back in my day, Jonathan Rose dead, Did you
Speaker 1: hang up the journal? At least I think I still
Speaker 1: have so, I mean there's probably something right over there.
Speaker 1: I have your name because once I did it, I
Speaker 1: never took it out. How many years, well we produced
Speaker 1: it for five years. You are now liable. So if
Speaker 1: you get an email, you know why. The opinions expressed
Speaker 1: on the Arkansas baron Buck Drill did not reflect the
Speaker 1: opinions of Josh, so Okay, So Josh and I have
Speaker 1: been longtime friends, and Josh, I was trying to find
Speaker 1: a way to describe you, and I've I've got it perfect.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, because we're saying we have to
Speaker 1: be conscious of the sphere that we're inside of, and
Speaker 1: like people that are listening to this for the most part,
Speaker 1: or hunters for the most part. So you know, I'm
Speaker 1: kind of introducing to you. It's like the hunting Josh. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: so here here here, this would be like on your resume.
Speaker 1: There's only been one graduate of the Gary Newcombs Hunting
Speaker 1: School of Hard Knocks that graduated, and that would be me,
Speaker 1: I know, the one that graduated. My brothers were both
Speaker 1: in the school. They didn't make it. They didn't make it.
Speaker 1: God love him. There there um but semesters no. Well, listen,
Speaker 1: if Gary Knwcomb had had like a summer camp, if
Speaker 1: the Gary Newcoms School of Hunting the hard Knocks had
Speaker 1: had a summer camp, you would have gone to the
Speaker 1: summer camp and like got the shirt and went through it.
Speaker 1: Because so for like the better part of on and
Speaker 1: off for twenty years, Josh's you know, probably probably fourteen
Speaker 1: of twenty years. Fifteen of twenty years, we've gotten down
Speaker 1: in hunting with my dad in public land in southwest Arkansas.
Speaker 1: Would you say that's about right? So you uh you,
Speaker 1: you have some Gary Newcomb paraphernalia. A significant portion of
Speaker 1: my hunting gear has come through Gary Newcomb, whether voluntarily
Speaker 1: or involuntarily. Your bow, my bow, you're still sporting those
Speaker 1: real tree cameras from I stole his flashlight, his stream
Speaker 1: light flashlight for about three years before I gave it back. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so uh so. But but Josh and i' hunted together
Speaker 1: on the podcast you're on before we were talking about
Speaker 1: generational continues, we're talking about raising kids. We told your
Speaker 1: famous story of killing the first day you bow hunted
Speaker 1: public land, you killed the deer. Tried to keep it
Speaker 1: a secret from you, but you spotted the dime sized
Speaker 1: spot of blood on my boots from like two miles
Speaker 1: away as you drove up to get me. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: I took We We won't go into the full story,
Speaker 1: but Josh killed the deal. The first day you ever
Speaker 1: setting a tree too in bow hunt, and he drugs
Speaker 1: he drags it early in the morning. It was like
Speaker 1: we didn't have cell phones, so it's like he you know,
Speaker 1: I was gonna come pick him up at eleven and
Speaker 1: so you know, he killed this deer at like am.
Speaker 1: So he drags the deer out to the road and
Speaker 1: uh and goes to sleep off the road kind of
Speaker 1: off the road. Yeah, yeah, like for a pillow and
Speaker 1: took a two and he wakes up and uh, they're
Speaker 1: buzzards surrounding him. So these buzzards were like, we got
Speaker 1: a pretty big old boy, and they were like, well,
Speaker 1: I don't know what happened there, but something happened. And
Speaker 1: so they landed and we're like about probably to pack
Speaker 1: his eyeballs out when he woke up. And then you
Speaker 1: had turkeys walked by you. It's pretty so yeah. And
Speaker 1: then uh, and we've had it added off together. I mean,
Speaker 1: you've coon hunted with me, You've you've done quite a
Speaker 1: bit of stuff with me. Hunting was always enjoyable time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: David killed a turkey with us, and we have turkey
Speaker 1: youth turkey hunted, Yes, we have. Yeah. Awesome. So in Malachi,
Speaker 1: you didn't know this, but uh, well, so Maliki, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna die listening here. And so Maliki is an Arkansas
Speaker 1: licensed hunter. Oh, Yeah, it's real serious. Renewal in end
Speaker 1: of June one year, coming up on my one year anniversary.
Speaker 1: It's real serious. So this is your first Arkansas hunting
Speaker 1: license that you've ever bought. Though it is true you
Speaker 1: grew up in Texas. Grew up in Texas. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: you did a little bit of hunting in Tea. But
Speaker 1: but you wouldn't call yourself a hunt definitely not. I
Speaker 1: did a little arm and hunting back in elementary school
Speaker 1: with like a little fourteen yeah, going out shooting varmints
Speaker 1: with my friend and his dad in Midland, in Midland,
Speaker 1: Texas yea. And then did a little quail and dove hunting.
Speaker 1: Hometown of George hometime of George w Wah. I don't
Speaker 1: think that hometown of George see his dad. Uh, George
Speaker 1: h did his old business there and that's how he
Speaker 1: got got his money. And then the sun was I
Speaker 1: don't know if George w was born there, but I
Speaker 1: knew he went to elementary school there, and so that's
Speaker 1: how Midlands. When I left Midland, it was about two
Speaker 1: hundred thousand. Now it's close to about three or four
Speaker 1: hundred thousand from they had a big old boom old money. Yeah,
Speaker 1: back when a couple of a couple of years ago,
Speaker 1: maybe Midland was like the biggest producer at all. Did
Speaker 1: you know, said I heard George H. W. Bush say
Speaker 1: one time that the difference between him and George W.
Speaker 1: You're talking about the dad of the son. Okay, George
Speaker 1: W is the son. George W. Said the difference between
Speaker 1: him and his dad was Midland, Texas because George W.
Speaker 1: Was kind of like this, you know, kind of folksy
Speaker 1: kind uh you know, like I don't know not yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: kind of texting in in. George H. Was like a
Speaker 1: rich boy from the north, a little more polished. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, middle of Texas is my hometown. So I
Speaker 1: want to say to you though, that you you're qualified
Speaker 1: to call yourself a hunter if you wanted to that,
Speaker 1: because I've shot I mean just you went hunting, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, and you find it with me? Yeah, we
Speaker 1: have cool hunting. Yeah. Um. And now he bought his
Speaker 1: license because we were going to try to go duck
Speaker 1: hunting this year, but we it just didn't happen. But
Speaker 1: but did y'all know that I tried to get Malichi
Speaker 1: to go in with me and buy a boat hold on.
Speaker 1: That's why that publicly ask him why he didn't want
Speaker 1: to go in with me boat. Cut on, hold on,
Speaker 1: hold on, let me listeners, listeners, listen, listen to me.
Speaker 1: Clay and I were talking one day and we were
Speaker 1: talking about we had fried some fish. Came over here
Speaker 1: and had had a fish fry and he was like, man,
Speaker 1: it's so nice to go out and catch fish, come
Speaker 1: back home and cook it. And I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: let's do more fishing. Okay, So I'm thinking I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go get a fishing pole and we're just gonna go
Speaker 1: out to the creek to do a little fishing. The
Speaker 1: next text message from Clay nucok, what do you think
Speaker 1: about going in on the boat? And I'm thinking, like,
Speaker 1: you just want to rent a boat or for the weekend,
Speaker 1: And he's like, I'm talking about buying the boat's whole.
Speaker 1: I just want some fishing poles. And I'm talking about
Speaker 1: every once in a while, I don't want to buy
Speaker 1: a boat, you know, like where do you have it?
Speaker 1: You're texting somebody and they like respond back, go back
Speaker 1: and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And then
Speaker 1: you asked this question and there's like siloce and you're
Speaker 1: like and for like the first five minutes, you're like, ah,
Speaker 1: he must have just said his phone down. And then
Speaker 1: after like thirty minutes, you're like, he probably went for
Speaker 1: a run. And then after an hour you're like, he's
Speaker 1: he's not happy with what I said. When? So when
Speaker 1: when Malachi and I multiple times we've fried fish together,
Speaker 1: and I can tell the man likes to fry fish.
Speaker 1: We kind of enjoyed like cooking for our wives. And
Speaker 1: so I'm like, all right, I got a friend. I
Speaker 1: got a friend that wants to catch fish, and so
Speaker 1: anyway I messaged him. I was like, hey, you want
Speaker 1: to go out on He went from like zero to
Speaker 1: like he doesn't do anything real quick. So anyway, okay,
Speaker 1: at least I know why why you still farm me though,
Speaker 1: But okay, that it offers still stands. Offers still stands.
Speaker 1: We didn't need to go fishing. Um Okay, Benjamin lagron Man, Okay, now,
Speaker 1: Ben Ben has you have a long history of hunting,
Speaker 1: but not real I mean, you're not super serious about it.
Speaker 1: Would you describe how would you describe your heart? I
Speaker 1: would say I was really serious growing up. I've just
Speaker 1: since I've had three little kids, and the thought of
Speaker 1: trying to add that to my schedules pretty daunting. Grew
Speaker 1: up in like, yeah, deer camps and stuff with. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: So I grew up Central Arkansas mainly deer hunting. The
Speaker 1: second highest thing I did was probably duck hunting, but
Speaker 1: you know, I did some squirrel, a little bit of
Speaker 1: turkey quill and all that. But yeah, we I grew
Speaker 1: up hunting in um deep South Arkansas and for most
Speaker 1: of my childhood. Man, we had a pretty primitive camp.
Speaker 1: It was rough in it, and that made me pretty
Speaker 1: battle hardened, I think in a good way. Like I
Speaker 1: knew what it I knew what it meant to sacrifice
Speaker 1: for the kill. I mean, I knew hunting was work,
Speaker 1: you know, and you know, we scouted, we we we
Speaker 1: tended to the land like we did um It was
Speaker 1: hard work. And then I remember, probably like maybe when
Speaker 1: I was a teenager, my dad and we kind of
Speaker 1: got tired of the primitive camp and we joined this
Speaker 1: membership of of it was a luxurious to enter, to
Speaker 1: our standards, a luxurious deer camp. We're like this is awesome,
Speaker 1: Like we can actually go indoors, I mean, our old
Speaker 1: camp it was like it was just like a lean
Speaker 1: to you would eat and you know, around the fire
Speaker 1: and uh. And that was like the ritz Man And
Speaker 1: it was actually a a cool deal because it was
Speaker 1: a lease. But there was somebody that owns some land
Speaker 1: and lived there all year long, like right next to
Speaker 1: the lease. That was really great because we leave our
Speaker 1: stuff and it was always safe and and they were
Speaker 1: always kind of like keeping their eyes open on um,
Speaker 1: how the deer moving and stuff. And but that was
Speaker 1: most most of my most cherished childhood memories were deer
Speaker 1: hunting with my dad. And then in high school my
Speaker 1: best friend started telling me duck hunting and um and
Speaker 1: I really love that. Built a lot of great memories
Speaker 1: with him and his dad, who recently died of cancer
Speaker 1: a few years ago. And uh, but so that's one
Speaker 1: of my cherished memories with him was was duck hunting
Speaker 1: and they duck hunting near Stuck Guard and it was
Speaker 1: just it was just a lot of fun. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: you do have a you do have a rich history
Speaker 1: inside of hunting and it's it's uh, it's interesting. Y'all
Speaker 1: may not know it as much, but like South Arkansas,
Speaker 1: there's not as much public land so there's the hunting
Speaker 1: lease culture is pretty strong, like you got it, and
Speaker 1: it's affordable. It's not like I mean, there are certainly
Speaker 1: big leases down in South Arkansas that are incredibly expensive,
Speaker 1: like more expensive than you could imagine. Um, but I
Speaker 1: mean like a lot of lease is that you know,
Speaker 1: just a working man could afford to get into. Um
Speaker 1: and uh So anyway, but like up here, you can't
Speaker 1: hardly find it hunting least again Northwest Arkansas. If you
Speaker 1: were to say, if you would ask me where hunting
Speaker 1: Least you could join is, I wouldn't know where to
Speaker 1: tell you to go. But it's probably because there's so
Speaker 1: much there's quite a bit of public plan around here,
Speaker 1: so people can go hunt public lan and do pretty
Speaker 1: do okay. But now you know what I always say
Speaker 1: is that so in what's happening right now with the
Speaker 1: hunting world is that hunter recruitment is a massive, massive issue.
Speaker 1: So technology, transportation, the opportunity inside of a prosperous nation,
Speaker 1: opportunity just gives people so many options for what they
Speaker 1: do with their spare time, and for of people, hunting
Speaker 1: is an option for what to do when they have
Speaker 1: spare time, and uh and prosperity creates options and uh,
Speaker 1: and so what has happened? You know, the peak hunting
Speaker 1: numbers in the United States were in the early nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: and I think we had like sixteen million hunters, but
Speaker 1: the population was like two million people. So that was
Speaker 1: like I can't remember the percentage, somebody could do the
Speaker 1: math um, but essentially something like that. And so like,
Speaker 1: that's actually a pretty fair number listeners, that's wrong, that's
Speaker 1: half that, okay, somewhere around ten. So, so what has
Speaker 1: happened now is that we have eleven million licensed hunters
Speaker 1: in the US, but the US population is three d
Speaker 1: and thirty million. So if you when you're talking about
Speaker 1: a democratic society where people vote, like even though, I mean,
Speaker 1: losing five million hunters massive, but what's equally as massive
Speaker 1: is that the population we've not we've not had a
Speaker 1: healthy growth with the population. And so I say to
Speaker 1: like Malachi, Malachi, buying a hunting license is significant, and honestly,
Speaker 1: in the state of Arkansas, he has done as much
Speaker 1: for conservation as I have. I mean really, and so
Speaker 1: like just buying a hunting license, I mean, like buy
Speaker 1: your spouse a hunting license for no, no, reason other
Speaker 1: than just as a as a gift, as a as
Speaker 1: a a donation to conservation. Um. Because I never thought
Speaker 1: about that before, Clay, because you know, I buy a
Speaker 1: hunting license every year, but really, to to help make
Speaker 1: a difference, you could buy family members. It's I mean,
Speaker 1: if all the license hunters in Arkansas just said, you
Speaker 1: know what, I'm gonna buy somebody a hunting license, and
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously you want those people to participate in hunting,
Speaker 1: but even if they didn't, you're you've you've doubled the revenue.
Speaker 1: And all that money is ear tag to go back
Speaker 1: into the state organizations that are doing work for conservation
Speaker 1: in every state. You know. The other the other way
Speaker 1: that money comes in, And that's not what this podcast
Speaker 1: is about. But but is uh, you know, buying hunting
Speaker 1: equipment through the Pittman robertson money that like, is uh
Speaker 1: the tax money that comes from firearms? Um, all you
Speaker 1: guys are in the firearms big time, and uh man,
Speaker 1: the ammunition that you're buying is specifically earmarked for conservation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Pittman Robertson exercise tax. Oh, firearms users and hunters are
Speaker 1: the ones who are funding conservation in this country, America. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're welcome, America. And that's the that's the problem. So
Speaker 1: it's not just that, you know, like I'm a hunter
Speaker 1: and I want my culture to persist through time like that,
Speaker 1: that's part of it, Like this kind of emotional you know,
Speaker 1: cultural connection to hunting that like I want my great
Speaker 1: grandkids should the earth persist, uh live through then see. No,
Speaker 1: there's real tangible value to hunters being on the landscape
Speaker 1: because they fund conservation. So less hunters means less wild places,
Speaker 1: means less wildlife. And that's that's kind of a hard
Speaker 1: pill for some people to understand. But that's not why
Speaker 1: we're here, old boys. Um, what I want to talk
Speaker 1: about is man unprecedented times we live in? Is it
Speaker 1: not absolutely unprecedented times? And the you know, and we're
Speaker 1: we're talking about the coronavirus, we're talking about just a
Speaker 1: political instability. We're talking about I mean, the chaos of
Speaker 1: riots and ludy and we're not gonna get into the
Speaker 1: details of that. But to me, what I want to do,
Speaker 1: and I think the base level instinct of pretty much
Speaker 1: any family, any person, any any head of home, you know, husband, wife,
Speaker 1: it's gonna want to do is stabilize their families inside
Speaker 1: of times of instability. I mean that whether you are
Speaker 1: I don't care where you're from. That is the innate
Speaker 1: desire of parents of families, whether you're religious, whether you're
Speaker 1: not religious, whether you live in China, whether you live
Speaker 1: in New Zealand, whether you live in the United States,
Speaker 1: whether you live in the urban center of New York City,
Speaker 1: whether you live in Newton County, Arkansas. You have this
Speaker 1: innate desire to stabilize your family and times of crisis,
Speaker 1: times of instability shaking shake that and people could be like,
Speaker 1: I'm not shaken by this, you are a little bit.
Speaker 1: I mean like I mean, as my life really been affected.
Speaker 1: I mean like we've eaten just as much food, probably
Speaker 1: more we've I mean like we've not like sent down
Speaker 1: the financial belt I figured we've probably I mean like
Speaker 1: life has been pretty normal for us. So that's not
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about. I'm not saying you're starved out
Speaker 1: of food or but life is different. Life is different
Speaker 1: than it was. And uh, and we have to walk
Speaker 1: our families. I feel like as as leaders of homes.
Speaker 1: And when I say that, you can hear me say
Speaker 1: that A lot. I mean, I'm talking about husbands and wives, parents, Uh,
Speaker 1: navigating family through all this stuff is significant. But so
Speaker 1: the foundation to that though, the the ability to ride
Speaker 1: a mule through a rough spot in the mountain doesn't
Speaker 1: come when you get to the rough spot in the mountain.
Speaker 1: It started in the round pen when you were training
Speaker 1: it um a long long time ago. The foundations of
Speaker 1: that animals connection to the writer is the writer's connection.
Speaker 1: And know what that animals? You know, you see what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. So it's like crisis tests us. All this
Speaker 1: test us. So what we're talking about the building family culture,
Speaker 1: building family culture, and all you guys, I respect every
Speaker 1: all of you for the way that you have built
Speaker 1: your families. And I think nobody's doing everything right. I
Speaker 1: mean that that the word right is a tough one,
Speaker 1: but we're doing it intentionally. And I know all you
Speaker 1: guys well enough to know that you're very intentionally building
Speaker 1: family culture. And if if you don't hear anything else
Speaker 1: on this podcast, and you know you're just listening to
Speaker 1: this and like you just want to chew on something,
Speaker 1: my question to you is are you being intentional with
Speaker 1: the way that you're building your family? And that word
Speaker 1: building could throw you off and let me let me
Speaker 1: let me say this right here? Is that? Or I've
Speaker 1: got a couple of written statements here. Um, let's see.
Speaker 1: Let's see. We we research and consult almost everything that
Speaker 1: we want to be proficient at. Do we not, Like,
Speaker 1: if you're gonna go on a big hunting trip, you're
Speaker 1: gonna learn about it. If you want to get into cycling,
Speaker 1: like you go to cycling experts and see what they say. Um.
Speaker 1: But with family stuff, a lot of times people are
Speaker 1: really isolated. Um. Why why do you think that is?
Speaker 1: I think it can be perceived as weakness to have
Speaker 1: to rely on some on advice or counsel from someone
Speaker 1: else to build your own family. You know, when you
Speaker 1: when you see you know someone who's proficient at hunting,
Speaker 1: and and you see, you know, I like to fly fish,
Speaker 1: and so you know, I watch other guys, it's like, well,
Speaker 1: they've had a long history of this and I want
Speaker 1: to glean from them. But when it comes to your
Speaker 1: own family, it says it's a really a sensitive spot
Speaker 1: because you don't want to be seen as weak or
Speaker 1: there's there's the other side of you. You get isolated
Speaker 1: because you don't want to build like mom and dad,
Speaker 1: or you don't want to follow their pattern and so
Speaker 1: so I'm gonna do it on my own. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: find my own way. And so it's it's almost a
Speaker 1: comparison of I don't want to do that, so I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do it my own way, and that can that
Speaker 1: can make you isolated. Yeah, I think, and I think
Speaker 1: we as people a lot of times are insecure and
Speaker 1: and to open ourselves up for somebody else's input, that's
Speaker 1: pretty vulnerable. And it you it takes time of doing
Speaker 1: that a lot that you'll learn the value of it.
Speaker 1: And you're like, man, the more I open up my
Speaker 1: life to input, the better my life gets. The more
Speaker 1: I learned, the more the better my marriage gets. And
Speaker 1: so I remember even early on um in my marriage,
Speaker 1: and then the same with early I want to first
Speaker 1: had kids, like maybe like the first time I kind
Speaker 1: of like went to some went to maybe one of
Speaker 1: you guys or you know, people older than me, the
Speaker 1: been married longer, head kids longer. I remember, it was
Speaker 1: almost like you know, what are they gonna say? And
Speaker 1: like what if I'm doing everything wrong? And what if
Speaker 1: I'm invalidated? Yeah, exactly. And then every time that I
Speaker 1: did go to people wiser than me, always got two things.
Speaker 1: I always got. Number one, they related to me. I've
Speaker 1: never had an issue in my family or marriage. Somebody
Speaker 1: was like, you struggle with that? Oh my gosh, like
Speaker 1: you're you're a terrible person, Like you have a marital
Speaker 1: struggle are So it's like everything it's almost like my
Speaker 1: friends would like fill in the sense, oh yeah, and
Speaker 1: I bet you said this after you do that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then I bet you felt like this and yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh so that was one and that right there
Speaker 1: is comforting and it shows you that it's safe. And
Speaker 1: then the second looking at somebody that you you perceive
Speaker 1: has made it through that and you're like, well they're
Speaker 1: okay and they had this problem. And then the second
Speaker 1: thing is I've always had and I've always from that
Speaker 1: received an alternative perspective that I didn't have before. And
Speaker 1: it's like every single time I learned that I can't
Speaker 1: do this on my own, you know, and I know
Speaker 1: we're I'm jumping right into all this, but like that's
Speaker 1: one thing I'll learned with building my family is like,
Speaker 1: there ain't no way I can do this on my own.
Speaker 1: As exactly exactly. So I think it's it's like this
Speaker 1: double edged toward It's like we're kind of insecure, but
Speaker 1: we kind of I want to do it on our own.
Speaker 1: But at the same time that's really hard. So we
Speaker 1: ended up just kind of feel we I think people
Speaker 1: either just feel like failure or they just kind of
Speaker 1: build up. They kind of just say, well, this is
Speaker 1: how I am, and this is the way my family
Speaker 1: is gonna be forever, not really getting to experience what
Speaker 1: could be better. I think it's a pretty American cultural
Speaker 1: thing to be really independent with your family. Mean, just
Speaker 1: you know, cultures, cultures are built based upon national history.
Speaker 1: I mean, and like you think about the people that
Speaker 1: like settled in this region or heck, every region of
Speaker 1: this country unless they're unless they're Native Americans. They came
Speaker 1: here and there was like this pioneer spirit that was
Speaker 1: on people to like bust through the wilderness and make
Speaker 1: it on their own. People had to be self sufficient,
Speaker 1: and like here in the Ozarks, that is a trait
Speaker 1: that is honored self sufficiency. I mean, like at the
Speaker 1: Newcomb Farm, we hat tipped to the idea of self
Speaker 1: sufficiency big time. That's okay, but that cannot be the
Speaker 1: definer of every part of your life, or you're a fool,
Speaker 1: you know. So like, yeah, we we like to hunt
Speaker 1: some some of our own food, butching our own animals,
Speaker 1: grow some stuff, training or you know. But when it
Speaker 1: comes to the things that I am not an expert
Speaker 1: on that I'm incapable, Well, anybody could can have insight
Speaker 1: into their family and make decisions on their own. We're
Speaker 1: not We're not suggesting that somebody is incapable of making
Speaker 1: decisions on their own. But what I'm saying is best
Speaker 1: practice inside of life is for people to be connected
Speaker 1: inside of some network of people that they trust, you know,
Speaker 1: that they're getting input. And so, I mean that was
Speaker 1: just my point is that like all this other stuff,
Speaker 1: we're happy to go to YouTube and ask people and
Speaker 1: da da da da da, But when it comes to family,
Speaker 1: don't talk to me about my family. That's just it's
Speaker 1: just it just said, it doesn't even make sense. And
Speaker 1: and so um family culture I would describe it as
Speaker 1: the values, the philosophy, and the structure to the way
Speaker 1: that your family lives its life and uh and and
Speaker 1: that culture holds the keys to how your family air
Speaker 1: quotes will turn out. I mean, like man, we live
Speaker 1: inside of a dynamic space as humans that live in
Speaker 1: the earth. Like man, we are but a flake of
Speaker 1: dirt that has had life breathed into us. I mean
Speaker 1: like it is a facade. I mean the human experience
Speaker 1: is such a facade. I mean like it's so easy
Speaker 1: for us to look at our grandparents who are deceased,
Speaker 1: and it's like, man, there was a time when they
Speaker 1: were twenty nine, and they were forty, and they were
Speaker 1: at the peak of their life, and and now they're gone.
Speaker 1: It's like we will be like that. We have this
Speaker 1: short period of time in the earth, and we're constantly
Speaker 1: projecting forward. We're projecting forward like how our children, you
Speaker 1: know what will our children? Are we equipping our children
Speaker 1: so they can go out and be successful in the
Speaker 1: future environment that we don't even know what it is us.
Speaker 1: I'm projecting into my marriage every single day. I'm doing
Speaker 1: things consciously or unconsciously or consciously that is sowing seed
Speaker 1: into my relationship with my wife five years from now.
Speaker 1: I say that to to young married guys, is don't
Speaker 1: expect things to get on a five year plan inside
Speaker 1: your marriage. Start doing stuff today that in five years
Speaker 1: your wife is gonna trust you more and and you know,
Speaker 1: like because it takes a while to change stuff sometimes. Um,
Speaker 1: but so you know the very nature of of raising
Speaker 1: children means that we're investing in them with the hope
Speaker 1: of a return on that investment. Uh, not not for
Speaker 1: us to gain back, but just like I want my
Speaker 1: kids to I don't want my kids to not be
Speaker 1: able to be you know, whole humans. You know, and
Speaker 1: and here's here's the crux is that no human is
Speaker 1: void of values, philosophy and culture. Like, so everyone has
Speaker 1: values and everyone displays those values, and every human life
Speaker 1: creates a vacuum that's filled with a value system. So
Speaker 1: you could be like, I don't have a value system.
Speaker 1: I don't want to have a value system. Well you
Speaker 1: just told me your value system. I mean, really, there's
Speaker 1: a human life creates a space that has it has
Speaker 1: no option but to be filled with values, culture, and
Speaker 1: philosophy for life. Like there's so if if if you
Speaker 1: and I mean that gets right down into you know,
Speaker 1: what would be what would be an example of well,
Speaker 1: I've got here. You know, the question is how intentional
Speaker 1: is it? Lots of people, you know, people that have
Speaker 1: built their life very unintentionally, you know. And you also
Speaker 1: know people that have built their life very intentionally. Right,
Speaker 1: It's pretty obvious it is. And it's not just by chance.
Speaker 1: It's not just by luck. It's it's it's from intentional.
Speaker 1: And so when we use the word building like I used,
Speaker 1: we we use that word a lot building. It's like
Speaker 1: I'm building family, culture and and and that. And for
Speaker 1: me it's like, uh, and I know for you guys, well,
Speaker 1: I mean it doesn't mean that like we have like
Speaker 1: newcom family school everything. We're just living our life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: That's that's when I was thinking about this the other day.
Speaker 1: One of my first memories of Clay was not with Clay.
Speaker 1: It was with his kids, because I used to teach
Speaker 1: at um That, the school that his kids went to,
Speaker 1: and I can remember his kids like bringing in like
Speaker 1: bear fat to tell what the weather is going to be,
Speaker 1: or bringing in like skins of coon and raccoons and
Speaker 1: you know, foxes and stuff like that. And I remember
Speaker 1: that standing out because all the kids did it, and
Speaker 1: what it was showing me it was like, hey, they
Speaker 1: liked to hunt and and they value kind of giving
Speaker 1: back to conservation or and it just really stood out
Speaker 1: to me because I got a flavor of who Clay
Speaker 1: was through its kids, and I knew it's like that's
Speaker 1: something he was intentionally building inside of his home. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: What would be an example of values? Because sometimes those
Speaker 1: words like values, philosophy and culture, like what what would
Speaker 1: be an example of like family values? I think openness.
Speaker 1: I would say for me, one would be openness. You know,
Speaker 1: I've only been married for three and a half years,
Speaker 1: and in our first year, one of the things that
Speaker 1: we always did we called it um Nichols family hours,
Speaker 1: Like every every week, once a week, we sat down
Speaker 1: and we just talked about the hard stuff, what was
Speaker 1: hard inside the home, what what was frustrating, you know
Speaker 1: what things, And that really did build a pattern inside
Speaker 1: of our marriage where we're if we're frustrated, we talked
Speaker 1: about it, right, if we if we had a hard day,
Speaker 1: we talked about it. It's something that our spouse was
Speaker 1: doing that was irritating us, we talked about it. And
Speaker 1: so we value communication and openness. And I knew if
Speaker 1: I didn't do that at the beginning, it wouldn't be
Speaker 1: built right because I'm just not naturally open. I just
Speaker 1: don't naturally that's something you had to work. That's something
Speaker 1: I had to work and develop that muscle inside of you. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's good. And so the opposite of that would be
Speaker 1: if you didn't communicate, you would actually be building the
Speaker 1: value of non communication. Right. So it's like it's not
Speaker 1: this isn't like yeah, I think I'll have some values.
Speaker 1: It's like, no, you've got value exactly. You've got philosophy,
Speaker 1: you've got culture, just you doing it on purpose and
Speaker 1: the expression of that to your children, whether you say
Speaker 1: it or not. Um, you know, you can you can
Speaker 1: tell a family that's not open and communicative because the
Speaker 1: children have the attitude of well, we can't talk about that,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. You can see it on
Speaker 1: a kid when they have frustrations when they we don't
Speaker 1: we just bottle that up and move on. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that whole thing about openness. The opposite, I think is
Speaker 1: like privacy and that that's a value in our culture
Speaker 1: as well in America. The independence, the privacy you're your
Speaker 1: own person. And yeah, when you let if you let
Speaker 1: your kid retreat and not talk about something, or in
Speaker 1: your marriage, if you just decide there's just places we
Speaker 1: don't go in our conversation, then you are establishing a
Speaker 1: value system, like you're saying, and that I think what
Speaker 1: you're saying earlier about projecting is so important because that
Speaker 1: can sound good in the short term of like, Hi,
Speaker 1: privacy is respectable and and I'm and sometimes you gotta
Speaker 1: give people space. And we know as married people you
Speaker 1: gotta give each other space sometimes. But if you project
Speaker 1: to the future, you've got to be aware of what
Speaker 1: that's gonna build over time. And I think this whole
Speaker 1: thing about you value something, whether it's this or that,
Speaker 1: there's no such things as no value system. I think
Speaker 1: if you become just aware of that reality, you're ahead
Speaker 1: of the game on n of humans on the earth
Speaker 1: because most people kind of go through autopilot, just kind
Speaker 1: of cruising along doing whatever they think or feel. And
Speaker 1: that awareness is just super key and it's super practical.
Speaker 1: It's not always like deep stuff like most people want
Speaker 1: to talk about values. I think of like integrity, honesty,
Speaker 1: and that's true, those are important, but it's the simple
Speaker 1: stuff too, Like like in my family, we value routine,
Speaker 1: Like we have a pretty solid routine and that's just
Speaker 1: kind of how we roll. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: we my wife and I've talked about it, like sometimes
Speaker 1: we need to be more flexible because so like the
Speaker 1: opposite of routine would be flexibility. And we've looked at
Speaker 1: our life and sometimes how we get stressed out, and
Speaker 1: we'll be like, we need to be more flexible. We're
Speaker 1: teaching our kids not to be flexible, We're teaching them
Speaker 1: to be control rolling and you know, routine based because
Speaker 1: me and my wife were like big planners. We like
Speaker 1: everything planned out, so we'll purpose sometimes, Jessica and I
Speaker 1: will purposely do something to like jack up our routine
Speaker 1: so that our kids. Yeah exactly, so our kids know
Speaker 1: that mom and dad are you know, are free sometimes
Speaker 1: and it see my response, yeah exactly. So it's not
Speaker 1: always again this deep stuff like integrity and compassion, which
Speaker 1: those are great, but it's sometimes just like how do
Speaker 1: you perceive your own day to day life? That's your
Speaker 1: value system? Yeah, that's good. Um. I use this word
Speaker 1: philosophy like you know, family, like every family would have
Speaker 1: a philosophy. I'm trying to define what that would be.
Speaker 1: I thought of an example, like, you know, we have
Speaker 1: a philosophy that uh, short term gain for long term
Speaker 1: excuse me, short term sacrifice for long term gain. I
Speaker 1: mean it's a it's a that's a philosophy that it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can you gotta clean your room, you gotta do this,
Speaker 1: and then you can go do this. Or you know,
Speaker 1: whether it's my son who loves playing basketball, it's like
Speaker 1: he uh like he he's building. He really takes it seriously,
Speaker 1: very disciplined and we we like that. Um So, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to define what these things would be, so values, philosophy,
Speaker 1: and then culture. Um So here's the question, why would
Speaker 1: somebody even care? I mean maybe you know, a lot
Speaker 1: of these things people do by default and don't even
Speaker 1: realize it. And maybe you're doing good stuff, you know,
Speaker 1: so that's very possible. Like there's some people that just
Speaker 1: kind of have you know, are doing stuff, maybe not intentionally,
Speaker 1: but still they have some good stuff happening. But I
Speaker 1: you know, a well ordered life and family gives a
Speaker 1: person options, you know, like to me like and not
Speaker 1: to take this back to hunting, like, hunting is like
Speaker 1: the ultimate goal for every person that's listening inside of this.
Speaker 1: Hunting is just a facet of my life. But this
Speaker 1: is a hunting podcast where we're giving people, you know,
Speaker 1: we're talking about it. But like, if you're your family
Speaker 1: and your relationships in your life are the foundational platform
Speaker 1: that everything in your life stems from, that's just the truth. Um.
Speaker 1: And so if your family and your relationships is chaos
Speaker 1: or unordered or you know, there's some something crazy going on,
Speaker 1: that's not the best way to describe it. You are
Speaker 1: not gonna be able to have the liberty two do
Speaker 1: what you want to do. I mean, the way I've
Speaker 1: said it is is when you have your value system
Speaker 1: in order, then all the things beneath that are you're
Speaker 1: able to really give yourself to Like I've really been
Speaker 1: able to give myself to hunting for the last of
Speaker 1: most of my life, but really the last fifteen years.
Speaker 1: And there's a direct connection between that and having a
Speaker 1: family that was in order, because you know, if it
Speaker 1: was causing so much friction in my marriage, like I
Speaker 1: wouldn't be able to do what I do, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh and so and and just like in even
Speaker 1: in your job. I mean it's like if you got
Speaker 1: if you're if you're not building family culture, you're you know,
Speaker 1: you're gonna have a hard time being successful really at
Speaker 1: anything that you do. You know, and I think there's
Speaker 1: part of this conversation is just hopefully gonna help people
Speaker 1: just just hear a different conversation about it. Because there's
Speaker 1: little things that can be done where wherever anyone is at,
Speaker 1: little things that can be done. Um and uh and
Speaker 1: that's powerful stuff. UM. You know, I kind of broke
Speaker 1: this down thinking about like internal family culture and then
Speaker 1: external family culture and the to being like kind of
Speaker 1: like internal value systems. But then there's external family culture
Speaker 1: like hunting, like like you described my kids like ten
Speaker 1: years ago, bringing bringing stuff to school like that would
Speaker 1: be to me like external family culture, like we value hunting,
Speaker 1: we value this. Um. But the the the internal stuff
Speaker 1: starts at the top and um, family culture is primarily
Speaker 1: built behind closed doors and decisions that nobody sees. I
Speaker 1: love that about life is that there's some things that
Speaker 1: you cannot you can't fake, you know, I mean, and
Speaker 1: that's the that's the crazy part of the world we
Speaker 1: live in. It's like with social media and stuff, people
Speaker 1: can people can put off a perception of themselves, but
Speaker 1: you can't. You can't fake out reality, you know. And um,
Speaker 1: and so the statement that I have here is that
Speaker 1: you know the power to proclaim a standard only holds
Speaker 1: the power when the proclaimer lives out those standards. And
Speaker 1: so you know that falls back onto to me and
Speaker 1: to us. Is that like inside of our families, like
Speaker 1: if we we can't ask our kids to do something
Speaker 1: that we're not willing to do, the old classic line
Speaker 1: of do as I say, not as I do, does
Speaker 1: not work. It just doesn't work. Yeah, it does. It
Speaker 1: doesn't work. So you can't you can't build something that's
Speaker 1: not inside of you already, you know. And so that's
Speaker 1: that's where the personal responsibility of all this is cool,
Speaker 1: because you know, we can clean up our own selves,
Speaker 1: you know. It really, it really is the entry point, Clay.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's the the entry point for a value
Speaker 1: system is through whoever leads it. And so your value
Speaker 1: system is not going to be built by your children.
Speaker 1: It's not going to be built accurately through your wife.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be built through you as the head of
Speaker 1: your home, you know. And that's and that's the way
Speaker 1: we've we've we've done it in our houses. You know,
Speaker 1: I've got to have enough sight to say this is
Speaker 1: what my family needs, and this is what my wife needs.
Speaker 1: And then you know, my wife, Christy and I we
Speaker 1: we work really closely together to partner and produce, to
Speaker 1: produce things in our children's lives. And that doesn't happen
Speaker 1: without us identifying it. You know, what do we want
Speaker 1: to build in our home? Because if we can't write
Speaker 1: it down, it's not going to be built right. If
Speaker 1: we can't articulate, it's not going to be built right.
Speaker 1: So as we talk and as we think of of
Speaker 1: systematic ways to implement those things in our family and
Speaker 1: in our kids, and for us to say what's important,
Speaker 1: what do we want for our children? Where were the
Speaker 1: shortcomings in our own lives where we want to invest
Speaker 1: in our kids to give them something better? And I
Speaker 1: think probably if you've listened to this podcast this far
Speaker 1: in you have that same desires to give your your
Speaker 1: children something. Do you want to say to all the
Speaker 1: guys that aren't listening anymore, but you you probably have
Speaker 1: a desire to give your children something even better than
Speaker 1: you had. And so, you know, I think that that
Speaker 1: identification of those things and then implementing in your own
Speaker 1: life to give your children something to model. Kids need something.
Speaker 1: Kids are imitators. You know, what they see is what
Speaker 1: they do so right now. What they're seeing is they're
Speaker 1: seeing things on Facebook, they're seeing things on TV. They're
Speaker 1: seeing things and athletes, they're seeing things in all these
Speaker 1: different areas that will define them if you don't take
Speaker 1: your rightful place as their their parents. So unfortunately, UM
Speaker 1: in our society these days, we have a lot of
Speaker 1: parents that have forgotten what it means to be a parent,
Speaker 1: and they're letting other people and other things and other
Speaker 1: influences be parents for their children. So and and to
Speaker 1: and aside to that is also that you don't wait
Speaker 1: till you have kids to start building exactly you you
Speaker 1: even if you're a single guy. It's like you start
Speaker 1: now of building your values. Even my wife and I
Speaker 1: we don't have kids, but we started when we said,
Speaker 1: I do building values that we want to be transferred
Speaker 1: into our children. And it starts now. It's it doesn't
Speaker 1: it doesn't hurt if you never thought about it and
Speaker 1: you have kids, start today. But you have to have
Speaker 1: I like what Josh said, it's us, it's my wife
Speaker 1: and I. You sit down and and that's one thing
Speaker 1: that we've tried to build inside of our home is
Speaker 1: the aspect of team. Right. We're not competing against each other.
Speaker 1: I'm not counting how many times you're washing the dishes.
Speaker 1: It's like we're a team. We're building one thing, and
Speaker 1: that's the Nichols culture. That's the Nichols family. That's the
Speaker 1: the things we are we have articulated and the things
Speaker 1: we want to see built in our children. Let's build
Speaker 1: it now that when when we have children, there's already
Speaker 1: a pathway for them to to step into and they
Speaker 1: can learn the ways and and see the ways. I
Speaker 1: think it's important. It's not just here our values are here,
Speaker 1: the culture, but it's seeing it, seeing it being displayed.
Speaker 1: I think that's a that's an important thing because it's
Speaker 1: the foundation marriage. A family is just a set of relationships, right,
Speaker 1: and the first relationship is that marriage. I like, Josh,
Speaker 1: when you talked about, you know, giving them this gift,
Speaker 1: like which is you're talking about like modeling these values.
Speaker 1: One of the greatest gifts you can give your kids
Speaker 1: is an example of a healthy, functional, good marriage, because
Speaker 1: they ain't gonna find many examples in the media today.
Speaker 1: And that's one of the greatest sources of joy in life.
Speaker 1: It's the greatest source of hard work and uh. But
Speaker 1: it's a great source of joy. And I want my
Speaker 1: kids to when they become adults, to know what that
Speaker 1: looks like and be excited for that. And so you know,
Speaker 1: you said the beginning of Malichos setting the foundation because
Speaker 1: I didn't have kids yet. It's like, that's exactly right.
Speaker 1: Like I remember in our marriage, first couple of years
Speaker 1: were rough. Man, it was intense, and we work some
Speaker 1: things out, for sure, and the Little Ground's House you
Speaker 1: can hear from it was like the cartoon. And but
Speaker 1: we came through that, uh, different people and so much
Speaker 1: more patient, so much more tolerant, um, so much more
Speaker 1: in love because we chose to to deal with those
Speaker 1: things head on. And it's never too late for that.
Speaker 1: You know. It's like it's like we still have issues
Speaker 1: come up, just like any marriage, but we built a culture.
Speaker 1: Is my culture, the culture and my home is like
Speaker 1: we deal with it. You know, it might not happen overnight,
Speaker 1: but we deal with it. We might have to bring
Speaker 1: in some help or talk to some people or but
Speaker 1: we're gonna deal with it and um and therefore, like
Speaker 1: my kids don't have to live with that. You know
Speaker 1: what some kids might deal with, which is the awkwardness
Speaker 1: of of that tension in that relationship, because that's a
Speaker 1: that's a weird thing to cohabitate with. Uh, you know
Speaker 1: two people that that's struggling. That So that's I think
Speaker 1: that's a big time gift we can give our children
Speaker 1: as example a good marriage. Yeah, that's great, that's good.
Speaker 1: Um m hmm, so much, so much good stuff here. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to I want to give it. I guess
Speaker 1: people sometimes I hear stuff and I want people to
Speaker 1: be more specific. I'm not talking about you guys, but like,
Speaker 1: uh like like really map out you know exactly what
Speaker 1: we're talking about. Uh, you know, what is family culture? Um?
Speaker 1: But I think I think we'll get We've been some
Speaker 1: good examples in here of of what it is. But ultimately,
Speaker 1: you know, strong leadership inside of family's rooted inside of
Speaker 1: rooted inside of a balanced person that really loves the
Speaker 1: people that they're close to, you know, like I just
Speaker 1: willing to sacrifice for them. Yeah. I feel like the
Speaker 1: you know, my kids are getting older, my older statters
Speaker 1: eighteen and uh, and I couldn't be more proud of
Speaker 1: the human that she is. And uh, man, if there's
Speaker 1: one thing that I could say, is that relationship with
Speaker 1: your kids, authentic relationship with them is so powerful and
Speaker 1: that's what has that's what has made you know my
Speaker 1: kids and not they're they're not perfect. We're working with
Speaker 1: all of them on different stuff all the time. So
Speaker 1: don't don't hear me say that they're perfect. But just
Speaker 1: that relationship, and that relationship means we can talk about anything.
Speaker 1: We do talk about anything. There's nothing that's off the table.
Speaker 1: And that didn't start when they were fourteen, that started
Speaker 1: when they were three. You know that they had a
Speaker 1: healthy view of who we were, They had a healthy
Speaker 1: view of our love for them. Um, and we made
Speaker 1: plenty of mistakes, man, that's the beautiful thing about it.
Speaker 1: You can make a lot of mistakes, uh in in
Speaker 1: and your kids and your family still work out right
Speaker 1: if things are built in such a because relationship is
Speaker 1: very robust. Real human relationship is robust, like man, even
Speaker 1: anthropologically like from a like yeah, you know, human culture
Speaker 1: started as these like bands of nomadic people, the bands
Speaker 1: of nomadic people that were successful. And if we take
Speaker 1: it right back down to biology, um, biological biological success
Speaker 1: means that you produce a viable offspring. Okay, you produced
Speaker 1: children that are able then to reproduce. If we're just
Speaker 1: talking like biological success, well, the people that knew how
Speaker 1: to leverage community relationships were the ones that were biologically successful.
Speaker 1: Stragglers were picked off by wolves. I mean literally, um
Speaker 1: there was there. There's all this study about like, uh,
Speaker 1: the traits that have made people like biologically successful. But
Speaker 1: I just say all that to say, um, well, I've
Speaker 1: lost my training thought, doc got it. I was getting
Speaker 1: into the anthropology of drifting back to the straight up
Speaker 1: I was. I was in the burying straight imagining the
Speaker 1: people crossing over. But no, no, no, just it's it's
Speaker 1: deep inside of us to want to connect to community,
Speaker 1: you know, it's deep inside, like to leverage the strength
Speaker 1: of human relationships is powerful. And I always say this, man,
Speaker 1: the very foundation of hunting is provision for the people
Speaker 1: that that person values. Like that's why I think hunting.
Speaker 1: It's so bizarre that in this day and age that
Speaker 1: there are people that that say hunting is not something
Speaker 1: that should exist or they don't understand it. Like hunting
Speaker 1: is essentially a key definer, a diagnostic definer of what
Speaker 1: it means to be human projectile points making tools and
Speaker 1: weapons to kill animals, to pro cure protein, to bring
Speaker 1: it back to your family. Is a diagnostic thing that says,
Speaker 1: oh that's a human and not a draft. Really diagnostic,
Speaker 1: The word diagnostic would mean like nothing else does that, Like,
Speaker 1: if it has that trait, then it is this. Nothing
Speaker 1: else is making stone points, nothing else is making slick
Speaker 1: trick broadheads, nothing else is uh is makinginmag shells. Diet
Speaker 1: is diagnostic. And I like to bring the hunting, the
Speaker 1: hunting thing back to kind of this original narrative because
Speaker 1: it is it is true, like my family eats wild game.
Speaker 1: I go out harvest wild game, bring back to my family,
Speaker 1: provide for them healthy meat, and and in a way,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a metaphor for leadership, for provision, It's
Speaker 1: a metaphor for um the way that I want my
Speaker 1: life to be for them. I want my kids, my
Speaker 1: wife to be able to say I received resource from
Speaker 1: this guy because he's he's my protector, he's my shade,
Speaker 1: he's my health. And I mean I do the same
Speaker 1: thing with my I mean my wife is that to
Speaker 1: me in a lot of ways, Clay, I was just
Speaker 1: gonna say one of the things, you know, just in
Speaker 1: communication with with the listeners out there, just the difference
Speaker 1: between values and definers. You know, you can talk about
Speaker 1: definers like being a hunter and uh, you know whatever,
Speaker 1: whatever you might be versus values are things that are
Speaker 1: that are who a person is internally. You know, integrity, honesty,
Speaker 1: hard working, you know, caring, you know those those are
Speaker 1: the difference. You can't build you can't build a value
Speaker 1: system on what you do. It's who you are. All right.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you what I've been thinking just while we
Speaker 1: were talking about links between all this and hunting, and
Speaker 1: I realized that one of the biggest like family cultured
Speaker 1: moments that really shaped us had to do with hunting.
Speaker 1: And this was a few years ago. I used to
Speaker 1: own a couple of acres and it backed up to
Speaker 1: twenty acres of woods and um, and I figured out
Speaker 1: I was just kind of tramping around there and found
Speaker 1: some signs and deer sign. I was like, this is cool,
Speaker 1: there's deer back in here. Figured out who owned the
Speaker 1: land and she was like this developer lived in Florida
Speaker 1: and just didn't care. She's like, yeah, sure, you can
Speaker 1: hunt on it whatever you want. And um. And this
Speaker 1: was a few years ago. I think only had two
Speaker 1: kids and they were really young, and I I hadn't
Speaker 1: hunted in a while because I moved up here into
Speaker 1: honeywhere to go. So I was like, this could be
Speaker 1: the resurrection of my hunting career. Like yeah, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like twenty acres behind my house. Nobody is really hunting it.
Speaker 1: So I was like, I'll put up so I put
Speaker 1: a game camera up. Lo and behold there were two
Speaker 1: bucks regularly through there. One of them was very like,
Speaker 1: both of them were shooters. One of them was very large.
Speaker 1: I was like, holy cow, got a got an automatic
Speaker 1: feeder up there. Started getting started tracking it more regularly
Speaker 1: because I did have a limited time just working and
Speaker 1: taking care of kids. And I started investing more and
Speaker 1: more time out there. And when I say it's close,
Speaker 1: I mean this where I was going to put up
Speaker 1: the stand. I mean it's probably just like yards from
Speaker 1: my house. We're less and um. So I was getting
Speaker 1: all ready to go, and then hunting season was about
Speaker 1: to start and I was talking to my wife about it.
Speaker 1: She's really uneasy about it. I was kind of like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess I'll like watch the kids during those mornings
Speaker 1: and and evening and all the time because probably eaten
Speaker 1: much wild game either. No, she isn't a huge fan
Speaker 1: of it, but she knew it was important to me,
Speaker 1: you know, and so like she she let she let
Speaker 1: me go in a sense. But I remember, Um, I
Speaker 1: just remember when it was finally time to like sit
Speaker 1: on the stand and go out there and hunt. It
Speaker 1: just felt off. Man, it just felt it felt off.
Speaker 1: It felt like like, man, this I know, this seems
Speaker 1: it seemed like destiny, you know, the land, the buck,
Speaker 1: it was like perfect. Everything was perfect, and for a
Speaker 1: plenty of guys and families that might have been perfect,
Speaker 1: you know, but something felt off. And I remember going
Speaker 1: I remember coming back and just telling her I was
Speaker 1: and she aren't you gonna hunt? It's like I was like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't it just fills off. I
Speaker 1: don't know if this is the season for me, And
Speaker 1: I think right now where the kids are little, like,
Speaker 1: I think I'll stay here. And it was like the
Speaker 1: massive weight off of her lifted. She's like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: I'm so glad that you did that. Um, and it
Speaker 1: it meant so much to her, and it wasn't even
Speaker 1: like I was doing it just for her. It was
Speaker 1: like it just fell off. I can't describe. And that sacrifice,
Speaker 1: which was a sacrifice at first, it hurt. It was
Speaker 1: like yally because you know it was I was so
Speaker 1: close it. What was the sacrifice turned into being a
Speaker 1: reward because I've built so many great memories with my
Speaker 1: kids and there was never this from what was right
Speaker 1: for me was not trying to like to time it
Speaker 1: like I'm gonna try to like fit in the time
Speaker 1: of the girls and get to my hunting in It's
Speaker 1: just like it's not the season for it. And and
Speaker 1: I know someday it will be. And I know someday
Speaker 1: that will be right. And my my oldest daughter, I've
Speaker 1: already got her interested in hunting. She's like she's about
Speaker 1: ready to go. She's already into fishing and stuff. I'm
Speaker 1: really excited. Um, and that'll be a whole different dynamic
Speaker 1: because it's it's building. Well that's the short term sacrifice
Speaker 1: term gain. You know, there will be a time when
Speaker 1: it's right. And I'm really glad you brought that up
Speaker 1: because people need to understand timing, you know, like like
Speaker 1: people like especially people that are inside of like social
Speaker 1: media Instagram. I mean, you're gonna see you're gonna see
Speaker 1: all these people posting all the stuff that they're doing,
Speaker 1: and you're just say, oh, it's the time, you know,
Speaker 1: I gotta get out there. I gotta get out there.
Speaker 1: I gotta get out there. Man. There. I didn't hunt
Speaker 1: like I hunt now when I was at ben stage,
Speaker 1: I didn't. And that's the that's the difficulty of social
Speaker 1: media or comparison, uh, you know of like and and
Speaker 1: and that's where families can get messed up. And that's
Speaker 1: where you know, I don't ever want like my my
Speaker 1: influence to get people to do something, which I'm constantly
Speaker 1: trying to get people to hunt like that's what I do.
Speaker 1: But I don't people have to take it and then
Speaker 1: put it back up against their life and say does
Speaker 1: this fit? And everybody has a different amount that it fits.
Speaker 1: And so when Maliki Nichols felt the Clay Luken push
Speaker 1: against his family getting a boat, and it's true, it's true,
Speaker 1: and I think and I think that kind of brings
Speaker 1: up if you're looking for a tool of how you
Speaker 1: can build culture inside of your family. It's what being
Speaker 1: said of like he talked to his wife and wait
Speaker 1: was released and the side of my my life is
Speaker 1: like a tool to know is this the way to go?
Speaker 1: Is communicating with my wife, I's like, are we in
Speaker 1: the grad Like are we in agreeans in building this?
Speaker 1: And and this is direction. So I think that's a
Speaker 1: to combat the media and the thing that is trying
Speaker 1: to push you and pull you to go to a
Speaker 1: certain direction. It's is your team, is your your home unit?
Speaker 1: In ingredients? Is this is the way we should go?
Speaker 1: And I think that's a powerful tool to to to navigate. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: you use and that's a good I'm glad you said
Speaker 1: that word. You use different things to build family called
Speaker 1: you use like we could use. I use hunting as
Speaker 1: a tool to build values inside of my family. I
Speaker 1: use hunting as a mechanism to build relationship with them.
Speaker 1: I mean I spend a ton of time with my
Speaker 1: kids hunting and the hunting related stuff. If if they
Speaker 1: were doing other activities, we would not spend the arms
Speaker 1: reached time together that we do. So it's like I'm
Speaker 1: using that as a tool and so I mean, you
Speaker 1: just gotta see if it fits. Is this a tool
Speaker 1: to really build something into my family? And I've said
Speaker 1: this before, like there's this narrative in the hunting community.
Speaker 1: You know, take your kid hunting and you're you're gonna
Speaker 1: have this like great kid. That's not true. Hunting is
Speaker 1: not gonna save your kids. Um, if you have a
Speaker 1: really strong relationship with your kid and you use hunting
Speaker 1: as a vehicle for human relationship, then yes, you're it's
Speaker 1: gonna help your kid. And and that's what I've that's
Speaker 1: what I've tried to do. And uh and and people
Speaker 1: can do that with a lot of different stuff. But
Speaker 1: you know, for this context we're talking about we're talking
Speaker 1: about some honey, but using it as a tool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was thinking about this whole thing is sacrificed too,
Speaker 1: And and talking with our spouses now because I've I've
Speaker 1: really shown Jessica like I'll sacrifice anything for my family.
Speaker 1: Like if I was to go to her and be like, hey,
Speaker 1: so and so wants me wants to go hunting, that
Speaker 1: we can you know, we think she'd be like, oh man,
Speaker 1: it's like she wants to share in that joy because
Speaker 1: I'm not always trying to do that. You know, she
Speaker 1: trusts my heart and that I am thinking of her first,
Speaker 1: you know. And on that note, I went when my
Speaker 1: dad left fault killed the biggest buck of my life.
Speaker 1: So it was just kind of worked out. So she
Speaker 1: likes game now that then she she's she's slowly acquiring it,
Speaker 1: she's slowly. Yeah, maybe don't start her out with possum.
Speaker 1: Maybe not. I'll just say, yeah, we we use dear
Speaker 1: meat for everything. Yeah, the heat's chilly. Lindsey's school with Yeah,
Speaker 1: most of them are. I would say all of my
Speaker 1: wild game eating has happened at the New Conform and
Speaker 1: that is a true statement. And all of her wild
Speaker 1: game eating has happened at the New conform that we
Speaker 1: have been and we have like we still come back. Yeah, yeah, yeah, good. Well, um,
Speaker 1: I think I've said what I wanted to say. I mean,
Speaker 1: I just want people if they don't remember anything, or well,
Speaker 1: what are we what are we gonna say to all
Speaker 1: the guys that aren't listening anymore? We can talk mad
Speaker 1: about them because they're not listening. I think they got
Speaker 1: it all figured out. No, no, we you know the time,
Speaker 1: Usually on this podcast we're talking to experts about hunting,
Speaker 1: like and that's what we'd like to talk about. That's
Speaker 1: what this context is designed for. But it just seems
Speaker 1: like with all the stuff going on it was time
Speaker 1: to have a little bit more serious podcast. And if
Speaker 1: nothing else, just build your family intentionally. Don't wake up
Speaker 1: in ten years and realize that there was something that
Speaker 1: you know you you are building something right now. That's
Speaker 1: the main thing. You're building something. Make sure it's on
Speaker 1: purpose and and ultimately, you know. I was reading a book. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say it before. Sometimes I start to say
Speaker 1: something and then realize there's a big backstory behind it
Speaker 1: that has to be said. I get into the backstory
Speaker 1: and I forget what I was originally gonna say. I'm
Speaker 1: doing it now. Okay, okay, I'm doing it now. Um.
Speaker 1: I read a book. Uh, real famous author from the
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds, Stevenson, you wrote. I can't remember what he wrote,
Speaker 1: but I'm reading this book called Travels with a Donkey.
Speaker 1: It's a little bitty book written in like old English.
Speaker 1: And uh, and this guy said he said a quote
Speaker 1: that I liked because it's true. I think it's true.
Speaker 1: He said that the reward of life is a man's friends. Yuh.
Speaker 1: He it was really beautifully written, and that's just but
Speaker 1: he said, the reward of life is a man's friends.
Speaker 1: And it's so It's so true and I've been saying
Speaker 1: it for a while, is that hunting would have little
Speaker 1: value if it weren't for friends that we could share
Speaker 1: stuff with. It really is. I mean, I don't care
Speaker 1: if you're like the biggest, baddest hunter on Instagram and
Speaker 1: you you know, you you receive a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: from your friends and even your haters. Like there there's
Speaker 1: there's a lot of um. So a lot of our
Speaker 1: value that we get from stuff happens from being able
Speaker 1: to share it, you know. And uh, and that's the
Speaker 1: way it's supposed to be. We're such you know, I
Speaker 1: think sometimes we we missed that point. Is that, like
Speaker 1: we really ought to be experts at human relationship. That's
Speaker 1: how that's that's big success and a lot of areas
Speaker 1: of life. It's the hardest wildlife team. Yeah, yeah, it is. Well,
Speaker 1: we just did a podcast a few days ago with
Speaker 1: some biologists and they said the guy said, uh, he
Speaker 1: said he had heard a biologists say I use more
Speaker 1: of what I learned in the bar dealing with humans
Speaker 1: as a bartender. I'm not promoting bartending. Um. Then he
Speaker 1: did use his wildlif biology to he's a wildlipologist with
Speaker 1: me all the guys are just like half grinning looking
Speaker 1: at me, going like what he's saying. He was saying,
Speaker 1: as a wildli biologist, he manages people more than he
Speaker 1: actually manages science of biology. Dealing with people. Yeah, closing comments, Guys,
Speaker 1: what are your thoughts? What do what do? What do we?
Speaker 1: What do we need to say? We're done? I think
Speaker 1: I think we wanna. What I want to communicate is
Speaker 1: just you know, you're not alone. You know you need people,
Speaker 1: and uh. The great thing is is that is that
Speaker 1: experience is something that that someone can share. You know,
Speaker 1: it's not just something that you have that you can't
Speaker 1: give away. And I think I think that that we've
Speaker 1: had some good experience. We've made some bad decisions, but
Speaker 1: we've made some good decisions too, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: for for Clay and I who who are kids are
Speaker 1: it and older we've seen the the benefit of the
Speaker 1: sacrifices and the decisions that we've made. And uh and
Speaker 1: you know watching Ben lead his girls and you see
Speaker 1: the good fruit and you see where um, there's decisions
Speaker 1: where you could have made that that would have been
Speaker 1: better for them, and so we want to be able
Speaker 1: to share that with people. Um, to know that that
Speaker 1: there's a way to do it that that really produces
Speaker 1: good fruit. You know, my wife talks a lot about um,
Speaker 1: you know, having kids is like having an orchard and
Speaker 1: you you plant and you fertilize and you water and
Speaker 1: uh you know, now our kids are getting to the
Speaker 1: age where we're just picking the fruit and enjoying it,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, I think I think we want
Speaker 1: that for everybody out there to really have a family
Speaker 1: that that you can enjoy. There's nothing worse than not
Speaker 1: liking your own family, you know, or would rather be
Speaker 1: somewhere else than with your own family, or friends that
Speaker 1: won't go in with on a boat. Yeah, nobody wants
Speaker 1: a friend like that. But yeah, anyway, it's worth it.
Speaker 1: The investment is worth It's the best investment you can make.
Speaker 1: Clo thought, Yeah, I just to I was thinking about
Speaker 1: how when people think talk about parenting, a lot of
Speaker 1: times the focus is on not just parenting the culture.
Speaker 1: The focus is on like behavior. And I think what
Speaker 1: I want to say is that you are the family culture.
Speaker 1: It starts with you. I'm saying you to like everybody
Speaker 1: like and me, it starts there and before you can
Speaker 1: expect because when you start, especially with small kids, are like,
Speaker 1: how on the world I get him to stop screaming
Speaker 1: their head on? You know, You're like all these behaviors
Speaker 1: you want to fix. It's like, well, start with you
Speaker 1: and what you gotta do with and and I know that,
Speaker 1: um and I shared this analogy with you other day.
Speaker 1: But I just bought a puppy recently. He's a registered
Speaker 1: Brittany beautiful dog. I'm really proud of him. Started training him.
Speaker 1: It's I'm not making my bird dog and just trained
Speaker 1: him as a family pet. And I've trained dogs before,
Speaker 1: And huh, why didn't you get a scroll dog? I've
Speaker 1: interacted Instagram posts about pets. Go ahead, I was actually
Speaker 1: gonna bring him in here about in your office? Sudden
Speaker 1: I thought about bringing him. He's sitting at home alone
Speaker 1: right now. But anyway, UM, so I've trained dogs before,
Speaker 1: and it back when I was younger. I remember it
Speaker 1: was all about how do I get him to do blank?
Speaker 1: How are I gonna do that? But it was all
Speaker 1: about the behavior. And I was sharing you with this,
Speaker 1: you sharing this with you the other day of how
Speaker 1: it's like now that I've parented, it's like my perspectives
Speaker 1: totally different towards the dog. Like all I've been doing
Speaker 1: is is like communicating to him that I care about
Speaker 1: him and that I'm his authority figure almost just like
Speaker 1: can I get this dog to know me and respect me?
Speaker 1: And it's just totally different, And it's like and it's
Speaker 1: made the training easier because there's already a relationship. And
Speaker 1: that's why dogs. I love dogs, is because they are
Speaker 1: relation on with him and so much more than other pets.
Speaker 1: But I was like, goally, that's just like with my kids,
Speaker 1: Like I don't actually to me, it's not really it's
Speaker 1: important of this their behavior as much as like do
Speaker 1: they know my heart? And so I've got to I've
Speaker 1: got to focus on that versus, you know, trying to
Speaker 1: get them straighten up or whatever. Mr nils I would say,
Speaker 1: I'm a very practical guy, and I think you can
Speaker 1: hear this podcast and think where do I start right
Speaker 1: and you try to maybe take a big bite of
Speaker 1: I'm gonna build family culture. I think it's just starting
Speaker 1: just one decision, what do you value and and focus
Speaker 1: on that for the next two months. It's like, if
Speaker 1: you want to value communication, focus on being more communicative
Speaker 1: with your wife and with your children right. If you
Speaker 1: want to, if you want to value being, having a
Speaker 1: servant heart and serve people, focus on that for for
Speaker 1: the next month or two months. It's not taking a
Speaker 1: big chunk of life and let me build family culture
Speaker 1: and family values. But it's just make one right decision
Speaker 1: each day, make the next right decision, make the next
Speaker 1: right decision, and then you wake up ten years so
Speaker 1: now and you realize you built something right, and we
Speaker 1: as humans are naturally designed to build something, but it
Speaker 1: takes one step out of time. Yeah, that's good. Great, Well,
Speaker 1: thanks guys, Thanks time appreciative. May I just want to
Speaker 1: say to you really know how to how to treat
Speaker 1: a podcast guest, to that breakfast this morning? You treat
Speaker 1: all your podcast guests that way. No, oh wow, special
Speaker 1: all past podcasts guests breakfast. No, no, don't tell him,
Speaker 1: don't tell him. All right, guys, man, I'm trying to
Speaker 1: think there was something I was going to you out.
Speaker 1: That's it. We're done. Keep the wild places wild because
Speaker 1: that's where the bears live.