Speaker 1: Welcome to this country Life. I'm your host, Brent Reeves
Speaker 1: from coon hunting to trot lining and just general country living.
Speaker 1: I want you to stay a while as I share
Speaker 1: my stories and the country skills that will help you
Speaker 1: beat the system. This Country Life is proudly presented as
Speaker 1: part of Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you the best
Speaker 1: outdoor podcast the airways have to offer. All right, friends,
Speaker 1: pull you up a chair or drop that tailgate. I
Speaker 1: think I got a thing or two to teach you
Speaker 1: when it all falls apart. John Prine released a song
Speaker 1: in May of nineteen seventy eight titled That's the Way
Speaker 1: that the World goes Round. Here's the chorus. That's the
Speaker 1: way that the world goes round. You're up one day,
Speaker 1: the next you're down. It's a half a inch of
Speaker 1: water and you think you're going to drown. That's the
Speaker 1: way that the world goes around. Now, if you can
Speaker 1: find a better analogy for my turkey season, I want
Speaker 1: to hear it. You'll find out why in a minute.
Speaker 1: But first I'm going to tell you a story. Two
Speaker 1: days before my birthday in twenty twenty, I brought home
Speaker 1: a coon. Now that's a whole story in itself, but
Speaker 1: all the context you need for this one is a
Speaker 1: new dog and taking up residents with us just a
Speaker 1: few days prior to the world coming unraveled. It was
Speaker 1: a very opportune time for my family to have something
Speaker 1: good to focus on while we navigated through the new place.
Speaker 1: We all felt lost in not knowing what we were
Speaker 1: supposed to do about all the changes and restrictions we
Speaker 1: faced in our jobs and daily routines. We focused our
Speaker 1: energies on our faith, each other, and a clumsy, four
Speaker 1: legged tree and walker pup named Whalen. It was love
Speaker 1: at first sight from my youngest daughter Bailey and my
Speaker 1: wife Alexis as they each introduced themselves to that big
Speaker 1: ear joker, who instantly returned the affection. Unlike any other
Speaker 1: hound I'd ever owned, he had a lot to learn
Speaker 1: if he was going to be a coon dog. I
Speaker 1: had a lot to learn if I was going to
Speaker 1: help train him, and the thought of him not making
Speaker 1: it really never cross my mind. I already knew he
Speaker 1: wouldn't be leaving because of how the girls felt about him.
Speaker 1: Hound hunters, my dad being a prime example, can go
Speaker 1: through dogs like grass goes through a goose. Get one
Speaker 1: keep him awhile find the fault or mannerism you don't like,
Speaker 1: and send him on down the road to the next guy.
Speaker 1: Then he'd get another one and start the whole process
Speaker 1: over again. I remember many times when Dad and I'd
Speaker 1: be out at the dog pen. I'd ask, where's old
Speaker 1: so and so. He'd say, Oh, I sold him or
Speaker 1: I traded him for this one. Hounds came and went.
Speaker 1: It was the nature of the community and the process
Speaker 1: and developing a pack of running dogs that worked well together. Hounds.
Speaker 1: Many women have preferred styles of how dogs hunt, how
Speaker 1: they sound, how they look, how they act. When you're
Speaker 1: feeding multiple dogs, like my dad did, you're always looking
Speaker 1: for the next one that'll give you the advantage in
Speaker 1: helping your pack outrun everyone else's. Now. I say all
Speaker 1: that to say this, When you have two other people
Speaker 1: in the house and they love dogs more than anything,
Speaker 1: and not this type of dog or that type of dog,
Speaker 1: but dogs period. Getting rid of one that doesn't suit
Speaker 1: your fancy can be harder than it should be, as
Speaker 1: long as it is in biting the neighbors, chewing up
Speaker 1: the burkingstocks or the Lululemon. That Rascal will have two
Speaker 1: strong advocates in his corner when the conversation comes up
Speaker 1: that maybe he just didn't work it out hunting the
Speaker 1: way I want him to. I tried it out a
Speaker 1: month after we got him, and don't get me wrong,
Speaker 1: I had no intention whatsoever getting rid of my new
Speaker 1: coon awn. When I said I don't think this dog
Speaker 1: is working out, Alexis and Bailey both looked at me
Speaker 1: and and I'm paraphrasing here, but the gist of their
Speaker 1: responses were so what he ain't leaving a month into it,
Speaker 1: and I knew this dog better work because it appeared
Speaker 1: that they would sanction my dismissal before they would His
Speaker 1: coon Dog School was in session five six and seven
Speaker 1: nights a week. I'd be in the woods with Whaling
Speaker 1: after the girls had gone to bed. Sometimes Bailey would
Speaker 1: go with me, and that was back before getting muddy
Speaker 1: was a bad thing. She hunted a lot with me
Speaker 1: and was there from beginning in Whaling's progression from just
Speaker 1: a dog wandering around in the woods to hunting with
Speaker 1: a purpose. Now, whether Bailey win or not, Whaling than
Speaker 1: I were through the hot summer we win. I'm blessed
Speaker 1: to have friends who have land near where I live in.
Speaker 1: The abundance of public landing available in Arkansas is huge,
Speaker 1: So for the first year I hunted like a man possessed.
Speaker 1: It was a routine. I worked during the day, came home,
Speaker 1: spent time with the family until the girls went to bed,
Speaker 1: and then me and Whalen went to work every night
Speaker 1: with few exceptions. It's the best way to do that.
Speaker 1: I found. By exposing your dog to places where coons frequent,
Speaker 1: you're gonna find out pretty quick what you're dealing with
Speaker 1: and the natural ability of the hound, and what you'll
Speaker 1: have to work on to get him focused on how
Speaker 1: you want him to hunt. It's a process, and the
Speaker 1: best process is repetition. Doing everything the same over and
Speaker 1: over again. The way you load him up at the
Speaker 1: house in your truck, the way you put his collar
Speaker 1: on him and unload him when you get there, the
Speaker 1: way you unsnap him off the lead, how you talk
Speaker 1: to him before you turn him blues and what you
Speaker 1: say is all important. If you do everything the same
Speaker 1: every time, you'll notice anything he does different, and that's
Speaker 1: how you see his tendencies. That's how you gather the
Speaker 1: data for how good or badd he's doing. When everything
Speaker 1: is equal, the anomalies stand out. That's how it works. Now,
Speaker 1: I believe it or not, that dog is watching you too.
Speaker 1: They're creatures of habit, just like we are, and they're
Speaker 1: training us at the same time we're training them. Consistently
Speaker 1: doing the same thing over and over is comforting and
Speaker 1: soon I found wailing standing at the back door looking inside. Now,
Speaker 1: anytime around dark, if he saw me walk towards the
Speaker 1: garage door, he'd go stand by the backyard garage entrance.
Speaker 1: If I stepped into the backyard with his lead in
Speaker 1: my hand, he'd stand motionless for me to snap it
Speaker 1: on him, and then he would pull me to the
Speaker 1: truck to load up. I let him get away with
Speaker 1: pulling me so often that I've had to retrain him
Speaker 1: on healing so he doesn't pull me down. Michael Roseman
Speaker 1: would tell you that I have done a terrible job
Speaker 1: be correcting that, and he'd be right. But the dog
Speaker 1: is smart and he'll do what I tell him, so
Speaker 1: I really don't mind it. In fact, it kind of
Speaker 1: comes in handy Sometimes when I'm going up a creek banking,
Speaker 1: I need a little help from my four legged friend
Speaker 1: to get to the top. The first summer was like clockwork.
Speaker 1: We were a well old machine of routine. Kiss the
Speaker 1: girls goodbye, load my boots, light and vest in the truck,
Speaker 1: Walk to the back door with my lead, Snap it
Speaker 1: on the dog that was standing at attention. Load him
Speaker 1: in the dog box. Drive fifteen minutes to the hunting spot,
Speaker 1: put my lighting boots on, put his collar on him
Speaker 1: while he stood on the tailgate. Walked to the release spot,
Speaker 1: standing straddle of him, holding his collar. I'm patting his
Speaker 1: ribs and releasing him while saying let's go. Every step
Speaker 1: of that was done exactly the same way every time,
Speaker 1: old deviation whatsoever. He started catching on pretty quickly that
Speaker 1: dude possesses a lot of natural ability, and by repetitively
Speaker 1: keeping him in the woods, I was taking advantage of
Speaker 1: that and only having to correct a few minor issues
Speaker 1: I found undesirable. With all that was going on at
Speaker 1: the time, I'd become concerned about a jillion things that
Speaker 1: was going on around us just in life. Alexis was
Speaker 1: working remotely most of the time, Bailey was doing the
Speaker 1: online school thing, and we were all three trying to
Speaker 1: get used to the new abnormal being normal. The only constant.
Speaker 1: That was constant was mining Whalen's routine through all of
Speaker 1: that madehem. After months and months of repeating the step
Speaker 1: by step process of leaving the house just as as
Speaker 1: I detailed to you, and hunting the same spot over
Speaker 1: and over, I decided to go to a new spot. Now.
Speaker 1: This one was almost two hours away, and I decided
Speaker 1: that we both needed a new set of woods to
Speaker 1: look cat Whaling was treated on his own now, and
Speaker 1: our routine had become more like a rut. Not in
Speaker 1: a bad way, but just in the mindless autopilot of
Speaker 1: day after day of the same thing at the same place.
Speaker 1: I was spicing it up. Now it was going to
Speaker 1: be good for both of us. I was going to
Speaker 1: see how he did out of his comfort zone, and
Speaker 1: I was looking forward to adding that day to what
Speaker 1: he'd been doing on familiar ground. We were going to
Speaker 1: a big expanse of public ground, and I had been
Speaker 1: struggling over where to cut him loose. I had four
Speaker 1: or five places in mind to cast from, and my
Speaker 1: first choices already had someone hunting there. I'd been all
Speaker 1: over the map of the area, picking out spots to go,
Speaker 1: downloading the offline maps to my trackers so i'd know
Speaker 1: where I was and where whaling was in relation to me.
Speaker 1: I'd have to leave earlier and to get there right
Speaker 1: at dark. There was a lot of water in that area,
Speaker 1: so I took some dry clothes in case I got
Speaker 1: wet from wading to him shitty tree across the slough
Speaker 1: that was over my boots. I didn't want to drive
Speaker 1: home with a wet pair of breeches all the way
Speaker 1: to the spot. For nearly two hours, I thought about
Speaker 1: where to go first, and changed my mind several times
Speaker 1: in a route until I got there, and then I
Speaker 1: just went to the closest place I could find it
Speaker 1: that wasn't even on my list. I was excited to
Speaker 1: look at some new country. I was excited to see
Speaker 1: what my dog would do, and a spot he had
Speaker 1: never been to and how he react to the new
Speaker 1: area was the focus of my mission. I thought about
Speaker 1: it all day that and all the other things that
Speaker 1: were going on at that time, and the two hour
Speaker 1: drive seemed to take forever. Time usually passes quickly when
Speaker 1: I'm preoccupied with something, but when the preoccupation is with
Speaker 1: getting to the starting point, the road there seems to
Speaker 1: go on forever, But finally I was there. I stepped
Speaker 1: out of my truck and I put on my light,
Speaker 1: I changed it to my boots, and I I tired
Speaker 1: up the track and collar. All of that was the
Speaker 1: same as always. It was my pregame routine at the
Speaker 1: parking spot before getting Whaling ready to cut loose. I've
Speaker 1: already told you that there's a routine inside this story
Speaker 1: about routines. The only difference this time was the time
Speaker 1: it took to travel to the new spot, and Whaling
Speaker 1: didn't bark from the inside of the dog box when
Speaker 1: the collar beefed after I turned it on. He always
Speaker 1: did that every time, like it was ingrained in him.
Speaker 1: I attributed it to his excitement for the upcoming hunt,
Speaker 1: after all, every time he'd heard it beep over the
Speaker 1: last few months. He was turned loose to chase Bandido
Speaker 1: shortly afterwards, Except this time, now many questions were running
Speaker 1: through my mind. Was the ride too far? Did he
Speaker 1: get carsick and puke everywhere? Oh Lord, did I make
Speaker 1: a mistake and take it him to a different spot
Speaker 1: too soon? When I dropped the tailgate and looked inside
Speaker 1: the dog box, I knew immediately what it had happened.
Speaker 1: The ride wasn't too long for him, he didn't get carsick,
Speaker 1: and I hadn't made a mistake by taking him to
Speaker 1: a new spot. I hadn't done any of that. The
Speaker 1: mistake I made was not loading him up at the
Speaker 1: house before I left. He was still at home. I
Speaker 1: was coon hunting without a coon dog. And that's just
Speaker 1: how that happened. For two episodes, I talked about how
Speaker 1: twenty four hours in Missouri all fell into place this spring.
Speaker 1: I was zigging when I should have been zigging, and
Speaker 1: I was zagging when I should have been zagging. At
Speaker 1: every turn, I was guessing right and making the right
Speaker 1: moves or not moving, and it was all paying off
Speaker 1: and flopping turkeys. But I don't want you to get
Speaker 1: the wrong impression about my luck or how the majority
Speaker 1: of my adventures play out. No chance, So that if
Speaker 1: you listen to more than the last two episodes of
Speaker 1: this show, my life is a highlight reel of calamity,
Speaker 1: a literal step by step storyboard of lessons on things
Speaker 1: you shouldn't do. And you folks that have been here
Speaker 1: a while, slide over, let the newbies have a seat.
Speaker 1: Follies to follow here's one that's so fresh that if
Speaker 1: this door was a gallon of milk, it wouldn't have
Speaker 1: had time to go bad. Since it happened, guess where
Speaker 1: it occurred, Yep, Missouri. Remember the three stories I told
Speaker 1: you about three turkeys that met their fate on the
Speaker 1: opening week this year. Remember me beating the feathers off
Speaker 1: of that dead turkey. See where I substituted a dead
Speaker 1: horse with a dead turkey and still continue to beat
Speaker 1: the dead horse by continuing to talk about the opening
Speaker 1: day turkey hunt by using a different dead animal. I'm
Speaker 1: out of control. Well, I went back to Missouri the
Speaker 1: following Monday, a scant seven day from the zenith of
Speaker 1: my personal best twenty four hours a turkey smashing. I
Speaker 1: owned the Missouri turkeys. I was in the zone. I
Speaker 1: had something to prove. I'd recently placed third in the
Speaker 1: Meat Eater online turkey calling contest behind the show Nuff
Speaker 1: Deer Killer, Mark Kenyon of our very own Wired to
Speaker 1: Hunt podcast, and some other bozo named clud Clay Mud
Speaker 1: or some other soap opera name that I can't think
Speaker 1: of right now that has a podcast on this very feed.
Speaker 1: If I ever get bored enough I was listening to
Speaker 1: it doubtful. But anyway, after that rig contest, I had
Speaker 1: some bonds to pick with goblin turkeys. Those are the
Speaker 1: votes that really count, and I count those one beard
Speaker 1: at a time, not like Clud does with a sweatshop
Speaker 1: full of mule skinners, rubbing blisters on the thumbs, voting
Speaker 1: online like the room and board depended on it, which
Speaker 1: I'm sure it did. Who cares. I'm a turkey killer,
Speaker 1: and I had two days to run back up there
Speaker 1: and show Clud and Mark the deer Guy and everyone
Speaker 1: else that in the Turkey woods, I'm as dangerous as
Speaker 1: a drunk monkey with a box cutter. I couldn't wait
Speaker 1: to get there. Now, these things that usually have a
Speaker 1: way of evening out or really ending up in Nature's favor.
Speaker 1: Mother Nature is like a casino. She'll let you win
Speaker 1: a little, and you may even win a lot, but
Speaker 1: in the end the house always comes out on top.
Speaker 1: Neither one of them are in the business to let
Speaker 1: you win for long. They used like to love you
Speaker 1: into a false sense of security, then whammo, you lose.
Speaker 1: I would be reminded of that very soon. I don't
Speaker 1: know why it surprised men in the end. I don't
Speaker 1: think it really did. I was just on a roll
Speaker 1: and I had time for one more throw of the
Speaker 1: dice because Daddy was feeling lucky and baby needed a
Speaker 1: new pair of shoes. I hunted all day where I
Speaker 1: called up the two turkeys on the opening Monday, one
Speaker 1: for me, one for my post daughter. The turkey I
Speaker 1: was on a daylight answering every call I made to him,
Speaker 1: had a hen with him. He walked away, no problem,
Speaker 1: Go find another one, and I did. I found him
Speaker 1: strutting in a field. I made a big loop. After
Speaker 1: making the perfect plan to get in there and set
Speaker 1: up on it, I miscalculated where I thought he'd be
Speaker 1: and I spooked him on to another property. With the
Speaker 1: afternoon hunt run, I decided to pack it in early
Speaker 1: so I didn't do any further damage. Actually, come to
Speaker 1: find out, I didn't spook him at all. I spooked
Speaker 1: a turkey that I didn't even know was there where
Speaker 1: I'd planned to set that afternoon and jump that gobbler.
Speaker 1: Before getting there, there was another gobbler gobling in that
Speaker 1: spot the next morning. I wouldn't learn that until I
Speaker 1: decided to go to a different spot and my host
Speaker 1: texted me with the good news he heard him from
Speaker 1: the back porch. Oh well, it didn't matter. The next morning,
Speaker 1: I was on a different piece of property and listening
Speaker 1: to several turkeys goblin. It would only be a matter
Speaker 1: of time. Remember I'm a turkey killer. The first turkey
Speaker 1: I set up on that morning was doing his best
Speaker 1: to gobble the world awake until he hit the ground.
Speaker 1: After that he shut his yap and didn't say a word.
Speaker 1: I called the hen in, expecting to have her boyfriend
Speaker 1: rolling behind her, but alas she was sad. No problem,
Speaker 1: Go fight another one, I did. He's back to where
Speaker 1: another one had been gobling that morning, and there he stood,
Speaker 1: almost half a mile away, blowed up like a big
Speaker 1: black trash bag in the edge of an open field field.
Speaker 1: Turkeys they're tough nuts to crack. Sometimes sometimes they're really easy,
Speaker 1: or so I've heard from me. There was a long
Speaker 1: tree lined fence road that ran along the south end
Speaker 1: of that field for nearly half a mile, and I
Speaker 1: was at the east corner. He was at the west.
Speaker 1: There was a lot of ground between us, and I
Speaker 1: had a drop dead time of twelve pm to get
Speaker 1: out of there, to make the long trip back home
Speaker 1: to catch a plane the next afternoon in a little
Speaker 1: rock a good, bad, or indifferent. Come twelve o'clock, I
Speaker 1: had to be making tracks for the Casa day reefs.
Speaker 1: I watched him strutting and walking, strutting and walking, and realized, hey,
Speaker 1: he was making his way toward me, and he was
Speaker 1: following a hen. Now at the time, they were moving
Speaker 1: pretty good, So I just sat down where I was
Speaker 1: at at the east corner of the field. Last time
Speaker 1: I saw him, he was about fifty yards north of
Speaker 1: the edge, making his way straight toward me. A slight
Speaker 1: rising in the elevation of the field kept me from
Speaker 1: seeing him when I sat down. I just had to
Speaker 1: be patient and trust the science of what I was doing.
Speaker 1: I'd killed a sack full of turkeys just a week ago.
Speaker 1: One I literally pulled the trigger on the other two
Speaker 1: died of the trickery of my calling. This dude was
Speaker 1: more or less given up by walking straight towards me.
Speaker 1: I guess he'd heard about me. It figured it'd be
Speaker 1: easier just to come on in and get it over with.
Speaker 1: Forty minutes later, I started to think he wasn't coming.
Speaker 1: Dad gun, I could have pedded the tricycle down there
Speaker 1: and back in that length of time. Well, I slowly
Speaker 1: stood up, shot gun at the ready, and there he was,
Speaker 1: back in the original place I'd seen him over seven
Speaker 1: hundred yards away. This was only going to prolong his
Speaker 1: life for a few more minutes. As I crossed the
Speaker 1: fence on the opposite side of the woodline and made
Speaker 1: my way west. Just inside I headed out wheatfield. If
Speaker 1: he stayed where he was right now, he was a
Speaker 1: dead man walking. The timber at that end of the
Speaker 1: field was bigger and would allow me to slip in
Speaker 1: there close enough to bust a cap if he decided
Speaker 1: to retrace his steps. I was close enough to the
Speaker 1: edge of the field that all I had to do
Speaker 1: was standing in the shadows and send him one when
Speaker 1: he got close enough. Either way, he might as well
Speaker 1: been at Martha White's getting custom fitted with the battered
Speaker 1: bathing suit he was going to be wearing while swimming
Speaker 1: in my deep frier. The wind had picked up pretty
Speaker 1: good now and it was blowing from north to south.
Speaker 1: Any noise I made would be pushed away from him,
Speaker 1: and the leaves had come on a lot since the
Speaker 1: week before. That was going to hide my movement when
Speaker 1: I got down to where he was, or allow me
Speaker 1: to slip unseen up to the fence row. I cut
Speaker 1: the distance in half and peeked down to where I
Speaker 1: could see him. He'd have that distance himself then was
Speaker 1: walking back toward me. This was going to be easy.
Speaker 1: He'd already walked this route and felt safe while doing it.
Speaker 1: Turkey potpire, just plain old fried turkey. I couldn't decide
Speaker 1: which one I was gonna cook first. I sat down
Speaker 1: on the fence row. He didn't know I was on
Speaker 1: the planet. He was walking towards me. It was now
Speaker 1: at one hundred and fifty yards, But this time there
Speaker 1: was no strutting, no hesitation, no follow on the hen.
Speaker 1: He was on a bee line for the hen he'd
Speaker 1: heard earlier. That sounded good and looked a whole lot
Speaker 1: like me. I raised my double barrel up to my
Speaker 1: shoulder and rested my thumb on the safety, waiting to
Speaker 1: slide it forward, my index finger just outside the trigger guard,
Speaker 1: Waiting patiently. I glanced down at my phone screen. Eleven
Speaker 1: forty four am. I had sixteen minutes left at a
Speaker 1: little over one hundred yards. I slid the safety off
Speaker 1: and began sighting his red, white and blue head down
Speaker 1: the barrel, the bead over and less and less of
Speaker 1: his head and neck as he got closer with each
Speaker 1: purposeful step. I picked out a spot at thirty yards
Speaker 1: to send him a smoking tea spoon full of nastiness.
Speaker 1: He's at eighty yards now, and he's showing no signs
Speaker 1: of slowing down. This cat only has a few more
Speaker 1: seconds to live, and in the blink of an eye
Speaker 1: he ducked his head, flying and running back the way
Speaker 1: he came as fast as his wings and feet would
Speaker 1: toad him. I put my shotgun on safe and raised
Speaker 1: my cheek from the stock, wondering what in the world
Speaker 1: had just happened. When a crop duster nearly drug his
Speaker 1: wheels through the top of the tree I was sitting
Speaker 1: under as he made a big, loud pass right above me.
Speaker 1: Had I had wings, I believe I'd have picked up
Speaker 1: and flew with him. It scared me as bad as
Speaker 1: he did a turkey. I found it humorous eventually, and
Speaker 1: I watched that pilot making pass after as I walked
Speaker 1: back towards my truck, shot gun broken down and resting
Speaker 1: across my shoulder. I was nearly back when he passed
Speaker 1: right over the top of me while banking back toward
Speaker 1: the wheat field he was spreading. He was low and
Speaker 1: I could see him clearly in the cockpit looking at me.
Speaker 1: He was closer to me than the turkey ever got.
Speaker 1: I gave him my thumbs up, and he puffed a
Speaker 1: ball of marker smoke back at me. They do this
Speaker 1: by squirt and shot aill onto the exhaust, and the
Speaker 1: white smoke is easy for me to see it and
Speaker 1: helps them determine which way the wind is blowing. But
Speaker 1: that day, I think it was more of a sorry friend.
Speaker 1: I've been humbled by mother nature more times than I
Speaker 1: can remember. My own ineptitude had sent me back to
Speaker 1: the house singing the blues even more. But getting my
Speaker 1: ego put in checked by a crop duster man, that's
Speaker 1: a new one even for me. I thank y'all for listening.
Speaker 1: If you are the pilot that was flying that day,
Speaker 1: if you can prove it of you by telling me
Speaker 1: where this happened, I'll send you a meat eater T shirt.
Speaker 1: I was just playing that day you were working, and
Speaker 1: I ain't mad at you. Send your stories into me
Speaker 1: and Reva at MYTCL story at the medeater dot com.
Speaker 1: Check out Mark Kenyon over and Wired to Hunt and
Speaker 1: Old Clud over at the Bear Grigs until next week.
Speaker 1: This is Brent Reeves signing off. Y'all be careful.