Speaker 1: Today's podcast is notably different from a typical documentary style
Speaker 1: bear Grease that we usually put out every other Wednesday.
Speaker 1: I was recently asked to be the keynote speaker at
Speaker 1: the pheasant Fest banquet where we celebrated Quel Forever's twentieth anniversary.
Speaker 1: And it might seem odd that they'd ask me to
Speaker 1: speak because I don't own bird dogs or travel the
Speaker 1: country wingshooting. But I'd like to share with you bear
Speaker 1: Grease folks, a slightly elongated version, so it's not the
Speaker 1: actual speech.
Speaker 2: It's a little bit longer, but I want to share.
Speaker 1: That speech with you, and I think that you'll understand
Speaker 1: after you hear it why they asked me to speak.
Speaker 1: I'd say this story is deeply personal, and I titled
Speaker 1: it The Bird Hunter.
Speaker 2: My name is Clay Nukem, and this.
Speaker 1: Is the bear Grease podcast where we'll explore things forgotten
Speaker 1: but relevant, search for insight and unlikely places, and where
Speaker 1: we'll tell the story of Americans who lived their lives
Speaker 1: close to the land. Presented by FHF Gear, American made
Speaker 1: purpose built hunting and fishing gear that's designed to be
Speaker 1: as rugged as the place as we explore. I'd like
Speaker 1: to tell you a story. On the morning of September fifth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four, I awoke from a dream so vivid
Speaker 1: I felt like that I'd actually been with him. When
Speaker 1: I got up, I wrote down what I experienced. I
Speaker 1: dated it, I told Misty about it, and actually called
Speaker 1: my mom and dad. He had died on Christmas night
Speaker 1: twenty thirteen, but on that September morning, over ten years later,
Speaker 1: I felt like that I had actually seen him. The
Speaker 1: man in the dream was a school teacher, a pastor,
Speaker 1: and a bird hunter that I knew very well, and
Speaker 1: the shadow and echo of his life has never left me.
Speaker 1: And right now I'd like to tell you his story.
Speaker 1: His name is one you've never heard of. Nothing was
Speaker 1: ever written about him. There's no existing film of his
Speaker 1: dog training, but the ripples of his life are still
Speaker 1: in motion today in the eyes of his peers.
Speaker 2: Perhaps his life was mundane.
Speaker 1: And normal, but it would never be disputed that his
Speaker 1: life was nothing if not noble, disciplined, and others focused.
Speaker 1: The man in my dream was Lewin Nukeom, known to
Speaker 1: me as perhaps he was my grandfather, and he was
Speaker 1: a bird hunter and a dog trainer deluxe. He lived
Speaker 1: the life of dedication and passion for quell hunting until
Speaker 1: the day he died, and his story is foundational to
Speaker 1: my story because before I ever hunted a bear, deer,
Speaker 1: or turkey or road of mule, I was, by default
Speaker 1: of quell hunter, simply by blood. Some of my first
Speaker 1: memories of engagement with wild places were overgrown fields with
Speaker 1: long legged pointers leaving tracks in the frost. Bird dogs
Speaker 1: and quall hunting would be the relational conduit that transferred
Speaker 1: to me a value system that went far beyond the
Speaker 1: boundaries of being a bird hunter. However, to think about
Speaker 1: Lewin's life, that stood out to me that would come
Speaker 1: to almost haunt me and inform the way that I
Speaker 1: lived my life was how he spent the last thirty
Speaker 1: five years of his life in silent grief as Bob
Speaker 1: White quell populations near his home were.
Speaker 2: Reduced to almost nothing.
Speaker 1: I think this story will be familiar to a lot
Speaker 1: of people in America. Perhaps even into his late eighties,
Speaker 1: he trained bird dogs and often hunted five days a
Speaker 1: week with no intention of finding birds. I remember as
Speaker 1: a kid being so impacted by watching paps that I
Speaker 1: would pray for the quail populations, just even as a kid.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't realize how much this impacted me until I
Speaker 1: was an adult, and I didn't want the same thing
Speaker 1: to happen to me with the wild beast that I loved.
Speaker 1: But this story isn't a story of loss. It's one
Speaker 1: of incredible gain. And to understand his story and my story,
Speaker 1: I'd like to take you way back, probably even back
Speaker 1: a little further than you might think. My great great
Speaker 1: great great great grandfather, Thomas Nukeomb came out of Kentucky
Speaker 1: in the eighteen thirties and settled in the east west
Speaker 1: running ridges of the Washington Mountains of Arkansas. They'd settled
Speaker 1: in Montgomery County in the community of Bumblebee, and Thomas
Speaker 1: begat Thomas Joseph who begat Robert who begat, Oscar who
Speaker 1: in nineteen nineteen begat, Lewin Anderson Nukomb who begat Gary
Speaker 1: Believer Nukom in nineteen forty eight. My dad, who begat
Speaker 1: me and I was born approximately twenty three miles east
Speaker 1: of Bumblebee in nineteen seventy nine, just barely in time
Speaker 1: to overlap the fleeting glory days of the Southern Bob
Speaker 1: White quail and the grand hunting culture that surrounded it.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have recognized it at the time, but there
Speaker 1: have been few wild beasts that have defined an era
Speaker 1: of the American sportsman more than that little whistling bird.
Speaker 1: But I for God to admit my relationship with mister
Speaker 1: Bob White as complicated from me flow's massive respect even
Speaker 1: all of the birds, but I found their presence on
Speaker 1: the landscape irreplaceable. In their absence life altering, the flutter
Speaker 1: of queill wings brings to me an uneasy feeling of
Speaker 1: an eden lost. No other wild beast in my lifetime
Speaker 1: has caused such heartache, which created in me a foundational
Speaker 1: hegemon of the fragility of wild game, causing a gunshinness
Speaker 1: to give my heart to any wild beast, especially a
Speaker 1: dad gum ground nesting bird. But it sure didn't keep
Speaker 1: Lewin from loving them or me. Lewin wouldn't have known it,
Speaker 1: but the date of his birth would be consequential in
Speaker 1: many ways. He spent his teenage years living through the
Speaker 1: Great Depression, building an attitude of resilience, simplicity, and contentment
Speaker 1: that would brand his life. He would turn twenty two
Speaker 1: years old in nineteen forty one, precisely the time when
Speaker 1: our country called for brave young men to arise, and
Speaker 1: he responded to that call, joining the Navy, where he
Speaker 1: led a team of seven men who operated a single
Speaker 1: gun on an American battleship fighting in Okinawa and the Philippines.
Speaker 1: We wouldn't know it until after Perhaps's death in twenty thirteen,
Speaker 1: but he won a Bronze Star for heroism in action.
Speaker 1: No one knows exactly what he did, but he once
Speaker 1: told me with his own mouth that he was credited
Speaker 1: with shooting down an enemy aircraft, but he completely left
Speaker 1: the war medal out of the story. We found that
Speaker 1: out after someone gave us a news clipping at his funeral.
Speaker 1: But in a display of humility to a nine year
Speaker 1: old boy, he confided in me that he wasn't sure
Speaker 1: if he and his team actually had shot down the plane.
Speaker 1: He wasn't interested in stolen valor. He was mainly interested
Speaker 1: in people and bird dogs. After the war, he moved
Speaker 1: to Hot Springs, Arkansas, east of Bumblebee, and in nineteen
Speaker 1: forty three married my grandmother, Emmaline, known to me decades
Speaker 1: later as Mimi. As many people did in these poor
Speaker 1: soul othern states, they chose to leave to make a living, So,
Speaker 1: like the Beverly Hillbillies, they loaded up and moved to
Speaker 1: Port Chicago, California, in nineteen forty seven to find work.
Speaker 1: It was in California in nineteen forty eight that my
Speaker 1: father Gary was born. But it was also here that
Speaker 1: something happened that would define Lewin's life more than the
Speaker 1: Great Depression, the accolades of war or ground nests and birds.
Speaker 1: In a revival meeting in the late nineteen forties, he
Speaker 1: got saved and his life was radically transformed.
Speaker 2: He looked and.
Speaker 1: Acted different, and words spread about his experience to the
Speaker 1: point that people literally just wanted to come meet paps
Speaker 1: and look in his eyes.
Speaker 2: After they heard his story.
Speaker 1: And I don't know the details, but shortly after this
Speaker 1: he believed that God communicated to him that he and
Speaker 1: his family should move back to Arkansas, which he did,
Speaker 1: and that's a decision I'm forever grateful for nothing against California.
Speaker 2: It would be in.
Speaker 1: Arkansas that he would raise his family, be the first
Speaker 1: in his lineage to go to college, and he'd become
Speaker 1: a biology teacher at a public school, and in the
Speaker 1: early nineteen fifties he became a Pastor Paps would be
Speaker 1: known in his community as a man of impeccable integrity
Speaker 1: who studied the Bible with passion and discipline. He spent
Speaker 1: multiple nights per week for decades visiting the sick at
Speaker 1: the local hospital, which he viewed as a core tenant
Speaker 1: of his faith. And it would also be in the
Speaker 1: early nineteen fifties, when he was in his early thirties,
Speaker 1: that he got his first bird dogs in the beginning
Speaker 1: of the American glory days of quail. One of his
Speaker 1: first dogs was named Elvis. I bet if you track back,
Speaker 1: you'd find somebody in your bird hunting lineage that had
Speaker 1: a dog named Elvis. It would still be thirty five
Speaker 1: years before I'd ever hunt with Paps. But during this
Speaker 1: time he went to a training seminar in Oklahoma put
Speaker 1: on by Delmer Smith and perhaps became a master bird
Speaker 1: dog trainer, training small numbers of dogs, always registered pointers
Speaker 1: in English setters, always having dogs and training, rarely selling
Speaker 1: a dog, but giving them away to the right people.
Speaker 1: To say that bird hunting and dog training was his
Speaker 1: hobby would be a slap in the face of his discipline, seriousness,
Speaker 1: and passion. It was a lifestyle it was part of
Speaker 1: who he was. My first memories of hunting with Paps
Speaker 1: were in the late nineteen eighties. I was under ten
Speaker 1: years old and he was in his late sixties. To
Speaker 1: go with him was a big deal, maybe even a
Speaker 1: little bit risky, not because he was unsafe, but because
Speaker 1: he was known to walk grown men to death in
Speaker 1: his daylight till dark death marches in search of birds,
Speaker 1: and many well meaning hunting companions were lost to the cold,
Speaker 1: to the heat, or just playing weariness of heart, following
Speaker 1: who many of them called Brother Nukele.
Speaker 2: Few people could hang.
Speaker 1: With Paths, and you knew it was cold when he
Speaker 1: broke out his long underwear. It was like he was
Speaker 1: made of tempered steel and rawhide. As a young boy
Speaker 1: on that first hunt, rising what seemed like weeks before daylight,
Speaker 1: my grandmother would make us sausage, biscuits, gravy, and eggs,
Speaker 1: and it was here that Paps tutored me and the
Speaker 1: finer things. If a man raised in depression era Arkansas,
Speaker 1: sorgum molasses mixed with butter and put on a biscuit
Speaker 1: with a tall glass of buttermilk was his filet mignon.
Speaker 1: The molasses I loved the buttermilk I could not tolerate.
Speaker 1: My grandmother would make us blowney sandwiches on whitebread wrapped
Speaker 1: in aluminum foil for our lunch. She even wrapped our
Speaker 1: cokes and foil too, which I never quite understood, but
Speaker 1: somehow I knew it meant that she loved us. He
Speaker 1: took me Honting, near the home place of Robert Nukem,
Speaker 1: his grandfather, which the house then was nothing more than
Speaker 1: a falling down oakombe built on rock pillars. I wish
Speaker 1: I could remember what Paps told me about Robert. He
Speaker 1: said something about him. It was minimal, but it summed
Speaker 1: up the man's life in a sentence. I don't remember
Speaker 1: what he said, but it planted in me in awareness
Speaker 1: the brevity of man's existence. Who lives at the mercy
Speaker 1: of the voracious appetite of time, rolling over men, reducing
Speaker 1: them to dust in their life into a sentence. To
Speaker 1: this day, I rarely passed an old, falling down home
Speaker 1: without thinking about the people that lived there, often wondering
Speaker 1: if anyone even remembers their names. Perhaps remembered Roberts though.
Speaker 1: As we hunted, we walked sage grass covered cattle fields
Speaker 1: and I followed Paps in his army green briar briches
Speaker 1: while he shouted commands to a long legged liver spot
Speaker 1: porter that would have curled the hair of a lesser dog.
Speaker 1: Later in my life, at Paaps's funeral, a family friend
Speaker 1: told me that he never knew how a man so
Speaker 1: kind could scold a bird dog so harshly. He demanded performance.
Speaker 1: Perhaps told me that a dog's name should be one
Speaker 1: syllable and project from the chest, not the mouth. Acceptable
Speaker 1: names were like Buck, or Goldie or Elvis. I never
Speaker 1: fully understood what an unacceptable name would be, and sometimes
Speaker 1: I felt like some of his names had two syllables,
Speaker 1: at least one and a half. At lunch, we sat
Speaker 1: on the tailgate of his red two wheel drive S
Speaker 1: ten with the wooden dog box in the back, and
Speaker 1: ate our lunch. I never saw the man eat a
Speaker 1: blowney sandwich without laughing out loud as he called it
Speaker 1: preacher's ham. It was a hat tip to the life
Speaker 1: of poverty of a poor country preacher. The humor of
Speaker 1: the joke never lost its luster to him, and he
Speaker 1: said it to me each time, laughing out loud, as
Speaker 1: if he nor I had ever heard the joke before.
Speaker 1: On that first hunt, we didn't find any quail, but
Speaker 1: I'll never forget picking up out of the dirt of
Speaker 1: a cattle trail a beautiful, white, fully intact stone point
Speaker 1: an arrahead. The images frozen in my mind in perpetuity.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have realized it, but this would be the
Speaker 1: moment that my fascination with the deep antiquity of human
Speaker 1: hunting in North America started, which carries on in my
Speaker 1: work today on the Bear Grease podcast. We lived about
Speaker 1: an hour and a half from Paps, but he would
Speaker 1: come to Mina to hunt with Dad and I and
Speaker 1: of all the grandkids. He noticed in me in interest
Speaker 1: in bird hunting, and when I was in the sixth
Speaker 1: grade in nineteen ninety two, he gave me something that
Speaker 1: impacts my life to this day. There was a dog
Speaker 1: named Lucy. She was a fully trained registered English center.
Speaker 1: She was three years old, white with a black head,
Speaker 1: and had been through the lew And Neukom training Academy.
Speaker 1: The beauty of where we lived was that we had
Speaker 1: access twenty seven acres behind our house that was a
Speaker 1: grown up field dissected by multiple grown up fence lines
Speaker 1: that oddly held multiple covees of quail. It was kind
Speaker 1: of an anomaly, maybe even a microcosm of the glory
Speaker 1: days of quail.
Speaker 2: But I couldn't hunt it. I just had permission to
Speaker 2: roam it.
Speaker 1: Roam it we did between nineteen ninety two and nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety six. They're telling how many different times we pointed
Speaker 1: and flushed those covees, and then we'd go after the singles.
Speaker 1: Those quail had nightmares about Lucy and I. We kept
Speaker 1: them on the run, but never killed a single one.
Speaker 1: It was during this time that Paps gave me a
Speaker 1: book on the Delmer Smith method of training, which I
Speaker 1: read cover to cover. I got a long check cord
Speaker 1: with a brass buckle, and I still used this foundational
Speaker 1: knowledge of animal training on my mules, squirrel dogs, and
Speaker 1: coon dogs today. Soon, perhaps this confidence in me grew,
Speaker 1: and he gave me another dog, a black handed pointer
Speaker 1: puppy named Nick, from the bloodlines of a dog called
Speaker 1: Fiddler's Ace. I didn't know anything about the dog, but
Speaker 1: he sounded really good. The goal was for me to
Speaker 1: train Nick myself, and I tried, but like so many
Speaker 1: things in life, moments are fleeting and dreams died easier
Speaker 1: than they realized, and after four years of bird hunting,
Speaker 1: I gave Lucy and Nick back to Paps. Always felt
Speaker 1: like I failed the old man and my efforts with
Speaker 1: the bird dogs, and I felt bad about it, but
Speaker 1: I never picked up that it bothered him. He knew
Speaker 1: it was like fighting an incoming tide. There just weren't
Speaker 1: any birds. Without birds, people didn't need bird dogs. I
Speaker 1: wish so badly Paps could see what's happening today in
Speaker 1: quail conservation, and how in many parts of the country
Speaker 1: wild quail are coming back due to the efforts of
Speaker 1: many people in organications like twel Forever. After I gave
Speaker 1: back the dogs to Paps, we still had a yearly hunt.
Speaker 1: I only remember actually finding birds one time. It was
Speaker 1: February nineteen ninety six or nineteen ninety seven. I was
Speaker 1: around seventeen and perhaps was seventy seven, and we turned
Speaker 1: Loose's dog Goldie, out on a small logging road that
Speaker 1: divided a clear cut on public land in southwest Arkansas,
Speaker 1: where my dad had flushed a big covey of quail.
Speaker 1: The little butterscotch setter had hunted in front of the
Speaker 1: truck for less than a quarter mile before her run
Speaker 1: turned to a catwalk and her nose lowered. Her tail
Speaker 1: went from making big circles to small circles to a
Speaker 1: staunch as an O Sage fence post as she'd locked
Speaker 1: down on point, like her body had been suddenly filled
Speaker 1: with concrete. I'm not sure who was more surprised, me,
Speaker 1: Paps or Goldie. We jumped from the truck and scrambled
Speaker 1: to load our guns. Paps's voice changed octaves and he
Speaker 1: whispered as he gave me precise instructions on how to
Speaker 1: approach the pointed dog. I wished his instructions from my
Speaker 1: life had been a straightforward I used to ask him
Speaker 1: questions I was afraid to ask my dad, like is
Speaker 1: it okay to chew tobacco? I dabbled with that dirty
Speaker 1: voodoo for a few years, but his non confrontational wisdom
Speaker 1: to quote stay away from it eventually took lifelong route.
Speaker 1: He always used to tell me that God will lead
Speaker 1: you step by step, Clay, just like he did me.
Speaker 1: To this day, I still take comfort in those words,
Speaker 1: and I say the same thing to my kids. And
Speaker 1: I haven't forgotten that Goldie is on point. But I
Speaker 1: just want to tell you one more story that showed
Speaker 1: Paps's input into my life. He told me the same
Speaker 1: story on multiple occasions that was such a high octane
Speaker 1: Solomon like parable that as an adult, I've wondered if
Speaker 1: he actually did this or if this was an old
Speaker 1: story told by a lot of different people that he
Speaker 1: just repeated to me. But I've never heard this story
Speaker 1: anywhere else, and I've come to the conclusion that he
Speaker 1: was the one that actually did this. The story is
Speaker 1: about two roosters, one old and one young, that he
Speaker 1: had on the farm when he was a kid. The
Speaker 1: older white rooster was the top dog and literally ruled
Speaker 1: the roost, dominating the younger but bigger rooster that was
Speaker 1: daily put in his place by coming in runner up
Speaker 1: during the pair's daily spur and contest. Young Lewin always
Speaker 1: thought that the young rooster could probably whip the old one,
Speaker 1: but he just didn't know that he could. One day,
Speaker 1: perhaps decided to put his theory to the test, so
Speaker 1: he caught the old white rooster and covered him in
Speaker 1: black soot, changing his color temporarily to charcoal gray, making
Speaker 1: him unrecognizable to the young rooster. Perhaps then pitched the
Speaker 1: old rooster back into the chicken yard, and a young rooster,
Speaker 1: not recognizing him and believing it was a new rooster,
Speaker 1: promptly came over and in a whizbang tussle of feathers,
Speaker 1: spurs and clucks, the young one whipped the old one
Speaker 1: with ease. The old rooster must have been in shock
Speaker 1: at the youngster's confidence, and as the soot slowly faded
Speaker 1: back to white, the young rooster remained dominant the pair's
Speaker 1: entire life. Like Solomon passing the sluggard's field and noting
Speaker 1: the work ethic of the ants, perhaps his parable almost
Speaker 1: didn't need explanation. It's clear that our biggest enemy is
Speaker 1: often our own self confidence, and much of life is
Speaker 1: simply an exercise in renewing our minds. This I have
Speaker 1: never forgotten, and I've also not forgotten that I'm telling
Speaker 1: you a story about us walking up on a covey
Speaker 1: of birds. He always told me, on the covey rise
Speaker 1: to pick out one single bird and block it out
Speaker 1: with the end of the gun barrel and flow through it.
Speaker 1: Don't stop as you squeeze the trigger, and when it falls,
Speaker 1: just move on to the next one. I think that's
Speaker 1: what he learned on that gunship in World War Two.
Speaker 1: We eased forward, Paps with his bret of twelve gauge
Speaker 1: and me with the Remington eleven hundred and twenty gauge,
Speaker 1: ready for the explosion. Just as I passed Goldie on
Speaker 1: my left, and perhaps was just on the other side
Speaker 1: of Goldie, a sound like someone opening a bottle with
Speaker 1: the hoof beats of one hundred horses erupted. As the
Speaker 1: covey rose. At least twelve birds got up before us.
Speaker 1: Pap shot twice. I shot three times, so five shots
Speaker 1: total were fired and three birds fell. In all these years.
Speaker 1: It was the only covey we'd ever found while hunting together.
Speaker 1: But Paps didn't take credit for hitting any of the birds,
Speaker 1: Just like the enemy planes in World War Two, he
Speaker 1: insisted that I'd killed all three, which I'm pretty sure
Speaker 1: to this day that I didn't.
Speaker 2: I honestly don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know if he just wanted to believe that
Speaker 1: his grandson had knocked down a triple on wild birds
Speaker 1: really on one of his only covey rises. Five or
Speaker 1: six years later, in two thousand and two, when Perhaps
Speaker 1: was eighty three years old, we went back to the
Speaker 1: same block of public land. Perhaps was still hunting Goldie,
Speaker 1: now in the final leg of her life, but we
Speaker 1: all kind of knew it was Perhaps's final leg.
Speaker 2: Two.
Speaker 1: We didn't find any birds that day. As we walked
Speaker 1: through a clearing, I noticed the shed of a white
Speaker 1: tailed deer lying on the ground and kind of like
Speaker 1: that stone point. I picked it up, showed it to Paps,
Speaker 1: and I took the horn home. Using the sharping marker,
Speaker 1: I wrote on it Clay and Paps Nucomb Bird Hunt
Speaker 1: two thousand and two. I wouldn't have known it at
Speaker 1: the time, but that would be the last time that
Speaker 1: I hunted with him, and it would be the beginning
Speaker 1: of the end of Paps's hunting. My first cousin, Greg Sheets,
Speaker 1: lived close to Paps, and not long after I found
Speaker 1: that shed horn. While driving to work, Greg noticed Paps's
Speaker 1: s ten pulled off the side of the road near
Speaker 1: an overgrown field that he often hunted, and Greg passed
Speaker 1: all the time. Seeing passed his truck there was normal,
Speaker 1: but what caught his eye was that Goldie was by
Speaker 1: the truck with no Paps.
Speaker 2: It was a hot day.
Speaker 1: And Greg, slightly alarmed, turned his truck around and got out,
Speaker 1: called for Paps, and he said that Goldie took off
Speaker 1: out into the brush. Greg followed Goldie, who led him
Speaker 1: straight to a briar thicket where Perhaps was tangled to
Speaker 1: the point that he couldn't move. The day was heating up,
Speaker 1: and Greg said that Perhaps was coherent, but it looked
Speaker 1: like he'd been there for several hours of fighting briars,
Speaker 1: and he just sat down.
Speaker 2: He just couldn't fight him anymore and he was just
Speaker 2: awaiting his fate.
Speaker 1: Greg went in and cut him out, got Perhaps home
Speaker 1: and safe. I'm grateful that Greg turned around that day,
Speaker 1: but not long after that Perhaps couldn't drive anymore.
Speaker 2: And I think you can predict the rest of the story.
Speaker 1: That shed Horn from our last hunt hangs in my
Speaker 1: office today, but it's right beside a watercolor painting that
Speaker 1: I did for Perhaps when I was a senior in
Speaker 1: high school and I'd painted one of his best dogs
Speaker 1: that he ever had that was on point. It was
Speaker 1: from a beautiful photograph that someone took. It was an
Speaker 1: English setter named Snipper, just on full point. When I
Speaker 1: painted it. I gave it to Paps, and that painting
Speaker 1: hung in his office from nineteen ninety eight until they
Speaker 1: moved Paps out of his home into assisted living around
Speaker 1: twenty ten. Mimi had passed away in two thousand and seven,
Speaker 1: and I'll never forget seeing Paps cry as he walked
Speaker 1: down the aisle to say his final goodbye to the
Speaker 1: love of his life and a woman who was so
Speaker 1: influential in mine. Having a grandparent in your life is
Speaker 1: so powerful because you get to see played before you
Speaker 1: the stages of your life that you know will someday
Speaker 1: happen to you. I'd like to close by telling you
Speaker 1: about the last two conversations that I had with Paps.
Speaker 1: The first happened in the all of twenty thirteen, just
Speaker 1: before he died. At the time, he could hardly hear,
Speaker 1: so you had to yell at him to get him
Speaker 1: to understand. And I'd recently been on some public land,
Speaker 1: that same public land where we found those birds, and
Speaker 1: I'd found some more birds, and I came in and
Speaker 1: I set close to Paps and I said to him, Paps,
Speaker 1: I saw a big covey.
Speaker 2: Of birds the other day.
Speaker 1: And his eyes lit up, and he said, you did.
Speaker 1: And this teed him up to tell an anecdote. I've
Speaker 1: heard my whole life. When he talked about his dogs,
Speaker 1: and without segue, he said, my old dog Goldie, I
Speaker 1: believe if you'd cracked her head open, a covey of
Speaker 1: birds would have flown out. Every time he'd say this,
Speaker 1: he'd do his he haul laugh, which I wish I
Speaker 1: had a recording of. That laugh was one of a kind.
Speaker 1: He kind of had a he haw and donkey vibe
Speaker 1: that was guaranteed to draw a smile from anyone within
Speaker 1: the earshot. The last conversation I had with him is
Speaker 1: kind of complicated. I do not understand the mechanics of
Speaker 1: the spirit realm or the depths to which the dreams
Speaker 1: of men create reality. But if I lay unconscious and
Speaker 1: a doctor could peer into my mind and heart and
Speaker 1: ascertain the last time I actually saw Paps, the last
Speaker 1: time my spirit registered that I had engaged with him,
Speaker 1: I'm confident that they would say it was on the
Speaker 1: morning of September fifth, twenty twenty four. Do you remember
Speaker 1: the dream that we started this story with. I approached
Speaker 1: Paps and he was strong and vibrant. He wore a
Speaker 1: bright blue shirt, and he had some type of treatment
Speaker 1: to his ears, and he could hear really well. He
Speaker 1: swayed slightly as he stood, and I walked up to
Speaker 1: him and I shook his hand, and in the climax
Speaker 1: moment of this short interaction, I said one thing to him.
Speaker 1: I said, Paps, I've been burned hunting, That's all I said.
Speaker 1: And I saw that excitement and passion in his eyes
Speaker 1: that branded me as a child, and the dream was over.
Speaker 1: True story. It happened just like that. It's like I
Speaker 1: just wanted to engage with him one more time. Surely
Speaker 1: there's something powerful, even supernatural, in the fluttering wings of
Speaker 1: a Covey rise that connects the hearts of men who
Speaker 1: witness it together. It has the power to link generations
Speaker 1: and an unbreakable bond that no man made thing can do.
Speaker 2: It did that with Paps and Eye.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and eight, the youngest of my wife
Speaker 1: Misting Eye's four children was born. We felt like that
Speaker 1: he should be named in honor of Paps, so we
Speaker 1: named him Shepherd Covey Nukem. The name shepherd essentially means
Speaker 1: pastor someone who cares for people, like Paps did, and
Speaker 1: the name Covey is a direct reference to Paps's love
Speaker 1: of quail, but equally an admonition to our son to
Speaker 1: not live in isolation, but to integrate himself deeply into
Speaker 1: the lives of family, friends, and his church community for life. Today,
Speaker 1: Shepherd is seventeen and is growing into a fine young man.
Speaker 1: His life just barely overlapped with paps. But I have
Speaker 1: no doubt that the legacy of integrity, spiritual pursuit and
Speaker 1: love of wild places is going to carry on through
Speaker 1: him and all my kids. That's the same passion that
Speaker 1: perhaps had for wild places, quail and bird dogs is
Speaker 1: the same energy that fuels my life and career today.
Speaker 1: He died on Christmas night twenty thirteen at the age
Speaker 1: of ninety four, would have little understanding of what I
Speaker 1: would do with my life, but I know this conservation
Speaker 1: movement in the research urgence of Quail would have made
Speaker 1: him proud and probably would evoke his passionate he hauled laugh.
Speaker 1: I can't thank you enough for listening to Bear Grease
Speaker 1: and Brent's This Country Life podcast.
Speaker 2: I hope you enjoyed this.
Speaker 1: This was something unique and really personal to me, and
Speaker 1: I know a lot of you probably have similar stories
Speaker 1: about your grandparents. But really, in this context, the point
Speaker 1: of this story is that watching Pahaps grieve about the
Speaker 1: loss of quail the last thirty five years in his
Speaker 1: life really fueled my.
Speaker 2: Interest in conservation. Even as a kid. I was like, man,
Speaker 2: I hope this doesn't happen to me.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for listening, for supporting what Brent
Speaker 1: and I are doing down here. Keep the wild places
Speaker 1: wild because that's where the quail live too.