Speaker 1: Welcome to This Country Life. I'm your host, Brent Rieves.
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 Eater's 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 tail gate.
Speaker 1: I think I got a thing or two and teach
Speaker 1: you trapping in TNT. Trapping a controversial subject in some
Speaker 1: places these days, but like it or not, trapping was
Speaker 1: and continues to be an important and effective method of
Speaker 1: predator nuisance, animal control and land protection. As a kid,
Speaker 1: I followed my older brother Tim around, learning the dudes
Speaker 1: and the don'ts, just like he followed our uncle Dob
Speaker 1: around learning from him. Now you've heard me talk about
Speaker 1: Uncle Dob before. He wasn't our uncle, just a longtime
Speaker 1: family friend that, like the rest of us Reeves boys,
Speaker 1: would rather hunt, fish and work a condition none of
Speaker 1: us ever really got under control. Trapping in beaver control stories.
Speaker 1: This week on Meet There's This Country Life podcast. The
Speaker 1: first I'm going to tell you a story. It was
Speaker 1: the winter of nineteen eighty five, and while I was
Speaker 1: enrolled in college at the University of Arkansas at Monticela,
Speaker 1: I worked as a nighttime and weekend dispatcher and jaylor
Speaker 1: at the Warren Police Department. In a town less than
Speaker 1: seven thousand people, there wasn't usually a whole lot happening
Speaker 1: on Sunday mornings, So when the entrance door swung open
Speaker 1: with a bang and a mud covered man stepped up
Speaker 1: to the window of the radio room kind of startled me.
Speaker 1: He was soaked from head to toe, tracking mud all over.
Speaker 1: The trustee polished floors and was staring at me with
Speaker 1: an exaggerated look of desperation. This man needed help. Had
Speaker 1: he been involved in an accident, been in a fight,
Speaker 1: witness some type of tragedy. I had no clue, but
Speaker 1: I didn't know that in the time it took me
Speaker 1: to get out of my chair and hurry to the window,
Speaker 1: he seemed to be hanging on by a thread. Sir,
Speaker 1: you all right, I need a game warden. A game warden.
Speaker 1: That's not what I was expecting to hear. He could
Speaker 1: have said anything, but the last thing I expected. He
Speaker 1: him to say, was I needed a game warden? I
Speaker 1: asked him again, are you okay? He said, man, I'm tired.
Speaker 1: We're all tired, but I need a game warden and
Speaker 1: tell him to bring a cage. I never seen this
Speaker 1: man before in my life, but I knew he was
Speaker 1: sincere about what he was talking about. But it's six
Speaker 1: am on a Sunday morning. I'm fixing. I had to
Speaker 1: wake someone up, so I have to have a little
Speaker 1: more information before I do. I said, you said that
Speaker 1: you were all tired of somebody outside. Yes, my trapping partners. Well,
Speaker 1: none of this was making a lot of sense, so
Speaker 1: to answer the questions I was bound to get when
Speaker 1: I woke the game boarding up, so I told the
Speaker 1: man I needed to go with him outside, me the
Speaker 1: folks that they were there with him, and get a
Speaker 1: little more information about what was going on. I wasn't
Speaker 1: sure a game board is what this guy needed. I
Speaker 1: was thinking a bath and a psychiatrist would be more
Speaker 1: help to him. Anyway. I followed him outside and there
Speaker 1: stood his two accomplices, both disheveled, muddy, soaking, wet, and bleeding.
Speaker 1: Now they weren't oozing blood, but they were covered from
Speaker 1: head to toe with pretty significant cuts and scratches in
Speaker 1: their All their clothes, and I mean all of their
Speaker 1: clothes look like they'd been in a fight with a
Speaker 1: weed eater and lost. One man was wearing the remnants
Speaker 1: of a pair of rubber boots, the tops of which
Speaker 1: had been shredded. The only thing that appeared to be
Speaker 1: holding on his feet was a round of duct tape
Speaker 1: that he wrapped around each shin. These guys look like
Speaker 1: they've been eaten by a kyoti and crapped off a cliff.
Speaker 1: Whatever had happened was serious, and these boys were traumatized
Speaker 1: from it. Okay, man, now what's going on? Why do
Speaker 1: you need a game warden? The man with the taped
Speaker 1: on rubber boots spoke up, We need one to give
Speaker 1: us a tag for this otter. I looked around. What otter?
Speaker 1: The one in this wooden box in the back of
Speaker 1: the truck. He motioned toward the back of his truck,
Speaker 1: and I walked over to see a plywood box about
Speaker 1: three foot square, had a hinge lid on the top,
Speaker 1: and it was secured with a hasp and a padlock.
Speaker 1: You got an otter in there barely? Okay, Well, why
Speaker 1: do you need a We need him to pay us
Speaker 1: our hundred dollars for an otter. Yes, this otter wanted.
Speaker 1: My feeble attempt at humor was lost on these guys.
Speaker 1: I thought it was funny. They did not. Why is
Speaker 1: a game warden going to give you one hundred dollars?
Speaker 1: He told me. The game and Fish is trading Missouri
Speaker 1: otters for turkeys. For every live otter we bring in
Speaker 1: and turn over to the game and Fish Arkansas gets
Speaker 1: a turkey and we get one hundred dollars. Well, how'd
Speaker 1: y'all catch him? We trapped him? How'd you get him
Speaker 1: in the box? Fellas that I'm not really sure. It
Speaker 1: seemed to go on forever. There was a little bit
Speaker 1: of sadness in his voice. Well, tell me about it.
Speaker 1: We had him on a catch pole and took the
Speaker 1: trap off his foot, and everything was going fine up
Speaker 1: to that point. The cable was running around his chest,
Speaker 1: right behind his front legs, and I had it set
Speaker 1: where just hold him and not squeeze him. I didn't
Speaker 1: want to hurt him. The plan was to take the
Speaker 1: trap off his foot, pick him up, and drop him
Speaker 1: in the hole in the box and hit the tension
Speaker 1: release on the catchpole and removed the cable. Well that's
Speaker 1: not what happened, no, sir, not even close. The second
Speaker 1: that foothole trap come off, he went berserk. You ain't
Speaker 1: never seen nothing like it, he told me. He bit
Speaker 1: the catch pole in half quicker than anything he'd ever seen.
Speaker 1: He said, it was like I had Bruce Lee on
Speaker 1: the leash and he was beating us all up with
Speaker 1: a pair of nunchoes. It's the biggest otter I've ever seen.
Speaker 1: He gnawed, and he called Lloyd's boots off so fast
Speaker 1: that when he jumped he can try to get away.
Speaker 1: He stepped out of both of them. Lloyd told his
Speaker 1: boots back to the truck in his hands. The next
Speaker 1: forty five minutes were painful. I kept him in the
Speaker 1: wire catch, but we couldn't get him in the box.
Speaker 1: Should have made the hole bigger. I'd lift him off
Speaker 1: the ground and try to lower him down in that hole,
Speaker 1: but he just standing there over that whole, snarl in
Speaker 1: the bite and trying to kill him. These boys were
Speaker 1: in a bad way. I said, well, how'd you get
Speaker 1: him in there? He said, Lord pitched him one of
Speaker 1: his boots, and as soon as he jumped on it.
Speaker 1: He threw his coat on him, wrapped him up, and
Speaker 1: stuck him down in there. I said, that's why Lord
Speaker 1: ain't wearing a coat. Yep, the otter got it. I said, well,
Speaker 1: at least you got your boot back, Lloyd. What's left
Speaker 1: of it? He said, all right, I'm gonna call the
Speaker 1: game and fish and they'll be sending someone out here
Speaker 1: pretty quick. I bet is the otter injured anyway or anywhere.
Speaker 1: He looked healthy when we last saw him. Fair enough.
Speaker 1: I said, he's a bigger hunh. He said, it's the
Speaker 1: biggest one you've ever seen. How big is he? Man
Speaker 1: said he's pushing thirty pounds. Wow. Okay, well crack that,
Speaker 1: open that lid and let's look at him. I want
Speaker 1: to sing, fellas that do what I said, open the lid.
Speaker 1: I want to see this thirty pound odd. Well. They
Speaker 1: all looked at one another and back at me without
Speaker 1: saying a word. Then he said, mister, I've always tried
Speaker 1: to do right by the law, but listen to me
Speaker 1: when I say this. I ain't opening that box up
Speaker 1: for you or nobody else. If my grandma walked up
Speaker 1: here right now, that's been dead over twenty years and say,
Speaker 1: crack that lid open. I want to look at him.
Speaker 1: She'd hand me one hundred dollars before I got the
Speaker 1: key out of my pocket. And when you call the game, Horden,
Speaker 1: don't worry about having him bring a cage. He can
Speaker 1: have this one. And that's just how that happened. From
Speaker 1: the sixth grade on and off through junior high. In
Speaker 1: high school, I ran it trap line before school. Now.
Speaker 1: That meant that while all the other kids were still
Speaker 1: sacked out in the old bed, Old Briddley was walking
Speaker 1: through the woods and creeks checking traps. I never had
Speaker 1: out more than two dozen at a time, but checking
Speaker 1: that many traps, resetting and running down coons that had
Speaker 1: pulled my drags off, that took some time. And there
Speaker 1: were several mornings that I was running across the field
Speaker 1: with a coon or two to throw in the barn
Speaker 1: and run and catch the bus before it took off.
Speaker 1: I never missed it, but there were a couple of
Speaker 1: close calls. I look back at that now and I think,
Speaker 1: would I let my kids do that? Well, the answer
Speaker 1: is yes, if I felt they were as competent at
Speaker 1: it as I was. And that's the difference. I may
Speaker 1: have been eleven or twelve when I started doing this
Speaker 1: on my own, but I had several years experience following
Speaker 1: my brother around and watching and helping him. There's so
Speaker 1: many things to learn, and all of it I still
Speaker 1: used today. Tim would have me looking at tracks and
Speaker 1: how they came down a bank or a creek edge,
Speaker 1: and tell me to look at it and see why
Speaker 1: coon would walk that way. Why would he walk over
Speaker 1: some things and around others. He never told me the
Speaker 1: answers until I answered right. He always made me think
Speaker 1: about it. I got pretty good at it, and after
Speaker 1: a while I figured out that they usually just travel
Speaker 1: the path of least resistance and that keeps them near
Speaker 1: their food source and close to an escape route. By
Speaker 1: paying attention and asking questions, I learned a lot about
Speaker 1: how coons get around in the world, just out there
Speaker 1: doing their thing, and that eventually led me to try
Speaker 1: and fox and Bobcat. I never really got good at those.
Speaker 1: Him was a whole lot better at it than I am.
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, I've only caught one bobcat
Speaker 1: in my life, and that was four years ago. Beaver
Speaker 1: and Otter was a whole other deal. And I never
Speaker 1: targeted Otter specifically because at the time I was really
Speaker 1: getting into trapping and getting good enough to start making
Speaker 1: a little money at it. The fur market went billy up.
Speaker 1: Only reason anyone was trapping during that time was either
Speaker 1: because they'd done it forever and didn't want to quit,
Speaker 1: or they were doing nuisance trapping for landowners and timber companies.
Speaker 1: Tim even contracted for a while doing some nuisance trapping
Speaker 1: for a timber management company. And while he was doing that,
Speaker 1: I went to work for Georgia Pacific in the forestry
Speaker 1: department as a timber spotter. Now, if you don't know
Speaker 1: what that is, allow me to elaborate. Georgia Pacific owned
Speaker 1: thousands of acres of timberland in South Arkansas, and it
Speaker 1: was my job, along with several other crews, to select
Speaker 1: cut tracks of land for the contracting laggers to come
Speaker 1: in and harvest the timber. Now, this is when I
Speaker 1: was working with mister Leon. I'm sure most of you
Speaker 1: remember him. If you don't check out episode one twenty seven,
Speaker 1: Know Your Trees. That's just one of a handful where
Speaker 1: I've talked to about mister Lyon. But we would get
Speaker 1: our orders from the forester who was over our district,
Speaker 1: and we'd either be painting landlines or checking behind laggers
Speaker 1: to make sure they were utilizing the resource, or spotting
Speaker 1: new tracks to cut. We carried a tree marking spray
Speaker 1: gun that would paint a stripe at eye level that
Speaker 1: could be seen, and then another stripe on the bottom
Speaker 1: where the stump would be to ensure the trees we
Speaker 1: marked were the ones that were getting cut. But my favorite,
Speaker 1: my favorite thing we did was beaver control. We had
Speaker 1: a couple of different folks that GP contracted to trap
Speaker 1: beavers and I'd go with them sometime checking traps and
Speaker 1: getting the beavers out of there. But the best part
Speaker 1: was when we scheduled beaver down blowing days. Everyone knows
Speaker 1: that beaver's dam upstreams and this causes the water to
Speaker 1: back up the stream, flood out into the woods, and
Speaker 1: eventually kill the timber, either by flooding or the beavers
Speaker 1: gnawing them down to using the damn. They're amazing creatures
Speaker 1: and I love them, but they're a costly lot when
Speaker 1: it comes to growing timber to maturity, and that was
Speaker 1: the business we were in. So if we found a
Speaker 1: beaver pond we'd walk it out until we found where
Speaker 1: the dam was located, mark it on a map, and
Speaker 1: when the contractor showed up, we'd put in explosives and
Speaker 1: get to work. Times were different, remember, and if you
Speaker 1: had a current driver's license and a legitimate reason to
Speaker 1: have it, you could go to a construction supply business
Speaker 1: and buy explosives. Beaver control was a legitimate reason. The
Speaker 1: training was pretty intense. I remember the contractor telling me
Speaker 1: cut the fuse long enough for you to light it
Speaker 1: and get to safety. Well, how long is that? I
Speaker 1: asked him. He said, how fast are you? And that
Speaker 1: was the end of the training. So while I hated
Speaker 1: math in school, I was constantly doing it in my
Speaker 1: head while we waited around beaver ponds and dug out
Speaker 1: holes in the dam, the stuff full of explosives, and
Speaker 1: planned our escape routes before the big boom. Cotton Mouths
Speaker 1: were a constant reminder that there were more dangerous things
Speaker 1: out there besides us and the explosives, believe it or not,
Speaker 1: And those jokers were always where I wanted to be.
Speaker 1: I wanted to poke my hand to dig out a
Speaker 1: spot to put some of the tovex. Tovex is the
Speaker 1: explosive that we were using. It was just another thing
Speaker 1: to have to keep up with. It was in the
Speaker 1: spring of the year and the rain had flooded out
Speaker 1: a huge creek bottom that we'd planned the log that summer,
Speaker 1: so in order to do that we had to find
Speaker 1: the dam. It took us a couple of days of
Speaker 1: walking and wading and hunting it up, but we eventually
Speaker 1: found it. One of them. Anyway, turned out there were
Speaker 1: a series of dams along this creek that they had
Speaker 1: worked on for years. It was an absolute marvel of
Speaker 1: ingenuity and engineering. The structures that they build. They looked
Speaker 1: so happenstanced, but they are anything but accidental. Every little twig,
Speaker 1: every little limb, every load of mud is specific to
Speaker 1: that portion of the dam and its purpose, and we
Speaker 1: were there to blow it up. The largest of the
Speaker 1: dams was about six feet high on the downstream side
Speaker 1: and nearly one hundred yards long. It was massive. The
Speaker 1: water had backed up and flooded what we estimated to
Speaker 1: be about thirty acres of timber. The timber was showing
Speaker 1: signs of an extreme stress, and if we were going
Speaker 1: to salvage any of it before it died and righted
Speaker 1: away that beaver dam had to go. Now, looking at
Speaker 1: a topo map and knowing the country and how the
Speaker 1: woods drained in that area, we knew there would be
Speaker 1: no ill effects downstream by turning all that water loose.
Speaker 1: There were slews and creeks and boughs that all led
Speaker 1: to the river like a highway system. But how much
Speaker 1: water are we talking about. Well, in a one acre
Speaker 1: pond that's four feet deep, you're looking at over six
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty one thousand gallons. Now, y'all feel free
Speaker 1: to check my mouth. If it's wrong, don't send me
Speaker 1: you hate mail, Copernicus take it up with the nerds
Speaker 1: at Google. So you get the picture that we're dealing
Speaker 1: with a lot of water, a lot of water. We
Speaker 1: walked out in the middle of the dam on the
Speaker 1: downstream side with a grubbing hole in a sack full
Speaker 1: of explosives. We rigged three sets of four sticks of tovax,
Speaker 1: placed them out in a twenty yard chain, and connected
Speaker 1: them all with a debt cord so they would all
Speaker 1: detonate at the same time. We put out plenty of fuse.
Speaker 1: He let me light it, and when that fuse ignited,
Speaker 1: I checked my watch, and we left there like we
Speaker 1: were late for work, giggling like a couple of kids
Speaker 1: with anticipation that what was about to happen. We'd already
Speaker 1: picked out our spot, two big pennoak trees that stood
Speaker 1: side by side that would have had us about seventy
Speaker 1: five yards away from the blast zone and at angle
Speaker 1: where we could watch the show in relative safety. I
Speaker 1: want to know how to make time stand still, estimate
Speaker 1: the length of time it takes for a burning fuse
Speaker 1: to set off an explosion. We waited and waited and waited,
Speaker 1: and nothing. I looked at my watch. Surely had been
Speaker 1: a minute. By now, fifteen seconds had gone by, and
Speaker 1: what seemed like forever would only be an additional fifteen seconds.
Speaker 1: I was staring intently at that smoke drifting from the
Speaker 1: burning fuse. The contract was smoking a cigarette, staring in
Speaker 1: the other direction, like he was waiting on a school bus.
Speaker 1: Did it go out? He looked at me and said,
Speaker 1: you want to go check it? No, sir, I don't.
Speaker 1: He looked back down through the bottles and took another
Speaker 1: big drag off his cigarette. Finally, he looked over me
Speaker 1: and said, fire in the hole. As non shalocked, as
Speaker 1: he would say, past the biscuits. I poked my fingers
Speaker 1: in my ears, and I peeked out around that big,
Speaker 1: massive tree, just in time to see a tranquil spring
Speaker 1: morning turn into arm again. Mud sticks and water were
Speaker 1: raining down all around us, and the sound of the
Speaker 1: water rushing through that fifteen yard gap in the dam
Speaker 1: was louder than the explosion. Fish were pouring through the
Speaker 1: opening like crazy. I wish that brought a dip net.
Speaker 1: It took a while for that thing to drain, several hours.
Speaker 1: In fact, we'd blown the dam at about ten am,
Speaker 1: and at three in the afternoon we decided the creek
Speaker 1: was safe enough to wear across. Now, why would we
Speaker 1: be waiting across the creek Because the spot we picked
Speaker 1: a hide from the explosion was on the wrong side.
Speaker 1: That's why. Oh well, live and learn. Thank y'all for
Speaker 1: listening and for helping us spread the word about our show.
Speaker 1: If you haven't and you know someone that might enjoy,
Speaker 1: send it to him. Remember which side of the creek
Speaker 1: you're own. And until next time, this is Brent Reeves
Speaker 1: signing off. Y'all, be careful