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Speaker 1: Interstate Batteries outrageously Dependable. My name is Clay Nucleman. I'm
Speaker 1: the host of the Bear Hunting Magazine podcast. I'll also
Speaker 1: be your host into the world of hunting the icon
Speaker 1: of North American wilderness. We'll talk about tactics, gear conservation,
Speaker 1: but will also bring you into some of the wildest
Speaker 1: country on the planet chasing Battery. I usually begin the
Speaker 1: podcast when I introduced someone, I say, this is my
Speaker 1: friend whoever it is, Well, I want to say that
Speaker 1: about this guest and I and I really mean it,
Speaker 1: but I have not known this guy for very long,
Speaker 1: but as soon as I met him, I was like,
Speaker 1: this is a good guy and he's gonna be my friend.
Speaker 1: And so on this podcast with my friend Jonathan Wilkins,
Speaker 1: you're gonna hear a very interesting conversation. Jonathan was raised
Speaker 1: in an urban area and became a hunter later in
Speaker 1: life when he moved to Arkansas. He had a non
Speaker 1: traditional entry into the hunting space. We have a very
Speaker 1: candid conversation about all his early experiences hunting, about race,
Speaker 1: about a bunch of great stuff, and you're going to
Speaker 1: enjoy this podcast, my friend Jonathan Wilkins of Black Duck Revival. Secondly,
Speaker 1: it's not too late to check out Northwood's Fair Pride US.
Speaker 1: There's still quite a bit of bear baiting going on
Speaker 1: and north Woods Bear Products has a full line of products.
Speaker 1: You guys, hear me preach about it about every other podcast.
Speaker 1: But we have been going through the gold rush like crazy.
Speaker 1: As I record the intro to this podcast, we just
Speaker 1: got done bear hunting. I mean I've still my skinning
Speaker 1: knives are still stained with the evidence of a bear
Speaker 1: kill from yesterday that was taken because of north Woods
Speaker 1: Bear Products. Since So check out our friends on Instagram, Facebook,
Speaker 1: and their website north Woods Bear Products. These guys just
Speaker 1: aren't making bear products, but these guys are bear hunters
Speaker 1: that are doing good things for the sport of bear hunting.
Speaker 1: Check them out. So I am here in Northwest Arkansas
Speaker 1: with my new buddy, Jonathan Wilkins. Jonathan and I are tired.
Speaker 1: We're tired, aren't we, Jonathan, I'm a little warm. Damn you.
Speaker 1: We've been at the World Championship Squirrel cook Off all
Speaker 1: day long and you were you were a contestant. You
Speaker 1: you were you were cooking for the for the gold medal.
Speaker 1: I was cooking. I did not get a gold medal,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I gave it a shot. Gave it a shot. Well,
Speaker 1: we're doing a whole other podcast about the World Championship
Speaker 1: Squirrel cook Off, but so tell us what tell me
Speaker 1: what you cooked? So I did a kind of a
Speaker 1: riff on a a plastic kind of British bar food
Speaker 1: called chips and curry. So normally that's just like a
Speaker 1: very simple curry sauce on top of you know, French fries.
Speaker 1: What is curry sauce? Actually, I mean I know what
Speaker 1: it is. I eat it and like it, but I
Speaker 1: honestly don't know what it is. It's like, okay, curry,
Speaker 1: I think I think curry Actually train inslates to sauce,
Speaker 1: and there's a million different varieties of it and it's
Speaker 1: regional specialties. But just to simplify it, it's, uh, it's
Speaker 1: a sauce that can incorporate any number of things. Primarily
Speaker 1: people think of it as that like that yellow color
Speaker 1: which is tumeric based. But you know, coming out of
Speaker 1: Southeast Asia, out of India and Pakistan, and you know tradition,
Speaker 1: I mean, you could pair it with meat, depending on
Speaker 1: the person's uh you know, what religion they practice or whatever.
Speaker 1: They might pair it with goat, they might pair it
Speaker 1: with lentils and do a vegetarian thing. There's a million,
Speaker 1: there's a million different iterations of it. So I didn't
Speaker 1: mean to interrupt you there. So so I did a
Speaker 1: curry over. I did a squirrel curry. It had like
Speaker 1: cardamon water, um, you know, cilantro, fresh ginger, onions, garlic,
Speaker 1: a bunch of gray squirrel in it. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: just like a curry that I like. Some raisins. You
Speaker 1: put some raisins in your career, yeah, man, Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: especially like in the Middle East, Uh, you know, up
Speaker 1: to like you know, Morocco and stuff like that. They
Speaker 1: do a lot of pairing of sweet and savor. You
Speaker 1: Like in Morocco there's a very classic pigeons stuffed with
Speaker 1: raisin and dates dish. Uh. It compliments well, especially when
Speaker 1: you get that dried fruit that kind of intensified rich uh,
Speaker 1: molasses c kind of flavor. It can go well and strong.
Speaker 1: You save me any I would be able to comment
Speaker 1: now and talk about how good it was. Man, it
Speaker 1: went quick. But like I said, man, if we can
Speaker 1: get you down to duck hunt, man, I'll make you
Speaker 1: some more. So. The World Championship Squirrel cook Off is
Speaker 1: in Bentonville, Arkansas. And so you you cooked like six
Speaker 1: plates for judges, is that right? Yeah? So six servings
Speaker 1: of that and you've got to give that the judges
Speaker 1: and and arrest. You don't have to, but pretty much
Speaker 1: it's like the thing to do is you serve that
Speaker 1: to the general public that comes to this big event.
Speaker 1: And so you had now chips when you say chips,
Speaker 1: French fries, Yeah, that's just fren fried. I fried. You
Speaker 1: poured this like it kind of looked like chilly to me.
Speaker 1: I mean, I was like, it's just kind of it's
Speaker 1: like dark reddish, you know, like sauce. You put that
Speaker 1: over the French fries. Yeah, Fried, I did the French
Speaker 1: fries and rendered duck fat, rendered like a pent rendered
Speaker 1: duck fat. No way, and then uh, and then I
Speaker 1: steeped squirrel in duck fat. And then I strained it
Speaker 1: and then I used that to make a vintegrette, and
Speaker 1: then I just dressed like a cucumber and tomato salad
Speaker 1: because that curry was pretty spicy. You get that cucumber
Speaker 1: kind of cools it down a little bit, and I
Speaker 1: served that on the sude right on. Well it's it
Speaker 1: smelled awesome. I appreciate it. It smelled good, But so
Speaker 1: little introduction of who you are. And and I've i've
Speaker 1: i've we kind of I've known about you for a
Speaker 1: little while, but but you have, well, you you introduce yourself. So. Uh,
Speaker 1: I've been in Arkansas for half my life. I moved
Speaker 1: down here to go to college. I'm originally from St. Louis, UM.
Speaker 1: Just through half instance and whatnot. I ended up meeting
Speaker 1: a guy who taught me how to bow hunt. That
Speaker 1: kind of transformed my life about ten years ago. I
Speaker 1: came to it later in life as an adult, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a million things that have happened. But
Speaker 1: now I've got a a small business running uh a
Speaker 1: little a little duck lodge in the Arkansas, a delta
Speaker 1: and you know, just trying to find my feet in Uh.
Speaker 1: I guess the outdoor industry. I guess what you would call.
Speaker 1: It's just kind of trying to find my way and
Speaker 1: find my little niche and how I can do the
Speaker 1: stuff that brings me a lot of joy and satisfaction
Speaker 1: and still take care of my family. So you started
Speaker 1: hunting about ten years ago, Yeah, I think I killed. I.
Speaker 1: I was real lucky, and I had a lot of
Speaker 1: success from the beginning. I was living on my at
Speaker 1: the time, my girlfriend's family property. We're just living in
Speaker 1: a little trailer on fifteen acres. And I bought a bow,
Speaker 1: just a compound, and uh, you know, a compound is
Speaker 1: not a difficult thing to use. I feel like just
Speaker 1: basic proficient proficiency is fairly easy to attain. And I
Speaker 1: killed I killed a pretty good book two weeks later,
Speaker 1: really after getting your bow, just right after you getting man.
Speaker 1: I mean that, And that's what I'm saying. I'm not
Speaker 1: a I'm not an awesome bowshot. Uh. I couldn't. I
Speaker 1: probably couldn't hit a pie plate at forty yards, but
Speaker 1: inside of twenty yards or yards, like, I could hit
Speaker 1: a door nine all day long. I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people could. And I was doing that within the
Speaker 1: first couple of hours. I practiced for a week. My
Speaker 1: buddy was like, I think we can take you hunting.
Speaker 1: Did you okay? You just you just stepped over a
Speaker 1: very good line, did you know? Runella gave me a
Speaker 1: hard time about saying that, Uh, somebody couldn't shoot a
Speaker 1: bow within a couple of hours. You may not. It's
Speaker 1: on the Meteor podcast when I was on there, I
Speaker 1: said somebody, I said, somebody can learn to shoot a
Speaker 1: bow in like three hours and be pretty proficient. And
Speaker 1: they they He was like, they were like, no, no,
Speaker 1: they couldn't know. They couldn't. I've had so many people say, Clay,
Speaker 1: we agree with you. So do you agree with me
Speaker 1: that you can get pretty proficient with the bow within
Speaker 1: a couple of hours? Yeah? I think. I think it
Speaker 1: probably has a lot to do with where you're hunting.
Speaker 1: I think Ranella does that Western hunting when he's got
Speaker 1: longer shots. But I mean we live in Arkansas. I
Speaker 1: hunt that Eastern Deciti yard shots most of the time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't. The first year I killed he was about
Speaker 1: twelve yards. Then later that season I killed one at
Speaker 1: about nine yards. I killed another one with the bow
Speaker 1: the next year at five yards. It was three years
Speaker 1: before I ever shot my bow further than fifteen yards
Speaker 1: in a hunting scenario. I would say that's real congruent
Speaker 1: with my experience bow hunting. I mean, not a lot
Speaker 1: of deer I've killed over thirty yards. I mean some
Speaker 1: I have, but it's but you know, that's twenty five
Speaker 1: years of bow hunting and hunt bow hunting a lot,
Speaker 1: but typically twenty yards inside of twenty yards for Arkansas,
Speaker 1: for our Arkansas stuff. What let me ask you a question.
Speaker 1: What what drew you to hunting? So? I mean you
Speaker 1: were raised in an urban environmentally urban very much. Told
Speaker 1: me you had dreadlocks when you came to Arkansas. Not
Speaker 1: that that makes someone urban, but no, I had you
Speaker 1: you you said that to me to like be like,
Speaker 1: yeah I was. I was in a different I was
Speaker 1: in a different sphere. Yeah I had. I had little
Speaker 1: dreadlocks when I moved to Arkansas. Uh, And I grew
Speaker 1: him for a long time and with like some big,
Speaker 1: gnarly rasta looking ones. But I'll tell you what. I'll
Speaker 1: tell you what I think it really came came down to. Uh.
Speaker 1: When I grew up my dad, my dad raised me
Speaker 1: reading Louis Lamore books and watching Westerns and you know,
Speaker 1: Jeremiah Johnson and all that kind of stuff. Uh. There
Speaker 1: was a book I loved when I was a kid
Speaker 1: called My Side of the Mountain about this kid from
Speaker 1: New York who ends up in the Smoky Mountain and
Speaker 1: hollows out of tree and trains of hawk and all
Speaker 1: this stuff. Uh that sounds like it's a great book,
Speaker 1: and it was. They even made it into a movie
Speaker 1: in the seventies and we watched it like on Friday
Speaker 1: movie night with my family. But there was I feel
Speaker 1: like when I was introduced to hunting and I had
Speaker 1: access to it, it it just made sense. It was
Speaker 1: something that I was missing. And the reason I referenced
Speaker 1: those like Westerns and the Louis La Moore books and
Speaker 1: stuff is because there was something that I was responding
Speaker 1: to in those, but I didn't know how it was
Speaker 1: going to manifest. And I think that what I'm I
Speaker 1: think that what I really respond to with it. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's very multifaceted, but I kind of boil it down
Speaker 1: to it's very much, uh representative of the American dream
Speaker 1: to me because it's the way that I approach it.
Speaker 1: It's about self sufficiency. Uh, you know, when you go
Speaker 1: and hunt what I would quantify as fair chase, and
Speaker 1: you go and you, you know, match wits with an animal,
Speaker 1: and you treat it with respect, and you you're respected
Speaker 1: enough to learn a whole bunch about it so that
Speaker 1: you can try and put yourself in a scenario. And
Speaker 1: then if you are able to be successful with that,
Speaker 1: that's you. You earned it. It's it's like picking up
Speaker 1: a heavy weight. You can either do it or you
Speaker 1: can't do it. Uh. And I respond a lot to that.
Speaker 1: I feel a real sense of accomplishment with it. It Also,
Speaker 1: I feel like when I'm in when I when I
Speaker 1: was in the National Force a couple of weeks ago,
Speaker 1: and it was a chunk of woods I've never been
Speaker 1: in before, but it felt very familiar and appropriate for
Speaker 1: me to be there. I don't think i'd feel that
Speaker 1: way in a desert. I don't feel that way on
Speaker 1: the ocean, but I don't even really feel that way
Speaker 1: on big lakes. But by us swampy stuff, you know,
Speaker 1: the mountains we have here in Arkansas. That's those are
Speaker 1: places that feel like I have some kind of connection
Speaker 1: that to it that's bigger then I can I can
Speaker 1: quantify what what were the challenges of coming into hunting
Speaker 1: without a lot of Now, it sounds like you had
Speaker 1: some you had some place in your in your upbringing,
Speaker 1: in the input that you had a parental input, even
Speaker 1: even your dad have an interest in like now lu
Speaker 1: La Moore, that's not necessarily hunting stuff, but it's it's West.
Speaker 1: I don't know that much about it, but Western stuff
Speaker 1: like connection to the land, kind of like this, uh
Speaker 1: well Western cowboys stuff. But then like Jeremiah Johnson would
Speaker 1: have been like pioneer stuff hunting. So I mean, like,
Speaker 1: so I guess you did have a place inside of
Speaker 1: your mind where it was like this could fit. But
Speaker 1: so what were the what were the challenges of coming
Speaker 1: being a new hunter? I mean, i'd say just a
Speaker 1: reference which you just spoke to, Like I was raised
Speaker 1: to be capable, Like I was raised like my dad
Speaker 1: was fourty years old when I was born. I was
Speaker 1: first kid. And I say that because my dad's older
Speaker 1: and he just has a different mindset. So I was
Speaker 1: raised to fix things first if you could, Like you
Speaker 1: don't call somebody in to fix your washing machine if
Speaker 1: you can fix it, like you work on your own car.
Speaker 1: When I was nine years old. My dad had me
Speaker 1: up on the roof helping him shingle it. You know.
Speaker 1: So I'm just saying there, I think that helped play
Speaker 1: into it. Because did that play into like the like
Speaker 1: the food aspect of it, Like like I want to
Speaker 1: go get food for myself, just like you know, you
Speaker 1: fix your car for yourself. I think yes, partly, But
Speaker 1: I think I think I'd speak more to the fact
Speaker 1: that it gave me enough confidence in myself that I
Speaker 1: felt like I could do things that were physically difficult
Speaker 1: if I tried, you know, uh, that there wasn't something
Speaker 1: I couldn't do if I didn't keep working at it
Speaker 1: kind of deal. Uh, And then I did have Actually
Speaker 1: I lost the point. So what were you asking me
Speaker 1: challenges to hunting? Challenges to be like, so you're like
Speaker 1: mid thirties now, so you started hunting ten years ago,
Speaker 1: so you're in your mid twenties. So he didn't grow
Speaker 1: up doing it, but kind of had this space in
Speaker 1: your you know, you had this pocket of interest and
Speaker 1: curiosity and desire that was that found traction. When something
Speaker 1: you met somebody here in Arkansas that taught you had
Speaker 1: a bow hunt, did you well I'm jumping ahead of myself,
Speaker 1: but maybe this is maybe this is jumping backwards. Did
Speaker 1: you pursue that guy or did he pursue you a mentor? No,
Speaker 1: he's a I mean, he's one of my best friends. Uh.
Speaker 1: We were actually we're working together. We had a little
Speaker 1: business building decks and running fence and just odd jobs.
Speaker 1: And when he we were building the deck out at
Speaker 1: my mother in law trailer, and he was just looking
Speaker 1: at the woods around there. He was like, man, I've
Speaker 1: never seen this many huge white oaks. It's just nothing.
Speaker 1: And that fifteen acres backed up to a thousand acres
Speaker 1: of just beautiful hardwood force and he was just losing
Speaker 1: his mind about it. And so it was really a
Speaker 1: thing where I was just kind of tagging along because
Speaker 1: he wanted to go see if he could what's up
Speaker 1: with this draw over here? Man, look at all this
Speaker 1: greenbrier that's been off here. Uh. And he started checking
Speaker 1: out these woods like from a hunter's perspective. He was
Speaker 1: he was noticing stuff that a hunter would notice that.
Speaker 1: But I had no I mean, and you gotta understand,
Speaker 1: like I I had probably seen too deer from a
Speaker 1: distance in my life at this point like I just
Speaker 1: I didn't have any association with him, uh, but he
Speaker 1: was passionate about it, and you know, it piqued my interest.
Speaker 1: And I remember I remember us walking around this little
Speaker 1: five acre hunk and he was explaining me, like what
Speaker 1: a deer bed looked like, and so I was just
Speaker 1: every depression I find, like you think there's a deer
Speaker 1: living here, You think there's a deer living here. And
Speaker 1: I remember him being like, dude, you're looking at this
Speaker 1: too small, because to me at the time, five acres
Speaker 1: was an enormous chunk of property and I thought there
Speaker 1: was maybe three or four deer that lived on that
Speaker 1: five acres like all the time, I had no idea, uh.
Speaker 1: But so yeah, but I went. I just ended up
Speaker 1: going down the rabbit hole with it, and I went hard.
Speaker 1: Uh And yeah, so he probably we probably went squirrel
Speaker 1: hunting in September that first year. And then November seven
Speaker 1: of two thousand ten, I I killed my first deer though,
Speaker 1: and I killed it with a boat two weeks after
Speaker 1: getting a bow, like I said, And and I understand
Speaker 1: how lucky I was, but I do take a little
Speaker 1: bit of pride because I caught on fairly quickly and
Speaker 1: where I killed that deer. You know, my buddy had
Speaker 1: showed hit shown me, excuse me, he showed me, like
Speaker 1: what a d I didn't know what a draw was.
Speaker 1: I didn't know what the saddle was. And so I
Speaker 1: just walked around until I found this spot where there's
Speaker 1: three draws running together. And if you found the spot
Speaker 1: on your own, I found on my own. And I
Speaker 1: grunted that deer in and he came in and it
Speaker 1: was like TV. He put on a show. He beat
Speaker 1: up a tree, he peeed all down the back of
Speaker 1: his legs and stomped around and then I just thumped
Speaker 1: him at a twelve yards And then I called my
Speaker 1: buddy from the deer stand, shaking and said I just
Speaker 1: killed a deer. I just called it killed a TV deer.
Speaker 1: I come on this deer on TV. Uh So, man,
Speaker 1: that's cool. That's a that's a good first experience. It's
Speaker 1: an awesome one. Yeah, it was. If I had if
Speaker 1: it had taken me six years to kill a deer,
Speaker 1: I'm sure that at some point I would have said
Speaker 1: this is it's not working out. But because I kind
Speaker 1: of saw what it could be very early, it just
Speaker 1: fueled my desire to go further and further into it,
Speaker 1: and and I'm I'm definitely definitely not I'm not hunting
Speaker 1: for antlers. I really, I don't have that much interest
Speaker 1: in killing running bucks anymore because they can get a
Speaker 1: little funky tasting. And I'm looking, I'm looking to put
Speaker 1: four or five deer in the freezer. But uh, it
Speaker 1: just it opened me to be able, or it gave
Speaker 1: me the opportunity to be able to open myself to
Speaker 1: all the other stuff that comes with hunting. So it
Speaker 1: sounds to me like you're you found a good you
Speaker 1: found a good mentor but your passion really helped you
Speaker 1: overcome a lot of the obstacles of knowledge and stuff,
Speaker 1: just because it sounds like you just started sucking up information,
Speaker 1: sucking up knowledge, and just we're able to just kind
Speaker 1: of a self starter in a sense, even though you
Speaker 1: had somebody, I mean, we all had somebody helping us
Speaker 1: do sure, you know, But I mean I was I
Speaker 1: was actively reading every book I could find, even old
Speaker 1: ones I'd find in antique stores. Uh, I was looking
Speaker 1: for stuff on the internet. I was. I mean, this
Speaker 1: was before you kind of had that YouTube, the YouTube
Speaker 1: Hunting Resurgence or not resurgence, but just what's happening now.
Speaker 1: It wasn't what it is today. Yeah, I mean I
Speaker 1: would go I would go to Walmart three times a week,
Speaker 1: starting in September, waiting for there was a there's a
Speaker 1: White Tailed Hunting DVDs to come out. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: because I was like, just anything, I can know what
Speaker 1: I actually missed that I did the same years. For years.
Speaker 1: I bought DVDs and they would come out around first
Speaker 1: week of September, second week of September at Walmart, and
Speaker 1: oh man, I would go buy one of those, and
Speaker 1: I would be like giddy, and I would go home
Speaker 1: and I would put it in the I mean in
Speaker 1: the dv we don't even own a DVD player anymore.
Speaker 1: Put in the DVD player and watch it. It's like
Speaker 1: the way it's those the way records used to be.
Speaker 1: Those days are gone. Yeah, it's it's all very immediate.
Speaker 1: And I and even though I've only been doing it
Speaker 1: for ten years, I do feel like I got in
Speaker 1: it early enough to understand references from people who have
Speaker 1: been doing it for thirty or forty years. You know,
Speaker 1: well that's that's cool. So okay, so we we've got
Speaker 1: you into hunting now, and um, now I know that
Speaker 1: you're you're a big duck hunter. Is that? Let's see you?
Speaker 1: You went to college at Hendricks, which is a college
Speaker 1: here in central central Arkansas. And when did you start
Speaker 1: duck hunting? The year after I started deer hunting after that? Yeah,
Speaker 1: the way that went down is so like, I don't
Speaker 1: look like the prototypical Arkansas hunter, you know, like I'm
Speaker 1: a person of color. I got a bunch of weird
Speaker 1: tattoos on me, and those are pretty good looking tattoo.
Speaker 1: I'm looking at the let me see that looking at
Speaker 1: a a mallard duck. Yeah, I got mallards. I got
Speaker 1: my mollard in the hen. You gotta picture of mom
Speaker 1: I got at caravan. I got a Pekinese with a
Speaker 1: you're gonna tell me the story of the ny Caravan tattoo. Man,
Speaker 1: I played music for a long time and that was
Speaker 1: my old tour van. So we used to say, man,
Speaker 1: you gotta get in the van and ride or die.
Speaker 1: So I put it on my arm with ride or
Speaker 1: Die underneath it. You're gonna get a squirrel like World
Speaker 1: Championship Squirrel Contestant cook Off tattoo. No, you know, I
Speaker 1: hold off on that. What about if you ever bring
Speaker 1: home the w you do that, no more tattoos. No,
Speaker 1: I'll probably get more tattoos. I'm probably not going to
Speaker 1: memorialize one of the guys competition, not to not to
Speaker 1: sidetrack too far, but pretty far. One of the guys
Speaker 1: today that I talked to it at the Squirrel cook Off.
Speaker 1: He asked him what he's gonna do if he won,
Speaker 1: and he said, get a new tattoo. He was gonna
Speaker 1: put a world champion. And he got third place. Okay,
Speaker 1: he was the guy that got third place, So I
Speaker 1: don't know if he's gonna get a new tattoo or
Speaker 1: not at the top. Uh. But no, I mean we're
Speaker 1: talking about com but no. So So the way that
Speaker 1: duck hunting thing started, and the reason I bring up
Speaker 1: the fact that I don't look like a prototypical hunter
Speaker 1: is because sometimes that's a disadvantage, but sometimes it's been
Speaker 1: an advantage in the fact that it piques people's interest.
Speaker 1: And so there was this guy that I used to
Speaker 1: come and watch my band play and he was just
Speaker 1: fascinated with the fact that I was in the bow
Speaker 1: hunting man. You want to come out here and try
Speaker 1: duck hunting. And so he took me out and we
Speaker 1: just hunted like a little weed field down by look
Speaker 1: and shot shovelers. I mean, and I was on it.
Speaker 1: I mean the first time it happened, I was on it,
Speaker 1: ate up with it, not good at it, but just
Speaker 1: I just it was just an amazing thing to watch.
Speaker 1: It was whistling wings, convincing those ducks from way up
Speaker 1: in the air to come down and land right in
Speaker 1: front of you. I was just on it. And then
Speaker 1: it's just been and then he doesn't even live here anymore,
Speaker 1: and so then it was a lot of just me struggling,
Speaker 1: finding very marginal places to walk into and just using Yeah,
Speaker 1: it took a long time to learn how to blow
Speaker 1: a call, because that's another thing. I didn't have anyone
Speaker 1: to show me that stuff. Uh So it was just
Speaker 1: constant trial and air and I was very bad for
Speaker 1: several more than several years. And for a long time,
Speaker 1: most of the ducks I killed didn't get called to.
Speaker 1: I just have some decoys out there and try and hide,
Speaker 1: and sometimes they'd come in a lot of times just
Speaker 1: that first thirty minutes, uh, which they say everyone's a
Speaker 1: duck killer the first thirty minutes because the light's bad
Speaker 1: they can't see that good. Uh, but just slowly learning more.
Speaker 1: Asking I asked people, how do you feel like you
Speaker 1: as a as a caller today? I mean, just honestly,
Speaker 1: are you a good caller? Proficient? Call are not average
Speaker 1: or really good? I think that I think honestly, in
Speaker 1: the last six months I probably moved a little past
Speaker 1: proficiency in the pretty decent Like I blow a I
Speaker 1: blow an old fifties cut down old which anyone who
Speaker 1: blows a duck call, that's that's about as hard a
Speaker 1: call to blow as you can get. It takes a
Speaker 1: tremendous amount of air and pressure, and like when I
Speaker 1: first started blowing that, it would make me lightheaded and
Speaker 1: I'd see stars like it. It's just a lot of
Speaker 1: it's physical exertion. And then once you figure it out,
Speaker 1: it's like anything else. You know, you can have a
Speaker 1: little more finesse on it and be a little more dexterous.
Speaker 1: But but that was that was an example there of
Speaker 1: I just kept trying something that was really hard to
Speaker 1: do and just kept being bad at it until one
Speaker 1: day I wasn't and I was running around. I told
Speaker 1: my wife, can you I just uh, I just uh,
Speaker 1: I just did a rolling feet on this thing? Can
Speaker 1: you believe it? She doesn't care, you know, but she
Speaker 1: knew that it was important to me because I probably
Speaker 1: had I bet you I had three hours blowing that
Speaker 1: thing in my truck until I could the old call?
Speaker 1: Is it a better? Is there an advantage to be
Speaker 1: able to blow that call if it's harder? I know,
Speaker 1: in most animal calling usually if there's a harder method,
Speaker 1: a lot of times it's better in some ways. I mean,
Speaker 1: like a turkey diaphragm call, Like, yeah, you could use
Speaker 1: a box caller, you could use a little push call.
Speaker 1: But if you can call with a diaphragm, which is
Speaker 1: much harder, you you're you're better caller. I mean, make
Speaker 1: make better noises with it. You know it's okay. So
Speaker 1: an old cut, cut down call is it's a it's
Speaker 1: a call that's been modified. The tone board has been
Speaker 1: usually filed with like a bastard file or a like
Speaker 1: sandpaper basically, and it's something that developed very much here
Speaker 1: in Arkansas. And the reason is because Arkansas is known
Speaker 1: for hunting timber. California, Virginia a lot of places they
Speaker 1: hunt these open marsh lands, sound travels much better. I'm
Speaker 1: trying to hunt in flooded timber. There's tree tops early season,
Speaker 1: there's leaves, an old, an old cut down old will
Speaker 1: get incredibly loud and it will cut through that. That's
Speaker 1: the advantage of it, and especially on public land when
Speaker 1: you're competing with a bunch of other people calling if
Speaker 1: you can call louder I mean, because you gotta think
Speaker 1: about this, a duck if you drive down the road
Speaker 1: at six and you stick your head out the window,
Speaker 1: that's what a duck hears all the time. So you're
Speaker 1: just trying to get them to hear a little bit
Speaker 1: of it a lot of times, just a cluck or
Speaker 1: a little bit of that quack, to turn their head
Speaker 1: to pay attention to your decoys, and then try and
Speaker 1: start convincing them to work down in there. So that's
Speaker 1: that's the advantage of the loudness of it. It's the
Speaker 1: loudness also the rasp Uh, A cutdown call is it's
Speaker 1: just like people's voices. Uh. It's a really raspy kind
Speaker 1: of ratily call. It has a lot of bottom ends.
Speaker 1: You'll hear people talk about that they're talking about kind
Speaker 1: of the low tone of it, the base, and that
Speaker 1: deep bass sound travels through the air much better than
Speaker 1: a high sound. So like in a perfect example of
Speaker 1: that is elephants. You know, elephants will do this very low,
Speaker 1: very low kind of sub sonic rumbling and it can
Speaker 1: be heard for miles and miles for by other elephants.
Speaker 1: And it's because that low tone will just cut through
Speaker 1: the air better. That's interesting. So tell me about tell
Speaker 1: me about your your duck club or your your your Yeah,
Speaker 1: So that started with I was driving around. You know,
Speaker 1: it was an hour and a half drive from my house,
Speaker 1: and I was driving it sometimes seven days in a row,
Speaker 1: and then turning around and driving back, getting up at
Speaker 1: two in the morning. The Arkansas Delta is a very
Speaker 1: economically depressed place. Industry has gone farming his change. You know,
Speaker 1: uh two acre farm that used to take twelve guys
Speaker 1: to work takes one guy in a combine now. So
Speaker 1: it's very economically depressed. And that means that just real
Speaker 1: estate prices aren't what they would be otherwise. So I
Speaker 1: was trying to find just a little rats nest that
Speaker 1: I could get for cheap, that I could stay in
Speaker 1: and not have to travel so much. And what I
Speaker 1: ended up buying was an old church, and I thought
Speaker 1: I was just gonna do excuse me, I thought I
Speaker 1: was gonna do like a superficial revamp on it. But
Speaker 1: that was because I didn't know what I was doing.
Speaker 1: And it was a complete gut job, like I had
Speaker 1: to take every floor joy style, like basically the only
Speaker 1: things original and the exterior walls, and that I was
Speaker 1: having to justify the expenditure because I got to a
Speaker 1: point where I was like, I've either got a just
Speaker 1: lose this money and move on, or I've got to
Speaker 1: try and make this something. And I just to trying
Speaker 1: to make it something. And so I built it into
Speaker 1: something that I would want to go to, a place
Speaker 1: that would be really utilitarian but comfortable and you know,
Speaker 1: hopefully attractive. You had a place to put your boat,
Speaker 1: you could have your dogs there, They had kennels, had mudrooms,
Speaker 1: just everything you would want. And if no one's there,
Speaker 1: I hunt out of it. But then I rented out
Speaker 1: to other d I y hunters who want to come.
Speaker 1: It's a really great place for like four or five
Speaker 1: or six buddies to get there, and you don't have
Speaker 1: to stay in a little hotel room. But you also
Speaker 1: don't have to pay five dollars a night to stay
Speaker 1: at a really fancy duck ludge. You can, uh, you
Speaker 1: can come there. You can bring your wives, your kids.
Speaker 1: I got a lot of people to do that. They
Speaker 1: hunt for the weekend or for the week There's White River,
Speaker 1: Cash River, tons of w M A s by you
Speaker 1: to view row By you stuck guards forty thirty five
Speaker 1: minutes away. It's in the heart of the the premier
Speaker 1: green timber duck hunting on the planet. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: I just kind of developed into that, and uh, then
Speaker 1: I ended up buying the house next to it was
Speaker 1: an old fur trapper and fur buyer's house, and I
Speaker 1: ended up buying that, and I just finished the revamp
Speaker 1: on that and I started renting it out for this season,
Speaker 1: and so I kind of ended up with this corner
Speaker 1: in the middle of town, in the middle of brink. Yeah,
Speaker 1: some of the best coming in the world right on, Man,
Speaker 1: what tell me the name of it? I know that
Speaker 1: I want you to say. That's what we called Black
Speaker 1: Duck Revival, Black Duck Revival. And yesterday I tried to
Speaker 1: guess why you call it black duck, and I struck
Speaker 1: out on the first guess. So this name has some significance.
Speaker 1: So tell me about black duck revival. So obviously this
Speaker 1: was like this was an old country delta church, very traditional.
Speaker 1: Uh goes along with that, that idea of having revivals.
Speaker 1: So there's a reference to that. The black duck is
Speaker 1: a reference in the Mississippi flyway that a black duck
Speaker 1: is a very prized uh duck would be like killing
Speaker 1: a black duck would be like killing a white tail. See.
Speaker 1: And that's where I was confused, because I thought a
Speaker 1: black duck was a trash duck. Duck, Yeah, you were.
Speaker 1: You were thinking about a black duck actually being black colored,
Speaker 1: which is not the case. A black duck looks like
Speaker 1: a slightly darker him. But did they not call them
Speaker 1: black ducks? I mean, I've duck kind of a little
Speaker 1: and I remember seeing ducks flying over big kind of
Speaker 1: long neck ducks, kind of thick. They didn't flap their
Speaker 1: wings quite as fast, and I you know, you know,
Speaker 1: i'd be like, there's some ducks and maybe like those
Speaker 1: are black ducks. I mean, those could be it was
Speaker 1: like coots or something. Yeah, I mean coots merganser's scops,
Speaker 1: but they weren't interested in them. But you're telling me
Speaker 1: that that black duck is like something special. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: in the Mississippi flyaway, absolutely, that's an Atlantic flyway bird.
Speaker 1: It'd be like it'd be like, so they're just not
Speaker 1: supposed to be here. They will be here now. They
Speaker 1: will interbreed with mallards and sometimes they'll get they'll just
Speaker 1: be one that's loss and he's with mallard. But it
Speaker 1: almost be like, uh, if you were hunting up in
Speaker 1: the Ozarks and you saw a prong horner or something,
Speaker 1: is that right? Like I know guys that have duck
Speaker 1: hunting for forty years and they would never killed a
Speaker 1: black duck. Well, I like the I like the branding
Speaker 1: and imagery of that revival because of this refurbished church.
Speaker 1: Tell me a little bit of the history about that church.
Speaker 1: You told me yesterday something that was kind of cool. Well,
Speaker 1: you just you just said you said that this church
Speaker 1: just hung on, And it kind of to me when
Speaker 1: you told that, it was reflective of of what I've
Speaker 1: seen and what I know and what you just said
Speaker 1: about the Delta. I mean, the Delta is one of
Speaker 1: the most probably economically depressed places in the country. Am
Speaker 1: I am? I right? And so there's Arkansas Delta and
Speaker 1: it would probably be in the Mississippi Delta and stuff.
Speaker 1: I mean, these are some of the most I mean,
Speaker 1: to be honest, the poorest places in America that are
Speaker 1: there's people, there's people in the Delta areas of arc
Speaker 1: it'saw in Mississippi that legitimately might not have uh might
Speaker 1: not have floors in their house. I mean, it's incredible.
Speaker 1: And I'm not saying that's everybody, but it's just there's
Speaker 1: no industry, there's no jobs there. I mean, you might
Speaker 1: have a fast food restaurant and an agg store and
Speaker 1: a dollar store, but there's just nothing left. I think
Speaker 1: Brinkley graduates like kids a year. Now, see this was
Speaker 1: all this is all like so people hear me talking
Speaker 1: about the mountains of Arkansas. Obviously, so Arkansas. If if
Speaker 1: Arkansas were a square, which is not really a square,
Speaker 1: and if and if there was a line drawn from
Speaker 1: the northeast corner of that square to the southwest corner
Speaker 1: of that square, the northwest half, you know, the upper
Speaker 1: left half of that triangle would be kind of the
Speaker 1: mountainous regions of Arkansas, the wash Tols and Ozarks. We
Speaker 1: didn't have any agriculture to speak of them. It's all
Speaker 1: just forested rough ground land sat the the other triangle,
Speaker 1: half of that square would have been Mississippi Delta swamp land.
Speaker 1: Stuff that was cleared, Timber was cleared, and they made
Speaker 1: agg fields out of it. So I mean, like massively
Speaker 1: agricultural area changed, completely changed the landscape over a hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty years. I mean this was these were like
Speaker 1: the big woods is what they called the stuff around Brinkley.
Speaker 1: And these are enormous cypress swamps, Tupelo swamps. You know,
Speaker 1: there's hardwood bottoms in there. Uh. And part of the
Speaker 1: reason it's great for agricultures because you had this system
Speaker 1: of thousands and thousands of years of decayed vegetative matter
Speaker 1: building up this really rich soil. You also had a
Speaker 1: substrate under that that was largely clay, so it held water,
Speaker 1: which is so the thing that made it a great
Speaker 1: swamp once it was cleared is a thing that turned
Speaker 1: it into a great place to uh grow rice. So
Speaker 1: I know I didn't know that. Yeah, I mean it's
Speaker 1: the same thing. You know, you're putting that water on
Speaker 1: the fields and it's holding it. Yeah, because rice has
Speaker 1: that they have to flood these fields. Yeah. You know,
Speaker 1: in in college, I learned about the Grand Grand Prairie aquifer.
Speaker 1: So the Grand Prairie aquifer if you look at these
Speaker 1: underground water maps hydraulic maps, so they have them everywhere,
Speaker 1: I assume, but the ones in Arkansas. One of the
Speaker 1: largest underwater aquifers I'm just gonna say in the southern
Speaker 1: United States, and it could have even been in North
Speaker 1: America was a Grand Prairie aquifer which is right in
Speaker 1: the delta of Arkansas. And so for a hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty years they farmers were able to flood rice fields
Speaker 1: by just drilling down, put a well end drilled down
Speaker 1: a hundred feet and they have unlimited water pumping out
Speaker 1: at a hundred gallons a minute or something. In anyway,
Speaker 1: you know, fifteen years ago when I was in college,
Speaker 1: there was they were talking about the depletion of the
Speaker 1: Grand parreographer, which I assume, which I assume is still
Speaker 1: happening even more because I was fifteen years ago. But
Speaker 1: and they they've they've had to mitigate. Anyway, it's it's
Speaker 1: caused some issues because they got to drill down way
Speaker 1: deeper than they used to to get this water. Anyway,
Speaker 1: that's a whole another story. But you just taught me
Speaker 1: something about the swamps. Yeah, I mean that's why, that's
Speaker 1: why it works. And you know, and that leads to
Speaker 1: stuck guard getting planted in Rice in nineteen o one
Speaker 1: when it started, and that that goes to migration patterns
Speaker 1: for ducks changing, and then this whole culture, of this
Speaker 1: whole culture of hunting ducks in flooded Rice in Arkansas
Speaker 1: had hold that exact thought about the flyaway patterns, and
Speaker 1: I want to go back. I jumped ahead of it,
Speaker 1: and I do this all the time. Black Duck Revival.
Speaker 1: So the revival I got with the church black duck.
Speaker 1: Why the black duck, Well, like I said, because it's
Speaker 1: it's just like it's just something special. Yeah, it's the
Speaker 1: special unique kind of like the holy grail of duck hunting.
Speaker 1: And then and then also it's tongue in cheek, you know,
Speaker 1: like I'm a black guy, and uh, I wanted to
Speaker 1: focus on part of part of my business model is
Speaker 1: trying to expose non traditional hunters two hunting, because there's
Speaker 1: a lot you asked me earlier what were some of
Speaker 1: the difficulties in it. And honestly, the biggest difficulty in
Speaker 1: it for me learning was that it was something that
Speaker 1: society did not show that it did not There wasn't
Speaker 1: a lot of documentation of people who looked like me
Speaker 1: doing it, and it it makes you feel like it's
Speaker 1: not a place for you. Uh. You know, people lead
Speaker 1: they they lead lives that are oftentimes based on the
Speaker 1: examples of others, um and that are doing that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that are doing or that they can identify with on
Speaker 1: some level, you know, And I think that, I mean
Speaker 1: that could you could say that about you know, African
Speaker 1: Americans and hunt and you can say about women and hunting,
Speaker 1: I mean anything. Uh, but but like what kind of
Speaker 1: what we talked about yesterday's you know, African Americans until
Speaker 1: the great migrations that occurred, like you know, at the
Speaker 1: turn of the century, when droves of black people went
Speaker 1: from the rule parts of the South to places like St.
Speaker 1: Louis and Indianapolis and Chicago and up to you know,
Speaker 1: Boston and Baltimore and stuff like that, because it was
Speaker 1: just a it was a crippling, hostile environment, so they
Speaker 1: moved places where they weren't under thread of as much
Speaker 1: physical danger in places where it was easier to make
Speaker 1: a life, and what happened when when that happened. One
Speaker 1: of the results was that you took a population of
Speaker 1: people that was almost entirely rule and you made them
Speaker 1: almost entirely urban. And then four or five generations later,
Speaker 1: you have this narrative that black people don't hunt, you know,
Speaker 1: like maybe something black people fish, but black people don't
Speaker 1: really hunt, And that's not the that's not the case.
Speaker 1: It's actually much more complicated than that. Uh. I've looked
Speaker 1: into some of the the numbers of like how many
Speaker 1: licenses in Arkansas they they track the race of people
Speaker 1: buying hunting and fishing licenses. Is that information that's successiful?
Speaker 1: Yeah you couldn't. I mean, if you, uh, you might
Speaker 1: have to foy it. But yeah, it's totally available. I
Speaker 1: don't know them off the top of my head. I
Speaker 1: do know. I mean, I haven't looked at it in
Speaker 1: a couple of years. It's a lot more people than
Speaker 1: you would think. And what I found out just this
Speaker 1: is anecdotal, but what I found out is that there's
Speaker 1: lots of black folks. I'm talking specifically about African Americans.
Speaker 1: But there's lots of black folks in Arkansas that hunt.
Speaker 1: But there is still Frankly, there's a fear amongst a
Speaker 1: lot of African Americans about being in the woods, you know,
Speaker 1: with with folks they might feel are you know, ellen
Speaker 1: tended or hostile towards them. So I think a lot
Speaker 1: of black folks hunt still, like even here in Arkansas.
Speaker 1: Like like ah, now I can see some like an
Speaker 1: urban somebody in an urban place that wasn't familiar with
Speaker 1: arc with with anywhere, like having that. I've actually encountered
Speaker 1: one of my friends that was from Chicago. He lives
Speaker 1: in Arkansas for a while, he was terrified to drive
Speaker 1: after dark to my house. I mean that was bizarre
Speaker 1: to me. I was very afraid when I moved down here.
Speaker 1: I was, I was very afraid. Was that taught to you? Uh?
Speaker 1: I mean when? And when I say taught, I mean like, like,
Speaker 1: is that like something in the culture. I think it's
Speaker 1: I think it's partly gonna be just something that's like
Speaker 1: out there in the zeitgeist, like you know, seeing stuff
Speaker 1: on TV or TV or whatever. But I mean it
Speaker 1: does it come from experiences like and I'll give you
Speaker 1: a very I'll give you a very pointed one. I'd
Speaker 1: say that the vast, vast, vast majority of my outdoor
Speaker 1: experiences have been very positive. But I can tell you
Speaker 1: that the the few times that i've after the initial
Speaker 1: after the initial time or two of me going out
Speaker 1: duck hunting, the few times that I've taken in the
Speaker 1: taking up someone on an invitation to go duck hunting,
Speaker 1: I've heard like a vitriolic racial slur while duck hunting. Oh,
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, they dropped the inn word on you.
Speaker 1: And I remember one time, you know, because I'm not
Speaker 1: like like guys that are like like really being where
Speaker 1: obviously if they're saying that they're being ugly, yeah, or
Speaker 1: did they think it's like playful or something. I think
Speaker 1: I remember specifically one time there were guys already in
Speaker 1: the whole. Me and a dude, a buddy of mine.
Speaker 1: We got there late and someone came and picked us
Speaker 1: up in the boat of the ramp and we went
Speaker 1: out there. It was like twenty degrees. It was freezing,
Speaker 1: So I had a face mask on and I'm not
Speaker 1: incredibly dark complexed, it was still dark, and uh yeah,
Speaker 1: old fella just he didn't know I was a black guy,
Speaker 1: so he just started throwing it around, just talking, you know.
Speaker 1: Or I'm sitting in a blind with a guy and
Speaker 1: he starts dropping it and what it What I realized
Speaker 1: was that I don't think they were I don't think
Speaker 1: they were like I want to hurt or offend this guy.
Speaker 1: I think that they just say it so much it
Speaker 1: didn't even occur to them that that it would be
Speaker 1: offensive to somebody. But I don't want to I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't want to harp on that too much. But
Speaker 1: I mean, truthfully, there is but there there's truth to
Speaker 1: what you're saying, is that there's there's reason for that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a reason to be unnerved. Maybe, And and you
Speaker 1: gotta think too. In Arkansas. Uh, Like, I'm the only
Speaker 1: one at boat ramps I've never seen I've never seen
Speaker 1: anyone darker than cat get a boat ram ever, you know. Uh,
Speaker 1: I've the only time I've even seen black people hunting
Speaker 1: is black guys in the Delta running dogs. Because there's
Speaker 1: a very strong history of houndsmanship among African Americans, and
Speaker 1: that's traced all the way back to slavery. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean duck hunting. There's it's few and far between.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of black deer hunters. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of black fishermen, there's a lot of black small game hunters.
Speaker 1: But the point that I was making is that I
Speaker 1: think it's a it's a comfort thing with a lot
Speaker 1: of folks, and so they're hunting, but they're hunting kind
Speaker 1: of in a cloistered way, you know. Like I've met
Speaker 1: dudes that have like in a like just like the
Speaker 1: hunt on family land, or they got a deer camp
Speaker 1: down you know, Uh, you know the timber companies down south.
Speaker 1: But it's just all like them and their cousin and
Speaker 1: their uncle and guy to go to church with, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. Uh, it's it's it's a reality
Speaker 1: that Uh it's unfortunate, but it's it's something I feel
Speaker 1: like I can have. I can have some positive impact
Speaker 1: on by just you know, maybe maybe this guy he
Speaker 1: just needs to be introduced to it and I can say,
Speaker 1: look here, dude, like you and me are coming from
Speaker 1: similar positions. I'm telling you it's out there for us
Speaker 1: to get to I'm out there doing it. Uh. And
Speaker 1: that goes back to my idea about like the American dream. Uh.
Speaker 1: I pay my taxes. You know, I'm I deserve to
Speaker 1: be able to access anything that is publicly accessible. Uh
Speaker 1: So I'm not gonna do anything fool hardy because I
Speaker 1: I've got a wife and children I've gotta go back to.
Speaker 1: But I'm not gonna tell someone. I'm not gonna allow
Speaker 1: someone to tell me that I can't go and hunt
Speaker 1: a piece of public ground just because they feel like
Speaker 1: someone like that looks like me shouldn't be able to
Speaker 1: do it, you know. Now, But now, I've never had
Speaker 1: anyone say that to me. I'm just saying like or
Speaker 1: or here's a perfect example, you know, Like the first
Speaker 1: one of the first things I ever heard when I
Speaker 1: moved to Arkansas was there was a music festival up
Speaker 1: in Newton County when I was at college, and these
Speaker 1: folks look, dude, you can't go up there. They're like
Speaker 1: the grand dragon of the kut Lux Klan lives up there,
Speaker 1: which is what's the case. I don't think I think
Speaker 1: he formerly held that position, but but you know, a
Speaker 1: lot of people are gonna hear that, and they're not
Speaker 1: gonna go into that chunk of Arkansas, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. So there's just like this, Yeah, it's almost
Speaker 1: like a well, yeah, like, yeah, I see the barriers there. Dude.
Speaker 1: I told a dude one time, I said, let me
Speaker 1: ask you this. Imagine a very rule kind of monolithic
Speaker 1: town in Arkans So there's a million and five people
Speaker 1: or something like that. I said, Uh, this was a
Speaker 1: Caucasian guy. I was like, you want to go duck hunting,
Speaker 1: but you had to you had a roll into Compton
Speaker 1: at four o'clock in the morning by yourself, Like, you
Speaker 1: would probably feel uncomfortable because you would very it would
Speaker 1: be very easy to tell that you weren't from there.
Speaker 1: Being an outsider is uncomfortable to human beings, you know,
Speaker 1: So I like, it's uh, And I'm not saying that
Speaker 1: just because you went to Compton you would be in
Speaker 1: danger or something like that. I'm just saying that it's
Speaker 1: people want to be comfortable and and I think that's
Speaker 1: the biggest barrier to getting non traditional hunters into it,
Speaker 1: is they've they've gotta you know, regardless of race or
Speaker 1: color or anything. Being an outsider being uncomfortable. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's a massive social challenge for anybody. Just coming from
Speaker 1: a very urban environment is enough of a challenge when
Speaker 1: you start putting other stuff on it, So then you
Speaker 1: put being a woman on it, then put being a
Speaker 1: woman of color. There's all these things, and it's not
Speaker 1: that people cannot overcome those things. It's just that human
Speaker 1: beings are really good at wallowing out a small comfortable
Speaker 1: spot for themselves and then not wanting to to expand
Speaker 1: past that. Man, just knowing you just for a few well,
Speaker 1: not knowing you real well, that was something. I mean,
Speaker 1: You're you're really good at pushing outside of your comfort zone.
Speaker 1: I mean, just even coming up here to the Squirrel
Speaker 1: Squirrel cook Off, I mean, just hey, we're gonna go
Speaker 1: compete and the scull cook Off. We brought your whole
Speaker 1: family up here. I mean anybody would I mean that
Speaker 1: that would be intimidating to anybody really probably just you're
Speaker 1: not afraid to do new stuff. I mean, I'll tell
Speaker 1: you what I think. I'm probably the only one who
Speaker 1: did it solo. Everyone else had teams. I did the
Speaker 1: only thing solo, you know. But it's because and an
Speaker 1: older guy that I'm friends with told me that. He's
Speaker 1: told me. He said very pointally, he said, there's never
Speaker 1: been anything I couldn't do. It might take me a
Speaker 1: long time and we were talking about hunting in the
Speaker 1: national force. He's like, there's never been anything. He's like,
Speaker 1: if you killed a five pound black bearer back there,
Speaker 1: you could get it out. You might be dead, dug tired,
Speaker 1: and it might be four in the morning before you
Speaker 1: back at your truck. He's like, but you can get
Speaker 1: it out if you just you have to have that
Speaker 1: mindset if you want, if you want to live anything
Speaker 1: other than an ordinary life, if you want an easy,
Speaker 1: ordinary life, you're gonna do easy ordinary things and you're
Speaker 1: gonna have easy ordinary experiences. If you want more out
Speaker 1: of it, then you have to put more into it.
Speaker 1: And there's never been growth of any human being that
Speaker 1: didn't involve discomfort. It's it's a necessary it's a necessary
Speaker 1: thing to grow. Yeah, it's like lifting weights. You have
Speaker 1: to be uncomfortable to push yourself past that level. But
Speaker 1: then you keep referencing what was before and you see
Speaker 1: how how far you've come, and that give you a
Speaker 1: little bit of fuel to try and go to that
Speaker 1: next step. All right, man, that's awesome. I really like
Speaker 1: what you're doing in terms of and again, and it's
Speaker 1: it's not even just about African Americans. It's about it's
Speaker 1: about anybody that's not in this space easily, yeah, coming
Speaker 1: into it, just overcoming the whatever difficulty it would be
Speaker 1: because you're You're absolutely right. I mean, it's like, man,
Speaker 1: it really is our right to be hunters in in
Speaker 1: this country any way. I mean, it's it's you know,
Speaker 1: the public land, the wildlife resource that's owned by the people,
Speaker 1: the history of this country in terms of providing wild
Speaker 1: game for our families and sustainable ways. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: just such a beautiful, awesome thing. Uh. To deprive people
Speaker 1: of that because of these like what we've been talking
Speaker 1: about is bizarre and and crazy. Yeah, and I think
Speaker 1: it also. I mean this is stuff I love to
Speaker 1: wax poetic about because I'm real big into like ethos
Speaker 1: and pedagogy. So I don't know that second word. I
Speaker 1: learned it. I've been using it recently because I learned
Speaker 1: it from my wife about a month ago. But it's
Speaker 1: it's it just kind of it's a more specific way
Speaker 1: to say ethos or your underlying ideals behind something. But
Speaker 1: I'm big on being part of a human continuum. And
Speaker 1: like I was telling you yesterday about when I was
Speaker 1: scouting for bears, and I was up on that limestone
Speaker 1: ridge and I climbed up on that ridge because there
Speaker 1: was just something in me and I would have felt
Speaker 1: that way if I was five years old that said
Speaker 1: get up on top of that thing. That's the high thing.
Speaker 1: Climb up on top of that. And then I was
Speaker 1: looking out over all this national forest and I thought
Speaker 1: about the fact a thousand years ago, some guy wearing
Speaker 1: buckskin did the same thing. I don't know who he was,
Speaker 1: I don't know when he did it, but I know
Speaker 1: somebody did it, you know, and someone did it a
Speaker 1: hundred years ago. It's the same thing with uh, you know,
Speaker 1: running trot lines or bow hunting deer or running a
Speaker 1: coon dog. You're you're immersing yourself in a human experience
Speaker 1: that's richer and bigger than you are, and you'll you'll
Speaker 1: contribute to it, and then people after you that you
Speaker 1: don't know. You know, some guy two hundred years ago
Speaker 1: that came over here from England and then was on
Speaker 1: the lamb in New York and ended up in Arkansas
Speaker 1: that was out in the woods would have no frame
Speaker 1: of reference for some weirdo like me that I'd be
Speaker 1: doing the same thing to your years later, but like
Speaker 1: we're connected now, We're connected on a very human level. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: and uh yeah it's I'm I'm looking. I'm real big
Speaker 1: on doing for yourself and self reliance. But everybody needs help.
Speaker 1: I mean everybody needs help. You know, your dad showed
Speaker 1: you how to hunt. You know. I'm sure you have
Speaker 1: bad days where you just you know, tell your wife,
Speaker 1: oh man, I'm having a horrible day, you know, and
Speaker 1: you can get recharged and helped along because of your
Speaker 1: wife or your family or whatever. No one's in this alone.
Speaker 1: So if I can, if I can help contribute to
Speaker 1: that continuum by even if just by an example of
Speaker 1: someone saying, hey, I've got something in common with that guy,
Speaker 1: maybe I could try that. Uh, or let me holler
Speaker 1: at this guy and see if you would, if you
Speaker 1: would take me, let me tag along with him. Uh.
Speaker 1: That can do a lot. And you know, on an
Speaker 1: other on a bigger, more noble note too, what you
Speaker 1: start doing is you start building relationships with people that
Speaker 1: are uh, that are different than you uh, and you
Speaker 1: start you start focusing more on similarities between people and differences.
Speaker 1: You know, like I can have different political beliefs from people.
Speaker 1: I can have different, uh, goals in my life as
Speaker 1: far as professional. I can have different ideas about how
Speaker 1: I want to raise my children, but I can connect
Speaker 1: with a person, Like if I see a guy that's
Speaker 1: real loving to his children, I feel like I've got
Speaker 1: a connection with him, you know, if I see, like
Speaker 1: I told you yesterday, I heard you say something real
Speaker 1: complimentary about your wife on a on a podcast one time,
Speaker 1: and I felt a connection with you because I respected
Speaker 1: it so much, because it seems like a lot of
Speaker 1: guys feel like it's cool to to speak derisively about
Speaker 1: their wives, you know, Like, and the way I think
Speaker 1: about my wife this is this is a human being
Speaker 1: that I value above all others. And I stood up
Speaker 1: in front of every I know and told her that. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so you start, you start drawing connections with people
Speaker 1: like you scored me some big bonus points by saying that.
Speaker 1: To my wife, I'm glad man for real. She said,
Speaker 1: we got the car. She said, when did you say that?
Speaker 1: I was brilliant? And I said, oh, I say that
Speaker 1: all the time. That's but you know what people need
Speaker 1: to People do need to hear that, Like people that
Speaker 1: are important to you need to hear not just you saying, oh,
Speaker 1: I love you. But I mean if you speak, if
Speaker 1: you're taking the time to speak highly about someone that
Speaker 1: you care about to other people, you really mean it. Man.
Speaker 1: There's a good old boy culture and it's it's very
Speaker 1: alive in the South. Maybe it's alive everywhere, but where
Speaker 1: people that they you know, all the old ball and
Speaker 1: chain to stay stuff like that. I never say stupid
Speaker 1: stuff like that. I mean, you know what I'm saying. Yea, yeah,
Speaker 1: I appreciated that you recognize that. Yesterday when you said
Speaker 1: that that, my wife actually said he's a good guy,
Speaker 1: and I said, yeah, I said, I mean you can
Speaker 1: tell a lot about him and by the way he
Speaker 1: treats us wife, by the way he talks about her,
Speaker 1: by the way thinks about her. Because just what you said,
Speaker 1: I mean, if this person is the person that you
Speaker 1: have committed your life before God and family and that
Speaker 1: you have chosen to you know, I mean, you better
Speaker 1: talk good about her and and treat her that way.
Speaker 1: And and you know this this all does to me,
Speaker 1: It wraps itself up kind of in a tidy package,
Speaker 1: because like you met my daughters today, like I have
Speaker 1: two little girls. Really, the way they're gonna learn how
Speaker 1: they should be, how how they should expect to be
Speaker 1: treated by a partner is what they see from the
Speaker 1: way that me and their mother interact. And so I've
Speaker 1: got to having those having my children really put my
Speaker 1: head that I want them to have the best example
Speaker 1: possible so they can make good choices later in life.
Speaker 1: And the requirement for that is for me to be
Speaker 1: better than I am currently, you know. So I'm really
Speaker 1: focused on trying, like with trying to build this business
Speaker 1: and trying to build this burn and it's difficult, it's
Speaker 1: very unsure a lot of the times. Uh, I am optimistic,
Speaker 1: and I feel like I'll be able to, you know,
Speaker 1: make a life for myself and my family. But even
Speaker 1: if I fail at it and I've got to go
Speaker 1: dig ditches, my girls are gonna they're gonna get something
Speaker 1: out of scene that they have a father who's willing
Speaker 1: to try and willing to fail and then get back
Speaker 1: up and keep going and not give up. And that
Speaker 1: that works for business, that works for a relationship, that
Speaker 1: works for hunting. If you can take that kind of
Speaker 1: mindset into all these things, then a lot of these
Speaker 1: this other these distractions that we were talking about race, gender,
Speaker 1: political affiliation, all that stuff. Those things are important and
Speaker 1: they're they're identifiers for humans. But I have found very
Speaker 1: few people that on an individual basis, I can't find
Speaker 1: something in common with and we can't develop some sort
Speaker 1: of rapport. It's always the problems always occur when you
Speaker 1: get into bigger groups and people start consciously or unconsciously
Speaker 1: worried about how they're perceived by others, you know, which
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not like I'm immune to that, but uh,
Speaker 1: and you know, like with duck hunting has been a
Speaker 1: big thing, Like I was very cognizant in the fact
Speaker 1: that I stuck out. I was like this weird looking
Speaker 1: black guy that wasn't good at duck hunting, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's the truth. I couldn't blow a duck call.
Speaker 1: I couldn't identify birds when they were flying for a
Speaker 1: long time. Uh. And I got better at it because
Speaker 1: I kept trying and I kept immersing myself in it.
Speaker 1: And I'd hazard to say that I'm better at it
Speaker 1: than got some guys who have been doing it for
Speaker 1: twenty years now, not everybody, but I've put a lot
Speaker 1: into it too. Uh. But I mean, yeah, i'd say
Speaker 1: that probably aside from my children being born in the
Speaker 1: last couple of years, that getting to the point where
Speaker 1: I could blow a duck call uh competently, I felt
Speaker 1: like that was a real achieved it because there was
Speaker 1: nothing in any of my experience that said I should
Speaker 1: be able to get to that point, and so I
Speaker 1: just picked the hardest way to do it. And it
Speaker 1: took me a real long time, but I finally did it.
Speaker 1: And it was mostly just driving. Really, it was driving
Speaker 1: back and forth to Brinkley. It's an hour and fifteen
Speaker 1: minutes each way, just blowing that old all day long
Speaker 1: until finally I trained. I trained your tongue as a muscle.
Speaker 1: I had to train that muscle to do some stuff
Speaker 1: and I've never done before. Mhm, man, that's good stuff.
Speaker 1: That's good stuff, very good stuff. Wow. Well, So Black
Speaker 1: Duck Revival people could come and rent your place down
Speaker 1: to Brinkley. Yeah, I'll point you. I'll try and point
Speaker 1: you in the right direction as far as public land. Like,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna necessarily give you all my holes, but
Speaker 1: I'll I won't be stingy with it. If you want
Speaker 1: to talk about it, we sit down in front. I've
Speaker 1: got the hallway when you walk in a lacked up
Speaker 1: you walk in and there's like a long hallway and
Speaker 1: then it opens up to a big great room. The
Speaker 1: kitchen and the living room were all together, but though
Speaker 1: that hallway is lined with big Google Earth maps of
Speaker 1: all the public ground around there. And so I'll if
Speaker 1: i'm working up there, I'm hunting or something, and I
Speaker 1: meet the guys when they come in. We'll sit there
Speaker 1: for thirty minutes and I'll say, look, you can put
Speaker 1: it in this boat ramp and check the water gauge.
Speaker 1: If the water gauges at this, you can get back
Speaker 1: past here and then look around back there, and you
Speaker 1: gotta be able to find something. How long have you
Speaker 1: had Black Duck or the lodge? I opened it. I
Speaker 1: think I was down on the wire, So I think
Speaker 1: I opened it in October of last year. I've had
Speaker 1: one season and then I just opened up. How many
Speaker 1: place hunters could you hold in both camps? So in
Speaker 1: in the old church h you can do up to
Speaker 1: eight comfortably, and in the bungalow you can do five comfortably.
Speaker 1: Maybe we need to do and we sort of a
Speaker 1: little bit talked about this. Maybe we ought to do
Speaker 1: a like a youth duck hunt down there that we like,
Speaker 1: like like said, okay, there's ten spots. Me and my
Speaker 1: son come and say there's or how many spots would
Speaker 1: there be between both places? Eight? And so say, okay,
Speaker 1: there's thirteen spots. And we talked about youth season just
Speaker 1: because youth season in Arkansas is pretty good usually, am
Speaker 1: I right? Well, you know it's it's just a lot
Speaker 1: less competition. Yeah, and especially there's a later youth season
Speaker 1: after duck seasons over. It's like the first week in
Speaker 1: February and then you've had ducks. They're coming back after that, right, well, no,
Speaker 1: you're still gonna have ducks that are working their way
Speaker 1: south in the most can be pretty good though, Well
Speaker 1: what it is you got all the yahoo's out of
Speaker 1: the woods? Yeah, you know, And so I mean duck
Speaker 1: hunting public public duck hunting is has a lot to
Speaker 1: do with the pressure. There's a lot more pressure now
Speaker 1: than there used to be. Like in the eight duck
Speaker 1: hunting in Arkansas was completely different in two thousand nineteen
Speaker 1: than it wasn't eight five. Like the tornadoes of ducks
Speaker 1: that some of those guys could work in the eighties,
Speaker 1: I'll never see anything like it in my life. There's
Speaker 1: I've seen videos and you know, from when I was
Speaker 1: four years old, then pulling five mallards through the three times,
Speaker 1: I've never experience. Oh look, I'm chasing the times that
Speaker 1: I've seen twenty five ducks do it. That's it's like
Speaker 1: you know, people, I'm not in the Gulf, but people
Speaker 1: say like one good round will keep you going back.
Speaker 1: Like I'm chasing the time I worked twenty five ducks
Speaker 1: through the timber. And I'm telling you, you keep trying
Speaker 1: and trying and trying. You're bad at it. And then
Speaker 1: one day you convince twenty five mallards to come down
Speaker 1: through those tree tops and they're like hitting branches on
Speaker 1: the way down, and and you're watching them and they'll
Speaker 1: splash down right in the deeks, right in front of you.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter if you shoot one. It's it's you
Speaker 1: did something. Yeah, you know it's it's it's I'm telling you, man,
Speaker 1: it like wells you up with pride. I haven't cried
Speaker 1: doing it, but I could see it at some point.
Speaker 1: Just if I saw five hundred, I'd probably get a
Speaker 1: tear in mine. It's I mean, it really is. It's
Speaker 1: one of the most majestic things I've ever seen. I
Speaker 1: really do. I I get it, you know. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm not a duck hunter. I know people are surprised
Speaker 1: when they hear them from Arkansas and don't duck hunt,
Speaker 1: But I mean the mountains of Arkansas, we don't have
Speaker 1: any flyaway, you know. And over there, well, it's also
Speaker 1: completely it's a completely different culture. Like that guy Orally
Speaker 1: that you interviewed, like he grew up in a completely
Speaker 1: different culture. Now he might he might have grown up
Speaker 1: you know what we would consider poor. And some guy
Speaker 1: in the Delta grew up with very little, uh, very
Speaker 1: little money as well. But the cultures are are very different.
Speaker 1: But you know, I think there's a lot of similarities
Speaker 1: in those things. Folks in the Delta, folks in the Mountain,
Speaker 1: they have made they've made a living, may you know,
Speaker 1: living like it takes up. I heard a guys say
Speaker 1: one time about you know where star City is. He said, man,
Speaker 1: it takes a big hammer to pound out a living
Speaker 1: in star City, you know, And it's that kind of idea.
Speaker 1: But that guy or Leave, he said, oh, we always
Speaker 1: had plenty to eat. His expectations were different. His expectations
Speaker 1: about what work was was different. Uh there's I think
Speaker 1: there's a lot of similarity in that. And I even
Speaker 1: told you that I think in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1: You know, the mountains of the western Arkansas are kind
Speaker 1: of the inverse of the bottom land in the U
Speaker 1: in the east. It's ah, they're to me, they're both
Speaker 1: mesmerizing and like just a little bits just spooky enough
Speaker 1: to keep it interesting, you know. Yeah, well maybe, uh yeah,
Speaker 1: I would. My boys wanted duck hunt, like for real, man,
Speaker 1: that dude, you guys on a couple of youth duck
Speaker 1: hunts the last couple of years and we haven't done
Speaker 1: it just you know, something just every time. But if
Speaker 1: we really had a reason to duck hunt, So maybe
Speaker 1: if maybe, if we could formulate something and and uh
Speaker 1: fill up your camp for a weekend, that'd be pretty good.
Speaker 1: Do we could do it? And I would, I would
Speaker 1: say too. I'm I'm all about like early success for
Speaker 1: people trying you know, fishing, a kid fishing or someone hunting,
Speaker 1: so it keeps them into it. But with that duck hunting,
Speaker 1: I'd love to get those kids in the timber. It's
Speaker 1: it's a completely foreign environment, like you're you're standing on
Speaker 1: ground that the month before was totally dry land and
Speaker 1: squirrels and deer were running around it, and now it's
Speaker 1: become this weird conglomeration of places. You know, there's beavers.
Speaker 1: It's it's like being on a different planet. To me,
Speaker 1: it is, i mean, put it on waiters and walking.
Speaker 1: I'm like, we're gonna walk out there. I mean that's like,
Speaker 1: you know, like we're looking at this. I'm like, in
Speaker 1: the mountains, we don't go in mud holes like that. Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: you go in and look. You have to. You have
Speaker 1: to pay attention. Stuff can go wrong. I mean, you
Speaker 1: can mitigate a lot of that, but you have to.
Speaker 1: You have to pay attention. You have to be safe. Uh.
Speaker 1: But then you know a lot of stuff that you're
Speaker 1: into goes along with it. The dog culture, you know,
Speaker 1: the idea of having that partnership with an animal, something
Speaker 1: like my dog, Ammo. He's probably one of the greatest
Speaker 1: things ever happened to me, you know, the experiences I've
Speaker 1: had with him. And I've always said this, I'd rather
Speaker 1: go and kill two ducks and have Ammo pick him up,
Speaker 1: then I would rather do that by myself. I duck
Speaker 1: come by myself most of the time, you know. Uh,
Speaker 1: it can be a really fun group activity, but it's
Speaker 1: to me, it's so special that a lot of times
Speaker 1: I want to kind of keep it as a a
Speaker 1: reverent moment. Yeah, you know, it's it's it's that special
Speaker 1: to me. And and it's that special to me whether
Speaker 1: or not I kill birds or not, yeah, because because
Speaker 1: and whenever I do have success with it, it's super
Speaker 1: special with me because like, no one did that for me.
Speaker 1: No one handed me those birds, you know, I did
Speaker 1: that myself. And then my dog, who's just I think,
Speaker 1: is you know, the best thing on four ft. He
Speaker 1: goes and gets it for me, and we hang out
Speaker 1: and he falls asleep with his head on the head
Speaker 1: rest in the truck, you know, and go get a
Speaker 1: sauce biscuit. Man. It's it is. It's the most this
Speaker 1: stuff we're talking about, you know, hunting and fishing, the
Speaker 1: outdoors and family, those are the those are the times
Speaker 1: when I'm most content. I feel like I'm kind of
Speaker 1: a frenetic person, Like my mind goes a lot. I
Speaker 1: get socially anxious a lot. Uh. My wife says that
Speaker 1: to me all the time, Like every time we go
Speaker 1: to like a dinner party or something, I come back.
Speaker 1: Hold on, I talk too much, I take that person
Speaker 1: off whatever. But you know, getting when I was scouting
Speaker 1: in the mountains the other day, Uh, I realized, I said,
Speaker 1: man I. I got back to the truck and said, man,
Speaker 1: I hadn't thought about anything other than where I was
Speaker 1: putting my feet and the trees and the land around me.
Speaker 1: For five hours, I think about a single thing. And
Speaker 1: it went like the blink of an eye. And it's
Speaker 1: a like I said, I think that's a very human
Speaker 1: that's a very human thing. I think that immersing yourself
Speaker 1: in these activities it helps you realize your humanity, because
Speaker 1: I don't think that people did not evolve to spend
Speaker 1: all their time sitting in front of a computer and
Speaker 1: walking on paved grass. There's a feeling you get when
Speaker 1: you're a kid and you have like bare feet on
Speaker 1: the grass, you know, running around, being sweaty, using your muscles. Uh,
Speaker 1: doing something that's hard and being successful at it, running, jumping, throwing.
Speaker 1: I think that you know an ad a laddle is
Speaker 1: the natural extension of a human being thrown, and then
Speaker 1: that bow and arrow is the extension of that. I
Speaker 1: think that these are all very human experiences. And when
Speaker 1: I was up there on those limestone ridges, climbing around
Speaker 1: pulling myself up, I was engaging, you know, my quads
Speaker 1: and my arms and stuff that I wouldn't be doing
Speaker 1: if I was sitting in an office. It it makes
Speaker 1: me feel like I'm alive. It makes me feel like
Speaker 1: I'm part of the human continuum. Uh. And it and
Speaker 1: that's why I want to help people that need a
Speaker 1: little push to get into it to do that, because
Speaker 1: that's it's it's it's like it's the reason that people
Speaker 1: have children. Tell other people you should have children, m
Speaker 1: you know, like it's something that I had no I
Speaker 1: could not fathom what being a father was like until
Speaker 1: I was a father, and I could not fathom not
Speaker 1: being a father. Now, you know, it would be if
Speaker 1: something happened to be the worst thing, if I was
Speaker 1: no longer a father, to be the worst thing to
Speaker 1: ever happen to me, you know, because it's becomes so
Speaker 1: ingrained in who I am. It's changed my identity. And
Speaker 1: I think that I think that really that most people,
Speaker 1: if they gave hunting, uh, if they gave hunting an
Speaker 1: honest effort. I think that it would fundamentally change most
Speaker 1: human beings and make them feel more rooted mm hmm
Speaker 1: in being a person. Yeah, that's good. You know, there's
Speaker 1: an Edward Abbey quote. I don't like Edward Abbey, uh,
Speaker 1: but he did have some he had some good stuff.
Speaker 1: There was a quote that I've got it somewhere on
Speaker 1: my phone where it says for it says, for ten
Speaker 1: thousand years, humans were warriors and artists and poets and
Speaker 1: tamers of horses. That's what I liked. And he said,
Speaker 1: and then in just the last hundred and fifty years
Speaker 1: we became clerks and accountants and you know, had these jobs.
Speaker 1: And he said, basically the quote said, there's no way
Speaker 1: that you can extinguish that thing that we were in
Speaker 1: this short time. And I think that's what fuels me
Speaker 1: in a significant way is just what you've said, is
Speaker 1: that the adventure that we experience as hunters on whatever scale,
Speaker 1: if it's going out in your backyard and hunting deer,
Speaker 1: there is a level of adventure there that can be
Speaker 1: absolutely world class, high level human experience. To go and
Speaker 1: you're stinking backyard and bo hunt deer. The the ability
Speaker 1: to acquire a game. I mean, I'm preaching to the
Speaker 1: choire here, but your the ability to acquire the most healthy,
Speaker 1: the most rich rocket field, as Ted Nugent says, in
Speaker 1: the world for yourself, is this extremely human experience that
Speaker 1: does it kind of equalizes us in some way. I mean,
Speaker 1: in it, in it, and it does it makes us human.
Speaker 1: And it seems like the further we get into time,
Speaker 1: the urban, the further we've got away from being human.
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean, really, when you think about it's
Speaker 1: not just technology, but it's culture and politics and all
Speaker 1: the like, the complexities of life that we've never had
Speaker 1: to deal with are pulling us more and more into
Speaker 1: something that's really kind of unhuman. And and there's something
Speaker 1: about and it's not And I I said this, I
Speaker 1: think even recently on a podcast, is that to me,
Speaker 1: there for hunting to make us something different. To me,
Speaker 1: it has to be connected to something bigger like it
Speaker 1: had and and to me that bigger thing is is God.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's something bigger that you know, and and
Speaker 1: and I think that's a powerful component of it too.
Speaker 1: You know, you know, hunting just alone to me, you know,
Speaker 1: could just be something empty. But when it's connected to
Speaker 1: something bigger then then to me, that's when it makes sense.
Speaker 1: But this whole idea that that hunting is what makes
Speaker 1: us human is uh. I think it's a powerful idea,
Speaker 1: and I think it's something that that the non hunting
Speaker 1: urban community, not just urban but just the non hunting
Speaker 1: community really wouldn't understand. But their misunderstanding of it is
Speaker 1: some is a product of a very short amount of
Speaker 1: time on in in the vast view of human history.
Speaker 1: I mean, just in the last fifty years have people
Speaker 1: started thinking that hunting was weird, you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: And and then not that everybody hunted before that. But man,
Speaker 1: I think what we're what we're saying, what we're identifying with,
Speaker 1: and what we the reason we're here is because we
Speaker 1: recognize the incredible opportunity that we have access to. Ye.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's what we're talking about, is this
Speaker 1: incredible opportunity and access that we have at whatever level.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't expect my kids to take hunting
Speaker 1: as serious as I do, even though I would like
Speaker 1: for them too. I doubt they'll be able to make
Speaker 1: a living doing hunting related stuff like I have done. Uh,
Speaker 1: I don't even know if they'll take it. They may
Speaker 1: not need to take it as serious as I do.
Speaker 1: But if people, if people that really should and really
Speaker 1: could at least have some level of deep respect for wildlife,
Speaker 1: wild places and a humans ability to extract resource from
Speaker 1: that wild place in a sustainable way. If you, if
Speaker 1: they just respected it just a little bit, we'd be
Speaker 1: way further along and in trying to continue hunting as
Speaker 1: we've known it. I mean, so praying a practical sense,
Speaker 1: Like if my son Bear grows up and it's just
Speaker 1: a squirrel hunter and has a couple of squirrel dogs
Speaker 1: his whole life and takes his kids squirrel hunting, I'll
Speaker 1: be happy if he grows up and he's like, Dad,
Speaker 1: I don't want to bear hunt like you do. You
Speaker 1: kind of took it, you know. I mean that's cool, um,
Speaker 1: because I don't want to paint the picture that everybody
Speaker 1: has to be is into. I mean, you've like given
Speaker 1: your life to this thing the last few years. And
Speaker 1: I mean and I did the same thing. I mean,
Speaker 1: my whole a lot of my world revolve around hunting,
Speaker 1: and uh not everybody can do that or should do that,
Speaker 1: But no, I mean, look, I wouldn't want them to,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, I don't want if everybody I
Speaker 1: knew was like me, then the places I go to
Speaker 1: would be crowded, you know, I mean, I mean practically,
Speaker 1: But I I thought of something when you were when
Speaker 1: you were just speaking before, And I bring my wife
Speaker 1: up again, because this really was a poignant moment in
Speaker 1: my life. It was maybe two or three years into
Speaker 1: me hunting until I had reached a level of competency,
Speaker 1: you know, where I could go out find deer, signed
Speaker 1: kill a deer, skin of deer, butcher it. I've never
Speaker 1: taken a deer to a process or you know. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I came home. I'm a little four cylinder to Koma,
Speaker 1: and I just had a pretty decent dough in there
Speaker 1: and my I had killed it and got home before
Speaker 1: my wife had even woken up. And I went and
Speaker 1: woke up and say, hey, come outside and take a
Speaker 1: look at this. And what she comes out and she
Speaker 1: looked at it, and I remember she said, oh baby,
Speaker 1: just like this kind of exclamation. And you know, my
Speaker 1: wife is a very intelligent woman. She's you know, a
Speaker 1: very progressive person. Absolutely would identify as a strong feminist.
Speaker 1: But there was something. It wasn't. It wasn't like she's
Speaker 1: she's totally capable of going out and procuring a deer
Speaker 1: for herself. I think she was reacting to something that
Speaker 1: was very human. She just felt happy and pride, prideful
Speaker 1: that her partner had accomplished something that was very very
Speaker 1: base too, being a human like I had gone out
Speaker 1: and I had literally procured food for our family, and
Speaker 1: she was just kind of reacting to that right off
Speaker 1: the bat. And I'm telling you it's one It's one
Speaker 1: of my proudest moments. I still think about it, uh,
Speaker 1: because it I felt. I think it made me and
Speaker 1: we never talked about it really, but it made me
Speaker 1: feel recognized and appreciated and validated, validated in a way
Speaker 1: that few things had because it was all it was
Speaker 1: all based around things that I I had done for myself.
Speaker 1: I've gotten that dear by myself. I convinced that woman
Speaker 1: that I was a good partner, you know myself. I
Speaker 1: had waxed and waned in both of those capable capability
Speaker 1: levels with both those things. But it was a moment
Speaker 1: where it kind of all came together and and yeah,
Speaker 1: like that's a cool experience and what I saw inside
Speaker 1: of it was, you know, marriage and partnership with another
Speaker 1: human at the level of husband and wife is like
Speaker 1: the most powerful entity and relationship ever in in a
Speaker 1: functional way, even evolutionarily, you know, and I used that word,
Speaker 1: you know, just it it worked, and it worked that way,
Speaker 1: you know, like complimenting things. Partnership. That's in essence what
Speaker 1: I saw inside it was just like partnership. That makes
Speaker 1: a lot of sense. And you know, you brought it
Speaker 1: back to a point that I'm in line with you
Speaker 1: about about that partnership. I absolutely think that my partnership
Speaker 1: with my wife is it's the strongest how how would
Speaker 1: I say that? He's waving his hands and it's the
Speaker 1: place that I draw the most most strength from in
Speaker 1: my life, you know, is that that partnership we have
Speaker 1: uh that you know, we are building a life together,
Speaker 1: we are making a family, we are making a way
Speaker 1: in the world for ourselves, and we're figuring out what
Speaker 1: we think and how to impart those ideas to our children.
Speaker 1: I think that's incredibly pow. Hey tell us tell everybody
Speaker 1: where they can find you Black Duck Revival dot com. Yeah, man,
Speaker 1: I'm most I'm probably most active on Instagram, So it's
Speaker 1: just Black Duck Revival on Instagram, and I try. I've
Speaker 1: been a little funky with it, but I try and
Speaker 1: do like a recipe and a substantive article every week
Speaker 1: or two. Uh, and then you'll find that on my website,
Speaker 1: which is just Black Duck Revival dot com. You can
Speaker 1: also if you go there, you can you can book
Speaker 1: a stay. You can, you know, feel free to send
Speaker 1: me an email ask me about what opportunities might be around.
Speaker 1: I'll shoot you straight. Guys could come down there and
Speaker 1: go squirrel hunting. It's great, some of the best squirrel
Speaker 1: hunting ever. That's what I want, beautiful. There's water trails
Speaker 1: down there that are for canoes, coon hunts, a huge
Speaker 1: culture of coon hunting down there. And this year I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do a lot of I mean, I've never done
Speaker 1: it before. I'm gonna try my hand at beaver trapping
Speaker 1: and try and kind of do double duty. When I'm
Speaker 1: out there on the water, you know, set a trap
Speaker 1: line on my way out, come back in the morning,
Speaker 1: hunt ducks and check my trap on the way out.
Speaker 1: There's tons of there's there's tons of opportunity to do
Speaker 1: all sources of stuff. Well, cool, man, that is really cool.
Speaker 1: Well check out Black Duck Revival and uh yeah, book
Speaker 1: a book, a couple of days duck hunting or that's
Speaker 1: a cool part of the world down there. And just
Speaker 1: and just so you know too, it's also uh the
Speaker 1: state record white tail was killed about ten minutes away
Speaker 1: from Black Duck Revival, so it's got the Arkansas Delta
Speaker 1: has the biggest deer in Arkansas too because of the
Speaker 1: Aglian So if you're a big deer hunter, there's plenty
Speaker 1: of public land opportunities for it. Really is. There's some
Speaker 1: incredible white tail hunting down there, for sure, incredible white
Speaker 1: to hunt. Well, did we forget anything? Word? No, Man,
Speaker 1: I appreciate the opportunity, man, I guess I told you yesterday. Man,
Speaker 1: I've been following your stuff for a heavily for a
Speaker 1: couple of months, and all the kind of stuff that
Speaker 1: we talked about today is why I've been so drawn
Speaker 1: to it, because I think you bring you bring that
Speaker 1: passion in that uh, that thoughtfulness to it, and I
Speaker 1: really appreciate it then identified with it. So thanks for
Speaker 1: the opportunity, man, Well, my pleasure to have you on. Well, man,
Speaker 1: keep the wild places wild because that's where the ducks live,
Speaker 1: and the bears and everything else m