Speaker 1: This is the meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
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Speaker 3: All right, ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 1: If you're sitting there on a and you and you
Speaker 1: look at your feed, and you and you think, what
Speaker 1: in Sam Hill? Is this a special episode of the
Speaker 1: meat Eater podcast, Well, you're correct. This is a special
Speaker 1: edition called truck Stories met Eaters truck Stories. Maybe you've
Speaker 1: heard meters campfire stories. This is truck Stories. And here
Speaker 1: to share in this event with us is as though
Speaker 1: dealing poker, not the dealer.
Speaker 4: Clay nukelemb Yeah, Clay nukelemb here, glad to be here, Gamble.
Speaker 3: That's probably why you don't know what I'm not as
Speaker 3: No dealing old maid.
Speaker 5: Little horse, little horse racing, dealing old maid Texas hold
Speaker 5: them yeah, Clay nukelemb from Barrier's podcast.
Speaker 1: Casey Smith Casey Smith from The Element, Tyler Jones, Tyler
Speaker 1: Jones from The Element.
Speaker 4: Big Truck Guys out Here, Chester Floyd.
Speaker 6: One time I won rent money off of a poker game.
Speaker 1: Chesterha has a big concert coming up the har Dady
Speaker 1: asked him how long till the concert? When was the concert?
Speaker 1: And he gave it to me in hours days and
Speaker 1: said he wasn't nervous, but the fact that he knew
Speaker 1: how many hours the way it was suggested nervousness.
Speaker 6: No, I'm excited. I saw a great concert last night
Speaker 6: Paul Coffin, and I took some mental notes of performing
Speaker 6: and it should be fine.
Speaker 3: The Big Velvet they call him, do you know that?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 4: I did.
Speaker 3: I like that guy.
Speaker 6: Yeah, he's good, talented.
Speaker 3: I texted him about coming on the show. Yeah, we
Speaker 3: should get him. Well, he's like referred me out. It's
Speaker 3: just got complicated.
Speaker 1: You're like, was like head talk to like the manager is.
Speaker 1: But if you're out there at Paul Cough, we still
Speaker 1: like to have you come on the show. I just
Speaker 1: want to like not have to make it so complicated.
Speaker 7: Ye.
Speaker 3: Jason, Jason Phelps cutting the Distance.
Speaker 8: And Dirk Durham cutting the distance.
Speaker 9: And you boys are going weekly. We are changing it
Speaker 9: up from bi weekly to weekly. Yeah twice, How are
Speaker 9: you gonna double the output?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 9: Just add Dirk every other week? So right now I'm
Speaker 9: every you just got to every other week.
Speaker 1: So if you're cutting the Distance podcast fan, now you
Speaker 1: can listen to every week.
Speaker 3: Yeah? What if that cuts into my listenership?
Speaker 4: Here?
Speaker 3: It shouldn't.
Speaker 4: Should the name of the podcast now not be twice
Speaker 4: as long as opposed to cutting the Distance?
Speaker 3: Brent?
Speaker 2: Who?
Speaker 3: Okay?
Speaker 1: Who's Who's gonna start out? I mean I could tell
Speaker 1: my story. I could tell my truck story and listen,
Speaker 1: my story is so old I had to call I
Speaker 1: had to call the person it's about to go over
Speaker 1: all the details this morning.
Speaker 2: You should?
Speaker 4: I mean, I think I think this is what we
Speaker 4: should do. I think we should go around the table
Speaker 4: rate our story based upon the what how we think
Speaker 4: the world is going to perceive it, and then you
Speaker 4: could assign because you know, I may have like a
Speaker 4: really happy, fun story about family that people are gonna go, oh,
Speaker 4: that was cute. And you may have a story about
Speaker 4: a truck, you.
Speaker 3: Know, inferno.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and you may we may order it a certain way.
Speaker 4: I would say mine is like a It is like
Speaker 4: a four point eight on the scale of like fun
Speaker 4: And then there's a smaller story that's like a seven.
Speaker 4: It's got a great punchline.
Speaker 1: Mine is a is maybe a seven, and it's a
Speaker 1: love story. Listen, you're gonna think it's about wrestling in Infernos.
Speaker 3: It's a love story.
Speaker 4: It's hard to be What about you, guys.
Speaker 8: I think everybody thinks their own story is the best.
Speaker 10: Usually.
Speaker 3: I gave mine a seven, but you know that's the
Speaker 3: best we got to offer seven.
Speaker 6: I don't I don't think mine it would be the best.
Speaker 9: But you know, mine just got like a funny part
Speaker 9: at the end, and then like it's a lot of
Speaker 9: a lot of build up to a funny and then
Speaker 9: there's a predator issue at the end. You know, poor
Speaker 9: Kren had to really talk to a lot of people
Speaker 9: to find a room full of people with a good
Speaker 9: truck story. So you guys better bring it.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm, it's gonna be good. What are you guys rating?
Speaker 11: Mmm?
Speaker 2: I'm I like to under rate but overachieve, you know,
Speaker 2: like four, probably because I don't know how people perceive
Speaker 2: out of ten.
Speaker 11: Oh, you know, my jersey never was a five, So
Speaker 11: I'm gonna go with that.
Speaker 3: Okay, who goes first? You had the highest number at seven.
Speaker 3: Here you go.
Speaker 11: Okay, So that's for last though, right.
Speaker 3: What's that stories?
Speaker 10: No?
Speaker 3: No, no one story.
Speaker 1: I got one story that I'm very committed to and
Speaker 1: I even made phone calls about it, so I'm there's
Speaker 1: no backing out now, Clay, go ahead.
Speaker 4: I was just gonna say this. This isn't even on
Speaker 4: my roster of stories, but just to get as started.
Speaker 4: When I was a junior in high school, I had
Speaker 4: a four wheel drive pickup truck.
Speaker 3: This is the story or not.
Speaker 4: This is not the story. This is a appetizer story.
Speaker 4: And I started complaining to my dad that there was
Speaker 4: there was mud getting into the cab of the truck.
Speaker 4: I said, Dad, the cab of my truck leaks. There's
Speaker 4: something wrong with my truck. I don't know what's going on.
Speaker 4: And so we were like, what's wrong with this truck?
Speaker 4: And a few weeks later, is back when we developed film.
Speaker 4: You know, you had film cameras and you took to
Speaker 4: the store and got filmed. Well, he took a camera
Speaker 4: to the to Walmart, got the film developed, and there
Speaker 4: was a picture of me in my truck and you
Speaker 4: could not see the truck. I was, I was deep.
Speaker 4: I was, I was you know, rear view, like side mirror,
Speaker 4: deep in mud, going like twenty miles an hour. And
Speaker 4: he came home with a photo and said, Clay, this
Speaker 4: is why your truck leaks. And it never occurred to me.
Speaker 4: So that's your appetizer story. That truck was an incredible truck.
Speaker 4: It was a it was a it was a reclaimed,
Speaker 4: it had been salvaged, had a salvage title because it
Speaker 4: had been in a flood somewhere down south. And so
Speaker 4: for like eight years while I had it, I didn't
Speaker 4: have it for eight years. However long I had it,
Speaker 4: it blew sand when you turn on the air conditioner,
Speaker 4: had like wearing glasses in the truck was blowing sand ambience.
Speaker 4: That would mean that wasn't even my story.
Speaker 3: Guys, are you going to do I go out No.
Speaker 4: That somebody else. I passed it off. Now right, well, yeah, I.
Speaker 2: Feel like the main course comes after the appetizer.
Speaker 11: I'll go, okay, all right, I'm tired of this.
Speaker 3: All right, gell and buckle up for a four.
Speaker 11: Let's go Uh, okay, so I'll start it.
Speaker 5: Uh. You know last song was on the podcast you
Speaker 5: had talked about kind of our story and it involves
Speaker 5: being a true white tail bone. So just completely broke
Speaker 5: trying to kill white tail deer on video and make
Speaker 5: something you know that we can people would like, right,
Speaker 5: So we Uh I had. I was living basically.
Speaker 11: In my truck for the season.
Speaker 5: I mean like I would camp some, but I would
Speaker 5: sleep in the back seat. And so I had uh
Speaker 5: I had a let's see two thousand and seven half ton,
Speaker 5: is that acceptable you're staying and and I killed a
Speaker 5: couple deer that year, one on Texas public land, which
Speaker 5: was my first Texas public land buck that I killed.
Speaker 11: This is twenty nineteen.
Speaker 5: And then we spent I had an Iowa tag, which
Speaker 5: is like a five year draw. I mean it's like
Speaker 5: and it's six hundred bucks you got to put in
Speaker 5: every year. It's like fifty bucks, sixty bucks every year.
Speaker 5: So you're like racking up an expensive tag for a
Speaker 5: whitetail deer, I mean close to one thousand bucks probably.
Speaker 5: So it's an important tag. It's you have the chance
Speaker 5: of shooting the biggest buck you've ever you know, seen
Speaker 5: in Iowa. It's just it's the greatest state in my
Speaker 5: opinion for deer hunting. So anyway, the first time we
Speaker 5: went up there was in October, and Case and I
Speaker 5: went together and we hunted last part of October all
Speaker 5: the way up to Halloween, like eight days, and there
Speaker 5: was like two snowing events, and I mean, we're from Texas,
Speaker 5: so that doesn't happen in October. We get up there
Speaker 5: and have a pretty good hunt, we don't kill a deer.
Speaker 5: So I got to go back. Well, on the way home,
Speaker 5: I'm going to edit some footage, so I get the
Speaker 5: computer out. He takes my keys, and we were driving
Speaker 5: right and uh, we get down into Missouri and it's
Speaker 5: it's icy, and we come up over this big hill
Speaker 5: and it's just flat prairie, you know, come.
Speaker 11: Up with this big hill.
Speaker 5: It's pretty ice. So we've been driving for like two
Speaker 5: or three hours and I'm like, hey, look at that
Speaker 5: eighteen wheeler right there. It's turned over. And about that time,
Speaker 5: it was like the top of the hill turned and
Speaker 5: went to the left and we just kept going and
Speaker 5: black Eyes.
Speaker 2: I mean, it was absolutely.
Speaker 5: And it was like there was a bunch of cars
Speaker 5: that had the same problem that day. But I mean
Speaker 5: we tore through a fence like two hundred yards of
Speaker 5: pasture I had. I had a tree about that big
Speaker 5: around that was coming right at me in the pastures.
Speaker 1: And I'm held as he held his hands out as
Speaker 1: though gripping Clay's head.
Speaker 5: That's right, a solid tree, like you don't want to
Speaker 5: hit that, you know, And it came so close it
Speaker 5: blew the mirror off side.
Speaker 8: For sure.
Speaker 5: And then and it was like it was deep snow,
Speaker 5: you know, Well we somehow I'll come to a stop. Finally,
Speaker 5: I mean, way out in this pasture. We limped the
Speaker 5: truck back up to the road and got it fixed
Speaker 5: that day. Enough, it had broken a tyrod or something,
Speaker 5: and so anyway, ended up getting it fixed that day
Speaker 5: and made it home that night with no rearview mirror
Speaker 5: on one side and like some of the lights weren't working.
Speaker 5: But uh, you know, I got to borrow a truck
Speaker 5: and come back in the rut because it was a
Speaker 5: special tag. So I come back in December and I'm
Speaker 5: doing and I'm literally I leave my house with a
Speaker 5: dollar sixty seven in my account. I had played, I
Speaker 5: played guitar, I had played a show and I made
Speaker 5: like two hundred bucks, which is pretty good.
Speaker 11: Yeah, it was.
Speaker 3: Interesting.
Speaker 11: I'll tell you.
Speaker 5: I'll tell you the venue name later on. You know,
Speaker 5: get to Inner Bucks, you know, pretty easy. Uh, but
Speaker 5: I I had the cash, so that was what I
Speaker 5: was gonna pay for gas to get up there, and
Speaker 5: I was gonnaigure it out. I think we were supposed
Speaker 5: to have like a deposit. Happened, you know, happened when
Speaker 5: I was up there. But my wife, she's been very
Speaker 5: faithful through this whole thing.
Speaker 11: So, uh, we get up.
Speaker 5: I get up there and I'm by myself and I
Speaker 5: have to sleep. I have no money, so I have
Speaker 5: to sleep in the back of this this new truck
Speaker 5: that I got, and I'm borrowing across it in a
Speaker 5: sleeping bag. It's it's cold out, and I'm in a
Speaker 5: Casey's parking lot.
Speaker 11: You know what a Casey's is anybody?
Speaker 5: Yeah, like a convenient Uh, the general store, some pizza,
Speaker 5: they have great pizza. You can get gas there, Yeah,
Speaker 5: you can't get gas there, and so anyway, I mean
Speaker 5: it was just terrible, like all night, just big trucks
Speaker 5: were coming in and waking me up. I slept terribly,
Speaker 5: but I end up like the third or fourth day
Speaker 5: that I was there on that trip, I'm hanging like
Speaker 5: eighty yards off the road. This road was too too
Speaker 5: slick to for cars to come through at the time,
Speaker 5: it had been raining. And uh, I see a deer
Speaker 5: pass across the road and then I hear the buck
Speaker 5: before I ever saw him, and I thought it was
Speaker 5: a motorcycle coming down the road.
Speaker 11: He was he was doing.
Speaker 5: He was grunting so loud and long that it was
Speaker 5: just like I thought of dirt bikes coming. He's fixing
Speaker 5: a mess. This whole thing up. It was, It's crazy.
Speaker 5: It's all on videos on YouTube on the Element channel. Yeah,
Speaker 5: and I shot him and he ran like twenty yards
Speaker 5: and fell over. Could see the truck from the stand too, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: it was up the hillways.
Speaker 4: Oh that was your punchline. Yeah, it's not like I
Speaker 4: can see the buck yeah from the stand.
Speaker 11: Yeah. No, but I you know, just sleeping in the
Speaker 11: bed of my truck. Is poor boy in it? You know?
Speaker 3: So that's great?
Speaker 5: Yeah, No, no, like no infernos or I was sure
Speaker 5: happy to shoot that buck.
Speaker 11: For sure.
Speaker 5: Whose truck was it? It is my wife's granddad. He
Speaker 5: had uh had gotten to where he couldn't really walk,
Speaker 5: and so he wasn't using his truck much.
Speaker 11: And so, yeah, it's a nice truck. I still have it.
Speaker 4: That's great.
Speaker 3: Yep, yep, digging in Chester, let's go.
Speaker 6: So I took my sister's truck from her senior year
Speaker 6: of high school. The day I graduated from high school,
Speaker 6: I took her truck out to Montana. I drove it
Speaker 6: all the way out because I wanted to be a
Speaker 6: fishing guide. The truck that I had in high school
Speaker 6: was not going to make it kind of out west,
Speaker 6: make the big trip.
Speaker 3: So my parents, did you let her know what you
Speaker 3: were gonna take it?
Speaker 6: I let her know, Well, my parents basically let her
Speaker 6: know that that's kind of how it was going to work.
Speaker 1: So young Chester is flying the coop and it will
Speaker 1: be in your truck.
Speaker 6: Basically, it was more of like the family truck, right,
Speaker 6: But she drove it. Yeah, So I took that out
Speaker 6: west the day after I graduated, just like super excited
Speaker 6: to kind of start my own life. So I drove
Speaker 6: it across the country and I got a job working
Speaker 6: at a drift boat shop, and I wanted to become
Speaker 6: a fly fishing guide. So that was like the job.
Speaker 6: I was like, I can work at this drift boat shop.
Speaker 6: This truck can handle, it handle pulling a light drift boat.
Speaker 6: I'm gonna work my way up and buy a drift boat.
Speaker 6: So I did that and got a drift boat and
Speaker 6: was kind of eager to fish as much as I
Speaker 6: possibly could. So I would work and or I'd get
Speaker 6: up real early, fish then go work or fish after work.
Speaker 6: And I was fishing with my buddy Steven Smith. It
Speaker 6: was in Yeah, it was real high water year twenty eleven.
Speaker 6: I remember, great hopper fishing. So we were it was
Speaker 6: like late July. We were literally going burning the candle
Speaker 6: on both ends, getting up before the sun comes up,
Speaker 6: and driving out to the Yellowstone and we had a
Speaker 6: pretty phenomenal day of fishing hopper fishing, and the wind
Speaker 6: was blowing and it was blowing all these hoppers in
Speaker 6: the water, I remember, and grasshoppers. Yeah, we were on
Speaker 6: like you know, cloud nine, two young kids. I've got
Speaker 6: a drift boat. I moved out from Wisconsin. You know.
Speaker 6: It was like the as good of memory as anyone
Speaker 6: could have. Meet some buddies at the boat ramp talking
Speaker 6: about our day and we get in the truck and
Speaker 6: I turned the AC on and we're cruising down I ninety,
Speaker 6: just feeling great about life. And my buddy's sitting there
Speaker 6: in the passenger seat and he said the next thing.
Speaker 6: He looks over at me, and I got my eyes shut,
Speaker 6: which is never good, man, never good. We got that
Speaker 6: AC going, we got music going, and I was tired.
Speaker 6: And you know, if we were in like today's trucks,
Speaker 6: this probably wouldn't have happen because there's all these alarms
Speaker 6: and safety things that are in him. But I hit
Speaker 6: the rumble strips and I was out cold sleeping, and
Speaker 6: I woke up and kind of from a dead sleep
Speaker 6: and over corrected.
Speaker 8: Ooh.
Speaker 6: We had the drift boat on the back. And at
Speaker 6: any moment I was like, it's one of those slow
Speaker 6: motion things in life that you're like, we're going to go,
Speaker 6: We're going to start rolling. Well we didn't. We like
Speaker 6: slid sideways on going eighty miles an hour, which is
Speaker 6: the speed limit out here on cruise control. Slid sideways
Speaker 6: and launched the truck off the side of the road
Speaker 6: airborne for like sixty feet. Whoa with a drift boat
Speaker 6: on the back and we land in a farmer's field.
Speaker 6: There's cattle around us, and they're like, what's that happening?
Speaker 6: And I'm just as surprised as the cows because I
Speaker 6: had just waken up from a nap, and you know,
Speaker 6: my buddy is like, you know, like shaken, and we
Speaker 6: did not have a scratch on us, So like, how
Speaker 6: was the boat? The boat was completely fine. It was
Speaker 6: an aluminum drift boat, just a burly boat and uh,
Speaker 6: but the trailer was kind of messed up. But yeah,
Speaker 6: I remember old rancher coming and looking over the side
Speaker 6: and being like, you boys are lucky.
Speaker 3: Why is it always an old rancher? There's ever a
Speaker 3: young rancher?
Speaker 1: There is ny no nervous isn't a young rancher came
Speaker 1: up to me.
Speaker 3: He might not have been a rancher either, he.
Speaker 6: I didn't ask him at the time, but dude, we yeah,
Speaker 6: I mean we drove that truck back home that night.
Speaker 6: My buddy brought a subway sandwiches, and we went and
Speaker 6: went to the drift boat shop and got a flatbed
Speaker 6: trailer and drove right back out there and went back
Speaker 6: whinch the trailer in the drift boat back on the
Speaker 6: the flatbed and we were out there fishing that day. No, no, no,
Speaker 6: we were out there fishing a couple of days later.
Speaker 8: But then was your sister mad?
Speaker 4: Was my sister mad?
Speaker 3: Nothing to be mad about.
Speaker 4: Man, The truck just ramped her truck sixty feet.
Speaker 6: It just but I think what happened there was what
Speaker 6: saved us was the boat trailer. I think because when
Speaker 6: we turned, it stayed, you know, parallel to the road.
Speaker 2: Like a rudder.
Speaker 6: And I think that exactly. Yeah, I think that's what
Speaker 6: kept us in there. But man, that was, like, you know,
Speaker 6: one of those life lessons that like, you do not
Speaker 6: drive tired.
Speaker 2: We all learned that young man, like around twenty.
Speaker 3: It's it's something.
Speaker 1: It's such a thing when with young I don't know
Speaker 1: if it will be in future generations, but it just
Speaker 1: that I am so far away from that now, but
Speaker 1: it was just a real thing. Yeah, I gotta pull over,
Speaker 1: you gotta drive. And like ten minutes later I got
Speaker 1: pulled over.
Speaker 3: You were so tired. We didn't stop and jumping jacks
Speaker 3: together a whole bunch. Man. My buddy hit on this strategy.
Speaker 3: He would get it.
Speaker 1: He would stop at a gas station, get a cup
Speaker 1: full of ice and I'm not joking. We'll just drop
Speaker 1: ice keeps down his back of his T shirt and
Speaker 1: then lean into the ice cube against the seat and
Speaker 1: now it was his whole like, well, I know how
Speaker 1: to get a long ways.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 6: But man, lucky to be fishing, that's for sure.
Speaker 3: Here you are now.
Speaker 4: Didn't hurt the truck much?
Speaker 6: No, didn't hurt drove it out of the field. Didn't
Speaker 6: hurt the truck at all? Man.
Speaker 4: Yeah, did you go through any fences or did you
Speaker 4: ramp the fence?
Speaker 6: One?
Speaker 3: One fence?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 4: How did you have to fix it?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 6: That we the guy said we were good.
Speaker 11: We were good.
Speaker 6: When we talked to him, he'd fix it.
Speaker 1: You know what I like about Chester's little Genesis story
Speaker 1: about a fishing guide is he had no idea what
Speaker 1: he's doing or talking about, but he actually did it, just.
Speaker 3: Drove away from home mm hmm and became fishing guide.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's what I wanted. My guidance counselor in high
Speaker 6: school asked everybody, like, they want to kind of help
Speaker 6: you with your career goal in college, and I said
Speaker 6: I didn't. I don't want to go to college. I
Speaker 6: want to be a fishing guide. And saying that in Wisconsin,
Speaker 6: in the Holy Land of Dairy Country. She's like, you know,
Speaker 6: like you're not you can't catch.
Speaker 4: They were like cheez and fish don't go together, right, So.
Speaker 1: When I I went down, this would never happen anymore.
Speaker 1: I went down to my guidance counselor. In fact, people
Speaker 1: don't believe that I'm telling the truth that this happened.
Speaker 1: I went to my guidance counselor in high school and
Speaker 1: I had I signed up for a zero hour so
Speaker 1: you started like seven in the morning and I and
Speaker 1: I had to do a gym credit. Still, I went
Speaker 1: down to the guidance counselor and said, listen, when I
Speaker 1: get out of school, I'm going check on my traps.
Speaker 3: So I'm gonna be active. And if I didn't have
Speaker 3: to go to gym, I could get out an hour earlier.
Speaker 1: And that's what I'm going to be doing anyways, is
Speaker 1: out canoeing and all that.
Speaker 6: They're like, okay, really, you got a credit they for trapping.
Speaker 1: They let me leave, so I was leaving at noon
Speaker 1: or whatever, and no one would ever be able to
Speaker 1: do that anymore.
Speaker 3: Now that just goes to show what's happened in this country.
Speaker 8: Something wrong.
Speaker 3: Dude, that's great. Oh yeah, just excuse me, my pe
Speaker 3: credit sweet man. That's a good guy. I should find
Speaker 3: that guy.
Speaker 6: Make a little side money, you know, trapping krin. Do
Speaker 6: you want me to mention the other quick story I have? Okay,
Speaker 6: I'll make this brief. This is about a truck that
Speaker 6: is like larger than life. You know, everyone like maybe
Speaker 6: knew a guy that he had a truck, and you'd
Speaker 6: see that guy and be like, oh, there's old old Bob,
Speaker 6: you know, doing something, and like the truck has its
Speaker 6: own careacter.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the truck is the person.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so my my grandfathers.
Speaker 3: It is an accessory to the truck.
Speaker 6: The person's an accescerated truck. And yeah, this person was
Speaker 6: my grandfather and uh he was a great, great man.
Speaker 6: He raised seven girls, my mom being one of them.
Speaker 11: And baby truck it.
Speaker 6: Was a it was a it was a half This
Speaker 6: one was a half ton. Yeah, Scotch bigger than the
Speaker 6: truck I drove out west.
Speaker 2: Is that a mom joke?
Speaker 4: No, just saying seven kids, But it was a truck.
Speaker 6: It was a fifty three to fifty five I don't
Speaker 6: know the exact year, like a blue truck just like that,
Speaker 6: like that truck right here, right here. Yeah, I have
Speaker 6: I have some pictures that I want to show you.
Speaker 6: I'll pass my computer around. Oh wow, he's got this
Speaker 6: is This is a truck. This is a picture with
Speaker 6: my dad, his brothers and his father with some deer
Speaker 6: in the back of the truck, with some foxes on
Speaker 6: the ground in a coyote. There were more trappers than hunting,
Speaker 6: real mixed bag the Chikowski family. And he bought this
Speaker 6: truck new, which was like one of the only things
Speaker 6: he bought new ever for a farm truck. And he
Speaker 6: you know, the neighbors would see this truck coming down
Speaker 6: the road and they'd be like, oh, there's John Chikowski
Speaker 6: coming to help out, or you know. It was just
Speaker 6: that kind of character of truck. Anyways, he's ninety six
Speaker 6: years old right now.
Speaker 3: Wow, and he still Yeah.
Speaker 6: His sister lived to be like one hundred and seven
Speaker 6: and his grandma was like one hundred and nine. Anyways,
Speaker 6: my mother is right now getting this truck fixed and refers.
Speaker 6: So I'll show you these photos.
Speaker 4: Really wow, this should have been well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, next time Chester, we can put them up on
Speaker 3: the TV and have everyone.
Speaker 4: Oh see them, but this is big.
Speaker 6: Yeah, let me find these real quick. Sorry, I didn't
Speaker 6: have them pulled up. So here's a little text from
Speaker 6: my brother in law who's fixing them, fixing it up.
Speaker 6: Just waiting on a little of everything for parts because
Speaker 6: you cannot find it. Wasn't It's not like one of
Speaker 6: those trucks where people want to fix up nowadays because
Speaker 6: it will have no value. But it's just sentimental value
Speaker 6: to the family. He's waiting on some clutch parts, transmission parts,
Speaker 6: parts for the steering box, seals for the rear axle,
Speaker 6: some brake parts, some.
Speaker 3: Interior parts, parts parts.
Speaker 6: Yeah, the engine was completely rebuilt with possibly the last
Speaker 6: set of pistons that were ever made in the factory.
Speaker 6: He got all the six pistons from a different store
Speaker 6: in different states. Really, so here's here's the color of it.
Speaker 6: But so my mom's getting it redone and my grandfather
Speaker 6: is not doing great right now, and the plan was
Speaker 6: to have my grandfather surprise him with this truck and
Speaker 6: then take him to the local warehouser parade and he
Speaker 6: would ride in that with my mother or whoever, and
Speaker 6: all the people like his nieces and stuff that are
Speaker 6: still around there would be surprised and see my grandfather
Speaker 6: in the truck at the parade like he was meant
Speaker 6: to be, like he was meant to be, and they would,
Speaker 6: you know, see that, and it would just so hopefully
Speaker 6: this can happen.
Speaker 3: God puts my faith back in America.
Speaker 1: I lost my faith thinking about counselors these days and
Speaker 1: not letting kids out.
Speaker 4: Of good story.
Speaker 2: Yea so good story.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Grandpa Chicklsi, good Man, good truck America, the story,
Speaker 6: last name Chaikowski, Chikolski.
Speaker 3: Yeah, think a one or too long? Where that guy
Speaker 3: come out of?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Holding, all right, who's up? I'll go okay, okay.
Speaker 9: Twenty fourteen, I trade into my fresh store, my half
Speaker 9: ton gas rig for a three quarter ton diesel. And
Speaker 9: this is this will be important later. I'm not just
Speaker 9: showing off. It's a beautiful truck. Eight inch lift, thirty
Speaker 9: seven inch tires, just an eight inch lift, just a
Speaker 9: nice truck, truck fourteen.
Speaker 3: It's a humble brag like a monster truck.
Speaker 9: Yeah, but this is gonna be important detail later when
Speaker 9: we get to something trying to get in it. So
Speaker 9: twenty fourteen, my my Hunt and buddy Charlie Smith's wife
Speaker 9: draws a coveted bluestag there in our state of Washington,
Speaker 9: so it screws up our whole plans. We gotta go
Speaker 9: film that. I'm gonna run camera. He's gonna call. We
Speaker 9: go get that one out of the way. She kills
Speaker 9: a great bull. On September fourteenth, when me and Charlie, like,
Speaker 9: our plan was to still go to Idaho. That was
Speaker 9: back in the good days when you could buy a
Speaker 9: tag over the counter. We go home because we had
Speaker 9: all of September off, wash our clothes, and then we
Speaker 9: take off Rida home and this is really twenty fourteen,
Speaker 9: my first time really hunting out of state for ELK.
Speaker 9: You know, I'd hunt a deer in Montana and stuff,
Speaker 9: but this is like my first on my own, no
Speaker 9: dad uncles around, I'm gonna go go out of state.
Speaker 9: So we leaving the brand new truck the night before
Speaker 9: and so we get to nowhere, Idaho at three am
Speaker 9: in the morning, just waiting for the gas station to
Speaker 9: open up.
Speaker 3: We're gonna buy one tag.
Speaker 9: We're gonna be real thrifty, buy one tag in case
Speaker 9: we you know, don't need the other one. And so
Speaker 9: we go up look at the spot we intended to
Speaker 9: go a few elk tracks. Nothing we get we get
Speaker 9: up there and hunt. So it's about two o'clock we're
Speaker 9: coming out. I remember, like vividly, he's chewing on a
Speaker 9: purple bag of skittles, and I bugle out the window
Speaker 9: like this is how this is how like exhausted I am.
Speaker 9: We just did like five miles in, five miles out,
Speaker 9: no elk a little bit like maybe our spot we
Speaker 9: pick sucks. Begle out the window and I'm like, will
Speaker 9: you stop chewing on your damn skittles. I just heard
Speaker 9: a bugle and he didn't believe me. So he's over there,
Speaker 9: still rattling the bag, and I'm like, Charlie, stop with
Speaker 9: the skittles.
Speaker 3: I said, I want to hear this bull. Be there't
Speaker 3: a bull out there.
Speaker 9: So we get out and listen again, and there's a
Speaker 9: bull answers and it's like, well, it's getting pretty late.
Speaker 9: It's like kind of a one track road. Let's fly
Speaker 9: up here. We have a fourler trailer on the back
Speaker 9: on a one track road. Let's go cut it and
Speaker 9: then we'll get on the fourll or drive back to
Speaker 9: this point and drop in.
Speaker 3: Successfully.
Speaker 9: Fortunately, my first day in Idaho, Like kill a bull
Speaker 9: and then we're kind of yet the bull, doub bull
Speaker 9: cut the distance, no pun intended cut the distance, got
Speaker 9: him killed. And I'm like, first thing, You're like, nobody's ever,
Speaker 9: Like we did nothing wrong, but this looks real fishy,
Speaker 9: Like we bought the tag three o'clock this morning.
Speaker 3: We got a bull in the truck this night.
Speaker 9: Like it's just not exactly but everything was legit, and uh,
Speaker 9: get it to the truck and uh like it's hot,
Speaker 9: it's real hot. We got to get to a cooler,
Speaker 9: so we drive to a town later and then we
Speaker 9: go buy his tag the next day. Very fortunate get
Speaker 9: into bulls that morning. Can't make it work that evening
Speaker 9: he kills his bull well a little bit of a
Speaker 9: tough shot. We watched it through our binocular state on
Speaker 9: its feet, so we had to go camp in the truck.
Speaker 9: At this point, I had kept my head in the truck.
Speaker 9: The guy the cooler didn't want us to keep the head,
Speaker 9: and I'm like, well, I'm just gonna do a euro
Speaker 9: so I'll skin it out. But like we were just
Speaker 9: tossing it in the brush. And I'm always like man
Speaker 9: predators around here, like it's a little iffy, it's warm,
Speaker 9: it's gonna get stinky. But we're we're making it work.
Speaker 9: So we're we got to sleep in the truck. Now,
Speaker 9: we throw it off and pack it. We go find
Speaker 9: his bowl next morning, get it all broken down, get
Speaker 9: it out. So now normally we would just like bomb home,
Speaker 9: but my meat's in a cooler. I can't get to
Speaker 9: cause it's five o'clock at night. So I'm like, well,
Speaker 9: what are we gonna do? Like he's like, oh my,
Speaker 9: my childhood cousin I grew up, who lives up here
Speaker 9: at the ski resort. We're gonna go. I'm gonna give
Speaker 9: her a call, calls her up. She's like, yeah, come
Speaker 9: on over, blah blah blah. My, you know, the the
Speaker 9: in laws are over and come hang out. You guys
Speaker 9: can shower up. So we I mean, it's nice. You know,
Speaker 9: you've been living like dirt bags for the last last
Speaker 9: three days, all sweaty, so you get to go take
Speaker 9: a shower. We drink, you know, have a few drinks,
Speaker 9: eat some pizza, and just kind of refresh.
Speaker 3: But there were some bad decisions made along the way.
Speaker 9: You know, Normally people would say like, why is your
Speaker 9: meat in the back of your truck? Why are the
Speaker 9: heads in the back of the truck. Charlie's attacks a
Speaker 9: drymas so he wanted to save his cape. We were
Speaker 9: able to save it and get it out, and you know,
Speaker 9: you're always like, well, there's houses everywhere. You're in a
Speaker 9: ski resort, like we should be fine. So we get
Speaker 9: my bedroom, you know, a bonus room kind of over
Speaker 9: the top of the garage which directs directly overlooks the trucks,
Speaker 9: and Charlie's down the hallway and so it's a I
Speaker 9: don't know somewhere in the middle of two am, and
Speaker 9: Charlie comes sprinting into my room like wakes me up
Speaker 9: out of a like middle sum's.
Speaker 3: In your truck? I'm like, how did you hear that?
Speaker 9: Way down the hall But so we kind of peek
Speaker 9: out my blinds and you can see something like in
Speaker 9: some some sort of light out there, you can see
Speaker 9: that there's a bear in the back of my truck.
Speaker 9: And in the short five seconds, like I don't know
Speaker 9: how it'llked out, but you could see that he's also
Speaker 9: trying to get on your bumper and he's coming up
Speaker 9: like the side of the tire and like trying to
Speaker 9: get Charlie's cape out right at this point, so.
Speaker 6: Me, good, think you got that lift?
Speaker 9: Yeah, so I know he's working hard, right and you
Speaker 9: can you can hear horns banging and this is my
Speaker 9: brand nude truck and all right, we gotta get down
Speaker 9: there quick. Well I had to wherewithal to put my
Speaker 9: pants on. Charlie is in a hurry. So Charlie flies
Speaker 9: down to the garage. Well, my pistols and like, we're
Speaker 9: not too worried, but he was like, there's a bear
Speaker 9: and once he's decided he wants to eat, Like who
Speaker 9: knows what we're dealing with. So we get down to
Speaker 9: the garage and it's this point I realized Charlie is
Speaker 9: still in his whitey tidies and I have to paint
Speaker 9: the picture of Charlie for you, and I paint it
Speaker 9: with a white brush because he is an Italian ger
Speaker 9: or no, an Irish ginger. He's about five foot seven
Speaker 9: pere redhead and he's in tidy whities, but you really
Speaker 9: can't tell where the lion's at. So it's at that
Speaker 9: point where we turn the garage light on and I'm like, well,
Speaker 9: you didn't evident'ly hit your cousin and her family.
Speaker 3: I'm like, why at least put my pants on him?
Speaker 3: You get down there.
Speaker 9: And so we're sitting in the garage kind of trying
Speaker 9: to peek out the glass line of windows, like is
Speaker 9: he still in there?
Speaker 3: Yeah? And then you could just hear him just beating
Speaker 3: the piss out of my truck. So what do we do?
Speaker 9: And these people live on the ski resort, well, skis
Speaker 9: and ski poles are available, So before I could like
Speaker 9: think of any good sense, Charlie has a ski pole
Speaker 9: in his hand and is running out the side door
Speaker 9: at the bear with his ski pole like a joust.
Speaker 3: Yeah he was.
Speaker 9: I don't know if he's braver than I am or
Speaker 9: just less, like it doesn't take the time to put
Speaker 9: all of the things together. But I'm like, I just
Speaker 9: don't know. He's got meat, he's got hide, He's already
Speaker 9: on it. And Charlie runs at this bear and gets
Speaker 9: about two feet from its butt with a with a
Speaker 9: ski pole before it decides to take off. And then
Speaker 9: instead of I mean he didn't have any way to
Speaker 9: tell where it was gonna go, it runs up a
Speaker 9: dang tree ten feet away from my truck. Like that
Speaker 9: was okay, he's not in my truck anymore, but we're
Speaker 9: not gonna be able to go back to sleep now
Speaker 9: until we go back in. I'm at this time, everybody
Speaker 9: else is awake and Charlie's now just in his underwear
Speaker 9: talking to everybody. So we kind of evaluate the situation
Speaker 9: and sure is I mean five minutes later, that bear's
Speaker 9: coming back down the tree and he doesn't run away,
Speaker 9: he goes back for the truck, and so we have
Speaker 9: to basically load up and leave at two am, get
Speaker 9: out of that country. Go down well, evidently when you
Speaker 9: park with elkheads in the back at a gas station.
Speaker 9: So we had sheriff stop us at three point thirty,
Speaker 9: woke us up, tapped on our window like what's going on.
Speaker 9: At five o'clock, a different game warden pulls in, asks
Speaker 9: us what's going on, and it's just starting to get daylight.
Speaker 9: And it was at that point when the game warden
Speaker 9: tapped on the window with his flashlight that I was
Speaker 9: able to evaluate the damage. Yeah, I had my brand
Speaker 9: new truck had bear scratches down all three corners of
Speaker 9: the truck bed.
Speaker 3: It is. It was cool, that's like a sticker.
Speaker 9: The punchline that story was just Charlie like I could
Speaker 9: never remember, like he was.
Speaker 3: I think he was more.
Speaker 9: Interested in protecting his cape than he was protecting my truck.
Speaker 9: But he just ran around the corner ski pole in hand,
Speaker 9: was gonna joust that bear. And yeah, I've had bad
Speaker 9: luck with bears. Two years ago, we were in Colorado,
Speaker 9: frozen cold. I lay a four x four post across
Speaker 9: the bed brails right from side to side and just
Speaker 9: try to get my wife's meal deer up off of
Speaker 9: and that bear decided he was going to lift the
Speaker 9: entire deer hanging on the post out in it like
Speaker 9: wrapped the side of my truck and smashed that four
Speaker 9: by four post, scratched it. Bear scratches all over my
Speaker 9: brand new pickup truck on that that time. But yeah,
Speaker 9: I've had I'm not keeping meat in the back of
Speaker 9: my truck anymore. You have a topper, now I do
Speaker 9: have a ton but that I had a topper. Then
Speaker 9: I had the tunnel cover, but I rolled it up
Speaker 9: so that I can kind of seem I hang the meat.
Speaker 2: I bet your insurance guy's like, come on, yeah, another bear.
Speaker 3: Listen the first time the whole bear thing. Yeah, the
Speaker 3: first time I was going to roll it. Second some
Speaker 3: of them up buying it.
Speaker 9: We followed that second bear down to the creek where
Speaker 9: you'd try. We could see the drag marks in the snow,
Speaker 9: and that bear was just I thought it was late
Speaker 9: in November or middle of November, cold as heck, like
Speaker 9: that bear be gone. He was down there by a
Speaker 9: big old oak tree or cottonwood or something whatever Colorado
Speaker 9: grows along the rivers, and I think he was just
Speaker 9: sitting there picking at some of the front quarters. Fortunately
Speaker 9: he didn't touch the back quarters or the backstrap, but yeah,
Speaker 9: he was just down there munch and we scared him
Speaker 9: off and got the meat back, and oh did Yeah
Speaker 9: that's cool.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I got.
Speaker 2: A topper on my truck. Yeah, you know, it's like
Speaker 2: a hunter thing, you know. Apparently for sure we got
Speaker 2: told or comment on a video. Somebody's like, people can
Speaker 2: tell you're from out of state because you got a topper.
Speaker 2: I'm like, you get you instators, get your stuff wet.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we like our stuff. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So Tyler not traveled the country hunting deers kind of
Speaker 2: what we do. You know, you heard historical bombs. He
Speaker 2: has the topper, had toppers on both of those trucks.
Speaker 2: You know, you can sleep in the back of it,
Speaker 2: like he was saying. You know, and I in particularly
Speaker 2: got the six and a half foot bed because of that,
Speaker 2: you know, and make sure you can sleep back there.
Speaker 2: The five and a half foot bed doesn't really work
Speaker 2: for me very good. Yeah, you definitely. Yeah, So I
Speaker 2: got a it's not an old Drugs twenty sixteen a
Speaker 2: half ton, you know, four world drive. But it's like
Speaker 2: you gotta be comfortable for the road, you know what
Speaker 2: I mean, Like, uh, we don't do the lift thing,
Speaker 2: not the big tires, but just like some good smooth
Speaker 2: all terrains, you know. And and we we just like
Speaker 2: spend a ton of time trucks scouting. It's like a
Speaker 2: thing we do. So you drive, you know, you go
Speaker 2: to said state and you just drive around, get a
Speaker 2: feel for the land. Elk is a lot like that, right,
Speaker 2: Like you're bugling out the window, you know, it's cool,
Speaker 2: so like.
Speaker 4: You're just one out the window, like Jason, did I.
Speaker 2: Have not you know, I just might have to, you know,
Speaker 2: be an experiment.
Speaker 5: He usually takes his have Alina call and it's right
Speaker 5: and it gets him to stop out.
Speaker 2: You do a quite loud call to make an animal.
Speaker 1: Like should have Oh yeah, you were saying about this sound.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he has to sound again.
Speaker 11: Well, it's very loud.
Speaker 3: It's very loud.
Speaker 2: Should a back up from the mic and do the thing?
Speaker 3: I want to hear this? So this is your universal
Speaker 3: animal stop? Yeah?
Speaker 4: This yeah, this, this, this makes sense in the story
Speaker 4: right now because he does this from his truck like
Speaker 4: a deer jumps across the road, running across the field.
Speaker 4: Roll down the window and.
Speaker 2: And you make the noise. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's why
Speaker 2: it's I got this from the old days as being
Speaker 2: a government trapper, like you got to stop the coyote
Speaker 2: and shoot it. So you got to figure out the
Speaker 2: sound that makes things stop.
Speaker 3: So he's gearing up for the sound I didn't do right.
Speaker 2: Hold on, I can't do it.
Speaker 3: I don't know if have I lost my call.
Speaker 2: Once more?
Speaker 3: Heard it first, I believe somewhere.
Speaker 2: I don't know if I can do it.
Speaker 4: Try it again?
Speaker 2: You got it?
Speaker 3: Come on? What it?
Speaker 4: Sometimes when people put you on the spot, barred out.
Speaker 5: Literally, you know how when a grenade goes off in
Speaker 5: a war movie and everything goes like, oh, put you.
Speaker 11: He did that one time.
Speaker 5: We're looking at have Alena's in the HeLa actually, and
Speaker 5: he did that to the back of my head and
Speaker 5: that happened.
Speaker 11: I had the high pitched grenade sound.
Speaker 2: It was like, try, but it just might be an
Speaker 2: outdoors thing. You know. There's thing.
Speaker 11: Diaphragm.
Speaker 2: I can't do it, guys, I can't do it. It
Speaker 2: doesn't it doesn't work in uh.
Speaker 11: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Anyways, there's nothing to do with my story. So sorry, but.
Speaker 3: The story.
Speaker 2: It doesn't roll the story at all, but it may.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I tend to use it.
Speaker 2: Did you hear it in Arkansas?
Speaker 6: I do it?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so it is impressive.
Speaker 3: Did he stop an animal with the universal animal stop call?
Speaker 7: Uh?
Speaker 4: I think we were talking about the universal animal stop call,
Speaker 4: and I said, let me do it, you know, show
Speaker 4: it to me, and he did it.
Speaker 3: It will yeah.
Speaker 2: So anyways, we're driving around trucks out and doing the thing,
Speaker 2: and I'm a public land deer hunter. I always have men.
Speaker 2: Tyler kills a awesome buck. This is all on film.
Speaker 2: We produced a series called buck Truck that's on meat Eater,
Speaker 2: you know, And so he killed an awesome dear early
Speaker 2: and that kind of puts me in a pickle because
Speaker 2: I'm like, my buddy's waiting on me to kill.
Speaker 11: A deer the first of November.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you killed a deer on November one, and it's
Speaker 2: the best week of the year, and you're like sitting
Speaker 2: around being the best buddy ever camp chef, you know,
Speaker 2: like just making breakfast and stuff, and I'm just struggling
Speaker 2: so bad. And we decide, all right, we cannot find
Speaker 2: a deer on public land. We're gonna get on the phones.
Speaker 2: Get on the phones, do some calling. Tyler somehow, some
Speaker 2: way gets a hold of this guy, remembers this guy's
Speaker 2: dad's name from like six years ago when he talked
Speaker 2: to him and like had that personal connection thing, and
Speaker 2: gets us permission to go hunt. Like it four thousand
Speaker 2: acre place, except there's no trees on the property. It
Speaker 2: is like rolling hills nothing. So we drive the truck
Speaker 2: out there. We're driving through. You got to go through
Speaker 2: like another property, gonna easement.
Speaker 3: Go out.
Speaker 2: We scout the place. Looks great, see a giant buck run,
Speaker 2: get glass on that thing, and decide, Okay, tomorrow morning's
Speaker 2: the push. We're gonna go out there and we're gonna
Speaker 2: find a deer to shoot like I'm gonna get it done. Well,
Speaker 2: just so happens that, I don't know. Three days before this, Uh,
Speaker 2: one of the other guys that travels with us got
Speaker 2: sick in the back of my truck. And uh, he's
Speaker 2: a young lad, and I guess he doesn't have as
Speaker 2: much experience with the you know, feeling it coming on,
Speaker 2: so he has a hard time getting the window down
Speaker 2: in time. So the sickness then perforates throughout the vehicle.
Speaker 7: Of course, look, he puked back, he up chucked the
Speaker 7: back of the truck, hits the back of the hits
Speaker 7: the back of the headrest, you know, and all down
Speaker 7: the side. Ye doesn't have the wherewithal to clean it
Speaker 7: up off the truck, so I have to do all that.
Speaker 2: And then he's gonna be mad that I'm telling that part,
Speaker 2: but whatever. And so we're out scouting this bad to
Speaker 2: the bone property, like just the private land thing. Being
Speaker 2: able to drive around a property is not a thing
Speaker 2: I'm used to, right, And so I get a rumble
Speaker 2: down deep while we're out scouting, like this ain't good.
Speaker 2: I have to go find a bush and I'm like, okay,
Speaker 2: well that's over. Well, no, for the next ten hours.
Speaker 2: I have the most violent sickness that I've probably ever
Speaker 2: had in my life. And I'm thinking, like, this is
Speaker 2: the baddest opportunity I've ever had at hunting, whitetail, deer,
Speaker 2: private ground, Giant Bucks, some of the best dates. And
Speaker 2: I'm sick and I just can't do anything right. I
Speaker 2: can't even get out of bed, which is not like
Speaker 2: a me thing to do. I'm a high energy guy.
Speaker 2: And so about like three point thirty, I finally get
Speaker 2: everything worked out or something I don't know, and I
Speaker 2: get an hour of sleep, get up the next morning,
Speaker 2: go up, make coffee, and I'm like, huh, all right,
Speaker 2: I can do this. Tyler actually woke Tyler up and
Speaker 2: he could not believe that I was moving. It was
Speaker 2: a weird thing. And go out to that property. Run
Speaker 2: a little bit late. Tyler drops me off. He's gonna
Speaker 2: go do some more scouting for me while I am
Speaker 2: gonna go on a hunt at least try, you know,
Speaker 2: like you got to give it a go. It's like
Speaker 2: November fifth, It's the the best day of the year,
Speaker 2: probably one of the best. It's a cold front, and uh,
Speaker 2: go out just kind of like have a beautiful morning sunrise.
Speaker 2: You know, it's just frosty. We're on the planes glass
Speaker 2: and it's just it's just enjoyable. I'm just thankful to
Speaker 2: be there. And all of a sudden, I see a
Speaker 2: giant buck at like five hundred yards and thinking, well,
Speaker 2: I don't know if I can do anything about this,
Speaker 2: but these deer are amped up. I'm gonna rattle with
Speaker 2: this deer, and uh, I get my antlers, and just
Speaker 2: if you've a hundred whitetails, you know that, like sometimes
Speaker 2: the things you do with antlers actually isn't realistic, but
Speaker 2: you're playing on their instincts, right, So I'm just cracking
Speaker 2: these things as hard as I can. It's five hundred
Speaker 2: yards away, right, and I this thing isn't gonna hear me.
Speaker 2: Sure enough, whips his head up and looks, and this
Speaker 2: thing just makes a bee line straight to He's trying
Speaker 2: to get down wind of us, five hundred yards away.
Speaker 2: I run down the hill, sickness and all about to
Speaker 2: pass out, and uh get to where I'm gonna be
Speaker 2: able to make a shot on this deer, and long
Speaker 2: story short, I uh get an opportunity at thirty two
Speaker 2: yards and shoot this deer. It's the biggest deer of
Speaker 2: my life. And I'm just recovered after being like death sick,
Speaker 2: and it's just one of those moments where we've all
Speaker 2: had them, you know, out in the outdoors, where you
Speaker 2: just kind of in awe of just the situation. It's
Speaker 2: it's a bigger thing than what you are, you know,
Speaker 2: and you you have to like kind of step back
Speaker 2: and be like, Okay, I didn't really accomplish this. This
Speaker 2: just happened to me, and I was blessed to be
Speaker 2: a part.
Speaker 3: You were the recipe.
Speaker 2: That's exactly right, man. And so I'm so pumped about
Speaker 2: all this. Right, well, Tyler's out scouting and I want
Speaker 2: to share this with my best bud. Well ends up,
Speaker 2: he gets a flat tire in the truck while while
Speaker 2: I'm waiting on him to get there, and it's like
Speaker 2: an hour and a half before and I'm just like
Speaker 2: sitting out on the planes, just out here with this deer,
Speaker 2: you know, just hanging out. And we get to back
Speaker 2: the truck up, put the deer in the back of
Speaker 2: the truck and just do the thing as opposed to
Speaker 2: like what we're used to, you know, with just packing
Speaker 2: stuff out and you know, cutting it up or whatever.
Speaker 2: Just kind of a neat different experience to be able
Speaker 2: to kind of like what that pictures showed that you showed.
Speaker 2: You know, it's of like what people have been doing
Speaker 2: for a long time, loading de arup in the back
Speaker 2: of the truck.
Speaker 11: Yep. I could work for NASCAR. By the way, changed
Speaker 11: a lot of tires. I've changed a.
Speaker 5: Lot of tires turning around the country with trailers and stuff.
Speaker 11: We're buying the cheapest tires we could we could find.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, keep the used time places.
Speaker 11: Yep.
Speaker 2: But yeah, that's my truck story.
Speaker 3: Excellent nks. Who's next, I'll go dirt hit them. So.
Speaker 8: I don't know about you guys, but in my twenties
Speaker 8: I had a lot of really good opportunity to learn
Speaker 8: life lessons.
Speaker 2: And I continue to do that.
Speaker 8: But in my twenties it seemed like they're really a
Speaker 8: lot of times where I, you know, maybe made the
Speaker 8: wrong choice. So, uh, picture this North Idaho. It's nineteen
Speaker 8: ninety seven, and my best friend and my brother in law.
Speaker 8: We grew up hunting together and he married my wife's sister,
Speaker 8: and so we're brother in laws. And it's February and
Speaker 8: on back up, your best friend married my wife's sid.
Speaker 4: They married sisters.
Speaker 2: Wow, so we're.
Speaker 8: Brother in law.
Speaker 3: She told me that before, and I was equally surprised.
Speaker 3: Wait a minute, that's great.
Speaker 8: So yeah, so we we went out to our old
Speaker 8: Elk Hunton's spot right out of town in North Idaho
Speaker 8: in the winter time and especially in February. So by
Speaker 8: this time, we've had quite a bit of snow on
Speaker 8: the ground and it's in its thawed and we've got
Speaker 8: more snow and then it's it's frozen, and it's been
Speaker 8: in the below zero you know, probably five ten blow
Speaker 8: zero at this point. Beautiful crystal clear days, but it's
Speaker 8: ice cold out and the snow has a crust like
Speaker 8: you can't believe. I mean, you can walk around on
Speaker 8: without falling through. Well, we're out on this old road
Speaker 8: and he has a quarter Ton pickup if you will.
Speaker 8: It's a compact quarter Ton pickup and we're driving on
Speaker 8: top of the snow and it's beautiful sun. It's yes, yeah,
Speaker 8: and it's like a you know, standard cab, little light
Speaker 8: truck and piece of junk. You know, this is so.
Speaker 3: Hard to picture, the floating on the floating on the
Speaker 3: crust on snow.
Speaker 8: Yeah no, no, no factory and they were worn out
Speaker 8: as good. There's a coar toime, yeah yeah. And I'm
Speaker 8: looking out the window and the sun is starting to shine.
Speaker 8: It's about seven o'clock in the morning. And I tell
Speaker 8: I look over her handy and I said, you know,
Speaker 8: you might want to And about that time it fell
Speaker 8: through the snow.
Speaker 3: I'm like, oh no.
Speaker 8: So we get out. And of course the young men
Speaker 8: we were we weren't prepared. We didn't have a shovel,
Speaker 8: we didn't have a come along, we didn't have anything.
Speaker 8: There was a handyman jack in the back of the truck,
Speaker 8: so handyman Jack's. I don't know if you're familiar with those,
Speaker 8: but they're really good for a lot of things, you know,
Speaker 8: jacking up your truck. I mean, you can put chains
Speaker 8: on them and use them for like a come along.
Speaker 8: You can, uh, but they're dangerous. You gotta be careful
Speaker 8: because if you're not, if you don't have a real
Speaker 8: good grip on that handle, it'll it'll come loose and
Speaker 8: whack you in the chin and then go and ratchet
Speaker 8: back down and let the truck down. Widow Maker, I've
Speaker 8: got to if I didn't have my beard. You'd see
Speaker 8: a scar on my chin from another time.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 8: But anyhow, so we get and we're facing the wrong way.
Speaker 8: We're faced away from where we want to be. So
Speaker 8: we get the old handyman jack and jack it up
Speaker 8: and then push it off, and we're going to try
Speaker 8: to turn this truck around so we can maybe get.
Speaker 1: By jacking it and pushing it over. Yeah, yep, so
Speaker 1: ten inches over yep.
Speaker 8: An hour later we got it turned around.
Speaker 11: Wow.
Speaker 8: And mind you, we're not prepared. We don't have what
Speaker 8: we're in tennis shoes. You know, this is usually always
Speaker 8: if I get stuck or have some bad decision made
Speaker 8: in a truck, it's always wearing tennis shoes or loafers
Speaker 8: or something. I'm not prepared. So we get this thing
Speaker 8: turned around and we're just not going to get out.
Speaker 8: So we're in the middle of this old logging road.
Speaker 8: There's probably three feet of snow there, and I'm like, well,
Speaker 8: we better walk back to town. So it's six miles
Speaker 8: back to town. We walked back to town. It's the
Speaker 8: end of the day. It's like, all right, tomorrow we're
Speaker 8: gonna get reinforcements. We're gonna come out. We're gonna get
Speaker 8: this truck. So my dad's got this old wood truck.
Speaker 8: It's like a nineteen fifty eight that he's kind of
Speaker 8: that he's had refurbished and he cuts a lot of
Speaker 8: firewood with. It's got a winch, it's got positive traction
Speaker 8: rear in. This thing's a bad mambajamba. So we drive
Speaker 8: back out there the next day. But it's an automatic
Speaker 8: and we're going up up this little hill and the
Speaker 8: snow is deep and the truck's working hard, and I'm like, man,
Speaker 8: something's getting hot. Well I get out and that truck
Speaker 8: is just bleeding automatic transmission fluid underneath. It over overheated,
Speaker 8: the transmission boiled, all the automatic transmission fluid out, and
Speaker 8: now we got to walk back not six miles. We
Speaker 8: have another We have another truck parked back on the
Speaker 8: on the gravel where it's plowed. So we walk back,
Speaker 8: getting the other truck, drive to town. And this is
Speaker 8: a small town of five hundred pe right, So a
Speaker 8: local convenience store. They've got like four quartz of automatic
Speaker 8: transmission from ATF. So we buy everything they got, take
Speaker 8: it back out there, pour it in there, and then
Speaker 8: get the old truck out of there. Well, we got
Speaker 8: to do something else. So the next day, my wife's uncle.
Speaker 8: He's got the ultimate hunting rig. You know, it's got
Speaker 8: a bit of a lift. Kid's got big tall mud tires,
Speaker 8: it's got a winch. It's like, oh yeah, this thing'll
Speaker 8: get up there. It's got posic, it's got a rear
Speaker 8: locker in that. This thing's gonna get up there and
Speaker 8: get this truck out. So we get up there and
Speaker 8: we make it past where my dad's truck boiled over. Well,
Speaker 8: he had an automatic transmission too, and it's boiled over
Speaker 8: as well. You're just like he was working so hard
Speaker 8: it just overheated the transmission. So well, we bought all
Speaker 8: the atf in town the day before, so we'd walk
Speaker 8: back to the other truck, drive all the way to
Speaker 8: the next town over that have six hundred people in
Speaker 8: it by a little more at okay, drive back out there,
Speaker 8: rescue that thing, and he's like, yeah, you're on your own, guys,
Speaker 8: I'm out of here. So well, I grew up my
Speaker 8: first car or my first vehicle, I can't It was
Speaker 8: a a nineteen sixty nine four wheel drive, so it
Speaker 8: was basically kind of a kind of an antique almost,
Speaker 8: And then this thing is a brute, but it's not
Speaker 8: the most you know, roadworthy machine. Right, you don't run
Speaker 8: that gray, but man, that thing will wheel. But I
Speaker 8: didn't really want to take it up there because who
Speaker 8: knows it may breakdown to So I get this old
Speaker 8: machine out there. We start going up there. I go
Speaker 8: right past where everybody else went, and it's just going
Speaker 8: great through the snow, like like nothing, and it's just
Speaker 8: cutting and it's got real skinny mud tires on it.
Speaker 8: It's just digging and it's going. And we get to
Speaker 8: the we get almost to Randy's truck, the freaking gas
Speaker 8: pedal breaks off.
Speaker 3: It breaks off on the floor.
Speaker 8: I'm what the hell, So now what do we do? Well?
Speaker 8: This thing had kind of like a manual cruise control
Speaker 8: up on the dash. You have this knob you pull,
Speaker 8: and this little knob has a little cable that reaches
Speaker 8: in to the carburetor and will operate the throttle. So
Speaker 8: kind of like an old school huh h, old school.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 8: So I'm like, and I'd never used it, but I
Speaker 8: knew what it was. I'm like, man, I got to
Speaker 8: get this thing working. So I jerked on that thing
Speaker 8: and finally got it moving to where I read the
Speaker 8: motor up enough where we could get that thing kind
Speaker 8: of turned around and we got out of there. I said,
Speaker 8: I don't know, Randy, I don't know what you're gonna do.
Speaker 8: So we had to leave that thing literally for a month.
Speaker 8: We had to leave it for a month in the wood,
Speaker 8: and I said, you know, maybe we can get it
Speaker 8: off the road. At least we had some shovels, so
Speaker 8: we dug a trench to where we could get it
Speaker 8: off throw jumped it up on the on the bank
Speaker 8: next to the road out of the way, because who knows,
Speaker 8: a road grader may come through, or people on snowmobiles,
Speaker 8: or you know, just hooligans in general, they may you know,
Speaker 8: vane it. It's kind of a piece of junk truck anyway.
Speaker 8: But anyway, we had to leave that thing for a
Speaker 8: month and UH in March we went back and UH
Speaker 8: was able to drive it most of the way out.
Speaker 8: We had to shovel a little bit in a couple
Speaker 8: of places, but we're able to get it out.
Speaker 3: But a lot of casualties.
Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, that was like, that's that's my worst. I
Speaker 8: think my worst trucks do. Oh no, no, we were
Speaker 8: both poorous could be. You know, we're dumb kids in
Speaker 8: our twenties. We didn't have any money to pay you know. Fortunately,
Speaker 8: you know the old timers, they had money.
Speaker 2: To pay for stuff.
Speaker 3: So that's good.
Speaker 8: It was good. But yeah, life lessons, you know, it
Speaker 8: seems like I've I keep learning my Even last fall,
Speaker 8: my wife and I were out there hunting and we
Speaker 8: were driving along like I'm gonna pull into this landing
Speaker 8: here with my pickup in the snow and and and
Speaker 8: do some glass. And I pulled over there. It was
Speaker 8: pretty deep, you know, about a foot of snow. Well
Speaker 8: I couldn't tell because it drifted, but the landing had
Speaker 8: kind of sloped. As soon as I pulled over there,
Speaker 8: I started sliding over towards this little cliff and have
Speaker 8: to stop. So I'm prepared. I'm prepared now because you
Speaker 8: know I'm forty nine years old.
Speaker 3: Were prepared by your twenties, man.
Speaker 8: That's right. So I've got to come along. And I
Speaker 8: got lots of cable and chains, you name it. So
Speaker 8: I sat there for an hour and demonstrate and showed
Speaker 8: to my wife out how prepared I was, and how
Speaker 8: you you know, recover a vehicle with a come along
Speaker 8: and lots of chains, and about an hour of that
Speaker 8: moving that come along and getting my truck out inch
Speaker 8: by inch, But we made it out, didn't have to walk.
Speaker 3: And didn't nothing to drive by transmission fluid.
Speaker 8: No, no transmission fluid perfect. Yeah, and I shot a
Speaker 8: buck about an hour later. No man, Yeah, timey, hell
Speaker 8: of the day.
Speaker 3: It was.
Speaker 2: My turn, Clay, Yeah, bring the inferno.
Speaker 4: This is our number seven story.
Speaker 3: Well, I don't want to give it a seven? Did
Speaker 3: I say that earlier? You did? I'm not in the story.
Speaker 1: So long ago, way back in history, they introduced a
Speaker 1: fish called a rainbow smelt into the Great Lakes and
Speaker 1: you go smelt dipping after dark. So when you're talking
Speaker 1: about driving real tired, that was a trademark of smelt dipping.
Speaker 1: And thinking about my favorite truck story, which now I'm
Speaker 1: not even in, I called my buddy from high school
Speaker 1: who I'm still friends with, Craig Christensen, today, to say, hey,
Speaker 1: remember that story about your truck smelt dipping, and he said,
Speaker 1: we wasn't smell dipping. I'm like, oh, I've been telling
Speaker 1: that story wrong for a long time. So he retells
Speaker 1: me the story. The first part of the story is
Speaker 1: this Craig wrestled in our high school wrestling team.
Speaker 3: Okay, he.
Speaker 1: Had a pair of shoes that he wrestled in all
Speaker 1: through his high school wrestling career, and he got up
Speaker 1: to where he was gonna. He got up to where
Speaker 1: he said, when I get my when I win my
Speaker 1: one hundredth match, I'm going to retire my wrestling shoes. Okay,
Speaker 1: red wrestling shoes. He goes on to have a thirty
Speaker 1: six wrestling match winning streak and hits his one hundredth
Speaker 1: win on his thirty sixth his one hundredth career win
Speaker 1: high school career win. He was good on his thirty
Speaker 1: sixth match in a row that he won, so his
Speaker 1: hundredth win was his thirty sixth consecutive win.
Speaker 6: I imagine he was a state champion.
Speaker 3: He had all that kind of stuff going on.
Speaker 1: So he then says he's going to retire his shoes,
Speaker 1: and he borrows a pair of shoes from another buddy
Speaker 1: of ours, John Merchant, puts on John Merchant's wrestling shoes
Speaker 1: and goes out and gets pinned by a guy who
Speaker 1: for that who had a thirteen loss eleven win record
Speaker 1: declares these shoes to be cursed.
Speaker 11: What does the wrestling shoe look like? I've never very.
Speaker 6: Minimalist converse like boxing shoes like they're kind of yeah, okay, so.
Speaker 3: Yeah, minimalist, like a minimalist, a little high topper ankle support.
Speaker 3: So hold that in the back of your head. That
Speaker 3: little wrestling shoe deal.
Speaker 1: Craig's he he had an eighty four three quarter ton
Speaker 1: truck and his dad had a much newer half ton truck.
Speaker 1: But Craig's ice shanny won't fit in Craig's dad's truck.
Speaker 3: Dude, I love this story already. Wrestling It's very common, man.
Speaker 11: I have no clue what's going on here.
Speaker 3: It's listen.
Speaker 1: Craig is now so that that Hunters match when the
Speaker 1: wrestling shoes were in he he's a senior in high school.
Speaker 1: He's now at Skiing Community College. I went there, Merchant
Speaker 1: went there, Craig went there, everyone went to the Skiing
Speaker 1: Community College. He's at with Skiing Community College and his
Speaker 1: dad wants to go ice fishing, and his dad goes
Speaker 1: ice fishing. It's Craig's dad, Craig's grandfather and Craig's wrestling
Speaker 1: coach want to go ice fishing, but they can't fit
Speaker 1: the shanny in.
Speaker 3: Craig's dad's truck. So they take Craig's truck. And there's a.
Speaker 1: Real heinous corner as you're approaching White Lake where we
Speaker 1: grew up, and it's icy on the way to ice fish,
Speaker 1: and they blast off the corner off into the woods
Speaker 1: and hit the guy that just blasted off.
Speaker 3: The road prior to that.
Speaker 8: Oh man, gosh.
Speaker 1: Somehow when they hit, Craig's truck is racing and won't
Speaker 1: shut off.
Speaker 3: So his dad, Craig I even pressed him on this.
Speaker 3: He doesn't understand.
Speaker 1: Why or what, but his dad's idea is to pop
Speaker 1: the hood and cut the battery cable.
Speaker 3: Not unhook it cuts the battery cable.
Speaker 1: Okay, I mean it's probably quicker than getting out of
Speaker 1: Criss Ranch because he desperately wants to get the truck
Speaker 1: turned off. Now they a week later fixed, the truck appears.
Speaker 1: The truck appears to be fixed. Craig drives the truck
Speaker 1: to the Skidon Community College and parks truck under an
Speaker 1: oak tree. Okay, does his classes and everything, and at
Speaker 1: the end of school comes out and goes to start
Speaker 1: the truck and turns it and just clicks like a
Speaker 1: dead battery. He thinks, whatever, I don't know, click dead
Speaker 1: battery something or another. He's got all his stuff and
Speaker 1: in another friend is going to drive him home. He
Speaker 1: happens to have John merchants losing wrestling shoes, okay, the
Speaker 1: pair he lost in the year prior. He has those
Speaker 1: wrestling shoes and he also has a dual cassette tape
Speaker 1: boombox belonging to John Merchant. Places the cursed wrestling shoes
Speaker 1: in the truck with the boombox, a box of twenty
Speaker 1: two AMMO, a box of twenty gage shotgun shells, and
Speaker 1: half of his clothes. Goes about his evening. They go out,
Speaker 1: they go to some bars and whatnot. Craig gets home
Speaker 1: to his mom's house late at night and the phone
Speaker 1: is just ringing up a storm at night. He never
Speaker 1: picks it up. Later realizes that was the fire department.
Speaker 1: He gets a ride to school and still unbeknownst to him,
Speaker 1: unbeknownst to him until later, his truck has melted into
Speaker 1: the ground. Everything in the truck is gone. He said,
Speaker 1: the steering wheel is laying on the ground. Everything is melted.
Speaker 1: Glass is gone. It burned up a oak tree. It
Speaker 1: defoliated oak tree he was parked underneath. Okay, burned up.
Speaker 1: The cursed wrestling shoes, which he blames this whole thing,
Speaker 1: are gone. The dual cassette tape, boombox gone. Oh, his
Speaker 1: term paper is gone.
Speaker 8: Oh no.
Speaker 3: He goes to a teacher and says, I don't have
Speaker 3: my turn paper. It was destroyed in a fire. And
Speaker 3: she's like, come on, Craig.
Speaker 1: Heys no, it was burned up right out in this
Speaker 1: parking lot and she goes, oh, that was your truck.
Speaker 1: So he then goes to a wrestling match after all
Speaker 1: this happened. He has a wrestling match to go to.
Speaker 1: Goes to a wrestling match and he's telling a buddy
Speaker 1: of his this story. At the wrestling match. Behind him,
Speaker 1: he hears a girl laughing, turns around, doesn't know her,
Speaker 1: and says, what are you laughing at? And she said,
Speaker 1: that's a pretty funny story about your truck. This year
Speaker 1: they're married twenty five years. Wow, you catch that, Phil,
Speaker 1: It's a love story.
Speaker 4: Wow about the love story.
Speaker 3: It's a love story that's better than.
Speaker 1: I tell that story all the time, but I tell it,
Speaker 1: uh that he was coming back from smelt dipping, not
Speaker 1: ice fishing.
Speaker 3: Did it kill that oak tree no more?
Speaker 1: Acres Cerig said, it defoliated it. But I haven't heard
Speaker 1: the oak trees dead. My favorite.
Speaker 6: Those oaks are tough.
Speaker 3: Story.
Speaker 1: That's how, that's how his that's how your wife has
Speaker 1: met his wife, Brittany.
Speaker 3: That's good, beautiful children.
Speaker 4: So the s so going from what seemed like something
Speaker 4: so negative, these cursed shoes to a burn up truck.
Speaker 4: That leads to.
Speaker 3: When I was talking.
Speaker 1: I was talking to him today, he says, I like
Speaker 1: to blame those shoes for losing that truck, but considering
Speaker 1: that halving my wife is a good thing, I suppose
Speaker 1: it was all good in the end.
Speaker 11: That's no, it's a great story.
Speaker 3: It's like a it's a love story.
Speaker 2: Good story. Should things go well for him throughout life after.
Speaker 1: The shoes are always once the shoes were gone, everything
Speaker 1: picked right up.
Speaker 4: About that, he sounds like a heck of a wrestler.
Speaker 3: Things picked right up.
Speaker 6: What if the truck burnt and the shoes were just still.
Speaker 10: There.
Speaker 4: Hey, I've got so I've got a couple of just
Speaker 4: like machine gun stories, yeah. So once me and my
Speaker 4: buddy Nick Cunningham were coon hunting in his dad's hunting truck,
Speaker 4: which was a half ton four wheel drive pick up,
Speaker 4: and we called it Old Gray. It was as gray
Speaker 4: as it called it.
Speaker 3: Old Gray. Yeah, I knew where this is going.
Speaker 4: So we went. We went coon hunting one night. It
Speaker 4: was in the wintertime and it was cold. It was
Speaker 4: just him and I we were both about sixteen. And
Speaker 4: we got way back into an area we called wolf
Speaker 4: Pen Gap and uh, and we had two dogs named
Speaker 4: and Macy and Maddie, my first blue Tick registered blue
Speaker 4: Tick coonhounds. And we got way back in the mountains.
Speaker 4: Don't remember anything about the hunt, but we went to
Speaker 4: the dogs, got back in the truck and the truck
Speaker 4: wouldn't drive forward, but the truck would drive in reverse,
Speaker 4: and so we drove nine miles home in reverse. We
Speaker 4: took turns because our next week get a crick. We
Speaker 4: it was so late at night and it was just
Speaker 4: back roads the whole way, and so we drove nine
Speaker 4: miles all the way home.
Speaker 2: Was that a parking break issue?
Speaker 4: It was the transmission went out, a transmission dial transmit.
Speaker 2: We had this meme my dad did duck hunt.
Speaker 11: When I was a kid.
Speaker 2: The parking break froze in place, but it would go
Speaker 2: in reverse, so went reverse in circles in the pasture
Speaker 2: till it warmed up enough to thow the parking break down.
Speaker 2: That's my first story.
Speaker 4: I just remember that short me and had some pretty
Speaker 4: good some pretty good times coon utting. His dad also
Speaker 4: had another truck that was a long bed extended cab,
Speaker 4: full size three quarter ton pick up. Huge. It was
Speaker 4: like a boat. I mean it was like eighteen feet long,
Speaker 4: you know. And we're sixteen year olds and at this
Speaker 4: time we were at a place called two Mile Motorway,
Speaker 4: which was a long stretch that went through national forests. Basically,
Speaker 4: basically it's like a one way road and the way
Speaker 4: you hunt two mile Motorway is you start at this
Speaker 4: end and you road hunt your dogs all the way
Speaker 4: to the other end, which the other end of two
Speaker 4: mile Motorway ends up in a really small rural community
Speaker 4: outside of the bigger town we lived in. Which town
Speaker 4: we lived in was like five thousand people, but this
Speaker 4: was like a community way out.
Speaker 3: That community was called hell Fire Wolf Can.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's exactly what it was. Look it up on
Speaker 4: a X. Well, we get out there and and and
Speaker 4: it's cold. And I remember we'd played basketball against a
Speaker 4: Catholic high school that night and afterwards we went counhuting Subiaco.
Speaker 4: Now they always beat us, man, Catholics are good at basketball.
Speaker 2: Not this one.
Speaker 4: We got the truck. This story and this is a
Speaker 4: machine gun story, so there's not there's no this is
Speaker 4: not a love story. But we we tried to do
Speaker 4: the eighteen point turnaround in this one way road and
Speaker 4: turned this eighteen foot truck around and it didn't work.
Speaker 4: And you along, we we banked it like the front
Speaker 4: bumper was embedded in the bank on the back, and
Speaker 4: the in the in the back bumper was embedded on
Speaker 4: the bank of the road in the back of the truck.
Speaker 4: And basically we got the truck just dead stuck across
Speaker 4: the middle of this one lane road. And I mean
Speaker 4: we dug and tried to do everything we could and
Speaker 4: could not get the truck on stuck. And it was
Speaker 4: one o'clock in the morning, and we walked. The story
Speaker 4: we tells we walked five miles. I could probably go
Speaker 4: on on X and actually find out it was, you know,
Speaker 4: like three and a half. We claimed we walked five
Speaker 4: miles to the nearest house, which happened to be our
Speaker 4: English teacher's house. A man named Mike McMaster was an
Speaker 4: incredible man. Yeah rarely, and he was known for being
Speaker 4: the nicest guy in the world. And we were nervous
Speaker 4: as we could be, but we went up to his
Speaker 4: house in the middle of the night before cell phones
Speaker 4: and knock on his door. Nothing, knock on his door,
Speaker 4: and finally his wife. We hear his wife like, who's there,
Speaker 4: and we're like, it's Clay and Nick. We're mister Master's students.
Speaker 4: And we got our truck stuck, and she was like okay,
Speaker 4: And like ten seconds later, here comes mister McMasters. And
Speaker 4: he was always just energetic and just the greatest guy
Speaker 4: in the world. And he literally pops out of the door.
Speaker 2: Hey boys, Oh, it's great to see you.
Speaker 3: Oh you got your truck stuck.
Speaker 4: Well, hop in mind, we'll take care of you. I mean,
Speaker 4: it's like out of a movie. And he goes and
Speaker 4: pulls us out.
Speaker 1: Gotta tell you quick, rapid fire because that brings it
Speaker 1: to mind. Uh, Michigan Dear. Season one was November fifteenth,
Speaker 1: and back then, the way you would do things you'd
Speaker 1: make your ground blind late at night November fourteenth, just
Speaker 1: just not thinking clear anyways, get real stuck out at
Speaker 1: the Zeldnros Farm like buried up to the frame in
Speaker 1: my truck. I can't remember how we went about it,
Speaker 1: but somehow got word or got a ride to my
Speaker 1: friend Matt Jones. He comes out in his truck and
Speaker 1: blows the engine out in his truck. At this point,
Speaker 1: we got no recourse and I had my then girlfriend
Speaker 1: Kelly with me. Me and Matt Jones and Kelly then
Speaker 1: walk to the nearest house and it is a blizzard
Speaker 1: at this point. Bang on the door and this woman
Speaker 1: is no way know how gonna let us come into
Speaker 1: her house, but she's like, I'll make a phone call
Speaker 1: for you. So she makes a phone call and we're
Speaker 1: within forty yards of her front door in a snowstorm,
Speaker 1: laying in a drainage ditch to get out of the wind,
Speaker 1: Me and Matt Jones laying on top of Kelly to
Speaker 1: try to keep her warm, while this person stares at
Speaker 1: us out of window, waiting for a rescue to come.
Speaker 3: M M.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's that Michigan hospitality.
Speaker 3: That never happen. They would never do that to you
Speaker 3: in the South, Well, it wouldn't be cold. They wouldn't
Speaker 3: need to.
Speaker 6: Explains the Michigan Hello.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I could take it. I don't know who lives
Speaker 3: there now. I can take you and show you that
Speaker 3: house right now.
Speaker 4: Probably the same woman lives there.
Speaker 3: I don't know. You know, I should step in there
Speaker 3: and say, you know what one time? You know what
Speaker 3: happened to that ditch in front of your house? One time?
Speaker 4: Do we need a closer?
Speaker 3: Do we have? Well? That was I thought that was
Speaker 3: the rapid fire.
Speaker 4: I mean I got another rapid fire. I mean you sure? Yeah,
Speaker 4: when I was landscaping one time.
Speaker 3: So these are all rapid fires.
Speaker 4: I Well, my long story is that my twenty fourteen
Speaker 4: Chevy Silverado pickup that I bought brand new in twenty
Speaker 4: twenty fourteen V six. I have carried my mules literally
Speaker 4: all over America in that V six pickup. And when
Speaker 4: I got it, people were like, man, you can't haul
Speaker 4: those trucks not made for pulling. You can't, I mean
Speaker 4: for real, like guys that haul livestock and trailers, and
Speaker 4: they're like, man, you're gonna burn the training out of
Speaker 4: that truck. It has two hundred and twenty two thousand miles.
Speaker 4: And I have hauled my mules from Arkansas to Montana
Speaker 4: at least three times, to Colorado, once to New Mexico,
Speaker 4: all over the country and it's still still rolling. That's
Speaker 4: my long story. That's no fun though. That was yeah,
Speaker 4: I mean for it's an incredible I've got the truck
Speaker 4: to this day. I drove it to the airport this morning.
Speaker 4: But I also had Okay three quarter ton single cab
Speaker 4: nineteen ninety four model three quarter ton truck. I had
Speaker 4: my trailer on and had my Caboa tractor on the
Speaker 4: trailer in Fadville, Arkansas. Very hilly. Do you know the story?
Speaker 4: Have I told it before?
Speaker 3: He told me the.
Speaker 4: Fade was really hilly, and I was commercial landscaper is
Speaker 4: my job. It's working by myself. I had backed my
Speaker 4: trailer way down this steep driveway, and the steep driveway
Speaker 4: ended on a concrete landing, and on the back side
Speaker 4: of the concrete landing was a very steep and severe
Speaker 4: drop off. Like these people had this beautiful view at
Speaker 4: the back of their house. My truck is up on
Speaker 4: the main part of the driveway. The trailer is on
Speaker 4: the concrete pad, and fifteen feet behind the end of
Speaker 4: the trailer is the drop off. This I was young
Speaker 4: and dumb like Dirk was at one time, and I
Speaker 4: didn't realize that when you're backing up heavy equipment off
Speaker 4: a trailer on an endcline, that something very special happens.
Speaker 4: So I'm I had to park break on the truck,
Speaker 4: and I got on the tractor and start backing the
Speaker 4: tractor off. And there comes a point it's all physics,
Speaker 4: when the weight that's exerted as you back the equipment
Speaker 4: off the trailer lifts the ball and tongue of the
Speaker 4: trailer up, taking the pressure off the black wheels of
Speaker 4: your truck. And I'm on which is holding in the
Speaker 4: back you know, the truck is is the parking brakes on.
Speaker 4: And so I'm on the tractor on the trailer. The
Speaker 4: truck's up above me. Uphill behind me is a drop off.
Speaker 4: And I mean that truck starts moving, I mean not
Speaker 4: just not just like creeping moving, and and and that
Speaker 4: the the your instinct is to jump off. Well, my
Speaker 4: instinct was to jump off the trailer and the truck
Speaker 4: continues to slide, is moving open the door while it's moving,
Speaker 4: jumping the truck and slammed on the brake and skid
Speaker 4: to a stop. And the and the tailgate of my
Speaker 4: trailer was hanging out over the over the over the
Speaker 4: drop off. The tractor is in gear, still running on
Speaker 4: the trailer. Now what I should have done was kept
Speaker 4: driving the tractor back, because if I had, if I
Speaker 4: had driven the tractor back even while it was rolling.
Speaker 3: You put the weight back on it, it would have
Speaker 3: just stopped. Like but it was.
Speaker 4: It's everything against your instinct and so.
Speaker 3: You have to make it worse for it gets better.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, So I jumping the pick up and
Speaker 4: it just, you know, just slides. And we had flip
Speaker 4: cell phones at that time. And I don't know how
Speaker 4: I had a wrecker service or how I got the number.
Speaker 4: I don't even remember, but I called a wrecker and
Speaker 4: I mean, I'm just like cramming the brake, pedal in
Speaker 4: and I'm like, man, how quick can you get here?
Speaker 4: Like I am on the side of a mountain and
Speaker 4: if I let my foot off this break this truck,
Speaker 4: trailer and tractor is going over the edge. How quick
Speaker 4: can you get here? And I think my my my
Speaker 4: energy sped him up a little bit and he was like, man,
Speaker 4: I can be there in thirty minutes.
Speaker 11: Oh.
Speaker 4: So I sat there for thirty minutes and this customer's
Speaker 4: driveway they weren't home, tractor running, hanging off. And when
Speaker 4: he came, I just I just you know, had the
Speaker 4: window down. I was like, do what you can do, man,
Speaker 4: I'm not getting I took my foot.
Speaker 3: Off the breaking with slot.
Speaker 4: So that was that was, That was the nail.
Speaker 3: Nail biters good.
Speaker 11: Must have some strong calves.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like doing three hundred Calfreys.
Speaker 3: Oh everybody, thanks for joining. Talk to you soon.
Speaker 4: Ride on.
Speaker 10: Sealed gray shine like silver in the sun, right.
Speaker 1: Right on alone, sweetheart.
Speaker 10: We dun beat this dawn, of course, Dad taking a
Speaker 10: new one and ride. We're done beat this damn Horsiday,
Speaker 10: So take a new one and ride on. H