Speaker 1: My name is Clay Nukeleman. This is a production of
Speaker 1: the bear Grease podcast called The Bear Grease Render, where
Speaker 1: we render down, dive deeper, and look behind the scenes
Speaker 1: of the actual bear Grease podcast, presented by f h
Speaker 1: F Gear, American Maid, purpose built hunting and fishing gear
Speaker 1: that's designed to be as rugged as the place as
Speaker 1: we explore.
Speaker 2: What do you got there, Brient, picture of catfish and
Speaker 2: the picture weighs eight pounds?
Speaker 3: Tell me how.
Speaker 1: The picture weighs eight pounds?
Speaker 3: Yeah, the picture weighs eight pounds. He's so big.
Speaker 1: That's big, old flathead. What did it weigh?
Speaker 3: Thirty six pounds?
Speaker 1: Thirty six pounds?
Speaker 2: How did you get We caught it on the try
Speaker 2: line and turn it.
Speaker 1: Loosely, turn loose the big one.
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: What were you fishing with?
Speaker 3: Uh? Brim live? I'm telling you man, it was to
Speaker 3: go to confession.
Speaker 2: For using something that tastes fabulous to catch something that
Speaker 2: tastes good.
Speaker 3: We were using big.
Speaker 4: It's about quantity, not quantity.
Speaker 3: We were using big blue gill.
Speaker 1: Which is your favorite fish of all times. You'd rather
Speaker 1: read a blue gill than a.
Speaker 2: Steak in anything, name it anything. And we were catching
Speaker 2: flat is. But it was just so much fun.
Speaker 1: How big a brim were you using?
Speaker 3: Oh, buddy, hand size, that's that's a hooking them in the.
Speaker 2: Tail, hooking them right in the liking worthy in the neck, Yeah,
Speaker 2: in the neck, neck, like right up.
Speaker 5: There where you cash fishes like that sometimes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, what do you call it? Cash? Where do
Speaker 3: you call it? When you you hook them at?
Speaker 1: I know, malcam well, he said. The next he said,
Speaker 1: hook like.
Speaker 3: In the like in the top of the tender lawn,
Speaker 3: right like that.
Speaker 1: That is only Brent would think that a bluegill has
Speaker 1: a tender loin. I'm not sure that they do. Hey,
Speaker 1: we need to we need to introduce, uh, introduce our guests.
Speaker 1: We have really a distinguished guest on the render. This
Speaker 1: is unusual because usually.
Speaker 3: I'm usually here every other week.
Speaker 1: Well uh, usually the feature guest on the Bear Grease
Speaker 1: is not able to be a render guest. But Russ
Speaker 1: Arthur from East Tennessee is with us today. Good to
Speaker 1: have you, Russ.
Speaker 6: It's it's great to be here and see some of
Speaker 6: the faces that's been involved in this.
Speaker 5: I yeah, man, it's good.
Speaker 1: Well, and then, but the real guest who I was
Speaker 1: actually talking about, as the distinguished guest is Cash. This
Speaker 1: is US's grandson, Cash. How old are you not? And uh, big,
Speaker 1: big blue gill man, I guess big fishermen. Do you
Speaker 1: like the catfish? Yeah?
Speaker 7: Yeah, I like to fish a lot.
Speaker 3: Good.
Speaker 1: Well, it's good to have you.
Speaker 7: Nice to be here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and uh, now Bear, everybody's got a little show
Speaker 1: and tail. Is that your show and tail?
Speaker 3: Oh? Sure? The eight pound pound fish and the spam socks.
Speaker 3: I go, wait a minute, what.
Speaker 1: Yes, Okay, okay, I'll take.
Speaker 2: It like a six pack of spam socks. Okay, they're good.
Speaker 1: Show break your bobcats. So so Bear killed a bobcat
Speaker 1: with his treadbow. Shot it back in December, and look
Speaker 1: at this. I shot it pretty much. I shot at
Speaker 1: once and missed it at like three yards, had a
Speaker 1: squirrel in his mouth that pitched. The squirrel ran out
Speaker 1: ten yards behind me, and I shot at it again.
Speaker 1: But it it moves so quick that it ducked and
Speaker 1: turned and the arrow just hit it right in the
Speaker 1: back of the head. Look at that. If you can't,
Speaker 1: you won't really be able to see it on the video.
Speaker 1: But there is a broadhead that entered right there. And
Speaker 1: if it had just had a little more energy, it
Speaker 1: would be poking out the front kind of a buzz.
Speaker 1: It's like pushing the top of the skull. It's such
Speaker 1: a lucky shot. I mean, it's like exactly in the
Speaker 1: center of the brain or something. And now the coolest
Speaker 1: part us I don't know if you heard the story earlier,
Speaker 1: but the coolest part of the story. Bear was deer hunting,
Speaker 1: and that bobcat came walking down the creek with a
Speaker 1: squirrel in its mouth, big gray squirrel in its mouth,
Speaker 1: and he he kills this bob He shoots and the
Speaker 1: bobcat drops the squirrel, jumps up on the bank and
Speaker 1: then turns around the like, hey, I just dropped my meal.
Speaker 1: You think that's why. I mean, I don't really know,
Speaker 1: but it just was like ten yards standing there looking
Speaker 1: at me. Didn't have a st I know, if Brent
Speaker 1: had a squirrel, yeah, and something spooked him and he
Speaker 1: dropped it, he'd come back for it.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, you'd had to shot me in the head
Speaker 3: to get me off.
Speaker 6: Well, you know, I've got a very short story that
Speaker 6: deals with squirrels, where a friend of mine hunting squirrels
Speaker 6: in the mountains back in East Tennessee. Two falls ago,
Speaker 6: was still hunting squirrels and he shot two of them,
Speaker 6: and he was waiting for a few more to come out,
Speaker 6: and he went to pick him up. There's a little
Speaker 6: bit of underbrush there, and he was trying to find him.
Speaker 6: And when he found one of them, a bear had
Speaker 6: physically picked it up and was walking off.
Speaker 3: Pretty cool.
Speaker 1: He was shooting a gun.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he was shooting a gun.
Speaker 1: Now it's but the bear wasn't scared off by the
Speaker 1: gun shot.
Speaker 6: Evidently it wasn't. And but I see he had. He'd
Speaker 6: been five or ten minutes after he'd killed those two.
Speaker 1: Oh, he was just sitting still.
Speaker 6: Sitting still, and shot them both from the same from
Speaker 6: the same location, probably twenty two were shooting at twenty
Speaker 6: two and was sitting there and let the woods settle
Speaker 6: down to see if any more squirrels came out. Finally
Speaker 6: he decided, I'm going to pick up my squirrels, and
Speaker 6: he worked his way through the brush and met a
Speaker 6: bear that had one of his squirrels.
Speaker 1: In my day, Wow, that that is interesting.
Speaker 8: So so bar and I Boone and Crockett scored that.
Speaker 3: We did that.
Speaker 1: Bobcat this one and one damn you killed. That's right,
Speaker 1: and you're scored what eight inches even eight inches?
Speaker 8: Even so, if anybody's got a bigger boone and Crockett
Speaker 8: squirrel than that, we we.
Speaker 1: Bob yours bobcat squirrel.
Speaker 4: Yeah, send us a pick, Send us a pick.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, we seen a bob cat and we
Speaker 2: was trout lying the other night where was frog gigging.
Speaker 2: Then laid up on the bank. You hardly ever see them,
Speaker 2: you know, just if they see you, they're they gone.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and we got it was a high bank.
Speaker 2: He's probably twenty thirty yards away, about thirty yards away again,
Speaker 2: he was laid up there and was watching us.
Speaker 3: We got, we went on by.
Speaker 2: And finally we've crossed the line where it was too close,
Speaker 2: and he just got up.
Speaker 8: He was like, look at those jokers wasting that brown
Speaker 8: Yeah for real, nose it off.
Speaker 3: Yeah, bigg hm hm hmm.
Speaker 1: Well I was I was trying to think of the
Speaker 1: I've killed several bobcats. The most memorable one was catching
Speaker 1: one on a on a snare one time and then
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 3: He was like, oh he was targeting him.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, And I remember walking up on it. You
Speaker 1: had to get pretty close to the snare before you
Speaker 1: could see if you'd caught anything. And I mean he
Speaker 1: was like fully alive, jumped up on a bungle of
Speaker 1: log and looked at me right in the eyes, big old.
Speaker 1: It was a twenty pound bobcat. Yeah, caught it right
Speaker 1: over here by the house.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: Mm hm, well man, this uh what shows your bow?
Speaker 7: Bear?
Speaker 1: So Bear gave us an update on the bow last time,
Speaker 1: and now it is fully complete. Well like nine, I
Speaker 1: still got a kind of sand out the imperfections in
Speaker 1: the seal, but yeah, I've been shooting it a lot.
Speaker 1: It's it's about fifty pounds at twenty eight inches, so
Speaker 1: it shoots. Tell us about what you about the aesthetics
Speaker 1: of it, Well, it's an osage orange bow. It's a
Speaker 1: snaky bow. So basically the grain on the stave that
Speaker 1: I was using just kind of has waves in it
Speaker 1: like a snake, and pretty much you just follow the grain.
Speaker 1: So I put copperhead skins on the back road killed copperhead,
Speaker 1: and then it's got pronghorn tip overlays from a pronghorn
Speaker 1: that my buddy killed in South Dakota. And then it's
Speaker 1: got a gray fox kind of buffer on the arrow rest.
Speaker 1: That was actually the first animal I ever killed.
Speaker 3: With the bow.
Speaker 1: Right up there was fox yep, gray fox And yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's if you saw that lad on the
Speaker 1: ground out in the woods, you jump, wouldn't you.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, that is a very good job.
Speaker 1: In the turkey feathers, oh right, Yeah, that's from the
Speaker 1: turkey I killed this year. Yeah, it's a beautiful bow.
Speaker 2: Is there a significance in the number of turkey feathers
Speaker 2: or was it just covering up?
Speaker 1: This is just the right amount to cover it. But
Speaker 1: it is a little shiny. I think I'm gonna kind
Speaker 1: of sand it in a way where it's less shiny.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: It shoots good though. It shoots really fast for a
Speaker 1: self bow.
Speaker 3: That's pretty Yeah.
Speaker 1: I felt like it shot really fast.
Speaker 2: Your hand good. Yeah, I did mine because you know,
Speaker 2: in case you need me to.
Speaker 3: Get a handle with.
Speaker 1: Russ, I have something I wanted to give you you
Speaker 1: and cash. You don't have that book? Do you needed
Speaker 1: your outdoor Cookbook?
Speaker 5: No, we do not.
Speaker 1: This is uh I want. I want to give this
Speaker 1: to you guys, So if it if you haven't listened
Speaker 1: to the last actually the last three episodes, we did
Speaker 1: an extra drop today. You see that pretty sharp, wasn't it.
Speaker 1: We did the first episode called runt Over, where Russ
Speaker 1: told the story of his early career in law enforcement
Speaker 1: getting runt over by a guy, and then the next one,
Speaker 1: the next episode was called Yellowstone Poacher, which was super interesting,
Speaker 1: and then we did one today that what do we
Speaker 1: call it? Appalachic Cola tree bandit yep. But so anyway,
Speaker 1: Russ your man, and Russ has been also he's kind
Speaker 1: of a Bear Grease hero now, and I've said this before,
Speaker 1: but I got to say it again. People listen and
Speaker 1: don't get caught up. The way that I met Russ
Speaker 1: was really unique for me because I did this story
Speaker 1: on two guys from my hometown of me And Arkansas
Speaker 1: named Louis Dell and Charlie Edwards, who I grew up
Speaker 1: my whole life. No, I mean, they were like my
Speaker 1: dad's age guys, but just grew up around them, grew
Speaker 1: up around their kids and ken folk, and I mean
Speaker 1: it's just these guys. They were notorious turkey poachers. There's
Speaker 1: just no other way to say it. Wonderful, lovely people.
Speaker 1: We did a whole story on the three full Bear
Speaker 1: Grease episodes and Loui Delle and Charlie had passed away,
Speaker 1: and and that was part of the reason. It just
Speaker 1: kind of felt like it was time to do the
Speaker 1: story is the year before, Yeah, the year before. Louis
Speaker 1: deal had passed away and Charlie had passed away a
Speaker 1: few years before that. And I interviewed well, I talked
Speaker 1: to to miss Edwards, Louis Dell's wife, talked to Stony Edwards,
Speaker 1: their son, talked to multiple people that knew me. And
Speaker 1: it was just a neat episode that kind of contrasted
Speaker 1: this idea of these guys being notorious lawbreakers but also
Speaker 1: being people that were respected and loved in the community,
Speaker 1: and kind of contrasting this this thing that I felt
Speaker 1: inside of me knowing them. It's like, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: do I like these guys or do I do I not?
Speaker 1: I feel conflicted, And we just explored that and and
Speaker 1: people loved it. I loved it well. At the end
Speaker 1: of the second episode, I got a call from a
Speaker 1: friend of mine and and uh, he said, Hey, I
Speaker 1: know a guy that worked Charlie ed Louis del Edwards
Speaker 1: was was assigned to work for work him undercover. And
Speaker 1: he said he lives in Tennessee, and he said, I
Speaker 1: can probably could get him to talk to you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Joe Lawles, the guy who Joe, And he said he's retired,
Speaker 1: he's not working in law enforcement anymore. And I was like, really,
Speaker 1: because what was so interesting was that the family and
Speaker 1: all the people over there had felt like that and
Speaker 1: may have had some a little bit of help with it,
Speaker 1: had felt like that that Louisdal had been worked by
Speaker 1: an undercover agent. And so they had all told me
Speaker 1: the story of Louisdale and this undercover agent, you know,
Speaker 1: twenty years after it happened, but it's still it was
Speaker 1: like they didn't know if it really was or not.
Speaker 1: And anyway, I go and meet Russ and Tennessee. First
Speaker 1: of I met him, and it was kind of like
Speaker 1: talking to a ghost, you know, because i'd heard, well
Speaker 1: the wildest thing. And I told you this before, Russ.
Speaker 1: But Andy Brown, who would have never met you, would
Speaker 1: have ever known who you were. He said. Louisdale said,
Speaker 1: one time, I think there was a guy that was
Speaker 1: working me undercover, a young guy, brick layer from Tennessee.
Speaker 1: And he said he was the best natural voice caller
Speaker 1: that he ever heard. So one of the first things
Speaker 1: I asked Russ when I met Russ was said, let
Speaker 1: me hear your al call, let me hear your turkey call.
Speaker 1: And he and it was kind of like kind of
Speaker 1: like hearing a ghost of from thirty years ago, you know,
Speaker 1: this like mirage that showed up. So let me hear
Speaker 1: your yep rush No later, later, later. It was just
Speaker 1: a unique it was a unique deal. And uh and
Speaker 1: then you you you were on that it was and
Speaker 1: it was Russ. It was this Russ Arthur. That's how
Speaker 1: I met Russ. And then amongst all that, just off
Speaker 1: the cuff, he was telling me some other stories and
Speaker 1: in my mind I was like, I'll be back, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I want to talk to him about those. And so anyway,
Speaker 1: that's what the last really three episodes have been about,
Speaker 1: and that people just like those stories are so unique.
Speaker 3: Cool.
Speaker 1: Anyway, that was a long way to say, here's a
Speaker 1: book and guess who it's signed by, None other than
Speaker 1: one Stephen Ryan Nella.
Speaker 3: He's signed the back page.
Speaker 1: Well, Steve, there it is, yeah, Steve Rania. Well so yeah, man.
Speaker 5: Very very much appreciated.
Speaker 4: And you're gonna have to do some cooking.
Speaker 1: Yes, I think I think I got I got some
Speaker 1: sugar here.
Speaker 5: Cash, I've got something better.
Speaker 3: Go ahead.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm sorry, I'm just like hogging the air here,
Speaker 1: I've got I've got a recipe in here, cash, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Clay Dutch oven bear grease biscuits.
Speaker 5: Now that'll be good.
Speaker 3: There you go.
Speaker 1: Hey, no, those were at Christie's regular.
Speaker 6: Hey, but but who rendered down some bear grease this
Speaker 6: year that we might get to make these biscuits?
Speaker 5: Who killed a bear this year back in our camp?
Speaker 5: That's right?
Speaker 1: So maybe uh, okay, somebody in.
Speaker 6: Our camp killed a good bear this year. Oh really,
Speaker 6: and one of our best friends, and we'll get him
Speaker 6: to use that. But when when we're off the air,
Speaker 6: we're gonna pass this around. We're gonna get everybody's signature
Speaker 6: in there, okay. And then where will this book go?
Speaker 7: Well, we'll probably keep it out the cabin.
Speaker 5: You're exactly right.
Speaker 1: Thank you figured out I would have left bathroom.
Speaker 6: No, that's that is that's special because we're all about
Speaker 6: trying new food anyway, and and where it came from
Speaker 6: and its meaning is very very very well received.
Speaker 5: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you bet, you bet. Gosh, I've been uh, I've
Speaker 1: been hearing about your uh your turtles. Yeah, why don't
Speaker 1: you tell me about what you're doing with turtles?
Speaker 7: I got four turtles?
Speaker 5: What kind? What kind?
Speaker 7: I got four box turtles? And we feed them like
Speaker 7: pretty much every day, me and my friends like to
Speaker 7: keep up with them. We Our first turtle we found
Speaker 7: was in our neighborhood. We're just kind of random. We
Speaker 7: just thought it'd be fun to have it for the day,
Speaker 7: but then we got like, we really liked it, so
Speaker 7: we kept it, and then one day he got out,
Speaker 7: but we wanted to look for more since it was
Speaker 7: really fun having that one. So Ever since that, we've
Speaker 7: started collecting turtles pretty much.
Speaker 1: What kind are they?
Speaker 5: They're box turtles, box turtle.
Speaker 1: What do you feed them?
Speaker 4: Uh?
Speaker 7: Well, you're supposed to feed them a bunch of different
Speaker 7: like worms, vegetables, but we feel the fruit. Yeah, that's
Speaker 7: pretty much only thing they'll take.
Speaker 1: Oh really yeah, now, okay, I'm kind of an old
Speaker 1: turtleman myself. There was always like real shy turtles and
Speaker 1: then like real like not shy turtles. How are your
Speaker 1: turtles We've got?
Speaker 7: Like, there was one that we got recently, actually the
Speaker 7: day before we came here. He was really shy.
Speaker 1: He's really shy, so it wouldn't come out much.
Speaker 7: No, he was really shy.
Speaker 1: Eat in front of you.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I've seen of hunger anybody.
Speaker 1: You'd be surprised what you do when you're hungry.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I've seen all of them except for the new
Speaker 7: one to eat in front of you.
Speaker 5: Do you have? I have four? Right?
Speaker 1: You told me you were going to have a hard
Speaker 1: time remembering their names.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just make up something.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they don't really tell the names.
Speaker 1: All I remember. Well, we have Larry.
Speaker 7: He was the first hurdle. He only has three legs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, whoa what leg is he missing?
Speaker 7: He's missing is back right?
Speaker 3: His favorite one.
Speaker 6: And Larry was the first one that wasn't able to
Speaker 6: climb out of our pans.
Speaker 1: Larry. You might be extending Larry's life and keep him.
Speaker 1: He's a little vulnerable, does he when he walks? Does
Speaker 1: he drag that back right side of his shell? He
Speaker 1: kind of skid marks on the back of it.
Speaker 7: It's kind of like the bone. He still likes to
Speaker 7: move it because it's still like a little little nub. Yeah,
Speaker 7: but he likes to move it, and it sometimes will
Speaker 7: dry against the concrete.
Speaker 1: I bet he feels it itching and it's not.
Speaker 6: There, Well, tell him what your what your goals on
Speaker 6: these turtles? What are we going to do with them?
Speaker 7: Oh, we want to try to breed them to get
Speaker 7: babies and then release them into the u at our farm.
Speaker 3: Oh that's you know. My brother I was down there
Speaker 3: the other day.
Speaker 2: We were getting ready to go to the river and
Speaker 2: go fishing, and he had an old wire milk crk
Speaker 2: right on the edge of his yard and I said,
Speaker 2: what's in that old milk crate? And he said nothing.
Speaker 2: He said, but underneath it, he's a turtle nest. And
Speaker 2: he saw a tearraf and get over there and dig
Speaker 2: a hole and lay the eggs. And when she'd left,
Speaker 2: he put that over there so nothing would dig it up.
Speaker 3: He's been waiting for him to hatch out.
Speaker 2: So if he has any questions, I'm gonna have him
Speaker 2: call you for some for some consulting word.
Speaker 8: Okay, you think that that curple turtle could get a
Speaker 8: prosthesis or something, he could release them back.
Speaker 5: Into the wild baby.
Speaker 1: Carve out a little peg leg for it.
Speaker 4: There you go.
Speaker 6: He asked a question the other day about when the
Speaker 6: when the new turtles hatch out, do you think any
Speaker 6: of them will only have three legs.
Speaker 1: I get a good question was it a was it
Speaker 1: genetic flaw or did he lose it in an accident?
Speaker 1: Or perhaps Larry is a daredevil that can be genetic too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of like.
Speaker 2: He's a risk taker, Larry kickstand tripod.
Speaker 1: I've never heard of a three legged turtle, you know what.
Speaker 1: I get pictures sitting to me all the time up though.
Speaker 1: Its three legged bears really often. I'm kind of like
Speaker 1: the three legged bear guy does it walk?
Speaker 5: Weird?
Speaker 3: Man?
Speaker 1: Those three legged bears are just as fast and a bear.
Speaker 1: I don't even know why God gave a bear four legs,
Speaker 1: because the ones that have three seem to do just fine.
Speaker 3: We filmed one up in Saskatchewan. If you remember, really.
Speaker 1: When you say that it's sparky memories the day was
Speaker 1: it missing just like a we called it?
Speaker 3: Oh nothing, Yeah, he was missing like his elbow or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you always wonder how that happened.
Speaker 2: He was running with the one that had the mains
Speaker 2: as o'hayed was all all his hair was all gone.
Speaker 1: That they were rough times, the crew.
Speaker 8: Mangy, Yeah, the Island of Misfit Bears. Yeah, going to
Speaker 8: start a band in the.
Speaker 3: Cartoon.
Speaker 1: I'll listen to it, mangy in then. Uh, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I'll be darn well. That's cool.
Speaker 5: That's cool. He's done a real good job with it.
Speaker 6: And he actually ordered some box turtle food and we've
Speaker 6: made him a quite extensive pen. Now they've got a
Speaker 6: big area around. Oh, that's good. Figured out when we
Speaker 6: needed hollow logs for them to get under, and it's
Speaker 6: got quite the quite the place. I'm proud of him.
Speaker 1: Excellent, excellent, that's good.
Speaker 3: He sent us the pictures of that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we will.
Speaker 1: Man, I've got I've got so many things I would
Speaker 1: like to do. I want to I want to get
Speaker 1: into this episode. Uh Russ told the story that we
Speaker 1: wish we'd had recorded. It was a hunting story, wasn't
Speaker 1: It wasn't a law enforcement story. Tell me about that.
Speaker 1: This was just a couple of years ago. Yeah, tell
Speaker 1: me tell me about that.
Speaker 3: Buck.
Speaker 6: Well, there's a like any good hunting camp, you've got
Speaker 6: special friends that are associated with you. You know, we
Speaker 6: all been there, and Cash and I are very blessed
Speaker 6: having really good good friends in the hunting world that
Speaker 6: they they extend out to the non hunting times as well.
Speaker 5: So there. We're all up at the cabin.
Speaker 6: You know, we got a small cabin and we're going
Speaker 6: on a h about a three or four day deer
Speaker 6: hunt in this particular area that was a it was
Speaker 6: buck only and h you could kill any any wild
Speaker 6: hogs and it was actually one bear, you know, and
Speaker 6: it was we were going to be on a three
Speaker 6: day hunt. So we go up there on the first morning. Uh,
Speaker 6: two of my best friends. They took off into the
Speaker 6: back country a couple hours before daylight, and I just
Speaker 6: decided to hang around the camp and just take it easy.
Speaker 6: I can't remember. I was extremely tired or something. I
Speaker 6: was just gonna have a lazy hunt. And this more
Speaker 6: or less hunt around the cabin, and as luck would
Speaker 6: have it, I shot a pretty nice eight porner, nothing
Speaker 6: right home about, but it was a it was a
Speaker 6: good mountain deer and it was close to the cabin.
Speaker 5: Good meat.
Speaker 6: So we were all talking, what are you gonna do tomorrow?
Speaker 6: You know, we've tagged out. I said, well, I'm going
Speaker 6: turkey scouting. So basically, we always pick out areas on
Speaker 6: the map that we've never been. And I said, you know,
Speaker 6: we've always wanted to look at.
Speaker 5: This remote area here. I'm gonna go in there and
Speaker 5: look at it tomorrow. You know, who knows I might
Speaker 5: find a hog or or may be bear there. Well,
Speaker 5: I get in there, so you got your gun, got
Speaker 5: my gun, and I get.
Speaker 6: In there and I'm on my way out of this
Speaker 6: area and it's just monckster buck, I mean huge.
Speaker 1: How did you first see it?
Speaker 6: A doe came under so you're you were you were moving, Yes,
Speaker 6: I was moving, and you.
Speaker 1: Just caught her before she caught you.
Speaker 5: Yes.
Speaker 6: And she comes up this this this hollow, this draw
Speaker 6: open hardwoods, and I'm watching her and she actually goes
Speaker 6: up in beds down and then this big mountain buck
Speaker 6: comes up kind of following her, and he just stops
Speaker 6: and he's looking.
Speaker 5: Around and looking around and he's he's huge.
Speaker 1: You showed me a picture of it. I mean, you
Speaker 1: say it's one of the biggest deer you've probably seen
Speaker 1: in the mountains.
Speaker 3: It was.
Speaker 6: It was one of the biggest deers I'd seen in
Speaker 6: the mountains. And I'm sitting there thinking, you know, I'm retired.
Speaker 6: Here I am looking at one of the biggest deer
Speaker 6: and you know, what a what a way to test
Speaker 6: your your your your ethical nerves. You know, I've got
Speaker 6: contact with my two friends with radio, you know. Uh,
Speaker 6: we didn't have cell service where we're at, and be
Speaker 6: very easy for me to shoot it and Collumn tell
Speaker 6: them come and tag it.
Speaker 5: I'm not doing that.
Speaker 3: How far was it?
Speaker 5: Oh it wasn't but thirty or forty yards?
Speaker 1: You wait, you see the photos.
Speaker 6: I took pictures of it. I videoed it. It was
Speaker 6: you know, it was looking around. I got shots of
Speaker 6: it looking away from me. You know, a deer looks
Speaker 6: bigger when it's looking away from you. Anyway, So anyway,
Speaker 6: it passes, and I'm thinking, you know, that's good enough.
Speaker 5: I got pictures of it.
Speaker 6: Well, we get back to the cabin and uh and
Speaker 6: we find out through through some through some sources that
Speaker 6: they had changed the limit.
Speaker 1: Oh it's two.
Speaker 5: Bucks that year.
Speaker 1: So for years that had been one one buck.
Speaker 6: And uh, you know, the area manager tell of that
Speaker 6: area tells me you need to start reading your book.
Speaker 6: He said, last year we changed to one.
Speaker 2: So was it was it? You got pictures? It was
Speaker 2: okay then anyway or not? What's that you said?
Speaker 3: It was just as good.
Speaker 6: But the sad part about it is the very that
Speaker 6: would have been three years ago. So the past two falls,
Speaker 6: I have stamped the area dry and not found that
Speaker 6: deer sign anywhere.
Speaker 5: I cannot find any sign. I don't know where he
Speaker 5: came from.
Speaker 6: It's just like he decided to go through there and
Speaker 6: torment me that one morning.
Speaker 1: You know, man, there's something about the ones that get
Speaker 1: away from you that.
Speaker 5: You should have killed, that you'll remember forever.
Speaker 1: One time, about a year ago, I sat down and
Speaker 1: I rode out every big buck that I qualified as
Speaker 1: should have been dead, but wasn't, you know. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's easy to remember the deer that you killed because
Speaker 1: you got their horns and you got that memory. And uh,
Speaker 1: but there's something about the and I'm talking about the
Speaker 1: big ones, like you know, the good shooter deer that
Speaker 1: you wanted to bring home with you.
Speaker 3: And uh.
Speaker 1: And I sat down and counted up eleven deer that
Speaker 1: I could. I can tell you more about those deer
Speaker 1: than I probably can the ones that I killed. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, just just like the scenario, the sequence, what happened.
Speaker 1: And uh, I was just I had that list and
Speaker 1: I don't know where the list is. I can make
Speaker 1: the list again, but every one of those deer kind
Speaker 1: of had a name, you know, the so and so
Speaker 1: farm buck that this mountain buck. And and uh, I
Speaker 1: kind of looked at that, and I think there's a
Speaker 1: correlation between that number and the number that you have
Speaker 1: actually killed, you know what I mean, Like if you well,
Speaker 1: it takes a lot of time. I mean I spent
Speaker 1: just as much time trying to kill those deer as
Speaker 1: I did the ones that I did kill.
Speaker 2: It's a statement on what what the deal is on
Speaker 2: while you're out. There's not just exactly because if you
Speaker 2: if it's just about killing them, you wouldn't even remember them.
Speaker 3: Well, let's about these over here.
Speaker 6: And you know, I was told a long time ago, son,
Speaker 6: you're gonna you're gonna remember those misses a lot more
Speaker 6: than you will to kills, you know, from when I
Speaker 6: was fifteen, sixteen years old. That was that was and
Speaker 6: it was so true. But on the funny side of that,
Speaker 6: this year, I missed a turkey that unmistakably should have
Speaker 6: been killed.
Speaker 5: And my best.
Speaker 6: Friend fifteen yards behind me opening day public land and
Speaker 6: four longbeards came in. Doesn't happen on public land? First
Speaker 6: time that has ever happened to me? And uh, And
Speaker 6: after the mess. We're sitting there by the tree and
Speaker 6: he's trying to remind me and by we're going to
Speaker 6: remember that? And I said, you know, you're right. I said,
Speaker 6: but it's been a long time since I missed. And
Speaker 6: then he started reminding me, well, what about such and such?
Speaker 3: He might not have remember what he did?
Speaker 5: What about this? And I'm like, well, yeah, but I'm
Speaker 5: trying to forget that former former Yeah, but that's but
Speaker 5: that's so much true to that. That's a that's a
Speaker 5: that's a testimony to while you're there. Yeah, exactly right.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, and this one's this year now, that was Uh,
Speaker 6: he'll remember that, miss Have you forgotten it yet?
Speaker 7: No?
Speaker 5: Okay, well yeah for sure not.
Speaker 1: I gonna forget it now that you're on the Bear
Speaker 1: Grease podcast and told everybody.
Speaker 7: Well, if you ever decided to go hunting with him,
Speaker 7: always beware that he might.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 7: He's so desperate to hear a turkey that he makes
Speaker 7: up it.
Speaker 1: Your grandpa does, Yeah, he makes it. So he'll be
Speaker 1: sitting there and he'll be like, I think I just
Speaker 1: heard one. Yeah, what does he say?
Speaker 7: He says, there's one over there, cash, and then I
Speaker 7: we'll be waiting there for a couple like twenty minutes
Speaker 7: and then I'm like, he doesn't call again. I'm like,
Speaker 7: are you sure there's one over there? And he's like, yeah,
Speaker 7: I'm for sure. I heard it and I never heard it.
Speaker 1: Hey, what does so? I know every every dad, grandpa,
Speaker 1: every turkey hunter has a certain way that they act
Speaker 1: when they hear a gobbler, like you know, yeah, Like
Speaker 1: what what does your grandpa do when he hears one
Speaker 1: and doesn't expect it?
Speaker 5: M I would say.
Speaker 7: He gets pretty excited. He It's like he gets excited,
Speaker 7: especially if I'm with him because he likes to have
Speaker 7: that experience with me. But he gets pretty excited.
Speaker 1: And what does he say? Does he just does he point?
Speaker 3: Does he?
Speaker 5: Honestly?
Speaker 4: I don't really know.
Speaker 2: You don't do like my brother did me and like
Speaker 2: push me backwards. He don't push it back down or
Speaker 2: anything like that.
Speaker 7: Although when he was trying to get me the other way,
Speaker 7: he did like throwby.
Speaker 5: Turkey was coming around the other side the tree.
Speaker 1: We had to do something.
Speaker 5: I can't do my my my normal friends that way
Speaker 5: they turn.
Speaker 1: Just move them. That's good, hyah, that's that's good.
Speaker 3: Brent.
Speaker 1: What do you do when you hear a turkey, yeah,
Speaker 1: do you have to say something?
Speaker 2: Well, when it's me and you, and it's and me
Speaker 2: and my brother. A lot of times if we're there
Speaker 2: together and we hear, we'll point and he'll be pointing
Speaker 2: this way, or you'll be pointing that way. He'll be
Speaker 2: pointing this way.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 8: Yeah, he does this. He does it with his hand. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yep,
Speaker 8: there he is right there.
Speaker 3: Let's go. Yeah.
Speaker 6: And there's been a lot of a lot of arguments
Speaker 6: on direction. That's the big thing, especially if you're hunting mountains.
Speaker 6: But then I've had occasion to hunt some flat ground
Speaker 6: and it's even worse.
Speaker 2: Oh, me and my brother were standing on We were
Speaker 2: standing on the Lake Slouth Bridge on the lower Potlatch
Speaker 2: Road in Cleveland County, not far from Slam River.
Speaker 4: So if you want to find a turkey, that's where
Speaker 4: you go.
Speaker 2: It's behind He just ca you had the parachute in there.
Speaker 2: But I'm standing facing downstream and he's looking upstream, and
Speaker 2: turkey gobbled and we looked at each other and both
Speaker 2: in the opposite direction. All though, did you hear one?
Speaker 3: Dude?
Speaker 2: He said, no, did you hear one? It was the
Speaker 2: same Turkey, but I was right. Because I have the microphone,
Speaker 2: I can say.
Speaker 3: You were right. My dad.
Speaker 1: My dad always told the story, you know, just like
Speaker 1: childhood lore. He remembered, and I think it happened when
Speaker 1: he was first started bow hunting and was just kind
Speaker 1: of getting used to, I don't know, tracking deer in
Speaker 1: the dark and getting out of navigating the woods in
Speaker 1: the dark. And he said he and his buddy had
Speaker 1: shot this deer, killed the deer, and had tracked it
Speaker 1: pretty long track job, and then it's like, all right,
Speaker 1: we got it. And he said they they guted it,
Speaker 1: and they're like, all right, that's head of the truck.
Speaker 1: And they he grabs the back legs, the guy grabs
Speaker 1: the front legs, and they just had an opposite and
Speaker 1: then they stop and he's like, where are you going?
Speaker 1: And he's like, I'm going to the truck, and where
Speaker 1: are you going? I'm going to the truck and and
Speaker 1: you know, they didn't have GPS or cell phones, and
Speaker 1: he said they had to sit there and listen in
Speaker 1: about you know. Some time later, a truck came down
Speaker 1: the gravel road and they they remembered which one I
Speaker 1: honestly can't remember if dad was here. I'm sure he
Speaker 1: was right.
Speaker 2: Me and Michael was leaving the tree the other night,
Speaker 2: hot Man trying to go back to the bucket. Yeah,
Speaker 2: we're walking, walking, walking. I'm like, do you know where
Speaker 2: you're going? He said, I'm following you, one of us was.
Speaker 2: I was following him, he was following me. We made
Speaker 2: a pretty good roundabout we got back to the side.
Speaker 6: So that one of the one of the things that
Speaker 6: I really appreciate around our camp now is there's a
Speaker 6: been a lot of kids that's been raised in that
Speaker 6: camp that are up like bears, age and and and
Speaker 6: older that that we're we fight now to get them
Speaker 6: to go with us because they got better. Donny, what
Speaker 6: can he go with me tomorrow?
Speaker 3: Hey?
Speaker 6: What's cash?
Speaker 5: Which way was he? Boy? I'm not proud.
Speaker 1: You can't hear direction very well though. I remember whenever
Speaker 1: I was a little kid and you bring me which
Speaker 1: way was that?
Speaker 3: Turkey?
Speaker 1: Oh? I was never really confident on which way I
Speaker 1: heard it, But I just remember you couldn't hear him
Speaker 1: at all. Oh, I I've got I got a bad
Speaker 1: ear and I can't course one. Uh, I try. I
Speaker 1: considered for a while getting my when I fed my
Speaker 1: mules gobble, so that day when they heard a turkey gobble,
Speaker 1: they would keep because I envisioned being being in the
Speaker 1: mountains riding my mule and hearing a turkey gobble three
Speaker 1: hundred yards away, and is he just going I just
Speaker 1: never did it. I just never. I just never pursued it.
Speaker 1: I think it would be pretty really, it's a funny.
Speaker 1: It's a fun thing to think. It would be very
Speaker 1: difficult to do. Now, they will queue in on just
Speaker 1: like if they see something, they hear something, they absolutely
Speaker 1: will queue on it. But something like some far off
Speaker 1: random noise, like they're not gonna they're not gonna mess
Speaker 1: with it. But uh, talking about direction though that this
Speaker 1: is disconnected slightly. Coon hunting story. I'll never forget this
Speaker 1: greatest most unsolved mystery in Clay's life of all time. Uh,
Speaker 1: what's that? It was a black panther, black panther. It's
Speaker 1: definitely in a black panther country. But I was in
Speaker 1: the in the Washtalls when I was a kid coon hunting,
Speaker 1: and uh, this story is not that good. And I
Speaker 1: remember we cut the dogs loose and go to a
Speaker 1: tree hound and there was a there was a big
Speaker 1: creek and it was such a good place to hunt
Speaker 1: because there's two big mountains and a creek, and the
Speaker 1: creek's running running downhill, and you know, we walked up
Speaker 1: the creek to get to the truck, or to excuse me,
Speaker 1: we walked away from the truck going upstream. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just impossible to get lost. But we go to
Speaker 1: this tree dog and I dropped back down to the
Speaker 1: creek and know, I mean with every ounce of instinct
Speaker 1: that the truck, that that's downstream. You know, that way
Speaker 1: is the truck. And when I get to that water,
Speaker 1: the water is going to be flowing that direction. I
Speaker 1: mean it would have been like if I had thrown
Speaker 1: an apple up in the air and you say, which way
Speaker 1: is the apple going to fall? I'd be like, it's
Speaker 1: going to come to the ground. I get to that
Speaker 1: creek and it's flowing that way, And I said, Lord,
Speaker 1: you have flipped the earth while we went after that coon.
Speaker 1: The Lord has literally turned the earth in a circle.
Speaker 1: I remember it was the first time in the dark
Speaker 1: that I was just absolutely scrambled. It was real disoriented.
Speaker 1: I was just like, what just called getting lost? But I, I,
Speaker 1: you know, followed what I knew was riding, sure enough
Speaker 1: there was a truck, but disoriented.
Speaker 5: They spend the.
Speaker 1: Rest of my life disoriented.
Speaker 5: It happen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, have you ever been real lost?
Speaker 3: There?
Speaker 1: I can think of one time when I had this
Speaker 1: real I was chasing a turkey down this ATV trail,
Speaker 1: and in my mind I had this real clear image
Speaker 1: of like where the main road was in comparison to
Speaker 1: where I was. And so there was like two roads
Speaker 1: that split like you they tee off and that there's
Speaker 1: road that goes north and road that goes south, and
Speaker 1: the main road was parallel with them. The road that
Speaker 1: goes north kind of would like it turned and started
Speaker 1: going west, and so I thought, I don't I don't
Speaker 1: remember the exact details, but I started going down that
Speaker 1: road or the south road, and in my mind the
Speaker 1: main road was just like right down the mountain. I
Speaker 1: chased this turkey all morning, and eventually turkey, I lose them,
Speaker 1: and so I just start walking down to get to
Speaker 1: the main road. And I just keep walking until I
Speaker 1: get to the bottom of the mountain and it starts
Speaker 1: going up and there was no road, and then I
Speaker 1: start hearing like ATV's way over here, and so I
Speaker 1: was just like, well, maybe it's over there, walked over there, nothing,
Speaker 1: and so eventually I just started walking in and I
Speaker 1: just picked a direction and walked and popped out on
Speaker 1: the road. Yeah, there was a game warning coming around
Speaker 1: actually about that time. Oh and I was totally illegal.
Speaker 1: Absolutely nothing died.
Speaker 6: You know what's amazing about that is, as I've learned,
Speaker 6: when you do run across roads or trails that many
Speaker 6: times will get you not paying attention to your terrain
Speaker 6: like it really should be, especially if you're doing land
Speaker 6: navigation with a map, that you you'll travel further and
Speaker 6: faster on those trails and roads than you normally would,
Speaker 6: and you're not paying there as much attention, and you
Speaker 6: do get those those visuals in your mind and where
Speaker 6: you act. Because that's happened to me several times. It's thinking, hell,
Speaker 6: but it seems like all the times that I've been
Speaker 6: turned around like that, it's been when I've run across
Speaker 6: a road or a trail that I that I thought
Speaker 6: I knew exactly the direction that it went.
Speaker 1: Do you use a map online like on x hunt
Speaker 1: or anything on your phone.
Speaker 6: I've got mapping programs on my phone, but I still
Speaker 6: I still carry a hard copy topo map in a
Speaker 6: map case that I that I checked frequently.
Speaker 1: Really and oh yes, oh yeah, old school.
Speaker 6: Well it's you know technology, if you if if it's
Speaker 6: got a battery, it can go dead.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're dangerous dependent on that whole thing.
Speaker 3: We are.
Speaker 1: I mean, what if you'd lost it? Oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean and and in most places, you know, getting lost
Speaker 1: is not that big a deal. It's just more of
Speaker 1: an inconvenience, right, But there are places where you get
Speaker 1: lost you could be in trouble.
Speaker 5: Well, there's there's a.
Speaker 6: There's a lot of people that that if you just
Speaker 6: gave them a topo map, a hard copy that that
Speaker 6: that couldn't get around.
Speaker 5: M hm, you know that couldn't get around.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 7: I saw an ad. It was like it was questioning people,
Speaker 7: what how do you think you would do if I
Speaker 7: took away your sofhone for twenty four hours? And they said, uh,
Speaker 7: there was one guy that said I could probably do it,
Speaker 7: but if it ever did come true, it was something like,
Speaker 7: I probably wouldn't let it happen.
Speaker 8: How would you do without your phone for twenty four hours?
Speaker 8: He'd be just fine withn't it?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 7: Maybe wat. It depends on who's with a lot of times,
Speaker 7: if I played with my friends, I would be fine.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I lost my phone the other day and a kayaking
Speaker 1: kayak flipped and got washed away, and it was like
Speaker 1: the last two days of Turkey season, and so I
Speaker 1: tried to set an alarm. I had a turkey located
Speaker 1: and I tried to set an alarm on my computer
Speaker 1: and it never went off. And I didn't have a
Speaker 1: phone for like three days and I never never was
Speaker 1: It was the last day of Turkey season and I
Speaker 1: just knew right where one was. But I lost my
Speaker 1: phone the day before in the river, and it was
Speaker 1: a big, inconvenient.
Speaker 4: Sad story, sad story.
Speaker 3: How many numbers you hunting from home?
Speaker 1: Yeah, well I was hunting around here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they'd make an alarm clock. You can get it.
Speaker 1: Nobody has an alarm clock around Let's talk about this episode,
Speaker 1: Yellowstone Poacher. Super unique story of Russ. Is such a
Speaker 1: good storyteller?
Speaker 5: Two, Yeah, he is.
Speaker 3: It was.
Speaker 1: It was just a unique story in so many ways. Josh,
Speaker 1: what what stood out to you about it? I?
Speaker 8: Uh, it's interesting to me.
Speaker 4: When when was that Russ?
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, you know, we didn't tell about the approximate
Speaker 1: day to that.
Speaker 6: That would have been in the.
Speaker 8: Mid nineties, Okay, so that would have been a bit
Speaker 8: of a different experience than it would have been today,
Speaker 8: just with with technology. But the fact that this guy
Speaker 8: was able to run this scam for a while, it
Speaker 8: sounded like, was pretty amazing to me. And the fact
Speaker 8: that he would just cherry pick his his customers at
Speaker 8: these these things, we were pretty amazing. But but just
Speaker 8: the fact that this this guy could continue to get
Speaker 8: customers with this food, hanging out there and taking I mean,
Speaker 8: it's amazing to me that.
Speaker 1: I mean, he probably didn't have repeat the customers.
Speaker 6: No, it was one time customers and uh and and
Speaker 6: most of them were successful, so you know.
Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, Or the fact that nobody turned him in,
Speaker 8: you know, pretty amaz Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you think that's pretty common for people to do
Speaker 1: stuff like that. Like so if you haven't listened to
Speaker 1: the episode, you should. But I mean, this guy was
Speaker 1: illegally outfitting, Like you can't you can't charge somebody money
Speaker 1: and take them in really anywhere in any state. Like
Speaker 1: if you're going to do any kind of guiding in
Speaker 1: any state, you got to have a license. I mean,
Speaker 1: in Arkansas. It's cheap, it's not a big deal. But
Speaker 1: primarily where he was getting in trouble as he was
Speaker 1: guiding people for money on public land in Montana. But
Speaker 1: but the kicker was that they were oftentimes going into
Speaker 1: Yellowstone National Park.
Speaker 8: He was a legal guiding and hunting in the in
Speaker 8: the national Park.
Speaker 1: So my question was do you in your experience, So
Speaker 1: Russ was the regional supervisor for special agents in a
Speaker 1: big section of the US for the US four Service,
Speaker 1: I mean, is that common.
Speaker 6: Well, the the illegal guiding is more of an issue
Speaker 6: out west than it is back east because of the
Speaker 6: vast areas of public land that they have out west,
Speaker 6: and most states have a two tier process, if you will,
Speaker 6: before you can guide, you have to have a license
Speaker 6: through your state, like in Montana, you have to have
Speaker 6: a license to guide, you know, through the state of Montana.
Speaker 6: Then if you go on public land, you have to
Speaker 6: have a permit through the US four Service for the.
Speaker 1: Public that's specific for that track.
Speaker 6: For that track of land, and most of them are
Speaker 6: broken out in units. And the reason they do that
Speaker 6: is they don't want any overuse of any unit and
Speaker 6: they're able to manage it and spread them out so
Speaker 6: you've got quality experience, and they take into consideration and
Speaker 6: they work with the respective state agencies to ensure that,
Speaker 6: you know, you don't overload any particular unit.
Speaker 3: So they're also vetted by two different yes agencies.
Speaker 5: Yes.
Speaker 6: So what happens is is you have people that have
Speaker 6: either applied for and didn't get it, or just don't
Speaker 6: believe they should have one, that it's their god given right,
Speaker 6: it's public land, that they don't need a permit. So
Speaker 6: you have a lot of those people. And I've worked
Speaker 6: probably four or five different illegal guiding cases Montana and Idaho.
Speaker 6: So it is common as egregious as going into the park.
Speaker 6: I don't think that's very common. All indications were this
Speaker 6: individual had a pretty high success rate of ELK. Whether
Speaker 6: they come off the park or not, we don't know.
Speaker 1: I think me and Brent would have a pretty high
Speaker 1: success right, Yeah, don't we've never l conted, well Brent
Speaker 1: has yeah.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 6: And now now back east we have some guiding, but
Speaker 6: uh uh.
Speaker 5: But it's a process.
Speaker 6: And the sad thing is there are some really good
Speaker 6: outfitters across this country in the big game world, I
Speaker 6: mean some, and there it's a legitimate use, and people
Speaker 6: like that gives the guiding a bad name. It takes
Speaker 6: away opportunities, just took away and I you know, took
Speaker 6: an elk out of there that could have very well
Speaker 6: been on public land and probably went back and forth
Speaker 6: from public to park, public to park where it was
Speaker 6: where it was taken. So, uh, people like that need
Speaker 6: to be taken taken out of the gene pool, so
Speaker 6: to speak. I don't think we've got that large of
Speaker 6: a problem with guiding and illegal outfitting in the East.
Speaker 6: Have worked a few small cases in the East, but
Speaker 6: it is guiding is big business out west.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Do you have any idea how many elk this guy
Speaker 4: ended up taking?
Speaker 6: You know, I think that particular year there was four
Speaker 6: or five. And that was another reason that we that
Speaker 6: we took the case as far as we did, and
Speaker 6: some things we didn't talk about on the previous podcast.
Speaker 6: You know, a lot of questions came up, you know,
Speaker 6: internally about the taking of that of that elk and
Speaker 6: what a lot of people don't understand. Back then, you
Speaker 6: didn't have a lot of technology as far as documenting
Speaker 6: what happened, you know, you know, video camera was all
Speaker 6: we had, and there are times when you would take
Speaker 6: a case if you're working undercover, and a defense attorney
Speaker 6: can can chew you up and say, that's not really
Speaker 6: what happened, and let's just play that scenario out and
Speaker 6: say that I didn't kill an elk. We come back
Speaker 6: and we ride up a case report. The US Attorney's office,
Speaker 6: you know, draws up an indictment, and we go to
Speaker 6: grand jury and we indict this guy and we charge
Speaker 6: him for illegal guiding on public land. He hires an
Speaker 6: attorney and they get me on the stand and said,
Speaker 6: did you kill an elk? No, so is it not
Speaker 6: true that he probably didn't have any intentions of you
Speaker 6: killing an elk there? Well, no, he gave me all
Speaker 6: the intentions in the world. Well it's my word against
Speaker 6: his then. But the big thing on this case, and
Speaker 6: we planned it that way eventually, that if we did
Speaker 6: take an elk, no matter where it was at, if
Speaker 6: we had to take an elk, I was not going
Speaker 6: to take possession of the meat. I was going to
Speaker 6: let him take possession of it. That allowed that meat
Speaker 6: to go back to his ranch. And that gave us
Speaker 6: what law enforcement caused probable calls to draw off a
Speaker 6: search warrant that gets us into that man's house, and
Speaker 6: we're able to articulate in the search, we're not only
Speaker 6: looking for the crime that that we know is there
Speaker 6: because of my testimony, but other crimes associated to that
Speaker 6: type of activity and illegal hunting, So we're able to
Speaker 6: get other clients' names, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 6: So that particular year, I think he had taken five
Speaker 6: or six different elk just.
Speaker 4: That one season.
Speaker 1: Yes, So that gives a lot of backbone to actually
Speaker 1: killing an elk. Yes, I mean because and I told
Speaker 1: I told him I have not heard Russell and I
Speaker 1: talked about this before we put this out, is that
Speaker 1: you know, it's possible somebody could be like, oh, you
Speaker 1: know this guy shot an elk illegally, probably had a
Speaker 1: great hunt, probably got the horns hanging in his house.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, just stupid, something stupid. And I
Speaker 1: tried to be clear in the podcast that like this
Speaker 1: was very calculated and he tried not to kill one,
Speaker 1: but he had to. And we've talked about that in
Speaker 1: other parts. When we did the Artie Stewart episodes doing
Speaker 1: undercover work, RTI talked about like if you have to
Speaker 1: take an animal, and he's like, there's legitimate times where
Speaker 1: you have to take an animal. And anyway, I didn't
Speaker 1: hear anybody saying any giving you any flag for that,
Speaker 1: But it's it's interesting. It even gives more meat to
Speaker 1: it to tell that it was actually a prosecution strategy
Speaker 1: to have him take the meat back, you know.
Speaker 6: Now if not, we had had a hard time articulating
Speaker 6: that you needed a search warrant for that man's residence.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, because you were miles away from.
Speaker 6: Right and there was no evidence time, you know, a
Speaker 6: violation to that residence.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 6: But once that meat went to that residence and he
Speaker 6: called and confirmed me with me that hey, I've got
Speaker 6: your meat and horns, then you've got a reason to
Speaker 6: go there, you know, and seize that evidence that you
Speaker 6: know was part of the crime.
Speaker 3: How long have you been operating up there?
Speaker 5: Was it at least at least ten or twelve years.
Speaker 2: While as much as forty exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it seemed like a lot of people, like knew
Speaker 1: before even getting into it that it was illegal, Like
Speaker 1: a lot of the guy people that he would guide.
Speaker 1: Did any of those people get in trouble afterwards? Like,
Speaker 1: did they kind of like backtrack the people that went
Speaker 1: with them knowingly shooting an Elk on the park or
Speaker 1: just illegally.
Speaker 6: No, no, and and And the reason for that is
Speaker 6: a lot of those people and he did keep very
Speaker 6: poor records, so there was very few people, you know
Speaker 6: that we could really tie it back to and uh.
Speaker 6: And it would be really hard because your evidence is gone.
Speaker 6: M h, you're you're you know, you don't have any
Speaker 6: evidence other than you know, maybe something that he had
Speaker 6: written down in a journal or a log book, so
Speaker 6: you had no physical evidence of where they were at.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 6: I was able to plot on the map this is
Speaker 6: exactly where we well was, you know, of all the
Speaker 6: encounters that I had with Elk. I was able to
Speaker 6: plod on a map as part of the case file.
Speaker 6: You wouldn't have had any of that, you know, with
Speaker 6: these other people. So it was very hard, but it
Speaker 6: took him out of the business, and I understand he's
Speaker 6: pretty much out of the business still.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 1: Interesting.
Speaker 6: Did he go to jail, No, fine, He was fine,
Speaker 6: very heavily. And he also I think I failed to
Speaker 6: mention this on the original podcast. He had to pay
Speaker 6: back the restitution for that Elk that was taken.
Speaker 3: That's pretty sport.
Speaker 6: He wasn't right, and so I think it was I
Speaker 6: think he got like a ten thousand dollars fine, pay
Speaker 6: three or four thousand dollars what they call a replacement
Speaker 6: cost of the elk, and then he was I think
Speaker 6: he was barred for hunting for five or ten years.
Speaker 1: Interesting, Brandon, what stood out to you? What was what
Speaker 1: was your what was the favorite part mm?
Speaker 2: I have thought about all I thought about Russ having
Speaker 2: to be in the visa entity of that guy. It
Speaker 2: was this, you have to associate yourself and align yourself
Speaker 2: that you agree or you condone the things that you
Speaker 2: absolutely are working to fight against. And it's a it's
Speaker 2: a back and forth a lot internally when you're hanging out.
Speaker 3: With these folks and watching what you're doing.
Speaker 2: When you just want to pick up a club and
Speaker 2: I hit them in the back of the head, really
Speaker 2: and it's just an internal struggle to condone or act
Speaker 2: like you're condoning what's going on and in participating in it.
Speaker 2: And it was the same way in the stuff that
Speaker 2: I did too, and that it was a it's stressful.
Speaker 2: That's where the stress comes in because you're having to
Speaker 2: just sit there and watch and watch and watch, watching
Speaker 2: this stuff's going on with, whether it's drugs or or
Speaker 2: game violations, either one. You know, it's something that you
Speaker 2: have dedicated your life to protect. But you realize then
Speaker 2: to be part of it and to help and to
Speaker 2: assist in keeping that stuff out of people's hands or
Speaker 2: protecting the resource, you got to get in there and
Speaker 2: get dirty and get the folks that are doing it.
Speaker 2: Because if you're not willing to get in there and
Speaker 2: get them, they're just going to keep doing it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, so that identified a lot with that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I bet you did.
Speaker 1: You know, it's funny I had I was thinking about
Speaker 1: Russ coming here today, and just last night I was
Speaker 1: I had the thought. I was just trying to put
Speaker 1: myself in the mind space that somebody might have to
Speaker 1: be to work undercover. And it's impossible because I, first
Speaker 1: of all, I've never been in law enforcement, so I
Speaker 1: don't really know what it's like to carry a gun
Speaker 1: and put yourself up against in dangerous situations with the
Speaker 1: bad guys. But I thought, what if I had to
Speaker 1: wake up tomorrow and go into an illegal camp for
Speaker 1: eight days. I'm fixing to go on a hunt, a
Speaker 1: legitimate hunt, and you know, like.
Speaker 4: What effects for the clarification.
Speaker 1: It was just it kind of scrambled my brain a
Speaker 1: little bit, like what if I had to go on
Speaker 1: this hunt? But it was actually I was pretending and
Speaker 1: we were gonna, we were gonna this guy was doing
Speaker 1: bad stuff and I was gonna be a part of it.
Speaker 1: It's just a weird. That's probably the most interesting thing
Speaker 1: about all this undercover stuff to me is just kind
Speaker 1: of the mind, the headspace you got to occupy and
Speaker 1: and anyway, any comments on that for me, either one
Speaker 1: of you you know you made I don't know if
Speaker 1: you know it, but Brent used to work undercovering our corg.
Speaker 5: Oh yes, I've picked on that.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm sure Russell tell you got to get in.
Speaker 2: You got to play that part, and you can't. You
Speaker 2: can't be that part whatever your undercover profile was. You
Speaker 2: can't be that guy. Just when you're talking to the target,
Speaker 2: you got to be that guy, wouldn't. You're fixing breakfast,
Speaker 2: you gotta be that guy. And he's asleep and you're
Speaker 2: sitting at the campfire waiting on him.
Speaker 3: You got to be that guy the whole time.
Speaker 6: You know, it's it's that and uh, and there's a
Speaker 6: there's a period there that your stress level is really high.
Speaker 6: And that's usually you know, your first thirty minutes with
Speaker 6: that person or first hour, and in that you know,
Speaker 6: I'm I'm here for the duration, so you know this
Speaker 6: was going to be a ten day back country hunt.
Speaker 6: And oh yeah, I met him one time at the Classic.
Speaker 6: But when you arrive out there to his ranch, you know,
Speaker 6: and he's and he's packing his stock and you're getting
Speaker 6: ready to go, and you know that that's your stress
Speaker 6: level right there.
Speaker 5: You know, has he done any checking on me?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 5: Is you know, is everything going to be okay?
Speaker 1: Rights?
Speaker 6: Yeah, you know, and and and you know, and a
Speaker 6: lot of people will be asking you a lot of
Speaker 6: questions and you don't know if they're asking you questions
Speaker 6: that they know the answers to, or you don't know
Speaker 6: if they're asking questions that it's just in conversation. So
Speaker 6: you don't, like he says, you don't know what that
Speaker 6: intention of that conversation is, just as you know how to.
Speaker 1: That's interesting, you say the first thirty minutes, because yeah,
Speaker 1: if you're just trying to make small talk, I mean,
Speaker 1: like yeah, you get somebody coming with you that you've
Speaker 1: never met, like if you're the outfitter, the illegal outfitter. Right,
Speaker 1: you're like, so tell me about your family. What kind
Speaker 1: of work do you do?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 1: Really your bricklayer? Well, what kind of stuff?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 1: I can imagine you're in your head, You're thinking, Oh,
Speaker 1: this guy's trying to sniff me out. Right, So did
Speaker 1: you think you in that situation, would you have visibly
Speaker 1: like if if your friends had been there with you,
Speaker 1: could they have told you were nervous?
Speaker 5: Probably?
Speaker 6: So really, yeah, you know, uh, you know, because the
Speaker 6: personality that that you are when you're undercover is is
Speaker 6: it should be different than you are every day.
Speaker 5: I mean, it really should.
Speaker 6: I mean that may sound crazy, but you you have
Speaker 6: to be yourself. But then you kind of have to
Speaker 6: set yourself apart a little bit and not be as talkative,
Speaker 6: you know.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 6: For an example, I I by nature like to talk,
Speaker 6: and I'm sorry for that for taking up too.
Speaker 5: Much Mike time. But but but but really, so.
Speaker 6: I have to I have to make a conscious effort
Speaker 6: when I would do undercover to shut up.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm, yeah, I don't need.
Speaker 6: To talk, and I'm sure this man right here can relate.
Speaker 1: It's impossible for Brent. Shut up.
Speaker 2: Just remember me telling you I was trying trying to
Speaker 2: cross the border. I'm like, answer the guy's question and
Speaker 2: nothing else. It's the first time we went across.
Speaker 1: The Yeah, Brent was like, Clay, you really messed that up.
Speaker 1: Chatting that guy is like, just answer the question.
Speaker 3: He asked your friend.
Speaker 1: Yeah, go ahead, let's go ahead.
Speaker 6: But but that's that's true. So I would have to,
Speaker 6: you know, consciously just kind of be uh and on
Speaker 6: this particularly one, I knew that I had to. I
Speaker 6: had to work my way eventually back to a to
Speaker 6: a remote guard station, if you will, independently when it
Speaker 6: was time to get out of there. So so I
Speaker 6: kind of set myself up that I like spending time along,
Speaker 6: you know.
Speaker 5: I mean, you know, if if there's a you know, hey.
Speaker 1: So you would have said that to him? Yeah, really,
Speaker 1: how did you? How would you plant that without it
Speaker 1: sounded well?
Speaker 6: You know, this is this is just great country. I've
Speaker 6: always wanted to come out here. I mean, I'm wanting
Speaker 6: to killing out, but man, I really really enjoy kind
Speaker 6: of exploring too. So if I if I just get
Speaker 6: out and walk around is that okay? You know, I
Speaker 6: don't have to have you with me. I don't even
Speaker 6: have to carry a gun, you know, I just I
Speaker 6: just man, I like to I like to backpack.
Speaker 5: Look at them, you know, just enjoy what's you were.
Speaker 1: You were making a setting the table for you to
Speaker 1: be able to.
Speaker 5: To go and and give a message, which I owe something?
Speaker 5: Did I see? You know?
Speaker 6: So you know, but you just you know, set up
Speaker 6: things like that to where you can get time alone,
Speaker 6: you know.
Speaker 5: And and and back then, I took no recorders.
Speaker 6: I actually had a back day pack that I carried
Speaker 6: that I had a special kind of hidden zipper in
Speaker 6: it that had a ledger in it, and I would
Speaker 6: actually write making notes at night, you know, or if
Speaker 6: you're going to hike by yourself, you make all your notes.
Speaker 5: You know, what was said, who was.
Speaker 6: In camp and all, you know, all the pertinent information
Speaker 6: you needed for that particular day. You know, didn't have
Speaker 6: GPS is back then, but you will write it on
Speaker 6: the map. I have a copy of your map in there.
Speaker 6: And you kept that backpack, you know, with you all
Speaker 6: the time, and and if anybody did get in it,
Speaker 6: they couldn't find that little notebook. So you know you
Speaker 6: you would, you would set yourself up to where you
Speaker 6: could get some space to do your documentation.
Speaker 3: Interesting.
Speaker 2: The best thing that I'm sure it worked the same
Speaker 2: with us. The best thing that I had going for
Speaker 2: me is that I had enough money in my pocket
Speaker 2: that they'd forget just about everything else. What do you mean,
Speaker 2: They're there to make money. They're not there for you
Speaker 2: to kill the health. They want your money. They're greedy
Speaker 2: and they they didn't care the quality of drugs that
Speaker 2: I bought. They didn't care if that was up to
Speaker 2: what I wanted, you know, supposedly wanted. All they wanted
Speaker 2: was the one hundred dollar bills I had in my pocket.
Speaker 2: I've told the story before on here. I had an
Speaker 2: informative was buying drugs for me one time, and he
Speaker 2: was known informant, had been an informant for years. He
Speaker 2: walked up, knocked on the door, and the guy asked
Speaker 2: the door and he's dead now, even says his first name.
Speaker 3: He said, Leroy, what you want? He said, you know
Speaker 3: what I'm after.
Speaker 2: He pulled out a hundred dollars bill and he said,
Speaker 2: I know you're working for the police, but you got
Speaker 2: that money, Come on you.
Speaker 3: And he sold it to him and he was right.
Speaker 3: He was working for the police just that short term.
Speaker 2: That short it wasn't a short it was he was
Speaker 2: taking a chance because because Leroy had a drug problem.
Speaker 3: Two.
Speaker 2: So he was just rolling the disk that I know
Speaker 2: you've been He was saying, I know you've been an
Speaker 2: informant before, but I also know that you're buying drugs.
Speaker 2: So you got the money, right now, I'll take my chance.
Speaker 2: Yeah he chose poorly, as they say, but hey, I
Speaker 2: mean right or wrong?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, money is the end rest.
Speaker 1: So you what you're saying is you carried around some
Speaker 1: money and like if things maybe the mood of the
Speaker 1: room was not great, you could.
Speaker 2: I just pay my money, get my stuff and walk
Speaker 2: out the door, or I say, I got the money
Speaker 2: you don't want to sell to me the guy down
Speaker 2: the street bill okay.
Speaker 3: Okay, okay, okay.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a big motivator. Wow.
Speaker 1: Here's a topic that Russ and I have talked about
Speaker 1: off air, is that it's like we're talking about and
Speaker 1: I enjoy talking about it is this stuff that kind
Speaker 1: of goes on behind the scenes. And but the but
Speaker 1: the undercover work that Russ was doing and YouTube RN
Speaker 1: is kind of like old school. It's different now like
Speaker 1: it was. We talked about, you know, like could this
Speaker 1: be detrimental to law enforcement to like tell these stories
Speaker 1: or something, and what would you say to that rush.
Speaker 6: Well, you know, first off, the height of my career
Speaker 6: was there wasn't a lot of the technology that we
Speaker 6: have today. And you know, for for listeners who are
Speaker 6: not aware of the of the US Forest Service, you know,
Speaker 6: undercover was not a.
Speaker 5: Huge thing we did every day. And I don't even know.
Speaker 6: If we covered this in the previous pod cast, but
Speaker 6: that was just part of my job. You know, I
Speaker 6: had mess lab cases on National Forest. I'd have to
Speaker 6: work wild fire ars and timber theft cases. You know,
Speaker 6: the overt investigations was part of my job or whatever
Speaker 6: duty station I was at. So, you know, the undercover
Speaker 6: just something I kind of fell into, as we discussed
Speaker 6: in the earlier podcast. But at the era that I
Speaker 6: fell into it, you didn't have Facebook, you didn't have
Speaker 6: the social media, you didn't have the back you didn't
Speaker 6: have to have the backstops that you had to have today.
Speaker 6: You know, uh uh, you know, you you you would
Speaker 6: work through the respective state that you were in and
Speaker 6: get an undercovered driver's license. Undercover, you had an undercover
Speaker 6: social Security number, you know, you'd have you'd have all that,
Speaker 6: you'd have a little bit of criminal history on your
Speaker 6: driver's license, you'd have just the normal backstops that you'd have,
Speaker 6: and you'd always use a profession that you had something
Speaker 6: that you could talk about. And the brick land wasn't
Speaker 6: natural for me, and I could discuss brick and actually
Speaker 6: they laid some brick before them, some undercovered jobs. And
Speaker 6: uh uh so I couldn't survive in the in today's
Speaker 6: world of technology doing undercover.
Speaker 5: Uh, there's just there's just no way.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So it's it's it's like talking about a way of
Speaker 1: doing things that really doesn't exist anymore, right, I mean
Speaker 1: is that I realize there's still undercover work that goes on,
Speaker 1: but it's just so vastly different.
Speaker 5: It's different, it's more technical.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 6: There there's undercover going on every day in the world
Speaker 6: of drugs, in the world of wildlife, and the world
Speaker 6: of gun trafficking. It's going on today, you know, right now,
Speaker 6: somewhere there's there's somebody being undercovered. Yeah, and and and
Speaker 6: and I commend those people that are doing it, because
Speaker 6: they are far more advanced than than I was, you know,
Speaker 6: twenty five years ago.
Speaker 5: I can tell you the hats off to them.
Speaker 6: It is a new era of people out there, and
Speaker 6: you know, just a lot more has to you know.
Speaker 1: What I think I actually have. Well, I may have
Speaker 1: heard a smidge of criticism back when I was doing
Speaker 1: the RT Stewart episodes with people saying, you know what,
Speaker 1: I don't like that our government does undercover stuff like that.
Speaker 1: That was that was something that they just didn't like
Speaker 1: that it was even a thing.
Speaker 5: Well, you know, I want to tell you something.
Speaker 6: And in law enforcement, you're always whatever agency you work for,
Speaker 6: you're looking for the edge to put the bad person
Speaker 6: in jail. You're not looking for the edge to make
Speaker 6: someone look bad. You don't single out a user group.
Speaker 6: You don't single out uh uh. You know, you don't
Speaker 6: profile and look for a specific group of people. You look,
Speaker 6: what is the problem and how can we address it?
Speaker 6: And I a lot of times, you know, it might
Speaker 6: be high visibility patrol. Well, if you've tried high visibility patrol,
Speaker 6: and you've tried you know, community education, and you've tried
Speaker 6: going into the communities and and and get and doing
Speaker 6: special presentations at civic clubs and you still have this
Speaker 6: particular problem going on, then you what tool is left?
Speaker 6: And a lot of times the undercover is is the
Speaker 6: last two you know, Uh, this the Yellowstone case. They
Speaker 6: had been getting reports of this guy, you know for
Speaker 6: two or three years, but did not have any way
Speaker 6: to approach it.
Speaker 3: The name, one other way you could have caught him exactly.
Speaker 6: And so you know there's a there's a lot of
Speaker 6: that that you have to consider and uh and it's
Speaker 6: uh and.
Speaker 5: You'll hear entrapment, right, yeah, Well you know this wasn't.
Speaker 6: A particular under I'll not get into that this case
Speaker 6: because it's a it's a whole other, lengthy story. But
Speaker 6: you know, you got to prove intent. You know, that
Speaker 6: person their intent was the breakfast, and you can't give
Speaker 6: them that idea.
Speaker 1: You can't plant the idea, Hey, I'd like to go
Speaker 1: killing el.
Speaker 5: No, no, no, no, you can't plant the idea.
Speaker 6: It's just like you know, he he couldn't as an undercover,
Speaker 6: couldn't walk around town and say I got some illegal drugs.
Speaker 6: You want to buy them? That's that's a no no.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 6: But but he could let it be known that you know, hey,
Speaker 6: if anybody wants drugs that he you know, he he
Speaker 6: back doors, figures out a way to get it out
Speaker 6: where the people approach him. He don't approach the people,
Speaker 6: you know, unless he's got information about this person that
Speaker 6: has predisposed themselves.
Speaker 5: And and and.
Speaker 1: That's a lot of legal technology.
Speaker 5: There is a lot of a lot of legal stuff.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 6: We had a case in North Georgia working with Georgia
Speaker 6: d n r UH a guy that was illegal guiding
Speaker 6: hall hunts wild hog hunts, and we had a really
Speaker 6: tough time on that one. But through the help of
Speaker 6: some great Georgia dn R rangers, we were able to.
Speaker 5: Make that case.
Speaker 6: And that guy predeposed himself by advertising in a local area,
Speaker 6: you know, his hog hunts, and so we were able
Speaker 6: to approach him, you know. And but he had predeposed
Speaker 6: himself by advertising, if that makes sense. So, you know,
Speaker 6: you can't just plant the idea.
Speaker 5: That's entrapment.
Speaker 6: It's when a law enforcement offer plants the idea, it
Speaker 6: has to be the idea of the other person.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I think there's there's value. Like my response
Speaker 1: to people that would have been like man I don't
Speaker 1: like undercover and kind of kind of like saying that it, yeah,
Speaker 1: might be entrapment or in infringement upon you know, private
Speaker 1: see and stuff like that. I'm like, it's real easy
Speaker 1: to not be investigated by undercover agents and that's just
Speaker 1: obey the law. Yeah, I mean, it's pretty like like
Speaker 1: if you you're a strike bear saying he walked out
Speaker 1: on the road and there was a game board and
Speaker 1: we're like, oh, wow, what do you do? And he
Speaker 1: was like, well, now there's one exception to this rule,
Speaker 1: and that's this guy. I know. He's working me undercover
Speaker 1: right now. In the long game ten years, you ain't
Speaker 1: found nothing.
Speaker 3: Yet away from my backpack. That's all.
Speaker 1: I got a hidden So I think there's I think
Speaker 1: there's I think there's value in the world knowing that
Speaker 1: we take wildlife crimes serious enough in this country, and
Speaker 1: I mean obviously drug crimes and other things that are
Speaker 1: just even more blatant. I mean, you know, there's some
Speaker 1: people when we talked about all this long for there's
Speaker 1: some people that I've heard that say, Hey, why people
Speaker 1: sending people to prison or these very stiff finds for
Speaker 1: wild eye, Like, is it really that big a deal.
Speaker 1: I mean there's people that are, you know, doing all
Speaker 1: kinds of other heinous crimes. Is wildlife crime that big
Speaker 1: a deal? And I mean my answer is emphatically yes,
Speaker 1: it is. As a culture, we have said that wildlife,
Speaker 1: wildlife management is something that we value.
Speaker 5: Well, and that's very true.
Speaker 6: And I don't know how many times that I've heard
Speaker 6: you know, why aren't you out here working on the
Speaker 6: real crime?
Speaker 5: Right? You know, why aren't you working on a real crime?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 6: You know, I do you know, you know, the meth
Speaker 6: lab cases, the the the murders on national form, we
Speaker 6: work those crimes.
Speaker 5: But you know what, uh, you know.
Speaker 6: When it comes to conservation and enforcement of our game laws,
Speaker 6: we have to partner with these state agencies, state agencies
Speaker 6: and work on it or will end up on with
Speaker 6: it's protecting our rights.
Speaker 2: You also, you know, you swear an oath to enforce
Speaker 2: the laws, not some of them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's all of them.
Speaker 6: It's like, you know, okay, here's the Code of Federal Regulations.
Speaker 5: Which law do you not want me to enforce?
Speaker 3: Exactly?
Speaker 6: You know, do you want me to you know, to
Speaker 6: quit enforcing this one or this one? And you know,
Speaker 6: and a lot of them are more egregious once you
Speaker 6: get into it than you think. And it wasn't an
Speaker 6: undercover case, but I could tell you a case in
Speaker 6: East Tennessee where a guy was trapping live bear and
Speaker 6: taking him back to his property at his house where
Speaker 6: he had about a twenty by twenty four enclosure that
Speaker 6: he was staging bear and dog fights. And when we
Speaker 6: were able to get enough for a search warrant for
Speaker 6: that residence, we brought in a specialist from a very
Speaker 6: well respected university and with a very well respected history
Speaker 6: of bear DNA, and we're able to prove that over
Speaker 6: a period of time that there was I think it
Speaker 6: was twenty something different bear had been in that pen.
Speaker 5: Oh wow, So you know, work.
Speaker 6: In one case how many bears died or was run
Speaker 6: through that type of just for the sake of entertainment
Speaker 6: and betting on bear and dog fights.
Speaker 1: Really?
Speaker 5: So wow wow?
Speaker 6: You know, so you have to you have to work
Speaker 6: them to find out how egregious some of them are. Yeah,
Speaker 6: and it's just I'm sure Brent can tell you. You
Speaker 6: might buy the nickel bag, but that is not what
Speaker 6: you're looking for.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, exactly, you're trying to get to the
Speaker 2: root of the problem. Is every every person's just a
Speaker 2: stepping stone to the to the next one.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Interesting, interesting, Well, I thoroughly enjoyed all these stories in
Speaker 1: the the Apalachic Coald Tree Band. That story that came out. Uh,
Speaker 1: if you're listening to this recording, it's already out. But
Speaker 1: it was the extra drop. Yeah you bear, I didn't
Speaker 1: realize that was part of the homework.
Speaker 3: Well no, not just graduate, I'm done.
Speaker 1: Uh the higher education that that was. That was a
Speaker 1: great one too.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was.
Speaker 8: Boy that that I think that's one of the ones
Speaker 8: I enjoyed the most, just because, man, it just seemed
Speaker 8: like the trap was set when you went to finally
Speaker 8: those guys man, what what I mean like dominoes all
Speaker 8: the way down.
Speaker 1: I could just see Russ pulling out going. I don't know,
Speaker 1: but I gotta go.
Speaker 5: Driving a uglyugly rent a car.
Speaker 6: But yeah, and there's there's one that could have never
Speaker 6: worked with today's technology.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, we want to message away losing all.
Speaker 5: There's an example of that.
Speaker 1: Cash. What do you think about your grandpa? Nobody ever
Speaker 1: told you he was such a cool guy?
Speaker 3: Did they.
Speaker 7: Told me some crazy stories?
Speaker 1: What's your favorite story that your grandpa tells. Do you
Speaker 1: have one you remember?
Speaker 5: Well, how will I remember?
Speaker 7: It's not exactly my favorite, but it's okay. I have
Speaker 7: one because I uh that I remember because it's like
Speaker 7: the most craziest and it's about this guy that pooped
Speaker 7: it in the back of his car.
Speaker 8: It looks like we're going to have another episode.
Speaker 1: Car.
Speaker 5: And actually that that was associated Rainbow family member.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, and the Rainbow Full Circle.
Speaker 5: And I had forgotten.
Speaker 6: That's probably been two years since I've told him that story.
Speaker 6: He always asked me to tell him police stories, and uh,
Speaker 6: I'm about run out of them.
Speaker 3: Just make him up here.
Speaker 6: No, no, but that that was true. He was he
Speaker 6: was at a national Rainbow gathering and was arrested into
Speaker 6: put in the back of a Crown vict completely unclosed
Speaker 6: and having to be transported to jail, and just decided
Speaker 6: to defecate in the back of the car and spread
Speaker 6: it overwhere.
Speaker 5: Just to get back at me.
Speaker 1: So, uh, your vehicle, yes, yes, oh wow.
Speaker 5: So anyway, that's.
Speaker 1: Just that's not what I got expected.
Speaker 6: No, that wasn't what they expected when they go through
Speaker 6: the sally port either.
Speaker 5: When the guy's processing.
Speaker 1: He was yikes.
Speaker 5: So that's a did you come up with that one?
Speaker 4: Archives?
Speaker 1: Jesus if that's your favorite for what your second?
Speaker 4: He can't tell it on air.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was like, we're going to have to hold
Speaker 1: that one back.
Speaker 6: I thought he was gonna tell about us going hiking
Speaker 6: or something, or to the waterfall or something fun.
Speaker 3: But anyway, mm hmmod job.
Speaker 5: I'm glad you pan attention, Isaac.
Speaker 1: Any questions you got cameraman back there? No, I thought
Speaker 1: it was phenomenal series of stories. Uh, and Isaac like
Speaker 1: it was interpret Isaac like the stories ahead. Uh, can't
Speaker 1: can't have him that lifestyle. Not good for that. Very
Speaker 1: thankful for it, ye yep, yep. Well, uh no, Russ,
Speaker 1: it's been a pleasure, pleasure to get to know you, man.
Speaker 1: I mean when we're gonna we're gonna stay in touch
Speaker 1: for sure. Just uh No, it's a you're You're a unique,
Speaker 1: neat unique guy in that Russ is a good storyteller.
Speaker 1: He's got great stories. And then just the integrity that
Speaker 1: you see inside of Rust. When Misty listened to Russ,
Speaker 1: she that's what she picked up immediately before she met him,
Speaker 1: was just like this is a good guy and the
Speaker 1: and uh uh but anyway, Yeah, for all your years
Speaker 1: of service and what you did.
Speaker 8: I think I think I'm grateful just to be able
Speaker 8: to have the open window to peer in and see
Speaker 8: that from the from your perspective that I.
Speaker 1: Think there's there's there's something to that. I mean, just
Speaker 1: just being willing to talk because I mean, not everybody
Speaker 1: would be uh. And I think it takes uh.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think it's good that we talk about this stuff.
Speaker 1: I think it's valuable. But I don't remember if I
Speaker 1: said it. But part of my I mean, any any
Speaker 1: story that I do on bear grease, like I'm thinking
Speaker 1: about it from every possible way that I know how
Speaker 1: to think about it, even critically, like is this story
Speaker 1: is there is there is there some negative to telling
Speaker 1: this story because anything that I'm going to talk about, like,
Speaker 1: I want to get behind it fully and I do
Speaker 1: like to talk about controversial stuff at times. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, and and uh, but I think there's value
Speaker 1: in people knowing that this is happening, like it it
Speaker 1: sets a it continues to show the the ethic of
Speaker 1: this country is that we live by the rule of law.
Speaker 1: Like you go to a lot of countries and other places,
Speaker 1: and people don't stop at red lights. People don't obey
Speaker 1: traffic laws. I mean, that's a big thing in the
Speaker 1: world in a lot of places. Here. Percent of the time,
Speaker 1: if you turn loose an American on a lonely country
Speaker 1: road and there's a stop sign, most of the time
Speaker 1: they're going to stop. They may do a roll and stop.
Speaker 3: Well it's a night. Then you can cut your lights off.
Speaker 3: You don't see any.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's exceptions to this rule, but but the but
Speaker 1: the principle I'll stand by is that we are we
Speaker 1: are a people that have an ethic that that we
Speaker 1: we want we want laws, we respect law, we respect laws.
Speaker 1: And there's obviously exceptions to that, YadA YadA. But point being,
Speaker 1: this makes us realize that there's it puts teeth behind
Speaker 1: that and and honestly keeps keeps us all honest in
Speaker 1: a way. I mean, if if I know and not
Speaker 1: that not that I would be necessarily tempted to break
Speaker 1: the law. But if a person was, if he heard
Speaker 1: this story, he'd be like, man, I gotta you know
Speaker 1: they're they're people working to enforce these laws. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: just think there's value in that. Yeah, absolutely, I think
Speaker 1: they're value in it. Brent and I are gonna be
Speaker 1: in Venice, Louisiana on a Meat Eater Experiences trip.
Speaker 2: I think, uh, they'll let me take my trout line
Speaker 2: down there.
Speaker 8: Yeah, for sure, let's catch some redfish with trial, That's
Speaker 8: what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: I think they've got a few spots left. The trips
Speaker 1: aren't cheap, Brent and I. I mean, it'd be nice
Speaker 1: if it was like five hundred bucks for like a
Speaker 1: four day trip all food, lodging, fishing, guiding, but it's not.
Speaker 1: It's more expensive than that. But there there's some spots
Speaker 1: left for that trip.
Speaker 4: Brent and if they want and you can get it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yep, it's a it's a fully guided fishing trip
Speaker 1: is what it is. But we'll be there with some
Speaker 1: of the other meteor crew.
Speaker 3: It'll be fun.
Speaker 1: I wanted to show everybody this to Mediator just came
Speaker 1: out with a collab with a co lab with the
Speaker 1: Montana Knife company. They call the flat tail.
Speaker 4: Perfect for cutting that apple up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, shows how it works. Josh, come on, come on,
Speaker 1: don't cut your hand.
Speaker 3: Out like this.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna take that. I'm gonna take that goat hunting.
Speaker 1: I hadn't cut anything with it.
Speaker 3: God man dropped it in the floor.
Speaker 1: I think that on the online One.
Speaker 8: Of the one of my greatest memories of my grandfather
Speaker 8: is eating apples with.
Speaker 1: Cutting them. Well, Russ and Cash, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for coming. I hope you'll have had a good time.
Speaker 1: And uh uh Cash take care old Stubby Larry for us.
Speaker 5: Well, we want to thank you and and the whole
Speaker 5: crew because.
Speaker 6: Uh, it's it's a it's a well worthy project that
Speaker 6: you that you work on, you do an excellent job
Speaker 6: at it, and so you've exposed a lot of I'm
Speaker 6: gonna go ahead and say this, and this is not
Speaker 6: a promo. Clay's not asked me to say this, but
Speaker 6: he is. He's reconnected me with a lot of people
Speaker 6: that I hadn't talked to in twenty five or thirty
Speaker 6: years from all over the country.
Speaker 5: Oh that's that's looked me up.
Speaker 6: And that I worked with, that I worked with and
Speaker 6: because I'm not a social media guy, and they found
Speaker 6: ways to look me up and uh and reconnected and
Speaker 6: and and got a lot of new uh what I
Speaker 6: would say, interest in the agency, which was one of
Speaker 6: the things that I really wanted to get across is
Speaker 6: because the US four Services, it's kind of a forgotten agency.
Speaker 5: It's a great agency.
Speaker 6: Got a lot of different functional areas within that agency
Speaker 6: and not just law enforcement. And uh, it was a
Speaker 6: great career and uh I appreciate the exposure, yeah to
Speaker 6: the agency.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right on, Well, we appreciate it, and I hope
Speaker 1: you'll have a safe trip back to Tennessee.
Speaker 5: Thank you.