Speaker 1: Welcome to this country Life.
Speaker 2: I'm your host, Brent Reeves from coon hunting to trot
Speaker 2: lining and just general country living.
Speaker 1: I want you to stay.
Speaker 2: Awhile as I share my experiences in life lessons. This
Speaker 2: Country Life is presented by Case Knives on Meat Eaters
Speaker 2: Podcast Network, bringing you the best outdoor podcast.
Speaker 1: The airwaves have to offer.
Speaker 2: All right, friends, grab a chair or drop that tailgate.
Speaker 2: I've got some stories to share. The Kansas count project.
Speaker 2: Now here's a little insight on how my first solo
Speaker 2: video project went that we just finished filming. Now it'll
Speaker 2: head to the editors who will take the pile of
Speaker 2: footage we assembled over three days and try to tell
Speaker 2: the story visually that we set out to tell during
Speaker 2: the planning of the project. Months from now, after a
Speaker 2: whole bunch of work from the folks you never see
Speaker 2: or hear about, we'll post it for all to see
Speaker 2: and hopefully learn a little something and enjoy it. Only time, Hotel,
Speaker 2: I got a lot to say, so let's get to it.
Speaker 2: My first solo video project for me Eater took place
Speaker 2: a little less than a month ago. Now that project
Speaker 2: immediately followed the South Louisiana Fishing trip and a hog
Speaker 2: hunt in Texas I talked about a few episodes ago.
Speaker 2: I've been a busy boy over the last few weeks,
Speaker 2: and now, after a couple of nights at home from
Speaker 2: the Texas trip, I was making tracks toward Kansas to
Speaker 2: leak up with my friend Jeff Ryder. Jeff's a fellow
Speaker 2: ar Kansas and a longtime friend now. I talked about
Speaker 2: him in episode two twenty nine, dedicated to hunting with
Speaker 2: decoy dogs back in July twenty twenty four. If you're
Speaker 2: not familiar with what a decoy dog is, I highly
Speaker 2: encourage you to give that one a listen. But I'll
Speaker 2: go over briefly here for those that are new, or
Speaker 2: for you folks with bad memories or the select few
Speaker 2: who are too lazy to move your finger about three
Speaker 2: times and listen to it for yourself. But decoy dogs
Speaker 2: have been an effective tool and predator control for a
Speaker 2: long time. As a matter of fact, there are still
Speaker 2: folks who've historically been called government trappers and hunters that
Speaker 2: are still working on predator numbers. Folks who are state
Speaker 2: or federal employees or contractors tasked with reducing the number
Speaker 2: of predators on the landscape with kyotes being one of
Speaker 2: their main targets. Now, you're probably gonna hear me say
Speaker 2: kyote and kyotey interchangeably, and it's just the way I
Speaker 2: was raised. But that's what I'm talking about. Forever, I
Speaker 2: thought the role of coyote number production was to benefit
Speaker 2: cattle ranchers and deer populations. So with that info simmering
Speaker 2: in my back pocket, I set out many moons ago
Speaker 2: to fill my friend Jeff doing the work of the
Speaker 2: people in saving Kansas burghers and booners one code at
Speaker 2: a time. Now, in a way, we were, but just
Speaker 2: not to the extent I was led to believe by
Speaker 2: word of mouth and my very unscientific research and observations.
Speaker 2: All that info would come out with a meeting schedule
Speaker 2: for the final day of shooting with the wildlife biologists
Speaker 2: from Kansas State University. Now, more on that enlightening meeting
Speaker 2: and conversation a little later on.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Now, here's how decoyed dogs work. We set up in
Speaker 2: a territory that offers cover and terrain suitable for coouts
Speaker 2: to operate in, which is just about anywhere, and start
Speaker 2: blaring cody sounds over a predator call the coute hears
Speaker 2: the sounds, comes to investigate, and while approaching, the dog
Speaker 2: sees the coyoute and gives chase. Now, if the cootie
Speaker 2: is aggressive enough, it will engage the dog by chasing it,
Speaker 2: and the dog will come back to where we're sitting
Speaker 2: and someone will take the shot, reducing the predator population
Speaker 2: by one. It is quite the spectacle, and to those
Speaker 2: who are interested in seeing how two canines and one
Speaker 2: domesticated and one not interact with one another, it's pretty amazing.
Speaker 2: But before we get into that, we've got to get
Speaker 2: to Kansas and link up with the production team and
Speaker 2: our host, the ever clean shaven Jeff Ryder. I've known
Speaker 2: Jeff for quite a while, and he's as good a
Speaker 2: fella as they make. His disdain for anything related to
Speaker 2: onions and a poor choice in music leaves a whole
Speaker 2: lot of room for improvement, but we can't all be perfect.
Speaker 2: I saw him contemplate a felony once in a cafe
Speaker 2: where a waitress brought him a cheeseburger with onions. He
Speaker 2: didn't say anything to her. He's a gentleman above all else.
Speaker 2: But the the rest of us heard his sad tale
Speaker 2: of woe endlessly over that whole trip onions nearly started
Speaker 2: civil unrest on the plains of the Sunflower State. I
Speaker 2: also remember driving home with him late one night, after
Speaker 2: nearly a week of little sleep and lots and lots
Speaker 2: of driving over the vast Kansas Prairie.
Speaker 1: Chasing old wily coyote.
Speaker 2: I was sound asleep in the passenger seat when all
Speaker 2: of a sudden, the Beastie Boys were blaring No Sleep
Speaker 2: Till Brooklyn at full voluble within the confines of the
Speaker 2: cab of that truck, a song and genre of music
Speaker 2: that would have me choosing a dentist apartment.
Speaker 1: Over listening to a complete track.
Speaker 2: I bolted up right in the seat, glared at him
Speaker 2: in his big, dumb, smiling face, and told him, won't
Speaker 2: you ever play that again? And I tried to go
Speaker 2: back to sleep. For those that are wondering, he did
Speaker 2: not listen. But a couple of weeks ago, when I
Speaker 2: pulled into the place where we were all staying, Eyes
Speaker 2: and Dave Gardner, two veteran cameramen who I've worked on
Speaker 2: several projects with during my time at Meat Eater, were
Speaker 2: already there, putting equipment and cameras together. That we'd be
Speaker 2: using for the next three days. Isaac had made the
Speaker 2: drive over from his home in Missouri, and David flown
Speaker 2: down from Montana, rented a car brought the majority of
Speaker 2: the equipment that we'd be using. The amount of stuff
Speaker 2: needed for a professional production may have gotten smaller in
Speaker 2: size as far as cameras and sound gear goes over
Speaker 2: the years, but the number of hard cases and redundancy
Speaker 2: has more or less remained the same.
Speaker 1: It's it's a lot of the stuff.
Speaker 2: Some don't realize the depth of planning of a production
Speaker 2: crew goes to a preparation for a film and a
Speaker 2: hunt like this. I know because I was one of
Speaker 2: them that didn't. Back when I was doing it. I
Speaker 2: bought the best camera in tripod I could afford, couple
Speaker 2: with the best shotgun Mike I could attach to the camera,
Speaker 2: and we headed to the woods and what ever happened happened,
Speaker 2: And whatever happened, I was hopefully paying enough attention to
Speaker 2: have the camera pointing in the right direction to document
Speaker 2: the event. Now that's still basically what we do, except
Speaker 2: everything is planned ahead of time for what we're going
Speaker 2: to try to film to fit a story agreed upon
Speaker 2: that hopefully the cameras will capture and support our narrative.
Speaker 2: Several online meetings of me pitching the idea to the
Speaker 2: office last year had this project ending up being about
Speaker 2: a hunter's relationship with his dog. A lot of my
Speaker 2: content is about hundred dogs, and that relationship is a
Speaker 2: solid narrative throughout them, all different environments being the stage
Speaker 2: on which the same story is told again and again.
Speaker 2: Nuances of the relationship being described on how the human
Speaker 2: dog interaction plays out in the hunt is what I
Speaker 2: find entertaining in education. I never grow tired of seeing
Speaker 2: a working dog work in conjunction with the goal, whether
Speaker 2: it's fighting a squirrel or a coon and a tree
Speaker 2: and the dog is telling you I promise he's right
Speaker 2: up there, just keep looking, or a shepherd moving cows
Speaker 2: from one place to another at the direction of a handler.
Speaker 2: I dig it, and I love witnessing the correlation between
Speaker 2: the man and the dog as much as the interaction
Speaker 2: of the dog and whatevery game is being pursued.
Speaker 1: In this case is colotes and I just gave.
Speaker 2: You a brief on how it works, with a more
Speaker 2: detailed version of that to be depicted in the footage
Speaker 2: we were fixing.
Speaker 1: To try and capture.
Speaker 2: I couldn't think of a better hunter to be with
Speaker 2: than Jeff and his dogs to showcase in this project.
Speaker 2: Countless hunts from him years ago still played vividly in
Speaker 2: my brain as I drove toward where we'd all meet,
Speaker 2: and I couldn't think of a better place to do
Speaker 2: it than Kansas, even though Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Missouri have
Speaker 2: been great locations as well from back in the day.
Speaker 2: Just something about the Kansas Prairie that speaks to me
Speaker 2: on a level like no other when it comes to
Speaker 2: this kind of honeing.
Speaker 1: Now, maybe it's.
Speaker 2: Because it was the first place that I witnessed the
Speaker 2: decoy dog work for jail. If I had to bet, though,
Speaker 2: I'd say it's because the sunsets in Kansas they're as
Speaker 2: good as they get anywhere. And when I think about them,
Speaker 2: I always see the horizon and in the frame of
Speaker 2: windmills and missing a couple of blades, and it sets
Speaker 2: motionless as the sky fades from blue to orange, and
Speaker 2: you can seemingly see forever. I was in the right place,
Speaker 2: with the right people. There was only one problem. It
Speaker 2: was raining like a Cowpeean on a flat rock. It
Speaker 2: had been raining off and on all spring, deluges of
Speaker 2: rain and storms. It seemed to be on a tighter
Speaker 2: schedule than we were. Almost a year of planning had
Speaker 2: come down to go time, and it was raining buckets.
Speaker 2: Day one was an absolute wash, literally and figuratively. We'd
Speaker 2: be in Kansas for five days. Day one and day
Speaker 2: five would be travel days getting there and then getting
Speaker 2: back home. That left us the middle three days for
Speaker 2: hunting and for getting the required shots outside of the
Speaker 2: hunting location, like sunsets and sunrises, birds and creeks, landscapes,
Speaker 2: drone shots, interviews, and the multitude of other film and
Speaker 2: photographs required to complete such a project. It's a lot
Speaker 2: of stuff, but we were ready. We were well prepared.
Speaker 2: We all knew what our individual rolls were, and the
Speaker 2: shooting schedule was our playbook. Everything that we could control
Speaker 2: was accounted for. The only two things we had no
Speaker 2: control over was the weather and the kyotes.
Speaker 1: On this trip, they were going to be hard to
Speaker 1: work with.
Speaker 2: Three hours before dark, the rain tapered off and we
Speaker 2: hit the ground running guns, cameras and dogs. My old
Speaker 2: high school agrid teacher always said, boys, you got to
Speaker 2: make hay while the sun shines. It sounded cool, and
Speaker 2: I was probably a lot older when I figured out
Speaker 2: what he meant by that. You have to take advantage
Speaker 2: of an opportunity when it presents itself well. The break
Speaker 2: in the weather was our first opportunity, and we were
Speaker 2: chomping at the bit to get started. Coats like tickets
Speaker 2: to den in and hang out during the day, and
Speaker 2: during this time of year, the mating pair will have
Speaker 2: a litter of pupps in a den. Naturally they'll be
Speaker 2: more protective and aggressive than other times because.
Speaker 1: Of that fact alone.
Speaker 2: Before we go any farther and I get accused of
Speaker 2: separating mommies and daddies from babies.
Speaker 1: That's not how nature works. They ain't people.
Speaker 2: Their will to survive is what makes them protective, as
Speaker 2: any parents should be. That same wheell is also what
Speaker 2: makes them slip into your farm and snatch a calf,
Speaker 2: a lamb of gold, a piglet, or your pet out
Speaker 2: of the backyard. The ones that do that, I would
Speaker 2: come to find out two days later, are the very
Speaker 2: ones we normally encounter on such a hunt. I'm not
Speaker 2: purposely bearing the hook to keep it from you. I
Speaker 2: just want you to learn about it like I did
Speaker 2: from a more trusted source than me. So back to
Speaker 2: that first setup. We walked north through an old barn
Speaker 2: lot and stopped at the edge of uncut pasture that
Speaker 2: was more prairie grass than hey.
Speaker 1: I can't imagine it looking much different from when.
Speaker 2: The first European settlers started making wagon tracks in that
Speaker 2: part of the country. Jeff walked out about thirty yards
Speaker 2: to set that pradator call out. There was a fence
Speaker 2: line to our left, also about thirty yards that ran
Speaker 2: north the direction we were facing straight up that fence.
Speaker 1: On the west side of it was a thicket you could.
Speaker 2: See on all necks that was pretty substantial, about five
Speaker 2: acres worth of boat arc trees and briars and thick
Speaker 2: fever that looked like a coat had designed it himself.
Speaker 2: We sat there facing the north, and there was a
Speaker 2: gap in the fence at about ten o'clock on.
Speaker 1: Our left, about fifty yards away.
Speaker 2: The wind was blown from the front right to the
Speaker 2: back left. According to Jeff, the colts had more than
Speaker 2: likely come from the north out in front of us,
Speaker 2: or from the left, which was west, and entered that
Speaker 2: gap where they could see the prairie and see what
Speaker 2: was making all the racket called Jeff at echoing across
Speaker 2: Kansas was a cody hal and a challenge to the
Speaker 2: local inhabitants, and then a simulated fight between two adult couts,
Speaker 2: and rounded it out with the artificial sounds that mimicked
Speaker 2: cody puppies in distress, all of which would make the
Speaker 2: hair stand up on the back of your neck and
Speaker 2: give you the creeps, but were a hundred times more
Speaker 2: pleasing to my ears than anything beastly boys ever released. Normally,
Speaker 2: we'd sit in a spot no more than fifteen or
Speaker 2: twenty minutes trying various calls, with Jeff working a pattern
Speaker 2: of gradual intensity, hoping to ramp up the predatory and
Speaker 2: territorial instincts of the couts, drawed them out of the open,
Speaker 2: building layers of curiosity and anger upon layer until they
Speaker 2: finally broke out and they opened. I'd watched him do
Speaker 2: it a million times, and I'd safely bet that more
Speaker 2: times than not it worked. This was the first time
Speaker 2: in over a decade that I would be sitting side
Speaker 2: by side with my friend Jeff on the plains of Kansas,
Speaker 2: waiting on a cow toy to show up.
Speaker 1: And this time it would be no different.
Speaker 2: I was getting itchy to leave to make another stand
Speaker 2: before dark when Jeff said, I think I saw something
Speaker 2: across from the prairie over into that thicket by two hundred.
Speaker 1: And fifty yards up the fence. I didn't see nothing.
Speaker 2: I kept a watchful eye of that fence row for
Speaker 2: what seemed like forever, and I remembered what he he
Speaker 2: said about the gap, and as I shifted my gaze
Speaker 2: to the left, Jeff said, there he is three o'clock.
Speaker 2: A joker had done just what Jeff said he was
Speaker 2: going to do. He crossed in front of us where
Speaker 2: he saw him. Then he followed that fence line south
Speaker 2: and walked into our set up, exactly where he figured
Speaker 2: he would. He was right on top of us, and
Speaker 2: had we been there just to whack and stack coats,
Speaker 2: that hunt would have ended right there. I swung to
Speaker 2: the left and had him in my sights. Dave and
Speaker 2: Isaac started rolling their cameras and Jeff seek the dogs
Speaker 2: to engage the coat who was staring at us from
Speaker 2: an easy fly cast away, But the dogs didn't see
Speaker 2: him immediately. They were looking straight forward. He was on
Speaker 2: the left, and the coat faded further to our south,
Speaker 2: trying to figure out which one of us was making
Speaker 2: the sounds that had.
Speaker 1: Brought him out in the first place.
Speaker 2: Now this is all happening at the same time, a
Speaker 2: mirror matter of seconds, and he got down wind enough,
Speaker 2: just enough to catch a bit of human sit And
Speaker 2: when he got a snow full of that, he little
Speaker 2: shuck and bamoosed back into that thicket, with Jeff's dog
Speaker 2: right behind him.
Speaker 1: Finally he saw it.
Speaker 2: Now, you think that that would be the end of it,
Speaker 2: with the coyote beating feet out of the country, But
Speaker 2: like most things in nature, it's not always what it
Speaker 2: appears to be. Spook deer don't run near as far
Speaker 2: as you think, and needed the coyotes less than one
Speaker 2: hundred yards away. We heard some fisticuffs break out between
Speaker 2: Jeff's dog and the coyote. Nothing vicious, mind you, or
Speaker 2: that lasted very long, more of a meaningful exchange of
Speaker 2: ideas from two folks who are never going to get along.
Speaker 2: Sometimes this will lead the coyote back into the game,
Speaker 2: but it's only a remote chance if they get awhiff
Speaker 2: of human sent before they engage with the dog, and
Speaker 2: right along with what the law of averages would say,
Speaker 2: he didn't come back out, but we had done what
Speaker 2: we had set out to do. We made a stand
Speaker 2: we called in a colt that we could have taken
Speaker 2: at any point. We just didn't get the dog action
Speaker 2: we were looking for for our project. It wasn't a
Speaker 2: colt shooting show. It was supposed to be a colt
Speaker 2: decoy dog show and we were just getting started. We
Speaker 2: deal with rain off and on for the next three days,
Speaker 2: so our hunting time got limited by the weather. In
Speaker 2: that time, we made about half of the stands that
Speaker 2: we wouldn't normally have done. By hunting from daylight until
Speaker 2: around noon before it gets too hot, you can feasibly
Speaker 2: make three stands an hour, which comes to about fifteen.
Speaker 2: Another five hours in the evening will put you at
Speaker 2: thirty stands a day. Not that hard to do when
Speaker 2: you're not having to drive very far, and we didn't
Speaker 2: because Jeff had easily half a million acres of private
Speaker 2: land that he had permission to hunt on, access gained
Speaker 2: over thirty years of helping farmers with the code issues.
Speaker 2: I'm not going to reveal how the filming ended because
Speaker 2: i want you to watch it when it comes out
Speaker 2: next year. I will tell you this that we had
Speaker 2: some crazy cool hunts, and I missed some shots I
Speaker 2: shouldn't have, and I made the shot of my life.
Speaker 1: On the final hunt for the final day.
Speaker 2: But I also want to share with you the name
Speaker 2: of a new friend Jeff and I made on this
Speaker 2: reunion hunt of ours, Doctor Drew Ricketts, a professor at
Speaker 2: Kansas State University. Drew's specialty is wildlife biology, and he
Speaker 2: is the extension specialist for wildlife Management and predator Control,
Speaker 2: which means, if you have problems with predators on your land,
Speaker 2: Drew is the guy you called who can teach you
Speaker 2: how to deal with issues like that.
Speaker 1: Now, I like that.
Speaker 2: I like the idea of passing the knowledge down for
Speaker 2: someone else to do it instead of doing it for him.
Speaker 2: It's like that old shampoo commercial of how the good
Speaker 2: word gets out.
Speaker 1: You tell two friends, and they'll tell two friends, and.
Speaker 2: After a few of those, everybody knows how to deal
Speaker 2: with the problem. Before you know it, it ain't a problem.
Speaker 2: No more on theory outside of how it works anyway,
Speaker 2: Drew was invited to be a part of the production to.
Speaker 1: Bring some learned knowledge into the mix.
Speaker 2: The best part about the whole thing, Drew is a
Speaker 2: decoy dog hunter himself. Drew added a lot of great
Speaker 2: information to the project, and we're already planning a more
Speaker 2: in depth interview podcast about what I'm fixing the lightly
Speaker 2: touch on here.
Speaker 1: I found it fascinating, and I hope you do too.
Speaker 1: Give me a.
Speaker 2: Show of hands out there as to how many of
Speaker 2: you have seen the meme on social media that shows
Speaker 2: a coute on top of a pyramid of deer fons
Speaker 2: that says during dinning season, studies show the female codes
Speaker 2: average killing nineteen phones each to feed their offspring. And
Speaker 2: then it ends with keep doing the workfellas, which is
Speaker 2: an encouragement to keep the coltes and check. Now that's
Speaker 2: an activity I fully support, but not for those reasons now,
Speaker 2: because those aren't facts, not even close, and I always
Speaker 2: thought they were. Doctor Ricketts, Jeff and I talked at
Speaker 2: length about how he came to the conclusion that that
Speaker 2: meme was bogus. Guess what he showed his math, He
Speaker 2: showed the work he did, how he got there, And
Speaker 2: I'm going to sneak peek it here for the folks
Speaker 2: that are curious and make the non believers mad with facts.
Speaker 1: It's one of my favorite things to do.
Speaker 2: Simply put, there there aren't enough deer in Kansas to
Speaker 2: make that math work. The actual figure of farm loss
Speaker 2: to colts isn't nineteen falls per year. It's zero zero
Speaker 2: point six y five falls deaths per could. That's like
Speaker 2: a half a deer a ratio. If anyone out there
Speaker 2: is old enough to remember that Andy Griffith show. Now
Speaker 2: is when you say poor ratio any anyway, zero point
Speaker 2: six y five is a long way from nineteen as
Speaker 2: a matter of fact, which is what I like to
Speaker 2: deal in when I can. It's eighteen point three to
Speaker 2: five deer away from facts. The deal is that couches
Speaker 2: do cause a problem, and the couts that respond to
Speaker 2: cause during dinners season are the ones most likely to
Speaker 2: cause their problems on farms, ranches, backyards.
Speaker 1: And deer leases.
Speaker 2: I'm going to wait neck deep into that subject and
Speaker 2: a lot of others pertaining too, these interesting creatures and
Speaker 2: how they affect the landscape. When doctor Ricketts and I
Speaker 2: sat down and discuss it in detail very soon, I
Speaker 2: think you'll be surprised at how the numbers really shake
Speaker 2: out on these curious animals.
Speaker 1: I know I was.
Speaker 2: They're very interesting and I learned a lot and I
Speaker 2: think you will too.
Speaker 1: But that's a wrap for this one.
Speaker 2: I appreciate y'all so much for listening to all of
Speaker 2: us on the Bear Grease Channel until next week.
Speaker 1: This is Brent Reed signing off. Y'all be careful.