Speaker 1: Welcome to Backwoods University, a place where we focus on wildlife,
Speaker 1: wild places and the people who dedicate their lives to
Speaker 1: conserving both. Big shout out to Onyx Hunt for their
Speaker 1: support of this podcast. I'm your host, Lake Pickle, and
Speaker 1: we are officially in February now. Now, I don't know
Speaker 1: about y'all, but for us here in Mississippi, February was
Speaker 1: always this kind of month where you would catch yourself
Speaker 1: looking around and wondering what to do. He can't deer hunt,
Speaker 1: that's over. He can't duck hunt. That ended in January two.
Speaker 1: I suppose you could dream about spring turkey season, but
Speaker 1: that doesn't start till March. Well, I'll tell you what
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do. Over these past few months, you and
Speaker 1: I have had the privilege of listening to some pretty
Speaker 1: incredible and fascinating folks. Grizzly bear specialist and marine biologists,
Speaker 1: botanist and beekeepers. We have heard from a wide spectrum,
Speaker 1: and that's one of the things that I've come to
Speaker 1: love about doing this show. One drawback that I have found, however,
Speaker 1: is that if you haven't noticed, Backwoods University is a
Speaker 1: pretty stick to the point kind of show. We don't
Speaker 1: really go down any rabbit holes, which I think is
Speaker 1: overall good. But sometimes in these interviews I will hear
Speaker 1: a real hum dinger of a story, but it's just
Speaker 1: slightly off topic and I'm left scratching my head wondering
Speaker 1: what to do with this incredible piece of content. Well,
Speaker 1: I found the solution. In this episode, We're going to
Speaker 1: go through some of the interviews from past BU episodes,
Speaker 1: and here's some pretty awesome tales that didn't quite make
Speaker 1: the original episode. I am supremely confident that you'll be
Speaker 1: glad we found somewhere to put these. Let's dive in.
Speaker 1: Our first story is gonna set the tone for this
Speaker 1: whole episode. From the time that I first heard it
Speaker 1: sitting across from Tom Parker and his cabin in Western Montana,
Speaker 1: I knew I had to find a way to share it.
Speaker 1: It's simply too good. Y'all remember Tom from the Grit episode,
Speaker 1: and his story is about getting run up a tree
Speaker 1: by an angry grizzly bear. In his decades spent guiding
Speaker 1: in the Bob Marshall Wilderness in Mission Mountains. I still
Speaker 1: maintain the opinion that Tom is one of the most
Speaker 1: interesting humans I've ever had the pleasure of meeting Well.
Speaker 1: In the midst of that grizzly conversation, Tom also mentioned
Speaker 1: that he once was charged by bull bison while he
Speaker 1: was working on a mountain lion research project in Yellowstone.
Speaker 1: I told y'all, this guy is interesting. Well anyway, I
Speaker 1: was so intrigued that I asked Tom to share the story,
Speaker 1: and luckily for me and for y'all, I was still
Speaker 1: recording when he did.
Speaker 2: Going back to the bison and Yellowstone, most people do
Speaker 2: get to enjoy all those experiences seeing those big animals
Speaker 2: on the landscape, But there are some people that have
Speaker 2: what I'm gonna call an inappropriate and ill informed perspective
Speaker 2: about you know, there's just kind of act like cow's.
Speaker 2: I mean, they must be fairly safe to be around.
Speaker 2: I'm here to tell you that the closest calls of
Speaker 2: my career have been with bison and in Yellowstone. You know,
Speaker 2: I work there on research projects, and I'm here to
Speaker 2: tell you that a rogue bull bison surprised at close
Speaker 2: range they're.
Speaker 3: Coming for you.
Speaker 1: Would you mind telling those stories?
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was. This was in ninety I want to
Speaker 2: say ninety nine. I was working on the Lions Study
Speaker 2: in Yellowstone, and we were doing what's called a predation sequence,
Speaker 2: which is where we follow a known lion, one that's marked.
Speaker 2: You know, we've caught it, it's got a collar on it,
Speaker 2: and we're following that thing through the landscape wherever it
Speaker 2: takes us. And what you do is you don't get
Speaker 2: close enough to this animal that you impact or effect
Speaker 2: it's behavior. In other words, you gauge your distance, you know,
Speaker 2: out of sight, out of sound, stay far enough back
Speaker 2: on the track, but you follow it through three large
Speaker 2: prey kills and whatever small prey kills may occur in
Speaker 2: that time. And I was following a female that had
Speaker 2: been injured by a cow elk and she had two
Speaker 2: offspring and they were forty to fifty pound offspring with it.
Speaker 2: And you know, we often spell each other on those
Speaker 2: predation sequence work because you know, it's a lot of
Speaker 2: long distance and you're on snow in the mountains. And
Speaker 2: my field partner Mike had said, you know, the other day,
Speaker 2: I was tracking this cat and she went down into
Speaker 2: the stage. It looked like she had you know, stalked
Speaker 2: close enough to make what we call the rush and
Speaker 2: take down on some elk, and actually there weren't many
Speaker 2: deer in that country, but there had been a deer there,
Speaker 2: and he said she just seemed to like change her
Speaker 2: mind and not try to take any prey. And she
Speaker 2: hadn't killed prey in quite a while. But he said,
Speaker 2: you know, there was the remains of a coyote in
Speaker 2: there that she went in and investigated, which I found
Speaker 2: very strange. She could have killed that coyote. You never know.
Speaker 2: She's desperate. So I'm following this cat a few days
Speaker 2: later and I went way up on a ridge we
Speaker 2: called Mom's Ridge, and it's a big, you know, fairly
Speaker 2: steep ridge full of big bowlders that are some the
Speaker 2: size of this room. Many of them the size of
Speaker 2: the truck are smaller the size of a Volkswagen, but
Speaker 2: a lot of them roughly bison sized. And this is up,
Speaker 2: you know, a steep mountain slope. I hadn't seen a
Speaker 2: bison track in a mile, you know, And there was
Speaker 2: some bison down in the bottom, and that we'd had
Speaker 2: a storm and the wind had blown off this ridge
Speaker 2: for this lion that I was tracking from way up
Speaker 2: on top of that mountain where she was hunting the
Speaker 2: day before she had started down that ridge, and you know,
Speaker 2: you're supposed to stay with that track or at least
Speaker 2: try to piece it together where it's blown out so
Speaker 2: that you don't miss some prey kill that you're going
Speaker 2: to document. And so I was really having trouble in
Speaker 2: this one area and all the boulders, you know, there's
Speaker 2: quite a few of them with snow. Particularly, I was
Speaker 2: on what I'm going to call the leeward side of
Speaker 2: the boulders. So I was on a fairly narrow ledge
Speaker 2: on this ridge contouring trying to pick up where this
Speaker 2: cat had crossed so that I could verify, you know,
Speaker 2: it's track, and it was headed down right ahead of
Speaker 2: me on this ledge. This boulder was a snowed under
Speaker 2: rogue bull bison. And this what happens is these bulls
Speaker 2: that are injured, old, not breeding anymore, they tend to
Speaker 2: go off from the other bison herds and groups and
Speaker 2: will go off up fairly high in the mountains to
Speaker 2: kind of die and be by themselves. And these old
Speaker 2: bull elk, I've seen him do the same thing.
Speaker 1: I thought about it when you said that it sounds
Speaker 1: like an old bull elk.
Speaker 3: Yep, they just kind of get off.
Speaker 4: They do.
Speaker 2: They don't want to be around the others. And what
Speaker 2: I thought was a boulder on this ledge I'm on
Speaker 2: and it's a fairly steep drop off about ten twelve
Speaker 2: feet to the earth below me off this ledge all
Speaker 2: this sudden there's an explosion of no, and it isn't
Speaker 2: much further than the corner of the room.
Speaker 1: Oh goodness, Oh yeah, this I mean.
Speaker 2: And a bison, I mean, they're like a rocket.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're fast, They're relivingly.
Speaker 2: Fast, deceivingly fast. And this is a big bull and
Speaker 2: here's this explosion. And I realized, I'm like, this bison's
Speaker 2: gonna take me out. I just jumped right off that ledge.
Speaker 4: Oh gosh, Oh I did, and I land you know,
Speaker 4: I know how to land, and I landed, and I
Speaker 4: rolled quite away, and I didn't hit any rocks or
Speaker 4: trees on the way down. And he couldn't come down
Speaker 4: there for me. It was quite the drop off, and
Speaker 4: he ran out on the contour there, and it was
Speaker 4: as close to dying as I've ever come, right there.
Speaker 1: More so than any grizen counter. Oh yeah, let's think
Speaker 1: about that last statement for a bit. Tom has been
Speaker 1: guiding the Bob Marshall Wilderness and the Mission Mountains since
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies, and he's spent the better part of
Speaker 1: his life in Grizzly Bear country. And yet the closest
Speaker 1: he ever came to dying was during an encounter with
Speaker 1: a rogue bull bison in Yellowstone wild I guess think
Speaker 1: twice before you go trying to pet one of those
Speaker 1: things I know Tom would advise against. For our next story,
Speaker 1: we're gonna have to go way back back to the
Speaker 1: very beginning. Y'all may remember the first ever episode of
Speaker 1: Backwoods University. We studied the history of bison in the
Speaker 1: eastern United States, and in that episode you heard myself
Speaker 1: and Jeremy French from the Southeastern Grassland Institute hiked down
Speaker 1: to see a still very visible remnant of a bison
Speaker 1: trail that crossed a river. This conversation picks up while
Speaker 1: we're still standing at that river in bison trail, and
Speaker 1: at that time Jeremy shared with me a fascinating piece
Speaker 1: of American history. This story is short, but it's definitely
Speaker 1: worth sharing.
Speaker 5: Actually, a really cool historical story here too. Of this
Speaker 5: creek is called Caleb's Creek, and Caleb was the son
Speaker 5: of one of the early settlers in Nashville. And they
Speaker 5: came up these waterways and I can't remember which settler was,
Speaker 5: and they found this area and they picked this area
Speaker 5: and they were like, hey, Caleb, you know, I don't
Speaker 5: know if you're a parent, but I always say I
Speaker 5: think about this when I become a parent. We like
Speaker 5: this area. We want to settle this, but we need
Speaker 5: to go back south to go pick up supplies. Why
Speaker 5: don't you live in this cave until it comes back?
Speaker 5: And they don't come back for like a year, and
Speaker 5: he this is pre settlement, right, So this is like
Speaker 5: the wilderness. There's tribes here, there's like, you know, probably
Speaker 5: still bison extent. And he goes and he lives in
Speaker 5: this cave. That's just that way if the water wasn't
Speaker 5: so high. Sometimes it's pretty low and you can just
Speaker 5: hop rock across it. But and he lives in his
Speaker 5: cave for like a year until his group comes back
Speaker 5: and gets him. He's gotta hunt all his own food.
Speaker 5: He's gotta avoid getting murdered, like in like sixteen.
Speaker 1: Maybe there's not a lot of details to go along
Speaker 1: with this story, but what is known other than what
Speaker 1: Jeremy shared with us can be found through researching the
Speaker 1: history of the Wessington Plantation. The boy's name was Caleb Winters,
Speaker 1: and he was known as one of Robertson County, Tennessee's
Speaker 1: earliest settlers. And to give this some contexts, Robertson County
Speaker 1: is just north of Nashville, and this took place back
Speaker 1: in the late seventeen hundreds, back when there was still
Speaker 1: a few bison roaming around and the entire place was
Speaker 1: truly wild. As Jeremy stated, Caleb spent about a year's
Speaker 1: time living in a small cave. It was said that
Speaker 1: he was an outstanding hunter, and he lived the entire
Speaker 1: year off of wild game. After his family returned, they
Speaker 1: built a cabin. It was just across the creek from
Speaker 1: the entrance of the very cave that he'd lived in.
Speaker 1: In his honor, they named the creek Caleb's Creek, as
Speaker 1: well as the cave Winter's Cave. I don't know about y'all,
Speaker 1: but if my parents left me to survive in a
Speaker 1: cave in the wild for a year, I would be
Speaker 1: telling them that naming a creek in a cave after
Speaker 1: me was the least they can do. Just imagine what
Speaker 1: all kind of wild stuff that boy saw during the
Speaker 1: year spent living in that cave. I would wager he
Speaker 1: saw that bison trail in action. Heck, maybe he even
Speaker 1: hunted a bison there. Who knows. What I can tell
Speaker 1: you is it was pretty crazy to hear that story
Speaker 1: as I was standing there looking at the entrance of
Speaker 1: that cave. Wild random fun fact before we move on,
Speaker 1: did y'all know that several of the roads that run
Speaker 1: through Nashville, as well as other roads in North Tennessee,
Speaker 1: were originally bison trails? Crazy? Right, Use that one next
Speaker 1: time you need a conversation starter. Moving on for our
Speaker 1: next story, We're going to keep the action level high
Speaker 1: as we turn our attention back to eight big and
Speaker 1: Wild animals. Y'all will probably remember Casey Anderson from the
Speaker 1: second Grizzly episode that we did. Casey's a lifelong outdoorsman.
Speaker 1: He's a naturalist, a hunter, and he's a person who
Speaker 1: has spent his career explaining nature to the world. We
Speaker 1: heard all kinds of wild tales from Casey in that episode,
Speaker 1: and he told me several more, including this one about
Speaker 1: an experience he had on the cat My coast that
Speaker 1: I've not been able to stop thinking about.
Speaker 6: First off, the historic relationship with humans. So the bears
Speaker 6: on the cat My coast almost have never been hunted.
Speaker 6: They see very few people, so they haven't learned to
Speaker 6: fear people at all. In fact, it's actually one of
Speaker 6: those things like is it that they haven't learned to
Speaker 6: fear people, or isn't that they haven't learned to do
Speaker 6: anything with people, Like, you know, they have no feeling
Speaker 6: for people at some level. In fact, it's so bizarre.
Speaker 6: Sometimes I'll be standing there and they'll walk right by
Speaker 6: me and they won't even look at you, like you're
Speaker 6: a rock, Like you're just not on the radar. They
Speaker 6: just don't care that they treat you the same way
Speaker 6: thing with a fox or a raw you know, literally, yeah,
Speaker 6: you know.
Speaker 1: The thing that stuck out to me is in one
Speaker 1: of those videos that kept by, like you're like observing
Speaker 1: this mother and two cubs, and like at home, you're
Speaker 1: taught like that's code read that is what you don't
Speaker 1: want to see, like mother and cubs, like get away,
Speaker 1: that's the one that's gonna charge you. Like how do
Speaker 1: you even learn to assess that situation? To know like,
Speaker 1: I can go watch her and as long as I
Speaker 1: keep my distance or whatever it is you do like it,
Speaker 1: we'll be fine.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's hard.
Speaker 6: It's hard, and especially when you flip flop between the
Speaker 6: two ecosystems. Sure sure, as you are dealing with what
Speaker 6: looks like the same animal but completely different mindset. It happened.
Speaker 6: It wasn't something that I went and did in an
Speaker 6: experiment with It was actually the other way around, and
Speaker 6: I put myself in the position of being there and
Speaker 6: had mothers with cubs bringing their cubs over to me.
Speaker 6: This sounds ridiculous again, and I'm gonna I'm gonna just
Speaker 6: add this on here because there's you know, movies like
Speaker 6: Grizzly Man and stuff like that. Is one thing you
Speaker 6: can never do is forget that no matter where the
Speaker 6: bear is, it's capable of killing you. And those cubs
Speaker 6: and mom, you know, the mom with cubs in Alaska
Speaker 6: are certainly capable of killing you. But what they'll do
Speaker 6: sometimes is they'll bring those cubs over close to you
Speaker 6: on purpose because they've realized that people kind of act
Speaker 6: of kind of like kind of like the safety net.
Speaker 6: Because there's other bears, particular males who are a little
Speaker 6: less apt to be comfortable around people. So if the
Speaker 6: cubs are close to you, then the males less that
Speaker 6: have to come near them, and so they start using you.
Speaker 6: And it's so strange and it's very uncomfortable in the beginning.
Speaker 1: I would like man trying to put myself in that situation.
Speaker 1: Like if I saw it, if I saw a mother
Speaker 1: and two cubs approaching, I'd be like, I need to
Speaker 1: go right now, and.
Speaker 6: Most people would, I mean, and I think that's that'd
Speaker 6: be the right feeling to have your instincts. But the
Speaker 6: other good thing is that I've spent so much time
Speaker 6: around bears and understand their body language. Is that you
Speaker 6: know when there's ill intent on a bear's face basically,
Speaker 6: I mean, it is a billboard telling you like, I'm uncomfortable,
Speaker 6: and if not, it's vocalizing, it's chomping its jaws, it's
Speaker 6: hoofing at you, it's doing something true. And when they
Speaker 6: come over and their ears are just flat, relaxed, and
Speaker 6: their body language is a really tense and you just
Speaker 6: see this like that, they are actually more getting more
Speaker 6: comfortable as they get closer to do It's so strange,
Speaker 6: but it's true. Yeah, and so at the same time,
Speaker 6: you just realize it's a unique opportunity and it is
Speaker 6: a little intoxicating when you're there next to these animals
Speaker 6: that are a thousand pounds and you can just go
Speaker 6: sit there amongst them and they they just don't care
Speaker 6: if you're doing the right thing. I mean, I think
Speaker 6: it's a two way street too. I mean, if you
Speaker 6: go in there with bad energy and you're all uptight,
Speaker 6: you're a billboard too. You know, you're showing your intention.
Speaker 6: But if you can go in there and just kind
Speaker 6: of relax yourself and realize that they're at a safe
Speaker 6: distance in some level and doing the right thing, and
Speaker 6: it's just so cool to be part of that true world.
Speaker 6: I can't explain it, man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it sounds so crazy, it does.
Speaker 6: And it's why, you know, there's so many times I'm like,
Speaker 6: I just gotta I wish I could take people there
Speaker 6: and have them experiences. But at the same time, it's
Speaker 6: like that's the right.
Speaker 3: Thing to do too.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, the thing is, it's like you're able to
Speaker 1: do that because you've spent so many hours around these
Speaker 1: animals that you it's like some of the best archery hunters.
Speaker 1: I know, they spent so much time because like bohunt
Speaker 1: and you gotta be close, right, Yeah, So they spent
Speaker 1: a lot of time being close to that animal and
Speaker 1: they can just read that animal's body language so well,
Speaker 1: Like they know when they come in and relax, they
Speaker 1: know when they're tense. They know, like I can draw
Speaker 1: back now like this this animal is about spook. This
Speaker 1: animals chilled out, Like they just spend so much time
Speaker 1: close to them, they can pick up on that. And
Speaker 1: you've spent so much time around these bears that you're
Speaker 1: just able to read that. So well, what's going on?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 6: No, I mean definitely, there's no doubt about it. And
Speaker 6: you know, and I've had so many close encounters, and
Speaker 6: I've had some that are obviously not been positive. You
Speaker 6: can see it coming right how so just the way
Speaker 6: that they start reacting, their body language starts to change.
Speaker 6: You're always paying attention to the wind, You're always I mean,
Speaker 6: it's just like anything, just like I said, whitetail buck.
Speaker 6: If you know whit tail bucks, you've been around all
Speaker 6: the time, you get honed into these little tiny things.
Speaker 6: Sometimes you don't even know why you're doing what you're doing,
Speaker 6: but there are these little subtle hints that they're giving
Speaker 6: you and you and you don't even know. It's almost instinctual,
Speaker 6: and you just start doing these same same things to
Speaker 6: counter the moment. And with bears, man, it's it's the same.
Speaker 3: I mean, you just you get.
Speaker 6: I've been in such tense situations where a bear is
Speaker 6: looking at me and I know that I need to
Speaker 6: back off slowly and pull my eyes away from it
Speaker 6: and then and that'll be the right thing to do.
Speaker 6: But I've I've also had time for bears are being
Speaker 6: aggressive towards me. And I looked at that bear. I
Speaker 6: don't even know why, and I've locked eyes with it
Speaker 6: and I've charged at it and ran it away and
Speaker 6: it's and I don't even know why, but I know
Speaker 6: that I see something in that bear. It's insecure and
Speaker 6: maybe it's it's thinking about it. And I just want
Speaker 6: you know what, No, I'm the boss today and I'm
Speaker 6: going to show you that I am. Sounds ridiculous, but
Speaker 6: it is this subtle game of body language poker that
Speaker 6: you're playing out there with all animals. And it sounds
Speaker 6: probably the most crazy because you're I'm playing it with
Speaker 6: an animal that can kill you.
Speaker 1: I feel like this needs to be said. Casey is
Speaker 1: a professional and he's been dealing with bears for a
Speaker 1: long long time. So all the stuff that he talked
Speaker 1: about doing, don't try that at home and think what
Speaker 1: you will about me. But I don't imagine I would
Speaker 1: be holding my ground if I saw Mama Griz and
Speaker 1: cubs walking my direction, and I certainly wouldn't charge you one.
Speaker 1: Thanks for the wild tales, Casey. For our next story,
Speaker 1: we're going to a very recent guest, mister Jim Cruise,
Speaker 1: the lifelong duck hunter. In this story, Jim tackles two
Speaker 1: very common pieces of duck hunter lore.
Speaker 3: Video is very telling.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know.
Speaker 7: I was looking at one that my wife did last weekend.
Speaker 7: She was thinking there were four of us shooting, and
Speaker 7: she was standing behind us working the dog, and a
Speaker 7: flight of teal came in right to left. I was
Speaker 7: on the left end, my son was on the right end,
Speaker 7: and two guests were in the middle of the line,
Speaker 7: and it was like we had choreographed it. Bam bam
Speaker 7: bam bam down the line. This is a teal came across,
Speaker 7: and of course, when you're shooting like that.
Speaker 3: You don't. You don't realize it. But that's exactly how
Speaker 3: it was.
Speaker 7: Bam bam, bam bam, one, two, three, four and three
Speaker 7: till fell and then the I guess there were two
Speaker 7: ducks left in the flock when I got on my end.
Speaker 7: One of them was a big white shoveler. I picked
Speaker 7: him out at a heartbeat. I couldn't pass him up,
Speaker 7: so I shot that one. But it just looking back
Speaker 7: at the video, wasn't nearly like I remembered it because
Speaker 7: it just happened so quick.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah. See. Now now I've got to ask
Speaker 1: you another question because you said something there that I
Speaker 1: want to ask you about.
Speaker 3: I shouldn't say.
Speaker 1: I know a lot of folks that do it. I
Speaker 1: know a lot of folks that say that they want
Speaker 1: shoot a shoveler.
Speaker 3: I hadn't met any yet. I know a lot who
Speaker 3: say they won't.
Speaker 1: But you you've heard that.
Speaker 3: I don't know my life.
Speaker 1: I don't know so bad. I was wondering about that too.
Speaker 1: I was wondering how long that's been going on. I
Speaker 1: think the Northern shoveler might be the most widely maligned duck,
Speaker 1: and I've never been to I've never been able to
Speaker 1: figure out.
Speaker 3: Why I let the hens pass.
Speaker 7: Sure, I let those brown shovelers pass, but a big
Speaker 7: drake he doesn't pass.
Speaker 3: They're pretty duck, they're beautiful.
Speaker 1: Why do you think they get such a bad rap?
Speaker 7: It's just people having something to talk about, that's all
Speaker 7: I can figure.
Speaker 3: They decoy, Well, they're pretty colored. What's not to like about.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I like the variety. I do too.
Speaker 1: If you've been around duck hunting culture for any length
Speaker 1: of time, especially down here in the Southeast, then you
Speaker 1: probably know that the northern shoveler getting looked down upon
Speaker 1: as a tale as old as time, and frankly I've
Speaker 1: never understood it, and apparently Jim doesn't either. So that
Speaker 1: is common duck ore number one. In the next part
Speaker 1: of Jim's story, we're going to tackle another commonly heard
Speaker 1: duck hunting myth.
Speaker 7: Probably twenty five years ago, my father invited the then
Speaker 7: CEO of Ducks Unlimited and they're chief biologists, to come
Speaker 7: down and duck hunt with us. We were in the
Speaker 7: process that time putting our property under conservation easement, so
Speaker 7: we were in contact with du negotiating all that. Anywhere
Speaker 7: invited them to come down and had a real good hunt,
Speaker 7: and we had shot mallards and gadwalls, but also six
Speaker 7: or seven ringnecks over course of two days. And I
Speaker 7: think we had held the ducks we shot the first
Speaker 7: day and decide we'll clean them all the second day. Well,
Speaker 7: the deused biologist guy named Bruce bat at the time,
Speaker 7: kind of eased up to me and said, hey, let
Speaker 7: me ask you something.
Speaker 3: I said, what is that?
Speaker 7: Bruce is a Canadian guy, really good guy, very knowledgeable.
Speaker 7: He said, would you mind if I took all these
Speaker 7: ring necks? No, of course, you're welcome to them and whatever.
Speaker 7: I said, I don't think I've ever heard anybody ask
Speaker 7: me that before. And he said, well, in my opinion,
Speaker 7: they had the best flavor of any duck. I said, well,
Speaker 7: help yourself, and I was kind of had been educated
Speaker 7: that they're not your top duck to eat. Oh yeah,
Speaker 7: well they really are surprising. My wife folks to cook
Speaker 7: ducks a lot, sure, and she likes to smoke them particularly,
Speaker 7: and her opinion, ring neck is the best one there
Speaker 7: is on the smoker.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, see I think that too. I think I think
Speaker 1: folks hear certain things their whole lives, and they just
Speaker 1: get told that ring necks are bad to eat, shovelers
Speaker 1: are bad to eat.
Speaker 7: But again, don't get me wrong, I still love the
Speaker 7: mallards and the pent tails and the big ducks all
Speaker 7: the best. But I think some of those so called
Speaker 7: less desirable species taken undeserved hit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I like them just fine.
Speaker 3: We get into the tailtelling stage now.
Speaker 7: I went out on New Year's Eve last week by myself.
Speaker 3: My wife was sick. She didn't want to go.
Speaker 7: I said, well, I'm going to go ahead anyway, if
Speaker 7: you're okay, and she said, oh, yeah, go ahead. So
Speaker 7: we had a decent flight that morning is a pretty day,
Speaker 7: and I can't remember what order I shot them in,
Speaker 7: but I had a wind up with a wood duck
Speaker 7: and a mallard and a ring neck and a gadwall
Speaker 7: and a wigeon. So that's five all drakes. And I
Speaker 7: looked at that and I said, well, I'm gonna try
Speaker 7: to get six drakes, but I'm gonna try to get
Speaker 7: number six different species.
Speaker 3: From what I already had.
Speaker 7: So I get this pair of pintails to come in,
Speaker 7: and I'm in my mind looking at that big old
Speaker 7: drake I can see his feet and that long sprig
Speaker 7: sticking out, and he's at about twenty five yards and
Speaker 7: I missed him.
Speaker 3: Clean in the.
Speaker 7: World did I do that? But I went, well, well,
Speaker 7: you know, maybe something else will come along. Fifteen minutes later,
Speaker 7: a drake green wing teal comes by and I didn't
Speaker 7: miss him. My dog brings him in, climbs up the
Speaker 7: ladder onto the boat, and I see that flash you
Speaker 7: don't see very often. It's a banded dream wing teal.
Speaker 7: So I'd never shot a banded teal before, so that
Speaker 7: was kind of a big deal.
Speaker 3: But also on a.
Speaker 7: Day when I got a royal flush on ducks, so
Speaker 7: that was a big These ducks you ought to appreciate
Speaker 7: every one of them for some reason, whether it's how
Speaker 7: they look, or how they fly, or how they decoy,
Speaker 7: how they taste, whatever it is, they all have special
Speaker 7: attributes that we need to revere.
Speaker 1: Going back to duck hunting culture, if you've been around it,
Speaker 1: you've probably heard people list off certain species of ducks
Speaker 1: as being not fit to eat, and a ring neck
Speaker 1: is commonly on that list. And how ironic and funny
Speaker 1: is it that a duck biologist said that not only
Speaker 1: were they fit to eat? But it was his favorite
Speaker 1: duck to eat. I don't know. It just makes you
Speaker 1: wonder if half the folks that make these claims have
Speaker 1: ever actually tried cooking and eating these ducks to begin with.
Speaker 1: And how about Jim killing a royal flush of ducks
Speaker 1: for his limit one day and that last one being banded.
Speaker 1: I bet that's the only time he's ever been glad
Speaker 1: he missed a pintail. For our final story of this episode,
Speaker 1: we're returning to my personal favorite topic that we have
Speaker 1: ever covered, the life work of Cook. That was episode
Speaker 1: four of this show, and I would highly encourage you
Speaker 1: to go listen to it if you haven't yet. This
Speaker 1: story comes from an incredible woman named Miss Kathy Shropshire.
Speaker 1: You heard her referenced in that episode a couple of times.
Speaker 1: Pay close attention to this final story because, for one,
Speaker 1: I find it inspiring, and two, it's actually gonna set
Speaker 1: us up for the next episode as we moved towards
Speaker 1: the spring. To my knowledge, you're the only person that's
Speaker 1: played Fanny Cook in a film.
Speaker 8: I think so, Yes, I believe so.
Speaker 1: How did that happen?
Speaker 8: Well, Bill, a friend of mine, a Robbie Fisher was
Speaker 8: working on that film. That was a Gulf Islands National
Speaker 8: Seashore film that they were doing in relation to the
Speaker 8: one hundredth anniversary of the National Parks. And because Miss
Speaker 8: Cook had been involved with letter writing and support and
Speaker 8: getting that done, Robbie wanted to have her featured as
Speaker 8: you know somebody who was involved. Well, she asked me,
Speaker 8: if I do it, and people ask me for all
Speaker 8: these things, are you usually say yes before I think
Speaker 8: through it, clearly, But.
Speaker 1: I got you to come to this interview.
Speaker 8: Right right, yeah, right, y'all What am I thinking? But
Speaker 8: it didn't require that I say anything. So we we
Speaker 8: did film that. There's a small segment in there about
Speaker 8: miss Cook and writing the letters and supporting the Cafellen
Speaker 8: se Sure. So yeah, as far as I know, I'm
Speaker 8: the only person.
Speaker 1: On a personal level, obviously, Fanny Cook means something to you.
Speaker 1: Why is she so important to you?
Speaker 8: Well, you know, she didn't tut her own horn. She
Speaker 8: had a mission when she decided she wanted to develop
Speaker 8: the mist Department, wile Offishers and Parks or Game and
Speaker 8: Fish Commission. At the time, it wasn't about her. It
Speaker 8: was about getting that done and then getting a museum
Speaker 8: and providing education, and so she was not one of
Speaker 8: those people who was out there waving the flag and
Speaker 8: saying look at me.
Speaker 1: Which is not something that you hear a lot.
Speaker 8: Of this day and age, right right, everybody wants credit
Speaker 8: for everything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 8: Well, I just think it's one person can make a difference.
Speaker 8: And you know, maybe that difference isn't that you'll be
Speaker 8: a Fanny Cook, or that you'll be a Rachel Carson,
Speaker 8: or that you'll be something else. But if you, as
Speaker 8: an individual can reach the person who then is the
Speaker 8: Fanny Cook or is the Rachel Carson, just follow your
Speaker 8: passion and be open and do what you can. I
Speaker 8: guess I'm not going to be Jane Goodall. I Am
Speaker 8: not going to be Rachel Carson. But maybe I've exposed
Speaker 8: somebody to those agendas that then will be that person
Speaker 8: who takes that step. I'd like to think that.
Speaker 1: It's a good thought too. I mean, because again you
Speaker 1: pick up, especially in that book, like all these influences
Speaker 1: that Fanny has at a young age, you know, from
Speaker 1: the people at the Smithsonian or father, I mean, it
Speaker 1: lists several of us. To your point, it's you know,
Speaker 1: when her father was telling her by passenger pigeons that
Speaker 1: she was younger. There's no way he could have known
Speaker 1: that she needn't turn out, you know, But it didn't matter.
Speaker 1: You know. He was investing those principles into his daughter.
Speaker 1: And look how important that was down the road. One
Speaker 1: person can make a difference. If there was ever a
Speaker 1: person that was living proof of that, it's Fanny Cook. Heck,
Speaker 1: if it wasn't for her, we might not have any
Speaker 1: game animals to hunt here in Mississippi. And I don't
Speaker 1: know what I would do with myself if we didn't
Speaker 1: have that. I also thought so much about Miss Cathy's
Speaker 1: perspective on her own impacts. Not all of us are
Speaker 1: gonna be the Fanny Cooks or out of loop holes
Speaker 1: of the world, and that's okay. Not all of us
Speaker 1: are going to get credit for the work that we do,
Speaker 1: and you know what, that's okay too. What's important is
Speaker 1: that we do what's right, we follow our passions, and
Speaker 1: maybe we'll inspire other people around us. I catch myself
Speaker 1: thinking all the time what my life would look like
Speaker 1: had my dad never taken me deer hunting, or if
Speaker 1: my friend Keith never took me turkey hunting. Your impact matters,
Speaker 1: whether you realize it or not. And speaking of impacts
Speaker 1: that matter, I said that this last story would tear
Speaker 1: us up for the next episode, So this is your
Speaker 1: homework until then. Think about what or who got you
Speaker 1: interested in wildlife and wildlife conservation, because in the next
Speaker 1: episode we're going to be learning about some life altering
Speaker 1: conservation work, how it started, how it was carried out,
Speaker 1: and how it's still benefiting us to this very day.
Speaker 1: I want to thank all of you for listening to
Speaker 1: Backwoods University as well as Bear Grease in This Country Life.
Speaker 1: If you liked this episode, share it with someone this week.
Speaker 1: I don't care if you like them or not, and
Speaker 1: stick around. There's a whole lot more on the way.