Speaker 1: Welcome to this Country Life. I'm your host, Brent Rieves
Speaker 1: from coon hunting to trot lining and just general country living.
Speaker 1: I want you to stay a while as I share
Speaker 1: my stories and the country skills that will help you
Speaker 1: beat the system. This Country Life is proudly presented as
Speaker 1: part of Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you the best
Speaker 1: outdoor podcast the airways have to offer. All right, friends,
Speaker 1: pull you up a chair or drop that tailgate. I
Speaker 1: think I got a thing or two the teacher things
Speaker 1: Lost and Found. Recently, I made a trip to Kansas,
Speaker 1: and while I was there, I searched, along with some
Speaker 1: friends of mine, for an item i'd lost eight years ago.
Speaker 1: Got me to thinking about things you lose and a
Speaker 1: little bit about the things you find. I talked to
Speaker 1: Clear about he said, man, you ought to do a
Speaker 1: podcast about it. Well, there's some lesson in there, and
Speaker 1: it's my job to figure out what those lessons are.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna tell you what I think, but first we're
Speaker 1: gonna tell you a story. Bow Hunting was popular in
Speaker 1: my part of the world long before it was the
Speaker 1: cool thing to do on TV and the internet. Heck,
Speaker 1: TV just barely existed. There weren't any bow hunting shows
Speaker 1: to mount to anything. At that time that this story
Speaker 1: took place, an occasional mention of archery hunting on the
Speaker 1: American Sportsman TV show was all you'd see outside of
Speaker 1: magazine articles and outdoor life or Field and Stream. But
Speaker 1: there was a core community of bow hunters that everyone
Speaker 1: knew about as being pretty good hunters. There was a
Speaker 1: lot of timber company land where I grew up. Before
Speaker 1: leasing started. You could legally hunt anywhere you wanted. There
Speaker 1: were established clubs with historic boundary lines between deer camps,
Speaker 1: but there was no legal recourse. If they caught you
Speaker 1: hunting on their claim land, you weren't trespassing, You were
Speaker 1: just violating a gentleman's agreement. So, just like turkey hunters
Speaker 1: play their cards close to their vest, the bow hunters
Speaker 1: didn't talk about where they hunted and what they were seeing.
Speaker 1: You do only know if they'd been successful, if they
Speaker 1: took their buck down to the local paper and warn
Speaker 1: and had mister Bob Newton take their picture to be
Speaker 1: published in the Eagle Democrat that came out every Wednesday,
Speaker 1: and only a small percentage of them did that. They
Speaker 1: were secretive, and rightfully so. It was during this time
Speaker 1: that the following conversation took place at my brother Tim's house.
Speaker 1: He lived right down the road from us, and a
Speaker 1: couple of his hunting buddies were meeting him there early
Speaker 1: one morning to go hunting themselves. And they walked into
Speaker 1: his house with their eyes wide from excitement, said, you
Speaker 1: ain't gonna believe what we just saw. And Tim said
Speaker 1: what they said? A buffalo? Tim said, you're right, I
Speaker 1: don't believe you because you didn't see one. They said, yes,
Speaker 1: we did, And the guy that was driving said, I
Speaker 1: had to stop to keep him hitting it. It was
Speaker 1: crossing the road right in front of us. Well, Tim,
Speaker 1: that's where they've seen it. And they told him just
Speaker 1: down the road. TEMPSA, y'all are crazy, and they swore
Speaker 1: they weren't telling a lie. Now, seeing a buffalo ain't
Speaker 1: that big of a deal. Really, Over three million people,
Speaker 1: that's the entire population of Arkansas. The same number of
Speaker 1: visit Yellowstone National Park every year, and I'm sure a
Speaker 1: large portion of them, if not nearly all of them,
Speaker 1: can lay claim to seeing alive on the hoof buffalo.
Speaker 1: Now that number and percentage gets smaller and smaller. The
Speaker 1: further south you go. Oklahoma, sports are good numbers, and
Speaker 1: I used to run in formation, passed several during basic
Speaker 1: training many moons ago at Fort Seal. But after you
Speaker 1: cross Arkansas River heading southeast, where this story takes place,
Speaker 1: you'd be more likely to see a mountain lion in
Speaker 1: a buffalo. Now I've seen two of those down here,
Speaker 1: remember with witnesses. But we're not talking about mountain lions.
Speaker 1: We're supposed to be talking about things lost and found,
Speaker 1: and I promised we are. I just I just have
Speaker 1: to set the stage for bringing it all together. We're
Speaker 1: almost there. There was another member of our community out
Speaker 1: in the country who was known far and wide as
Speaker 1: being frugal. We're gonna call him Frank. Now, Frank wasn't
Speaker 1: his real name, but for the sake of ease and
Speaker 1: keeping the character straight, that's what we're calling him. I
Speaker 1: saying Frank was frugal somehow doesn't do it justice. As
Speaker 1: far as I know, Frank didn't burn the light in
Speaker 1: his house after it got dark for fear of running
Speaker 1: up his electric bill. I don't guess there's nothing wrong
Speaker 1: with that, But I never recalled passing his house and
Speaker 1: seeing so much as a lamp burning inside. He was
Speaker 1: a good fellow, but tight as bark on the tree.
Speaker 1: Frank was tight as a field string. Frank was so
Speaker 1: tight that he squeaked when he walked. Get the picture.
Speaker 1: Frank was a tightwad. Frank was also an archery hunter,
Speaker 1: and I figure he bow hunted because he could shoot
Speaker 1: the same era over and over without having to buy more.
Speaker 1: If he'd done it with firearms, he'd had to keep
Speaker 1: buying ammo. Theoretically, a fellow only needs one era and
Speaker 1: a broadhead put meat in the freezer. But old Frank
Speaker 1: was cutting corners and saving money at every opportunity. Over
Speaker 1: the course of the next couple of weeks, buffalo sightings
Speaker 1: were popping up sporadically throughout the farming community. Old mister
Speaker 1: so and so said he saw the buffalo over at
Speaker 1: his place. Then another important the opposite direction would filter
Speaker 1: in that they'd got a glimpse of the mystical creature
Speaker 1: at another farm running through the woods. All of this
Speaker 1: was in the gossip circles that filled the party line
Speaker 1: telephone system that we all shared. They all know what
Speaker 1: a party line is. Hang on to your britches, kids,
Speaker 1: but believe it or not. But up close to the
Speaker 1: time that I went to high school, where I lived,
Speaker 1: there was one telephone line for several houses, and to
Speaker 1: use the phone you had to pick it up and
Speaker 1: see if anyone was already talking on it. The honor
Speaker 1: system kept you from listening on other folks conversation, supposedly. Anyway,
Speaker 1: back to Frank, about the same time that the buffalo
Speaker 1: report stopped, we started seeing Frank grilling in the backyard
Speaker 1: on a new grill. He just got a few evenings,
Speaker 1: a few evenings during the week and every weekend there
Speaker 1: was Frank standing in his backyard rain or shines grilling
Speaker 1: his steaks and burgers, smiling in the smoke. You can
Speaker 1: see him flipping them sometimes when you drove past, big
Speaker 1: old steaks the can that were expensive even back then.
Speaker 1: Frank didn't have any cows and was notoriously cheap. It
Speaker 1: was a safe bet he wasn't buying all that meat
Speaker 1: down into Dixon Dandy. So what about the buffalo? Did
Speaker 1: they really see one? Where the reports of the buffalo
Speaker 1: sidings that Tim's hunting friends and all the other folks
Speaker 1: in the community seeing, were they're legitimate? And where did
Speaker 1: this buffalo come from the people have been claiming to
Speaker 1: see all sorts of things for years, but that doesn't
Speaker 1: make it so. But here's the skinny on the buffalo.
Speaker 1: He was real. He and a couple of his brethren
Speaker 1: had escaped through a fence weeks before they were seen
Speaker 1: in our part of the world. They were the first
Speaker 1: buffalo in that country that had ever plopped their chips
Speaker 1: down on terra firma since being extirpated throughout the natural
Speaker 1: state in eighteen thirty seven. Now, it's worth noting that
Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty nine, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission
Speaker 1: released one buffalo near Lake Catherine in Garland County for
Speaker 1: undocumented reasons, and no other restocking program has ever been
Speaker 1: done since. Now we're pretty sure it wasn't that one
Speaker 1: that they cut loose, because this happened in nineteen eighty two.
Speaker 1: That'd make that'd make him my fifty three year old buffalo,
Speaker 1: and seeing how they don't live past twenty, it's a
Speaker 1: safe bed. If Frank was cooking one in his backyard
Speaker 1: that he wasn't that one. The buffalo Tims hunting partner
Speaker 1: saw was from a farm several miles away that had
Speaker 1: gone rogue. And slipped the bonds of confinement. I kind
Speaker 1: of liked that. I hate that fella lost his buffalo stock,
Speaker 1: But how cool would it have been to be sitting
Speaker 1: in a tree with your bow and raw, waiting on
Speaker 1: a white tail and look up to see a buffalo
Speaker 1: easing down the trail. Now, no one ever knew for sure,
Speaker 1: but old Frank was a bow hunter, and a pretty
Speaker 1: good one, and he lived right in the epicenter of
Speaker 1: all the buffalo reports. The buffalo, the buffalo sighting stopped,
Speaker 1: and then the sight of Frank working his magic, and
Speaker 1: that charcoal arena and that new grill it started. That
Speaker 1: could all be a coincidence. It could be, but the
Speaker 1: detective in me says there was reasonable suspicion to further
Speaker 1: than an investigation if anyone had been so inclined, But
Speaker 1: no one was. We didn't find out that someone had
Speaker 1: legitimately lost an American icon until long after the fact
Speaker 1: of seeing the animal in our midst and then seeing
Speaker 1: Frank routinely man in the grill in his backyard. The
Speaker 1: animals had been written off as a loss before Frank's
Speaker 1: probably encountering. Frank had a heck of a tale to tell.
Speaker 1: But bow hunters were secretive back then, and no confirmation
Speaker 1: was ever made between Frank and the buffalo except in
Speaker 1: my heart. In my heart, I know he got him.
Speaker 1: And so it's tem one fellow lost a buffalo and
Speaker 1: one guy found a freezer full of meat, and that's
Speaker 1: probably just how that happened, things lost and found. Was
Speaker 1: Frank wrong for shooting a buffalo? Well, it wasn't his.
Speaker 1: And I can't say I wouldn't have at that juncture
Speaker 1: in my life. Just last week I talked about looking
Speaker 1: at things from other folk's viewpoint, And if I had
Speaker 1: been Bob, a well known skin flint famous for saving Nichols, Yep,
Speaker 1: I'd have drilled up buffalo just as sure as I'm
Speaker 1: sitting here and add every piece of him. But it
Speaker 1: wouldn't have been the right thing to do. Even though
Speaker 1: the circumstances were somewhat extenuating. The thing was expensive. It
Speaker 1: wasn't the ever elusive ten millimeters socket that you never
Speaker 1: seemed to be able to lay your hands on when
Speaker 1: you need one. Find one of those laying in the
Speaker 1: sand as I'm walking through the desert, and I assure
Speaker 1: you I'm not putting an ad in the paper looking
Speaker 1: for the rightful owner. When I get back to civilization,
Speaker 1: that rascal is going in my pocket. The question is
Speaker 1: where do you draw the line? Supposed to draw the
Speaker 1: line at the point right before I put the ten
Speaker 1: middimeter socket in my pocket. It ain't mine, and I'm
Speaker 1: not supposed to claim it as such, But come on, man,
Speaker 1: it's the ten millimeter. A good friend of mine was
Speaker 1: duck hunting by himself on public land in another state.
Speaker 1: He completed his hunt and was now loading his boat
Speaker 1: back at the ramp that had been full of folks
Speaker 1: when he got there that morning, But when he got back,
Speaker 1: he was the only one there. Everyone else was long gone.
Speaker 1: After getting all this stuff squared away, he walked over
Speaker 1: to the edge of the parking lot to turn the
Speaker 1: thermos of coffee loose he drank that morning. He said
Speaker 1: he was just standing there and joining a moment, and
Speaker 1: something caught his attention. Then he realized he was looking
Speaker 1: at a brown lightning graded tory over and under broken,
Speaker 1: open and leaning against a tree. It's one of the
Speaker 1: many legacy symbols amongst duck hunters of my era, and
Speaker 1: this one was well used but well taken care of.
Speaker 1: It was immediately recognizable to him as being left there
Speaker 1: by had to be somebody's grandpa, or maybe a grandpa's
Speaker 1: son or a grandson had done it. These types of
Speaker 1: shotguns rarely left the family in my circle, and those
Speaker 1: like mine, they were passed down as inheritance and revered
Speaker 1: as such. My friend said, he looked around and he
Speaker 1: saw no one. Then he picked it up, snapped it shut,
Speaker 1: and he ran his hand along the smooth, cold, still
Speaker 1: admiring the craftsmanship, noting that the warn varnish and bluing
Speaker 1: that told him volumes about that shotgun and its people
Speaker 1: told him everything he needed to know about them, except
Speaker 1: who they were and where they were. He snapped it
Speaker 1: to his shoulder, as if shooting a big mall of
Speaker 1: drake decoyed into his spread in the timber. He said,
Speaker 1: it felt good, natural, and he would have been physically
Speaker 1: ill had he been the one who had forgotten it.
Speaker 1: It was late in the afternoon now, and he waited
Speaker 1: well beyond dark, missing an employment he was supposed to
Speaker 1: be at waiting for someone to come back, but no
Speaker 1: one ever did. He left only after pinning a note
Speaker 1: to that tree at the spot where that shotgun had
Speaker 1: been leaned up and it read I have it called
Speaker 1: this number. He took that shotgun home. He wiped it
Speaker 1: down and placed it in his gun cabinet, alongside several
Speaker 1: shotguns of his own that were of considerable lesser monetary value,
Speaker 1: but equally as rich an heirloom legacy. In a few days,
Speaker 1: he got a call from a frantic duck hunter who
Speaker 1: had all but given up over He also didn't live
Speaker 1: in that state, but he drove all the way back
Speaker 1: and retracing his steps, and what he he guessed was
Speaker 1: a vain attempt to find his grandfather's shotgun that he
Speaker 1: mistakenly left leaning against a tree. He stood there, heart broken,
Speaker 1: in tears and just happened to see the rained onwn
Speaker 1: note lying at the base of a tree. The numbers faded,
Speaker 1: but legend. That's a happy ending about something lost and
Speaker 1: something found. It's my favorite kind of story, A true
Speaker 1: representation of a story arc and how to craft a narrative,
Speaker 1: and the best part that it ain't fiction. I lost
Speaker 1: to pocket knife in Kansas during the archery season of
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen. I knew when I lost it, I knew
Speaker 1: where I lost it, and I searched and searched, but
Speaker 1: I never found it. It was my dad's last case
Speaker 1: of Minnie Trapper. It was the one he was carrying
Speaker 1: when he got sick. Hospital folks gave us his long
Speaker 1: as when he was admitted, all the things that he
Speaker 1: was told. That case pocket knife was one of the items.
Speaker 1: My dad would never carry it again, or any other one.
Speaker 1: Forty two days after he was admitted he died, Tim
Speaker 1: gave me that knife. Being the older brother, he took
Speaker 1: the lead on the yoke of responsibility in seeing after
Speaker 1: our dad's affairs, and I helped him. I don't know
Speaker 1: why he told me to take that particular pocket knife,
Speaker 1: but he did. For a long time, I just had
Speaker 1: it setting on my dresser. I'd pick it up and
Speaker 1: hold it in my hands and think about the last
Speaker 1: time my dad used it, probably opening up a sack
Speaker 1: of dog food for those walkers of his. It made
Speaker 1: me smile well. I left for Kansas that dear season,
Speaker 1: and as an afterthought, stuck it in my pocket when
Speaker 1: I left the house. Feeling it in there made me
Speaker 1: think about him. It made me secure somehow, and then
Speaker 1: I lost it. Now. I look as hard as I could,
Speaker 1: but I never found it. I vowed to come back
Speaker 1: one day with a metal detector and look again, but
Speaker 1: that opportunity never came until a few months ago when
Speaker 1: I was invited to speak in an event in Independence, Kansas.
Speaker 1: Chris Alexander is a volunteer with the Hunters with Mission
Speaker 1: organization there, and they are a nonprofit group that supports
Speaker 1: a Christian mission orphanage in India. In reality, they're not
Speaker 1: only feeding orphans, but children that the parents can't afford
Speaker 1: to feed. I save your comments about religion, politics and
Speaker 1: anything else. Hungry youngins are everywhere, and I'll help with
Speaker 1: that mission, regardless of the zip code. I met Chris
Speaker 1: at the Black Beery Banans in Arkansas last March and
Speaker 1: made plans to go speak at this event. Ten months later,
Speaker 1: I found myself standing in front of four hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty of the prettiest folks I've ever had the pleasure
Speaker 1: of spending the evening with all working toward filling the
Speaker 1: place of some hungry children. After it was announced that
Speaker 1: I'd be speaking there, I received a message from a
Speaker 1: man who invited me to bring old whaling and go
Speaker 1: coon hutting with him. We talked several times as the
Speaker 1: date got closer, and we finalized the arrangements for me
Speaker 1: to arrive a day early so we could hunt the
Speaker 1: night before the event. I got to the lodge in
Speaker 1: the afternoon, was still plenty of daylight left, and I
Speaker 1: told Tuffy Graham about losing that knife, and coincidentally, I
Speaker 1: thought it was pretty close to where we were. I
Speaker 1: described the property to him as best I could for
Speaker 1: a place that I hadn't seen in eight years. We
Speaker 1: looked at a parcel ground on all next that he
Speaker 1: thought sounded very similar to what I was describing, and
Speaker 1: we drove to it and that was it. I knew
Speaker 1: it immediately when I saw it. Tuff said he knew
Speaker 1: the land on and would call and get permission for
Speaker 1: us to look. It was also just over a quarter
Speaker 1: of a mile from his house. It probably takes the
Speaker 1: rest of the evening to hear from him. So we
Speaker 1: went back to the lodge hat supper, and we went
Speaker 1: coon hunt that night. Everything was falling into place. The
Speaker 1: story art was being built all through organic means. There
Speaker 1: had been no artificial or purposeful manufacturing. But now I
Speaker 1: can relax and go coonhut with my new friend Toff.
Speaker 1: He brought his eleven year old son Dakota, and Travis Blend,
Speaker 1: the preserve manager. We loaded whaling up in the side
Speaker 1: by side along with the rest of us, and in
Speaker 1: short order we were cutting whaling and tough as dog
Speaker 1: Boone loose in a creek bottom in Kansas. We made
Speaker 1: two trees and Dakota knocked out four turkey nest banditos
Speaker 1: to the delight of Whaling Boone and Travis, who was
Speaker 1: responsible for the health and balance of wildlife on the ranch.
Speaker 1: Good job to Coda. Those trees were lay up coons.
Speaker 1: The heavy miss that was falling had them stirn very little,
Speaker 1: so last drop was outstriking a very good track. We
Speaker 1: called it a night. My friend David McDaniels made it
Speaker 1: up from East Texas just in time to go to bed.
Speaker 1: He missed the hunt due to working late, but was
Speaker 1: excited to photograph and document our attempt to find the
Speaker 1: pocket knife the next day. He brought his camera gear
Speaker 1: to shoot the hunter with mission banquet the next evening.
Speaker 1: Tuffy met us the next morning after breakfast and we
Speaker 1: struck out for the spot where I had lost the knife.
Speaker 1: We followed him over to that property next to his
Speaker 1: and parked along the muddy road that had seen a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of rain in the last twenty four hours.
Speaker 1: The roads had only recently thalled from the frigid weather
Speaker 1: that had locked up half the country, and the new
Speaker 1: rain had made the hardest of roads rather spongy. We
Speaker 1: started across the road, and coming up as fast as
Speaker 1: two eleven year old legs could go was Dakota, kicking
Speaker 1: mud up with every step and getting faster the closer
Speaker 1: he got. We waited on him while he ran straight
Speaker 1: from his house to where we were. He stopped once
Speaker 1: he got to us, drew one big breath, and was
Speaker 1: as rested as if he'd just gotten out of bed.
Speaker 1: Oh to be eleven years old again and not just
Speaker 1: act like it. As we walked toward the spot, Toffy said,
Speaker 1: I talked to the landowner. He said that we could
Speaker 1: look at anything we wanted to, and he didn't know
Speaker 1: where you lost the knife, but he hoped it wasn't
Speaker 1: around the corral because he had several tons of rock
Speaker 1: hauled in to build up a low spot that always
Speaker 1: stayed wet. Well, that's exactly where I lost it. Toughy's
Speaker 1: metal detector made several hits and we dug through eight
Speaker 1: to ten inches of pack down rocks that had been
Speaker 1: dumped there six years ago, only to find small scraps
Speaker 1: of metal, no pocket knife. There would be no happy
Speaker 1: ending to this story arc, not yet anyway, now tough.
Speaker 1: He told me that when he got a chance, that
Speaker 1: he'd come over and search for me. Dakota told me
Speaker 1: that he'd help his dad. That's exactly what I would
Speaker 1: have said had my dad promised to help someone. So
Speaker 1: maybe this story arc does have a happy end. I
Speaker 1: came to terms a long time ago about losing that knife.
Speaker 1: I stopped beating myself up over it several years ago.
Speaker 1: Although this whole ordeal has kind of picked at the
Speaker 1: scar a little bit, but a chance meeting in Arkansas
Speaker 1: with Chris, a guy from Kansas, afforded me the opportunity
Speaker 1: to help some children that I'll never see. In doing so,
Speaker 1: I met Travis, I met Tuffie, the best of all,
Speaker 1: I met Dakota, and I met them in a place
Speaker 1: that has forever held a melancholy memory of a loss.
Speaker 1: All that changed when I met these folks, all eager
Speaker 1: to help me find something that I'd lost, while helping
Speaker 1: me find something better that's new friends. The banquet that
Speaker 1: night to that immeasurably I lost to pocket knife, but
Speaker 1: I gained a whole lot more that my dad would
Speaker 1: approve of. If you lose something, dear to you keep
Speaker 1: looking for it and don't give up cop No tell
Speaker 1: them what you might find. Black Bear Bonanza, where all
Speaker 1: that started, is happening again this year on March the ninth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four, at the Benton County Fairgrounds, Benville, Arkansas.
Speaker 1: I'll be there, Clay Bow will be there, and we'll
Speaker 1: be aul hooting, podcasting and having a ton of fun.
Speaker 1: Y'all need to get your tickets early, and you can
Speaker 1: do that by hitting the old Google with Black Barry Bonanza,
Speaker 1: follow the lank bringing youngs. I thank y'all for listening.
Speaker 1: Lots of good stuff coming from the media or YouTube
Speaker 1: channel from me and my Mississippi River cub pilot Claybold
Speaker 1: Nukam and some of this country life announcements to y'all.
Speaker 1: Just hanging there until next week. This is Brent Reeve
Speaker 1: signing off. Y'all be careful