Speaker 1: I pulled in. He was there at the store and
Speaker 1: I got out, and as I got out, there was
Speaker 1: an arrest team took him and he said, what's going on?
Speaker 1: I said, I don't know what I'm getting out of here.
Speaker 1: I got far, I left, drove on down the road.
Speaker 1: The next one. They said, hey, what happened Old So
Speaker 1: and So? I said, hey, didn't show then come out
Speaker 1: and they rest him. So we went all the way
Speaker 1: down the line and I'd make an excuse at each
Speaker 1: stop of why nobody was with me.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Bear Grease's first bonus episode. We interviewed so
Speaker 2: many people each year and aren't able to tell all
Speaker 2: the stories in our regular episodes, so we're trying to
Speaker 2: remedy that. And as many of our regular listeners know,
Speaker 2: the Bear Grease podcast has two kinds of shows. We
Speaker 2: have our premium documentary style like True Bear Grease episodes,
Speaker 2: where we dive deep to uncover some of those wild,
Speaker 2: gritty American stories that we love. But we also have
Speaker 2: our Bear Grease's Render podcast, which comes out every other week,
Speaker 2: where we gather up a group of five or six
Speaker 2: folks instead around and have a conversation about the last
Speaker 2: Bear Grease. It's a lot of fun, it's a lot
Speaker 2: more informal. Well, what you're listening to today is different,
Speaker 2: it's bonus content. It's shorter but highly relevant. We've spent
Speaker 2: the last two Beargrease episodes listening to two stories from
Speaker 2: United States Forest Service Special Agent Russ Arthur from Tennessee.
Speaker 2: In the first episode, called runt Over, he told of
Speaker 2: citing a man for illegal squirrel hunting and how later
Speaker 2: in retribution, the man tried to kill him and ended
Speaker 2: up in prison. Later, Russ would work an unrelated marijuana
Speaker 2: grow case in the National Forest and sent the man
Speaker 2: to prison for the second time. Truly a wild story
Speaker 2: with every type of twist and turn. In the last
Speaker 2: episode about Yellowstone, Russ found himself working undercover in Montana
Speaker 2: trying to bust an illegal outfittering gun thief. Truly and
Speaker 2: unbelievable story as well. Well, what you're about to hear
Speaker 2: is a story of timber theft, arson, rattlesnakes, and barefoot
Speaker 2: criminals in the swamps of Florida. I really doubt that
Speaker 2: you're going to want to miss this one, and let
Speaker 2: us know what you think of this episode on social media.
Speaker 2: My name is Clay Knukem and this is the Bear
Speaker 2: Grease Podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search
Speaker 2: for insight and unlikely places, and where we'll tell the
Speaker 2: story of Americans who live their lives close to the land.
Speaker 2: Presented by FHF gear, American made purpose built hunting and
Speaker 2: fishing gear as designed to be as rugged as the place.
Speaker 1: As we explore, well, they all got different different flavors
Speaker 1: and favorites, but probably one of my first undercover was
Speaker 1: one of the most interesting and nerve wracking and kind
Speaker 1: of had it all. There was a group of guys
Speaker 1: on the Appalacha Cola River that was stealing Atlantic white
Speaker 1: cedar juniper, and that's a tree species that kind of
Speaker 1: grows between the swamps and what they call the ridges
Speaker 1: the hills, and it was highly sought after for decking
Speaker 1: wood for cutting up, and it was very resilient and
Speaker 1: highly sought after him. And there was a meal down
Speaker 1: there that they were selling it to, and the and
Speaker 1: these guys were all friends. There was four or five
Speaker 1: of them. It turned out Bend and the agent down
Speaker 1: there had done a lot of background on on the
Speaker 1: best way to infiltrate this ground. But Uh. I went
Speaker 1: down and UH basically hired on as a sawyer for
Speaker 1: and I portrayed a guy that was down his luck.
Speaker 1: I just needed I needed a job. I was from
Speaker 1: Tennessee and uh and uh they took me in and
Speaker 1: you know, told me not, you know, obviously, not to
Speaker 1: tell anybody, and they could get me a little bit
Speaker 1: of a little bit of money and it would all
Speaker 1: be based on what all we sold. And that was
Speaker 1: early years of technology were wearing a wire was very
Speaker 1: hard to do, and especially in an environment of cutting wood,
Speaker 1: and there's a lot of legal you know, sideboards on
Speaker 1: when you can turn a tape recorder on, when you
Speaker 1: can turn it off, do you run it continuously? Do
Speaker 1: you just run it for you know, a few minutes
Speaker 1: or you'd being selective of you know, you turn it
Speaker 1: on and off. There was a lot of pressure on
Speaker 1: a young kid. I was still in my twenties. Then,
Speaker 1: so U hired on with them. And then they would
Speaker 1: cut timber all at night, really in the dark, in
Speaker 1: the dark, in the swamps, and.
Speaker 2: One of them using headlamps.
Speaker 1: Yep, not even head lamps, it was handhails. I mean
Speaker 1: headlamps really hadn't come around on the mid late eighties
Speaker 1: yet and uh, they just using handhad lights and uh.
Speaker 1: And one of them actually lived in the swamps and
Speaker 1: no electricity, no plumbing. It was just kind of sad.
Speaker 1: But would later find out what he's done with all
Speaker 1: his money. But anyway, he he would always do barefooted
Speaker 1: and uh. And I'll never forget one night we uh,
Speaker 1: we were riding around through there and they had found
Speaker 1: something during the day they wanted to cut, and we
Speaker 1: were just throwing these on the on on the back
Speaker 1: of the f two fifty in handload them. I shined
Speaker 1: my light and he was standing facing away from me,
Speaker 1: and there was this huge rattlesnake and it was laying
Speaker 1: stretched out about six inches from the back of his heels,
Speaker 1: and he was barefooted. And I'll never forget. I called
Speaker 1: his name and I said, man, that is a don't move.
Speaker 1: There's the biggest rattlesnake that you've ever seen right behind
Speaker 1: your feet. And I'll never forget. He mumbled, I know
Speaker 1: where that one's out. There's usually two of them. I'm
Speaker 1: looking for that second one. And I remember thinking, this
Speaker 1: pretty rough crowd. What happened? We continued on, Well, I
Speaker 1: mean he just stepped away from Yeah, he just stepped
Speaker 1: away from the snake. Now why was he barefoot? He
Speaker 1: never wore shoes. I never seen wear shoes. Just he
Speaker 1: never did wear a pair of shoes. It drank old
Speaker 1: mill while he's best, and he never had a cooler
Speaker 1: put it in. He'd always drink it.
Speaker 2: Hot and just logged barefoot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right right. They'd get a tree hung, you know,
Speaker 1: with a maker, into the top of another tree, and
Speaker 1: he'd climb up at barefooted, limit it till it shook down.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a wonder they didn't get killed out there.
Speaker 1: But uh but I would go down and I'd cut
Speaker 1: timber with him, and we'd take it to the meal.
Speaker 1: Uh we'd always get the meal right when it opened,
Speaker 1: and uh then we would. I'd do that for like
Speaker 1: a month with him, and that I'd tell him I
Speaker 1: was going back to Tennessee and we'd process everything, you know,
Speaker 1: you were recording over a lot of it. I would,
Speaker 1: you know, obviously not when the saws running, but uh then,
Speaker 1: uh then i'd call him and come back, you know, hey,
Speaker 1: you got more work. And they were uh that all
Speaker 1: always take me back in and because the rumor had it,
Speaker 1: they were setting fires too, and so of course we're
Speaker 1: working with our federal prosecutors, and they wanted me to.
Speaker 1: They made it clear one night they wanted me to
Speaker 1: go with them to said a wildfire. Well it was
Speaker 1: my job talking out of it. Now that might sound funny,
Speaker 1: but you know, we didn't want to be the ones
Speaker 1: part of setting the wildfire that ended up burning up
Speaker 1: a community, you know. So uh, we never did.
Speaker 2: Like you were there to say no, let's not do it,
Speaker 2: and then if they did it, it was.
Speaker 1: All the wrong. I wasn't going to be there, you know.
Speaker 1: I voted, hey, let's don't do it, you know, and
Speaker 1: that was through guidance from the from our prosecutors. You know,
Speaker 1: we're not going to be involved in setting any of these.
Speaker 1: You know, a matter of fact, we need to discourage it,
Speaker 1: you know. So uh uh you know. So, so some
Speaker 1: interesting guys and then one of them, there was five
Speaker 1: of them. They lived in five separate four differents separate
Speaker 1: communities up and down the Apple Takota River and uh
Speaker 1: and one of them invited me down to come down
Speaker 1: and help him, and I ended up helping him with
Speaker 1: his with his marijuana grow. So you know, went in
Speaker 1: and found out who he was selling it to, and
Speaker 1: it was a lady in Tallahassee, and so that had
Speaker 1: become a spur off of that temper theft case was,
Speaker 1: you know, the marijuana grow case, and so it was
Speaker 1: that was an interesting case and we had all successful prosecutions,
Speaker 1: and it was kind of funny the day of the takedown.
Speaker 1: We had it was five separate arrest warrants for each
Speaker 1: one of them, and we had it all mapped out
Speaker 1: where they all lived, and I had contacted the one
Speaker 1: that had a telephone and only one of them had
Speaker 1: a telephone at their house and told him said, hey,
Speaker 1: said that if y'all want to help me out on
Speaker 1: I think it was Saint George Island, that's out there.
Speaker 1: You want to help me out on Saint George Island,
Speaker 1: I've got a deck to building, y'all. We all make
Speaker 1: some good money. Because during that it was a year
Speaker 1: and a half spread out, I had kind of established
Speaker 1: that I had this this little construction thing going, and
Speaker 1: actually the agent that was overseeing the case was seen
Speaker 1: out there as kind of a builder. So they all
Speaker 1: bet hoo, hookline, sinker on, we're gonna we're gonna meet
Speaker 1: this guy Tennessee and we're gonna we're gonna eat, make
Speaker 1: us a couple hundred bucks in a day to build
Speaker 1: this deck. And I told him i'd pick him up,
Speaker 1: and I said, let so and so no, I'll pick
Speaker 1: him up at eight at that store. And I identified
Speaker 1: these five different areas that I was gonna pick them up,
Speaker 1: and they were all, you know, relative to the time.
Speaker 1: Said what it would take us to drive between them
Speaker 1: from north to south? As we were going to go,
Speaker 1: I told him I drive. And the first one we met,
Speaker 1: I pulled in. He was there at the store and
Speaker 1: I got out, and as I got out, there was
Speaker 1: an arrest team took him and he said, what's going on?
Speaker 1: I said, I don't know what I'm getting out of here.
Speaker 1: I got in the car and I left, drove on
Speaker 1: down the road. The next one they said, hey, what happened?
Speaker 1: Oh so, and so I said I he didn't show
Speaker 1: get and then they'd come out and they had rest him.
Speaker 1: So we went all the way down the line and
Speaker 1: I'd make an excuse at each stop of why why
Speaker 1: nobody was with me? And of course this was back
Speaker 1: in the day where they didn't have cell phones and
Speaker 1: communications so stuff like that work back then.
Speaker 2: You were in your twenties. Yeah, what what does it
Speaker 2: take to be able to hold your cover? I mean
Speaker 2: you work up with these guys that are so rough
Speaker 2: and man, you you you had to be believable or
Speaker 2: it could have been a dangerous situation. How did you
Speaker 2: Can you describe what it's like to be deep undercover?
Speaker 1: Well, you know, if if you're going to go undercover
Speaker 1: for any length of time, you have to have what's
Speaker 1: called a good backstop. A good backstop in today's world
Speaker 1: is a social media profile. It's it's the whole nine
Speaker 1: yards through the world of electronics. A good backstop. Back
Speaker 1: when I was doing it was you had you had
Speaker 1: an identification and maybe a little bit of criminal record
Speaker 1: that was created by the state for you, and there's
Speaker 1: a process to go through with that. And you had
Speaker 1: an ID, you had a social Security number, and there's
Speaker 1: a process to go through that, and you set up yourself.
Speaker 1: You have a phone line at your residence if you're
Speaker 1: going to use your residence, and most of the time
Speaker 1: you'll do undercover and you'll stay in a temporary quarters
Speaker 1: and that's what you would do sometimes is like rent,
Speaker 1: like an apartment or something under that same name. Uh.
Speaker 1: And but you the biggest thing is is to have
Speaker 1: knowledge of don't be somebody or not. And I was
Speaker 1: very lucky in that. You know, I worked constructions for
Speaker 1: so many years. I could talk to talk of of
Speaker 1: of a brick layer, you know, I could talk to
Speaker 1: talk of a land mountain stone, you know, some some
Speaker 1: some of the construction work. So you want to tell
Speaker 1: people your profession is something that you can talk about,
Speaker 1: first of all. And back in the day, they didn't
Speaker 1: have Facebook they could check you. The only thing they
Speaker 1: could check you on is maybe if they had a
Speaker 1: friend in the police department, they could They may figure
Speaker 1: out a way to get your driver's license and run
Speaker 1: your driver's license, you know in some of these small communities.
Speaker 1: You know, even though it's illegal, somebody might could do
Speaker 1: that and or run your tag number. You know, I
Speaker 1: haven't run your tag number, make sure so you'd always
Speaker 1: want to have that vehicle tied back to that driver's license.
Speaker 1: So so it wasn't that complicated back in the day.
Speaker 1: And especially if you set it up to where I'm
Speaker 1: not from this area, I'm just down here looking for work.
Speaker 1: I'm actually from a state or two a way, you know,
Speaker 1: and it seemed it seemed to work. You know, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can be compromised, and if you are, you've got
Speaker 1: to recognize the way out. One time I thought I
Speaker 1: was compromised before I even left, and I pulled out.
Speaker 1: It turns out I wasn't compromised. But the way the
Speaker 1: guy was talking to me. We had a case in
Speaker 1: Alaska that I was going to be a part of
Speaker 1: on a brown bear hunt. I hadn't paid the down
Speaker 1: on the hunt yet. We were just communicating. Something came
Speaker 1: up to where he he was questioning me, and I
Speaker 1: just did just didn't feel right. And it was going
Speaker 1: to be me and another undercover agent, because when you're
Speaker 1: going into a remote area you need to you really
Speaker 1: need two people. And this was actually an agent from
Speaker 1: Arkansas was going to go with me, and I called
Speaker 1: him up. I said, look, I don't feel good about
Speaker 1: this guy. He said, well, I'm not getting that failing Well,
Speaker 1: I told my boss. I said, I'm just not failing it.
Speaker 1: So he got somebody else and he and the other
Speaker 1: agent went and it turned out that that it was
Speaker 1: it was legit. He just was really intrigued about my background.
Speaker 1: He did he didn't. Oh, so this guy was quizzing, right,
Speaker 1: he was quizzing, quizzing me. And it turned out they
Speaker 1: went ahead and worked the case and they made the
Speaker 1: case and it was a good case. And he said, man,
Speaker 1: you missed it. It was some beautiful country. And uh,
Speaker 1: but the thing about it is we he he wasn't
Speaker 1: on to me, and but it was my own gut feeling,
Speaker 1: which you know, that's just that's just the way it goes.
Speaker 1: And a lot of people have a misconception. You know.
Speaker 1: Some of my friends all talk to him, and you know,
Speaker 1: and and I don't talk that much, even to my
Speaker 1: close friends about some of the work I've done. I'm just,
Speaker 1: you know, just don't. But the ones that really don't
Speaker 1: know me, they'll hear about it. They say, man, you've
Speaker 1: got it made. You've got to see the bitter roots,
Speaker 1: say away wilderness area, you've got to see Yellowstone, You've
Speaker 1: got to see all this going on undercover. It is
Speaker 1: not fun because normally the only fun part about it
Speaker 1: is seeing country that you probably normally wouldn't see. And
Speaker 1: and that intrigues me. I love love that. But being
Speaker 1: with somebody that you know, it's been violating for a
Speaker 1: long time. You may or may not know a lot
Speaker 1: more about the resources than they do, and you having
Speaker 1: to listen to them and do what they tell you.
Speaker 1: It's not funny that there is. There's no glory in that,
Speaker 1: because nine times out of ten, the people that do
Speaker 1: that are slots, And it's just not the type of
Speaker 1: people that you would enjoy hanging around around. You know, uh,
Speaker 1: you know. Do I want to hang around a guy
Speaker 1: that you know in the swamps of Florida that uses
Speaker 1: a hole in the Florida to do his business into
Speaker 1: the swamp because he don't have a toilet. You know,
Speaker 1: that's not the type of people I want to hang
Speaker 1: around with. Do I want to hang around the guy
Speaker 1: that's guided me twenty two miles in the back country
Speaker 1: that I know is getting ready to try to steal
Speaker 1: my pre sixty four Winchester because he's running guns too.
Speaker 1: You know, that's not the kind of guy I want
Speaker 1: to Yeah, I see what you're saying, hang out with?
Speaker 1: Do I want to wake up at five point thirty
Speaker 1: in the morning over there in some of the most
Speaker 1: pressed in country that God put on this earth and
Speaker 1: set there by the fire, drinking coffee listening to Elk
Speaker 1: bugle all around me and the guides in there snoring
Speaker 1: because he stayed up drunk all night. That's not the
Speaker 1: kind of guy I want to hang out with. And
Speaker 1: that stuff happens. Yeah, that has happened.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the level of stress on an undercover agent is
Speaker 2: hard to comprehend. If you haven't listened to our Secret
Speaker 2: Agent Man series we did with Rtie Stewart out of
Speaker 2: Ohio in twenty twenty two. Those are episodes seventy eight
Speaker 2: through eighty four. You probably should really some wild stories
Speaker 2: in there. And I mean, I guess we talked to
Speaker 2: an undercover agent almost every week. Brent reeves. You know
Speaker 2: he's working me. I think we all do. I can't
Speaker 2: thank Russ enough for opening up with us about these stories.
Speaker 2: Like was said before, he doesn't talk about this often
Speaker 2: and I had to twist his arm to get him
Speaker 2: to tell these stories. I hope you enjoyed this extra
Speaker 2: drop and we'll see you on the next episode. Thanks
Speaker 2: a ton for listening to Bear Grease and Brent's This
Speaker 2: Country Life podcast. Be sure to leave us a review
Speaker 2: on iTunes and share this podcast with you friends. Thank
Speaker 2: you