Speaker 1: Welcome to this country Life. I'm your host, Brent Reeves.
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 experiences and life lessons. This country life is presented
Speaker 1: by Case Knives on Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you
Speaker 1: the best outdoor podcast.
Speaker 2: The airwaves have to offer.
Speaker 1: All right, friends, grab a chair or drop that tailgate.
Speaker 1: I've got some stories to share. Ticks, ticks. I can't
Speaker 1: think of a creepier topic to talk about other than
Speaker 1: rats and dangs. You ain't talking about them, and I
Speaker 1: don't know which I hate worse, But this time of
Speaker 1: year where I live, they are an issue we deal
Speaker 1: with daily. I'm going to tell you about some stuff
Speaker 1: I learned while prepping for this podcast. But first I'm
Speaker 1: gonna tell you something I learned the hard way with
Speaker 1: this story. That Turkey season wasn't especially warm, cool, or
Speaker 1: anything really that stood out one way or the other weatherwise.
Speaker 1: It was just another spring turkey season, and I was
Speaker 1: doing my dead level best to keep the wild turkey
Speaker 1: population of Missouri in Arkansas in check. I was doing
Speaker 1: some filming with a friend of mine, the friend I
Speaker 1: talked about in episode three twenty one entitled West One
Speaker 1: Bob Zero. Bob was the guy who I was filming
Speaker 1: with and who was my initial mentor old filming hunts.
Speaker 1: Now he shuns the spotlight now And as I explained
Speaker 1: in that episode, I referred to him as Bob, which
Speaker 1: isn't his name, and I offer that info only because
Speaker 1: I don't want you wondering why I didn't include his
Speaker 1: last name. Bob doesn't have a last name. He's a
Speaker 1: man of intrigue and mystery, much like the sudden onset
Speaker 1: of terribleness I felt after returning to Arkansas from a
Speaker 1: trip with him in Missouri. That trip was etched in
Speaker 1: my mind not because we'd had bad luck. We'd killed
Speaker 1: the turkey and gotten some decent footage. It was an
Speaker 1: absolute great hunt that has never seen the light of day.
Speaker 1: We could never broker a deal with anyone to sponsor
Speaker 1: the airtime during the pioneer days of outdoor television, A
Speaker 1: bunch of that video just sitting in the cans. And
Speaker 1: that's not the reason that trip was so memorable. It
Speaker 1: was more haunting than anything else, and it was because
Speaker 1: of the ticks say what you want and chunk rocks
Speaker 1: at me when you see me coming, if you feel
Speaker 1: the need. But you have never never seen ticks any
Speaker 1: worse than we did that spring a decade or so ago.
Speaker 1: Now I'm not saying you haven't seen them bad in
Speaker 1: your corner of the world. I said, you ain't never
Speaker 1: seen them worse. And I'll go to my grave saying
Speaker 1: the same thing. Fortunately, you could only hunt half a
Speaker 1: day in Missouri back then. Now I say fortunately because
Speaker 1: it took the last half of the day to get
Speaker 1: all the ticks rounded up and all my person that
Speaker 1: had laid the claim to their own little piece of
Speaker 1: reeves land, a neighborhood of which they were not welcomed.
Speaker 1: It was every day, all day up and until the
Speaker 1: point of my tenure in this realm.
Speaker 2: I had never seen them that bad. I've only seen
Speaker 2: them as bad as that once.
Speaker 1: That would be a few years later in the Ozarks,
Speaker 1: were my friend Michael Meeks and I used to camp
Speaker 1: and chase turkeys annually during the open week. But that
Speaker 1: would be a few years later. But back in Missouri,
Speaker 1: the turkeys were gobbling and the ticks were crawled and biting.
Speaker 1: No idea how many I pulled off me during that trip,
Speaker 1: But I bet the farm during those three days it
Speaker 1: was well over one hundred.
Speaker 2: I actually counted the first day.
Speaker 1: Then I lost track during the next morning when I
Speaker 1: heard one tick say to a host of others, y'all
Speaker 1: want to eat him here, I'm just taking him back
Speaker 1: to our place and finish him there.
Speaker 2: The ticks were bad, real bad.
Speaker 1: Now. The last statement was confirmed when we sat on
Speaker 1: the back patio after a day of chasing turkeys and
Speaker 1: killing ticks. We were frying fish, playing music, and visiting
Speaker 1: with neighbors and relatives. We'd invite it over for supper.
Speaker 1: It had become an annual event of sorts, with the
Speaker 1: crowd growing bigger each year. I was paying particular attention
Speaker 1: to the brim I had swimming in that hot peanut
Speaker 1: oil when something just happened to catch my eye, and
Speaker 1: I looked at the back wall of my friend's white house.
Speaker 1: What are all those dots? Why are all those dots moving?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 1: Lord, say it ain't so, Joe, say it ain't so.
Speaker 1: Upon closer inspectually, my fear was confirmed. There were ticks
Speaker 1: crawling on the outside of the house. Sweet Jesus, that
Speaker 1: was creepy. I just got a chill, thinking about it.
Speaker 1: Apossum ran over my grave. They were everywhere. Every itch,
Speaker 1: every tickle of a breeze, every sensation felt like a
Speaker 1: tick crawling on me. If you only listen to a
Speaker 1: few of these episodes, you have no doubt figured out
Speaker 1: that I grew up in the country. The name of
Speaker 1: this show is a perfect descriptor of my literal being
Speaker 1: and my place in humanity. I am a country boy.
Speaker 1: I've been dealing with ticks. My whole life is just
Speaker 1: another part of nature. However, that spring in Missouri still
Speaker 1: gives me the hebe jebbies. There won another possum over
Speaker 1: my grave. A few days after I got home from
Speaker 1: that trip, I started feeling bad, like really bad, like
Speaker 1: I had the flu bad, or what I would assume
Speaker 1: the flu would feel like.
Speaker 2: I ain't ever had the flu. I've seen other folks.
Speaker 1: Waller around in the throes of despair having had it,
Speaker 1: but me, I'm seldom, if ever sick. To this day,
Speaker 1: being sick wouldn't even make a blip on my earthly
Speaker 1: timeline at that time, outside of having a hernia when
Speaker 1: I was three, an appendicitis when I was sixteen, jobbing
Speaker 1: my thumb in a copperheads Mouth when I was nineteen.
Speaker 2: My visits to.
Speaker 1: The hospital had been for reasons other than my lack
Speaker 1: of health. I hadn't been burdened by or susceptible to
Speaker 1: the maladies that plague are planted as the rest of
Speaker 1: you mere mortals have been.
Speaker 2: At least that's what I thought.
Speaker 1: I was about to find out that the rumors of
Speaker 1: my immortality were based on lies, a literal pyramid of
Speaker 1: inaccurate assumptions about my tear one abilities to fight off
Speaker 1: infection and dodge the bullets of sickness. I went to
Speaker 1: the doctor and he said, looks like you got the flu.
Speaker 1: I told him I never had the flu of my life,
Speaker 1: but my symptoms were just like my brother Tims, who'd
Speaker 1: gotten Rocky Mountain spotted fever the year before. My doctor
Speaker 1: looked at me with the here we go again look off.
Speaker 1: Thank goodness you called your brother and let him diagnose
Speaker 1: you over the phone. I forgot that the state police
Speaker 1: sent all their folks to the medical school.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 1: That doctor was a good friend of mine, a former
Speaker 1: combat pilot in Vietnam. He was rough as a cob
Speaker 1: and didn't mince words when he spoke. The one thing
Speaker 1: he did, though, was listening to his patience, and I
Speaker 1: reminded him that he was working for me and I
Speaker 1: wanted to be tested for tick fever. He humored me,
Speaker 1: had the nurse draw blood, and ran me out of
Speaker 1: his office, saying that he'd called me when he got
Speaker 1: the results. A week later, he called and he said
Speaker 1: he was sending all my charts to my brother. I
Speaker 1: had Rocky Mountain spotted fever. He nailed my diagnosis. After
Speaker 1: a steady diet of doxy cycline. I was good as
Speaker 1: new almost. Doctor told me that I could possibly always
Speaker 1: test positive for it, and then there may be flare
Speaker 1: ups of muscle and joint aches for the rest of
Speaker 1: my life because of it. He also said I should
Speaker 1: always inform anyone when and if I ever donated blood. Well,
Speaker 1: I haven't noticed enough flare ups over the last twenty
Speaker 1: years to even remember a specific time, and I've donated
Speaker 1: enough blood during that time to float that sea arc
Speaker 1: boat out there in my yard. But I'm ever vigilant
Speaker 1: these days, and I have been since, and I've had
Speaker 1: dreams over the last twenty years of sea and those
Speaker 1: ticks crawling on the side of the house.
Speaker 2: It's funny.
Speaker 1: I have been within arm's reach of enough bears to
Speaker 1: fill up a Greyhound bus and never gotten so much
Speaker 1: as a scratch and a tick. A lowly tick tried
Speaker 1: to kill me. That's just how that happened. The CDC
Speaker 1: reports around six thousand cases of Rocky Mountain spotted fever
Speaker 1: each year, But despite its name, you're more likely to
Speaker 1: get it in North Carolina, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and wait
Speaker 1: for it, wait for it, Missouri. The chances of you
Speaker 1: getting sick remain small percentage wise. If you get bit
Speaker 1: by a tick, only certain varieties carried disease and you
Speaker 1: have to be susceptible to catching it. Normally, the infected
Speaker 1: tick has to be attached for a prolonged period of
Speaker 1: time before the transference occurs. If you figure out all
Speaker 1: the folks that are outside where takes can be found
Speaker 1: in those states alone, your chances of getting sick from
Speaker 1: a tick bite are extremely remote. Fortunately, Rocky Mountain spotted
Speaker 1: fever is highly treatable with antibiotics. Unfortunately, Rocky Mountain spotted
Speaker 1: fever is the least of the issues when it comes
Speaker 1: to tick born diseases. There are twenty t different pathogens
Speaker 1: that can make humans sick, including erlichiosis, lyme disease, to laarhemia,
Speaker 1: and tick paralysis. In two thousand and nine, if of
Speaker 1: gall syndrome joined the chat and if all that other
Speaker 1: wasn't enough, that condition is that forced to be reckoned
Speaker 1: with And doing just a modicum bit of researcher for
Speaker 1: this podcast, I discovered illnesses I'd never heard of. But
Speaker 1: I'm amazed I never contracted, just by the sheer number
Speaker 1: of ticks that I've hosted over my lifetime. In the
Speaker 1: opening story, I told you about getting Rocky Mountain spotted feverbody.
Speaker 1: I didn't tell you the circumstances. It was a tick
Speaker 1: on the backside of my ribcage that I found by
Speaker 1: accident a day after I got home from that trip.
Speaker 1: Had I noticed it when it bit me, I doubt
Speaker 1: I'd ever had gotten it. That's why checking yourself and
Speaker 1: especially the little folks that hang around with you, is
Speaker 1: so important in prevention. Back during the conflagration known as COVID,
Speaker 1: my daughter Bailey and I did a project of making
Speaker 1: a coon feeder to concentrate the bandid. It was to
Speaker 1: a certain area to help train our coon down Whalen
Speaker 1: we failed it, and I shared that video from five
Speaker 1: years ago, not long ago, on my social media. Now,
Speaker 1: what I didn't show on that video is when Bailey
Speaker 1: and I were walking back to the truck because she
Speaker 1: was telling me about all the little spiders that she'd seen,
Speaker 1: and she told me that she'd wiped a.
Speaker 2: Bunch of them off her breeches. They caught my attention.
Speaker 2: I stood her up on the tailgate.
Speaker 1: It was then I saw she'd gotten into a miss
Speaker 1: of seed ticks and big ticks. Luckily she'd noticed them
Speaker 1: and said something. I was able to get her squared
Speaker 1: away before we ever left. On that same trip, I
Speaker 1: didn't get one, not one, and she'd been covered up
Speaker 1: with them. I'm friends with a few folks that have
Speaker 1: been sucker punched by tick diseases. And when I think
Speaker 1: about the multitude of people I know that do the
Speaker 1: same kind of things that I do, you'd think there'd
Speaker 1: be more. One such person is my friend Ronney Cowan.
Speaker 1: Ronnie's a wildlife biologist and the state Outdoor Recreation Specialist
Speaker 1: for the University of Tennessee. Ronnie's a lifelong hunter, and
Speaker 1: he and I met on a coon hunt last winter
Speaker 1: on the White River with my regular coon hunting palas
Speaker 1: at the Cash River Coon Club. Ronnie's a strong advocate
Speaker 1: for outdoor recreation, and a tick bite forced him to
Speaker 1: completely rethink how he hunts, trains dogs, and connect others
Speaker 1: to conservation now. He shared the following during a recent
Speaker 1: conversation he and I had. Here's what Ronnie said. A
Speaker 1: few years ago, I was diagnosed with alpha gal syndrome
Speaker 1: and it flipped my outdoor world upside down. Red meat
Speaker 1: was off the table literally, But instead of walking away
Speaker 1: from hunting, I leaned deeper into it and became a
Speaker 1: bird hunter. Now, thanks to some advice from Tony Peterson,
Speaker 1: who was incredibly helpful and getting me started in dog work,
Speaker 1: I retooled my life, got a bird dog, and found
Speaker 1: a new path into ethical hunting and mendorship. Now that
Speaker 1: change not only saved my outdoor identity, gave me a
Speaker 1: new purpose. Nice job, Ronnie, and quite a shout out
Speaker 1: to our own Tony Peterson for his help. That is
Speaker 1: the absolute textbook definition of taking a negative and turned
Speaker 1: it into a positive. If you haven't heard of alpha
Speaker 1: gal syndrome, here's a simple descriptor. Alpha gal is a
Speaker 1: carbohydrate molecule contained within red meat. The pathogen that you
Speaker 1: get from the tick reacts adversely with that molecule in
Speaker 1: red meat, and it makes you sick.
Speaker 2: There is no cure.
Speaker 1: Adding insult to injury is the fact that you ain't
Speaker 1: even got to eat red meat to get sick. If
Speaker 1: you have alpha gal, all you gotta do is touch
Speaker 1: some and it can trigger the illness if you get it.
Speaker 1: I hope you like chicken and fish, because that's the
Speaker 1: menu you're going to be ordering from. Feathers and scales, period.
Speaker 1: I couldn't fathom not being able to eat red meat again.
Speaker 1: I feel for those folks, but I also ain't gonna
Speaker 1: stay inside to ensure I never get it. If the
Speaker 1: ticks keep us from doing what we want, they win.
Speaker 1: We can't let the ticks win. We can't now if
Speaker 1: ticks are making us sick wasn't bad enough, they'll also
Speaker 1: do a number on our dogs. Just about everything that
Speaker 1: we can get from a tick, our dogs can get too.
Speaker 1: Depending on where you live, you're looking at a specific
Speaker 1: type of threats. I was today years old when I
Speaker 1: learned dogs can get lyme disease. I was chatting at
Speaker 1: that with my friend in Whalen's personal physician, doctor Jonathan Bradshaw,
Speaker 1: DVM to the Stars, and I was talking to him
Speaker 1: about tick stuff, and he told me that certain areas
Speaker 1: of the country where more prone to produce certain types
Speaker 1: of tick diseases that can be a big problem to
Speaker 1: your four legged piles ain't properly protected from specific diseases
Speaker 1: in specific areas, especially if you travel with you dogs
Speaker 1: like he does in hunt tests and field trial competitions
Speaker 1: with his retrievers, or like I do with friends around
Speaker 1: the country chasing coons. For example, down here in the South,
Speaker 1: er likia is the biggest threat to dogs, but there's
Speaker 1: a hot spot of lime disease around Dallas, just like
Speaker 1: up in New England.
Speaker 2: Who knew that?
Speaker 1: And across the big muddy over in Mississippi, my buddy
Speaker 1: Lake Pickle is dealing with keeping his yellow lab Knocks
Speaker 1: from getting annaplasmosis, which seems to be a bigger issue
Speaker 1: there than here. Traveling around puts you in new territory
Speaker 1: and associates your dogs with other dogs from other places
Speaker 1: who may have an altogether different set of tick threats
Speaker 1: from where they're from. This is most certainly true in
Speaker 1: the competition world. Where dogs from all over congregate in
Speaker 1: one setting, adding to the risk and raising the percentage
Speaker 1: of potential tick pathog and infections even higher. Is the
Speaker 1: fact that while we all like to think that everyone
Speaker 1: takes as good as care as we do of our
Speaker 1: pets and their general health, it's just not always the case.
Speaker 1: It's easy for a tick to hit your ride in
Speaker 1: the dog box and wind up someplace they never dreamed
Speaker 1: of the next morning, just full full of dogs everywhere.
Speaker 2: It'd be like me.
Speaker 1: Going to sleep one night and waking up the next
Speaker 1: morning in a watermelon patch. So to take care of
Speaker 1: your hunting buddies, it's just like driving a car down
Speaker 1: the highway. You have to drive and pay attention to
Speaker 1: the cars around you as if they don't know anything
Speaker 1: about driving. Same thing applies to your dog. Think defensively.
Speaker 1: I was fortunate enough to be invited to the Flint
Speaker 1: Oak Branch in Fall River Canvas back in January of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four. I was speaking out of hunters with
Speaker 1: Mission Bank, which just down the road and Independence. The
Speaker 1: next night, I went a day early to with my
Speaker 1: friends tough In to coat a gram at Flannel Branch.
Speaker 1: Toughy told me when I got there that they wouldn't
Speaker 1: allow Whaling to stay in the kennels with their bird
Speaker 1: dogs for their protection.
Speaker 2: Now I wasn't offended in the least. I got it.
Speaker 2: I understood why those folks don't know me.
Speaker 1: They were looking out for the best interest of their
Speaker 1: five star shooting facility. Tuffy said, you can keep Whaling
Speaker 1: in your room if you want. Now, that's suited me
Speaker 1: just fine Whaling too. Truth being on, I was planning
Speaker 1: on slipping him in there anyway, because I didn't know
Speaker 1: how their kettles were kept. It turns out the kennels
Speaker 1: were just as meticulously cared for and clean as the
Speaker 1: sweet we stayed in, except Whaling drank his water out
Speaker 1: of a fancy leather bound ice bucket in our room
Speaker 1: while the dogs out and the kennels only had polished
Speaker 1: stainless steep. Now Whaling would have been just fine out there.
Speaker 1: Heck I'd have been fine out there. But you just
Speaker 1: never know, and you can't take a chance. It's also
Speaker 1: the possibility of skullduggery. Now, for all of you that
Speaker 1: have hung on this long and are now trying to
Speaker 1: figure out what in the world is Brent talking about? Skullduggery.
Speaker 1: Skullduggery means underhanded and unscrupulous behavior. So what's that got
Speaker 1: to do with ticks? I'm so glad you asked, y'all.
Speaker 2: Remember mister Leon.
Speaker 1: He was the old World War two bet that I
Speaker 1: worked with in the woods back in the nineteen eighties. Well,
Speaker 1: he told me about a guy on his crew that
Speaker 1: he worked with before I came there. That told it
Speaker 1: an empty pill bottle in his shirt pocket, and every day,
Speaker 1: when the ticks were out, he'd catch them crawling and
Speaker 1: drop them in that pill bottle. Now that ain't weird enough.
Speaker 1: He then took them to a local country store he
Speaker 1: traded with and stopped at every afternoon after work, and
Speaker 1: would dump them out in that store when the propriety.
Speaker 2: Wasn't looking because he hated him.
Speaker 1: Now, apparently they'd had some kind of business deal many
Speaker 1: years before, and the store owner took advantage of him
Speaker 1: and beat him out of some money. So even the score,
Speaker 1: this dude was unleashing a daily carpet bombing of ticks
Speaker 1: in his store to prey upon the masses. Now, mister
Speaker 1: Leon said, I don't know how long he'd been doing
Speaker 1: that when I caught him, but when I did, I
Speaker 1: made him stop. However, it was a multi year campaign.
Speaker 1: According to him, TICS, I hate him and the only
Speaker 1: thing that disappoints me when I catch one and smash
Speaker 1: the life out of him is I can't hear him
Speaker 1: screaming when I do it. Talk to your vet where
Speaker 1: you live and get the protection for your dogs specific
Speaker 1: to the places you're going to have them operating in,
Speaker 1: and most importantly, check them for texts when the hunt's over.
Speaker 1: The same goes for you and your youngins. Lots of
Speaker 1: options out there, but there's nothing better than a self
Speaker 1: inspection once you get back to the CASA. Now be
Speaker 1: symptom of weare of clues that may on set, especially
Speaker 1: after thirty six hours of getting bitter exposed. It's always
Speaker 1: better to air on the side of caution. Formetha and
Speaker 1: spray will have the moon walking on your breeches until
Speaker 1: they fall off dead as disco, but with any chemical
Speaker 1: applications there's always safety protocols to follow. That's gonna about
Speaker 1: do it for this satellite view on TICS. I'm thinking
Speaker 1: about doing a deeper dive later on if y'all are interested,
Speaker 1: and maybe having some folks on to tell how they've
Speaker 1: dealt with issues as a result of tick boxes. Y'all
Speaker 1: let us know if you're interested. Thank y'all so much
Speaker 1: for listening to us here on the bear Grease channel.
Speaker 1: If we've got the bear Grease, the render this country
Speaker 1: life and now Backwoods University right here, my old buddy
Speaker 1: Lake pickle until next week.
Speaker 2: This is Brent Reeves signing off. Y'all be careful
Speaker 1: Entering