Speaker 1: M well, yeah, first day I ever mad him. That's
Speaker 1: what my buddy said that he was a game warden,
Speaker 1: and I think, yeah, he said, yeah, I have guys
Speaker 1: good right in and live with them. You know what
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, Yeah, that's what we do. Wow. We're on
Speaker 1: our third and final episode of our Secret Agent Man
Speaker 1: series with undercover Ohio wildlife agent RT Stewart. On part one,
Speaker 1: we learned about the big picture mechanics of undercover stings
Speaker 1: and how RT was a pioneer in the early nineteen
Speaker 1: nineties for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. We learned
Speaker 1: that humans don't do well with chronic stress and discuss
Speaker 1: the personal toll placed on undercover agents and their families
Speaker 1: because of it, And in a colimactic moment, I asked
Speaker 1: RT a cutting question, Was it worth it? You're too good? No? No,
Speaker 1: it was no. I look back at it. If I
Speaker 1: had to do it over again and I knew what
Speaker 1: I knew right now, i'd to say no. But at
Speaker 1: the time is the only thing I new and the
Speaker 1: only thing I wanted to do. On the second episode,
Speaker 1: RT told us about his biggest thing, Operation Redbud, where
Speaker 1: twenty six men were convicted of over two hundred and
Speaker 1: seventy five wildlife crimes. They were taken by total surprise. Probably,
Speaker 1: I think we ended up resting that day people. That's
Speaker 1: a major it was, and at that particular time, it
Speaker 1: was the largest turkey poaching ring in the country. And
Speaker 1: on this third episode, we're gonna hear about some close
Speaker 1: calls where Urt was almost found out and explore the
Speaker 1: idea of human instinct or having a sixth sense or
Speaker 1: a premonition, but also how that compares with just pure wit.
Speaker 1: Many believed decision making is purely based on observable data,
Speaker 1: but it sounds like some of our subconscious decision making
Speaker 1: mechanisms are hardwired into our d n A. We're gonna
Speaker 1: hear about that from Dr Matthew Sharp's from the University
Speaker 1: of California and Fresno. So we're gonna explore some of
Speaker 1: Art's best stories of how he handled trouble and how
Speaker 1: he used this uncanny wit and intuition to de escalate situations.
Speaker 1: I really doubt you're gonna want to miss this one.
Speaker 1: RT is calling a bird and uh, the other officer
Speaker 1: just happens to let it slip out. Good calling RT.
Speaker 1: So within a few seconds he comes back. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: why they call me a real turkey RT. Just that quick.
Speaker 1: He smoothed it over so quickly and so well that
Speaker 1: there was no question. And he did that time after
Speaker 1: time after time. My name is Clay Nukelem and this
Speaker 1: is the Bear Grease Podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten
Speaker 1: but relevant, search for insight and unlikely places, and where
Speaker 1: we'll tell the story of Americans who lived their lives
Speaker 1: close to the land. Presented by f HF Gear, American
Speaker 1: made purpose built hunting and fishing gear that's designed to
Speaker 1: be as rugged as the places we explore. The art
Speaker 1: is working undercover at Lake Erie and the uh the
Speaker 1: two main fish up there that people are poaching as
Speaker 1: walleyes and yellow perch. So people are coming to Art.
Speaker 1: They're selling him illegal walleyes, illegal perch, and at one
Speaker 1: point again one of the bad guys accuses him of
Speaker 1: UH being a wildlife officer, and he's got a somehow
Speaker 1: get out of it and prove that he's not so.
Speaker 1: At that time, and he wore a white cowboy hat
Speaker 1: a lot, especially when he gets dressed up, which I
Speaker 1: think is very symbolic. You know, the guy with the
Speaker 1: white cowboy hats the good guy, but that particular day,
Speaker 1: he had a wire under his cowboy hat. Okay, so
Speaker 1: he's recording this conversation, and so now he's got to
Speaker 1: put on the front that he's not the wildlife officer.
Speaker 1: So he accuses the other guy of being one, and
Speaker 1: he said, he said, and I'll prove it. Let's strip
Speaker 1: Let's strip down and we'll see who's wearing a wire
Speaker 1: who's not. So he strips down to his underwear and
Speaker 1: there's other people watching, and he demands the other guy
Speaker 1: do the same thing. They both look at each other,
Speaker 1: they both don't see a wire, and they go back
Speaker 1: to being buddies a drinking beer. The only catches RT
Speaker 1: had the wire in the in his cowboy hat, which
Speaker 1: he never took off. That's a great story. So that's
Speaker 1: the types of things that when I talked about how
Speaker 1: he could react so quickly, very very few people couldn't
Speaker 1: do that. He did an absolutely a great job. That
Speaker 1: was author Chip Grows. He wrote the book about Artie
Speaker 1: Stewart's career called Poachers Were My Prey. Aside from cruising
Speaker 1: around in the poach Coach is four by four undercover
Speaker 1: van equipped with state of the art surveillance equipment. During
Speaker 1: Artis time undercover, he was a master at thinking on
Speaker 1: his feet and appearing to keep his cool under pressure. However,
Speaker 1: just under the surface was the constant stress of being
Speaker 1: found out by the bad guys, causing Art to live
Speaker 1: in a constant state of fight or fight. Human response
Speaker 1: to stress and unusual situations is interesting to analyze because
Speaker 1: it's during these times that the veneers of our personality
Speaker 1: or any cheap socially accepted front we put on our
Speaker 1: cleared away and we see what's really inside of us.
Speaker 1: I often find myself disappointed when the outer layer of
Speaker 1: this human shape puppet I live inside of is stripped off.
Speaker 1: Often I over calculate my abilities to respond to stress. However,
Speaker 1: when the systems are overridden and we flow on autopilot,
Speaker 1: amazing things can happen. Sometimes. It's incredible humans have been
Speaker 1: tropping around and getting themselves into pickles for so long.
Speaker 1: I wonder if we have mechanisms at the DNA level
Speaker 1: helping us. We've all heard about humans having a sixth sense,
Speaker 1: but is that even real? I need to find out, And,
Speaker 1: like I've said so many times before, I'm interested in
Speaker 1: things that control us that we're completely unaware of. Here's
Speaker 1: Dr Matthew Sharps of the University of California, Fresno. He's
Speaker 1: analyzing arties stripping off his clothes at a party and
Speaker 1: demanding that the bad guy do the same. Dr Sharp's
Speaker 1: is going to talk to us about script violations. That's
Speaker 1: really brilliant. Yeah, because when you're suddenly surprised like that,
Speaker 1: you go immediately into a very high level of fight
Speaker 1: or flight, and that means a lot of the blood
Speaker 1: resources you'd have for your prefrontal cortex and part of
Speaker 1: the brain you actually think, the part of the brain
Speaker 1: that is involved the cognitive flexibility. Sudden you don't have that.
Speaker 1: So what are you gonna do a lot of people
Speaker 1: suddenly they start stammering you, I'm not one. Maybe maybe
Speaker 1: you're one. I'm not one, And suddenly there they've had it.
Speaker 1: But that idea of shifting it into not only like
Speaker 1: the rage like my friend in the anti drug world,
Speaker 1: but into something very surprising. This this might be interested
Speaker 1: in human beings often out in fact, pretty much on automatic.
Speaker 1: You know, if I pick up a coffee cuple I'm
Speaker 1: doing right now, it's not it's not something that I'm
Speaker 1: thinking about. I just do it. But you have what
Speaker 1: we call a script, the automatic automated sequences behaviors. Now,
Speaker 1: if we say, okay, fair enough, here's a guy who doesn't,
Speaker 1: somebody whoses it the other way. Okay, he has breakfast
Speaker 1: before he gets up every day? Is he Richard poor?
Speaker 1: Everybody knows he's Wretch's butler brings it to him. Right, Well,
Speaker 1: here's a guy who had breakfast before you get up today,
Speaker 1: but only today? Okay, is he's sick or well, everybody
Speaker 1: goes sick. Now, nobody's been asking those questions before, but
Speaker 1: we all know them because of the automatic scripts that
Speaker 1: we deal with in our in our world. So that
Speaker 1: what the challenge did was just brilliant. Okay, Because suddenly,
Speaker 1: when you're challenged like that, stripping off all your clothes
Speaker 1: and demanding that everybody else does too, that's a huge
Speaker 1: script violation. It's a script interruption. You turn the tables,
Speaker 1: the bad guys don't know what to do with you.
Speaker 1: Then this sounds like a superpower being able to scramble
Speaker 1: the bad guys social scripts, so they don't know what
Speaker 1: to do with you. Who knew the bad guys were
Speaker 1: such delicate social flowers. Social scripts are so deeply ingrained
Speaker 1: in us that we don't even recognize we abide by
Speaker 1: them until someone breaks one. The script change can be
Speaker 1: so destabilizing that it re routes the focus of the moment.
Speaker 1: You might try this in a benign situation when someone
Speaker 1: confronts you on something. Do something surprising and put a
Speaker 1: subtle question that demands response back from them. Don't be
Speaker 1: a jerk or be deceitful. But sometimes people want something
Speaker 1: from you that you can't give them, and you need
Speaker 1: a way out. It's worth a shot. Our fight or
Speaker 1: flight responses, though often not consciously calculated, are usually connected
Speaker 1: back to our training, whether formal or informal. After interviewing
Speaker 1: our Tea and seeing how many dangerous situations he was in,
Speaker 1: I wondered if he was ever in any physical altercations
Speaker 1: like fistfights. So that's exactly what I asked him. Our
Speaker 1: t in this next section is going to refer to
Speaker 1: an article that was written by Chip Gross in The
Speaker 1: Midnighteteam nineties about Ohio's new undercover Wildlife Department. On episode one,
Speaker 1: Chip told how the bad guys showed RT the actual
Speaker 1: magazine article when he was undercover got him in some trouble.
Speaker 1: Here's our team. Did you ever get in a fistfight
Speaker 1: or any kind of physical altercation? Just in the rough
Speaker 1: life that you had to live? I realized your your
Speaker 1: cover never got busted, never got busted. But did you ever?
Speaker 1: I had a couple of times where they were they
Speaker 1: a matter of fact that that letter that the article
Speaker 1: about undercover brought it up. Well, yeah, the first day
Speaker 1: I ever made him. That's what my buddy said, that
Speaker 1: he was a game warden. Really nothing. Yeah, I said,
Speaker 1: I don't even like to be called that anymore. You know,
Speaker 1: they never bring him back up. But you know, I
Speaker 1: felt I had enough confidence I could say that to him,
Speaker 1: And he said, yeah, guys, go right in and live
Speaker 1: with them. You know what I'm thinking, Yeah, that's what
Speaker 1: we do. But did I ever in any uh? Now?
Speaker 1: Would I have if I had to? Absolutely? I wasn't
Speaker 1: afraid to fight. I was fairly good shape, fairly good size,
Speaker 1: so I didn't get picked on too much. But I've
Speaker 1: been confronted a few times, but I was always talking
Speaker 1: my way out of it. Yeah, And I'll give you
Speaker 1: one example was he was drunk drinking and I was
Speaker 1: there and he apparently didn't like me or whatever. He said, Uh,
Speaker 1: I believe I can take you. I said, you're pretty good,
Speaker 1: so hard, but I believe I can take you. I said,
Speaker 1: you ain't. Yeah, I'm gonna try you for the night's over.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm think of, oh boy, here we go.
Speaker 1: And I just said, I'll tell you what, buddy, I
Speaker 1: guarantee you'll probably win, but you'll know you've been in
Speaker 1: a fight. He never never said that that. Those words
Speaker 1: just de escalated the situation. And you were kind of
Speaker 1: a master at that. I didn't know it was the time,
Speaker 1: but I look back at it now and I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's pretty good. That's pretty quick because there's a hundred
Speaker 1: of different things that you could have said that and
Speaker 1: that gave him an out. Yeah, that you gave him
Speaker 1: some honor. You absolutely like you probably wouldn't beat me,
Speaker 1: but you didn't. But you're not. You're so let him. Yea,
Speaker 1: I'm going to use that style. Yeah. Yeah, and it worked.
Speaker 1: It work. It gives him an owl, you know, because
Speaker 1: you know, would you have won, probably not. You probably
Speaker 1: would have taken A wise dude named Solomon, said to
Speaker 1: be one of the wisest men of the ancient world
Speaker 1: once said, a gentle answer turns away wrath, but a
Speaker 1: harsh word stirs up anger. One version of the quote says,
Speaker 1: a gentle answer deflects anger, but harsh words make tempers flair.
Speaker 1: This is exactly what Artie did, and he threw in
Speaker 1: a little extra so he didn't sound so much like
Speaker 1: a sissy. Artie, however, was pretty sure he would have
Speaker 1: won the fight. And here's why he had so much confidence.
Speaker 1: Let's just say he was experienced. I remember when they
Speaker 1: interviewed me, they said, uh, to take this job. I
Speaker 1: had a little experience in that fighting. When they did
Speaker 1: my background investigation, they said, also, i've found out you
Speaker 1: like to fight. I said, no, Now you got me
Speaker 1: mixing up with my brothers, which they was big into fighting.
Speaker 1: He said, all right, so how many fights you've been
Speaker 1: and I'm keeping mud. I was thirty five. How many
Speaker 1: fight you been into in your lifetime and I'm a
Speaker 1: lifetime I'm thinking school yachts, you know. Yeah, I said,
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe forty fistfights, fistfight, real, real fistfight,
Speaker 1: joking around, Okay, I didn't think nothing like man, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm the I'm the gentle one of the brothers. I
Speaker 1: was my brother. They go to town just to fight,
Speaker 1: you know, but I mean, seriously, my brothers were bad
Speaker 1: about it. And that's when I said, you got me
Speaker 1: mixing up with my brothers. And when I told him
Speaker 1: forty and I went home. I told my girlfriend at
Speaker 1: that time, I told her about the interview, and so
Speaker 1: fortunate she said, I said, well, yeah, did you got
Speaker 1: any idea how many men go through life and never
Speaker 1: been in a fight in their life. I just thought
Speaker 1: that was natural. You thought that was normal. Well, I
Speaker 1: can tell you that's not normal. Well I discovered that
Speaker 1: after that. I can say that's so I wasn't a
Speaker 1: rookie at it. Yeah, you know, that's probably to what
Speaker 1: gave you some confidence. I mean, and not that physical
Speaker 1: strength is gonna really be what somebody would need. But
Speaker 1: you knew you could take care of yourself. And it
Speaker 1: goes back to originally what you told me, that you
Speaker 1: had to be self sufficient. And you know you're in
Speaker 1: you're in the roughness of the rough places with criminals,
Speaker 1: people plotting to kill other I mean, this is like,
Speaker 1: this is a criminal world. That's a criminal world. You're
Speaker 1: living in and you're supposed to be the criminal. But
Speaker 1: if they find out who you are, your life is
Speaker 1: a jeopardy. And I never thought anything about that. I
Speaker 1: never thought. I just felt that I could take care
Speaker 1: of myself. I got into a situation. Yeah, I remember
Speaker 1: Chip asked me one time, did you carry a gun? No? No,
Speaker 1: I never carried a gun, But I said, He said,
Speaker 1: what was somebody doesn't pulled a gun on you? I said, well,
Speaker 1: it depending on the circumstances. I said, if a man
Speaker 1: we're sitting here across the table or in proc's close
Speaker 1: proximity of that individual, and that man pulled a gun
Speaker 1: on me, I had trained and was confident enough in
Speaker 1: myself that I would own that gun. I had that
Speaker 1: much confidence in training, in in weapon takeaway that I
Speaker 1: would own that from I'd take it from me. There
Speaker 1: was no question in my mind I could take it
Speaker 1: from me. But now, I said, if I walked in
Speaker 1: the door from here to there and the guy's got
Speaker 1: a gun on me, I wouldn't want to call on
Speaker 1: tactically disengaging going back out the door, because you know
Speaker 1: you ain't got a win sace. We're within arms reaching
Speaker 1: somebody with a gun. I'm taking it, I'm owning it,
Speaker 1: and that that kind of confidence and even that you
Speaker 1: have to this day is what it would take to
Speaker 1: be successful in that kind of situation, you know. And
Speaker 1: and when I hear you talk like that, I think
Speaker 1: sometimes about these uh like active shooters that are that
Speaker 1: are happening now, and how a lot of guys concealed
Speaker 1: carry and the potential for having to use your concealed
Speaker 1: carry to remedy a situation. I realized, there's so many wild,
Speaker 1: possible things that could happen. But I think most of
Speaker 1: us that aren't in law enforcement probably when it came
Speaker 1: down to it, we'd like to think we could do it,
Speaker 1: but maybe we'd lack of confidence to be able to.
Speaker 1: And I had I had raised with guns all my life.
Speaker 1: I had competed in combat shooting. I was very proficient,
Speaker 1: and you know, I can't say what would have happened
Speaker 1: had I got in a gun battle, and just like combat,
Speaker 1: you don't know what you're gonna do. But I felt
Speaker 1: in my mind that I had enough confidence that I
Speaker 1: could control about any situation. Training builds confidence, and confidence
Speaker 1: is extremely important in all areas of life. Research the
Speaker 1: jest that confident people tend to be healthier and live longer,
Speaker 1: and it's likely correlated to the effects of the positive
Speaker 1: emotions associated with confidence, happiness, optimism, and satisfaction. I asked
Speaker 1: Chip Grows to tell me one of his favorite stories
Speaker 1: about RT and I think this one will help us
Speaker 1: see some of Art's instincts in action, which will lead
Speaker 1: us to a bigger question. And here's one of the
Speaker 1: examples from the book. Uh, he would play cards two
Speaker 1: or three times a week with this group of poachers.
Speaker 1: They're playing cards one night, and you know how conversation goes. Well,
Speaker 1: there had been a bald eagle shot along the Ohio
Speaker 1: River and the FEDS were in on the investigation. Of course,
Speaker 1: the Ohio Divisional Wildlife which on the investigation. Everybody's trying
Speaker 1: to figure out who shot this eagle. And the bad
Speaker 1: guys were talking about this and didn't directly say to Urt,
Speaker 1: but they said, you know, I think I think I
Speaker 1: knew who it is. And they were trying to draw
Speaker 1: Ourt out there, thinking if he's an undercover officer, he's
Speaker 1: gonna want to know who kills this eagle. So they
Speaker 1: didn't really know who killed the eagle. No, I don't that.
Speaker 1: So they're watching for his reaction, and he wanted to
Speaker 1: ask in the worst way, Okay, who is it? But
Speaker 1: something told him, some intuition told him, don't say anything,
Speaker 1: just keep playing cards and just fluff it off. And
Speaker 1: that's what he did. So it comes back then a
Speaker 1: few weeks later from the bad guys that, Hey, you
Speaker 1: remember we were playing cards a couple of weeks ago.
Speaker 1: We were talking about the eagle. He said, yeah, he said, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, we were. We thought maybe we're a game
Speaker 1: war and we're just testing you that night. That's the
Speaker 1: kind of instincts he has, okay, And I don't know
Speaker 1: where it comes from. It's probably a combination of now
Speaker 1: tro ability and just working on the job and knowing
Speaker 1: when to push for information when not. But that's the
Speaker 1: kind of person here. You can't teach that, I don't think,
Speaker 1: so you can't teach that kind of instinct. This brings
Speaker 1: up an interesting question about the source of what we
Speaker 1: often call intuition or a sixth sense or a premonition,
Speaker 1: basically making a decision based upon data that doesn't exist.
Speaker 1: Dr Sharp's is about to tell us that some of
Speaker 1: our instinct is actually hardwired into our d n A.
Speaker 1: But let me say that even with this information, I
Speaker 1: absolutely believe in the supernatural as it pertains to a
Speaker 1: humans connection to a divine source to get information that
Speaker 1: can't be found from anything in the Earth. Western thinkers
Speaker 1: often frown on and belittle things that science can't prove,
Speaker 1: but I think that rationale is hogwash. Sign it's by
Speaker 1: its very definition, is only geared to explain the physical,
Speaker 1: observable and repeatable things in the universe. And the stuff
Speaker 1: I'm talking about isn't that. But I have personally experienced
Speaker 1: the delivery of information impossible for me to have known
Speaker 1: and disconnected from any other piece of earthly knowledge that
Speaker 1: came directly from the great creator of this universe, the
Speaker 1: l haf A himself. I believe that with all my heart. However,
Speaker 1: I do believe that some of our intuition, premonition, our
Speaker 1: sixth sense comes from stuff that's deeply hardwired into us
Speaker 1: because we've been rambling around on this planet for a
Speaker 1: long time, and to understand where the origin of some
Speaker 1: of this stuff comes from, we have to look at
Speaker 1: the very fabric of our DNA. Here's Dr Sharp's with
Speaker 1: some info on how humans respond to animal tracks and
Speaker 1: looking in the eyes of serial killers. Stay with me, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because he had broke his own script. There. If you're
Speaker 1: an investigator and the bad guys dropped something like that
Speaker 1: in your lap, there's a tendency that maybe you circumventent,
Speaker 1: but you want it. You want to find that out.
Speaker 1: It's amazing how much behavior is under the surface that
Speaker 1: we don't even know about me. But I did a
Speaker 1: paper some years or twenty years ago. Good I got
Speaker 1: interested in the psychology of hunting, and so I started
Speaker 1: asking us, Okay, what's the most complicated thing hunters do?
Speaker 1: What would you expect to have hardwired into the brain?
Speaker 1: The most complicated part of hunting is tracking. So would
Speaker 1: it help in the ancient world to have animal tracks?
Speaker 1: Though in your head would have to have a sort
Speaker 1: of be born with encyclopedia of animal tracks. Now it
Speaker 1: wouldn't because savor tian tigers don't longer exist, mammoths no
Speaker 1: longer exist. To be worthless, what you need is the
Speaker 1: ability to learn animal tracks. Well, I got urban college students.
Speaker 1: They have in general no experience, interest, or understanding of animals, hunting, track,
Speaker 1: or even being outside. They still learn animal tracks three
Speaker 1: times better and faster than other equally unfamiliar stimulating human
Speaker 1: beings are geared to learn some of the scripts of hunting.
Speaker 1: We did another one, another study is not not not
Speaker 1: going to con gear to hunting, but serial killers. You
Speaker 1: want to avoid them until you invent cops. Okay. All
Speaker 1: we do is show the eyes from the eyebrows at
Speaker 1: the top of the cheekbones of serial killers and non
Speaker 1: serial killers to people. They didn't recognize them to serial killers,
Speaker 1: but they didn't like them, they didn't trust them, they
Speaker 1: didn't want to work with them, just by looking in
Speaker 1: the eyes. There's all these audible autobi Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: I've pushed that as both as a search paper and
Speaker 1: in my blog to forensic view. There's all these automated
Speaker 1: things in us that we expect other people to behave
Speaker 1: in a certain way. We expect that if we behave
Speaker 1: in a certain way, the other people will treat us
Speaker 1: in the way we want. And in the undercover role,
Speaker 1: much of that is reverse. It feels like there's a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of data and intel working inside of us.
Speaker 1: Just because we are essentially a highly successful and I
Speaker 1: believe we're much more than animals. I do, but but
Speaker 1: from a scientific perspective, where a very successful mammal on
Speaker 1: planet Earth. There's a bunch of stuff that's flowing through
Speaker 1: us that we don't even understand that we do all
Speaker 1: the time. And people describe it as like a sixth sense.
Speaker 1: But maybe it's more mechanical, more explainable than just this
Speaker 1: kind of mystery of having a sixth sense. A lot
Speaker 1: of the stuff is under sort of you know, it's
Speaker 1: automated in us. It's not conscious, but we come up
Speaker 1: with things. Professor's how I got interested in the hunting
Speaker 1: stuff from personal experience, but also from a professor named
Speaker 1: Gordon Orients. And all he did was measured the distance
Speaker 1: between people and trees in paintings. And of course it's
Speaker 1: pretty much random as either where the artists wants somewhere
Speaker 1: they are where they actually saw. But if it's plenty
Speaker 1: of sunset, Oriens found the artists wants to paint people
Speaker 1: close to trees. Well, what happened at sunset Ascipe it
Speaker 1: gets dark is the back of the day the big
Speaker 1: cats came out. There were pretty are cats that are
Speaker 1: extinct now thank god, that specialized in eating humans or
Speaker 1: human ancests. Yes, today cats are nine inches tall. You know,
Speaker 1: you call them Mrs Fluffkins getting fishies back in the
Speaker 1: day when they were in Savard tooth. Yeah, like a
Speaker 1: lot of big cats can climb better than we are,
Speaker 1: but a lot of them more heavier than our ancestors.
Speaker 1: And there are no danger now. But you still have
Speaker 1: you still loving you know, put a painting on the wall.
Speaker 1: You want the people of trees pretty those together? If
Speaker 1: it's since that was what I didn't discovery, that was
Speaker 1: discovery Gordon orients the artists want to sell paintings. People
Speaker 1: tend to buy paintings of if there is a sunset
Speaker 1: and there are people of trees, and if they seem
Speaker 1: to want to have the trees and the people pretty
Speaker 1: close together. What is what Orients found the painters doing.
Speaker 1: We've got to rehash the three things that Dr Sharp
Speaker 1: said because they're incredibly interesting. He said that humans are
Speaker 1: geared to learn some of the scripts of hunting at
Speaker 1: a DNA level. We're hardwired to be able to identify
Speaker 1: and remember animal tracks three times better and faster than
Speaker 1: other unfamiliar shapes. That's mind blowing. Secondly, he talked about
Speaker 1: our ability to know if we can trust someone by
Speaker 1: just looking at their eyes. This is scientific research proven
Speaker 1: this stuff. Think about the nuance differences in people's eyes.
Speaker 1: How could we possibly discern so much information from a glance?
Speaker 1: Is that the pupils or how wide people open their eyes,
Speaker 1: or how long they maintain eye contact. There are only
Speaker 1: so many variables of imagery that create the visible look
Speaker 1: of the eye, but it tells us a lot. The
Speaker 1: third thing he talked about was an innate desire to
Speaker 1: be near cover at sunset. He basically said, if you're
Speaker 1: an artist and are painting humans at sunset on a
Speaker 1: natural landscape, you better put them near trees if you
Speaker 1: want to sell that painting. We all subconsciously know a
Speaker 1: key part of surviving on planet Earth is being near
Speaker 1: cover once it gets dark, and even in art, we
Speaker 1: lean towards things that make us feel secure. Now that
Speaker 1: is fascinating and points back to our hunter gatherer roots.
Speaker 1: These three things don't, really, though, give us any answers
Speaker 1: when we look at a career of somebody like Artie Stewart,
Speaker 1: who had this uncanny instinct to evade bad guys, but
Speaker 1: it does tell us that the answers are often more
Speaker 1: complex than we might have thought. So here's another great
Speaker 1: story of art getting out of trouble. I count this
Speaker 1: one to pure wit. Here's Chip. He and another undercover officer,
Speaker 1: a younger officer are out hunting. Turkey is illegally with
Speaker 1: the bad guy. Okay, so Urt is uh calling a bird,
Speaker 1: and uh the other officer just happens to let it
Speaker 1: slip out. Good calling Urt, And he was caught in
Speaker 1: the moment and he was excited. Good on our t
Speaker 1: And of course RT doesn't want to be called that,
Speaker 1: so within a few seconds he comes back. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: why they call me real turkey. RT. Just that quick,
Speaker 1: just just to come take note of it, maybe for
Speaker 1: a few seconds, but uh, yeah, he smoothed it over
Speaker 1: so quickly and so well that there was no question.
Speaker 1: And he did that time after time after time. Turkey. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So that's why I'm talking about. That's how good he was,
Speaker 1: and very very few people can do that. So we
Speaker 1: were very fortunate in Ohio to have him on our side.
Speaker 1: He could have been on the other side really easily,
Speaker 1: but uh, he was. He was a pioneer in Ohio
Speaker 1: as to what he did, and many officers have followed
Speaker 1: in his footsteps since and I think the undercover unit
Speaker 1: in Ohio is much in is in debt for what
Speaker 1: he did. You may remember from the past episodes, RT
Speaker 1: was one of the first undercover agents working in Ohio
Speaker 1: trying to catch wildlife violators. Now, some of these tactics
Speaker 1: are understood and agents are trained to do him. But
Speaker 1: Urt was flowing off pure instinct that came from living
Speaker 1: a diverse life of working in coal mines, being an
Speaker 1: outlaw himself in his early life, and just being an
Speaker 1: authentic rural Southeast Ohio broke. But he also had an
Speaker 1: intangible thing that can't be taught. You've just got to
Speaker 1: be born with him. I want to hear RT tell
Speaker 1: a story about a case that he worked, which we
Speaker 1: haven't talked about yet. So the guy he's gonna talk
Speaker 1: about is not target too, but he's gonna talk about
Speaker 1: a guy that he became pretty good friends with, so
Speaker 1: much that this guy tried to hook up OURT with
Speaker 1: his sister and RT knew that this was trouble and
Speaker 1: so one night and the heat of the moment, he
Speaker 1: found the perfect way to blow up this would be relationship.
Speaker 1: But first he'll tell us a little bit about the
Speaker 1: suspect and for all your parents out there, this story
Speaker 1: is probably a PG thirteen story Feller doing another operation.
Speaker 1: I've become very close to him, and he had children
Speaker 1: as also, and I always bring him candy and different things,
Speaker 1: and he would tell me things about the personal life
Speaker 1: that they probably shouldn't be telling. But we've become very close.
Speaker 1: He was a nice guy. He only had an eighth
Speaker 1: grade education. I did not take advantage of him by
Speaker 1: degrading him. I treated him as a human being. And
Speaker 1: uh during the take, and he called me buddy Bale.
Speaker 1: My name at that time was Bill Stone. And he
Speaker 1: borrowed money from borrowing money from me, everybody, and he
Speaker 1: always paid you back. That was another thing I told.
Speaker 1: I told my boss. He didn't know I was doing.
Speaker 1: My boss didn't. I told him later. I said, hey,
Speaker 1: he paid his gas bill all winner. He said what
Speaker 1: I said? He had asked me if the borrow money
Speaker 1: to pay the gas bill, and you know he's got kids,
Speaker 1: and I said, I'd blown him the money, and and
Speaker 1: every weekend whenever his wife would get paid, he'd help.
Speaker 1: He'd called me up and say, buddy, Bill, come down,
Speaker 1: said I forget her names, and she gets paid and
Speaker 1: we'll pay you. He was good, good for his word,
Speaker 1: good for him, good for his word on that they
Speaker 1: paid me in wouldn't wasn't no sense to tell him
Speaker 1: my boss at the time. And when when he found
Speaker 1: out you were undercover? What was his response? The guys
Speaker 1: that took him down, they he asked him who it
Speaker 1: was or whatever, and he says, and he told him
Speaker 1: they told him that was Bill and big buddy Bill,
Speaker 1: and he broke down a third cry. That hurt him
Speaker 1: that bad. And I felt sad for him or sorry
Speaker 1: for him. He because he wasn't the money number one
Speaker 1: person I was after. He was just he was an
Speaker 1: excuse to get to the number one person. He just
Speaker 1: tapped me getting hooked up with me. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: felt sorry for him. He's having a rough time anyhow.
Speaker 1: But I had a job to do, and you know,
Speaker 1: to do it, I had to do it, all right.
Speaker 1: You were gonna tell me about this lady that propositioned you.
Speaker 1: It was his sister said that we've got my sister's
Speaker 1: coming in. I've been telling her all about you, and
Speaker 1: she wants to meet me. And and they were the ones,
Speaker 1: they were the ones that I let read the compensation
Speaker 1: papers and stuff on my injury. So they thought you
Speaker 1: had a lot of money. Oh yeah, And he said
Speaker 1: apparently he'd been talking talking me up to his sister
Speaker 1: and said, mean she she wants to meet you. You'd
Speaker 1: be perfect match for my sister. And I'm going on,
Speaker 1: how do I get out of this? I said, she'll
Speaker 1: be in this weekend. Uh. Boy, We're sitting at a
Speaker 1: bar and I said no, and there's another guy there
Speaker 1: with us, and I said, you know I got hurt
Speaker 1: in the coal mine. Yeah, and that was a real
Speaker 1: part of your story. That was a real part of that.
Speaker 1: You've already told him he got hurt. You can probably
Speaker 1: going too detail, then go in detailed. I told him
Speaker 1: I got my which I did. I got I got
Speaker 1: covered up in the coal mine and hurt my rib
Speaker 1: on my back and my hip and that actually happened.
Speaker 1: I actually it's true story. And uh, but I didn't
Speaker 1: tell him the rest. How I come up with this,
Speaker 1: I have no idea one man. Yeah, but I know
Speaker 1: that if I had told him I had an operation
Speaker 1: my back or something. And if we're in camp and
Speaker 1: take my shirt off, there's usually a scar or something,
Speaker 1: you know, there's usually you gotta have you kind of
Speaker 1: think ahead, you know that. So I'm thinking, how do
Speaker 1: I get out of this. I'm sitting there and I said, now, Leonard,
Speaker 1: I want to tell you something, but everybody don't need
Speaker 1: to know this. And he said, come here. He gets
Speaker 1: in every close. I'm holding my head down. I said,
Speaker 1: you know I got hurt in the coal mine. You,
Speaker 1: I said, but I didn't tell you that the whole story.
Speaker 1: I said, it's it's kind of embarrassing. You know, what's
Speaker 1: that be? You know I like to chase women and
Speaker 1: everything like that. But I said, I can't do nothing.
Speaker 1: What I said, Yeah, I lost my my nuts. What Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was part of my and U. I said, it's
Speaker 1: very embarrassing. But I said, nobody knows that. So will
Speaker 1: you please keep out a secret? I said, how I
Speaker 1: was able to do it? I had tears coming down. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not one time after that did He never mentioned his sister.
Speaker 1: Well that's a good thing, right, you know what I'm saying. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it worked. While you just came up with that.
Speaker 1: Come up with that. It de escalated the situation. That
Speaker 1: was what Dr Sharps would call a script change, and
Speaker 1: a wild one at that. It was something that no
Speaker 1: one was expecting and took the emphasis off of what
Speaker 1: everyone was focused on. The only reason I knew about
Speaker 1: RT was through the book Poachers Were My Prey by
Speaker 1: Chip Gross. The book is written in the first person,
Speaker 1: meaning in artis words, but Chip is the one that
Speaker 1: wrote it. You can order this book off Amazon and
Speaker 1: it's a fun read that goes into much more detailed
Speaker 1: than we could get into on this podcast. Ourt tells
Speaker 1: about his top ten operations, and all of them are
Speaker 1: full of excitement and discussed as you see how criminals
Speaker 1: sought to take advantage of the system, but you also
Speaker 1: see the fascinating ways in which our t infiltrated these
Speaker 1: poach and rings. Here's Chip with a few words about
Speaker 1: the book. We had a fun time doing this book,
Speaker 1: and I felt privileged that he asked me to do it,
Speaker 1: and I got to hear all these stories firsthand, and
Speaker 1: to me that was super interesting, I mean super interesting.
Speaker 1: And the way we did this, you know, he lived
Speaker 1: here in southern Ohio. I lived in northern Ohio. We
Speaker 1: were pretty much each drive about an hour and a half,
Speaker 1: two hours towards the middle of the state. We'd meet.
Speaker 1: He tell me, uh, one of the stories. I'd go
Speaker 1: back home. I'd write for about two weeks, get it
Speaker 1: about the way I wanted. I call him and sa okay,
Speaker 1: or to let's do another one. We do it again.
Speaker 1: We probably met Um probably a dozen times, and that's
Speaker 1: how the book got written. It's really well done. In
Speaker 1: this Secret Agent Man series, we've learned a lot about
Speaker 1: undercover law enforcement and human nature. We've learned that criminals
Speaker 1: are fueled by ego. We learned about the social hierarchy
Speaker 1: of criminal rings. We learned that humans are designed to
Speaker 1: handle acute or temporary stress, but not long term chronic stress.
Speaker 1: We learned that the best liars often stick really close
Speaker 1: to the truth. We learned that criminals can be despicable
Speaker 1: in most areas of their lives. Some of them are,
Speaker 1: but sometimes they're decent people that are just misguided in
Speaker 1: certain areas. We also learned how much our game agencies
Speaker 1: are willing to do to protect wildlife. We also learned
Speaker 1: that these tactics that were employed pre internet and pre
Speaker 1: social media are completely different than what they're doing today
Speaker 1: to catch criminals. I think the biggest takeaway from all
Speaker 1: this is that we need to continue to craft the
Speaker 1: hunting culture in North America in a way that values
Speaker 1: obeying the law. I'm in the field a lot and
Speaker 1: around a lot of people, and I still see where
Speaker 1: foolishly the idea of breaking game laws is glamorized, even
Speaker 1: amongst good people, and that's just plain foolishness. In the end,
Speaker 1: I'm grateful for law enforcement and all that they do
Speaker 1: to protect wildlife and wild places. I can't thank you
Speaker 1: enough for listening to Bear Greece. Do me a favor
Speaker 1: by sharing our podcast this week with your buddies, and
Speaker 1: we'll see you next week. The Render