Speaker 1: My name is Clay Nukelem and this is a production
Speaker 1: of the Bear Grease podcast called The Bear Grease Render,
Speaker 1: where we render down, dive deeper, and look behind the
Speaker 1: scenes of the actual bear Grease podcast, presented by f
Speaker 1: h F Gear, American made purpose built hunting and fishing
Speaker 1: gear that's designed to be as rugged as the place
Speaker 1: as we explore. Welcome to the Bear Grease Render. This
Speaker 1: is going to be a good one. This is gonna
Speaker 1: be a good one. It's been a while. I'll tell
Speaker 1: you who I got around me here, Gary believer in
Speaker 1: nukemb It's been a while since you've been here. Good
Speaker 1: to have you back.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I thought I was fired.
Speaker 3: Check.
Speaker 1: We thought maybe you were too, But it turns out
Speaker 1: you weren't.
Speaker 2: Well. I told Bart, I said, you know, your daddy's
Speaker 2: really desperate when he when he causes mena guy up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, good, Good to have you back.
Speaker 4: I still got you still got your your retinas or
Speaker 4: did you burn them out in the in the clips?
Speaker 2: Say hey, I'm fine, man. I couldn't see good before
Speaker 2: and I still can't. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So yesterday was a mina where dad lives was in
Speaker 1: the path of totality. So we went down there. Pretty
Speaker 1: incredible experience. We'll talk about that. I'm gonna I'm gonna
Speaker 1: skip over my two mystery guests. Bear John Newcom is here.
Speaker 1: Good to see you, Bear, good to be here. You
Speaker 1: ready to you ready for Turkey season?
Speaker 5: I know you are been doing a lot of scouting. Yep,
Speaker 5: So hopefully we can make it happen this year. Yep, yep, yep, yep.
Speaker 1: Got Josh Lambridge Spillmaker here to my left. I'm here,
Speaker 1: see Josh. Josh and I were wearing the same hat.
Speaker 1: We didn't coordinate, but we got the same first light
Speaker 1: hat on. It's a good looking hat.
Speaker 6: It is a good looking hat.
Speaker 1: I want to make a hat like this with a
Speaker 1: bear grease patch.
Speaker 6: I'd wear the heck of that.
Speaker 1: Our guests, though, I've got Luke Naylor. Why don't you
Speaker 1: introduce your position, Luke with the arkansassion.
Speaker 7: I'd be happy to do that. Yeah, I'm the Wildlife
Speaker 7: Management Division Chief of the Arkansas Game.
Speaker 1: Management Division Chief chief, and so you you oversee for
Speaker 1: the Arkansas game and fish all the different like the
Speaker 1: all the turkey projects, bear projects, deer projects, duck projects.
Speaker 1: You're all those biologists and people's correct oversight.
Speaker 7: Yes, we've got real simply, we're divided up. We've got
Speaker 7: about fourteen I think what we call program coordinators, which
Speaker 7: what what I used to be is a waterfowl program
Speaker 7: coordinator or bear program coordinator. Turkey, all those theologists type
Speaker 7: positions we've got, and then also all our wildlife management
Speaker 7: area staff. So we've got seven different wildlife management regions
Speaker 7: and several different staff out there doing doing w may work. Yeah,
Speaker 7: along with a whole lot of other things.
Speaker 1: You were the you were theterfile biologist for sixteen years.
Speaker 3: Sixteen years.
Speaker 7: Yeah. Yeah, it's almost two years now since taking the
Speaker 7: switch over here to the to an office jockey, I
Speaker 7: guess an administrative role.
Speaker 6: So we get you out of any meetings today.
Speaker 7: Uh yeah, I got to cut one short. But let's
Speaker 7: let's make sure our boss didn't hear about that.
Speaker 1: Is very important public outreach.
Speaker 7: It is very important, and it's talking turkeys. So I'm
Speaker 7: passionate about that.
Speaker 1: Man, I want I want to talk some turkeys. We
Speaker 1: need to introduce our our mystery mystery guest. Luke's been
Speaker 1: here before. Nathaniel Maddox from Lebanon, Missouri. Not Lebanon, Lebanon
Speaker 1: you'd be tempted if you were just driving through Missouri to.
Speaker 6: Say, looking for a case knife.
Speaker 1: Where's Lebanon, Missouri? Lebanon?
Speaker 3: So how we spot a newcomer? They said, Lebanon?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, Nathaniel is from Lebanon, Missouri. Yep, and uh,
Speaker 1: tell us what you do man?
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 8: So I'm a filmmaker, own a company called Slatan Glass,
Speaker 8: a production company, and we we've been established in my
Speaker 8: hometown of Lebanon, Missouri since twenty fourteen. Moved back there
Speaker 8: after starting the company in Seattle, and uh ended up
Speaker 8: back on the family.
Speaker 1: Farm, Slaton Glass. So there's a there's a's a that's
Speaker 1: a turkey hunting. Those are turkey hunting words.
Speaker 8: Yeah, and their production words as well, like really glass
Speaker 8: for lenses and a slate is the little you know?
Speaker 3: Actually?
Speaker 1: Well is it?
Speaker 3: Was?
Speaker 1: It meant for turkeys though?
Speaker 3: Both?
Speaker 6: Oh it's a double on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's one of those artsy Seattle things. Have you
Speaker 1: really been from Missouri, you'd have called it turkey video work.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: But slat and glass double meaning.
Speaker 7: I like it.
Speaker 1: So you uh, you've been in full time video production
Speaker 1: for ten years with your own company.
Speaker 8: Since Actually I had a company before that. I started
Speaker 8: in twenty ten that I sold to a guy in Seattle.
Speaker 8: So since twenty ten, fourteen years okay, yeah.
Speaker 1: So I gotta get this on the table, Nathan. The
Speaker 1: reason I know Nathaniel, we have a mutual friend in
Speaker 1: Isaac Neil. But the main reason that your name has
Speaker 1: popped up in my world the last ten days is
Speaker 1: that you your company. You made the film The Colonel
Speaker 1: and the Fox for Massy Oak, which came out April.
Speaker 3: Fourth, yeah, last week.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that film kyleie Man. When I saw the
Speaker 1: trailer for it, I was with I was in Mississippi
Speaker 1: turkey hunting. I saw the little two minute trailer and
Speaker 1: I was just like, that is going to win. I really,
Speaker 1: I mean, I was like, that film is gonna be good.
Speaker 1: I can tell just from the quality of the trailer,
Speaker 1: but also the content. So Dad, So, Gary the Believer
Speaker 1: has not seen this film. The film is about Toxi
Speaker 1: is the one who started Massy Oak. His father, Fox
Speaker 1: Hayes is how old is mister Fox.
Speaker 3: He's born in nineteen thirty, so do some quick math.
Speaker 1: Midninet he's like ninety three, ninety four, ninety two. He
Speaker 1: was so. The film is a documentary about his life,
Speaker 1: but also the documentary of a man named Tom, Colonel
Speaker 1: Tom Kelly, who they call the poet Laureate of turkey hunting.
Speaker 1: He wrote a book in the nineteen seventies called The
Speaker 1: Tenth Legion, which is an incredible turkey hunting book that
Speaker 1: kind of shaped turkey hunting culture. And these two guys
Speaker 1: are still alive, and they'd never met, and but the
Speaker 1: story is about them, but it's really about their lives
Speaker 1: and the restoration of the wild turkey and their influence
Speaker 1: on the restoration. I probably should have let Nathaniel.
Speaker 6: Yeah, he probably might have.
Speaker 1: Daniel was my guest. He drove down here and he
Speaker 1: never spoke. I just I just looked at him.
Speaker 6: And talked about over here, mouthing to you.
Speaker 1: I've known Nathaniel for like eight minutes. Let me tell
Speaker 1: you about this guy. I mean, you know, he's he
Speaker 1: is from Seattle. He's got his uh, what kind of
Speaker 1: shoes are these?
Speaker 3: These are PF flyers?
Speaker 1: See, okay, this is the first is the first. Now
Speaker 1: bars got some interesting shoes too, though that Gary made
Speaker 1: a few comments about these ever the kind of blue shoes.
Speaker 1: But no, it was cool so I could talk about
Speaker 1: Nathaniel uh tell us about the film.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So, uh, really, it's been an overwhelming past week,
Speaker 3: so try to fair start.
Speaker 8: I've been working with Mosoke for for a while and
Speaker 8: they it's a company that's been important to me since
Speaker 8: I was a kid, because my parents got a satellite
Speaker 8: dish in nineteen ninety five and the first thing I
Speaker 8: got introduced to was tn N Outdoors and so on
Speaker 8: Sunday afternoons, there was all of a sudden these hunting shows,
Speaker 8: and Hunting the Country was one that I gravitated to
Speaker 8: and watched all the time. So I grew up watching
Speaker 8: these guys turkey hunt. They taught me how to turkey hunt.
Speaker 8: I live on a cattle farm in Missouri and there's
Speaker 8: turkeys all around me, but I don't know how to
Speaker 8: kill them, and my parents don't know how to kill
Speaker 8: them or hunt them, and so those guys taught me
Speaker 8: how to do it, you know. And so I have
Speaker 8: a stack of VHS tapes that I actually recorded. You know,
Speaker 8: you hit the play and the record button at the
Speaker 8: same time. Absolutely, and uh, all these years later.
Speaker 1: Wait a minute, was that a technology hack?
Speaker 3: You just there? You go? Yeah, what do you mean
Speaker 3: you recorded them off of the TV.
Speaker 6: You know, you run the TV and the VHO and recorded.
Speaker 1: Statue to limitations.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, there you go.
Speaker 8: Uh So all these years later, you know, I'm I've
Speaker 8: been working with the n WTF since twenty sixteen, uh,
Speaker 8: doing a lot of the content for them because turkeys
Speaker 8: have always been a very very important part of my life.
Speaker 3: Turkey hunting has.
Speaker 1: Would you say, turkey hunt is the main thing you're
Speaker 1: interested in out in the outdoors?
Speaker 8: Oh yeah, absolutely, yeah, Okay, that's it. I mean slate
Speaker 8: in glass, Yeah yeah, And I mean I love some
Speaker 8: bow hunting and do a lot of different things, but
Speaker 8: turkey hunting is just, for whatever reason, has grabbed a
Speaker 8: hold of me, you know, since I was a kid.
Speaker 8: So over the years I've gotten to know Toxi and
Speaker 8: Daniel and Neil and everybody at Mosioake and done a
Speaker 8: couple of commercials, thirty second commercial spots for new products
Speaker 8: and things. And they had come to me and said, hey,
Speaker 8: we got you know, pop Off Fox and mister Tom
Speaker 8: Kelly at camp together and there's a couple guys that
Speaker 8: grab some footage, but we're not sure how to didn't
Speaker 8: film that part.
Speaker 3: I did not know. So they came.
Speaker 8: Daniel and Neil came to me like maybe a year ago,
Speaker 8: and they said, we've kind of got this collection of footage.
Speaker 3: The camp was one of them.
Speaker 8: We've had a couple of other interviews with Tom Kelly's
Speaker 8: daughter and a couple other people, and asked if I
Speaker 8: would kind of take on the you know, responsibility of
Speaker 8: figuring out how to make a story that honored both
Speaker 8: of these guys. And started going through that footage, and
Speaker 8: then I got really deep into the weeds with putting
Speaker 8: together this big storyboard and I'm like, man, maybe it
Speaker 8: can be a thirty minute film, but it feels like
Speaker 8: there's a lot here. And so I started, me and
Speaker 8: my guy started doing more interviews and really decided, you know, yes,
Speaker 8: this is a story about these two guys that are
Speaker 8: that have been turkey hunting since the nineteen forties and
Speaker 8: not too many people can say that, but a lot
Speaker 8: has happened since the nineteen forties and America as a
Speaker 8: whole in our culture, and so how did not only
Speaker 8: this idea that these turkeys were almost gone when they started,
Speaker 8: and now we've got, you know, this beautiful thing called
Speaker 8: turkey hunting in the population that all of us get
Speaker 8: to enjoy. They came through that, but they also came
Speaker 8: through World War two and Vietnam and all these other things.
Speaker 8: And so my goal kind of became, how do we
Speaker 8: tell the story of the wild Turkey through the eyes
Speaker 8: of these two guys who are still hunting now, but
Speaker 8: also through the eyes of America, you know, like our
Speaker 8: culture and how it's shifted and changed over the years.
Speaker 8: And it ended up becoming an hour and twenty minutes
Speaker 8: instead of thirty minutes.
Speaker 1: And man, what you did there by by connecting the
Speaker 1: restoration of this this turkey to people is really powerful.
Speaker 1: And I mean, I think that's a key component to
Speaker 1: just all all of our endeavors as hunters. To show
Speaker 1: a non hunting public, which is becoming increasingly important in
Speaker 1: the sustainability of what we do, is that the non
Speaker 1: hunting public understands and it is empathetic towards us and
Speaker 1: sees the real value that we bring in so many ways.
Speaker 1: And man, anybody would watch that film and just be like, wow,
Speaker 1: I kind of get it, you know, because you just
Speaker 1: see these guys who just dedicated their lives to turkey hunting,
Speaker 1: but then you also see the human effort involved in
Speaker 1: the restoration of the wild turkey, and specifically these two
Speaker 1: guys in different ways. I mean, like Tom Kelly was
Speaker 1: more influential at a cultural level in writing this book
Speaker 1: that put words and put put some Yeah, just he
Speaker 1: he helped build a turkey hunting culture through this powerful
Speaker 1: work of literature, and then through mister Fox, who is
Speaker 1: more hands on in some ways of getting turkeys brought
Speaker 1: back in and released in the Mississippi. But you just
Speaker 1: see their lives and dad in the film. They it's
Speaker 1: like a documentary in a way about America, Like they
Speaker 1: show World War Two and Colonel Tom Kelly was in
Speaker 1: World War Two, and the shows I don't know, how
Speaker 1: did you? Is that a good description of it?
Speaker 3: I think so.
Speaker 8: I mean I feel like in my head, we're all
Speaker 8: very unique people, are you know? We all love the
Speaker 8: turkey hunt, but that's not all of us, right, Like,
Speaker 8: it's not the whole of who I am as not
Speaker 8: just a turkey hunter. And I wanted that this film
Speaker 8: to show that, and I think that sort of connects
Speaker 8: people who maybe not turkey hunters to understand a little bit.
Speaker 8: And we had a really cool screening down in Mississippi
Speaker 8: and everybody from ostri Oak was there and it was
Speaker 8: really fun and they were like, Hey, you need to
Speaker 8: do one in Lebanon and I'm going, Man, we've got
Speaker 8: like the Rich seven Theater.
Speaker 3: I hope it's still standing kind of thing.
Speaker 8: And so we had a premiere last week and two
Speaker 8: hundred people there or something, and a lot of them
Speaker 8: came out because they were our friends and family, and
Speaker 8: but it was it was cool to me so many
Speaker 8: people who know that I'm obsessed with turkey hunting, but
Speaker 8: they're just kind of like.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's just what this guy does.
Speaker 8: He always has coming into coming up to me and
Speaker 8: being like I get it now, like it makes sense.
Speaker 8: And a couple of people who I never thought would
Speaker 8: ever want to hunt were like, I think I'm gonna
Speaker 8: I might want to try this. To me, that felt
Speaker 8: like a success. You know, people in my community who
Speaker 8: were going, I get it, you know. And so if
Speaker 8: we could create a piece of content that makes someone
Speaker 8: who doesn't hunt or doesn't understand hunting have a little
Speaker 8: glimpse into what we're passionate about, then I feel like
Speaker 8: we've done something cool.
Speaker 1: Have you made feature link films like that?
Speaker 3: Before, not that long.
Speaker 1: No, how long did you work on this?
Speaker 8: That's a good question. So I was thinking about that
Speaker 8: on the drive up, like how many hours went into this?
Speaker 8: I started really really focusing on it hard early December,
Speaker 8: and I think I finished finished at the end of February.
Speaker 1: Oh for a while, So this isn't like that. I
Speaker 1: thought it was like a I thought you were going
Speaker 1: to say, since twenty two.
Speaker 8: Yeah, well we were doing We were doing archiving and
Speaker 8: research work probably since June through December. And then when
Speaker 8: I finally got what I felt was all the pieces
Speaker 8: of the puzzle, started putting it together, and it was
Speaker 8: my wife will a test that. There are a lot
Speaker 8: of nights when the kids went to bed and I
Speaker 8: ran back over to the studio until one or two
Speaker 8: in the morning because I have other clients too, But
Speaker 8: I wanted to put everything I could into this project
Speaker 8: because for me, it's like turkey hunting is the most
Speaker 8: special thing that I know of when it comes to
Speaker 8: relationships with people. You know that in my faith. Obviously
Speaker 8: my faith is first, but but turkey hunting is this
Speaker 8: way that I build relationships, that I maintain relationships. I
Speaker 8: spend time with people I love and so I knew
Speaker 8: this was my opportunity to really like sort of put
Speaker 8: that into a story, and I wanted to pour everything
Speaker 8: I could into it.
Speaker 1: So what did y'all think about the film? Josh?
Speaker 6: I thought it was fantastic. Man.
Speaker 4: I I really appreciated getting to see because I didn't
Speaker 4: know all the history of the reintroduction of the turkey.
Speaker 4: So I love being able to see all that old
Speaker 4: footage and you know, you get you get the impression
Speaker 4: of you know, you think about market hunting and then
Speaker 4: you think about hunting.
Speaker 6: In the in the.
Speaker 4: Around the turn of the century, even into the fifties,
Speaker 4: that was you know, you just went out and you hunted,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean, you hunted anything you could.
Speaker 4: To watch these guys with such a commitment to bring
Speaker 4: it back in the work and I mean even even
Speaker 4: looking at the turkeys that they were releasing, they look
Speaker 4: so scrat you know what I mean. But it's produced
Speaker 4: this thriving population. Obviously population decline in some areas, but
Speaker 4: we still have we have this, We actually have a
Speaker 4: turkey population thanks to these guys.
Speaker 1: Yeah, even in the woe the current woes of the
Speaker 1: Southeast and specifically here in Arkansas. We still got it
Speaker 1: pretty durned good. I mean yeah, compared to what they had.
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, we're all all, you know, bummed out
Speaker 1: about our turkeys here in Arkansas, but that gum, we
Speaker 1: still got it exponentially better than what they had in
Speaker 1: the sixties, forties, fifties, you know, big time dad. How
Speaker 1: aware were when did you kill your first turkey? The eighties?
Speaker 2: No, I think the late seventies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was a polaroid picture you and a guy
Speaker 1: holding a turkey that I remember being your first turkey.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it could have been early eighties.
Speaker 1: How aware were you of the restoration efforts going on?
Speaker 2: Not not too much.
Speaker 1: It's just kind of like there's turkeys and people are hut.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And I took a interest in it, and you know,
Speaker 2: learned how to call. You know, when you were a
Speaker 2: little guy. I was always going around the house calling. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So you know that this relates to bear.
Speaker 6: Louke.
Speaker 1: How old are your kids?
Speaker 7: Almost sixteen and thirteen?
Speaker 1: Do they do they do? Some hunting daughters?
Speaker 7: Now she's decided she's an angler, now okay, yeah, send
Speaker 7: Josh a picture of that little dry Run Creek trout
Speaker 7: not long ago. So she got hooked on flyfish and
Speaker 7: last something in Colorado where I learned at flyfish. My
Speaker 7: son kind of comes and goes on it. We've done
Speaker 7: some dove hunts, a few duck hunts, and we'll go
Speaker 7: turkey outing this year. A couple of times. He's not
Speaker 7: tore up with it, like like Bear seems to be
Speaker 7: at this point. But but he's did a little there's
Speaker 7: a spark there.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, well here this is the reason I asked you.
Speaker 1: That is when I was a kid, baron ukem, Britos
Speaker 1: are ready. The It was like I was like in
Speaker 1: military school to learn how to call turkeys. I remember
Speaker 1: you were just like, you got to learn how to
Speaker 1: call turkey. This is the PhD in hunting, and uh.
Speaker 1: I remember I was so proud of myself because one
Speaker 1: time I was working for buck Titsworth a construction project
Speaker 1: and I saw a turkey and the guy I was
Speaker 1: working for backyard, I was sixteen. I saw a strutting
Speaker 1: turkey like down the hill I'm working, and I had
Speaker 1: a mouth diaphragm call and I walked around the house
Speaker 1: and got on the other side and that turkey strutted
Speaker 1: in and I came home and told Dad about it,
Speaker 1: and he was like, let me hear you call. And
Speaker 1: he was like, Dad, that's okay. I remember you being like,
Speaker 1: I don't know if that'd work on a real wild
Speaker 1: turkey call. And I was like, Dad, I called him up.
Speaker 1: I mean, he was a backyard turkey, was a real
Speaker 1: wild turkey. It was a wild turkey, but it was
Speaker 1: in his backyard. But point being, Bar needs to work
Speaker 1: on his turkey call. And I'm gonna bring in the
Speaker 1: Gary Newcomb critique and be like, buddy, you gotta get
Speaker 1: on the way.
Speaker 6: You're about to run through the gauntlet, my friend.
Speaker 1: I mean, he's called kill turkeys. But but man, when
Speaker 1: you're down in Mississippi, an eleven year old kid in
Speaker 1: Mississippi can out call grown men in most states. And
Speaker 1: so Bear, we've got a lot of work to do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I remember.
Speaker 1: I hope all that made sense. I probably none of
Speaker 1: that may have made sense. It made perfect sense in
Speaker 1: my head.
Speaker 2: Well from my perspective, I could call in a bird,
Speaker 2: but I wasn't that great of a caller. And I
Speaker 2: taught Clay what little I knew, and uh, within a
Speaker 2: week he could call better than I could. I mean,
Speaker 2: he had a natural ability to do it. It might not be.
Speaker 1: Now I'm the best caller meat eater for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, proving anyway you had you had you had
Speaker 2: a knack forward.
Speaker 1: Well, when I go to Mississippi, I don't even call
Speaker 1: when I'm around all those guys in Mississippi, Lake Pickle,
Speaker 1: Jordan Blissed, Keith polk Uh. I hunted with Brad Ferris
Speaker 1: the other day, and there I've just shut up. I
Speaker 1: don't even I.
Speaker 6: Don't even call the presence of greatness.
Speaker 2: They can hoot and gobble and yep. I mean it's
Speaker 2: crazy listening to them.
Speaker 1: And that, and that kind of comes back to his uh,
Speaker 1: his his film. Yeah uh, I I've decided that. And
Speaker 1: as much as I you know, I'm prone to be
Speaker 1: very biased towards the state of Arkansas. I believe that
Speaker 1: Mississippi is the cultural epicenter of turkey hunting. I believe
Speaker 1: that from I mean, just everybody in Mississippi. Luke has
Speaker 1: written a book about turkey hunting. Hey, if you lived
Speaker 1: in Mississippi, you'd be like, Hey, Clay, Merry Christmas, here's
Speaker 1: a book I wrote about turkey hunting.
Speaker 7: Well, one of my best memories ended up living in California,
Speaker 7: met a Mississippi boy and we're friends to this day.
Speaker 7: And he introduced me to the old Pro Turkey Hunter
Speaker 7: book to read every every season. Once I got to
Speaker 7: know him, and we turkey hunted together a lot out
Speaker 7: there in the coast range and the foothills and such
Speaker 7: out and out there, and and he I got. That
Speaker 7: was my first introduction to the It was remote from Mississippi,
Speaker 7: but it was a Mississippi boy born and raised he
Speaker 7: I got. I understood, maybe not fully like like you
Speaker 7: have now, but I got a pretty good taste of
Speaker 7: what it's like to be alo in his mouth. Didn't
Speaker 7: do much al hooton no bard owls out there when
Speaker 7: we were hunk, but we'd do it anyway, because I mean,
Speaker 7: the turkey's child. But whatever. But I'm not gonna say
Speaker 7: that he would win the al hoot contest. But I'm
Speaker 7: not going to integrate him by saying, like like you've
Speaker 7: done with bears turkey calling here, say that he couldn't
Speaker 7: pull it off.
Speaker 1: See dad now is talking good about my turkey hunting.
Speaker 1: All I remember as a kid was it like it was.
Speaker 7: No good, like never measure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Uh, well, the what is the Are we in
Speaker 1: the middle of turkey biologist in Arkansas? Right now? We
Speaker 1: don't have a turkey biologist.
Speaker 7: We have one starting Monday, which whenever this comes out
Speaker 7: opening day, Yes, I heard.
Speaker 1: If he doesn't call in that day and say I'm busy,
Speaker 1: I'm not him.
Speaker 7: You know. I had a guy call me a friend
Speaker 7: and I still to this day. He's kind of a prankster.
Speaker 7: And he called me up Sunday night, the seventh and
Speaker 7: he said, man, I'm gett all my stuff laid out
Speaker 7: to go turkey hunting. I let him go on for
Speaker 7: about five minutes. He'll he'll listen to this and he
Speaker 7: I said, man, you can Are you like, are you
Speaker 7: just trying to get a game warding?
Speaker 1: Come find you tomorrow morning?
Speaker 7: He said, what do you mean so adult Turkey season
Speaker 7: starts the fifteenth, not the eighth. Oh, I say, well,
Speaker 7: I'm glad. I'm glad I talked to you and I
Speaker 7: still do this moment. Don't know if he was just
Speaker 7: pulling my leg, I really don't know, but but yeah,
Speaker 7: our new guy starts, uh March fifteenth, March fifteenth, April fifteenth.
Speaker 7: He's coming out, he's finishing his PhD. At North Carolina
Speaker 7: State Study studying turkeys up in Appalachia. So he'll be green,
Speaker 7: but he's coming in and we're ready to have him
Speaker 7: hit the ground running and keep things going. That Jeremy
Speaker 7: got rolling here for a while, got got a pretty
Speaker 7: good stable place here with our turkey management program right now.
Speaker 7: We've had some support to kind of keep things stable,
Speaker 7: keep our turkey regulations kind of kind of set here
Speaker 7: for a while. You know, he alluded to it a
Speaker 7: little bit ago, where it's a good place to be
Speaker 7: that we definitely are not at a point where anybody's
Speaker 7: worried about losing the opportunity to hunt turkeys anytime in
Speaker 7: the near future. We're not going to lose turkey populations
Speaker 7: again like we did back you know, nearly one hundred
Speaker 7: years ago, eighty years ago now. But we are definitely
Speaker 7: in a place, as we all know that we're in
Speaker 7: a decline. It's it's uh, maybe at the bottom of it,
Speaker 7: I don't know for sure, but but it's definitely gotten
Speaker 7: rougher for everybody, for turkeys and for turkey hunters. Uh,
Speaker 7: but it is. The good news is it's still still
Speaker 7: a lot of opportunity out There's still a lot of turkeys.
Speaker 7: It's just not quite as a slam dune boy. Late
Speaker 7: late nineties, I myself taught turkey hunter to nobody in
Speaker 7: my family turkey under and uh, you know, wanted to
Speaker 7: just got passionate about it when I was early teens
Speaker 7: and taught myself out of turkey. I probably watched some
Speaker 7: of the videos you were talking about, same deal, prim
Speaker 7: most true stuff. I don't know when that was started
Speaker 7: coming out, but the same audio stuff also from Mississippi.
Speaker 7: And it's hard, it's hard to say now that boy,
Speaker 7: we kind of learned when it was easy. I think
Speaker 7: we're honest if we're honest with ourselves. I think we
Speaker 7: did kind of learn when it was easy. Late nineties,
Speaker 7: early two thousands, Boy, it was you know, when I
Speaker 7: was going to undergrad at to Kansas State. Boy, we'd
Speaker 7: go out and duck hunt, duck hunt in the winter
Speaker 7: and it was flocks of two hundred plus birds every
Speaker 7: every creek bottom, you know. And that's just not the
Speaker 7: way it is anymore. Probably for Aunusts probably won't come
Speaker 7: back to be in that, but we're still going to
Speaker 7: have turkeys.
Speaker 1: What can you lay out like simply the what is
Speaker 1: the turkey. Is there a way to verbalize the turkey
Speaker 1: management plan in Arkansas? And I mean, can you do that?
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean we're we're always focused on habitat first, right,
Speaker 7: trying to continue that's a long term.
Speaker 1: And that's working with Forest Service. And so in Arkansas
Speaker 1: there there's we have quite a bit of national forest
Speaker 1: which Game and Fish works with Forest Service on some
Speaker 1: of that land or all of it.
Speaker 6: A lot of it.
Speaker 1: We have state owned land like Arkansas Game and Fish
Speaker 1: WM as.
Speaker 7: Correct, which a lot of that's in the Delta, which
Speaker 7: is less less it definitely has turkeys, but less so
Speaker 7: than the western part of the state, which is the
Speaker 7: hill country. Most of that, most of the public land
Speaker 7: there is national forest land. We got some awesome large
Speaker 7: wildlife management areas and the ozarks and the Washingtaws as well.
Speaker 1: They not that good though.
Speaker 6: Uh well, yeah, don't don't come No, don't.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm not come here.
Speaker 7: But I won't name any names at all because that's
Speaker 7: I know better than that. But you know, people still
Speaker 7: find places to find turkeys on public land. And yeah,
Speaker 7: it's a long term issue to keep managing habitat.
Speaker 1: So managing habitat YEP would be burning. I know there's
Speaker 1: a lot of places where you're you're they're planting food plots.
Speaker 1: I mean like specifically for I mean for wildlife. But
Speaker 1: but but turkeys too. What what would be habitat work
Speaker 1: that that gaming fish is managing.
Speaker 7: Yeah, so long term, we're trying to push habitat toward
Speaker 7: desired forest conditions. Desire conditions, So this kind of terminology
Speaker 7: we use and habitat management where we have, Okay, here's
Speaker 7: what we think this habitat should be. And e can
Speaker 7: debate that for months, but well, let's just take a
Speaker 7: look at it. And early a lot of times go
Speaker 7: back to the GLO records, what is that General Land
Speaker 7: Office or whatever, the early records when first settlement, when
Speaker 7: people go to survey trees and they'd go take every section,
Speaker 7: they'd assess it. And those records are out there and available,
Speaker 7: and they're really really fascinating to look through, and if
Speaker 7: you were to summarize it real quickly, it'd say, there's
Speaker 7: just way too many trees, which is funny when you're
Speaker 7: talking about turkeys. But there's like the whole Boston Mountains
Speaker 7: you drive through up in northwest Arkansas. I mean, that's
Speaker 7: a second growth forest that was the Washington Records talk
Speaker 7: about folks driving covered wagons with never having to dodge
Speaker 7: any trees. Right, you take a wagon train through it.
Speaker 7: It was so open, wow, so much grass cover. So
Speaker 7: most of our forests are two dents, would support fewer
Speaker 7: numbers of species. So we're talking about all kinds of critters,
Speaker 7: not just the ones we like to hunt, but but
Speaker 7: all sorts of different wildlife use this diverse forest ecosystem
Speaker 7: that had lots of uh forb and grass and shrub
Speaker 7: understory with you know, over story, pine and oak depending
Speaker 7: on what slope you were on, and generally just a
Speaker 7: lot fewer trees and a lot more fire.
Speaker 1: So the fire do, y'all. So I see quite a
Speaker 1: bit of fire. I've seen quite a bit of burns
Speaker 1: going on this spring in National Forest. Are y'all asking
Speaker 1: them to do that? Or is that Forest Service that's
Speaker 1: wanting to do that for timber management?
Speaker 7: Forest Service, I'm not going to speak for them, but
Speaker 7: a lot of what they do throughout the country is
Speaker 7: fuel reduction fires. So that just it's just they have
Speaker 7: an objective to reduce fuel loading.
Speaker 1: So it's just kind of it just kind of happens
Speaker 1: to be that that's good for turkeys too.
Speaker 7: It can, and it's it's maximized when there's some sort
Speaker 7: of forest management practice done in in cooperation with the fires.
Speaker 7: You cut trees, you know, thin out, thin things out,
Speaker 7: let some grasses grow up, then develop a burn regiment.
Speaker 7: After that, then you kind of you kind of reset
Speaker 7: that forest to back to a more diverse better You
Speaker 7: might say that's a judgment call, but but a little
Speaker 7: better system for lots of critters. Just burning without thinning
Speaker 7: has has reduced benefit because it doesn't have the same
Speaker 7: sunlight on the ground. The sunlight means diversity, and the
Speaker 7: sunlight helps regenerate stuff that may have been shaded out
Speaker 7: by an eighty year old oak tree that everybody thinks
Speaker 7: is a virgin forest. Maybe right, nobody's ever been here,
Speaker 7: human beings never touched its place as well. You know,
Speaker 7: most of the records of the Boston Mountains in northwest
Speaker 7: Arkansas was prairie. I mean it was it was. There's
Speaker 7: a What's p Ridge National Military Park up here is
Speaker 7: a good representation of what things probably work looked like
Speaker 7: in the Civil War era. Wide grasslands, open spaces, and
Speaker 7: most of what was cut over and now just sh
Speaker 7: it out by too many trees. But that and just
Speaker 7: trying to maintain now.
Speaker 1: That that prong one would be habitat. Habitat, it's always habit
Speaker 1: you there, it's always what would be what would be
Speaker 1: other things like season season dates.
Speaker 7: Yeah, you try to work on that and and try
Speaker 7: to maintain some stable you know, we've had what most
Speaker 7: folks would probably consider later turkey seasons here recently in Arkansas,
Speaker 7: but some stability in that so we can start to
Speaker 7: understand the impacts of different things, whether it's whether it's
Speaker 7: wet springs, right, we know we had a bunch of
Speaker 7: them in the last ten years that we know aren't
Speaker 7: good for ground nesting birds.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 7: But it's hard to tease that out if season structures
Speaker 7: are changing a little bit. So and you're starting to
Speaker 7: see more states at least talk about and try to
Speaker 7: implement later season to start right, More people are going
Speaker 7: toward that now because we're and we're doing some neat
Speaker 7: stuff that we can hopefully talk about, you know, twelve
Speaker 7: to eighteen months from now, about gobbling chronology, looking at
Speaker 7: auto autonum us recording units ARUs. You hang them up
Speaker 7: in a tree and they just record sound and then
Speaker 7: you can go in some algorithm finds out he has
Speaker 7: a turkey gobble and you can go check it. So
Speaker 7: we're gonna have unbiased data on gobling chronology across the state.
Speaker 6: Can you send me some pins.
Speaker 7: I probably won't do that, Josh, but I'll make sure
Speaker 7: to screen the data before we write a report on it. Now,
Speaker 7: that's going to help us understand gobling chronology because you're
Speaker 7: really talking about almost on purpose, trying to hit the
Speaker 7: second peak of gobling for birds, like let birds get
Speaker 7: through that first peak. It's frustrating as a turkey hunter sometimes.
Speaker 1: When they're doing their breed, you hear them doing it.
Speaker 7: They're left building, they're hearing building that whole kind of stuff. Boy,
Speaker 7: they're noisy. They can be really susceptible to calling at times,
Speaker 7: other times not at all. Of course we all know turkeys,
Speaker 7: but that that's kind of by design, is to make
Speaker 7: sure all that stuff gets done. Then we start going
Speaker 7: out and removing removing mails from the population.
Speaker 1: So habitat, season, structure, is there anything else.
Speaker 7: And we just keep like the monitoring work to try
Speaker 7: to keep making sure we have contemporary information on what's
Speaker 7: going on with turkeys. So you know, we've done gobling
Speaker 7: chronology work over the years. It's funny with a lot
Speaker 7: of things we've done with like dove call counts. There's
Speaker 7: been quail and pheasant call counts all across the country
Speaker 7: for years. It's kind of funny to watch those trends
Speaker 7: over the years and a bunch of old men going
Speaker 7: out and doing these surveys. It's funny those industries drop
Speaker 7: over time. Well, guys can't hear anymore. So you kind
Speaker 7: of like we say, we say biased, but I don't
Speaker 7: mean like somebody purposely doing something right. This isn't somebody
Speaker 7: faking data. This is just a reality when you have
Speaker 7: a human observer.
Speaker 1: If you sent me out there, I would report that
Speaker 1: all the turkeys were to the left. I would be like,
Speaker 1: I don't know what happened. They were all over while
Speaker 1: if Officer Luke, the turkeys were always to the left,
Speaker 1: no matter where I was standing.
Speaker 7: Yeah. Now we have the technology to remove the human
Speaker 7: element from it. Yeah, yeah, and so, but we haven't
Speaker 7: done a real goblin chronology work for I mean almost
Speaker 7: twenty years now, where we systematically had people go out
Speaker 7: and run routes with different levels of hunting pressure with
Speaker 7: different habitat type, different ecoregions. So now we're working on
Speaker 7: this with these ARUs. A lot of states are doing
Speaker 7: this now because it's a really cool way to figure out, Okay,
Speaker 7: what is the actual breeding krinology if you think Goblin
Speaker 7: chronology means great breeding chronology, Like, what is it really
Speaker 7: across the country, Because we've all got our own stories
Speaker 7: we can tell, but this should be really cool for
Speaker 7: a lot of states across the country to have this
Speaker 7: information the next several years.
Speaker 1: Wow, So the new guy starts Monday, right when John
Speaker 1: Calipari starts for the Arkansas Razorback.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, that'll well, yeah, I'm not sure which one
Speaker 7: will give me the most press time, will tell?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: I was, Okay, I had a little scenario in my
Speaker 1: head when I knew that you were going to be here,
Speaker 1: Luke and uh so, for those who aren't paying attention
Speaker 1: to college basketball, John Calipari from Kentucky is now gonna
Speaker 1: come be the Arkansas Razor Back head basketball coach. And
Speaker 1: there was a lot of press about that. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of mixed feelings in the state about it, and
Speaker 1: I thought, wouldn't it be something if it was just
Speaker 1: as big a deal about who the new Arkansas turkey
Speaker 1: biologist was gonna be in the equivalent of bringing in
Speaker 1: John Calipari though for the game and fish. And if
Speaker 1: y'all had a marketing team doing this, you could have
Speaker 1: could have created this environment like if you'd have brought
Speaker 1: in like Craig Harper or or the Turkey doc like Chamberlain,
Speaker 1: and it'd be like WHOA Chamberlain's leaving Georgia and coming
Speaker 1: to Arkansas, and like people be mad and people would
Speaker 1: be fired up.
Speaker 7: It would have been a lot of posts about that. Yeah,
Speaker 7: probably gonna have fewer about our about our new Turkey biologists.
Speaker 7: I had to guess.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, but it was a fun little game in
Speaker 1: my head.
Speaker 7: Well a few minutes. Good luck with Caliborn. They couldn't
Speaker 7: get Kansas State's coach. That's my.
Speaker 6: Name is you're gonna make me say it.
Speaker 7: He's got a last name that's hard to pronounce, David Miskicky.
Speaker 7: He's gonna he's gonna get mad at me. It's it's
Speaker 7: got a lot of confidents, So David Muskike.
Speaker 1: At some point, yeah, well, uh, you're getting ready for
Speaker 1: Missouri Turkey opener, Nathaniel, Yeah, next Monday, same as Arkansas,
Speaker 1: it is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's typically fifty in alignment. Yeah, we've already had
Speaker 3: a really good turkey y'all having.
Speaker 1: Pretty good y'all have pretty good numbers of birds where you're.
Speaker 8: It's been a lot better this year. I've seen so
Speaker 8: many jakes, which has been a huge deal. And I've
Speaker 8: got my family farm where I live. I've been hunting
Speaker 8: turkey's there forever, so I have a pretty good idea
Speaker 8: of how the population is doing, at least in La
Speaker 8: Clee County, and it's been really nice to see this year.
Speaker 8: And we had a good youth season. My son got
Speaker 8: a bird in one of his buddies and just this weekend, yeah,
Speaker 8: just this weekend really and then got well good this weekend.
Speaker 3: Oh it was great. Yeah, it was a really really
Speaker 3: good weekend.
Speaker 8: And then before that, my son and I went to
Speaker 8: Florida and got he got his Grand Slam.
Speaker 3: So oh, oh really it's a big deal. He's he's nine, and.
Speaker 8: Uh, he's been on the road a bunch with me
Speaker 8: turkey hunting over the last few years.
Speaker 3: So that was a cool, cool moment.
Speaker 6: Did you do any turkey hunting when you're out in
Speaker 6: the Northwest.
Speaker 3: A little bit. Yeah.
Speaker 8: Man, as soon as turkey season hit when I lived there,
Speaker 8: I was ready to get on the plane and be
Speaker 8: in the Ozarks though, you know so because I love
Speaker 8: being here in Kansas and just kind of our little spot.
Speaker 8: But we go to Wyoming every year, which is my favorite.
Speaker 1: Oh really Turkey out and Wyoming.
Speaker 8: Yeah, Miriams. We have a spot there. Then we go
Speaker 8: and it's close to South Dakota, but uh, I look
Speaker 8: forward to that. We usually do Florida and Wyoming and
Speaker 8: then wherever else I have to go for work stuff.
Speaker 1: Yea, Luke, are you hunting anywhere out of state this year?
Speaker 7: Yeah, we'll go to uh we'd kind of make a
Speaker 7: loop through Missouri, Kansas and a bread Okay, yep, yeah,
Speaker 7: I've been doing that for long. I mean going on
Speaker 7: fifteen years. Oh, Kansas side of stuff, and I went.
Speaker 7: I had some work trips that worked out very conveniently
Speaker 7: several years ago for Nebraska. Then took a little break
Speaker 7: in that and then uh uh yeah, so go back,
Speaker 7: go back to Missouri. We'll we'll kind of make a
Speaker 7: whole make a whole circuit, go there, hunt for a
Speaker 7: few days. Go up to Kansas, Nebraska for a few
Speaker 7: days drive back. If we want to spend a couple
Speaker 7: more days in Missouri, we will.
Speaker 1: We get to hunt all yeah.
Speaker 7: Oh yeah, well yep, by playing a hunt a little
Speaker 7: bit next week.
Speaker 1: You and.
Speaker 7: Good question. I will never answer that question. I joke
Speaker 7: with a lot of people are like he was like yeah,
Speaker 7: I was like, yeah, that's not what.
Speaker 1: I thought.
Speaker 7: We had an understanding. Yeah, no, no, like to living
Speaker 7: people know where our turkey hunt and one of them
Speaker 7: will go on that trip with me. So uh, that's
Speaker 7: how we treat turkey hunting spots, right. So yeah, but
Speaker 7: yeah I public Land in Arkansas, let's just put it
Speaker 7: that way. Yeah, public Land in Arkansas.
Speaker 4: And then after Turkey season, Luke's getting on the boat
Speaker 4: and we're going to go fly fishing.
Speaker 9: We'll go fly fishing. Yeah yeah, I'm ready for that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the Turkey Stories episodes that we do truly some
Speaker 1: of my favorite episodes to put together. Mainly just going
Speaker 1: and meeting. I meant I meet, I meet face to
Speaker 1: face with almost all these people. Occasionally, if I run
Speaker 1: into somebody that's uh that has professional equipment and lives
Speaker 1: along lay as the way they felt they record their story.
Speaker 1: But ninety eight percent of the stories I've ever had,
Speaker 1: I'm setting across from somebody in there telling me stories.
Speaker 1: And uh, there's a lot kind of like looking behind
Speaker 1: the curtain and kind of like we did with his film,
Speaker 1: like you may hear a four minute story on the episode.
Speaker 1: I was there with that guy for an hour and
Speaker 1: a half, you know, like talking about turkeys, and you
Speaker 1: kind of just have to like whittle it down. But uh,
Speaker 1: this was the second episode, Uh which which did did
Speaker 1: one story stand out to you? Nathaniel?
Speaker 8: I mean, as soon as you start talking about that
Speaker 8: Honda big red three wheeler took you had.
Speaker 1: A picture of a big red of Tom Kelly on
Speaker 1: a big red.
Speaker 8: That Uh man, that was nostalgic. I was like we
Speaker 8: all had those when we were kids, you know. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 8: that story to me was awesome. Just uh, well he
Speaker 8: got shot and then he didn't even tell the guy.
Speaker 1: Did you? Would you have known to David Ellis before
Speaker 1: I know who he is? Yeah yeah, Mississippi boy.
Speaker 8: Yeah, Yeah, it's a different it's a different way of
Speaker 8: life down there for turkey hunting Misissippi.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 8: Yeah, Now I thought that story was really and he's
Speaker 8: a great storyteller, so.
Speaker 1: Oh man, yeah, he's a pro. I mean, like he
Speaker 1: actually goes around and does like public speaking, so like
Speaker 1: he's told that particular story a lot of times, you know.
Speaker 1: But it was that was while when he first told
Speaker 1: it to me, I actually had to here's here's behind
Speaker 1: the veil. He told the story, and it was unclear
Speaker 1: to me at first whether he was trespassing or not.
Speaker 1: And I was like, wait a minute, this guy just
Speaker 1: told me the story about trespassing, Like I can't use this,
Speaker 1: and I and I and I said, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: were you trespassing? And he was like, no, I wasn't trespassing,
Speaker 1: and he went back and I and I actually edited
Speaker 1: out my question, took his explanation of not trespassing, dropped
Speaker 1: it in to like the climax of the story, and
Speaker 1: you'd never know it. For an editing nerd, it was like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's good. How the sausage just made it yeah for
Speaker 1: real because I didn't want it to. I didn't want
Speaker 1: people to question what had happened. But but it was
Speaker 1: real clear in the story, right like he he crossed
Speaker 1: this big ravine went up, there was bushwhacking. These turkeys.
Speaker 1: He wasn't even calling them because it was last day,
Speaker 1: and he was just like, man, I gotta kill a turkey,
Speaker 1: get shot in the face. Yeah, it's wild. It's a
Speaker 1: scary story. Yeah, scary story, Luke, which which story do
Speaker 1: you like? Well?
Speaker 7: I always enjoy listening to Andy. Yeah, tell I can
Speaker 7: tell a story like really really well, one thing maybe
Speaker 7: going back to last year's you did turkey stories last
Speaker 7: year too, right, yeah? Yeah, one thing I've noticed about
Speaker 7: all of them and nobody. I don't know if I've
Speaker 7: ever heard anybody tell a story about a small turkey.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's always big old gobbler.
Speaker 1: Everyone.
Speaker 7: Every one of them was a big old gobbler, every
Speaker 7: single turkey story told. But I always enjoyed just listening
Speaker 7: to him talk. I always used typically learn a new word.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which word? Which word was it?
Speaker 7: What did he say?
Speaker 1: Tumped?
Speaker 4: I was trying to figure how that spelled to you,
Speaker 4: m apostrophe d.
Speaker 1: I had multiple people bring that up. It's true, though,
Speaker 1: did that blip on your radar when he said tumped,
Speaker 1: like that would be an unusual word.
Speaker 2: I've heard him talk so much I think, yeah, I didn't.
Speaker 1: It never even crossed my mind. That that was an
Speaker 1: unusual word, and I had many people say they'd never
Speaker 1: heard tumped over. But man, I tell you what Andy
Speaker 1: I said it on the podcast. But Andy is number Well,
Speaker 1: you could be a great storyteller and not be that
Speaker 1: competent in hunting. That's one possibility, which is fun I
Speaker 1: mean that's great. You could also be very competent in
Speaker 1: hunting and not be a great communicator. You could also
Speaker 1: be a good storyteller, competent, but not funny. Andy has
Speaker 1: like all of it. Andy, I'd put Andy Brown up
Speaker 1: against any turkey hunter in the country. I mean, for real,
Speaker 1: his home turf for and everybody is you know, Andy's
Speaker 1: one of these guys. He's not like hunted all across
Speaker 1: the country. I mean, he's just dedicated.
Speaker 6: To you're saying skill wise, just for for.
Speaker 1: If you were to say, yeah, for where he where
Speaker 1: he hunts, you just couldn't be much better. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: do you just send out a hundred guys and say
Speaker 1: bring back turkey. I mean there's people that are as good,
Speaker 1: but like, he's just good. But then he's just a
Speaker 1: just a very good story too. And his dang laugh,
Speaker 1: I mean he laughs at himself. Oh, gosh, yeah, Andy,
Speaker 1: what a guy? What a guy? Okay, I keep going
Speaker 1: back to Andy's house in saying, Andy, we're gonna have
Speaker 1: to do it again Turkey story, and He's like, cleve
Speaker 1: about run out of him. I go to his house,
Speaker 1: I heard three new stories I've never heard and actually
Speaker 1: held him back. Any one of those stories would have
Speaker 1: been as good or better than any story that I
Speaker 1: put on there. I mean, it could have just been
Speaker 1: Andy's story time. So I saved him for next year.
Speaker 1: I told her. I was like, I'm just gonna put
Speaker 1: one on and then next year I've got two in
Speaker 1: the hopper that are incredible stories. So anyway, oh Andy, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's he's a lot of fun. But Dad, which one
Speaker 1: stood out to you? Well?
Speaker 2: Well, what impressed me was they were all so good.
Speaker 2: The first one I thought, well, this is gonna be
Speaker 2: the best. Then the second one, you know, so all
Speaker 2: the way through. But Russ's author. I really loved how
Speaker 2: how that came together. I mean, it's unbelievable. In fact,
Speaker 2: it's it is unbelievable. But I've heard you talk about
Speaker 2: him so much. I mean it happened. Yeah, And then
Speaker 2: I finally decided that the Yacht yacht in Poe Daddy,
Speaker 2: I forget the story anybody that has those nicknames. I mean,
Speaker 2: these are the coolest guys I've ever heard. I mean
Speaker 2: they got the lingo, and I mean when when when
Speaker 2: yat Yacht gets to talking, it's like he's in a
Speaker 2: road race. You know, after this, you can't even want
Speaker 2: to keep up with it. I had to replay it
Speaker 2: three or four times, and I go, man, I was
Speaker 2: going to try to repeat it in here, But it
Speaker 2: was just amazing storyteller. When you say he's a pro,
Speaker 2: he probably wouldn't know it unless somebody told you. But
Speaker 2: when you really think about what he's saying, how clear
Speaker 2: it was, how entertaining. It was an amazing guy. And
Speaker 2: they have names like how many people do y'all know
Speaker 2: they have goofy names like that. I mean, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: and y'all y'ah daddy And they call Poe Daddy because
Speaker 2: you know, he's too cheap, he said, he said, po
Speaker 2: Daddy ain't poor, he's just cheap.
Speaker 1: Like we saved ten dollars and get a hotel with
Speaker 1: one bed.
Speaker 2: So I guess po Daddy was my favorite. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Uh, David Ellis has to be at the top end
Speaker 1: of natural voice mouth callers like his gobble, just him
Speaker 1: being able to Oh, I mean, there's probably people that
Speaker 1: are better, but not much better. I mean, I guarantee
Speaker 1: you he'd be at the top end of with his alhoot.
Speaker 1: I actually put a video on the TikTok that got
Speaker 1: like one point two million views and it was me
Speaker 1: just standing there saying, David Gobble, alhoot, do your you know,
Speaker 1: yelp and just he just he can just do it.
Speaker 6: I love it when that's impressive.
Speaker 1: Sound effects added a lot to the story. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: And then the Russ Arthur story. You you mentioned it,
Speaker 1: but all re rehash it. That was an incredible That
Speaker 1: was an incredible story. And Russ oh man, there's never
Speaker 1: been a string on the earth. And Russ Arthur, I mean,
Speaker 1: I love the guy. I mean, and he such history.
Speaker 1: He's the one that told the story about his father
Speaker 1: passing away. He was his dad. I think was about
Speaker 1: his dad passed away. I think in twenty fourteen, same
Speaker 1: year lew And Newcomb passed away. And his dad was
Speaker 1: just a significant player in National Wild Turkey Federation over
Speaker 1: in East Tennessee and was one of these guys kind
Speaker 1: of like Fox and Tom Kelly. You know, like I
Speaker 1: mentioned it, but you could have missed it. Russ Arthur
Speaker 1: said in the sixties, when they were trapping turkeys out
Speaker 1: of East Tennessee because East Tennessee had some turkeys where
Speaker 1: they hunted and that's the reason they had such a
Speaker 1: hunting culture there. They were trapping their turkeys and taking
Speaker 1: them away. And Russ said his dad would set around
Speaker 1: campfires and evangelize to those guys like, hey, this is good,
Speaker 1: because all the guys were like, they're taking our turkeys
Speaker 1: just like we do today.
Speaker 7: Oh. I picked up on that for sure. As a
Speaker 7: folk you know, somebody who's in the wildlife management field
Speaker 7: and always need really strong advocates like that helping us out,
Speaker 7: but not but not part of the crowd. You know,
Speaker 7: you'd like, we need those advocates. And I I picked
Speaker 7: up on that right off, that that's the kind of
Speaker 7: guy we like to have that understands the bigger picture.
Speaker 1: Well just I mean, and a lot of people had
Speaker 1: sight back then obviously that because they were doing it,
Speaker 1: but it was controversial. They didn't know if it was
Speaker 1: gonna work. That's what Nathaniel's film talked about because they
Speaker 1: started catching all these turkeys across the country, and I
Speaker 1: think they did. Did y'all say that there were two
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty thousand turkeys relocated. Yeah, between like the
Speaker 1: forties to the sixties. Yeah, their seventies.
Speaker 8: There was the hurdles in there too, and in trying
Speaker 8: to figure out how to not break federal laws by
Speaker 8: you know, transporting wildlife across state lines. And I think
Speaker 8: at one point they decided to get somebody that had
Speaker 8: an airplane that they could somehow get around it by
Speaker 8: flying them from place to place in the back of
Speaker 8: this guy's private plane. So there were all these different
Speaker 8: methods until they could work out with the federal government
Speaker 8: how to do that legally.
Speaker 3: Oh wow.
Speaker 8: But there it was just a bunch of honestly rednecks
Speaker 8: who loved the wild turkey that were like, let's figure
Speaker 8: out how to do this. Let's take this technology and
Speaker 8: make it work. Yeah, pretty cool, boy.
Speaker 6: That just reminded me of Yaleville, Arkansas.
Speaker 7: Oh wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the turkey Colin Top.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I grew up in Yellville and back in
Speaker 4: the day.
Speaker 1: You say that as if we should know something about Yellville.
Speaker 4: Well, it's it's home of the Turkey Trot. The Turkey
Speaker 4: Trot is the annual festival in Yellville and they had
Speaker 4: the wild turkey calling content, but not only that year,
Speaker 4: in years past and even after it was outlawed, they
Speaker 4: would drop turkeys from airplanes in the middle of town
Speaker 4: and people would chase these turkeys down. You know, the
Speaker 4: festival is in is in October, and people would chase
Speaker 4: these turkeys down and take them home and raise them
Speaker 4: for Thanksgiving. And I mean turkeys can fly from five
Speaker 4: thousand feet. Maybe not so much they sort of plummet
Speaker 4: at an angle, but man.
Speaker 6: It was a zoo back.
Speaker 4: I never did it, but we you know, we'd go
Speaker 4: down to the festival and we'd see the plane. And
Speaker 4: after they outlawed it, they would tape over over the
Speaker 4: end numbers on the side of the airplane so they
Speaker 4: wouldn't get busted, and they would drop turkeys. Yeah, and
Speaker 4: you see these turkeys and just run through town trying
Speaker 4: to get one of these turkeys.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 8: We looked at doing a story about it because we
Speaker 8: thought it was a cool cultural thing. But then we
Speaker 8: learned about the survival rate of the turkeys.
Speaker 1: It was not wrong y'all wanted to do a film
Speaker 1: about it.
Speaker 3: I thought it would be cool, like a little history story. Yeah.
Speaker 8: Someone brought it to my attention about Yellville and we
Speaker 8: we dug into it and they're like, hey, most of
Speaker 8: them died when they hit the ground.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I like how you described that as I've never
Speaker 7: heard free falling out of an airplane described as plummet
Speaker 7: at an angle.
Speaker 6: That's that's kind of what they do.
Speaker 7: They It's a good description.
Speaker 2: And then they tumbled over.
Speaker 6: Yeah, then they tumped over, tump tumped over.
Speaker 2: Hey, what about Russ?
Speaker 1: Well, okay, guarded all that to say to talk about Russ.
Speaker 1: Russ was the undercover agent. Yeah, that worked Louis Dell
Speaker 1: and Charlie Edwards back in the eighties in Meana, Arkansas. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's how I know Russ. And uh so they sent
Speaker 1: a real turkey hunter in to infiltrate with the real
Speaker 1: turkey hunters of these guys, you know. But I started
Speaker 1: all that to tell the story. So Russ told Russ
Speaker 1: was the guy in the first episode that Turd told
Speaker 1: about finding the journal of his father and opened one
Speaker 1: of the journals up the first day. Well, yeah, and
Speaker 1: so this story to me, in its own way, was
Speaker 1: equally as impressive that you know, way back in this
Speaker 1: and it was a wilderness of federal wilderness, no roads,
Speaker 1: no GPS. They literally carried paper maps with them when
Speaker 1: they went back in there. Everywhere they went, they carried
Speaker 1: paper maps. And you know, just the way he told it,
Speaker 1: you know, he's like, I heard this turkey, and I
Speaker 1: got up my map and there's a little leg and
Speaker 1: went to the leg and thought, if I can get
Speaker 1: to that hickory tree, I can kill that turkey. Gets
Speaker 1: to the hickory tree, takes his sling off, kills the turkey,
Speaker 1: tells his dad where it's at, just over the phone,
Speaker 1: just tells his dad. But they're miles back in there,
Speaker 1: not a place they know. And the next day his
Speaker 1: dad goes in there and kills one the same hickory tree,
Speaker 1: but not on purpose. You know, phenomenal story.
Speaker 2: He came in from a different direction. Yeah, if you remember, Yeah,
Speaker 2: he didn't follow his right foot steps.
Speaker 6: Right, if I can just get to that tree.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just get to that hickory tree. Yeah, it was astonishing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, those guys used the word bonded. He said, my
Speaker 2: dad and I were bonded. You know, they really like
Speaker 2: operate as one. So it's kind of phenomenal. Deel.
Speaker 1: So when I saw the film, we had a guy
Speaker 1: on the first Turkey Stories episode like two weeks ago
Speaker 1: named Jack Hall, who's ninety two. That's a still turkey hunting.
Speaker 1: It reminded me of Fox Hayes and Tom Kelly, just
Speaker 1: that bracket. I mean, I don't know. I wonder how
Speaker 1: many active turkey hunters there still are that are in
Speaker 1: their nineties in the country. I had to be less
Speaker 1: than fifty.
Speaker 3: Can't be that man.
Speaker 1: I actually heard about another guy in Arkansas. Somebody reached
Speaker 1: out to me when they heard Jack Hall. They said,
Speaker 1: there's a there's an old guy. I can't remember where
Speaker 1: he was from. I'm supposed to go talk to him sometime,
Speaker 1: but he was in his mid nineties, still in like
Speaker 1: good health. Turkey huns, so there's a few around.
Speaker 8: But when I was listening to those stories, it made
Speaker 8: me think about, you know, you've got these guys from
Speaker 8: all over the Southeast, and they all have a different dialect,
Speaker 8: a different accent. You think some people are like, oh,
Speaker 8: a Southern accent is Southern accent, But you could start
Speaker 8: to see oh yeah, yeah, and like mister Fox and
Speaker 8: Colonel Kelly, they have a real distinct Florida Panhandle kind
Speaker 8: of accent. And it just made me think about and
Speaker 8: wonder how much longer we have of that because most
Speaker 8: of us don't speak like our granddaddies, do you know?
Speaker 8: I think probably TV and all this cultural stuff that
Speaker 8: comes to us every day ruins that, right, because those
Speaker 8: men grew up and they learned to talk from the
Speaker 8: people that.
Speaker 1: Are isolated, right, primarily other than probably some television radio, right.
Speaker 8: But small pockets with different dialects and different accents, and like, man,
Speaker 8: there's a time ticking on that.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Tom Kelly has an amazing like it's a foreign even
Speaker 1: being from the South. It's a it's a bud buds.
Speaker 1: How does he say bird? Can you say it? Nathaniel Boyd?
Speaker 6: It sounds like fall horn leghorn?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's it's really It's really cool.
Speaker 3: Though.
Speaker 1: Did you do the voiceover?
Speaker 3: I did? Well, you did.
Speaker 8: It was going to be a scratch voiceover and then
Speaker 8: we just left it so oh for real, Yeah we didn't.
Speaker 4: We never settled on it was very soon. It was
Speaker 4: a very soothing thanks. It fit well with the film.
Speaker 8: Well, we kept looking for somebody, and everybody tries to
Speaker 8: sound like a home deep poke commercial, you know, and really, yeah,
Speaker 8: it's like speech if I and had Snoop dog snoop
Speaker 8: to it, and we never found anybody and we just
Speaker 8: decided to stick with it.
Speaker 1: That would have been good.
Speaker 2: Bear.
Speaker 1: Which ones do that to you? Well, definitely the US working.
Speaker 4: On your calls you want to call, I'm happy to help.
Speaker 5: Definitely the Russ Arthur one was pretty wild, just that
Speaker 5: they can go back in there in the same tree
Speaker 5: killed two turkeys. But also the David Ellis one, there's
Speaker 5: a lot about that story that was like it was
Speaker 5: crazy like that that the trash passer shot two turkeys
Speaker 5: with one shot. That was pretty wild that I didn't
Speaker 5: realize that like that would happen. And I was unclear
Speaker 5: did he ever, like did the trash passer ever know
Speaker 5: that he shot him? No, So like that guy's still
Speaker 5: large and has no clue.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that and I didn't get I didn't go much
Speaker 1: past just what David told me, but I asked him,
Speaker 1: I said, did they did the game and fish like
Speaker 1: go get this guy? And basically nothing ever came of it,
Speaker 1: Like they didn't even Maybe it's because they didn't have anything,
Speaker 1: and David just went back to Mississippi and called the landowner.
Speaker 1: Like David didn't like try to press he did. It
Speaker 1: just wasn't worth it to him. He was just trying
Speaker 1: to get back home to Mississippi, probably to go back
Speaker 1: to work, you know. So he just told the landowner, Hey,
Speaker 1: there's a dude trespassing, and I got eight pellets in
Speaker 1: my face. We're headed back to Mississippi and I don't
Speaker 1: So it wasn't like the guy got a ticket, I
Speaker 1: don't think, because they probably would have had to. I
Speaker 1: don't know, it just would have been a bigger deal.
Speaker 8: But yeah, I wonder what distance chef to be from
Speaker 8: a twelve games blast to just catch a little bit
Speaker 8: to make you mad.
Speaker 1: I'd actually like to find out, he said. He said
Speaker 1: the pellets did not actually like penetrate, and he said
Speaker 1: he just had little blood spots on his face wicked up,
Speaker 1: like the bullets weren't in his face. Because I asked him,
Speaker 1: I was like, how many pellets did you get? Did
Speaker 1: they stick in your and he said it just I
Speaker 1: mean imagine like getting hit with gravel.
Speaker 6: Just like you know, like a red rider to the face.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was wild. So how did like, how did
Speaker 1: his vision go dark? Did it just like?
Speaker 6: Oh?
Speaker 1: I think he hittic.
Speaker 7: I think he just.
Speaker 1: I think he just uh probably flinched. Yeah yeah, I mean.
Speaker 4: I mean if you heard last pointed at you like that,
Speaker 4: you probably just yea you you definitely flinch up, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the way I took that.
Speaker 2: How would a game warden react to a guy, you know,
Speaker 2: he shoots one time at one bird, he kills two.
Speaker 2: I mean he didn't kill.
Speaker 7: I might have seen it happen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I know, a real real life case that
Speaker 2: I might bring up. I doubt. I mean, what do
Speaker 2: you do? I mean, you can't help it. You just
Speaker 2: see a bird and all of a sudden you go
Speaker 2: while there was two birds there.
Speaker 7: Yeah. Not not being a game boarden, but working with
Speaker 7: a bunch of the years just honestly is the best
Speaker 7: policy man. The sooner you can just call somebody and say,
Speaker 7: here's what happened, I think you got a lot better
Speaker 7: a lot better chance and things coming out in your
Speaker 7: favorites better to better to just own up to it.
Speaker 7: I actually worked Kansas had a Yeah, Governor's one shot
Speaker 7: turkey hunt. For years. It was this event held.
Speaker 1: Out that sounds like a good place for two turkeys
Speaker 1: to get killed one shot shot.
Speaker 7: Exactly, it's a great place. And I was, I was anyway,
Speaker 7: long story, I got a college scholarship through this thing.
Speaker 7: This wildlife artist anyhow was guiding another another different wildlife
Speaker 7: artist to go out on the hunt. And we worked
Speaker 7: all day on these birds and and finally they came
Speaker 7: in and he he took a shot and you know,
Speaker 7: two went down, Like, well, that's not exactly what they
Speaker 7: mean by a one shot turkey hunt. And you've got
Speaker 7: you know, it's he had one tag whatever, And there
Speaker 7: there was a game warden on site for that event.
Speaker 7: We just kind of it was a unique situation, of course,
Speaker 7: I mean the Governor's hunt, but but you know, walked
Speaker 7: right in and just talked to him and said, hey,
Speaker 7: here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna salvage tag this one.
Speaker 1: And he only had one tag.
Speaker 7: He had one tag.
Speaker 1: So the way for people who might not know, a
Speaker 1: lot of states have a two bird limit, but one
Speaker 1: bird per day. So I mean, technically it's it's illegal.
Speaker 1: And you you write, you're you know, you gotta.
Speaker 6: Tell me what that means. Lucas salvage.
Speaker 7: If you wanted to, if you felt inclined to pick
Speaker 7: up a roadkill and take it home and process it,
Speaker 7: I believe one of our game wardens could write you
Speaker 7: a salvage tag for that. Don't quit.
Speaker 6: One of them will listen to this, and so the
Speaker 6: guy got to keep both birds.
Speaker 7: Call one of them, well, I think one of them.
Speaker 7: They in that case, I think they just probably donated
Speaker 7: as somebody else who was helping with the hunts. I said, hey,
Speaker 7: here you go. But it's not now it wasn't just
Speaker 7: kind of in limbo and illegally. They're just an unclaimed
Speaker 7: bird laying around at this event, right, It's like, no,
Speaker 7: it had this is this is a tag bird. We've
Speaker 7: claimed that. Yep, here's what happened. There's a report on it,
Speaker 7: like this is what happened in this situation, and we've
Speaker 7: we've all it's been claimed one way or another.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's an honest mistake that happened.
Speaker 8: Sometimes one of our game wardens Missouri did it and
Speaker 8: wrote himself a ticket and uh yeah it was in
Speaker 8: the newspaper.
Speaker 7: It just happens, you know. Long enough, one of them
Speaker 7: is gonna have a head.
Speaker 3: But there's also wrong.
Speaker 8: There's also times where people know that they can just
Speaker 8: report it and they I don't know. I've seen that
Speaker 8: happen a few times.
Speaker 3: My son.
Speaker 8: I've trained him pretty good on making sure those birds
Speaker 8: aren't too close. And we were on our trip to
Speaker 8: Florida and there was seven birds that came to this
Speaker 8: giant group. Wow, And I'm like, are you ready? And
Speaker 8: he's like, too close together, Dad, And I'm like to wait,
Speaker 8: it is. But I think it's really important because you
Speaker 8: get in the water of seven and you could take
Speaker 8: out a big bunch of turkeys with one load.
Speaker 2: You know, you almost have to ride a ticket if
Speaker 2: you see a guy with two turkeys. I mean, I
Speaker 2: mean I could. I could understand it really because you
Speaker 2: you know, you start letting people go and anyway can
Speaker 2: get out of hand.
Speaker 1: Josh, which story was your favorite? You hadn't gone yet.
Speaker 6: Know and we've talked about most of them.
Speaker 1: But I love you can't pick y'all, y'all or Russ Arthur.
Speaker 6: I love listening to Andy Brown.
Speaker 4: I mean the whole tumped over thing and as soon
Speaker 4: as he said it, you know that whole motion of
Speaker 4: tumping over. Get it, you get it? Yeah, And so
Speaker 4: I just I love listening to him. He does such
Speaker 4: a great job with the whole build up of everything.
Speaker 4: You know, he's describing this bird behind the tree, and
Speaker 4: you know, you can just see this mental picture of
Speaker 4: exactly what's going on, and you got them, you know,
Speaker 4: you picture him with the gun leaning over and just over.
Speaker 4: So that I think that was the one that I
Speaker 4: really enjoyed the most.
Speaker 1: It was funny when he said, uh, I mean, anytime
Speaker 1: you're telling the story and just something unusual happens, like
Speaker 1: he was. He was like, we had to wear a
Speaker 1: suit and tie to work that day, and so I
Speaker 1: went out and I was in my in my black slacks,
Speaker 1: white shirt, tie tie, and then you know, just the
Speaker 1: details of I saw a little piece of plyboard out
Speaker 1: there to sit on it. And then the other time
Speaker 1: he laughed was when he said when he said the
Speaker 1: next morning when they went in on that turkey, and
Speaker 1: that turkey apparently had flown up. Uh ye, well, I
Speaker 1: mean like within thirty yards sitting on that plyboard. And
Speaker 1: he it took me a time or two listen to it,
Speaker 1: but he said he looked over and he saw the
Speaker 1: plyboard and he was actually on the side of the Turkey.
Speaker 1: Oh do you see what I'm saying, Because if he'd
Speaker 1: been to thirty yards on the other side of the plyboard,
Speaker 1: he'd been about sixty yards in Turkey. I think they
Speaker 1: were like on the yard Turkey like he said that
Speaker 1: Turkey was riding above us. Yeah. Yeah, Oh that was funny.
Speaker 1: That was funny. Yeah, I'd have to say the three
Speaker 1: wheeler one was was was fun and yeah, two three
Speaker 1: wheeler res at one time. That makes me want to
Speaker 1: do a film Nathaniel of Turkey hunting off big red
Speaker 1: three wheelers. Yeah, how cool would that be?
Speaker 3: I love it.
Speaker 1: What if we had, like we're gonna give away a
Speaker 1: great film ideal, but uh, what if you had all
Speaker 1: your turkey hitting buddies, like five of you on big
Speaker 1: red three wheelers.
Speaker 3: I love it.
Speaker 4: I mean someone could win a raffle of a big
Speaker 4: red three at the end. I saw one on Facebook
Speaker 4: marketplace a while back and it was cherry.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 7: I know a guy who runs one co worker and
Speaker 7: friend still got it, still go duck hutting he loads
Speaker 7: up the Is it a joker?
Speaker 1: Is he? Is it like a real that's all he's got.
Speaker 7: So that's what he didn't know.
Speaker 1: It's cool because my cousin, my cousin, Sean Marriott, he
Speaker 1: has one. And Sean is just like a cool guy.
Speaker 1: He's got like cool four runners and and just kind
Speaker 1: of like fixes up stuff. And he had one when
Speaker 1: he was a kid. Am I right caught and Sean
Speaker 1: had my first cousin.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it really is an adult I think.
Speaker 1: And and so he bought one. Is like a throwback,
Speaker 1: you know, like cool to have an old Yeah, Honda
Speaker 1: big Red, your buddy. He is trying to be cool.
Speaker 7: Not no, I don't know, he knows how, you know.
Speaker 7: He now, this is just the one his dad bought
Speaker 7: way back when he grew up in Mississippi too, and
Speaker 7: they had the Big Red. And we're to go duck hutting.
Speaker 7: It's just him and me and want to ride down
Speaker 7: a rice levee. He said, well, I got the I
Speaker 7: got the three wheeler. I said, what do you have
Speaker 7: a three wheeler? Yeah? He was dead serious, and he
Speaker 7: loads the thing up. He's got the tires, you know,
Speaker 7: kind of like those flotation kind of balloon like grip
Speaker 7: and and uh, it's a it's a quite a difference
Speaker 7: from today's you know, souped up lifted U TV with
Speaker 7: the big naisey tires.
Speaker 1: Like I can't even play in that game. I mean
Speaker 1: when people dad plays in the eighth the high end
Speaker 1: uh U t V, U t V market. I'm I'm
Speaker 1: kind of a mule man. But uh you had a
Speaker 1: now you had a Kawasaki one ten I mentioned on
Speaker 1: the podcast.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was lot of fun, man. And
Speaker 2: I always had a and that I always thought everybody
Speaker 2: was like me until I got a little older where
Speaker 2: I just love to jump and run and three you know,
Speaker 2: two wheel of three wheeler, and I'd go to deer
Speaker 2: camp and I think we'll like, let's go fast, let's
Speaker 2: write these things. And these guys are like, well, what's
Speaker 2: wrong with you? But he jeff Nis had a big
Speaker 2: red and I take my little Kawasaki down there and
Speaker 2: he'd outrun me. And then I got a two hundred
Speaker 2: yamahall next year when that he could still outrun me
Speaker 2: and the big yeah yeah wow. And so the next
Speaker 2: year I found a Warrior fifty warriors.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I he I remember a turkey. There's a
Speaker 1: picture of you with a turkey laid across that old
Speaker 1: that first Yamaha three fifty Warrior that you had. Didn't
Speaker 1: you bend to a shotgun barrel backing that thing into
Speaker 1: a tree?
Speaker 7: You did? That was ben Yeah, remembories getting foggy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, oh boy.
Speaker 2: I love those things and still do you know I
Speaker 2: still it's still one of my major hobbies.
Speaker 1: Hey, did y'all? I mean, the render is a time
Speaker 1: for me to uh like kind of reflect on the
Speaker 1: crash of building a podcast.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Uh, didn't y'all think it was funny when I said, uh, uh,
Speaker 1: Misty would be like, they don't just stop when I said, uh,
Speaker 1: it was like a middle aged man in the nineteen
Speaker 1: eighties walking into a Honda dealership to buy a big
Speaker 1: red Do you remember when I said that? Y'all don't
Speaker 1: remember that.
Speaker 2: I remember that.
Speaker 1: It was funny.
Speaker 7: It wasn't it funny?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Funny?
Speaker 7: Sure, Yeah, I was saying I was saying.
Speaker 1: I was saying, Uh, I can't even remember what I
Speaker 1: was saying, but it was funny.
Speaker 6: I go back and listen to it, folks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I was saying, Uh, someone got suckered into
Speaker 1: something like a middle aged man in nineteen ages walking
Speaker 1: into a Honda dealership. To buy Grid a middle middle
Speaker 1: class man, you had to be middle class down one.
Speaker 8: Of those you're talking about Turkey coming in maybe maybe so?
Speaker 1: Maybe so?
Speaker 6: Was the big Grid a pull start?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, just a.
Speaker 3: Pull start with I think so.
Speaker 6: I don't really the one tens. I think we're all
Speaker 6: pull start.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I've watched that one be pull starts in the
Speaker 7: last couple of years. Yeah. The fires right up and
Speaker 7: it purrs. Yeah, it sounds great, it's amazing.
Speaker 1: Wow, Wow, they're pretty cool.
Speaker 6: Wow seven minutes.
Speaker 1: Little well Nathaniel. Where can people watch your film?
Speaker 3: It's on MASSI Oak's YouTube channel. It's been up for
Speaker 3: a few days.
Speaker 1: How many many views have got? Plus?
Speaker 3: Two hundred round two hundred thousand? Yeah, two views? Is that?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I watched it like four times, so that's like
Speaker 1: like two percent of the views. Or for me, if
Speaker 1: you have two hundred views, what was the goal of
Speaker 1: the film? Like when when you were commissioned to make this,
Speaker 1: where they like, we're going to be happy if this
Speaker 1: many people watch it.
Speaker 8: I don't think. I don't think we had any kind
Speaker 8: of thing in you know, viewership in mind. Everything that
Speaker 8: that I've been able to do for Maso has been
Speaker 8: less about moving a needle or numbers and more about
Speaker 8: really like solidifying the legacy that they have, you know,
Speaker 8: and the story of who they want to be and
Speaker 8: who they are. So we just wanted to tell the
Speaker 8: story of those two men. And I think even talks
Speaker 8: and said you.
Speaker 1: Had a number in your head. Well I caught him.
Speaker 6: I caught him.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, I feel like you got to be pretty
Speaker 1: happy with that. Very I mean, because it's just started, if.
Speaker 3: That's the question.
Speaker 8: Yeah, very happy with the numbers. Yeah, I mean it's try.
Speaker 8: Hunting is a niche market. It's like a community, a
Speaker 8: small community of people. So we're thinking, you know, if
Speaker 8: most of the people within that community love it, have
Speaker 8: see it, get to respond to it.
Speaker 3: Then that would be a big win. And I think, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's gone beyond that.
Speaker 1: So I you know, we make a lot of films
Speaker 1: that Meat Eater, and so I'm aside from just loving
Speaker 1: hunting and telling stories and all these things, I kind
Speaker 1: of geek out about YouTube stuff, stuff I don't really
Speaker 1: talk about because it's not that interesting unless you're in
Speaker 1: the locker room. And now I've got nothingiel here. Fellow
Speaker 1: video man no, when I heard when I first saw it,
Speaker 1: I knew it was gonna be incredible. I wasn't sure how.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not gonna say I didn't think it
Speaker 1: was gonna do good. But it's just hard to there's
Speaker 1: so many variables, Like you put that film on a
Speaker 1: small YouTube channel, and if it's the best film in
Speaker 1: the world, it still doesn't do good because it doesn't
Speaker 1: have a huge YouTube audience that it's feeding it out too. Yeah. Also,
Speaker 1: you know there's always this thing about a shorter film
Speaker 1: versus a longer film. You know, is it intimidating for
Speaker 1: somebody to start off watching the hour and twenty minute
Speaker 1: So I was kind of thinking, I wonder how it's
Speaker 1: gonna do. And I was rooting for it big time
Speaker 1: by watching it and telling people about it. I thought
Speaker 1: it was a big win that after a week it's
Speaker 1: got two hundred thousand years.
Speaker 3: It's it's a it's a huge win.
Speaker 8: And for me, my work is always slower paced and
Speaker 8: sort of in our social media climate right now, that
Speaker 8: is not attractive and a certain way to really.
Speaker 1: So when you were making the film, you you felt
Speaker 1: like you were kind of bucking the trend of like
Speaker 1: well just fast paced.
Speaker 8: Oh yeah, I'll put I'll put work into a five
Speaker 8: or ten minute piece that I feel really good about.
Speaker 8: And sometimes a brand is like, let's do it in
Speaker 8: thirty seconds because TikTok has got a quick you know,
Speaker 8: you got to get to people quick. And I'm like,
Speaker 8: dang it, I wanted this to land with people in
Speaker 8: an emotional way. We can't do that in thirty seconds.
Speaker 8: And so my work is always longer form and moving
Speaker 8: at a slower pace. And so but I just felt
Speaker 8: after we got done with this, and so did everybody
Speaker 8: at Mosioak, that there's a place in the in this
Speaker 8: community for something like that. And that's kind of proved
Speaker 8: that that's that's true.
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, cool, cool, cool cool if.
Speaker 4: You uh, I was a little bit fascinated with that
Speaker 4: mister fox uh turkey vests.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that was going for how much should it
Speaker 3: go for? Thirty one thousand?
Speaker 4: So I they were numbered. I got on eBay to
Speaker 4: see what it would take for one to acquire one,
Speaker 4: and there anywhere from two thousand to five thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we got to go to the guy that's selling
Speaker 1: that and.
Speaker 6: Just we're coming after you.
Speaker 1: I mean you don't get that best and sell it?
Speaker 3: Do you?
Speaker 1: Am I wrong?
Speaker 3: Shouldn't?
Speaker 6: How many were there?
Speaker 8: One nine and eighty six because nineteen eighty six was
Speaker 8: the year that I say.
Speaker 1: So, yeah, yeah, that was a excuse me, that was
Speaker 1: a cool little little piece. They made a they made
Speaker 1: a turkey vest honoring Fox Hayes and and just sold
Speaker 1: out of them.
Speaker 4: Like yeah, they thought they were going to just you know,
Speaker 4: have an inventory to sell, and there was people camped
Speaker 4: out the night before to get them, and they went.
Speaker 4: They auctioned one off at NWTF, right yeah, and it
Speaker 4: went for thirty one thousand dollars and all the rest
Speaker 4: of them just were gone.
Speaker 8: It was the number five vest. That's why one of
Speaker 8: the reasons why I went for so much, because it
Speaker 8: was all the top. Twenty of them were given to
Speaker 8: close family and stuff, but the number five was was
Speaker 8: reserved for the Grand National auction.
Speaker 1: Hey, Barry, go get my turkey vest right there. I
Speaker 1: want to show you all this.
Speaker 3: This is a this is a.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, this is FHF. This is FHF Gears
Speaker 1: New h Turkey. It's a Turkey belt. So it's just
Speaker 1: a it's a belt and you can molly on all
Speaker 1: your different attachments. So it's got a pouch with all
Speaker 1: my uh you know, calls and shells and gloves and
Speaker 1: different stuff, but it's got it's it's on suspenders. And
Speaker 1: then I'm getting a little backpack attachment, just a small
Speaker 1: backpack attacked. But it's just like ultra lighting to turkey vests.
Speaker 1: Turkey Hunder's a big into turkey vests. I got my
Speaker 1: little uh my little slate call Paluch right there in front.
Speaker 1: But that's like uh minim minimalist turkey vest. Dad, what
Speaker 1: do you think?
Speaker 2: I like it?
Speaker 1: It's there you go run.
Speaker 2: Out, have the bird gobbling, and you won't have your
Speaker 2: little striker. Yeah. I like that.
Speaker 1: That that Yeah. Well, Luke, closing thoughts, what do you
Speaker 1: want to tell us about the game and fish?
Speaker 4: Tell us everything that we need to know about gaming,
Speaker 4: fish and tent everything.
Speaker 7: Thank you for your support. Uh now, yeah, I mean
Speaker 7: I think turkeys are in a state of flux. We
Speaker 7: all know that as turkey hunters, and I think it's
Speaker 7: just as a turkey hunter myself and in a wildlife biologist,
Speaker 7: it's kind of we're all just gonna have to work
Speaker 7: through this together, like we're in a new reality, I think,
Speaker 7: And so I just I just think it's a time
Speaker 7: for everybody to kind of work together on and realize
Speaker 7: that the new normal is different maybe when a bunch
Speaker 7: of us started out turkey hunting in and but it
Speaker 7: it could still mean it's good, it can still mean
Speaker 7: it's sustainable for a really really long time. And and
Speaker 7: so we're just gonna have to keep pushing through to
Speaker 7: if there's things we can solve, we'll work on solving
Speaker 7: them together.
Speaker 1: Right on, right on. Well, good to see everybody. Thank Nathaniel,
Speaker 1: thanks for coming, Luke, thanks for coming. Thank you all
Speaker 1: the regulars, thanks for coming. You know, my dad should
Speaker 1: probably get an award. He drives further and more often,
Speaker 1: Brent when Brent's here, Brent drives about actually a little
Speaker 1: bit further, and yeah, you'd get second place, Yeah you
Speaker 1: get second place. But no great conversation, guys, And yeah,
Speaker 1: check out the Colonel and the Fox on YouTube Masi
Speaker 1: Oaks YouTube channel, and.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thanks for having me.
Speaker 6: We'll see you next time.
Speaker 3: M