Speaker 1: My name is Clay Neukleman. This is a production of
Speaker 1: the Bear Grease podcast called The Bear Grease Render, where
Speaker 1: we render down, dive deeper, and look behind the scenes
Speaker 1: of the actual bear Grease podcast. Presented by f h
Speaker 1: F Gear, American Maid, purpose built hunting and fishing gear
Speaker 1: that's designed to be as rugged as the place as
Speaker 1: we explore. Welcome to the Bear Grease Render. This is
Speaker 1: the late August edition The Bear Grease Render.
Speaker 2: The hottest one of the year.
Speaker 1: The hottest bear Grease render of the year was it one? Three?
Speaker 1: Do you know what is on you usual about ursus American?
Speaker 1: It's the American black bear. Is that it's an animal
Speaker 1: with a black coat, lots of fat, thick hair all
Speaker 1: year round. They're not like a mule that has like
Speaker 1: a thick coat in the winter and then sheds it
Speaker 1: like they're pretty much hairy the whole year. Temperature doesn't
Speaker 1: seem to affect bears for real, Like when Guy's hunting
Speaker 1: the fall. The best thing that could be Joe on
Speaker 1: opening day for an Arkansas bear season would it would
Speaker 1: be there would be a ninety degrees No kidding, no,
Speaker 1: I mean it's totally backwards from deer hunting.
Speaker 2: Well, you know I've got some black hair fat.
Speaker 1: I mean, you like the heat too. What's your take? Oh?
Speaker 2: My take is is I've been searching for a town
Speaker 2: named November April. Oh, and if I can move there,
Speaker 2: I'll be at peace for the remainder of my life
Speaker 2: because I just think that those two months are the
Speaker 2: premium months.
Speaker 1: Of the year, some l primo months.
Speaker 2: Let's just honor this bear for being able to tolerate
Speaker 2: all the d.
Speaker 1: Ah. Well, we've kind of got a skeleton crew here
Speaker 1: on the render. This week we had we had one
Speaker 1: guy that was coming was charged by a bear as
Speaker 1: threw him off. Must have thrown his schedule off. Colby Morehead,
Speaker 1: owner a bear hunting magazine, on his way here, had
Speaker 1: a great story. But I guess the bear charge messed
Speaker 1: up his schedule and now he's not get Yeah, maybe
Speaker 1: so pa to go and change clothes, didn't I believe.
Speaker 2: His schedules messed up for a few hours.
Speaker 1: To be fair, if a.
Speaker 3: Bear charged me, I'd need more than an afternoon to
Speaker 3: walk that off.
Speaker 1: So but we do have Joe Wilson, the founder of
Speaker 1: the World Championship Squirrel Cookoff. I told you we were
Speaker 1: going to have you back on before the event in September,
Speaker 1: so it's good to have you. Joe's kind of like
Speaker 1: a one man circus when it comes to podcasts. Joe's
Speaker 1: the Joe's the l primo podcast guest. I could just
Speaker 1: be like, welcome to the bear Greasehrender take it Joe
Speaker 1: and Joe. Yeah, yeah, but we have we have Joe's sidekicks. No,
Speaker 1: not you guys just met Joe today, but longtime friend
Speaker 1: Ben LaGrone, good to see it. Ben, It's good to
Speaker 1: have you. Ben's been uh, he's been after he's been
Speaker 1: getting some pictures of some nice deer. And then, uh,
Speaker 1: my other longtime friend, Jonathan Webster.
Speaker 3: What's I'm really just here for the Apple Butter. I
Speaker 3: was hoping that there might be a second render. I
Speaker 3: miss an opportunity.
Speaker 1: You know what, if I'd have thought about it, I'd
Speaker 1: have brought a jar out and I would have said,
Speaker 1: the most valuable guest of the day gets the jar.
Speaker 2: Joe gets the jar of we're talking to Apple butter. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I ain't do anything for Apple butter and that Apple
Speaker 2: butter man.
Speaker 1: So okay. My conversation today is kind of revolving around bears,
Speaker 1: because yesterday we started baiting bears. We did our inaugural
Speaker 1: trip into the mountains to bait bears. So I'm thinking
Speaker 1: about bears, apple butter. Though. Fifteen eighteen years ago, when
Speaker 1: we bought this land, it's we've lived here almost twenty years.
Speaker 1: I started buying apple trees, and I'm going to give
Speaker 1: you an orchard lesson. Inside the lesson you going to
Speaker 1: learn about a little bit about bears, not much, but
Speaker 1: you're gonna learn more about orchards. The best time to
Speaker 1: start an orchard was five years ago, so you better
Speaker 1: start it now so that five years from now you'll
Speaker 1: be happy. When I bought this place, I started buying
Speaker 1: discount apple trees in like mid summer at Low's leaves. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: the little crooked ones with like four leaves that are
Speaker 1: like twelve ninety nine.
Speaker 3: The floor model applied to agriculture.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that's the same way I buy a ribb.
Speaker 2: I wait till they get that yellow tag on them.
Speaker 4: Yeah, half rotten, half priced te Yeah exactly.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's mistake number one. If you're going to plant
Speaker 1: an orchard, you need to go not to your big
Speaker 1: box stores. You need to go to a local nursery
Speaker 1: and find the disease resistant and the good species of peach, apple, cherry,
Speaker 1: whatever you're after that will grow in your region because
Speaker 1: Low's doesn't care. So I started planting these trees. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I started planting these trees, and basically today, seventeen eighteen
Speaker 1: years later, I have six good apple trees that are
Speaker 1: probably six inches at the base, I mean like full
Speaker 1: grown apple trees, and they have produced sporadic yields for
Speaker 1: all these years. But the life lesson from this, Joe,
Speaker 1: is that I've got six beautiful trees. I bet I've
Speaker 1: planted twenty.
Speaker 2: Five that black hit them.
Speaker 1: Wow, man, weed eaters got them, deer got them, drought
Speaker 1: got them.
Speaker 2: Did you know the history in Arkansas with the apple trees?
Speaker 5: Yes, what's that?
Speaker 1: I mean this has come back to apple. But the
Speaker 1: podcast I want here we go.
Speaker 2: So like if you're driving through uh Bentonville, we got
Speaker 2: a street called Moberley and that was home of Moberley apples, right,
Speaker 2: and so between apple cider, apple vinegar, and apples, Arkansas.
Speaker 1: Was the place it was export. Northwest Arkansas was exporting
Speaker 1: America's apples. Yeah, we were for the time period.
Speaker 2: Where Washington gets the credit. Now, that's what Arkansas was
Speaker 2: for a few decades, multiple decades, and then a blight
Speaker 2: come through. It's the same black that took out the
Speaker 2: chickapin the chick bent oak and wiped out these apples,
Speaker 2: and so our farmers had to come up with a
Speaker 2: new idea. And just so happens, they that feathers on.
Speaker 2: We started poultry directly, chicken farm. Yeah, you know.
Speaker 1: So the apples used to be big here, export and
Speaker 1: apples all over. So there is an apple blight and
Speaker 1: so those traditional like mainstream strains, apples die, So you
Speaker 1: need to get like I think there's one called Arkansas
Speaker 1: Black that's real good. But these are big box store
Speaker 1: apple trees that have survived. They just produced a real
Speaker 1: good crop every couple of years. But this year they
Speaker 1: produced a good crop. But the whole point of the story, Jonathan,
Speaker 1: you keep distracting was I planted those trees for baar bait.
Speaker 1: That's why I planted them. I mean that that's one
Speaker 1: hundred percent. While I planted them, I wanted good, cheap
Speaker 1: bear bait. But today my family makes apple butter off
Speaker 1: of those trees. It's secondary use. It's kind of like,
Speaker 1: not best use, but good enough.
Speaker 2: How many sacks of apples did you carry off in
Speaker 2: the woods?
Speaker 1: I didn't use very many other bears. It was a
Speaker 1: great idea back in the day. But uh no, I
Speaker 1: only yesterday, I only took about probably thirty forty pounds
Speaker 1: of apples that were on the ground once.
Speaker 2: The prime apple or the prime bear bait. I mean,
Speaker 2: what would you is it? Little debby treats, dy old donuts.
Speaker 1: Anything that will make a human fat and unhealthy, a
Speaker 1: bear will love. I'm getting my bait from a commercial
Speaker 1: bar bait distributor. There's there's commercial several big commercial bar
Speaker 1: bait distributors that send stuff all over the country. There
Speaker 1: are companies that deal with the waste by product big how.
Speaker 1: I don't know where it comes from, but there's a
Speaker 1: lot of really great food that goes to waste and
Speaker 1: goes to animal feed and bare bait. So like yesterday
Speaker 1: we were buying granola stuff with candies and gummies and
Speaker 1: marshmallows and circus peanuts and stuff like that. But we
Speaker 1: also use corn and dog food. I mean, I man,
Speaker 1: I've baited. Bears are just about everything. They like bread, doughnuts,
Speaker 1: all that stuff.
Speaker 3: Back in two thousand and nine, I was working at
Speaker 3: a local restaurant and you called me up and asked
Speaker 3: about getting into the grease trap and getting the leftover
Speaker 3: fried grease. And I think we did that happen that
Speaker 3: you were going to bring this up worked, I guess,
Speaker 3: I mean you came and got it.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, grease grease is really good.
Speaker 5: Got on the render. He hadn't forgot.
Speaker 3: That's that the fourteen years ago. The solid contribution of
Speaker 3: five pounds of grease is.
Speaker 2: A spring bear taste here than a fall bear.
Speaker 1: I have never been able to tell the difference, really
Speaker 1: because I have not because you know, like for our squirrels,
Speaker 1: for the squirrel cookoff, a spring squirrel is twice the
Speaker 1: squirrel as a fall Really.
Speaker 2: Well, that's because when squirrels are climbing up the trees
Speaker 2: and they're eating that old bitter you know, a whole
Speaker 2: off of the hickory nuts or the walnuts or gone
Speaker 2: or whatever, and so that bitter taste actually transfers into
Speaker 2: the meat.
Speaker 1: So I now, is that in the spring the fall?
Speaker 2: That's in the fall. Okay, So in the spring, the
Speaker 2: squirrels eating berries and sweet you know, sweet grains, and
Speaker 2: all of this nice good food that translates right in.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's no different than a finished beef cow. Yeah,
Speaker 2: compared to a grass joe.
Speaker 1: I don't think my palette is delicate enough to be
Speaker 1: able to tell the difference. But they do say, they
Speaker 1: do say that for sure, in the spring, a bear
Speaker 1: is going to be more lean than a fall bear,
Speaker 1: and so people would like a fall bear would be.
Speaker 1: And I don't like using this term because I don't think.
Speaker 2: The greasy deal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, bear's not any more greasy than a
Speaker 1: ribbi beef steak or Yeah, you take my bear meat
Speaker 1: that I grind that we make burgers out of meat loaf,
Speaker 1: every spaghetti tacos in brown hit next to a plate
Speaker 1: a deal of eighty twenty beef, and you're gonna have
Speaker 1: way more fat in that eighty twenty beef than you
Speaker 1: are in my bear meat.
Speaker 2: That bear you got in Alaska this year we were there,
Speaker 2: we got a bear week before you. Yep, we got
Speaker 2: two bears, and neither of them had any fat on them.
Speaker 2: I mean, those bears. I think if they would have
Speaker 2: stayed in their holes for a couple more days, they
Speaker 2: probably wouldn't have made it, but you're the favorite. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean these were the scrawniest, skinny, no fat bears.
Speaker 1: Huh.
Speaker 2: They were low fat, low fat. Yeah, they were probably
Speaker 2: better for you than that greasy one that you got.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I've always thought that bears is not greasy.
Speaker 2: I don't know where that come from.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, well, I mean there's good reason to say that,
Speaker 1: because they do in the fall, can have a huge
Speaker 1: amount of fat on them. But it's not in the meat.
Speaker 1: It's not marbled like beef yeat, and if it was,
Speaker 1: it would be even better than it is. I mean,
Speaker 1: like marbling and beef is what, yeah is what your Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and wild game just doesn't marble quite like that. But
Speaker 1: but yeah, they.
Speaker 3: Got to handle on like those Kobe cows where they
Speaker 3: go out and you know, massage them and play music.
Speaker 1: That's high quality there.
Speaker 2: That's what we call our black squirrels. Oh yeah, Primo,
Speaker 2: they're the angus of the squirrel world.
Speaker 1: You know, if I should leave some like classic music
Speaker 1: playing at my bare bait, you think it would make you.
Speaker 3: Get Primo marbles?
Speaker 1: Well, Joe, well, before we before we get into Joe,
Speaker 1: before Joe takes over the podcast, I'm sorry no, No,
Speaker 1: this is good. It's good. Ben. You have a Ben
Speaker 1: has a Dad Class.
Speaker 2: And I heard about it on a previous show Austin.
Speaker 1: I think it's pretty good. Tell us what's what's the
Speaker 1: dad class?
Speaker 5: Okay?
Speaker 4: This is this is like my magnum opus. I mean,
Speaker 4: I mean it really is. So for some context, I'm
Speaker 4: an influencer and like the father hood space, and I've
Speaker 4: had the privilege to work with a lot of men,
Speaker 4: do a lot of teaching, mentoring inside men's ministry and
Speaker 4: other contexts. In January, I went on like a pilgrimage
Speaker 4: basically to answer two questions, what specifically makes a great
Speaker 4: father and how do I become one? And through that
Speaker 4: and I talked, I've have survey data and talked to
Speaker 4: people probably like one hundred and thirty dads, and through
Speaker 4: that developed a something called the Framework for Fatherhood. And
Speaker 4: it's like a document that just captures succinctly what makes
Speaker 4: a good dad. And it's a tool that you can
Speaker 4: think about your strengths as a man and a tool
Speaker 4: that you can think about areas to improve. And from
Speaker 4: that I developed like a curriculum. It's an online course,
Speaker 4: it's self paced, and.
Speaker 1: This is what you guys do with your business. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you as you make on line courses for families,
Speaker 1: and so this fits right in this lineage of what
Speaker 1: yard exactly like.
Speaker 4: We hope someday that it's an online learning hub for
Speaker 4: learning how to build an awesome family. And so the
Speaker 4: dad Class that's what it's called, and you can read
Speaker 4: about it at dad class dot net, Pretty class dot net.
Speaker 1: I'm surprised elms that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well he's making a bid.
Speaker 1: That's actually true. That's actually true. I can't afford that.
Speaker 4: So it's a self paced program that you can go through,
Speaker 4: but we have I know, guys that are going through
Speaker 4: it together, like as friends. You could go through it
Speaker 4: as a men's group at your church or something. And
Speaker 4: it's not necessarily Christian base, but there is a really
Speaker 4: in depth Bible study companion that goes along with it.
Speaker 1: If you didn't.
Speaker 5: But anyway, there's four modules.
Speaker 4: The first one is about manhood, and Joe and I
Speaker 4: were talking talking about earlier about a simple question like
Speaker 4: what really makes a man and diving into that, and
Speaker 4: so in that module, we look at that question, and
Speaker 4: we look at the influences your father had on you,
Speaker 4: You look at all the things that influence you as
Speaker 4: a man. We talk about marriage in that module. The
Speaker 4: second module we dive into the framework for fatherhood and
Speaker 4: that's broken into fatherhoods in four big overarching skills or competencies, Leadership, relationships, shepherding,
Speaker 4: and legacy.
Speaker 5: And that module is awesome. It is awesome.
Speaker 4: It's been life changing for me to develop, and it's
Speaker 4: been life changing for guys that are going through it.
Speaker 4: And then the third module is called Fathering over Time,
Speaker 4: and it's where I take a lot of my knowledge
Speaker 4: of childhood development from my early education days. I used
Speaker 4: to work in public schools and so we look at
Speaker 4: the stages of child development and talk about how fathering
Speaker 4: shifts and changes as your kids age all the way
Speaker 4: up into young adult. And then the fourth module is
Speaker 4: something called brand New Dad boot Camp. So the whole
Speaker 4: course any dad of any age, there's there's there's a
Speaker 4: one guy in the taking the course. He's a grandfather,
Speaker 4: So guys of any age can take it. But that's
Speaker 4: a special module for brand new dads. It's like a
Speaker 4: crash course, a survival guy. If you are a new
Speaker 4: dad and you know nothing, and and I'm really excited,
Speaker 4: so we just launched it a couple of weeks ago
Speaker 4: and you can learn about it.
Speaker 1: So people are already taking the class.
Speaker 4: Yeah, all over the nation, and it's mostly guys that
Speaker 4: have taken My wife's my wife and I was childbirth
Speaker 4: class and stuff. But that that's one of the biggest
Speaker 4: requests that I've got. It was it was it was, Hey,
Speaker 4: I really want to be the best dad I can be?
Speaker 4: Do you have any resources from me? I get that
Speaker 4: question all the time. And then number two, where can
Speaker 4: I find support? So actually, if you when you buy
Speaker 4: the class, you get on this online private group that
Speaker 4: I moderate, and you can get on there.
Speaker 5: And ask questions.
Speaker 4: In the future, we hope to have like special live
Speaker 4: sessions and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: That's cool, man. I just just this week I sent
Speaker 1: Ben a screen clip from a private message somebody had
Speaker 1: sent to me a Bear Grease Render listener who said, Clay,
Speaker 1: I wish I wish you had more stuff about your
Speaker 1: family and how you raise your family, and and he
Speaker 1: was very he was a young father, interested in fatherhood.
Speaker 1: And I clipped it and sent it to you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's that's what we're looking for. People are interested
Speaker 1: in at that's the point I'm interested. Yeah, you know, Joe,
Speaker 1: you said on your podcast you ask everybody. One of
Speaker 1: the questions is what does it mean to be a man?
Speaker 2: We've asked one hundred men what it means to be
Speaker 2: a man, and and traditionally you have about four responses.
Speaker 2: One is is do what you say, and it's hard work,
Speaker 2: and it's being a member of the community, and a
Speaker 2: lot of times friendship, you know, being a good friend,
Speaker 2: being a good father, all of that comes in. We
Speaker 2: also asked the question did your dad ever tell you
Speaker 2: he loved you? And for people I'm about fifty years old,
Speaker 2: you know, and for people my age and older, the
Speaker 2: answers almost always know, really almost always no.
Speaker 3: Man, that is shocking, But for.
Speaker 2: Fifty years and younger, the answer is almost always yes.
Speaker 2: And so there was something that happened maybe in the eighties,
Speaker 2: I don't know that changed this now. Unless that guy
Speaker 2: that we asked a question to went through some major
Speaker 2: physical or mental abuse, the response is he didn't have
Speaker 2: to tell me. I knew. And so that's across the board.
Speaker 2: You'll hear that. The reason why I'm interested in your
Speaker 2: class is I have a seventeen year old daughter and
Speaker 2: an eight year old son. We kind of gap them
Speaker 2: apart a little bit.
Speaker 1: One on the way with this mash.
Speaker 2: Trust me, the doctor said that can't happen.
Speaker 1: The deal is, I do.
Speaker 2: I believe in miracles, But the deal is to me
Speaker 2: is I had a phenomenal relationship with my daughter until
Speaker 2: she was probably twelve and a half going on thirteen.
Speaker 2: This little girl caught every perch with me. We deer hunted,
Speaker 2: she cleaned deer with me. She was my shotgun rider.
Speaker 2: We ate donuts. Every time we could eat donuts, we
Speaker 2: hit the park. And then the dear Lord decided he
Speaker 2: was going to turn her into a woman, and things
Speaker 2: kind of changed, and it it's been a struggle. Now.
Speaker 2: My goal right now is I'm playing kind of like Batman.
Speaker 2: I live in a cave and if she ever needs me,
Speaker 2: she can shine that light and I'll come and run
Speaker 2: in and fix whatever it is as it needs to
Speaker 2: be fixed. But I'm playing the game right now where
Speaker 2: space keeps her from hating me. You know, I mean,
Speaker 2: you want to talk about getting your heart broken, and
Speaker 2: I guarantee you're gonna have a ton of your listeners
Speaker 2: say that that teenage year is evil. I mean it,
Speaker 2: It changes, and I was that I was that kid.
Speaker 2: I remember getting angry whenever as a teenager. I mean,
Speaker 2: we're not in rut, We're well maybe we were.
Speaker 1: But we were at that.
Speaker 2: Point to where, you know, we're trying to prove who
Speaker 2: we are and we're a man we can handle her,
Speaker 2: or you're a girl and a woman. It's a tough,
Speaker 2: tough time, brother, and I'm sure you'll have a lot
Speaker 2: of men if they open up to you, they'll tell
Speaker 2: you that a little girl can break a tough guy's
Speaker 2: heart pretty dang easy. And it sucks. It's a bad,
Speaker 2: bad deal. But being older, I've watched men go through this,
Speaker 2: and I know what the end game is. Those little
Speaker 2: girls are going to come back and they're going to
Speaker 2: find out that dad was just trying to protect them.
Speaker 1: Would he say, you know, when you brought up the
Speaker 1: deal about older the older generation not telling their kids
Speaker 1: they loved him, and then now it would be unusual
Speaker 1: for any any group of people probably to not tell
Speaker 1: their kids they loved them. And my question was, do
Speaker 1: you think that the kids that are being told they're
Speaker 1: loved really feel loved? You know? And I don't know
Speaker 1: the answer. It's not really a trick question. But the
Speaker 1: idea is that if you say something, well, because you
Speaker 1: said that, a lot of the guys that dad never
Speaker 1: told them they loved them, they knew they were loved
Speaker 1: because of the action. And now there's probably just as
Speaker 1: many guys that would say, man, my dad was a warlord,
Speaker 1: you know, and like at some level he loved me,
Speaker 1: but he was kind of a yeah. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: probably different versions of it.
Speaker 2: I think that that's the part that made us know
Speaker 2: that they loved us, is because they gave us rules
Speaker 2: and restrictions and guidance that if they didn't love us,
Speaker 2: why would they tell us that? And so you know,
Speaker 2: for a dad to enforce it and all of a
Speaker 2: sudden you're wrong.
Speaker 1: Well it cars. What is love is love letting your
Speaker 1: kid do whatever they want all the time and giving
Speaker 1: them everything they want, or is love, you know, discipline
Speaker 1: them in the right time and giving them correction and
Speaker 1: putting boundaries on their life and not letting them do this,
Speaker 1: and that.
Speaker 2: It's the highlight of our life to have our children.
Speaker 2: It's our legacy. Is what we leave behind in the
Speaker 2: Clay's deal, taking bear out and dropping them off in
Speaker 2: the woods, letting them kill a bear. I couldn't get
Speaker 2: away with that deal at my house, right, But well,
Speaker 2: I sure woo.
Speaker 1: But would I want to? Absolutely?
Speaker 2: What Clay has shared with the listeners about how he's
Speaker 2: raising his family is very very interesting to me. But
Speaker 2: I'm old school, and so to a lot of people.
Speaker 2: You know, they don't want our kids playing out I
Speaker 2: live in the country. They don't want our kids playing
Speaker 2: out there because the Boogeyman's gonna come kidnap them. There
Speaker 2: ain't no saber tooth tiger that's gonna take my kid.
Speaker 2: I'm that kid who would walk just like Brett Reeves.
Speaker 2: You know, he's talked on his show, This Current One
Speaker 2: to where he would walk on forever and we knew
Speaker 2: what time dinner was, we had to get home to it.
Speaker 2: We'd leave with a pocket full of bullets or a
Speaker 2: couple of hooks, and nothing bad.
Speaker 1: You know what happened.
Speaker 2: Everything was good, even the bad times were good. And
Speaker 2: I kind of feel like we're missing a huge opportunity
Speaker 2: to our kids by not doing what you're doing. Clay,
Speaker 2: in my opinion, that's often wrong.
Speaker 1: Well, you know the other thing that you wouldn't you
Speaker 1: wouldn't see about the freedom that I do give my
Speaker 1: kids or it's just not as it's just not something
Speaker 1: we just talk about all the time. Is I've placed
Speaker 1: a lot of really strong boundaries on their life too.
Speaker 1: The reason I can trust Baron Neukom to go in
Speaker 1: the woods for three days by himself while he's fifteen
Speaker 1: with a bow and all this and just trust him
Speaker 1: to be confident enough is that his whole life.
Speaker 2: I have been there.
Speaker 1: I've been there number one. But I've but I have
Speaker 1: tested him. I mean I've been I've been like, Okay,
Speaker 1: here's the rules. The playing field is really huge, but
Speaker 1: don't go outside the boundaries. And I'm not contradicting like
Speaker 1: letting free range kids. I mean my kids have kind
Speaker 1: of been free range, but inside of a controlled environment.
Speaker 1: And he's proven to obey the rules and do what's right,
Speaker 1: make sound judgment.
Speaker 2: And you know, I had to go cart one time
Speaker 2: for fifteen minutes.
Speaker 1: That's the beginning a story, for sure. Story.
Speaker 2: I watched my dad in the summer sun put together
Speaker 2: this go cart, and I believe it had a husk
Speaker 2: of army chainsaw motor right, and he worked hard, wrenching
Speaker 2: and bleeding and stuff putting this still together, and he said, son,
Speaker 2: this is your go cart. Don't touch the highway with it.
Speaker 2: And I got on the gold cart and I drove
Speaker 2: all the way down the road and I turned around,
Speaker 2: but them outside tires touched this thing that he considered
Speaker 2: the highway. I come back. He said, what'd you think?
Speaker 2: That's awesome? You know that's a cool deal. Get off,
Speaker 2: and he took it all apart and I never seen
Speaker 2: it again.
Speaker 1: Wow, because you broke the rules.
Speaker 2: Broke the rules.
Speaker 1: Wow, I'd tell you that's a good dad, and some boundaries.
Speaker 2: I mean so. And you know that was at a
Speaker 2: young age, that's nine, ten years old, and I understood
Speaker 2: at that point what the man said was what the
Speaker 2: man meant. And if I broke it, I paid the consequences,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 5: The dad.
Speaker 1: If Gary Nucomb were here, the believer himself, i'd tell
Speaker 1: this story. The most intense moments of my life would
Speaker 1: be when I was let's say I was eight or
Speaker 1: nine years old driving the truck on dirt roads. He'd
Speaker 1: let us drive. He was very serious dad. I don't
Speaker 1: know why. Maybe he had kids when he was in
Speaker 1: school that got killed in car wrecks and he was
Speaker 1: very concerned about us being good drivers and safe drivers.
Speaker 1: I mean like he coached us about that so much.
Speaker 1: So he let us drive on dirt roads and he'd
Speaker 1: be in the passenger seat and we'd be controlling the truck,
Speaker 1: you know, at some point after proving competency, and he
Speaker 1: would say, would be deer hunting, looking for deer signed
Speaker 1: he'd see a deer track on the road, or something
Speaker 1: would be in he'd say stop. And I remember just
Speaker 1: kind of like coming to a long stop.
Speaker 2: That's when the state troopers get mad at you.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah. And he would be like, I said stop
Speaker 1: the car. When I say stop, I mean stop. When
Speaker 1: I say turn, I mean turn. And I mean we
Speaker 1: learned real quick. You did exactly what he said, even
Speaker 1: if you didn't understand it. If he said stop, you stopped.
Speaker 1: Except Wills didn't squeak on dirt roads.
Speaker 2: So for the dad expert, I think that's where I've
Speaker 2: dropped the ball. I think that just like training bad comparison,
Speaker 2: But just like training a dog, you give them an inch,
Speaker 2: they're gonna take a mile, right. And I have never
Speaker 2: been real good at drawing that line. Is drawing that
Speaker 2: line important in your class?
Speaker 4: Absolutely? And First of all, I wouldn't say I'm the expert.
Speaker 4: I just say I'm a learner. And there's no perfect dads.
Speaker 4: You know, actually, Mom, Ben, we know you're perfect. What
Speaker 4: makes a great dad is somebody who's able to learn
Speaker 4: and reflect and make changes, even small changes. I think
Speaker 4: that's what makes a good dad become a great dad,
Speaker 4: because the world's full of good dads. I mean, honestly,
Speaker 4: I think ninety percent of the guys are good dads
Speaker 4: and love kids, doing the best. But when you think
Speaker 4: about sitting down, reflecting and making a practical change in
Speaker 4: your life, that's hard. It's hard work, and that's what
Speaker 4: this course we try to do. But we absolutely talk
Speaker 4: about boundaries and we talk about finding balance. So like
Speaker 4: some guys they might struggle with being way too harsh,
Speaker 4: way too strict. They just they can't build relationship for nothing,
Speaker 4: and that's gonna bite you in the end. And then
Speaker 4: you got other guys that struggle to set those boundaries
Speaker 4: and be consistent. So being a great dad's being aware, Okay,
Speaker 4: what's my natural tendency and trying to identify how to
Speaker 4: practically change that. That's what I'd say to that We've all.
Speaker 1: Got it in that awareness of yourself.
Speaker 5: Yep.
Speaker 1: And yeah, all of us have a tendency to either
Speaker 1: be too loose or too strong. Ye you go to
Speaker 1: one one side of the other and just being aware
Speaker 1: and knowing that probably somewhere in the middle.
Speaker 2: And I'm having you on our show. I would love
Speaker 2: to because I I think you'd be perfect on our
Speaker 2: show because our show is dominated by men listeners and
Speaker 2: the majority of them being a father, and and it
Speaker 2: will play right in with what our goal is. One
Speaker 2: you're a younger guy, and one of the values that
Speaker 2: we've tried to put on our show this season is
Speaker 2: to prove to the public that the younger generation is
Speaker 2: absolutely as strong as the older generation. Y'all just do
Speaker 2: stuff a little different. And because that's.
Speaker 1: Hey telling the name of your podcast, cooking.
Speaker 2: Up a story with Aaron and Joe's we drop a
Speaker 2: new one every Thursday and on all the all the
Speaker 2: things you can listen to them on and and we're
Speaker 2: a lot different than Clay's show. We are very open
Speaker 2: to listening to all.
Speaker 1: Kinds of things.
Speaker 2: But if you're a truck driver and you need three
Speaker 2: hours down the highway, tune in because it's a three
Speaker 2: hour show. But man, you fit in perfect to that,
Speaker 2: and and it's it's it's a characteristic because I work
Speaker 2: in construction industry and so I depend on young men
Speaker 2: to build America right. And one of the things that
Speaker 2: we deal with is that older guys say, young guys
Speaker 2: don't know how to work. Here's what I know. I
Speaker 2: know young guys. We've got to depend on them because
Speaker 2: they're going to fight for our freedom in this country
Speaker 2: and and and protect anybody that needs protecting. So we
Speaker 2: better respect them enough and treat them solid. But your
Speaker 2: dad and your grandpa and everybody. It's it's built into
Speaker 2: us to think that the next generation has done lost
Speaker 2: it right?
Speaker 3: Does not every generation feel every generation And so when
Speaker 3: you hear it, you just got to understood understand that
Speaker 3: we heard it and they heard it.
Speaker 2: And so it's just one of those deals. And technology
Speaker 2: plays a lot into it because y'all can do stuff
Speaker 2: faster than we could. I'm pretty good at that Google.
Speaker 2: But we think that because we don't see you breaking
Speaker 2: your back, that you ain't doing nothing, and so they
Speaker 2: call it lazy. You've heard it, right, and it's not
Speaker 2: the truth. It really ain't like it's just one of
Speaker 2: those deals to where we need a better bridge between
Speaker 2: the younger generation and until we get it, it don't
Speaker 2: be like every other generation, you know.
Speaker 1: So mm hmmm, yeah, you coming on stuff playing on
Speaker 1: it that's stuck. Yeah, man, I'll be listening in.
Speaker 2: So we got a couple to listen to.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I do shoot, man, Joe really does have a
Speaker 1: really interesting podcast. They do good.
Speaker 4: They do a good thing with the cube on Bear Grease.
Speaker 2: If I gave you a free squirrel? Is that worth
Speaker 2: another call you?
Speaker 5: You've landed in a good place here, sad class, doesn't it?
Speaker 1: Right on? That's awesome class.
Speaker 3: See a little something over there, that's a that's a
Speaker 3: sharp looking thing with your signature on what you going there?
Speaker 1: Oh? This is uh did you hear us talking about
Speaker 1: the son last I heard it?
Speaker 5: I heard?
Speaker 1: So this is this is the this is the acron
Speaker 1: grunt call. And they it's a it's made by Phelps.
Speaker 1: Phelps is a it's a meat eater company. Jason Phelps.
Speaker 1: Me and Jason Phelps worked for the same people. We're
Speaker 1: co workers. And we were in Mexico talking about deer
Speaker 1: calls and I said, man, I want a deer call.
Speaker 1: That's an inhale exhale grunt bleat deer call. And I'm
Speaker 1: telling the call master this and I don't think much
Speaker 1: about it, but I tell him some specifics that I
Speaker 1: wanted about it, and he's like, okay, okay, and then
Speaker 1: he makes this call and turns out it's there's nothing
Speaker 1: like it. There's not another inhale exhale grunt call in
Speaker 1: the market. I didn't realize that he had to overcome
Speaker 1: some real, uh engineering challenges to make a call that
Speaker 1: would do that. I thought I was asking him to
Speaker 1: do something that I just hadn't found yet, you know,
Speaker 1: in a call. But now these what I forgot to
Speaker 1: mention on the last couple of podcasts is that these
Speaker 1: are going to be for sale sometime around the first
Speaker 1: of September, so close to when this podcast comes out.
Speaker 1: But uh, yeah, for real, it's it's not it's not
Speaker 1: a gimmick. This is like a legit, really good call an. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's the acron Grunner. It's the acron Grunner because as
Speaker 1: as you all know, uh, when when the acrons fall
Speaker 1: in the early part of the season, that's when you
Speaker 1: can kill deer. So the acron the acron is the
Speaker 1: chicken nugget of the eastern deciduous forest. It's the pinnacle,
Speaker 1: pinnacle of the deer hunter, bear squirrel hunter's year. And
Speaker 1: it's the acron grunner. It's the deer hunter's call. It's uh.
Speaker 1: When you see the acrons fall, that's when you need
Speaker 1: to be blowing that call either way, sucker blow. That's amazing,
Speaker 1: that's pretty amazing. It made a white oak.
Speaker 5: Why were you intent on having in hell excel.
Speaker 1: Just so you didn't have to carry two calls? You
Speaker 1: typically had a grunt call and a bleak call that
Speaker 1: you had to carry and uh and in the early
Speaker 1: season the ring you wouldn't want to do a buck
Speaker 1: if you saw some doze that you're interested in shooting
Speaker 1: a buck. Grunt is not necessarily going to get them
Speaker 1: to come into you. A dough blea would, so you
Speaker 1: need the dope blea. A lot of guys use the cans,
Speaker 1: which are really good. Yeah, that primost can. That that
Speaker 1: call kind of revolutionized the deer call world with its simplicity.
Speaker 1: But this call makes a more in my opinion, a
Speaker 1: more robust, louder or soft. You have more control with
Speaker 1: this than that can, and and and it's and you
Speaker 1: don't have to keep up with a can.
Speaker 5: You know, I'd never use anything but the can. I
Speaker 5: didn't even think about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's all you can.
Speaker 2: I always start like a soup can with dried corn.
Speaker 1: In it, shake it around.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I just think man if I had a soup can
Speaker 2: with some dried corn, I just rattled this old deal
Speaker 2: and the deer would come a running.
Speaker 1: Work in Texas.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can put your name on that and probably
Speaker 2: sell a whole heap of them too, limited edition.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Squirrel cookoff Man September twenty third.
Speaker 2: September twenty third, in Springdale, Arkansas.
Speaker 3: I saw that you move locations.
Speaker 5: Oh okay, well yeah, it's in my neighborhood.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So you know, Arkansas Game and Fish put a
Speaker 2: pile of money into putting that place in Springdale.
Speaker 1: It's beautiful, it's a.
Speaker 2: Beautiful facility, and they're just not getting the traffic they need,
Speaker 2: and so they needed a circus act like myself health
Speaker 2: to come out to that deal and show people where
Speaker 2: it's at. And so on September twenty third, starting about
Speaker 2: nine o'clock in the morning, the teams will be doing
Speaker 2: what they do. And let me tell you We've got
Speaker 2: forty well qualified teams based off of the last time
Speaker 2: I was on Bear Grease. We brought in a lot
Speaker 2: of people that had never even heard of the squirrel cols.
Speaker 1: Really.
Speaker 2: Yeah, We've got a fellow coming from Kentucky that he
Speaker 2: claims he's number one fan of yours. He's bringing his
Speaker 2: Kentucky squirrels down, maybe in like an oak barrel or something,
Speaker 2: and he's he's going to bring his Kentucky squirrels in.
Speaker 2: We've got a team signed up from Massachusetts. We've got
Speaker 2: a team coming from Washington State. So when we claim
Speaker 2: we're a world championship, if those people in France or
Speaker 2: China or whatever want to come over and partake, they're
Speaker 2: more than welcome to you. But we're going to crown
Speaker 2: the next world championship or a champion on September twenty third.
Speaker 2: And this is big. It's gonna be big. We're doing
Speaker 2: squirrel cleaning competition. We're doing uh.
Speaker 1: Hey, can in the squirrel I've been meaning to ask
Speaker 1: you this. Can you bring your own implements for skinning?
Speaker 2: Yeah? You can't. What was the crazy thing that you said?
Speaker 1: Snippers? Oh? Yeah, snippers are good. Snippers are good now.
Speaker 2: But the problem is, Clay, is these squirrels have been
Speaker 2: in the freezer for a month and a half.
Speaker 1: You don't think that matters, not in the least. But
Speaker 1: I will don't. I don't want to make any big claims,
Speaker 1: but I can skin squirrel fast.
Speaker 2: I know you can't. I know you can't.
Speaker 1: But and the reason I know that it doesn't matter
Speaker 1: if they're frozen is a lot of times in the winter,
Speaker 1: come in late, come in late, and that squirrel's been
Speaker 1: you know, it's probably forty degrees outside, so you're not
Speaker 1: worried about the squirrel, and he's been in your pouch
Speaker 1: since nine o'clock that morning, and you skin him at
Speaker 1: six o'clock in the evening and he's hard as a rock.
Speaker 2: It's are you not? You're not playing that game on
Speaker 2: a fox squirrel.
Speaker 1: Oh you can do it just the same. I'm not
Speaker 1: saying it's it's easier with a warm one, no doubt, No,
Speaker 1: a warm one. I mean you can just you can.
Speaker 1: You can claim quick.
Speaker 2: We Clifton Jackson who works for Arkansas Game and Fish.
Speaker 2: He has the Jackson squirrel rifle. It's named after him. Uh,
Speaker 2: he's the reigning champion.
Speaker 1: How fast? Does he do it fast? Okay?
Speaker 2: Well, the reason why we don't have to stop watch
Speaker 2: what we it's it's you against somebody else.
Speaker 1: Oh really, you lose, You're gone, Hey man, you ought
Speaker 1: to start doing the stop. Actually, do you.
Speaker 2: Think Guinness would put us inside.
Speaker 1: Of a blunder the sun? Why not?
Speaker 5: You'll have your own.
Speaker 1: But then you can compare. You could you could actually
Speaker 1: crown a world champion, like a like a.
Speaker 2: World record a goal for somebody.
Speaker 1: I mean, and it would they would need to be
Speaker 1: squirrels of similar size and temperature.
Speaker 3: I'm thinking you could absolutely get Guinness out there.
Speaker 1: Now. Here's what's gonna happen though, and I'll go ahead
Speaker 1: and cut the mule off at the game, is that
Speaker 1: when I bring my clippers up there and beat everybody,
Speaker 1: they're gonna be like, oh he was using clippers. You know,
Speaker 1: you gotta say it's it's fully legal.
Speaker 2: Right now on the Bear Grease podcasts, you know, one
Speaker 2: of the most successful podcasts you can listen to. So,
Speaker 2: I mean, if I was gonna get it out, here's
Speaker 2: the joint to do it. You can use your clippers
Speaker 2: if you want to use your clippers. Okay, that being said,
Speaker 2: this ain't no walk in the park, Clay Nukele. This
Speaker 2: is a bona fide. I mean, have you ever been
Speaker 2: to a drag race? It's the same thing with a squirrel. Okay, okay,
Speaker 2: Not only do we have that, we have the world's
Speaker 2: it's always been the world's hottest wing eating competition, squirrel
Speaker 2: wing eating competition. We're gonna up that this year and
Speaker 2: we're going whole squirrel.
Speaker 1: What do you mean you gotta eat the whole squirrel.
Speaker 2: We're gonna do a single whole fried squirrel with lava
Speaker 2: poured all over the top of it. I love it
Speaker 2: and whoever can eat it, and I don't need anybody
Speaker 2: choking or do anything stupid like that. But we're going
Speaker 2: to take away points if you let a little bit
Speaker 2: of protein on the bone, you know. So we're going
Speaker 2: to have that event. We also were debuting a white
Speaker 2: Tail movie at the game and fish Yeah, yeah, yeah that.
Speaker 2: A bunch of people have spoken in. Yeah. We're having
Speaker 2: a youth bb gun competition in the morning where they'll
Speaker 2: be shooting at squirrel targets. There's all kinds of stuff
Speaker 2: to do. The only thing I'll say is our parking
Speaker 2: is really lacking so you may have to find a
Speaker 2: place and skip down the road a little bit.
Speaker 3: But kind of it's kind of out there. It's kind
Speaker 3: of an unusual spot.
Speaker 1: And an unusual spot hard to get to that. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's like off the inn.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it's a The goal, the goal behind it
Speaker 2: this year is to really promote that facility and show
Speaker 2: people because it's an upland facility, they're trying to put
Speaker 2: habits at end, really build back the prairie, get the
Speaker 2: quell population going. And you know that's how nature is is.
Speaker 2: If you try to rebuild that Upland bird, everything else
Speaker 2: is going to be more successful along the way. Game
Speaker 2: official has been spectacular.
Speaker 1: The Brent, So, Brent Reeves is going to be a judge.
Speaker 2: He's been training.
Speaker 1: Oh, Brent trains year round.
Speaker 2: He'll pull out that case pocket knife and try to.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, So so Brent's gonna be there, and and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be there. I'm not I'm not I'm not
Speaker 1: like making I'm not like doing anything. Yeah, but I will.
Speaker 1: I'm planning to be there. Joe, Okay, well we expect
Speaker 1: you to be there. Yes, I want to be there.
Speaker 1: I want you to be there too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean your little documentary you made, was it
Speaker 2: one thousand dollars squirrel? Hundred dollars square, one hundred dollars squirrel?
Speaker 2: Y'all seen it? He pulled a documentary when they were
Speaker 2: out on them mules riding around And what was the
Speaker 2: premise of that deal.
Speaker 1: Well, we were eating. We killed two squirrels in the morning,
Speaker 1: a hunting and my buddy said, that's one hundred dollars squirrel.
Speaker 1: It costs us two hundred dollars to drive out here.
Speaker 1: And uh shot, as you know, shot two boxes of
Speaker 1: shells and killed two squirrels.
Speaker 2: And that's kind of the moral of the whole squirrel cookoff,
Speaker 2: as you're taking these squirrels that are the smallest of
Speaker 2: game and you're turning them into a premium meal. And
Speaker 2: so if you can do it with squirrel, you can
Speaker 2: thank sure to do it with a bear. There ain't
Speaker 2: no doubt you could do it with an elk. And
Speaker 2: and just enjoy enjoy the gifts that we have. So yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm looking forward to seeing everybody out there.
Speaker 5: I'm gonna be there. That's that's in my neighborhood too,
Speaker 5: I'll be there.
Speaker 1: That's a lot of.
Speaker 3: Fun facility hosts so much like educational stuff, to the
Speaker 3: to the post. My wife is going there tomorrow. They're
Speaker 3: hosting a charcooterie board building class. My wife's gonna learn
Speaker 3: how to do it. No carpentry stuff. It's it's amazing
Speaker 3: you could find fishing stuff. The Arkansas Game and Fish
Speaker 3: has done a really great child.
Speaker 2: I think most Game and Fish organizations are suffering on
Speaker 2: trying to get people back in to hunting and fishing.
Speaker 2: And so they got it. They got to depend on photography,
Speaker 2: and they've got to depend on the culinary side, because
Speaker 2: if you can get someone through their stomach, you can,
Speaker 2: dang sure that's a pretty quick trip right to their brain,
Speaker 2: right and teach them the value of what.
Speaker 1: Hey, I got it, I got it. If we're talking
Speaker 1: about game fish, Austin Booth the new director of the
Speaker 1: Game and Fish. He's been there for about two years now.
Speaker 1: I mean, I didn't know the guy before he became
Speaker 1: the director. After the after he became a Director's when
Speaker 1: I met him. It's not like we're longtime friends. But
Speaker 1: he man, he's he's a heck of a guy. Well
Speaker 1: he's a heck of a leader. It takes youth right.
Speaker 1: He man his uh, his leadership skills with the department.
Speaker 1: I mean he's grabbed that thing by the horns, the
Speaker 1: Arkansas Game and Fish and has has doing some incredible stuff.
Speaker 2: They they've got a big piece of property they got
Speaker 2: to worry about, which is the whole state. And in
Speaker 2: that there's a whole bunch of smiles that can be
Speaker 2: developed in this state if people just go out and
Speaker 2: take some of this free entertainment. And uh, it's available
Speaker 2: in every state. I mean, you're going up to Alaska
Speaker 2: here before too long. If you were ever bored in Alaska,
Speaker 2: there ain't no hope for you. That ain't no hope
Speaker 2: for you.
Speaker 1: Man, except the winter time when it doesn't get daylight.
Speaker 1: That's the only time. Yeah, all sorts of stuff.
Speaker 2: There's things to do.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. So the bear grease render on the Burgers
Speaker 1: was the introduction. Yeah, welcome to the bear grease Render.
Speaker 1: Now we're going to talk about last week's episode of
Speaker 1: the Mississippi. This is the fourth episode in the Mississippi series. Man,
Speaker 1: I had some people that were like, Man, I wish
Speaker 1: you'd do four more.
Speaker 3: I want to hear about the coastal erosion and the
Speaker 3: nitrogen bloom. I want you said, you skipped right over it,
Speaker 3: just said I'm not gonna well, but I was hoping.
Speaker 1: There's so much. And then I was talking to my dad,
Speaker 1: Gary Biliver Nukam my biggest fan, and he's like, Clay,
Speaker 1: I'm tired of Missippi River stuff. No, no, it's he
Speaker 1: was like, he said, it's interesting. But I you know, I.
Speaker 3: Like that about Bear Grease. I mean, like I'm probably
Speaker 3: like a part of the atypical crowd for Bear Grease,
Speaker 3: but I found this series fascinating. Really, Oh yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 3: And I think he really brought like to the forefront
Speaker 3: of my understanding why the Mississippi River is important, how
Speaker 3: it impacts like the country as a whole. Like I really,
Speaker 3: I have enjoyed every episode.
Speaker 1: What would you have known about the river before this?
Speaker 3: I knew it was, well, you know what's funny. I
Speaker 3: was about said, I knew it was the longest river
Speaker 3: in America, but actually that's the Missouri.
Speaker 1: River, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I didn't know much, I guess. I mean,
Speaker 3: I know, I drove over it and it doesn't look
Speaker 3: very pretty. But that was one of the things that
Speaker 3: I really loved about the series, and Specifically, this episode
Speaker 3: was talking about the health of the river because you
Speaker 3: do have this impression when you drive over it, Like
Speaker 3: the areas I drive over would be near Memphis, right,
Speaker 3: it's a I mean everywhere around it. It just kind
Speaker 3: of looks muddy and the banks don't look that great,
Speaker 3: and it just kind of you get a bad impression.
Speaker 1: And see, that is when you talk about natural systems
Speaker 1: and you talk about beauty. If an alien came from
Speaker 1: another planet and stepped in.
Speaker 2: They always go to the desert.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, good point, Joe. Yeah, like what would they
Speaker 1: perceive as beauty, Like what what would you know? Would
Speaker 1: they look at the rocky mountains and say that's beautiful,
Speaker 1: or would they look at this muddy, dark river system
Speaker 1: and say it was beautiful? To me, a natural system
Speaker 1: that is functioning like it was before humans got too
Speaker 1: involved is beautiful. Yeah, you know. So, I mean like
Speaker 1: when you cross over the Mississippi River on a bridge
Speaker 1: and look and see this big flat water that looks
Speaker 1: like it's still, but it's actually screaming down towards the
Speaker 1: Gulf of Mexico. That is equivalent in terms of natural
Speaker 1: systems that impact the landscape to an Appalachian Mountain Range,
Speaker 1: a rocky mountain range, the Ozarks, even on a smaller scale,
Speaker 1: I mean, and just to appreciate it, is like that
Speaker 1: is a dynamic, wild, ancient, hard to control, dominating piece
Speaker 1: of a geologic feature of the Earth. That is like,
Speaker 1: we'll be here longer than we will be here when
Speaker 1: we're along gone, that river will be here.
Speaker 2: I'm like, I'm like you man. When he talked about
Speaker 2: the health of the river. Yeah, I think we get
Speaker 2: so shocked because when we open up our game and
Speaker 2: Fish book and it talks about, well, you should probably
Speaker 2: want eat fish like twice a month or whatever, lead
Speaker 2: mercury all of this, and we think about the runoff
Speaker 2: that's going inside of it. For him to state that
Speaker 2: the nitrogen and the things that were actually we're not
Speaker 2: bad for that part of the river, they're bad for
Speaker 2: the ocean right for the golf to hear the fishing
Speaker 2: store to understand that a flathead isn't its valuable, Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's a blue cat. I think a lot of our
Speaker 2: listeners who aren't from someplace that borders the river would
Speaker 2: find that eating buffalo, if they even know what a
Speaker 2: buffalo is. Buffalo ribs are real good, and it's kind
Speaker 2: of just like a southern delicacy. Mm hmmm. They also
Speaker 2: they're kind of like a drum, you know, a buffalo is.
Speaker 1: It's a big, scally rough fish. I mean, you wouldn't
Speaker 1: think people be eating.
Speaker 2: But they're they're good. It was. It was an excellent series.
Speaker 2: I learned a lot about the river. The two hundred
Speaker 2: feet of top soil.
Speaker 5: Yeble, because how much.
Speaker 2: Top soil do we have here? Inch?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, pretty rough, Yeah, you know the top That's
Speaker 1: a good place to insert a a a dendum when
Speaker 1: you talk about I kind of gave some If you
Speaker 1: actually listened to what exactly I said about top soil,
Speaker 1: it would be a little bit contradictory because top people
Speaker 1: use top soil in different ways. A soil scientist would
Speaker 1: not say that the topsoil layer of the alluvial floodplain
Speaker 1: of the Mississippi was two hundred feet.
Speaker 2: Deep because it's not on the top.
Speaker 1: Well, no, because the top soil technically would just be
Speaker 1: like the surface that was impacted by organic matter. And
Speaker 1: probably some of the deepest top soils in the world
Speaker 1: are like forty to fifty feet deep. But the alluvial
Speaker 1: deposit made by the river over the last gazillion years
Speaker 1: in places is three hundred and fifty feet deep. But
Speaker 1: it's not all top soil. It actually would be like
Speaker 1: if you dug down one hundred and fifty foot and
Speaker 1: brought that soil up to the surface, it would be
Speaker 1: of a different constituency than the soil right on.
Speaker 2: The what's our guy from Mississippi.
Speaker 1: Hank Burdon See? I let him say what he said
Speaker 1: because I knew what he was thinking. He said, the
Speaker 1: average soil depth top sol depth the Mississippi River Lousville
Speaker 1: Floodplain is like one hundred and eighty feet deep.
Speaker 2: If Hank doesn't get like a TV show to where
Speaker 2: he can have thirty minutes of conversation across the globe,
Speaker 2: we're missing out as a world.
Speaker 1: Hank, Hank. I love Hank Burdon. He is He's everything
Speaker 1: that you feel like he is.
Speaker 2: I watched him on a YouTube video singing a song
Speaker 2: about a hot Tomolly, have you seen nothing?
Speaker 1: No, don't surprise me at all?
Speaker 2: Yeah, variety, And I thought, you know, Hank needs a
Speaker 2: whole album.
Speaker 1: Yeah you know who else?
Speaker 3: You know who else was really I mean quite capturing,
Speaker 3: was mister Bill. I mean, yeah, Bill lancash, Next time
Speaker 3: Meat Eater does another campfire stories, you guys need to
Speaker 3: include his his story about getting tossed out of his boat.
Speaker 3: I mean, that was a great story.
Speaker 1: Man, Bill, Bill Lancaster, this is behind the scenes burgery stuff.
Speaker 1: He well, move back up. The hardest part of my
Speaker 1: job is getting the right people to talk to you.
Speaker 1: Some of the right people want to talk to you,
Speaker 1: like Joe Wilson and Hank Burdine like they're ready to talk.
Speaker 1: Sometimes the right people don't want to talk to you.
Speaker 1: Bill was he was I could tell he well, not
Speaker 1: that I could tell. He told me like he wasn't
Speaker 1: so sure that he should talk to me, just because
Speaker 1: it's like Bill is, he didn't listen to podcasts.
Speaker 2: He's been doing all right without you for seventy years exactly.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: It's like he's not doing this for show. He's not
Speaker 1: doing this to show off what he does. He literally
Speaker 1: fishes almost every day, has for the last since nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty four, and fish before that a lot from nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty nine, but professionally for a living every week of
Speaker 1: the year since nineteen eighty four. Is he a one
Speaker 1: man showing up? He doesn't. He doesn't take anybody with him.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: You know a lot of shrimp people, shrimp boat captains
Speaker 2: were like that. They were just one guy on a
Speaker 2: shrimp boat. And you that's like the life of a boxer.
Speaker 2: You're the one who determines if you're winning or losing. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And that's what I got out of him. His work
Speaker 2: ethics unbelievable.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and then uh two he had two
Speaker 1: stories about finding dead bodies in the river. You did
Speaker 1: second one. I mean it was just you know one.
Speaker 1: You heard them all.
Speaker 2: How about the comparison to Tracy Lawrence.
Speaker 1: Did you see the picture of it?
Speaker 2: I don't think I may. Does he look like Tracy Lawrence?
Speaker 1: That's what I immediately thought. What I like?
Speaker 2: Is this the thin, youthful Tracy Lawrence or the chubby,
Speaker 2: the young, a young, thin Tracy Lawrence with a mustache
Speaker 2: and the and the hair. Paint me a Birmingham, a
Speaker 2: Birmingham Tracy Lawrence or.
Speaker 1: After well, I don't know, I don't know when he
Speaker 1: was in Birmingham.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's his song you Paint Me a Birmingham.
Speaker 1: Shoot, I don't even remember that one, young Tracy Lawrence.
Speaker 1: It's a compliment to mister Bill handsome handsome fella. So,
Speaker 1: mister Bell, if you're listening that you're a handsome man.
Speaker 1: Bill Bill Bill for rell.
Speaker 2: A podcast A father.
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, he was one of my He was so
Speaker 1: fun to talk to. And uh, you know, somebody that's
Speaker 1: dedicated that much of their life to anything is going
Speaker 1: to be good at it. You know, you ever fish
Speaker 1: the river the Mississippi, I never have never had. We fished.
Speaker 2: We fished the Mississippi three or four times. And just
Speaker 2: like they were talking for what catfish, things with things
Speaker 2: with lips, I can tell you. One night we set
Speaker 2: up trot lines by a coal dog somewhere by Rosedale, Mississippi,
Speaker 2: or a grain dog, I guess, you know. And there
Speaker 2: was a light and there was some grain floating on
Speaker 2: the water and we could see things popping and above
Speaker 2: and son, this is where we're going to do it.
Speaker 2: So we set out a hundred hook line. We went out, fished,
Speaker 2: come back, pulled this line. We maybe had three or
Speaker 2: four three or four hooks without a fish on there,
Speaker 2: but every hook had a fish. And let me tell
Speaker 2: you what they were. They were about sixteen inch gar. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it was miserable because there was just a garfish on
Speaker 2: every hook. But we've caught some big fish. Man sixty
Speaker 2: seventy pound blue cats out that.
Speaker 3: It's amazing.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 3: My wife heard that and she was like, we have
Speaker 3: to go. We need to find somebody to take us.
Speaker 1: Your wife listens Tosh.
Speaker 3: And she likes to fish.
Speaker 1: We should have had her on the podcast.
Speaker 3: So she so Kolby, who was supposed to come today.
Speaker 3: He he went noodling and got a flathead catfish. He
Speaker 3: gave us some of that and my wife cooked it
Speaker 3: up and she was like, I just want access to this.
Speaker 3: I was like, we can go find.
Speaker 1: Some cat I like it when a lady gets so
Speaker 1: dead set on meat that she's like ruthless.
Speaker 2: That's my kind of woman.
Speaker 3: Well, she's going for it for catfish.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I see that in people's eyes. I'm like, this
Speaker 1: woman would break the law for a cat.
Speaker 4: Austin that my wife had never known how to cook venison,
Speaker 4: and once she started figuring out her own stick and
Speaker 4: what she wanted to do, she's like, get your butt
Speaker 4: in the woods. You know, it just totally changed the
Speaker 4: whole you know, I go hunting this weekend, It's like
Speaker 4: the wood.
Speaker 1: What are you at home.
Speaker 2: That's my excuse to get to go to Alaska every year.
Speaker 2: My wife likes eating that halibit, So I ain't going
Speaker 2: to Alaska for myself. Bullys is servant leaver lead right
Speaker 2: here trying to U beat this poor economy. You know,
Speaker 2: you provide for your family. Yeah, gotta go lass than
Speaker 2: number three.
Speaker 3: Uh, Claire, I have a I have like a slightly
Speaker 3: anecdotal story about experience with the Mississippi. So I I'm
Speaker 3: into bicycling, right, and I do two bicycle touring, and
Speaker 3: so last year I actually went on a bicycle tour
Speaker 3: from Kansas City to Saint Louis and half of that
Speaker 3: when I met Booneville was along the Missouri River.
Speaker 1: Met Boonville. Boonville, Yeah where Missouri. Okay, boon Missouri, and
Speaker 1: you go from. I bet every state has a booth
Speaker 1: east of the Mississippi and touches the Mississippi River has
Speaker 1: a boon Yeah, we have a Boonville in Arkanitas. That
Speaker 1: sounds about right. This one has.
Speaker 3: I mean it is where the trail that I was
Speaker 3: riding goes over the Missouri and it is a huge bridge.
Speaker 3: I mean, but I've run.
Speaker 1: Along like a bicycle bridge. It's a car bridge, a traffic.
Speaker 2: Bridge, bicycle bridges. I'm moving.
Speaker 3: Here is the kind of like roughly related part of
Speaker 3: my story, which is we did that. It was an
Speaker 3: amazing and I have planned this year. I planned, I
Speaker 3: don't know when I'm going to do it, a biking
Speaker 3: trip from northwest Arkansas down to Arkansas City, very near Greenville,
Speaker 3: and it goes along Arkansas State is builting the Delta
Speaker 3: Heritage Trail State Park, which is beautiful and right along
Speaker 3: the Mississippi River. Goes from like West Helena, West Memphis
Speaker 3: down to Arkansas City. So it's like eighty five miles
Speaker 3: and there's a section in the middle where the White River,
Speaker 3: Arkansas River all meet the Mississippi River, and there is
Speaker 3: there is not a bridge for seventy miles. And I
Speaker 3: was frustrated. I spent days on like GPS apps and
Speaker 3: maps just like hot in this modern day of twenty
Speaker 3: twenty three, can I not get across this body of water?
Speaker 1: And you called me. I called you.
Speaker 3: I called the State park and I said, hey, like
Speaker 3: I know that the trail's not finished. You got an
Speaker 3: incomplete section, Like how can I cross this body of water?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: So it's basically built along the the levees, but also
Speaker 3: along some old railroad trestles. Yeah, there's a beautiful section
Speaker 3: that's that's down there near the Trust and Holder Wetlands,
Speaker 3: And that's the section that's incomplete, and it's basic based
Speaker 3: around this trestle. And uh so one day I will
Speaker 3: ride it. But I just could not believe that in
Speaker 3: the year twenty twenty three, I called the state agency
Speaker 3: and said, how can I get across this like four.
Speaker 1: Miles the same problem that Hernando to.
Speaker 3: So exactly And she told me, She's like, you're gonna
Speaker 3: have to go seventy miles around. That's the closest bridge.
Speaker 3: And I said, hey, do you think that I could like,
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm on the other side of the state.
Speaker 3: Do you know any I see there's hunting clubs? Do
Speaker 3: you know anybody that I could like, ferry me across?
Speaker 3: This is a soft pitch to all the bears. Is
Speaker 3: there anybody give him a ferry? Got told. I got
Speaker 3: told that that was a lost cause because apparently the
Speaker 3: hunting clubs were not a fan of this, of this
Speaker 3: burgeoning state park, which made the section of your podcast
Speaker 3: talking about the hunting clubs being this wildlife mecca really
Speaker 3: interesting because of the story kind of conflict of like, well,
Speaker 3: I want access to that.
Speaker 1: Two points of conflict there you're there, Well, I don't
Speaker 1: even want to get into this. But the conflict that
Speaker 1: you're stepping on that you wouldn't have even known is
Speaker 1: that you know public lands there there is conflict around
Speaker 1: kind of who controls those, and so there there's a
Speaker 1: it's so it's such a big topic. It's hard to
Speaker 1: want to talk about. But hunters are paying users of
Speaker 1: of of the land that we hunt because we buy
Speaker 1: licenses that go to do stuff for that land. A
Speaker 1: bicyclist doesn't do.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'll pull out my game and fish card and.
Speaker 2: Fishing pull on your back.
Speaker 1: Well you're a hunter, but but but as a bicycler,
Speaker 1: like using public land, you don't have to buy a
Speaker 1: bicycle license. And so there's there's this there's this conflict,
Speaker 1: the second conflict that we could get into. I had
Speaker 1: somebody reach out to me and say, Clay, thanks for
Speaker 1: highlighting in a positive way the land inside the Mississippi
Speaker 1: Levees because no doubt that is some of the highest
Speaker 1: priced land on planet Earth. I had no idea.
Speaker 2: Oh, those clubs along the river, Yeah, there's one hundred
Speaker 2: thousand dollars memberships.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh Joe, that's that's outdated.
Speaker 2: Is one hundred thousand?
Speaker 5: Really?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 1: There are clubs down there that first of all, someone
Speaker 1: has to die and they don't have to have an
Speaker 1: air that would inherit the club membership. I personally know
Speaker 1: clubs that you couldn't buy into for two hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty grand, no kidding, I mean version of like Yankees
Speaker 1: like this, so that that to to a god that
Speaker 1: just doesn't in my opinion. And now I could pitch
Speaker 1: the other side of this and have a good argument
Speaker 1: against it, but I just don't see it that way.
Speaker 1: And I got no steak I wish like crazy. I
Speaker 1: got no steak in the inside levees of the Mississippi
Speaker 1: River anywhere. Like, I'm not a member of a club,
Speaker 1: don't have any connection to them. But they would say
Speaker 1: that is a rich man's thing that is unattainable for
Speaker 1: the common man to hunt inside the levee.
Speaker 2: So there was a guy that I was working with
Speaker 2: through the Squirrel Cookoff ten years ago, and he reached
Speaker 2: out to me. He wanted to write a coffee table
Speaker 2: book based off of all the hunting clubs from about
Speaker 2: where the start of the levees are down to Baton Rouge.
Speaker 2: And because the history of those structures, you know, these
Speaker 2: are old plantations. There's presidents and governors and every banker.
Speaker 2: You know, it's been inside these clubs, and we wanted
Speaker 2: to do a book, coffee table book showing the history
Speaker 2: and their favorite meal at that club, because hunting club
Speaker 2: is a place to eat, socialize and maybe shoot something,
Speaker 2: you know, and so the history behind those things is
Speaker 2: phenomenal and it's hidden history.
Speaker 3: I would not have known anything about it. I mean again,
Speaker 3: I'm kind of the atypical listener, but it would have
Speaker 3: been completely invisible to me, except I was just trying
Speaker 3: to say, how do I get from point A to
Speaker 3: point B? There is not a single road.
Speaker 2: Well, you're on a bicycle.
Speaker 1: Bicycles don't do good than swamping.
Speaker 2: You know that that rub between bicycles and all kinds
Speaker 2: of things is happening in our state. And there's actually
Speaker 2: an initiative in Benton County to where they're branding dirt
Speaker 2: roads yes as gravel roads. Very cannot be paid and
Speaker 2: it's a for bicyclers. Yeah, and so it's a unique idea.
Speaker 2: The idea is is in order to preserve the farmland
Speaker 2: and the wild lands in that area, if you don't
Speaker 2: pave that dirt road, therefore there will not be a subdivision.
Speaker 1: It stays rural.
Speaker 2: And you could imagine who's behind this, some big money.
Speaker 2: And so this is just in the last month I
Speaker 2: actually cooked for that group. A buddy of mine, Wes Evans,
Speaker 2: is part of it. He's a big time farmer in
Speaker 2: the county. And it's hard to change that paradigm that
Speaker 2: we're going to accept bicycles. And so this grassroots effort
Speaker 2: is there and now the.
Speaker 1: Way, now, who wants it to stay rural? The farmers,
Speaker 1: the bicyclers, well, and the farmers. You know, most of
Speaker 1: the farmers could sell their property right now and never
Speaker 1: have to worry about it again with the price of
Speaker 1: real estate. They're holding onto the farm because that's their
Speaker 1: history and their heritage. And so in order to maintain
Speaker 1: that they can have their animals without some person in
Speaker 1: the eighteen hundred square foot house living next door to
Speaker 1: them complaining they're getting with the bicycle groups.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I say, somebody unlike Yeah, gravel is like kind
Speaker 3: of the thing right now for for bicycling, because it's
Speaker 3: more of an adventure. You get out into more of
Speaker 3: the rural areas, and honestly, you don't have to worry
Speaker 3: as much about getting killed by a car man.
Speaker 1: It's I didn't mean.
Speaker 3: I didn't mean to turn this into the bicycling podcast,
Speaker 3: but that was my access point to appreciating the area
Speaker 3: around the Mississippi River, the rural areas, the levees and
Speaker 3: all the stuff that I would. I'm really excited about
Speaker 3: visiting the Delta Heritage Trail State Park once it is completed,
Speaker 3: which I believe is sometime in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: So I what about the Sultana Museum.
Speaker 3: Yes, I talked about it, and I had never heard
Speaker 3: of that, but that sounded awesome, you said.
Speaker 1: Fel Yeah, it's out in a private I mean, it's
Speaker 1: on private land. You can't go see it, but the
Speaker 1: Sultana is in somebody's sweeping field.
Speaker 2: I'm about the tie in with Holt Caller on your
Speaker 2: One of my favorite episodes or a series was Whulk Collier,
Speaker 2: right and knowing that his killing of the bear and
Speaker 2: the deer fed the people that built that levee system.
Speaker 1: Built the railroads and the levee system.
Speaker 2: And then you got the nineteen twenty seven flood, which
Speaker 2: I was aware of the flood because it even affected
Speaker 2: us in northwest Arkansas when the White River backed up
Speaker 2: and flooded. But that flood, being the worst flood, killed
Speaker 2: more people than any flood that we've ever had. And
Speaker 2: most Americans don't know anything about nineteen twenty seven.
Speaker 3: I didn't I and I had heard that there was
Speaker 3: a flood back in the day, and that's about as
Speaker 3: much as I knew.
Speaker 1: Hey, let me do something here. I want to go back.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about the two thousand and eleven flood.
Speaker 1: We're going to hold the flood stuff. I got to
Speaker 1: go back to my comments about the Mississippi River and
Speaker 1: have to finish a thought that's really important. I think
Speaker 1: it's important. It's the whole rich guy inside the levee thing.
Speaker 1: And yeah, the land inside the levees for hunting is
Speaker 1: not accessible to just average people. It's just not. And
Speaker 1: it's not that everybody that hunts theres rich, that's not
Speaker 1: it either. It's just they know a guy well, A
Speaker 1: lot of the guys that have memberships in those clubs
Speaker 1: aren't rich at all necessarily, They've just had memberships in
Speaker 1: the clubs when they were not valuable. And that's the point. Hunting,
Speaker 1: recreational hunting has made that land extremely valuable, more valuable
Speaker 1: than the timber. I wish I had made this point
Speaker 1: more clear. Y'all can tell me if it was clear.
Speaker 1: Timber companies owned all that land because it was not
Speaker 1: valuable for farming, it was not valuable for houses and living.
Speaker 1: Because it was inside the levees, it could flood. So
Speaker 1: timber company owned all the land from Baton Rouge up
Speaker 1: to you know where the levees ended around Saint Louis
Speaker 1: or well, from Memphis, let's just say Memphis to Baton Rouge.
Speaker 1: Timber companies owned it. Timber companies are gonna do whatever
Speaker 1: it takes to make money. They're gonna cut the cut
Speaker 1: timber heavily. There came a tipping point when the cultural
Speaker 1: value of recreational hunting became more valuable the RD than
Speaker 1: the timber. And at that point, that's when all that
Speaker 1: land and there's still some timber company land inside the levees,
Speaker 1: but not near as much as there was before. Like
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 2: These islands are what twenty five thousand square feet. I mean,
Speaker 2: they're a huge, huge.
Speaker 1: Oh there's hundreds of islands on out there too that
Speaker 1: are literally islands of the river. But Point being the
Speaker 1: recreational hunting value of that land became more value than
Speaker 1: the timber it was bought by these private clubs. And
Speaker 1: in the nineteen eight eighties you could have got into
Speaker 1: an l primo Mississippi River hunting club for probably pennies
Speaker 1: on the dollar of what it's worth now, So you
Speaker 1: didn't have to be a rich gut you see what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. So if my family had been down there
Speaker 1: within an hour of the river and we'd been like, heck,
Speaker 1: we'll just become a member of Diamond Point, and we'd
Speaker 1: have bought into that. Today that membership might be worth
Speaker 1: one hundred thousand war dollars. Let me say this though,
Speaker 1: but I say to somebody that would say that's bad
Speaker 1: because there's this whole idea that we're becoming more like
Speaker 1: Europe where it's a pay to play game for hunting,
Speaker 1: I would say, in this case, which was such a specific, unique,
Speaker 1: delicate Riparian zone of one of the greatest rivers, in
Speaker 1: the world. I don't care who's making it healthy.
Speaker 2: As long as it's healthy. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So it's like, bro, I salute and love watching Will
Speaker 1: Primos hunt inside the levees of the Mississippi River and
Speaker 1: kill John Deere. I love hearing the stories and and
Speaker 1: and at different times I'll ply, I mean, I'm supposed
Speaker 1: to go hunt inside the levees. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: this this year.
Speaker 2: What kind of fall will you be using?
Speaker 1: I'll be using.
Speaker 2: But don't you don't you think that not only that
Speaker 2: particular area of hunting clubs. You know, guys used to
Speaker 2: be able to scrap together some money and go out
Speaker 2: and buy a piece of property and start a hunting club.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's so far out of reach for people
Speaker 2: these days. Working men, you know, common working men, because
Speaker 2: there's men that work, work hard and make a lot
Speaker 2: of money, the common working with these social media influencers.
Speaker 2: I say, I had a deal that made dads better.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I was hanging out with a podcaster and stuff, and
Speaker 2: we decided that we were going to buy us a
Speaker 2: hunting club. And hunting club's got to be for or
Speaker 2: five hundred acres or you know, it probably ain't worth it.
Speaker 2: That's that's a million bucks or better. Now in Arkansas. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, it's it's just out of reach unless you
Speaker 2: have so many members that at that point the population
Speaker 2: of hunters, that's the.
Speaker 1: Value would be less because of so many people.
Speaker 3: I don't know what public access to hunting inside the
Speaker 3: levees is like, but that's one of the reasons that
Speaker 3: I like seeing things like the Delt Heritage Trail State Park,
Speaker 3: which obviously you can't hunt in the state park work
Speaker 3: for them, but times that Arkansas even fish in Springdale too,
Speaker 3: We're gonna hit all of it. No, I like seeing that.
Speaker 3: I don't know what public access is like that.
Speaker 1: Along the Mississippi River, there is some public land that
Speaker 1: touches the river, but not a lot. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: the vast majority of anything from Memphis to Baton Rouge
Speaker 1: is going to be private land.
Speaker 2: If y'all ever just stood there and watched the barges
Speaker 2: going up the river, I mean they're pushing forty six
Speaker 2: barges up a river with one engine. It's an amazing thing.
Speaker 2: And if you actually think about how many semi trucks
Speaker 2: that would have took for rail cars that river, I
Speaker 2: think ninety percent of all of our agriculture comes down
Speaker 2: that river. Wow, I mean all of our grains everything.
Speaker 2: And the unique thing is like, was it early this
Speaker 2: year or last year? When it was this year when
Speaker 2: the river was going dry? Right, it was making national
Speaker 2: news all the time, and we'd watch the news and think,
Speaker 2: boy in Memphis is getting hammered. That river is going
Speaker 2: to come up. That water comes from Ohio that fills
Speaker 2: up Memphis. It has nothing to do with how much
Speaker 2: rain is coming through Arkansas. It's the Ohio Valley is
Speaker 2: where that water is troughed down. It comes down the
Speaker 2: river and feeds the Gulf, and it's it's our biggest highway. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I got a.
Speaker 3: I have a barge story that wasn't on the Mississippi,
Speaker 3: but I grew up in the Gulf coast of Florida
Speaker 3: and there was an intercoastal waterway built between the Choctahatchie
Speaker 3: Bay and a Bay and Panama City. They would move
Speaker 3: cargo via barges, you know, inland, and so they just
Speaker 3: dug it out in the middle of nowhere. And so
Speaker 3: they threw the sand out. You know, Florida's flat, but
Speaker 3: they threw the sand in these great heaps. So we
Speaker 3: would go when I was fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, camp on
Speaker 3: the side of what felt like a mountain to a
Speaker 3: Florida and right, it's probably a thirty foot drop down
Speaker 3: to this.
Speaker 2: To the thirty feet above sea level.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I know Florida.
Speaker 1: I have a distinct memory.
Speaker 3: I went out there with some high school friends and
Speaker 3: we camped out overnight and we cut down a tree
Speaker 3: and we with hatchets, like, you know, just totally out
Speaker 3: of our debt. But we were having a great time
Speaker 3: and we uh each catalog were carrying it along the
Speaker 3: bank at probably two in the morning, just having a
Speaker 3: great time, and a bar is coming and of course
Speaker 3: that wake just is immense, even in this especially in
Speaker 3: that small and so we all started hoofing it and
Speaker 3: there was a down tree and uh we were trying
Speaker 3: to like hoist logs over this tree, and we were
Speaker 3: the barge getting closer and we're sixteen and we're freaking out.
Speaker 1: That barge were in the water. No, we're on the bank.
Speaker 3: There's clothes, yeah, and it's not going to drag us out,
Speaker 3: but it's gonna get us wet, right, sixteen man, Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, having a great time and that barge points
Speaker 3: that million looming spotlight on us, and we are in
Speaker 3: the middle of nowhere, and I have this log on
Speaker 3: my shoulder and I was kind of a bigger kid,
Speaker 3: and I'm struggling to get up, and this barge pilot
Speaker 3: gets on his loud speaker and goes, go, go go.
Speaker 1: I got to the top of ya. It was the
Speaker 1: best things. That's my barge story.
Speaker 2: I loved it was It was an awesome series. Clay,
Speaker 2: it really was good. Four was probably the right number.
Speaker 1: I'd love it well, Jose with Gary's like, I get
Speaker 1: a little tired of the river. I like the diversity
Speaker 1: of topics.
Speaker 4: Coming from a former history teacher, all always thought about
Speaker 4: the economics of waterways and that port and role that
Speaker 4: played in our history. But I learned a lot thinking
Speaker 4: about the geography, and it really it never hit me
Speaker 4: just how pivotable, how pivotable, how pivotal it is, just
Speaker 4: having it in the middle and America is so biodiverse
Speaker 4: and huge that we just don't think of that river
Speaker 4: substantially as say, like Egypt. So in two thousand and eight,
Speaker 4: I went to Egypt and I boated on the Noile River.
Speaker 4: Egypt is the Noile River. Now river is Egypt, Like
Speaker 4: that is the country. I mean, it's a desert. There
Speaker 4: would be nothing without that river. I've been far south
Speaker 4: in Egypt where you can stand on one side of
Speaker 4: the desert, look over the river valley and see the
Speaker 4: other desert. I mean, it's just ninety percent of people
Speaker 4: live right there in the in the valley and into
Speaker 4: the delta. But in America we take it for granted.
Speaker 4: And I think when I was listening to this, I
Speaker 4: was like, what would I take away from this if
Speaker 4: I lived in like this other distant part of the country,
Speaker 4: And I think I would become a lot more interested
Speaker 4: in the waterways around me. You know, if you lived
Speaker 4: in way in Southwest or wherever. It's like our lives
Speaker 4: are defined by water, not just the economics that I've
Speaker 4: always thought about, but are biodiversity and survival. And then
Speaker 4: and then you think about the planet like eighty percent
Speaker 4: of its water in the oceans. I mean, water is everything.
Speaker 4: And so this series definitely caused me to think a
Speaker 4: lot bigger about that.
Speaker 5: For sure.
Speaker 1: Well it it was a gap in my understanding that
Speaker 1: I felt was a liability for real, Like two years ago,
Speaker 1: I was like I just woke up one day I
Speaker 1: was like, I gotta know more about Mississippi River. It's like,
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm incomplete.
Speaker 2: Unless if you weren't a Mark Twain guy.
Speaker 1: Me too. I never did the public schools where I
Speaker 1: came from, never never had his read them. I never
Speaker 1: read a single Mark Twain book.
Speaker 2: I like Mark Twain so much. My son's name is Clem.
Speaker 1: Is that right?
Speaker 2: Based after Samuel Clemens? Because I thought that if I
Speaker 2: gave him names such as Clem, he'd have a fight
Speaker 2: chance of telling the story when he got a little old.
Speaker 1: So yeah, there you go.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Uh. The Mark Twain stories about the river, the
Speaker 2: country songs about the river.
Speaker 1: They so that I have. I have a whole episode
Speaker 1: that is that I could do. I could do a
Speaker 1: fifth one. I'm not going to about the blues.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah.
Speaker 1: I felt like when I was scripting out this thing,
Speaker 1: I thought, I'm going to talk about the blues, And
Speaker 1: actually I had a whole section where Hank Berdine talked
Speaker 1: to me about the blues that I didn't use.
Speaker 3: I got to put out a poll.
Speaker 1: Well listen though, the first guy that I started looking
Speaker 1: for to tell me about the Blues. I was driving
Speaker 1: down the road and I was looking for a podcast
Speaker 1: and and it was called the Chris Thomas King. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I don't think so. Chris, Chris Thomas King. You guys
Speaker 1: know the movie Oh Brother, Where Artell? Okay? On that movie,
Speaker 1: there's a boy that plays Tommy Johnson. Okay, Tommy Johnson
Speaker 1: is the guy that is supposed to have sold his
Speaker 1: soul to the devil at the crossroads. And and when
Speaker 1: the guys that are Oh Brother, Where Artell guys are
Speaker 1: driving down the road, they come to a crossroads, they
Speaker 1: pick up this African American guy who gets in with
Speaker 1: the guitar, and it's Tommy Jones Johnson Johnson And that
Speaker 1: guy ends up playing a blues song by the fire
Speaker 1: on the movie Oh Brother, Where art thou? That is
Speaker 1: Chris Thomas King.
Speaker 2: A podcast.
Speaker 1: He has a podcast. I interviewed a full interview with
Speaker 1: Chris Thomas King. Chris Thomas King came out with a
Speaker 1: book and basically he says that the narrative that the
Speaker 1: Blues started in Mississippi is not true.
Speaker 2: What we're tell me. It's not Saint Louis.
Speaker 1: No, it started in New Orleans, according to him, and
Speaker 1: it's so basically there it is so and he I
Speaker 1: want it to be a whole bear grease, but go
Speaker 1: fur five.
Speaker 2: I can tell already after this render you're going to
Speaker 2: go five.
Speaker 1: Difference between Jackson don't. I don't have the bandwidth to
Speaker 1: like get more. But basically he says that there is
Speaker 1: a If you ask anybody in the country where the
Speaker 1: Blues started, they're going to say, uh, Clark's I believe Clarksdale,
Speaker 1: Mississippi is what they say. And and just like that's
Speaker 1: where it started. He says that Alan Lomax, this storyteller
Speaker 1: from the nineteen seventies and eighties, nationally known, really really
Speaker 1: renowned storyteller who told some major stories and made some
Speaker 1: major documentaries about the Appalachians. He gained national fame and
Speaker 1: basically went to Mississippi, and he says that Alan Lomax
Speaker 1: is the one who kind of was the guy that said, Hey,
Speaker 1: the Blues started.
Speaker 2: Are you doing this for safety reasons? Not throwing this
Speaker 2: out this fifth episode?
Speaker 1: Because safety I'll get killed.
Speaker 2: You start saying that the Blues ain't from the Delta.
Speaker 1: Well, now it's from the Delta. Chris Thomas King just
Speaker 1: says it. And he says that that narrative doesn't add up,
Speaker 1: and he wrote a whole book about it and has
Speaker 1: a really strong thesis about how the word blues actually
Speaker 1: came from sat basically musicians in New Orleans making fun
Speaker 1: of blue laws, which blue laws would have been like
Speaker 1: religious laws, like you can't buy alcohol in a Sunday,
Speaker 1: or you can't your your juke joints can't be opened
Speaker 1: on Sundays, stuff like that. There was a heavy influence
Speaker 1: in New Orleans, I believe from the Catholics, and there
Speaker 1: was it was heavy blue laws. And then there arose
Speaker 1: this music scene that defied that, and it was about
Speaker 1: kind of rebellion against that. Then that's why the name
Speaker 1: they called it the Blues, because it was it was
Speaker 1: it was rebellion against blue laws. Well, and then the
Speaker 1: Blues went up the Mississippi River. And his whole thing is,
Speaker 1: which which tracks with the history of the settlement of
Speaker 1: the Delta, is that there weren't even African There were
Speaker 1: not vast numbers of most of the Mississippi Yazoo. Delta
Speaker 1: did not have slaves in it. But because it wasn't
Speaker 1: settled after the Civil War, if you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: like the place where they say the Blues started before
Speaker 1: the Civil War, because they talk a lot about the
Speaker 1: Blues being gang chain gangs of enslaved people singing and
Speaker 1: there's ingie dancers. He says that that's he doesn't buy it.
Speaker 2: If you did part five and you said the Blues
Speaker 2: weren't from that region, and you said that the Delta
Speaker 2: Tomali is where all Tomali's come from.
Speaker 1: Canceled.
Speaker 5: My career.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he has to go on that alternate career path
Speaker 1: that people from Mississippi. I've gained their trust bye by
Speaker 1: doing all this Mississippi stuff and then at this last
Speaker 1: one drowned in the Mississippi River and mister Bill, finally,
Speaker 1: what a movie?
Speaker 2: What a movie? Phenomenal? What do you got coming up on?
Speaker 1: Lord of Mercy? I don't know if I should tell
Speaker 1: Should I tell the world what we're gonna do?
Speaker 2: Just a hint?
Speaker 1: Well, just us no, no, no, no, yeah, I'll just
Speaker 1: tell you guys, Okay, don't tell anybody, don't put it
Speaker 1: on social media. So it's actually gonna it would be
Speaker 1: good intention. I've had some people, that's a good question, man.
Speaker 1: I've had some people I've heard to our podcasts referred
Speaker 1: to as regional, which I didn't necessarily like. And region
Speaker 1: will be in the South. Like I heard some people
Speaker 1: be doing a show on the Baltimore Orioles. Yeah, that's right,
Speaker 1: Baltimore Oriols. Well, I don't see I don't see bar
Speaker 1: Grease as regional. I view berg Grease is what I'm
Speaker 1: interested in. Happens to be a lot of what I'm
Speaker 1: interested in is in the South. We're doing an Alaska
Speaker 1: Stories series nice where I have a very diverse, eclectic
Speaker 1: group of storytellers that are going to tell harrowing, near
Speaker 1: death wild experiences in Alaska's got nine stories right now.
Speaker 3: This is like a Campfire Stories Part three. Oh yes,
Speaker 3: I'm excited.
Speaker 1: It's so it's each episode is going to have multiple,
Speaker 1: like full length stories, not interviewed. Like I'm not even
Speaker 1: on the podcast other than just through the like i'll introduce.
Speaker 1: I'll say, like, here's this guy and uh and he's
Speaker 1: gonna tell a story. There's there's I don't even want
Speaker 1: to tell you what's on there. Beard beard stuff, there's
Speaker 1: bear stuff, there's uh, near drowning stuff. So it'll be good,
Speaker 1: it'll be good.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I like the I like the storyteller, the story episodes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just just with different people telling their stories.
Speaker 3: You know, the when I tell people about the campfires stories.
Speaker 3: The story I tell them about is the guide in
Speaker 3: Alaska who lost his boat across the bay and tried
Speaker 3: to go walk and find it and then tried to
Speaker 3: do that terminal burrowing and had to tell himself like.
Speaker 1: Stop, you're digging your grave.
Speaker 5: Weird.
Speaker 3: So I mean more Alaska close calls and stories that
Speaker 3: that sounds awesome.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Alaska the Hollywood of the hunting world. Ooh, no, kidding.
Speaker 4: And you can make a movie anywhere, but the best
Speaker 4: movies seemed to always be in Hollywood. It's like Alaska, man,
Speaker 4: unending story plots there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a wild place.
Speaker 3: Didn't you start this episode talking negatively about Alaska in
Speaker 3: the wintertime.
Speaker 1: Well, not negatively. I just said sometimes the sun doesn't
Speaker 1: rise there and it's dark twenty four hours a day.
Speaker 1: Conflicting information here, Okay, I love Alaska. September twenty third,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three, Springdale, Arkansas World Championship Squirrel Cookoff. It's big.
Speaker 1: It's going to be big, man, It's going to be big.
Speaker 1: Brent Reeve is going to be there. I'll be there
Speaker 1: at some point. Just I'll just be there.
Speaker 2: We'll tell Alaska stories when you get there.
Speaker 1: Okay, I will have been to Alaska, so Ben, Dad
Speaker 1: Class sad Class dot net, Dad Class dot net elon
Speaker 1: Muscow's dad Class dot com. Don't go there. Only look out.
Speaker 2: For that special podcast on cooking up a story.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll be Joe. Just podcast cooking up a Story. Okay,
Speaker 1: dad Class, check it out. Jonathan, you peddling anything podcast
Speaker 1: over so good. Now we're done.
Speaker 2: That's it.