Speaker 1: And welcome to the Sportsman's Nation podcast network, brought to
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Speaker 1: Interstate Batteries outrageously dependable. My name is Clay Nukeleman. I'm
Speaker 1: the host of the Bear Hunting Magazine podcast. I'll also
Speaker 1: be your host into the world of hunting the icon
Speaker 1: of the North American wilderness. Prepare we'll talk about tactics,
Speaker 1: gear conservation. We will also bring you into some of
Speaker 1: the wildest country on the planet, chasing bare Probably in
Speaker 1: all of our not so distant past, we have been
Speaker 1: public land knuckle heads. And on this podcast I'm joined
Speaker 1: by James Brandenburg, the back country hunters and anglers, Brent
Speaker 1: Reeves of the back country Arkansas, just greedy, good old boys.
Speaker 1: Colby moorehead Texas am m graduate, moved to Arkansas and
Speaker 1: became gritty, tough and smart and myself and we're talking
Speaker 1: about how not to be a public land knucklehead. We
Speaker 1: hope this podcast has some real practical information for someone
Speaker 1: who's maybe not grown up with hunting. In this uh
Speaker 1: quarantine era that we're in right now, Turkey hunting licenses
Speaker 1: have been on the rise, and many many states a
Speaker 1: lot of new guys are on public land. Public lands
Speaker 1: are a lot more crowded. This is a positive thing.
Speaker 1: But we discussed the ins and outs, the dudes and dunts,
Speaker 1: and a bunch of other fun stuff on this podcast.
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Speaker 1: all your garment needs they sell. They sell the end
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Speaker 1: at the Western Bear Foundation. Right now, currently they are
Speaker 1: inside of a struggle taking the front lines on a
Speaker 1: lawsuit where they're trying to fan baiting bears in certain areas.
Speaker 1: And so Joe Condelis and the guys and his team
Speaker 1: are there being the voice for bear hunters and for reasonable, rational,
Speaker 1: conservation minded people. Hey enjoy this podcast. And lastly, check
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Speaker 1: enjoy this podcast. Man, it's been raining all day long
Speaker 1: at the Global Headquarters. Um, it's been rained all day long.
Speaker 1: And uh look who showed up when it started to rain.
Speaker 1: James Brandenberg once again. The last podcast that James was on,
Speaker 1: we were fighting the pitter patter of rain drops on
Speaker 1: a you know, uh, I call it canopy canopy Yeah,
Speaker 1: for some reason, I couldn't think of that word, and
Speaker 1: awning at Turkey Camp. But the Global Headquarters roof is
Speaker 1: a little bit better, even though I will have you
Speaker 1: both know. And if you'll look up to the right
Speaker 1: up there in the very peak corner, you will see
Speaker 1: what appears to be just like a little bit of
Speaker 1: fibery glass insulation. Did you see that? That is a
Speaker 1: squirrel that has chewed through the sheet rock and is
Speaker 1: trying to break into this place. It doesn't seem like
Speaker 1: a very smart squirrel. Does he know what goes on
Speaker 1: around here? Exactly sixteen feet to the east of that
Speaker 1: squirrel hole is a little squirrel dog named Tess that
Speaker 1: would just erupt. So anyway, we're at the Global Headquarters
Speaker 1: and it's raining, and we got squirrel problems, and James
Speaker 1: Brandenberg is here. James Brandenburg, Um back country hunters and anglers. Yep,
Speaker 1: still yep, still still kicking it. Yep. All right. We
Speaker 1: got Colby moorehead. Colby, like me, is needing a quarantine haircut. James,
Speaker 1: your hair looks pretty good one last weekend. You've always
Speaker 1: needed a haircut every day. Brent has a head of
Speaker 1: hair like a nineteen forties football helmet. You can't shoot
Speaker 1: a baby gun. Uh No, So Colby borehead. Yeah looking good, flame,
Speaker 1: Yeah good, you look good man. It makes me look
Speaker 1: faster when I'm on my bike or something like yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then to my right. I don't know if you
Speaker 1: can hear the thunder, but it is thundering. I have
Speaker 1: Brent Reeves, So Brent hey, from Brent, Hey, from Brent,
Speaker 1: good to see it. Hey, what we're gonna talk about today?
Speaker 1: This is uh. Usually when James is here, we're having
Speaker 1: some like topic driven podcast. So you know, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of different kind of podcasts in the world. You
Speaker 1: have the short, punchy, topic driven just like where people
Speaker 1: like they just basically pretend like they're not friends. It's
Speaker 1: just like, I don't care about your family, your life,
Speaker 1: or who you are. We're gonna talk about the facts.
Speaker 1: This is not that podcast. But sometimes we shift gears
Speaker 1: to where we're a little bit more topic driven, so
Speaker 1: we're we're like trying to accomplish a very specific goal,
Speaker 1: and that would be this kind of podcast today. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so what we're gonna talk about is uh, and
Speaker 1: James is gonna give us a little a little backstory
Speaker 1: info of why, but basically how not to be a
Speaker 1: knuckle head when hunting public land. That's right, because what
Speaker 1: what I've realized, what James is realized, what Brents realized, COVID,
Speaker 1: we've all realized that we all know it, but we're
Speaker 1: all at different levels of experienced hunting public land. Um,
Speaker 1: is that there's a very long list of un and
Speaker 1: rules that are very important. And let me begin by
Speaker 1: saying before I asked James to say talk about kind
Speaker 1: of the quarantine and kind of just the idea that
Speaker 1: of and I'll let him say that. But there's zero rules.
Speaker 1: I mean, like if you're a hunter, if you're a
Speaker 1: new hunter, you buy a hunting license and you're not
Speaker 1: a convicted felon, and you can carry a firearm, and
Speaker 1: it's hunting season, you go into the woods in public land,
Speaker 1: it would probably be in your best interests to kill game.
Speaker 1: To follow the best hunter that you know literally to
Speaker 1: his standard, run him off. I think that's a hunting
Speaker 1: strategy that some guys has. Run him off, offend him
Speaker 1: so much that he's perturbed, and go somewhere else and
Speaker 1: then hunt in his stand. He would have broken zero laws,
Speaker 1: zero zero laws. But in fact, that is exactly the
Speaker 1: opposite of what you need to do if you desire
Speaker 1: to be a functional, normal human in modern times. Do
Speaker 1: you want to be invited back in a quotes or
Speaker 1: if you want to live? No. But it's kind of
Speaker 1: interesting when you think about it, because there there there's
Speaker 1: no I mean, like the Forest Service, the Arkansas Game
Speaker 1: of Fish Commission, the commission of your state does not
Speaker 1: have a list of laws that you know ethical law,
Speaker 1: you know social ethical parameters for how people that own
Speaker 1: the same amount of in no matter how long you've
Speaker 1: been hunting down at by Meat and Brent, I've never
Speaker 1: duck hunted there one time in my life, and we
Speaker 1: show up there on the same day. We have equal
Speaker 1: rights to every square inch it, but we don't do it,
Speaker 1: I mean because we don't at all. And so that's
Speaker 1: all we're gonna talk about there. There are parcels of
Speaker 1: land in there that belong to individual people, Yeah, exact. Well,
Speaker 1: so we're gonna try to get to some like real
Speaker 1: practical stuff just like uh, you know, give some examples,
Speaker 1: like a park in your truck, how far you can
Speaker 1: hunt from someone else, what to do if you see
Speaker 1: a hunter, what to do if you see a tree stand?
Speaker 1: Can you set up a camp three days before you
Speaker 1: plan to hunt to save a spot? You know, kind
Speaker 1: of some of these like kind of unwritten rules, like
Speaker 1: what do you do if you hear another guy calling
Speaker 1: a turkey? What do you do if you walk in
Speaker 1: the woods and you find a gut pile where somebody
Speaker 1: killed a deer there yesterday? I mean, like yeah, just
Speaker 1: random stuff. But James, so what's the what's the you
Speaker 1: think more people are hunting now that there's a quarantine. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, all you gotta do is a quick Google
Speaker 1: search and you can get that pulled up pretty quick.
Speaker 1: There's plenty of hard data from some of the states
Speaker 1: who have have already put out there, you know, double
Speaker 1: digit increases in license sales for you know, most recentcies
Speaker 1: be in turkeys. Um, you know, states with increases in
Speaker 1: license sales, some states seeing thirty and increases in turkey
Speaker 1: harvest year over year. States where Georgia, for example, you know, um,
Speaker 1: is it like Chamberlain was about to say the same thing. Yea,
Speaker 1: he had turkey doc He had put out that in
Speaker 1: Georgia the number of people who had taken two turkeys
Speaker 1: had increased, like I want to say, like I may
Speaker 1: have these numbers backwards somewhere in the thirties percent or
Speaker 1: maybe it's somewhere in the forties percent. And then the
Speaker 1: ones that had taken three turkeys was the other one,
Speaker 1: you know, increase, significant increase. So all of that, that's
Speaker 1: all hard data. Now all you have to do is
Speaker 1: go out and drive drive through the National Forest and
Speaker 1: and know that if you've been there before, you can
Speaker 1: see that there are more people there than what have
Speaker 1: been there. You know, I went out and did a
Speaker 1: did a loop um a few weekends ago, and you know,
Speaker 1: we were still in you know, for lack of a
Speaker 1: better term, quarantine. UM. So all the wreck areas are closed,
Speaker 1: but any of the normal spots where you're gonna see
Speaker 1: people under the bridges along creeks, you know, the wreck
Speaker 1: areas people there were dozens and dozens of cars out
Speaker 1: there and people all over the place. Um, so what
Speaker 1: does that mean? Well? Number one, what are these people
Speaker 1: new or are they reactivated? You know, the hunters, are
Speaker 1: they reactivated hunters? Are they new hunters? Um? Maybe they
Speaker 1: haven't been out there for a while, but I'll bet
Speaker 1: you there's a lot of new people out there. And
Speaker 1: we've talked before. You know, I still kind of count
Speaker 1: myself on the newer side of the scale. And UM
Speaker 1: got us to thinking, and we were kind of having
Speaker 1: a discuss us amongst our Southeast Chapter board and Jeff Jones,
Speaker 1: who's on the national board now, he had joined us
Speaker 1: for that discussion and and he said, you know, it
Speaker 1: would be great for somebody to to just talk about
Speaker 1: some of the etiquette of being out on public land
Speaker 1: and do it in a format where we can share
Speaker 1: that with people and help them to get educated. But
Speaker 1: you know, the other thing is just remind some people
Speaker 1: who have been at it all their lives that we're
Speaker 1: not born with this innate knowledge of the underwritten rules.
Speaker 1: You show some grace to people and and help them
Speaker 1: understand that, you know, hey, instead of chewing them out,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe just help explain to him that if
Speaker 1: you want to park here to hunt, maybe don't park
Speaker 1: your truck in the middle of the road or whatever.
Speaker 1: There were things not done with malice. Yeah, but sometimes
Speaker 1: it's automatically perceived as malice. Oh, I would think that
Speaker 1: would be the first thought. Yeah, some jerk has done this.
Speaker 1: But that's where the new guy comes in. He's probably
Speaker 1: not gonna think that. He's probably gonna think anything about
Speaker 1: it until you know that norm is established with him.
Speaker 1: There's there's room for interpretation. Yeah. Yeah, well, now that's
Speaker 1: that's really interesting that uh, there's so many new people
Speaker 1: in the woods and so let's just let's just jump
Speaker 1: into some examples or um, you know, to me, here's
Speaker 1: what here's the way. Here's the way we'll do this, James,
Speaker 1: is that I'll do one and we'll have a discussion
Speaker 1: and then you do one. Okay, Like I'll read one
Speaker 1: of my statements that I made that I felt like,
Speaker 1: what's kind of a good question to be answered, and
Speaker 1: then we'll just have a general discussion about it, and
Speaker 1: I think from that people can draw some conclusions and
Speaker 1: then you can jump to one of yours. Here we
Speaker 1: gotta we got about list of about probably fifteen, I
Speaker 1: don't know, twelve things here, but okay, So so here's
Speaker 1: this is a like very simple entry point level stuff.
Speaker 1: How far from a truck should you hunt when you're
Speaker 1: on public land? Because that's the way I mean, people
Speaker 1: are presumably driving vehicles to public land to hunt, unless
Speaker 1: they're ridding the mule, which uh if you know, if
Speaker 1: you see a parked mule, uh, maybe a little different story.
Speaker 1: So you see a truck parked on the side of
Speaker 1: the road and he's in the spot you wanted to go,
Speaker 1: and so you go, dang, he's in the spot. Many
Speaker 1: many options here do you pull up or right behind
Speaker 1: him and park your truck right beside his and go
Speaker 1: hunt your spot? The answer to that is an't emphatic no.
Speaker 1: I mean that is a good way to get a
Speaker 1: flat tire, to get a black eye. Unfortunately, to offend
Speaker 1: someone deeply, deeply, Okay, Um, So then the then the
Speaker 1: question is um, And I mean I've been tempted to
Speaker 1: do this before, and probably if I'm being honest, I've
Speaker 1: done this, known that a guy was hunting somewhere and
Speaker 1: then go way around and basically come into that same area.
Speaker 1: I've done that young days. I mean, like be like,
Speaker 1: I think I would do that today. But but knowing
Speaker 1: that that guy was probably two yards off the road
Speaker 1: and I was trying to get back in there a
Speaker 1: mile you see what I'm saying. Yeah, I mean in
Speaker 1: that So that whole scenario is a real gray area
Speaker 1: to me. Think about the place that we turkey hunted
Speaker 1: this year, okay, and where we parked, and how we
Speaker 1: did that. You know, imagine if if we had Imagine
Speaker 1: if we had stopped the truck a half mile sooner,
Speaker 1: but otherwise followed the same trail in I mean, there
Speaker 1: were hundreds of acres on either side of where we
Speaker 1: were where somebody could have come in right behind us
Speaker 1: but gone a completely different way. And so how do
Speaker 1: you I think it matters what you're hunting. If your
Speaker 1: turkey hunting, you need to leave big space in between
Speaker 1: you because you can hear a turkey gobble for half
Speaker 1: a mile, so you know, even if you're and that's
Speaker 1: where you can cut somebody off. And people get mad
Speaker 1: because if you park your truck on the road and
Speaker 1: then you go out of sight and park your truck
Speaker 1: and you're essentially hunting the same turkeys, and you're like, well,
Speaker 1: I didn't park by him. You're hunting the same turkeys,
Speaker 1: and and and the the question that I would ask
Speaker 1: myself is that if I hear his turkey gobble, and
Speaker 1: am I gonna go the opposite direction? I mean, and
Speaker 1: that's a hardy like so, but if you're deer hunting,
Speaker 1: that's a little bit different because if you're deer hunting,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, you don't you don't you certainly
Speaker 1: don't want to barge in on somebody, but it's not vocal.
Speaker 1: You know, you're not gonna you know, you're you're, you're
Speaker 1: you're hunting these deer. It's it's a little bit different. Well,
Speaker 1: you hear a lot of stories in turkey hunting to
Speaker 1: about close calls because you're not wearing orange. You're it's
Speaker 1: a safety issue. You know, you're trying to really be
Speaker 1: hidden you're putting decoys out a lot of times, So
Speaker 1: I mean that makes a lot of sense to operate it.
Speaker 1: Try to operate that far exactly exactly. And and and
Speaker 1: I think weapon makes a difference to if it's both
Speaker 1: season and you know what I mean, like you know
Speaker 1: that this is you can shoot forty yards. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying go in on somebody, but these are
Speaker 1: things I would think about. And I mean the answer
Speaker 1: to the question is go somewhere way away, nowhere close
Speaker 1: to that guy. I mean, the whole key to public
Speaker 1: land hunting is having multiple options. Is everybody having a space, yeah,
Speaker 1: because I mean I don't want to. I mean, part
Speaker 1: of the reason that I don't do a ton of
Speaker 1: Arkansas turkey hunting once the adult season starts, we do
Speaker 1: a lot of youth turkey hunting is because I just
Speaker 1: despise going to my spot. In my heart fluttering a
Speaker 1: little bit when I see a car park there. It's
Speaker 1: just like I'll just do something else, Like I just
Speaker 1: don't I don't want to share the woods with a stranger.
Speaker 1: It's not because I don't like that guy. It's just,
Speaker 1: you know, I have found that with age that is
Speaker 1: more and more of the case too, Yeah, because it's
Speaker 1: just and it's not I still have the same desire
Speaker 1: to smash a turkey in the face as I did
Speaker 1: when I was sixteen, you know, however many hundred years
Speaker 1: ago that was. But I don't want to deal with yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: but you know, I don't want to deal with everything
Speaker 1: else that goes with it. And it's it's not as
Speaker 1: important to me, being fifty four years old to kill
Speaker 1: in the turkey. I've killed a hundred and fifteen in
Speaker 1: my life total, and it's not as important to me
Speaker 1: as the experiences, I think. But you can't narrow it
Speaker 1: all down to this young folks being disrespectful, I mean,
Speaker 1: or not so much disrespectful as being encroachful, if that's
Speaker 1: a word. But you know, you get just what I mean.
Speaker 1: And it's not just you know, the college age kids,
Speaker 1: the young folks, the new hunters or whatever that are
Speaker 1: that are crossing that line of of being respectful or
Speaker 1: showing you know, etiquette or what however you want to
Speaker 1: describe it. It's not just them that's doing that. So
Speaker 1: I think you know that the driver or whatever, though,
Speaker 1: we'll play a large part in that as well. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I know that there's some public land we hunting down
Speaker 1: in southern Arkansas that uh, there's just common access points
Speaker 1: that you park on the road, you know, but you
Speaker 1: walking into multiple So it's so it's normal there for
Speaker 1: multiple vehicles to be parking. And I was about to
Speaker 1: say yeah, and walking into something that like a normal
Speaker 1: like travel we'll call the travel corridors, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: but like they go in and they maintain certain areas,
Speaker 1: and so you'll have a lot of guys that like
Speaker 1: you're walking the same bootprints as somebody that morning, but
Speaker 1: you've never seen because it's like it's like you go
Speaker 1: down a certain amount and then everybody just kind of
Speaker 1: fans out into their their own area. So I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think context has a lot to play. So if
Speaker 1: you're like going down some road down some national forests
Speaker 1: and and you come up to a truck, this's like
Speaker 1: there's nothing that is common in that area. It's like
Speaker 1: your youngest but and it's like if you see flags there,
Speaker 1: it's like I'm not gonna follow any of these flags.
Speaker 1: I'm going the opposite way. You know, somebody's marking their
Speaker 1: trail or or something. But yeah, now that's a great
Speaker 1: point because what I learned this year turkey hunting over
Speaker 1: here close to the house. Just two mornings, well maybe
Speaker 1: just one morning we went out over here. Man, if
Speaker 1: if you had followed the Gary nucom Code of Conduct
Speaker 1: for public land turkey hunting, we would not have had
Speaker 1: a place to turkey up. I mean, because he well, yeah,
Speaker 1: and so do I I mean, like, if you see
Speaker 1: a truck, just forget go to another place, like a
Speaker 1: long ways away. And I mean there were trucks parked
Speaker 1: every half mile. And it was like, okay, well, if
Speaker 1: we're gonna play this game, we're gonna just have to
Speaker 1: pretty much be close to people. And so we did
Speaker 1: that that morning, and we walked up on three people
Speaker 1: while we were in the woods, which was yeah, and
Speaker 1: one guy I mean, I say we walked up on.
Speaker 1: They came up on us. One guy was at the
Speaker 1: truck when we got back. There was a truck parked
Speaker 1: by my truck when we got back, and he was
Speaker 1: waiting first to come out so he could go in.
Speaker 1: And one guy drove a four wheeler right past us.
Speaker 1: We I mean, he didn't know we were there. He
Speaker 1: was just puts around on a four wheeler. He stopped
Speaker 1: and he told me I killed a turkey right over there.
Speaker 1: I mean, he told me everything, and he real nice guy.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, you do have this immage like
Speaker 1: when I heard that four wheeler coming, I was with
Speaker 1: my daughter, and it's like everything in me pictured this
Speaker 1: guy as just like a dirt ball. I know exactly
Speaker 1: what you're talking about. Every other hunter in the woods
Speaker 1: is a dirt ball. The other team on when your
Speaker 1: kids are playing baseball, the other team, those kids are
Speaker 1: dirt balls, you know. Yeah, Oh, they're all terrible people.
Speaker 1: And and and when I when I realized the guy
Speaker 1: was it was a little little just little pig trail road.
Speaker 1: And so he's coming down the road and I want
Speaker 1: him to know we're there as a you know, turkey
Speaker 1: outing is one of those things where it's best to
Speaker 1: just let people know you're there. So I didn't want
Speaker 1: to jump off the road. If we'd have been bow
Speaker 1: hunting deer, I would have been like jumping the ditch.
Speaker 1: Let's just let him go past us. We're turkey hunt
Speaker 1: and I wan't him know where we're at. So we
Speaker 1: just stand there. And in my mind, I'm envisioning like
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to de fend my daughter when this
Speaker 1: rolls up and I'm like, whatever happens River just you know,
Speaker 1: it's this old guy and he's just like, hey man,
Speaker 1: I just out hooted on the hill. I didn't hear anything,
Speaker 1: but I killed a gobbler right off there last year,
Speaker 1: and I killed seventeen dobblers over here. I mean, this
Speaker 1: nice guy in the world. Yea, yeah, it kind of
Speaker 1: changes your perspective. These are people just like me, just
Speaker 1: trying to have a good time, most of them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that changes with like squirrel hunting or something.
Speaker 1: It's like I'll park a lot closer if somebody squirrel hunting.
Speaker 1: You know, it just depends on the season. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Turkey hunt is the most touchy one because you're you're
Speaker 1: you're hunting vocal and duck probably duck hut. It's how
Speaker 1: what is hard enough turkey? And it is hard enough
Speaker 1: by itself. If you get competition, you know, it's twice
Speaker 1: as hardy, so that that would tend to make it
Speaker 1: more of a sensitive issue. Yeah, so now what about
Speaker 1: duck hunting, because that's I mean, I don't know, if
Speaker 1: I don't know, if we have time to go into
Speaker 1: all of that, I'll hit the high points, um, and
Speaker 1: I think a public land hunting forever, it's been what
Speaker 1: we call the public shooting grounds. It's uh buy me
Speaker 1: the wildlife refuge uh in centered around Stuck Guard, Arkansas,
Speaker 1: thirty six thousand nacred green Tree Reservoir with the largest
Speaker 1: green tree reservoir state owned in in the world and
Speaker 1: managed for waterfowl. And you got thirty six thousand, man,
Speaker 1: that's huge. We'll back you know. When we first started,
Speaker 1: it used to be legal to uh guide duck hunters
Speaker 1: on on public land. My brother and I we had
Speaker 1: a guide service and we did and I can remember
Speaker 1: in the eighties and and early in the nineties. Um,
Speaker 1: in the middle of the week, you could go out
Speaker 1: there and there was a place close to where our
Speaker 1: camp was called Buckingham Flats, which was a four acre
Speaker 1: tip cornered piece of biot. Well it was it's uh
Speaker 1: it wasn't around by a fields or something. Yeah, it was,
Speaker 1: and in one corner of it touched by a meta itself,
Speaker 1: so it was body of water. Yeah, that's that's the
Speaker 1: public the public shooting grounds on by meta is a
Speaker 1: boot that runs through there. But that area that Wildlife
Speaker 1: Management area is called Bio Meta Wildlife Management Area. So
Speaker 1: this four acres were kind of set off by itself,
Speaker 1: but it was attached at a corner to the rest
Speaker 1: of the public land, but had two access areas to it.
Speaker 1: And we could go there during the middle of the
Speaker 1: week with paying clients or by ourselves just on a
Speaker 1: pleasure hunt. And there may be two other vehicles in
Speaker 1: the park. A lot of that may not be anybody
Speaker 1: in there. And over the years, the popularity of water
Speaker 1: Fountain from TV shows and the Internet and all that stuff,
Speaker 1: they made duck hunting a fad. The population are the
Speaker 1: number of hunters has grown significantly. Yeah, you add a
Speaker 1: caveat in there of the duck numbers going down substantially
Speaker 1: from what they were, the flyaway somewhat changing, duck shortstopping
Speaker 1: and not coming as far south as they did. And
Speaker 1: you limit your limiting the number of ducks coming down
Speaker 1: while you're increasing the amount of duck hunters going in there.
Speaker 1: So and I mean it's a a very passion driven sport.
Speaker 1: It is a in that part of the world. I mean,
Speaker 1: you've got people coming from all over the world to
Speaker 1: that area to just a duck hunt and to the economy,
Speaker 1: they're around stuck, are they? The Chamber of Commerce down
Speaker 1: there says that on the average, it's a during a
Speaker 1: sixty day duck season, it's a million dollars a day
Speaker 1: of revenue coming into that area. So you know, it's
Speaker 1: a high priority for those businesses to promote it, to
Speaker 1: keep it going, to get that income coming in. So
Speaker 1: you got all those folks down there, and you've got
Speaker 1: limited space to do it. They cut out all the
Speaker 1: guiding down there, thinking that would so you can't you can't,
Speaker 1: can't got on public for waterfowl, you can't for anything else.
Speaker 1: But so they cut all that out. But that wasn't
Speaker 1: the issue. The issue was just the number of people
Speaker 1: in the limited space to put it in. And so
Speaker 1: what's the one are the rules like, certainly there's only
Speaker 1: limited access point if you're talking about putting in boat,
Speaker 1: so you're you're gonna see a bunch of people at
Speaker 1: the boat rount. Yeah, And they the problem was that
Speaker 1: people would go in early. They used to call call
Speaker 1: them hole runners and and folks guides, people that wanted
Speaker 1: to hunt, pleasure hunters, whatever. They would lay claim to
Speaker 1: a certain area down there. You know, and like out
Speaker 1: of that whole right there off of the main creek
Speaker 1: channel or whatever to the left. You know, I grew
Speaker 1: up hunting that with my dad and my grandpa, and
Speaker 1: we always hunted that area. And we're gonna hunt that
Speaker 1: area every day during duck season, and we're gonna get
Speaker 1: in there early in claiming, and it would be to
Speaker 1: the point where folks would be spending the night in
Speaker 1: boats down there were lanterns and saving no spots, which
Speaker 1: was perfectly legal. He got to the point to where
Speaker 1: a few years ago they had to instigate a rule
Speaker 1: of where no boats or nobody could venture into the
Speaker 1: w may until a certain time. I think it's like
Speaker 1: four or thirty. I don't hunt public land anymore for
Speaker 1: just for that very reason. It's too much of a headache.
Speaker 1: But they limited the number of at the time that
Speaker 1: you could go in. That increased the congestion of boat
Speaker 1: motors of boat traffic at the same time. At the
Speaker 1: same time, it put everybody leaving at a one point.
Speaker 1: And they it's it's like a Kentucky derby down there.
Speaker 1: It's just they were boat ricks and boat crashes and
Speaker 1: fist fights and you name it. That developed from that
Speaker 1: in the game fishes. I mean, you know, I hate
Speaker 1: I would hate to have that problem because I don't
Speaker 1: know what the answer to that is, and and they
Speaker 1: there it's a struggle for them to figure it out,
Speaker 1: you know. But you know a lot of that goes
Speaker 1: to it. If people respected the next guy enough, they
Speaker 1: they've even That's my answer to it. It's just people
Speaker 1: are out in this day and age more. Not everybody,
Speaker 1: but a lot of folks are. They're worried about They're
Speaker 1: going to get in there and get their spot regardless
Speaker 1: of you know, what happens, and try to be changed
Speaker 1: specific question to ask him about that. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a couple of different things. One of
Speaker 1: them is going to be all around. You know. Obviously,
Speaker 1: if there's a boat in a hole that you're trying
Speaker 1: to get into, that's pretty easy. Um. But if you
Speaker 1: you pull up to a parking area to a spot
Speaker 1: that you're gonna walk into, um, I mean, because I'm
Speaker 1: thinking of a place that I hunted this year specifically,
Speaker 1: we were always only the ever we were saying that
Speaker 1: the right way, we were only we were the only
Speaker 1: truck there. It's the only one that we ever saw.
Speaker 1: But I know from walking around in that area it
Speaker 1: could have supported easily three or four groups of hunters
Speaker 1: like us if they'd all spread out. So it wouldn't
Speaker 1: seem fair to me if I was the second truck
Speaker 1: there to turn around and go somewhere else. But I
Speaker 1: don't know where those people went, So how do I
Speaker 1: deal with that? What? How it used to be? This?
Speaker 1: You know, and I'm I can only talk and how
Speaker 1: it was it's been in my experience, but even as
Speaker 1: late as in the nineties, when you got there and
Speaker 1: you and in a lot of places we didn't use
Speaker 1: a boat going to we would walk into there in
Speaker 1: Buckingham Flats, especially because you couldn't really go a lot
Speaker 1: of places unless the water was flooded out. Everywhere you
Speaker 1: would walk. You'd leave the parking lot walking and after
Speaker 1: half a mile or so you start hitting the water,
Speaker 1: the flood water, and then you'd walk into wherever the
Speaker 1: need deep place was you wanted. And how it worked
Speaker 1: back then as you got to a spot, when you
Speaker 1: got there, you threw your decoys out, you said on
Speaker 1: a log, and you drink coffee till it come time
Speaker 1: to duck hunt. If you saw another light coming, you
Speaker 1: shot them, you shine your light at them. Those folks
Speaker 1: may shine it back that main holler and say hey
Speaker 1: we're going left, we're going right, we're gonna come. We're
Speaker 1: gonna walk right by you and and go on pasture.
Speaker 1: Is anybody gone through? No man, come on? Or or
Speaker 1: if there was, we said hey, come hunt with us.
Speaker 1: You know we've done that before. But there was always
Speaker 1: that unwritten rule if you didn't go up next, get
Speaker 1: too close to somebody. And another thing that was that
Speaker 1: was just an absolute no no. I mean it was
Speaker 1: a bad thing. If you had to set up close
Speaker 1: to somebody, you would get within a hundred fifty two
Speaker 1: hundred yards of them. If they're working ducks over there
Speaker 1: in that area, and ducks I'm talking about, they're calling
Speaker 1: to them, and ducks are responding to them to that area,
Speaker 1: and they when they flew over the top of where
Speaker 1: they were, they wouldn't shoot at them, they wouldn't call
Speaker 1: at them. Those were your ducks. And when that happened,
Speaker 1: when they started working ducks, you would honor that as well.
Speaker 1: And man that worked like that for a hundred years
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden it didn't It didn't
Speaker 1: work anymore. And they would they would shoot your ducks,
Speaker 1: and you're you know in quotation, they would shoot the
Speaker 1: ducks that flew over, and it just got to be
Speaker 1: a a test of who could get them shot out first.
Speaker 1: And and you know, get back to the truck and
Speaker 1: people they didn't there. I don't think he'll ever be
Speaker 1: the way it used to be. Uh sees that squirrel
Speaker 1: is trying to eat anything, you know, and that very
Speaker 1: well may have started. See that system works great as
Speaker 1: long as it's saturated the culture, you know, because the
Speaker 1: first time that the group over there started shooting your ducks,
Speaker 1: your groups started saying, dang, well, I guess we're just
Speaker 1: gonna have to be every man for himself. And maybe
Speaker 1: it was those guys over there that just didn't know
Speaker 1: any better. Sure, I mean, maybe they were jerks, but
Speaker 1: probably they just didn't know any better. Probably they were
Speaker 1: coin toss but let's let's just say they were new guys,
Speaker 1: and we're just like, there's ducks. I'm gonna call those
Speaker 1: ducks and shoot them. And then and then they messed
Speaker 1: up a whole system of honor that was inside the
Speaker 1: high any world. And and honestly that we could sum
Speaker 1: up everything that we're going to talk about today with
Speaker 1: having a code of honor of treat others like you
Speaker 1: would want to be treated. If I if my truck
Speaker 1: is parked on the side of the road over here,
Speaker 1: I don't want you anywhere near me. I want you
Speaker 1: to go find your own turkeys. Uh. If if I'm
Speaker 1: bo hunting whitetails, I mean I don't want you anywhere
Speaker 1: near me. So I mean I've got to have enough
Speaker 1: character that I you gotta do the same thing. You
Speaker 1: gotta do the same you gotta you gotta go somewhere else.
Speaker 1: And then but then you also learned the culture, like
Speaker 1: what Kobe's talking about. I've hunted in some of those
Speaker 1: places down south, in these state management areas where there
Speaker 1: may be only five places to park your truck on
Speaker 1: the whole thing, So you can't just go home if
Speaker 1: there's a truck park, it's okay. But you you know
Speaker 1: if that that you know, that's the golden rule of
Speaker 1: it is to treat somebody like and and the way
Speaker 1: you know how you would want to be treated is
Speaker 1: you wouldn't want somebody to jeopardize your hunt. You've taken
Speaker 1: time off work, you spent your scouting time, your gas,
Speaker 1: your whatever, and like if if that other person does
Speaker 1: something that's gonna screw up your hunt, then you're gonna
Speaker 1: be like, dang, So just don't do that for someone else. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I think there might even be exceptions in
Speaker 1: different places, just culturally. I know a place we've hunted,
Speaker 1: there's a there's a natural gas pipeline that runs down
Speaker 1: through the area, and it's not uncommon for it's like
Speaker 1: you're walking down the pipeline and somebody flashes a light,
Speaker 1: but they like, you know, the emotion need to keep
Speaker 1: on going, and you just walk several hundred yards and
Speaker 1: just keep going until you find a spot where no
Speaker 1: one is. Like, but the deer they've traveled like across
Speaker 1: the pipeline. They don't go like up and down in
Speaker 1: but that's just kind of like they're hunting different deer
Speaker 1: than them. Yeah, and you know a lot of the
Speaker 1: guys that are there, like you've seen them around the
Speaker 1: different like access Yeah, following them in the height, you
Speaker 1: were following them around marking all their truck marking. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's something on the list here. Well, um, okay, that's
Speaker 1: that was all great stuff. Um, James, you're give me,
Speaker 1: give me one of yours, and let's discuss. Let's um,
Speaker 1: let's talk about social media etiquette. Okay, okay, so up
Speaker 1: to modern technology, yep, yep. So we're all out there hunting.
Speaker 1: We're we're it's been a great season. We're having success. Right.
Speaker 1: I got out there early. I found a spot, and
Speaker 1: I man, I killed a big old bear. I get
Speaker 1: on social media and I and I'm just like, look
Speaker 1: at this bear I killed at blah blah blah blah
Speaker 1: blah blah blah, and uh and I was doing this
Speaker 1: and doing that. Wait a minute, this is your spot though, Well,
Speaker 1: I mean that's where I killed it, so it must
Speaker 1: be my spot. You wouldn't tell where you killed it?
Speaker 1: Well maybe I don't know any better. Okay, let's just
Speaker 1: so let's let's talk about that. So first of all,
Speaker 1: let's talk about blowing spots up on social media, you know. Accidentally,
Speaker 1: let's also talk about I'm a new hunter and I'm
Speaker 1: trying to find somewhere to go, and then you get
Speaker 1: on social media and you're like, hey, can somebody tell
Speaker 1: me something about you know now that you say that
Speaker 1: I have seen people go I killed this Turkey on
Speaker 1: such and such w A this morning, and I know
Speaker 1: all the people that hunt that w A or going
Speaker 1: dotgone it, man, don't. Yeah, there's well, there were some
Speaker 1: stories shared whenever I was gathering information for this, talking
Speaker 1: about some places that just got flattened. Turkeys got flattened
Speaker 1: this year because people got on social media and we're
Speaker 1: bragging about what they had done, and it just it
Speaker 1: just took fire. So um, so it happens. I mean,
Speaker 1: either people don't know or they're too dense to not
Speaker 1: do it. Yeah, what's your well? I mean, so first
Speaker 1: of all, if I think you need, you need to
Speaker 1: understand that you're not the only person who hunts that place.
Speaker 1: And number one, you've got to some responsibility to your
Speaker 1: fellow hunters to protect it, to protect the the nature
Speaker 1: of what's there. Um, you also have some responsibility to
Speaker 1: protect the wildlife that's there. I mean if you if
Speaker 1: you go in someplace and and shoot a trophy deer
Speaker 1: and then you drop a pen and basically say this
Speaker 1: is where I killed it, everybody's gonna think, well, man,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go in there. It's just like it's just
Speaker 1: like the misery trout parks. You go up to Roaring
Speaker 1: River up here. He just did it. You can't put it.
Speaker 1: You can't put anybody else in. You can't put more
Speaker 1: people in there. It's already full. But you go in
Speaker 1: there and you watch, and when somebody pulls a big
Speaker 1: trout out, it's he's like a magnet. Everybody just comes
Speaker 1: and stands next to him and starts casting over him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so you've got to realize that that that's gonna
Speaker 1: happen for you. If if to the animals, it's gonna
Speaker 1: happen to your your other hunters that are in there,
Speaker 1: that spend all summer and all, you know, all season
Speaker 1: long scouting and working for whatever the animals are that
Speaker 1: are in there. So be responsible when you put things
Speaker 1: on social media. Well, I think here's here's a good
Speaker 1: rule of thumbs. You know, people want to be I mean,
Speaker 1: part of the story is always connected to a place,
Speaker 1: like like if you're if you're posting stup on social media,
Speaker 1: it's because you have this inn a human desire to
Speaker 1: share a story. That story inside of hunting is always
Speaker 1: connected to place. Place gives even value to that. So
Speaker 1: that's why people want to A man I killed this
Speaker 1: at the such a set. But you just have to
Speaker 1: be general, and you have to make a decision of
Speaker 1: how general is general enough, Like you could say a
Speaker 1: lot of times of late, i've just been naming the
Speaker 1: state in the corner, maybe Northwest Arkansas, deer, northwest Arkansas,
Speaker 1: this or that. You know, if you draw a map
Speaker 1: around the five thousand square miles that encompassed northwest Arkansas
Speaker 1: and you can find I mean, yeah, that's pretty big area.
Speaker 1: Um So, I mean you just have to be general. Now,
Speaker 1: some people like I think it depends on how big
Speaker 1: it is. If you're talking about a w m A
Speaker 1: that's ten thousand acres, just don't name the w m A. Yes,
Speaker 1: just don't. If you're talking about a national forest that's
Speaker 1: two point two million acres, perhaps you could say, I
Speaker 1: mean I wouldn't suggest it, but I've done I've done
Speaker 1: that before those art national forest I take than that,
Speaker 1: you know, and it's like it's pretty big place. You're
Speaker 1: probably not gonna draw a lot of attention. And then
Speaker 1: if you throw in something really negative about the place,
Speaker 1: it'll drop off the riff raff. So say I killed
Speaker 1: this buck, I'm hunting there for a week, and it's
Speaker 1: the only one boy, stuff like that climb through five
Speaker 1: miles of BlackBerry brambles to get there too. And the
Speaker 1: thing about it is, you know you can have some
Speaker 1: some detrimental effects by giving the spot away accidentally, are
Speaker 1: on purpose, but you still hadn't broken law. No, no,
Speaker 1: it's all. You haven't done anything exactly wrong. But on
Speaker 1: the other and you have I have. Let me. This
Speaker 1: is funny because both of you guys have hunted with
Speaker 1: me on public land. So I'm not talking about you,
Speaker 1: but I could be. If you mess up, you could
Speaker 1: be this guy. You know. What I've found is, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, you gotta be careful who you take into
Speaker 1: your spots. You absolutely do. You have to trust him
Speaker 1: that they they have the same code and ethic as
Speaker 1: you do. What I find is people on accident do
Speaker 1: stuff like like they'll not me. Okay, I'll give you
Speaker 1: an example that it's not either one of you guys.
Speaker 1: I took a guy into a pretty good spot of
Speaker 1: mine and uh, he's never going back in there. I
Speaker 1: know he's not. I mean, like, I'm not worried about that. Well,
Speaker 1: he told a family member of his about it, just
Speaker 1: in conversation, and then and then he He told me
Speaker 1: that he told his family member just as if it
Speaker 1: was nothing. And and his family member had been in
Speaker 1: there before and knew the spots. And I was just like, dude,
Speaker 1: need that guy knowing exactly where I took you. I
Speaker 1: don't care if he's been in there or not. I
Speaker 1: don't want him to know that I was in there.
Speaker 1: And he had no malice whatsoever. It was actually a
Speaker 1: veteran hunter. Just in his world. It just wentn't a
Speaker 1: big deal, like you know, just public land. I told
Speaker 1: my brother in law where we went, and I was
Speaker 1: just like, don't tell your brother in law where we went.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, um, so usually people do it
Speaker 1: on accident. Uh. And people there's people are secretive to
Speaker 1: a degree, but then there's people inside their circle that
Speaker 1: they'll tell anything to. For instance, you could take somebody
Speaker 1: hunting and you cannot make them not tell their dad
Speaker 1: or their own I mean, do you know what I'm saying, Like,
Speaker 1: you can't take Clay nwcom anywhere that I'm not probably
Speaker 1: gonna tell my dad where we were at. You could
Speaker 1: you could be you could say, Clay swear to secrecy.
Speaker 1: You will never utter these words again in your life.
Speaker 1: All I will cut your throat and I'll be like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm good, and then I'll be like, Dad, we went
Speaker 1: in back in there too. I mean, you know, you
Speaker 1: do it almost unconsciously with like people that you're super
Speaker 1: tight because my dad's not going in there. But my
Speaker 1: dad didn't swear to anybody over and then so Dad's like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, Clay, and they went over to and my
Speaker 1: Dad's never done that. I'm not throwing my dad. My dad,
Speaker 1: Gary Nucom has never done it. That has been done
Speaker 1: to me by friends that I've taken and I can't
Speaker 1: And honestly, I evaluate that when I and all my
Speaker 1: friends that are listening to this, I'm not talking about you,
Speaker 1: it's like four people right now that are going is
Speaker 1: he talking about No, I'm not talking about you. That
Speaker 1: person has already been dealt with. Yeah, that person is
Speaker 1: no longer alive. No. But so I'm just saying, you
Speaker 1: just gotta be careful. Yeah, if and not that the
Speaker 1: whole objective of a hunter is to keep his spot secret.
Speaker 1: I mean it's like we inside of modern time, tis
Speaker 1: the way we will persist in our culture will persist
Speaker 1: if more people get involved in hunting. So I mean
Speaker 1: that seems kind of hypocritical in a sense if you
Speaker 1: were from another planet and you were peering down and
Speaker 1: we're having these conversations like we need new hunters. Public
Speaker 1: Land is awesome, it belongs to us all, and then
Speaker 1: we're like, man, So you know, there's a part of
Speaker 1: you know, but there are things that you just kind
Speaker 1: of you gotta kind of keep close and you just
Speaker 1: gotta be careful who you take in there. And it's
Speaker 1: a good thing to share stuff with people. I mean,
Speaker 1: a human sharing a hunting spot, honestly is one of
Speaker 1: the most ancient and honest and real hat tips that
Speaker 1: a human can give to another human. I was actually
Speaker 1: just thinking about that. How I mean, that is such
Speaker 1: a core part of the human hunting experience. Is this,
Speaker 1: you know, the share activity. You know, I'm gonna help you,
Speaker 1: You're gonna help me. Um, So it's weird to talk
Speaker 1: about not sharing that, but I think it speaks to
Speaker 1: the bigger picture of how we form those hunting relationships.
Speaker 1: I mean, I got all kinds of friends who I
Speaker 1: would never take hunting, you know, and for all my
Speaker 1: friends who happened to be listening to this I may
Speaker 1: be talking about. But but you know, for various reasons,
Speaker 1: but I think it speaks to what we what you
Speaker 1: form as a hunter, and that's probably a subject for
Speaker 1: a different podcast. But end of the day, what we
Speaker 1: share on social media, we have to realize it's just
Speaker 1: like what mom and dad's moms and dads tell their kids.
Speaker 1: Be careful what you put on the internet, because once
Speaker 1: you put it out there, you can never take it back.
Speaker 1: And and we would do well until look in the
Speaker 1: mirror and repeat that to ourselves before we put some
Speaker 1: of these things on social media in in a lot
Speaker 1: of different ways. But with regard to where I killed
Speaker 1: that big buck or whatever, did you kill that, I
Speaker 1: did not kill it anything. Hey, you know what I
Speaker 1: think I think inside of if we're talking about taking
Speaker 1: people hunting, like, I think there's a dual part responsibility.
Speaker 1: And this is the reason I've taken both of you
Speaker 1: to places that I that are, you know, spots that
Speaker 1: I know, is because I know that you will pay
Speaker 1: you the respect. I think there's a responsibility of the
Speaker 1: taker to be very clear about his expectations when I
Speaker 1: when I took in with you and in Zach, it's
Speaker 1: it explicitly said, man, y'all come back in here. Do
Speaker 1: you remember me saying that, I said, man, come back
Speaker 1: down here. Totally fine. There's places that I would not
Speaker 1: say that to you. You know what I'm saying, hurt, No,
Speaker 1: they can't be. They can't be. And if I took
Speaker 1: you in there, I mean it would be my responsibility
Speaker 1: to have the character and the boldness of just knowing
Speaker 1: my value system to be like, dude, don't bring anybody
Speaker 1: in here. Don't don't come back in here. Do you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying? And then I think that's fair.
Speaker 1: I think it's fair. Do you think that's fair? I
Speaker 1: think it's I think it's fair. It's not, it's not.
Speaker 1: I think it's fair to ask because I've done that
Speaker 1: with people that I've guided and in public on public ground,
Speaker 1: you know, like or it's some folks that I've taken hunting,
Speaker 1: maybe not guiding, just a pleasure hunt, and that has
Speaker 1: bit me in the behind more than once. Tell me
Speaker 1: like they you took him in there, and they asked
Speaker 1: if they could come back. I took him in and say, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, we found this spot. I've been hunting here
Speaker 1: on the Arkansas River for twenty years and we found
Speaker 1: this spot here and I'm gonna take you to it,
Speaker 1: and I you know, I appreciate if you can let
Speaker 1: me know if you want to come back, I'd be
Speaker 1: glad to take you. Okay, that's a good way to
Speaker 1: say it. It's essentially saying, don't come back in here
Speaker 1: without me sure, and then show up over there. My
Speaker 1: brother and I go back and here this guy is
Speaker 1: with three other people that I don't even know. But
Speaker 1: what he's done, he's broken no laws. Well, he's broken
Speaker 1: a trust, but he I mean, when you get down,
Speaker 1: when you get down to the to the brass tax,
Speaker 1: he hadn't done anything illegal, but but he but for
Speaker 1: what we're talking about a public land etiquette, he's bad.
Speaker 1: My dad, my dad, uh at the expense. And this
Speaker 1: is where if you're talking about building friendships with people,
Speaker 1: my dad used to not hunt with certain people because
Speaker 1: he knew that they were going to take him to
Speaker 1: a spot that probably he was eventually going to find
Speaker 1: on his own. Do you hear what I'm saying? And
Speaker 1: if that guy took him in there, Dad, I mean,
Speaker 1: my dad would just like never go anywhere within five
Speaker 1: miles there for the rest of his life. Like that's
Speaker 1: the kind of code. Basically, I grew up with the
Speaker 1: most conservative possible way of thinking about public land etiquette.
Speaker 1: And so Dad got invited him, how are you let's
Speaker 1: go back in there Turkey ounting Gary, and Dad was like,
Speaker 1: he turned him down because Dad wanted to go in
Speaker 1: that area. The guy's not the one who turned Dad
Speaker 1: onto that area, you understand what I'm saying. And so
Speaker 1: Dad knew eventually he was gonna get back in there
Speaker 1: and find stuff, and so he didn't want to do that. Um.
Speaker 1: And I get that because if if it's a spot,
Speaker 1: like if I took you or you to a spot
Speaker 1: that you are never gonna find on your own, then
Speaker 1: I think I've got the right to be like, hey,
Speaker 1: don't come back in here and not be a jerk
Speaker 1: about it, just like hey, we're just too humans. I
Speaker 1: hope that you have a spot that you like that
Speaker 1: much that you could just be like, man, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that's fair. Yeah, well you can. I think it is. Um,
Speaker 1: I think it's mostly fair. I think part of that
Speaker 1: that we have a responsibility as hunters if we, you know,
Speaker 1: to pass that culture down, is to explain why we're
Speaker 1: saying that to people because we're a jerk, not because
Speaker 1: we're greedy, not because we're hoarding, right, but but also
Speaker 1: to explain why what attracted you to that spot, so
Speaker 1: that if I'm a new hunter, I could go and
Speaker 1: I can do my own work. And that's part of
Speaker 1: part of what um to me. You know, the benefit
Speaker 1: of going with other people is learning from those people,
Speaker 1: and so we as hunters need to keep that in
Speaker 1: mind as well. Like if I'm if I'm the more
Speaker 1: senior hunter or fisherman, I try to explain to other people,
Speaker 1: like why did I pick this spot? I might be right,
Speaker 1: I might be wrong, but I want that same thing
Speaker 1: in return, especially if it's going to be that situation
Speaker 1: where like I'll take you. I'm gonna take you to
Speaker 1: the spot, but this is just for this is just
Speaker 1: for us today. And you know, I appreciate if you
Speaker 1: not come back here unless unless I'm with you or
Speaker 1: you let me know if you're coming back in here,
Speaker 1: and you know you, you would hope that would be
Speaker 1: nuanced enough that you wouldn't have to be that direct. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but some of us are dumb. I mean, I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna say it. Some of us are just socially dumb
Speaker 1: about that kind of stuff and wouldn't know. I just wouldn't. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're just like, well, yeah, I'm thinking of an example
Speaker 1: of a new hunter recently that I just thought public. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a different story. I think there's a context of that too,
Speaker 1: because it's like, that's your spot. It's not saying don't
Speaker 1: come back to like this w M A or this
Speaker 1: set of mountain range, like there's a there's a nuance
Speaker 1: of just like you know, it encompasses. And the other
Speaker 1: way that that's fair to say is because I know
Speaker 1: that there's fifteen other spots just like my spot that
Speaker 1: you can go find. But I like what you're saying though, James,
Speaker 1: about trying to understand what that spots like. And and
Speaker 1: that to me is where as mentor hunters that we
Speaker 1: share information and I freely try to Yeah. I mean like, like,
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to keep you from finding the best
Speaker 1: spot in the world for killing a big buck in
Speaker 1: the national forest over here. I want you to find that.
Speaker 1: You know that that helps, That helps the season hunter
Speaker 1: right there helping somebody else, because then he's going to
Speaker 1: get away from him. He's gonna find his own spot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't, you know, Teach a man to give him
Speaker 1: man of fish feeding for a day, teach a man
Speaker 1: to fish feeding for life, exactly. And it's the same.
Speaker 1: It's the it's the same basic principle. It's simple. It
Speaker 1: all comes to respect, and it all comes to see
Speaker 1: and looking at this thing out beyond killing an animal
Speaker 1: or taking an animal home with you, you know, it goes,
Speaker 1: it goes way beyond that to get the full experience,
Speaker 1: the true experience of what it is, and you know, sharing,
Speaker 1: taking people hunting. I would rather hunt with somebody and
Speaker 1: I had by myself any day, especially the older I get,
Speaker 1: I would rather take somebody with me as a kid,
Speaker 1: or somebody that are an adult that doesn't hunt much,
Speaker 1: you know, and didn't let them experience what I spent
Speaker 1: a lifetime looking at and watching those folks see it,
Speaker 1: because that's you know, you get to see it for
Speaker 1: the first time all over again, and watching somebody to me,
Speaker 1: watching somebody. We've taken kids. We had a kid to
Speaker 1: work for us, that guided for us, and I put
Speaker 1: that in air quotes. He just hung around the camp
Speaker 1: and he hunted with us, and he'd learned he learned
Speaker 1: to hunt ducks, and he learned to call and he
Speaker 1: got it was the best thing in the world. Watching
Speaker 1: that kid go from zero to a hundred and he
Speaker 1: didn't eat us. You know, two or three years he
Speaker 1: was ready to go on his own. Honey, still hunting
Speaker 1: with us. But watching somebody grow and develop and do
Speaker 1: their own thing and being able to go out and
Speaker 1: find their own spots and and do that is is
Speaker 1: to me, it's very rewarding as well. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: it's the motivation too of the mentee. Like, if you're
Speaker 1: just trying to find a just to sap off a
Speaker 1: good spot from somebody, then I got no interest in
Speaker 1: taking you hunting. If you really are interested in learning,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'll probably open the treasure fold to you know.
Speaker 1: I mean like you perceived that about people of like
Speaker 1: what's their intention? You know? I think that means a
Speaker 1: lot too. But I think the rule of thumb is
Speaker 1: is take nothing for granted and be explicit in your communication.
Speaker 1: So if somebody's taking you hunting, just straight up ask them,
Speaker 1: or or just assume that you can never go back
Speaker 1: there and then maybe they slip in. Uh, if you
Speaker 1: want to come back in here next week and try
Speaker 1: to kill that turkey, go for it. I can promise
Speaker 1: you that that happens more times than not. When you
Speaker 1: don't ask, yeah, can I come clack and I come
Speaker 1: back in here? You always tell me no. But it's
Speaker 1: kind of But when but when someone when I see
Speaker 1: somebody enjoying themselves and you've got no inclination at all
Speaker 1: that they're going to come back tomorrow with the brother
Speaker 1: in law, he's like, man, come on back in here,
Speaker 1: you know, or or whatever, you know, whatever it is,
Speaker 1: and it's just the respect thing I think is we'll
Speaker 1: go along ways. And that's a cool part of friendship too.
Speaker 1: I mean, really, I keep hammering this down, I wrote
Speaker 1: in the editorial the May June issue Barney Magazine, But man,
Speaker 1: what gives value to our hunting is our relationships it really.
Speaker 1: I mean, like we think Clay Nucom thinks that he's
Speaker 1: after big bucks and big bears, and that's like the
Speaker 1: goal of what I'm trying to do. That is not
Speaker 1: entirely true. You take human relationships out of the picture,
Speaker 1: and that has way less value. And I mean, like,
Speaker 1: I want to go kill a bear so that I
Speaker 1: can come home and tell you guys the story that
Speaker 1: that that's what has value. And and even to a
Speaker 1: very more much more primitive, functional human understanding. Hunting has
Speaker 1: always been about provision for other people. I mean, like
Speaker 1: a hunter goes out, he leaves his family and brings
Speaker 1: back provisions that allows them to live to share. So
Speaker 1: I mean like this whole hunting thing, I mean like
Speaker 1: we you know, there's all these different representations of hunting
Speaker 1: that we see on social media to you and and
Speaker 1: we do like to nerd out about the tactics and
Speaker 1: about how tough somebody is if they're a hard hunter,
Speaker 1: good they are. But really a lot of it is
Speaker 1: about the kinship that we have with people. And I
Speaker 1: say that to say I enjoy sharing a spot with
Speaker 1: a good friend. Well, and I think and I think
Speaker 1: that probably is what motivates a lot of us to
Speaker 1: do that sharing that we do that sometimes brings us
Speaker 1: great rewards but also carries great harm. Sometimes it's like
Speaker 1: a double edged sword. You know, we want to share
Speaker 1: that with other people two to build those connections with them.
Speaker 1: And you don't, in in that rush to feel to
Speaker 1: feel the happiness of sharing with others, you forget about
Speaker 1: the possible harm that can come on the back side
Speaker 1: of that um from being too free with your information
Speaker 1: or from uh saying you know, I mean you can
Speaker 1: take that a lot of different ways, pictures that we
Speaker 1: share on social media and stuff like that. But man,
Speaker 1: it's it's hard to be a human sometimes, you know.
Speaker 1: I find that there's different gradients of hunters. Like the
Speaker 1: other day on our Turkey public land Turkey Hunt River,
Speaker 1: and I came out and there was a truck parked
Speaker 1: by my truck, and it upset me. For I was like,
Speaker 1: oh God, this guy, because I thought he'd parked his
Speaker 1: money a party. He even had a white pickup. It
Speaker 1: was like me, uh, and I thought he had parked
Speaker 1: beside me and just walked right in on us. Well,
Speaker 1: when I got out there, sure enough, it's the same situation.
Speaker 1: It was not a bad guy. It was an old
Speaker 1: man sitting on the tailgate of his truck. He was
Speaker 1: waiting for us to come out. And man, he told
Speaker 1: me everything he knew about turkeys in that part of
Speaker 1: the world. I mean, he told me about turkeys, he'd
Speaker 1: heard Goblin that day. He told me where they were
Speaker 1: going to cross the road, he told me. I mean,
Speaker 1: he just nothing was nothing was off limits. And um,
Speaker 1: you know there's some people and you kind of like
Speaker 1: that guy, and I didn't use any information that he
Speaker 1: gave me to do anything, and you know, I just
Speaker 1: went home. But but then there's the other guy that
Speaker 1: is just so tight lipped. You know, well that that
Speaker 1: brings up a great point that another kind of line
Speaker 1: in the in the topics that we that I kind
Speaker 1: of gathered, and and that's the idea of two guys
Speaker 1: cross paths. How much information are you going to give
Speaker 1: that guy if y'all are walking in opposite directions. I mean,
Speaker 1: there was there was some pretty colorful stories shared about
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I'll i'll, I'll tell him I was hunting
Speaker 1: back over on this side over here, and I was
Speaker 1: actually over there and I heard a bunch of gobbles
Speaker 1: back over there, blah blah blah blah blah, or I'll
Speaker 1: I'll tell him I was hunting in a completely different
Speaker 1: county or whatever. You know. I mean, I don't have
Speaker 1: to enumerate all the stories. People know. People can think
Speaker 1: in their heads what it was. But point being is
Speaker 1: that I think what I took away from that was
Speaker 1: going into the situation, I should know what am I
Speaker 1: How am I going to interact with somebody? How much
Speaker 1: am I going to interact with somebody. If I'm when
Speaker 1: I'm bear hunting this fall and I crossed paths with somebody.
Speaker 1: If if I've got a piece of information that's valuable
Speaker 1: to me, how much of that information am I going
Speaker 1: to share? I don't think you're bound by any code.
Speaker 1: I don't think that you're bound to don't tell a
Speaker 1: lie because you'll go to hell. But moral code, you
Speaker 1: anything that would be a safety factor to somebody, like hey,
Speaker 1: when you go back, when you're crossing those falls over there,
Speaker 1: you step on that big rock out in the middle,
Speaker 1: you're you're going swimming, or I saw a big rattlesnake
Speaker 1: or whatever. You you you tell somebody something that could
Speaker 1: anything that would be a potential harm to him. But
Speaker 1: you don't have to tell him that you heard three
Speaker 1: turkeys in there. There's no there's nothing wrong with that,
Speaker 1: you know, And I've had what if he asks you
Speaker 1: if you saw I got a good I got a
Speaker 1: recent example, but go ahead, brand Yeah, if he asked
Speaker 1: you that, and you know what, you know, I've heard
Speaker 1: him in here before. Good at this game, way better
Speaker 1: than me. That's a former law enforcement officer. H Yeah,
Speaker 1: they play nuanced really Brant's really good at it. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: if my modus operanda in the woods is I will
Speaker 1: not lie to someone. I mean, I won't lie to
Speaker 1: anybody any other day, So I don't know why I
Speaker 1: would lie to him on the day I'm hunting. I mean,
Speaker 1: so guy says, do you hear any turkeys? If I
Speaker 1: heard a turkey and you asked Clay nucom in the woods.
Speaker 1: If you directly ask me did you hear a turkey?
Speaker 1: And I say I did not, then I truly did not.
Speaker 1: Now I may not answer you. I mean, I'm it's
Speaker 1: possible I could evade, but I'm not gonna lie to you.
Speaker 1: Do you understand? But the other thing is is, uh,
Speaker 1: you don't have to tell a whole story like that.
Speaker 1: We were in Montana a couple of weeks ago and
Speaker 1: walk walk out to the truck and uh, a full
Speaker 1: wheel drive vehicle pulls up. It's clear it's a hunter.
Speaker 1: He's wondering what we're doing. And uh, I'm not the
Speaker 1: best at this game. And uh, the guys I was
Speaker 1: hunting with were very surprised at how much information I
Speaker 1: gave out to these guys. Now it was my spot,
Speaker 1: so I could do whatever I wanted. They were with
Speaker 1: my My guys were with me. So but this guy
Speaker 1: just said, what are y'all doing? Man, we're bear hunting?
Speaker 1: You see any bears? Yeah? We did way the heck
Speaker 1: back in there. I was like, I mean it was
Speaker 1: like six miles from where we were standings where we
Speaker 1: saw a bear. So I was like, man, at the
Speaker 1: very back of that place. I mean, really, if that
Speaker 1: guy wanted to go in there after that bear, more power. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then but I did not tell him a thing
Speaker 1: about the turkeys that we had just worked for two
Speaker 1: hours and that, you know. And so the guys were like, man,
Speaker 1: you have that got a lot of information. I said.
Speaker 1: I didn't tell him about our turkeys. He didn't ask
Speaker 1: about turkeys. But I think anyway, yeah, that's a tough one.
Speaker 1: Most of the time, it's best to just keep your
Speaker 1: mouth shut unless but I've been in the woods too
Speaker 1: where I've met a guy that it's like, I'm going
Speaker 1: home and i ain't coming back here for the rest
Speaker 1: of the year. I'll tell him everything. I know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've been in that same situation. You know, you just
Speaker 1: help a guy out, you know, he's just like you.
Speaker 1: He just wants to kill. But yeah, if you're in
Speaker 1: the heat of the hunt, you know you're not all
Speaker 1: but you're gonna be pretty close lift and you're not.
Speaker 1: I mean, let him do his own scouting. There's nothing
Speaker 1: wrong with that, dude, to do the legwork. You'll find something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, there's nothing wrong with saying. You know, I've
Speaker 1: been all over this this country back here, I've been
Speaker 1: all over that country over there. There's just as many
Speaker 1: turkeys over there that is here. You just gotta get
Speaker 1: out and find them. Well, Hey, the other side of
Speaker 1: the coin is being the guy that's getting information. That's right.
Speaker 1: I was recently hunting with a gentleman up in Montana
Speaker 1: that was very good at getting information from people. He
Speaker 1: when he when we came up on people in the woods,
Speaker 1: which we came upon a quite a few, he was
Speaker 1: constantly the first one to ask questions like he he
Speaker 1: got them on the kind of defensive and most people
Speaker 1: just spilled the beans. Hurting turkeys out here. And now
Speaker 1: that's because they follow the Clay Nucom Code of not
Speaker 1: telling lives. Yeah, well, you would be surprised. It's been
Speaker 1: my experience in the law enforcement game of the last
Speaker 1: twenty nine years that people like to talk and if
Speaker 1: you will ask a question and shut up and listen,
Speaker 1: they will answer it, and lots of times they'll volunteer
Speaker 1: it more than you asked. That's me. Yeah, I would
Speaker 1: be a terrible criminal. We cannot. I'm driving from now
Speaker 1: on anytime we cross them. Had to give me a
Speaker 1: tutorial and how to cross the Canadian border every time?
Speaker 1: Better at it? All? Right? How what what's our time? Okay,
Speaker 1: let's do uh, let's do James, Why don't you pick
Speaker 1: one others we have done like two of our twelve
Speaker 1: here man. Okay, let's talk about some real operational stuff
Speaker 1: you had talked about, like how to park on the
Speaker 1: road and things like that. So let's let's try to
Speaker 1: cover some of those things that are people need to
Speaker 1: try to be sure we won't go down rabbit trails. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so to me one of the you coach coach me
Speaker 1: through this with more questions. But let me answer that question, James,
Speaker 1: find another one. But like like parking on a road,
Speaker 1: a lot of times you're on a secondary road, like
Speaker 1: a two track pick trail road that is only open
Speaker 1: for one vehicle to drive down, and a lot of
Speaker 1: times your I mean, your truck is your signal to
Speaker 1: the world that you're hunting in there, but you still
Speaker 1: do not own that road, and you have to park
Speaker 1: off that road such that someone could get around you,
Speaker 1: even though you don't want him to. Yeah, and even
Speaker 1: though you shouldn't. Like if you're on a tiny little
Speaker 1: road that goes back in there a half mile and
Speaker 1: dead ends, and a quarter mile into that road, you
Speaker 1: see a truck park and you know that that guy
Speaker 1: is down at that culvisac al hooton, you turn around
Speaker 1: and go back. But at the same time, you cannot
Speaker 1: block that road because what if I've dropped my son
Speaker 1: off down there and I've gone somewhere else and I
Speaker 1: gotta come back and pick him up. Or what if
Speaker 1: there's a side road beyond where you're at and there's
Speaker 1: somebody parked in there that you don't know that at
Speaker 1: nine o'clock in the morning is going to come back
Speaker 1: out and not be able to get around your true
Speaker 1: I mean just stuff like that. So you've always got
Speaker 1: to pull away off the road. You can leave your
Speaker 1: leave your you know, the back corner out just a
Speaker 1: little good if for nothing else, do it for the
Speaker 1: aspect of safety. If somebody gets hurt, first responders, you've
Speaker 1: got to get back in there, and you would want
Speaker 1: the same thing afforded you. And I have run into
Speaker 1: that in in in my life trying to get somewhere
Speaker 1: and to help somebody, and somebody part like that unintentional obviously,
Speaker 1: but the result is the same. You can't get back
Speaker 1: in there and help somebody, So do it for just
Speaker 1: for the sake of that. Uh, let's talk about camps
Speaker 1: real quick. So that's part of the scouting that I
Speaker 1: was doing recently, was looking for places to set up camp,
Speaker 1: and obviously I found a bunch of places. So now
Speaker 1: the next thing in my head is how soon is
Speaker 1: too soon? And you know what, what do I need
Speaker 1: to do? Like two air quotes, I'm gonna use air
Speaker 1: quotes hold camp? You know, I don't think I don't
Speaker 1: personally feel like it'd be right to go in there
Speaker 1: three or four days before I intend to come set
Speaker 1: up the camp and park something there. Um. So this
Speaker 1: is a single camp site, Yeah, yeah, I think this is.
Speaker 1: Here's my question to you. Does this camp size give
Speaker 1: you access to a place that you can't get access
Speaker 1: to it any other way? No? No, this So I'm
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna use my own examples. This will be
Speaker 1: a place where I could go set up camp of
Speaker 1: a certain size and comfort level, but my intention is
Speaker 1: to use that as my base of operations and I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go hunt. Okay, So you're not really trying to
Speaker 1: hold a hunt holding a hunting spot, because there's a difference.
Speaker 1: I want, I want to spot to camp because you could.
Speaker 1: I mean, the other scenario would be dead end dead
Speaker 1: end road that goes into all this big country and
Speaker 1: that's the only access point and you're trying to lock
Speaker 1: down a hunting location. I think that would be different
Speaker 1: in my mind, James, if you want to do the
Speaker 1: extra work and have that much forethought, go in there
Speaker 1: three days before and set up a tent. I personally
Speaker 1: wouldn't have a problem with that, especially if it wasn't
Speaker 1: blocking some major access point to all this country. Do
Speaker 1: you see what I'm saying? Like that, Like there's some
Speaker 1: places out here where you can find one of those spots,
Speaker 1: and then there's a two track that runs out the
Speaker 1: back of it. Yeah, and and and you're clearly just
Speaker 1: trying to save a Look, there was one place in
Speaker 1: the Ozarks that we hunt that it's a long finger
Speaker 1: ridge that always has turkeys on it. And these people
Speaker 1: would come in like two weeks before turkey season and
Speaker 1: put a camper up right in that spot. And I
Speaker 1: mean they they weren't just looking for a place to camp.
Speaker 1: They were hunting that ridge. And that was kind of like,
Speaker 1: come on, man, Uh in halftime, they wouldn't be there.
Speaker 1: And so I just parked by their camper and walk
Speaker 1: in there when they weren't there. You know, I was like,
Speaker 1: if you're not gonna even be here, they were blocking
Speaker 1: a hunting location. Yeah, so your deal. I wouldn't have
Speaker 1: a problem personal I wouldn't either. And we saw that
Speaker 1: in New Mexico. Remember we were hunting straight out there
Speaker 1: and they had the uh we were bear hunting, and
Speaker 1: they had the mule deer season coming up. People were
Speaker 1: bringing campers in Yeah, a couple of days beforehand just
Speaker 1: to get a billion acres. I mean, who cares, I didn't.
Speaker 1: Does that help you? Yeah? That helps me a lot, actually,
Speaker 1: because I mean set it up now it may I'm
Speaker 1: gonna get the lawnmower down there. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: the key to any public land huntings to have at
Speaker 1: least three options. Yeah, Well, that's that's what I've been thinking.
Speaker 1: You know, I identified several places where we could go
Speaker 1: and knowing what I want to try to get in there,
Speaker 1: you know, I can go to any one of those spots,
Speaker 1: and maybe what I'll do is send somebody ahead of
Speaker 1: me with a small car go drive this loop and
Speaker 1: tell me which one to go to so that I
Speaker 1: don't have to because I'm if I'm gonna take a
Speaker 1: camper and well, yeah, and your your your deal is
Speaker 1: a little bit harder because you've got to find a
Speaker 1: spot with a camper. I would absolutely go in there
Speaker 1: a week before James, also, really because it's different, like
Speaker 1: if you if you're setting up a camper, you've got
Speaker 1: to have a really specific place. I think a lot
Speaker 1: of this goes back to motivation. I mean, like if
Speaker 1: I knew that about you, I would not be upset
Speaker 1: that you camped in that spot a week before. These
Speaker 1: people that put their camper there again that I was
Speaker 1: upset with. They weren't there there, they were blocking a
Speaker 1: hunting location, different, different, they were probably lived local and
Speaker 1: just throw the camper in there too. Yeah, there's one
Speaker 1: place that we hunt close to where I took you
Speaker 1: this year where somebody left the camper and they left
Speaker 1: the camper like it's been there for like three years
Speaker 1: storage space. Eventually the forester is gonna have to haul
Speaker 1: it off. Well normally, you know, especially on state ground,
Speaker 1: you're limited on the amount of time that you can
Speaker 1: stay in one sea. That's true. Ye, what's another one? Okay,
Speaker 1: there's a couple more good ones on this list. Um,
Speaker 1: what do you do if you see a tree stand
Speaker 1: in the woods? What do you do if you see
Speaker 1: another hunter in the woods. We kind of talked about
Speaker 1: that with turkeys. You know, every species I think is
Speaker 1: gonna be a little bit different depending on is it
Speaker 1: firearms season, is at bow season? Maybe things like that.
Speaker 1: But I mean, these are things that maybe some of
Speaker 1: the new hunters really need to hear and understand how
Speaker 1: to deal with. So the legality I believe of hanging
Speaker 1: a tree stand in Arkansas on our state land. Don't
Speaker 1: quote me, but I want to say you you're supposed
Speaker 1: to be able to leave a stand up for like
Speaker 1: two weeks or something something like that. At one point
Speaker 1: one time it was fort days. I don't know if
Speaker 1: it's okay. So let's say let's just pretend like that's
Speaker 1: the law. The law is that a stand can be
Speaker 1: hung up for fourteen days. Now, people leave stands all
Speaker 1: the time, year round. That happens constantly. It's rarely enforced
Speaker 1: scene in most places. But so if I walk into
Speaker 1: a stand, walk into a place and there's a tree
Speaker 1: stand there, it would be a pretty massive etiquette violation
Speaker 1: to go forty yards away and hanging to the tree stand,
Speaker 1: right unless you yeah, that stand is covered in leaves. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's what I was about to say. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: if it's a new tree stand, and you can tell
Speaker 1: this dude hung this a week ago, Yeah, get the
Speaker 1: heck out of there. You go somewhere else. Now, you
Speaker 1: find the stand that's been left in there for three years,
Speaker 1: and you look at the steps and the straps, and
Speaker 1: you're like, this guy hadn't been here a long time.
Speaker 1: Many times I've seen that. Well, you can tell that
Speaker 1: when if the straps are grown into the tree a
Speaker 1: little bit, they're covered in moss, you know, stuff like that.
Speaker 1: So hanger standing hunt there. I mean, and you're using
Speaker 1: other context clues as well. I mean, are their boot
Speaker 1: tracks in the road where this guy has been in here?
Speaker 1: Are there? You know? Is there a truck park, there
Speaker 1: is he in it? Is he in this? Yeah? No?
Speaker 1: I mean so in general, you're always wanting to get
Speaker 1: away from people. But just because there's a stand hung
Speaker 1: there doesn't mean that that guy's claimed that spot for eternity.
Speaker 1: And it all goes back to context. If you're hunting
Speaker 1: a place that has a ton of hunters, like there's
Speaker 1: a w may around here that is just notorious for
Speaker 1: having a ton of hunters. You can't walk three yards
Speaker 1: in the woods without finding a tree stand or evidence
Speaker 1: of people hunting down in some of the other places
Speaker 1: I hunt. Jeez, if I found a tree stand out somewhere,
Speaker 1: I would just be like, I'm getting miles away from here.
Speaker 1: Just guys in spot? Is that that's yeah? Yeah? I
Speaker 1: think so. Um talk about real quick, let's talk about
Speaker 1: just you're out hunting, um and you run across you
Speaker 1: happen to see somebody else, or you're you're in a
Speaker 1: spot and you're actively still and somebody else is coming
Speaker 1: up on you. You know, talk about the safe ways
Speaker 1: to handle that, talk about the ethical ways to handle that,
Speaker 1: real quick. I think that's something important to touch on.
Speaker 1: You know, they talk about that somewhat in Hunter's ed.
Speaker 1: But you know how many of us remember that? Well.
Speaker 1: I think first of all, you don't want to start
Speaker 1: waving your hand or moving a lot. I mean, like
Speaker 1: somebody's walking towards you, they've got a firearm in their hand.
Speaker 1: You don't want to be like hey, because I mean
Speaker 1: they could think that movie. Yeah, they could automatically think
Speaker 1: that movement was an animal. Thereafter, the first thing to
Speaker 1: do is the verbally or with a whistle. Yeah, whistle
Speaker 1: is the best thing. I'm constantly listening. I'll hear a
Speaker 1: bird whistle when I'm in the woods and I'll stop
Speaker 1: and look in the trees, thinking that somebody's whistling at me.
Speaker 1: And you know, I mean what you should do if
Speaker 1: you see somebody in a tree stand or they whistle
Speaker 1: at you, is to make eye contact with them, perceive
Speaker 1: what's happening with them. I mean, and they might flag
Speaker 1: you over to them. I mean, I've done that before
Speaker 1: with people. Wave at them, just be like, hey, come over,
Speaker 1: you know, and maybe you can talk to them. Get
Speaker 1: over here inside. I mean, somebody in a tree stand
Speaker 1: probably wouldn't do that, but like if you're on the ground,
Speaker 1: you know, they might wave you over and you might
Speaker 1: go greet them or just talk. You know, where are
Speaker 1: you going, I'm going to go over here? Or eighty
Speaker 1: percent of the time what you need to do is
Speaker 1: turn your old butt around back the exact way you
Speaker 1: came and do something else. I mean, that's that's here's
Speaker 1: something they're running into somebody that we talk walked about.
Speaker 1: Everybody's in their bow hunting together, and you don't want
Speaker 1: but on some public land you can bow hunt and
Speaker 1: you can squirrel hunt all at the same time. I've
Speaker 1: been sitting in public land, Uh, far more live bow
Speaker 1: hunting and here two and like, who's shooting two? Then
Speaker 1: you see the guy coming through still hunting, and he
Speaker 1: got just as much right to be there as Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a tough one, you know, and you just let
Speaker 1: him know where you're at. Hey, I'm not a squirrel
Speaker 1: sitting up here. And usually they just happened my buddies
Speaker 1: that I squirrel hunting with over here. Uh they said
Speaker 1: last year their dog went in and tread their road hunting.
Speaker 1: So they're turning the dogs out and them run down
Speaker 1: the road and h they the dogs dove off the
Speaker 1: road and went in there and treat well, they come
Speaker 1: around the corner and there's a truck park there and
Speaker 1: their dogs are down their treat and they walked down
Speaker 1: to the I mean they gotta walk to the dogs,
Speaker 1: and literally the dog is treated like ten feet from
Speaker 1: a guy to tree stand and he said. They said
Speaker 1: the guy was real nice and he said he had
Speaker 1: the squirrel. It went a whole. They were real apologetic.
Speaker 1: They said, hey, sorry man, we we didn't know you're
Speaker 1: in here and the dog. Anyway, they said the guy
Speaker 1: was real nice and they retrieved the dog and got
Speaker 1: out there. Anyways, Well that's what you do. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: then kudos to the guy in they're not getting man, Yes,
Speaker 1: exactly exactly. Hey, hey, talk real quick about something that
Speaker 1: you just said. Road hunting, So you know, there's a
Speaker 1: really effective way to hunt. There's all different manners of slight. Okay, people,
Speaker 1: that was a joke. No, So, I mean there's different
Speaker 1: manners of roads. If we're talking about National Forest, you
Speaker 1: know which one's I mean, you're not gonna road hunt
Speaker 1: for deer with a gun in the truck, right yeah, um,
Speaker 1: but that's not necessarily the here's an example. Okay, So
Speaker 1: I went, So I went pronghorn hunting, in Wyoming and
Speaker 1: we rode around on private ground in the truck all
Speaker 1: over the place glassen. But you know, we weren't shooting
Speaker 1: from the truck, but we had the guns in the
Speaker 1: truck with us. Chambers were empty, but they were otherwise
Speaker 1: loaded and ready for us if we needed to get
Speaker 1: out and make a quick whatever. Um. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: all these different kinds of scenarios, right. So you're in
Speaker 1: the National Forest. You've got varying levels of roads. You
Speaker 1: can walk the roads. Some people are gonna use four
Speaker 1: wheelers or UTVs on the roads. I mean, let's just
Speaker 1: talk about that real quick, and people may not really
Speaker 1: realize what really is a good idea or a bad
Speaker 1: idea on that. Are you saying, like, can you squirrel hunt?
Speaker 1: I'm not question because well, let me just say, like
Speaker 1: we we road hunt our coon dogs sometimes and our
Speaker 1: squirrel dogs, which means and bird dogs. Absolutely. It means
Speaker 1: you run them in front of mules or your truck
Speaker 1: or your or your four wheeler and the dogs run
Speaker 1: down the road trying to scent game and they're not
Speaker 1: usually pointing or tree and game on the road. Your
Speaker 1: squirrel dog smells a squirrel and dives off the road
Speaker 1: and goes down in there hundred yards and trees like
Speaker 1: that's kind of what happens, right, And so you go
Speaker 1: off and shoot the squirrel and trucks parked on the
Speaker 1: road like that's normal, right. But somebody who doesn't know
Speaker 1: might hear road hunting as a term and think, I
Speaker 1: drive down the road and if I see a squirrel,
Speaker 1: I can okay, okay, because I said that, didn't I
Speaker 1: said we were road hunting. Yeah, okay, that that's what
Speaker 1: that means. Yeah, And they're they're legalities about you know,
Speaker 1: how close you can shoot to a paved road for sure? Yeah,
Speaker 1: any maintained road, State Federer County, maintained road, if somebody
Speaker 1: lives on it, if you can pretty well figure if
Speaker 1: a school bus drives down that road, you can't shoot
Speaker 1: from it. I think you've got to be like a
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty feet from the center line of the
Speaker 1: roads that run. Yeah, something like that. So it all
Speaker 1: comes back to etiquette and being respectful. It all comes
Speaker 1: back to the individual, seasoned or rookie to know the law,
Speaker 1: to know what's expected of him legally and safely first
Speaker 1: before he ever steps out into the woods. And now
Speaker 1: it's not always the case, but it is their responsibility
Speaker 1: because the ignorance of the law is no excuse. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when he gets right down to it now, And that's
Speaker 1: a good point. I think that, you know, there's the
Speaker 1: legality of it, which we all need to know one
Speaker 1: way or the other. And then there are these unwritten
Speaker 1: rules that we've been talking about that come from experience
Speaker 1: that sometimes they come from bad experience, and we just
Speaker 1: get out there and make mistakes. Um, you're gonna I
Speaker 1: make mistakes. We all do. I think have the wherewithal
Speaker 1: that if you get out and put yourself in a
Speaker 1: situation where you walk through somebody's hunt, or you do
Speaker 1: something that you can tell they're clearly upset with you about.
Speaker 1: You know, it's the golden rule. It's just like apologize,
Speaker 1: try to make it right, try to get out of
Speaker 1: the way, whatever. And you know, I would hate for
Speaker 1: I would hate for new hunters or people who are
Speaker 1: just getting back out into it, especially right now. I mean,
Speaker 1: people are so stressed out anyway. You could kind of
Speaker 1: look at a lot of negative interactions with people and
Speaker 1: blame it on the current situation, right, but I would
Speaker 1: hate for those things too, to turn people off from
Speaker 1: from hunting or from being out in the woods because they're,
Speaker 1: like we've talked about, there's so much to gain from
Speaker 1: being out there. It has this spring. Being out in
Speaker 1: the woods has helped me keep my sanity. I'm not
Speaker 1: not making light of that at all. I mean it's
Speaker 1: it's been good to refresh and and I would hate
Speaker 1: for somebody to get a bad taste in their mouths
Speaker 1: and never go back. Yeah. Hopefully, hopefully we've helped some
Speaker 1: people out with that. Yeah, if not, regardless, James, you
Speaker 1: and I know where we're going hunting together. When Clay
Speaker 1: is not going to be there, they're going back in there. No. Now,
Speaker 1: I think I think this has been a pretty well
Speaker 1: rounded discussion. Uh, you know, there's a thousands suffix that
Speaker 1: we probably didn't cover. But in general, if your buddy
Speaker 1: takes you to a spot, assume you can't go back.
Speaker 1: If you see another hunter, go as far as possible
Speaker 1: away from him. Try to understand the cultural norms of
Speaker 1: the place that you're hunting. If it's a if it's
Speaker 1: an area that has very sparse hunting pressure, then if
Speaker 1: you see someone, you should go as far away as possible.
Speaker 1: If you're in an area that has super dense hunting pressure,
Speaker 1: then maybe it's acceptable for you to park in the
Speaker 1: same parking lot as another car. Like just don't assume,
Speaker 1: don't assume anything, and don't assume that somebody's a bad
Speaker 1: guy because they don't take you to their don't take
Speaker 1: you to their spot or you know, again, we're we're
Speaker 1: talking about how we got to increase hunter number and access,
Speaker 1: and then we're talking about how to keep our spots secret.
Speaker 1: That's just the game. Don't don't hate the player, hate
Speaker 1: the game, and and it's and it's not the game's
Speaker 1: fault either. You know. Part of hunting is doing your
Speaker 1: own work. Yeah, and but we all got to have
Speaker 1: a leg up. I mean I didn't. I've not become
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, everybody's got to stand on somebody's shoulders.
Speaker 1: People took me to their spots that I learned from,
Speaker 1: you know, so so there's no you know, it's not
Speaker 1: like you've got to be this. You know, nobody's an island.
Speaker 1: Nobody has done at all on their own nobody. But
Speaker 1: there is part of being a hunter is being disciplined
Speaker 1: and doing the work and doing the planning. And that's
Speaker 1: the fun of it. So so you know that's where
Speaker 1: and I would say another big rule of thumb and
Speaker 1: just kind of summarizing what we're talking about is is
Speaker 1: perceive someone's motivation inside of like spot giving and different things.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, there's no you don't have to
Speaker 1: do the same thing with two people because two people
Speaker 1: may have two totally different motivations. And you have the
Speaker 1: right to withhold or give information anybody you want, you know,
Speaker 1: based upon what you think they're motivations are. And you
Speaker 1: know there's a uh, somebody told me the other day, Uh,
Speaker 1: Tennessee mountain bear hunter. Uh. He told me some things
Speaker 1: are just sacred. Yeah, and we get to call them
Speaker 1: sacred just because we chose to make them sacred. Sacred
Speaker 1: meaning set apart special. And he said, things that are
Speaker 1: sacred make life worth living. And sometimes hunting spots are
Speaker 1: kind of sacred. It's just like so you don't have
Speaker 1: to dish them out. But at the same time, sharing
Speaker 1: something sacred is a valuable part of relationship. So just
Speaker 1: be wise and uh, and yeah, share, I think I
Speaker 1: think it's great to share information, you know, if you're
Speaker 1: a mentor, share information about how they can learn to
Speaker 1: fish quote unquote, not just give them a fish, because
Speaker 1: there is a lot of a lot of there's plenty
Speaker 1: of places to hunt, more so out west, Boy, out west,
Speaker 1: I mean, Gili, there's so much ground, so much public ground.
Speaker 1: The culture is a little bit different out there with
Speaker 1: public land spots than it would be here, which we
Speaker 1: have quite a bit of public ground here in Arkansas,
Speaker 1: but still much less than say the state of Montana.
Speaker 1: That's like, I don't know what percentage of public land
Speaker 1: it is, but more public land than private land. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know a lot of those states out there like that.
Speaker 1: So anyway, just different cultures. Don't assume, keep your mouth
Speaker 1: shut most of the time. Be safe. Yep, it sounds good.
Speaker 1: Closing thoughts. That was my summary. I like it. I
Speaker 1: like them. I like the idea of it. I love
Speaker 1: public land hunting. I like the the you last in
Speaker 1: the resource and doing it the right way. You know,
Speaker 1: it's fun. It's fun. It should be fun. It should
Speaker 1: be work. You should have to earn it because it
Speaker 1: it makes it so much better. The reward is so
Speaker 1: much better. Yeah, I gave my closing thought right. No,
Speaker 1: I think that's a really good conversation to have. I
Speaker 1: think overall, it's just you know, just being mindful of
Speaker 1: others and just being you know, I'm not gonna do
Speaker 1: anything to try to cause anyone to stumble. And so
Speaker 1: I think if we understand that we're sharing the same
Speaker 1: space and then we all have ownership of it, but
Speaker 1: also like respecting the nuances of of the you know,
Speaker 1: just things that are culturally accepted. Not just that, but
Speaker 1: just you know, not assuming things and just putting yourself
Speaker 1: any other person's shoes, and just you know, just being
Speaker 1: a person that takes in all things and not just
Speaker 1: make like a split section second decision, actually consider things
Speaker 1: before just doing it. You Yeah, um, I think that
Speaker 1: would solve a lot of a lot of the conflict. Yeah,
Speaker 1: inside these scenarios right on. Al Right, guys, thanks so much.
Speaker 1: Thanks James, you bet, Thanks Thanks Colby. Keep the wild
Speaker 1: places wild so that we'll have a lot more ground
Speaker 1: where we can all spread out and go hunt. Just
Speaker 1: don't go dunk uh. Thankscellent