Speaker 1: My name is Clay Nuckleman. This is a production of
Speaker 1: the bear Grease podcast called The bear Grease Render, where
Speaker 1: we render down, dive deeper, and look behind the scenes
Speaker 1: of the actual bear Grease podcast, presented by FHF Gear
Speaker 1: American Maid, purpose built hunting and fishing gear that's designed
Speaker 1: to be as rugged as the place as we explore. So, Dad,
Speaker 1: Michael Roseman was just saying that he thought it was
Speaker 1: pretty suspicious that we moved to Mina in the early
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties and you became a banker and Mina right
Speaker 1: when Barry Seal And what's the.
Speaker 2: Movie, Michael, don't remember that?
Speaker 3: The American Dream?
Speaker 1: American Dream? Yeah, with with Tom Cruise and Bill Clinton
Speaker 1: and drugs and the airport and everything. Yeah. Hey man,
Speaker 1: I just don't know. You might have had something to
Speaker 1: do with that.
Speaker 2: I didn't say it was suspicious. What I said was
Speaker 2: I watched the movie put two and two together and
Speaker 2: text Brint and I said, Hey, I don't know Clay's daddy,
Speaker 2: but wasn't he a banker in Miena at this time?
Speaker 2: How many banks are in Mina?
Speaker 4: There were a lot apparently.
Speaker 1: Uh, well, welcome to the bear Grease Render. Man, I've
Speaker 1: been excited about this ever since I knew who was
Speaker 1: going to be here. We have multiple I would say,
Speaker 1: multiple new er Ish voices. I have. To my left,
Speaker 1: Brent Reeves, Brent, good to see. I want to talk
Speaker 1: about Okay, We're gonna go around the room and I'm
Speaker 1: going to tell each of you what I would like
Speaker 1: to talk to you about, and then we're going to
Speaker 1: come back to you. Brent. I want to talk to
Speaker 1: you about Kin's Reward Brent's podcast. This week, we talked
Speaker 1: about a horse named Ken's Reward. We got to come
Speaker 1: back to that. To Brent's left, Isaac Neil Grease, assistant
Speaker 1: to the assistant producer of Bear Grease from Missouri, from
Speaker 1: the Queen, the Queen City of the Ozarks. Did you
Speaker 1: know that Springfield, Missouri calls themselves the Queen City of
Speaker 1: the Ozarks.
Speaker 5: As far as as far as I know, King King
Speaker 5: City of the Ozarks is up for grabs. So I
Speaker 5: don't know what you're grasping about. We're just saying we're
Speaker 5: the second best.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you can. You should call yourself the runner
Speaker 1: up city of It's pretty good.
Speaker 5: There's a lot of cities in the Ozarks.
Speaker 1: From the runner up city in the Ozarks, Isaac Neil
Speaker 1: to Isaac's left, Michael Roseman, Hello, Man, Michael. So, Michael Dad,
Speaker 1: he owns Operates, He's the engineer, he's the lead man, dishwasher,
Speaker 1: dishwasher at sun Spot Coonlights. So the coon lights that
Speaker 1: we sell on mediator dot com that me and Brent use,
Speaker 1: the big high powered coon lights. This is the this
Speaker 1: is a man behind it. So yes, yeah, and so
Speaker 1: what I want to talk to Michael about later is
Speaker 1: his new light. And I am going to tell everyone
Speaker 1: in the United States that if you don't own one
Speaker 1: of these, you should. I use my I use my
Speaker 1: light all the time. And I don't even have a
Speaker 1: coon dog right now. I have one retired dog that
Speaker 1: backtracks a lot, so it's pretty straight. It just, uh,
Speaker 1: we just hit a lot of dentrees after I lost
Speaker 1: my good female. So I use my coon light almost
Speaker 1: every day. Incredible light I use in the back country.
Speaker 1: We'll get back to that. The guest of honor today
Speaker 1: because he's come so far, is my buddy Chris Pale
Speaker 1: of the Houndsman XP podcast How Far Do You Come Today?
Speaker 4: I was like, I traveled for three weary days by
Speaker 4: Mule and Donkey. We're talking.
Speaker 5: We're talking physical distance because I thought there was personal
Speaker 5: growth or something.
Speaker 4: Like Yeah, there's always personal growth when you're traveling with
Speaker 4: the terrier patients.
Speaker 1: Oh you got your dog with you?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I got tough with me.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 3: Cool.
Speaker 1: You came from Indiana, yes, the northwest Arkansas yep. Great. Well, okay, boys,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk to Chris about this newly proposed
Speaker 1: it's gonna get serious Colorado legislation that's designed to shut
Speaker 1: down mountain lion hunting with hounds in the state of Colorado.
Speaker 1: So Chris is kind of he's he's stayed up to
Speaker 1: date on that, and we're going to introduce that and
Speaker 1: talk about it the world. We're going to come back
Speaker 1: to that. So thank you so much for coming.
Speaker 3: That was my pleasure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, man. And then to your left believe or Nukem.
Speaker 1: Did you hear your name come up on the podcast?
Speaker 3: Nailed it?
Speaker 2: Brother?
Speaker 1: I'm I'm I'm excited about this episode. It's been a
Speaker 1: while since we've done a documentary style podcast. We've been
Speaker 1: doing stories for ten weeks. So you know, if you're
Speaker 1: new to this, if this is your first every time
Speaker 1: to tune into the Bear Grease podcast. Our render is
Speaker 1: when we talk about the documentary style podcast that we do,
Speaker 1: and the last five episodes. We did two episodes Chris
Speaker 1: in September on Alaska Stories, which just was a compilation
Speaker 1: of wild, harrowing Alaskan stories, which I really enjoyed, and
Speaker 1: then we did three full deer hunting episodes, which to
Speaker 1: me are some of my favorite things that we do. I'
Speaker 1: just like hearing the way people think about a moment
Speaker 1: inside of their hunting career. Really, it's just like a
Speaker 1: to these guys that I know about him, I have
Speaker 1: respect for, and I'm like, tell me your best, dear story.
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed that. So, all right, going back the
Speaker 1: other direction, Brent yep Ken's Reward. So, Brent on this
Speaker 1: Country Life podcast, I'm going to take a little bit
Speaker 1: of credit for a lot of the success of This
Speaker 1: Country Life.
Speaker 3: I wish Mystery was here because the.
Speaker 1: Way this works, Dad is Brent, we'll be driving somewhere.
Speaker 1: He told me the story of Ken's.
Speaker 3: Reward years ago, Yeah, a long time ago.
Speaker 1: And I was like, dude, you need to figure out
Speaker 1: a way to tell that story on This Country Life.
Speaker 1: So if you haven't heard it, which, go back and
Speaker 1: listen to it. Brent had Brent's dad bought him a horse,
Speaker 1: yea from a sale in Ada, Oklahoma.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 1: How old were you, Brent?
Speaker 3: Oh, let's see, I would have probably in nineteen eighty eight.
Speaker 3: I'd have been twenty two.
Speaker 1: Where it's twenty two years old. His dad and his
Speaker 1: best friend go to horse sale in Ate, Oklahoma and
Speaker 1: get a great deal on a pure bred American quarter
Speaker 1: horse that was supposedly a horse.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then he couldn't buck. They said he wouldn't
Speaker 3: buck good enough, so they made a cow horse up.
Speaker 1: They wanted him for a bucking horse.
Speaker 3: Yep, that's what.
Speaker 1: They made him into. A roping horse.
Speaker 3: Yep, they made him into a You got to hear.
Speaker 1: Him tell the story.
Speaker 3: You did.
Speaker 1: You did a good job of telling the story. And
Speaker 1: but the but the but the whole podcast was about
Speaker 1: animal names, like why do we name animals the way
Speaker 1: we do? And he it's a mystery why this horse
Speaker 1: was named Ken's Reward because you know, he ends up
Speaker 1: doing a lot of trouble with the horse.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was not he was not conducive to what
Speaker 3: what I wanted him to do. And what I wanted
Speaker 3: him to do was be able to get on him
Speaker 3: and ride him and get off of him without having
Speaker 3: to are Yeah, without any type of medical personnel involved
Speaker 3: in it. I just wanted to get on a horse
Speaker 3: and go from point A to point B. It sounds simple,
Speaker 3: and then come back and both of us be happy.
Speaker 3: And that just it didn't work out.
Speaker 1: That was it didn't work out with Ken's Reward. No,
Speaker 1: here's what we're gonna do. Here's what we're gonna do.
Speaker 1: If you are in agreement with it, We're putting out
Speaker 1: an APB across the bear grease world if somebody can
Speaker 1: legitimately tell us and verify where, like who owned Ken's
Speaker 1: Reward and what the story was. All we know was
Speaker 1: that in nineteen eighty eight it was bought at a
Speaker 1: horse selle in eight, Oklahoma, and it supposedly came from Texas.
Speaker 3: And I saw the papers. It is an absolute one
Speaker 3: registered American quarter horse. I saw the papers and his
Speaker 3: name was Ken's Reward, ky E n apostrophe s Reward. Okay,
Speaker 3: that was it.
Speaker 1: Whoever can get us in touch with Ken, yeah, or
Speaker 1: should should Ken no longer be with us? Ken's Ken?
Speaker 1: I will give you one of these, a genuine Arkansas
Speaker 1: plot treed coonskin hat, land Bridge spillmaker. Yeah, for a
Speaker 1: plot to tree a coon. Yeah, that's rare.
Speaker 3: I tell you what I'll do. I'll sweeten the pot.
Speaker 3: I'll throw in a case mini trapper pocket knife.
Speaker 1: Okay, it's the deal. Now. It's hard to ride out Like,
Speaker 1: we're not lawyers here, but it's really got to be
Speaker 1: a genuine, like verifiable lead where we could talk to
Speaker 1: someone and get some sense of why this horse was
Speaker 1: named Ken's Reward? Any holes in this planned, Chris.
Speaker 4: I don't see any. I'm looking at the hat. I
Speaker 4: mean it's that coonskin cap, right, there's legit. We know
Speaker 4: what a mini trapper is. I mean, somebody's just got
Speaker 4: to come up with the right info.
Speaker 1: Are there any loopholes though, Dad? Like, could someone like liars?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean, but it's gonna We're gonna have to talk
Speaker 1: to Ken. Now. Somebody had to be pretty good to
Speaker 1: pull the wool over our eyes.
Speaker 5: Yeah, okay, is this is this Ken's Rewards Reward?
Speaker 4: That's it, right, I have seen the papers and you
Speaker 4: don't need to disclose it here. But do you know
Speaker 4: how that horse was bred? No, okay, I don't. I
Speaker 4: don't remember. It's one of the verification things out the
Speaker 4: window right there.
Speaker 3: I don't. I don't remember, but I'll tell you what
Speaker 3: I have. I've thought about a million times, and I
Speaker 3: didn't have a young and in the world when I
Speaker 3: had that horse. Since then, I've had three. And every
Speaker 3: time I helped them with a school project that involved glue,
Speaker 3: I fantasized about me squeezing ken out on a piece
Speaker 3: of paper. Oh yeah, that's where he wound up.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: But that's dark.
Speaker 5: That's really saying something.
Speaker 3: I'm just telling you. You tried to kill me.
Speaker 1: That is pretty dark.
Speaker 5: I feel like I be remiss to not point out
Speaker 5: that you're halfway to be in a long hunter. By
Speaker 5: the time you get that hat and that knife, you're
Speaker 5: just missing a set of buckskins.
Speaker 1: And that is a great I'm glad you're reminded me.
Speaker 3: That was.
Speaker 1: What we're going to talk to Clay about today is
Speaker 1: me and Steve Vanella and a team at Meat Eater.
Speaker 1: One of those team members was Randall Williams, doctor Randall,
Speaker 1: Doctor Randall. We talked about it this week, but we've
Speaker 1: come out with an audio original. It's essentially an audio
Speaker 1: book about the Long Hunters and it's it's available for
Speaker 1: pre sale. Did you see that dad on the internet?
Speaker 1: Do you get on the internet much? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Internet, We've we've done a terrible job of marketing.
Speaker 4: Is on the internet right now.
Speaker 1: This week meat Eater announced our audio book called The
Speaker 1: Long Hunters seventeen sixty one to seventeen seventy five by
Speaker 1: Steve Vanella Clay Nukeomb narrated by Steve Vnellen Clay Nukemb.
Speaker 1: And it is never before compile data on the Long Hunters.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm serious, there has never before been this
Speaker 1: data crunched together in such a compact way. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's incredible and it's really cool. And so you can
Speaker 1: pre order that now through Penguin Random House, through the
Speaker 1: links that are you know, on media and stuff. But
Speaker 1: it'll come out on January ninth.
Speaker 5: Put a link in the description.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I'm very excited about that. It was a
Speaker 1: ton of fun. So basically it's it's me and Steve
Speaker 1: Vanella kind of going back and forth in this audio
Speaker 1: book and h really cool.
Speaker 6: So I can tell you one thing about the Internet
Speaker 6: is every time I even turn around, Brent Reeves comes
Speaker 6: up going this country life and I'm going to back off, man.
Speaker 6: I mean, I got I gotta look for yours. I mean,
Speaker 6: I gotta go. Come on, Clay, I need, I need
Speaker 6: to watch this. And all of a sudden, on the
Speaker 6: bear Grease feed. Yeah yeah, I just you know when
Speaker 6: I go to when I go after it, this guy's
Speaker 6: got the product.
Speaker 1: He's playing it. Yeah, yeah, they're they're they're feeding you.
Speaker 1: Brent Reeves. Come on, yeah, Michael, you're tell us about
Speaker 1: your new light. So let me let me go back.
Speaker 1: Already said it before, but I have been in multiple
Speaker 1: showdowns with big game hunters that thought they had a
Speaker 1: good light.
Speaker 2: Never lost, did you?
Speaker 3: Never?
Speaker 2: You won't coon.
Speaker 1: Hunters win the light game every time? Am I right?
Speaker 3: Chris?
Speaker 1: I mean for real, I've been in hunting camps and
Speaker 1: been like, somebody shine their light and I'd be like,
Speaker 1: that's a cute light, and and they're like, oh this
Speaker 1: is this is the best light ever, and and I'll
Speaker 1: step outside and shine them. And the thing coon hunters
Speaker 1: don't have the market on much. Let me put it
Speaker 1: that way. The one thing coon hunters have the market
Speaker 1: on is bright lights that last a long time. And
Speaker 1: I use my son's spot light all the time. I
Speaker 1: take it on back country hunts, I take it off
Speaker 1: my hard hat. So I have a hard hat. Have
Speaker 1: had some people ask me about why the hard hat.
Speaker 1: You don't have to use a hard hat. The idea
Speaker 1: of a hard hat is that it holds a heavier light,
Speaker 1: which the bigger coon lights. I mean they're heavier than
Speaker 1: like a little little, you know, energizer bunny little bitty
Speaker 1: pocket light you put in your piace. It's a little
Speaker 1: bigger than that, but they last forever and incredibly bright.
Speaker 1: How let me ask you this, on the lowest power
Speaker 1: of a sun spot, like the lowest walking light power,
Speaker 1: so this light would have multiple stages of brightness and
Speaker 1: even dishes the light out different like it has a spotlight,
Speaker 1: but it also has a walking light. If you turn
Speaker 1: it on just the walk lowest walking light, how long
Speaker 1: would that light burn on a big charge?
Speaker 2: Over one hundred hours so you could.
Speaker 1: Literally leave it on in your bag for a week.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, four days, four or five days.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's pretty incredible. What about candle power?
Speaker 1: Do you still use candle power?
Speaker 2: Is there some other so? Yeah, they do, But it's
Speaker 2: the metric it's lux is what we go by. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so a lot of people that look at lights, they
Speaker 2: want the first question they ask you is how many
Speaker 2: lumens does it have? And that's not really a measurement
Speaker 2: that's useful for us. Lumens is a measurement that comes
Speaker 2: from the factory. So it's how much that LED can
Speaker 2: output with this much current put on it, and it's
Speaker 2: that's total light. That's light that's lost in the reflector,
Speaker 2: light that you're never going to see. It's not something
Speaker 2: that's useful. But that's what the state.
Speaker 1: Is, not reality limit it is.
Speaker 2: It is, but not in not in the way that
Speaker 2: we use it. So but that's the way that the
Speaker 2: industry in like Walmart and the smaller little stuff that's
Speaker 2: they advertise lumens because that can be verified. So I
Speaker 2: have a cre led, it has this much current put
Speaker 2: to it. To Cree says, you have this many looms. Lux,
Speaker 2: like you're talking about a Candlepower is how much throw
Speaker 2: that light has so how far it's gonna shine, And
Speaker 2: that's what we call brightness.
Speaker 5: So you can have to LEDs with the same lumins,
Speaker 5: but if you put a different reflector on there.
Speaker 1: Yes, that you use, so the lux is more of
Speaker 1: a real world lux.
Speaker 2: How much light you have throw of the light lumins
Speaker 2: is actually how much light you have coming out of it.
Speaker 2: But there's no way to measure that. This is what
Speaker 2: he's saying is depending on the optics that you use
Speaker 2: for it, you can have a thousand lucks. These light
Speaker 2: bulbs are lumins. I'm sorry. These light bulbs have a
Speaker 2: high lumin value to them, and they just softly light
Speaker 2: up your light your room, so it doesn't do you
Speaker 2: any good coon hunt. But you put an optic behind
Speaker 2: it that can gather all that light and put it
Speaker 2: in one place for you, and that's what we're calling lux.
Speaker 3: Okay, Finally, I've been using these lights forever and I
Speaker 3: have heard him talk about this a thousand times. Finally
Speaker 3: understand it.
Speaker 4: It's low throwback on that is I was headed across
Speaker 4: forty and boom, there's a night like score off the
Speaker 4: I like squealed tires getting off the road because when
Speaker 4: I started hunting, night like light was it. They came
Speaker 4: out with a six volt gel cell and then they
Speaker 4: I had one of those for a while, and then
Speaker 4: they put the strobe on it and I don't know
Speaker 4: that it did anything. It doesn't do any It doesn't
Speaker 4: do anything, but it was cool.
Speaker 1: That was designed to make a coon look at your
Speaker 1: eyes and you clicked it it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so you push the button on top of the
Speaker 4: wrist at and boom, had start flashing and you think
Speaker 4: that he's gonna look now. The only thing it did
Speaker 4: was melcher meltry wrist at down starts smoking on your side.
Speaker 2: The night light was the first real coon hunting light
Speaker 2: I ever had. The only thing I had before that.
Speaker 2: We carried a truck battery in a backpack with this
Speaker 2: giant spotlight that they used to make it was called
Speaker 2: a sunspot. Really, that's where the name of that. You
Speaker 2: have the game ward and took it from me.
Speaker 3: But that's another star.
Speaker 4: Store.
Speaker 1: You bought me a night light. When I was in
Speaker 1: the ninth grade, we used to have those big belt
Speaker 1: used to have to carry battery packs to have those
Speaker 1: big thick belts. I still got it. It was the
Speaker 1: It was the industry standard back in the day. Now
Speaker 1: the lights are way better, way brighter, way smaller, way lighter.
Speaker 2: The only thing in this world that is increased in
Speaker 2: functionality and quality and decreased in price.
Speaker 1: Wow, Now there's a cell.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's it. I mean I used to pay four
Speaker 2: or five six hundred dollars for some of these belt
Speaker 2: lights and they were literally maybe a fifth is bright
Speaker 2: is what we do now, and you're paying three hundred
Speaker 2: dollars for a light now that lasts longer, is brighter.
Speaker 1: So your light now, this is not like a sales pitch.
Speaker 1: I you know, there's people and I'm one of those
Speaker 1: people that if I like something, I'll talk to people
Speaker 1: on the street about it. I'll be like, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean like I want you to like and if
Speaker 1: you don't, if you don't like it, I'm offended. Like
Speaker 1: I'm like, well, god the man. No, coonlights is one
Speaker 1: of them. And there's a lot of good coonlights, don't
Speaker 1: get me wrong. I mean there's there's there's plenty of them.
Speaker 1: I'm just talking about coonlights. But Michael's got his. Your
Speaker 1: light has a lifetime warranty. Yeah, send it to you.
Speaker 2: Ten dollars for return shipping and that's it. It's the
Speaker 2: only thing. We don't covers damage, and we cover that
Speaker 2: most of the time. Yeah, depends on how bad.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is not a throwaway.
Speaker 4: No you ever find yourself sunspots consider one of the
Speaker 4: top lights in the Yeah, in the country and in
Speaker 4: my community for sure.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you ever find yourself just putting on the helmet
Speaker 5: to go out to grocery shop or something, just so you.
Speaker 1: Have a okay you're on. When you're on a competition
Speaker 1: coon hunt, tell me if this is right or wrong.
Speaker 3: I know where you're headed.
Speaker 1: When you're on a competition coon hunt and you stop
Speaker 1: at a gas station and you got four guys in
Speaker 1: a cast in a cab of a truck, maybe you
Speaker 1: know them, maybe you don't. And you go to a
Speaker 1: gas station, everybody wears their coon light into the gas station.
Speaker 4: Where you thought I was gonna go, well kind of ok.
Speaker 4: I've done that multiple times. You leave the house hunting
Speaker 4: or whatever, and you got to stop the gas station,
Speaker 4: get a pop, get a can, at you whatever, and
Speaker 4: you got your hip boots on and your coon light
Speaker 4: on your vest on and people are looking at you
Speaker 4: like what is he doing? I didn't know.
Speaker 1: Somehow when you're in a competition hunt, like it's okay.
Speaker 1: Like if I went to Walmart, I just walk in
Speaker 1: there with my and my big light on. But what
Speaker 1: were you where do you think I was going on that?
Speaker 4: Was it the other gas station store?
Speaker 5: For sure?
Speaker 3: Yeah? For sure?
Speaker 1: Coon Lights. So y'all come out with a new Copperhead.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we come out with a new light. We dropped
Speaker 2: two nights Adults called the Copperhead comparatible to our other lights.
Speaker 2: It's brighter, smaller, lighter weight than our Viper, which was
Speaker 2: our topy en light, Smaller than the Viper, lighter weight, wrider,
Speaker 2: all the same functions, and it's a slick looking light.
Speaker 1: I like it. I like it. Okay, we're just marching
Speaker 1: around here. Uh, Chris, Yeah, we're I'm on a mission, man.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about I want to talk about this,
Speaker 1: the story of the plots.
Speaker 4: War my shirt for you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's got the American Plot Association shirt on.
Speaker 4: It was either this one or not a game Warden
Speaker 4: T shirt.
Speaker 1: Yeah, dad, Chris is a retired game warden.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I talked to one of our friends. They got there.
Speaker 1: I talked to one of our mutual friends just yesterday, Chris,
Speaker 1: and uh, well, no, no, no, no, no, no, you told
Speaker 1: me this story. One of our mutual friends introduced you
Speaker 1: when you went bear hunting with them in East Tennessee.
Speaker 1: He would introduce you as this is Chris pal he's
Speaker 1: a former game warden from Indiana.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah.
Speaker 1: And Chris kind of got embarrassed about it, like saying, hey,
Speaker 1: you don't have to say that, And the guy was like,
Speaker 1: trust me, I don't want these guys to find out
Speaker 1: later that you are a former game warden. He said,
Speaker 1: they'll they'll they won't trust you. Is that about the
Speaker 1: way it happened.
Speaker 3: That's exactly the way it happened.
Speaker 4: You know. It's like, since when do we have to
Speaker 4: walk around and this is this is Clay nukemb he
Speaker 4: works at meat Eater, This is Gary Nukeum. He was
Speaker 4: a retired banker. You know, it's like, oh, this is
Speaker 4: a game warden and that, and we're going to introduce
Speaker 4: him like that. It's like being a preacher.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: I never introduced my preacher. It's like, hey, this is
Speaker 4: so and so he's my preacher. I mean, it's like
Speaker 4: sending out the warning don't don't.
Speaker 1: Come, don't come, don't color show.
Speaker 4: So yeah, I used to get introduced like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was doing it for your as a favorite
Speaker 1: to you though.
Speaker 4: I think, uh, I think he was really good at
Speaker 4: pivoting on the moment and and coming up with that.
Speaker 4: But I do think that I do think it was
Speaker 4: for his benefit. Yeah, he wasn't bringing a game warden
Speaker 4: to the mountain.
Speaker 1: He's like just full disclosure here, yeah, full disclosure, Yeah,
Speaker 1: full disclosure.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 6: You know some of my favorite Bear Grease stories were
Speaker 6: about game wardens.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 6: I mean they just go down as the top notch stories.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 2: I loved it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that seems to be the consensus of the world. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because some of our best episodes were low Dell and
Speaker 1: Charlie and then The Secret Agent man.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, I love that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, Chris tell it. Give us like a high
Speaker 1: level view what's going on in Colorado?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so we're gonna get serious.
Speaker 1: Huh yeah, all right, Well, I'll.
Speaker 3: Tell you what's happening.
Speaker 4: And we're seeing science based responsible wildlife management being hijacked
Speaker 4: in the state of Colorado through it's called Initiative ninety one,
Speaker 4: and it's been introduced. It went through the what's called
Speaker 4: the title board hearing, where they've got to make sure
Speaker 4: that the labeling is right. An Initiative ninety one is
Speaker 4: going to be a ballot initiative where the public gets
Speaker 4: to vote on this issue of wildlife management and it
Speaker 4: pertains directly to mountain lions and bobcats, and they threw
Speaker 4: in links for sensational value. You can't hunt links in
Speaker 4: the lower forty eight anyway because they're on the endangered
Speaker 4: species list.
Speaker 1: There're links in Colorado.
Speaker 4: There are links in Colorado, really, so they just threw
Speaker 4: that one on the pile just to just to add
Speaker 4: to the sensationalism, even though you still can't hunt them.
Speaker 1: So, yeah, you can't hunt them now.
Speaker 4: No, no, you can't hunt them now. So what does
Speaker 4: that need to be there?
Speaker 2: You know, because it's an animal on the endangered species
Speaker 2: list that when the people are voting, oh you look
Speaker 2: it up, they say, oh yeah, we definitely won't let it.
Speaker 4: It's totally totally sensationalized. But what's happened is some groups
Speaker 4: have gotten together in Colorado and put this on the
Speaker 4: back or put this forward, have got approval for it
Speaker 4: to be moving forward and be introduced to the ballot
Speaker 4: next year. So they've still got to go through signature
Speaker 4: acquisition and things like that. Right now it's in the
Speaker 4: Supreme Court, and basically that's just making sure that all
Speaker 4: the eyes are dotted and all the teaser crossed and
Speaker 4: things like that. But the most alarming thing about it
Speaker 4: is not because of the lions and the Bobcat issue.
Speaker 4: I mean, take those two animals out and put elk
Speaker 4: in there, put sheep in there, or put you know,
Speaker 4: whatever animal you want, white tailed deer in there. This
Speaker 4: is just a typical tactic where people with influence are
Speaker 4: trying to hijack the traditional North American model for wildlife
Speaker 4: conservation and make it a political issue. So when you
Speaker 4: when you start doing that, there's a lot of dangers
Speaker 4: and a lot of trip trip ups for that. You know,
Speaker 4: we don't we don't necessarily need somebody who's uninformed, who's
Speaker 4: been been sensationalized to and and had this narrative soul
Speaker 4: to them based on emotion, to vote on this, you know,
Speaker 4: because it's it's it's just alarming. It's an alarming thing.
Speaker 4: I mean, our wildlife is and our story of our
Speaker 4: our conservation story is amazing, you know, going back to
Speaker 4: the eighteen eighties and the recovery and and the money
Speaker 4: that was spent to and it's all because hunters stepped
Speaker 4: up and said we'll do this right. And then the
Speaker 4: first ten of the conservation. North American model is wildlife
Speaker 4: is a public trust. So we did that and we said, yeah,
Speaker 4: go to the park and look at elk, go to
Speaker 4: the go to the National Forest and and look at bars,
Speaker 4: do all this other stuff. So we willingly did that.
Speaker 4: It's the only it's the only bill that I'm aware
Speaker 4: of that was ever passed, the Pittman Robertson bill who's
Speaker 4: ever passed where people said.
Speaker 1: Tax us, Yeah, please tax us.
Speaker 4: So we've got a big investment in this thing, and
Speaker 4: the anti hunting crowd is trying to flip the narrative
Speaker 4: and divert us away from science based and responsible wildlife management,
Speaker 4: make it a political weapon and based it.
Speaker 1: On almost who is doing this.
Speaker 4: There are a couple of local groups in Colorado that
Speaker 4: are that are leading the charge on this. Yeah, that
Speaker 4: it hasn't been revealed yet, but we're pretty confident that
Speaker 4: that there are some larger, more well funded groups.
Speaker 1: That they've got a lot of money and are waiting.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is a very well funded thing for
Speaker 1: for Initiative ninety one. Is that correct that you have to.
Speaker 4: Be seen you're talking which side.
Speaker 1: Well not our side?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean they're gonna what was the time? Tell
Speaker 1: me the timeline. So when give me a timeline of
Speaker 1: like when are the when are they signing the Well.
Speaker 4: Right now, it's it's been introduced to go to the
Speaker 4: Colorado Supreme Court and that's expected to be heard sometime
Speaker 4: in January to make sure all the legalities and you know.
Speaker 1: Make sure the law is it works, and.
Speaker 4: Then the cons the people to vote on Yeah, when
Speaker 4: does it go win?
Speaker 3: Does it? Yeah?
Speaker 4: Next November in the twenty twenty four election. So between
Speaker 4: that time, you're going to have a period of time
Speaker 4: where you're gonna have to have signatures to make sure
Speaker 4: they meet the ballot requirements for the required number of
Speaker 4: signatures for it to appearental ballot. There are gonna be lawsuits.
Speaker 4: There are gonna be Then there's gonna be a campaign
Speaker 4: time when when both sides of we as hunters are
Speaker 4: going to launch a campaign, the anti hunters are going
Speaker 4: to launch a campaign. We're gonna have this Classies Titans
Speaker 4: in the state of Colorado all through next summer and
Speaker 4: then leading up to the election. We need to have
Speaker 4: our ducks in a row by July, I would say,
Speaker 4: to be able to start who.
Speaker 1: Is the main guy what's the guy's name that we
Speaker 1: were talking about.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the guy the spearhead and the whole efforts out
Speaker 4: there is Dan Gates. And he is the head of
Speaker 4: an organization called Colorado Colorado's for Responsible Wildlife Management, and
Speaker 4: a lot of different entities are coming together to back
Speaker 4: him and and he's been working this state.
Speaker 1: For this was coming. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean Colorado is right for it. It's the demographics.
Speaker 4: There are right big.
Speaker 1: Urban cities with most of the population.
Speaker 4: And then the to give you an idea, I saw
Speaker 4: a slide on that that was put together in a
Speaker 4: presentation while I was out in Colorado a month or
Speaker 4: so ago. There are five point eight million people in
Speaker 4: the state of Colorado. Five point two million of those
Speaker 4: live on the Front Range and the Denver Boulder, that metroplex. Yeah,
Speaker 4: five point two million. That leaves six hundred thousand people
Speaker 4: living out in the sticks that understand ranching, wildlife management
Speaker 4: and things like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's gonna.
Speaker 4: Be it's it's it is the Battleground State for Wildlife
Speaker 4: Management twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you'll be hearing more stuff from us and some
Speaker 1: specific calls to action at different times, but Yeah, we're
Speaker 1: we're gonna do our best at bear Grease and meat
Speaker 1: Eater to get the word out and because I mean,
Speaker 1: people that are listening to this podcast are gonna know
Speaker 1: why we're against and you know, closing down the season,
Speaker 1: why we're for predator management.
Speaker 4: I mean it, I wouldn't even have to go, I
Speaker 4: wouldn't even try to try to pigeonhole. It is a
Speaker 4: predator management. This is an outright attack on science based
Speaker 4: wildlife management.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and not just the predator control. So from what
Speaker 2: I understand, and I don't big game hunt with hounds,
Speaker 2: but from what I understand that the cat hunters are
Speaker 2: basically responsible for saving mountain lions.
Speaker 4: That's a great point because if you were not for
Speaker 4: the houndsmen that were out there catching mountain lions, organizations
Speaker 4: like Colorado's Parks and Wildlife would not be able to
Speaker 4: collect the data. There's so much that goes into a
Speaker 4: mountain lion study. You know, you catch it, you dart it,
Speaker 4: you collar it. You can collect all that data. You
Speaker 4: can find out their home ranges, you can find their
Speaker 4: kills on ungulant species. You take the bones from those
Speaker 4: ungulant species back into the lab. You can measure the fat,
Speaker 4: you can test your DNA, you can The predator management
Speaker 4: studies are an integral part and valuable to the management
Speaker 4: of all wildlife species.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and just the general idea too, that a hunted
Speaker 1: animal has cultural value, and where an animal has cultural value,
Speaker 1: it will ultimately be protected by the people that want
Speaker 1: to hunt always. And so you know, there's nobody in
Speaker 1: Colorado that wants more mountain lions than mountain lion hunters.
Speaker 1: You got that right, I mean, but we also know
Speaker 1: that predator numbers. What's happening continental wide is that predator
Speaker 1: numbers are on the rise. I mean wolves, mountain lions, coyotes, coons, possums,
Speaker 1: the meso, predators, black bears, like everything is is those
Speaker 1: are the things that seem to be doing really well
Speaker 1: right now. And so hunting with hounds is a management tool,
Speaker 1: high regulated, It is not out of control. Mountain lions
Speaker 1: are doing incredibly well in Colorado. So this is a
Speaker 1: political thing of someone that doesn't like the idea of
Speaker 1: people going out and hunting mountain lions. This is something
Speaker 1: that's been going on since for hundreds of years. I mean,
Speaker 1: people hunting with dogs been going on for thousands and
Speaker 1: thousands and thousands of years, but you know, you get
Speaker 1: the point. So, man, everybody's always heard me talk about
Speaker 1: garding the gate, it's been a while since I've actually
Speaker 1: talked about it. So I'll quickly review the doctrine. I believe,
Speaker 1: and a lot of people believe, that the whole model
Speaker 1: of North American wildlife are our management system. The weak link,
Speaker 1: the place where the anti hunting community really has a
Speaker 1: strong foothold, is inside of the predator arena, specifically bears
Speaker 1: and mountain lions. It's harder for them to sell to
Speaker 1: the general public that hunting a deer, or hunting a world,
Speaker 1: or hunting that whatever is bad. It's pretty It's a
Speaker 1: pretty easy sell for them to say, Hey, these guys
Speaker 1: are out there killing bears and mountain lions. What are
Speaker 1: they even doing with them? It's a trophy hunt. They
Speaker 1: don't eat them. All this stuff that's not true, correct,
Speaker 1: And I believe that that that weakest link in this
Speaker 1: whole system is the place that we need to guard
Speaker 1: the most. They're kind of was, like I would say,
Speaker 1: ten years ago, by my interpretation of the hunting community,
Speaker 1: there was kind of this idea that those guys are
Speaker 1: kind of on the fringe, and those guys being the
Speaker 1: predator hunters and specifically the hound hunters that are bear
Speaker 1: hunting with hounds, and those guys are kind of on
Speaker 1: the fringe. That's kind of going away. We're not gonna
Speaker 1: associate with that. Like people weren't wanting to step up
Speaker 1: and talk. And that's not entirely true. That's a generalization, hyperbolic,
Speaker 1: as they say, exaggeration to make a point, But that
Speaker 1: was I felt like that happening. And then we were like, hey,
Speaker 1: the weakest link is the most important thing, because once
Speaker 1: they get that, we know this is not this is
Speaker 1: not exaggerated hype political talk like incremental incrementalization like the
Speaker 1: anti hunting community and whether it's this big, really designed thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, they're kind of like, you know, the it's
Speaker 1: like they got a one hundred year plan to stamp
Speaker 1: this thing out. Yeah, they even said it.
Speaker 3: You can't compromise, it can't be you can't give up,
Speaker 3: and you can't give up one inch. Yeah, because they
Speaker 3: will not satisfy them. Yeah, you can't say okay, okay, okay, yeah,
Speaker 3: I'll just we'll just do this and that'll be the end.
Speaker 3: Of it. It won't be the end of it.
Speaker 4: There is nothing that they do that is not with intent.
Speaker 4: Everything they do is purpose driven. It's the reason they
Speaker 4: came to Colorado is because of the population dynamic there
Speaker 4: and Andy.
Speaker 1: The reason they could win.
Speaker 4: The reason they come after Mountain Lions is because it
Speaker 4: mainly affects houndsmen, and so houndsmen historically have been very
Speaker 4: loosely organized, very even like you alluded to, being looked
Speaker 4: at on the fringe. I mean, you can't even get
Speaker 4: you can't even get bear hunters or anybody to come
Speaker 4: together to say that, all of them to say that,
Speaker 4: hey man, you guys are hunting with hounds, go for it.
Speaker 4: You know, we even get snipe from inside the hunting community.
Speaker 1: So so, but I think that's changing.
Speaker 3: Yes, I do too believe that.
Speaker 4: I think we're gaining a lot of ground there. So
Speaker 4: it was just go back to the art of you know,
Speaker 4: the art of war with sun sou. These people know
Speaker 4: what they're doing and they're coming after the weakest link.
Speaker 4: And what we need from the hunting community as a
Speaker 4: whole is like Brent said that we stand together other
Speaker 4: and we say no. It's like, you know, it's like
Speaker 4: a family. It's like a family reunion. You don't get
Speaker 4: along with everybody there. Yeah, but if somebody comes up
Speaker 4: and punches your cousin in the face that you don't like,
Speaker 4: you're gonna you're you're throwing in you know. Yeah, and
Speaker 4: that's what we need well.
Speaker 1: And that's that's what I think we've seen in the
Speaker 1: last seven eight years is more of the general hunting
Speaker 1: community coming around the hound and predator community and saying, hey,
Speaker 1: this is a big part. This is a part of
Speaker 1: the family, and we're concerned because what we've always said
Speaker 1: is that if you're a deer hunter in Missouri, if
Speaker 1: you're a turkey hunter, if you're you know, this matters
Speaker 1: to you. Like if if the whole of North American hunting,
Speaker 1: and we don't realize that we're in the heyday of
Speaker 1: so many parts of North American hunting. I mean, we
Speaker 1: we we have this incredible thing and the trend and
Speaker 1: you see it in other places in the world, is
Speaker 1: that that thing that freedom slips away and goes away.
Speaker 1: And so you know, we're saying, hey, we're a generation
Speaker 1: that's that is not going to give anything.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 1: We're not trying to be hard nos or jerks about it.
Speaker 1: I mean, we're we're just saying, hey, this is just
Speaker 1: this is just who we are as Americans. There is
Speaker 1: a place inside of our society where the hunters reside.
Speaker 1: You don't have to be a hunter. We love wildlife.
Speaker 1: If you you in general people in America love wildlife
Speaker 1: and wild places. Well, guess who does too, the hunters.
Speaker 1: We're the ones who are funding wildlife habitat conservation across
Speaker 1: the country. We're all on the same team. You want hunters.
Speaker 1: Hunters provide an incredible, incredible service to society. We need
Speaker 1: mountain lion hunters, we need bear hunters. And so that's
Speaker 1: why this is important, because the idea would be like, well,
Speaker 1: I don't hunt mountain lions in Colorado. I probably never will.
Speaker 1: I don't care. That's that's a short, short sighted thing,
Speaker 1: you know. So it's longer term, and I mean that's
Speaker 1: really that's really all there is to say about it.
Speaker 4: We have, we have hunted, we have we have This
Speaker 4: generation of hunters has inherited one hundred and fifty years
Speaker 4: of conservation work, right, I mean you think about that.
Speaker 4: We are the benefactors of Teddy Roosevelt, and yeah, uh
Speaker 4: you know, you know, all these guys that built this
Speaker 4: and now we're enjoying it all. And it's like, I'm
Speaker 4: a deer hunter and I got my pile. I'm an
Speaker 4: elk hunter and I got my pile. I'm a houndsman
Speaker 4: and I got my pile. Man, We're not going to
Speaker 4: survive like that. We gotta we gotta find ways to
Speaker 4: bridge those gaps. None of us can stand alone.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, yeah, that this is all really great and
Speaker 1: and uh it's just an invitation to for the whole
Speaker 1: hunting community to rally around this thing.
Speaker 4: I so, can I tell people where to find more
Speaker 4: informational updates? Ye, so if you go to Save the
Speaker 4: Hunt Colorado dot org. Okay, then you can get updates
Speaker 4: on what's going on with the initiative ninety one.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 4: You can also go to our website at hounsmanexp dot com.
Speaker 4: You know, scroll we're dropping a lot of content on
Speaker 4: this sort of stuff, and you know, just reach out
Speaker 4: to me if you if you're concerned about it and
Speaker 4: you're looking, say, man, this is this is a good fight.
Speaker 4: I want to get in it. Just contact me through
Speaker 4: a website at Hounsman XP dot com.
Speaker 1: And there's a bunch of groups that are going to
Speaker 1: be doing a lot. Absolutely, I'm a big fan of
Speaker 1: howl dot org. The guys at how they're working, I
Speaker 1: think they're doing doing a good job of getting stuff out.
Speaker 3: Origin Blood is another.
Speaker 1: One all these groups. I mean, uh, Sportsman's Alliance big time.
Speaker 4: Yes, I'm glad you brought them up. Yeah, of course.
Speaker 4: But c r w M is going to be the
Speaker 4: place that we need to get this money too. So
Speaker 4: that's where I would tell you.
Speaker 2: To go first, go to the bigger army.
Speaker 6: I mean, if you just say this is war, you
Speaker 6: know it'ses versus China.
Speaker 1: Who who's who's the probable win or Well, I think.
Speaker 4: If you're talking funding, then I believe that that the
Speaker 4: anti hunting crowd is got more dedicated funds to fight
Speaker 4: this today.
Speaker 3: However, if you.
Speaker 4: Look at the amount of money that hunting produces, then
Speaker 4: that's one of the biggest things that that you're your
Speaker 4: person that's a non hunter that's got to make a
Speaker 4: decision in Colorado, who's going to fund this wildlife next year?
Speaker 4: If we outlawed this year, who's going to fund it
Speaker 4: next year? It's not gonna be the humane side of
Speaker 4: the United States or Center for Biological Diversity or Friends
Speaker 4: of Mounta Lions or whoever is behind this. You know,
Speaker 4: you're you're going to strip the funding mechanism to the
Speaker 4: tune of about three point five billion dollars a day.
Speaker 6: You know, if you com communicate the way you have communicated,
Speaker 6: I mean, you win. But you've got a gullible populace
Speaker 6: out there that could care less about it, and they
Speaker 6: just read it and go it sounds like a good idea.
Speaker 3: I would be one of them.
Speaker 1: Well I look at that five minutes. I'd go, yeah, man,
Speaker 1: get rid of it.
Speaker 4: Well that's that's one one of their So you got
Speaker 4: to be I mean, they.
Speaker 1: There their line.
Speaker 4: They tried to push this thing through a sensational narrative,
Speaker 4: like talking about trophy hunting. Well, Clay, you do an
Speaker 4: outstanding job of defending trophy hunting. I mean I've watched
Speaker 4: you do it on Joe Rogan. I mean you turned
Speaker 4: it around on On Rogan and explain it to me.
Speaker 4: But that's part of it, and and that language has
Speaker 4: been taken off of it. But they were they were
Speaker 4: trying to redefine what hunting actually is. And that's the
Speaker 4: most that's the most important thing that affects all hunters.
Speaker 1: Well, there's gonna be a whole lot more coming about it.
Speaker 1: But that's the business. This is the boardroom. That was
Speaker 1: the business we need to take care of. And uh,
Speaker 1: thanks for thanks for giving us the details crawl. Yeah,
Speaker 1: now that we're gonna have a lot more about that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. The podcasts Pure Americana. Let me start off.
Speaker 1: I said, Chris would understand this. This is a pretty
Speaker 1: risky podcast. Dad kind of yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: to to to oh yeah, I understand that to not
Speaker 1: challenge I didn't challenge anything, but to even put out
Speaker 1: there that there was some skepticism around the origin story.
Speaker 1: But I did it because I actually felt like it
Speaker 1: would be fair to the origin story to do that.
Speaker 4: Actually, this is.
Speaker 6: So, this is so beneficial to the plot hound Yeah,
Speaker 6: origins and everything. I mean, they just took a little
Speaker 6: area like this and exploded it all through Bear grease.
Speaker 1: People are going to buy books, people are going to
Speaker 1: talk about this.
Speaker 6: You know you Clay's been foreshadowing what a great podcast
Speaker 6: he's got coming up, and I turned it on.
Speaker 1: I thought dead gum plot hems, You thought I.
Speaker 6: Don't care about plot app but I mean it was
Speaker 6: an awesome deal and and I tell you it, it
Speaker 6: was really good and I think everybody will really enjoy it.
Speaker 1: It was a big deal, just like you said. But
Speaker 1: at first glance, a plot town man, I don't need
Speaker 1: no thinking plot down. But it's a it's a now
Speaker 1: you want one as a It's a human story, it's
Speaker 1: a family story, it's a history story. I don't think
Speaker 1: you offended anybody. Well, what I'm saying is in the
Speaker 1: plot community, like people are so opinionated and so just
Speaker 1: it's it's it's they get attached to a narrative and
Speaker 1: they sometimes wouldn't want to hear anything else. But uh yeah, Brent,
Speaker 1: if should I I die mysterious strange death, will you
Speaker 1: lead an expedition into.
Speaker 3: The team picked out? I can't tell you that.
Speaker 1: What Chris, what did you think?
Speaker 4: What?
Speaker 3: What?
Speaker 1: What was like the most? This is all stuff you'd
Speaker 1: be very familiar you you hunt plots.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, yeah, plot historian. Though, I thought the your
Speaker 4: selection of having Bob Plott, who is a descendant of
Speaker 4: the Plot family, who's heard these stories his whole life,
Speaker 4: and he's dove into, you know, finding out the stories.
Speaker 4: His books for his books.
Speaker 1: That there's a book I'm holding that striking state. It
Speaker 1: really is a fascinating book.
Speaker 2: Bob.
Speaker 1: Bob's a real pro when it comes to history. And
Speaker 1: the main the coolest thing about this book is all
Speaker 1: the photos. Yeah, look at that, Brent.
Speaker 4: It's uh, it needs to be in every Hounceman, every
Speaker 4: hunter's collection, really, I mean it's just.
Speaker 1: Look at some of those pictures.
Speaker 4: And then John Jackson. John Jackson has been writing plot
Speaker 4: history for for decades, you know, and very well spoken.
Speaker 4: I really like the way you described me, a true
Speaker 4: Southern Mountain gentleman. Yeah, and that's that describes John to
Speaker 4: a t.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was. Uh, that was the first time I'd
Speaker 1: met John a new John had communicated with him some
Speaker 1: with Bearhunting Magazine, he had written some stuff for us.
Speaker 1: But he is like a yeah, a classic Highland Southern
Speaker 1: gentle way I described him, just very proper, very articulate,
Speaker 1: but deeply passionate. Like h We went down and I
Speaker 1: recorded a bunch of this stuff, but I just wasn't
Speaker 1: able to really use it in the podcast. But his
Speaker 1: the basement in his house is like a museum with
Speaker 1: plot plot stuff and just Appalachian rural stuff and Civil
Speaker 1: War stuff and guns and famous famous hunters over there,
Speaker 1: guys that had plots. He had. He was instrumental and
Speaker 1: finding some of some kind of relics of the plot community. Anyway,
Speaker 1: just such a neat guy, but knew so much. But
Speaker 1: he's not a believer. And that's what's kind of right.
Speaker 4: Was disappointed. What's that? I was disappointed?
Speaker 1: You were disappointed, like John, like we said, I hate
Speaker 1: to disappoint you.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I was disappointed.
Speaker 3: He was melancholy when he talked about it too.
Speaker 1: Okay, here's the deal. I read Bob Plot's book and
Speaker 1: knew Bob Plot I'd heard the story from. Actually, Steve
Speaker 1: Hurd is the one who introduced me to the the
Speaker 1: original story. Steve heard is a breeder of a strain
Speaker 1: of plots called Bluff Creek Plots. It's the kind of
Speaker 1: dogs I've hunted. And Steve was the first one that
Speaker 1: ever introduced me to plots, really, and he told me
Speaker 1: the story just just like on a phone call.
Speaker 4: He's like years ago, stepping off the Mayflower.
Speaker 1: About the two brothers. One of them guys that bring
Speaker 1: five dogs. Two of them or or three of them
Speaker 1: are brindle. One of them's two of them are yell
Speaker 1: or whatever, and I was like, wow, that's incredible. When
Speaker 1: I go to John Jackson, who is a plot historian,
Speaker 1: I go to his house and I expect him to
Speaker 1: just tell me that story, and he immediately he did
Speaker 1: such a good job. He was like Johannis plot. He
Speaker 1: just like fed me in. Then he goes, cy, I
Speaker 1: hate to disappoint you, and I don't think that happened that.
Speaker 1: I was like crust. Literally, I was like, oh gosh,
Speaker 1: I mean for real, I didn't know what to do
Speaker 1: with the I was like, well, what am I? What
Speaker 1: am I supposed to do with this interview? Now that
Speaker 1: this whole story that I thought was true maybe isn't true.
Speaker 5: Well, I think there's one big point here that I
Speaker 5: found fascinating about the whole podcast, and that is I'm
Speaker 5: less interested in what was true in terms of a
Speaker 5: historical sense and more interested in the fact that there
Speaker 5: was one family that cared enough about this thing to
Speaker 5: hand down this tradition from one generation to the next.
Speaker 5: Like the veracity of the story down to the detail
Speaker 5: is less interesting to me than to zoom out and
Speaker 5: go like, here's this family that cared enough about this
Speaker 5: thing that whether or not the origin story of a
Speaker 5: guy stepping off a boat with five dogs is true,
Speaker 5: they are the genesis of this breed. And it is
Speaker 5: because it's almost more compelling that it's it's not this
Speaker 5: happenstance thing of a guy or maybe it is, you know,
Speaker 5: but it's not this happenstance thing of a guy stepping
Speaker 5: off with five dogs and here we go. It's this
Speaker 5: very careful overtime, each father to son, uncle to nephew, whatever,
Speaker 5: telling this story, caring about these dogs, bringing this forward.
Speaker 5: That's as compelling, if not more compelling, to me.
Speaker 1: And that's what John Jackson said. He was like, he
Speaker 1: basically said, the story there, you know, either way, even
Speaker 1: the story if that didn't happen, he said, is as
Speaker 1: compelling as as as the original narrative. Yeah, but it
Speaker 1: and I mean we're kind of cutting right to the
Speaker 1: chase here, But where did if that story was just
Speaker 1: completely fabricated, it happened very quickly because Bob Plot his
Speaker 1: third great grandfather would have been Johannas or George Plot
Speaker 1: third great grandfather, so not his dad, but his you know,
Speaker 1: like you start going back and it's like not very
Speaker 1: far and somebody in that line had a really created
Speaker 1: a really wild story and cemented it into the plot community.
Speaker 1: I mean there was most plot people wouldn't even question
Speaker 1: that story, am I Right?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 5: In the same way that our last conversation was a
Speaker 5: conversation about like to some degree, like what are humans
Speaker 5: like when we're having these conversations about conservation and wildlife management?
Speaker 5: We want to remove humans from that system, right, But
Speaker 5: that's a luxury that's only happened in the last one
Speaker 5: hundred and fifty to two hundred years. We're a part
Speaker 5: of the system. Us growing up in this world and
Speaker 5: learning to hunt, learning to interact with animals. We're an
Speaker 5: integral part of the system. We're not a different system
Speaker 5: that's removed as are you serious? Is talking the evolution
Speaker 5: in the progress of man is integral with hunting, the
Speaker 5: species we hunt. We're a part of that same system.
Speaker 5: We're not a different system.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: That's exactly right, And that's what the anti hunters tried
Speaker 4: to tell us, is that we're not part of that system.
Speaker 5: That's only a narrative that's developed in the last one
Speaker 5: hundred and fifty two hundred years. Because we've had the
Speaker 5: luxury to be removed from it.
Speaker 3: And in the same.
Speaker 5: Way, what's this got to do with plot bringing the
Speaker 5: only the only thing that's standing the way from me
Speaker 5: tying this together is you. In the same way, we
Speaker 5: look at oral narratives, oral histories and we look down
Speaker 5: on them. We we we were like, oh, well that's
Speaker 5: not reliable because it was oral, and it's like, that
Speaker 5: is the story of humanity. The only way we gave
Speaker 5: our histories for the last thousand, the millennia preceding us
Speaker 5: is an oral history, the only reason we have anything
Speaker 5: at all. And so I think it is a very
Speaker 5: modern viewpoint to look at an oral tradition and go, well,
Speaker 5: that's not reliable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, show me. It really was the head to head conflict,
Speaker 1: and it was how much weight does an oral story
Speaker 1: carry versus what was on a piece of paper on
Speaker 1: a cargo manifest.
Speaker 3: Chris can tell you from a law enforcement perspective, before
Speaker 3: all these crazy CSI shows came on TV, how good
Speaker 3: was an eyewitness then who just saw something? Oh yeah,
Speaker 3: pretty reliable.
Speaker 4: Now it's then you had dash cams, and then you
Speaker 4: had to have dash cam.
Speaker 3: Then you had to have fingerprints, DNA and all that
Speaker 3: and a man's word.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good point. So maybe back in the thirties,
Speaker 1: nobody would have even been asking these questions.
Speaker 4: Even in the early nineties before DNA and all this
Speaker 4: other stuff you watch. Getting back to what Brent said,
Speaker 4: when a police officer took stand and he testified to something,
Speaker 4: he had credibility in the courtroom, and the defense attorney's
Speaker 4: job was to discredit this law enforcement officer. And so
Speaker 4: that's why, and I know Brent's heard this, they'll they'll
Speaker 4: sit there and they'll say, instead of staying officer Reeves,
Speaker 4: you'll say, mister Reeves. Yeah, they'll try to discredit him.
Speaker 4: And I don't know what that has to do with
Speaker 4: what we're talking about, but.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, we see what you're saying, Brent. Is that, like,
Speaker 1: what more do we need? I mean again, this idea
Speaker 1: of a head to head between the actual data in
Speaker 1: facts that we have, which are important we need, and
Speaker 1: then an oral story, because what's compelling is that this
Speaker 1: plot family very quick. What we do know one hundred
Speaker 1: percent is that George Plot had a bunch of dogs
Speaker 1: that were unique to his to this part of the world,
Speaker 1: and he was he just came straight from Jerry.
Speaker 2: What do you think, Michael, where they is there any
Speaker 2: documentation of a brindle hound in Germany?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 1: There is there. There's a Hanna very Okay, that's a
Speaker 1: good point. There's a there is a breed of dog
Speaker 1: called Hannoverian Hounds, which and there is some brindle and
Speaker 1: docs AND's too. I'm told I.
Speaker 2: Got a few questions. How do you spell johannas like Johannas? Okay?
Speaker 1: So that now I'm gonna get onto Michael. What does
Speaker 1: this have to do what that?
Speaker 2: What did you say when you what anglicized sized? All right?
Speaker 2: That would be anglicized to John, not George.
Speaker 1: Well we're not arguing that you have to take that
Speaker 1: up with the plots?
Speaker 2: Well, I know, and I'm not going to tell anybody
Speaker 2: their family story because I don't really have a clue.
Speaker 2: I'm just this is just my mind. If someone asked
Speaker 2: a question, this is where I'm going to go to.
Speaker 2: It was signed g Plot g Plot, not j Plot right,
Speaker 2: all right, So Johanna's probably wasn't the name on the boat.
Speaker 3: Right, right?
Speaker 1: And I mean that's what that's what John Jackson says.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was probably George. How does a boy that's
Speaker 2: by himself, that his brother just died land in a
Speaker 2: country where he has no money and no possessions and
Speaker 2: take care of five dogs and keep them alive.
Speaker 3: All well.
Speaker 1: But see, we don't know, we don't have any.
Speaker 2: Any That's what I'm saying. I don't know if there's
Speaker 2: more to the story I'm not hearing, or how where
Speaker 2: this goes in my opinion. Let me let me ask
Speaker 2: you this too.
Speaker 1: They might kill you, you know that don't live They Gary?
Speaker 2: Where where's your where's the the nukelems from England? England? Okay?
Speaker 3: Negative?
Speaker 1: Scotland, Scotland, Scotland?
Speaker 2: Okay? Do you think they come from somewhere other than Scotland?
Speaker 2: What I mean is before they got to Scotland, were
Speaker 2: they somewhere else?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Okay, mm hm, you can't make these dogs out here,
Speaker 2: saying from what I know from dog breeding. Out of
Speaker 2: five dogs, okay, So there is so much in the
Speaker 2: any hound, not just plot. You're calling them Americana, the
Speaker 2: same things with walker dogs, blue ticks, anything else. They
Speaker 2: got their body shape, their overall makeup from English hounds,
Speaker 2: long years European. Everything else was American. There's no tolls.
Speaker 2: How much of that.
Speaker 4: Well, saying that's different about a plot than any other
Speaker 4: breed of the hound, says they are different, they're a
Speaker 4: different style of dog style.
Speaker 2: But if you just look at them, they're a hound.
Speaker 4: No, that's not true. Their ears are shorter, they're more
Speaker 4: of a flagtail and a traditional I do not believe,
Speaker 4: because the Appalachian people are way too pragmatic to not
Speaker 4: breed the five they're Yeah, if old Ship was a
Speaker 4: good bear dog, this dog that I'm calling a plots
Speaker 4: getting bread bread.
Speaker 2: Dorschure, which makes some Americana, But that was my point.
Speaker 2: The same thing happened in blue ticks, English walkers. They
Speaker 2: were bred to curs. They were bread. The best squirrel
Speaker 2: dog I've ever seen in my life was half labbador
Speaker 2: and half chow. No kind of hound whatsoever, absolute tree
Speaker 2: and machine.
Speaker 1: And you're saying that could have been.
Speaker 2: I'm saying that they they There may be a little
Speaker 2: bit of German something in those dogs. But these hounds
Speaker 2: came what was mixed into them, come from Native Americans.
Speaker 2: They come from the Appalachian people that were already here. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And I don't see a difference in the plot story
Speaker 2: and walkers or black and tans.
Speaker 1: Well, but okay, that but that's I could shoot some
Speaker 1: holes in that boat.
Speaker 2: Uh No, But walkers, walkers.
Speaker 1: And that photo right there, just like the walkers in
Speaker 1: your kennel. That's because they chose English.
Speaker 2: That's because they chose a color to breed to, because
Speaker 2: walker dogs started out as English dogs. Okay, they were
Speaker 2: the same dogs as blue ticks, the same dogs as
Speaker 2: red ticks, and they chose that color pattern and bread
Speaker 2: for that coin.
Speaker 1: I hear what you're saying, but you're not making your
Speaker 1: point very clear. What's your what's your? What's your? Just
Speaker 1: give me one sentence. You're saying that they came from
Speaker 1: the dogs that were all.
Speaker 2: Of those hounds, hounds of Americana, every one of them. They
Speaker 2: all have the same story. The difference in them is
Speaker 2: that the plot hounds has one particular family that they
Speaker 2: go back to. The rest of them are overall, but
Speaker 2: the story of them is all the exact same.
Speaker 1: Okay, let me ask you this, why Why are why
Speaker 1: does the plot I see what you're saying about the
Speaker 1: shape of a hound. I mean, I could give you
Speaker 1: that they're shaped about like a hound, but all blue
Speaker 1: ticks and even I mean the brindle. The brindle is
Speaker 1: different than any other English hound. Where'd that?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well I don't know. I got a French bulldog
Speaker 2: that that's brindle. I don't know right well, that probably
Speaker 2: come from the mixing of all these other dogs into
Speaker 2: that that were not hounds but had the traits that
Speaker 2: they were looking for. Or I told you had a
Speaker 2: lab and a chowd that would tree, so they would
Speaker 2: have they were pragmatic, they would have took anything that
Speaker 2: would improved their dogs and put that in.
Speaker 1: So there's a case. And then I said it when
Speaker 1: I talked about and I'm not sure I used the
Speaker 1: correct term by saying that brindle was a recessive gene
Speaker 1: inside of all dogs. But I mean there are brindle
Speaker 1: boxers there. Brindle feist. My little feist out here is brindle.
Speaker 1: Brindle plots, brindle pitbulls like brendle is something. And that
Speaker 1: was my buddy, who's a big time plot man, is
Speaker 1: the one who brought that up to me. He was like, Clay,
Speaker 1: if you just mix a bunch of dogs together, it's
Speaker 1: not long for you have a bunch of brindle. What
Speaker 1: say you to this, Chris, I.
Speaker 4: Don't think I think you can I think you can
Speaker 4: mix a lot of blue ticks together and you're never
Speaker 4: going to get brindle. Okay, So I think there is
Speaker 4: there was a brindle. Yeah, it was a concentration from
Speaker 4: the Plot family. I'm more of I latch on because
Speaker 4: I am a romantic and historian and I like the
Speaker 4: story of Johanna's Plot and that story.
Speaker 3: I think he probably.
Speaker 4: Came here with the intent of being a games keeper,
Speaker 4: you know, following his father's trade back in Germany. He
Speaker 4: was probably an indentured servant at the time, so he
Speaker 4: already had a place to go. He didn't need money.
Speaker 4: Somebody picked him up off that boat and brought him
Speaker 4: down there, and he had some dogs with him, and
Speaker 4: after he worked off his indentured servitude, he was also
Speaker 4: a man of means, you know, from getting money the
Speaker 4: Old World country, which the Plots were influential type people,
Speaker 4: you know, and they got it from somewhere. They were
Speaker 4: business people, they were horse people, and and I think
Speaker 4: they had the influence and the means to be able
Speaker 4: to to to and I'm not saying at all they
Speaker 4: kept all the genetics within those five dogs.
Speaker 3: I'm with.
Speaker 1: I'm with I don't think anybody's saying that, but that's
Speaker 1: like the exaggerated fairy tale version.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: The reason that it's an Americana story is because of
Speaker 4: the deep, rich history. It's the first it's a North
Speaker 4: Carolina state dog. It's it's uh, you know, there's mountains
Speaker 4: named after the plot family. It just fits Americana. Yeah,
Speaker 4: but you look, you look at the Walker dog, and
Speaker 4: you can you can talk about George Washington, you know.
Speaker 4: So there's some some of they're not the same dogs.
Speaker 4: They're not the same dog, but they are the dogs
Speaker 4: where our tream Walkers came from. When you trace it backwards.
Speaker 1: Brant, what, what about the whole story was most important
Speaker 1: to you?
Speaker 3: Who came from the English? Fox?
Speaker 5: Hu?
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it was a black tank.
Speaker 1: I don't have that conversation, Brence. What was the most
Speaker 1: saying that what stood out to you most? And you
Speaker 1: probably wouldn't have known that story much about it?
Speaker 3: No, very little love it had I ever heard. But
Speaker 3: also the longer I listened to it, I could care
Speaker 3: less which story was true. What fascinated me was the family,
Speaker 3: and that's what is so it's so rich in it,
Speaker 3: and what's so American to me is they can trace
Speaker 3: it back to that family so far, and everyone was
Speaker 3: all in on these dogs, regardless of where they came from.
Speaker 3: Once they got it started, they stayed with it. And
Speaker 3: it was father and son and grandson and grandson and
Speaker 3: grandson and nephew and uncle and everybody. And they're still
Speaker 3: there's still folks over there right now spelling their last
Speaker 3: name P L O T T. And they've got those
Speaker 3: dogs in the front yard. And to me, that is
Speaker 3: the absolute coolest thing. This will be a heck of
Speaker 3: a movie. This would beat Old Yeller to death.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it wasn an awesome story. My favorite part of
Speaker 2: the whole thing good was when you were right with
Speaker 2: Bob in the beginning and he was saying, you know,
Speaker 2: they were here and this was his house. That was awesome.
Speaker 2: The story of them bringing those dogs in it, following
Speaker 2: them through history and the pride that they would have
Speaker 2: had is just awesome. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I had seven
Speaker 2: generations of the same females starting seven generations ago, and
Speaker 2: they were I mean, they were it for me and
Speaker 2: they would feel the exact same way. But could you
Speaker 2: imagine not seven generations ago, but when did they bring
Speaker 2: the dogs over seventeen? If you breed a female what
Speaker 2: most of the time around two or three years old,
Speaker 2: you're looking at a one hundred generations of dogs. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so they have one hundred generations of those dogs.
Speaker 1: That's awesome, you know, to me the most, like if
Speaker 1: you're talking about how the plot story is different and
Speaker 1: out that we're trying to say, it's better than I've
Speaker 1: had many people already say you should do one of
Speaker 1: these on the Walker breed, and I'm sure we could.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's not as interesting though, well.
Speaker 1: But that's what I think to me being in adult
Speaker 1: and I got into plots roughly nine years ago, that's
Speaker 1: kind of when I was introduced, so I was an
Speaker 1: adult and I just it's like my eyes popped open
Speaker 1: when I went and saw Roy Clark and Tracy and
Speaker 1: Ben Jones and Curtis Walker and who are some of
Speaker 1: the I mean Mark Defray up in Maine and Mark
Speaker 1: Dan Wagner and uh Ira Jones, Oh, can't forget Ira,
Speaker 1: Ricky Reinhart, all the guys that I know over there,
Speaker 1: and a bunch of people are going to get upset
Speaker 1: if I don't start naming their names. Chris, who am
Speaker 1: I missing that I know? There's these incredible plot. People
Speaker 1: that just started deep in it. I mean they just
Speaker 1: bleed plot. And it's such a regional phenomena. That's to me,
Speaker 1: what's the coolest part of it. The whole thing is
Speaker 1: that it happened in a very small geographic area and
Speaker 1: was isolated geographically for basically one hundred and fifty years,
Speaker 1: and then it.
Speaker 5: Just I mean that was that was put through the
Speaker 5: lens of this is a geographic region that has been
Speaker 5: sort of a national joke, like those people look at
Speaker 5: they've got nothing, and to be like this thing that
Speaker 5: I can take pride in that comes from here, that
Speaker 5: is my thing and is now nationally recognized as the
Speaker 5: best at what it does. I think that that sort
Speaker 5: of incongruency or seeming incongruency.
Speaker 1: You're foreshadowing into the next episode. She hadn't even heard it,
Speaker 1: I know for real. We talk about how that that
Speaker 1: these people didn't have much, but this is something they had. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they were valuable and that's why it became so valuable.
Speaker 4: They were valuable enough to be to be hauled out
Speaker 4: to places like Oregon when the timber trade took off
Speaker 4: an Oregon. These apple Chians who have been cutting chestnuts
Speaker 4: and all this other stuff for generations. It's like, yeah,
Speaker 4: we can cut down big trees. When they went, they
Speaker 4: took their dogs. Yeah, you know that, And that's how
Speaker 4: the brindle dogs end up in the North.
Speaker 1: Today the plot is all over. I mean, you go
Speaker 1: to Wisconsin and Michigan, they're big hubs.
Speaker 4: James lived in Illinois.
Speaker 1: He was a big coon hunter on big big game bread.
Speaker 4: Some of the best big game dogs you got Salmon
Speaker 4: River dogs that Doc smith Out had had out in Salmon, Idaho.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what Chris give me kind of like a tour
Speaker 1: of the plot plot geographically, can I mean, we're not
Speaker 1: gonna hit everybody, So if you're offended by this, and
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, but like my buddy, my dear dear friend
Speaker 1: of of our family, the Clarks and East Tennessee Laurel
Speaker 1: Mountain plots, who is his name? Some of them there's
Speaker 1: no way we can name them all.
Speaker 4: Well, so you know, Everett Ever ended up taking you know,
Speaker 4: dogs and getting them in Illinois, and those were the
Speaker 4: wims Bread dogs. And then you had plots, you have
Speaker 4: Weams bread and then those turned into swampland dogs and
Speaker 4: Mike Colley's and then you got well swampland was Leroy
Speaker 4: Hogg in it. Indian Mike Coley ends up with the
Speaker 4: buy you caging plots that he's been breeding on for years.
Speaker 4: You've got, uh, the Houston Valley plots in eastern Tennessee.
Speaker 4: You've got the Salmon River plots that that were out
Speaker 4: in the Salmon River country.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 4: You get the Bluff Creek plots in Oklahoma or Kansas.
Speaker 4: You know, so it's it's it was one of.
Speaker 1: Those deal Pocahontas and poc.
Speaker 4: You've got the the Redwood plots that Jeff Coons kind
Speaker 4: of inherited from his uncle and and developed into highly
Speaker 4: skilled dogs. You got the Serge bread plots from Ohio Brandenburg.
Speaker 4: That was an older I.
Speaker 1: Mean good enough. I mean just the point is is
Speaker 1: that white inside of the plot world, there's these little
Speaker 1: narrow channels and people just go nuts over them. I mean,
Speaker 1: people are looking for certain dogs, they are bred in
Speaker 1: certain ways, and just to the average person to be
Speaker 1: like it's just a plot, but there's there's these real
Speaker 1: specific things connected to real specific people, and it's it's
Speaker 1: like it's just kind of neat.
Speaker 2: Do these dogs start to get different looks.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can.
Speaker 4: If a real student of the plot breed, well we'll
Speaker 4: be able to tell. You know, branden Burger plots were
Speaker 4: a little bigger and a little houndier looking than what
Speaker 4: some other and a real good person better than I am,
Speaker 4: can walk through plot days and say, well, that's a
Speaker 4: you know, that's a Pocahontas, and that's a brand you
Speaker 4: know this.
Speaker 1: Is they do have a Look.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love hounds, all of them. And I've never
Speaker 2: really paid much attention plots because there's not very many
Speaker 2: around here, but undeniably they have the best backstory of
Speaker 2: any of them.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, there's none of the rest of these hounds. So
Speaker 2: you know, you have Blue Ticks with the Vaughans and
Speaker 2: and those guys, and you have the Walker Dogs with
Speaker 2: the Gettings up there, and there's there's several different but
Speaker 2: none of them have the type of story that a
Speaker 2: plot hound has.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, that's what That's why I like them. Now
Speaker 1: what stood out to you just taking the whole story,
Speaker 1: like what surprised you? What? What what stood out? Well,
Speaker 1: it's amazing that a family name could be attached to
Speaker 1: those dogs for so long and and and I like
Speaker 1: to play the game of who's right? Was it the
Speaker 1: two boys coming from Germany? Was it George family coming over?
Speaker 1: So you made a compelling argument. You guys just really
Speaker 1: did a great job. My argument would be that this
Speaker 1: was a smart, successful family. You got a guy here
Speaker 1: that wrote a book.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I trust oral, you know, Uh, they couldn't find
Speaker 6: documentation to support or but I mean, these are these
Speaker 6: are brilliant people, successful people. You don't see the new
Speaker 6: com name all over the world. I mean, these guys,
Speaker 6: there's something special about these plot people. And they're not
Speaker 6: going to pass down lies. I mean, oh, George boy Henry,
Speaker 6: Henry tells Monty, Monty tells, Yeah, John got it. I mean,
Speaker 6: and it goes up to your buddy Bob. That's not
Speaker 6: too far back.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. You know, so you're you're saying it's not
Speaker 1: that they didn't just fabricate an outright lin Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, you know, I admit that
Speaker 6: it could be the other way.
Speaker 1: I mean, but well, that's a big question that has
Speaker 1: to be answered. Yeah, was there a family reunion when
Speaker 1: they're like back in the eighteen hundreds. Before they do,
Speaker 1: there's gonna be an internet or anybody's gonna care.
Speaker 4: We hey, Moses wrote the Book of Genesis thousands years
Speaker 4: after the Garden Eden. So do you believe that or not?
Speaker 3: There you go.
Speaker 4: If you can't believe that, then the plot story probably
Speaker 4: didn't free you.
Speaker 2: It's probably a little bit of both. Yeah, just like
Speaker 2: any other story that's probably a little bit of both.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: And and in all fairness to John or mister Jackson,
Speaker 5: John Jackson, I don't feel like he I felt like
Speaker 5: he was very measured in his response.
Speaker 2: It was moral.
Speaker 4: I could not find documents.
Speaker 2: Yeah he wasn't.
Speaker 3: He wasn't. Yeah, I don't.
Speaker 5: I didn't feel like it was too antagonistic or aggressive.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and no doubt. Well I tried to make it
Speaker 1: clear too that you know, one option would be that
Speaker 1: this family, just to go along with what you said,
Speaker 1: were so sharp, dominant, socially successful that maybe not even
Speaker 1: with intentionality, the plot name just got attached to them, right,
Speaker 1: And that's kind of what John Jackson says. And it
Speaker 1: wasn't like they did this as some kind of conspiracy.
Speaker 1: It just happened on its own, you know, and it
Speaker 1: emerges the plot hound, But really the bigger web was
Speaker 1: much bigger in many other families in theory, and this
Speaker 1: is an exaggerated thing. But in theory, there could have
Speaker 1: been some other family that was as involved but not
Speaker 1: as vocal. I mean, that's kind of the idea, which
Speaker 1: there's no evidence that really supports that, Like there was
Speaker 1: not another dominant family. And what my friend, I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna say his name because he might feel like he's
Speaker 1: gonna get in trouble. He told me a friend of ours,
Speaker 1: Chris over in Appalachia. That's a big plot, man, He said, Clay,
Speaker 1: can you imagine a family an Appalachia that was raising dogs,
Speaker 1: two families raising dogs breaking down, Two families raising dogs
Speaker 1: that were the same and they'd been working together in
Speaker 1: one family gets to name the dog after their family,
Speaker 1: he said, don't you think the other family would be
Speaker 1: throwing a fit?
Speaker 3: Oh? Yeah, you see, you see what you're.
Speaker 1: Saying, Like as if the plots came in and like
Speaker 1: swooped in to get all the glory for this thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And this guy was like no, he said, and he
Speaker 1: basically was like I think they got it. Honest.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, you hear documentation of the other family going.
Speaker 1: Hold up, this is the Jones dog.
Speaker 4: I can tell you. I can tell you that even
Speaker 4: within an established breed, you know, breeding for trades, breeding
Speaker 4: for confirmation, breeding for color, and things like that, it's
Speaker 4: tough to do by yourself, even your own family. You're
Speaker 4: gonna need a network of people. Yes, so that would
Speaker 4: be a regional thing for Appalachia at the time. You know,
Speaker 4: there's other people in the community that need a bear dogs,
Speaker 4: and the plots had the dogs. But when it comes
Speaker 4: back to it, and now I've got to breed the
Speaker 4: next generation a dog, It's like, is that a plot? Well,
Speaker 4: I don't know if it's a plot dog or not. Well,
Speaker 4: it looks like a plot. It's a really good bear dog.
Speaker 4: It's going to fit into this program. We can make
Speaker 4: this work. You know, that dog's got traits that I like.
Speaker 4: So he's not gonna he's not gonna upset the apple
Speaker 4: card here. So I really like him. Let's let's add him.
Speaker 4: That's just a development. That's a natural development of Yeah,
Speaker 4: whether it's cattle breed, uh, dog, sheep or whatever, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and and and undoubtedly that happened.
Speaker 4: And at some point it got to the point where,
Speaker 4: you know, Vaughn a few generations later, he already had
Speaker 4: his breed type. He already had his standard. Isaiah Kidd,
Speaker 4: all those guys, they all had that breed standard and stuff,
Speaker 4: and so they didn't breed outside of it. Their gene
Speaker 4: pool was big enough where they could stay within the
Speaker 4: breed type and.
Speaker 3: Boom, boom boom. That just exploded.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well it didn't explode, but there's still rare.
Speaker 1: I was going to bring up. I had somebody, uh
Speaker 1: that got on to me for They said I bashed
Speaker 1: forward trucks. I said, it's like building a forward truck.
Speaker 1: We needed some overseas parts, but making America made and
Speaker 1: uh and they thought it was like a that like
Speaker 1: a punched afford.
Speaker 2: Oh really, it was crazy.
Speaker 1: I could have said anything. I could have used any
Speaker 1: single I thought it was funny though, that that was triggered.
Speaker 1: Yeah they were, Yeah, somebody was triggered on that. That
Speaker 1: was funny. Well, uh, what other thoughts? Yeah, this I
Speaker 1: have been working on this in ways for a long
Speaker 1: long time. I did those interviews two years ago, and
Speaker 1: I actually did.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I sounded younger. Wasn't it smart though?
Speaker 3: But it was.
Speaker 1: It was a lot of fun And I think I
Speaker 1: think people that aren't even in the hounds could listen
Speaker 1: to it because it really wasn't about no.
Speaker 2: It was a family store America.
Speaker 3: It's American history, and it's a legacy, and it's you
Speaker 3: find a lot of value in it if you, and
Speaker 3: all you got to do is look is just barely
Speaker 3: look under the surface of it. I know you've heard
Speaker 3: me talk about and I've talked about it on my
Speaker 3: podcast about my dad Squirrel. The squirrel dogs in my
Speaker 3: family started with my great grandfather. Well, it ended with
Speaker 3: me and my brother. Well, we have no more of them.
Speaker 2: They're gone.
Speaker 3: There will never be any more of those dogs. And
Speaker 3: that is what's so cool about it to me and
Speaker 3: even emotional when I when I listen to it and
Speaker 3: think about all of that history with that family, and
Speaker 3: you're there's more. I cannot absolutely I can't wait for
Speaker 3: the rest of it.
Speaker 1: I don't think people, including me, understand the dedication that
Speaker 1: takes to have a generational line of hounds.
Speaker 2: That's what I was going to say. It's an incredible
Speaker 2: amount of work those seven generations. I had seven generations
Speaker 2: of females all the way back. I didn't feel like
Speaker 2: breeding for a little while, and I didn't, and the
Speaker 2: last one died the day the heck was born and
Speaker 2: that's it. They're gone. No more of them. Yeah, that's it.
Speaker 1: And to and to think going back that many, that
Speaker 1: many general, it just takes a ton of intentionality. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: how many plots do you have, Chris? Right now?
Speaker 4: I've got two right now too?
Speaker 3: Two?
Speaker 1: Yeah. What's their breeding?
Speaker 4: They're buy you caging plots call these stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, good, yep.
Speaker 1: Well, I am big time in the market for a
Speaker 1: plot female. I've decided. I told these guys, so this,
Speaker 1: this is funny, and this will give you a little
Speaker 1: bit of insight as we close down into the way
Speaker 1: people think about these things. Is so my good plot
Speaker 1: female that I had, Yeah, Fern Newcomb's Ozark b C.
Speaker 1: Fern b C stands for Bluff Creek. Got it from
Speaker 1: Steve Herd. She was all I needed a koon dog
Speaker 1: and and and you know, if I had another one
Speaker 1: like her for the rest of my life, I'd be happy.
Speaker 1: Doesn't mean she was good, doesn't mean she was bad.
Speaker 3: I just liked her.
Speaker 1: She got she died last winter.
Speaker 3: She died.
Speaker 1: Plot coon dogs are hard to find. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: not that hard to like get a plot. But I
Speaker 1: tried to replace her for five years before she died,
Speaker 1: Like I I got I told you all that, and
Speaker 1: and and and got rid of went through I think
Speaker 1: four different dogs, and I even went as far as
Speaker 1: the hunt a walker dog Michael was gonna Michael had
Speaker 1: a dog, Michael. I hunted a dog for a couple
Speaker 1: of days that Michael had that was a fine hound.
Speaker 1: I mean, probably better than any how that I've ever handled.
Speaker 1: And what I learned was I didn't want to I
Speaker 1: didn't want a walker dog. I thought I wanted a
Speaker 1: coon dog.
Speaker 3: What I don't.
Speaker 1: I didn't really want a coon I wanted a plot
Speaker 1: coon dog. Because I actually try a hunted another walker
Speaker 1: during this summer, and uh, a guy, you know, it's
Speaker 1: a friend of mine had a dog, said you know,
Speaker 1: and then it three nights and just gave it back
Speaker 1: to him and it wasn't the dog's fault. I just
Speaker 1: was kind of like, yeah, that was kind of dog's fault.
Speaker 1: But we just didn't do it for me. You like
Speaker 1: what you like, and it doesn't make any sense, and
Speaker 1: I think it probably bum fuzzled my two dear walker
Speaker 1: friends here. They're like, hey, Claire, thought you wanted a
Speaker 1: coon dog.
Speaker 3: Yeah, here you go. I've always known you're weird.
Speaker 2: You know why I got a walker dog because the
Speaker 2: first dog I guy was a walker dog. Yeah.
Speaker 1: If that happened to me, that's the way I'd have been.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: It's just it's one of those things that there's a
Speaker 4: lot of really nice dogs out there of all colors.
Speaker 4: I mean, there really are.
Speaker 3: Plots. You take.
Speaker 4: You take like the Redwood line of plots, and you
Speaker 4: take like Johnny Hager from West Virginia, and he can
Speaker 4: compete just with anybody. You know, you know he's going
Speaker 4: to be there. You're gonna know he was there anyway. Yeah,
Speaker 4: And and Evan Workman and Jeff Coons and and now
Speaker 4: you know there's they're out there. But I always get
Speaker 4: tickled out of these guys that are you know, they're hunting,
Speaker 4: hunting a walker or something like this, and they're like, yeah,
Speaker 4: I always always thought i'd try a plot sometime. It's like, man,
Speaker 4: you don't have enough buy in, you know, It's no,
Speaker 4: that's not the way this works. You have total buy in.
Speaker 4: It's like it's like liking the deer hunt and think, oh,
Speaker 4: I think I'll pick up a flint lock and and
Speaker 4: go out and shoot a deer with it. You got
Speaker 4: to be more invested in it than that.
Speaker 1: It's not good.
Speaker 4: It's not easy. And I'm not even saying you're smart.
Speaker 4: I'm just saying it's not you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, my life would be easier. I could go.
Speaker 1: I bet money we could. We should probably do it.
Speaker 1: I bet today, Dad, I bet I could buy five
Speaker 1: walker dogs in the state of Arkansas that we could
Speaker 1: take out tonight and go trick the next four hours.
Speaker 1: I could I make four or five calls and I
Speaker 1: could get a good three year old dog if I
Speaker 1: had the money.
Speaker 3: I mean you do. Yeah, I look at that.
Speaker 2: I'll tell you one one this is over.
Speaker 1: You did say if I had if I had ten
Speaker 1: grand and you said, Clay, go find you a good
Speaker 1: two year old plot female coon dog, I'd be like, Okay,
Speaker 1: which direction do I go? I mean there might be
Speaker 1: out there and money talks that might be a problem
Speaker 1: one out of somebody.
Speaker 2: Why just because they're more big game hounds as well?
Speaker 4: Well, No, long we're going to make this book.
Speaker 1: This is what I made in part. I said this
Speaker 1: in a post on Instagram. I made them tag Brent Reeves.
Speaker 1: The there's a there's one hundred walkers to every one plot,
Speaker 1: maybe more, maybe a thousand walkers. Like if you actually
Speaker 1: did the population dynamics on the breed of dog, let's
Speaker 1: just say there's a hundred to one. If I give
Speaker 1: you one hundred tries to throw a bean bag through
Speaker 1: a hole and I get one, you're gonna win every
Speaker 1: single time. And my point is that because I mean,
Speaker 1: you have joked Brent, and I've said that to Brent
Speaker 1: before and I'm pretty sure he was like, well, why
Speaker 1: do you think there's one hundred walkers because they're good
Speaker 1: and people want them. I don't think that good logic
Speaker 1: is not entirely true because it all has to do
Speaker 1: with access and the walker just I mean, you couldn't
Speaker 1: even get plots till the nineteen forties.
Speaker 4: Walker dogs are good entry level dogs.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I get to the top.
Speaker 1: And I'm not this is not degrading to walkers. I'm
Speaker 1: just saying it's not that simple. And so they're just
Speaker 1: a smaller pool. They're primarily big game dogs. There's just yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just like, go right now and try to find
Speaker 1: a six week old plot. P up hard to find.
Speaker 4: When we were talking earlier, you know, I said plots
Speaker 4: are different and they are. And you know, in nineteen
Speaker 4: forty six, UKC decided to recognize them as a hound
Speaker 4: and it had some value for historical preservation and records
Speaker 4: keeping and stuff like that. But at that point, now
Speaker 4: you're allowed to go hunt them, and uk see night
Speaker 4: hunts in different So there's even a lot of strife
Speaker 4: within the plot breed breeders and fanciers between big game
Speaker 4: bread and coon bread dog coon dog type stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 4: there's there's that kind of strife. There's strife, Well he's
Speaker 4: a good bear dog, but or he's a good hog dog.
Speaker 4: But they're not good they're too hard for bear. You know,
Speaker 4: you get them, kill them bear, you know. I mean,
Speaker 4: you can just go on and on and on. You
Speaker 4: can make of all kinds of stuff. So the reason
Speaker 4: walkers are better is because people have one goal in mind,
Speaker 4: and that's to breed a good coon dog. Plot breeders
Speaker 4: want hog dogs, they want utilitarian dogs, they want bear dogs,
Speaker 4: they want coon dogs.
Speaker 1: They want Yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 4: Walker breeders are like, we're going to tree coons with
Speaker 4: this dog, and we're gonna win World champions ships and
Speaker 4: we're gonna win a lot of them and yep, and
Speaker 4: that's what they do.
Speaker 1: And Dad, that's the walker dominates the hound world. I
Speaker 1: mean dominates like you know, I don't know the big
Speaker 1: big World Championship hunts. How many have not been walkers
Speaker 1: in the last twenty years. I mean there's been some
Speaker 1: English and so maybe a blue tick here and there, maybe.
Speaker 2: No, but not in UK. See blue ticks never won
Speaker 2: UKC World.
Speaker 1: But anyway, the dogs like the dog that you have
Speaker 1: if you're a coon dog guy.
Speaker 3: But so that's.
Speaker 2: Had a blue tick as a kid.
Speaker 1: Yeah, my first dogs were blue ticks.
Speaker 2: I was saying, the blue Ticks won some A C
Speaker 2: h A World hunts.
Speaker 1: And there was a plot that won the world one
Speaker 1: time in the eighties, right, that was one that was
Speaker 1: like like back nineteen ninety four n C double a Chance,
Speaker 1: Corlis Williamson, Scottie Thurman beat Duke. That's nineteen ninety four,
Speaker 1: Go hogs. Right, that's the one thing we've got in
Speaker 1: the whole state that our whole history.
Speaker 3: We got basketball and we got almost baseball.
Speaker 1: Well that's like the plots. When was nineteen eighty eight
Speaker 1: that dog won the world.
Speaker 2: Change they won the PKC World one time too.
Speaker 3: They won the PKC World yep.
Speaker 1: So you know we got a few bright spots in
Speaker 1: the past, but we do have a good story.
Speaker 4: Yeah, John walk Up won it, uh pk C and
Speaker 4: Spud Reynolds and Jim Cannon won it with sizzling heat
Speaker 4: in the UKC World Hunt.
Speaker 1: M I guess I could use this platform to my
Speaker 1: advantage to try to appeal to some of these good
Speaker 1: plot coon men.
Speaker 4: I thought that was the only.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Please the dog Burn, the dog that you and Michael
Speaker 1: are both hunted with, she was a good well, she
Speaker 1: was not. She was the only coon dog. I mean
Speaker 1: almost all those dogs went to be lying and bearing hogdogs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but a Fern could have been as good a
Speaker 2: coon dog as there is. Fern's little holes that she
Speaker 2: had was because of you.
Speaker 1: No doubt.
Speaker 2: Stuff that you let her do that was okay with you.
Speaker 2: So sure other than that, sure street coon as good
Speaker 2: as any dog I've ever seen.
Speaker 1: So you're being generous. He didn't say that when I'm
Speaker 1: not around.
Speaker 3: No, he does. That's the truth. I've seen him now
Speaker 3: he saw it.
Speaker 4: I've been around some top plot coon dogs. I mean there, yeah,
Speaker 4: they're out there, but they're hard to They're just hard
Speaker 4: to get your hands on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yep. Well uh any closing thoughts. Yeah, just one thought.
Speaker 6: I can't remember which one it was, but one of
Speaker 6: those boys, Mont or his boy Wab Yeah, uh said
Speaker 6: he would never have a bathroom inside of house he
Speaker 6: was living there.
Speaker 5: Yeah. I thought I thought about that two different times
Speaker 5: today just driving down the road.
Speaker 2: I mean, he wasn't the only one in that time
Speaker 2: period that thought that either. That was a yeah, I left.
Speaker 1: That in there because there was such a little nugget
Speaker 1: he said. He said, I will he didn't have an
Speaker 1: indoor bathroom until like the nineteen forties because he said,
Speaker 1: I will never go to the bathroom in my house.
Speaker 1: How crazy are you? That was good now that that
Speaker 1: plot history over there, Golly, if you're ever in western
Speaker 1: North Carolina, Maggie Valley Heywood, I know you've seen all
Speaker 1: the sites. Chris. There's a really neat historical marker put
Speaker 1: up by the state of North Carolina that looks over
Speaker 1: the plot Balsam Range and it has a a big bronze,
Speaker 1: you know, about the half the size of a truck
Speaker 1: hood that has the story of the plot hound. You
Speaker 1: know it says that the Plots they lived here, they
Speaker 1: hunted here, they did this really cool. And then Bob
Speaker 1: just gave me the tour man one day. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'll realize what a unique thing I had spending the
Speaker 1: day a lot more than that with with Bob Plott
Speaker 1: over there, such a neat guy.
Speaker 6: And yeah, the cabin in the White House, those need
Speaker 6: to be preserved, if nothing, in really good photography and
Speaker 6: put it somewhere on display. I mean, I can't believe
Speaker 6: those two places are just well, they're not being neglected.
Speaker 1: Well, listen to this. So mont Plott's house that was
Speaker 1: built in like nineteen oh three, Yeah, nineteen oh three,
Speaker 1: somebody has It's not in the Plot family anymore. Somebody
Speaker 1: has bought that and they've fixed it up and it's
Speaker 1: a beautiful home, probably worth a ton of money. They
Speaker 1: kept it classic though, they kept it, they held true.
Speaker 1: Just imagine a really nice home that's been renovated but
Speaker 1: still holds the kind of the tradition looks and styles.
Speaker 1: And so me and Bob went to this man's house,
Speaker 1: knocked on the door. Bob knew him, and he's like,
Speaker 1: oh Bob, and he's like, hey, these are plot men
Speaker 1: they want to see, you know, Mont's old house, and
Speaker 1: he took us all through the house and real neat
Speaker 1: in the cabin is surprisingly still intact. They've got they've
Speaker 1: done a good job of keeping it up. But it's
Speaker 1: not public. I mean, it's not like you can go
Speaker 1: there and knock on this guy's door, you know, and
Speaker 1: it's it's very private, and you know, they're not like
Speaker 1: telling you where it's at. But yeah, it's a massive
Speaker 1: piece of history.
Speaker 6: The photography of it should be out for the public.
Speaker 1: And it is somewhere. Well, there's pictures of all that
Speaker 1: in Bob's book. Okay, yeah, strike and stay the story
Speaker 1: of the plot Hound. Yeah, man, support old Bob. He's
Speaker 1: a he's a he's a great writer. He's done a
Speaker 1: lot of writing in Southern Appalachia. He's got a stack.
Speaker 4: Of great Highlands that one of his or was it
Speaker 4: the legendary Hunters of the Southern Highlands.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's it. There's a there's a bunch of them.
Speaker 1: There's some on the railroads and different things. But yeah,
Speaker 1: this has been great. Thank you Chris for coming from
Speaker 1: Indiana's man, Michael Chris, thank you for coming from South Arkansas.
Speaker 1: Sun Spot lights, Southern Ish Arkansas. Uh Grady, all right?
Speaker 3: But Greig or Central Okay.
Speaker 1: Where somewhere somewhere down there, it doesn't matter. Isaac, good
Speaker 1: to have you, Brent, good to have you. Hey Meeteater's
Speaker 1: got a bunch of Black Friday sales first Light. If
Speaker 1: you want to take advantage of these big companies.
Speaker 3: Now's your time.
Speaker 1: Now's your time. Thank you, guys.
Speaker 3: You bet