00:00:14 Speaker 1: My name is Clay Nukeleman. This is a production of the Bear Grease podcast called The Bear Grease Render, where we render down, dive deeper, and look behind the scenes of the actual bear Grease podcast, presented by f HF Gear, American made purpose built hunting and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the place as we explore. So, what's the nearest town to where we're at? Where would you go to buy groceries for your house? 00:00:49 Speaker 2: Mike, Rolling Fork, Rolling Fork, Rolling Fork, Mississippi where the tornado hit. 00:00:54 Speaker 1: We are near Rolling Fort, Mississippi. 00:00:56 Speaker 2: Yew about twenty eighty two miles. 00:00:58 Speaker 1: And well, Rolling Fork, Mississippi is where that huge tornado came through. 00:01:03 Speaker 3: That's correct. 00:01:04 Speaker 1: And you guys were you were there on the scene, Am I right? 00:01:07 Speaker 4: I hope everybody was. Yeah, I mean the whole town. Yeah, when Spring was there helping in the spring. Yeah, yeah, I think March. 00:01:18 Speaker 1: Yeah, back in March, that terrible tornado. We're in Mississippi. We it's dark outside right now, but we're within sight of the Mississippi River. I've got to my right, Lake Pickle Houdy, good to see you. 00:01:32 Speaker 3: Lake. 00:01:32 Speaker 1: Likewise, to your right, Jordan bliss It. Hello, you guys are old regulars on the Bargeries podcast. Though Oh yeah, second, they're sitting here just like, oh man, this is just another day in the park, doesn't here. 00:01:44 Speaker 5: I'll tell you this, the last time Jordan and I were on the Render, i'd gotten used to unusual guests being on the render, and then the OG crew roasting them the next week, and they never said anything about us. Yeah, they never said nothing about me and Jordan's that. 00:01:55 Speaker 1: Kind of stopped the the OG group kind of chilled a little bit. 00:02:00 Speaker 3: I think, Well, I was worried about it. 00:02:02 Speaker 1: Yeah. To Jordan's right, the guest of honor in my mind, Mike Amden pleasure man. Mike, I got some specific questions for you about the Mississippi River, I hope, yeah, Man. To to Mike's right, Brent Reeves, It's good to have you back. Brent prince regular except when he's not, when he does whatever he does. And then to Brent's right is Drew steckline Man. So Drew is uh your videographer, photographer, former professional skier. Right on, would you guess that he has two L shaped plates on both cheeks of his face? 00:02:51 Speaker 5: I mean I'd wondered why he looked like that, But no, no. 00:02:55 Speaker 1: I actually thought he was pretty well put together. No, his face broke up. 00:03:00 Speaker 6: Did your face hit or tree or something? 00:03:01 Speaker 1: What happened? 00:03:02 Speaker 7: I have my uh knee and a skiing accident and then the other one had collided in somebody else's foot. 00:03:08 Speaker 8: Oh yeah, no snow involved. 00:03:12 Speaker 2: No snow. 00:03:14 Speaker 3: No. 00:03:15 Speaker 1: It's been good to get to meet Drew. And then, uh, I guess the the seventh guest of honor is Brent's big buck that he killed just today. We've got the rack of How about the beautiful zippy delta? 00:03:27 Speaker 3: That rack of horns you're that you're holding right now. Slept in the woods last night? Yeah, clean up, that looks good. 00:03:35 Speaker 6: Nice sleeping in the house. 00:03:36 Speaker 1: Well, hey, we've got man, do we have a lot to talk about? We so the this latest episode of the Bargers podcast, the Donnie Baker Story Nightmare. This was a super unique podcast for me to put together. We're going to talk about it in a little bit, but uh, but first, man, I'm always torn on whether we should talk about what we've been doing. We've been, uh, we've been we've been hunting down here in Mississippi. It's January the January the ninth. Today we've been deer hunting, duck hunting. Brent's been doing a little hog hunting. 00:04:15 Speaker 3: Yep. 00:04:16 Speaker 1: And uh, Brent and I rode two hundred and fifty miles down and Drew and Isaac Neil two hundred and fifty miles down the Mississippi River to get here. We could have just drove here. Would have been a little quicker just to drive here. But nah, there's a film project that you'll see at some point this year on Meat Eater that's gonna be gonna be really cool. But uh, Mike, how long have you been living close to the Mississippi Twelve years? Twelve years, last twelve years. But man, you're uh, you're a river rat, Mike. I knew that when I saw you. You can't really help it, can't help it. But you loved catfish. 00:04:58 Speaker 4: You and your wife, Oh yeah, yeah all the time. She fishes all the time. I fish part of time. She she wants fish every day. 00:05:07 Speaker 1: Yeah, man, I wish we could have put some lines out on me too. We tried to do some fishing, which January you wouldn't think would be good for catfishing, and I mean it's not a traditional time to do it, but you can catch them in January. Oh yeah, they're out there doing catfish stuff. 00:05:25 Speaker 4: But we can catch them here in a month or so too. Yeah, be better. 00:05:27 Speaker 1: Actually, yeah, what's the biggest what's the biggest blue cat you caught out of the river? 00:05:32 Speaker 4: Eighty two eighty two pounds? Now, that was on a that's on a vertical line. Vertical biggest one on My wife actually caught the biggest blue we got and it was seventy six on a pole. And then she's called seven sixty seven flathead, six seven pound flatthead. 00:05:53 Speaker 2: She and boat records. Right now, that's just kind of a weird thing. 00:05:56 Speaker 6: You know when you say vertical line, is that like a limb line? 00:06:00 Speaker 4: No, like a You just you find your deep hole and put your weight on and then you start dropping it down and just taking clips and clip your hooks on and then have jugs on top. I just started this year myself and very productive. 00:06:15 Speaker 1: Huh. So it's a vertical. It's just like I finally understood it the second time you described it to me. Right, It's just like a trot line, except it goes straight. 00:06:24 Speaker 2: Everything same put a weight. 00:06:26 Speaker 1: On the end and just drop it. And then you have some special thing that clips onto. 00:06:30 Speaker 4: The Yeah, it's a little old trout line clip where you hook on it. We fish leaders about like that. 00:06:36 Speaker 6: So you so you've got a bunch of different hooks, are different depths that way exactly. 00:06:42 Speaker 2: So you know how you tie off the bank. 00:06:43 Speaker 4: You know, you kind of stretch it out there and on your first you know, a few catch or whatever this is. 00:06:48 Speaker 3: You got every depth. 00:06:49 Speaker 2: Huh works great? 00:06:51 Speaker 1: Now, Okay, Mike, the Achilles heel of the vertical trout line, what if it gets hung up down there? 00:06:58 Speaker 4: You really don't not it's sepidary. I mean there's not that much structure anyway. And uh you always round by them docks and it's pretty clean. 00:07:06 Speaker 1: So does the. 00:07:07 Speaker 4: It's more for you'll catch more blue calf than you do flatheads. 00:07:12 Speaker 1: Okay. Second problem, potential problem. You get thirty fish on the same line, they all get in cahoots together and take that sucker down. 00:07:21 Speaker 2: I hadn't had that happen, but I could see it to be an issue. 00:07:26 Speaker 4: But I mean, if we've had some big I mean we've had you know, ten or twelve at a time, on there and it's. 00:07:32 Speaker 3: Stay hood the catfish yourselfish. They'll never work it out amongst. 00:07:36 Speaker 4: Yeah, they're like they're pulling against each other. And you can take your live view and get back and look at it and your line's gonna have a little bow in it and come back up to them jugs and you just get there behind them rock docks. They usually only next morning. Bait's a big thing. What do you what are you using? 00:07:56 Speaker 2: Skip jack? 00:07:57 Speaker 3: Uh? 00:07:58 Speaker 1: Is a live wildfish that lives in this river. 00:08:01 Speaker 2: Yes, skip jack. 00:08:02 Speaker 1: It's just like a shiners. 00:08:05 Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly, and so oli is right behind these rock dikes. It's natural and works great. I love brim. Yeah, this according time of year it is, you know, that's a big thing. 00:08:18 Speaker 2: Springtime. I want them live. 00:08:19 Speaker 1: I want that live bait hook them right in the tail. 00:08:23 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:08:24 Speaker 4: But I mean some of these old timers right here is me and they're going to their skip jack all the way through and they don't want fool with live bait, and they catch a lot. 00:08:33 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:08:34 Speaker 4: Yeah, there's several guys in this river. I want to fish with it. I just met some of them last year. 00:08:39 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:08:40 Speaker 1: Well, we had on the Bear Grease podcast as a as a formal guest, Bill Lancaster, I told you about. Oh yeah, man, he's a he's a heck of a guy. If you go in the Wildlife Museum in Leland, Mississippi. Uh, he's he's got a whole section in that Wildlife Museum of all his It's just a bunch of pictures and much of neat stuff. But he's a cool guy. He's a cool guy. 00:09:03 Speaker 2: And we catch. 00:09:04 Speaker 4: We're doing this burk line fishing stuff a little bit, but we were ninety percent. 00:09:08 Speaker 1: Pole fish, pole fishing. You want real men. 00:09:11 Speaker 2: Yeah, we fish. 00:09:12 Speaker 4: We fish up down this bank, all up through behind these dykes. Sometimes we take the buck, you know, we fish out of the boat out there, but still fishing the same spots. But it's kind of handy just to leave the house and go these sand bars and yeah, set them up and go back, eat souper, go back, check them. 00:09:29 Speaker 1: Yeah works good. And I gotta get I want to come down here sometime and fish with you when it's good. And I know. So we were playing this deer hunt, duck hunt, and I'm gonna let Jordan talk about the duck hunt. But uh we uh, we kind of threw on the catfishing deal there at the end. It wasn't it wasn't a perfect time at all. But no, Jordan, Jordan Lake. 00:09:55 Speaker 2: I was looking. 00:09:56 Speaker 1: I was looking at Lake and said Jordan Dan. 00:09:58 Speaker 6: I thought I was don't get the roasting. 00:10:02 Speaker 3: I couldn't believe it's be brutal. 00:10:07 Speaker 1: So Lake, you work for on X, do you work for open season properties? You sell real estate Mississippi? What else do you do with your life? 00:10:16 Speaker 5: I mean that's where we could end it right there. I mean those two things. Duck God, if I was duck, if I was duck guiding, I would be filing for unemployment after this last go round. 00:10:32 Speaker 1: But it's not your fault. 00:10:35 Speaker 4: The same same morning the other morning, and they was there, and they might they would thank you. 00:10:40 Speaker 6: Yeah, you're not supposed to help him. 00:10:43 Speaker 2: Well, so yeah, I mean mine on me too. You know, my group didn't kill either. 00:10:48 Speaker 5: Mike's on the north side of this property. I'm on the south side. Before I'd even talked to Mike, I text y'all and I said, dunk report. I think what I said is good, not great, like it wouldn't loaded. But I was like, there's definitely enough here, and I go talk to Mike and Nick and they're like, oh, yeah, man, they're here. And then we go out that next morning and. 00:11:06 Speaker 2: We all kind of looked like fools there. 00:11:08 Speaker 1: I mean, we killed a duck, a duck, Paul shot him, right, No, it was it was neat hunting down in this country. Man. It feels like, I know, in Arkansas, which is further north than here, the guys talk about how the ducks aren't coming as far south. It's taking them longer to get there, and down here it's it's it's a whole nother it's a whole nother deal. I mean, but still you're getting some good mallard duck duck hunting. 00:11:41 Speaker 5: Typically it I mean where where we were at obviously, the Mississippi River and all that, you know, Floodplain Louvia Valley is just historically good duck area. And uh, I mean, y'all see it. Y'all are on the river. It's just so low and it's such a lack of water and warm been dry and it just just not down here. 00:11:59 Speaker 1: It's historic lows on the Mississippi River, is that right? 00:12:02 Speaker 3: For sure? 00:12:03 Speaker 1: Historic lows. 00:12:05 Speaker 4: I mean it's it's never been three foot of food hunting seasons as I've been here. 00:12:09 Speaker 1: Okay, I've talked about this before. And when you say three foot describe to somebody who doesn't know that's going on in gauge. So where is zero? 00:12:21 Speaker 6: Like what like? 00:12:22 Speaker 1: What at what reference point is zero? If it's three foot above something? 00:12:27 Speaker 3: What's zero? 00:12:28 Speaker 1: Anybody know? 00:12:30 Speaker 4: I can't answer that, but it has to be off the marker down there at Vicksburg Breed. 00:12:33 Speaker 6: So it does go in the negatives. 00:12:35 Speaker 1: Well, so so okay, let me let me teach you boys something I'm deducing. No, they must just have like a normal normalcy that they decided was zero. And they just said it like this is normal flow of the river. Am I right? That sounds right? Experts. I've come all the way to the Mississippi River experts. 00:12:59 Speaker 8: We just it's a little more confidence there. I would have said, that's exactly one. 00:13:03 Speaker 1: I mean, it's I guess it's gotta be here's because. 00:13:05 Speaker 3: It's yeah, here's what I know. 00:13:07 Speaker 5: It's like you talk to these guys like Mike that's on this property and then at cotton Mouth, which is north of here. But all these guys that spend time on their particular property, they can tell you what river gauge. Like if they if they look at the Vicksburg gage, for instance, they know if I tell Mike what's the river doing at twenty two feet, he can tell you, yeah, you know, I mean, because he knows what happens on that property with different levels. 00:13:26 Speaker 1: Well, so I was looking at a map. There's a big there's a big map in one of the rooms of this property on the wall, and there's a legend like this is really cool because you wouldn't have this anywhere else. There's a legend. And then the legend that says, at twenty two feet this and this floods, and it describes places on the property that are named at thirty feet, this happens. At fifteen feet, this happens. And you kind of, I guess if you get to know a place, you understand exactly what that river's going to do. And so you've got this property along the river that you're managing, and at different flood stages, different sections are gonna flood. 00:14:05 Speaker 2: Well you go to hunting it and stuff. 00:14:06 Speaker 4: Well, you need to know if the road if you're close to the road going under and you've got five people and you're going north with them, and you get there and you know, you don't know that it's fixing me over that road. Then the whole morning is messed up for everybody. Yeah, so you got to keep up with all that. 00:14:21 Speaker 1: Well, I mean we experienced that this week when we were trying to get to an island. So the property that you manage, Mike has A has A has an island in a correct island in the Mississippi River, right which there are. There are a lot of islands in the Mississippi River, even though they're all unique and really dynamic. So we were gonna go hunt the island. And for the last four months you could drive to the. 00:14:42 Speaker 4: Island, drive until two days before we are one. When I was here, we didn't even know that we couldn't get to it. We thought we can still. 00:14:49 Speaker 1: Yeah, we had our bows and we're gonna drive over there and go hunting. And the river came up two feet just overnight, which two. 00:14:55 Speaker 4: Feet, and he really out there because it spreads out because you know, aft on that same bar and it just. 00:15:02 Speaker 1: Spreads out quick and so it it messed up our We had to get a boat and we ended up boating over to the island. You know, I spent some time in Alaska, well just in December, but I was also there in May. And the tide swings in southeast Alaska are some of the biggest tide swings in the world, like massive tides, so everywhere you go, you're constantly calculating for the tide and those guys just have to be able to read it so that they don't get stranded or they don't kill themselves in some way with the tides low going through certain places, you know, like when the tides low, there's gonna be rocks in that little channel, or when. 00:15:41 Speaker 4: The tide's high you could drive a big boat through there. I'm this is like that same thing. I'm just different scale, but same thing. Yeah, same problems. Yeah, and just just like all the day y'all trying to get there, and we thought, you know, they just y'all just drive around, come up around a certain spot, drop y'all off, and uh like that, everything went chaos. 00:16:02 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:16:03 Speaker 4: Yeah, but they got your handled, they got you on the water. 00:16:06 Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah they did. 00:16:08 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:16:09 Speaker 4: That was kind of unexpected. That's kind of unexpected. Little you know, we wasn't playing on getting boat and the water anything is. I mean, just we got it done though. 00:16:17 Speaker 3: The boys did. 00:16:18 Speaker 2: Oh it was. 00:16:19 Speaker 1: It was funner taking that boat over there than oh, yeah before, wasn't it? Brent probably better hunting Brent. So I've spent uh two hundred and fifty miles with Brent as my I was the on our boat, our vessel, which I gotta explain this. We've talked about this. Our boat. We named it Laura. Do you know why, Jordan, we named it Laura. 00:16:44 Speaker 3: Oh? 00:16:44 Speaker 1: The iceberg close close? Okay, Well, the ice sheet, so the Lauren Tide ice sheet formed the upper part. Well, it formed the Mississippi River valley. So naturally we named our boat Laura. So was the captain of Laura. I was the cub pilot. Okay, and about fifty miles in like like like Samuel Clemens, like you know, Mark Twain, fifty miles in, I said Brent. And I'm not an experienced river man. The weakness. If you were just to pitch me out into the wilderness, I would probably like die in a river. But if I had to tame a horse or a mule and ride it across the mountains, I'm good. If I need to drive an ATV in extreme circumstances I'm good. If I need to walk or hike, I'm good. Boat is my biggest weakness in wilderness travel fifty miles in, I say, Captain, I think it's time for Clay to take the wheel. And I mean I can drive a boat, but but not a lot of experience. And I pretty much drove the last two hundred miles. 00:17:56 Speaker 3: Did it not? You did? 00:17:58 Speaker 2: How to do? 00:17:59 Speaker 3: You did? Very well? You did? You really did. 00:18:02 Speaker 2: It was time to load across that current. I saw that. 00:18:07 Speaker 8: I don't know if if I was going to say that, Mike, I appreciate you bringing that. 00:18:11 Speaker 1: Oh, dude, I'm the first one. 00:18:14 Speaker 3: It was. It's different, isn't it. 00:18:17 Speaker 8: Oh, it's tough, a lot of there's a lot of physics that goes into loading a boat in the current, and loading a big boat is our. 00:18:27 Speaker 2: Boat, and then a cross current on top of that. 00:18:30 Speaker 1: Yeah, I chickened out. I chickened out. So I drove that boat two hundred miles down the river, passing barges, I mean, doing everything. And when we I told him I've loaded a smaller boat in a trailer. But yeah, we had the nine mile per hour current going down the river. And then I had you and and the other two guys on the bank, and it was raining and I tried to hit it, and I got right up to it and chickened out and threw it. 00:18:59 Speaker 8: He had a good approach, though, didn't he did. 00:19:02 Speaker 1: And Brent was trying to make it like a teaching thing. He's like, now, come on, Clay, you're gonna do I could tell he was like, this is a learning experience. You're going to do this. And I finally just said, Brent, get in his seat, put this thing in the in the trailer. I'm I'll learn another time when there's not ten people standing here watching camera. Yeah. 00:19:21 Speaker 8: Well it's a boat. I mean, good gosh, it ain't like we're loading a john boat. This thing is twenty seven feet long. 00:19:28 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:19:28 Speaker 2: Yeah, I've never seen such. 00:19:29 Speaker 3: It's so nice, big sea arc boat man. 00:19:32 Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really really cool. I just wanted to We were just talking about the river. I can't remember exactly what I was about to say. 00:19:45 Speaker 8: But if I can tell you this from being the captain, I didn't get to marry nobody on the way down. As being the captain of the ship, I'm kind of disapported about that. But if this trip would have been two hundred and fifty one miles. I think we would have made a built a plank and somebody who had been walking off. 00:20:05 Speaker 3: The cub pilot. 00:20:06 Speaker 1: Mike, they get they get mad at me because we'd be coming around a tight corner. So the Mississippi River in places it's very wide. In places it's like surprisingly narrow, but they have the channels marked and there's green booys and red booies. Red booies are on the east side of the river. Green boos are on the west side of the river, and you got to keep your the in between the booies. I'm describing this to people who wouldn't know which I would not have inside the booyes is maintained by the corp of Engineers and it's dredged out, so you're you have a guaranteed channel. Outside those booes, you got no guarantee of any. 00:20:46 Speaker 2: Channel at all. 00:20:46 Speaker 1: There could be obstructions, there could be sandbars, anything, but in the main channel there could also be logs and obstructions that you got to constantly watch for. So this I was going to tell you, they would get mad at me because we'd be coming in and you know, come around a corner and all of a sudden there would be a huge barge. I mean, these things are like pushing, like eighty eighty barges. I mean it's like a massive boat in the water coming around a corner. And I would say, I guess you had it right to be mad at me. Think about it? 00:21:22 Speaker 2: What should what should I do? 00:21:24 Speaker 3: What you do? 00:21:25 Speaker 1: What happened? 00:21:25 Speaker 7: Tell me, bro I just told you what you should do and you did the opposite. 00:21:31 Speaker 1: Why did you ask me what to do? 00:21:32 Speaker 3: He said? Should I pass on? 00:21:34 Speaker 2: Every hour? 00:21:35 Speaker 8: Should I pass on the left to the rights? I pass on the left. Well, why wouldn't I pass on the right? I said, just pass on the left. You got the room, that's the way. Let him have that saddle there. Well, I think I should pass on? I said, were you driving? Just drive? But you need to make a decision, do one or the other, but you need to do it right. 00:21:52 Speaker 1: And what Britta and I's relationship is so good because he helps me process through decision making. 00:21:59 Speaker 3: And the ulcer I have in my stomach. 00:22:04 Speaker 1: But we made it. 00:22:07 Speaker 3: It was good. You did really well? Man? 00:22:10 Speaker 1: Well it was. It was a lot of fun. It really was a lot of fun. 00:22:16 Speaker 5: Were you intimidated at all. Oh yeah, absolutely, there's a lot of folks. I mean, because there's stories that come up about people putting in boats on that river man, And I mean, yeah, I would be intimidated. 00:22:26 Speaker 1: Shoot, just like. 00:22:27 Speaker 2: What I said today, when she's grumpy, don't mess with her. 00:22:31 Speaker 3: Yeah that was good. 00:22:32 Speaker 8: When you said that today, I thought, man, that's that's a great way to do it. 00:22:35 Speaker 6: The first time I ever got out on the main Missippi River channel, it scared me to death. 00:22:40 Speaker 3: Really. 00:22:41 Speaker 6: I was twenty one years old, just started guiding at a place down south, and are right at Natches and we're going to take hunters out. And I had no idea. I never experienced Missisi river bottom of my life, but I was so excited to be there. And I had a deer stand right on the river, and the best way to get to it was by the river. 00:23:03 Speaker 1: And the head gud. 00:23:04 Speaker 6: Over sent me and another boy didn't know what he's doing out in a sixteen foot John Bow twenty five horsepower, little Kawasaki or something on it. So y'all go around a point down there. You'll see the flag, and I put on river bank. We come out to this point and there's barges and currants and whirlpools, and I'm like, oh my gosh, but I mean we made it, but I was scared to death. 00:23:31 Speaker 1: Well there's yeah, I mean that. So we had this idea to do this trip. We were going to try to do it in the warmer weather. We had to delay, and so we came back when it was super cold, and which ended up not being the limiting factor. I mean, we were cold, but that we had a we had a semi covered deck that kept us fairly warm, but we were just decked out with warm weather clothes. Ended up being a nine hour trip two hudred fifty miles and we we when I we put in at Memphis with inside of the bass Pro pyramid at Memphis at the bridge, and uh yeah, those first few miles we didn't know how long it would take. We didn't know. I mean, there was just uncountable variables and uh, it was absolutely intimidating. Yeah, but that's why we did it, I suppose. I mean, it's it's it was just yeah, like I said, we could have drove here. But when we did this series on the Mississippi River back in the spring, back in the summer, that's when I had the thought that I wanted to go down the river. I just wanted to go down. I wanted to see it. And uh, the truth is is that the way the river looks today, it's it's definitely different than when Davy Crockett, you know, Davy Crockett wrecked a boat just south of Memphis and nearly died. I heard about that one, and uh, you know, all these famous people, I mean, anybody in American history that has done anything, has been down the Mississippi River. And I wanted to see it. And honestly, today it looks about like it did then. I mean that you just can't. What I was most struck by when I was on the river, and I knew this, but then I saw it is that there are no cities. Don't come to the edge of the river in that span from Memphis to Vicksburg. There are no cities to speak of. And by cities, I mean you can if there were. I mean, you know, it's woods. What you're seeing is woods. We did see the Tunica casino that stood up above the tree line, and then you would see loading docks, you know, where they were loading barges and stuff and you'd see the odd well you'd see river camps. Once you got well all down through there, you would occasionally see river camps, and there'd be clusters of them around cities because the cities are outside the levees, so you can't see them. But I mean, I I just it was. I wouldn't have thought or I just never thought it through that the river looks about like it did when Mark Twain was running down it as a cub pilot like me. 00:26:14 Speaker 2: How many other boats did y'all say that? 00:26:17 Speaker 1: I'm glad you asked that. We saw one pleasure craft and two pleasure crafts and two hundred and fifty miles. 00:26:23 Speaker 2: Wow, no joke. 00:26:24 Speaker 1: We kept track. We saw two people. Now we saw how many barges did we think we passed? Oh, we had a guest. I think we said we figured we passed probably between thirty and forty barges in a two hundred and fifty miles stretch, nine hours on the water. We saw two civilian just like pleasure crafts, just like guys on the John boat two fifty miles. 00:26:48 Speaker 3: Now. 00:26:48 Speaker 1: We were there in January, which was you know, not a lot. 00:26:51 Speaker 3: Of people out the off season. 00:26:53 Speaker 1: It's the off season, no skis No, I didn't see any skiers. 00:26:58 Speaker 8: But anyway, incredible trip though, spending the night on the on the island. 00:27:04 Speaker 3: Then yeah, it was, it was, it was really it was fun. 00:27:09 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:27:11 Speaker 7: Uh so Isaac and Ice up in the boat and we were way at back up this back channel, how far up back up the back quarter mile or a quarter mile up of back channel and Isaac and I were sleeping in the boat and it's just crazy that you could feel the waves from the barges a quarter mile up a back channel like rocking. 00:27:35 Speaker 2: Be glad y'all found channel. 00:27:37 Speaker 4: Oh yeah yeah, yeah, makes your water had come over the back of your motor and all that. 00:27:44 Speaker 1: Yeah. Then the boat the water table rose in the night. 00:27:50 Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, the water table rose in the night, and then the barges slowed down and didn't come through and probably midnight until five, and then at five and the morning the barges started coming through, and then the boat just kept rocking and rocking. You feel as the barges increased, the boat would continued rock. 00:28:10 Speaker 2: So yeah, it was pretty cool experience. 00:28:13 Speaker 3: Yeah. I was really glad. You'll slept in the boat. 00:28:16 Speaker 1: Yeah, Brent, Me and Brent slept in tents on the bank and he said, I'm glad those boys are sleeping that boat. And I said why and he said, in. 00:28:24 Speaker 3: Case it floats off, they can drive it back. Yeah. 00:28:29 Speaker 1: Yeah, And I was like, that's why I brought you. 00:28:32 Speaker 3: Captain. 00:28:33 Speaker 1: Hey, let's uh, let's talk about this podcast. So everybody got to listen to it. Mike, you listened to your first podcast today. 00:28:41 Speaker 2: First podcast. I loved it. 00:28:44 Speaker 1: I'm very honored that the Barge podcast was a was the first one you ever listened to. This was a unique one. Usually we've done a lot of We've done multiple series on while I Violators and Violations. We did the lou Dell and Charlie series, which was one of my favorites of all time, about two guys that have passed away that were notorious turkey hunting poachers from my hometown near Mina, Arkansas, but they were beloved people in our community. And I interviewed family members to all kind of different people about these guys and told the story about their life really interesting, but I didn't talk to them. We did a big series called Secret Agent Man, where I interviewed an undercover wildlife agent from Ohio that worked undercover for years and years, and he just had the wildest stories you could ever dream of. Yeah, but we didn't talk to We didn't talk to We ended up talking to one of the people that he was after. But this was unique because I was talking to the guy, and I mean I thought it was. I said it over and over in the podcast, maybe to a point of redundancy, but where I was trying to be like, Donnie didn't have to tell us this story. He could have said, no, thanks, Clay, I think I'll pass on reliving one of the worst period times in his life, you know, when he got caught for this. But what well, let me back up. I also was very concerned about when I did the interview with him, I told him I wasn't even sure if I could use it. I talked to him for two hours. Y'all heard twenty seven minutes of the interview, so by the time it was whittled down, you heard twenty seven minutes. I talked to him for two hours that we recorded, and I told him, I said, I don't know if we can use this or not. And it was because I didn't want it to I didn't want to hurt this guy. 00:31:03 Speaker 3: You know. 00:31:04 Speaker 2: I didn't. 00:31:04 Speaker 1: I wanted I wanted him to tell a story. I wanted us to learn something from it. I learned a ton of stuff from just hearing people's stories. I mean we all do, whether we know it or not. I mean, like stories are so powerful to you know, just every arena of life. 00:31:19 Speaker 2: But I was. 00:31:22 Speaker 1: I didn't. I didn't want him to be, you know, have to go through the ringer again for something he's already paid for. But the main reason that I could talk to Donnie was that first time I talked to him, I said, I smelled a whiff of genuineness, contriteness, and just he was humble, And I thought that was I thought that was unique. And he did a such a good job of telling the story, and uh, I thought it was fascinating. 00:31:55 Speaker 2: To it. 00:31:56 Speaker 1: Did you so you? Yeah, what did you feel like after you? Did you like the guy? 00:32:01 Speaker 4: Did you liked him? I mean, I'm like I said, genuine You can. 00:32:04 Speaker 2: Hear that in his voice. 00:32:05 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:32:06 Speaker 4: Yeah, he wasn't trying to hide nothing. He just spoke it out there. 00:32:09 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:32:10 Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I'd like to meet him. 00:32:12 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:32:13 Speaker 1: Well, Brent, what stood out to you in the podcast. 00:32:21 Speaker 3: He talked? When he talked about his dad. Yeah. 00:32:24 Speaker 8: Well, and when you talked to when he went back in the house and you talked to his dad, and that that was almost kind of made me kind of misty. I thinking about a father's love for a son who has made a terrible mistake, and that but he's standing beside him, and he can see all the pain that that kid's going through. There's nothing he can do to help him, and he and and it was very prophetic when he showed his dad that deer and his dad said, son, that's an awful big deer. Not to shoot or not to get the right way, Yeah, and he I mean it was all almost like, you know, this is this thing going to end? Well, yeah, but it's your son, you know. And so that's that stood out to me. 00:33:09 Speaker 1: You know. 00:33:09 Speaker 8: It made me think about my kids, made me think about the times that I've disappointed my dad, and I would I would say that that was probably that would rank near the top of the things that bothered on anybody anything, is knowing that he his dad was disappointed in him, and I just I couldn't get away from that. There were several other things that that really said something to me. 00:33:33 Speaker 3: But you you. 00:33:35 Speaker 1: Said something to me when we listened to it together, you said you thought so Brent's thirty two years background in law enforcement. You said you didn't think they had enough evidence on him to really prosecute him. 00:33:52 Speaker 3: I don't think they did. 00:33:54 Speaker 1: That's shocking to me. 00:33:55 Speaker 8: Well, judging from just from how the investigation went about. 00:34:03 Speaker 3: Why if. 00:34:08 Speaker 8: I mean, if I'm going to talk to somebody, it's to get to get more information. If I got enough to arrest him, I'm going to arrest him. Right then I've already got I've taken all the in in, all the facts that I need to the prosecuting Attorney's office, and they've sworn our judge. 00:34:26 Speaker 1: But okay, so if they if they they had the evidence to prosecute him in court and they arrested him, what would they have done with him? Put him in jail until the court date? 00:34:37 Speaker 3: No? Well, I mean on a game violation. No, I'm sure that it's a mistemean. 00:34:42 Speaker 1: So what would they have done? 00:34:43 Speaker 3: Then? Issued him a citation? 00:34:45 Speaker 1: Just just wrote him a citation? 00:34:47 Speaker 8: Yeah, unless you know there's here's another thing in this deal. It was on a on a federal it was on an army base. Yeah, so there's some federal laws there that I'm not familiar with, that that may have been the a mitigating factor and all that, but I just just from listening to it, it just made me say out loud, if they're wanting to talk to him, they're wanting to talk to him and say, Hey, this is the information we got, we think, this is what's. 00:35:13 Speaker 1: You told me. I've heard you talk before about talking to people, like talking to people that are assumed to have committed a crime, and what do you say. 00:35:23 Speaker 8: They if you will give them the opportunity, they'll tell them themself. Somebody that's not not a sociopath, but some. 00:35:30 Speaker 1: Sociopath being someone who has no remorse for doing something correct. 00:35:35 Speaker 3: They see nothing wrong with what they're doing anything they choose to do. 00:35:38 Speaker 1: So if somebody has guilt. 00:35:40 Speaker 8: Somebody has guilt. Somebody who has has knows the difference in right and wrong and does something wrong. You, if you give them the opportunity, they'll tell on theirselfs because they want to unburden. It's a burden, it's something that they're they're holding, and that I mean Donnie said it himself. He laid his hand on the biggest deer he will ever lay his hands on probably, and he said he didn't feel good about it. He's like, I'll never get away with this. Well, I never get it. He knows he did something wrong, and he said later on in the story he told you. He said when he finally told the agents, he felt better. 00:36:23 Speaker 1: He said it was a burden that lifted off. Yeah, which is not surprising, but it's interesting the way you said that. If you're not a sociopaths, if you don't have some wild mechanism that makes you not feel remorse for something right, you want to get rid of that guilt. 00:36:39 Speaker 8: Yeah, he took he made a choice. I don't agree with terminology about somebody made a mistake. Making a mistake is putting two cups of flour in a recipe that calls for one. That's a mistake. Walk getting out of your truck and taking a bow and arrow and purposely going and shooting a deer where you know you're not supposed to. That's a violation. That's breaking the law. That's doing something that you're not supposed to do. That don't mean it's that you can't get over it. That don't mean that you can't atone for it. I'm not saying that at all, But I don't. That's not a mistake. He did that on purpose. 00:37:16 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:37:17 Speaker 8: But would I sat down and have a couple of coffee with him? You bet I would? 00:37:21 Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, gole that that's all really interesting. What would you do to someone to make them talk? How would you? How would you handle somebody that you know? Because see they knew he did it, they didn't have evidence that he That's. 00:37:36 Speaker 3: What I'm and that's what I meant, you know, I mean that's what I think. 00:37:39 Speaker 1: There's no way that he could have at one time. Ye, my mind is going to one hundred different directions. I know, if he'd had a really good lawyer, you think he could have got out of it. 00:37:50 Speaker 3: Doubtful because too many people saw the deer. 00:37:52 Speaker 1: One time I was with a guy. This is where my mind sidetracked. One time I was with a guy in Arkansas and something happened and it was kind of his fault, but I would have been entangled in it just because I was with him. And I said, hey, bro, you sure we should be doing this? And he said, he said, Clay, if they come after you, I will get the baddest lawyer in Mississippi to defend you. And I was like, wait a minute, Mississippi. Why Mississippi. We were in Arkansas and I'm from Mississippi. I never forgot that there must be some good lawyers in Mississippi because he said, I'll get the baddest lawyer in Mississippi. Luckily we didn't have to go there. Well, carry on, Brett. Could he have got out of it? 00:38:37 Speaker 3: Man? I don't know. 00:38:38 Speaker 8: It goes back the old adage that's attributed to Benjamin Franklin that three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead. So there's no way he could have kept that deer secret. And then he didn't, you know, he showed his cousin. He's like, oh, okay, here's this is what I did. Then he gets over his cousin's house and there's what two hundred people there? 00:39:01 Speaker 1: Yeah, he said, there was just a wat of people there. 00:39:03 Speaker 3: So I mean, that's the jig is up right then. 00:39:05 Speaker 1: What what was interesting too, is that he knew from the very beginning. He said, as soon as he shot and saw the deer, he said, he said, there's no way I'm going to get away with this. 00:39:17 Speaker 2: Wish he wouldn't have done it right then. 00:39:19 Speaker 1: Yeah, but then but he just kept it just kept getting worse, kept getting worse, Like he just. 00:39:24 Speaker 4: How far was his house from where they'd been seeing the deer? 00:39:28 Speaker 1: A good ways thirty forty miles worse. 00:39:32 Speaker 2: So that didn't so. 00:39:33 Speaker 1: When he when he killed the deer and the guys had trail camera pictures of it on Fort Leonard Wood and he said he'd killed it. 00:39:40 Speaker 2: Right, That's why I was one of that. 00:39:41 Speaker 1: It may have only been twenty five miles, yeah, it. 00:39:43 Speaker 4: But steal it, but it was they knew that deer just didn't go twenty five miles real quick. 00:39:49 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. What what do you think, Jordan? 00:39:54 Speaker 6: And Uh, the biggest part that stood out to me that I could relate with for is what today society is is the validation part. I don't remember as either you or him talking about, you know, a big reason why he wanted to shoot the deer or whatever because kind of kind of put the puzzle pieces together, like you know on the bow shop. You know, if he kills big old deer, you know, gives me more validation for my what I do for a living. And yeah, you know, it's just a cycle that keeps on going from there, and I think that was a huge part why he probably did it. You know, it was a validation of you know, not that you want to beat your chest, but I mean we all hunt want to kill a big bucket when we do, you know, you want to show people. Yeah, you know that's that's that's that'll get you in trouble, is what I'm saying. I think that's a big part of why he did it. 00:40:44 Speaker 1: Yeah, and he was twenty six years old. 00:40:47 Speaker 6: Prove to these old guys, you know whatever, you know, I can kill these big deer too, just like y'all can. 00:40:53 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:40:54 Speaker 1: Yeah. It was a unique set of circumstances that I mean, I think I said it was a one two three judo kick of him having a Botus truck, him having uh it being season, which he wasn't willing to kill it out of season, but then having that deer right there, and it was just like it just broken But Lake, what do you think? 00:41:26 Speaker 3: What what? Just what longer craving on him? 00:41:29 Speaker 4: Yeah, Yeah, which happened to a lot of people if they were going to be honest about it. 00:41:33 Speaker 2: Sure, Yeah, I don't know, I mean just think about it. 00:41:36 Speaker 6: Yeah, I don't know anybody sitting in this room. It's all two hundred deer thirty yards off the road. It wouldn't at least think about it. 00:41:43 Speaker 1: Yeah, and looking, hey, you, what'd you think about the dollar value analogy? 00:41:52 Speaker 4: Do you remember? 00:41:52 Speaker 5: Yeah, that's one twenty five versus two hundred incher Yep, that makes sense? 00:41:57 Speaker 1: Say what say what was on the podcast? 00:41:59 Speaker 3: You remember? 00:42:00 Speaker 5: Basically you were you know, take that same deer that's thirty yards off the road in the ditch, and you can be like, that's a killable deer right there, and he's a one hundred and twenty five inch eight point, good solid eight point, But that might not make somebody break their morals, right you turn that deer into two hundred inch like it. Truly, it sounds cliche, but it truly wants in a lifetime deer that's a little bit more of a little bit more waving out, you know, temptation, waving in front of your face. 00:42:30 Speaker 1: But then I use the analogy that the one hundred and twenty five inch buck would be like one hundred dollars bill laying on the table. That's not yours that you could take, but it's not yours. A two hundred inch yeer, and I want to hear if y'all think this is the right monetary equivalence, A two hundred inch deer would be like having one hundred thousand dollars cash on the table. 00:42:53 Speaker 8: When you were when that was coming out of your mouth, I thought he's going to say a million dollars. And when you said one hundred thousand, I thought that's perfect. 00:43:00 Speaker 1: Because in the white it's it's you know, you kind of have got to be in the moment. But in the white tail world, you know, one hundred and twenty five inch year versus a two hundred inch deeer is about like one hundred dollars bill one hundred thousand. 00:43:13 Speaker 3: A life change. And most of us never seen a. 00:43:16 Speaker 2: Two indred inch year. 00:43:17 Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, have you ever seen one? No, not just out, No, sir. 00:43:21 Speaker 1: Mister stad have you seen one. We've got a we've got a guest here that's not on the mic. You've probably seen a two hundred inch deeer. 00:43:27 Speaker 2: Hens lots of places. 00:43:28 Speaker 1: Yeah, we got one guy here that's seen a two hundred inch year. I've seen close to a two hundred in year. 00:43:34 Speaker 3: I have not. I can assure you I. 00:43:36 Speaker 1: Have not either had neither by close, I mean like inside of you know, twenty I. 00:43:44 Speaker 3: Could. 00:43:44 Speaker 5: I've seen one that I could say, I'd say he was one hundred and eighty inches. I'd be comfortable saying that, but not not a two hundred. 00:43:52 Speaker 2: That's different. 00:43:53 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, you've seen two hundreds yeer, yes, sure have you actually hunted one for like five years, ended up killing him last year, but he was not two hundred anymore. Oh for really kill the big one last year? What did it score when he killed one sixty five? And at one time it was a tutored in. 00:44:09 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:44:10 Speaker 6: We first saw him I think in twenty seventeen and he was well over that no way, and uh yeah, this is in Kansas and got a hunt with up there. Actually shot at him a couple times that your rifle. I missed him, and next year he got missed again, and then he disappeared for a couple of years, and then last year ended up killing him. I didn't put all the puzzle pieces together till later on. The neighbor had been getting pictured of him for the last three years. 00:44:37 Speaker 1: So yeah, okay, so you've seen one, Drew, have you seen a tutor inch year? 00:44:43 Speaker 2: Not even close? 00:44:43 Speaker 1: Are you a new hunter, Drew? 00:44:45 Speaker 2: Uh No, not a new hunter. 00:44:47 Speaker 7: Okay for a long time, okay, but not definitely not a professional hunter. 00:44:52 Speaker 1: Yeah, what'd you think about the podcast? 00:44:55 Speaker 2: I thought it was awesome. 00:44:56 Speaker 7: I mean, I yeah, I guess I genuine felt bad for him, but like I know, the whole bullets and arrows deal, like, once they're released, you can't take them back. 00:45:11 Speaker 2: Yeah, so yeah, I mean I think it's. 00:45:12 Speaker 7: A major bummer what what happened to him? And I could definitely understand, like Jordan, you're saying, getting out of the truck and maybe making a foolish walk, but then once once it's gone, it's gone, and then how you act afterwards. I think the story could be potentially drastically changed if f it's like, hey man, that was a bad deal and just turned himself in right away. 00:45:41 Speaker 1: You know, I wonder how different it would have been if he'd have done that, Because that never happens. 00:45:46 Speaker 7: I don't know the outcome, but I mean that's what you're I mean, that's technically what you're supposed to people. 00:45:50 Speaker 1: People that make mistakes kind of by accident, will turn themselves in. I mean, we all probably in this room know someone that's done something on accident and then been like, oh man, I made a mistake, call the game word and turn themselves in. Nobody that commits an egregious wildlife crime, I mean that I know of is gonna poach your tw in net deer on a military base and then immediately that would be like best case scenario. It's interesting why they Yeah, he could have he could have skipped a lot if he'd just. 00:46:27 Speaker 7: Just go down the Rabbitman. The more like it, like he was saying, all right, started bringing people into this that didn't even want to be a part of it. Yeah, so his actions hurt a lot of people. 00:46:39 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, did uh did anything? Did anything surprise anybody about about I don't know what what stood out to Did you think he was gonna did you have when you knew this guy killed the deer? Did you project how he was going to kill it? Did you like, were you surprised when you heard how it rolled out? 00:47:02 Speaker 2: Oh? 00:47:02 Speaker 5: I was the Yeah, I mean, because I mean I thought he was gonna it just seemed like how he ended up killing it. I was like, it sounded like, dude, you're lucky you got away with it for as long as you did, because it sounded like it was just very you know, viewable for other people to see. Yeah, when he talks about those other people pulling into the parking lot and him hiding in the. 00:47:26 Speaker 3: Woods and all that. 00:47:27 Speaker 5: Yeah, but that was surprising to me. 00:47:29 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:47:29 Speaker 4: I mean it's hard to hide two hundred inches horn laying out there in the ark. 00:47:34 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:47:34 Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, Mike, what stood out to you just in the whole thing? Like, what if you were down at the gas station tomorrow telling somebody about this, what would you say. That's a tough question because gas stations way, there's like no gas stations. That's a bad analogy. 00:47:51 Speaker 2: Like I'd like the party. He was humble. I believe he meant every word he said. Yeah. Yeah, I think he knew he made a mistake from the start. Yeah. 00:48:00 Speaker 4: I think he probably got nervous and did you know, did the line on you know, where he killed it and all that, which that did wasn't good. Yeah, but I think he realized it real quick. 00:48:11 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:48:11 Speaker 4: Do I think the guy is a poacher and outlaw? No, I think he got caught up in the moment. I mean you're looking at that two hundred inch deer and you're giving bold lessons and everything else, and you're kind of the guy around there, Like Jordan said, yeah, I can see to where it would make you want to think about it. 00:48:29 Speaker 6: Yeah, Clay, didn't you kill an like a giant omers deer one time? 00:48:34 Speaker 1: I mean, well, Jordan, I'm glad you brought you Well, I killed the biggest ever killed, one hundred and sixty nine inches. 00:48:42 Speaker 6: Well, didn't it like like set your like career? Like yeah, articles and stuff like that wrote about you about it, so you can kind of understand the validation part of it, like it exactly. That's kind of where I was going with that, Like it could potentially change his whole business or life right whatever, you know, right doing for a living. 00:49:01 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it absolutely could have. It absolutely could have. 00:49:06 Speaker 3: If you got away with it. 00:49:09 Speaker 1: Well and then and then in the podcast we talked about how, you know, cheating that cheating the system really just messes you up in the future, you know. 00:49:20 Speaker 4: I mean I didn't feel like he was really a cheater as much as I mean I felt like after he'd done it, he felt like that. But on a normal day, I felt like that guy was straight up Probably he just got caught up in the. 00:49:31 Speaker 1: Moment well, and so that that brings up this whole thing that I kind of wanted to explore outside of just this guy committing a crime, is how as a society do we handle people that mess up? Because I think especially with the in the advent of the internet in the last fifteen years, I mean, if you read that story, if you read the headline on meat Eater or outdoor Life said man kills illegally kills two hundred inch white tail on Fort Leonard Wood, Like, you're immediately gonna think poacher. This is what I'm gonna think. I'm gonna think poacher. Throw the book at it, which I mean, I think they should have done that with Donnie. I mean, like, just because you're a nice guy doesn't mean you can get off. 00:50:23 Speaker 3: There's still consequences. 00:50:24 Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. 00:50:25 Speaker 1: But what what I what's so wild about setting across from somebody like Donnie is you see the context that that happened in, and the second episode is gonna get way into the context of his life, which actually has nothing to do with the deer. Like he told me the deer story, and then I asked him a question. I said, Donnie, why why did you tell me this? Story, I'm kind of foreshadowing of what's going to happen. And he's said, Clay, he said, this dear thing is really a pretty small piece of what's happened to me in the last ten years. And he started talking about stuff that doesn't have to do with a government agency penalizing you, just in his life. It's just interesting. And so to me, it's like everything that you happen when you're dealing with a human you're dealing with a context of circumstances that you most people don't have access to see. And again, that doesn't justify someone breaking the law. But when I talk to Donnie, my instinct, especially with someone that's humble, that's doing what he's doing, is to have empathy for him, you know. But when I read it on the headline of Meat Eater, I don't, And it's like, wait a minute, perception, how's that? How does this work? 00:51:48 Speaker 3: I mean? 00:51:49 Speaker 2: And so. 00:51:51 Speaker 1: That's why we toyed around with the words at the end. You know, a guy's a poacher, you know, if you break the law, If you break the law one time, then I'm a poacher. And Lake you're probably a poacher. I mean, we've all anybody that's hunted very much or done anything very much has broken a law, maybe not maybe not on purpose, maybe on purpose, but we throw these stigmas around like so hard, Like if somebody does something, it's just like poacher, whole life never you know, how do you crawl out of it? And that's why I was talking about with my wife. We talked about how as a society do we do we handle people? Who do we forgive? And and who do we who do we allow a second chance? Because there's people that we don't very much. 00:52:41 Speaker 4: When I kind of figured out he was, I felt like he was all right, guys. Is one of the part about him being in church and preacher talking about it, he said that was the toughest part on him. 00:52:50 Speaker 3: You know. 00:52:51 Speaker 2: Yeah, well that kind of that you know. 00:52:52 Speaker 4: That he's real Yeah what church? Yeah, you know, and then yeah, you know when preacher announces that from very you know, and you didn't do it right, you know, it's got to kill you. 00:53:02 Speaker 2: Yeah, facing everybody. 00:53:05 Speaker 5: Yeah, what got me was I've heard, you know, coaching wildlife violation stories before, and typically you know, you get the sense the guys like me, I really kind of was off the you know, doing all this stuff and finally got called my life change. It's the best thing that ever happened to me. And now I'm this way that this guy seemed like he was a good, genuine honest guy, did something wrong and he was a good genuine honest guy afterwards, like he's the character about it didn't change. 00:53:33 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I also Brent, Brent and Drew asked me today when we listened to it about two times in the podcast, I said, I don't have twenty years of experience with this guy, you know. I said, I met this guy thirty minutes before I started talking to him and he told me his story, and I don't have a b experience and kind of from a sense of being honest inside of being a journalist essentially, I wanted to say, I think this guy's telling me the truth. I think this guy has changed. I think this I don't think he would do that well, I know he wouldn't do it again, And I wanted to say I think this is a good guy. He has Clay Newcomb's stamp of approval. Donnie Baker does, but I also wanted to be responsible with that endorsement and say I don't know this guy, only he really knows. Did you who was it? It was you that were you the one that was saying that you thought that was a little sketchy of me to do that? Do you know what you said? 00:54:42 Speaker 3: Drew? 00:54:42 Speaker 1: You said it. 00:54:46 Speaker 7: No, we talked about it, and yeah, I think, I mean, he's the only one that's gonna know for sure. 00:54:52 Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I was kind of just trying to say I don't know. I was just trying to be honest about it, you know. And uh, because if I if I knew, if I knew Brent for twenty years, it's like I could go, this guy's different. I was just saying, Man, I think this guy's different, and I do. I absolutely do. But but I'm looking forward to the to the next episode. It's gonna be interesting, man, And you're gonna learn what they did to him. 00:55:24 Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what I'm interested on. 00:55:25 Speaker 1: And I'm not gonna You're not look at these eyes? 00:55:28 Speaker 3: Lake. 00:55:29 Speaker 1: Am I giving away anything? 00:55:30 Speaker 3: You Cliff hung us a little bit? There? 00:55:32 Speaker 1: Am I poker face? 00:55:34 Speaker 3: It's very poker face. 00:55:35 Speaker 1: Are they gonna Are they? Okay, let me ask you this, Brent, don't answer, because I think you know, are they gonna what are they gonna do to him? Any any ideas. 00:55:45 Speaker 5: If I had probably gonna take his hunting license away, take his you know, all those weapons and stuff, I didn't probably big fine, and I mean yeah, probably, I would guess somewhere in there it'd be hunting privileges taking away for a long time. 00:55:59 Speaker 3: Okay. 00:56:00 Speaker 4: That federal being on the air base and all that just changes everything. I don't really know what to expect. I can't wait to find out. 00:56:07 Speaker 1: Yeah, Drew, what do you think they're gonna do to him? 00:56:10 Speaker 7: I mean, I think same as Lake plus plus a bit more because the air base. 00:56:16 Speaker 1: M hmm. 00:56:17 Speaker 6: I don't think it's anything outstandingly crazy. I think the public mutiliation. 00:56:23 Speaker 1: There you go, is his punishment. 00:56:25 Speaker 6: I mean, he's obviously going to get fines and some other little stuff, but I don't think it's ervading in jail time or anything like that. I think the public community, let's getting the emparised over everything. 00:56:36 Speaker 1: Okay, And that brings up a point A question that I asked on the podcast, is that to us that are deer hunters killing a tutor, each deer is a big deal. What if he had approached a basket rack eight point nobody. 00:56:51 Speaker 3: Yeah, just wouldn't make near the ripple. We wouldn't be doing a podcast. 00:56:55 Speaker 6: About our shot to me? 00:56:57 Speaker 4: Or what if I said, I like that one hundred dollars one hundred thousand dollars. 00:57:01 Speaker 1: What if I said, Hey, a guy killed a deer on Fort Leonard Wood Bassaract eight point. He snuck it out of the base and said he killed it at his house and got caught. 00:57:13 Speaker 2: That was the story. 00:57:14 Speaker 1: And I said, what do you think they're going to do to him? 00:57:17 Speaker 3: Oh? 00:57:17 Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I mean, because that's what happened. It's kind of interesting because like, what what about you know, a couple more inches of bone? I'm touching Brent's deerhead. There make no different. 00:57:31 Speaker 6: The law is not based on how what size of the deer is. 00:57:34 Speaker 2: That's exactly right. 00:57:35 Speaker 1: Well, today it is in a lot of places like inches. 00:57:40 Speaker 2: Yeah, oh I didn't know that. 00:57:42 Speaker 1: Yeah, we're going to talk about it more on the next episode. Oh yeah, there's there's trophy finds now. So if you kill a deer, and that's what I was kind of exploring. I was like, is that is that? Okay? 00:57:55 Speaker 3: Is it? 00:57:55 Speaker 1: But oh yeah, if you kill a two hundred inch deer today now in too thousand and nine when this happened, I don't think that was as common, But there is a difference by the law. 00:58:07 Speaker 5: Absolutely, I mean, honestly, it kind of makes sense to me. I mean, going off of the compan back to the comparison you made, I mean, it it's just. 00:58:16 Speaker 1: But it's interesting because the only thing that gives that deer value is just the cultural value that we as a society, society of deer hunters. I mean, you take that rack into some place where nobody knows anything about deer, and you set that one next to a great, big one and go which one do you do you want? Which one do you think is pretty? They might go goy, that one's ugly and big, like this little one that you know looks symmetrical. 00:58:40 Speaker 6: I can hang a lot of hats on. 00:58:42 Speaker 1: My point is is that it's totally human, human subjectiveness and this idea of beauty that we've created around a white tail rack that then makes the punishment. It's just interesting to think about it. I think it's I think it's interesting. And you know, the other question asked about on the podcast that was just rhetorical question, was intent. Does intent matter? Like if he Mike if he had two months before been like I'm gonna sneak into that contonement area and I'm gonna put up a tree stand and I'm gonna kill that deer with a thermal, which they didn't have them probably to the public back in two thousand and nine. But why is that different than him having an impulsive shot. I liked it when he said it was like when you're a kid and you shoot a bird and you kind of wish you hadn't done it. But yeah, so intent, Why does intent matter? 00:59:40 Speaker 7: It's like just getting caught up in the moment a lot of times. But why does the matter with the law? 00:59:45 Speaker 3: Though? 00:59:47 Speaker 7: Well, the difference is like I'm thinking about like calling you a bunch of bad names or whatever and thinking about it for a long time, or you just get into argument. 00:59:58 Speaker 3: I just. 01:00:00 Speaker 7: Say, like you know what I mean, Like I just if I if I shout out like real quickly, it's like it's just impulsive impulsive. The only difference is I can say I'm sorry to you the word that arrow it's it's gone. There's nothing back. 01:00:17 Speaker 8: If me and you were driving down the Mississippi River and you run over a buoy by going left. 01:00:21 Speaker 3: When I tell you to go right and I kill you, that's impulse. 01:00:25 Speaker 8: If I think about it two hundred and fifty miles, think about killing you and just finally do it at the two hundred and forty ninth mile when I was actually thinking about it, that is intent. 01:00:36 Speaker 2: That's malice, I know. 01:00:37 Speaker 1: But why does it matter. 01:00:38 Speaker 4: I don't think in both of them, I don't think to find probably no different. I mean, it's doing the same things just right. You know we thought about a little longer. 01:00:49 Speaker 6: Well, okay, something else I just thought about too. On the regret of doing that standpoint, if you really really regreted doing it once you did it, you still went ahead and tried to hide it. 01:01:03 Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. 01:01:04 Speaker 6: You know that's instead of just saying calling an MP and saying, man, I just I made a huge mistake. I'm messed up. 01:01:13 Speaker 3: Yeah, but how many people would do that though? Right? I mean, I mean I'm not I'm not saying you're. 01:01:18 Speaker 2: Wrong, told that you're gonna write it out. 01:01:21 Speaker 5: Because when that guy was telling that story and he talked about releasing the arrow and it hit I mean, like I could almost feel the weight of it of just being like, can you imagine me like, what in the world did I just do? 01:01:32 Speaker 3: And he had to have been terrified. 01:01:37 Speaker 1: Go yeah, it's. 01:01:39 Speaker 3: Like when he shut up burden. 01:01:42 Speaker 1: This exact nightmare. Going back to the the the intent thing. Intent does matter in the law. Think about manslaughter, Uh uh what is it? First degree? What am I talking thinking about? Involuntary? Involuntary manslaughter? A guy go to prison for five or ten years murder one as they call it in the pen is it's like I'm gonna I'm going to kill. That would be like thinking in Memphis that he was gonna try to bump me out of the boat and get like the capital crimes. Yeah, so, I mean it does matter. So if you if you killed, if you killed someone in by accident in a fistfight, is different than if you went to their house. You're talking about wild stuff here, but intent intent matters. 01:02:34 Speaker 2: Ye. 01:02:35 Speaker 1: But it's just interesting to think about why is intent and in tent matters all the time in every single area of our life. When I deal with my kids, they may knock a cup over and spill stuff all over the couch, I am calculating intent intuitively, instinctively and immediately of where they messing around and do you know wrestling with her brother or sister and knock it over or was it just a genuine error, just a just a bumble. And I would handle that different. I would handle h I mean, we're we're constantly understanding intent because people are constantly doing us wrong. I mean, like if your friends with some human relationship means that you have to I mean with a husband and wife, with a boat captain and a cub boat captain. 01:03:27 Speaker 6: Today Lake took me out in the cold, wet mud. Was that did he have in tin. 01:03:32 Speaker 1: To make him miserable or is it just happened when he went out, when he went out looking for the ducks that weren't there. 01:03:38 Speaker 3: It was my intent. 01:03:39 Speaker 1: It worked. H No, all this stuff is interesting and uh well, it's been good to have everybody, man. I was I really intended to, Like, Okay, you got to tell us one story, Drew. You got to tell us about your jump that the photo that made the cup. We're changing gears here and winder down. Okay, Okay, tell me about the ski jump. So the other day, so I just met Drew. I met Drew like an hour before we got on the Mississippi River. It was pretty good. We were like in go mode. So usually there's some pleasantries amongst people when you first meet each other. Me and Drew were just like the all business. 01:04:22 Speaker 5: And oddly enough, his wife and I worked together at own X. 01:04:25 Speaker 1: That's right, your wife works at on X. Yeah, that's awesome. Do you get free prime eliteorship? 01:04:32 Speaker 2: Absolutely not. 01:04:35 Speaker 1: I know a guy as you look him up. 01:04:38 Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, we can do that. Yeah. 01:04:40 Speaker 1: No, okay, tell me about the ski jump. Tell me the whole story. Yeah, so the whole story. 01:04:44 Speaker 7: So I grew up ski racing and Sundvalley, Idaho, and then got out of ski racing young, probably at like fourteen or fifteen, and then I started doing the extreme skiing tour and did like a circuit around the West. And when we were in college, there's Loveland Pass and Colorado which is a big, big mountain pass and my buddy and I Griffin Post, who's a world famous skiers, still skis for tg R and the stuff all around the world. 01:05:21 Speaker 1: We don't know what t GR is. 01:05:22 Speaker 7: It's a teach Gravity Research. It's a ski movie. 01:05:25 Speaker 1: Company, y'all know what that was. 01:05:27 Speaker 2: I down. 01:05:31 Speaker 6: And I was like watching the slalom or whatever they call it. In the Olympics. 01:05:35 Speaker 2: This is like this is like this, but would like semi drugs. 01:05:41 Speaker 7: So we wanted to build a jump and jump over this highway, and. 01:05:47 Speaker 1: So it's it's it's a mountains. Just some envision a very steep, snow covered mountain side with a with a two lane highway like cut into the bank, kind of going around that rim of the mountain. 01:06:01 Speaker 7: Yeah, well right over, right over the top of a mountain pass, okay, okay, And so we built this jump. 01:06:09 Speaker 1: Right above the build a snow jump. Just pack snow, just. 01:06:12 Speaker 2: Grab the shovels and start. 01:06:14 Speaker 1: How big was the jump? 01:06:16 Speaker 7: Probably about ten feet If you say on the to take you to build it weekend, I mean weeken Like, what does that mean? Eight hour work day, lunch, yeahright, sixteen two hours, sixteen. 01:06:31 Speaker 1: Hours, sixteen hours, okay, I get that, all right. 01:06:34 Speaker 7: Sixty hours. So shovel on and then grooming in the in run. And it hadn't really in run like Jordan telling them what that is in run stuff where you land. 01:06:49 Speaker 1: I thought, because Jordan like skin, was that right? Is that what it is? 01:06:53 Speaker 3: No? 01:06:53 Speaker 1: The d run is where you're build up to get the jump. 01:06:58 Speaker 3: I was really hoping Jordan was right. 01:07:00 Speaker 6: He said at the end of the run. 01:07:03 Speaker 1: Okay, so ten foot jump on the edge of the highway. 01:07:07 Speaker 2: Yeah, and so we basically. 01:07:10 Speaker 1: He said yeah, like as if that would be normal. 01:07:13 Speaker 7: So we built the jump and deemed that it was not safe because there wasn't very good snow that's on the land on the landing. So we waited an entire month for there to be more snow. 01:07:27 Speaker 1: And you gotta have good you can't have I'm sorry for interrupting you, but I'm not that sorry good snow. 01:07:33 Speaker 2: Okay, we're from the South. 01:07:35 Speaker 7: Everybody here in the South, it would be if there's bad snow, it would be like jumping into a pool with no water. So you want more fresh snow, which is more water to jump into to make it softer. 01:07:48 Speaker 1: Some cushion, some cushion. Okay, that's good, analogy, got it. 01:07:53 Speaker 7: Yeah, So we deemed it unsafe. So we waited a month and came back to Colorado, and it turns out that it really hadn't snowed in a month, but we decided that since we were there, so you had to travel to get there. Yeah, how far from Salt Lake City? So I'm not sure how. 01:08:14 Speaker 1: I mean like ten hours, maybe eight hours something like that. So you drove eight hours to get to this jump? 01:08:19 Speaker 3: Yeah? 01:08:20 Speaker 1: Was there not a highway close to you that you could have done that at? 01:08:23 Speaker 7: This is a pretty nice highway, that's why you mean it's a pretty famous pass we've done. 01:08:28 Speaker 1: Okay, that that answered my quest. Is a famous pass? Yeah, so you wanted to do it right there? 01:08:32 Speaker 3: Yeah, that's intent. That's intent. 01:08:35 Speaker 1: Is intent. If me and Brent were just driving down the road and we just saw random pass and just were impulsively built a jump, that would be that would not show intent. Okay, so you get there a month later, no new snow, but you decided to go for it. 01:08:50 Speaker 2: Anyways, So we. 01:08:54 Speaker 7: Decided to do rock paper scissors to see who had to go first. And so I'm not as good as Griffin at rocket paper scissors. 01:09:03 Speaker 1: So do your best of three or just one off best three? For sure, it's always. 01:09:10 Speaker 6: You must pick. 01:09:14 Speaker 7: So so I I had to go first with Griffin. Had no idea how to operate the camera. 01:09:22 Speaker 1: So you're a professional photographer. 01:09:24 Speaker 7: Yeah, this is this is in the beginning. So I set up the camera on the tripod. He said, all right, I'll go to the go to the top and when you see a giant tanker or a house coming through, coming house, because everything goes over love on past like houses on the back of trucks. 01:09:45 Speaker 2: I mean mobile, bubile home like you name it, you can. 01:09:50 Speaker 1: You needed a big truck coming. And now he's working the camera. 01:09:54 Speaker 3: Yep. 01:09:54 Speaker 7: I just have him to hold hold the button and told him as soon as I hit the lip, just hold. 01:09:59 Speaker 1: The but and it just you had it on multi shot. 01:10:02 Speaker 7: Yeah, this is back in the film days. Yeah, okay, and uh he's like all right. So soon as they soon as it rounds the bend, I'll give a whistle and one's go, and then two is stop and three is cops. 01:10:19 Speaker 1: Because me and Britta have that same thing. One is go, two has stop, three as cops. 01:10:28 Speaker 3: That's it. 01:10:29 Speaker 8: That's international. It's like Morse code. 01:10:33 Speaker 7: And so yeah, I went went up to the top and got the whistle and went and bombed down and shot over the top of two semi trucks. 01:10:42 Speaker 1: And they were passing each other like this. 01:10:44 Speaker 7: There's two going going up at the same time. There's one that went over and the other one was like right in the right in the background of the photograph. 01:10:55 Speaker 5: I wonder what they were thinking if they saw you. 01:10:57 Speaker 7: Oh, but they're freaked out for sure. And then uh landed and made it a bit. But there's I mean, just giant chunks of ice and the landings that kind of exploded and landing relatively soft spot and then made Griffin go. 01:11:16 Speaker 1: So you land you stuck it. You stuck the landing for a bit and then it got you. Then you crashed. It's a bit of a rodeo at the end, but it was okay. How high were you at the highest point from the ground, thirty forty feet something like that. How far did you jump? 01:11:33 Speaker 7: However, however far the standard width of a highway, I mean plus. 01:11:38 Speaker 3: A little bit. 01:11:38 Speaker 7: I mean landed sixty probably fifteen twenty feet past the guardrail. You don't want to hit the guardrail. 01:11:45 Speaker 6: So like a hundred feet probably or more. 01:11:48 Speaker 7: Maybe I would say less than one hundred feet seventy got your feet like. 01:11:51 Speaker 1: That, okay. And then the photograph that your buddy he took it because he actually punched the shutter. 01:11:59 Speaker 7: Yes, so the first photography he ever took ended up being a double page spread and skiing magazine. My mom's saw is she is not not very thrilled. 01:12:10 Speaker 2: How old were you when that happened? Probably twenty three? 01:12:14 Speaker 1: Okay, that's a good age to make mistakes. 01:12:17 Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right, that range. 01:12:21 Speaker 1: I had to hear that story again. That's awesome, that's good, that's good. Hey, thank you guys, like anything you want to say, the Burgers World. 01:12:30 Speaker 5: Glad to be here again. Glad y'all came down here and we're able to make it down this low river. 01:12:35 Speaker 1: Yeah. 01:12:36 Speaker 3: Maybe we'll do it again sometime. 01:12:37 Speaker 1: Yeah, man, Yeah, next time we made just drive. 01:12:40 Speaker 5: I mean, you could take the boat again if you wanted to. I wouldn't suggest it. 01:12:45 Speaker 8: Separate boats next time. I'm hiring a crew that will do what I tell them. 01:12:52 Speaker 3: Drew, you're in. 01:12:55 Speaker 4: Uh, Drew kind of worked out, didn't he worked out? 01:12:57 Speaker 2: It worked out. 01:12:58 Speaker 5: I'm also as I think, I mean, I know, I can speak for everybody here. I tickled about Brent's buck, absolutely. 01:13:05 Speaker 2: To and I'm very tickle for him. 01:13:07 Speaker 6: I've been paying attention to how well you did not talk about your archery shooting. So we'll just. 01:13:16 Speaker 1: I made a couple of good shots, real good ones. 01:13:25 Speaker 5: Jordan did get to cut on me about the duck, so we had to cut on somebody. 01:13:30 Speaker 3: Sometimes you gotta climb down to reload. 01:13:35 Speaker 1: Is there a reason all your errors are covered in Mississippi Gumbo bud, Mississippi buckshot. 01:13:40 Speaker 5: Someone gonna call in and be like, I was on a barge and I swear I saw an arrow floating down the river. 01:13:48 Speaker 1: Uh, Jordan's good to have you, man, Mike, good to have you been our host. He's been hosting us this week quite a bit. Mister Thad has been hosting us to who's over here here, But uh, I really appreciate it. We're gonna come cat fishing with you, man it I wanted to. 01:14:06 Speaker 4: Go some squirrel hunt catfish combo. 01:14:08 Speaker 1: Let's do it. I'm in, count me in. Yeah, all right, thanks guys. Mhm