00:00:14 Speaker 1: My name is Clay Newcomb, and 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. Brought to you by Takova's Boots. I'm a cowboy boot man, and I've been wearing Takova's for years. They're the most comfortable boot I've ever put on. Good boots for good times. 00:00:44 Speaker 2: We're rolling. 00:00:47 Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bear Grease Render. What a crew we have today. Quite the crew. I've got to start with our distinguished guest. Usually our distinguished guests go last, but you're so distinguished, we're going to start with the man in the Toccova's hot seat, Brian Burroughs. 00:01:08 Speaker 3: I like the way Brian says it, because when I first read it, it said Brian Burroughs. But when Brian says it, he says Brian Burra. 00:01:15 Speaker 1: Burra. 00:01:16 Speaker 2: Burra. That's the way family says it, but we fully realize that nobody can understand the word. So when we introduce, it's always Brian Burra. But after a while, you end up saying Brian Burra because we're lazy. 00:01:30 Speaker 1: Burra. Okay, no S. Well, you're in the Tacobas hot seat. I don't know if you realize it, but your chair has boots. 00:01:37 Speaker 2: This was very impressive. I would love to have one of these. 00:01:39 Speaker 4: Yes, yes. 00:01:40 Speaker 1: You're in the Tacobas hot seat today. 00:01:41 Speaker 2: Right. 00:01:42 Speaker 1: And so Brian is the host of Meat Eater's new podcast, The Gunfighters. But that's hardly a fraction of the stuff he's done. You're a writer. You've written multiple books. That's your full-time profession is writing. 00:02:01 Speaker 2: I got very lucky that at a young age they decided to let me write books, and 35 years later I still get to do it. 00:02:08 Speaker 1: You're still doing it. 00:02:10 Speaker 2: I got to be very lucky, yeah. Yeah. 00:02:12 Speaker 1: Well, it's so good to have you. Our other distinguished guest. 00:02:17 Speaker 5: Less distinguished guest. 00:02:18 Speaker 1: No, no, Josh. Equal distinction, just different category of. 00:02:25 Speaker 5: Genre of distinction. 00:02:26 Speaker 1: Genre of distinction. Yes, the guys from our friends from the Southern Outdoorsman Podcast, the Gingerbow Hunter, Jacob, Andrew Maxwell. What's your nickname? 00:02:37 Speaker 5: Nickname? 00:02:38 Speaker 4: I don't really have one, man. 00:02:39 Speaker 6: He had one a while back and then he kind of stopped doing what gave him the nickname, which he used to make custom topography and LIDAR maps back before you really had any. 00:02:49 Speaker 1: That's a tongue twister. We can call you custom topography and LIDAR guy. 00:02:53 Speaker 6: We called him the wizard because he just put something together and you're like, this is unbelievable. 00:02:57 Speaker 5: This is. 00:02:58 Speaker 6: Back before Onyx was doing LIDAR and everything, and Andrew was making these little custom maps, and that was really cool. So we called him The Wizard for that, but then I kind of figured it out. 00:03:04 Speaker 4: Then we had a deer that we ended up naming The Wizard. So there was a conflict. 00:03:07 Speaker 1: It's confusing. 00:03:08 Speaker 5: And he wouldn't wear the pointy hat anymore. 00:03:12 Speaker 1: You know, it's confusing when you have somebody with a nickname, and then there's an actual thing. I've dealt with this since 2005 when my son Bear Newcomb was born. I have a son. His name's Bear. And I didn't realize, well, at the time I didn't know that black bears were going to be such a dominant part of my life. And it's very complicated to tell a bear hunting story with the hunter's name as Bear. 00:03:38 Speaker 2: Your son just constantly going, Dad, what do you need me? 00:03:41 Speaker 1: You need me? Yeah, yeah. We have to, like, in camp, well, we gave Bear a nickname. We call him Bear John. And people think his name's John and his nickname's Bear, but it's opposite. You know, his name's Bear and his nickname's John. But I constantly am like, during stories, which always involve bear, and Bear Newcomb killed a bear three days ago. I mean, the guy's, he's after him. And I'm always like, bear, my son was doing this. And then the real bear was, so wizard could be a problem if you've got a deer named wizard too. 00:04:16 Speaker 5: And if you know an actual wizard. 00:04:18 Speaker 4: Yeah, that's right. A lot of wizards run around Birmingham. 00:04:22 Speaker 2: It's rough losing your nickname to an animal, though. 00:04:24 Speaker 5: It's true. 00:04:24 Speaker 4: Well, I mean, he's a good one. He's a good one. I mean, I'm talking about a sure enough man. 00:04:29 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:04:30 Speaker 7: And he looked like, the reason we called him the wizard is because his antlers came up and they were all kind of like wavy. And I don't know, our buddy Michael was like. 00:04:36 Speaker 4: He kind of looks like a wizard or something. So we named him the wizard. 00:04:41 Speaker 1: I like it. 00:04:42 Speaker 5: I don't know. 00:04:43 Speaker 4: It never stuck. I'm just Andrew. 00:04:44 Speaker 1: So Brian's podcast is sponsored by Tecova's. So we're going to, instead, in lieu of giving our distinguished guest the pair of Tacobas that we give away, we're going to give y'all one pair of Tacobas that you can split. 00:05:00 Speaker 3: Do you guys wear the same size? Like you can Monday, Wednesday, Friday kind of arrangement? 00:05:05 Speaker 5: Yeah, rotate out. 00:05:06 Speaker 1: You can rotate. 00:05:08 Speaker 4: I'll have custody of the boots this week. 00:05:09 Speaker 6: I'll get the left boot. You get the right boot. 00:05:11 Speaker 1: Well, that's what I was thinking. I was thinking you could split it. I mean, because, you know, sometimes you just need a good boot for one side, you know, for fighting or something. 00:05:19 Speaker 5: Yeah. 00:05:20 Speaker 1: And then, like, something comfortable. No, we'll give you both. We'll give you two pair of boots. 00:05:24 Speaker 5: Oh, dude. 00:05:24 Speaker 4: How's that? 00:05:25 Speaker 1: That's awesome. 00:05:26 Speaker 6: I was going to say, I've already got a couple pairs of Tacobas. 00:05:28 Speaker 5: I like them. 00:05:29 Speaker 4: Andrew's the only person I know that doesn't have a pair of Tacobas. 00:05:31 Speaker 6: Does not have them. 00:05:32 Speaker 4: My wife, my three-year-old daughter has a pair of Tacobas. 00:05:34 Speaker 2: Wow. 00:05:34 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:05:35 Speaker 2: Wow. Yeah. 00:05:35 Speaker 5: So thank you. You are low on the totem pole. 00:05:37 Speaker 4: Yeah, dude. I'm way down there. 00:05:39 Speaker 6: You can see he likes wearing tennis shoes. 00:05:40 Speaker 2: He's not, you know. 00:05:41 Speaker 6: We've got to get him into being a boot guy. 00:05:43 Speaker 4: That's right. 00:05:43 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. It's time you grow up, man. 00:05:46 Speaker 5: Genuine bison right here. 00:05:48 Speaker 7: Oh, dude. 00:05:48 Speaker 4: Those sharp-looking boots. 00:05:51 Speaker 1: So, Brian, you're from Austin, Texas. You were just telling us how Austin, you've been there for 35 years. 00:05:59 Speaker 2: I've been in Austin. I grew up in Central Texas, a little town called Temple, and went to New York for 30 years to make some money. And when I got tired of that, I came back to Austin to take care of my parents. And it's a nice place to live. I guess I've been back about 15 years now. 00:06:14 Speaker 4: Yeah. 00:06:15 Speaker 1: What was your first book? 00:06:17 Speaker 2: My first book was called Barbarians at the Gate, and it was from 1990 before most people in this room were born. And it was a runaway number one bestseller, still one of the better known books about Wall Street. Really? And that kind of established me as a writer that, you know, I don't think I've ever quite equaled the visibility of that book. 00:06:41 Speaker 4: Really? 00:06:42 Speaker 5: You peaked too soon. 00:06:43 Speaker 2: I still haven't. 00:06:44 Speaker 1: No, no, that's not true, Josh. 00:06:46 Speaker 5: Just kidding, just kidding. 00:06:48 Speaker 2: It's true. It's true. Yeah. But I've, you know, I come out with a book about every five years, and I have a lot of fun doing it. 00:06:55 Speaker 1: So what led you up to, like, getting a book contract? You were in the 90s, you would have been. You mean the very first one? Well, just like this book, like an unpublished author. Getting a contract with a book that's going to do well, I would imagine it was a good publisher. 00:07:12 Speaker 2: I was halfway in the door already. I was a reporter at the Wall Street Journal. I covered this big takeover battle for the journal. And when it was over, they said, somebody ought to write a book about it. I was 27. I raised my hand. They said, you? Okay, here. Here's a little bit of money. Go try to write a book. And it became this big number one bestseller. 00:07:31 Speaker 1: I'll be darned. And you kind of built your career off of that. 00:07:34 Speaker 2: I've had, since then, I've had... four national bestsellers, two books that did okay, and two that have been read mostly by my family. So I've had the highs and the lows, and I've enjoyed it all. 00:07:48 Speaker 1: Yeah. So the most recent book, though, is this Gunfighters book. 00:07:52 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:07:53 Speaker 1: And is that what got Steve's attention? 00:07:57 Speaker 2: This book, I wrote a book called The Gunfighters, How Texas Made the West While It Came Out Last Summer. And to my vast surprise... It was kind of a hit. And Stephen and the guys at Meat Eater had me up to Bozeman. I was somewhat skeptical. You're going to fly me where to talk to who about this? And it was great. 00:08:19 Speaker 1: You should have been skeptical. 00:08:21 Speaker 2: My sales that week nearly put me on the bestseller list. They were apparently pretty happy with theirs. And so afterwards, Stephen said, would you consider helping us turn this book into a longer podcast, a narrative podcast about gunfighters. I mean, they pay you and everything. 00:08:39 Speaker 1: Oh, they're paying you? 00:08:41 Speaker 2: It's not going to make me rich, but I can get a new refrigerator. 00:08:44 Speaker 1: I work full time. So you wouldn't have been exposed to Meteor before you came up to be a guest on the Meteor podcast. 00:08:53 Speaker 2: Oh, no, no. Guys, I'm not going to pretend that I have any knowledge of hunting or anything. I'm aware that people hunt. But I'm just not one of them. I come from a long line of indoor Southerners. 00:09:06 Speaker 1: Okay. 00:09:07 Speaker 2: They exist. So, no, I'd never heard of Meteor, but I immediately knew it was cool because my two step-sons, who were both avid adult hunters, were like, wait, you're going on Meteor? We listen to Meteor. You don't know anything about... I'm like, I get to go talk about gunfighters. And they were like, oh, that makes sense. 00:09:25 Speaker 5: Yeah. 00:09:26 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I think that's great. 00:09:30 Speaker 5: So, you. 00:09:32 Speaker 1: Currently, there's four episodes that are out. How many are we going to get? 00:09:37 Speaker 2: We're going to get 26 episodes. One away for six months. So this will be going on into February. And it starts, you know, originally just kind of talking about where this whole idea of Old West gunfighters came from. And now we're starting to get into the individual ones themselves from John Wesley Harden to Billy the Kid to Wyatt Earp. to all sorts of guys you've never heard of and that's the fun of it is revisiting and sorting through the myths around the names you know and then introduce you to a bunch of people you've never heard of who have great. 00:10:11 Speaker 1: Stories i've got a question that kind of relates or it's a question i genuinely have uh for myself is when you write a book like Gunfighters, and then you go out and are trying to publicize the book, you need to talk about it, you need to tell people about it. Do you worry that people are going to just listen to the whole series and not buy your book? 00:10:34 Speaker 2: Talk about a first world problem. Come on, dude, you got a book out and you got a podcast and you got people who are going to pay you to go around and talk. I just don't see a lot of downside. 00:10:43 Speaker 1: So the end goal is not necessarily to sell a book like this. This is as good a goal. 00:10:48 Speaker 2: I know authors, my friends are all who would probably worry that way. 00:10:53 Speaker 5: I don't. 00:10:53 Speaker 2: I'm just happy to be out there talking about my stuff. If I talk for 40 minutes at some bookstore in Indianapolis and You know, 14 people want to go buy the book and 10 people said, well, I've heard enough. It doesn't matter to me. I just don't overthink it. I know why you're worried about this because you've got one coming out yourself. 00:11:13 Speaker 1: Yes, yes. Thank you for teeing that up. Yeah, I do. And it's coming out February, February 9th. My book, American Bear. 00:11:23 Speaker 2: We have the same publisher. Aha. Just have fun. 00:11:27 Speaker 5: Yeah. 00:11:27 Speaker 2: There are so many writers, so many authors who go out there and these books– And they're fairly easy for me now just because I've been doing this my whole life. They're not easy. They're hard. And you've put a lot of yourself into it. But when you go out there, don't worry about listening to me lecturing you. But don't. Just have fun. 00:11:44 Speaker 1: Lecture me. 00:11:45 Speaker 2: No, just allow yourself to have fun. Allow yourself to think, I wrote this thing and people are asking me questions about it like I'm some smart guy. 00:11:54 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. That's a great attitude. And that's kind of the philosophy that I've... picked up from a lot of successful people is like anybody talking about the work you're doing in any fashion is good probably even if they're talking bad about it I mean at least it's out there you know I mean just any publicity is good publicity. 00:12:16 Speaker 2: I'm not quite sure I'd agree with that but in general I think I do think that just about anybody that's talking about the work that you've put out there it's going to be good because it prompts people to think about. 00:12:29 Speaker 1: It yeah Yeah. So what's so cool about the series is I don't know what I expected when I started listening to it. I mean, I knew it was going to be good, but I didn't have any expectation. And quickly I learned, okay, we're going to actually hear the real story of how this stuff happened, which is always the interesting part of it. And then you also get to compare– The real story and kind of the deep foundational components of it, for instance, like this idea of Southern valor being connected to... I didn't see that coming. And then you also learn how trivial and shallow kind of the cultural ideas that I would have had about gunfighters was. I mean, you just kind of take it for granted. It's like, yeah, there's gunfighters in the Old West. And I have had the thought before... now why do we celebrate these guys that were like murdering people? Like I wouldn't want to, I wouldn't want to that guy to like be friends with my daughter, you know, but, but we're like celebrating them in American culture. I've kind of had just this like passing thought of that, even though I would have been intrigued by the West, the history of the West, these outlaws gun of all people. I'm very intrigued by outlaws, but I've also kind of conflicted about it a little bit. 00:13:58 Speaker 2: Like, Well, anybody would be because it's so funny that you went to the daughter thing because the line I've always used on various talk shows and podcasts is most of these guys are not somebody you'd hired up to babysit your kids. You know, this was a different time. It was a rougher time. I try not to judge them by our standards of the day, of today. But in general, I take no judgment whatsoever. I view these men, whether they were, let's just say, generally good gunfighters or bad gunfighters in the broadest possible sense. Um, I just view them as specimens of history to be examined. And what I love doing is taking the accepted story, the kind of the myth, if you will, the, the generally the one advanced by Hollywood movies or bad books and, and, and try to drill down into what the truth was. Uh, and I have no agenda here whatsoever. I don't, uh, uh, approach this with any type of agenda on or around guns. For me, they're just interesting and generally overlooked historical characters as, you know, the gunfighter is a big part of American culture. When you say that, it's 140 years later and we still all know what that is. We even know some of these guys' names, but you don't necessarily know the stories. And I will say that a lot of the literature out there is often not the best. I mean, frankly, Billy the Kid and Wyatt Earp and Wild Bill Hickok don't attract the attention of Harvard law, of Harvard history professors. They just don't. And so I thought there was a, there was an opening here. There was a hole in the literature and I was, you know, pleasantly surprised that it kind of stuck, struck a little bit of a chord. Yeah. 00:15:49 Speaker 1: I want to open up the floor to you guys in a minute because you've all listened to it, but I have a question based on what you just said earlier about kind of historical revision. 00:15:59 Speaker 5: Yep. 00:15:59 Speaker 1: Explain to me, explain to a nine-year-old child, let's bump it up, a 13-year-old, why it's fair or not fair to judge someone from another time. Because, and I'll give a little more context, I mean. 00:16:19 Speaker 5: With. 00:16:19 Speaker 1: Something as clearly negative as murder or slavery, that we could pretty much agree, well, maybe we could. 00:16:35 Speaker 2: Murder bad. Yeah. 00:16:37 Speaker 1: I mean, just like all of humans from the beginning of time, like this was never a time when it was just like perfectly acceptable. Well, slavery might be different. why can't we judge those people? And explaining this to a child. 00:16:51 Speaker 2: Well, if I'm talking to a child, I say there's a difference between murder and killing. Murder is typically a situation where a legal verdict has been rendered and somebody had the intent to kill someone else. So often in this book and in the kind of canon of gunfighter literature, A, no one's ever convicted of the crime, but more to the point, very few of these are like, hi, you're unarmed. Bang, you're dead. It's generally two people shooting each other. I think morally. 00:17:21 Speaker 1: So the guy that dies is at fault too for just being there and shooting at the other guy. 00:17:24 Speaker 2: I'm not sure I render any fault here. I'm just like, it was the way, especially on the 19th century frontier, that a lot of disputes got adjudicated outside the courtroom. And the fact was, the law, juries and judges in those days, if it was seen as air fight if it seemed to be like they each had a chance you almost never got any type of criminal verdict at all i mean the number of gunfighters that i can point to the number of men they killed might be from 10 to 42 being john wesley harden and the number of them that ever were convicted of any crime much less served time maybe one in 15 um out of this book um And so I think that says not only a lot about the nature of what we call gunfights, we tend not to call them gunfights. If somebody just shot down another man in cold blood, there's no gunfight there. A gunfight almost necessarily implies two guns, at least people shooting each other. And then secondarily, the fact that there was rarely any type of criminal verdict. So that's how I would tell, I mean, you don't have to be a pretty smart 13 year old, right? But I think maybe he could follow that. Yeah. 00:18:41 Speaker 1: Yeah. Um, Okay, I'm going to let y'all talk in a minute, but not yet. What about when I listen to this, I thought about the timeframes in history and just the worldviews of people. That's always so interesting when you get a little window into the way people thought at a time and see how different it is today. I don't think there's very many people today, and I could be wrong, that would be willing to die over a trivial dispute. I mean, like, I just think a gunfight, like, you might die. And you're willing to do that. I'm just trying to think. And there are people that would do that today. And maybe if they did it today, we'd have 30 of them that we talked about. But the duels and all this stuff. 00:19:33 Speaker 2: So many of these things that we call gunfights in the Old West were over fairly picayune times. And they were inevitably somebody's honor, somebody's sense of manhood was dissed. you know and it could be something stupid we opened the book for instance the first nationally recognized gunfight in Springfield Missouri just north of here July 1865 because one guy took another guy's pocket watch to settle a gambling debt instead of the cash and And the guy wanted his watch back. He wouldn't give him back. So they literally face off at 80 paces outside the Greene County Courthouse. They're in Springfield Mow. And that's kind of the genesis of this whole idea through which Americans began viewing the gun violence that we saw on the frontier time and time again. I mean, yeah, there's probably some real reasons for gunfights. I'm thinking of, for instance, gunfighting. Billy the Kid was involved in the Lincoln County War there in New Mexico. This was a serious power struggle in a county with a lot of wealth and resources and cattle and things to fight over. So there were gunfights over money, if you will. But so many more were one cowboy bumps into another in Dodge City and somebody says, let's take this outside. 00:20:59 Speaker 1: Was life just cheaper back then? 00:21:02 Speaker 2: I think that's one of the lead quotes in the New Mexico chapter is, what can I tell you? Life just mattered a little less down there. This was, you know, I'm writing about what I call the gunfighter era, Clay, from 1866 to 1901. And especially on the frontier, there were so many, when there were bad Seth MacFarlane movies, wants a million ways to die in the West. There were so many ways to die in the West. And we sometimes forget that the reason that people first started taking guns out there was not just to deal with Native Americans, but with critters, with snakes. And so people didn't live as long. Guns and knives and Bowie knives were drawn for reasons that maybe we might think a little bit more about. The fact that The only real entertainment, serious entertainment on the old frontier, there was no radio, no TV, no Internet. It was a lot of drinking. And certainly just the amount of alcohol that flowed in the Old West to alleviate boredom probably smooth provided some of the fuel for some of this. I mean, academics have been looking at why gunfights happened, why they were so prevalent on the Old West frontier for a long, long, long time. And, I mean, that's one thing I might just... One question that a listener might have, because I get it all the time, is just, was the Old West really as violent as it looks like in Clint Eastwood movies? Because, you know, beginning in the 60s, it was very cool for academics to say it wasn't. Right. To say, oh, no, this is all overblown. But now we have these big data, AI ways that we can. 00:22:56 Speaker 2: Analyze every homicide rate across the Old West, and it's now been done, and it's been shown categorically, you know, if a murder rate of 9 per 100,000 is considered big. 00:23:09 Speaker 1: And that's what it is today? 00:23:10 Speaker 2: That's like what it's been over 50 years in the U.S., something like that. 00:23:14 Speaker 1: I think it's 9 per 100,000 homicides. And Dodge City in 1878 was like 317. 00:23:15 Speaker 2: You know what I mean? Okay. So you can't say no, gunfighters. 00:23:26 Speaker 2: Faced off in the in the streets of tombstone or dodge city every saturday at four we can prove categorically by with data that these towns were stratospherically violent even more because where i was thinking and i'm gonna let y'all talk in a minute not yet is is you know with as many there's exponentially more guns in america today and there's still a lot of gun violence are we going to be talking well my you know you answer my question does that Yeah, it was more violent back then. Because I'm not writing about today, I can't even compare it today. 00:24:04 Speaker 1: Well, but just the homicide rate being less, I mean, doesn't that prove it? 00:24:08 Speaker 2: Well, what it proves is that there's a lot more people in America now than there were in the Old West. 00:24:12 Speaker 6: Yeah. 00:24:14 Speaker 5: Oh, I see. 00:24:14 Speaker 1: So, like, just the statistics. 00:24:16 Speaker 2: Probably had a lot fewer murders than numbers, but it was with a much smaller data set. A lot fewer people. 00:24:22 Speaker 5: Yeah. 00:24:23 Speaker 1: You know, when you hear about the tumultuous times of the past compared to today you know there's always this question of uh because you know times are pretty rough today in the world and you know you hear some people be like oh this is nothing compared to what it was um but then sometimes when i hear your stories and listen to your podcast i'm like man it pretty was pretty bad back then we live in a pretty civilized society you know i i know it's it's it's hard to compare I mean, you'd have to define what you're actually comparing. 00:24:59 Speaker 2: I don't know how many people are really walking around saying that the old west was a good old days. I mean, putting aside violence for the moment, we could do 15 minutes in hygiene here that would just horrify you. 00:25:10 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. And now we've just romanticized it so much. It's hard to even get a clear picture of what it really was like. 00:25:20 Speaker 2: I don't want to go here, but let me just say, if there was a woman in the room and we started a discussion about female hygiene and you just don't want to go there tough times in the old west yeah uh yeah and you know the final word you know not only did they not have deodorant they didn't have toilet paper it was rough literally. 00:25:43 Speaker 1: You don't see that in the clint eastwood movies do you they didn't they didn't talk about that they didn't talk about that Well, let me open it up to you guys. What thoughts, what did you think when you listened to the stuff? What did you learn? Do you have any questions for Brian? 00:26:08 Speaker 6: One thing that I found very interesting, episode one, you're talking about Hickok getting in that duel in Springfield, Missouri, and how, at least if you watch any kind of Western movies and there's duels or anything like that, it's that quick shoot, okay? How he aimed, and you were saying that that's, you know, the quick draw shooting seemed to be more of like a, novice like look down upon skill set versus actually aiming and shooting which i did not know that i thought that was fascinating. 00:26:32 Speaker 1: Works for deer hunting the same way i don't know if you know is that right well the two you gotta take you gotta take your time. 00:26:40 Speaker 2: The two things in that one example that i didn't understand was one the the classic cliche that we've all seen if we've ever seen a western of two men standing with pistols and then drawing at the same time That was almost unheard of in the Old West. I can point to maybe 10 or 12 examples like that that are documented. There's thinly anecdotal evidence for more. But the real eye-opener to me, and both Hickok and the gunfighter Wyatt Earp alluded to this in single interviews over the years, was that modern-day writers, Western aficionados, were always talking about quick draw, how everything has to be fast, fast, fast. And both Hickok and Earp said, uh-uh. It's never speed. It's always accuracy. And that's why I thought the interesting thing in that very first gunfight was the guy across the way that Hickok was fighting there in the streets of Springfield Mow, an Arkansas guy, as a matter of fact, named Davis Tut, drew and fired from the hip, exactly like they do in the movies. And, you know, older gunfighters kind of thought that was a fool-ass move because Hickok pulled his gun, let's say a split second later, but instead of just firing, he thrusts his left arm forward and places his Navy Colt revolver over his forearm to aim the weapon. By the way, a method of aiming, I have never seen anybody put the barrel of a gun, I mean, I gotta hope he's wearing gloves, across their forearm and shooting, but it's documented he did it more than once. Wow. And he, obviously Davis Tut, his shot went wild, it probably ended up in a 7-11, you know, down the road, and Hickok one shot shot him in the heart. 00:28:23 Speaker 5: At 80 paces. 00:28:24 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:28:25 Speaker 1: That's a long shot for a pistol. 00:28:27 Speaker 2: It was, and Hickok, I mean, we have stories of target practice from almost all the major gunfighters. Billy the Kid, Butch Cassidy's not a gunfighter, but still practiced ad nauseum. But Hickok, every day, especially as an adult, he would wake up every day, shot a whiskey, and an hour of target practice. Really? Yeah. 00:28:51 Speaker 1: That's documented now. 00:28:52 Speaker 2: Yeah, the day he died in Deadwood. Shot a whiskey, hour of practice, then to the bar for the rest of the day. 00:29:00 Speaker 5: Wow. 00:29:01 Speaker 2: That's a lot of blood. Wow, wow, wow. 00:29:03 Speaker 4: Gentlemen. 00:29:05 Speaker 7: One thing that, Clay, you kind of alluded to the point that I was going to make, and that is just how violent everything seemed back then. Because I was telling Clay before we got started, I've been on like a frontier kick for like a couple months now, reading all these books on it. 00:29:18 Speaker 4: But mostly the Eastern frontier. 00:29:19 Speaker 7: So like Daniel Boone, guys like that, reading about that. And one thing that you hear about, at least with those frontiersmen, is you think that they're like just these guys that want to go hunting and, you know, go experience the wilderness. But a lot of them were like fugitives of the law. Like they did something and they were trying to get away from society. And so you could see how the frontier is full of these just characters. 00:29:40 Speaker 4: And it was. 00:29:40 Speaker 7: Interesting hearing your podcast where you said something similar where like some of these guys looking back have like bipolar disorder or something like that. You read the text, you're like, these guys had to screw loose. 00:29:51 Speaker 2: Well, one of the things I did wonder immediately is this period took place immediately after the Civil War. We know something like 40% of the men fought in that war. Common sense tells you that there must have been some damage, something like PTSD, going on with some of these gunfighters. I think, unfortunately, that has to remain speculation. I think good speculation. We just don't have the data. Other than with this one guy, Clay Allison from New Mexico, who was one of the most feared gunfighters of his time, and we know he was drummed out of the Confederate Army for spells in which he would go crazy violent. So there is some evidence for that. But to your larger point, not a lot of people went out west because they were doing real well back east. 00:30:47 Speaker 6: Right. 00:30:47 Speaker 2: Most of them were not necessarily fleeing the law. An awful lot were fleeing debts. That was something that got you to mosey out to Texas or mosey out to Nebraska. And so you did tend to get a lot of men out on the western frontier who were searching for their next thing, searching for the life that had eluded them back east. And, you know, many of them, shall we say, had somewhat short resumes. And many of them were troubled and inevitably that's who ended up on one side of a lot of these gunfights. 00:31:26 Speaker 5: Right. 00:31:27 Speaker 7: And it makes sense because, I mean, if you've put yourself back then and you think about what it was probably like. It's like you're going to go to the edge of civilization, like literally the fringe of society. There's Indians killing people. You know, there's people killing people. Like these towns are rough. 00:31:42 Speaker 2: And there seemed fortunes to be made. Yeah. Whether mining or any, I mean, remember Wyatt Earp wasn't running around making his life as a sheriff. He was out there trying to mine for gold or silver and everything most of the time. And he just took, like so many of them, took a law enforcement job because the rest, the things he really wanted to do didn't pan out. A number of these guys were kind of failed entrepreneurs, if you will. 00:32:07 Speaker 1: Have you heard of the, have you heard of the duel in the Arkansas State House in the 1830s? 00:32:18 Speaker 5: Yes, I think. 00:32:20 Speaker 2: I know that, I mean, remember, we had duels in the U.S. State House in the 1810s. 1830s was like, the dueling craze that preceded this gunfight craze was really biggest from 1810s to 1840s. So it doesn't surprise me. What happened in the Arkansas one? 00:32:37 Speaker 1: Well, I'd have to look up the guys' names, but it was two prominent legislators in Arkansas that just got in a political dispute and were just like, well, we're going to have a shootout. And honestly, now that I say it, if it was in the courthouse, if it was in the statehouse, I think it was kind of a, impromptu thing and then but then later there's lots of documentation of of legislators going out to the mississippi river or you know actually having sanctioned duels oh yeah but but i learned you know i've heard all these stories and it just is peculiar you know you're just like wow how'd this happen you're you given the history of these duels starting back in aristocratic europe these these people came over particularly the irish i believe you cited came over with just this idea of dealing with conflict like this. And it just stayed here. And the fact that you can kind of pinpoint when it was all going on. I mean, that was interesting. It kind of gives a window into, there's always a reason for stuff. 00:33:46 Speaker 2: Yeah, and I just had never really appreciated it. And frankly, I went out a little on a limb here trying to make the connection between these duels, principally those in the South, which is where they were most prevalent from, South Carolina all the way to Texas, and how that kind of morphed into a lot of the gunfights of the Old West. The difference being the duels in the Old South typically were single-shot flintlock pistols. And what happened about the time we went out West was you got Texans first evolved the revolver. Of course, Samuel Coles invented it, but Texans kind of discovered it and introduced it, and that's really what It was a giant leap in firearms technology that allowed this whole gunfighter era to take place. We forget when we get our first nationally recognized gunfights there after the Civil War in 1865, revolvers had only been in active use in America for 20 years. And this is really brand new technology, which I thought was a fun way to think of it because we just don't think of, in the old west but that was one of the factors driving. 00:34:55 Speaker 1: All this I liked your quote about the Native American that said after a battle that they had as many shots in their gun as fingers on a hand. 00:35:05 Speaker 2: I will never after the first time the Texas Rangers took apart a Comanche band with using revolvers for the first time when one of the chiefs retired years later he referred to the Ranger Captain Jack Hayes and said I will never fight Jack Hayes again for he has a bullet for every finger of his hand. 00:35:26 Speaker 1: Yeah, you would never think about after centuries of single-shot guns. 00:35:33 Speaker 5: Centuries. 00:35:34 Speaker 1: Well, that's right. Centuries. You get one shot, and then you've got to do all this stuff, and then all of a sudden you get repeating rifles, repeating pistols, and that being like a whoosh. I mean, like going from horses to a car. I mean, when you look at the story of the Old West. 00:35:50 Speaker 2: I'm not sure the old west gets conquered in the 40 or 50 years that it does with single-shot weapons. It just doesn't. Because, bear, I shoot you one bullet, okay? It takes a professional 20 seconds to reload that musket or that little flintlock during which a Comanche warrior could shoot four arrows in him. So it wasn't really until revolver, until repeating weapons, that Americans really, you know, they finished off the rest of the west. How many, what, 150 years to get out to Texas, then maybe 50 to get to take out to California? And a lot of that, you have to say, was advanced in firearms technology. 00:36:26 Speaker 1: Now, why, okay, with a gunfight, it's just one shot per person, like in a sanctioned duel or gunfight? 00:36:34 Speaker 4: I was about to ask the same question. 00:36:36 Speaker 1: So, yeah, why would it matter to them if they had a revolver versus a single-shot pistol? 00:36:41 Speaker 2: Well, just in a fight with any type of Native American or just any. 00:36:44 Speaker 1: Well, I'm talking about like a sanctioned gunfight because you kind of... And maybe the connection is just not that significant. But like in a gunfight... It doesn't make any difference. But just people were carrying revolvers just because they were popular and we had the technology. 00:36:59 Speaker 2: Especially... Yeah, they were just carrying revolvers. And so you see in the years immediately after the Civil War, you can go back and find people writing in memoirs. Wow. Wow. This is, it used to take, we used to have fights that would take, you know, minutes and an hour sometimes if they involved knives or fisticuffs. And now people sell their disputes in 90 seconds because they have revolvers. It was just, the spread of revolvers after the Civil War, when the federal government, what, auctioned off 3.5 million handguns, led to something that had been Pretty rare up until that point, men began wearing guns on their bodies, typically on their hips, in a way that you saw every now and then. But afterwards, it became a thing. Men, you might wear a different necktie, you might wear spectacles, and you might wear a gun. It just became a new thing. That also was something that really marks the beginning of this gunfighter era. 00:38:01 Speaker 3: That leads me to my question. You mentioned... in these, there became a code, a list of rules. Like, would that have included, like, you get one shot? You know what I mean? One shot, and you both miss, it's over. 00:38:15 Speaker 2: That was part of the old dueling rules. Out in the West, the rules were gone. It was pretty much, I mean, the rules that mattered in the old West was there was a code of honor, and people will argue about this, people will push back on it. But if you go back and you read everything that's out there and then you look at the incidents, the fact was it was the old Southern Code of Honor on steroids. The principal rule being if you were insulted, you were obligated to respond in some way and violence was acceptable and deadly violence was acceptable. And to not do so for at least a 40-year-old period there on the old western frontier risked you know total social cancellation right you know if you walked away from a challenge you were a pariah let's just say you weren't going to be elected what word did. 00:39:14 Speaker 1: You use pariah we don't know what that means it's like an outcast pariah is. 00:39:21 Speaker 3: Like a fish like an outcast yeah Is that a fish with a little teeth in it? 00:39:25 Speaker 5: You're not familiar with that? 00:39:26 Speaker 1: No, that's a piranha. I mean, you've even stumped the New York Times. Times bestseller. 00:39:31 Speaker 2: Can you back me up? You used it perfectly well. 00:39:32 Speaker 5: Can you back me up? 00:39:34 Speaker 1: I just stood in context, but I just wanted to call it out. I actually didn't know what that meant. 00:39:38 Speaker 4: Carry on. 00:39:39 Speaker 2: If you turned down a challenge to a duel or a gunfight, you would commonly leave town. 00:39:44 Speaker 5: Oh, really? Oh, yeah. 00:39:46 Speaker 2: There was no... Commonly, there was no lady that was going to be seen. 00:39:50 Speaker 1: Is there a social equivalent to this today that you see in society? 00:39:53 Speaker 2: Cancellation. If you say something wrong on social media, the wrong political thing, and you get canceled. 00:40:00 Speaker 1: So the internet has its modern gunfight in being canceled. 00:40:04 Speaker 2: Well, I think the social cost that you pay for a misstep, the missteps are different, but the price you pay can be much the same. 00:40:14 Speaker 1: That's interesting. Yeah, it kind of accomplished the same thing, wouldn't it? It would just cancel your social credibility, like if you walked away or if you got canceled today. I kind of see the– it's not probably the– yeah. 00:40:29 Speaker 2: It's not apples and apples, but it's close. 00:40:30 Speaker 1: It's not perfect. 00:40:32 Speaker 6: Brian, there was a section– I forget what episode it was in, but it was talking about gentlemen from different areas of the country, if you were to call them a liar, how they would react. 00:40:42 Speaker 2: Could you mention that again? There was a, I'm trying to remember who said this. It was a story that just used to be said on the frontier. And it was to talk about, I was trying to make the point, about the violence inherent in post-war Texas. And what was said is that if you told a man his wife was ugly, the New Englander might say, you can't prove that. And the man in Ohio would say, well, that's a mean thing to say. And the man in Texas would take his gun and shoot you. because, and it speaks directly to the reputation that Texans had for incendiary and immediate violence. And I attempt to make the case gently in the book that Texans had an awful lot to do with the spread of this type of honor-based violence on the old frontier. I don't want to get too egg-headed about it, but I will say that's one of the great things about Meat Eater is they let you get a little over toward academic I mean, the book and the podcast especially are fun because you learn the truth, frankly, about everyone from Billy the Kid to the Dalton gang, but you can also learn a little bit about the societal, the cultural, and the history that influenced it, and it helps explain it because that was one of the very first questions I had was, wait, why are the only gunfighters I've ever heard of all rose and fell in 40 years on the old west frontier. Why not Australia or Canada or Kentucky or someplace? So that was fun for me is just to kind of do a little detective work. 00:42:23 Speaker 1: Now, would that have been something that would have been in academia before, like this defined period of the gunfighters, or is that something that you came up with? 00:42:31 Speaker 2: It's kind of me. 00:42:32 Speaker 1: Okay. 00:42:33 Speaker 2: Because, look, this is not– Clay, this is an area of history that's not– Serious enough. 00:42:42 Speaker 5: Really? 00:42:43 Speaker 2: For, you know, professors. Oh, come on. 00:42:46 Speaker 1: Well, listen, I mean, like, in the sphere that we really love on this side, like Daniel Boone, David Crockett, these frontiersmen, long hunters. 00:42:56 Speaker 2: They get more academic attention, I think, because they were considered important, significant advancers in of the frontier than Wild Bill Hickok or Billy the Kid, who frankly are important almost exclusively to popular culture. 00:43:11 Speaker 1: I understand. 00:43:12 Speaker 2: To dime novels and later Hollywood movies. I gotcha. What academics look at in the Old West is murder rates and what made it violent. But drilling down into the province of the truth behind murder this myth or that myth or was Johnny Ringo really a fake which he was that's unfortunate that's left to guys like me. 00:43:40 Speaker 4: Don't burst our bubble here Brian Johnny Ringo. 00:43:45 Speaker 1: I was going to mention something a minute ago about open carry you talked about how people just started wearing guns in the old west and I was just making an observation I wanted to ask you guys and you too as well Brian There's places today that I would, and this is not a political statement, even remotely. There's places today where I would open carry. I don't often, but I have. But I know where I can do it and where I can't. For instance, we were in Alaska. We were in a very small town in eastern Alaska like two weeks ago. And it was like a couple of hours into... our doings in this town that I realized that my buddy was carrying a 10 millimeter SIG on his chest, like walking into stores, getting coffee, getting supplies. And even I didn't even notice it. I mean, we're like talking pop up on the radar. If we had been in any, I mean, some other place, I would have been immediately been like, bro, you can't do this. you're going to get, you know, you're going to get in trouble or whatever, even if it's legal. I think in Arkansas, it's legal to open carry. Like I could, I could walk around with a gun on my hip legally. Um, I also know that I go down here to remember, I'm remembering one time just randomly, I went to dollar general in Winslow, Arkansas, like 20 miles, 15 miles, 10 miles from here. And like on a Tuesday night, there was a guy in there with his family, you know, open carrying. And like, I didn't think a thing about it. Like I just, I just, I noted it. Uh, Anyway, I just think, are there places you guys would open carry? 00:45:37 Speaker 2: Personally, me, I used to, but not anymore necessarily. 00:45:40 Speaker 1: I'd rather just conceal carry. 00:45:42 Speaker 4: It's not uncommon for us to see. 00:45:43 Speaker 6: Yeah, we go to small communities in some of these different states, and you'll see it. We'll go to Kansas, you see it all over the place. It's like half these guys are working on the ranch, they're going back and forth in the town, small little town. Yeah, they're carrying some kind of revolver or sidearm on them. it's like you see that in certain communities certain areas um but like where i live a little bit too big of a town i feel like i want to go walk around open carrying. 00:46:05 Speaker 1: Yeah um but you'd know i guess my point is you'd know where you could absolutely absolutely where you couldn't yeah. 00:46:10 Speaker 4: Absolutely i've seen people in your town open carrying. 00:46:13 Speaker 6: I mean at the restaurant they do there's still some ranchers right there absolutely. 00:46:17 Speaker 2: I see day to day in texas i live in austin very liberal university town Nobody open carries. If somebody brought a gun into my house, into a dinner party, I think I'd object. I've married into a ranching family in West Texas. We have barbecue out there or sit-down dinner, and people open carry all the time at the ranch. Really? Nobody thinks a thing about it, and it's just three hours away. But it's a world away because it's an entirely different context. 00:46:47 Speaker 5: Yeah. Yeah. 00:46:49 Speaker 1: That makes sense. 00:46:50 Speaker 6: Just on the flip side, it doesn't have to necessarily– deal with this but with open carrying a lot of people say like open carrying makes you a target when you're out in public as in like if someone was going to do something bad they say you have a weapon that's one reason why you hear a lot of people talk like you shouldn't open carry because it makes you a hard target instead of concealed carrying yeah but yeah it is an interesting endeavor different areas and whether or not you'd want to do it or not you know if we're on a hunting trip or something like that you know carry a sidearm on me but it's one of those things like if I'm going to go to a grocery store I'm taking that thing off. 00:47:19 Speaker 1: I guess that would be unique to America though kind of in for most of, if you were comparing it to most of the world, like the idea that any of us in this room could open carry a firearm. I mean, would that be unique to America? 00:47:31 Speaker 5: I don't know. Is there another country that you can open carry? 00:47:35 Speaker 2: I'm not sure. 00:47:36 Speaker 5: Okay. 00:47:37 Speaker 1: Well, I just, I guess I'm just thinking about like this lore, maybe connecting some of these things with this deep American mythology around the gunfighters and kind of how it translates into even modern times. And like, I don't know, some percentage of us are just kind of like okay with it, you know. And obviously there's a percentage that aren't. But, no, I just wondered if there was any connection to it. 00:48:03 Speaker 2: Well, this was the time, you know, in the late 1860s, in the years after the Civil War, where something that had been pretty rare before the war, in fact, you could see, like, British travelers going, you know. In fact, one of the first incidents I remember was from the 1830s, a British traveler saying, oh, my God, I was in Arkansas. It's awesome when you're wearing a pistol outside his pants. And 30 years later, after the Civil War, the handguns are just so prevalent that it just becomes quickly accepted as a new thing, especially on the frontier and in rural areas of the U.S. Not as common, obviously, on the East Coast. 00:48:44 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. Man, these sword fights, that sounds rougher to me. Then a gunfight almost. 00:48:51 Speaker 3: I actually looked up your duel in the statehouse, and it was a brawl with bowie knives. 00:48:56 Speaker 1: Oh. 00:48:56 Speaker 5: A man was killed with a bowie knife in 1837. 00:48:59 Speaker 2: The whole class of duels involving bowie knives. You're talking about swords because back in the day, in the decades before gunfights when you were dealing with duels, most duels were flintlock pistols. But in places where there was a French influence, especially New Orleans, they were typically done with swords and rapiers. 00:49:20 Speaker 5: What is that? 00:49:22 Speaker 2: It's a super thin sword, just like a super thin... Like a fencing tool. 00:49:28 Speaker 5: Like a foil. 00:49:29 Speaker 1: In today's city park at the foot of Esplanade in New Orleans in the 1830s. 00:49:42 Speaker 2: There would be up to 10 sword duels a day there under the oaks, under those beautiful old oak trees. And same idea as a duel, same idea as a gunfight, except First Blood ended it. So very few ever ended up with anyone dead. So the exact same matters of honor were settled, but if I got blood on your shirt first, I won. 00:50:09 Speaker 5: Okay, okay. 00:50:18 Speaker 2: So there were a lot of flavors of the way that men during this period settled their disputes. Thankfully today we settled them mostly in more civil war. 00:50:28 Speaker 5: Social media. 00:50:29 Speaker 1: Yeah. Thankfully today we settled them. That's really turning out good for the country too. Um, maybe when I was in, when I was in high school in Mena, Arkansas, one of my classmates, um, We had a small class, you know. But his dad got shot in a bar fight in Oklahoma, which we lived on the border of Oklahoma. 00:50:53 Speaker 2: Because everybody in northwest Arkansas considers Oklahoma crazy territory. 00:50:58 Speaker 1: That's right. That's right. 00:50:59 Speaker 5: It's true. 00:51:00 Speaker 1: And especially down there, two hours south of here. And we always, we just, I mean, we never talked about it. We never really dissected why. But we always thought that was really cool. I mean, maybe not cool, but just like, man. We knew the– I know the man well. I mean, it's like he got shot. He had a shootout at the Candlelight Bar in Smithfield, Oklahoma. Y'all were like, it's kind of legit. I'm pretty sure he has a bullet still in him. Guy's still alive today. 00:51:30 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:51:30 Speaker 1: But anyway, I just think about like this lore of– and it's terrible. I mean, if you knew– and I don't know the circumstances of the thing. It's just like little– things dinging in my head you know from reaching way back but like it was probably a terrible situation and that guy probably does not romanticize that at all man with. 00:51:50 Speaker 2: The bullet yes less likely. 00:51:51 Speaker 1: Yeah yes yeah but it kind of feels like we treated it just naturally like whoa this is this is neat but i'm sorry for that i'm repenting to the world. 00:52:04 Speaker 6: I was just thinking also like the arbitrary ways like some of these guys got killed that you highlight especially the first episode like the guy like Shot somebody in the hotel because he was snoring? 00:52:11 Speaker 5: He shot through the wall? 00:52:13 Speaker 6: It was still like that. Andrew probably would shoot me when we. 00:52:15 Speaker 2: Got to the hotel. This was one of the greatest gunfighters to ever come out of Texas was John Wesley Harden. He might have been the greatest of all. He claimed 42 men that he'd killed. I think it was at least 30. And the craziest story about him was he was actually popularized in an ad for a time-life book in the 1970s called The Gunfighters. It was a TV ad. And the ad was, can you believe John Wesley Harden killed a man for snoring? And, of course, everybody said, oh, that's just Texas. It was a bunch of BS. But the fact was, in Dodds, it was in Wichita. August of 1871, John Wesley Harden was 18 years old, and he'd already killed six people in the three months that he'd been at the end of a trail drive in Wichita. And that night... another Texas cattleman was found dead in his room at the hotel in town. And Hardin ultimately admitted to it, but he said that the guy had been creeping into his room, which was crazy. He was shot in his bed. He was found dead in his bed. Four bullets shot through the wall. It was only about 20 years later when Hardin was eventually brought in and the rare gunfighter sent to prison that it was argued that that he'd killed the man for snoring. And so when this Time Life thing came out, everybody said, oh, that's a bunch of BS. And I went back and re-looked at that. And I'm sorry, why would you kill somebody through a wall at four in the morning through a hotel room wall? It's not like they were arguing over who just won the gin rummy game, you know? I mean, I can't think of another reason that you shoot somebody through a hotel room. I'm prepared to believe that in part because I know, much as you alluded, that my ex-wife would have shot me for snoring. Absolutely. 00:54:15 Speaker 1: When you're going to do 26 episodes, six months, six months, are you systematically going through the book, kind of building episodes? 00:54:29 Speaker 2: Well, you do it. I'm a little anal. I like my stories in order, so it's chronological. That's good. So it starts with the first gunfighters, many of whom came out of Texas after the Civil War and spread with the Texas Longhorn cattle, which spread across the West. We got Texas gunfighters who spread across the West, John Wesley Hardin being the first great one. And, you know, the Kansas cow towns up at the top of the Chisholm Trail where Texans drove their cattle, Those are the first places where so many of the gunfighters arose there in the early 1870s. And then I end the story in 1901. Let's see if y'all can guess who this was. The last pair of great American outlaws left the country. 00:55:18 Speaker 6: 1901. 00:55:18 Speaker 2: Who were they? 00:55:19 Speaker 1: Jesse and Frank. 00:55:21 Speaker 5: You mentioned the episode. 00:55:21 Speaker 4: I don't remember, though. 00:55:23 Speaker 2: Butch and Sundance. 00:55:23 Speaker 5: Oh, dang it. I had it. 00:55:25 Speaker 2: And to me, that's, you know, when Butch and Sundance say that, The West has gotten too closed. Everywhere you look, there's a sheriff, a posse, or a Pinkerton man. We're going to go get on a boat to South America, as they did. That seemed to me like a proper place to end the gunfighter era. 00:55:45 Speaker 1: When they did that, they were thinking about you. One day, somebody's going to write a book, and they're going to need to know when this area ends. 00:55:50 Speaker 4: A nice book end. 00:55:51 Speaker 2: I have no doubt. But it's great. That's the last chapter in the book, is Butch and Sundance. and the Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the 1969 movie, the one with Redford and Newman, which stands up so well. I mean, if you haven't seen it, you should see it. 00:56:09 Speaker 5: I don't know that I've seen the whole thing. 00:56:12 Speaker 2: Well, let me tell you, it is amazingly accurate except for the best parts, which totally aren't. So that's what was fun to write about in that chapter was to show you what was real and what wasn't. 00:56:24 Speaker 1: It's got to be pretty rewarding to find a hole in the literature a hole in the research like you've done in a way i mean all these things are out there but uh that's got to be gratifying. 00:56:39 Speaker 2: That's the that's why it takes me so damn long to find the next book every time because i can't candidly clay to get the money i want to be paid i can't just write a book i've got to write a book that will be notable that will get attention from the new york times and such places. 00:56:53 Speaker 1: Yeah oh they pay you to write books. 00:56:56 Speaker 5: What the They better. 00:56:57 Speaker 1: I've got to talk to my publicist. 00:57:02 Speaker 2: And the very first thing is, well, is there room? Do you have something new to say that historians and people who follow this for a living will turn around and say, oh, well, that's interesting. And then, if you've done that, by the way, is it something that's interesting enough that people will pay $ 29. 95 to go learn about? Yeah. That's why I'm astonishingly picky about what I do. I don't know how long your book took. Mine typically take between four and a half and six and a half years, so five years on average. And I'll be damned if I'm going to go spend five years of my life literally and figuratively sometimes boarded up in a room and put out something that people are just going to ignore. 00:57:48 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. 00:57:50 Speaker 2: That is failure, and I don't like failure. 00:57:53 Speaker 1: So are you working on anything now? 00:57:55 Speaker 5: I am. 00:57:56 Speaker 1: Secret things. 00:57:58 Speaker 2: No, it's just silly. I used to be a serious writer. I wrote about gunfighters because I'm in my 60s now. I'm at a point in life where I can pretty much write about what I wanted to write about. And I've been reading everything you can about gunfighters since I was 11 years old, like in sixth grade. So I turned the book in and the publisher really liked it. Sometimes they're like, oh, okay, that's fine. And this one they really liked. And so a week later, he came back and he said, we really like what you do with this book. It's conversational. It's casual. It's accessible. It's everything we want a book to be these days. We have the next idea. And I'm like, pirates. Oh. Meaning the golden era of piracy, which is 1650 to 1725. It's every pirate you've ever heard of. So Blackbeard. Captain Kidd. 00:58:53 Speaker 3: Oh, I thought you were talking about in the 80s and 90s when we had that piracy thing come up on our VHS tapes. 00:58:58 Speaker 2: That's a Tom Hanks movie. That's a Tom Hanks movie. I'm talking about the real Jack Sparrow. 00:59:04 Speaker 5: Okay, okay. 00:59:04 Speaker 2: Man, that. 00:59:05 Speaker 4: Oh, I can't wait for that. 00:59:06 Speaker 1: That's going to do good. I'm having a lot of fun with it. I bet that's going to do good. 00:59:10 Speaker 2: It's one of those things, Clay, where about once a week I kind of get up from the computer and go, shit, they're paying me to do this. This is so much fun. 00:59:19 Speaker 5: That's awesome. 00:59:20 Speaker 1: That's great. 00:59:21 Speaker 6: One question, if you don't mind, Clay. 00:59:23 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:59:23 Speaker 6: One question I have is for something like that, you're now researching pirates. What kind of research do you have to do in order to kind of have an idea of how you want the book to kind of not only begin and end, but how you want to tell that story and make sure you get the most accurate information possible? 00:59:41 Speaker 2: Well, with Pirates, there's been very little original information that's come out in 300 years. Most of the primary source material is from the early 1700s, and it has not enlarged greatly. There have been 11 million Pirate books published. And I resisted writing the 11 millionth and one because I said, you know, what am I going to say new? And the publisher came back and said, well, this sounds really big headed. We would just like to have your version. You know, we think that that will be entertaining. I was like, oh, well, that's a pretty low bar. I just get to go write my version of this that I want to, which is going to be the way all my books are. It's going to be, heavy on research. It's going to be accurate and defensible. And in the end, it's, and in the end, you're not going to care about any about that. You're going to read to the end and think, oh, and by the way, I learned. 01:00:39 Speaker 5: Yeah. 01:00:39 Speaker 2: I mean, that's what I try to do. I try not to make it too heavy. Yeah. 01:00:43 Speaker 1: Oh, that's exciting. That's great. Um, yeah, now we're, we're getting close to when we're going to close her down. So y'all can be thinking about any, any remaining things, but But I am really interested in your writing process, which maybe I think other people would be too. You said that for years you'd been interested in the gunfighters, but you didn't want to write a book that just had a new gunfighter every chapter. I believe that's what you said. 01:01:12 Speaker 2: That's pretty much. 01:01:12 Speaker 1: And all of a sudden you had an epiphany of how to turn this into a big story. 01:01:18 Speaker 2: Yeah. In 2004, I wrote a book called called Public Enemies, which was about the FBI's drive against bank robbers like John Dillinger in the 1930s. They turned into a decent movie with Johnny Depp and Christian Bale about 15 years ago called Public Enemies. And so I wanted to write a prequel to that. When was the only time that outlaws were running around before the bank robbers of the 30s? Well, the Old West. And I wanted to write about gunfighters. And so I went in and basically announced grandly to my editor, the next book will be about gunfighters. And I kind of mic drop and I was ready to walk out the door. And he was like, what about gunfighters? I'm like, what do you mean what? It's going to be great. And he was like, well, you can't just write 17 chapters on 17 gunfighters. That's kind of lame. And it's been done back in the 1970s. It would have to be a single story. Well, there is no single story. Jesse James doesn't know Billy the Kid, doesn't know Wild Bill Hickok. So ultimately, I spent 12 or 13 years not all the time, but regularly trying to think how I could do all that. How could I do every gunfighter you've ever heard of as a single story? And the first thing you do is you say, I'm going to write about this gunfighter era. So 35 years, 1865 to 1901. And then you try to find the connective tissue. And in this case, as you've alluded to many times brilliantly, the connective tissue was behavioral. Why do people, why were they doing these And how did one set of gunfights and gunfighters, say the initial ones in the Kansas cow towns like Dodge City, how did those flow and relate to the ones in Tombstone? And that was fascinating stuff. It ended up being, you know, a lot of these stories are distinct from the others, but they also relate to each other. You get a lot of the same people appearing over and over. An awful lot of Texans. And I thought an awful lot of fun. Yeah. 01:03:19 Speaker 1: I guess that's really the formula for a good book, really, is to take a string of similar but maybe unrelated events and find the human element of it and defining it and trying to understand it. 01:03:39 Speaker 2: Look, there's as many different formulas for a good book as there are books themselves. So I bet your formula for yours is entirely different than mine. But I bet it's going to work just as well. I bet it will, Brian. 01:03:52 Speaker 1: Thank you for bringing that up. American bear. 01:03:55 Speaker 4: February. 01:03:58 Speaker 1: Oh, this has been great. Thoughts, guys? Questions? 01:04:03 Speaker 4: I'm just looking forward to the rest of them coming in. 01:04:04 Speaker 2: I just want to make another nod to you, and that is I don't listen to your podcast. This is a genre that I'm wholly unfamiliar with. Josh sent me the last episode. the one that starts with the anecdote about Daniel Boone, Daniel Boone's son. 01:04:24 Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. 01:04:25 Speaker 2: Absolutely fascinating. Not only did I not, just when you started going into the, like discussing that rack on the mythical, you know, the deer that the gentleman shot, I had no idea all the math and the terms you were using. 01:04:46 Speaker 1: I was like, this is such. 01:04:47 Speaker 2: A rich subculture. I had no idea. But what I really loved was I found myself wondering in this really splendid anecdote of Daniel Boone's son talking about stalking a deer with single shot muskets in 1790. What, four? Yeah. Was that the first ever American account of... Of deer hunting. I mean, are there others? Maybe Natty Bumpa? I don't know. I just thought, I just never would have thought to anchor. I have a lot of friends who hunt deer. They come out and, you know, by the time I'm waking at 730, they're walking in with their meat already, you know, from being out in the blind. I just never would have thought to link today to Daniel freaking Boone. I mean, that was just so interesting. 01:05:36 Speaker 1: I mean, I don't hunt. 01:05:37 Speaker 2: But I wanted to know more. 01:05:38 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. Well, we actually talk about this in American Bear. We talk about the foundations of, well, the Boone and Crockett Club, which would become Teddy Roosevelt's club that would be instrumental in saving North American wildlife, was called the Boone and Crockett Club because of how much Roosevelt and others kind of mythologized these market hunter's of Boone and Crockett, these guys that were actually, you know, partakers in a very difficult time for American wildlife because they were killing so many of them. Yet the, the archetype of Boone and Crockett, these American frontiersmen, patriots, which both of them end up leaving the country and, uh, you know, pretty disgusted with America, interestingly. Um, still their way of thinking about wilderness and wild animals is, it was in my DNA that I discovered as an adult. Like I was kind of an adult before I really understood Boone and Crockett in particular. And I began to say, wow, Gary Newcomb, my dad instilled in me, even the terminology that Boone would have used in the way that he spoke about the woods, about woodsmanship, um, that is in the DNA like so evident today that most of us wouldn't recognize. And so that's kind of– it is super interesting. 01:07:14 Speaker 2: Just one question. Were you able to identify a moment or a period where deer hunting moved from primarily food collection to recreation? 01:07:24 Speaker 1: A hundred percent. I mean, to the day. You basically– You stepped in that one, Brian. 01:07:30 Speaker 2: You signed a copy of this book for me because I'm going to read it. 01:07:32 Speaker 1: Yeah, you should. And I'm not– And I'm not the originator of these ideas. We do have some original ideas in the book. We really do. We have some original ideas of how the Black Bear played a role in the expansion of the American frontier from the Appalachians to the Great Plains. You'll have to read the book. But 1889, the Boone and Crockett Club starts with a goal to change... This is one of these things that 20 years later they were like, hey, we really did this. And probably their goals weren't quite as clear as the result actually became. But basically they were trying to turn America from market hunters to sport hunters. And they did so by quantifying and making a record book of male big game animals. Like all the measurements that I spoke about. you know, the main beam length and time length and circumference and these, you add this all up and you have this record book. They quantified and gave value to an older, mature male by a number. And by doing that, they took the emphasis off females and young and put it on older, mature males and people became sport hunters just like, I mean, almost overnight. And they began to criminalize market hunting. Wildlife laws became standard across the country. It took like 40 years. A lot of the game and fish organizations popped up from 1900 to 1930, all the different states. But basically... Yeah, we went from market hunters to sport hunters in a very short time. And so the thing that's so interesting that someone who wouldn't understand the history is that we say that trophy hunting saved North American wildlife, which is a wild thing because trophy hunting has such a negative connotation that somebody like myself who has these deer horns on the wall, like, oh, you killed that deer just so you could hang his horns on the wall. 01:09:39 Speaker 2: They'd be treated as pests probably. Unless someone valued them and wanted to conserve them. 01:09:45 Speaker 1: Well, and the whole story of American conservation is that where an animal has value through hunting, that animal, unequivocally, him and his habitat have been protected. 01:09:59 Speaker 2: And will thrive. 01:09:59 Speaker 1: Yes, because of hunters. Because of the motivation of the common man, which is a new thing to America. You know, we talk about all this stuff in American Bear. We tell the conservation story. through the lens of the black bear but it applies to all the big game that today are are doing well in our country because of the so it's it's a fascinating story even if you didn't like hunting the story is pretty fascinating because it's so counterintuitive you'd think the guys that kill these animals are the ones that you know wiped them out and there was a time when that was true then these guys these thought leaders came in and were like no we got to change the way people think about wildlife. And I mean, Roosevelt and those guys given incentive to the common man, which had never been done before on the earth to want to be able to partake in wildlife, which seemed, which seemed like a really dumb idea. It's like, Hey, let's protect all the deer. I got an idea. Give everybody the right to hunt deer. That's a radical idea that I probably would have been like, wait a minute. Let's not do that. I know these hillbillies, but it, but it incentivized the common man. He had a stake in the game. It's a fascinating story. I don't know if it answered your question. 01:11:11 Speaker 2: It absolutely did. Thank you. 01:11:14 Speaker 5: I'm looking forward to this book. 01:11:16 Speaker 1: Me too. Hey, we're about to start officially talking about our book. We've told people that I've been writing it. It took me three years. I've had the contract for three years, which was is a long time, but man, in writing, time is wonderful. I mean, originally, the contract was for a year. We were supposed to turn this book around in a year. And we got an extension, yeah. And we just thought, well, yeah, we can do that. And then we quickly realized we couldn't. And because of Meat Eater's publishing schedule, they punted it like, well, basically two years out. And at the time, I was bummed about it. Because I'm not like you. I don't know. I mean, I wasn't a professional writer, or I had not written a book. So, I mean, I was just excited to write a book and get it out. And so when they were like, ah, it'll be two years, I mean, it's like, wow, that is a long time away to work on this and not have any return on investment in terms of just sharing it. But now, if today they were like, Clay, we're going to punt it another two. I'm finished with the book. If they punted it another two years, I would love it. I would go back in. I mean, there's stuff I would do. I'm happy with where it's at. I'm very happy, but I'd just keep writing. 01:12:43 Speaker 2: The only parallel I can come up with on how good it feels to get done with a book is when your kids leave the house. When they come off the books, like when I quit paying my youngest's car insurance... It was just the ultimate freedom. That's the closest I could explain to anybody about what it's like to finish the book. Can I just say congratulations? 01:13:09 Speaker 1: Thank you. Thank you. 01:13:11 Speaker 2: You get it. 01:13:13 Speaker 5: You know how it feels. 01:13:15 Speaker 2: I know how that feels. 01:13:15 Speaker 1: Yes, yes, yes, yes. It's funny. We've had a first-time writer with a publishing company like this. We've had multiple stages of celebration. When I turned in the manuscript... which was like February 7th. I don't think I'll ever forget that date of 2026 that the editor hadn't read yet. Mind you turned in the manuscript. I mean, I'm like, we're like going out to dinner and inviting friends and yeah. And then, uh, and then, you know, the editor gets back with us and as you know, there's a lot of work to be done. July 1st, we turned back in that, manuscript that has now had the changes the editor wanted so we're like man we're done well then the copy edited version comes back oh. 01:14:05 Speaker 2: It's just it's just like having fleas in your underwear they just never stop they just never stop no i i sympathize with you i had a book in fact it was public enemies and my editor came back and said this is just great and it is way too long oh that's tough cut 23% of the total words. 01:14:26 Speaker 4: Oh, my Lord. 01:14:26 Speaker 5: That's a lot. 01:14:27 Speaker 2: The book took me five years, so that basically was a year of my life that just ended up on the floor. The book was much better because of it. But shorter is always better. I'm always reminding myself. But it hurts. 01:14:40 Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, yeah. 01:14:41 Speaker 2: It's like building a blind in your backyard, and then you have to take down 80% of it. Yep, yep. 01:14:50 Speaker 6: One of the last things I was going to mention, Brian, is the production quality of the podcast has been phenomenal, especially the video, which I think is available on Apple Podcasts and YouTube. It is phenomenal. And it's really cool how Meteor and y'all have kind of put it together. So I just recommend if someone's trying to go and listen to it, watch some of it as well. 01:15:06 Speaker 2: Well, I tell you, I couldn't agree with you more. I agreed to do this as a conventional audio podcast. That's the only thing I had known. I guess I'd heard generally that the professionals out there were moving toward video and about two months before we started taping, they said, guess what? We're going to come on up to Bozeman. We're going to start shooting this. I'm like, I'm a, you know, I look like I look, I hope you've got some good video and, and, and pictures. And it's, it's pretty great. I was, I was a little concerned and now I'm not, and now I'm kind of proud and willing to take, uh, credit for something, the video and such, that I have almost nothing to do with. I'm responsible for the words. 01:15:49 Speaker 1: I meant to say this from the beginning. You have a great podcast voice. You really do. 01:15:55 Speaker 2: Coming from you, that means something. 01:15:57 Speaker 1: It does. When I first listened to the episode, I knew the author. I knew what was happening. I'm going to listen to the guy that wrote this book. And when you came on, your voice automatically was just– it was easy to listen to. Your accent's good. Your sound is good. I mean, not to, like, over-critique. 01:16:17 Speaker 3: Your– And the guy that does the voice acting for Mark Twain, holy cow. 01:16:21 Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, that was me, wasn't it? 01:16:22 Speaker 5: Holy cow. 01:16:24 Speaker 1: Absolutely. 01:16:25 Speaker 2: Well, you know. It's been a lot of fun. 01:16:27 Speaker 1: Yeah, great. Well, it's great to meet you. Thank you so much for having me in. And you guys, where are you all headed now? Back home. 01:16:35 Speaker 6: Back home, and I get married in a week. Wow. 01:16:37 Speaker 2: Congratulations. 01:16:38 Speaker 6: Thank you, thank you, thank you. 01:16:39 Speaker 4: Got a busy week coming up. 01:16:40 Speaker 1: I got an idea for your wedding. How about you have a mock gunfight? 01:16:44 Speaker 2: Oh. Yeah. 01:16:45 Speaker 1: With her former boyfriend. Yeah, let's go. 01:16:49 Speaker 4: I'm in on this. 01:16:50 Speaker 5: If you can get him to take a fall. 01:16:53 Speaker 6: Oh, yeah, no, me and him are way too close to do that. 01:16:55 Speaker 4: That's good. 01:16:55 Speaker 2: Yeah. 01:16:56 Speaker 4: If he's too good a shot. 01:16:57 Speaker 6: Hey, funny enough, that is one of the specifications of the VINI we're using was like no firearms are allowed. I'm like, I can't believe like you really need to put that out there. She's like, yeah, you can't open carry at your wedding. 01:17:08 Speaker 1: So no, no gunfighting. Well, congratulations, man. 01:17:11 Speaker 6: Thank you. Thank you. 01:17:12 Speaker 1: That's great. 01:17:12 Speaker 6: So, but yeah, other than that, we're just recording episodes, uh, trying to prep for the rest of the year, get everything else done and be able to focus on editing and, and, uh, really plan out the spring, spring Turkey content with the show. And then also be able to hunt a little bit. 01:17:25 Speaker 1: Yeah. Y'all got any big whitetail hunts lined up? 01:17:28 Speaker 2: Yep. Yeah. 01:17:29 Speaker 4: We're going to Missouri. 01:17:30 Speaker 7: Um, and then we're planning on going to East Texas, I think. Um, But that's up in the air for me because I'm having my second daughter in December. 01:17:37 Speaker 2: Oh, wow. 01:17:38 Speaker 4: That's gracious. 01:17:39 Speaker 7: Yeah, this is our last big podcast trip of the year, kind of getting everything done for the rest of the season. 01:17:44 Speaker 4: So now we can take a little pressure off because he's getting married. I'm having a kid. 01:17:47 Speaker 1: Wow, y'all got a lot going on. It's going to be a busy fall. 01:17:50 Speaker 3: You know what nobody ever says is I'm going to go to Arkansas and kill a big buck. 01:17:54 Speaker 1: Well, let's keep it that way. 01:17:58 Speaker 2: When you're ready, you can come on out to West Texas because they not only got whitetails, they got axes. And a lot of turkey. Oh, and also a lot of pigs. You can shoot the pigs for free. Okay. From your truck. 01:18:12 Speaker 5: While you're open carrying. 01:18:15 Speaker 2: Yeah, actually, yeah. There are, like, no rules about the pigs. 01:18:20 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. 01:18:22 Speaker 6: Great. 01:18:22 Speaker 1: Well, thank you all for coming. We're going to get you guys some Toccova's boots. 01:18:26 Speaker 4: Appreciate it. 01:18:26 Speaker 1: Thank you, man. And, yeah, keep the wild places wild because that's where the bears live.