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. What an eclectic crew that we have today. We have, to my left, we have the Honorable Mo Shepherd from the mountains of Arkansas. Mo's been on here many times before, been a dear storyteller many times. Good to have you, Mo. 00:01:06 Speaker 2: Glad to be here. 00:01:07 Speaker 3: Glad to be here, Clay. 00:01:08 Speaker 1: We got Josh Landbridge, Spillmaker. We're going around counter, well, we're going clockwise. We've got Josh Landbridge, Spillmaker. We've got Bear John Newcomb. 00:01:17 Speaker 2: Yep. 00:01:18 Speaker 1: Bear has a new dog he's going to introduce us to. But in the Toccova's hot seat today, I don't know if you realize it, but you're in the Toccova's hot seat. Do you see those boots on that chair? Is Ron Poole from Hector, Arkansas. And Ron was one of our, he told a story on the last episode about killing a big deer in Iowa that, grew a taproot overnight and a big 232 inch deer and so it's great to have Ron great to have Mo Bear introduce us to your new dog though well give me that phone got a got a new pup. 00:02:04 Speaker 4: Easy girl. 00:02:11 Speaker 1: Got a new pup She's a blue tick out of the Uchman line from Missouri. Her name is Cricket. And she's going to be a coon dog. Pick her up a little bit so we can see her. So she's 10 weeks old. And so in the coon hunting world or in any dog world, there's going to be lines of dogs that are just well-known throughout the country. And, you know, the walkers have their... They're lines that are really good. And the Uchman line in Blue Ticks is a really well-known kind of old-fashioned Blue Tick hound. So you went and met, who did you meet? Lonnie Uchman. Lonnie Uchman. And it was like his grandfather that started the Uchman line? Yeah, I think maybe it was his dad that started it, but it's a 14-generation line, so they go back pretty far. 00:03:06 Speaker 4: Yeah. 00:03:07 Speaker 1: Pretty good dogs. I heard a lot about them. And I was in the market for a coon dog about a year ago. I was looking around and I wanted a blue tick just because, you know, we never had one. I like the way they look. And anyway, I got on a waiting list and a year later. And what Bear didn't know, let me show y'all something. What Bear didn't know is that when he told me that he was getting an Uchman blue tick, I said, oh, son, you're tapping deep into the The Newcomb Roots. 00:03:42 Speaker 2: Oh my. 00:03:43 Speaker 1: This, I saw this in March 1995. The March issue of 1995 of Coonhound Bloodlines when I was 16 years old. And there was a dog named Eastex Blue Boomer. I don't think he was worth a darn. But they had him up for stud in the Coonhound magazine. And he was in Center, Texas, which was like five hours from MENA. 00:04:09 Speaker 4: And, but. 00:04:10 Speaker 1: this dog is out of all the Uchman dogs. So they, you know, on a stud dog advertisement, they're always going to show the dog tree in and looking beautiful. And then they're going to have their pedigree over down here in the corner. And so this dog is double Uchman bred on both sides. So I showed that to Barry. He didn't even know. I didn't even know. 00:04:29 Speaker 4: Yeah. 00:04:30 Speaker 1: And so, so I had a dog, a Uchman dog called Newcomb's Southern Ouachita Blue Thunder. Registered name. You could look it up today. 00:04:41 Speaker 2: That's a powerful name. 00:04:42 Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah. 00:04:43 Speaker 1: Back in the day, I mean, people still do it, but when you register a coon dog, you have these elaborate names, you know. And Thunder was probably better at baying skunks than he was treeing coons, but it was my first, like, well-bred dog, you know, that I hunted for several years when I was in high school. 00:05:06 Speaker 2: What happened to that dog? 00:05:08 Speaker 1: I sold it when I went to college. 00:05:10 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:05:11 Speaker 1: When I went to college. 00:05:11 Speaker 3: I had a blue tick when I was 18. Kept him for nine years. 00:05:15 Speaker 1: Really? 00:05:15 Speaker 3: And he wasn't no big bloodline or anything, but his name, I named him Boomer. 00:05:20 Speaker 4: Boomer. 00:05:20 Speaker 3: And I coon hunted with him. You mentioned that name on that. 00:05:23 Speaker 1: Yeah, East Texas Blue Boomer. 00:05:25 Speaker 3: Anyway, I had him for nine years, hunted with him. 00:05:28 Speaker 1: Was he a decent coon dog? 00:05:29 Speaker 3: He was a decent coon dog. I treated a lot of coons with him. 00:05:32 Speaker 4: Yeah. 00:05:33 Speaker 3: And when I lost him, when he got killed, I lost him. I just quit coon hunting. I didn't coon hunt after that, and I had other irons in the fire and too many other hobbies, and I just quit coon hunting. But I coon hunted from the time I was 11 or 12 years old until I was 29 or 28, I guess. 00:05:51 Speaker 4: Yeah. 00:05:53 Speaker 1: Oh, that's cool. That's cool. Did you ever coon hunt, Ron? 00:05:56 Speaker 4: Raised lots of world champion bloodline dogs. Really? I had Smoky Mountain Blue Sades, Blue Ticks. I had Snowflake Walkers. I had Diamond Gem Walkers. Had ball and banjo. Had quite a few. Really? 00:06:13 Speaker 1: What years were you coon hunting? Like back in the. 00:06:16 Speaker 4: Late 70s and early 80s. That's when I coon hunted too. 79. Down home coons got to $ 86 a hide. 00:06:28 Speaker 2: Wow. 00:06:28 Speaker 4: Wow. Count tails. 00:06:29 Speaker 2: Wow. 00:06:30 Speaker 4: Were you hunting then? 00:06:31 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:06:32 Speaker 3: Up here, you could sell them to the buyers. If they were a really good, big, large coon and had good color to them, you could sell them up here for $ 50. And then they were taking them somewhere from here. 00:06:41 Speaker 4: We were taking them to the fur house. 00:06:43 Speaker 3: Okay. See, I was just giving them to a buyer that was taking them to the fur house. 00:06:47 Speaker 4: And we were coming out one night on the old military road and hit the highway, and there was a coon that had been run over. And I told this boy that was driving, I said, stop. And he said, what for? I said, I'm going to get that cone. And he said, well, it's a mash flat. I said, it might be worth $ 10, you know. And back then. 00:07:10 Speaker 1: $ 10 was $ 2. 00:07:12 Speaker 4: So he pulled off, but he wouldn't back up. He said, if you want it, run back there and get it. Well, I went back there and picked it up. And I thought, boy, I don't feel right. And I turned my light on. And somebody had been coon hunting, and it killed eight coons and skinned them, aced them out, and it stuffed seven inside of one, and I guess laid it up on the dog box. 00:07:35 Speaker 1: No way. And it blowed off. 00:07:37 Speaker 4: And it blowed off, and the truck hit it. You know, it looked like one of them frisbees. But I had eight coons at $ 86. Oh, wow. 00:07:46 Speaker 1: What a story. 00:07:48 Speaker 2: That's a pretty good find. 00:07:50 Speaker 4: Well, I did better than that trapping, though. Well, no, it was coon hunting. My brother bought a pair of dogs, and he gave $ 600 a pair, which in the 70s was a bunch of money. And I bought one I gave $ 35 for. Well, we went hunting together, and my dog traded possum, and I killed it. My brother throwed a fit. He said, I ain't hunting with you. You're going to ruin my dogs, you know. And I said, well, you know, possum's worth $ 0. 35. If I kill a hunter, I paid for my dog, you know. Well, I wound up killing 27 possums with that dog. And we went to Newport to the fire company to sell our fire. And the first calculator I ever saw, this man come in. They said, this is my son. Said, he's going to college over here at Bay Bay Business Administration. Said, he's going to take his place over. And he called their fire out and said, so many coon, you know, that boy could do that. So many mink, you know, and he got to them possums. He said, boy, somebody's going to be tickled. He said, possums has tripled this week. And I thought, dadgum, a dollar a piece. And he counted them out, and he said, 27 possums, $ 27. And he's standing there, and he said, well, if you want to sell, get with my son. And I said, he'll get you the cash money. That boy said, do you want to sail? And I said, well, I know what I want for my fire. I said, what are you offering? Well, he punched it in and owe me a number. And I looked at my brother, you know, and that boy said, you'll either sail or get your stuff and get out of here. He said, there's not going to be any squabbling. I said, that's what you're offering? He said, yes, sir. I said, are you sure? He said, these things do not make mistakes. 00:09:55 Speaker 3: Unless you hit the wrong button. 00:09:56 Speaker 4: I said, well, I guess I'm a selling. And we got back to the truck and going down the road and I got to figuring it out. And when he said 27 possums, $ 27, he gave me $ 27 a piece. 00:10:09 Speaker 1: Oh. So he overpaid you. And you were like, are you sure you want to give me that? You were trying to be honest with him. 00:10:19 Speaker 3: $ 26 is too much. 00:10:20 Speaker 1: Wow. 00:10:21 Speaker 3: $ 26 too much. 00:10:22 Speaker 2: Wow. 00:10:23 Speaker 1: This could be the beginning of, like, the fur trader, the golden experiences of the fur trader. 00:10:30 Speaker 2: We're going to have to have two fur episodes every year now. 00:10:33 Speaker 1: Oh, my goodness. And just going to be his stories. 00:10:37 Speaker 4: Wow. 00:10:37 Speaker 1: I only sold furs one time in the Walmart parking lot in Mena, Arkansas, when I was 16 years old with dogs that thunder treed. Newcomb Southern, Ouachita Blue Thunder. 00:10:48 Speaker 2: Coons. 00:10:49 Speaker 1: Coons. 00:10:49 Speaker 2: Yeah. You said dogs that he treated. 00:10:52 Speaker 1: Coons that Thunder treed. And I had eight coon hides. That's all I had. And I knew there was a fur trader coming through town. Somehow word went around, and you knew when the fur trader was coming through town, and he met people in the Walmart parking lot. And I had my eight coons stuffed in a Walmart sack and went down there, and you had to bring them thawed out. And he looked them over and gave me $ 8 apiece. I got $ 64. 00:11:18 Speaker 2: Was that just the going rate? 00:11:20 Speaker 4: Yeah. 00:11:21 Speaker 1: They were just like not very good green coons. You know, I mean, just mountain, scrawny, not very good haired coons. And I just remember that $ 64 was just like probably the coolest $ 64 that I ever had as a 16-year-old. 00:11:39 Speaker 3: Was that all Finder trade was them cool coons? 00:11:41 Speaker 1: Probably. 00:11:41 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:11:42 Speaker 1: He'd leave the big ones. Yeah. But, and we, yeah, so I got started hunting blue ticks. So this is, we've got in the studio here, we've got Baranukum's moose from Alaska that we just got back. 00:12:02 Speaker 4: It was shipped. 00:12:04 Speaker 1: When you kill a moose in Alaska, it's pretty wild. You have the option to do this. You take the meat in the head to a transporter and they freeze it in a big reefer truck, like a semi truck. I mean, you put it in there yourself, frozen. And they drive it back down to the States, and Bear met these guys in Denton, Texas. 00:12:25 Speaker 4: Yeah. 00:12:26 Speaker 1: And you got your head and all the meat frozen. 00:12:29 Speaker 3: That's why all those other moose heads and stuff was there that you put on your thing, right? 00:12:34 Speaker 2: Right. 00:12:35 Speaker 4: Yeah. 00:12:36 Speaker 1: At my stop in Denton, there were probably 20 other guys with moose, and everyone just pulled their truck up to the back of that semi and then load up their truck. There were some big ones. There were some huge moose in there. My moose, you know, right here, it looks like a big moose, but it was probably one of the smaller moose in the, in the truck. This is a 50 inch moose. So in the, in the Alaskan world, that would be the best I can, the best way I can describe it. It would be like killing. That was Ron. That was Ron's phone. He's got a bar down. You tell me if you think this is right, Bear. A 50-inch moose is like killing a 125-inch whitetail. I honestly would have thought it was like killing a two-and-a-half-year-old eight-point. It's like a good, like, well, okay, 50 inches in many of the zones in Alaska is the legal requirement for, like, a moose has to be 50 inches or have four brow tines. So, I mean, a 50-inch moose is kind of like, hey, this is an adult moose. Like here, I mean, since we're in CWD zones, it's kind of different. But used to, it would have been like a three-point zone, you know. You're talking about the whitetail. Yeah, like comparing it to a whitetail, you would have had to shoot like a Well, okay, think about the other subspecies of moose, like a shiris moose or a Canada moose. Like a 50-inch Canada moose is a big one. I mean, they make them bigger. You can kill 60-inch moose in Canada, plenty of them. But when you actually get into the subspecies of Canada moose, which is further east in Canada, like, I mean, most guys are killing moose in the 40s, like fully mature moose. So for a Yukon moose, this is a smaller buck. Very respectable Yukon moose. 00:14:34 Speaker 4: Right. 00:14:34 Speaker 1: That's the way I calculate it. 00:14:36 Speaker 4: Yeah. 00:14:37 Speaker 1: I think I was talking to the bush plane pilot, and he was telling me that he thinks that moose could be around three or four. 00:14:45 Speaker 4: Yeah. 00:14:45 Speaker 1: And they live to be, you know, they'll be in their prime like seven to eight. 00:14:49 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:14:50 Speaker 3: I like a whitetail deer then. 00:14:52 Speaker 4: Yeah. 00:14:52 Speaker 1: All the deer are about the same. 00:14:54 Speaker 4: Yeah. 00:14:54 Speaker 1: That's what I was thinking. 00:14:55 Speaker 4: Yeah. 00:14:56 Speaker 1: So it's like, yeah, it's a great representation of a, Alaskan Yukon moose. Yeah. Couldn't be happier with it. And I feel like that moose's body was really big. 00:15:06 Speaker 4: Yeah. 00:15:07 Speaker 1: I've seen three moose on the ground. And that moose was, I feel like it was bigger than the other two that I've seen. And we killed two. I mean, Steve Rinell's moose that he killed, I mean, it was a 60-inch moose. 00:15:21 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:15:22 Speaker 1: Mine was a 52-inch moose. And I feel like, I mean, just completely off just visuals. I feel like your moose was, it was big. You know, whenever I shot it, I didn't have much time to like really look it over. But just from looking at the antlers, looking at the moose, I thought, you know, that's probably a, I thought it was a lot smaller than it ended up being. And I think it probably was because the body, like whenever we walked up to it, it still kind of looked smaller than what it ended up being until we pulled the horns out and you can actually see them. 00:15:53 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:15:53 Speaker 1: I think, yeah, maybe the body being bigger made it look smaller. So, Ron, when we killed this moose- We were trying to just get a visual for how big it is. And Bear laid down. So imagine a moose laying on the ground with his back feet just kind of sprawled out. Straight. Yeah, just like that dog right there. Bear laid down by the back of that moose and put the bottom of his feet at the moose's hooves and laid down. And that moose's rump was even with the top of his head. 00:16:24 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:16:25 Speaker 4: Yeah. 00:16:26 Speaker 1: So, basically, the moose, the rump of the moose was six foot one. You're six, are you six one? 00:16:34 Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah. 00:16:34 Speaker 1: Basically, so, I mean, I don't think you could have reached, I think maybe you could have reached up and touched that moose's horns. 00:16:43 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:16:44 Speaker 1: Because his rump was as tall as you. And it rises up to that hump over their shoulders and then the antlers. I mean, it just, you know, you don't ever see one standing tall. If you're hunting them, you're seeing them on the ground. And it's hard to envision if they were standing up. They're just so big. Hard to know how big. 00:17:01 Speaker 2: How much meat did you get? 00:17:02 Speaker 1: It was close to, I think we calculated roughly just with how many pack loads. I think it was like 450, 500. It was weighing down my Danger Ranger. Yeah, it's deboned meat. It was weighing down my Danger Ranger on the way back up. 00:17:18 Speaker 4: Where'd you put it all? 00:17:19 Speaker 1: Just threw it in the bed. I brought two ice chests when it was frozen. Well, we got a bunch of big freezers. Yeah, and some of it's still in the ice chest. Filled it up. Yeah, I brought two big ice chests, and I got there, and I was like, I shouldn't have even brought these ice chests. Well, the only reason I bring this up is I want Ron to tell us about the almost moose hunt he went on. 00:17:39 Speaker 2: Moose hunt that almost happened. 00:17:42 Speaker 4: We almost killed a moose. The first time I went up there, We were driving from the airport back to my cousin's house, and I asked him, I said, do you ever see any moose on the road? He said, oh, you don't ever see a moose here. And I hollered, stop! And this moose come out in the road, and we stopped like five foot from him. And like you said, if you hit a moose, you've knocked his legs out from under you. He's coming through the car. 00:18:11 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 00:18:12 Speaker 4: And anyway, we planned the moose hunt, and they. 00:18:18 Speaker 1: Your cousin. Your cousin lived in Alaska. 00:18:20 Speaker 4: Yeah. And they would float a creek where the highway crossed it. It was 168 miles until they crossed it again. Wow. And they would float that every year. And they killed the moose, and they were in the back part. They had two pontoons, you know. One had gone down, and they waited two hours, and then they followed so they'd give time to quieten down. And they killed the moose and drifted past him and tied their big pontoon up and come back with a meat raft, skint this thing out, and rounded the bend to go, and their main pontoon had floated away. They didn't have any guns. All I had was a knife, no food, no water for two days in bear country. 00:19:21 Speaker 1: Oh, wow. 00:19:23 Speaker 2: Wow. 00:19:24 Speaker 3: Stay close to the raft. 00:19:27 Speaker 4: Anyway, he came down here, and they were going on a three-week Hawaiian cruise. And when they got back, we were going to Alaska to moose hunt. 00:19:40 Speaker 1: So this is the story I was queuing in on. 00:19:44 Speaker 4: And the day they pulled out of port, he passed away. 00:19:48 Speaker 2: On the ship? 00:19:49 Speaker 4: On the ship. And they wouldn't turn around and come back. So they put him in storage and went to Hawaii, and his wife was going to get him off and fly him back home and found out that it could take six months to get him back through customs. So they left him on the ship. And they moved her up to the presidential suite up top. And he stayed there three weeks until they got home. And then the cruise line paid for his funeral and all. But that was the extent of my moose hunt. 00:20:25 Speaker 1: So you never got to go because the guy you were going with died just weeks before you were supposed to go. 00:20:31 Speaker 4: Yeah, and then... A friend of mine that bear hunts with me went to Africa hunting, and they called and asked if I would take the owner of this place bear hunting. I told them, yeah. Well, he came over and he killed a bear, and he told me, he said, you got free hunting. He said, plan on staying three weeks, kill anything you want to kill so it's not going to cost you a penny. And he died. 00:21:01 Speaker 2: And I hope I don't ever go hunting with Ron. 00:21:02 Speaker 1: Don't invite Ron anywhere. Don't plan a hunt with Ron. Now, I'm still a little bit hung up on this, the cruise ship. So they've taken off from port. The guy dies, and they won't turn around. So the wife just has to stay on the cruise with her husband who's passed away. 00:21:27 Speaker 4: Crazy. 00:21:28 Speaker 1: In the freezer? What year? Was this a long time ago? 00:21:31 Speaker 4: No, like 2004, somewhere along there. 00:21:36 Speaker 1: Okay. I feel like today they would helicopter out to get, I mean, I don't know. 00:21:42 Speaker 2: I don't know. 00:21:43 Speaker 1: Cruise ships. Put him in the freezer. 00:21:46 Speaker 3: Well, I think what that amounts to, I've heard of that before, and I think on cruise ships, if somebody dies, they don't know exactly what they died from necessarily, and they don't want To remove that body until an examiner can examine the body in case it's something bad that could be spread to other people that they take off of those cruise ships. I've heard that. 00:22:06 Speaker 2: Oh, wow. 00:22:06 Speaker 3: Does that make sense what I'm saying? 00:22:07 Speaker 4: Yeah. 00:22:09 Speaker 1: So maybe there's some protocol on there. 00:22:10 Speaker 3: Protocol is what I think it is. 00:22:12 Speaker 1: Wow. 00:22:13 Speaker 3: I was asking about him. I don't guess I ever told you this. I was within one year going on a moose hunt in Canada. My buddy that I was hunting with in Colorado and killed elk with my recurve bow and stuff with passed away the year before we were going up there. He was retiring. December that year, he got an aneurysm and died in October. We were going to go the next fall to Canada. He was going to take me up there. He'd saved up with his retirement money, and we were going to go to Canada. 00:22:38 Speaker 4: Oh, wow. 00:22:39 Speaker 3: It was a moose hunt, and he passed away, and I didn't get to go. 00:22:42 Speaker 1: Wow, look at this. 00:22:44 Speaker 4: Golly. 00:22:45 Speaker 1: Tough times. 00:22:47 Speaker 3: He's the one that always went to that. 00:22:48 Speaker 1: Yeah, I know. 00:22:49 Speaker 3: He's the one that we've killed elk up there with our anchors. 00:22:51 Speaker 1: Yes, I know who you're talking about. 00:22:53 Speaker 4: He might have. 00:22:54 Speaker 3: He lived in Winfrey Valley. 00:22:57 Speaker 1: Might ought to call Steve, see if he's all right. 00:23:00 Speaker 3: He lived in Winfrey Valley. His name was Tommy Pence. 00:23:03 Speaker 1: Tommy Pence. 00:23:05 Speaker 3: Long line of pences in Winfrey Valley down there. 00:23:08 Speaker 4: I'll be darned. Well, shoot. There we go. 00:23:13 Speaker 1: Hey, I forgot to tell y'all, you're in the Toccova's hot seat, and you're going to get, and you, Mo. 00:23:21 Speaker 2: Really? 00:23:21 Speaker 1: We're going to give you both pair of Toccova's boots. Toccova's boots are really nice boots, Ron. And you'll get a, well, you can get whatever kind of boots you want. You can get all kinds. 00:23:33 Speaker 3: I've looked at boots. 00:23:34 Speaker 2: They got cowboy boots. They got work boots like that. 00:23:37 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. They've got, yeah, I got a new pair of their work boots. They've got a composite to work boot. 00:23:43 Speaker 3: Didn't they make a line of like snake boots or something other? 00:23:46 Speaker 4: Oh, yeah. 00:23:47 Speaker 1: Yeah, they have some big. 00:23:48 Speaker 4: No, no, no. 00:23:49 Speaker 2: He means those like snake skin boots or snakes or like... Like snake gator boots. 00:23:53 Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah. 00:23:54 Speaker 1: Like the tall. 00:23:55 Speaker 3: Yeah, I know they make the snake skin boots. 00:23:57 Speaker 2: Those were a limited run. I don't know if they still have them. 00:24:00 Speaker 1: That's true. 00:24:01 Speaker 3: I've never seen them in one of their catalog days. 00:24:03 Speaker 1: Yeah, those are pretty sharp. Those are pretty sharp. 00:24:06 Speaker 4: You can take a pair of them work boots and soak them with bear grease and rub them down every three or four months. They'll last the rest of your life. 00:24:14 Speaker 3: Never leak. 00:24:15 Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah. 00:24:16 Speaker 2: Never leak. True. 00:24:17 Speaker 4: I've got a bear I've been wearing for eight years. It's still good. 00:24:23 Speaker 1: Rub them down with bear grease. 00:24:25 Speaker 4: They start drying. 00:24:26 Speaker 3: Imagine that, bear grease doing stuff like that. 00:24:28 Speaker 4: Bear grease. 00:24:30 Speaker 2: Like a magic potion. 00:24:31 Speaker 3: It is. 00:24:32 Speaker 1: Hey, there will be information released in my book, American Bear, that's going to be available for pre-order in early November. This is huge. 00:24:47 Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah. 00:24:47 Speaker 1: It's going to be available for pre-order. But we, this will be the first time I've talked about this. I think this is an appropriate group. Ron Poole, Mo Shepard, Bear Newcomb, Josh Spillmaker. Y'all are the only ones listening to this, right? 00:24:59 Speaker 2: Yes. 00:24:59 Speaker 4: Yeah. 00:25:00 Speaker 1: So we had bear grease analyzed by the top level technology in the world for analyzing lipids, oils, right? Basically, I wanted to know why bear grease had all the qualities that it had. Because when Europeans first arrived here on this continent, they found Native Americans in the East using bear grease in copious amounts on their skin. They found them using it in their hair. They said they could forecast weather with it. Bear grease lasted longer than any other oils, just like was shelf-stable oil. And there's all this folklore about bear grease curing rheumatism, arthritis, bear grease making your hair grow, which was a very common theme that's still known around the world. And basically, we sent a vial of bear grease from the Washtenaw Mountains and had it analyzed by this lab, Emory Lab in Atlanta, Georgia. And it was really cool because I first met with this lady who was a PhD lipid specialist. And I said, hey, I want to get this bear grease analyzed. I want to know what's in it. And she said, oh, you won't need to do that. It's already been done. And she said, we just need to look in the literature, the scientific literature, and find where they've analyzed American black bear oil. And it'll be there, and I'll give you your information. I was like, oh, great. That's cool. Well, we go look in the literature. And the technology changed about 10 years ago. And so they had run bare oil through the older technology. 00:26:44 Speaker 3: But not the new. 00:26:45 Speaker 1: But not the new. And she comes back to me and she says, Clay, actually, it's never been done on this new spectrometer. It's called, I'm not even going to say the name of the machine. It's an acronym. But basically, all oils in any industry, Any jar of oil, and this is a jar of bear grease right here. There are thousands of different species of lipids in this that makes it bear oil. Any kind of oil. You can take olive oil, and it would have different species of oil in it that makes it what it is. And basically, we analyzed bear grease. I have a whole chapter on the bear grease in my book, American Bear, about Going to Atlanta and meeting this lady and what I learned. And then the chapter then goes into the Bear Grease oil trade and how the Mississippi River was a highway for Bear Grease for basically 100 years. And anyway, it's pretty interesting. But you can use bear oil to oil down your Tacobas is what Ron's saying. 00:27:56 Speaker 4: Yes. 00:28:03 Speaker 1: That's right. That's right. That's in the book. That's in the book. 00:28:10 Speaker 4: Yes. 00:28:11 Speaker 1: Well, so this last episode, so on the Bear Grease Render, which is what this podcast is, typically we talk about what happened on the last episode. And the last episode was our deer stories episode. Every year we do two deer stories episodes where we go around, gather up deer stories, and just Tell some good ones. Ron told a story. Mo's told stories on lots of Deer Stories episodes, but not on this one. Josh, which episode stood out to you? 00:28:49 Speaker 2: I have to say there were some really great stories on these last two episodes, but I really enjoyed because I got to meet Margie Saul. Yeah. Just her talking about when I walked into their They have a minnow farm in Duval's Bluff, Arkansas. The grandfather had started this minnow farm. I walked in and their office there, like you said on the podcast, is just full of every kind of species of anything you could get mounted hanging in there, including a polar bear. Probably at least an eight foot square polar bear that was killed by the grandfather. There's a caribou in there that that the grandmother had killed. And Margie, I met with William Saul, who's the current kind of runs the business now. And he's the grandson of the gentleman who started it. He said, you need to talk to my mom. She's killed a bunch of these deer. And I said, really? She was standing there. She's like, and, and when you look at her, she's just this sweet lady. And you, I mean, not what you would expect to be an avid hunter. And she just loves hunting. And, uh, I sat her down to talk to her, and she was a little bit timid to record. But she started talking, and she started telling us when she was 56, they deliver minnows with an 18-wheeler tanker all over the country. Their main driver got a different offer, and they encouraged us, said, if you get a better offer, we want you to be able to provide for your family. So he left, and she and her husband got their CDL at 56. And she got a Class A CDL and started delivering minnows all over the country with her husband. Wow. But just listen to her tell stories and how passionate she is about hunting. And she started bow hunting. And I'm kind of coming off a high from this weekend. And I told my wife about that story. And it kind of gave me the idea. I asked my wife. I said, hey, would you ever be interested in shooting a bow? And my wife was like. Yes, and before she could even get a full yes out of her mouth, I had bought her a bow, and she was shooting, and she just loved it. And this weekend, she killed her first deer and killed it with a bow, and it was just neat to see that story about Margie and just kind of touch my own family, you know, so it was pretty neat. 00:31:12 Speaker 1: Josh, or Bear, did you know that Christy killed a deer with a bow? I saw the picture. Well, I got on to them because they showed me the picture, and I was like, wow, this is incredible, Christy killed a deer. 00:31:25 Speaker 3: When did she start hunting? 00:31:27 Speaker 1: Well, she was, okay, in the picture she was wearing Hunter's Orange, and we know that it's primitive firearms season right now in Arkansas. 00:31:35 Speaker 3: Alternative weapons season. 00:31:36 Speaker 1: Alternative weapons. 00:31:37 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:31:38 Speaker 1: And first time I knew Christy had been deer hunting, and I just assumed that she's hunted with a straight wall rifle. And so last night at church, Christy was like, yeah, I drew back the bow. And I said, what? You killed her with a bow? You didn't look at the picture close enough. I probably didn't. But there was no bow in the picture. There was an arrow. 00:32:00 Speaker 3: There was an arrow laying there, at least the one I got sent. 00:32:02 Speaker 1: Yeah, this is a rookie mistake, Josh. Rookie mistake. 00:32:07 Speaker 2: I screwed up. I apologize to the world. 00:32:09 Speaker 4: Yes, yes. 00:32:10 Speaker 2: My wife is a bow huntress. 00:32:11 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. I told her soon she's going to be, you know, the algorithm is going to start feeding her Cam Haines, shooting his bow, you know. She's going to be the ultimate. 00:32:21 Speaker 3: She's hunted for a long time trying to get one with a bow. 00:32:24 Speaker 4: Yeah. 00:32:24 Speaker 1: Well, she's, he's killed a few. He's killed a few with a bow. 00:32:27 Speaker 3: He told me, took him a while. 00:32:29 Speaker 2: Took me a while. Yep. 00:32:30 Speaker 1: That's a big deal. 00:32:32 Speaker 2: She smoked it too. She's, she straight up smoked it. I mean, just couldn't have hit a better shot. 00:32:37 Speaker 1: Well, she's, she's jumped so quickly into elite bow hunting. She may need to become like these guys and shoot instinctive. Well, all three of them shoot instinctive, no sights. 00:32:49 Speaker 2: True. 00:32:49 Speaker 1: And I, I mean, I can shoot instinctive. 00:32:53 Speaker 2: Make her watch Dan Fitzgerald videos. 00:32:57 Speaker 1: Did you ever meet Dan Fitzgerald? Did you really? 00:32:59 Speaker 4: He grew up at Buckhorn. 00:33:02 Speaker 1: In Arkansas. 00:33:03 Speaker 3: Oh, really? 00:33:04 Speaker 2: I didn't know he grew up in Arkansas. 00:33:05 Speaker 4: He's blind in his right eye. He's been since he was a kid, and he shoots right-handed instinctive. 00:33:12 Speaker 1: I'll be darned. 00:33:14 Speaker 3: I knew he was from Arkansas. I didn't know just where, but I knew he was from Arkansas. 00:33:17 Speaker 4: He was about nine miles from where I was raised. 00:33:20 Speaker 1: So you knew him. And Dan's still alive. 00:33:23 Speaker 4: He's 80. 00:33:23 Speaker 1: I think Dan's 80 years old. 00:33:25 Speaker 2: I wanted. 00:33:28 Speaker 1: In the original... In the original document, when the Bear Grease podcast wasn't even real, and we were just talking about it, making it, they told me to make a list of 26 mock... You know, just potential episodes. 00:33:45 Speaker 3: Are you telling me that? 00:33:47 Speaker 1: Of what I wanted. And on that list... was an episode called Searching for Dan Fitzgerald. And the episode was going to be about, like, where's Dan Fitzgerald? Because Dan Fitzgerald was so legendary in the 80s and 90s. He was one of the first guys, if not the first guy, filming... At least getting it on television and making DVDs of like over-the-shoulder bow hunts. And he was like super passionate. And then I don't want to, I don't know, he kind of disappeared. 00:34:31 Speaker 4: Yeah. 00:34:32 Speaker 1: But he actually didn't disappear. He's still going strong. 00:34:36 Speaker 2: He kind of disappeared out of the mainstream. 00:34:38 Speaker 1: I mean, that's what some would say. And so, anyway, but it's just never worked out. I've been in contact with him quite a bit. And it's just, he's kind of a hard guy to wrangle. But because he's out there just being Dan Fitzgerald, you know. 00:34:55 Speaker 3: I remember seeing stuff about him when I was in my early 20s and early. 00:34:58 Speaker 4: 80s, you know. 00:35:00 Speaker 3: And like I said, he kind of went away and didn't know what happened to him or anything. 00:35:04 Speaker 4: Yeah. 00:35:06 Speaker 1: He's still bow hunting and still. And they're on his son. guy uh runs their they've got a big facebook page yeah i mean like hundreds of thousands of people so he didn't just vanish right but uh but anyway. 00:35:25 Speaker 4: He used to be with bob polkroyd they put out no films together and then they split and and started on his own you know and bob went with ass pro yeah Did it for a while. 00:35:43 Speaker 1: Yeah. Why did you. 00:35:46 Speaker 1: You shot instinctive your whole life? Just never had sights? 00:35:51 Speaker 4: I went through a phase there for a year or two that I had them, but I felt... I got to know how far it is, and I got to be able to decide what pin to put on it. You sound like me. I just wanted to kill them. 00:36:10 Speaker 1: You didn't want to worry about the details. 00:36:12 Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, when I was in my prime, I shot for about every major company out there, and the first IBO World Championships in 1990, we shot up to 80 yards. And if you wasn't in the 10 ring, you wasn't in the running. 00:36:36 Speaker 3: Didn't stand a chance. 00:36:37 Speaker 4: Oh, I've been in the top five, five times. I would just never needed pans. 00:36:48 Speaker 2: Shooting a compound? Were you shooting a compound? 00:36:50 Speaker 4: Shooting a compound unaided is what they called it. Didn't have no sights or nothing. Wow. 00:36:56 Speaker 1: When you draw the arrow, do you draw it under your eye or do you anchor down on your lip? 00:37:01 Speaker 4: I put that finger under right there in my nose. And on the compound, I look to the right side of the string. 00:37:08 Speaker 1: Really? The right side of the string? 00:37:11 Speaker 2: Compound. 00:37:12 Speaker 4: I don't with a recurve or a longbow, but I do with a compound. 00:37:19 Speaker 1: All of us in the room are like pulling up our bow, trying to understand how to look on the right side of the arrow. 00:37:26 Speaker 4: And you'll get skin off your nose. Once in a while, won't you? That's why I was the most accurate. I mean, we'd shoot. I could set it up to 80 yards and you could be shooting a coon or a bobcat target at 80 yards where the kill zone's up there. 00:37:44 Speaker 1: So you didn't use any kind of aiming point. And let me explain that to people. So when you shoot instinctive, well, instinctive to most people would just be you're not shooting sights. You have no sights on your bow. You're throwing. 00:38:00 Speaker 3: There's a difference. 00:38:01 Speaker 1: Well, I'm going to talk about gap shooting. But like, instinctive would be equivalent in some ways to like throwing a baseball. Like you don't, you don't, you're just instinctively throwing the ball where you're looking in your hand-eye coordination and you hit it. But there's a technique in traditional archery, gap shooting, which basically when the bow is at full draw, you use the tip of your arrow to basically, it's like a sight pin and you kind of have to judge yardage. 00:38:35 Speaker 3: That's why a lot of people shoot three curves and long bows. 00:38:39 Speaker 1: How do you shoot? 00:38:39 Speaker 3: I shoot instinctive. 00:38:41 Speaker 1: Just like throwing a baseball. 00:38:43 Speaker 3: Wherever I want to hit, I stare at that spot, and when it feels right, I don't even realize when I release there a lot of times. 00:38:49 Speaker 4: It just goes. It's got to be spontaneous. I mean, you can't say, well, I need to hold my arrow right there, and I need to shoot now. 00:38:58 Speaker 3: Concentrate, you draw, and you shoot. 00:39:00 Speaker 4: You missed. I look to the right side of my string with a compound, and it's kind of like shooting quail when they jump. You know, you see the barrel, but you see the bird too, and you're looking at the bird. You're not looking at the barrel. 00:39:17 Speaker 3: Mine takes over and points that gun barrel just like it does when you're shooting instinctive with a bow. In my opinion, that's how it works. 00:39:23 Speaker 4: It's kind of like a tank. You know, a tank, you have to elevate that barrel down so far to hit what distance you want to hit when you draw and you concentrate on your spot and this arm stops it's time to shoot because. 00:39:38 Speaker 3: That calculation it's it's there. 00:39:49 Speaker 1: Yeah, I've recently switched over to instinctual in the last year and a half. And I've been finding that the more that I try to aim that arrow, even if I'm not looking at the arrow, but the more I'm like, oh, I think I might need to put it a little higher, you know, a little far off. 00:40:05 Speaker 3: It's going to be high. 00:40:06 Speaker 1: It's just all about just doing the same thing every time. Like I quit focusing on where my arrow is going to go. I just look at where I want it to go. And then my main focus when I'm shooting now is just get my anchor point and get fully drawn out. And then when I shoot, that arrow... So the way to think about it, if you're not familiar with archery, is that if you took any of these bows that we're shooting, even a wooden traditional bow or even a self bow, which is the most primitive bow made of a single piece of wood that they carve out of Osage or Hickory or whatever, if you put that bow in a jig and you had a robot that just held on to the handle, drew the string back, and shot it, That bow would pretty much shoot the exact same every single time. 00:40:49 Speaker 3: You'd run a lot of errors. 00:40:50 Speaker 1: If you, if you, if you drew it back to the exact, so the variables are basically how far you draw the bow back. Because if you, when a human draws a bow and there's no wheels, a compound bow, you can only, you draw it back to like a single spot. Traditional bow, you could draw it back 10 inches or 12 inches or 20 inches or 29 inches. So there's one variable. So, that's why your anchor is so important. Like where you draw the bow to, but also it's your bow arm out. But, but then, so the whole thing is about just consistency in your form and just doing the same thing right every time. And it feels to me like with archery that you either got to be like all in instinctive. Like you guys are just like, Hey, every time you try to, intellectually manipulate that area by like thinking about how to aim you mess it up it's either like all in or all nothing because the other version of archery is incredibly technical with compound bows sights stabilizers dialing your sight pin to the exact yardage using the range finder so it's either like you're either all in yeah or or or all in with the technology or all in with like human instinct that comes from repetition like a quarterback throwing a football how's that sound ron is that about right. 00:42:26 Speaker 4: Well your left hand is just as important as your right hand i mean you've got to keep it still so you hear it hit the target instead of Banking the shower curtain back to see where you hit. 00:42:40 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:42:42 Speaker 3: That's a good assertion right there. That makes good sense. 00:42:45 Speaker 4: On your release, you see these argued archers that are gap shooters. And whenever they shoot, they say, try to pick a golf ball off your shoulder. That's something you got to think about doing. When I shoot, I want to do this. Right, right. When I shoot, I don't want my hand to move from my face. If you shoot and your fingers are straight, You tried to open your hand. 00:43:11 Speaker 1: Right. 00:43:11 Speaker 4: You can't open it fast enough to get away from it. Yeah. So when you're doing this, you're pulling the string to the right, which is going to make your arrow shoot that way. Mm-hmm. But if you shoot and your hand is relaxed and just hanging right beside your face, you've got a good release. 00:43:29 Speaker 2: Mm. 00:43:30 Speaker 4: But it's got to surprise you. You can't look at it and say, I need to shoot now. Yeah. Because you're going to miss. 00:43:37 Speaker 3: I said a while ago, when you make a good shot, you don't realize you've released air or anything. You just see the air flying. 00:43:44 Speaker 4: You have no idea when it's going off. 00:43:46 Speaker 1: The mystical flight of the arrow. 00:43:49 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:43:50 Speaker 1: Well, so in your deer story that you told, Ron, about killing a 232-inch buck and watching it for 30-something minutes before you got a shot, you're sitting there with a Compound bow, but with no sights. I was thinking about just how difficult that would be. How far was the shot on that big deer? 35 yards. 00:44:16 Speaker 4: 35 yards. 00:44:17 Speaker 1: That's a long shot with a compound with sights. I mean, most guys, I don't care who you are, anybody out there that thinks they're a good bow hunter with a compound bow, and any of us can go out with a target and hit a deer at 35 yards. 00:44:34 Speaker 4: I mean.... 00:44:36 Speaker 1: You can be an elite archer. Mo, did you listen to the episode? 00:44:41 Speaker 3: Listened to both of them, the first episodes and the second episodes. 00:44:44 Speaker 1: Well, we only had... Yeah, we did have both of them. What stories stood out to you? Did any of them just. 00:44:52 Speaker 3: It was such a conglomerate of different things on the whole thing, from darting deer to doe hunting, you know, to fill your freezer, to killing big bucks like Ron did, to... Just killing a deer to almost tragedy happened, two different stories. It's hard to pinpoint one down. I really enjoyed both of them. 00:45:13 Speaker 4: I'm glad I wasn't involved in. 00:45:14 Speaker 3: Them this time. I got to listen to them a little bit. But I didn't really, you know, if I had to pick one out, maybe just because of the situation he's in, I'm kind of in that situation, but not as near what he is right now is Teddy Valines' story where he killed a buck, you know, years ago. Him and his buddy was hunting and he kills a deer, you know, and then they lose the horns, lose all the pictures, lose everything of his evidence. And then he talks about him with the cancer and stuff, you know, and how he's blessed that he's still going right now, whatever he's doing, whether he's logging or cutting timber or still able. 00:45:54 Speaker 4: To hunt, you know. 00:45:56 Speaker 3: And I kind of sided with that because of the time he hunted. When I first started hunting a little bit in the mountains of White Rock, there was few of the old timers ran dogs in, you know. 00:46:06 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:46:06 Speaker 3: I never killed a deer in front of a dog because I wasn't very good when I was a young teenager, you know, as far as shooting, stuff like that, you know. But my dad has killed them that way and my uncles have killed them in front of dogs back in the 60s and early 70s. And then with Teddy with his cancer and it, you know, getting remission or whatever it is and, you know, I had my cancer three years ago now and it hasn't come back on me and my kidneys or anything. So, I kind of tied in with that story really well because of all those things right there. Yeah. 00:46:37 Speaker 1: That was one of my favorite stories on that first episode, too, was Teddy's story. And to me, the interesting part was just that he gave up that rack. He didn't fight the guy. Yeah, which was kind of surprising. I mean, I don't even think he ever raised a question. I think the guy just kind of was like, well, that's my deer because I shot it last. And I don't think he ever even confront, you know, it was just like, well, now let's talk about this. 00:47:08 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:47:10 Speaker 1: Or, you know, he just kind of let the guy take it. Yeah. I don't think Ron listened to that episode. Let me ask you a question. Let me give you a scenario, and you tell me what is the right thing to do. Two guys are standing here deer hunting. Dogs are running. One guy has been on his stand. And his buddy, who's supposed to be on another stand, walks over to hunter one's stand. While they're standing there together, a big buck runs by. And hunter number one, who's supposed to be on his stand, you know, they're in his spot, shoots the deer. 00:47:50 Speaker 4: Boom! 00:47:51 Speaker 1: And the deer goes down but isn't fully dead and is kind of getting away a little bit. His gun jams so he can't shoot again. So hunter number two who's supposed to be on the other stand over here, just follows up right behind him and shoots the deer and kills it. Whose deer is that? 00:48:10 Speaker 4: Well, the way I was raised, and we hunted dogs, first blood, that was his deer. 00:48:18 Speaker 3: The same way as when I was growing up. 00:48:20 Speaker 4: Yeah. And whoever killed that deer gave half the deer to the man that owned the dog. 00:48:28 Speaker 1: Well, okay, in this scenario, the man that owned the dogs was hunter number one that drew first blood. They were his dogs. 00:48:35 Speaker 3: He turned them loose and everything. 00:48:37 Speaker 1: Yeah. So in the story, hunter number two, it's two young guys. I mean, Teddy Velines was 20. Then, like I said, he's just a little bit older than me, not much. And then that was in 78. He would have been about 20 years old. He was just a young guy, about Bear's age. 00:48:53 Speaker 4: I was 18. 00:48:54 Speaker 1: And it was his buddy, so another guy his age. And they kill a deer that I– the interesting part of the story was there's no pictures, and the rack burned up in a house fire. Two house fires, actually. One burned up the rack, and then Teddy's house burned and burned up the pictures. pictures of it and uh and just by by the estimation and what i know about those guys and what they know about big deer i think it was probably 170 inch at least 160 inch mainframe typical 10 point well 12 point 12 point that's right 21 inches on the inside off the base made it a 13 point yes i mean just a monster and anyway Shooter number two claimed the deer. 00:49:40 Speaker 3: Claimed the rack, anyway. 00:49:42 Speaker 1: Claimed the rack. Yeah. 00:49:44 Speaker 3: Shooter number one tagged the deer. 00:49:46 Speaker 1: Shooter number one tags the deer. And then just like when they're skinning it, the guy is just like, well, the rack's mine because I killed the deer. 00:49:54 Speaker 3: And he stood off. 00:49:55 Speaker 1: And, yeah. So, anyway, and Teddy never balked about it. 00:50:01 Speaker 2: Going on these rules, I think I owe Josh Barger a deer. Yes, you do. 00:50:07 Speaker 4: This happened years ago, and it's hard to even imagine. 00:50:13 Speaker 1: Ron, let me move your mic up just a little bit. There you go. 00:50:19 Speaker 4: Guy's last name was Lloyd Rogers. He was a little short, fat man down home. And anyway, the dogs come running through, and he shot a deer and tagged it. And was sitting on the deer. And his nephew pulls up in a truck and he gets up and they drop the tailgate and the deer jumps up and runs off. 00:50:46 Speaker 1: With the tag on it. 00:50:47 Speaker 4: With the tag on it. The mayor of Biscoe's wife got the deer. And Lloyd ran up there and was hollering, my deer, my deer. And she said, it ain't your deer. He said, I killed this deer. He said, well, let me get my tag. 00:51:07 Speaker 1: Your tag was. 00:51:10 Speaker 3: Still on it. 00:51:10 Speaker 4: Yeah. 00:51:11 Speaker 1: Wow, that's incredible. Well, that ties into Lane Weaver's story, which Lane Weaver, he was the guy that told the story after you, the guy from the Ozarks up here. He had a story inside of a story. I said it was layered like a- He. 00:51:27 Speaker 3: Shot two different deer that both got up to their feet trying to get away. 00:51:31 Speaker 1: Well, the big deer that he ends up killing, he starts telling this story about a 160-inch deer called Edward Longtines that he ends up killing. That deer, his neighbor had shot it with a muzzleloader, watched it fall in the field, actually had walked over to the deer- And now, I didn't get the... I didn't... There was just so much going on, I didn't stop laying and ask him if the guy actually put his hands on the deer. But the impression that I got is that the guy was sitting in a deer stand, shoots this Edward Longtines, 160-inch buck, walks over to the deer. 00:52:11 Speaker 3: Sees it's dead or he thinks. 00:52:12 Speaker 1: I mean, like, the deer is dead. 00:52:15 Speaker 3: And goes, gets his flatbed truck. Is that what I'm thinking of? 00:52:17 Speaker 1: Walks back to his truck and... Driving through the field, the deer is still dead, laying there in the field. Gets 50 yards from it, and through the windshield of the truck, he sees the buck jump up and run off and live. And then in the story, you know, Lane Weaver kills the buck months later, like perfectly fine, and kills the deer with a bow. Did they know where it got hit? They were shooting these deer in the neck. Everyone, so the week before, Lane told the story of when he was 20 years old or something, shooting a deer in the neck and walking up to it, dragging it off, like dragging it home. 00:53:03 Speaker 3: Under a fence or through a fence. 00:53:04 Speaker 1: And it jumps up and runs off and hits him and scares him to death. And three weeks later, they see the deer alive jump the road. I mean, this is a deer he had his hands on and was dragging back to the truck. 00:53:20 Speaker 3: He said you could see the spot on his neck there is what he told him. 00:53:24 Speaker 1: And then he, and this was in the first episode too, he tells another story of shooting a big deer in the neck with a 270. I believe it was a 270 rifle. Shot a deer in the neck at like 80 yards with a 270. 00:53:39 Speaker 3: A 7 mag, wasn't it? 00:53:39 Speaker 1: 7 mag. 00:53:40 Speaker 4: Yeah. Yes. 00:53:42 Speaker 1: And walks up to the deer and he's like, by now, because of what happened, he was pretty cautious walking up to a dead deer. 00:53:49 Speaker 3: That's when he shot in the back of the head. 00:53:51 Speaker 1: And he poked it. It thought it was dead. And it jumps up and runs off. And he shoots it. 00:53:57 Speaker 3: And kills it. 00:53:58 Speaker 4: Yes. 00:53:59 Speaker 1: I guess what's happening is whenever there's certain spots you hit in the neck where it just drops from the shock. 00:54:07 Speaker 3: Shock. 00:54:07 Speaker 2: Shocks it. 00:54:08 Speaker 1: And then it's just not hitting anything vital. And then once the shock kind of wears off, they just. 00:54:12 Speaker 4: Yeah. 00:54:13 Speaker 1: Whenever I shot my big buck last year, I shot it like 25 yards. 6.5 Creedmoor, but had some... I can't remember what the deal was. It was something with the bullets. They didn't go through the shoulder at all. Well, the bullets we were shooting were basically just a copper... Didn't have a... I mean, just like a fully copper bullet. So it's designed when it hits, it just turns to shrapnel. Yeah, and basically I hit it in the shoulder, and there was nothing on the inside of that deer. Like, its heart, lungs, nothing got shot. just had shrapnel on the outside of its shoulder. When I walked up to it, it appeared to be dead, but I was watching it for a while and it wasn't dying. So I went ahead and put a follow-up just because, you know, it was the biggest buck of my life. 00:55:03 Speaker 3: Hard thing to do. 00:55:04 Speaker 1: And then, yeah, and then whenever I did the autopsy, I wondered if maybe he wouldn't have, maybe if it just shocked him and dropped him. It kind of reminds me of the story last year that Matt Taylor told of the guy in his camp getting kicked by a deer. 00:55:18 Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. 00:55:22 Speaker 3: All stuff happens in the deer woods. 00:55:24 Speaker 4: I had some friends that they were coming out of the mountains down to Russellville to build a house. And I said, the deer, there wasn't many deer then. This was in the 30s. And there was a deer hung up in a page wire fence. Had his legs caught in it. Well, anyway, they took a hammer and knocked this deer in the head. And they They put it in the trunk of their car and said there was an old deaf mute that lived down the road from them and said he was walking and they stopped and he got in the back seat and said they was driving down the road and said, man, he just went to, and they finally got the truck stopped and he jumped out and took off running and that deer had come alive in the back of the, trunk of that car and was kicking the back seat. 00:56:18 Speaker 1: Oh my goodness so they were just giving this guy a ride to be nice yeah just picked him up and they couldn't tell him that there's a deer in the in the back because the guy wow the complexities of that. 00:56:32 Speaker 2: Story a lot of layers there. 00:56:37 Speaker 1: Oh my goodness wow wow gosh wow well. 00:56:44 Speaker 4: Oh, man. 00:56:47 Speaker 1: I don't even know where to go from that one. The story, a story that hit home with me because it always does when I hear tree stand accident stories of Jim Malone falling 20 feet out of a tree and not even getting hurt. 00:57:12 Speaker 3: There were several things there that Looked over him. It was the vines, the good Lord, a little bit of everything to keep him from dying or getting hurt really bad that far up. Yes. 00:57:20 Speaker 2: Christy killed her deer 150 yards. 00:57:21 Speaker 1: You fell out of a tree, Ron? 00:57:24 Speaker 4: It's hard to believe. I had a boy at church that was scared of heights. And he wanted to bow hunt. And I said, if I climbed up the back of a cedar tree and then cut some limbs out to put you stand where you can't see the ground, you think you could hunt? And he said, yeah. I go over there. and walk about a mile and probably three-quarters of a mile back into this food plot. And I'm cutting out the back of this cedar tree, you know, and I get up about 20, 25 foot and I climb down and tie my stand on a rope and climb back up a tree. And I'm on the opposite side of the tree from where I've got cut out. And then on a green limb, it's probably four inches. Hugging the tree, pulling the stand up the backside, and that limb sheared off right with the tree. 00:58:20 Speaker 1: A live limb. 00:58:22 Speaker 4: Yes, a live limb. 00:58:23 Speaker 2: Wow. 00:58:24 Speaker 4: A big limb. And anyway, I fell and I broke my back. 00:58:32 Speaker 1: Did you go down through a bunch of limbs? I mean, because in the cedar, you were climbing through limbs, so you were just like hitting stuff as you went down. 00:58:40 Speaker 4: Yeah. 00:58:41 Speaker 1: How did you land? 00:58:43 Speaker 4: On my back. 00:58:44 Speaker 1: Just flat on your back. 00:58:45 Speaker 4: Well, on my shoulders and my back. And I moved my arms and legs and I thought, well, ain't nothing broke. And I tried to get up and I couldn't. 00:58:57 Speaker 1: How old were you? 00:58:59 Speaker 4: Sixty. 00:59:01 Speaker 2: Oh, wow. 00:59:03 Speaker 4: Anyway, I had a 30-foot rope on my stand and I tied my bow and my stand, and I'd crawl 30 feet and pull it to me and crawl 30 feet and pull it to me. Finally got back to the truck, and I couldn't get up in my truck. 00:59:20 Speaker 1: Now, wait a minute. I'm sorry for interrupting you. Why were you pulling the stand? 00:59:24 Speaker 4: Because I was... carrying it to the truck, and I couldn't walk. I was crawling. 00:59:29 Speaker 1: You didn't want to leave the stand. 00:59:30 Speaker 2: No. 00:59:31 Speaker 4: I got in my boat. Okay. 00:59:33 Speaker 1: Make sure he still had it. 00:59:35 Speaker 4: I got to my truck, and I couldn't get up in it, but the far side of the road had a dozer cut where it was higher, and I could crawl over there, and I could get up in my truck. Before driving out of it, any little old rocky cross felt like he was running over a basketball, you know, it hurt so bad. Finally got to where I had signal and I was about to pass out and I called my buddy and him and his brother come up there and got me and took me to the hospital and broke my back. It happened, I mean, that's the only time I've ever failed, you know, and 76 years old now, but I wouldn't have thought that limb would have ever broke with me. 01:00:24 Speaker 3: Found it had some type of a crease where it fitted onto the tree or something and made it weak right there. 01:00:28 Speaker 4: Something's wrong. 01:00:30 Speaker 1: Hmm. 01:00:31 Speaker 2: But it happened. 01:00:33 Speaker 1: Wow. How long was the recovery on that? 01:00:37 Speaker 4: That wasn't too awful long. Up and about and going, you know, but I had to wear a brace for a while, but healed pretty quick. Man. 01:00:50 Speaker 1: Yeah, that's scary. I've never, I've probably told plenty of times all these stories. I've never really completely fallen out of a tree. I once was climbing up a 16 foot stick ladder and got probably 12 feet off the ground. My hands were kind of closer to the top and the strap just kind of disintegrated. It was an old strap. So I'm hanging onto a little stick ladder, hanging on a tree. And so the straps below me were held. And so that the, the metal just bent back and I just wrote it down to the ground. It was before daylight, you know, I had my bow there and I just held onto it. And, and, you know, the, the bending metal slowed me down slightly, but it just, I just went to the ground out from the tree and just held onto that and landed on my feet and actually never hit the ground. 01:01:46 Speaker 2: Really? 01:01:47 Speaker 4: Yeah. 01:01:47 Speaker 1: Just landed on it. I remember it hurt my back the way it, Just the impact of it. Oh, man, I was literally just crying out to God out loud in the dark. Yeah, I actually did. I was just like, save me, God. And I landed on my feet and was fine. And then one time I had a... You. 01:02:13 Speaker 4: Had a climber. 01:02:15 Speaker 1: Yeah, but I guess I didn't really fall. 01:02:17 Speaker 2: Ice. Ice. 01:02:19 Speaker 1: Yeah, but the bottom fell out. I didn't fall out, though. The bottom fell out. Yeah, yeah, and I'm stuck way up in a tree with no base. But I always tell these to bear, because do not be the guy that falls out of his tree stand and is paralyzed. 01:02:36 Speaker 4: My son works at the nuclear plant there at Russellville, and last week it was on the nuclear plant property that was posted. And Some guy come in there and fell out of a tree stand and killed him. 01:02:51 Speaker 2: Really? 01:02:51 Speaker 1: In Arkansas? 01:02:52 Speaker 3: I remember seeing that on the news. 01:02:54 Speaker 1: So I know somebody that works at the hospital here in town, and they kind of tell me occasionally, they don't break any HIPAA laws, but they tell me, hey, somebody came in and had a tree stand accident. 01:03:09 Speaker 3: Tree stand fall. 01:03:10 Speaker 1: It's pretty common. I mean, and it's not always somebody gets paralyzed, but like you'd be, I was surprised to hear how many times someone comes in with a tree stand accident. I mean, in this town, this year already. You know, because you hear about the ones where someone dies or when someone, you know, gets hurt really bad or something. But, yeah, it's pretty dangerous. 01:03:34 Speaker 3: I've had a couple of close calls through the years because I've hunted out of lock-ons. I've hunted on tree limbs and everything else through the years, but. never fail i've come close i've slipped and done this and that but caught myself. 01:03:47 Speaker 1: That if it scares you yeah yeah yeah yeah that's. 01:03:52 Speaker 2: One of the things i like about hunting out of a saddle i feel like it's just having that rope there just gives you a lot more stability having the lineman when you're climbing yeah a lot more. 01:04:02 Speaker 1: Secure it has the potential to be more safe but there's a lot of ways to fall out of a tree even with those i think we'll stop Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, Ron, are you doing much hunting anymore? 01:04:21 Speaker 4: Occasionally. I can't hunt the way I want to hunt. I like to pick a deer and hunt that deer. You got to put in lots of ground work to locate what you want to hunt. I'm just not capable of walking in these mountains like that anymore, but I go down home, and in the river bottoms, I can get around pretty good down there, you know. But up here, I can't. Last year, I had a buck that I wanted to kill, and I was a half a mile from a truck, and he come in just like I thought he'd come in. And I thought, you know, if you shoot that thing, you got to track it down and We'll dress it, and then you got to drag that thing back to the truck, and then you got to go home and skin him. I said, I've already beat him, but what I wanted to do, I said, I could have killed him, let him walk, and he was a pretty decent buck. But I ain't near as mad at him as I used to be. 01:05:31 Speaker 3: Yep. That's a good term, being mad at him. 01:05:37 Speaker 4: I used to, boy. I hunted every day. I kept a bow in my truck, and if I wasn't working, I was up a tree somewhere, you know. But that's what you got to do to kill good bucks. You got to hunt where good bucks are first. And stay after them. Stay after them. And like this next two weeks in my part of Arkansas, if you want to kill a buck, you need to be in the woods the next two weeks. 01:06:08 Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. 01:06:09 Speaker 4: With a bow especially, it's... And you can go a little further south and hunt, you know, the second and third week of November and a little further south and hunt. 01:06:24 Speaker 3: December even. 01:06:25 Speaker 4: Yeah. You can hunt four ruts in Arkansas if you just want to take the time to travel and do it, you know. 01:06:33 Speaker 1: Now, Ron, you've killed two 200-inch deer? 01:06:38 Speaker 2: Two of them. 01:06:41 Speaker 4: Yep. 01:06:42 Speaker 2: Both with a bow? 01:06:43 Speaker 4: Yeah. I've killed very few deer with a gun. I've killed a few with a muzzleloader, but very few with a gun. 01:06:51 Speaker 1: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 01:06:56 Speaker 4: Started bow hunting and pretty proficient at it, and it was a challenge and all, and I just... Even during gun season, I'd go over to Hollow Bend, you know, where you couldn't gun hunt, you know. 01:07:11 Speaker 3: I hunted at Hollow Bend years ago. I went to vo-tech school at Ozark. I was 18 years old, down there about a year and a half living there, and I went to Hollow Bend and bow hunted a couple times down there. That's the only time I, but that was back in 78 and 79. 01:07:26 Speaker 4: It was probably pretty good right there. 01:07:28 Speaker 3: There was a lot of deer down there. 01:07:29 Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah. used to you know there'd be 400 people signed in on saturday or sunday but it's it's not like that anymore. 01:07:41 Speaker 3: You'll have it the other way where you sign in that's what it was when i hunted there you signed in then you when you come out you signed. 01:07:46 Speaker 4: Out yeah i was in there one morning before daylight and i was signing in and i come out of a little old booth they had there and there's a guy standing there at the in front of my truck and asked if I if I'd mind giving a person a tip it wasn't going to be there but a day and I said yeah and I told him where one of my stands was and how to get to it and all and had no idea who it was and I come back and look and it was Ted Nugent really he was playing in Russellville that night under the next morning He went down to my cousin's deer camp, and he killed two doe and a buck with his bow, but it was during gun season. And I forgot how they did it. Anyway, he had had to mate ship back to Michigan, and they got him for the Lacey Act or something. I don't remember... I don't remember. the laws back then stated you couldn't kill doe during gun season. There was some little stipulation. Anyway, he got fined for it. 01:09:14 Speaker 1: Well, I went deer hunting this week and killed a dog. killed a big hog yeah which is which is fun yeah i i mean it was uh it was a neat hunt we were we were in the mountains on public land and uh it was it was kind of a neat hunt because i've i'd been moving a lot that afternoon just kind of slip hunting just kind of scouting and i'd find the spot that's right the way mo taught me that's right just moving and scouting and calling and, and right at dark, I was trying to get back to my mule before dark and we were going to ride out and, uh, like 15 minutes, 20 minutes before, you know, you couldn't see the shoot. I was just sitting there and I heard something up the mountain from me. And at first I thought it was a squirrel, just kind of the way it shuffled and And then it just continued and continued and continued and continued. And a squirrel will be on the ground for a while, but eventually it'll get up in a tree. 01:10:24 Speaker 4: You won't hear it. 01:10:25 Speaker 1: Yeah. But this just kept on for probably five straight minutes. And I'm trying to course it and can't really course it. I just know it's kind of in front of me. And I finally am just like, well, it's going to get dark on me. And I decided that it was a large animal. I mean, I didn't know if it was a deer, a bear, or a hog. I had seen some hog signs, so I knew it was possible. I was just like, that's a large animal. And so I just started walking towards it, and it's so dry here. I mean, it was just like super loud. But I was moving slow, trying to sound like a squirrel. But I knew I had to cover some ground. It was probably 80 yards away, and I could see 40 yards. So I needed to cover 40, 50 yards towards this animal to just see what it was. And I keep thinking maybe it's coming towards me, but I listen to it so long, it's never getting closer. It's actually kind of getting further away. So I'm like, I got to do something. So I start walking towards it, and a deer snorts at me. What James Lawrence calls whistling. He whistled at me. And so I'm like, well, it's a deer. And I just snorted right back at it, partly because Lane Weaver. 01:11:43 Speaker 4: Yep. 01:11:43 Speaker 1: I mean, I've done that before, but I never thought about it too much. But when it snorted and I knew the gig was up, I just was like, I might as well confuse this deer. So I snorted at it. And directly I hear it scuttling around again. And I think, that's a deer. And so I just keep moving towards it. And I can hear it, and I think, well, I fooled it. It thinks I'm a deer that has snorted and is moving. And I basically cover the 40, 50 yards. and kind of come up over a little rise and look out across this little ridge, and I see a big black hog. And that hog snorted at me. It sounded just like a deer. 01:12:22 Speaker 2: Really? 01:12:23 Speaker 1: Have you all ever heard a hog do that? I'd never actually heard one do that. It alarm snorted like a deer. Just blew. 01:12:32 Speaker 2: Yeah. 01:12:33 Speaker 1: And the guy I was with told me he's heard them do that. 01:12:35 Speaker 3: I've heard them do it, hog, before. 01:12:37 Speaker 4: Yeah. 01:12:38 Speaker 1: It was a little coarser there, more of a, Yeah. I mean, after it all went down, I realized the snort was slightly different than a deer. But at the time I was just like, that's a deer. And anyway, I get up there, big, big black boar. I can tell him he's by himself and he was just feeding on acorns. And I had a straight wall gun, big straight wall gun, put my earmuffs on because I'm not shooting that thing without. 01:13:05 Speaker 4: Yeah. 01:13:06 Speaker 1: And shoot it. I actually shot twice at I hit it the first time and it started to run up the mountain and made a loop and came right back past me. And I just thought, well, I mean, I thought maybe I missed it. 01:13:17 Speaker 4: I don't know. 01:13:18 Speaker 1: I shot it again. 01:13:19 Speaker 3: You hit it both times. 01:13:21 Speaker 4: Yeah, I did. 01:13:22 Speaker 2: You shot that hog with that rifle and it didn't go down. 01:13:25 Speaker 3: Yeah. 01:13:26 Speaker 4: That's wild. 01:13:27 Speaker 1: Yeah, it took it. 01:13:28 Speaker 3: Big hogs are tough. 01:13:29 Speaker 4: Yeah. 01:13:30 Speaker 1: So it was a pretty neat hunt, but we didn't see very many deer. 01:13:32 Speaker 4: I was getting the hog out, you know, and that shield on him. It was like three-quarters of an inch thick, and I had a chopping block there and a double-bit axe where I'd been cutting kindling. And I laid that hide on that chopping block, and you could not mar that shoulder with a double-bit axe. It was sharp. It would not cut it. 01:13:57 Speaker 1: Just kind of bounced off of it like rubber. Just kind of cartilage. 01:14:01 Speaker 4: Yeah. Wow. Yeah. 01:14:04 Speaker 1: They're tough. They are tough. I shot a hog. with that gun last year and when I was skinning it I found a broadhead in the shield. Someone's broadhead in the shield. It's probably Moe's. 01:14:17 Speaker 2: Yeah. 01:14:18 Speaker 1: Shoot rage expandables. 01:14:19 Speaker 4: No. 01:14:20 Speaker 3: I don't shoot fancy expandable heads though. 01:14:23 Speaker 1: Yeah but I didn't on that shot it happened so rushed I didn't use ear protection. 01:14:29 Speaker 4: Oh no. 01:14:30 Speaker 1: And that was the last time I've done it. I've never been so mad at you. I tell him Ron, I've lost a lot of hearing out of my right ear to the point I can't hardly course a turkey. I wear a hearing aid in my right ear, and I've preached to Bear about just never shooting without hearing protection. And this gun we're shooting. 01:14:50 Speaker 3: Actually large calibers. 01:14:51 Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a ported gun. It's a. 457 Magnum, so it's a. 45- 70 turned into a Magnum cartridge, but it's a straight wall, so it's legal to shoot in that alternative firearm season. It'll ring your bell. It was originally purchased as a Cape Buffalo gun. 01:15:08 Speaker 3: It's just above the 444 Marlin. 01:15:12 Speaker 1: It's a cannon. It's got a muzzle brake, so all that sound comes right back at you. Up to that point, I was decent about your hearing protection. After that, even on this moose hunt, it happened super quick. 01:15:28 Speaker 3: It was like last fall, me and you were deer hunting together, you know, and you'd already tagged your deer, but we was hunting together looking for a bear deer slip hunting. Remember when that buck come up that you grunted at and he come up in front of us there. I could see you was putting your ear protection on because you didn't know if I was going to shoot or not. 01:15:44 Speaker 4: Yeah. 01:15:44 Speaker 3: He wasn't that big, you know, and we let him walk off. 01:15:47 Speaker 4: Right. 01:15:48 Speaker 3: I remember seeing you putting your ear protection on. 01:15:52 Speaker 4: Yeah. 01:15:52 Speaker 1: On that moose, the whole hunt, because we were shooting big. 300 PRC with a muzzle brake. I just said, I don't... It's going to have to be a pretty giant moose standing right in front of me for me not to put my hair in protection. 01:16:06 Speaker 2: Not to put it on. 01:16:07 Speaker 4: Yeah. 01:16:09 Speaker 1: Well, thank you guys so much for coming. Ron, thank you for coming up. We're going to get you a... We're going to get you. 01:16:18 Speaker 4: A. 01:16:19 Speaker 1: Basically, a gift certificate that you'll be able to get a pair of Toccova's boots. You can order them. Josh can help you. Mo, you're going to get the same thing. 01:16:28 Speaker 3: Appreciate it. 01:16:29 Speaker 1: You've got a wife that can help you, though. 01:16:31 Speaker 3: She may just want to use it for herself. 01:16:33 Speaker 4: Oh, yeah. 01:16:34 Speaker 1: That's right. 01:16:35 Speaker 4: Yes. That happens. 01:16:36 Speaker 1: Yes. That would be probably a good move. 01:16:39 Speaker 4: Yeah. 01:16:39 Speaker 1: Let her use that to COVID. Get her some boots. She treats me swell and everything. 01:16:43 Speaker 4: I want her to do that. 01:16:44 Speaker 2: Yep. 01:16:44 Speaker 1: You probably should. 01:16:45 Speaker 4: That's not all I want. My wife's IT. I don't know what you even call it. But anyway... a company that's got i think nine different companies in this one bang and three continents and she runs it all from home and i can play solitaire on one of them that's about as far as i. 01:17:08 Speaker 1: Go so maybe she could help you get some order some boots well thank you guys for coming uh deer stories was uh i thought we had some good stories this year too we ran two episodes and Hey, I'm going to tell you what the next Bear Grease is about. For the people that have listened this long to this episode, the next Bear Grease is we're starting a series on the Inuit in the High Arctic. I went to the High Arctic. That's where you went polar bear. To Resolute Bay. Yeah, I went on a polar bear hunt with a young Inuit guy. And the reason it's coming out right now is season 14 of Meat Eater. Steve Rinella's show, Meat Eater, is coming out in the first episode. It comes out in early November. And my polar bear hunt is going to be a part of Steve's season 14 of Meat Eater. So you'll be able to watch that hunt, but you'll also be able to listen to Bear Grease and meet Devin Manick, this young man that I went hunting with. And here, a very robust. 01:18:22 Speaker 3: That's the young end to it. 01:18:23 Speaker 4: Yes. Yep. 01:18:24 Speaker 1: Yep. 25 years old. Really great guy. Cool guy. But the podcast... I'll tell you, and this is the reason I like podcasts. The podcast will go into massively more amount of detail about the Inuit and their culture. I mean, you'll learn some serious stuff in this episode, so. 01:18:48 Speaker 1: You'll be able to hear that. So that'll be the next Bear Grease. It's about the Inuit. 01:18:54 Speaker 2: Awesome. 01:18:55 Speaker 1: Well, Cricket has been laying on our feet this entire time. 01:19:00 Speaker 3: In some much-needed rest. 01:19:01 Speaker 2: Dog puppy. 01:19:02 Speaker 4: I got to wondering if that boot was going to squish her. 01:19:06 Speaker 1: Yeah. 01:19:09 Speaker 4: Well. 01:19:10 Speaker 1: Keep the wild places wild because that's where the bears live.