00:00:05 Speaker 1: Welcome to this country Life. I'm your host, Brent Reeves from coon hunting to trotlining and just in general country living. I want you to stay a while as I share my experiences in life lessons. This Country Life is presented by Case Knives from the store More Studio on Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you the best outdoor podcast that airways have to offer. All right, friends, grab a chair or drop that tailgate. I've got some stores to share. Being on time it's a pet peeve of mine and has been for quite some time. Being on time is important to me. For me, I don't look down or judge others who may not find that as critical as I do. Unless we're talking about the fuse on a stick of dynamite, then I want the tie. I'm calculated down to the very second. We're not blowing anything up today, just talking about being on time. I'm going to tell you about a recent event involving someone not being somewhere when they said they would. But first I'm going to tell you this story. Let's leave Carls at four point thirty in the morning. It's a forty five minute drive from there to the Beaver Pond. We'll get there at five fifteen. It's a ten minute walk at most, and we can be chunking decoys by five point thirty shooting iurs ain't till six nineteen. That'll give us plenty a time. I was on the phone with my lifelong friend who's more of a brother than friend. We grew up together, played baseball, football. We're roommates for a spell back in our younger years and have never not been close when we lived far away from each other. He's the friend that you don't have to talk to every day, every week, or even every year. You just pick up right where you left off the last time, the moment you seem He's that kind of friend, and I love him dearly. He used to be notoriously lated for everything, and he had been since I'd known him. We met in the third grade and became friends immediately all through school and after this cat ran on his own caliber. He was and is loyal to a fault, but his clock ran anywhere from fifteen to thirty minutes behind everyone else's. Dude could take a nap at the drop of a hat. I don't know how many times when we lived together that on a weekend evening when we planned to go somewhere and do something together after work, that i'd be ready in waiting in the living room for him to get ready, waiting and wait and waiting, I mutually planned and agreed upon departure. Time would come and go, and the light would still be shining out from under the bathroom door. I call his name and get no answer. I check his room and he wasn't there. No where did he go. I called across the street to a relative's house. No, he's not here. I look out the window and I can see his car parked in front of y'all's house. Now, the first time it scared me until I opened the bathroom door and I found him asleep in the tub. I yelled at him, thinking he was dead, only to have him confess that his lips turning blue was due to the water being so cold. For the love of humanity, how could anyone sleep in cold water, I don't know, but he did it. I believe he could have slept just as well on top of the stove or in the oven for that matter. Now, he's a good duck hunter, and a pretty good shot as well. It was good to have along to help put ducks on the stringer. He's also a lot of fun to have around it makes me laugh, and has enough nervous energy to never slow down until he literally falls asleep if you'll never rollerskate on empty holes in the duck climb when he's around, because he never met a mess he didn't want to clean up. Now, who couldn't love a guy like that, not to mention that he's an absolute wonderful human being, which is just another attribute of why he's so well thought of by everyone that knows. It wasn't for that being late thing I'd adopted myself, which reminds me of this little story, so bear with me. Once upon a time, moons ago, when we were roommates, my friend and I stopped at a convenience store to buy some potato chips and cold drinks on our way home to watch the Arkansas play basketball on TV. Now, my buddy has a baby face and has since he was an actual baby when we graduated high school. He could have turned around and gone undercover in elementary school. Is a six foot fourth grader. Me, on the other hand, I started shaving in the seventh grade and you could see gray hair on my knocking in my senior pictures. We were born less than six months apart. Anyway, there we are standing together at the counter when the lady who's ringing up our purchases says, and what are you two gentlemen up to on a Friday night? I told her, as I handed her some money, We're going home to watch the razorbacks play. She looked up at both of us, who were standing side by side looking back at her, and this is what she said, and I quote, I think that's so cool, a father and son spending a Friday night together watching a ball game. I looked at her and tell she was serious. I looked over at my pardner, who was now grinted like a baked possum, who then looked over at me and said, thanks dad. Anyway, back to the original story, old babyface, me and another couple of folks were planning on thinning the duck population down by four limits the following morning. I'd already called the other two and said, we're pulling out of cars one stop in the morning at four point thirty. Be there or be square. Now, my buddy with the slow running internal clock and I were grown and living on our own By this time, we were knee deep in separate careers, making house and car payments, and doing all the adult things that adults do. So when I said be a Carls, which was a bait shop and forting goods retailer on the south end of Warren, Arkansas, where like minded folks would use as a meeting spot for hunting and fishing trips, I assumed everyone would be at Carls by four fifteen. Heck, I got there at ten after four, and I was the third one of our group to get there. It was the three of us hanging out and waiting on old babyface. We cracked open one of our thermoses of coffee, combined, I gear into one suv for the forty five minute ride over to the Beaver Pond and discuss where we'd set up in the beaver pond once we got there, where the recent rains had pushed water out into a hardwood flat where ducks were known to congregate. Four point fifteen turned into four twenty five. Where is this dude? There were no cell phones back then. When you hung out with people, you actually had to look at them and talk to them, unless there was a payphone close or you barred someone's house phone. There was no calling any away from the crib. At five am here he came sliding up in the parking lot like he was late for work, which, as far as I was concerned, he was, I overslept. Sorry man. He threw his stuff in the back and we lit a ship for the duck hole. We took turns trying to make him cry for being late, and had to paint the road red to get there. With enough time to get exactly where we wanted set up, just like we talked about before. Shooting time came and we barely made it. It was cold, clear, a bluebird day, with a north wind just stout enough to push the three dozen decoys around that we brought with us. It was a morning that you hear about, one of those mornings you read about high flying ducks that broke down when you started calling to him from we up there that circle just long enough to slow down then drop through the trees and bunches of thirty fifty landing all around you, while some hovered above the gaggle of ducks that had just lit, looking for a spot to light themselves. We had four limits in short order. The beginning of the morning all but forgotten as we rode back home, still talking about the grand adventure we'd all just shared. We pulled back into Carl's parking lot, divided up the ducks, took possession of our guns and gear, and collectively agreed we'd do it all over again in the morning. I dressed the group, but was looking at old babyface when I said be there or b square. At four five the next morning, I was once again the third man of our forsom to pull in, having been beaten by the other two by a matter of moments. We started our routine of combining all our plunder into one ride. Other hunters were meeting there as well, and with every new set of headlights that turned in off the highway, we looked for our s straggler, only to see a different group of folks gather all their shooters and take off four point fifteen for twenty four twenty five. Anybody talked to him last night? No, The last thing we said was the same time tomorrow before we all left yesterday four thirty four thirty five, four forty and here he came, same deal as the day before. Sorry, I overslept again. We tried to make him cry. He did not. We headed to the same spot as the day before, after getting a late start, had to settle for a different spot because we'd been beat to our first choice. They were walking away from the parking spot as we were pulling in. We scrapped out a couple of ducks at our spot and were forced to watch and listen as clouds of ducks dropped in that hole, only to get goosele chopped by a bunch of strangers before a cat could lick its behind. Duck hunting is like real estate. It's all about the location, and when they prefer a different spot, there's nothing you're going to do to change their minds. We were watching a duck hunt instead of participating in one, all because of mister Sleepy. Someone suggested leaving earlier in the morning, several rude comments directed to mister Sleepy later, and we'd all agreed to leave at four point fifteen from Carls the next morning. We want to make sure you we'll get there in time to beat those folks. As the whole look pal at four fifteen in the morning, we're leaving Carls. If you're there at four sixteen you'll be by your he laughed, and he said, I'll be there the next morning. I leaned up against the tree. I was sidled up to two mornings before the sky was waking up with the astronomical term of civil twilight. As whistling wings and silhouettes and ducks began their daily ritual of leaving the flooded fields to rest in the confines of the timber we waited past legal shooting to get started, watching group after group falling through the hardwood canopy, slapping limbs in each other as they splashed down into the decoys and beside us. Once the light got good enough to see clearly, we went to work, taking our time, even taking turns, trying to stretch the morning out to more than just a few minutes on this last day before the season closed for a week during the mandatory split. Once the last of the limit was reached, the three of us sat back and someone said out loud, I wonder what mister sleepy's doing right now. I responded with learning not to be late, and that's just how that happened. Being late to anything drives me crazy. I have a condition about it. My wife, Alexis, has a phobia I thought I did until I met her. She stone cold serious about being on time and will leave me just like I left my buddy on that duck hunt way back yonder, not to mention that it's downright rude and socially unacceptable. I was reminded of the story I just told you all a couple of weeks ago by some friends of mine. Now, these are college ads, young men who have the drive to go day after day when they have the opportunity to do so, and sleep to be able to find the spot of their own to chase ducks. I know these young men, and they are not the cogs in the wheels of calamity that is modern day duck hunting on public land in Arkansas. Quite the contrary, they are an example to not only their peers, but to the adults who have helped perpetrate the chaos over the last decade that has driven a wedge between public land users and cause the divide we all find ourselves in now. I have no desire to bandy words with anyone on this subject about who's the fault here, But there's two things that I can bring to light. The young folks. I'm talking about couldn't hunt by themselves when the public land duck hunting war started, and a big portion of the folks working to try to change the dynamic of what's happened today to what it was years before it all started, Well, they couldn't either anyway. Two of these young men had planned to meet up with two more folks of their same generation the following morning to go hunting. The father of one of these boys and I were going as well, but we decided a long time ago that worrying about getting somewhere first was a lot less problematic when you have a private spot to go to. I realize not everyone has that luxury, but I also don't care. I work and save to be able to afford it, and I've leased land to duck hunt on twice in my life. The first time was when Tim and I were guiding and the state made it illegal to guide hunters on the public land. Even then, we had to take guests to be able to afford it, so we never went by ourselves. It was always like being at work. Now I have friends that I like to hunt with, and we found a place close to the camp that we can sleep late drive over to climbing our spots in the blind and shoot a duck or two down again. It's quite a more relaxed way of enjoying this time of year. I still have the desire and the fire to sit in the wet and the cold, hoping for just an opportunity of poking the business into my scattered gun, up a mount of ducks behind, and turning it loose. I have sat for hours before shooting, time to the last second of legal light in the evening to do it, having never busted a cap, eyeballs peeled, having to make myself blink thinking I might miss something. Now I don't care. Ducks quit flying for forty five minutes, How would I know I've been gone for thirty of them. I'm back at the cabin, trying to drown a biscuit in salt milk gravy while eating the whole setting of eggs. My priorities have shifted from the stringer to the couch. But we ain't talking about me. We're talking about these young men who I had invited to come stay at the cabin with us so they could get a head start on the foot race the following morning. They were counting on their other two pals to beat feet to the spot, while they came in later with one of them's younger brother. All three of them were staying with me all evening. I watched them trying to get hold of their friends who were gonna be the early birds, the ones who were gonna save them a spot, to bring the little brother too, so he could have the opportunity that big boys did. Looks like they dipped us. One of them said out loud, Now is that good or bad? I don't know what that means. Well, it turns out it's bad. They ghosted them. They left them in a lurch. They left them behind and dry. They depended on those two to help them take the little brother to a good spot, and had been abandoned at the second most critical time of the whole operation, the night before. The only thing that would have been worse was waking up the next day and walking into the spot to find other folks there that you didn't know, Your friends nowhere to be seen, and it too late to find your own spot somewhere else. Your pals peed on your fire, didn't they. He looked at me and did the math in his head, figuring out what I just said to him and answered, oh, yes, sir, I think they did. We all just come go with us in the morning. We can sleep late. We can drive the canem to the blind, unload all our stuff, and sit in comfort while we hunt. Someone beats us to there, they're trespassing and they ain't gonna be in there very long. Well, they liked that idea. Now I like that idea. My friend, who was already going with me, like that idea even more because one of those young folks was his son. Would be an opportunity for them to hunt together that he didn't know was coming. None of us knew. It was just the way it all worked out. And we watched TV for a while, and then I headed to bed, and I told the youngsters on my way that we were leaving the cabin the next morning at five thirty. They were ready to go at five thirty one, they wouldn't be hunting with me. And if they didn't believe I'd leave them, they could ask mister sleepy. I hope all of you are on time for visits and hunts with your family and friends for the holidays, regardless of what or how you celebrate. I hope you find the time to share it with the folks that love you, or is in my case, we'll tolerate you up to a point. Thanks so much for listening, and I hope to see you out on the road at one of the live shows that are starting up here pretty soon until next week, This says Brent Reeves, signing off, y'all be careful movies