00:00:05 Speaker 1: Welcome to This Country Life. I'm your host, Brent Reeves from coon hunting to trotlining and just 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 the airways have to offer. All right, friends, grab a chair or drop that tailgate. I've got some stores to share. Jesse Lily Beth in the FFA. I have long been a fan of the FFA. I grew up on a farm, I was raised by farmers, and I was a member of that organization all through high school. I believe it it's people and its mission. On this episode, coon hunting and FFA meet for an intended purpose, and I'm going to tell you all about it. But first I'm going to tell you this Tom Jesse, the coonhound puppy I purchased several months ago, has been slow to get going. I got spoiled with old Whaling, who more or less came out of the box, pun intended hunting the way a hound should nose on the ground and moving with the purpose. He had no idea what he was looking for. He was just looking for something to bark at. He had natural interest in the drive to get out and hunt, and I remember not long after I met my friend Rex Whiting, that he and I were hunting with Whaling in his dog Shadow. I've talked about Rex's shadow here before, but for those that may be new to this weekly struggle, Rex stopped by my house one day and introduced himself because he saw me cleaning out the dog box I had in the back of my truck. We made friends in short order, and a few days later we were hunting together. We turned the hounds loose and Shadow left on a mission to sniff out a coon and Whaling. He just left, Shadow moved off in one direction, and Whaling went in the opposite. Shadowed treed on the bank of an old pond about two hundred yards away. When we got to his tree, I expected to see Whaling there with him, but he wasn't. We searched the tree for several minutes and finally found the coon hiding in a fork. Shadow was a bark dang near every breath tree dog and was plenty loud for Whaling to have hurt him, and I kept looking around, thinking I was going to see that buffoon loping up to greet us all of the tree, and he never showed up. I checked my garment tracker and that dude was seven hundred and ninety eight yards away doing his own thing, exactly what he should have been doing and depends. That's in a hunting hound. It's priority one for me and Whiling, well, he had it from the start, Jesse not so much. Last night. I took her and Whiling over to a spot close to the house, just me and them. I turned her loose right behind him, and for two hundred yards she kept up with him and eventually peeled off on her own for a while. The recent rains had put some water in a drain that sneaks off the beginning of a hardwood ridge that's filled with short timber, the same place I tried to hem up a low hanging coon for Bear John to pick off with his self bowl a couple of weeks ago. I knew it was a gamble then because of how dry it had been, And just like I figured, we didn't strike a tract until Whaling hunted on down toward the creek, where he promptly worked one up and eventually treated him about nine miles high, effectively out of boat range. What I wanted to happen, then it happened last night. I cut Whaling loose eighty yards or so from that drain, a place he'd struck a coon track. This I don't know. Many times before I wasn't as concerned with whaling success as I was getting Jesse in the game. He was going to help me in her coaching. I needed an easy win for her and in my plans. While making the drive down the old power line in my cannam, I thought the best chance of getting Whaling her on a coon at the same time would be shortly after I cut him loose. I needed him to get struck quickly on a hot track while she was still with him, and before she got distracted by something else or or realized that she wasn't close to me and started coming back to make sure I was still there. Now at the two hundred yard mark, Whaling hadn't cracked his jaw, and she started meandering round on her own, which is a good thing too. I needed her to find something out there that gets her at ten more than missing the security of being with me. Something that would trigger her prey driving. I didn't care what it was. Whaling started looping back around to the right, and she was less than one hundred yards away when he opened up with a long ball, letting me know that my plan so far had worked just like that hoped it would. I was watching her on my garment, moving toward where Whaling was pushing that track, which in a finished coon dog is less than desirable. But she ain't a finished coon dog. She just a coon hound by breeding, and at this point wouldn't qualify as started. She might as well have been a goat running around out there with that track and collar. But Whalen was heating that track up. It was less than one hundred and fifty yards from me when she made it over to him, and for the next eighty yards she was running with him. Man, he could just pull up on that coon and tree and while she's still there. This might be the best plan I'd ever di buy. But you know that he didn't already, don't you, Because I ain't the way this dog is gonna be. As Whaling put the pressure on that track by getting louder and faster, his path was going to take him across the road where I was sitting less than fifty yards away. Miss Brenda McDougal, my junior high math teacher who threw love and swinging a paddle with the average weight of a stick of stove wood, would be proud to learn that I was doing some math in my head that she taught me, and if my calculations were accurate. About the time Jesse saw me sitting in that buggy with my face lit up like I was at the drive in movies watching her and Whaling on the big screen, she was gonna get distracted and run straight to me, And that's exactly what happened. She came to where I was sitting on the side of the road as if she was on a rail, while Whaling continued to run that track another one hundred and forty yards across the road and tread man. I had figured everything exactly how I wanted it to happen, and had nailed it on every level except where I was gonna sit being a factor in anything. I was the unknown variable in that equation. Miss Brenda hadn't prepared me for that one. Whalen was blowing it out, and I walked across the road and Jesse followed me across and I stopped, and then she went to Whalen's location. I let him tree for a minute or two while she was there, and then made my way the short walk to where they were now. Once while walking in, I heard her bark. It was no doubt I heard her bark one time. It wasn't It wasn't a long ball of a located bark, just a bark like it was like it was entering. It just blurted out on accident, Like most of my funniest comments, a lot of which fly under the radar, which is the only way I figured I have successfully dodged HR so far. But I made two mistakes on that cast, one of which I really had no control over. But if I turned that display off on my garment when she crossed the road, she may not have noticed me so easily. Who knows. But when I walked to Whalen's tree and she was at the base, meeling around, sniffing here and there after I had heard her bark at least once, I didn't leash her up immediately. That is a total rookie mistake that I let pass me by when I started looking for that coon It took me a minute to find him, and after I did, I looked around to hitch her up to a tree, and she was gone. What was I thinking? A quick check of the old garment and I could see her just getting back to the canam. I had a golden opportunity to teach her that once your tree, you stay until I decided that we leave. And also I was going to knock that coon out and see if I could ramp up her prey drive. Two opportunities squandered on the same tree. I wanted to climb that tree and jump out of it my own self. I decided to make one more cast. So Whaling and I met Jesse back at the canyam and moved on down the road to a different spot. Now I cut them both loose again, and she took off like she was late for work. And when they passed three hundred yards, they split off and she went left again and Whaling went right. He was eight hundred yards deep. Had never said a word when she started looping around back towards the way that she'd gone in the woods. Well, I told to Waler on his collar and he started heading back to where I was. And since since I knew it was unlikely that he'd strike a coon in the air he was crossing through. I decided to at least make a positive out of it. For Jesse. She never crossed her trail to come back, but made a big enough loop that I could see she was genuinely out there, snooping around, and that's progress, and sometimes it has to be measured incrementally. In her defense, now she hasn't had the opportunities that Whaling had as a puppy. Fewer reps in the woods means further behind, and that's on me, not Her progress is progress regardless of Michael Roseman reminded me of that the next day when I was giving in to play by playing on the phone. I've said it a million times. All dogs are different. I have to learn to adjust with the reality of it all. It's just the way it is. Like this morning when Alexis and I were in Walmart. I'm driving the buggy and as we reach the end of the house, she says, I need to check on something real quick. You stay right here. Then, if she rounds the end of the aiule, she asked me what I think about something she's looking at that I can't see, said she and it are on the other side of the aisle from where I'm standing. A lady is walking by at the very same time and turns her head from Alexis to me as she's walking. She's taking all this in and out of the three of us, that lady and Alexis are the only two people in the Milky Way galaxy that knows what she's talking about. Well, I cocked my head sideways to let slip the dogs of war with my sarcastic wit, which I intend to make this stranger laugh with, while calling out to my wife that she's just asked a question that I can't answer. And without slowing her gait any hesitation or change of expression, that lady looked at me in the eyes as she walked by, placed her index finger up to her lips and the international symbol of be quiet, and softly said marriage as she continued on her way. I followed her advice, and I didn't say a word, Just like Jesse being slow about learning to hunt coons. Sometimes that's just the way it is, Thank you, wise woman of Walmart. And that's just how that happened. Relationships built through the outdoors aren't uncommon. I've talked specifically about several on this very platform. My friend Terry Garner, that I met while fly fishing on the Little Red is one that comes to mind when I think about it. And Rex Whiting and Michael Roseman, my fellow compatriots up at the Cash River Hound and Mallard Club, and a box car load of other folks that I've met over the years that happened to be at the same place at the same time that never go away. It's not the person you're sit next to on the plane that's pleasant to talk to while hurtling through the atmosphere at three hundred and fifty miles an hour, and when you get to the next airport you never see them again. Now, all these are the people that you meet, and from the first conversations, you know these are folks you want to see again, Folks you want to learn more about. Well, I did that last weekend. I was contacted weeks ago and asked about the possibility of donating to hunt to the fundraising banquet of the Greenbrier, Arkansas Chapter of the Future Farmers of America. The stars aligned and I actually had some open dates and was happy to accommodate the request of missus Lilybeth Hill. Now, I also reached out to my friend John Pantuso with Case Knives to see if they were interested. I already knew they would because they absolutely love FFA and we're all in on sweetening up the donations. But Lily Beth is a senior serving as an officer in her chapter and has her own business. Every kit I've ever seen being successful in FFA has been an above average hard worker. The ones that show animals have to take care of them twenty four to seven critters don't take days off. Then there's a practice for showing the animals and all the things that come with taking care of them. Then there's other commitments and responsibilities as officers that take time and all of that on top of the rest of school and other activities. But the good ones, the ones that stare at bursty in the face and push forward because hard work is just another day, they make their own way. Lilibeth or LB as everyone calls her, has done all of that and more. She's shown goats pigs, competed in leadership development events, parliamentary procedures, and won the state contest for venting their science. And I'm finally getting to what I want to tell you about that LB does us. She does something else that she excels that she has her own cookie, bacon and decorating business, LB's Cookie Company. Now you can find her on Instagram and Facebook under that name. I've seen the cookies that she makes, but I and a whole squad of coon Hunters participated in a sampling of a strawberry cake that she made that was what I imagine an angel would taste like if you bit one when it flew by you. Now, her mama, Miss Jennifer, sent a couple pieces home with me and David McDaniels. They didn't last long. Rie was going to add the link for her Instagram in the show description, and I encourage you to give her a follow. She's working hard and like a lot of kids in that organization, she's doing good work. Which brings us to the event itself, the coon Hunt. We all met at the Hill Home for supper. Now I could smell the groceries when we walked in the house. And after the production we fixed our plates and thank the Good Lord for the fiddles we were about to share. Set down at the supper table and dug in. Now in the South it is, I'm sure it is in a lot of places. You look for a commonality when you first meet people, and then you run the conversations of things that aren't as evident. We already had things in common. We all like to eat fish, support our children's education in the outdoors. This was gonna be easy. It didn't take long for the stories to start. And let me tell you, Troy Weatherley, Lilybeth's AGG teacher and FFA advisor, is quite the character, a big man with an even bigger passion for his students and his community. It's leaders like him that are the inspiration for the next generations of AGG professionals that will lead us from where we are now to where we can't even think of. It was obvious that everyone sitting around the table had the best interest of that group of kids in their front sights. They talked and told stories about events and happiness that they'd all been at for different reasons that involved school functions and the betterment of all those students. The point of their different stories was something usually humorous, that happened in the course of the contest or meeting. But the common thread among all the tales was they always took place while they were doing something in support of those youngins. I'd love to see the day when an AG teacher's salary was looked at with the same importance as it coaches. Before we settled up and headed out, Troy Weatherley handed me a box, and inside the box were some T shirts, a handmade fixed blade knife, and an official Future Farmers of America jacket, just like the one I'd dreamed of owning in high school but couldn't afford. My name brodered and cursive on the front and Warren Arkansas stitched in bold letters on the back, a simple gesture of thanks that struck me to my core. Forty one years later, I put on a personalized FFA jacket of my very own in front of a group of strangers, and I'll tell you it was a little emotional for me. And get overwhelmed sometimes by the wonderful people I get to meet because of this job or better or better yet, this life, and I'm blessed to live it in it sometimes it leaks out through my eyes. But we were hunting on Darren Hill's ground, and Darren is Lily Bell's daddy and the one that came up with this idea to begin with. Jim Bo Elliott bought the one at the auction, and he brought his dad, Jim and his son Bo. Wow. I know, I know Jim, Jimbo and both three generations. That made me. He laughed a little bit too. And I'm from Arkansas anyway. Troy's eleven year old son, Cooper was there, so was Trey Kelly, and all in all we had seven coon hunters, one cameraman and one coon dog. Quite the ensemble. I only know one thing. When I cut way the loose in the woods, he's fixing to do his dead level best to find a coon if it's closer a mile away. He's looking from the moment he comes off the chain until I call him back. He's focused, and his instincts and internal drive takes over. When he's on the track, He's hard to distract away from it. He opened up and treed shortly there after, less than one hundred and fifty yards from where we all stood talking and laughing, a process that would repeat itself over the course of the night. On one tree, he'd cross through a twope little gum swamp and was barking his brains out on the other side. Now, our deal is he finds them and I to him every time. If there's any way possible for me to get there safely. Waiting water above my hip boots doesn't qualify as being unsafe, So the majority of our crew pulled our boot tops as high as we could, and into the breach we went. I was half way across when I felt the water running past both pocketknives on the inside of my boots. Gravity pulling downward determinal velocity so much for a dry night man. It was cold. It was also my duty to get to that dog. And when I and the others that came with me got there, Whaling was telling the truth once again. Five stories up was a turkey nest bandito looking back at us. One of the Eliot boys permanently revoked his meal card with a twenty two, and we all headed back to the rest of the crew one more cast before calling it a night. Now you've heard me talk about the infamous one more drop curse Michael Rose when it is notorious for turning a long night into a marathon by not knowing when to say when so much so that I call him one More Mike. It's the last one that always has the tendency to be miles away from the truck through an impenetrable thicket, or across the river in the middle of a swamper after the tracking caller has lost signal. It's always something and usually not fun, and yet I let him bully me into it nearly every time. Okay, may not always be one More Mike's fault, and it may not always turn out bad. But we've just made a handful of trees at this point and clovert a sack full of coons. We could stop right here and end it on a good note. And I heard myself say it as I did it. It was like I was having an outbody experience. We got time for another quick one before it gets too late, and everyone sounded excited and wanted to continue. From how they acted, it would have been perfect time for anyone to grab me, give me the old Humphrey boguard slapt to the jaw while shaking me and saying, have you taken leave of your senses, ma'am? But no one did that, so whatever was fixing to happen was gonna be on all of them mostly kind of well, I was gonna blame it on them anyway. But we moved a little further down the road, and once again I cast Whaling the wonder Hound into the darkness in search of procyon loader, and watched him fade into the night, traveling quite a way, so far in fact, that we relocated to more or less cut him off. After several minutes of him not saying anything, I watched him on the garment out from the seat of my canm or is I like to call it coon TV. He was following the edge of a creek right to us, and forty yards out he opened up with that big booming voice of his, and I just sat there and watched him come in and go back out of sight, trailing what would hopefully be the last coon of the night, and bypassing the perfect opportunity at the end of the night right there. But all you dog hunters know you don't stop a hound in the middle of a track, not a coon track anyway, And since Whaler don't mess with anything else, I let him go. This is the part where it usually goes wrong, but it didn't. He treated five hundred and fifty yards away, and we were able to drive within easy walking distance to his tree. Then half a box of twenty two shells later, I thought I might have to climb the tree and knock him out myself, but the coon finally succumbed to lead, poison and gravity. We gathered back at the Buggies, made fun of the boys shooting, took our pictures and headed home. It was a great time and I truly enjoyed meeting and hunting with these folks. They have a lot of fun and they're truly appreciative of the blessings they have, and they pay it forward in spades. Thank you Greenbriar, Ffa, Lily Beth, Darren, Jennifer, Troy Cooper, Tray, Jim, jimbo Bow and Whaler. We are to do it again sometime. Support the folks and the future farmers of America. They truly are doing some great things. Well that's gonna knock this episode in the head for the week. I hope you enjoyed it, and I hope you know that Clay Lake and I worked very hard to bring you the stuff that you like to hear, and we couldn't do it without you, so until next week. This is Brent Reeves sign it off. Y'all be careful.