Bear Grease - Ep. 116: BEAR GREASE [RENDER] - Squirrel Cook Off and Crockett Quiz

Episode Date: June 7, 2023

On this week’s episode of the Bear Grease Render, Clay Newcomb is joined by Misty Newcomb, Josh Spielmaker, Brent Reaves, and Joe Wilson, founder of the World Champion Squirrel Cook Off. The crew discusses the history of the Squirrel Cook Off, as well as the cultural significance and implications surrounding hunting and cooking small game. After fleshing out the finer details of, quite possibly, the most important annual event in North America, Clay springs a pop quiz on the crew to discover whether or not they’ve been paying attention - see if you can keep up - and after an intense battle, crowns a victor in a narrow race. The crew then discusses some of their favorite parts of the previous episode which followed the childhood and young adulthood of America’s first celebrity, David Crockett. You’ll also want to stay tuned for Joe telling the story of his Donut Man from his podcast Cooking’ up a Story. We really doubt you’re gonna want to miss this one… Connect with Clay and MeatEater Clay on Instagram MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube Shop Bear Grease MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. First Lights fieldware collection is made for the work that happens long before opening day and continues when the season ends. Products built for early mornings, full days in real use. Hard wearing where they need to be versatile where it matters. No shortcuts. Just gear designed for the work that earns the season.

Built to perform, built to last. Check out. First Light's new field. Worldware Gear at firstlight.com. 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. Presented by FHF Gear, American Made, Purpose Built, Hunting and Fishing Gear that's designed to be as rugged as the places we explore. That is a heck of a lineup of Coonskin hats right there on that set of antlers.

Today, last render that we talked about, Crockett, I had everybody wear a Coonskin hat. Would anybody like to wear a Coonskin hat? I was actually going to bring my own. Oh. Yeah? But I didn't, you know, I didn't know the quality of y'all's hats. Well, that's to your mediocre at best. Mediocre at best.

I just, I didn't want to be outmatched on Coonskin hats. Yes. The guy who made those Coonskin hats could not be trusted. So I hear, I hear rumored that he's got four more that he's been making for about six months. We're going to do something with these hats at some point. And hey, speaking of Coon Hides, last night, two nights ago, I, I had two dogs. I had, so I have a squirrel dog that runs loose all the time. Tim.

He is the most responsive dog to human, mind, will, and emotion that I've ever been around. Like, you can be, like, thinking something and kind of glance over to it, and he'll be like, oh, we're talking about that. Like, he's just, he's hyper. He's in tune. He's hyper in tune, like ridiculously in tune. So he runs around, and he's normal.

My really good squirrel dog is so good, I can't let her run loose because she'll just hunt herself to death or end up, you know, running off. She gets treat on things for hours at a time every time she's off. So a few days ago, I turned. turned her loose just to let her run. In the summer, I just let her run. And I like to keep my neighbors in check. I like for dogs to just be treed for hours, just like close to the house. Just to let people know that this is not suburbia. Just when they, this is when you think they're going to start showing up to eat. Right when they think they're going to start paving the road and putting in nice

$400,000 houses and stuff, I want people to come down here and try to buy land to be like, man, there's some hillbillies. Have you ever had one of your dogs? tree is squirrel down here at the marina like 200 yards down the road where the sailboat is yeah that's yeah that's why we like to keep this place i've got we've got some boats on our road far far from any river systems or lakes that's when you know you're living right yeah that's right so so i had tests running loose and she's my good squirrel dog and about 30 minutes before dark two nights ago i hear of them just on a hot track and get treed and they're up here in what I call the possum funnel there I've got on this land that I've got here which isn't a big piece of land those dogs

tree possums in like one spot and there's no rhyme or reason there's no big den trees but if they get treed and it's upon a possum which they tree a lot of possums they'll tree within a 50 yard radius is I don't understand why they always tree there but Tim was treed hard. Test was right there. I mean, it was just beautiful tree. And I was busy and just didn't even bother with them. At least an hour and a half.

And I'm being conservative. It was probably closer to two hours. I mean, it was when I wanted to go to bed, like, closer to 11. They were treed hard. Continued to be treed hard out there. And I was going to bed, and I told Bear John, my son, I said, how about you go feed those dogs and go shoot that possum out of the tree that they've got tree and he said dad i'm not interested in shooting up and so i went out to my truck and got my

d't because man if you walk in these woods right now yep you would be covered in ticks and uh and chiggers and so i went out to the truck and sprayed down with d't this is like right before i'm going to bed and i just am trying to retrieve my dogs take my 22 because right now in arkansas it's war on varmints trying to save turkey poles and chickens. Yeah, we've had serious predation this spring on our chickens. And I go out there and Tim and Thress are just treed hard, and Tim is extra pumped. And I shine up in this incredibly bushy tree.

I didn't think I was going to see it, Brent. And sure enough, there's a coon there, which is the first time they treated a coon. Tim the squirrel dog, he should be Tim the possum dog. He loves possums more than anything. You can hear it in his voice when he trees a possum. squirrels are a distant second, pack rats are third, and number four is a coon. And anyway, speaking of Coonskin hats, and I shot that coon out.

Well, I think there's another angle to this story. We're sitting inside, and Bear really wants to start a business, and he and I are talking official business. We're talking about paperwork and what taxes would look like and all this kind of stuff, and we're having this real in-depth conversation. We're on computers, Googling on the couch. And Clay walks in with a coon in his hands, a dead coon in the dogs. And we look up and I don't even, I don't even pause.

It's like, yeah, Clay's got a coon in the house. Again. It took me a double take before I realized, shoot, you've got a live coon in our house. It was dead by that. He was dead. And the dogs, he wanted to get a picture with them. And the dogs were just ridiculous. You could tell they were pretty pumped up.

Here's something I'm taken from this. I don't know if y'all, do anybody else hear when he first, he said, Bear John, go out there and kill that possum. He says, I have no interest in it. Had he told me that? And I was talking to my mom about accounting. I would have looked like you'll see him and his Sam went through the wall. Not Bear Newcomb.

Man, that guy is hard at it. He put the hard sell on me this week for some stuff too. So, I mean, he's in it to win it right now. That's good stuff right there, man. Yeah. So we have a, we have a, we've got some regulars on the podcast, but we have, Joe is not really an irregular. Joe's been, Joe. He don't look at it.

You've got Joe Wilson's yet to be determined. I've known Joe for many years now. Yes, sir. And Joe was on the Bear Honey magazine podcast way back. O.G. Yeah. And Joe was on the Arkansas Image podcast that I did. If you remember when I went to the old Walton Five and dime,

and then we went into the Walmart Museum with a hologram, Joe was kind of my guide there. So you've heard Joe's voice if you're paying attention to Bear Greas. He's been on the Bear Greas more than Josh has. I was just going to say he was on original Bear Grease and you never were, were you. Josh has yet to be a feature guest. I've never been on Bear Greece. I was on the bear hunting magazine podcast.

Mainly because it would be like, I don't have any other content. Just get Spillmaker in here. Joe, how do you introduce yourself to people if you have the open mic? Well, if I had an open mic, I'd introduce myself as a father of two, a husband of one. I've got two dogs right now. It's driving me crazy. I just got a new puppy a week ago. So I'm a little bloodshot in the eye.

but what was the saying that Dave Crockett said? He said that he, about an accident? No, about his, yeah, about the accident. Well, he just said that his fame came on him completely by accident. And so my fame has come on me completely by accident. So, you know, Clay knows this story, and I doubt the listeners do, but I throw the world champion squirrel cookoff here in northwest Arkansas. and it come to me straight up by accident.

Hey, we got to, okay, listeners out there, he just dropped the bomb. Joe is the founder of the one and only world championship squirrel cookoff. And it come to me by accident. So tell me that. So I was working in downtown Bentonville and for the listeners who aren't aware of what that could be like. It's kind of like a Norman Rockwell painting. It's brick buildings, old buildings. It's where the retail giant started of Walmart.

And I become sociable with a lot of people walking by, and the lady who's in charge of downtown Bentonville cornered me one day, and she said that Andrew Zimmern from Bizarre Foods had contacted them, and they wanted to do the Ozark Edition, and I was the guy that they wanted me to fix this deal. And so this is a week after our football coach, Bobby Petrina. Bobby Petrina. Bobby Petrina.

The accident that didn't hurt around the world. Yeah, exactly. He had had a little accident. You have to Google that, everyone. No, they don't. You do. So they started question me on things they wanted to see,

and they wanted to see a rabbit hunt, and I said, I can do that. And they wanted to do a bear hunt, and I said, I know some people, and Clay was part of that, and wanted a gig for suckers. in the river. I said, I got that covered. And they said, we want to do a crow hunt because our research shows that people in Arkansas eat crow. Now, mind you, this is a week after our

football coach had had some sort of accident. And I said, ma'am, you're mistaken. I said, we really don't eat a lot of crow. Matter of fact, we don't eat any. And she said, no, sir, our research says that people in Arkansas eat crow. And I said, well, I've cooked crow before and we ate it, but we'd been drinking. And people said that it tasted pretty good, so we could cook crow. They said, what about squirrel? Do you do squirrel? Oh, yes, ma'am.

I said, matter of fact, we cook the world champion squirrel. And she says, how do you know? And I said, because we throw the world championship. She said, when is it? I said, when are y'all coming? He didn't have a world chicken. Is that when it started? Yeah.

We had a lot of November can. Yeah. She said like August 11th, and I said, you know what? It just happens to be on where we do it. And she said, no kidding. And I said, yeah, that's when it is. And so as soon as I got off the phone, I started scrambling. What was the date approximately?

It was in August of 2000. No, no, no. that she was calling it was in August she called oh she called this probably June yeah okay so you had a couple months dang that still ain't no time man so I scrambled got on the phone and I called people and I had teams from seven states show up and we had 24 teams and at that time I thought to have a judge at a squirrel cookoff they needed to be certified by like the governor so I had a district judge County judge

I had real judges so that way I knew it was fair and plus I had a fat used car salesman because that man knew squirrel and I had a James Beard award winning chef and so the first year we did the squirrel cookoff we had as random of things as you could imagine you know we of course we had fried squirrel

and we had gumbo and some gravy but that's when we started having the squirrel pizza and the squirrel fried rice and things like that. So that show aired, I want to say, in 120 countries across the world. Andrew Zimmerin's Bizarre Food. That would have been 2014? No, it was 2010. Was it really?

Yeah, it was. 2010. Wow. Because you were on it. Yeah, you all made cracklinks. So it was Andrew Zimmerin's Bizarre Foods. And let me tell my side of that one, just real quick. I had those people called me.

Andrew Zimmerman's people call me. And it's just I don't have any exposure to media at all during that time. And they say, hey, we want to do a show. I'd never heard of, we didn't watch TV. I didn't have, I'd never heard of Andrew Zimmern. And this person says, we want to come to Arkansas and we would like for you to kill a bear on October 1st. That's easy. Okay.

No problem. And I was like, now what do you mean you need it on October 1st? And she's like, well, that's when my crew will be in Arkansas. saw and we need you to kill a bear and I was like ma'am I can't guarantee that we can have a bear that day but I remember very vividly what I said to him I said now tell me about this Andrew Zimmerin in the show I said because if you're looking for a bunch of hillbillies to make fun of you got the wrong guy like I was like I came in pretty hot I was super defensive and then the woman was like oh no no no Andrew is so respectful of people's culture.

And then as I did, like I watched the show, I was like, oh, this guy's really cool. So that was, well, and then the short version of our bear hunt was, I just sent out like an APB to all my buddies. And I said, hey, if you kill a bear on October 1st, call me. Because that was close to opening day of season, maybe even the opening day of season. And one of my good buddies, Trey Clark,

killed a bear on October 1st, first and i and i called andrew zimmern's people and they like made a beeline from northwest arkansas down to where we were hunting big huge film crew oh yeah and they filmed us do everything in the world we made bear crack on side of that bear but this goes on the same show that the world championship squirrel cookoff is on yeah well you know another part of that is when it come down to the crow part i had to fill this slot and so i was friends with phyllis spears and phyllis spears did Arkansas outdoors cooking in a Dutch oven. Yeah.

She'd cooked everything with a face, you know. And so I called Phyllis, and I said, Phyllis, I'm in a bind. I got to do some crow hunting, and I got to cook a crow. And being the sweetheart that she is, she says, hon, do I need to bring my own crow? And I said, it probably wouldn't hurt, Phyllis. So we go right down the road from us, and we had shot crows. We really never hunted crows.

We shot some, you know. And so we get out there and we got a crow call and we're calling and calling, and that spy crow comes a flying. You know who I've heard is really good at a crow call? The scout. You know who I've heard is really good at a crow call? Who's that? Steve Ronella.

He's an ace. I want to do more crow hunting, but so that old scout comes flying over. And one of my guys is a little loose. And so he started letting it fly at the scout. So that meant there's no more crows. So that producer, I bet you remember him, his real slimy, greasy hair. Long black kind of smoking a big cigar. Yeah, man.

He filmed comb over the movie. He traveled the country looking for the comb over capital of the world. Actually interviewed Donald Trump long before he was president. Is that right? So he says, what do we got to do to get these crows? I said, man, we got to load up and go to the store. So we went to the largest outdoor provider down in Rogers and walked in there with three shopping carts. And we bought bull blinds.

We bought electric collars, a fishing pole just in case we needed it, all new camouflage and some camping gear. Because they were fitting the bill. Plus some decoys. And we showed up and could not get a crow, but Phyllis had a s had a s stunt crow in the back of the truck. And we launched that thing up and filmed some good B-roll a couple times. What do you mean she had a stunt crow? She brought three processed crows and three fully feathered crows in the back of her big Dodge truck.

Like not alive? No. No. It didn't know that it was part of the show. Okay, okay. But so Phyllis. Hollywood. Phyllis made for the listeners who've never ate crow.

I want to turn your nose to it Because a crow, their legs are the lighter color meat And their breast is the dark color meat And I don't know what a Kansas crow Or a South Dakota crow is But an Ozark crow eats a lot of dead armadillos On the side of the road, right? Yeah

And she made a shepherd's pie And then she made these little cuts of crow breast Which she had marinated And they tasted more like beef than beef does. Now, I've ate pretty near any animal I've ever seen. And I enjoy it. But my nemesis would be sweet potatoes.

I can't stomach them. Do you eat a crow meat? We can't have a sweet potato. All kinds of stuff. I couldn't stomach a sweet potato, and she made that shepherd's pie, and I had to dig through the sweet potatoes to get to that crow meat. But to put icing on top of this cake here, Pro meat is worth the eat.

It's good stuff. So that show aired in 120 countries. And just like your son, I thought I could make a dollar off this deal. So I decided I was going to sell Squirrel Cookoff T-shirts, and they were 20 bucks a piece. And come to find out, the shipping to Australia is more than 20 bucks. So I lost it that deal. A lot of overseas orders. Well, typically the orders would come in about 2 o'clock in the morning, and they were always for 4-Xs.

Because I think when that show aired in the middle of the night, there was some chubby guy eating Cheetos. He was like, world-cote. He was wanting a T-shirt. So since it was so famous, the next year we got the front page of the Wall Street Journal. And the Wall Street Journal come to Bentonville. The mayor wasn't happy. He thought the Wall Street Journal was going to run us through the mud. He said they were in the East Coast Bias deal.

And they were going to put that hillbilly element on the deal. and I asked the mayor who he was most scared of, was it the Wall Street Journal or me, and he said, you just don't want them here. He said, they've spent a lot of money making this town what it is, and we don't need that reputation. And I told him the last time that the Wall Street Journal had come to our town, there was a guy named Sam Walton, who received the Medal of Freedom from a guy named George Bush, who had a son named George Bush. And if it took a redneck and squirrels to get us back on the front page of the Wall Street Journal,

somebody wasn't doing their job. And so we carried it on, man, and we've done it for a reason that's more than humor. We wanted to show the world that we could take smallest a game and turn it into the biggest of meals. And some of the things, Clay, you've been there a couple times, the biggest thing to me has been to seeing the diversity of human beings that will show up to cook squirrel. Everybody thinks it's guys like us. No, there's hippies. There's five-star chefs.

There's old people and kids and people of every color and creed show up to cook squirrel. And sometimes the people that do the best are the people who've never even cooked a squirrel before. And so that's been the highlight of the thing. First and foremost, getting people back outdoors to hunt small game. That's how we learned. The old AIMS small, miss small thing takes place in the woods chasing squirrels and rabbits. And over the years, we've put a lot of people back in the woods. We may have caused some Lyme disease.

Because it is a chigger and tick-prone sport. But we've had a lot of good times, man. So it's been going on now for 14 years minus COVID. Yeah, we missed two years of COVID and one year from me being lazy. But we're coming back in this year, September 23rd, we'll be in Springdale, Arkansas. It'll be our first time in Springdale. Arkansas Game and Fish has a beautiful new facility there. Yeah.

And they're trying to get people to come to it. And once again, the squirrel's going to. to save the day. That's just right down the road for me. So let's stop right there. September 23rd, which is a Saturday. Yes, sir. 2023.

Yes, sir. Springdale, Arkansas. And what's the name of that facility? I've been there shooting. We'll have to add that in later, Clay. Okay, yeah, yeah. That's the JV and John L. Center, Center.

Yeah, it's a very, very, like a multi-gazillion dollar outdoor facility in Springdale. That was built to rehabilitate the question. Well. Okay. That's, I mean, they really thrive on quail habitat and all of that. What's the name of it? AGFC, J.B, and John L. Hunt, family Ozark Highlands Nature Center. It's just a little word.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Awesome booth would be, he'll be upset that we didn't get it on the first try. Sorry, Austin, but it's an incredible facility. It is an incredible facility. They have an outdoor 3D archery range. You can just walk up, shoot your bows, big facility. They have an indoor pellet and BB rifle shooting range. as well for the kids and and so our goal this year is to bring the kids really into it so we're

going to have a in the morning we're going to do a pellet rifle shoot indoors don't be mistaken that we're just a squirrel eating competition here we also have the world champion squirrel cleaning competition oh look at on some of that the reigning champion is clifton jackson of arkansas who has the expensive squirrel rifle you can buy is named the Jackson squirrel rifle and it's named after Clifton. He's been in charge of small game for several years here in the state of Arkansas. How fast can you clean a squirrel? Well, this isn't the squirrel like your dog's been treying out here. This is a squirrel that's been inside my freezer for a long time. Okay. And so it's semi-thawed squirrel and we give you a knife and we've had people assist by using their teeth.

whatever it takes to get through this deal. I can't tell you how fast. He was the fastest. Let me ask you this. Do you have to use a knife? Could I bring another implement to the competition? You could. The rules on this deal is hopefully you bring your own knife

and hopefully you bring your own glove to keep you from cutting a finger off of because I don't want to be responsible for that. So we've got that event. Because I don't use a knife. I use a pair of clippers. He's a very competitive squad for it. I can see. It's boiling out.

One minute. I mean, I'm not saying I'm the fastest in the world. He has competed. I'd be hot on the heels of whoever. That guy looks a whole lot like you. Yeah, that's exactly what I'm saying. Do you know I've been listening to this show since it started, and that's probably the least humble I've ever heard you?

Well, you remember when he was running the back of confidence. Yeah, when he was running the back coat, kind of. Yeah. Well, there's just some things that about confidence. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps game calls in building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called prime cuts. Now, I'm going to tell you, I love mine because it's easy to use. I'm not going to go, I'm not going to win a turkey calling contest.

It's just not going to happen. But when I run this call, I get the sounds that gobblers are looking for. I have a great turkey hunting track record. If you go listen to real turkeys out in the woods, they're not going to win calling contests, right? that's who I listen to. I can make those sounds on my cut. I also hunt with Phelps's cut, and I hunt with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts.

Check out Prime Cuts at Phelpsgamecalls.com. I think you'll be glad you did, and you'll find out that the Steve Ronella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. So the other event, event is the world's hottest squirrel wing eating competition.

Oh, hottest. How did the squirrels had wings? Taste heat. Oh, yeah. This is, Pepper hot. Yeah. Pepper hot.

This is, we take the hind quarters of the squirrel and bread them up, deep fry them. And then we pour molten lava of some Carolina Reaper and whatever else somebody grew in their garden. That's a woods on fire. Yeah. And that's a hilarious event to sit there and watch. So we'll have live music. So let me describe, and you can fill it in,

but when I've been there before, it wasn't at this venue, but if you have a team, which anybody could have a team. You bet. So if you're from wherever you're from, how would they register? So about the time this show airs on our Facebook page, World Champion Squirrel Cookoff Facebook page, there will be the registry information, and we are going to limit it to 40 teams.

Oh, really? Well, it's torturous to our judges. And because... So only 40 teams can compete. Only 40 teams. How are they vetted? Are they vetted? Are they vetted? Or it's just like first come first serving?

And Misty, I know you're a heck of a cook, right? Yes. Yeah, I just had some... Slightly above average. Some strawberry cakes you made. And if you added a little squirrel to that, you might have a fighting chance of winning a strawberry squirrel. I mean, currently, how many world championships do you hope? You know, I don't think I hold a world championship in anything.

There would be nothing prouder that would make a humble clay. No, no way. If he was to introduce his wife. So our event is set up to where you got to do an entree and a side dish. Okay, and 80% of the meat used inside of your squirrel entree has to be squirrel. So that's not 80% of your overall dish. Okay. That's 80% of the meat.

It's either like egg rolls. Why did you say that out loud? Did you cut that out, Isaac? Here we go. Yeah, the dishes that they have will blow your mind. Squirrel Jello. I mean... Oh, with grapes in it.

Yeah. Acres. Okay. I was going to describe you would come to this event and there would be, if you have a team, if you're one of the 40 teams, you would have a booth. Yep. And there would be time frames during the day when you had to have. meals cooked, but you also cook kind of for the public, for whatever you want. Yeah, it doesn't necessarily have to be squirrel.

If you got a good porcupine recipe, you're more than welcome. Who don't do me that? And people are just kind of wandering around, talking to the chef. It's always real fun to just go around and just ask, we're like, what are you cooking? And, you know, a lot of people, I've never seen more squirrel costumes and, like, get up from people. Just random people. They'll dress up. Not even the cooks.

They're just people. It's kind of like when Star Wars comes out. It's like the hillbilly version of Star Wars premieres. I guess I need to start making some squirrel hats. Squirrel costume. Squirrelcom. Squirrel com, yeah. I'm so glad I bought instead of rented.

So Clay's right. As you're walking around, if you're a people watcher like I know we all are, it is the perfect place to pull up a chair and sit and stare at what's showed up at this hill. Because we've had teams from as far away as the Netherlands. Wow. We even have squirrels in the Netherlands? I'm not real sure. You've got to come here to cook them.

But we've had teams from the Netherlands. We've had a couple female bankers from New York City. Oh, wow. That's cool. Who brought them in. We get West Coast teams. We've had teams from Canada. We had a judge from Italy to come to do this.

And so why I'm saying this. is this ain't no joke. This is the real deal. When we crowned you as a world champion, you're the world champion. You should never serve that squirrel on a paper plate again. That's what I'm talking about. It's fine china.

So you're doing an entree and a side dish, and your side dish should pair with your entree. And a couple... What variety of wine goes best with... It matters how you cook the squirrel. I mean... Got it. Start meat.

But we had a... Up until a couple years ago, it was kind of blind. I give you a styrofoam box. You put your groceries in there. It turned it into the judges. And then I'd open up the box and give them to the judges. And they'd say, what is this? I'd say, I have no idea.

Squirrel. And so now we give the teams the opportunity. They put a three by five card inside that box. And it'll describe what dish they've turned in. Because if you know what it's supposed to be, it'll kind of taste like that. Right. Right. How many judges are there, though?

So we'll have 12 judges. Twelve judges. Six on one side, six on the other. Each judge, you know, we have an odd set of judges in an even set. So depending on what your turn-in token says, if you're number two, you go on the right side. If you're number one, you go on the left. Because it is torture, man. When you've got 20 dishes, that's an entree and a side, and there's a chance you'll have a number eight shot in any of that.

Oh, yeah. You know. You got an orthodontist on the standby. And so it's a workout to eat it. And as a judge, you sign up to eat everything we throw in front of you and judge it fairly. So most cooking competitions, if it's chili or brisket or steaks or whatever you're doing, everybody's in the same realm. So it's real easy to pick the best brisket from that day.

This, everything's different. So we judge you on your own. If you make a squirrel meatloaf, well, we're judging on what we want as our best meatloaf. Okay. And how close you come to that mark. Squirrel Kiev. I'm just saying, don't make squirrel meatloaf for the championship cookoff. You're not going to win that thing.

Well, you know, squirrel meatballs placed really well in the past. Can you give us a couple of examples of stuff that's won? I mean, it's stuff that you just would never dream of. Oh, man. And we've had Mexican dishes do really well. Yeah. I'll just put it to you that way. We've had a lot of Mexican dishes work out.

We've had a lot of Italian dishes work out really well. So squirrel does well with tomato. Well, squirrel is the tofu of the woods, so it'll gather whatever flavor profile you throw at it. When I was there, and I'm trying to remember, But there was one group that their whole thing was to make a chick-fil-A sandwich. I disqualified them. Really?

Yeah. Why? Well, because our rules are simple. 100% of the preparation of this dish has to take place on site. Okay, they did sign. And so there's no marination, there's no prep work done. And to make that chick-fil-a sandwich, that means you had to marinate it in pickle juice. That's the secret to the chick-fellate.

chicken is the pickle juice. Well, just as an example, though, even though this team got disqualified, I didn't realize it. These guys, like, their booth looked like a chick-fil-a booth. I love it. And they made. This thing's not on Sunday. The same little. They wouldn't be open.

Yeah. It was good. You know, they made a little chick-fil-a deal, and that was their thing. Yeah. There was a lot of Asian dishes. The BHA guys that I knew over there, they, they, they made like squirrel

nachos and we're feeding them to people all day. Is it B.Y.O. Squirrel? It is, man. That's part of the game. So the game is to get people back in the outdoors. And so squirrel's not a commodity. We can go to the grocery store and purchase.

Ironically, I know Steve Rinella was just on CBS Sunday morning. And he was what, the Martha Stewart of The Julia Child. Julia Child of the campfire. So I'll throw my humbleness out here. I beat Steve Rinella on to CBS Sunday morning.

I was on it years before he was. And I was the first guy. You know, at the end of CBS Sunday morning, there's a majestic scene of like a moose blowing steam out of its nostrils or an old blue herring just tiptoeing just tiptoeing through the water. they got me to be the first guy to shoot at something. Oh, really? And so I'm sitting on Spavinole Creek on a lawn chair,

and about three feet from me is this dude from Seattle, Washington. And they brought their little goon with them, who was from Manhattan, not Kansas. And the little guy's writing on a card handing it to the guy to ask me the questions. and they're trying to burn down my house. I could promise you as we're sitting there. They're trying to get p-ed-up. What are they interviewing you about?

The squirrel cook-off. Why we would kill something if we could go to the grocery store and just buy it. Okay. And, you know, your standard questions that come to a hunter from somebody who's not a hunter. And one of the questions was, surely you eat fast food. And I said, yes, sir, man. I said, an antelope will do 43, you know? And so I was one up in him.

That was the game I was playing. So down the creek about 100 yards walks out this little old gray squirrel to take a drink of that cool spring water. And the little man from Manhattan, he says, could you shoot that squirrel at that distance? I said, oh, yeah, in the face. And so I lean up on this tree. And I'd been, I'd done some TV. I'd done the Andrew Zimmern deal. I had never been around a camera like these guys' camera.

I don't know what HD they were, but it was more than we got at my house, you know. And so they got two cameras in front of me, one behind me, that great big umbrella that's lit. And they said, whenever you're ready. And so I breathe in one, pow, I shoot. And I've killed hundreds upon hundreds of squirrels. I had never killed one like this that was ready for TV. as that bullet just barely nicked him, he goes, and like a three-toed sloth,

this thing is grasping at stones, crawling, playing it up for the movies. Oh, no. And the guy says, what are you feeling? What's your emotions? I said, I'm pretty upset. He said, about wounding that animal? Man, I missed it clean.

I said, I'm upset because I don't get to cook it for you. And my mind's just running through on every excuse. I could come up with because I thought the day this airs is the last day I'm going to be able to walk into my house, you know, and they cut it. They cut it out. And the show actually turned out really good. So whenever I heard Steve Rinella was on that show, and I thought, yeah, I was on there, too. They about burned down my house. man well

Brent you can we get a commitment from you to be at the World Championships squirrel cook on? Let me do this I've got seat number one over there on the left hand side that I'll put you down in the judging spot if you'll accept it. 40 squirrels

I'm there pal I got you mark it down 40 squirrels this is big I got you now gaming fish just auctioned off one of these on the foundation deal. Oh, really? A spot as a judge.

I think they got like 400 bucks. And so you're going to be a judge. Oh, my gosh. Absolutely. I'll be honored to. Yeah, man. We'll be honored to have you. Yeah.

I know that you come qualified. Yeah. I come from a long line of squirrel eaters and killers. Yeah. Yeah. So, hey, expect this. If you're coming from a long distance, you should probably look for your hotel room.

Because we've got multiple things happening that weekend. And so go ahead and get you a hotel. The event starts at 9 in the morning should be wrapped up by about 4.30, but we'll keep you busy all day looking and laughing. Is it cost money to get in? Clay, I would never charge anybody for a good time. And so, no, it's free.

That's incredible. That's great. Man, okay, I will most likely be there. Are we going to have an opportunity to eat squirrel just as a participant? Yeah. Okay. So. Oh, go ahead.

Oh, go ahead. How long do they have to prepare it? if they can't prepare anything off-site? So what we do is first thing in the morning, about 8 o'clock, we'll have a meeting of the teens, and we'll once again go through all the rules and regulations at 8.30. I'm going to send my meat inspectors around. And this is to make sure there's no contraband squirrel inside them coolers.

You know, don't be fooling me with some rabbits. And so we'll also test the meat to make sure that it's four. 40 or under. Okay. Because there's a chance you're going to eat it. Now, when you come and sample something, you're playing this game at your own risk. So we inspect at 9 o'clock. The team's fired up, and they could cook on any heat source.

So if you want to cook on a Coleman stove, that's fine. If you want to cook on a $10,000 smoker that you won the Texas brisket competition in, you're more than welcome to cook on that. You can fry it. You can bake it. You could roast it. You name it. We've even had squirrel sushi.

We've had squirrel ice cream. The desserts are kind of out there. The hardest part about smoking a squirrel is keeping him lit. That's right. That's right. You've got to bite off the end of it first. That's it. That's the trick.

And we hope to have, if anybody's listening and they have something, a group or somebody that needs a little bit of support, you can contact me. and maybe we could get you a booth set up at that deal as well. So you'll have some vendors. Got to have some vendors. Yeah. Local people. Vendors.

Outdoor stuff. Organizations. Y'all know if we lose one generation of hunters where we're at as a country. We're in trouble. And so y'all's show and everybody who does it the right way is doing God's work on this deal. because we're just a boat. We're inches away from losing our kids in the outdoors. And so if I could help promote our youth in the outdoors,

if I could help bring back an old-timer that used to love squirrel hunting, if I could get him drug back out in the woods, then it's worth it because I could guarantee you, Clay, I ain't never made a penny on this deal. And I don't want to tell my wife what we haven't had because of it. So it's that important. And seeing these urban people show up and have their nose pointed up in the air when they get there. And by the end of it, you watch them walking around nibbling on a squirrel leg or something.

That's my success story. Man, I think what you're doing, Joe, I mean, I've called you a hero before for putting this thing on. I mean, I absolutely love it. Just like Dave Crockett, I stepped into this deal by accident, but it's given me some opportunities. You know, I was telling Brent earlier that I've got a nonprofit organization that we travel around the country and we feed firefighters, police officers, first responders, a ribby steak dinner. And that's off a bovine. That's not off of a squirrel. Squirrel ribby. We've made a 40.

thousand ribby steak dinners across the country that's amazing to steaks for sheep dogs steaks for sheep dogs and our goal is to show community you could not get along with somebody there there's certain people in this country you may not like but you'll eat at their restaurant breaking bread is really the secret to to neighbors and friendships and all that And we can always have a meal and work out our issues. That's whenever your guards down, whenever you're eating, especially good food. And so six years ago in Dallas, Texas, a bad guy showed up. He killed a bunch of police officers.

I've seen an opportunity for me to slide in there and try to make a change. And we've helped people. We'll never win the fight. It's impossible to make everybody appreciate that we have sheep dogs. out there taking care of us. People are going to dislike people regardless. But I know whenever our team shows up and we put smiles on faces and every time you've spoken to people, whether it be at church or on one of your adventures, there'll be somebody

who will call you and say, I needed that that day, you know? And that's my trophy is we'll leave a community and I'll get a phone call and there'll be someone I've never met before, say, you don't know where I was at that day. And when you showed up and fed us, it gave me a clear view that we were still together as a country. And I'm not saying I've saved anybody. I just know that we've touched hearts through ribby steaks, some really good mashed potatoes, and some dang good green beans.

That don't do it every time. Man, that's incredible. Steaks for sheep, dog. Yes, sir. That's awesome, man. Yeah, I appreciate it. And, you know, we're 100% volunteer organization. I don't know how I have the gas money to show up here today

because everything I do is for free, you know. But we're born with the last name as kind of our brand. And I've listened to your stories about your boy being left out in the woods and all that. Well, he's a Newcomb. And I've got a last name of Wilson. and so I wanted to give my kids a solid foundation a brand name. My last name given to my kids should be able to give them some opportunity to where people would know Joe was a good old boy,

so maybe that acorn didn't fall far from the tree on his son or his daughter. And I don't know if this is going to work or not, but I'm going to give them the easiest path to people believing, and if they say it, they're going to do it. So that's kind of how I stand on that deal. That's awesome, man. That's good stuff, thriller. Hey, tell us about, and this isn't a sales pitch for Joe's spice thing, but it is.

Oh, shoot. Wilson Shire sauce. Tell me about, I've got questions. Joe just handed me a bottle when I left him the other day, and I was like, what is this? And he said, put it on anything. It'll taste good. And man, it does. Wilson Shire sauce is a craft Worcestershire sauce.

See, you had a hard time saying it, too. Yeah, yeah. So I woke up one morning, same show, CBS Sunday morning. And they had the top five hardest words for an American to say. One of them was squirrel, and I already had that covered. And the other one was that Worcestershire, right? Really? Wastro sisters.

I thought I said it really pretty good there, Worcestershire. And so I thought, well, maybe. I could do better. So I read the label on that Lee and Pairns and I went to three different grocery stores, bought some stuff and it kind of looked like a lab inside the house. I kicked everybody out and said, leave me alone. I'm inventing something. And in my shop, I've got a fermentation refrigerator like most of us do. Well, yeah, of course. And I filled a big old jar full of a concoction. And about a month, I went out there and looked at it and didn't look right. Second month, the heck, it

looked even worse. Third month, it had grown a big skin over the top, and I hit it with a blender, took a tablespoon of it, drank it, set in my chair, woke up in the morning, and I hadn't died. That made me hungry. And so I bottled 20 bottles of it. I sent it around the country to people that I knew would appreciate it. And Mark Lambert, who's a seven-time world champion of barbecue, I gave him a bottle, and he won an event with it.

And he says, I need more. I said, you're in trouble. it takes three months to make it. And after about two years of him prodding me, we made Wilson Shire a commercial thing, and we've sold thousands of bottles of it. But, you know, right here in the state of Arkansas, we've got towns and spice and supply,

and they're out of Melbourne, Arkansas, a little small place. And they make all the rest of my seasonings, and I brought you all some seasonings, because if you're going to eat, you might as well make it taste good. So where can we buy Wilsonshire? Wilson Shire sauce. If you could spell it, you could go online and just type it in and you'll find a place. Man, Josh, it's hard to describe.

You get a bottle of what you realize is Worcestershire sauce. And you're like, how often do I use Worcestershire sauce? I use it all the time. My wife could drink. You have got to. It's not normal. If you want a flavor something, I mean, if you want a good, you know, there's, what is there, five flavors? This got the umami in there.

Yeah, that's the umami is the savory flavor. That's the great. Best way to get it. It doesn't even make sense. Because you eat it, you drink it, or you put it, you don't drink it. I drink mine right out of that little nipple.

We're going to have a drink after the show. Clay's got like a rabbit bottle that he just licks on it. It's good. It's good. Hey, we have, uh, we got a segue here. We got a segue. Big segue.

Let's do it. Big swing. Davy. Davy Crockett. Y'all ready? I've heard of David Crockett. Listen, you guys don't know it, but y'all have walked into a trap, every one of you. I feel like that.

Because we have a quiz. For you. I have a quiz for Davey Crockett episode number two. So now, ding, ding, ding, ding the music. We're now on a game show. And I'm going to see if y'all actually listened. Every time I tell Josh to come, Brent to come, I'm like, do you listen to the podcast? You know we listen to it?

And they're like, yeah, and I'm like, whatever. You didn't listen to the podcast. Yeah, sure we did. Okay, so I have seven questions. The first person to answer correctly gets one point. You will be charged with keeping your own score. Are we raising our hands or we're just blurting it out? Blurting it out.

Okay. You will be charged with keeping your own score, but it would be a buddy system. We will be monitoring. monitoring you. All right. It's going to start out easy and get progressively harder. Okay.

In 1991, what country rock band released a cover of... Kentucky Headhunters. Bam, Josh Spellmaker. Boo, yeah. I got an extra point on that. Let me read the full question. In 1991, what country rock band released a cover of the ballad of Davey Crockett?

The correct answer is the Kentucky Headhunters. Josh, had you ever heard that version of it? I had not. It's a great version, though. Did you like it? I did like it. Did you heard it, Joe? Oh, yeah. many times.

Yeah. I have a bone to pick with you. It is the version. You know, I grew up in Hatfield, Arkansas. You know I heard that version before. And watch the movie, the video. Like, I remember as a kid. All the people with the Coonskin.

There was this channel, like, we had five channels in Hatfield. And then one day, all of us got 18, and one of them was more music, which was this. It was this video. It showed music videos. MTV was not allowed in Polk County. So that was like my first experience. In Polk County, like it wouldn't let it air? Yeah, it was.

You couldn't get it there. You couldn't get it. Eventually people got satellites and you could get it on satellite. Okay. But you couldn't get it like it was not allowed. So I hadn't seen music videos like everybody else. And the Kentucky headhunters came on there. And man, that guy had side jobs.

And I mean, my brothers and I, when they would come on, we loved it. One of those guys was from Leachville. Really? Is that Arkansas? Yeah, up in Mississippi County. Okay. Yeah, a bass player. I am not surprised.

Okay. Did y'all like? Like that wasn't played at y'all's way. It was kind of a new trick I did. Played the song, but then described what was happening. Did you like that? So what I didn't put in there was when the drummer got up from the drum set to chase the bear, he actually went and turned on this little handmade auto drummer.

Like it was a joke. Yeah, I remember that. He like jumps up from the drum set, but the music's playing. So the music, like the drum keeps going. and they had to figure out a way to fix that. You know, it's funny is when you said that, I thought, well, who's drumming now? You actually thought that? I did.

I did. Well, okay, so in the music video, there's like a handmade, hand-drawn little box, and it says manual drum and auto-drum, and he flicks it to auto-drum and then jumps out the window and chases the bear. I didn't even think anything about that. Josh is a deep thinker. This is a thinking man's game. One of the Elvis movies, he was singing. singing a song and he wanted the Jordanaires to back him up while he's riding this motorcycle down the road. They're like, Elvis, you can't have the Jordanaires singing. He said, where are we going to put him?

He said, I guess the same place where the folks are playing the music. He's riding a motorcycle and singing. All right. Question number two. I'm going to ask that you wait to the question. That's not fair because we're all going to answer at the same time if we know it. Okay, just answer the question. Okay. what state was David Brucker born in? I mean, I got the answer. Go ahead.

So it was Tennessee before as it was tied into North Carolina, right? Okay, does anybody, this is not the correct case. Franklin? Franklin? So you were on the right track? I was trying to remember. I knew that question was going to come up. Yeah, it's what is now Tennessee. But at the time, it was considered the state of Franklin.

Four or five years. Which was like four years when there was a state named after Benjamin Franklin. Well, he deserved the state. Oh, it was named after Benjamin Franklin. That's what I think. Is there another Franklin in American history? Well, I'm sure there's several. No, there's only one.

I'm sure. Yeah, yeah, one of the founding fathers. Franklin Reeves. Richard. Richard Franklin. Everybody, like even song says, born on a mountaintop in Tennessee. And the complicated version is, well, it actually wasn't Tennessee when he was born there. But so,

John, did you get that right? Nothing around. So you got two right? He did say, frankly. Josh, wow, the score is two to zero.

Okay. At what age did David Crockett's father of John? I was going to say it. First bond him out to work. You know, I have never thought about that. Had I thought about bonding out my kids,

I would have gone into tons of debt. Yeah. I wish you could rent him right out to the credit card company. I got a son who will work anybody under the table, and I should have bonded him out. years ago. You should see if you work something out with Visa or MasterCard, just to have him work correctly for them.

Brent Reeves, with the correct answer, 12. You know, what I learned, so a good way to approach American history to me, just trying to understand what was going on is when you're looking into this stuff, you just kind of learn about how life was by these details that don't seem to make a lot of sense, or aren't that irrelevant. But what I learned inside of this is that it was extremely common. for people to bond out their children, like have them, like, go live with people.

Here's was something that I thought was interesting. I thought, you know, at 12 years old, now we think about that, that is a, that there's still a child for almost 10 more years, really. Yeah. But I looked up several different things that I researched said that the average lifespan of somebody back then was like 38. So that's really a quarter. Somebody's already lived a quarter of the life by the time they're 12.

It's time he got up, made something of his still. I mean, people were getting married at 13, 14, 15, 16. Yeah. Really, I mean, I was kidding, but I mean, that's really, it's kind of wild to think about it. On Blood Trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is over. They just get darker. I've seen something in the road. I instantly thought it was a sleeping bag and there was a full of blood.

Oh, my God, he doesn't have a hit. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors. Where the terrain is unforgiving, the evidence is scarce, and the truth gets buried under brush and silence. Indications were he should be right there, but he wasn't. This season, we're going deeper. From cold case files to whispered suspicions, from remote mountains to frozen backwoods. Each story begins in the wilderness and ends in darkness. Because out here, there are no witnesses, no cameras, just fragments and the people,

behind trying to piece them back together. He's not an honest person. He's incapable of being honest. Somebody somewhere knows something. I'm Jordan Sillers. Season 2 of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, Iheart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, so the score is one to two.

Joe and Misty are... We're bringing up the rear. Bringing up the rear. Okay. I think I should maybe get half points because I knew two of the answers. Well, this is the – And I think Joe should get a half point because he had an explanation for one of the answers. I'll fight my way back.

Okay. Okay. Okay. The next round is double-monthed. David Crockett spoke of – he said that he had blank number of the most vicious bear dogs in the south. Seven. Seven goes to Joe Wilson. Good job.

He had seven of the most vicious bear dogs in the south. A wide one and six black ones. That's right. And the white one was a walker dog, Clay Pace. Well, it had to have been. And you think there were no other white dogs? No, no, negative. It for sure.

So there's, it's complete speculation. Crockett said that he did not like pure breed dogs. Right. He liked a mixed, a mixed breed dog, which is common still today in a lot of places. People like the mixed breed dogs. I guarantee you one of his dogs wasn't bred with a poodle. Nope. No, no, it wasn't a crocadoodle.

that is the only indication of the type of dogs he had was I love it because he said he was he was bay and this bear at night in the dark and the only dog he could see was this white dog and I think and Walker hounds weren't really Walker hounds by that time but there were a lot of hounds from Europe coming in at that I mean all of our hounds obviously came from Europe but George Washington was bringing in pure Brit purebred hounds. The plots in the 1750s first got here.

And by the time Crockett was hunting in the early 1800s, the plot breed would have been extremely tight there in eastern North Carolina, which that's right

where Crockett was. I mean, Crockett would have been probably within less than a hundred miles of where the plots were at that time. So it's, you know,

it's possible, but unlikely. He probably had just a mix of black and tan and English and running dogs and curs. They like to clip their tails. Houndsmen today typically don't clip their dog's tails, especially in the east, in the west they do. But Crockett said he loved a dog with a clipped tail.

Later, we're going to see, in the next episode, we're going to hear about the most famous painting of Crockett, which was done in Manhattan, New York. And the painter, back in those days when you painted someone, you actually had to stand there and they painted you. So it was like a days long thing. And he wanted a picture of himself.

I'm spilling the beans. This is like my favorite part of the next episode. Are you sure you want to do that? This is the one where he's tipping the hat. Yes. Yeah, yeah, that one. And I hadn't talked about it yet, so good job on that.

No extra points. He had to point to Joe Wilson. One half, two, one. And the guy was just painting some random. them dogs on there and crockett was like no no no no we got to go find some dogs that look no no no this is what it was the guy was painting these purebred dogs that he had got from somewhere in new york and crock was like no we got to find some dogs that look like tennessee bear dogs yepie dogs they went to the streets and got these mongrel dogs and brought them back in and

crogo was like they looked like it yes here we are question number four fill this is a fill in the blank question this is a quote from crockett they said if a fellow is born to be hung he will never be drowned. And further, if he is born for blank, even flower barrels can't make mash of him. No. Let me read it again. If a fellow is born...

This is one of my favorite quotes. Is it drowned? No, no, no. Well, listen, you're looking for a word, but this is one of my favorite Crockett quotes. He said, if you're born to be... If you're born to be hung, you'll never be drowned. I explained that today to my son.

I love that quote. He said, if a fellow's born to be hung, he'll never be drowned. And further, if he is born for blank, even flower barrels can't match it. Congress. That's correct. Yeah. I knew it was in there. Yeah.

I'm going to listen next time. I listen to the podcast once at regular speed and a second time at one and a half speed. So it all got buried in there. I listen at 1.25. I can't get that guy at 1.5. 1.5. I mainly listen to it because I like hearing there. I think a podcast is totally runned if you have to up the speed.

I'm a one-x guy. Is that like this film has been edited to fit to format your screen? Remember when they used to do that? Man, I actually wish I could do that to people. Like in real-life conversations. You're born to Josh when you did that. Yeah. So in Crockett's biography,

I think it's important to note this. So Daniel Boone, I made this statement like four times because I think it's important. Daniel Boone became this American archetype. Daniel Boone was like a generation before Crockett. Boone, we have this image of him that's really pristine. And I think it's partly because we never really saw

Boone's humanity from his own voice. There were all these autobiographies of Boone were lost or destroyed. And so Boone is kind of this mysterious guy that we never actually heard from him in his own voice. And Boone has this kind of mythical figure because of that. Crockett was so genuine, vulnerable, and real in his autobiography, I think it is detrimental to him.

And the autobiography is laced with political stuff. And it kind of bugged me because it's like every time he was talking, and he would say, but at that time I didn't know that one day I would be great and sit amongst the greatest men of the world. Like he kind of was self-aggrandizing quite a bit. Because he still had an agenda of being president. Absolutely. And so he, you know, I was thinking about this through the show. When you're a state representative, you're there for two years.

Yep. Right? And so as soon as you get elected, you're trying to get reelected, which is kind of a flaw in our whole deal. If you gave those guys a five-year term, maybe a single five-year term, that way you're not worried about getting reelected and self-promoting as much as you are taking care of your folks in your region. Don't bring comments sense into this, Joe. I'm sorry. Yeah. But that's how I got it.

And, you know, you talked about him being a self-promoter. Yeah. I mean, he would be a star on Twitter or YouTube or whatever. That's who he was. Yeah. So, well, he was always bringing up his political career inside his autobiography. And that's probably why people don't like them. Like, that's the legacy.

Well, if that's his autobiography, that's the legacy. I said it before. If he'd had a good editor, an editor could have toned him down. I mean, I'm being honest, I think a lot of people might write something like that, but it goes through so many, they would be like, hey, that sounds, people said that to me before, believe it or not, Joe. They've been like, hey, when you say it like that, it sounds this way of that. I wonder if that correlated to the style of the time, though. And I agree.

When you had to be the loudest, when the loudest guy got heard. Or that he was a southern frontiersman, and everybody in the east thought he was going to be an idiot regardless. Yeah. From the cane. Yeah, he kind of had a chip on his shoulder. Yeah, he had to fight his way through. And I don't know. It was style of the time.

And what we heard from Robert Morgan is that Crockett like emerged as, you know, some would say America's first big celebrity that someone that was famous in their own time, that knew about their fame, that interacted with their fame, had plays made about them, had a global bestseller book. And he, the way he talked and the way he communicated impacted like the next hundred years of literature. And he probably wasn't the only. only one. But he was a big voice inside of that.

So, like him just being verbose and talking about himself and jumping the Ohio and whipping wildcats and all this stuff. Like, I don't think he was the one that created that. I think he heard people like that on the American frontier. But he was the first guy that had a mouthpiece. The capitalized. That was talking like that. Yeah.

And, you know, I think he kind of, he liked that. And he probably took it a little. And then it gave probably one of the greatest storytellers of all times, Sam Clemens, gave him a catapult to move on and be Mark Twain. Did he ever learn to read? Crocket? Yeah, he did. Did I miss that?

Yeah, you missed that. The next question was, where did Crocket learn to read? When you ask it again, I'm going to ask it like, did he ever learn to read? Is that really one of the questions? No, it's not. It's not. Bam! Bonus point.

What was it? Canada. The guy he lived with. So the honest Quaker, Canadae, was this like really straight-laced influence in Crockett's life. Crockett was just like a poverty-stricken, rough back. I mean, you get the feeling his dad really loved him. Party animal. But his dad was a rough man.

Just like a rough old, just frontiersman pushed by poverty. Was constantly running. from being bankrupt and crisis after crisis. His dad had grist mill. Man, pretty much in American history, if you read about, here's a hot tip. If you're reading about American history and you see, and then they borrowed some money

to have a gristmill. Guaranteed it's going to get washed away in a flood and cause them to go bankrupt. You're going to be saying. Every time. Happened to Boone, happened to Crocket, happened to every single person

that ever had a grist mill. So don't get into that business. But Canada was a big influence on Crockett that kind of, and there's been people like that, identified with that. Like people, I made a statement about how people outside of your immediate family when you're in this influential age really do influence you.

I know men that, and not that your family does something wrong, but you're just family, it's like you come out with this worldview from your family, and then you kind of, you see there's other ways to do things. Okay. Question number five.

What European capital city did Crockett almost sail to at the age of 14? Bears. Wrong. London. Bam, Misty Nukin with one. I don't remember that. We were like, literally

Crocett's the guy Crockett was working with physically restrained him from getting on a boat and sailing to London. And who knows? He may have got over there and stayed and never come back.

It was interesting when he was just a kid. Okay, Mark Twain was born how many months before Crockett died at the Alamo? If you remember. Oh, yeah, yeah. I talked about how their lives overlapped. Four.

Who said that? I did. Brent Reeves, four months. So, what was I got, 10? Mark Twain and Davey Crockett, their lives overlapped by four months. I'm fascinated by thinking about our lifespans. And, you know, I talked about how I was born in 1979. You do the math.

I mean, if somebody was 80 years old. You know, my great-grandfather, who I knew well. was born in 1898. Wow. And I'd love to listen to him tell stories. Pretty amazing. So think about, if that were extrapolated back, how much older was he than you? Well, he would have been 96 when he died, and that was probably 1992.

So you would have been like 10, so he would have been like 80-something years older than you? No, 1999. I was 16. So what I'm saying is, what I'm saying is, what I'm saying is, 76. 76. So there's about a 70. Oh, yeah. He was 80.

98 years older. Now what, the math I'm trying to do, though, is if he was born in 1898 and he was 10 years old, he would have could have been interacting with people born in the 1830s or something. Yeah. Oh, yeah. So technically he could have known men that would have known Dave. Davy Crockett. Yeah.

Well, yeah, you could go, like, if you go 80 years back, say, like, our World War II guys. Yeah. Those, you go 80 years back from that, and that was Civil War guys, and you go 80 years back from that, and it's the independence. And so if you take that, because we've got the 250th anniversary coming up. Yeah. We're not that far removed from the founding fathers of this country, which that's some pretty amazing history. if you just sit back and think about it for a minute. And so I'm right there with you.

I think this is amazing, the overlap. Yeah. You hear the 1800s, and it's like that might as well have been like dinosaurs. 10,000, yeah, dinosaur, but it's not. I was 16 or 17 when my great grandfather died and he was born in 1891. Really? Yep, I was sitting there.

I just did the census thing because I couldn't remember. Great grandfather? My great-grandfather. And you knew it. So about the same difference in age between your great-grandfather and my great-grandfather. He died in 18-91. He was born in 1891. Your daughters knew.

Their great-great-great-old. Well, on my side, their great-great-grandparents held them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was my great-grandparents. Right. And they're, yeah, that's pretty cool. That's pretty cool. Okay, so the score is two?

I've got 14. One. One. Three, one. How do you get three? Joe's one. Josh is three. Misty one.

How many questions are left? There are two questions left. Okay. Two questions left. I can tie up. What was the name of Crockett's first rifle? Fawkes. Who said it first?

I got Betsy. Bam. Joe's a cheater. I'm sorry. Joe was making it up just like you did. The World Championship Squirrel Cookoff. What's that? It was named after his sister.

It was named after his sister, but it wasn't him that named it. Well, yeah. Well, that wasn't the question. Well, he did call his rifle Betsy. Okay, so he called it Betsy? But he did officially call his rifle Betsy, but the rifle that I actually got to hold in Knoxville

was not most likely the rifle that he called Betsy. But did he call all of his... Yeah, that's what I... In the podcast, I was a little clear. I think this is more where you get into the mythology, because really the only hard, hard evidence, the primary source data that you have about David Crockett is that book right there, a narrative of the life of David Crockett by David Crockett.

And he never mentions Betsy in that book. He didn't. Yeah, he doesn't talk about Betsy. But, you know, there were a lot of people that knew Crockett that wrote about him that would have brought that up. He looks just like Fass Parker. Yeah, yeah. It looks just like Daniel Boone to me.

Um, so what did y'all think about, uh, was it cool? MJ. Oh, yeah. Was that a good one? Yeah. That was, I live for being able to do stuff like that on a podcast. I put Michael Jordan on there and do some really deep metaphor or analogy that probably nobody gets. Yeah.

But, uh, I actually took it a step further and I had to research O Betsy a little bit more. I watched YouTube video and seen the rifle, where they talked about they had to reconstruct the forearm of the rifle because it was in such bad state whenever he purchased it. Yeah. Pretty interesting. Whole deal. I mean, you can sit and watch YouTube videos for about 10 hours on a Sunday

on Davy Crockett if you want to. Yeah. So you saw Joe Swan. I did. He's on the internet. Yeah, all over it. Man, he is a really nice guy. he and his son were like super nice guys really genuine really just loved crockett their whole life i mean

joe did joe's probably in his 70s yeah and yeah it was interesting how he got that rifle um did still have the ramrod yeah i don't know if it's the original what would you say would be the thing that you have in your possession that would be as close to him owning that rifle anybody has anybody got a piece of history you know now this doesn't count totally somebody else can go after me but in some ways it does right behind you about three feet from you is a flintlock musloader that james lawrence gave me my my old-time hero he's still alive uh but he gave me that his old hawkin 50 caliber several years ago that's special to me it happens to be a flintlock just like that to be my our family It was printed in 1836 and it's got dates in there written of people born in the late 1700s

when they purchased that Bible and started writing the Reeves family history in it. And I've got that. That's pretty big. That's pretty big. Obviously my wedding ring. Yeah, I was going to say my wife's wedding ring has diamonds from my great-grandmother, both my maternal and paternal grandmothers. one from me.

I've got an old single shot 410. It's a foldover. Like you could put it in a saddlebag. It's got a notch in the buttstock where the trigger guard slides in there. That my great-grandmother used to shoot at rats in the dairy barn. That's awesome. And I've got that hung up on the wall. I think that's family history-wise.

That's probably the most important. One that I got short of my grandpa's cowboy hat. That means a lot to me as well. Nice. It's a good question. So the score is, Brent. Three. Misty.

One. Josh. Three. You're still three. Two. Wow. That's a lot. So seven questions.

I thought you said you had seven questions. Why'd you get a third question? I just answered one right. You did not. Joe, you've got two. Joe's got two. I've got three. You're a cheater.

That's seven. Calling you out. Wow. Wow. Words, words. If that was a lie, I would do. Final question, and this would be a tiebreaker potentially, or we may just have to go for a tie.

Or if somebody. Play the drop, Phil. Okay. In the podcast, I talked about what part of the bear did hunters and crockett's time? Blatter. Bam, Joe Wilson used to transport the rendered bear oil. And the answer was a dry bladder. That's a tie.

We got a three-part tie tie. Misty, can you think of a question? A tie-breaking question. Yeah, what about with, can I just go ahead and ask it? Yeah, this is tiebreaker. Whoever gets it wins. Who's tied? I'm thinking about three or Todd.

He's got two. He said that's a cheater. I think he's got three. How many questions have we had? Nine questions? Nine out of seven. I don't know. I don't know.

You got a question? When was he jilted? And by who? When? Oh, wow. I don't even know the answer to that. I don't know. Yeah, that was a big deal.

It was a big deal in the podcast. That was the Quaker guy. Did it say what year? No. He was 17. Was he 17? I don't think we got into dates on that one. And her name was started with an L.

Okay, I got one. The night before his wedding is what I would have accepted. That's true. What is the name of. Crocett's first wife. Polly. Josh Philmaker's our winner. You know what you get?

He's going to get a bottle of Wilson Shire. The winner gets a bottle of Wilson Shire sauce. You're going to want to eat this tonight. That was worried. You're going to want to cook with it tonight. And you got to drink it right now. And depending how you behave, I'll autograph it. Hey, Joe's face is on the bottle of Wilson Shire.

Yeah. And I love it. I love it. It's got a cowboy hat, big mustache. Yeah, man. It was a right. marketing move for your face. Can I tell you my favorite part of the podcast?

Yes. My favorite part of the podcast was when he showed up when he was, I don't remember what, after he had worked for Canada. 15. Is that after he worked for Canada Day when he had the $40 bond and he walked back and he set it down in front of his dad and his dad said, I don't have money for that. And he said, I took care of it. I was like, that that's the kind of thing that like, well, first of all,

it pulls at the heartstrings a little bit because I love the the sacrifice and commitment. I mean, this is for a dad who bonded you out. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. But just the commitment and then the lack of, I mean, he could have done it and been, been, you know, held a grudge about it, but he didn't. And I love that it said that his dad who was, who repeatedly was referred to as a, you know, the, what was the name of the,

the Irish. Ulster Scott. Yes, yes. Would have been a rough man. I mean, he ran a tavern. He shed many tears over that. I thought that's the kind of thing that after years of, I'm sure they probably didn't have a great relationship.

That's the kind of thing that builds a bond there that makes that father and son dynamic right. It was the right thing to do. I go back to that talking about that too Josh I think it was a I don't think it was an anomaly there was probably a lot of that stuff going on

he was just unfortunate enough to be one of the out of that litter of nine wasn't it nine that had to go pay that off so I think it was the right thing I felt like so every most people maybe not most people a lot of people would know

the high points of Crocket's life. When you're trying to tell a big story like this, there's some things you just have to leave out and some things you want to add in. I felt like everybody knows a lot of the big Crockett stuff, but his childhood, actually what made him who he was, I felt like it was really important.

And I actually kind of felt like maybe this podcast would be a little boring because it's kind of like small stuff like, you know, I included when he took that canoe across the river. He included that in his autobiography. Basically, I just went through the autobiography and included most of the, maybe not even most, but some percentage of the stories. I wanted to include the stuff about his dad. I wanted to include the stuff about him coming home and no one recognizing him.

You remember that? Yeah. He walks back into his own house. Yep. gets a room from one of his family members, sets down at the table, and one of his sisters recognized him. Because he had matured so much.

Yeah. Yeah. And he, in Crockett, to his own detriment, always showed his cards in a genuine way. He said, when they embraced me and my dad embraced me, even though he was mad at me when I left, and he said it made me wish I had never put them through all this stuff. When Crockett was jilted the day before his wedding.

And I'm saying this because the next episode, you see Crockett's blunder, which Crockett did kind of screw his life up eventually. Wow, that's good, effective. Yeah. A little foreshadow in here. Yeah. Tune in next week. Very effective. But Crockett, like when he talked about getting jilted, I listened to that part today.

And he went into great detail, vulnerable detail in his autobiography. about how it hurt him when this woman left him. Like literally the day before the wedding. You would have thought back then they would have just brushed over it like, oh, no big deal. He was a man just like any of us. And that's what's cool about Crogate. You don't know that stuff about Boone. It's a mystery.

It's a mystery what went on with Boone. But Crogate, you see him full, full scale. And he represented a, an archetype really of manhood in America and the frontier that I believe today is still active for better or worse. That's why these things are so interesting to me because it's like we wake up and are born into something that tells us what has value. And that's why I think this stuff is interesting to look back at why we think the way

we think. And obviously people like us, people connected to hunting specifically, but just rural. rural America, and it's not just hunters that are connected to Crocket. I mean, he set a template for a lot of different stuff, but I like to learn where, you know, are, well, I'm going to get into more. I'm going to get into more. Yeah. So, closing comments. Joe, it's been great to have you, man.

Really great, yeah. So it was so good hearing about the squirrel cookoff September 23rd, Springdale, Arkansas, man. be there. Brent's going to for sure be there. Yep. I've got a trip, but I think I'm going to be back by that time.

Well, we'd love to have all your listeners, and like I say, they could pay attention to that Facebook page. I'm old school. I don't have all the other ones. All right.

But on Facebook, you could look up the World Champion Squirrel Cookoff, and, hey, could I give, we also have a podcast. Yes, absolutely.

Our podcast is called Cooking Up a Story, and we try to put faces on common people and uh because so many people get overlooked we we don't pay attention to the guy that makes the donuts we we don't know who that person is so we drag in common people and we dig deep into their start of their life all the way up to current and uh we get better because of it so it's a really neat podcast yeah what was the one you sent me i sent you the donut man yeah and so i had a curiosity why every time

time I went to the donut shop, there was an Asian guy making my donuts. And come to find out, they're all Cambodian. And this guy had survived the killing fields. He was a Buddhist monk. He was enslaved several times in his life. And he prayed to Jesus, wound up in New York City and become an American as a Buddhist. That episode is phenomenal. It's, uh, yeah. And Joe, he's giving you the short version, which is good, but basically Joe just said a stereotype that anybody in America would probably recognize

that a lot of donut shops are run by Asian people. I mean, that's not like, that's just, it happens. Joe went to his local donut shop and just interviewed the guy that owned the shop. That's a short version. And this guy has the most phenomenal

story you've ever heard in your life. It's amazing. I mean, this guy needs a movie. Yeah, what's his name? Lang tang Lang tang. Lang tang. It's called, what's it called? It's cooking up a story and that episode is...

The podcast is cooking up a story. The episode is... Donut guy. Donut guy. It's phenomenal. I mean, that's how we look at people. Sure. Right?

That's the guy that pours the concrete. The mailman. That's the millman. And we've surrounded ourselves with all these people. And back in time, I'm saying when I was a pup, we knew those people's names. Right. And one of the problems was... society right now as you push a button, you buy something, you don't know nothing about it.

Yeah. You don't even know the guy that dropped it off on your front porch. So we're trying to find common people who have exceptional stories, and unless we sit down with them, those stories are lost. So that's the game worth playing. And then the guy across from me wearing the overalls, man, how about his show? Yeah, man. This week, this country live with Brent Reeves, squirrel dogs. Squirrel dogs.

Talking all about them. Get you prepped up for going to the World Championship. Good stuff. Great show, man. Looking forward to the rest. We're getting into the Alamo. We will later. Gotcha.

It's getting close. All right. Keep the wild place is wild. Get your Wilson Sharks off. Break out the case. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps game calls in building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called Prime Cuts. Now I'm going to tell you, I love mine because it's easy to use.

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