Bear Grease - Ep. 124: BEAR GREASE [RENDER] - The Final Word on David Crockett

Episode Date: July 5, 2023

On this episode of the Bear Grease Render, Clay Newcomb is joined by the usual suspects - Brent Reaves, Misty Newcomb, as well as Kristy and Josh “Landbridge” Spielmaker. The crew starts off talking about a catastrophic energy that Misty suffered after thinking about sneezing, or maybe long days of quilting, Brent's affinity for Bream, as well as an update on Banjo and whether or not he’ll be up for sale. Afterwards the crew dives into Crockett’s travels through Arkansas on his way to Texas and Davy’s death at the Alamo - as well as an informal poll of the crew’s opinion of how he died. You’ll want to stick around to hear which famous Musician is a die hard Crockett and Alamo collector and enthusiast. 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. I don't know if y'all are aware of this, but I am nursing a pretty severe injury.

Oh. Oh, really? What happened? Like physical, emotional? No, very physical injury. I have been alternating ice and heat using a tins unit laying around. Rice. It's been serious, guys.

It's been kind of serious. Rists. Emobilized. Misty's going to be on prayer chains all across the country. That ain't a bad place to be. Tell us what happened. It's a lot better today, but I couldn't, like, turn to the riot all yesterday because I thought about sneezing. I didn't sneeze.

I just thought about it. I geared up for it. You injured yourself thinking about sneezing? Tell the story of how it happened. Well, okay, so here's what really happened. I think what happened is that I was actually, I made a quilt this weekend for my first ever grandniece. Oh. One of the next generation of my people.

is having a child. And it's the first one of that generation to have a child. Wow. So I made a quilt. My mom came over, helps me with it, totally bit off more than we could chew in the time allotted for this project. Yeah.

And so I just like set over a sewing machine or, you know, I was like all day long. This is one of those freaks sewing trees to do this. I know. Well, no, I mean, there's always deadlines. There's always deadlines. There's always deadlines.

It's always, there's a baby shower. Right. There's a baby shower that has a date, and then like three days before, it's like, let's make this child something that will last their lifetime. Well, to be honest, I bought the... Would you like to buy something? Well, no, you can't buy something that will last... TBAH, Josh.

That's right. I actually purchased the materials for this in January. It's been a busy year, you know? Absolutely. And so we had a lot of... So you're hunched over. I'm hunched over. So I think that probably my back was like,

I'd rather you not be like this. You know, this is too much for this time period. What causes is it? Birthdays. Birthdays. I've never felt like I've had accumulation of birthdays, quite like I did this weekend. So I get to the end of it. I'm super happy.

We finish it like at midnight one in the morning. And a sneeze comes on me. And I get ready to go for it, right? I have powerful sneezes. I'm not a meek and mild sneezer at all. I wish I was. It's humiliating to me when I sneeze. Like it's awful.

But one came on. I was alone. Everybody else had gone to bed. And I didn't sneeze. Nothing came out. But a muscle in my back seized up. Your sneezer. So bad.

You broke your sneezer. It was horrible. I mean, just like. And so Clay wakes up in the morning. And I said, hey, I really hurt my back. He said, why? I said, well, to be honest, I thought about sneezing. Anticipatory sneeze injury.

She was like incapacitated almost. She could walk, but just barely. I thought about football one time tore my ACL. And so Clay said that either, like the best case scenario is that I got a quilting injury. The worst case scenario is that I got an injury from thinking about sleeping. Well, we're so glad you could join us. Yeah. I'm a badgerie surrender today.

Feeling a lot better today. You know, I heard, and I like this, I like the thought of this. I like to think about it like this. Be careful. That aging, aging is actually the accumulation of error in your body, DNA replication. Was that on one of your podcasts?

It may have been. Because I feel like I heard that. It may have been. Okay, okay. Maybe I said it already. But when you think about aging, it's actually, you know, your DNA replicates, and it's an accumulation of error that makes you old

and eventually makes you die. It has very specific things that happen. There has to be a tipping point of that, right? Well, I think quilting injuries is the beginning. There's got to be an inflection point if it's an accumulation of error. It's so great to have you all here out of the beverage for any of things. To my right, I have my dear friend, Josh Lernerner. Landbridge spillmaker.

Great to have you, Josh. Glad to be here. Josh, you have brought your lovely wife who's also a dear friend of ours. Yes. Hello, hello, hello. My favorite person. My favorite person. My second time on the render.

Second time. I think. Maybe even more. To Christy's left is Misty Newcomb. Yes. Great to have you, Miss Newcomb. Thank you. Nick Brace and all.

To Misty's, I just thought it was a fancy collar. To Misty's right is Dr. Britt Reeves. Yes, yes. Hello. It's great to see, Brett. Brit, how's this country life going? Man, it's more fun than a bunch of puppies. It's just, I'm getting lots of good feedback talking to people.

Who's this feedback coming from? Right. Mainly me. Is this kind of like a feedback circle? Like an algorithmic circle of people that just bolster your confidence nonstop? Yep. It's my mom and my wife. Right.

Yep, that's who it is. But it's, man, it's going really good. So this last week you talked about brim fishing? Oh, yeah. I haven't listened to that one yet. I'm really looking forward to them. I have gotten, I don't know how many pictures of folks sending me. So, man, you inspired me to get out and go catch fish.

And I'm like, man, this is great. I hope they ain't going to where I like to go. Yeah, yeah. Because they're smashing them, man. They're catching fish. And lots of pictures of folks taking kids out fishing. Oh, that's great. Oh, it's absolutely.

It's wonderful. You know, what's going to happen to you is what happened to me and Daniel Boone. What's that? Oh. Daniel Boone went into Kentucky. in the late 1760s and found to him what was a paradise. It was also the land and inhabited by, you know, the Chenees and others. He hunted for two years and then within 30 years of him going in there and being one of the first white Europeans to cross the Cumberland Gaff and going to Kentucky.

Within 30 years, Kentucky was a state. Oh. What does this have to do with you? Yeah. One day, you're going to go to your brim fishing hole and it's going to be covered with people. It's going to be a mall. It's going to be a state. A mall.

That'd be really good. It's a saddest thing I've ever heard. Every time y'all tell the story, I just keep bringing it down. I'm so sorry for that. This is a lot of conversation. No, we got our friend Deborah Dee in the house today. All started with a sneeze. No, no.

That's a good thing. is when people do what you're inspiring them to do. Yeah. Go fish. And so today I've seen a few things around you saying that brim is your favorite fish to eat more than croppy. More than anything. Is it because of the taste or is it because of the accessibility of croppy? Because sometimes I like something and I'm like, I like this better than that.

And it really doesn't have to do with the thing. It more has to do with things around the thing. Like this thing is accessible to me. So I love it and I did it with my dad and I can do it. There's obviously a lot of nostalgia with it because it was our favorite pastime. And usually anytime I catch a crappie, it's an accident. I'm not a very good crappie fisherman. So, but you have a plate-up side-to-side, you know, I'm going to.

I just prefer brim. I just love them. Can you tell me that the describe to me the difference between a brim and a croppy and taste? Can you? One's good, one's better. Okay. I mean, I can't give you that. I can't give you that.

You know how if we had a guest here, I would have you describe in detail what they're wearing. Yeah. Here's a plate of brim. What's it weird? Here's a plate of croppy. Talk to me about why one tastes different than the other. Well, I like brim out of the river more than I do out of a steel water, out of a lake. Okay.

It tastes better to me. It's a fresher taste, and people say, you know, this tastes fishy. Well, it's fish. That's what fish is. Should taste like. Yeah, nobody says this hamburger is too. Hamburger. It tastes cowie.

Yeah, it's cowie. It's whatever you like to eat. It's like gamey, you know, whatever. That's game doesn't taste gamey. It tastes like what it is. Bears taste like bear. Deer tastes like deer. Okay.

Cropi have, the meat is a little wider, probably. Okay. It's a little wider than what brim are, but they know they're different fish. So I just, my palate, I agree. grew up, if you put numbers on the, on fish that I ate growing up, it would be brim by far the most, and then catfish and then everything else. How many actual brim do you think you've eaten?

Oh, God. I could, I wouldn't have no idea. One day, I'm going to meet somebody, and when I do, I'm going to give them a hug and, like, invite them to be my friend for the rest of their life. If they can tell me how many brim they've eaten in their life. I quit counting Whalen's Coons he treed last year sometime after 350-something. Now, I was pretty impressed that you were keeping track of the amount of coons that he treated.

But I couldn't tell you, I couldn't even begin to guess. So Misty and I ate some fish this week. Misty's not a big fish person. I'm not. I'm disciplining myself to become there because I want those omegas. When me and Miss Newcomb crossed paths, then our lives became one, she didn't like fish. So it kind of inherited this. Yeah, you know when people say it tastes fishy, I'm like, and that's not good, and that's what this entire species tastes like.

All of them taste the same to you? More or less, yeah, and you know, I was probably not raised on fine fish. You all eat nutcats over there, food or veal, whatever. Not like even fried catfish. You don't like that either? Like when we would go to restaurants and they would fry their french fries in the same oil that they would fry their fish in, I'd be like, I don't like these french fries. Gotcha. I mean, that was the, yeah.

So this week, I was in Alaska back in May, and we caught a halibut, about an 80-pound halibut, which was a pretty fun thing to watch. I was in the boat. I didn't catch it, but Christy, do you know what halibut is? Uh-huh. It's a big flat fish. It's a flat fish. It looks like a big flounder.

Man, so a halibut, if it, I was explaining this to Brent the other day. You know how just a standard, a standard brim would. be upright in the water. He would be thin and tall, and his fins would be oriented, you know, his dorsal fin would be pointing towards the sun. His tail would be pointing south. His mouth would be pointing north. A halibut would be exactly like a brim. His mouth would be exactly like that except turned flat so that his dorsal fin would be pointing like on the ground, but both his eyes are on the top on the same side of his head. So, When you get him and turn him upright, it looks like it messed up fish.

Wait, I want to just see those hand motions again. I think it would be beneficial. This is a brim. This is a brim swimming through the water. Okay. This is a halibut swimming through the water. Except the halibut has two eyes on top. A brim has two eyes on the side.

It was like Wiley Coyote after he gets run over by a steamroller. Yes. So this week, I fried some halibut. And how was it? Oh, listen to this. How'd you from? The story just keeps getting deeper. This story's making its own gravy.

I went, I wanted to fry halibut, and I went to the cupboard where we keep our bear grease, which I thought we had like 10 jars, to be honest with it. No, sir. And there was one jar left in there. And that one jar was from the rendering at Bear Camp two years ago. I mean, coming up on two years ago. How was it? Well, I opened it up.

And I have, in the past, I have used bear grease. I was a year and a half old. And so this is more than a year and a half old. And I opened it up. And with age, the odor becomes stronger. It's not bad. It's not rancid. Like, you would know a rancid odor.

It was a stronger odor. And I went, well, it's not bad. So I got the pan hot, poured it in. initially the first three minutes of putting that barrel in there, it kind of had a stronger odor, not a bad odor, just a little musty odor. And then once the oil got hot,

it completely clarified, and I fried that halibut and that fish, and it was incredible. There was zero, zero taste of, so point being, barrel oil lasted for almost two years on the shelf, non-refrigerated. Be careful. People listening, always check for the,

smell. I wouldn't normally recommend people eat a year and a half old. And actually smell in it at the beginning, I was like, oh, I don't know that I want any of that. But I ate the halibut because, and I've eaten trout this summer that bear got. I think he got with you, Josh. And I'm developing a tolerance. A tolerance. It, that, that fish tasted good. The halibates, I mean, it was really good. It was amazing. And it truly didn't have any type of like. Yeah. It's true. And Britt said the same thing about trout, but honestly the trout, we cooked it in this garlic skate butter, and it was so good.

And I didn't taste any fisciness to the trout. See, yeah, that's the thing. It's a texture that is a little bit of a, that's what I've realized. It's like, okay, this is, the texture is what has been a turnoff to me. But I actually really liked the halibut. There was no, no interesting aftertaste. And really, Clay just, like, pulled off of Pinterest or something. This batter.

I'm not on. Pinterest, but go ahead. I don't think that's true. Yeah, it was a good batter. It was a batter that used flour and bread crumbs. Panko crumbs. Oh, panco crumbs. It was really good.

So it wasn't a cornmeal batter for that flounder. And it was very good. It was very good. Yeah, it was really good. Yeah, but the halibut, it's almost like a chicken strip. You can break it. It's very meaty. Yeah, have you had it, Christy?

Yes. Do you like it? I love it. Now, where have you had halibed? I've had it. Uh-huh. In Seattle. Steamed.

Oh, okay. Really good. Steamed? Mm-hmm. Steamed. I've had it. Steamed, broiled, never fried. Oh.

Yeah. Fried is, I think, the way to go, man. Okay. Amen. So. When do you want us to come over? Yeah, for real. For real, you should.

You should come over. They supply us. Christy feeds me all the time. Mm-hmm. Clay, something big has happened that we haven't touched on yet at the farm. And that is Banjo has been back from boot camp for a couple weeks and you haven't been ready to talk about it. He's almost leave. Yeah.

So if you recall, for those of you faithful listeners to the bear group surrender, back last year, I talked about how I had green broke, Banja. I'm trying to figure out the best way to describe it. I was riding him in a round pin. I got where he would take a saddle where you could get on him, where he could ride him in a round pin. Last year, I used him to pack in bear bait in a place where we pack him bear bait, so he's been packed quite a bit, meaning he would use carry saddle paniers full of stuff, loaded down, and would have got a lot of exposure to just planet Earth by doing that. But last year, he two different times bucked me off

He went wayward He did and it was my fault though And I knew that it was I knew that it was my fault I don't know why you keep covering for this animal Well it's because it's it's relevant Josh It's relevant because I Just too quickly I didn't do enough groundwork

I didn't I long trained him too Which means when I trained Izzy I had her For the most part trained in about 60 days because I messed with her every day for 60 days. Right. I went from almost zero to Reidener in 60 days. Was Izzy the one you did the video series on?

Yeah. And I still have her. Okay. Banjo, it was more like over a year I did what I did in 60 days with Izzy. And it just didn't stick as well. Not as consistent. Not as consistent. And he bucked me off twice.

Well, I felt like that it was my fault that I rushed him. and so I asked Dad and you guys what I should do. I had a really good mule man in Prairie Grove, he was 80 years old. I told him about banjo, and he wanted me to quit talking so that he could say, get rid of the mule, which was good advice. Point being, when I said the mule bucked me off,

what should I? And he was like, get rid of it. In his mind, it's like, why would you mess with an animal that already had a strike against it? Because a mule bucking you off is kind of in a way like a biting dog. You know, it's like, well, maybe not. He doesn't bite everybody. Yeah, yeah.

Oh, he's nice. Yeah. Does your dog bite? But I really felt like that it was my fault and that he deep inside had all the characteristics I was looking for in a mule, but clay messed up. And so I remember my dad on this very show said, get rid of it. It's not worth it. get rid of it. And I'm sure he still stands behind that.

He said the same thing about one of our kids. And I thought he was right. And he probably was. At the time, it could have gone either way. But I went ahead and invested in banjo and sent him to the Amish. Bill Trainer, which is just a great guy. Something we should probably consider doing with some of our kids. Yes.

I would. I need his number. I would send my kid there. I would. He came back with a nice haircut. I mean, Banjo kind of went a little bit flashy, and he came back kind of humble. I mean, had a very tight, you know, it was like he had been at boot camp for real. Everybody gets a buzz cut when you get the boot camp.

That's right. That's right. He got a buzz cut. He got four shoes, and he came home a lot more humble. And I've ridden him every day that I've been home since the day I got him other than two days. So I've traveled a few days during that time. So not counting those days, but only two days that I've been home have I chosen not to ride him. So I've probably ridden him 10 times, sometimes as much as two hours, sometimes as little as 30 minutes.

I've taken him on roads with traffic. I've walked him up to pedestrians with dogs. I've had him cross creeks. I've had him walk under bridges. I've had him in all varieties of. of binds, walked him through creeks. Like when you're running one like this, you're trying to find his cracks as quickly as possible

so you know what to expect. And then when he passes the test, you gain confidence in him. And he's doing very, very well. On a scale of one to ten, what was he when you took him over there? Oh, three. What is he now?

For the stage that he's at, he's probably an eight. But in the big mules, in the green broke mule category, he's an eight or a nine. In the finished mule category, he's probably a five. There's different categories.

Yeah, I'm just saying it's compared to what he was when you took a And he's how old? He's five years old. Okay. So I've had him since he was weaned. You can't teach him old mule a new trick. What is the lifespan of a mule? Lifespan of the mule is going to be 30 plus years most of the time.

Yeah, I've got a good 20 more working years. They'll live long enough to kill you. I remember one time I went Coon Hunt with an old man down on the Arkansas River. And I asked him how long he'd lived where he lived. No, no, no, no. I asked him how long he'd been married. His wife was there. And he started the sentence off and he looked into the air

and started counting. And he said, well, I got my mule. The mule died when it was 53 years old, and I was married two years before I got the mule. I've been married 54 years. And he had a mule that lived 52 years. Wow. Yeah.

I don't think that's the point of that story. Yeah. Is this last name Reeve? When people ask me how long I've been married to Misty, I say. Izzy's eight. And I was married 13 years before Izzy, 14 years, 15 years, 22 years. That is not how long you've been married. 23.

Math. Math is tough. Hey, let me say, I think that Banjo gets extra points, though, because he's pleasant. Izzy is mean. She is... Is she mean to certain people or mean to everybody? She's a salty old girl. I mean, she really is not pleasant.

Before we saw her. started talking about banjo. We talked about how great Izzy was. Well, Clay loves Izzy. Clay loves Izzy, but Izzy is really unpleasant. Every morning she wakes up, like when she's here, every morning she boots the other mules out of the feed file when they do anything. I mean, she's constantly harassing everyone on the farm.

This is a classic example. And it's not a negative thing. I think Banjo's doing well in part because Izzy's not here right now. Yeah. And he's able to just kind of like breathe. It's a classic scenario where there's massively different systems for raiding the usefulness of stuff based upon your worldview and what you do with the animal. Misty walks outside and feeds them most mornings and just watches them in the pasture. So when she sees Izzy, she sees a mean, sassy, bucky mule that's pushing and biting the other mules, which is very true.

Izzy's dominant. When I work in the garden, Banjo actually comes up and eats the weeds beside the. the fit so that he so that we're working side by side. Oh, intentionally. So he is a very pleasant. Yeah. He'll come up to you when you walk by him.

He is. He's, he's, he's sweet. He's probably never the dominant animal in a, in a pin. Truth. Which can be a good thing.

Izzy, though, I'll tell you why I love Izzy. Izzy's now going on eight years old. I've had her since she was 18 months old. And I, I've had Izzy an uncountable, sticky situations all over the place in different parts of the country. And she has never done anything crazy.

And now when you're evaluating people and friends, that's not a bad way to evaluate them. Part of the reason that I love Josh Spillmaker so much is he's never done anything really crazy. Or bad. Brent has done like two crazy things, but I'm still giving him a chance. Two strikes, pal.

You and Christy are perfect. Just too? I'm serious. But no, I'm serious. Usually you put 3,000 miles on an animal. That one time, you know, she, when she crossed the river, freaked out and nearly killed you. Or the one time that happened or the one time. And so when you get an animal that just consistently doesn't, doesn't do anything really stupid,

is he's never kicked me? Izzy's never bucked me off. Who's never run off? Run me off. Which meal booked off River? Well, that was River's fault. That was River's fault. That was Izzy.

Let's edit that out. Izzy didn't bump her off. I'm just kidding. For sure, the mule ran with her and she lost control. And that was when Izzy was young. That was River. So was Sweet River and her love her. Yeah, that was a major dead error.

So, Izzy's a great mule. She's high-powered, and she will, she's a better, she's good at the mountains, man. Oh, I've got her over to Buddy's Pasture on a good grass. Okay, so what would happen to Izzy if you took her to the Amish trainer? She teach him a thing or two. That's right, Christy. No, they, I mean, would they do anything to her? Oh, I could take her.

Can you take a mule that's trained to a trainer and they can make her better? 100% when I went to pick up banjo and me and the trainer went for a ride he was like hey when you come we're going to go for a ride I want you to ride banjo and I want to talk to you while you're riding and tell you what we've been doing he rode a mule that came from iowa that was supposedly a really high dollar nice mule that the owner wanted to just get dialed in real tight and get him neck raining real good sometimes these mules are they plowler Raine trained them, which means they, if you want to go right, you just kind of grab the right rain and just pull their head. The neck rain is when the two reins are coming up on either side of the neck and you just move your hand the direction you want to go. And actually the rain lays across the opposite side of their neck. And it's like power steering.

You just kind of move. So, yeah, he could teach, he could teach easy something for sure. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So banjo's great. I said all that to say, banjo may be for sale next April. Oh, why next April?

That's when I will be confident. Oh, okay. And I want to ride him basically for a year. Why would you get rid of him? Because he's going to be worth a lot of money. Let's put money down right now on whether banjo will be here next year. What's the over and under? Listen, okay, you want to really know my strategy.

But I mean, you get this great mule. why would you get rid of it? Okay, Josh, I, when I got Izzy up to speed and where getting on her was no longer a question of what was going to happen,

just knowing what was going to happen, if Banjo and Izzy are out there right now, I'm riding banjo because I'm a trainer. I want to train them. I like messing with them. So Izzy's finished. Banjo at some point will kind of be finished

within the next year. and he is a he is a prime mule to be sold because of his looks because of his age and he'll be worth a lot of money and I want to get another one and I've actually already got another one in my sights

I want to try another one flashy as they make brother I don't I don't buy a meal unless is flashy so if you get another meal are you going to train it or are you going to or the Amish going to try it I am okay with what happened with Banjo. I recognize the limitations on my travel schedule in my life.

I will get the animals started, but I may take it to my bro. I think you have to quantify the value added to Banjo by the celebrity he has gotten from being on this podcast. Well, Christy don't hate the player, hate the game. game. Perhaps this whole thing has just been a ploy for me to become a high dollar mule salesman. Trader. I think you should be a mule trader. Yeah.

Lifelong dream. Right. Like people do watches, right? They trade up. If you say you get a year out and someone's like, I don't want to buy this meal, but I will trade you X for it. What would be the thing? I ain't trade nothing but Greenback.

All about the Benjamin's baby. Do you know why? Because I want to build a north wing off of the Mideastard south headquarters. And we're going to call it the banjo wing. Oh, the banjo wing. So I'm going to use that money to build a wing. Literally, is it going to be full of banjos, Misty? No.

Clay has given me a number of different things that he will be using the proceeds of banjo for this is one of familiar. Or I may take Misty to Alaska on a moose on. Okay. Whenever. Whenever I get upset about him potentially selling banjo, he's like, well, you just, you don't know, but essentially that I'm going to use that money for X. And it's almost never the North Wing. It has been once, but there's a lot of other things that he's told me he's going to use that money for him. And I actually really like banjo.

You know, when you take care of the animals and I don't take care of them, like ride them, you know, but just every morning I'm out there with them. And this week, someone left the gate open. Why? Why? And when I walked out there, Banjo was standing by the gate looking at it like he was scared of it. But inside the gate. He stayed in the...

And that kind of endeared me to that, Banjo. I'll fight to keep that mule. Was a person who left the gate open a repeat offender? It was an older offender. Oh. It was me. It was a small gate. Yeah, it was a big time error, big time error.

It was a small gate, like a... a pedestrian gate. It wasn't a big gate. And so it appeared like it was shut, but it actually wasn't. It was only open about six or eight inches. Yep. And so I think he just didn't push up against it. If he had pushed against it, he would have been like...

Izzy would have. When Clay... Yeah, Izzy would have, for sure. When Clay leaves, either myself or the children are in charge of those meals, right? And most of the time it's me, but he tries to give the boys or different people responsibility for them. And we have four kids, which means in one year, those meals are... out four times because each one forgot to close the gate at one point, right? And if he's not here,

we're going to get those meals alone. And they'll, they like trapes around town. And the problem is, is that they've gained kind of a reputation during that, particularly during COVID when we had all the kids here because that meant really each one of them got to make one mistake. Because once you make that mistake, you don't make it again for a while. Right. And each one of them did it four times. And so people were like, hey, that pretty meal's out again. Pretty meal. And people started talking about these mules. People kind of developed friendships with the mules.

The mules would come to houses and kind of see what they got going on in their lawn. And so people started, we have like a Facebook group, you know, for the whole city. People start commenting on the mules. And then they like go down the railroad tracks together. And three of them had gotten out this last time. And, I mean, the city had a riot with it. They looked like a band walking down this railroad. People were really proud.

The people of the town were proud that this was happening. So proud that they took a picture of the mules, and it is now on the city community page, our loose mules. Like, it is still there today. Is it? Yes, I look this week, and I'm like, take that picture down and get something else.

There's this woman whose pigs get out. And I don't understand why the picture of the police trying to catch the pigs is not on the city Facebook group. There's so much more drama. So much more drama. Well, enough about mules. Okay. Enough about mules.

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. let us get to the matter at hand. This is serious. This is the final Crockett episode, the Alamo. This is a big day. I've had some talk about, well, is he going to make it into the Bear Gries Hall of Fame?

As a matter of fact, some of you may have asked me earlier if we were going to do that today. and I explained to someone on the Instagram the other day that inductions into the Bear Grease Hall of Fame are kind of like a thief in the night. You don't know when they're going to come. They just come when the time is right. So just because the series has ended and there's a potential candidate,

just like any Hall of Fame. Like the day that Michael Jordan retired, I don't think they held a meeting to see if he was going to be in the Hall of Fame. Do you know, Christy? No, I don't. I don't know that. Okay.

So I don't, I think it would be projecting our intent too much to be like, oh, let's do an induction today. I think baseball you got to be out five years before you're eligible. Yeah. So we'll probably do another induction in 20, 29. No. Wow. When the time is right, should his name even come up in the conversation?

That's not what this is about. So we're not doing that today. No. I thought for sure we would be. I thought for sure we would be, too. You keep talking about it, foreshadowing. I figured. Yes.

Sometimes my plans are more in line with geologic time than human time. I'd say that's right. All of you people living day by day, I'm thinking generations. For induction. I don't know. Here's how we're going to do a project. place says all right man you ready yep we're going to leave in a month and a half from today got you next day hey man we're going to put that off six months okay that's fine

third day can you be ready in the morning am i right or wrong it's 100% true it's 100% true okay okay we'll do the induction okay oh my gosh this is like an emotional roller coasterce game really is just kidding that is That is what life lived with Clay Newcomb is like. It is a constant emotional roller coaster. Nook. I've got a quiz for you. Okay.

In your face. So we're about to get into Crockett. Yeah, I know. It's from the podcast. You have a question. Okay, let's go. No, I don't have a question. I have a quiz.

A quiz. Okay. This pandemic. Oh, thank you. Yes. We are. You stealing my thunder, girl, but go, I'm with you. Careful you make.

First appeared between 1817 and 1821. Why don't you tell me what that pandemic was? What did you tell us? What does you tell us? How did James Bowie's wife die? Colera. No, no, no, no, no. I said choleria.

Choleria. You guys, I listened to it. I actually stopped and was like, huh, I've never heard that before. I rewelded it. Like, I just assumed. You know, he said coleria. Anyone.

Coeliorism needs to get hooked on phonics. And I most definitely, like, was a girl in the 90s, and so I read a lot of Jane Austen, so I knew about, like, bad things that happened. Right. And, you know, before we had penicillin, things like that. But I rewound it, and I was like, man, I've never heard of that disease before. And I kept going back and I was like, surely he doesn't mean cholera. Surely he seen that.

He does mean Colorado. Don't call me Shirley. But he's actually... Think about it. The way I figured it out is that he actually is a good phonetic reader. He read it just like he was spelled. Like with all things, he added an eye.

He always throws in this like... That reminds me, Ava, when she was little, said, what's Cholira? What's Cholira? Hey, okay, so I also took a little heat for the pronunciation of Jim. Booy. So I would say booey knife.

Oh, you were getting a confusing. There was another one too. There was another one in there. I would attest to the integrity of my journalistic efforts that I'm not being influenced by I'm not just listening to someone else and then just repeating what they said. That is a fantastic spin. That is a fantastic spin, Clay. That's like glass half full, y'all.

The other one is... What was the other one? The other one was the name of the... Oh. Yes. Peña. De La Pena. And the guy you were interviewing

kept trying to bring it back down. Like, that's a little hot. Yeah. I have a hard time. I heard it. I heard it. Today I could do it. But in the heat of the moment,

I hadn't heard it enough. Yeah. So it's de la Pena. Pena. See, and I was like, de la Pina. It's always like, oh, okay. I struggled.

I struggled, I struggled, guys. Do not read jalapeno. You know, listen, my mom, us reading and having access to books that was super important to her, we did not have a lot of discretionary spending in our home. but she would sign up for books when we you know if we'd bring those scholastic things home she would buy the books she really really valued like we did not we were not a big toy family we were not a gadget family

but ddie would get you books and and we had a stocked library so we read all the time i didn't hear all the words that i saw very often right yeah yeah and so it wasn't like i was around a lot of other people who and i have story after story about when i went to college You would say words. I mean, I'm thinking about it some of them right now. Epitome. Anyone know? Epitome.

Epitome. Let me see. I remember I thought I was clever because I added the word pseudo in front of something. Like I made up a word. Right. Yeah. And I can't remember what the word was, but I remember it was not actually pronounced Swedo.

My kids gill me on. I ask them if they wanted to go to that. Chipotle restaurant Chipotle Oh dad that's not what it is I sympathize with you Yeah I do too

Well so the Crockett series Was and if you're new to the Bear Grease Render podcast What we do on the Bear Grease Render is we talk For about 30 to 40 minutes about Absolutely not Random things The last half of the podcast

We discuss the very serious Bear Grease podcast from the week before this was our first four-part series, Christy. Yes. I've never done a four-part series. You haven't. Just three. And it felt like the Alamo could have stood on its own.

Oh, 100%. You know, it was like you've got the three-part series plus the Alamo. Exactly. And you have an actor that's in both place. And so this whole time, I've been trying to understand in my mind get an answer for who was Crockett as a person. Who was Crockett? and was he a good guy was he a bad guy was he a funny guy was he not funny guy

was he did he have good intentions did he have bad intentions and clearly you can't really know all those things but you can gather data and there was so much information on crockett that was not true even much more so in his own time there were people writing quote autobiogical false autobiographies about him in his time

making him look to be a a braggard, a crass. Do you remember the painter, Chapman, that made a point to say that Crockett was never crass when he was in his presence. And he was painting him, so he would have been around him a lot in a very informal environment for hours and days.

And he never heard Crockett be crass. Well, that pointed to that people had made him out to be this like vulgar person. Right. And so my question this whole series is who is Crockett Because it's clear that his who he is has impacted America so much that we're still talking about him. People know him.

He has as much name recognition probably as in the upper echelon of Americans, Crockett. Why? He was a bear hunter. He was this Tennessee backwoodsman. He was uneducated. He was all these things. And when you really dig down into the. the granular things that he actually did in his life.

He's a fascinating guy. But he takes a bad rap. Like, for instance, with the Alamo, if you had talked to me about the Alamo before I really studied much into it, I would have heard people say, ah, Crockett's no hero. He didn't even want to be in that war. Like, he didn't even have anything to give to it. He was just looking for land and painted it like he was a bad guy for being at the Alamo.

and when you look when you see what actually happened no it wasn't that his motivations were I love the country of what could be Texas and I'm going to go fight for independent no but his motivations were he was looking for a new life he was looking for a better world for his family yeah he wanted to be a politician in Texas that's not a bad motivation anyway

clarification of all these things that he was What do y'all think? What do you all think? Was after hearing four episodes, what's your take on Crockett? I think Crockett was a pretty normal guy with a charismatic normal guy. But I think one of the things that, you know,

Christie and I had a lot of discussion about his time in Texas and whether he was there to just do what he had to do to get some land or, you know, what were his intentions there. And I think it comes down to the fact that the one thing that I did pick up about Crockett is he was very relational. And I think, you know, he talks about in the letter, I can't remember if it was the letter that John Wayne wrote, read, or which letter, but he says, I'm here

with my friends. It was his letter to his daughter, and John Wayne referenced it, but I read the whole letter. And I think there's an aspect to, like, he believed in Texas. Like, he thought, this is a place where I want my family to come. But I think there had to have been an aspect, because you see characters like Stephen F. Austin, you see Jim Bowie. You know, they also have reputations of being larger than life characters. And I think that David Crockett probably felt at home with those guys.

And when push came to shove, he's like, it wasn't necessarily about getting the life. It wasn't necessarily about defending Texas. It was there to stand with my brothers in the end. And so I think if there's something good to be said about David Crockett is that he cared for people. He loved people. And I think that's a good, I think that's good insight. I think in the moment you would do things for people.

I don't think he would just pack up and leave those guys. You know, I'm sure he said, all right. here too. I'm going to stand with you till the end. And he feels like a guy that can make a quick friend too. Yeah, exactly. You know, yeah. I took him as being family oriented.

A lot of the stuff, it goes back to him taking care of his family. Like when his wife died, he could have pawn, which was not in common, find somebody look, I ain't got a wife, I got these kids y'all need to take care of them. Duceus, I'm out.

But he didn't do that. He wasn't found somebody take care of his kids and then not only do that he was taking care of them that that letter the whole time i was reading listening to you read that letter i was thinking that's the letter i would would have wrote to my daughter to where she wouldn't worry about me even when i could if those cats were all cleaning the rifles outside the alamo and i knew it was fixing to get bad i'm not writing a letter home that says i may never see you again and one i don't believe that's going to happen they're going to to get me because my my fight then is to get home to them yeah you know that's what i thought and to take care of it and that's that's what i got out of it that he was really family oriented and he he

he also had family there his brothers his brothers and arms folks that they was fixing to duke it out with that was going to be the guy left and the guy on the right of him you know you want to make friends quick and make family quick get in a boxhole somebody and you get out of there you know you will be tight forever. And that was what I got out of that, that he was really family-oriented, or so I thought. That was my perception.

Well, just for the historical record, and I felt a little bit bad not including this, but it just didn't fit. He didn't have the greatest relationship with his second wife. We don't really know the details, but we know there was a period of time when they did not live together,

which doesn't, necessarily mean that they were divorced or separate. Well, but they were separated. So I see exactly what you're saying. And he was dedicated to his kids and different stuff. I think, and I think he was very family-oriented. I think if you really got into the, you know, we had a four-hour podcast, basically four hours of content.

And, you know, you could read for 50, hours on stuff written about Crockett. And there is a fair bit of stuff about him not being a great husband. Never being unfaithful, that's never spoken of. When you were talking about Austin and Bowie, booey. I thought I was saying it right. You're getting confused with the 80s.

Yeah. Right. Rocker. Yeah. Well, you know. Or 80s rocker. Those guys had some legit, rough stuff in their record. That would just be like,

a pretty wild strike against you. Crockett didn't have that. Crockett owned slaves in Tennessee, at least one. So he's not, he's not, you know, he had that. But he was never known as a womanizer. He was known to be faithful. Whether, now, you know, you're going to write that in your autobiography? Probably not.

Somebody else would, though. So somebody else would write that in your autobiography. True. True. Well, they'd write about it. Yeah. Does anyone know when the U.S. coined, we're the land of opportunity, right? Is that true?

Natural state. No, no, no. Arkansas. The U.S. Oh, I got you. I think we're called the land of opportunity. Honestly, I think when I think about Crockett, like overall, and all the stories about him, he's really always what drives him and motivation.

him, in my opinion, is opportunity. Yeah. Right? So you tell the story about the barrels and taking him down and it failed, but it was all about like, we got an opportunity here and he's chasing the opportunity. You think about, you know, his politics. Everything you talked about that he did and the impact from politics was all about how do you open up opportunity for someone?

Like going to Texas. Whatever was driving him was like, it feels like in every element. and every story you told, what he's driven by, is that there's this opportunity over here, and I think I'm going to go after it. And I think that there's some kind of connection with why he's such a pillar inside of our history, is that there's that connection to opportunity.

What's ahead of me? What can I go grasp? And whether that's for his friends or for his family, I mean, he watched it with his dad, his dad try things, fail things. He'd have to go make up, like go work to pay. off his dad's debt and he did it willingly like you know from the stories but but i think that was built inside of him and there's got to be this opportunity for something else and it it feels like that is what

was driving him yeah and i can connect to that like i think i think that's not hard to connect to you and maybe an element of why he's such a pillar yeah in american culture in american culture yeah going back to your first statement we we do live in a place of incredible opportunity over the last 200 years in this country. Right. If you just looked at the literal options that people have had in terms of economics and where to live. And I mean, and then you looked at the landscape of the world for the last eon, this is a place of incredible opportunity. And yeah, and he, he, that's what he, yeah, I think that's probably why he represents, he's such a core part of American identity early on.

Yeah. And I kind of, I think that's a little bit what makes me have a slightly more critical view of Davey Grocket. Josh just, sorry. Brent just kicked Josh out. Josh is out. Christy's in. Yeah. So the render.

Well, but I think that is kind of what makes me have a little bit, like I'm listening to y'all describe him and I think it's very generous. I think that. school teacher well I'm just saying I would love to be davy crockett's friend I think he would be the person that I would if I go into a room and he's there I want to go hang out with him I'm going to feel most comfortable around him I'm going to feel I'm going to enjoy hearing his stories yeah I don't know that I'd want to live with them or rely on them like I think that that that would be I'm just thinking about yeah that that constant pursuit of the thing around the corner and and like the way that he, when he lost, how quickly he fled out. Yeah. I don't, that's like, but was that not a characteristic of the American frontier? Hashtag let Misty talk.

Um, I, I hear you and it may, may have been. It's just if I'm, uh, to me, as I listen to him, I think it's a characteristic of populist types of, of people who, like I said, it was kind of funny to me that he found a home in Little Rock because we've read books by other authors who talked about our found comfort in Little Rock. Remember when he talked about the people in Arkansas that the huge welcome they gave them? Because that type of politician would do really well here that we love populists and they do. Gershacker hated Little Rock. Exactly. There's other authors who came through Little Rock around that same time period who thought it was the bane of humanity. I mean they just thought it was a terrible

Gerstocker, do you remember how he described it? Oh, it's not really comparing apples to apples because Gerstocker was detailing, actually traveling through and living in the city. All we have from Crockett's stay here is his an excerpt from his speech where he's trying to make friends with these people. And he says, this is where the half-horse, half-alligator men

that live nowhere else along the background of the years. He was a politician because he said, you know, no finer place could he find to live them. Lil Rock, then he went to Texas. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's like, this is the garden spot of the world. See y'all. Thank you, Little Rock.

In Texas. New Mexico's great. It's like all these country singers. Been to Nevada? It's like all these country singers you see on Instagram every single week. It's like, Spokane's the best place in the world. The next night they're like, too. But that's actually kind of the feel I get from David Crockett.

Like he's going to be whatever he needs to be in the room. He's a chamellian. Doesn't have super thick skin. super strong staying power. Like I just, I think fun guy could see why everyone would like him. Not sure that that's the guy I would hitch my boat to. Well, because he lacked restraint. I think that's the thing about him.

And any good entrepreneur, right? I'm fascinated by entrepreneurs. Yeah. Who will live in their college apartment 10 years after they've made $80 million. Why? Because they don't care about the money. They are building and investing in whatever they're building in. But a good entrepreneur is going to have restraint.

They're going to have that entrepreneurial spirit, but they're going to also restrain themselves. Good option, bad option. Opportunity there, not one to pursue. I don't think Crackett had restraint. I think he just went after all of it. He did. 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 bed, and there was a full of blood. Oh my God, he doesn't have a head. 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 left 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. The one thing that we don't have about Crockett is that he only lived to be 49 years old. We don't have the rest of the story. Like maybe the story would have been he had gone to Texas and he has a huge place there and it's stable. And maybe financial stability would have calmed him down the last part of his life. And he would have been the president of Texas.

And then all this stuff that happened to him before, these failures would have just been the thing that built up to the success. So when somebody dies when they're 49, it's just you're getting like half the story. Yeah, I don't disagree. And like I said, I don't think he's a bad person. Like I don't, I don't dislike him. In fact, I like them. I would want to be around them.

You know, I would want to be around them. I would enjoy the pursuits and would love to, you know, once he did something. And it was like, say, like, he's a pioneer. He's a, he's an entrepreneur. I think. I think one thing that I talked with Robert Morgan about this and it just didn't make the cut. I think that a lot of who Crockett was, came from him being a middle child. He was fourth or fifth of eight or nine kids.

And he was, the thing that glows to me in his autobiography is how much he loved validation from people, which actually made me not like him. because he spends half of his autobiography talking about basically he spends a lot of his autobiography talking about how people responded to him and he was very pleased with the way that people responded to him I could look at that and immediately go this guy is full of himself and that's really what Clevesonella

was trying to say was that Crockett was kind of vain man. That's the idea that you get. And Crocket went to his own play in New York City, Broadway play about him and kind of took in the crowd when they recognized

that Colonel Crockett was here. The less generous viewpoint is that that he was jumping from place to place not just for opportunity but for validation. Well, he was addicted to him. That's where I go back to this

middle child thing. This man was literally raised in abject poverty on the American frontier, which today is romanticized. At the time was the end of the earth. It was not the place you wanted to be. People were enamored with the frontier. Europe wanted to hear about it. The East wanted to hear about it. But to actually live there and scratch out of living would be like living on the edge of a war zone.

I heard my friend Steve Renella one time described the American frontier like living on the border of Iraq and Pakistan. I mean, a contested border. And so here's this kid who pops up. And by the time he's like in his late 20s and he becomes a magistrate in his county and all of a sudden his neighbors start going, you know what, David, you're pretty good guy. You have pretty good judgment. You're a respected man.

And then he runs for state representative and all of a sudden just like, holy, Cal, I could be state representative in Tennessee. And I mean, I see, and so he climbs that ladder, and he begins to actually do work for the people. He was a good politician, especially at the state level. He did very good stuff and was an effective politician when he was a Tennessee state representative, doing really practical stuff. Right. Like, he made laws that made it more difficult to get a divorce.

He made laws that helped widows. He made laws that were practical laws like building navigation inside of rivers. But his main thing was always the people like him that didn't have money that wanted to be landowners but had zero way to get there. That was his main thing was the people need this land. And so when you look at that and then again, this middle child thing, enjoy invalidation because they never got it because they weren't the oldest, they weren't the youngest, they were just lost in the middle. Some of us understand that. Not Josh.

He doesn't understand that. Josh. Who all's a little child in here? I'm a middle child. Most definitely Clay is. Who is the baby in here? Brent's the baby. Misty's the baby.

The real fun ones. I was the firstborn. Josh is the firstborn. Yep. So when you, so basically what I'm saying, I could be negative about Crockett and think he was, see this thing where he was kind of vain. But I also have a,

it's a pretty tall order to put my value system that I have today on a man that literally rose up from the ashes and became a legitimate potential presidential candidate, did all that he did. And he did have a lot of moral fiber. It was misused in some places. But he really stood up to Andrew Jackson, the most powerful man in America

and put it in his face about the marginalized Cherokees and Native Americans that they were trying to move out and from everything that you can inspect about his decision to oppose the Indian Removal Act of 1830 it was legitimate which it's like man I can hat tip that because that was a very

forward thinking idea and so he stood against that so man he would have been a hoot to have been friends with he sure would have been i would have loved to he would have had a permanent seat at the bear grease render okay yeah he had been more colorful he would have he would have rivaled you brent first ballot he's the first ballot hall of famer i'm just saying

mm hmm brin's trying to force a vote here he's trying to force a vote that's a coup or a coop a coop a coop If I was reading it, if I was reading it in the literature. You try to do a coopie on us?

Untainted by the opinions of others, I would read that as a coop. Okay, we're going to do it. We're going to, this is great. We're going to do a quiz. Oh, we win. We're going to do a quiz. I'm not using all my brain unless I got a power. Got prize.

Oh, I see. So do you have any other thoughts on Crockett as a whole? Well, what about this last episode? Do you see In general, this is one of these things where in general people, you get the idea that people in Texas are real worked up about whether Crockett died fighting.

I was really surprised when the guy talked about the letters and death threats he got. That was wild to me. That was kind of wild to me. Well, but when you actually talk to the individuals that I talked to in Texas, they're like, we really don't care how he died. No, I wouldn't have either.

Yeah. He was there. He was, he signed his name to the dotted line, and he got up there, and he stayed there with the folks. He didn't run off. I don't care if they caught him or if he died swinging like Fess Parker did, or if they blew him up like he did John Wayne. He was there, and to me that's all it matters, because that's all it mattered to those boys that were with him. I could have made a podcast wholly on the controversy of a, Why, even 50, 60, 80 years ago, Texans made a bigger deal about it?

Because there's all these paintings of Crockett, so much national, well, state identity. But at the time, national identity, because Texas was a, its own republic, its own country for about eight, nine years. There was some deeper stuff. And my boy, James Crisp, I didn't include it because it's just not the conversation I was having. but he brings up a strong point of he talked about how he felt like they didn't want Crockett giving up to the Mexicans as like a racial thing like we would never we would never surrender to another country like Benedict Arnold turning on us for the British and so there in lies something a little bit deeper which I don't know

It was a compelling argument he had, like I said, but I don't know that that's the full story. You might could look at it that way. So there is some more, there's some legitimate reasons to wonder about why I did it. But what do y'all think? How did he die? Ready go. Brent. It's your gut.

My gut is they overwhelmed him and killed him. I called him and killed him. Just from the description. So you're not. Like executed, you think he was captured and executed. Is that what you're saying? Well, the real question is, yeah, was the De La Pena diary, correct? Because that was the whole thing.

De La Pena said that seven men were captured and they were executed. The lady that had the child and then they... Dickinson. Yeah, one of the survivors. She said where he was laying, was laying between two buildings, laying there with his hat beside him. to me, if they're going to execute him, they'd put him out in front of right out in the middle of the street

or the middle of the courtyard or the plaza or whatever it was. But she said it was between two buildings. To me, it sounded like that's where they run him down or caught him or surrounded him and got him right there. There's something to be said there, but here's the thing. And I'm playing devil's advocate just for the sake of all the information, is that she never wrote down what she saw.

what she said was recorded by someone else. So this woman who was one of the only female English-speaking survivors who survived with her child who was called the Alamo Baby. The person that wrote down what she said said, I saw Colonel Crockett laying there with this peculiar hat beside him. And she didn't say like there was a line of dead men, you know, as like an execution line. And that was what I'm saying.

And then Santa Ana made really no reference to him other than if some guy called Crockett. Right. Am I right? Okay. So you think he died fine? I do. Okay. Ms. Newcomb.

Okay. I think there's two possibilities. If I have to pick one, I'm going to pick how the lady described him. But what I'm saying is that the lady. You're saying she described. He could have been executed. Yeah. But I'm with Brent.

I think that I do think the guy would have made a bigger deal of it if he would have understood who he was. and if he didn't understand who he was, then, yeah, it's almost like an afterthought. Yeah, this guy y'all know, everyone there's talking about named Crockett. I think it's possible. He could have gotten caught up in a sneeze. It just killed over.

It just happened. I mean, he was 49, so, you know. Good one. Goodwin, Newk. Way to bring it back. Oh, man. Oh, wait. So you think he died in battle?

he was executed. I don't. And you guys are real believers. Listen, listen. If Christy comes back and says he was executed, I'm going to tell her all the reasons why it's crazy to think he was executed. So I'm playing devil's advocate. Yeah, I can take it.

There are three corroborating eyewitnesses of Crockett's death by execution. Why? Zero. On the other side. Of him dying in battle. And all three were on the other side, right? All three were Mexicans. And they did it quite a while.

after, right? Well, the information, well, no. The De La Pena diary did come out in the 1850s in America. People knew about it in Mexico for a long time.

It's just Crocket was brought up by Disney, and apparently somebody was like, hey, we got, you know, we know how Crockett died. My thing was that the, didn't they say something like the font was different?

Okay. Yeah, there was some differences. Wade, my buddy Wade Dillon, I love that guy. He's the one whose dad built a house that looked like the Alamo in Florida. Wade Dillan's a cool guy. I wish he could have been here. He's a great guy. You should follow him on Instagram.

Wade Dillon Art. He's an illustrator and passionate about the Alamo. I love it. Wade said, he's the one that said that, and that is an argument, that the diary is true. Like it was a legitimate diary, but the section about Crockett was. was forged and wasn't right. He thinks that de la Pena was in a Mexican prison and was reading newspaper articles

and went back in and filled in his diary with the information he was getting from newspapers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so it was different. Yeah. James Crisp, who, that guy, he is probably the authority.

The national expert. on Crockett's death for the side of execution. And he says that the De La Pena Diary has been scrutinized to the highest degree by all the possible methods and that it is 100% legit. That's what he believes. So now you're looking at Christy, like, Christy, what are you going to say? But you just sort of. But listen.

But listen, Josh can validate that this is what I said yesterday. Okay. And I'll say exactly what I said yesterday. I think he was captured and executed. and I think that because I think he was, he wanted to live. He wanted, I don't, I mean, I'm going back to my first, like, he was all about opportunity, making a way for his people, his family, and I think he was a good soldier. And so I don't think he was killed.

I think he was captured. And I think he could have been captured fighting as hard as he possibly could. But that's, that's, I mean, maybe it's a romantic view. So you think he was captured and executed. I do. And I would also say the only thing I know about the parley I've learned from Pirates of the Caribbean. And I was offended by they rejected it. Well, what about the Tornell decree then, Christy?

I don't know. The Tornell decree was death to all pirates. Which means they weren't taking prisoners. That's what was so good. We had that conversation yesterday, too, because it was so confusing. And they rejected the parlay. So did they actually capture anyone because they told them no prisoners? Kill everybody.

so it's weird. I don't know. But if I'm just, if I get to choose, which I feel like this is a little bit choose your own adventure because we don't know. I'm going to choose

that he was captured because he fought like... I know what happened. I know exactly what happened. I think he fought. I think he ran out of ammunition. I think he probably was down to, you know,

hand weapons, a knife, a hatchet, whatever. could have lost those. I think they probably overwhelmed him, took him, and just killed him. Not like a public execution, but like they caught him. I think they caught him and just killed him.

I did that for him. So that would be dying battle. Yeah, but I think, I think he was. Oh, wow, you're introducing a whole new theory into the David Crockett. So we've got four. It's a brus. I mean, I don't think it was, I don't think it was hand-to-hand combat that he died in. I think he was, I think they probably cash for it and just gave him.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That's what I. So I think, I don't think they made a big deal that he was David Crockett. He was just another guy fighting.

See, that's where. And then somebody who knew recognized him. He had that peculiar hat on. Yeah. That's what they. Fine. Well, and. none of us are probably really qualified to have an opinion.

True. Why? Well, if I'm being honest, because we have not read the De La Pena diary, and I have not, I have not read what he actually wrote. I have not seen the pages and made a decision of was the front like the back. But also the corroborating witnesses, I would like to read those to see. what they said. There's also,

they also said that De La Pena was very upset with Santa Ana and was in a Mexican prison and he had reasons to say that Crockett was executed.

What were those reasons? Well, I don't know. I don't understand really all the politics of it but it would be like, oh, of course he would have put that in his diary. It's stuff like,

like it's very complicated. Very complicated. But am I the last one? Yes. What are you? think? Snezing.

And just because we're not all qualified. So help me, every Texan in America is going to come after you if you say he committed suicide. That didn't mean. Not having a qualified point of view has never stopped us before. To not, even with the Dalapena diary, even with the corroborating witnesses saying they saw him executed, it's hard for me to get behind it. the execution. I think he died fighting. And that's not a romantic.

I don't really care. I don't think it's, that's not me wanting to like Crockett. I just think that they were just killing a bunch of folks. Yeah. And secondly, what are the chances that Crockett would have been one of the last guys. Yeah, that's the thing. He could have died 20 minutes after it started. I mean, there are, we do know that he lasted a really long time.

And it's even possible that some of the survivors noted that he was one of the last guys around. Somehow we know that. And the data that escapes you. Well, I don't know that I ever had it. But the fact that he would just be like the last guy alive. It would made for a short movie and book if he had died at the beginning of it. Yeah. I just think.

But if he was captured, I think he would have done everything in his, in his power to get released. Yeah. Because the De La Pena Diary and some others say that he tried to get out of dying, which is like a good thing. Yeah, of course. I would have believed, like, if they said he tried to get out of dying with, like, befriending them and saying wild stories.

Yeah. Like, I would think that if he were to try to get out of dying, it would be colorful and memorable and descriptive. He wouldn't have done it. The thing about everyone getting mad, like, he wasn't doing it out of cowardice. Like, you were just motivated to live. Yeah.

And if you weren't shot in the battle, then you're going to be motivated to live, whatever that looks like. Yeah. But to go against everything that I just said, to play devil's advocate on yourself. Our boy, my friend Wade Dylan, he said that he doesn't think Santa Ana would have killed Crockett

if he would have known who he was. Because he would have taken him back to Mexico to prove to the Mexican government of American involvement because here is this the most famous man in America that Santa Ana would have saved him and taken him back. They still could have taken him back. Well, that's why I... And I'd like to talk more with Wade about that.

I mean, it's a pretty big deal to take a prisoner of war, especially. when you've declared that everyone's going to die and they ended up taking a flag back of the New Orleans Graze which was a garrison of troops from New Orleans and so that argument I'm not entirely clear on because that's one of his main things is he said if they'd had known Crockett they wouldn't have killed him

they would have taken him as a captive because he was so famous which I don't know has everyone been to the Alamo I have not I don't remember being there. My family traveled a lot when I was under three years old. I don't remember.

I've been to the Alamo, not in the Alamo. Okay. Christ, do you've been there? Yep. How do you do this whole thing, this whole series about, well, just this last one in particular, the last episode about the Alamo, and not mentioned Phil Collins. You know what, Clay actually tried to get a hold of him. Oh, Phil's not doing well.

No, I understand that as well. Yeah, we actually tried to get Phil Collins as a feature guest on the Berger's podcast. It made a pretty legit stab with some people that knew his people. Oh, really? He's an extreme Alamo enthusiast. Phil Collins, the musician? I didn't see it in the air tonight. Yeah, he donated a, he had a huge collection.

He had a huge collection of Texas and Alamo's. Apparently his age, his age. would have had him as a child during the Walt Disney Crockett era. And yeah, he's a very well-known Crockett-A-Moe diehard. Really? Interesting. Makes me like him even more. I can hear it.

How's it go? I can feel it. I said see it. You said hear it. It is feeling. We love you, Phil. We do. We do.

We do. No symbols. That's right. It's true. Well, this has been a great conversation. Thank you all. so much for being here. Christy,

it's been great to have you. Thank you. You gave some very compelling arguments that are going to rival the next invitation whether I invite you or Josh. Josh, thanks for driving her up. Yeah, exactly. I'm just the chauffeur.

Well, I can't wait for everyone to find out what the next series is about. Is it going to be a four-part or two? On Fest Parker. I doubt it'll be four. I doubt it'll be four. It's going to be good. But it's going to be good.

Phil C.C. Isaac, C.C. Hayden. Please close out with, I can feel it in the air. Goodbye, Mallory. Thanks, guys. On blood trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is over. They just get darker. I've seen something in the road. 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 backwards. Each story begins in the wilderness and ends in darkness. Because out here, there are no witnesses, no cameras, just fragments, and the people left

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. This is an IHeart podcast

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