Bear Grease - Ep. 127: THIS COUNTRY LIFE - Know Your Trees!

Episode Date: July 14, 2023

This week on the show, Brent's drawing on his history in the big woods of Arkansas to make the case that everyone -- from foresters, firewood cutters, hunters, and anyone in between -- ought to know their trees. Join him as he walks you through using tree identification skills to make the most out of his hunts, avoid extra labor in his firewood collecting, and shut up the high school loudmouth.  Connect with Brent and MeatEater MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube Shop Bear Grease MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Welcome to This Country Life. I'm your host Brent Reeves. From Coon Hunting to Trotlining and just general country living, I want you to stay a while as I share my stories and country skills that will help you beat the system. This Country Life is proudly presented as part of Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you the best outdoor podcast the Airways have to offer. All right, friends, pull you up a chair or drop that tailgate. I think I got a thing or two to teach you.

Know your trees. Tree identification is more important than maybe some folks think, and being able to tell the difference between a red oak and a white oak, could be the difference in going hungry or coming home with a sack full of supper. Trees on the landscape tell a story. It's never too late to learn the differences, and it's never been easier to do it right now. Why it's easy right now?

Because right now is when we're talking about it, and the amount of information available, has never been greater. I'm challenging you to know the woods you're rambling around in. The more you know, the better it's going to help you in every pursuit that you have that takes place in the woods. Know your trees is up next, but first, I'm going to tell you a story. In high school at Warren, Arkansas, I took a two-year forestry class at the Votech campus, along with my old watermelon stealing buddy Greg Hayes.

I'm starting to think this guy may have been a bad influence. But our teacher was a bona fide registered forester and his name was Fred Burnett. It's still Fred Burnett. Anyway, the Warren Votech took students from all over southeast Arkansas and offered welding, construction trade, nursing, business courses, and forestry. The forestry class was absolutely outstanding. It was also hard. We had to learn to identify 75 different species of trees that grew in Arkansas along with their

scientific names and be able to identify them by their leaves and the characteristics of their bark, limbs, and twigs. I loved it and everything about it. The majority of the instruction weather permitting was always outside, which is where I wanted to be anyway. There were around, I don't know, 15 of us, I guess, in the class from four different area high schools. And like little turkey poults following a mother hen, we trailed Mr. Burnett all over the school campus, learning about all the aspects of trees and where they grew. I remember exactly where we were standing a week into school when he looked at me and told me to identify a tree and give him the scientific name.

We had just started studying this stuff, and we were at the south entrance to the school campus that doesn't even exist anymore. Beside the driveway where the Votech bus was parked was a tree, and everyone in the class was waiting for me to screw it up when I said, American sweet gum Liquid ambarstaira Flua Correct, said Mr. Burnett

And that was 41 years ago And I remember it like it was this morning Lucky for me It was also the first one that I'd learned I could tell you about ten different trees Before I started that class But the scientific names

That was the gravy of the tree ID game We were also blessed to have a school forest about 15 acres of mixed pine and hardwood, and that was our real classroom. That's where we made money to finance school projects and trips. Those woods are gone now and have been for quite a long time, but back then selling firewood was our mission. I can't imagine this kind of curriculum in schools now. Maybe I'm wrong, but we had chainsaws and we used them.

A lot of us had used them at home before we ever got to high school, and those that hadn't, Mr. Burnett taught them how to do it. We'd take turns notching and cutting trees, trimming the limbs, cutting the log into firewood links, and then take a bolting axe or a splitting mall, whatever you want to call it, and split the wood for stacking. At school, chainsaws, bolton axes, sledgehammer, steel wedges, single and double-bit axes were all at our disposal.

It looked like a children's prison gang out there, and Mr. Burnett was the warden. Now, having kids from different schools, especially those from rival schools, always put an extra dynamic of competition amongst the students. Terry was a guy from just such a school. He was a good guy, a good athlete, but always competitive. Everything was a competition to him. Terry told me that while I was pretty good with a chainsaw,

that there wasn't a cut-off section of wood that he couldn't split with a double-bit axe. He then proceeded to demonstrate it by easily splitting a cut red oak in the pieces ready for the fireplace. Terry was a show-off, but Brent was diabolical. And when he said, there ain't a cut-off piece of wood out here that I can't split, being at my limit of having to listen to him say how good he was at everything, I accepted his challenge and rolled him up a two-foot-in-diabitor and beautifully round cut of sweetcoat.

Now, anyone that knows anything about splitting wood and burning wood knows that oak cutoffs split good when they're green and great when they've been put up to dry. Sweet gum, on the other hand, do not. The twisted woven grain of the sweet gum is terrible for splitting and it's basically useless as firewood. Whoever cut it down that day must have just been practicing because I can assure you, Mr. Burnett wasn't about to have us split it up and stack it for sale. But that wasn't Terry's challenge. He said there wasn't a cutoff. He said there wasn't a cutoff out there that he couldn't split with a double-bit axe. Well, remember Greg Hayes, my partner in watermelon crime,

my lifelong to this very day friend that's more like a brother, that guy? Well, I blame him for what happened next because he should have stopped me. He knew just as well as I did that he wasn't going to be able to split that, especially with an axe. You could have loaded that thing up in a cannon and shot it through a fire truck and not knocked the bark off of it. Sweet gum doesn't split well, but Terry, he was a competitive. He knew the challenge that lay before him and he walked around that end table size cutoff,

sizing it up and looking for a weak spot. He was toting that double-bed axe like Thor toast his hammer as he tried to stare it down. He stopped and looked up at each of us like he knew something we didn't, and he grinned. And he spit on that cutoff marking his spot. I looked at Greg and we smiled. Then that cat slowly raised that axe above his head and with one, mighty stroke, he landed that axe blade precisely where he'd planned. It was as surprised as the both of us when the axe bounced straight back, hitting him with the opposite side blade on the

forehead above his left eye. It was a bang, bang, play. None of us had time to react, but for the love of humanity, I wasn't trying to kill him. The amount of litigation that would take place in these times makes me shudder to imagine what would happen, but those times were different. He had a two-hitch cut on his head that bled pretty good for a few minutes. Mr. Burnett applied some gals from the first aid kit that he kept with us and took him to the school nurse, and the nursing students got to work on a real live dummy instead of a plastic one. Now, he came out of their smiling after having all those gals fussing over him and wrapped up like he'd been loaded in a cannon and shot through a fire truck.

But that was all. No one got sued. No one got in trouble. not bad trouble anyway, Mr. Burnett had what I'd call a meaningful exchange of ideas with all three of us, and that was it. This wouldn't be the last adventure in that class, but that's for another time. But before someone writes in and says anything negative about the supervision or that there was a lack of it, let me remind you that we had all gone through safety training

and chose to ignore what we knew were tried and true practices of safety. said. Mr. Burnett couldn't be everywhere at once to keep idiots from causing their own calamity, just like a coach can't be to prevent an athlete from injuring themselves, or my high school ag teacher the time I filled a pipe full of acetylene, stuffed it full of wet paper towels, lit it, and shot them across the shop and ag class like a Roman candle. That was all on us, nobody else. Mr. Burnett will go on to become the forester at a central Arkansas military base and eventually retire as the fire management officer for the Arkansas Forestry Commission. You don't rise to those positions of being inattentive or careless.

He's a grandpa now and a good man and a great influence on me. And that's just how that happened. It's been said the best deer killers probably don't know what kind of tree they're sitting in. So why does it matter? It matters because all animals operate on the three necessities of life, food, water, and shelter. Food and shelter can be provided by trees, and water, well, that can be located by the types of trees that you observe. Trees are also a static identifier for a whole bunch of stuff. They'll tell you the potential wildlife that lives there, they can tell you the area you're entering or leaving as different species grow in different terrain types.

They can tell you the general health of the ecosystem you're operating in and possibly be a barometer for your potential success in that space or at least the opportunity for success. Healthy trees usually dictate healthy wildlife, but not for all wildlife. Sometimes the absence of trees is even more beneficial, or at least in that same area. And stay with me.

There's no one that likes an open hardwood bottom more than me. Seeing that grand overstory of giant oak trees is both peaceful and nostalgic. It's our nature to love things and to have order and the neat defined contrast between an open hardwood flat and a briar-laden thicket is a prime example of how predators and prey coexist in the same space. One time my dad and I was squirrel hunting in the Saline River bottoms where I grew up, old peanut was treeed and we were going to him by cutting across the thicket from one spot of timber to the next. I was sitting behind him on our big buckskin horse with the toes of

my boots dug in behind the bend of his knees. My hands are run deep in his pockets of his old army green hunting coat and I was squeezing him as hard as I could to hang on with my face buried in the middle of his back as we rode through a patch of briar so thick a rabbit would have had to tow to hatchet with him to get around in. We busted out on the other side and I could relax and look around, I remember telling him how much I hated those thickets, and that I wished all of it could look like the open timber we were riding in now. And I never will forget how he described it looking when he was a kid. He said, when I was your age, I could run barefooted from Mount Elby to the Calford. Y'all just going to have to trust me on that one. That's a long way from

down the river through the woods from those two places. But he said, I wouldn't have to worry about stepping on briars, getting hung up in blackberry thickets, or even slowing down to look at deer tracks. When I asked why he wouldn't slow down to look at deer tracks, he said, because there wasn't any deer in here to make them. Now, don't get me wrong, there were deer in Arkansas, way before my dad was a little boy. Fernando de Soto was traipsing around here for about a year starting in 1541, and he was trading goods and visiting with the Caddo Indians who were wearing buckskins that came from here and the meat that they ate was a large part of their diet. And I can dig it less than an hour ago.

Alexis had me lay out a package of burger to thaw out for supper tonight. Those folks know what was good, and we do too. His point to why the woods, the open woods, looked so good to me, was because we were out there to catch stuff and eat it. Now here's another side note. He was making a point about predators, but don't anyone think for a minute that he was about to eat one of the squirrels we'd kill that day or any other day. He wouldn't eat one if he'd have been starving, slapped to death.

He'd help me skin them and even cooked them for me, but eat them, not Buddy Reeves, and not for any amount of money. He gave him away to neighbors, traded them to a man down the road for snake bite medicine and anyone that wanted them. But he wouldn't eat one, and why he wouldn't eat one? That's a whole other story. Anyway, he told me the better that we could see, the better chance we had is slipping around and getting close enough to something to catch it.

It worked the same way with animals. And while that didn't endear me to thickets, it did make me realize that, you know, they were important. It's one of the necessities of life we talked about. Shelter. Those thickets are where deer lay up to have their phones hidden from any and everything that was running around trying to make a Bambi sandwich out of them. They also hold the brows and a million other goodies and reasons why they're beneficial to a multitude of animals found in and around them. Maybe we'll talk about thickets one day, but this day ain't it.

We're talking about trees and importance of knowing the difference. 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 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 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. You don't have to know the scientific names of trees, but it's important as hunters and observers of wildlife that we understand as best we can, environment that we find ourselves operating in. Being able to tell the difference in mass-producing trees, evergreens and deciduous trees, that's the ones that lose their leaves in the fall, is one of the best eras in your quiver. And not all deciduous trees lose their leaves at the same rate or begin at the same time.

If you're summer scouting and you're looking to hang a stand in that perfect spot where trails come together and you want to be there for an October bowhunt in Arkansas, and you choose a tree with limbs that come out at a 90-degree angle with great leaf cover, you'll be shining like a diamond in a goat's butt by the time that October gets here because the tree you select is more than likely a black gum. Now that's Nissa Silvatico. It's one of the first trees in the woods to lose its leaves, and usually by October it's as barren as a 10-year-old dough.

However, the fruit of a black gum can be made into jelly for us, to eat, and animals from turkeys to songbirds, the coons, bears, and squirrels, and a bunch of others love them. Deer, not so much. They'll feed on the seedlings and the leaves up to a point. Then as the sapling matures, the leaves lose their attraction, and the deer move on to something else, and other animals I mentioned take advantage of what the deer crossed off their menu. Also, the black gum tree is very susceptible to heart-roach, which could cause them to become hollow over time. But with their wood-bent, so strong, they can still live for a long, long time.

This creates shelter and dens for mammals, birds, tree dwelling critters, bats, and spaces for honeybeehives. All of that in one tree. That's just one of more than a hundred different species of trees that are native to Arkansas. In Louisiana

and Kansas, you're looking at about the same number. Well, you say to yourself, I hunt out west, and there ain't many trees out there anyway and the dang sure ain't enough to make a different to any kind of plans that I'm going to make one of the hunt out there. Well, guess what? It should make a difference because New Mexico and Arizona, they sport over 130 different species. In Utah, that's close to 250. Obviously, all of them ain't providing food for game, but you have to remember that shelter is just as important, and it's one of

those three basic requirements for life. So keep that in mind. Speaking of shelter, my friend Meyer Means, who is the large carnivore program coordinator for the Arkansas Game and Fish, he told me once when they were doing some Bear Den studies. Now, Bear Den Studies when they locate a breeding aid sows that have been radio collared, and they hit them with that old razzle-dazzle knockout shot and get all the biological data they can muster from her and any cubs she may have. Betta and I won't on one this past March. Man, what an experience it was.

Anyway, Myron and his merry band of biologists, veterinarians, and technicians tracked a collared sal down in South Arkansas where it's common for Mama Bears to use tree cavities to den in since the areas are prone to flood. I guess this old guy was prepping for the big one because Myron said she was located over 80 feet high in a huge bald cypress tree. That's tax odium to stitch them for you folks keeping score and just some more gibberish for those that ain't. But bears are funny creatures, and I dig them. Now, I can't speak much about the trees out west, but I can talk about those I find here. And Quircus Alba, the white oak, man, it's a blessing and a curse all rolled up in one. Now, how could something that produces nature's best acre and preferred by animals and humans alike be a curse? Wait a minute, did I say humans?

I sure did. I mentioned the Caddo Indians earlier. Well, that's just one tribe of Native Americans that were trading deer skins and other such plundered to De Soto and his crew while toting a lunch bucket full of acre and base groceries to the meet and greet. My friend Rick Spicer is a Flint nap and Acorn eating bushcraft teaching guru. If there was such a thing as a human Swiss army knife, mine would have a Rick Spicer blade in it. Y'all check out Rick's Instagram page at Packrat Bushcraft and give it a follow. a link to it on mine and post up his step-by-step method and the recipe he uses to make cinnamon acorn bread cinnamon acorn bread you all know i'm going to try it this winter so you might as well join me

all right the curse of the white oak acorn is mainly to bear hunters hunting over bait i don't have the energy to fuss with folks about baiting or not baiting that ain't what we're talking about save it for another day and somebody else what i'm talking about is how white oak acorns can absolutely ruin a baited bear hunt. Simply put, when they start falling, a black bear will crawl over a mountain of donuts to eat one acre. Your bait will die deader than disco literally overnight. Knowing the trees in your bear hunt area is crucial if the acres start falling early. You may have to swap it up and change up your tactics from stand hunt to more of a spot and stock. By knowing tree ID, knowing your trees, you can look for a stand of white oaks. Check for bear.

bear side, focus your efforts where you're likely to cross past with the bear or the bears that have abandoned your bait. Now, I know I've been talking about bears and white oaks, but that's the only example. Your target species could be focusing on the acorns of red oaks, pin oaks, or psalmon fruit or beech tree masts, whatever. Late winter when the acorns are all but gone and there's no frogs or crawfish or bugs around for coons to eat, we'll go to areas where we know there are groups of deciduous holly trees. That one's called Alex Decidua. Some folks call it a possum hall or a winterberry tree.

And that's probably the best name for it because they'll have fruit when everything else is gone. And when that's the case, we'll be treying in those spots on a regular basis. A lot of you may know that before I turn it, into a life of fighting crime that I worked in the woods managing timber. For those that didn't, I used to work in the woods managing timber. Tree ID was crucial and allowed me to do my job. Cruising timber, which is taking a survey of the merchantable timber on a particular property, either by measuring every tree on it or through a measured sampling of designated intervals

required me to tally the different types of trees to estimate the value of the timber on that land. You should be doing the same now every time you hit the woods, but not for removing timber, but for removing whatever you're chasing out there or at least finding what you're looking for. Everyone I hunt with is always looking for sign, and I'm the same, but maybe just as important as the sign you're seeing is where it's located and what's around it. Are they just passing through to get to an area of food or shelter? The shelter doesn't have to be a place where they sleep. Shelter can be described as a secure place in which, you know, they breed or they rest.

How about like a big oak flat or a pine ridge where a gobbler has a strutton zone? Or white tails bed during the middle of the day. Of course, you can substitute elk and mule deer or whatever you're after. All I'm saying is to observe the terrain, what's growing there, the environment, the wind, everything that you can file in the old noodle data bank for retrieval when you run across it again, somewhere else. Being able to easily identify the trees and what uses in will make your scouting quicker

and more effective. When all things are the same, it may be the difference in setting up in a sweet gum grove or a bunch of white oats. Now I'll close out with this story here that demonstrates the necessity of tree ID. Back at my timber management days, me and Mr. Leon were marking timber to be cut

and were a half a mile from the truck when I found a 40-pound pine knot covered in dried gray mud. For those unfamiliar with a pine knot, it's the rich heart or sap wood of a pine tree. Some folks call it lighter pine. It's used for kindling and starting fires and where I grew up, it was gold. Everyone that had a fireplace picked it up all year long regardless of where they were. See a pine knot, pick up a pine knot, and tote it home. It was common practice and basically the last.

law of the land, a man with a fireplace or any reason to build a fire was judged by the amount of pine knots that he had piled up at home. This one was a monster, and it was all mine. Mr. Leon had eyes like a hawk when it came to find the pine knots, and it was like he had a radar. He'd find them, and I'd wind up being the one to tow them back to the truck for him. After all, I was the youngster on the crew, and I respected him for his age and his service in World War II. This day, he it was hot and we'd been in the woods all day long. We were still a half a mile walk through a sea of briars from the truck. I'd taken the lead, shot in Asmuth with my compass,

and was breaking a trail for both of us when I spied the end of the mother of all pine knots poking up from a patch of greenbriars. Mr. Leon saw me pull it up and throw it over my shoulder. We'd walked for a minute or two when he stopped whistling and said, What you got there, son? luckily he was behind me and couldn't see me rolling my eyes and making a face at the dumbest question I was going to hear all day. My pine knot?

Oh, is that right? With a hint of sarcasm, I said, I believe it is. And I wanted to end that with, oh man, but I didn't. He started back whistling, and we kept walking and fighting through the briars and the heat toward the truck. Now, I got to tell you, that pine knot was killing me. I was swapping shoulders more than I was walking. It was over a hundred degrees in that thicket, and the only air turning in there was when I was walking,

swapping shoulders with my prize or Mr. Leon's whistling. I warned to chunk it, but I knew he'd pick it up and toad it about 50 yards before my conscience made me take it away from him and toad it for him anyway. Still a quarter from the truck, he stopped whistling again, he said, you're really going to tote that all the way out? Now, did he think I couldn't do that?

it. I'll tell you what. As bad as I wanted to fling that pine knot past his ear and almost miss him, I was bound and determined to have it at the truck when I got there. The last hundred yards was the worst. I'm telling you, rain would have had a problem hitting the ground in there. It was so thick. But we broke out of it right beside the truck, and I immediately dropped that pine knot. He stopped whistling and said, you're on a good line back to the truck, son. No, why do you have to say that? Mr. Leon wasn't very complimentary to anyone about anything. His usual response to a question or observation was usually negative,

but I always tried to look past that because of all that he'd been through in the war. He was a genuine hero to me, and all of a sudden I felt real bad about the way I'd been thinking and acting as we walked out, even though he couldn't see it. He poured and handed me the first drink from our water keg. I looked at him and said, Mr. Leon, do you want this pine knot? He took a big, long drink of water, and he filled his cup again, and he drank it down. He turned away from me and chunked it back over his shoulder,

hitting me dead in the chest with a wadded-up paper cup and said, that ain't no pine knot. That's a big red oak limb. Turn it over and look at the bark that was on the end you had pointing toward me. he was whistling again when he sat down in the cab of the truck it pays to know your trees thank you all so much for listening i truly appreciate you allowed me a little time to run around in your head every week i promise to do my dead level best not to step on anything important this is brent reeves signing off y'all be careful last spring clay newcomb and i collaborated with jason

Phelps at Phelps game calls and 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 Phelpsgamecauls.com. I think you'll be glad you did, and you'll find out that the Steve Rinella cut

is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action.