Bear Grease - Ep. 140: BEAR GREASE [RENDER] - Dad Class, Squirrel Championship and River Finale

Episode Date: August 30, 2023

On this week’s episode of the Bear Grease Render, your host, Clay Newcomb, is joined by Joe Wilson, Founder of the World Championship Squirrel Cookoff, Ben Lagrone of Balanced Families, and Jonathan Webster. The crew starts off talking about learning to be a good father and about the new Phelps Game Calls, the Akern Grunter. They then turn their attention to the World Champion Squirrel Cookoff before talking about the last Bear Grease episode, Mississippi River - Big Fish. Finally, Clay gives the crew a peak at what’s coming up next on Bear Grease. 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 and 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. Welcome to the Bear Grease Render.

This is the late August edition, the Bear Grease Render. The hottest one of the year. The hottest bear grease render of the year. There was 103 in my truck pulling up. Was it? 103. Do you know what is unusual about Ursus Americana's, the American Black Bear, is that it's an animal with a black coat, lots of fat, thick hair all year round.

They're not like a mule that has like a... a thick coat in the winter and then sheds it. Like they're pretty much hairy the whole year. Temperature doesn't seem to affect bears. For real. Like when guys hunting the fall, the best thing that it could be, Joe,

on opening day for an Arkansas bear season, would it, would be, there would be 90 degrees. No kidding. No, I mean, it's totally backwards from deer hunting.

Well, you know, I've got some black hair, some fat. I mean, you like the heat too? What's your take? My take is, I've been searching for a town named November, April.

And if I can move there, I'll be at peace for the remainder of my life. Because I just think that those two months are the premium months of the year. Some El Primo months. Let's just honor this bear for being able to tolerate all that it tolerated. Well, we've kind of got a skeleton crew here on the render this week. We had one guy that was coming, was charged. by a bear as

threw him off must have thrown his schedule off Colby Moorhead owner of Bear Honey magazine on his way

here had a great story but I guess the bear charge messed up his schedule and now he's

not gonna be able he probably messed up more than one schedule yeah yeah yeah yeah maybe so

probably had to go and change clothes didn't he I believe his schedule's messed up for a few hours

to be fair if a bear charged me I'd need more than an afternoon to walk that off

so but we do have Joe Wilson, the founder of the World Championship Squirrel Cookoff. I told you we were going to have you back on before the event in September. So,

it's good to have you. Joe's kind of like a one-man circus when it comes to podcasts. Joe's the El Primo podcast guest. I could just be like, welcome to the Barry Shrender. Take it, Joe. And Joe could just start talking. You want a Jonathan out of leave?

Yeah, yeah. But we have Joe's sidekicks. No, you guys just met Joe today. But long-time friend, Ben LaGrone. Good to see you, Ben's good to have you. Ben's been, he's been getting some pictures of some nice deer. And then my other longtime friend, Jonathan Webster. What's up?

I'm really just here for the Apple Butter. I was hoping that there might be a second render of Apple. I miss an opportunity. You know what? If I'd have thought about it, I'd have brought a jar out. and I would have said the most valuable guest of the day gets the jar.

Joe gets the jar. We're talking to apple butter. Yeah, you'd do anything for apple butter, wouldn't you? That apple butter, boy, well, man, so, okay, my conversation today is kind of revolving around bears because yesterday we started baiting bears. We did our inaugural trip

into the mountains to bait bears. So I'm thinking about bears. Apple butter, though, 15, 18 years ago when we bought this land. We've lived here almost 20 years. I started buying apple trees. And I'm going to give you an orchard lesson. Inside the lesson, you're going to learn about a little bit about bears, not much,

but you're going to learn more about orchards. The best time to start an orchard was five years ago. So you better start it now, so that five years from now you'll be happy. When I bought this place, I started buying discount apple trees in like mid-summer at Lowe's. The ones with no leaves. Yeah. Yeah, the little crooked ones with like four leaves that are like $12.99. It used to be $29.

I didn't know the floor model applied to agriculture. Oh, yeah, that's the same way I buy ribbyes. I wait until they get that yellow tag on them. Yeah. They're aged. They're half rotten. Yeah, well, half price, too. Yeah, exactly.

Okay. That's mistake number one. If you're going to plant an orchard, you need to go not to your big box stores. You need to go to a local nursery and find the disease resistant and the good species of peach, apple, cherry, whatever you're after that will grow in your region because Lowe doesn't care. Right. So I started planting these trees. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I started planting these trees. And basically today, 17, 18 years later, I have six good apple trees that are probably six inches at the base.

I mean, like full-grown apple trees. And they have produced sporadic yields for all these years. But the life lesson from this, Joe, is that I've got six beautiful trees. I bet I've planted 25. Did Blake get them? Wow. Man, wheat eaters got them. Deer got them, drought got them.

Because you know the history in Arkansas with the apple trees. Yes. I don't. What's that? I mean... This is coming back to Apple Butter. Take it, Joe. No, podcast don't want.

Here we go. So, like, if you're driving through Bentonville, we got a street called Moberly, and that was home of Moberly apples, right? And so between apple cider, apple vinegar, and apples, Arkansas was the place. It was export... Northwest Arkansas was exporting America's apples. Yeah, we were the time period. Where Washington gets the credit now, that's what Arkansas was for a few decades, multiple decades.

And then a blight come through. It's the same blight that took out the chicken bin, the chicken oak, and wiped out these apples. And so our farmers had to come up with a new idea and just so happens they got feathers on. We started poultry directly happened. I have no idea. Chicken farming. That was our backup plan, huh? Yeah.

You know, so apples used to be big here, exporting apples all over. So there is an apple blight. And so those traditional, like, mainstream strains of apples die. So you need to get, like, I think there's one called Arkansas Black. Arkansas Black. That's real good. But these are big box store apple trees that have survived.

They just produce a real good crop every couple of years. But this year, they produced a good crop. But the whole point of the story, Jonathan, you keep distracting, me, was I planted those trees for bear bait. That's why I planted them. I mean, that's 100% why I planted them. I wanted good, cheap bear bait. But today, my family makes apple butter off of those trees.

It's secondary use. It's kind of like not best use, but good enough. How many sacks of apples did you carry off in the woods? I didn't use very many of them for bait and bears. It was a great idea, though. It was a great idea back in the day. I hear you. No, I only, yesterday I only took about probably 30, 40 pounds of apples that were on the ground.

What's the prime apple or the prime bear bait? I mean, what would you, is it little Debbie treats, day old donuts? Anything that will make a human fat and unhealthy, a bear will love. I'm getting my bait from a commercial bear bait distributor. There's several big commercial bear bait. bear bait distributors that send stuff all over the country. There are companies that deal with the waste. The byproduct.

I don't know where it comes from, but there's a lot of really great food that goes to waste and goes to animal feed and bear bait. So like yesterday, we were buying granola stuff with candies and gummies and marshmallows and circus peanuts and stuff like that. But we also use corn and dog food. I mean, man, I've baited bears with just about everything. They like bread, donuts, all that stuff. Back in 2009, I was working at a local restaurant, and you called me up and asked about getting into the grease trap and getting the leftover fry grease. And I think we made that happen one time.

I think you were going to bring this up. Listen, it worked, I guess. I mean, you came and got it. Oh, yeah, grease is really good. Can I ask you a question? That's how you got on the render. He hadn't forgotten. That's the 14 years ago, the solid contribution of five pounds of grease.

Is a spring bear tastier than a fall bear? I have never been able to tell the difference. Really? I have not. Because, you know, like for our squirrels, for the squirrel cookoff, a spring squirrel is twice the squirrel as a fall. Really? Well, that's because them squirrels are climbing up the trees

and are eating that old bitter, you know, hull off of the hickory nuts or the walnuts or the pecans or whatever. And so that bitter taste actually transfers into the meat. So I was just... Now, is that in the spring? the fall. That's in the fall. Okay. So in the spring, the squirrel's eating berries and sweet, you know, sweet grains and all of this nice good food that translates right in. I mean, it's no different than a finished beef cow compared to a grass. Joe, I don't think my palate is delicate enough to be

able to tell the difference. No, but they do say, they do say that for sure in the spring, a bear is going to be more lean than a fall bear. And so people would, like a fall bear would be, and I don't like using this term because I don't think. The greasy deal. Yeah. I mean,

bear's not any more greasy than a rib-eye beefsteak. Or, yeah, you take my bear meat that I grind that we make burgers out of, meat loaf, spaghetti, tacos, and brown it next to a plate,

a deal of 80, 20, beef, and you're going to have way more fat in that 80-20 beef than you are in my bear meat. That bear you got in Alaska this year, we were there. We got a bear week before you. Yep. We got two bears, and neither of them had any fat on them. I mean, those bears, I think if they would have stayed in their holes for a couple more days, they probably wouldn't have made it. But you'll... Get them a favorite. Yeah. I mean, these were the scrawny, skinny, no-fat bears. They were low-fat. They were probably better for you than that greasy one that you got.

But yeah, I've always thought that bears is not greasy. I don't know where that come from. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, there's good reason to say that because they do in the fall can have a huge amount of fat on them. But it's not in the meat. It's not marbled like beef. And if it was, it would be even better than it is. I mean, like marbling and beef is what is what.

It's the desired thing. Yeah, yeah. And Wild Game just doesn't marble quite like that. But, yeah. They got a handle on like those Kobe cows where they go out and massage them and play music. It's that high-quality bear. That's what we call our black squirrels.

Oh. Yeah. El Primo. They're the angest of the squirrel world. I wonder if I should leave some classic music playing at my bear baits. Oh, man. You think it would make them? You'd get Primo marble.

he thinks well Joe well before we before we get into Joe before Joe takes over the podcast I'm sorry

no no this is good this is good Ben you have a Ben has a dad class and I heard about it

on a previous show awesome I think it's pretty good tell us what's the dad class man okay this is this is like my magnum opus I mean

your life's work I mean it really is so for some context, I'm a influencer in like the fatherhood space, and I've had the privilege to work with a lot of men, do a lot of teaching, mentoring inside men's ministry and other contexts. And in January, I went on like a pilgrimage, basically, to answer two questions. What specifically makes a great father and how do I become one?

And through that, I talk, I have survey data and talk to people probably like, like 130 dads. And through that, developed a something called the framework for fatherhood. And it's like a document that just captures succinctly what makes a good dad. And it's a tool that you can think about your strengths as a man and a tool that you can think about areas to improve. And from that, I developed like a curriculum. It's an online course.

It's self-paced. And this is what. what you guys do with your business is you make online courses for childbirthing and for families. And so this fits right in this lineage of what you are doing. Exactly. Like, we hope someday that it's an online learning hub for learning how to build an awesome family. And so the dad class, this is what it's called, and you can read about it at dadclass.net. Pretty simple.

That's catchy. Daddclass.net. I'm surprised Elon Musk didn't know that. Yeah, well. He's making a bid. He owns a dot-com version. No, that's actually true. That's actually true.

I can't afford that. So it's a self-paced program that you can go through. But I know guys, they're going through it together, like as friends. You could go through it as a men's group at your church or something. And it's not necessarily Christian-based, but there is a really in-depth Bible study companion that goes along with it. If you wanted that. But if you didn't, you didn't have to have that. You don't have to.

But anyway, there's four. The first one is about manhood. And Joe and I were talking about earlier about a simple question, like, what really makes a man and diving into that? And so in that module, we look at that question, and we look at the influences your father had on you. You look at all the things that influence you as a man. We talk about marriage in that module.

The second module, we dive into the framework for fatherhood. And that's broken into fatherhoods in four big overarching skills or competencies, leadership, relationships, shepherding, and legacy. And that module is awesome. It is awesome. It's been life-changing for me to develop, and it's been life-changing for guys that are going through it. And then the third module is called fathering over time, and it's where I take a lot of

my knowledge of childhood development from my early education days. I used to work in public schools. And so we look at the stages of child development and talk about how fathering shifts and changes as your kids age all the way up into young adult. And then the fourth module is something called brand new dad boot camp. So the whole course, any dad of any age, there's one guy taking the course who's a grandfather. So guys of any age can take it. But that's a special module for brand new dads. It's like a crash course, a survival guide.

if you are a new dad and you know nothing. And I'm really excited. So we just launched it a couple weeks ago, and you can learn about it. So people are already taking the class and stuff. Yeah, all over the nation. And it's mostly guys that have taken my wife's, my wife and I as childbirth class and stuff. But that's one of the biggest requests that I've got.

It was, hey, I really want to be the best dad I can be. Do you have any resources from me? I get that question all the time. And then number two, where can I find? support. So actually, if you, when you buy the class, you get on this online private group that I moderate and you can get on there and ask questions. In the future, we hope to have like special live sessions and stuff like that. That's cool, man. Just this week I sent Ben a screen clip from a private message somebody had sent to me a bearerous render listener who said,

Clay, I wish you had more stuff about your family and how you raise your family. And he was a young father interested in fatherhood. And I clipped it and sent it to you. Yeah. And that's what we're looking for. People are interested in it. That's the point. I'm interested.

Yeah, you know. Joe, you said on your podcast you ask everybody, one of the questions is what does it mean to be a man? We've asked 100 men what it means to be a man. And traditionally you have about four responses. one is is do what you say. And it's hard work. And it's being a member of the community. And a lot of times friendship, you know, being a good friend, being a good father,

all of that comes in. We also ask the question, did your dad ever tell you he loved you? And for people, I'm about 50 years old, you know. And for people my age and older, the answer is almost always no. Really? Almost always no. Man, that is shocking. But for 50 years and younger, the answer is almost always yes.

So there was something that happened, maybe in the 80s, I don't know, that changed this. Now, unless that guy that we asked the question to went through some major physical or mental abuse, the response is he didn't have to tell me I knew. And so that's across the board. You'll hear that. The reason why I'm interested in your class is I have a 17-year-old daughter and an 8-year-old son. We kind of gap them apart a little bit.

There should be another one on the way with this math, Joe. Trust me, the doctor said that can't happen. I believe in miracles, Joe. The deal is, I do. Believe in miracles. But the deal is to me is I had a phenomenal relationship with my daughter until she was probably 12 and a half going on 13. This little girl caught every perch with me. We deer hunted.

She cleaned deer with me. She was my shotgun rider. We ate donuts. Every time we could eat donuts, we hit the park. And then the deer lord decided he was going to turn her into a wild. woman and things kind of changed. And it's been a struggle. Now, my goal right now is I'm playing kind of like Batman.

I live in a cave. And if she ever needs me, she can shine that light and I'll come running and fix whatever it is that needs to be fixed. But I'm playing the game right now where space keeps her from hating me. You know? I mean, you want to talk about getting your heart broken. And I guarantee you're going to have. have a ton of your listeners say that that teenage year is evil.

I mean, it, it changes. And I was that, I was that kid. I remember getting angry whenever I was a teenager. I mean, we're not in rut. Well, maybe we were, but we're at that point to where, you know, we're trying to prove who we are and we're a man we can handle her. Or you're a girl and a woman.

It's a tough, tough time, brother. and I'm sure you'll have a lot of men if they open up to you, they'll tell you that a little girl can break a tough guy's heart pretty dang easy. And it sucks. It's a bad, bad deal. But being older, I've watched men go through this, and I know what the end game is. Those little girls are going to come back,

and they're going to find out that dad was just trying to protect them. What do you say? You know, when you brought up the deal about the older generation not telling their kids they loved them, and then now it would be unusual for any group of people probably to not tell their kids they loved them. And my question was, do you think that the kids that are being told they're loved really feel loved? You know, and I don't know the answer. It's not really a trick question, but the idea is that if you see, say something. Well, because you said that

a lot of the guys that dad never told them they loved them. They knew. They knew they were loved because of the action. And now there's probably just as many guys that would say, man, my dad was a warlord. And like, at some level he loved me, but he was kind of a, you know,

I mean, there's probably different versions of it. I think that that's the part that made us know that they loved us is because they gave us rules and restrictions and guidance that if they didn't love us, why would they tell us that? And so, you know, for a dad to enforce that and all of a sudden you're wrong. Well, it's just like, what is love? Is love letting your kid do whatever they want all the time and giving them everything they want? Or is love, you know, discipline them in the right time and giving them correction and putting boundaries on

their life and not letting them do this and that? It's the highlight of our life to have our children. it's our legacy is what we leave behind in them. Clay's deal taking bear out, dropping them off in the woods, letting him kill a bear. I couldn't get away with that deal at my house, right? Why not? Well, I shall whoop me. But would I want to?

Absolutely. What Clay has shared with the listeners about how he's raising his family, is very, very interesting to me, but I'm old school. And so to a lot of people, you know, they don't want our kids playing out. I live in the country. They don't want our kids playing out there because the boogeyman's going to come kidnap them. There ain't no saber-tooth tiger that's going to take my kid.

I'm that kid who would walk just like Brett Reeves. You know, he talked on his show, this current one, to where he would walk on forever. And we knew what time dinner was. We had to get home to it. we'd leave with a pocket full of bullets or a couple hooks. And nothing bad, you know what happened? Everything was good. Even the bad times were good.

And I kind of feel like we're missing a huge opportunity to our kids by not doing what you're doing, Clay. That's, in my opinion, that's often wrong. Well, you know, the other thing that you wouldn't see about the freedom that I do, give my kids, or it's just not something we just talk about all the time, is I've placed a lot of really strong boundaries on their life too. The reason I can trust Baranukum to go in the woods for three days by himself all he's 15 with a bow and all this and just trust him to be competent enough is that his whole life, I have been there, I've been there, number one, but I've, but I have

tested him. I mean, I've been, I've been like, okay, here's the rules. The, the, the playing field is really huge, but don't go outside the boundaries. And I'm not contradicting, like, letting free-range kids. I mean, my kids have kind of been free-range, but inside of a controlled environment. And he's proven to obey the rules and do what's right, make sound judgment. And, you know. I had a go-kart one time for 15 minutes. That's the beginning of a good story. For sure, beginning of a good story. I watched my dad in the summer sun put together this go-cart, and I believe it had a husk of arna chainsaw motor, right?

And he worked hard, wrenching and bleeding and stuff, putting this deal together. And he said, son, this is your go-car. Don't touch the highway with it. And I got on the go-cart, and I drove all the way down the road, and I turned around, but them outside tires touch.

this thing that he considered the highway. I come back, he said, what did you think? That's awesome. You know, that's a cool deal. Get off. And he took it all apart, and I never seen it again. Wow, because you broke the rules. I broke the rules.

Wow. I'd say that's a good dad and forcing some boundaries. I mean, so, and you know, that was at a young age. That's 9, 10 years old. And I understood at that point what the man said was what the man meant. and if I broke it, I paid the consequences. You know, if Gary Newcomb were here, the believer himself, I'd tell this story.

The most intense moments of my life would be when I was, let's say I was eight or nine years old driving the truck on dirt roads. He'd let us drive. He was very serious. Dad, I don't know why. Maybe he had kids when he was in school that got killed in car wrecks and. He was very concerned about us being good drivers and safe drivers. I mean, like, he coached us about that so much. So he let us drive on dirt roads.

And he'd be in the passenger seat, and we'd be controlling the truck. You know, at some point after proving competency, and he would say, we'd be deer hunting, looking for deer sign. He'd see a deer track on the road or something and would be in. But he'd say, stop. And I remember just kind of like coming to a long stop. that's when the state troopers get mad at you. Right, yeah.

And he would be like, I said, stop the car. When I say stop, I mean stop. When I say turn, I mean turn. And I mean, we learned real quick. You did exactly what he said, even if you didn't understand it. If he said stop, you stop, except wheels didn't squeak on dirt roads. So for the dad expert, I think that's where I've dropped the ball. I think that just like training, it's a bad comparison, but just like training the dog, you give them an inch, they're going to take a mile, right?

And I have never been real good at drawing that line. Is drawing that line important in your class? Absolutely. And first of all, I wouldn't say I'm the expert. I'd just say I'm a learner, and there's no perfect dads, you know. Come on, Ben, we know you're perfect. What makes a great dad is somebody who's able to learn and reflect and make changes, even small changes. I think that's what makes a good dad become a great dad because the world's full of good dads. I mean, honestly, I think 90% of guys are good dads and love their kids doing the best. But when you think about sitting down, reflecting, and making a practical change in your life, that's hard. It's hard work.

And that's what this course we try to do. But we absolutely talk about boundaries. And we talk about finding balance. So like some guys, they might struggle with being way too harsh, way too strict. They just, they can't build relationship for nothing. And that's going to bite you in the end. And then you got other guys that struggle to set those boundaries and be consistent. So being a great dad's being aware, okay, what's my natural tendency

and trying to identify how to practically change that? that's what I'd say to that. We've all got to... Having that awareness of yourself. And yeah, all of us have a tendency to either be too loose or too strong. You go to one side of the other and just being aware and knowing that probably somewhere in the middle... Man, I'm having you on our show. I would love to.

I'm telling you, man. I'd be good. I think you'd be perfect on our show because our show is dominated by men listeners and the majority of them being a father. and it will play right in with what our goal is. One, you're a younger guy. And one of the values that we've tried to put on our show this season is to prove to the public that the younger generation is absolutely as strong

as the older generation. Y'all just do stuff a little different. And because that's- Hey, tell them the name of your podcast. Oh, cooking up a story with Aaron and Joe's. We drop a new one every Thursday on all the things you can listen to them. on and we're a lot different than Clay Show. We're very open to listening to all kinds of things.

But if you're a truck driver and you need three hours down the highway, tune in, because it's a three-hour show. But, man, you fit in perfect to that. And it's a characteristic because I work in construction industry. And so I depend on young men to build America, right? And one of the things that we deal with is that older guys say young guys don't know how to work. Here's what I know. I know young guys, we've got to depend on them because they're going to fight for our freedom in this country and protect anybody that needs protecting.

So we better respect them enough and treat them solid. But your dad and your grandpa and everybody, it's built into us to think that the next, generation has done lost it right you know does not every generation feel that every generation and so when you hear it you just got an understood understand that we heard it yeah and they heard it and so it's just one of those deals and and technology plays a lot into it because y'all can do stuff faster than we could i'm pretty good at that google but we think that because we don't see you breaking your back that you ain't doing nothing. And so they call it lazy.

You've heard it, right? And it's not the truth. It really ain't, Clay. It's just one of those deals to where we need a better bridge between the younger generation. And until we get it, we're going to be like every other generation. Mm-hmm. So, yeah, you're coming on. Let's do it.

Let's do it. Yeah, man. I'll be listening in. You got a couple to listen to. Yeah, I do. Shoot, man. Joe really does have a really interesting podcast. They do a good job.

I can't wait to hear it. Oh, last thing with the coupon, bear grease. Oh, yeah. 25% off of that. Bear grease. Got a, wow. How about that? What if I gave you a free squirrel?

Is that worth another 25? You'd be in. You've landed in a good place here, but that. That class. That class. Right on. That's awesome. 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 pool 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 two of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, Iheart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Clay, I see a little something over there. That's a sharp-looking thing with your signature on it. What you got there? Oh, this is a... Did you hear us talking about this on the last time?

I heard it. I heard it. I heard it. So this is the, this is the Acre and Grunt call. And they, uh, it's a, it's made by Phelps. Phelps is a, it's a meat eater company. Jason Phelps. Me and Jason Phelps work for the same.

people. We're co-workers. And we were in Mexico talking about deer calls. And I said, man, I want a deer call that's an inhale, exhale, grunt, bleat deer call. And I'm telling the call master this, and I don't think much about it. I tell him some specifics that I wanted about it. And he's like, okay, okay. And then he makes this call and turns out it's, there's nothing like it. There's not another inhale, exhale grunt call on the market. I didn't realize that he had to overcome some real engineering challenges to make a call that would do that. I thought I was asking him to do something that I just hadn't found yet, you know, in a call. But now these, what I forgot to mention on the last couple of podcasts is that these are going to be for sale sometime around the first of September.

Okay. So close to when this podcast comes out. But yeah, for real, it's not a gimmick. this is like a legit, really good call. Is this saying Acron on it? Acron, yes. It's the Acron Grunner. That's it.

It's the Acron Grunner because, as you all know, when Acrens fall in the early part of the season, that's when you can kill deer. So the acron is the chicken nugget of the eastern deciduous forest. It's the pinnacle of the deer hunter, bear, squirrel hunter's year. And it's the Acron Grunner. It's the deer hunter's call. it's uh when you see the acorns fall that's when you need to be blowing that call either way suck or blow that's amazing that's pretty too it's amazing

it's made a white oak why were you intent on having inhale exhale just so you didn't have to carry two calls you typically had a grunt call and a bleak call that you had to carry and uh and in the early season the reint you wouldn't want to do a buck if you saw some doze that you were interested in shooting a buck grunt is not necessarily going to get them to come into you a dough bleat would so you need a doblee would so you need a do A lot of guys use the cans, which are really good. Yeah, that Primos can. That call kind of revolutionized the deer call world with its simplicity. But this call makes a more, in my opinion, a more robust, louder or soft. You have more control with this than that can.

And you don't have to keep up with a can, you know. I'd never use anything about the can. I didn't even think about it. Yeah, that's, you can. I always thought like a soup can with dried corn in it. Shaking it around like a deer feeder going off. Yeah, I just think, man, if I had a soup can with some dried corn, I just rattle this old deal, and the deer would come or run it.

It works in Texas. Yeah. I think you could put your name on that and probably sell a whole heap of them, too, limited edition. Yeah. Squirrel cookoff. Man. September 23rd.

September 23rd in Springdale, Arkansas. I saw that. You move locations. Oh, okay. Awesome. Yeah. It's in my neighborhood. Yeah.

So, you know, Arkansas Game and Fish put a pile of money into putting that place in Springdale. It's beautiful. It's a beautiful facility. And they're just not getting the traffic they need. And so they needed a circus act like myself to come out to that deal and show people where it's at. And so on September 23rd, starting about 9 o'clock in the morning, the teams will be doing what they do. And let me tell you, we've got 40 well-qualified. qualified teams. Based off of the last time I was on Bear Grease, we brought in a lot of people

that had never even heard of the squirrel. Really? Yeah, we've got a fellow coming from Kentucky that's, he claims he's number one fan of yours. Okay. He's bringing his Kentucky squirrels down. Okay. Maybe in like an oak barrel or something. And he's, marinated. Yeah, yeah. He's going to bring his Kentucky squirrels in. We've got a team signed up from Massachusetts. We've got team coming from Washington State. So when we claim we're a world championship, if those people in France or China or whatever want to come over and partake, they're more than welcome to.

But we're going to crown the next world championship or champion on September 23rd. This is big. It's going to be big. We're doing squirrel cleaning competition. We're doing a... Hey, can, in the squirrel, I've been meaning to ask you this. Can you bring your own implements for skinning? Yeah, you can.

What was the crazy thing that you did? Snippers. Oh, yeah. Snippers are good. Snippers are good. But the problem is, Clay, is these squirrels have been in the freezer for a month and a half. You don't think that matters. Not in the least, but I will, I don't want to make any big claims, but I can skin a squirrel fast.

I know you can. I know you can't. And the reason I know that it doesn't matter if they're frozen is a lot of times in the winter. Come in late. Come in late. And that squirrel's been, you know, it's probably 40 degrees outside. It's not, you're not worried about the squirrel. And he's been in your pouch since 9 o'clock that morning.

You skin him at 6 o'clock in the evening, and he's harder to rock. Are you now, you're not playing that game on a fox squirrel. Oh, you can do it just the same. I'm not saying it's easier with a warm one, no doubt. No doubt. A warm one, I mean, you can just, you can clean them quick. We, Clifton Jackson, who works for Arkansas Hall Game and Fish. as the Jackson Squirrel rifle is named after him.

He's the reigning champion. How fast do you do it? Fast. Okay. Well, the reason why we don't have a stopwatch, it's you against somebody else. Oh, really? You lose, you're gone.

Hey, man, you ought to start doing the stopwatch. Do you think Guinness would put us inside of a book? They'll do. They've got a record for everything under the sun. Why not? And you'll have your own book. But then you can compare, you could, could actually crown a world champion like a world record squirrels.

Give a goal for somebody. I mean, and they would need to be squirrels of similar size and temperature. I'm thinking you could absolutely get Guinness out there. Now, here's what's going to happen, though, and I'll go ahead and cut the mule off at the gate, is that when I bring my clippers up there and beat everybody, they're going to be like, oh, he was using clippers. So you got to say, it's fully legal right now on the Bear Gris podcast. You know, one of the most successful podcasts you can listen to.

So, I mean, if I was going to get it out, here's the joint to do it. You can use your clippers if you want to use your clippers. Okay. That being said, this ain't no walk in the park, Clay Nukum. This is a bona fide. I mean, have you ever been to a drag race? It's the same thing with a squirrel. Okay.

Okay. Not only do we have that, we have the world's, it's always been the world's hottest wing-eaten competition. Squirrel wing eating competition. We're going to up that this year, and we're going whole squirrel. What do you mean? You got to eat the whole squirrel? We're going to do a single whole fried squirrel with lava poured all over the top of it. I love it.

And whoever can eat it, and I don't need anybody choking or doing anything stupid like that. But we're going to take away points if you let's a little bit of protein on the bone, you know. So we're going to have that event. We also were debuting a white-tail movie at the game in Fish. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That a bunch of people have spoken in. Yeah. We're having a youth BB gun competition in the morning where they'll be shooting at squirrel targets.

There's all kinds of stuff to do. The only thing I'll say is our parking is really lacking. So you may have to find a place and skip down the road a little bit. it. It's kind of out there. It's kind of in an unusual spot. It's not hard to get to. I mean, it's like. Off the inters date and 40th.

But yeah, it's a. The goal behind it this year is to really promote that facility and show people. Because it's an upland facility. They're trying to put habitat in. It's really cool. Build back the prairie, get the quail population going. And, you know, that's how nature is. If you try to rebuild that upland bird, everything else is going to be more success.

along the way. Game of fish has been spectacular. So Brent Reeves is going to be a judge. I sure hope he's been training. Brent trains year-round. You think he'll pull out that case pocket knife and try to saw all three things. Yeah, yeah. So Brent's going to be there and I'm going to be there.

I mean, I'm not, I'm not like making, I'm not like doing anything. Yeah. But I will, I'm planning to be there, Joe. Okay. Well, we expect you to be there. Yes. I want to be there. I want you to be there, too.

Yeah. I mean, your little documentary you made, was it $1,000 squirrel? Or $100 squirrel? $100 squirrel. You all seen it? I have none. He pulled a documentary when they were out on them mules riding around. What was the premise of that deal?

Well, we killed two squirrels in a morning of hunting, and my buddy said, that's a $100 squirrel. It costs us $200 to drive. out of air and shot two boxes of shells and killed two squirrels. And that's kind of the moral of the whole squirrel cookoff is you're taking these squirrels that are the smallest of game and you're turning them into a premium meal. And so if you can do it with squirrel, you can d'natured do it with a bear. There ain't no doubt you can do it with an elk.

And just enjoy, enjoy the gifts that we have. So, yeah, I'm looking forward to seeing everybody. I love it. There will be some fathers out there, T. I'm going to be there. That's in my neighborhood, too. I'll be there. That's a lot of fun.

That facility hosts so much educational stuff to the public. My wife is going there tomorrow. They're hosting a sharkoery board building class. My wife's going to learn how to do my carpentry stuff. It's amazing. You could find fishing stuff. Arkansas Game and Fish has done a really great job. I think most Game and Fish organizations are suffering on trying to get people back in to hunting and fish.

and so they got to depend on photography and they've got to depend on the culinary side because if you can get someone through their stomach you can dang sure that's a pretty quick trip right to their brain right and teach them the value of what we do. Hey, I got a, if we're talking about Game of Fish, Austin Booth, the new director of the Game of Fish, he's been there for about two years now.

I mean, I didn't know the guy before he became the director. After he became a director is when I met him. It's not like we're long. time friends. But he, man, he's, he's a heck of a guy.

He's a heck of a leader. It takes youth, right? He, man, his, his leadership skills with the department,

I mean, he's grabbed that thing by the horns, the Arkansas game and fish, and is, is doing some incredible stuff. They, they've got a big piece of property

they got to worry about, which is the whole state. And in that, there's a whole bunch of smiles that can be developed in this state. if people just go out and take some of this free entertainment, and it's available in every state.

I mean, you're going up to Alaska here before too long. If you were ever bored in Alaska, there ain't no hope for you. There just ain't no hope for you, man. Except the wintertime when it doesn't get daylight. That's the only time. Even the northern lights. Yeah. All sorts of stuff, man.

There's things to do. So the Bear Gries Render. On the Bearer Granger. That was the introduction to the render. Welcome to the Bear Grie Strinder. Now we're going to talk about last week's episode, the Mississippi. This is the fourth episode in the Mississippi series. Man, I had some people that were like, man, I wish you'd do four more.

I want to hear about the coastal erosion and the nitrogen bloom. You said, you skipped right over it, just said. I'm not going to do it. Well, I was hoping. There's so much. And then I was talking to my dad, Gary Believer, Nukum, my biggest fan. And he's like, Clay, I'm talking. I'm tired of Mississippi River stuff, man

No, no, it's been really good He was like, ah, you said it's interesting, but ah, you know I like that about Bear Grease. I mean, like, I'm probably like a part of the atypical crowd for Bear Greece, but I found this series fascinating. Really? Oh, yeah, absolutely. And I think you really brought, like, to the forefront of my understanding

why the Mississippi River is important, how it impacts, like, the country as a whole. Like, I really, I have enjoyed every episode. What would you have known about the river before this? I knew it was, well, you know, it's funny. I was about to say, I knew it was the longest river in America, but actually, that's the Missouri River. Right, yeah, yeah. I didn't know much, I guess. I mean, I know I drove over it, and it doesn't look very pretty, but that was one of the things that I really loved about the series.

And specifically, this episode was talking about the health of the river. Because you do have this impression when you drive over it. Like, the areas I drive over would be near Memphis, right? It's a, I mean, everywhere around it, it just kind of looks muddy, and, you know, And the banks don't look that great. And it just kind of, you get a bad impression. And see, that is, when you talk about natural systems and you talk about beauty, if an alien came from another planet and stepped in.

They always go to the desert. Yeah, yeah. Good point, Joe. Like, what would they perceive as beauty? Like, what, what would, you know, would they look at the Rocky Mountains and say, that's beautiful? Or would they look at this muddy, dark, river system and say it was beautiful. To me, a natural system that is functioning like it was before humans got too involved is beautiful. So, I mean, like when you cross over the Mississippi

River on a bridge and look and see this big flat water that looks like it's still, but it's actually screaming down towards the Gulf of Mexico, that is equivalent in terms of natural systems that impact the landscape to an Appalachian mountain range, a rocky mountain range, the Ozarks, even on a smaller scale. I mean, and just to appreciate it is like that is a dynamic, wild, ancient, hard to control, dominating piece of a geologic feature of the earth that is like, we'll be here longer than we will be here. When we're long gone, that river will be here.

I'm like you, man. When he talked about the health of the river, I think we get so shocked because when we open up our game and fish book and it talks about, well, you should probably only eat fish like twice a month or whatever, lead, mercury, all of this. And we think about the runoff that's going inside of it. For him to state that the nitrogen and the things that were actually, we're not bad for that part of the river,

they were bad for the ocean, right, for the Gulf. Yeah. To hear the fishing stories. to understand that a flathead isn't as valuable. Yeah, that shocked me. Yeah, that was cool. Yeah. As a blue cat.

I think a lot of our listeners who aren't from someplace that borders the river would find that eating buffalo if they even know what a buffalo is, buffalo ribs are real good. And it's kind of just like a southern delicacy. They're kind of like a drum. You know, a buffalo is. Big scaly, rough fish that I mean, you wouldn't think people would be eating. But they're good.

It was an excellent series. I learned a lot about the river. The 200 feet of topsoil. Yeah, that was incredible. Because how much topsoil do we have here? Inch. The Ozarks. Yeah.

Pretty rough. Yeah. You know, that's a good place to insert an addendum. When you talk about, I kind of gave some, if you actually listened to what exactly I said about top soil, it would be a little bit contradictory. Because people use top soil in different ways. A soil scientist would not say that the top soil layer of the alluvial floodplain of the Mississippi was 200 feet deep. Because it's not on the top. Well, no, because the topsoil technically would just be like the surface that was impacted by organic matter and probably some of the deepest top soils in the world are like 40 to 50 feet deep.

But the alluvial deposit made by the river over the last gazillion years in places is 350 feet deep. But it's not all top soil. It actually would be a, like if you dug down 150 foot and brought that soil up to the surface, it would be of a different constituency than the soil right on the top. What's our guy from Mississippi? Hank Burdine. See, I let him say what he said because I knew what he was thinking. He said the average soil depth, topsoil depth of the Mississippi River,

alluvial floodplain is like 180 feet deep. If Hank doesn't get like a TV show to where he can have 30 minutes of conversation across the globe, we're missing out as a world. Hank, Hank, I love Hank, Berdyne. He's everything that you feel like he is. I watched him on a YouTube video singing a song about a hot tamale. Have you seen that? No, it doesn't surprise me at all. That was a variety show.

And I thought, you know, Hank needs a whole app. Yeah. You know who else was... You know who else was really, I mean, quiet capturing was Mr. Bill. I mean... Yeah, Bill Lancaster. Next time Meat Eater does another campfire stories, you guys need to include his story about getting tossed out of his boat. I mean, that was a great story.

Man, Bill, Bill Lancaster, this is behind-the-scenes, burglary stuff. He... Well, move back up. the hardest part of my job is getting the right people to talk to you. Some of the right people want to talk to you, like Joe Wilson and Hank Berdyne. Like, they're ready to talk. Sometimes the right people don't want to talk to you.

Bill was, he was, I could tell he, well, not that I could tell, he told me. Like he wasn't so sure that he should talk to me. just because it's like Bill is he doesn't listen to podcast he's been doing all right without you for 70 years yeah exactly you know it's like it's like he's not doing this for show he's not doing this to show off what he does he he literally fishes almost every day it has for the last since 1984 and fish before that a lot from 1969 but professionally for a living every week of the year since 1984.

Is he a one-man show in that boat? He doesn't take anybody with him. Yeah. You know, a lot of shrimp people, shrimp boat captains were like that. They were just one guy on a shrimp boat. And that's like the life of a boxer. You're the one who determines if you're winning or losing.

Yeah. And that's what I got out of him. His work ethic is unbelievable. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and then he had two stories about finding dead bodies in the river. I noticed that you didn't tell the second.

I mean, it was just, you know. You heard one, you heard them all. How about the comparison to Tracy Lawrence? Did you see the picture of him? I don't think. I may have. Does he look like Tracy Lawrence? That's what I immediately thought when I saw.

Is this the thin, youthful Tracy Lawrence or the chubby retired? The young, a young, thin Tracy Lawrence with a mustache and the hair. Paint me a Birmingham, a Birmingham, Tracy Lawrence or after? Well, I don't know. I don't know when he was in Birmingham. Oh, his song, You Paint Me a Birmingham. Shoot, I don't even remember that one. Is this a Laurenne-Len all over again?

That's like his best song. It's a compliment to Mr. Bill, handsome fellow. So, Mr. Bill, if you're listening, that was a... You're a handsome man, Bill. No, no, Bill, for real. He's listening now. He wasn't sure about this podcast. No, Bill...

Heck of a father. Yeah. No, he was one of a... He was so fun to talk to, and you know somebody that's dedicated that much of their life. to anything is going to be good at it, you know. 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.

You ever fish the river, the Mississippi? I never have. Never have. We fished, we fished the Mississippi three or four times. And just like they were talking. For what? Catfish. Yeah, things with, things with lips, you know. I could tell you one night we set up trot lines by a cold dock somewhere by Rosedale, Mississippi, or a grain dock, I guess, you know.

And there was a light and there was some grain. floating on the water and we could see things popping and above it. I thought, son, this is where we're going to do it. So we set out a hundred hook line. We went out, fished, come back, pull this line. We maybe had three or four hooks without a fish on there. But every hook had a fish. And let me tell you what they were.

They were about 16 inch gar. No way. Yeah. It was miserable because there was just a garfish. Sean Ervy Hood, but we've caught some big fish, man, 60, 70-pound blue cats out. That's amazing. Man, my wife heard that and she was like, we have to go. We need to find somebody to take us.

Your wife listens to the barriers with you. She listened to in preparation. And she likes to fish. We should have had her on the podcast. So she, so Colby, who was supposed to come today, he went noodling and got a flathead catfish. He gave us some of that. And my wife cooked it up and she was like, I just want access to this.

I was like, we can go find some catfish. I like it when a lady gets so dead set on meat that she's like ruthless. That's my kind of woman. She's going for it for catfish. Sometimes I see that in people's eyes. I'm like, this woman would break the law for a catfish. Austin, Rachel, is not like that. My wife had never known how to cook venison.

And once she started figuring out her own schick and what she want to do, she's like, get your butt in the woods. I kill some beer. You know, it just totally changed the whole, you know, hey, I go hunting this weekend. It's like, get in the woods. That's my excuse. What are you doing home? That's my excuse to get to go to Alaska every year.

My wife likes eating that halibut. And so I ain't going to Alaska for myself, boys. This is a servant-leaver right here. This is me trying to beat this poor economy. You know? Provide for your family. Being a great dad. Yeah.

Got to go. Lesson number three. Clay, I have a, I have like a slightly anecdotal story about experience with the Mississippi. So I'm into bicycling, right? And I do two bicycle touring. And so last year, I actually went on a bicycle tour from Kansas City to St. Louis. And half of that when I met Boonville was along the Missouri River. Met Boonville?

Boonville. Yeah. Where? Missouri. Okay. Boonville, Missouri. And you go from... I bet every state...

Has a Boonville. East of the Mississippi and touches the Mississippi River has a... Boonville. We have a Boonville in Arkansas. That sounds about right. This one has, I mean, it is where the trail that I was riding goes over the Missouri and it is a huge bridge. I mean, it's, but I've run along. Like a bicycle bridge? It's a car bridge. It's a traffic bridge. If they start building bicycle bridges, I'm moving. No, no. That was a dumb question. No, no, no. Here's the, kind of like, roughly related part of my story, which is we did that. It was an amazing and I have planned. This year I planned. I

I don't know when I'm going to do it. A biking trip from northwest Arkansas down to Arkansas City, very near Greenville. And it goes along, Arkansas State is building the Delta Heritage Trail State Park, which is beautiful. And right along the Mississippi River goes from like West Helena, West Memphis, down to Arkansas City. So it's like 85 miles.

And there's a section in the middle where the White River, Arkansas River, all meet the Mississippi River. And there is, there is not a bridge for 70 miles. And I was frustrated. I spent days on like GPS apps and maps just like, how in this modern day of 2023 can I not get across this body of water? And I called me, didn't you? I called the state park.

And I said, hey, like, I know that the trail's not finished. You got an incomplete section. Like, how can I cross this body of water? Is there a plan to build the bridge? Yeah. So it's basically built along the levees, but also along some old railroad trestles. Yeah. There's a beautiful section that's down there near the trust and holder wetlands.

And that's the section that's incomplete, and it's based around this trestle. And so one day I will ride it, but I just could not believe that in the year, 23, I called the state agency and said, how can I get across this like four-mile gap? You had the same problem that Hernando, Desotola. Exactly. And she told me she's like, you're going to have to go 70 miles around. That's the closest bridge. And I said, hey, do you think that I could like, I mean, I'm on the other side of the state? Do you know any? I see there's hunting clubs. Do you know anybody that I could like ferry me across? This is a soft pitch to all the bearish guys. Is there anybody down there that would give him a ferry ride across this river on his bike?

I got told that that was a lost cause because apparently the hunting clubs were not a fan of this burgeoning. state art, which made the section of your podcast talking about the hunting clubs being this wildlife mecca really interesting because of the kind of conflict of like, well, I want access to that area as well. So two points of conflict there, you're, well, I don't even want to get into this, but the conflict that you're stepping on that you wouldn't have even known is that, you know, public lands, there is conflict around kind of who controls those. And so there, there's a, there's a, It's such a big topic.

It's hard to even want to talk about. But hunters are paying users of the land that we hunt because we buy licenses that go to do stuff for that land. A bicyclist doesn't do... I mean, I'll pull out my gaming fish card. You're a hunter, though. You're a hunter. You're a high fishing pole on your back. There it is.

Well, you're a hunter. But as a bicycler, like using public land, you don't have to buy a bicycle license. And so there's this conflict. The second conflict that we could get into, I had somebody reach out to me and say, Clay, thanks for highlighting in a positive way the land inside the Mississippi levees. Because no doubt that is some of the highest price land on planet Earth. I had no idea. Oh, those clubs along the river, there's $100,000 memberships. Yeah.

Oh, Joe, that's outdated. It's 100,000. Really? Oh, there are clubs down there that, first of all, someone has to die. Yep. And they don't have to have an air that would inherit the club membership. I personally know clubs that you couldn't buy into for 250 grand. No kidding.

This is like the Arkansas version of like Yankees, like season tickets. And so that, that to a guy that just doesn't, in my opinion. And now, I could pitch the other side of this and have a good argument against it. But I just don't see it that way. And I got no steak. I wish like crazy. I got no stake in the inside the levees of the Mississippi River anywhere. Like I'm not a member of a club.

Don't have any connection to them. But they would say that is a rich man's thing that is unattainable for the common man to hunt inside the levees. So there was a guy that I was working with through the squirrel cookoff 10 years ago. And he reached out to me. He wanted to write a coffee table book. based off of all the hunting clubs from about where the start of the levees are down to Baton Rouge. And because the history of those structures, you know, these are old plantations, there's presidents and governors and every banker, you know, has been inside these clubs. and we wanted to do a book,

coffee table book, showing the history and their favorite meal at that club because a hunting club is a place to eat, socialize, and maybe shoot something,

you know? And so the history behind those things is phenomenal. Oh. And it's hidden history. I would not have known anything about it. I mean,

again, I'm kind of the atypical listener, but it would have been completely invisible to me except I was just trying to say, How do I get from point A to point B? There is not a single road. Well, you're on a bicycle.

Bicycles don't do good in the swamp. Oh, man. They sink. You know, that rub between bicycles and all kinds of things is happening in our state. And there's actually an initiative in Benton County to where they're branding dirt roads as gravel roads that cannot be paved. and it's a for bicyclers yeah and so it's a unique idea the idea is is in order to preserve the farmland and the wild lands in that area if you don't pave that dirt road therefore there will not be a subdivision it stays kind of rural it stays and you could imagine who's behind this some some big money okay

And so this is just in the last month. I actually cooked for that group. A buddy of mine, Wes Evans, is part of it. He's a big-time farmer in the county. And it's hard to change that paradigm that we're going to accept bicycles. And so this grassroots effort is there. Wait a minute. Now, who wants it to stay rural?

The farmers? The bicyclers. Well, and the farmers. You know, most of the farmers could sell their property right now and never have to worry about it again with the price of rural. real estate. They're holding on to the farm because that's their history and their heritage. And so in order to maintain that they can have their animals without some person in an 1800 square foot house living next door to them complaining, they're getting with the bicycle groups. Yeah. I see. So there's

two unlikely groups pairing up. Yeah. Gravel is like kind of the thing right now for for bicycling. Because it's more of an adventure. You get out into more of the rural areas. And honestly, you don't have to worry as much about getting killed by a car. Man. I didn't mean to turn this into the bicycling me all the time. I didn't mean to turn this in the bicycling podcast,

but that was my access point to appreciating the area around the Mississippi River, the rural areas, the levees and all the stuff that I would, I'm really excited about visiting the Delta Heritage Trail State

Park once it is completed, which I believe is sometime in 2024. So I, what about the Sultanam Museum? Yes. Did I talk about that? You did. And I had never heard of that.

But that sounded awesome. You said that Sultan is still there? Yeah, it's out in a private, I mean, on private land you can't go see it. But the Solana is in somebody's soybean field. How about the tie-in with Hulk Collier on your, one of my favorite episodes or series was Hulk Collier? Right. And knowing that his killing of the bear and the deer fed the people that built that

levee system. Built the railroads and the levy system. And then you got the 1927 flood. which I was aware of the flood because it even affected us in northwest Arkansas when the White River backed up and flooded. But that flood being the worst flood killed more people than any flood that we've ever had. And most Americans don't know anything about 1927. I didn't.

I mean, I had heard that there was a flood back in the day, and that's about as much as I knew. Hey, let me do something here. I want to go back. I want to talk about the 2011 flood. Yeah. We're going to hold the flood stuff. I got to go back to my comments about the Mississippi River and I have to finish a thought. That's really important.

I think it's important. It's the whole rich guy inside the levee thing. And yeah, the land inside the levees for hunting is not accessible to just average people. It's just not. And it's not that everybody that hunts there's rich. That's not it either. It's just people. They know a rich guy.

Well, a lot of the guys that have memberships in those clubs aren't rich at all necessarily. They've just had memberships in the clubs when they were not valuable. And that's the point. Hunting, recreational hunting, has made that land extremely valuable, more valuable than the timber. I wish I'd made this point more clear. Y'all can tell me if it was clear. Timber companies owned all that land because it was not valuable for farming. It was not valuable for houses and living because it was inside the levees.

It could flood. So timber companies owned all the land from Baton Rouge up to where the levees ended around St. Louis. Or, well, let's just say Memphis to Baton Rouge. Timber companies owned it. Timber companies are going to do whatever it takes to make money. They're going to cut timber heavily. There came a tipping point when the cultural value of recreational hunting became more. valuable than the timber.

And at that point, that's when all that land, and there's still some timber company land inside the levees, but not near as much as there was before like the 1980s. These are what? These islands are what, 25,000 square feet? I mean, they're huge, huge. There's hundreds of islands out there, too, that are literally islands of the river. But point being, the recreational hunting value of that, land. became more valued in the timber.

It was bought by these private clubs. And in the 1980s, you could have got into an El Primo, Mississippi River hunting club for probably pennies on the dollar of what it's worth now. So you didn't have to be a rich guy. You see what I'm saying?

So if my family had been down there within an hour of the river and we'd have been like, heck, we'll just become a member of Diamond Point. And we'd have bought into that. Today, that membership might be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Thwarted by your own success. Let me say this, though. But I say to somebody that would say that's bad because there's this whole idea that we're becoming more like Europe where it's a pay-to-play game for hunting. I would say in this case, with such a specific, unique, delicate riparian zone of one of the greatest rivers in the world, I don't care who's making it healthy. As long as it's healthy. Yeah. Yeah. And so it's like, bro, I salute and love watching Will Primos hunt inside the levees of the Mississippi River and kill giant deer.

I love hearing the stories. And at different times, I'm supposed to go hunt inside the levees. As a matter of fact, this year. What kind of call will you be using? I'll be using. Play nuke of Micah and Crouter. There is. But don't you think that not only that particular area of hunting clubs,

Like, you know, guys used to be able to scrap together some money and go out and buy a piece of property and start a hunting club. I mean, that's so far out of reach for people these days, working men, you know. Common working men, because there's men that work who work hard and make a lot of money. The common working men. Like these social media influencers like men. Say I had a deal that made dads better. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was hanging out with a podcaster and stuff,

and we decided that we were going to buy us a hunting club. And a hunting club's got to be four or five hundred acres or, you know, it probably ain't worth it. That's a million bucks are better now in Arkansas. Yeah. You know, it's just out of reach unless you have so many members that at that point, the population of hunters. That's the value would be less because of so many people.

know what public access to hunting inside the levees is like, but that's one of the reasons that I like seeing things like the Delta Heritage Trail State Park, which obviously you can't hunt in the state park. Do you work for them? You said it like seven times. The Arkansas gaming fish in Springdale, too. We're going to hit all of it. No, I like seeing that. I don't know what public access is like. There's along the Mississippi River, there is some public land that touches the river, but not a lot. I mean, it's the vast majority of anything from Memphis to Baton Rouge is just going to be private land. Have you all ever just stood there and watched the barges going up the river?

I mean, they're pushing 46 barges up a river with one engine. It's an amazing thing. And if you actually think about how many semi-trucks that would have took or rail cars, that river, I think 90% of all of our agriculture comes down. that river. Wow. I mean, all of our grains, everything. And the unique thing is, like, was it early this year or last year when it was this

year when the river was going dry, right? It was making national news all the time. Yeah, it was low. And we'd watch the news and think, boy, Memphis is getting hammered. That river is going to come up. That water comes from Ohio that fills up Memphis. It has nothing to do with how much rain is coming through Arkansas. Right, right.

It's the Ohio Valley is where that water is troughed down. It comes down the river and feeds the Gulf. And it's our biggest highway. Yeah. I have a barge story that wasn't on the Mississippi, but I grew up in the Gulf Coast of Florida. And there was an intercoastal waterway built between the Chocte Hatchee Bay and a bay in Panama City. They would move cargo via barges inland.

And so they just dug it out in the middle of nowhere. And so they threw the sand out. You know, Florida's flat. but they threw the sand in these great heaps. So we would go when I was 14, 15, 16 camp on the side of what felt like a mountain to a Floridian, right? It's probably a 30-foot drop down to this waterway. And it was 30 feet above sea level. I have a distinct memory.

I went out there with some high school friends and we camped out overnight and we cut down a tree and with hatchets, like, you know, just totally out of our depth. But we were having a great time. And we each catalog, we're carrying it along the bank. at probably two in the morning, just having a great time. And a barge is coming. And, of course, that wake just is immense,

even in this, especially in that small. And so we all started hoofing it, and there was a down tree. And we were trying to, like, hoist logs over this tree. And the barge's getting closer, and we're 16, and we're freaking out. And that barge points out. No, you're in the water?

No, we're on the bank. There's like, close. There's like, we're going to get, the wake is going to hit you. Yeah, and it's not going to drag us out, but it's going to get us wet, right? 16, man. Yeah, you know, having a great.

time. And that barge points that million lumens spotlight on us. Oh, really? And we are in the middle of nowhere. And I have this log on my shoulder and I was kind of a bigger kid and I'm struggling to get up. And this barge pilot gets on his loudspeaker and goes, go, go, go, go. You can do it. You can do it. I got to the top. He went, yeah. It was the best thing ever. That's my barge story. That was funny stuff. It was an awesome series, Clay. It really was. Good.

Four was probably the right number. I'd love to. Joseph with Gary, he's like, I was getting a little tired of the river. I like the diversity of topics, too. Coming from a former history teacher, I've always thought about the economics of waterways and that important role that played in our history. But I learned a lot thinking about the geography,

and it really never hit me just how pivotal, how pivotal. There we go. It is, is having it in the middle. Right, yeah. And America is so biodiverse and huge that we just don't think of that river substantially as, say, like, Egypt. So in 2008, I went to Egypt and I boated on the Nile River. Egypt is the Nile River.

Nile River is Egypt. Like, that is the country. I mean, it's a desert. There would be nothing without that river. I've been far south in Egypt where you can stand on one side of the desert, look over the river valley, and see the other. desert. I mean, it's just 90% of people live right there in the valley and into the delta. But in America, we take it for granted. And I think when I was listening to this, I was like, what would I take away from this if I lived in like this other distant part of the country?

And I think I would become a lot more interested in the waterways around me. You know, if you lived in way in southwest or wherever, it's like our lives. lives are defined by water, not just the economics that I've always thought about, but are biodiversity and survival. And then you think about the planet, like 80% of its water in the oceans. I mean, water is everything. And so this series definitely caused me to think a lot bigger about that for sure. Well, it was a gap in my understanding that I felt was a liability. For real, like two years ago, I was like, I just woke up one day and was like, I got to know more about the Mississippi River.

It's like, I'm not, I'm incomplete unless I know more about the river. I found it odd that you weren't a Mark Twain guy. Me too. I really, I really did. The public schools, where I came from, never, never had his read them. I never read a single Mark Twain book. I like Mark Twain so much. My son's name is Clem.

Is that right? Wow. Based after Samuel Clemens. Because I think. I thought that if I gave him a name such as Clem, he'd have a fight chance of telling a story when he got a little hoax. I bet he does.

So yeah, there you go. I like that. The Mark Twain's stories about the river, the country songs about the river. So that I have a whole episode that is

that I could do. I could do a fifth one. I'm not going to. About the blues. Oh yeah. I felt like when I was scripting out, this thing, I thought, I'm going to talk about the blues. And actually, I had a whole section where Hank Burdine talked to me about the blues that I didn't use. You ought to put out a poll. Well, listen, though, the first guy that I started looking for to tell me about the blues,

I was driving down the road and I was looking for a podcast, and it was called the Chris Thomas King Blues History. No, no, I don't think so. Convenient last thing, though. Chris Thomas King, you guys know the movie, Oh, Brother Where Art Thoub? Yeah. Okay, on that movie, there's a boy that plays Tommy Johnson. Oh, yeah. Tommy Johnson is the guy that is supposed to have sold his soul to the devil at the crossroads.

And when the guys that are, Oh, Brother Where Art Thal guys are driving down the road, they come to a crossroads, they pick up this African American guy who gets in with a guitar, and it's Tommy Jones Johnson. Johnson. And that guy ends up playing a blues song by the fire on the movie, Oh, Brother, Where Are Thou? That is Chris Thomas King. That's him. And he's got a podcast. He has a podcast.

I interviewed him. Oh, wow. He did a full interview with Chris Thomas King. Chris Thomas King came out with a book. And basically he says that the narrative that the blues started in Mississippi is not true. What word? Tell me it's not St. Louis. No, it started in New Orleans.

Oh, according to him. And it's so, basically, it is so, and he, I want it to be a whole bear grease, but. Go four, five. Go four, five. I would enjoy that all right. I can tell already after this render, you're going to go five. The differences between jazz and. I don't have, I don't have the bandwidth to, like, get more.

But basically he says that there's a, if you ask anybody in the country where the blues started, they're going to say Clark's, I believe Clarksdale, Mississippi is what they say. And just like, that's where it started. He says that Alan Lomax, this storyteller from the 1970s and 80s, nationally known, really, really renowned storyteller who told some major stories and made some major documents. documentaries about the Appalachians. He gained national fame and basically went to Mississippi, and he says that Alan Lomax is the one who kind of was the guy that said, hey, the blues started here. Are you doing this for safety reasons not throwing this out this fifth episode? Safety? Well, I mean, you get killed? I mean, go. You start saying that the blues ain't from the Delta?

Well, now, it's from the Delta. Well, that's the New Orleans. Chris Thomas King just says it. And he says that that narrative doesn't add up. And he wrote a whole book about it and has a really strong thesis about how the word blues actually came from, basically musicians in New Orleans making fun of blue laws. Which blue laws would have been like religious laws like you can't buy alcohol on a Sunday or you can't. Your juke joints can't be open on Sunday. days, stuff like that.

There was a heavy influence in New Orleans, I believe, from the Catholics, and it was heavy blue laws. And then there arose this music scene that defied that, and it was about kind of rebellion against that, then that's why the name, they called it the Blues. Because it was, it was rebellion against Blue Laws. Well, and then the Blues went up the Mississippi River, and his, whole thing is which which tracks with the the history of the settlement of the delta is that there weren't even african there were not vast numbers of most of the mississippi yazoo delta

did not have slaves in it because it wasn't settled till after the civil war if you made i'm saying like you like the place where they say the blues started before the civil war because they talk a lot about the blues being chain gangs of enslaved people singing and there's this... The ganggy dancers. He says that that's he doesn't buy it. If you

did part five and you said the blues weren't from that region and you said that the Delta Tamale is where all tamales come from. Canceled. You better get you a bicycle you'd have to go on that

alter. All these people from Mississippi, I've gained their trust by doing all this Mississippi stuff. And then at this last one, I'm mysteriously getting drowned in the Mississippi River and Mr. Bill finally. Whoa, what a movie. What a movie? Phenomeral.

What do you got coming up on Bear Gris? Lord of mercy. I don't know if I should tell. Should I tell the world what we're going to do? Just a hint. Well, just us. No, no, no, no. Yeah, I'll just tell you guys, okay?

Don't tell anybody. Don't put it on social media. No, it's actually going to, it'll be good. I've had some people, that's a good question, I've had some people I've heard to our podcast referred to as regional, which I didn't necessarily like, and regional be in the South. Like I heard some people be like,

You're doing a show on the Baltimore Orioles. Yeah, that's right. Bing, me, big, big, big, big, big, big. Two men from Barry Gris, Baltimore Orioles. Well, I don't see, I, I don't see. I don't see Bear Greece as regional. I view Bear Greece is what I'm interested in. Happens to be a lot of what I'm interested in is in the south.

We're doing an Alaska Stories series. Nice. Where I have a very diverse, eclectic group of storytellers that are going to tell harrowing, near-death, wild experiences in Alaska. I've got nine stories right now. This is Laika Campfire Stories Part 3. Oh, yes. I'm excited about that.

So each episode is going to have multiple, like, full-length stories, not interviewed. Like, I'm not even on the podcast other than just through the – like, I'll introduce. I'll say, like, here's this guy. And he's going to tell a story. There's – there's – oh, I don't even want to tell you what's on there. A lot of beard – beard stuff. There's bear stuff. There's near drowning stuff.

That's cool, man. It'll be good. It'll be good. Yeah. I like the story teller, the story episodes. Yeah. Yeah. Just with different people telling their stories, you know.

When I tell people about the campfire stories, the story I tell them about is the guide in Alaska who lost his boat across the bay and tried to go walk and find it. And then tried to do that terminal burrowing and had to tell himself like, stop, you're digging your grave. Weird. So, I mean, more Alaska close calls and stories. That sounds awesome. Yeah. Alaska, the Hollywood of the hunting world. No kidding.

You can make a movie anywhere, but the best movies seem to always be in Hollywood. It's like, Alaska, man, unending story plots there. Yeah, it's a wild place. Didn't you start this episode talking negatively about Alaska in the wintertime? Well, not negatively. I just said sometimes the sun doesn't rise there and it's dark 24 hours a day. Oh, man. I'm getting conflicting information here.

Okay. All right. I love Alaska. September 23rd, 2023, Springdale, Arkansas World Championship Squirrel Cookoff, it's big. It's going to be big. It's going to be big. Brent Reeves going to be there. I'll be there at some point.

I'll just be there. We'll tell Alaska stories when you get there. Okay. I will have been to Alaska. So, Ben, Dadclass. Dadclass.net. Dadclass.net. Elon Musk owns Dadclass.com.

Don't go there. Be on the lookout for that special podcast on Cooking Up a Story. Yeah. We'll be there. We'll be there. We'll be there. Okay. Dad class.

Check it out. Jonathan, are you pedaling anything? Bicycle. Oh, my podcast. It's over. I thought you planned that out. That's perfect. That was so good.

No, we're done. That's it. Talk to the next week. 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 and 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 Lights new fieldware gear at firstlight.com. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.