Bear Grease - Ep. 163: THIS COUNTRY LIFE - What’s in a Name?

Episode Date: November 17, 2023

We never know where Brent’s going with these episodes and we’re not fully convinced he does either. This week he’s talking about everything from bucking horses to naming his kids. He’s like a metal man in a shooting gallery just running all over the place so, just jump in and hang on. “What’s in a Name” on MeatEater’s This Country Life podcast.  Connect with Brent and MeatEater MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube Shop Bear Grease Merch https://gootf.com/See 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've got a thing or two to teach you.

What's in a name? Have you ever thought where some names come from? Why is Old Spot called Old Spot? Well, the answer to that may be obvious. But what about Seabiscuit? Ren 1010 or Old McDonald's faithful sidekick? What's in a name and should we put more thought into it? Since there may be a chance you could be raising a historically significant human being or an animal.

That's the subject today and I'm going to talk all about it. But first, I'm going to tell you a story. Back around 1988, I was working for Georgia Pacific and rent a house with a barn, a pond, and a pasture, not far from where I grew up. My brother Tim and I had yet to start our duck and goose garden business, so I still had time for all my other hunting passions and squirrel hunting with dogs, off horses, was right up there at the top. My dad, as I've said on here before, was a tree dog man from way back. The line of Mountain Kerr tree dogs that we had had come from a long line of dogs that had started way before I was born. There was Bob, Trixie, Tip, Sambo, Prissy, and others like Buck. Now, don't confuse him with Dad's huge buckskin horse whose name was also Buck,

but Buck the Mountain Kerr, who was the last squirrel dog to hold that rank. of being my dad's last dog. But this isn't a dog story. It's a horse story. A story of perseverance and persistence. I didn't make a lot of money having just gone to work, but I could afford horse feed, so my dad and a friend of his were at a horse sale

in Ada, Oklahoma one weekend, and he called me to tell me. He said, son, check the fence around your pasture and get a stall in your barn squared away and go get some horse feed. I'm bringing you a horse. I was beyond excited. So being a good son or trying to be, I did exactly what he told me to do.

I walked the fence. I made sure there was no gaps. I prepared a stall for the new member of the family that dad was bringing me and made a run to the feed store. Well, that night around midnight, dad rolled in with a registered sorrel quarter horse named Ken's reward. I let him off the trailer and threw the gate and into the lot, and I secured him for the night in his stall. Dad said start early in the morning, get him brushed off, feed him, lead him around, and start getting him used to you.

I couldn't wait. I could hardly sleep. Tomorrow was Saturday, and I'd have all day to start working with this horse. Together, Ken's reward and I were going to dominate the squirrel woods this winter. By the time all the leaves hit the ground, I'd have a woods horse that was as solid as dad's old. buck, the buckskin horse, not the mound curb. Dad pulled in about the time the coffee stopped dripping and after a little breakfast we went to the barn.

He brought me a good Hereford saddle, a couple of blankets, and a brand new head stall on set of reins. I was set. I had an open pasture with good grass, a spring-fed pond that wouldn't turn over in the summertime, and a barn that was older than anyone I knew but was solid with a good roof. Dad had just added the last component to complete the circle, a fine-bred American quarter horse. I rigged up some haystring and hung my saddle from a rafter and then I fed my horse. Then while we watched him eat, Dad told me the story of how he came to buy him.

He'd gone to the cell with one of his best friends in the whole world, Mr. Steve Ashcraft. Now, Mr. Steve is a wonderful man, and I love him and his whole family. They're good folks. They're real good folks. But he said, me and Steve went to the sale looking for something for you specifically, and when this horse came up, we both knew he'd be what you wanted. And I got him at a good price, so for some reason, and I can't think of one, but for some reason, if he don't work out, we can get her money back on him, and we'll get you another.

Sounds good to me, Dad. I can't thank you enough for getting him for me. We just stared at him. He was slick as a minute after I brushed him off. Dad looked at his feet. He'd eventually need to be shot, but I wouldn't be hitting the gravel for quite a while, and I had plenty of good pasture to ride him in until we did. I don't remember exactly how it came up in the conversation,

but I do remember the change in Dad's tone of voice when he said, Now, this horse comes from rodeo stock. He wouldn't buck to suit them, folks, so they broke him and used him as a ranch horse. I didn't even acknowledge he said the word buck. I slid right over it and asked, you can rope off of him? Dad said, that's what the man said. Cool, he must be pretty solid. He sure looks it.

We walked back up to the house and had another cup of coffee and dad took off to whatever he had planned for the rest of the day. My job was to get this horse used to me. I laid him around the lot, changing directions, telling him, whoa, even had him trotting a couple of times. Man, this was going to be easier and quicker than any of us thought. Dad said, let him get good in you. to you, let him see that you're on his side before you saddle him up. Feed him, pet him up, brush him good, just interact with him, show him who's the boss, then saddle him up and put his butt to work for you. Ride the hair slap off of him in that pasture. Hey, that's easy enough for me.

I've been riding horses all my life. I ain't scared of them. I respected them because they were a lot bigger than me, but I grew up riding horses that my dad had broke to the point that I could stand up in the saddle and pull vines to make a squirrel move with limbs and leaves falling all over the horse's head and ears and they not move a muscle. Old Buck, the horse, not the mountain cur, I have stood in the saddle and fired a shotgun over his head at a running squirrel and his ears didn't even twitch. He was solid. Now that's what I, that's what I'm used to dealing with. They didn't all come that way. Ken's reward would fall into the latter category.

I wondered about that name. Who was Ken and how was this horse his reward? I just assumed Ken was the boss cowboy at the ranch in West Texas where he came from. Yep, West Texas. He was sold through a horse auction in Oklahoma, but old Ken's reward was a bona fide cow pony from West Texas, and it just didn't get any more wild and western. and that. Or so I thought. Everything was going good. He was taken to his stall and his new digs

fairly well. He was leading around the lot like a champ coming up to me whenever I called him and shook the feed bucket and had yet to display anything other than acknowledging my right to live alongside him as he ate the feed from my bucket. I might as well go ahead and saddle this rascal up. By the time Dad comes back through to check on me this evening, I'll have a rut walked around that pasture edge, and this horse will do my bidding as well as the Labrador Retriever. Dad's going to be so proud of me. I led Ken over to the fence, and I tied his halter off.

I grabbed the head stall and placed the bit in his mouth without much trouble, and I saddled him up with a relative ease. This cat had gotten the memo. I don't know what had taken place out in West Texas, but in South Arkansas, the new sheriff in town was yours truly, and I was running this show. I sensed that front gird up tight as a fiddle string. I knew it would loosen up, you know, after we made a few laps around the pasture, but I wanted a good tight seat when this started,

and I didn't want to have to slow down his workout once it did to retighten that saddle. I was working against the clock. By the time dad came through, I was going to have him retrieving ducks and making biscuits. there had been no issues during any of the saddling. His ears, his eyes were just as relaxed as they had been while he was eating or when I was brushing him down. It was just another day. I'm thinking my dad stole this horse from that sail barn because whoever had him had seriously misjudged this cabalio's value. My left foot went in the stirrup, and I swam my right leg over,

and the moment my behind hit the saddle, I felt him suck in a big belly full of air. I leaned forward. I was talking to him while I patted him on the neck, just reassuring him that all was good and that we were going to be pals. I reached down and untied his lead rope from that fence and I dabbled it around the saddle horn. And I gave him just a little left-hand rein and he turned sharp as a cutting horse, spied the gate out open just before saddled him up, and I assume had a flashback to his rodeo days. His eyes rolled back in his head. He pinned his ears back, dropped his head, and pitched me over the fence I had him tied to like he had just flicked a cigarette butt out of the truck window. All the air left in one big grunt as gravity took hold of me between the gate and the fence post.

I was laying flat on my back, holding the reins in my right hand and looking back over the top of my head at Kendra Ward, who was just chilling, looking back at me. I sat up and I looked around. Nobody saw that except for me and this horse and I wasn't going to tell nobody. And he didn't know anyone but me. So having never turned the Marines loose, I climbed right back on top of him. He shot out of that barn lot like a cannonball, bucking and crow hopping after running about 40 yards. Now, I'd like to say that I rode him during all that. But truth be known, I was stuck in the ground like a yard dart after about the first thing.

30 yards. I wiped the dirt off my face, and as best I could, I walked over to Ken's reward, who, by now, was just standing there amongst a tangled set of reins and a dangling lead rope. He'd just chilling, like nothing had taken place. I walked right up to him. He never flinched. He just looked at me. Now, nothing on me hurt at the moment, and it had been somewhat to my advantage that he had

stopped where he did. the ground was a little soft there it was a little low spot about 20 yards or so above where that pond started kind of a little seat where it was always soft even in the summertime i knew what i was going to do i'm fixing to get right back on this joker and we're going to walk around in this soft ground till we dig a hole to china he's going to have to work double hard to buck and cut up in this soft ground sinking up to his pastures with about every step and after ten minutes or so, I figure I'll have his attention to the point where he'll recognize who's running this show. And that's just what I did.

I climbed right back on top of him, and he went right back to Bucking like he had a license to fly. The soft ground worked great, but only to break my fault, he didn't seem to be having a lot of issues with it. Speaking of Bucking, I was having a little trouble understanding and the issue that old Ken was having with Ken's reward in the bucking category. From where I was occasionally momentarily sitting, I thought he was doing really well. He threw me off four times before he quit bucking, and I just kept putting him in that low spot making figure eights back and forth,

left and right, till we were both lathered up pretty good. Finally, I had the upper hand. It had been a rough go, but I had it going my way. I rode him back to the bar and was taken off his saddle when dad walked up. I told him everything that had happened and he said, son, you need an act right stick. An act right stick. Yep. You need a little stick.

Then when he does that bucking again and he will, you give him one in the top of the head and show him who's running his show. Ah, the caveman approach. I liked it. So that's what I did. That evening, I went down to my brother Tim's house and barred a time. T-ball bat from one of my nephews and the next morning, right after daylight, I was saddling up Ken's reward for the final installment of his lesson. It was going to be his semester test and would determine his future on the Ponderosa. Batting my right hand and left foot and stirrup,

I swung my right leg over and settled in the saddle. I gave him just a nudge with my heels and it was the Calgary Stampede all over again. I was struggling to. I was struggling to stay in the saddle and he was doing everything he could to show me the other side of the moon. I swung at him with a bat and hit his right ear. He grabbed a gear and neither one of us knew he had and I swear Larry Mahan would have bailed off on him. Don't know who Larry Mayhan is, look him up. But Larry wasn't sitting straddle of this killer. I was.

And doing all the math I could muster in that time I calculated that I would be rejoining TerraFirmo within the next few seconds if something drastic didn't change. I swung once more for that spot I had picked out between his ears and connected. It sounded like Mickey Mantle had just smashed one over the fence and Ken's reward fell like a one-egg pudding and laid over on the ground. I just stepped off of him holding the reins in my left hand and my act right stick in my right. He didn't move, and I just stood there wondering how I was going to tell my dad.

Dad, I had just killed the horse he'd bought for me the day before. Then O'Kin blinked his eyes and stood up. And as he was standing up, I swung my left leg over him, and when he was upright, I was sitting in that saddle just like I had never left. I nudged him with my heels, and he walked like a gentleman in every direction I arranged him to go. He was a different horse. The act right stick had worked.

I rode in the rest of the day off and on, and every other. Every time was like he had seen the light, and that bucking was an undesirable quality and one that I appreciate he did not continue. He was a changed horse, or was he? I was feeling confident in my horse training abilities, so having just fixed him, I thought I might stretch him out on the pasture and see how fast we could make the loop around the fence. I gave him some slack in the reins, nudged him with my heels, and that's all it took. He came out of that lot like a bottle rocket, hucking the edge of the pasture like we were in the Kentucky Derby. Down one stretch of the fence line,

some low-hanging limbs stuck out in the pasture. I light rained him to the inside to go around him, and he slowly moved over like a seasoned vet, right up to the point of contact, and all at once, he dodged right under them and wrecked me out of that saddle before I could even think about what was happening. We didn't keep him. he had to go before he killed me.

But I figured out his name. It finally dawned on me that they must have named that horse as he was leaving that ranch and headed to the horse sale. Because Brent's reward was living long enough to see him in a horse trailer headed back to the sail barn.

And that's just how that happened. On blood trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is over. They just get darker. I've seen something in the road. I instantly thought it was a sleeping bag. And there was a 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 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 two of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, Iheart, YouTube, or wherever. you get your podcasts.

What's in a name? Naming animals. How do we come up with them? Now, I don't mean like scientific names. I know how that's done. And if you don't, prepare to be bored for the next 20 seconds of your life that you will never get back while I explain it. But here it is.

Scientists use a two-name system called a binomial naming system. Scientists name animals and plants using the system that describes the genus and species of the organism. The first word is the genus, and the second is the species. The first word is capitalized, and the second is not. For the love of humanity, I almost jumped out the window reading that. I promise not to try to make you think anymore today. What I'm talking about are the names we give dogs, horses, and the like,

and where did the historical names that we've heard of come from? Remember that movie about Seabiscuit? The fastest thing on horseshoes back in 1938 beating a horse called War Admiral, who up to that point had won everything but the World Series and the Super Bowl, and his name was War Admiral, a name you'd associate with power and greatness. But Seabiscuit, how did they settle on that? Seabiscuit's dad was named Hard Tech. That's a type of cracker from back in the day.

His grandpa was named, you know, named Manawar. Now, how did that happen? How did that lineage go from intimidating toughness to food you can eat with one hand and goes in soup? I wish I could tell you. But see in the movie, I was always distracted by that silly name. I'll give them their dues, though, because here it is nearly a hundred years later, and we're still talking about that horse and his funny name. So what's in a name? I've had dogs name, Goldmine, Luke, Tom, Pinole, Sambo, Anna, Whalen, Tip, Ranger, just to name a few. Some of them you've heard me mention on here in other places, but the name.

What's in a name? The first famous movie dog was Ren 1010. He was a rescued German Shepherd from the battlefield of World War I in France. Came back to the U.S. starred in silent movies. Now, that name is highly original and one that I haven't heard of outside of that particular. dog. But you can't mention famous dogs of TV and film without Lassie. The name Lassie alone is a descriptor from Scotland that literally means girl. Lassie was a rough collie breed of dog and she had nearly a dozen feature-length films

in a TV series that ran from 1954 to 1973. She saved the day more than once by being able to communicate the misadventures of little Timmy who led a calamity-filled life not unlike my own. He was either falling in an old well or getting stuck in a mine cave-in or caught up in some situation that required a dog to use everything from an aluminum welder to quantum physics to save that little idiot

whose sole purpose in life seemed to be to where his mama slapped to death. Pretty good for an old gal. Except she wasn't a girl. In every TV show and movie, Lassie was played by a male collie every time. Makes sense? Of course not. Why would it?

But it just goes back to wondering if names are really that important. I and both of my brothers go by our middle names. Not our first names like the federal government and your health insurance intended. No, that would have been too easy. My mother decided to throw that little extra challenge into the men. So you wouldn't hear my mama hollering Wilton, Richard, Tracy, when it was time to eat. It was Tim, Chuck, and Brent. I don't ask me why, for the reasoning behind that has been lost a time.

I will say this. When others found out my first name was Tracy, the boxing lessons that closely followed served me well in my law enforcement career years later. I bet no one tried that with Lassie. Anyway, the names we use, at least in my, case always have some roots in a feeling or an observation for about that particular animal. Buck, the horse, not the mountain cur, pretty simple. Buck is short for buckskin.

The color of the horse and buck the mountain cur, not the horse, was buckskin colored too, so dad named him Buck. I know very original, right? Whalen, my coonown, was named when I got him. and that name, among a few other little factors, was the reason I brought him home. So there is attraction and familiarity with names, something that connects and helps us identify that individual or family. Now, when I was guiding for a living, it was November, and I was standing in knee-deep water in flooded green timber. I was leaning against a tree, and I was trying to decide on a name for my son who would be born the next March.

What should I name him? What would a duck guide name his son? What would a duck hunter name his baby boy? Drake. Drake Hunter, that's it. I was so proud of myself. It was perfect. I had one of the best mornings I'd ever had in the timber calling in ducks by the droves

and my whole party limiting out on greenheads before the sun had gotten above the trees. It was a perfect day. six limits of Drake Mallards and I had without much effort chosen the perfect name for a duck guide son. We called him by his middle name, always have. No need to let him coast through life without a few challenges. Well, I know I'm going all over the place with this naming thing, but how people, animals, and places get names has always intrigued me. But maybe for the wrong reasons. It's really not the name, but what that entity does that exemplifies what people think of and associate with that name.

A name doesn't make a person. The person makes a name. Benedict Arnold, George Washington. Two names from the same time period that evoke contrast in emotions. One, a traitor, the other are he. Names don't matter. It's what you do with it that does, and that's your challenge this week. Make a name for yourself and your family, a good one.

Because good or bad, folks might still be talking about you 100 years from now. Thank you all for listening. And until next week, 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 Phelps Game Calls.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.