Bear Grease - Ep. 17: Bear Grease [Render] - White Panthers, Black Roosters, and Danny-Boy Boone
Episode Date: September 1, 2021On this episode of the [Render], Gary Newcomb is back. He tells us how to not get canceled and waxes about Clay's fairly average story telling ability. Clay reveals his mother is upset with him becaus...e of his reaction to podcast feedback. Misty and Josh cover a famous song about the Cumberland Gap. The crew has an enlightening discussion on the second Daniel Boone podcast. It's action packed and fun, as usual.Connect with Clay and MeatEaterClay on InstagramMeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YoutubeShop Bear Grease Merch Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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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.
Gary, is that Sasquatch on your head?
It is.
Where'd you get that hat?
I'm not telling, man.
It's my people.
I got it from my people.
Bigfoot gave it to him.
That's a nice Sasquatch hat.
Welcome to the Barry Grie surrender.
Man, have we ever, have we ever got a show for you today?
I've got, I'll do introductions as I usually do.
Mr. Brent Rees, how are you doing?
I'm doing good.
Good to see you.
As my grandfather would say, I'm gooder and snuff and I ain't near as dusty.
To your left, Misty Nucumus back.
Hey there.
Welcome back, Miss Nuckel.
I knew she looked familiar.
Good to be here.
I have no clever statements like Brent.
I made a statement last time that I would like to recant.
Yeah.
I said, I was like to rephrase.
I said you were supposed to be at the last Bergerie's render.
And she was, quote, easily replaced.
I miss you,
I miss you, Brent.
Thank you.
That was a misstep on my part.
Definitely.
But it's great to have you back.
Thank you.
Thank you for making the time
to come to the render.
To your left,
Josh Landbridge spillmaker.
My goodness.
It's quite a moniker I've acquired here.
Man, hey, you're just killing it
on being the dumb guy
at the front of the Berger's render
that doesn't know what we're talking about.
Pretty much if I need.
someone to not know anything.
What I'm doing when I pick these interviews is I'm trying to pick like a representative
person for like the masses.
So I'm taking an average of all the smartest people I know and then the not as smart.
And that's somewhere around the Josh to make a range.
About the land bridge.
Imagine two continents.
Oh, I see.
You see?
Wow.
And then, but then Josh, he also, so he doesn't know what we're going to talk about.
but he brings in some charm and some humor.
Both times, did he not?
Thank you, Josh.
Thank you.
Yeah, so that was great.
What was sad, though, was I recorded a couple.
Is that he's not going to get in this morning.
I recorded a couple other of those just kind of imprompt to, you know,
I'm just like walking up to people like at my kid's school that I know.
And so I don't have to explain to them why I'm doing this.
I'm just like putting a microphone in their face.
And so I did this twice
And one of the ladies
Just knocked it out of the park
Oh really?
I was like, do you know what the coming gap is?
And she was like, oh yes.
Of course I do.
This is where Daniel Boone came through.
Key to the Western United States
And the expansion.
I was like, wow, cool.
Do you know about when white Europeans
went through the gap?
And she was like, hmm, Jamestown was found
in the 1660s.
I'm going to say 1670s.
And I was like, holy smoke.
The first documented white man
went through the Cumberland Gap in 1674.
And then he got my son on there and he's like, oh, no.
Yeah, yeah.
So anyway, Josh is that guy.
David Spilmaker and I are in a class all our own.
Solidly.
The same class.
What happened to her interview?
Oh, yeah.
Okay, listen, I'm highly technical with IT gear, computers, all these sort of things.
Those are not true.
Not true.
That was a misstatement.
I had my earbuds in, in the truck, because my truck, the radio went out.
Okay?
So I was listening to the earbuds in the truck.
They're on Bluetooth.
I see this person I want to interview in her car.
I jump out of the truck, knock on the window, do this great interview where she just knocks
it out of the park.
You know, her history professor from high school was probably crying.
Oh, yeah.
And then I tell her, I'm like, man, that was the best one of these I've ever done.
You did great.
I get back in the car and basically listen to the recording because I did it on my phone, which I rarely do, but I did.
And it was picking up my Bluetooth of my boys in my truck, like, be an idiot.
Baboon.
Exactly.
Exactly.
So I had to call this lady and be like, remember that home run interview you did?
Sorry.
It didn't count for anything.
So that's what I had to go find Josh.
To Josh's left.
Daniel Rup.
Dan Rooke.
Good to see it, man.
Professor Dr. Daniel Rooke.
Give me all the respect possible.
Dan has a spot on the real bear grease podcast coming up here in a couple episodes.
We can't talk about.
Just another, Dan, on the podcast.
As long as it was.
You need to get some fresh meat on this thing.
And then to Dan's life.
Coming back in hot,
from wherever he's been,
Gary Newcomb.
He is Gary here.
Where you've been, man?
Well, you know what?
I wanted to give you guys a shot at it on your own.
And you came up short.
Came up short.
So you needed to bring back in kind of the little bit of a little daddy attitude.
Keep you guys in line.
There you go.
Well, it's great to have you.
I'll tell you.
I invited my mother to be on this render, and she turned down.
So, Juju, my mother's name is Judy.
We call her Juju.
She's been on the Bear Grays podcast, so she's qualified to be here.
The other day, she comes up to me and she says, Clay,
and she kind of looks at me with those mom eyes,
and she said, now I'm going to tell you something,
and you know, you're a grown man.
You don't have to do it.
But when people give you feedback on your podcast,
you need to treat them nice.
And Juju Juju was easily replaced.
Wow.
She said, I was listening to that Render when you said that those boys told you that y'all didn't need to talk over each other.
And then you said, you all laughed and you said, keep talking over each other anyway.
She was like, Clay, you need to pay attention.
Did she say anything about the treatment of Alex?
That's where I thought that was.
No.
No, I did speak to Alex this week, though.
Oh, good.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It was a gamble to me, whether he was going to be upset with me or we were going to be like best friends.
Turns out, he just came in and was like, you know, we just had a normal little chat.
And I just say, hey, thanks for being the whistleblower.
Man, Alex is just really cool.
Yep.
Hashtag I stand with Alex.
Yeah, me too.
Stand with Alex.
Okay.
Speaking of this, Alex.
I had a guy.
I forgot about this just happened.
So it's not in my render notes here.
I haven't listened to the meat eater campfire stories yet.
I started it.
Because I'm saving it for an 18-hour road trip that I'm going on by myself very soon.
Okay.
So it's not like lack of interest why I haven't listened to the meat eater campfire stories,
an audible book New York Times bestselling.
Okay, so that's what the scandal was about last time, if you remember, that I recounted a story.
How can we forget?
That I, someone had told me, and then I recounted it, and then people were like, oh, man, it was way off.
Well, I have a guy write me today and say, Clay, I heard your version of the story and the version of the Campfire Meteor story, and it wasn't that much different.
And so I'm like, maybe we've been blowing the whistle that didn't need to be blown.
I guess we'll find out.
Because I'm about, I'm a couple hours into the,
Christy and I had to go to Tulsa this weekend,
and we turned it on and listened to it.
Man, it's really good.
This guy sent you a message.
Got some amazing stories in there.
He sent you a message.
His name, I guess, was Bray Krucombe was it?
That you sent you the message.
That you were spot on.
Yeah, yeah.
And I was like, as a matter of fact,
I think I'm going to hunt that guy down and send him a hat.
I think I'll send him a bear grease hat.
A beaver felt a beaver felt.
A beaver felt hat.
Okay, so if anybody's new to the render, okay, the Bear Grease podcast, our documentary-style podcast is so, you know, just polished, produce, scripted, which people get scared of that word, but the truth is, it is very scripted.
The Bear Greas render is very much unplugged, okay? That's the idea.
Yeah. And so we do housekeeping for the first section of the podcast where we just kind of go through some stuff.
And then the last section of the podcast, we get serious, Dan.
Okay.
I'm trying.
And we talk about the content of the last Berger's podcast.
So I wanted to tell you, I have had no less than, let's just say 50 to 100.
I'm losing count of how many people have sent me messages about the Sturgel Simpson album.
Oh, man, they've been sending you messages?
Oh, God, yeah, every day.
Every day.
And it's either one or two songs or the whole album.
Yeah, yeah.
You got to listen to it.
I like, man, I can't listen to it again.
Yeah.
It's wonderful.
Yeah.
So this guy, I don't know.
I didn't know much about Sturgle Simpson still don't.
But he made a, as I understand it, it's a, it's a, it's a,
what do they call albums where all the songs are connected together to kind of tell a story.
A musical concept album?
I don't know.
But he talks a lot about mules, hounds.
Yeah.
And everybody's like, Clay, you're going to love it.
And so anyway, it's a cool album.
So, yeah, so no need to alert me to that anymore.
The first one was really cool.
I mean, the first guy that did was cool.
I think listen to Juju when people send you a lot of stuff.
Why don't you be a appreciative?
Hey, listen, everybody that sent me a message
felt like they were the first person.
My response.
They don't anymore.
Well, because I was just like, thanks, man.
That's awesome.
Wow.
That's one of response.
Thanks, man.
No, no, it was good.
It was good.
Okay.
Covering a few things.
And then I'm going to give you all a chance to,
if you have any news or anything that you want to update.
So I was recently on the media.
podcast. And this is another thing that my inbox has been full of this week. I was on Steve
Ronella's meteor podcast. Man, I was, I was bear hunting with Steve Ronella. And somewhere in the
back country, I brought up that I had read somewhere, I didn't know where, but I had read that a way
to measure the amount of bear grease, an old way from the 1800s, 1700s, a way to measure
a volume of bear grease that could be used as a monetary exchange like money was called
an eel, an E-L-L-L of bear grease, which was the tanned neck height of the deer that was
sewed together and then used as like a, you know, like a big, big flask that would hold bear oil.
So I tell him that, and he got excited about that, as was I.
And he was like, oh, man, that's cool, you know, this old archaic unit of measurement.
And so we get on the podcast, and he's like, hey, where did you hear that?
You kind of got called out.
I listened to it.
Yeah, and I was like, man, I said, I know, I just know for a fact I read it in some type of academic,
reading years and years ago.
Wikipedia.
And I couldn't tell him.
I said, I don't know.
And then Janus gets on there and they start looking.
And I mean, pretty soon it's like, Clay, you're just full of it.
Oh, wow.
Again.
And I didn't have any, I didn't have an answer.
And I actually, I guess I did know it was coming because I had written an email to one
of an author that I thought had said it.
And he was like, nope, I never said.
that. But I lost sleep over this. I'm serious. It bothered me big time. I mean, not that they
gave me a hard time. I mean, I deserved that if I couldn't find it. But just like, I knew that
it was somewhere and I couldn't remember. I mean, it's been so many years, but I've said it for
years as if it was just like 100% truth. And that's why I was pretty confident in it.
Man, the Bear-Greece world came through for me. Apparently, there's people that are a lot better at
researching phrases and there are some really technical ways to search the internet.
Better than Janice Patelis? Is that what you're saying?
Well, I mean, he was just Google searching, which I did too. But the first guy and the first
guy, this is going to encourage people to, you know, I don't know what it's going to encourage
to you. As long as we're encouraging the people, I feel good. Okay. The first guy that sent
me the screen capture from an academic journal that this was in, and it was in, and it was,
It was citing the source of an old journal that said,
an eel of bear grease is a unit of measurement that could be used as an exchange.
I mean, I tell you what, I'll pull him and read it.
I was so excited I sent him a bear grease hat.
And within minutes, let's say hours,
like tons of people from all over the country started sending me the documentation.
Documentation.
So anyway, I sent it to, I sent it to.
I sent it to the higher-ups, let them know.
You crushed the send button on that when you said it.
Yeah, I really did.
You put a little sticky note on there that said, eat it, boys.
He hit it with a hammer.
Okay, here it is.
So it says a black bear was a valuable commodity to early settlers of Arkansas.
It was in a thesis project done by a University of Arkansas student about Arkansas black bears.
So I probably studied this in 2000.
three and four when I was supposed to be studying what I was there to study in college, but didn't.
Black Bear was a valuable commodity to early settlers of Arkansas.
The price for bear skins at Arkansas Post in 1806 range from one to two dollars each.
Bear oil sold for $1 per gallon in 1834.
In the early 1880s, an eel of bear grease.
Spell that.
E-L-L-L-L-E-L.
How would you?
ELE.
L?
L.
I would say L.
An L of bear grease formed from the hide of the head and neck of a deer was a standard
medium of exchange.
A man's status as a provider was judged by the number of eels of bear grease that stood by the fireplace.
Bear meat sold for $10 per 100 pounds.
That's big money back there.
That is the creed of this podcast.
Boom, roasted.
We're going to have it.
stamped into bronze
and make a plaque,
like a very heavy plaque.
Is this your tombstone?
Could be used for that later.
I like killing multiple birds with one stone.
That's good stuff right there.
It came from,
somebody's going to ask me where it came from.
What was the wording, the measure of a man?
A man status as a provider
was judged by the number of eels of bear grease
that stood by the fireplace.
What if he had like 30 of them there?
What's it going to do with all?
that bear grease.
Well, I mean, it was a measurement of exchange.
So he'd take them to the store.
It was rich.
Trade it for something.
I see.
I see.
But doesn't it make sense how, so they used the skin of a deer was basically a serious medium
of exchange, but they were using the big part of the hide.
So that like the legs, the tail, the neck and stuff would have not been as valuable.
So presumably you cut the neck and head off and make almost like.
like a sock.
I mean, imagine the neck.
You can pour it out his mouth.
I'm telling you.
So his eyes should.
Brent's like, if you think the head and neck of the deer is cool to put bear grease,
you ought to fill a whole deer high that way.
Yeah.
Just pop to cor.
You mean, grease for a long time.
Bill Gates, man.
Yeah.
What do you think about that, Dad?
I think it's awesome, man.
Yeah.
That's what I've got for my wealth.
That's what's going to my kids.
He's got his, his, his, else, filled with
Bitcoin.
Rancet bear grease.
Okay.
Moving on.
So we got,
we got,
we took a little flack
from one person,
one person.
Uh-oh.
Over my story
of the Captain Rooster.
Oh,
okay,
did y'all know that?
I did.
It kind of hurt.
Well,
I knew there was a chance of that,
but also knew that.
And in,
before I said the story,
I don't know if you remember,
but I said anybody that challenges me on the treatment of this animal just absolutely has no ground to stand on if they've ever eaten a chicken, an egg that came from any type of confinement agricultural farm.
Because this rooster had the life of a king.
Except for when you threw that block of wood at him and shot him with an arrow.
I think that anyone that's ever had a rooster actually, that's the thing.
I can't believe how many messages we've received.
received from people who want to tell you their mean rooster stories.
I also can't believe how many pictures we found of a captain attacking people in full
attack mode.
He was pretty mean.
And I think that it's only instinctive to protect yourself.
I will say when I saw that,
this man probably did not grow up on a farm and has never been around a rooster.
Okay.
Okay.
I mean, but the thing of it was, is that he lived a very long life for a rooster.
And we only attempted to kill him once.
And I wonder about that.
So you are a proponent of euthanasia.
Well, I mean, it's like if your dog bites your neighbor, what are you going to do?
Shoot your neighbor.
I'm wondering if he thought that it was unethical to shoot him with a bow and arrow.
Well, okay.
I mean, there's more factors of this story, buddy.
I'm not talking to you.
I'm talking to the guy.
Oh, right.
It's like, perhaps, perhaps I didn't want to shoot a gun right here.
You know, maybe that's an option.
You shoot guns here all the time, though.
Oh, come on, man.
Perhaps.
Perhaps.
Perhaps Shepard's a better shot with a bow and arrow than.
Perhaps a bow and arrow is a more ethical way to kill something than a gun.
Oh, I could, I mean, I'm being serious.
That's not the reason we did it.
It's a philosophical conversation here.
I'm going to pray on that.
What is the reason you did it?
Well, because I wanted Shepherd to take care of it for me.
He wanted the rooster dead.
He wanted that bird dead.
Just real quick.
But when I was three years old, I went to my grandfather's farm, and a roostered.
And I stuttered.
And, you know, the family laughed about that for years.
It's just roo-ro-ro-roo, you know, all that stuff.
Well, oh, you went back to tell what happened, and you stuttered to your mind.
Well, no.
Yeah, yeah, you know, and it was bad.
And here's how you handle a deal like that.
I mean, all this stuff y'all doing is, it's a waste of time.
You're saying how do we handle someone that has a complaint?
No, no, no.
The rooster.
The rooster.
The way you dealt with your rooster.
Here's how you deal with your rooster.
That night for supper, guess what we had?
We had chicken and dumplings.
Mr. stew.
And, of course, that didn't tell my grandfather went out there immediately and killed that rooster.
Really?
And cleaned it and threw it in a pot and cooked it.
That's a good story.
I've got a Lew and Newcomb story.
So my grandfather's name is Lou and Newcomb.
His pictures right there is Dad's Dad's father.
Lou and Newcomb, when I was a little boy, he told me.
And this story was ripe with philosophical proverb.
Okay.
He told me that when he was a boy, you remember this story.
I know you remember it, Dad.
He said when he was a boy, they had this big rooster, big old rooster.
They got a new rooster, a young rooster.
The big rooster
whooped on the young rooster.
The young rooster, he became subordinate to the big rooster.
Well, the young rooster grew up
and Papps said he always knew
that the young rooster
could have whipped the old rooster
but never did because he thought
he was the lesser of the two.
That's because chickens don't know how to look at mirrors.
He said one day.
Major chicken problem.
And I don't know if he did this
or if his dad did this or what.
But I believe the story to be him to have done this,
he covered the old chicken in black wood ash to change its color
and then pitched it out in the yard.
And the young rooster sees a new rooster and comes and just whoops the fire
out of the old rooster.
And he was trying to tell me that to say,
it's all in your head.
You know, you can do,
a lot more than you think you can do.
Do you remember him telling that story?
Not really.
He preached that to us.
I'm telling you, he told me that story five times.
I think he liked you better than he did.
No, okay, so I was telling dad about this guy that was giving us a hard time.
And tell me what you said, Dad.
Dad called me another day.
Well, you know, this guy didn't like the captain's story.
And, you know, I could see where he was coming from.
but I didn't particularly like, you know, the way you addressed him, even though it was, it was very good.
And I was addressing him just in talking to you.
Yeah.
Like I never officially addressed the guy.
So anyway, you know, I just told Clay, I said, you know, when you're dealing with people that are coming at you from a negative standpoint,
my experience working for 40 years is you immediately agree with them, you know.
I mean, I have seen so many, I've defused so many arguments by going, you know, you're making a great point.
They used to come in my office and be so mad they couldn't even see straight.
And the first thing I would, they were dealing with people that would go, hey, man, this is the regulations, you know.
And I would go, man, I don't blame you for being mad.
I said, I've had something like, you know.
So you defuse them and then you eventually tell them where they're wrong.
And they leave happy.
And so when I look at this kid, I thought, you know, it's ironic, but he believes the exact same thing.
You know, he doesn't want the animal rights people to take our hunting privileges.
So, I mean, he pretty much slapped down his reputation, his love for bear grease.
He laid it on the line, man.
He said, I ain't tolerating this stuff.
You know, he misinterpreted the whole thing.
He made a mistake.
But I saw that I like this kid.
You know what I mean, he's got to write, he's got what you're fighting for.
He just misinterpreted this deal and carried it too far, I thought.
Yeah.
And I bet you a $20 bill he's under 30 years old.
I'll tell you why.
Because cancel culture is essentially where if somebody does anything wrong to you, you canceling.
Just canceled, done.
and that that is kind of the modern trend where I bet he's under 30 years old
could be wrong hey the opposite side of that is instead of attacking you I mean he could
have done it in a way where where you know I mean a lot of people don't like you shooting a
chicken with a boat you know well how'd my grandfather kill that chicken he probably wrung his neck
about the same thing but so he should have been supporting you you should have been supporting him
yeah no it's wild you know I read I believe I
heard this on a podcast, but it was a guy that was, he basically did a study on the humane
treatment of chickens. His study was on the humane treatment of chickens. And he studied two
types of chickens. He studied confinement agriculture chickens that are raised in chicken houses.
And he studied cockfighting roosters.
Oh, man.
Yeah. And this guy wasn't.
like pro cockfighting.
What he was trying to do was show the hypocrisy inside of mankind in general.
And basically, a confine with agriculture chicken, like you'd go to your big mainstream grocery
store, the cheapest chicken you can buy.
That chicken is genetically modified such that it has huge amounts of meat.
These animals are designed to live six months and then be butchered.
If they live longer than that, they weigh so much.
they can't even function.
They're fed all kind of hormones.
They're, I mean, just they live, you know, literally probably have a square foot of space
that they're able to live.
I grew up, we had two chicken houses.
Yeah.
35,000 chickens in each house.
Yeah.
So I'm not dogging that.
Don't, if you write me and say that I'm anti-agriculture, that's not what I'm saying.
Nor is he endorsing cockfighting.
I just want to make that clear as well.
Listen.
And then the guy said, so he paints the picture.
picture the confinement agriculture chickens in their life six months you know all this and then he goes
and then i went down he maybe had to go to another country or maybe the study was done long time
ago i don't know and he said cockfighting chickens they usually don't start fighting them until
they're two years old so they've already lived three times the amount of time that a confine an
agriculture chicken would live and he said they're fed incredible diets and staking it
They have much more space.
A lot of them are raised in bigger spaces.
This is not an indoor.
And the guy was like, hey, I'm anti-cockfighting.
But the point was.
I've got a question.
Do you think this gentleman that wrote in about the captain, if we covered you in Ash,
do you think you'd whip your tail?
That's a great way to get out of this conversation.
No, I really do.
being inside the hunting community and baiting bears and doing a lot of things that seem controversial to people.
I love actually getting down to the nitty gritty of the ethics of some of this stuff because usually there's like big holes inside the way people think that if you just slowed down and looked at it a little different, you'd be like, well.
Or fill those holes up with information.
Yeah.
Do a little research.
Do a little study.
Read a book.
We are about 20 minutes past when we should have stopped talking about chickens.
This is five minutes, Josh.
Chicken grease.
I was making me hungry is what it's doing.
I'm starving.
Oh, okay.
I did have a guy send me a picture of a legit black panther.
A white one.
No.
A white one.
Yep, it's called a, it's not an albino, but it's a lucistic panther.
Wow.
Animal has partial loss of pigmentation.
It isn't purely right.
This, they call it a puma, but it's essentially, I'm not sure if it's the exact same species as our mountain lions, but it was found in the Brazil's Atlantic rainforest, and they've been getting trail camera pictures of it.
Oh, wow.
That's crazy.
Supposedly, this is from 2013.
So I haven't checked on much more than just a quick search.
Oh, wow.
But, hey, thanks, man.
Whoever sent me that?
That was nice, not to get a black one,
still getting Black Panthers photos by the day without any explanation.
Thank you.
The Black Panthers are literally sending him the selfies.
We're real, man.
Yeah, yeah.
All right.
Josh.
Yes.
You have a song for us.
No, no, no, no.
Oh, I forgot the funniest part.
I forgot the funniest part of the story of the guy that gave us a hard time about the captain's story.
He gave us five stars.
Yeah, he did.
I saw that.
He gave us five stars.
You remember the other guy was like, the other guy was like, man, this is the legendary podcast.
Best one ever.
Two stars.
So this guy that got on to us, he was like, Clay, I'm never listening to this again, yada, yada, yada.
five stars man you win some you lose some i guess that kind of balances out in the end yeah you guys
had some reviews you wanted to talk about though didn't you i've got one okay yeah tell me what it is
josh read it uh this guy i thought it was an excellent review uh the bearded mystery man
i knew i knew that was you this is probably the best podcast to ever hit the digital airways
It's informative, interesting, humorous, challenging, and so much more.
I look forward to the release every week.
The main podcast is great, but the render is next level.
The group of panelists every other week are some of the most entertaining humans on earth,
especially that Landbridge guy.
What a shining star.
What I wouldn't give to have a face-to-face conversation with him.
Keep up the good work, Clay, and Meat Eater.
Signed.
You're telling me.
Sign Josh's mom.
Yeah.
That's going to be dead.
You wrote that.
There is no doubt in my mind.
That you wrote that.
Oh, you did.
I told you.
I told you.
You actually did.
I told you.
I was waiting for you to read that one.
I knew it.
It was a plant.
Okay.
I read it.
And I was like, I actually sent it to you right away.
And I was like, man, this is.
This is, like, I thought maybe, I thought maybe one of your kids did it or something.
I didn't know you did.
Oh, that's funny, Josh.
This is low.
This is low.
Yeah.
Hey, I think we should impeaching, man.
This is a impeachable.
Cancel.
Cancel.
Cancel.
Oh, that was easy.
Cancel, Josh.
That felt good.
Hey, I got one.
So on Friday, the title of the review is great waste of time.
Yeah.
It's from the WIO Archer.
And I'll just read the,
as long as great, I'll read the first and the last sentence.
He says, I just want to take the opportunity to thank Mr. Newcomb for such a spectacular waste of my time.
Of course, he's being tongue-in-cheek.
He's being facetious, but he just goes on to talk about, he just enjoys basically hanging out with us.
And he says, you ever driven through southwestern Wyoming on his way back and forth to work?
You'd be dozing through the board and two.
Thanks for wasting my time in such fashion, Clay and guests and all the boys in the render.
It's just fun.
I really enjoy coming and hanging out, and it's cool that this gentleman is hanging out with us.
Misty.
Okay.
The chicken thing, I don't look at iTunes reviews, but I read that one.
I pulled it up to read the chicken and we were in the car, and I just started reading them, a bunch of them out loud.
And we came to this one, and it said, I honestly was not a fan of Clay when he was on the meat eater.
I thought he dominated the conversation too much.
And I just looked and said,
yeah,
story of my life.
He goes on to say that he loves this one.
Well, go ahead and read that part too.
Okay, okay.
All right, you want me to read the good part too?
Now, given his own podcast,
I love his take on issues and topics,
great stories, and I like the render, keep it up.
But it's pretty funny.
Yeah, juju.
I love it when people are trying to say something nice,
and they start it with telling kind of the baseline
of how they really hated you before.
Here it is.
I'm on, here's the tip of the spear.
Okay.
This is from acorns.
Five stars, lots of acorn talk.
Lots of acre and talk.
That was it.
Quick and to the point.
Quick and to the point.
All right.
Dad, did you have a review?
Yeah, I have a.
It was very short.
I was going to read through all of them.
In fact, I asked Judy to do it and pick one out for me.
But this thing was just real short.
And I read it and I thought, well, why I read any more?
This kid's type.
it. I say kid, you know, could be an old guy like me. He said, awesome. I love the research. I love
the information. Very good. Thank you, Mr. Newcomb, something like that. But, you know, when you
think about it, I listen to a few podcasts, and I enjoy several podcasts. And my point is this,
this bear grease is well researched. It is scripted. There's so much time and depth.
put into it.
That's why he likes the research and the information.
So that's why I like it is because it's not just a bunch of good old boys sitting around
yipping, you know, which I like that too.
Like this is.
Nobody wants to hear that.
Yeah.
But really.
So I compliment you on the work that's put into it.
What's interesting is that people say Clay is a great storyteller.
Well, guess what?
When we're at Deer Camp, you know who I listen to most?
It's not Clay.
It's not me.
It's usually some of our friends that are really great storytellers.
But if those same people were doing a podcast, you probably wouldn't like it too much.
I mean, it's the research.
It's the work.
So whether you're hunting, it's your career, whatever you're doing, I mean, the work pays off.
And to add some mass to really what he's saying.
It's like, we're reading all this stuff and people say, Clay's a good storyteller.
And me and dad are like, oh, you want to find a good storyteller.
We'll show you a storyteller.
It's not me.
And I'm being serious.
I was interviewed by a lady the other day for something.
And she was like, Clay, how do you tell stories?
How do you formulate this in your mind?
How do you do this?
what you know how did you and i mean like you know she's saying like you're a good storyteller and i just
said i said i'm not a good storyteller i know good storytellers and i've always rejected when people
have said that i'm a good storyteller and i told her this i said because i reject that because
every time i've seen somebody that thought they were a good storyteller that it it corrupted them
I mean, like when you're at a campfire
and you're the guy that's stepping up to the plate
to tell 80% of the stories,
usually that's the guy you don't want to hear talk.
Usually it's the guy sitting in the back
that didn't say anything
that's really got something to say.
And what I kind of distilled my idea
of storytelling down is
is that a good storyteller is passionate about the story.
I mean, it's not oratory skill.
It's not,
detail
because you could
you could be trained
to tell a story
and there is
some skill involved
in like
actually learning
how to tell a story
but
but
a passion to tell the story
for someone else
and I think that's what
fuels Bergeries
like when I talk about
Roy Clark and James Lawrence
and Daniel Boone
and these guys like
that's what I
that's the drive
like so I agree with that
it's not about
good storytelling
and it's about wanting to get the story, the truth of the story out.
You know, what's interesting is that if I had worded, if I had taken the time,
which I would not do, if I had taken two or three hours and written this out,
the bottom line would have been exactly what you said.
And here I go to tell it and I forget that.
You know, so you don't forget stuff because you do the research and you actually scripted it.
You know, I'm in a bow shop one day and this guy sees me walk in.
in and he tells his buddy, he goes, Clay's son, man, is a great storyteller.
Y'all'll go listen to him.
And I didn't say anything, but I thought he's really not a great storyteller.
I mean, really, Deer Camp, he's not.
But his storytelling on the render is unbelievable.
So any, and you think, well, okay, Gary, what you're saying, anybody could do this.
Well, no, you can't.
I can't.
You got to have the love of the subject first.
You got to have the desire to communicate it in a way to captivate people.
So, I mean, it goes deep.
And then you can't just instantly turn it on.
You've got to start reading in college instead of studying algebra.
You go to the library and study bare.
And then when you get your diploma, you don't quit reading.
You keep reading.
And all of a sudden, you got a base of an eye.
And knowledge is power and blah, blah, blah.
So, you know, he said it all, research, it's information, and that's why these are good.
Yeah.
Now, the render, oh, my goodness, it's good, too.
It's something.
The render, I mean, I enjoy the render.
Yeah, I think people are hungry for stories.
Yeah.
I think we're at a time, too, in our, just in the climate of the planet of the plant.
planet where these stories of connection to the land are resonating with people.
Yeah, they really seem to be.
And I'm very, very interested in the identity, always have been for a long time.
I mean, personal identity, but also national identity.
And that's why Boone is so interesting.
Hey, Josh and Misty have a song, Cumberland Gap song.
So now we're going to start talking about the Cumberland Gap.
All right, Josh, tell us what you're going to be.
playing.
All right.
We're going to sing a song here about the Cumberland Gap.
It's David Rawlins.
David Rawlins.
So on the podcast, that was the Wayfair's song, which is an old-timey version of a song
called Cumberland Gap.
This is a newer version.
I mean, a totally different song, but a new one.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay, Misty.
You ready?
Ready.
We have never played this song together.
This is the part I don't like about the Barry's podcast.
We're just going to...
Off the cup, ladies, telling you.
Cumberland Gap is the devil of a gap.
Cumberland Gap is the devil of a gap.
Kiss me, Mama, kiss your boy.
Bless me well and lucky.
For I won't be back till I return.
I'm going to Old Kentucky.
Cumberland Gap is the devil of a gap.
That's what the scouts all tell you.
Sure enough, it'll make you tough.
If it doesn't kill ya, kill ya.
Kentucky, she's awaiting on the other side.
Give you the fever.
Put the daylight in your eye.
Brother John's already gone with a full-blood turkey maiden.
He made the trip from the blizzard's grip.
I'd rather wrestle Satan.
Cumberland Gap, she's the devil of a gap.
Oh, the snow kept coming, picked her up upon his back.
Oh, he loved that woman.
Daniel stood on a pinnacle rock,
looking up and down the mountain.
Took his trusty, open lock.
Daniel started shouting, shouting.
Kentucky, she's waiting on the other side.
Give you the fever, put the daylight.
Air light in your eye
Is the devil of a gap
Cumberland Gap is the devil of a gap
Cumberland Gap is the devil of a gap
Cumberland Gap is the devil of a gap
Awesome
Awesome awesome awesome
Really good
Man that was 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
that there was a full of blood.
Oh my God, he doesn't have a hit.
Blood Trails is a true crime podcast
born in the outdoors, where the terrain
is unforgiving, the evidence is scarce,
and the truth gets buried
under brush and silence.
Indications were he should be right there,
but he wasn't.
This season, we're going deeper.
From cold case files to
whispered suspicions, from remote
mountains to frozen backwoods.
Each story begins in the wilderness,
and ends in darkness.
Because out here, there are no witnesses, no cameras,
just fragments and the people left behind trying to piece them back together.
He's not an honest person. He's incapable of being honest.
Somebody somewhere knows something.
I'm Jordan Sillers.
Season 2 of Blood Trails premieres April 16th.
Follow now on Apple, Iheart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.
You know, what I do,
love about
I think I
like things that
attract the attention
of multiple genres of life
so the Cumberland Gap
I can connect
to a gap in a mountain from a hunting
perspective because my whole life
we've talked about gaps and mountains
that animals travel through that we
hunt and then
this gap
is also it's just so complex
because this gap
has become this thing that was the gateway to the west for Daniel Boone.
It was super influential in the travel corridors of Native Americans, just super complex.
And by multiple genres, I mean, artists flocked to the Cumberland Gap.
I mean, most of the people that I interviewed, even Josh, who didn't know much about the Cumberland Gap,
he knew that folk singers wanted to sing about the Cumberland Gap.
But, man, what did y'all think of the podcast?
It was good.
It was full of information that I did not know.
Was it, it was kind of dense.
It was very dense.
I actually had to listen to it a couple times because I got through the first time and I was like, oh, wait, I missed a big portion of that.
I've got to go back and listen to that again.
I think the part that I found the most interesting was listening to the gentleman at the end, the Cherokee.
Yes, Taylor King.
Yeah.
What a interesting perspective.
Yeah, it was neat to hear.
hear him talk because I you know I I you know I don't know why but I think a lot about
Native American people and Native American history I find it really fascinating I
love the art and just the the the the tragedies that the Native Americans have
endured through to it would be very easy to look at that period in history and
be bitter yeah and he was very you know not not sweeping anything under the
rug but at the same time saying look this
This is the history that's brought us to where we are.
Yeah.
And the, the, just the, the value that he placed on the exploration of Daniel Boone and, and while
not negating the, the normalcy of what it would have been for Native Americans a thousand
years before Daniel Boone.
Yeah.
Man, he, he, uh, so there's, I want to talk about him talking about the land bridge.
I do too.
Because I specifically didn't say Land Bridge.
I had another guy write in and say, hey, quit disseminating false information about the
land bridge.
There was a time when the land bridge and the passage of humans across the land bridge was
like the primary theory of how humans got to North America.
That theory has now been broken up and there's been newer things that have happened.
And ultimately, there's, and I'm not an expert on all those theories.
I do know that there's a place called Cooper's Ferry deep in Idaho that supposedly has some of the oldest human existence which shows that potentially there was, it's connected to water travel into North America into the northwest.
So like these people, you know, they're saying they came over on boats.
There's also evidence that down in South America that humans have been there for way longer than people than the stuff we see from the land bridge.
So we'll do a podcast at some point on all these different theories.
But basically, he was like, dude, Taylor Keane was like,
your Landbridge story doesn't cut it for the Cherkees.
Does this, is this?
Is this a representation of the Cherokee people's telling that Josh the Landbridge spillmaker
was interesting?
Is soon going to break up and go the way of the old Land Bridge theory?
Well, I mean, Dave is most dead.
What about the Cherokee story of where they came from?
do you remember
yeah
he said
with the blow darts
I was like what
that I mean
that blew my mind
I thought that was fascinating
and how okay
okay the reason
that there's no more
land bridge between Alaska
and Russia is because
glaciers melted sea levels rose
which would have all kind of
you know he said that their island
flooded in their in their stories
I mean they didn't just make this up
after here in the science
like this these are
ancient stories and big turtles are big in their cosmology.
And anyway, so if that was the case, you know, he was saying maybe they came in from the
west side, maybe from the east side of the gap.
But yeah, I thought Taylor Keene's input was incredible.
It was my favorite part.
And he didn't gloss over anything.
And you didn't either in the interview with him or talking to him.
But when he talked about, you know, that forever it was Daniel Boone, you know, that was promoted as discovering, you know, the Cumberland Gap when the Native Americans have been rolling through there for, you know, 10,000 years or as long, could be as long as 10,000 years.
It was, it reminded me of some old man I used to work with about when somebody else would take credit for something, a job or a job or, or, or,
laboring that someone else had done and he would always say you know that's kind of like
we killed a bear but paul's the one that shot him where the credit wasn't going actually going
you know i'm sitting here bragging about you know this this activity that we did yeah but really it
was these other folks over here yeah that did it but i was there i was with him yeah and but he
actually didn't know white europeans we weren't even there really yeah well i tried to really
paint the picture of what
I have seen painted for me.
I mean, this isn't an original thought that I had,
but from the books that I've read and research I've done,
I mean, Daniel Boone was Daniel Boone
because of indigenous people.
Like, that's what made him.
And that really is what distinguishes
American identity from Europe.
Yeah.
Like, if you really boil it down,
like these people came over
with totally the worldview and ideology coming from Europe, Scotland, Ireland.
They came here and then they were so influenced by Native Americans,
especially the first people that got here because they had to learn how to hunt.
They had to learn how to survive on this continent.
And then so the backwoodsman, the frontiersman, is this merging of English,
Western views in Native American.
and this merging of it.
And what's wild is that today,
and why I was so interested in Boone,
is that today,
Boone's influence on the American hunter
is extremely notable.
Extremely notable.
Misty, what was your favorite part?
Well, I was going to say,
that whole last section,
I thought you did a good job
telling the story from a lot of different angles.
And I thought that Robert Morgan did a good job
and kind of almost
classic professor
sort of instructing everyone
how to hear history
and how to take it in.
And what I liked about the podcast
is that it did show,
it did show multiple perspectives
of this piece of history.
And I think that right now,
when we went to the Cumberland Gap
that's on the podcast
and we watched this little video
with the kids before we,
we hiked it.
And in the video,
they kind of just gloss over
the fact that Native American
people were there
first and it, you know, it just really kind of, they were a blip on the, on the picture. And as we
were hiking, that was one of my questions is what, what about that side of the story? You know,
you're, we're celebrating Daniel Boone and we're celebrating him as the person who discovered this,
but what about, what about that, that side of the story? And I think what this podcast did a good
job of doing is showing that. And I think it's important to do that. Clay and I were talking,
and I've taught some history classes for high schoolers.
And one of the things that we have them do before we,
that I've had them do before we go into any type of histories,
we just walk through the building and do a little walk around
and then make everybody write down all the different things that they did,
that they saw.
And, you know, the people at the front might see someone in the hallway
who's gone into a room by the time the people at the back around the corner.
And so they would not see that same person.
And so the person at the front of the line is going to say
there was someone in the hallway
and the person at the back is going to say
the hallway was empty. And we all tell the story
and we agree we don't think anyone in the room is lying.
Right. And these are
you know. Totally different stories.
Completely different. People on the exact same journey
and we talk about... Yeah. And the importance of
understanding what everyone sees that you don't actually know
the full history of what happened in that hallway
unless we have all of our perspectives
and that that's one perspective does not
invalidate another. But
until we have all the perspective
and really are looking at history from all these different angles.
So I like that you did that.
And I think it's important, I think it's super important to have those different perspectives of it.
And Taylor Keen's a wonderful representative, and he knows a whole lot of the history.
And I think it's super cool just on a practical level the oral tradition that they have as a people that we, you know, I would not say we have as my family anyway.
It does not have that type of oral history.
and I think those are real important components of looking at history.
So I really enjoyed the podcast.
Dan, what was your favorite part?
Probably two things.
So one was the whole kind of the mechanism of smallpox
and how these European settlers came and just this is wide open wilderness
and just imagining the people.
I think that Dr. Keane said, you know, think if your 100 closest relatives and
friends and now all of you but five.
are gone.
Yeah, that's a, that's a picture.
Oh, my goodness, just didn't occur to me in the whole kind of narrative and story.
And then the other thing that really suck out to me was the right before the very end where you read was supposedly Daniel Boone's own words.
Yeah, John Philson.
John Philson's account.
I'm going to pound that name into people.
There's a couple of names beside Boone that everyone's going to know by the time they're done with this.
John Philson and Lyman Draper.
John Philson.
John Philson was the one in 1784.
John Philson, Lionel Richie, and Lyman Draper.
Gotcha.
No, so Philson was the one in 1784 who wrote a book about Kentucky.
One single chapter in the book was about Colonel Daniel Boone, who no one knew his name.
You know, no, he was just regionally famous.
And then that catapulted him.
So go ahead.
So whenever Philson, in writing in Daniel Boone's words said,
I can't remember the exact phrase,
but in his mind,
what was on the other side of the gap
was a second paradise.
Yeah.
This idea that out there,
there's something more,
there's something,
and just the whole,
you go out there,
and he was anxious and worried
and needed extra philosophy.
You know,
he was kind of pushed to his limits,
but he was in search of,
you know,
the idea of there's a paradise out there.
Yeah.
That's very,
I don't know if it was a concerted effort.
I don't think there was like an American marketing team in the 1800s that met together under some administration.
It was like, we're going to market the Cumberland Gap in the West as this.
But that's essentially what happened.
Well, I think collectively, like that kind of part of American culture and our consciousness, we wanted that.
And so it naturally came out.
Think about the direction of movement from where we came, where.
white Europeans came from.
And they would have been coming from,
the only reason they left is because they didn't like it where they were.
So they were leaving oppression,
leaving poverty,
leaving something.
And just think about momentum,
even in physics.
Like you start moving a direction,
it's hard to stop.
So once they came west and got to the colonies
and then got to America,
there was this drive.
And, you know,
he talked about how Jefferson and Washington
and all these leaders of early America were like the West, the West, the West.
And I'll drop a statement that you'll hear in part three, which nobody's heard yet.
But Robert Morgan, he tells me that Jefferson said that the Ohio River was the most beautiful river in the world.
And he'd never been there.
But he was, and he changed the entrance of one of his houses, the key entrance.
the key entrance was originally facing the east,
and he changed it to face the west.
Wow.
So like, and these are the thought leaders of this country.
Yeah.
And so the idea, this paradise beyond the mountains was just, I mean,
it had appeal that was unstoppable.
Yeah.
Daniel Boone really is the forerunner of Manifest Destiny.
They were just looking for somebody to attach that to.
Yeah.
They were looking for a hero.
And then the artist came in.
You know, I started the podcast by talking about George Caleb Bingham's painting.
And man, those in, they call them the romantic artist, perhaps as the Enlightenment artists too.
They, that picture, it's not in here.
It's in the house right now.
But, oh, it shows that like the landscape is dark and ominous and there's big dark rocks and silhouettes of trees with no leaves.
And then Boones, it's like he steps into this beam of sunlight.
His clothes look like they've been pressed.
Look like Malachi Nichols.
And he just looks so stately.
And these guys were influential.
I'll read what was written about George Caleb Bingham.
And so he was an influential writer or artist in early Americana.
he was an early artist in early America.
And he said,
it said his paintings were a,
he was a significant contributor
to early American genre painting.
A significant contributor to early American genre painting
were influential on crafting and disseminating
political ideologies and popular myths
about American national identity
in the era of westward expansion.
So it's like everything was like,
going, we got to go west, boys, we got to go west.
And then De Boone goes west.
And he's a hero.
And he was this phenomenal person.
And just the American identity just latched on to him in such a powerful way, which is pretty wild.
Dad, what was your favorite part of it?
Well, the bluegrass.
You go through the Cumberland gap.
You don't know what you're going to find.
and you find the most beautiful place on the planet almost.
I mean, it's just wonderful.
And somebody said it was almost a miracle because there were no Indian tribes.
There was nothing negative there because they looked at it as what, blood something?
Blood country.
Dark and bloody, they called it the Native Americans called the dark and bloody ground.
That they wanted, you know, I might have misinterpreted it.
The way I looked at it, they wanted that ground for them.
All of them wanted it.
And so nobody had it.
That's right.
And so all of a sudden, Danny Boy walks in and he goes, hey man, I believe I'll take over
this property.
Yeah.
I mean, you know, that's crazy.
And the other thing that I noticed is that if we had school teachers, Misty, if we had
history teachers that could teach like this.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, can you imagine the interest?
And that's why I think we.
all want to learn, but we don't want to learn in a boring fashion. We want to learn in a fun fashion.
And one other point is through all this trauma, all this adventure, it's like Boone would go,
I think you might have alluded to it, Dan, is that I'm content. Yeah. My brother's left me. I don't
have a horse. I don't have a dog. I don't have all my supplies. I'm going to get.
bat dung for
guana for
gunpowder gunpowder and I'm happy
man I just look around and I go wow
so there you go
well see we're going to explore that a whole lot more
in the third podcast
about really
where this idea of
how we experience wilderness
as Westerners comes from
Dan and I talked about it quite a bit
but you're referring to Boone
account of being in that first part of Kentucky.
Man, I thought it was fascinating that Robert Morgan saw the connection between Robinson
Crusoe.
Was that point clear?
Yeah.
I mean, just about how, like, it makes total sense that he would have done that.
Yeah.
Like, that he would have posed his story in the terminology, the fashion, the style of the popular
thing of the period.
And that people read it and thought it was true.
Well, Robinson Crusoe.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Because they wanted it to be true.
It fit there.
You know, just like you said, we wanted this.
And so we attached it to Daniel Boone.
They read Robinson Crusoe.
Of course, that's true.
Yeah.
It fits what we.
Yeah, yeah.
Hey, Clay, one last thing.
It sounded to me like there were hundreds and thousands of Daniel Boone.
We just happened to pick up on this guy.
That's right.
Probably not hundreds of thousands.
But there were several.
That's the point that Steve Ronella made so well is that, yeah, there were lots of guys doing the same stuff.
Boone did.
And you'll hear in podcast number three, spoil alert, the first time Dan went into Kentucky, he met white guys over there.
He met white long hunters over there.
And so, like, he certainly was one of the first, but wasn't the first.
So there's a lot of people doing this.
no man if you go back and listen to or read you should go read you can pull it up on the internet you don't have to buy the book you can pull up on the internet john felson's you know type in uh adventures of colonel daniel boone and you can read the whole chapter in that book and um oh did golly philson was a good writer or dan was a great speaker one of the other he said philosophy okay they use a lot of words that we're not familiar with philosophy
I haven't looked this up.
I'm totally going off context clues.
It essentially means like happiness.
Somebody.
Felicity?
Felicity.
Felicity.
Felicity.
That's the word.
That's the word.
Yeah.
Somebody look up what that means.
It means happiness.
It means happiness.
Okay.
Let's say I was right then.
Philosity is not a word.
Velocity is.
Alex, will you check these people?
You've got some interesting ways to pronounce things.
F-E-L.
Felicity.
Felicity. Acorns.
Felicity. F-E-L-I-C-I-T-Y.
Yeah, Felicity.
Felicity. Okay. Boone said.
Where's the Shurdo coming?
Flicity is the... Intense happiness.
Yeah, yeah.
Felicity is the companion of content
and is found in our breast rather than an earthly treasure.
He said that.
And then he said, at another point, he said,
never before had I had greater need of philosophy and fortitude.
That's a really good line.
It was full.
I wasn't able to write it all down.
I wanted to come in here and read it,
but you can listen to it on the podcast.
He said he and John Stewart had a pleasing ramble.
I'm going to use that in the future for sure.
That's the render right there.
Please don't ramble.
No, but just that was super fascinating to me that Boone did that.
I did have some people that were confused, and they would have been based upon what I presented
if they had no context for it.
The Cumberland Gap, there's a lot of different names.
If you remember, when I was in the Cumberland Gap with my boys, I called it the Deer Path,
Wasioto, which is the Shawnee, what the Shawnee called the Gap.
They called it the Deer Path.
Okay, so that's one.
They also called the whole mountain range Wasiote.
which meant area with a bunch of deer, basically.
The Warriors Path.
So the Cumberland Gap, if you're standing in the Cumberland Gap on a trail,
you're on the Warriors path.
But the Warriors' path is a long stretch of path
that connected the Iroquois Confederacy to the Cherokees.
And basically, man, there were times and seasons when they just went to war.
It's like, oh, September 1st.
It's your tomahawks, boys.
and they just went down to their, you know, their rivals territory and just raised cane.
I mean, so they called it the Warriors Path because that was the middle ground where they passed through.
So the other thing that it was called by white people was the Wilderness Road.
So if you were standing in the Cumberland Gap, are you on the Wilderness Road?
Yes, you are.
But the Wilderness Road went from Virginia, maybe even up into Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania and went down through the Cumberland Gap and into Kentucky and then back up even into Ohio, as I understood it.
So Wilderness Road, Warriors Path, Wasiotto, Deer Path, and it was later called Boone's Trace.
Because in 1775, Boone went back through and was the first guy with machetes and hatchets and men, saws, horse,
to cut a trail through the Cumberland Gap.
And after that, they called it Boone's Trace.
So a lot of different names.
And then Highway 74.
And then Highway 25.
And then why didn't they just take I-40, man?
I mean, they could have come down like low and just missed this whole deal.
So, I mean, you know what?
Have you looked at an autopo map to think about that?
But as a history student, you know, I go home and study.
You know, there's a lot of stuff I want to know.
So, you know, it's intriguing the way your history teaching is.
It gets you really curious.
I want to know how high the Cumberland Gap was compared to the rest of the mountains,
how far they travel through.
You know, why didn't they go south?
Yeah.
You know, I mean, the Cumberland Gap is 1,300 feet in elevation.
And it's not the highest point.
It's not pretty low.
I mean, that's not as high as mountains around here.
Oh, no, it's not.
they're not, yeah, you get the idea that like,
if it was this impenetrable barrier,
that it was like these huge 10,000 foot Rocky Mountains.
Nah, the Cumberland Mountain, I think, is like in the 2,000 foot range.
But it wasn't just, and Robert Morgan said this,
it wasn't just a physical barrier.
It was a geopolitical barrier because they were in the accent and pronunciation.
Did you hear me?
Pronunciation of Robert Morgan.
He said they were for,
bad to go across the mountains.
Anybody catch him saying that?
I did.
They were for bad.
Man, he pulls out some old English, man.
That guy is the coolest guy.
One of the coolest guys I've ever met.
But yeah, so that was the place where they couldn't go
because it was French territory and Indian territory.
And so it wasn't just that it was mountains.
But the other thing, when you're restricted by your feet,
a horse, and a wagon, and carrying supplies back in there,
all of a sudden, a 2,000-foot mountain that
runs for 200 miles is a pretty big barrier, you know.
Hey, Steve Rinala's portion.
Yeah.
When Steve was talking about death and how closely acquainted the people back
where with death and telling the story of Daniel Boone coming back through his son's
remains, I think that really stuck out to me as well.
No, that was really good as well.
How did it impact you?
Yeah, I just thought, I thought it's, it is what he said.
is that we do tend to underestimate how much death impacted these people.
And you could do that either way.
And I think both stories about the deaths that happened there,
that when he said the,
when Taylor Keen said the part about imagine 95 out of 100 of your family members,
and when Steve Rennela kind of gave the narrative of Daniel Loon going back
and holding his son,
that was, I thought was really powerful.
And it really humanized, really humanized him.
Yeah.
man see i i finished up episode three today so i'm thinking episode three yeah you shouldn't wait
till you hear episode three oh man it's it it to me is the my favorite one because it really
humanizes boon because we i basically do clean up and tell all these stories about him some
it involves his family a lot of it involves his later life but i think it really puts a bow tie on
his life and you kind of seeing him as human.
Yeah.
I think the part about his family, and of course I live with you, and this has sort of been
Clay's life for a little bit now, and he's shared a lot of these stories, but I think
it's important for people to hear about Daniel Boone, the family man, and what that
version of him.
What did y'all think about historical revision or relativism?
Do you think we handled that fairly?
Definitely.
I think you handle it.
I mean, without a doubt, it seems like even in Daniel Boone, like in the subsequent just decades right after him,
revisionism was happening because they're using this mythical character that kind of became Daniel Boone to write and broadcast a narrative.
We've got to go west.
We got to do this.
And so it's not like historical revisionism just started in the last decade.
We've always been doing that.
We're just maybe a little more aware of it.
going back and looking at really bad stuff.
That was the point of what I was saying was that at the end of the podcast was, you know,
because the cancel culture of today is you find anybody that has any tarnish in their life,
and then you go cancel them.
And today, if you did some of these egregious things.
Hey, we're doing it right now in a hundred years from now.
They're going to be going, can you believe what they were doing back in 2000?
I mean, look at how they treated roosters.
Exactly.
Yeah.
I think you all handle it very well.
But, you know, to me, it's a, it's, but it's, there's a lot of hypocrisy in that, in my opinion, because it's, it's so easy to pick on the other guy.
Well, if you trace your genetics back, guess what?
Your great, great, great, great, great, your bloodline was doing that.
And if you had been there, you'd be doing the same thing is what I think.
So you can cut that out.
Well, that's just it.
It's like if you go back very far or anywhere,
you're going to find egregious things
because humanity has been on a track of,
I mean, in many ways you could say upward movement.
There's some parts of the place that we've cleaned up.
We've got two girls in college now,
and these are the types of conversations.
We've had a lot.
Our oldest was here this year,
and she would go into history classes and come out
and we would talk about sort of the take
and how the professors were handling all of history now
because it's a tricky time to teach things.
And we talk a lot about cancel culture
because I think that that idea that we just evaluate people
by their worst, the worst version of themselves,
the worst aspect of themselves,
and never give an opportunity for recovery,
which we have no choice with these people
who've been dead for 100 years.
I think our, as humans and in our family, we want to be merciful.
We want to be people because mercy has been extended to us.
And so we want to always, and we want our kids to have a growth mindset about life that you can always improve.
And that cancel culture really shuts that down because you are judged.
And it's current.
I mean, people that are living are being canceled.
And some of them, you know, probably deserve and should have never been famous, never should have been.
you know, known, but the idea that you can't, people can't change is such a tragic idea and such a,
I mean, it hinders any actual progress or growth from happening. So I think it's a real toxic
mindset. And I think that's the importance of saying, let's tell all of the story and both stories
and all sides, because you can't judge a person by one aspect of their life. And you can say that's
wrong. What they did here was wrong. And in, in this,
with what we know now, we shouldn't do that.
And surely there should have been some things that people should have never done.
It's fair to say that is wrong and that should have been wrong back then as well.
That being true, I think that there's a real tendency right now to just shut people,
cancel people out of history because it doesn't match your, what the standards we have right now.
I think it's a, I mean, you said you're very passionate about identity and cancel culture is essentially a faulty way of doing identity.
It's a very convenient way to.
do identity. I can look at a person and if anywhere in their past or any connections in their
doings, they have these certain things, I get to just write them off. But that's a very
faulty way of doing identity. Because all of, I mean, who does not have something in their
pastor back to what Gary said? What are you hiding? Nothing. I know all about it. Oh, my gosh.
No, that's good. But we do it because it's convenient.
We don't do it because it's right.
And it takes out the hard work of growth.
Exactly.
And it doesn't provide an opportunity for people to change and to say.
There's no incentive to change.
I did wrong.
I'm so sorry.
And that's such a powerful humility, such a powerful place and a powerful opportunity to have.
The other side is that these people are, they're dead.
They don't have the opportunity to say, wow, with this new information, I realize that with a much broader perspective.
When you've got one book and one.
chapter written about you.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And we're making gross assumptions about someone's life without their ability to explain.
It's, it's a little too easy.
Even after hearing Clay's own testimony about the heart behind his rooster treatment.
Right.
I'm still canceling it.
People change.
People change.
Hey, I used to wet the bed.
I don't do that no more.
Not yet.
Yet.
much.
Oh.
Well, hey, this has been really good, guys.
You know, I had somebody right in and say,
I can't make up my mind if I love it or hate it every time you call him Dan during podcast.
I see, I told you.
Well, Eric called him Danny Boy.
I've created a legitimate internal controversy.
You have once again polarized the nation.
Oh, man.
Cumberland Gap, you ain't talked about Pickles Gap.
Pickles Gap.
Yeah, North of Congress.
They got saltwater taffin chickens.
Hey, the only negative thing about them rewilding the Cumberland Gap is apparently there was a real famous cool, old, like, pit stop gas station up there somewhere, right, around the Cumberland Gap.
That was somebody else tell me what it is, but it was like, you know, scooters or spankies or something.
and it was like a hillbilly hangout.
It was not spanky.
We definitely had a spanky where we grew up.
That is a true story.
No.
Well, hey, good render, guys.
Yeah, episode three and we're done.
We're done.
We're out with Dan Boone.
Third half of this series.
I'm grieved, though.
I really am.
I hate to see it go.
I really am.
As I wrote this last one, I just...
It's like I wanted to stay.
I wanted to stay here.
But we got to move on.
There's other topics.
Oh, and you know what?
The thing is, is that you can't listen to three hour and 10 minute long podcasts and think you really have the scoop on DB.
Oh, no.
We got a fourth nickname here, DB.
There's so much.
There's so much.
And so I hope that it catalyzed people to.
you know, get Mr. Morgan's book, and there's tons of other good, there's all the Boone biographies.
You know, there's this new one. I'll mention this new one. There's one out right now by Tom Clavin,
blood and treasure. I've got it. The John Mack Farager one is probably right behind
Boone's known as a really good one. This one's brand new. This one came out just this year.
but anyway
I would highly suggest
though
the my father
Daniel Boone
the lime and draper papers
man that
now that is when it gets real
when you start reading Nathan Boone
talking about his dad
but all right guys
thank you so much
keep the wild places wild
because that's where Daniel Boone
killed bears and such
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