Bear Grease - Ep. 175: THIS COUNTRY LIFE - Season of Giving

Episode Date: December 29, 2023

If anyone could make a Christmas story out of fried eggs, hogs, and hunting pants, it would have to be Brent. He’s talking about presents received and ruined and a chance meeting that will warm your soul. It's the Season of Giving this week on MeatEater's "This Country Life" podcast. Connect with Brent and MeatEater MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube Shop Bear Grease MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

First Lights fieldwear collection is made for the work that happens long before opening day and continues when the season ends. Products built for early mornings, full days in real use. Hard wearing where they need to be versatile where it matters. No shortcuts. Just gear designed for the work that earns the season. Built to perform, built to last. Check out. First Light's new fieldwear gear at firstlight.

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

The Season of Giving The season of giving is upon us. This time of year is my favorite. It coincides with hunting season, and it's not my favorite because of the physical items I received during Christmas, but for the intangible items I get from seeing friends, relatives, and from giving too. Now, that hasn't always been the case, and I'm going to tell you about one present that I logged for and I finally received,

how I lost it and what I learned from. But first, I'm going to tell you a story. A few nights ago, I was coon hunting in a large expanse of public land here in Arkansas, and I was hunting with my friends Randall Whitmore and Brad Clark. Now, they're lifelong friends of each other's and partners in a young tree and Walker and hunt a lot with me and Michael Roseman. Randall's a descendant of coon hunting royalty. His dad, Dick Whitmore, is a legendary coonhound man from Memphis, Tennessee.

You're going to hear more about him in the very near future when a project Clay Newcomb and I worked on last winter is released. Anyway, Randall, Brad, and I cut their dog and my dog wailing loose. We were really there to observe and train their hound. He's learning the ropes and they're learning him and his style. And these dogs aren't machines that you wind up and cut loose. They're all individuals and have different styles of hunting, and those styles and tendencies appeal to different kinds of hunters.

The same reason they make fords and Chevys. Different folks. They like different things. It was a bad night to be going in the first place, and the hour-long drive to the spot we were going to cut loose gave me plenty of time to plan my strategy of how I was going to help them with their dog. Just thinking of different scenarios and things to look for in different situations. The more info that you have on the little things that a dog does over a period of time,

especially in similar situations, they can give you a pretty good idea of how he hunts and maybe even how much potential he has down the road. And that's what you're after. You want to know if the time you're investing is being invested in something that you can count on to be fruitful in the future, or if not, you need to cut your losses. Find him another home and start looking again for what you're. want. Well, it had rained over an inch that afternoon, and it's normally not beneficial to hunt right after a big rain. The rain washes all the scent away, and most times coons are like we are.

They don't ramble around a lot when it's coming to downpour. They lay up in a den where it's warm and dry, but that ain't always the case, and it was on that remote chance that we could find one stirring around that we were banking on. And one thing's for sure. You can't train them in the dog pen. You've got to go when you have the opportunity. Also, it's a good excuse to get together and have a good time. Both Randall and Brad live across the big river in Tennessee and Mississippi, so we don't get to hunt together but usually one or two nights a week when they come over to stay at the legendary Whitmore camp on the White River here in Arkansas. The other times we're sharing pictures and videos back and forth across the Big Muddy about what each other's dog is doing. There are also the clowns

that invited me to go duck hunting again a couple of weeks ago and relit that fire that I thought had been put out a long time. We always have a good time together regardless of the focus of the visit. But tonight, the focus was training a dog and tree and a coon, and hopefully at the same time. We tracked whaling and their dog caches progress as they made their way together for a while, then as they separated and hunted in different directions. Now, that's not uncommon. and it's a desired trade amongst coon hunters, especially competition coon hunters. They breed their dogs for independence and to do their own thing because regardless of how many dogs tree on the same tree, there's only first place points for one of them.

So the idea of independent dog versus a pack mentality is a better way to score more points. Now, we'll cover that on a future episode of this country life, but right now I just wanted to explain to the folks that aren't familiar with the process that the dog's being separated, that ain't a bad thing at all. The hounds had eventually gotten over a mile apart. Rats suggested we relocate and get a better fix on whaling after Randall caught cash, so that's what we did. We drove for quite a ways and the road eventually got within a half a mile of where whaling was.

Now, when I got out of the truck, I could hear him and another dog deep in the bottoms and both in the same direction. Now, Whalen wasn't treying, but he was bumping around enough that I could tell he was on a coon track, but it was probably pretty cold or the rain had washed it out because he wasn't doing much with it. Now, Whelan is trained to come back to the last place he saw me when I activate his Garmin tracking collar with an audible tone. Since I wasn't still at that spot, I thought I'd just walk in closer to where he was and wait for him to get treat. Now, Randall and Brad had recast cash, and he was moving off in the direction. that was different from where I needed to go, and we were fixing to have to split up.

I gave random my keys and told him when they got back to the road after checking on cash to just pull my truck around to where they saw Whelan's tracking icon on their Garmin tracker. That's a pretty cool feature to be able to track all the dogs you're hunting with, to see where everyone's hounds are,

and you can even track the other handheld device. A great safety feature to be able to keep up with each of, other if you know you need to separate just like we were fixing to do my plan was to go straight to whalen and lead him over to the road that i could see on my garment that was a lot closer than going back the way we'd all walked in whalen had gone northeast and cash had gone northwest now i know that the theme of this episode is the season of given and so far this story has been nothing but a play-by-play of a mediocre coon hunt but y'all hang with me i'm fixing to give you to you to the good part. I found myself in a thicket, trying to cut across and get to where whaling was hunting.

It was so bad that at one point, if I could have found a place big enough for me to lay down in, I would have and just stayed there until I retired from living. Now, I could have called him to me, and he would have come to me, but by calling out loud to him, I risked having cash come to me, which that wouldn't have been a big problem, but remember there was somebody else's dog in there barking, and I didn't want to mess up their hunt or get their dog going in the direction that they didn't want it to go. Plus, a little exercise never hurt anyone, especially me. So with me a half a mile from where I parked in my truck

and still a half mile from the bend in the road I'd planned on walking out to, I finally caught up with my hound. I looked at the map and I checked my compass and took a bee line for the road. I'd gone about halfway when I walked up on two and a half coon hunters in the middle of the woods. woods. The half of Coon Hunter was 10 years old I would come to find out, and he was dressed

apart from head to toe. I introduced myself and asked if they minded if I walked out to the road with them. They were training a couple of Walker Dogs, and one of them was the one I'd heard in their barking with Whaling. For the quarter of a mile walk, I talked to Coon Hunting with the little fellow. I remember what it was like being his age and wanting to be like my dad and do the things that he and his friends did. They didn't coddle him, just like my dad didn't coddle me. He had a hound half the size he was on the lead and was making every step we were back out to their truck.

He told me he liked to drive the truck around on the farm feeding cows, and I've already told you all about how I drove at an early age, one of the stories anyway. He also told me that he liked a deer hunt, and he'd already gotten himself a buck, but coon hunting, man, that was his favor. And as we walked and visited, I couldn't help but see all the parallels between me and him. I badgered him with questions and mistakenly called him by the wrong name a half a dozen times until his dad politely corrected me when Randall and Brad drove up to where we'd walked out, and I introduced him by the wrong name. I apologized to him, but he didn't seem to care. He was enjoying the conversation and talking about our dogs and how they'd been doing that night

and let me tell you, I was enjoying it too. And just when I thought our chance meeting in the middle of thousands of acres of river-bottom wilderness couldn't get any better, my little friend all of a sudden said, hey, let me show you what I got for my birthday. He reached deep down in his right front pocket and pulled out a case-trapper pocket knife.

It had a coon hound inscribed on it chasing a coon. My heart's gift of beating, I told him, standing right there. I walked over to my truck, and I brought out the exact same knife that my brother Tim had given me for Christmas a couple years ago that I had hidden in there. I know y'all are thinking,

don't you already carry two? That's right, I do. But you know what's better than two? Three. Randall took our picture with our knives, and after visiting a little longer, my little friend and his dad, and their hunting companion they left.

We called it a night too, and I hated back home on that one-hour drive having not treat a single coon or had any real opportunities to work with cash. Normally I'd have been a little disappointed in the lack of opportunity. But the chance of meeting I had with that little boy who reminded me so much of myself at his age made every turn of the wheel worth it. His dad let me take a picture with him and you can see him, his birthday pocket, knife and mine on my Instagram page. I'm telling you this story, and Christmas was four days ago as you're listening.

But when it happened, Christmas was still two weeks away. And outside of seeing my family and friends, the chance meeting I had with a little boy and the flood of memories and feelings I would get from, it would be the best gift I would get all year. And that's just how that happened. 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 Rinella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. When I was a kid Christmas was an anticipated resupply

and upgrade for hunting equipment and clothing. I'd get a gamer. or maybe a toy some kind, but what I wished for and asked for from an early age was traps, guns, ammo, pocket knives, anything related to me being able to have a better time outside. That still holds true to today, except today when I want something, I usually go get it myself. And this aggravates Alexis to no end. And she'll say, now why did you buy that? It's too close to Christmas.

My response is something like, oh, I'm sorry, I didn't know you were planning on buying me a brick of 22 shells and an old carbide light off of eBay. And when she looks at me like a calf looking at a new gate wondering what both of those items are, I tell her that's why I bought it. Now, you could just about bet on a couple of pair of good wool socks, a new union suit. If you don't know what a union suit is, let me explain. Sometimes it's called long underwear. but the ones we routinely received were red, and they fit like a baby onesie that buttoned up the front like a shirt with a button flap in the back for convenience when nature called.

Now, they helped keep you warm, and with just a click or two on the old interwebs, I found the same ones available that we were all wearing way back then. About every other year, I'd get a dozen traps that I'd put to good use, but one year, after many requests and prayers, I finally got a pair of genuine, heavy ducks back hunting britches for my dad that I absolutely cherished. They were dang near bulletproof and after several years of wanting them, he found a pair

to fit my frame when I was in the fifth grade. I was so proud of them breeches that I wanted to wear them to school, but my mama wouldn't let me. In the closet they went, stiff as a board and able to stand up on their own. It seemed like forever, but finally we went squirrel hunting, and I got to wear them on multiple hunts. Now, one squirrel hunt turned into a hog baying, and I helped my dad and Jerry Huddleston catch and cut a big boar hog. Now, turning a boar hog into a bar hog was often a precarious event for everyone, especially for the hog.

But for everyone not familiar with this operation, it's pretty simple. All of our squirrel dogs would bay hogs too, and that means they'd surround the boar hog and keep them in one spot till we could get there. Then we'd either rope him or grab his hind legs and flip him over and hold him down until somebody took a pocket knife and cut out both of the items that made a boarhog, a boy hog. After all the wallering around and the mud and the blood, it could get kind of messy, and I didn't shy away from any of it.

It was probably more of a hindrance in help, but I was all in on learning, and my dad was always in on teaching. After we cut the hog loose, minus his pride, and a couple other things, we went on about our hunt. Now, once it was over, my dad dropped me off at my maternal grandma and grandpa's house in town. I was spending the night there to go to school the next morning, and when my grandma saw me walk up on the porch with my muddy boots, covered with the same as well as dried blood from head to toe, she made me take off all my clothes in the washroom. I peeled off layer after layer of mud and caked and blood-soaked clothing and arranged them purposely like little badges of honor from our hunt. Those britches I stood in the corner, literally.

The legs of them were like little stove pipes of thick canvas duck material that was more brown and deep red from the hog grassling and cutting than the olive drab color they looked when I opened them up at Christmas. She had our supper fixed, and me, her, and Papa had a good meal, and they listened to me, tell how we'd kill some squirrels and castrated that hog while we ate. My grandpa was smiling while my grandpa kept saying, that's nice, about a hundred times, and I'm sure we should not talk about something else. I talked as much about those britches as I did anything and how I loved them and wanted to wear them to school. school, but Mama wouldn't let me. Those ain't school britches. They're hunting britches, she would say, and she was right. Not only were they blood-stained from skinning animals, but they smelled like squirrel dogs, horses, hogs, and the most malodorous of all, a little boy. My mom had sent a whole batch of school clothes for me to wear the next day. I was all set for

clothes. But the next morning, my grandma, Bula Sly, we called her Mama Sly. She woke me up to come eat breakfast. Papal had already gone to the farm. I sat up on the edge of the bed and I nudged my right shoe and I heard a jingle. My grandpa always stuck a couple 50 cent pieces in my shoe for what he called walking around money. It was our secret. We didn't tell anybody. I could smell goodness coming from the kitchen, sausage, bacon, grits, biscuits, gravy, and eggs fried like Robert Rewark so perfectly described in one of the greatest books I've ever read, the old man of the boy. Let me read his description for you. I have never liked an egg in any form in a restaurant, but a fried egg in the woods sizzled in

bacon fat until its white edges turned to fine Belgian lace, grating up to brown, is a noble thing. And if it is accompanied by fried sile belly and busted into a plate of fine ground hominy grits and the whole mess flavored up with grease, there might be indigestion around the corner, but it is not worthy of worry. Well, Mr. Rewark, you just described breakfast at my mama's house every day, not in the wilderness. But I walked into the kitchen in my drawers and a t-shirt. The washroom was on through past Papal's bathroom. I washed all your hunting clothes, Mama Sly said.

They're all folded on the dry. Your breeches was a choice. but I think I got most of the blood out. I had to wash them twice to get all that mud off, and they should be dry by now if you want to check them before you eat. You can wear them to school if you want to. Suddenly, I had lost my appetite. At the tender age of 11, even I knew the repercussions of washing and drying

a pair of ducks back bridges. Ooh, a folly that my mama sly would soon learn as well in her grand attempt to make me happy. Hot water and dryers will shrink cotton duck material to the point of no return. I ran to the dryer, snatched over the door, and pulled out a pair of smoldered hot hunting pants that would have been too small for a toddler. I commenced to choking back tears while saying out loud. Oh, no. Oh, no. Well, Mama Sly came running there to see what was wrong, and I held them up, and when she came in, she said, well, I swan.

What happened to them britches? I eventually got another pair, but at that moment, moment and time, I just wanted to jump in the trash barrel with those pants. She was so upset that she had ruined them and that they bought me another pair. She was trying to do something nice for me. There's no telling how early she got up to work on getting clean enough for me to wear to school regardless of what my mama said. And in doing so, she'd ruined them.

But at the same time, she showed me without saying it, how much she loved me, that she was willing to go the extra mile and work extra hard on top of everything else she had to do just to make me happy. And that, that was better than any Christmas present or pair of bridges that I could ever get. That's enough from me. I appreciate y'all listening, but turn this thing off and gather up with the folks you love and y'all tell some stories or just visit. A special memory doesn't have to be something spectacular. It can be something as simple as a result of not reading the washing instructions. Or as my mama's lie, I would say, the washing and raching instructions.

Please be safe. Look out for one another and be kind. Enjoy the time that you spend together. Until next week, this is Brent Reeves. Signing off. Y'all be careful. First Lights Fieldware collection is made for the work that happens long. before opening day and continues when the season ends.

Products built for early mornings, full days and real use. Hard wearing where they need to be versatile where it matters. No shortcuts. Just gear designed for the work that earns the season. Built to perform, built to last. Check out. First Light's new fieldwear gear at firstlight.com.