Bear Grease - Ep. 181: THIS COUNTRY LIFE - Cold Fronts

Episode Date: January 19, 2024

Brent's talking about cold fronts this week and one of the stories involves explosives. If you listened to the episode when Brent was battling beavers you know that he loves a good explosion. Well, this time he and his brother are fighting Old Man Winter. It's "Cold Fronts" 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've got a thing or two to teach you.

Cold fronts. Good night nurse, it's cold in Arkansas folks, a lot colder than we're used to, and it's all because of a big old cold front. Normally we look forward to them because that usually ramps up the hunting this time of year, but these major ones, they do just the opposite most of the time. We're going to talk about cold fronts today, but first, I'm going to tell you a story. This story is called dynamite, ice, and rice. I know more dynamite. I don't want you to think that my life was just full of stories and incidents that involved explosives,

but there were a few, and it wasn't limited to dealing with beaver dams and flooded timber. Not this time anyway. This was all due to a major cold front and duck hunting. Right after the turn of the century, the most recent one, my brother Tim and I were prepping for a group of hunters from the east coast. A large percentage of our clients hailed from up and down the eastern seaboard, and they always seem to travel in herds. Other than a few exceptions, if we got one of those rascals, we got a whole passel of them. Not a problem.

Tim and I would try to limit the number of hunters booking at the same time to about eight, and we would split them up and hunt four to a guide for safety, and it's easier to have a smaller number of folks in the woods, which is where we did the largest portion of our hunting. After all, that's why folks travel to Arkansas to duck hunt. They want to experience what it's like to have large groups of ducks falling into the timber and hovering above the decoys. It's one of my favorite things, but seeing others see it for the first time is probably my most favorite of all. It's one of those, if you know, you know moments, and it has to be experienced in the flesh. Pictures, stories, and even films don't do it justice.

Feeling the air generated from the thump of beaten wings, hearing chattering and quacking of drakes and hens as they jockey for position to land during the final approach. The splashing of feathered bodies as they turn graceful flight into what resembles amateur night at the demolition derby for the final few feet of descent to the surface of knee-deep water. That's the ticket, man.

That's the show. That's what you pay your money for. That's what you see in your dreams when you lay down at night anticipating the next morning's hunt. It plays over and over in your head, and like that one good golf shot out of a thousand bad ones keeps a golfer coming back to the T-box. The thought of having a chance to witness a spectacle such as I just described

is what keeps a duck hunter spending his hard-earned money to travel halfway across the country in the off-chance that they might see it again or for the first time. Now, the group we had coming would see none of that. Not even close. But they would see something just as incredible. Record lows, the product of a blast of Arctic air, ice, and snow. The kind we talk about down here forever, and folks up north would probably call a Tuesday.

It was forecasted to hit a couple days before they arrived. In Arkansas, in South Arkansas, anyway, any mention of snow, and ice was anticipated as eagerly as Christmas. Any ice on the road meant school would be closed and the whole state was shut down with a quarter inch of ice or sleet, literally. I ain't kidding. As a young one, I'd go to bed with snow and ice forecasted for the following day, having already made my plans on what I was going to be hunting the next day.

Tracking rabbits, quail, deer, whatever was in season or close to being in season. was on the agenda. Then I'd wake up to find that the weatherman had missed it once again. I waited for the bus and the cold madder than a mashed cat hating school and the weatherman. But this time, however, he nailed it. Temperatures in the 20s and several inches of snow locked up the flooded woods and timber. Now, we told our clients about how everything was locking up, but they wanted to come anyway. So Tim and I scrambled to find a solution.

Now, we had an 80-acre rice field leased next to 40 acres of woods that bordered the world-famous biomeda Wildlife Management Area. We called biomeda the public shooting grounds or the scatters, among other local names, but if hunters could get out to the main bio where there was some current, they would keep the ducks moving in and out instead of just sitting in there like it was a sanctuary. There would be plenty of people trying to get to those coveted open spots, so the competition in there would be fierce.

But it would work to our advantage if we could just get some open water. The evening our hunters arrived, we scouted the rice field, which was 15 minutes away from the camp. Now, ice was already a quarter of an inch thick, and the temperature wouldn't get close to 32 for the next few days. We drove a four-wheeler out in the ice and in the water in front of the skid-blind we had brushed up in the middle of the field. We were breaking up a large area of muddy, open water as we drove. in circles and made it shine like a diamond the ducks coming in with the cold front and they were landing in it before we got back out on the turn road to leave open water would be the key to our success and a struggle to maintain the blind would hold five people safely and

comfortably that meant we had to stagger our groups but we had a plan that Tim would take his four hunters and get in there at daylight the trailer we had for hauling the four-wheeler was serve two purposes. Once we arrived, he'd unload the four-wheeler, then hook it to the trailer to haul our hunters and all their plunder along the turn row out to the blind. He doesn't hook the trailer, make a loop through the ice where we were going to put the decoys while our clients got in the blind. Now once he had the hole opened up, he'd park the four-wheeler behind the blind and start hunting. A 10-wood hunt from the opening of shooting hours till around 9 o'clock and then I'd have my crew there where we parked our trucks ready to swap out

when he came out. It was a good plan. The best part was I got to sleep late. It had been a long season. My Nokia 510 cell phones started buzzing before 7 o'clock. The message from Tim was was, y'all come now, all caps and with several exclamation marks. Well, that wasn't a good sign. It was barely shooting light outside and my crew had just started giving you. getting up and moving around. No doubt he's stuck or is having some kind of trouble, I thought, so regardless, I needed to get them up and get them moving with whatever had transpired at the rice field. Y'all get your stuff up and let's go. We've got to go right now. Something's wrong. Now, if someone had been hurt, he would have said that, so I knew whatever the emergency was,

it was hunting related and not an issue of life and death. So like herding cats, I finally got my folks and all their stuff in my Bronco, and we took up. off. I'd messaged him a couple of times to see if I need to bring anything other than what he knew was in my ride, but he never answered. In my head, I'm thinking he's elbow deep in cold ice and mud, and I figured he couldn't answer. So about 720, when I pulled up to the property and saw Tim with the trailer loaded with all his hunters making their way back toward us along the levee. Immediately, my mind raced as to what we were going to do with these hunters. Now, if he's driving me, he's driving. back he's obviously not stuck so the rossfield must be frozen up beyond opening up i figured man they they hadn't been there 45 minutes from the time shooting hours opened up until now and i had no idea what we were going to do next but tim must have a plan or he wouldn't have called me to come over

but we're sitting in the bronco and i turned to the guys that were with me i said boys i don't know what's going on but don't look like we're going to be hunting here today their disappointment was obvious, even though they didn't say anything, but I was disappointed too. Now, as they got closer, one of them said, look at all those ducks. I looked out across that field and ducks were pilinged into that rice field from every direction. I looked back at the trailers Tim got closer and it was filled with mallard ducks and smiling duck hunters. I started laughing.

I said, y'all get your stuff together. The B team is going in. Now Tim said it was an absolute dream. They couldn't spook the ducks out of the field. All his hunters were wanting to tell their buddies about what they'd done, but I was in a hurry to get them out there. Who knew how long this would last, and I wanted all of them to have every opportunity to shoot ducks that we could give them.

So I got my boys loaded up, and we looked back at that rice field that had a tornado of ducks bombing in that muddy water. I told Tim, wait here if you want we're going to be back in a few minutes he didn't wait but i wasn't wrong tim and his crew went back to fix breakfast for all of us it took us longer to get ready at the camp and get there than it did for us to shoot five limits of ducks wave after wave of ducks being pushed into that area with that cold front were falling into the decoys it was too cold to have my lab out there so i was picking up dead ducks and live ones were still dropping in

As high as you could see a duck, you could call at him, and immediately, they locked up and fell like a rock. Wings were pressed close to their sides, and they sounded like a jet engine as they gained speed getting closer and closer. No circling, no nothing, straight down like they were on a string. We were back at the camp before Tim could get the biscuits done. We'd shot ten limits of mallards, tag team style. But what about tomorrow? What were we going to do about tomorrow? Most folks are judging their jobs by their last performance.

A duck guide has to sell himself on what he's going to do next. And I had no clue what we were going to do. That ice would be too thick to break with the four-wheeler. Tim had a plan, though. He knew what we were going to do next. And what we were going to do next was going to be just as entertaining is what we had just done. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps game calls

in building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called prime cuts. Now, I'm going to tell you, I love mine because it's easy to use. I'm not going to go, I'm not going to win a turkey calling contest. It's just not going to happen. But when I run this call, I get the sounds that gobblers are looking for. I have a great turkey hunting track record. If you go listen to real turkeys out in the woods, they're not going to win calling contests, right?

That's who I listen to. I can make those sounds on my cut. I also hunt with Phelps's cut, and I hunt with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts. Check out Prime Cuts at Phelpsgamecauls.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. We planned to hunt after the sun came up the next day. It would give us time to safely put our plan into action. We had acquired two sticks of Tovex. Tovex more or less replaced dynamite in that it was safer to store and handle. Back then you could legally buy it. That's enough of that. That's not the important part of this story.

Anyway, our plan was to blow a hole in the eyes that had become a lot thicker through the night. Breaking it with a four-wheeler wasn't possible any longer. We could do donuts without even trying. All ten of us were walking on the ice, jumping up and down, trying to make a hole, slipping and falling and generally risking life and limb. At one point I looked around and everyone had fallen and was on their backs, flopping around like someone had kicked over the Shiner bucket in the bottom of the boat. It was slick, and I'm not sure we could have broken through with a truck.

Enter Tovex Tim. With the explosives prepped, he lit the fuse, and we retreated to the relative safety to witness the festivities. How long you cut that fuse for? It's an old, about any time now, and with that, it detonated with a large boom. Our clients were cheering from the levee after they had all taken refuge behind the four-wheeler trailer about 100 yards away. Tim and I had tucked in behind the duck blind. The results were less than we'd hoped for, but we had. had managed to knock a hole in the eyes. A hole almost big enough to stick your foot in.

Now we had one more stick left but decided against putting it in that hole for fear of wrecking that laser-leveled field that we had leased. Doubtful the farmer would have appreciated a big low spot in this dead center where we were hunting the coming spring when planting time came. So we all worked as hard as we could to make that hole about the size of a kitchen table. The biggest chunks of ice we slid into the ice that we couldn't break or just laid it on the outside of the hole. Then we threw three decoys in it and called it good. It was all we could do, and it worked like a charm. The wind was steady, and the ducks that were coming in were all migrators and looking for a place to sit, no matter how small the hole was. They wanted water. It was literally the perfect storm.

Temped all our hunters in the blind, and we stood behind it, and we shot another, full 10-man limit that afternoon, just like we'd done the day before when we alternated groups. On the third day, we were frozen solid, and our guests got an early start back home. We tried to talk them out of coming at the beginning, but they wanted to experience an Arkansas duck hunt. And while they didn't get it in the classically historic sense, what they did get was an experience with some Arkansas flair. And that's just how that happened. Cold fronts, man, we look forward to cold fronts as much as anything down here. Number one, it's going to start giving you some relief from the heat that is the south.

And number two, if you're a duck hunter, it usually means more ducks are coming. Ducks only go as far south as they have to. They're fueling up to make it through the winter, select a mate, and travel back north to make more ducks. So if Stuttgart, Arkansas is as far south as they need to go to have food and water, that's where they'll spend the winter. If it stays warmer, further north will be their cold weather home. It's been my belief, not from schooling, but from observation over the past almost 50 years of chasing them,

that ducks are energy hoarders, and they're only going to burn enough to sufficiently stay healthy enough to do what ducks do this time of year, which, again, is to prep for making more ducks. Snow and ice that cover and freeze all the food sources up yonder force all the waterfowl to make tracks to my neck of the woods. I remember watching the weatherman talking about, y'all better bundle up and have plenty of firewood on hand.

There's a big cold front coming. Now, my wife can hear a forecast like that, and she starts inventory in wool socks and seeing how many she can put on at the same time just to stay inside. All I hear him saying is, Brent, you better get outside. The critters are stirring. Now, as I'm telling y'all this,

I've been locked in the house for the past three days because a particularly big coal front came through bringing snow, ice, and single-digit temps. In a historically low water year, there froze the water we did have while given the lowest duck numbers recorded in the past 25 years the old boot in the bridges, kicking them on down the road. The light at the end of the tunnel is it'll start warming up in the next day or so, and the ducks should start moving back in. before duck season plumb slips away. Now that's the ebb and flow of cold fronts, low duck numbers, and unprecedented low water. There was a time when I wouldn't have missed a minute of it, and Tim and I would have been somewhere where there was open, flow, and water, even this severe cold because there's one thing that's 100% guaranteed in nature

and that there is no 100% guarantees. all the water doesn't freeze all the ducks don't leave and all the duck hunters don't stay home derrick reynolds a man who was first introduced to me and tim when he was a teenager he wanted to duck hunt and needed someone to take him and we did and derrick became a member of our family he now has a beautiful family of his own and he became a staple at our guide service when he was a kid and if we ever had an official mascot, it would have been him. What's that got to do with cold fronts? Well, I'll tell you.

Derek sent me and Tim a pitcher this morning. It was 10 degrees, and Derek and a friend of his were posing with two limits of ducks. There was some open, flowing water in the background. The pitcher made me shiver just looking at it, an aluminum boat with frozen mud, dirty snow, and covered with ice. The amount of clothes those boys were wearing reminded me of Randy in the movie of Christmas story. My response to this text was, heck yeah. But in parentheses, I wrote, I'm glad I wasn't there. But that was a lie.

I would have been there. I've been stoked for the past three days to get out and see what's shaking in the woods, and I'm not sure if it's habit and learned behavior or genetically ingrained in me to be outside when it's cold, but that's where I want to be. Maybe cold fronts affect me just like they do other creatures. Now, I don't have any scientific data to back that up, but I bet there's something to it. I do know that Coon stay in the den for the most part where I live when it's this cold,

so cutting whaling loose would be more like an exercise and futility if I wanted to tree a Coon outside of his den. And with my duck holes frozen up and deer not moving much, I've had to lay up in the house and wait out the cold tips just like an old boar coon, getting more anxious every day. Then when I thought staring out the window at iced over roads and snow was going to be my new hobby,

a road grader and a salt truck passed by my house. Then Michael Roseman called and said, Get your stuff together. I've got some beagles and we're going rabbit hunting. Man, oh man, how I love a cold front in this country life of mine. Thank you all so much for listening. Chuck a big log in that fireplace that'll still be burning when you get back home.

Bundle up and get yourself outside. Take someone with you and enjoy the gifts of winter. We don't know how many of these we're going to get, and we need to take advantage and revel in the ones we do. 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.