Bear Grease - Ep. 182: The Donnie Baker Story - Dark Decade (Part 2)

Episode Date: January 24, 2024

On The Donnie Baker Story (Part 1), we heard from Donnie Baker about the 2009 illegal killing of a 204-inch buck on the Fort Leonard Wood military base in Missouri. Now, we’ll learn about his punishment. You’ll be surprised by the severity of it. What’s most surprising, however, is the dark decade that followed in Donnie’s personal life. From car crashes, to world class rabbit beagles, to cancer, this story is shocking and tragic. We really doubt you’re going to want to miss this one. Connect with Clay and MeatEater Clay on Instagram MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube Shop Bear Grease MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. First Lights fieldware collection is made for the work that happens long before opening day and continues when the season ends. Products built for early mornings, full days 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 field. Worldware gear at firstlight.com. And she said, have you ever got a second opinion? And I said, no, I've considered it. At that time, I was trying to get him cut it off. I could get it around you and cut it off.

Cut your leg off? Yeah, it was blue. It wasn't getting circulation. It had staff in it. And nobody knew it. And the hardware had the bone locked the wrong direction. My foot was pointed straight to the right. In part one of the Donnie Baker story,

we heard the firsthand account of the poaching of a 240, inch drop-tine Missouri White Tail on the Fort Leonardwood Military Base in central Missouri. In part two, we'll hear the rest of the story about the spring of the coiled jaws of justice that fines and punishment. I have no doubt that the severity of it will surprise you, but after that, we'll expand our vision to a larger story of the decade following the event. 2009 to 2019 were a downward cascade rife with tragedy for Donnie and his family

unrelated to wildlife crime and punishment every headline that involves the human life is easily minimized into a sound bite or a myopic label absent of context and don't worry this isn't a justification of an egregious crime but a zoom out to a bigger story

Honestly, if this podcast was just about hunting or history, we'd have stopped at episode one when Donnie confessed to the crime. End of story. But as I talked with him and saw his openness regarding his failure, a larger question arose. Why was he so willing to share his story? That was a big question that I had. And I would be surprised at his answer. And I think you will too. I hope this story helps solidify in our hunting culture a deeper respect for wildlife, wild places, and the law.

I have zero tolerance for deliberate law-breaking. But this story really isn't about that. It's about the human life behind every headline. And I really doubt that you're going to want to miss this one. We get my truck on 63 coming from Vichy driving down the road. Angela hasn't said a word. We get almost the Vienna. And she just looks over at me and says, I'll give my wedding dress money and marry you on the ball field and Dixon if you'll go back and get that dog.

My name is Clay Newcomb and this is the Bear Grease podcast where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant. Search for insight in unlikely places and where we'll tell the story of Americans who live their lives close to the land. Presented by FHF Gear, American-made, purpose-built, hunting and food. fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the places we explore. On the last episode of Bear Grease. Through the rest of the summer, seen him, I think six times always in the same place. With that deer done, it lived in a little block of brush behind a dining facility. I'd never seen it in a legal hunting area.

The first time I seen him, I was 100% sure he was 200-inch deer, which I'd never seen a wild deer with 200-inch. And still, at that time, wanted to kill this deer right. October 4th of 09, and as I'm driving down Army Street, I looked to my left and he's standing right where I've seen him two or three times. And I thought, good, grief. So I pulled down to those porta-potties, and I thought, I could kill it deer right there. So I draw my bow back, and he's still just standing there. I mean, he's looking right at me.

I know that if I can fall it into his front end, high success rate of killing him. And I put that pin right underneath his nose, just right about the top of his white patch. turn it loose. And like I said, it was kind of, I don't know if you ever, when you was a kid shot at a bird on a tree, sitting in a tree or something, just kind of, and then when you do kill it, you think, oh, man, that's kind of what I went through there. And immediately, I thought there's no way that I'm going to get away with this. Good evening. The crime was shocking. The verdict dramatic. The trial of O.J. Simpson is over. He is not guilty. Correspondent Bill Whitaker begins our coverage of the day's events.

Mr. Simpson, would you please stand and face the jury? In the matter of the people of the state of California versus Ornthal James Simpson, case number B.A.097211. We the jury in the above entitled action find the defendant, Ornthal James Simpson, not guilty of the crime of murder in violation of penal code section 187A, a felony upon Nicole Brown's... As a society, we're very interested in the juncture of where crime and punishment meet, were interested in the delivery of justice, whether extreme or lenient were all ears. The O.J. Simpson verdict in 1995 was one of the most watched television clips in American history.

And at the end of episode one of the Donnie Baker story, Donnie was in a room on Fort Leonardwood, surrounded by multiple game wardens, a polygraph man, and an expert on determining the time of death, who was brought. in to analyze a photo of the dead buck that was posted online. In a way, this was the jury who met to deliver Donnie his sentence if he was willing to settle outside of court. We ended episode one with Donnie confessing to killing the buck in a contonement area, not open to hunting, then sneaking the buck off the base in Mary's County and falsifying that he'd killed the buck in Pulaski County. We're going to go slightly backward to just before.

the confession. Let's jump right in with Donnie and very quickly we'll hear what the punishment was. Brace yourself. Right out of the gate, Aaron said, I don't believe you killed that deer anywhere, but right here. You know, it's straightforward, which I respect him to be that kind of person. And Casey just just kept trying, Donnie, you're caught, we got pictures of it on Fort Learwood. They knew exactly how many miles it was from where that deer picture was to where I had claimed to have killed that deer. I mean, they had enough evidence. There was no way the deer could have traveled that far. No, it had to swim in the Gascad River and miles.

Two, different county. And I thought, I have to stick. If somebody had been with me or seen me, if a car would have pulled in there and seen me loading or something, I knew I'd have been, but I don't think anybody's seen anything other than the blood on that tailgate. And it hadn't come up, so I knew that that was, or figured that that was in. So they write the ticket out. They told me they was going to confiscate the deer, and I would have to plead it in court. well, going through the gates of Fort Lern with federal insulation, when you're in question, you're more guilty than tell you're proven innocent.

It's a privilege to work and hunt out there. It's not, you know, they don't owe you. So they said, here's the deal. We know you killed that deer here, and we can tell you're going to fight. What our ticket will be is $114, falsifying telecheck ticket. That means that you didn't do anything wrong other than checking it into the wrong county, which means that we'll confiscate that deer. Donnie, you can go to work tomorrow.

you can go hunting out here tomorrow. But we know that deer is illegal, and this is the ticket that we're going to give you, and that'll be the end of it. We don't want to fight this forever. I said, so if I plead guilty of this, it's $114. You're taking the deer, and they said, yeah. And I said, I can hunt and fish Fort Leonard Woodrow. Yes.

And I said, I did, and I told them the whole story. The antlers I'd put in my uncle's house, I'd had some people tell me that they'll steal them and everything, and people find out where they're at. So knowing that I was going to be out of town, It's late at night. It's 10.30 before I finally got out there. And they said, all right, go get those antlers. And I said, those are in, my uncle be in bed. They're in his basement. And I hadn't, he didn't know the real story either. I said, I'm not going to do anything. They said, listen, if you break those antlers or do something with them, we're going to charge you again for whatever. And Casey said, what time do you want to meet? We set up a date in the early afternoon. He said, that's fine. And he told the other agents.

He said, if he said he's going to do that, don't worry about it. And Casey showed up. And then he just he took the antlers and I felt like it was a relief other than having to tell all the people in the area that I'd like to Of course news had already traveled in that day almost as fast as the deer And of course the stories were just out of control They told that I'd spotlighted it off the roof of the hospital with a rifle and it was it was insane Stuff that was told but behind the scenes somebody took a picture that deer and put it on the internet and it was called Mary's County Monster because that's the county that I checked it in It was actually killed in Plasky County, Fort Irma. And that page had gained a lot of traction,

especially since one of the agents put that they'd recovered the deer or what have you. They didn't bash me on there. But everybody else in the world did. You know, there was stuff on there saying that I was a prior convicted felon. People claimed to seem to me have done stuff that I never done, which was a lot of noise around the agents in Fort Leonard Wood. So a week or so went by. I went in one morning when I opened up my email,

the lead officer at Fort Leonardwood, Bill Forrest, had emailed me the night before and said, hey, when you get in, email me or call me at this number. Remember Donnie worked on Fort Leonard Wood as the archery pro at the Fort-owned Bow Shop, so he had to go on to the base every day. So I called him, and so he'd come out there, and I don't want to misspeak of where the paperwork come from, but I'd paid the $114 fine, which is the finalization, I guess, of admitting to guilt. And as soon as I'd done that, the MPs had barred me in Fort Leonardwood for life. And my hunting privileges were revoked.

And I said, well, Bill, you said that I, and he said, well, this hasn't anything to do with the conservation. This is the MPs. So I had through Christmas, my job through Christmas. And it's right out November now. And truthfully, me being a civilian, they didn't want to see me. They didn't care about it deer. You know, if I done something bad enough to get in that much trouble over deer, and good luck pretty well.

I talked to multiple people, tried to talk to state representatives, and I wasn't trying to get my hunting privileges back at all. I just wanted to keep the job. He was a phenomenal job. I didn't realize that until I realized it was going to be taken away. So I was contacted by somebody in the military and said, you can't lose your job over this because you weren't at work, and it didn't put another person's life in danger.

So I tried to go that direction, and they said, well, no, you don't have to lose your job. But when the MPs barred you from Fort Leonard would, you can't come to work, then you do. It's pretty easy to see what happened here as multiple agencies overlapped in jurisdiction. A person could be torn because it sounds like he was misled to get the confession, but you can't justify a feeling bad for someone being misled

when they themselves were the ones who started the line. He fought the law and the law won. But it's just interesting to see how it all went down. But what we haven't talked about yet is the giant white mastodon in the room. Mastodons are even more glaring than elephants. And that's the $114 fine. I'm hearing this story for the first time as I'm sitting across from Donnie in his home. I figured he was going to tell me they fined him 20 grand, took away his truck, and put him in jail for 30 days.

I had to ask Donnie what he thought about the fine. The punishment that you got being a $114 ticket, that's what the world would see. They wouldn't see that you lost your job and affected your life and all this stuff down the road. They would see you killed this 200-inch deer and got a $114 ticket and would say that was like massively unjust. I would agree. Why did you get off so easy in terms of actual fines and jail and all that? I think I got off that easy. I'm sure that if I'd shot it with a gun in Boe season or.

spotlight it and shot it or anything like that it would have been completely different. So you think the fact that you killed it with a bow during an open season in the state, like there was some factors that made it? I think that made a huge difference. If you heard of a guy killing a 200-inch deer like that, would you want them to get a bigger punishment? Other than a $114 ticket? If it was somewhere I was hunting, I'd be frustrated as heck. Yeah.

No doubt. I mean, you couldn't say, yeah. If I was hunting a world-class deer and somebody shot it illegally, I would be fit to be tight. And then if they got a $114 ticket and that was it, I really would be mad. This took place 14 years ago, and I'm convinced in modern times the punishment would have been much more severe. In most states today, there is a poacher's trophy fee where larger animals bring higher fines, often charged by the inch of antler. I had someone in law enforcement contact me, completely unconnected from Donnie's case, just a listener, speculating that they really didn't have that much hard evidence against

Donnie and wanted to make it easy for him to confess because they might have a difficult time convicting him in court. Hard evidence could be video of a bloody tailgate as Donnie left the base that night or an eyewitness who saw him load the deer in his trunk. truck. To my knowledge, the only evidence they had was the picture of the buck on Fort Leonard Wood, but I'm completely speculating. I don't know what evidence they had. And for transparency sake, I'll let you know that I did contact the Missouri Department of Conservation, hoping to talk with the officers who worked the case, but it just wasn't possible, which I completely respect. I was graciously contacted by a high-level official in the department who answered

multiple questions for me, and I was very grateful for that. I've always been impressed by the Missouri Department of Conservation. The trend of the hunting world is moving away from culturally glamorizing wildlife violators. I'm not talking about hunting media glamorizing them. That would be rare. I'm talking about behind closed doors, around campfires, and in family circles. I am exposed to a lot of the hunting community in a ton of different places. And I'm amazed in 2024 what my ears here and how lax people can be towards adherence to the law and how they handle it even in conversations. And those are the things that build culture. And I hope that in no way the work that I'm doing here could be portrayed as such. And I think it would be a stretch to say it was. I'm telling

this story because we can learn a lot from it. I'm interested in human stories that overlap wild places. Some are positive, some are negative. I'm interested too in the hunting community banding together to preserve wildlife, wild places, and our right to hunt, and this demands strict adherence to the law. I'm also for stricter punishment for wildlife violators, especially repeat offenders. But let's get back into our story. Here's more from Donnie on the aftermath of the confession. And remember, we're getting to the question of why was Donnie willing to talk to me? And for people, everything you could imagine,

I had people coming in to work at that time telling me how no good I was, and they hoped that I'd never get back. And then other guys come in and say, man, anybody shot that deer. So it was all over the place, but I'm still watching this page. And that wasn't a good thing for me to do.

It started getting me depressed already, and I mean, I hadn't even lost my job quite yet, but there was a lot of hate out there. I mean, people can really, really say some mean stuff. sure you being what you are. It's amazing what people will say. What did you learn from this? Well, it's, I'll always say, and I said before and I'll say after, I really believe that

that hunters are the most greedy group of people there is. If it's a goblin turkey or a good buck or just even a good loaded white oak acorn tree, I learned not to claim. You know, those deer, those aren't ours. and just to do it. What I learned was, and what if I didn't kill that deer like that? What if November 1st, that buck run a doe-bime, I mean, I killed it right, you know, or anybody else.

You know, what if a 13-year-old kid killed that deer with the boat? You know, that'd been pretty amazing. Or if nobody killed it, what if that buck bred 15 dough in his life? You know, good high-quality dough and what would be there now? And it was a black guy that I still carry today. I mean, you can talk to three people. people on Fort Leonardwood right now and somebody tell you some type of story about that deer. You know, the issue is, the main issue, is I knew better.

But not only did I know better, I explained to people that come on Fort Leonardwood where you can and can't hunt. I knew, and almost still do today, some of that stuff changed, but I knew to the foot of where you were allowed to hunt. There was no excuse about any of that. I knew for a fact that that deer not only couldn't be killed there, he was going to have to be a quarter of a mile from there before you could hunt him right. something about just actually knowing he was a 200-inch deer and just thinking for some reason

that that was going to be my right of passage to be the guy known as a as a good hunter. So, I mean, I guess that would just be ego. Is that right? It happened. I mean, that's, to be the only thing going to me. Yeah, had to be me thinking about me. And not that I was not wanting anybody yet. Well, I guess I was. I was worried death. Somebody else was going to kill that deer. Yeah. And that was a rough way to learn something like that. But, I'm one of the least jealous people about deer that I know. Today. Yes, today.

At that time, I didn't realize how jealous I was about that until it hit me in the face, you know. Let's just take a minute and let all that settle in. Donnie paid the fine, lost his job, and his reputation was tarnished by the crime. Donnie's saying that hunters are the most jealous people on planet Earth hurts me down deep in the gizzard. I view the hunting community through rose-colored glasses sometimes. Not all are jealous, the people can be. It's our job in modern times to change that in our culture. In the last episode, we explored what as a society that we expect

or demand of people who mess up. And in short, we learned that a sincere apology rife with remorse and compelling evidence that the person wouldn't do it again goes a long way. justifying actions, blame shifting, or lack of humility are sniffed out quickly like an unseen but potent pheromone. I have another question for Donnie. So you're familiar enough with the hunting community. We've all heard, you've heard stories of guys killing an animal illegally. Yeah. What's the first thing you think when you hear about a guy killing the deer. And I mean, this goes without saying. I mean, what you did was more than just

like, it wasn't like you messed up and did something on accident. Like, this was an egregious thing you made a choice to do. It was blatant. I mean, there was no question. So when you hear a story of such and such a guy killing the deer illegally, what do you think? I probably look at it a little different than a lot of people. I'm the last one to bash them, I would think. There's There's always two sides to something. And like the buck that I killed, if I wanted to poach it, I could have killed it many times before that. I'd have been way better off to have went full out illegal

and staged a place, prepared myself to kill it illegal, instead of it just happening. But I still despise somebody killing 15 turkeys in a season. I'm not going to lie. It makes me mad. Or everybody in their household getting a buck tag and them feeling one guy feeling his whole family's deer tags. I'm still hard.

core against that and always have been. And I'll be vocal about being against killing a bunch of deer, and I got kids that like to hunt and nieces and nephews. And I'm against that 100%. But sometimes when you see where somebody's got a deer removed and they find out that they shot it in National Force with a rifle out the window, most people would say, well, that, no good, whatever. The first thing I think of was, was he planning?

Did he go out there with intent on driving and killing that deer? or did it walk across the road and he'd hunted six days and hadn't seen anything and jumped and shot it. Do you think that makes a difference? From what I went, you mean it being illegal? Well, I think. No, because you're, I see exactly what you're saying is that intent is important. Or it's not important. Like if you break the law, you break the law, but intent shows motivation.

And what I'm hearing you say is that you didn't really have intent to kill this deer, just an opportunity happened and somehow you cross that line real quick. Yeah. Knowingly, though. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I always look at it thinking that he or she go out there

with 100% intent of spotlighting that deer. I feel like that's worse. As far as the law is concerned, it isn't. Illegal is illegal. Sometimes we can get excited. Man, it's something we all love. That's why you're here. We're passionate about hunting in the outdoors.

and sometimes our passion makes us do some stupid stuff. Donnie isn't using legal terminology, but he's right. Intent does matter in the law and sentencing. In the research data, intent is correlated with recidivism, meaning a person who commits a premeditated crime is more likely to do it again as compared to someone who acted on impulse.

That doesn't give someone a license or justification to be weak and vulnerable to temptation. You may be able to cheat the law, but you can't cheat the system. Things are in the right way, beget the intangible things that comprise our character. I think there's incredible honor in doing the right thing when nobody's watching. Incredible honor. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps Game Calls and building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called prime cuts. Now, I'm going to tell you, I love mine because it's easy to use.

I'm not going to go, I'm not going to win a turkey calling contest. It's just not going to happen. But when I run this call, I get the sounds that gobblers are looking for. I have a great turkey hunting track record. If you go listen to real turkeys out in the woods, they're not going to win calling contests, right? That's who I listen to. I can make those sounds on my cut. I also hunt with Phelps's cut, and I hunt with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts.

Check out Prime Cuts at Phelps Game Calls.com. I think you'll be glad you did, and you'll find out that the Steve Ronella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. Now we're going to transition out of crime and punishment, and I'm going to ask the question. I've been wanting, answered this whole time. Why are you so open to telling the story to the world? Well, a few things. That put a, I skipped a lot. That was pretty financially hard on my family.

I had a lot of family step in. And then I've been through way worse than that deer. I thought that was as bad as it could get. That deer having this world-class deer taken away. Just thought that I was as down as a person can get. Right. I lost that job. I was known as an outlaw.

Still am a little bit today. I was surprised by his answer of why he was willing to talk. He'd been through way worse, he said. But I didn't really understand what he meant by that. Life is calibrated by perspective, and perspective comes from our past. What we've lived through helps us respond to difficulty. The rest of his story isn't connected to him killing the deer.

at least in any rational or natural pathway. But in Donnie's first correspondence with me, he told me his life began to unravel after he killed the buck. But strangely, it seemed that he viewed the unraveling as connected. In a person's life, it's hard to separate out isolated incidents. Events and time congeal into a glob forming a singular journey, a coherent, unparsable, connected scene with incidents, linked by cause and effect.

If you do this, then this will happen. We feel safe by having a philosophy that garners guaranteed and predictable flow of events if certain rules are followed. However, the older I've gotten, I've learned that this isn't always true. Life often throws wild cards that are not earned by merit. When my wife and I got married,

we jokingly said the mission of, our marriage was to answer the question of why do bad things happen to good people. It was a joke, but it revealed a deep-held philosophical position of many Americans, and probably people across the world. Good things happen to good people, and bad things happen to bad people. It's complex because some things in life do elicit immediate recompense of good or bad fruit that seems just, but other times life seems unfair, either in the direction of the prosperity of the wicked or the punishment of the righteous. It's one of the great mysteries of life. These things are on my mind as I hear the rest of Donnie's story. On December 29th, 2009, just two months

after his confession, something terrible happened. Here's Donnie. 29th of December, a cousin of mine, Luke Fritchie and my wife, she was, she was just my fiancé at the time, went rabbit hunting up towards Tipton up and there. We hunted the morning, was on our way back, and a guy I know that owns an excavator company called and said, hey, are you looking for work? And I said, I definitely am right now. I don't know if I'll get back out there,

but I need to do something like starting Monday. So I put the dogs up and dropped my wife and my cousin Lucas off. I headed towards that guy's place, which was in Hayden, Missouri, and I hit a slick spot right past the M.m. Highway on 2,000. 28. Wasn't running very fast. We're driving an old Jeep and lost it. Well, it run off in the gravel. And about the time I got it straightened up, I hit an oak tree head on. I probably running 45 mile an hour and I didn't slow down any. And when I hit that tree, just the ringing in the car and the steam rolling, I thought, good grief.

At first, zero pain. And I still had my overalls and hunting boots and stuff on. And it was the actual hood light from the hood being smashed in had come on. and the steam rolling from the radiator, and I thought that thing was catching on fire. He looked like flames. So I started to get out of it. When I stepped out on the ground, I just fell in the snow. And I had a cordial fracture in my femur or butterfly broke,

a big chunk of it in the middle come out. And it was way off to the side of me in those overalls. And I grabbed that leg and slit it back over straight. I didn't feel the pain at all. Ambulance gets there. And the first thing they did was go to cut these new overalls off of me. And I said, don't cut them overalls. So I fought with them for a while.

When they went to try to take them off, I said, no, go ahead and cut them. So they trimmed all my overalls and my boots and stuff off of me. They rushed me to Rala. I lost nine units of that, I guess that bone had cut a major artery in there. I passed out multiple times going to the hospital. They tied something on the end of my foot to keep that bone from moving, cutting around there. So it was almost like a kettlebell tied on the end of your toes.

That was the most pain I've ever felt my life. Go around a corner of that thing had swing to one side, then the other. And I mean, I'd wake back up. I was passing out. So when we get there, it was emergency surgery. And they go in and I guess it was more dangerous than I realize I was just thinking it was a broke leg. Anyway, they set that bone back and it didn't set right. That started a whole new battle.

It took 13 surgeries to get that thing back right with tearing ACL, redoing the meniscus, and all my tendons in my even busted a time or two. How long is this after you were convicted of? killing this deer. Right at the first of November is when I was... So this is just weeks after you killed this deer, you had this terrible car wreck. Yeah. So I'm getting pretty down and out by now. And here I am in a wheelchair now. Can't walk. Every time I get a minute alone, I open up that stupid web page and read about how terrible person I am. And it got me in a dark spot. It did. I had good family around me.

You know, most of them forgave me. Coming in, checking on me and what have you. But it was mentally a very, very tough time. One guy wrote on there that when they put the, I'd been an act, I mean, they were putting my life on this, on this webpage of Mary's County Monster. One guy on there said he gets everything he deserves. And, you know, and those guys, some of them, some of them I knew who they were, but some of them didn't know me. They're just, just aggravated out me for killing this deer that they probably had a chance of killing. They were watching, you know. That deer got a lot of traction. You know, if it had been 110 inch eight point, well, I wouldn't have done that. But it wouldn't have got that traction.

Everybody in the state was talking about that deer and other states. One of my nurses in Columbia knew who I was. So that her kid had a picture of me and that deer. And then she didn't know the rest of the story. I told her. I had family bring, we had only wood heat in that house. I had multiple family members bringing loads of wood. You know, I couldn't cut or anything.

My dad was trying to work in his old shop. It was coldest winter we'd had in a long time. And it was just getting me down. I mean, it really was. And about six months in, I got Mars to infection in that bone and all kinds of issues. And that doctor told me, he said,

probably never walk again without an aid. And I was like, this is a broken leg. People break their legs every day, huh? And it was actually set wrong. And just by coincidence, August 7th, we had a softball tournament and a guy I went to school with, wife comes walking up to me.

I didn't know her. Her name's Kelly Alexander. And she said, how long have you been fighting that leg? And I've been over a year. And she said, have you ever got a second opinion? And I said,

no, I've considered it. At that time, I was trying to get him cut it off. I could get it around you, cut it off. Take your leg off? Yeah, it was blue.

It wasn't getting circulation. It had staff in it. And nobody knew it. And the hardware had the bone locked the wrong direction. My foot was pointed straight to the right. And she said, I work for a doctor

in Columbia Orthopedics. And she said, I would love if you'd come have him look at that leg. Like the following Monday, she had me appointment. Very hard doctor to get into, and I mean, he's super intelligent guy. And I brought my paperwork with me. I was leaned up against crutches,

standing there because it hurt bad to sit down and ride anywhere. I'll never forget. They done a few x-rays and went out, and he came back in. He said, sit down. I said, oh, I feel better. He said, no, I need you to sit down.

That bone's not even touching. And he said, we're going to have surgery this afternoon. and he started redoing the leg. I mean, I play a little ball now. I can hunt as hard as I want to. He fixed you. He did. Yeah, just blessing of, you know, this girl I didn't even really know.

Kelly Alexander just said, I know where a good doctor is, you know. And I'm not blaming the first doctor. I think I was bleeding out when they put it together. I'm sure it was a chaotic spot. Yeah. Just how it goes. But then when I got back on my feet, that started the, I have to go start a ball. people. And that was almost as hard as lying to him, knowing that you've done wrong and

having to face them, you know. It's hard to imagine in middle America in modern times that fixing a broken leg could go so wrong. Did you hear him say that he was trying to get them to cut his leg off? A dark cloud seemed to descend over Donnie's life. He became depressed. Times were hard. It's wild that the boldness and concern of a stranger at a boldness, game would change Donnie's life as this lady helped him get an appointment with the doctor that fixed him the very afternoon of the appointment. But this was just the beginning. This next section will introduce us to a name we've heard a few times, Angela, who was at the time Donnie's fiance. This next story does a great job of painting a picture of their relationship. But don't forget

that dark cloud. While I was crippled up, we've raised field trout beagles for a long time, UKC beagles. And we've had a couple good ones. My wife and I were playing on getting married in August. And she'd saved up money for a dress. And I mean, rubbing pennies, raising two boys, it was tough. And she'd save money for a year for a dress. And we had pretty well everything picked up.

Of course, I wasn't helping at all. I'm sitting in a chair with my leg all wrapped up. I'm 130 pound. I was 210-pound pretty big guy when I had this accident. She had to carry me to the bathtub and back out. I mean, it was just like taking care of a feeble old man. And Angela and my dad were still running kind of in the points series of these UKC hunts. We were going, and I would show a dog once in a while,

but me and the boys would stay in the clubhouse and hang out. We were at a hunt down south, and Angela come walking in. And she said, did you see this dog tied up out here? And I said, no, what? And she said, come look at this dog. So I'd get up and cripple out there. It was the prettiest beagle I've ever seen. Big old bold, muscled up.

I mean, had more muscle than any beagle I ever seen in a lot. She said, I want that dog. I said, we can't afford that dog. There's no telling it. So when he gets in, she makes him go out there and show her the dog. My wife was crazy over beagles. Some people, I've heard more than one person say when I die, I wanted to come back as one of Angela Becker's beagles.

I mean, you know, they got dessert and everything. So she told him we were interested in getting that dog And I had an idea what that dog would cost And we couldn't afford it, no way A month or so goes by And he calls me at my house He goes, hey, I'm thinking about selling that dog So we went over there Sunday evening

He had a little side to side he got me in We went out and I brought a couple dogs with me And he cut him out And there was nothing the dog done that was wrong It had a huge mouth It sounded like a person screaming what When he ran Which is kind of something you want to be able to strike your dog

If it's a good dog, you want it to be distinct from the other ones so other people can't strike their dog on yours. We ran for a couple hours, and we get back and load everything up, getting ready to leave. And he priced the dog, and I thought, good grief. So we get my truck on 63 coming from Vichy, driving on the road, and Angela hasn't said a word. So we get almost to Vienna, and she just looks over at me and says, I'll give my wedding dress money and marry you on the ball field in Dixon if you'll go back and get that dog. I about turned that truck over, turned around 63. Went back and bought the dog.

And he was a huge blessing, just that himself. So she won nationals a couple times with him, multiple state hunts and shows. We just lost him last year. He was 15 years old. That dog brought us really close. We were young. You know, had a couple boys. Everything was fine.

We loved to hunt and fish. But that dog gives us something to do big time together. So after him, we ended up purchasing another. other pup that turned out to be amazing and at one time we had the top two dogs in this area points and hunt wise field trial is what she loved she loves competition we played a lot of softball together she just you can field trial with the boys take them with you we ohio indian all over that was something that that was such a blessing to us so like said i thought that that really beat me down so with with the field trialing angela and i done everything together i still bow hunted a lot

done things like that, but we ran dogs two or three days a week and every weekend for a few years. And then in May, May of 2011, we were building this running pin up here and my dad got to having pain and he had massive heart attack. Right above the whittlmaker, his heart still works today just over 30%. So already that deer, the issues of that deer didn't mean as much. But at the end of 2015, Ansel started having issues with her stomach and not feeling good, losing weight. And in March of 16, she was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. But honestly, I mean, it was scary. If you knew her, you'd understand.

She was in the middle of CrossFit. They were trying to get her to compete at the time. Strong. Not female, strong. Strong is anybody her size. Tough as she could be. I mean, she packed water buckets with me. I mean, we were just like two buddies, really.

That's what made us close. She could be, and she was a beautiful person, but she could wear car heart jeans and stomp brush piles just like anybody, which is probably what attracted me her most. She played on my men's softball team. But in 2016, 2016, they gave her 18 months to live with treatment, 12 to 18 months. And honestly, it was scary, but it just,

She just one of them, I thought, man, if he mightn't be to be her. And she took, yeah, she took 20 chemo treatments and 48 radiation treatments. Angela's stage four cancer came as a complete surprise. The dark cloud had materialized overhead again. Only in her late 20s, she was a beautiful lady, the picture of health and fitness. It's hard to imagine the shock of such a diagnosis. After she received the maximum amount of radiation and chemotherapy treatments, the doctors sent her home saying there was nothing more they could do

and gave her 12 to 18 months to live. At this point, Donnie and Angela began to research non-traditional methods of cancer treatment. I struggled from an editorial perspective whether to include this as it's just really personal. But in the end, it's Donnie and his family's story. That's part of their journey through this dark decade from 2009 to 2019. And Donnie included this in his story. So I did in this one too. So she found a show called Cancer Can Be Killed,

and it was about natural, you know, and not, it was actually explained not to blame the doctors. That's Western medicine how they're taught. But the United States goes round because of cancer, all the way to our newspapers and everything. triple down money from cancer street and so we went to Florida she went to Florida for six weeks we didn't tell her doctor because he said if you go don't don't come back here because by the time you get back it'll be out of control and he's

good dude I'm not I'm not saying but he really believed it would be and we went to she went to Florida for six weeks my sister set up it itinerary for every like five days she would have some family member fly down there to hang out with her for four days and come back, flew the boys of myself down there. And I could tell when I got there, Clay. It was like on week four, I believe we hadn't seen her for a month. Of course, the boys were excited to see her mom. She had just settled into this place, like she'd lived there a whole life, knew all the side streets, and we went to the beach. But she was laughing, running, playing with kids. I could tell something was different. And when we got back, when she got back after six

weeks of that she was cancer-free. I mean, well, I take that we didn't tell him. They went in to do her bi-monthly CAT scan, and the last time she had outspots all in her bone and everything. It didn't spread. And of course, she lived a long time after they said that she would. And when they got done with the CAT scan, they come in, they said, well, something's not right, right, we have to do that again. And she said, how come? He said, it didn't show anything. So they took her back in, cat-scanned her again. and when they come back out, he said, whatever you're doing, continue on it. And she was cancer-free.

It was a very strict diet. She could eat like three things, zero sugar ever again. And it was hard to do. You know, I mean, couldn't eat anything on the road. I had to pack your meals for everything. And it was almost unfeasible. It was. And then heat tank every day.

You got to get your body core up to, I think, over 103 degrees. Cancer can't live. It's so high. And it was just, and she stayed on track with that for a long time. Angela would stay cancer-free for just under one year. And during that time, she had no chemo or radiation and was already alive past the original projected time the doctors told her she'd live.

But the remission didn't last. And then August of 19 it came back. and that time it came back with a vengeance. And I could tell when it come back it was a different thing. And it was stage four both times, but when it came back, you could see it zap the power out of her. And she fought it a long time. But, you know, we had these two boys and my dad, my sister, mom, everybody,

done what they could. But our little town, like a lot of little towns, has drug problems. And it has issues like all towns do, I'm sure. But Clay, this community was unbelievable. How they come together for us. When it came back second time, I was still trying to work. The boys were multiple sports. My sister stayed with us quite a bit through the night so I could try to sleep at night.

I don't know where she was sleeping that ever, but day after day for months, longer than that, for over a year, we had dinner delivered here from just somebody else. I mean, just our community, and my family's amazing. And going through that and watching how much, watching how. how it affected myself, my dad and sister, and my boys especially, that deer kind of started taking a back burner on me feeling pity for myself. It just, what I thought, when I thought I was down and out and everything was gloomy, it was over a deer. But watching her fight for her life like that made me realize it was just a deer. But that's why I'm open about it, Clay, to say,

in that second round of cancer, I was playing a lot of ball and stuff when I killed them. that deer and I wasn't a drug riddled alcoholic or anything but I was raised in church and I knew when I was doing right and when I was doing wrong and playing a lot of ball, drinking a lot of beer, being rowdy with kids at home, you know, and doing things that I shouldn't. My wife's faith never wavered one ounce and as the man of the house I should be the leader and I wasn't. My wife was and as she faded, I started realizing that's what I'm going to have to be. She passed the 25th of May of 2020 after a terrible fight. And the last thing she said to me was I'm ready to go home.

Yeah, it was tough, but the time I had with her, I really cherish. I can't thank you enough for listening to Bear Grease. I hope you've enjoyed and learned something from the Donnie Baker story. None of us are without fault, including Donnie, but he's one of us, an American woodsman and hunter, and a darned good one at that. Just the story we chose to tell of his overlap with the wild was one of his worst moments. After episode one, I was concerned that the world would make Donnie pay again for killing that buck, and I compensated for that by asking the listener to be sympathetic.

And after the episode, Donnie reported back to me that he'd received almost 100% positive feedback, which I was really glad to hear. But most importantly, I think now he can fully just put all this behind him. I'm grateful for compelling stories, positive and negative. And I look forward to telling many more in 2024. It means the world to Brent and I that you guys listen to our podcasts. And I really look forward to talking to everybody on the Render next week about this episode two. And hey, I want to thank you all for the support of the launch of Steve Ronella and I's audio original The Longhunners.

So far it has been a big success as it stood number one on the Apple audiobooks and reached number four on Audible, which is big for us. And hey, as another announcement on March 9th, 2024, if you want to come say hi to Brent and I, all day will be at the Black Bear Bonanza in Bentonville, Arkansas. It's an incredible event, big time, big day, Google it, and hope to see you there. Have a great week. First Lights Fieldware collection is made for the work that happens long before opening day

and continues when the season ends. Products built for early mornings, 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.com. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.