Bear Grease - Ep. 187: THIS COUNTRY LIFE - Things Lost and Found

Episode Date: February 9, 2024

Things lost and found is this week's topic, and Brent's got a couple examples that are a little different - not to mention somewhat outlandish. He's going to bring it all together toward the end though, so strap in when you sit down to listen to this one. Also, watch where you step, there are buffalo afoot. "Things Lost and Found" on MeatEater's This Country Life podcast.https://hunterswithmission.com/ Connect with Brent and MeatEater MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube Shop Bear Grease MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

Things lost and found. Recently, I made a trip to Kansas, and while I was there, I searched along with some friends of mine for an item I'd lost eight years ago. Got me to thinking about things you lose and a little bit about the things you find. I talked to Clay about it.

He said, man, you ought to do a podcast about it. Well, there's some lessons in there, and it's my job to figure out what those lessons are. I'm going to tell you what I think, but first, we're going to tell you a story. Bow hunting was popular in my part of the world long before it was the cool thing to do on TV and the internet. Heck, TV just barely existed. There weren't any bohunting shows to amount to anything at that time that this story took place.

An occasional mention of archery hunting on the American Sportsman TV show was all you'd see outside of magazine articles and outdoor life or field and stream. But there was a core community of bow hunters that, everyone knew about as being pretty good hunters. There was a lot of timber company land where I grew up before leasing started. You could legally hunt anywhere you wanted. There were established clubs with historic boundary lines between deer camps, but there was no legal recourse if they caught you hunting on their claim land. You weren't trespassing.

You were just violating the gentleman's agreement. So just like turkey hunters play their cards close to their vest, the bow hunters didn't talk about where they hunted and what they were seeing. You'd only know if they'd been successful if they took their buck down to the local paper and warned and had Mr. Bob Newton take their picture to be published in the Eagle Democrat that came out every Wednesday. And only a small percentage of them did that. They were secretive and rightfully so.

It was during this time that the following conversation took place at my brother Tim's house. He lived right down the road from us, and a couple of his hunting buddies were meeting him there early one morning to go hunting themselves, and they walked into his house with their eyes wide from excitement and said, you ain't going to believe what we just saw. And Tim said what? They said, a buffalo. Tim said, you're right. I don't believe you, but you didn't see one. They said, yes, we did. And the guy that was driving said I had to stop to keep him hitting it.

It was crossing the road right in front of us. Well, Tim, that's where they see him, and then they told him. Just down the road, Tim said, y'all are crazy, and they swore they weren't telling the lie. Now, seeing a buffalo ain't that big of a deal, really. Over three million people, that's the entire population of Arkansas. The same number visit Yellowstone National Park every year, and I'm sure a large portion of them, if not nearly all of them, can lay claim to seeing alive on the hoof buffalo. Now, that number and percentage gets smaller and smaller the further south you go.

Oklahoma sports are good numbers, and I used to run and formation past several during basic training many moons ago at Fort Seale. But after you cross Arkansas River heading southeast, where this story takes place, you'd be more likely to see a mountain lion than a buffalo. Now, I've seen two of those down here, remember, with witnesses. But we're not talking about mountain lines. we're supposed to be talking about things lost and found, and I promise we are. I just have to set the stage for bringing it all together. We're almost there. There was another member of our community out in the country who was known far and wide as being frugal.

We're going to call him Frank. Now, Frank wasn't his real name, but for the sake of ease and keeping the character straight, that's what we're calling him. I say him Frank was frugal, somehow doesn't do it justice. As far as I know, Frank didn't burn the light in his house after it got dark for fear of running up his electric bill. I don't guess there's nothing wrong with that, but I never recall passing his house and seeing so much as a lamp burning inside. He was a good fellow, but tight as bark on the tree. Frank was tight as a fillestring.

Frank was so tight that he squeaked when he walked. Get the picture? Frank was a tight wad. Frank was also an archery hunter. I figured he bow-hunted because he could shoot the same era over and over without having to buy more. If he'd hunted with firearms, he'd had to keep buying ammo. Theoretically, a fella only needs one era and a broadhead to put meat in the freezer. But old Frank was cutting corners and saving money at every opportunity.

Over the course of the next couple of weeks, Buffalo sightings were popping up sporadically throughout the, the farmer community. Old Mr. So-and-so said he saw the buffalo over at his place. Then another report in the opposite direction would filter in that they'd got a glimpse of the mystical creature at another farm or running through the woods. All of this was in the gossip circles that filled the party line telephone system that we all shared.

Now y'all know what a party line is? Hang on to your breeches, kids, but believe it or not, but up close to the time that I went to high school where I lived, there was one telephone line for several houses, and to use the phone, you had to pick it up and see if anyone was already talking on it. The honor system kept you from listening on other folks' conversations, supposedly. Anyway, back to Frank. About the same time that the Buffalo report stopped, we started seeing Frank grilling in the backyard on a new grill he just got.

A few evenings during the week, and every day, Every weekend, there was Frank, standing in his backyard, rain or shines, grilling steaks and burgers, smiling in the smoke. You can see him flipping them sometimes when you drove past, big old steaks, the kind that were expensive even back then. Frank didn't have any cows and was notoriously cheap. It was a safe bet he wasn't buying all that meat down into Dixie Dandy. So what about the buffalo? Did they really see one? Were the reports of the buffalo sightings that Tim's hunting friends and all the other folks in the community see,

and were they legitimate? And where did this buffalo come from? The people have been claiming to see all sorts of things for years, but that doesn't make it so. But here's the skinny on the buffalo. He was real. He and a couple of his brethren had escaped through a fence weeks before they were seen in our part of the world. They were the first buffalo in that country that had ever plopped their chips down on Terra Firma since being extirpated throughout the natural state in 1837.

Now, it's worth noting that in 1929, the Arkansas Gaming Fish Commission released one buffalo near Lake Catherine in Garland County for undocumented reasons, and no other restocking program has ever been done since. Now, we're pretty sure it wasn't that one that they cut loose because this happened. to 1982. That'd make him a 53-year-old buffalo, and seeing how they don't live past 20, it's a safe bed if Frank was cooking one in his backyard,

that it wasn't that one. The Buffalo Tim's hunting partner saw was from a farm, several miles away that had gone rogue and slipped the bonds of confinement. I kind of like that. I hate that fellow lost his buffalo stock, but how cool would it have been to be sitting in a tree with your bow and error waiting on a white tail and look up to see a buffalo easing down the train.

No one ever knew for sure, but old Frank was a bow hunter and a pretty good one. And he lived right in the epicenter of all the Buffalo reports. The Buffalo sightings stopped, and then the sightings of Frank working his magic in that charcoal arena in that new grill. It started. That could all be a coincidence. Could be. But the detective in me says there was reasonable suspicion to further than an investigation if anyone had been so inclined. But no one was.

We didn't find out that someone had legitimately lost an American icon until long after the fact of seeing the animal in our midst and then seeing Frank routinely manning the grill in his backyard. The animals had been written off as a loss before Frank's probable encounter, and Frank had a heck of a tale to tell, but bow hunters were secretive back then, and no confirmation was ever made between Frank and the buffalo, except in my heart. In my heart, I know he got him, so does Tim. So, one fellow lost to Buffalo,

And one guy found a freezer full of meat. And that's probably just how that happened. On Blood Trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is over. They just get darker. I've seen something in the road. I instantly thought it was a sleeping bag. And there was a 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 backwards. 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. Things lost and found. Was Frank wrong for shooting a Buffalo?

Well, it wasn't his, and I can't say I wouldn't have it that juncture in my life. Just last week, I talked about looking at things from other folks' viewpoint. and if I had been Bob, a well-known skin flint, famous for saving Nichols, yep, I'd have drilled that buffalo just as sure as I'm sitting here and add every piece of him. But it wouldn't have been the right thing to do, even though the circumstances were somewhat extenuating. That thing was expensive. It wasn't the ever-elusive 10-millimeter socket that you never seem to be able to lay your hands on when you need one. Find one of those laying in the sand as I'm walking through the same.

the desert and I assure you I'm not putting an ad in the paper looking for the rightful owner when I get back to civilization. That rascal's going in my pocket. The question is, where do you draw the line? Supposed to draw the line at the point right before I put the 10 millimeter socket in my pocket. It ain't mine and I'm not supposed to claim it as such. Come on, man, it's the 10 millimeter. A good friend of mine was duck hunting by himself on public land in another state. He'd completed his hunt. It was now loading his boat back at the ramp that had been full of folks when he got there that morning. But when he got back, he was the only one there. Everyone else was long gone. After getting all his stuff squared away, he walked over to the edge of the

parking lot to turn the thermos of coffee loose he drank that morning. He said he was just standing there and enjoying a moment and something caught his attention. Then he realized he was looking at a browning, lightning-grade tutorial over and under, broken open and leaning against a tree. It's one of the many legacy symbols amongst duck hunters of my era, and this one was well used but well taken care of. It was immediately recognizable to him as being left there by had to be somebody's grandpa,

or maybe a grandpa's son or a grandson had done it. These types of shotguns rarely left them. family in my circle and those like mine. They were passed down as inheritance and revered as such. My friend said he looked around and he saw no one. Then he picked it up, snapped it shut, and he ran his hand along the smooth, cold steel admiring the craftsmanship, noting that the worn varnish and bluen that told him volumes about that shotgun and its people.

He told him everything he needed to know about them except who they were and where they were. He snapped it to his shoulder as if shooting a big maller Drake decoing into his spread in the timber. He said it felt good, natural, and he would have been physically ill, and he'd been the one to have forgotten it. It was late in the afternoon now, and he waited well beyond dark, missing an appointment he was supposed to be at, waiting for someone to come back, but no one ever did. He left only after pinning a note to that tree at the spot where that shotgun had been leaned up, and it read, I have it, call this number.

He took that shotgun home, he wiped it down, and he placed it in his gun cabinet, alongside several shotguns of his own that were of considerable lesser monetary value, but equally as rich in heirloom legacy. In a few days, he got a call from a frantic duck cutter who had all but given up over. He also didn't live in that state,

but he drove all the way back retracing his steps and what he guessed was a vain attempt to find his grandfather's shotgun that he mistakenly left leaning against a tree. He stood there heartbroken in tears and just happened to see the rained on note lying at the base of a tree. The numbers faded, but legend. That's a happy ending about something lost and something found. It's my favorite kind of story. A true representation of a story arc and how to craft a narrative and the best part that it ain't fiction. I lost a pocket knife in Kansas during the archery season of 2015. I knew when I lost it. I knew where I lost it. And I searched and searched, but I never found it.

It was my dad's last case mini-trapper. It was the one he was carrying when he got sick. The hospital folks gave us his belongings when he was admitted. All the things that he was toting, that case pocket knife, was one of the items. My dad would never carry it again or any other one. 42 days after he was admitted, he died. Tim gave me that knife. Being the older brother, he took the lead on the yoke of responsibility and seeing after our dad's affairs and I helped him.

I don't know why he told me to take that particular pocket knife, but he did. For a long time, I just had it sitting on my dresser. I'd pick it up and hold it in my hands and think about the last time my dad used it. Probably an open up a sack of dog food for those walkers and his. It made me smile. I left for Kansas that deer season, and as an afterthought, I stuck it in my pocket when I left the house. Feeling it in there,

made me think about him. It made me secure somehow, and then I lost it. I looked as hard as I could, but I never found it. I vowed to come back one day with a metal detector and look again, but that opportunity never came until a few months ago when I was invited to speak in an event in Independence, Kansas. Chris Alexander is a volunteer with a Hunters with Mission organization and they are a nonprofit group that supports a Christian mission orphanage in India. In reality, they're not only feeding orphans, but children that the parents can't afford to feed. Save your comments about religion, politics, and anything else. Hungry youngers are everywhere, and I'll help with that mission regardless of the zip code.

I met Chris at the Black Bear Bananza in Arkansas last March and made plans to go speak at this event. 10 months later, I found myself standing in front of 450 of the prettiest folks I've ever had the pleasure of spending the evening with, all working toward filling the plates of some hungry children. After it was announced that I'd be speaking there, I received a message from a man who invited me to bring old whaling and go coon hunting with him. We talked several times as the date got closer, and we finalized the arrangements for me to arrive a day early so we could hunt the night before the advent of the event. I got to the lodge in the afternoon with still plenty of daylight left. I told Tuffy Graham about losing that knife, and coincidentally, I thought it was pretty close to where we were. I described the property to him as best I could for a place I hadn't seen in eight years.

We looked at a parcel of ground on Anex that he thought sounded very similar to what I was describing, and then we drove to it. And that was it. I knew it immediately when I saw it. Tuffy said he knew the landowner and would call and get permission for us to look. It was also just over a quarter of a mile from his house. It probably takes the rest of the evening to hear from him, so we went back to the lodge, had supper, and we went cune hunt that night. Everything was falling into place.

The story art was being built all through organic means. There had been no artificial or purposeful manufacturing. But now I can relax and go cune hunt with my new friend. Tuffy brought his 11-year-old son, Dakota, and Travis Blynn, the preserve manager. We loaded Whalen up in the side-by-side along with the rest of us, and in short order, we were cutting Whalen and Tuffy's Dog Boone loose in a creek bottom in Kansas. We made two trees, and Dakota knocked out four turkey nest banditos to the delight of Whalen, Boone, and Travis, who's responsible for the health and balance of wildlife on the ranch.

Good job, Dakota. Those trees were lay-up coons. The heavy mist that was falling had them stirring very little, so one last drop was outstriking a very good track we called it a night. My friend David McDaniels made it up from East Texas just in time to go to bed. He missed the hunt due to working late, but was excited to photograph and document our attempt to find the pocket knife the next day. He brought his camera gear to shoot the hunter with mission banquet the next evening.

Tuffy met us the next morning after breakfast, and we struck out for the spot where I'd lost the night. We followed him over to that property next to his and parked along the muddy road that had seen a whole bunch of rain in the last 24 hours. The roads had only recently thawed from the frigid weather that had locked up half the country, and the new rain had made the hardest of roads rather spongy. We started across the road, and coming up as fast as two 11 years, old legs could go was Dakota, kicking mud up with every step and getting faster the closer he got. We waited on him while he ran straight from his house to where we were. He stopped once he got to us, drew one big breath, and was as rested as if he'd just gotten out of bed.

Oh, to be 11 years old again and not just act like. As we walked toward the spot, Tuffy said, I talked to the landowner. He said that we could look at anything we wanted to, and he didn't know where you lost the knife, but he hoped it wasn't around the corral because he had several tons of rock hauled in to build up a low spot that always stayed with. Well, that's exactly where I lost it.

Tuffy's metal detector made several hits, and we dug through 8 to 10 inches of packed down rocks that had been dumped there six years ago, only to find small scraps of metal, no pocket knife. There would be no happy ending to this story arc, not yet anyway. Now Tuffy told me that when he got a chance that he'd come over and search for him, Dakota told me that he'd help his dad. That's exactly what I would have said had my dad promised to help someone.

So maybe this story arc does have a happy ending. I came to terms a long time ago about losing that knife. I stopped beating myself up over it several years ago, although this whole ordeal has kind of picked at the scar a little bit. But a chance of meeting in Arkansas with Chris, a guy from Kansas, afforded me the opportunity to help some children that I'll never see. In doing so, I met Travis, I met Tuffy, and best of all, I met Dakota. And I met them in a place that has forever held a melancholy memory of loss. All that changed when I met these folks, all eager to help me find something that I'd lost while helping me find something better. That's new friends.

The banquet that night would add to that immeasurably. I lost a pocket knife, but I gained a whole lot more. That my dad would approve of. If you lose something dear to you, keep looking for it, and don't give up hope. No telling what you might find. Black Bear Bananza where all that started is happening again this year on March the 9th, 2024 at the Benton County Fairgrounds in Bentonville, Arkansas. I'll be there.

Claybow will be there and we'll be Al Hootin podcasting and having a ton of fun. Y'all need to get your tickets early and you can do that by hitting the old Google with Black Bear Bananza, follow the lane. Bring you young ones. I thank y'all for listening. Lots of good stuff coming from the meat eater YouTube channel from me and my Mississippi River Cub pilot Clayboat Newcomb and some this country life announcements too. Y'all just hang in there. Until next week, this is Brent Reeve, signing off.

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