Bear Grease - Ep. 192: BEAR GREASE [RENDER] - Homo Americanis & a Missouri Game Warden

Episode Date: February 28, 2024

Clay Newcomb and the crew speak with the artist and retired Missouri Game Warden, Kyle Carroll, about his career in the American wilderness. They discuss the wilderness myth, Clay’s fourth verse of the song "Ironic," pragmatism, Frederick Jackson Turner’s Frontier thesis, and the wimpification of America. Josh “Landbridge” Spielmaker, Dr. Misty Newcomb, Bear John Newcomb, and Brent Reaves join the show. 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 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 field. Worldware Gear at firstlight.com. My name is Clay Newcomb, and this is a production of the Bear Grease podcast called the Bear Grease Render, where we render down, dive deeper, and look behind the scenes of the actual Bear Grease podcast. Presented by FHF Gear, American Made, Purpose Built, Hunting and Fishing Gear that's designed to be as rugged as the places we explore. I'm a little disappointed with, I was listening to the podcast and the ad came on for the dog, the company that makes the collars.

Right, yeah. And I feel like, I feel like Jed's been loyal enough that he shouldn't get a bad rap on a commercial. Did Jed? Yeah. Did Jed? My coon dog that's not very good. Did I say that? Yes.

about poor Jed? Oh, man. God breaks my heart. He deserves an apology. Jed doesn't listen. Jed is kind of a bad boy. Yeah, all of a sudden, like somehow when I'm in my office alone, recording the podcast ads, that seemed completely fair.

Might have been late at night. He hadn't treed or something. Now it seems really wrong. Jed is getting really old. Jed has been, when I see Jed walking through my yard, who's now like fully retired, He's just a yard dog. He is reverted, Brent, to wearing out a rabbit race. Really?

Oh, he runs rabbits all the time. He loves it. But for, I've given Jed a bad rap. Jed has literally been on hundreds of coon trees, hundreds of coon tracks. And I took him three times after Fern died, and he ran backtrack three times and saw I gave up on him. I mean, it's probably not fair what I've done. So here's probably not this is what I want to know. Yeah, probably.

Jedi. I have been on literally thousands of trees, and I didn't treat one of them either. So I like Jed. Have you ever treat a rabbit? Nope. Well, thank you for bringing that up, Josh. I was just that hurts me a little bit for Jed. Yeah, you know what?

Jed helped me early back in the Bear Honey magazine days. Yeah. I remember he had a spot right up there on the desk. Jed would jump up on the desk. That was Alexis's favorite. Yeah. Everything. Yeah.

Yeah. He's quite the hound. He's a character. You know, Jed, he doesn't have the strength he used to, but he doesn't know it. And Tim is a little more athletic than Jed. We can get across a yard pretty fast. And when Jed sees it, you can see in his eyes, he's like, yeah, let's go. And then he tries to do it, and it just moves really slow.

So whenever I go on walks, the dogs always come with me. And Jed used to, we couldn't let Jed come with us because, you know, who knows where he'd go or how long he'd be gone. but he moves pretty slow. I can identify with that. I think your brain's still, you still can run with the fast dogs. He's not getting it. It's like it's slower.

You're getting smarter. Well, we've got a great crew here today. To my right, Josh Landbridge Spillmaker. I'm glad to be here. To Josh's right, Dr. Misty Newcomb. Great to have you. Good to be here. To Misty's right, Bear John Newcomb,

who has something in his hand that we're going to talk about here in a minute. Yep. Two, all right, we've got a mystery guest, skipping over the mystery guest, Brent Reeves. Hey, buddy. Great to hear you. You know, Brent, I hear almost every day that people tell me they still think you're an undercover game warden. Really? Almost daily.

Really? I'm retired, man. I'm out to pass. You know what a great play that would be, though? Yeah. I would work. Here's the ultimate undercover assignment. Like a 15 year.

You're going to work 32 years. Yeah. seven months. Yeah. And then we're going to tell everybody you retired. And then we can work 30 more years. I'm like that guy in the mounds living by itself and the government's under the helicopter.

We got to have you back. Like Rambo. Like Rambo. I actually feel like I've seen this movie before. Rambo first blood part two. Colonel Troutman goes back to the penitentiary. Gets Rambo out after that crazy night up in Portland. You know what I'm talking about?

It's always up in the northwest. Yeah. And then they call him out to go back into Vietnam to get those POWs. Yeah. I'd go. It's kind of like your movie. I'd go. Okay.

I wouldn't come out just to get you. Our mystery guest, our mystery guest, it's Kyle Carroll. Yeah. Kyle, awesome to have you, man. Came all the way from northwest Missouri. North of the river. Good to be here on a great Arkansas Spring Day. Yeah, man.

So I intentionally have held off, like, talking to Kyle before he got here. When the first time I was on meat eater, Steve Rinella wouldn't talk to me before I came. I was there like a little early, and I was just like, what a jerk. And then I realized it was actually, it's a podcast strategy. And other podcasts that I've been on, people have done that. They've not wanted to talk to you beforehand. So Kyle came in and I was like, oh, sorry, I can't talk to you.

Well, Brent, I understand this. If you're on time, you're late. Exactly. If you're on time, you're late. So I was like five minutes early. I did send a text. Don't shoot. I'm coming in.

Yeah. Yeah. Now, listen, y'all probably don't know this. You see this painting right here of Tacomsa? I put that on my Instagram a couple of weeks ago. This is a, what kind of, what medium is that, Kyle? Well, it was, the original was an oil painting. An oil painting.

Yeah, oil on, I think it was on linen, maybe, oil on canvas. I'm not sure, but, yeah. So Kyle is an artist, a distinguished artist, which we're very interested in. This is going to surprise you. He's a retired game warden in Missouri. I didn't know that. I didn't know that those two things could exist in the same person. Two game boards in a room, kind of, sort of.

Yeah. This is a sting? Or is there? Wait a second. Yeah. So how long have you been doing art? Well, that, you know, I started actually out of when I went to college as an art major. And I had to decide the first year.

Like a lot of art majors, law enforcement or art. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you want to paint you or want to hook you up? No, it was just, I didn't really know for sure what I didn't know how to get in the business. I knew that I kind of wanted to work like for, for Missouri, Missouri Conservation Department, and I knew they had one artist. So I'm thinking, how is that going to work, you know? And then about the same time I was interested in applying for the game warden position,

I was either going to be in Wyoming or Missouri because I was working in Wyoming in the summers. And so the summer. the summer, the freshman year, they decided that you had to have a full college degree to apply in Missouri. To be. To apply it as a game warden. Okay. So I went ahead and switched to biology as a major. And so I just, I never really left it, but I didn't start doing anything professionally or really seriously until about 99 or 2000.

So you were always just a good artist, just naturally. Well, yeah. I mean, my mom kind of encouraged it. And I always, I drew stuff to entertain my brothers. and sisters, you know, on paper, and then I'd turn the paper like this, so it was moving pictures, you know. Nice. So.

What kind of stuff did you draw when you were a kid? Like if your notebook was out in front of you during class, what would you draw? Probably two things. It was either wildlife or there were bombs going off, like bombs, you know, arm. Yeah, yeah. So this, where did you get this image of Ticumsa? Because you painted it, but were you looking at an image? Well, that's interesting that you asked that because.

I was asked to do that for a project that was put together by David Wright, a good friend of mine in Tennessee. And really, probably the reason I'm in any kind of artist today is his mentorship. But he was working on that gun in the painting is actually a gun that's in the Museum of the Fur Trade that has the can be traced back to Cicumse. Oh, really? And so they wanted, they had a group that went out and they actually let them photograph it, take it apart. They made an exact replica. And then when that story was going to be in the magazine, they wanted a cover piece for it. So there are no picture.

Well, you know, from your research, there's really no picture of Tecumpsis. So that's a compilation of just what we know that by the time he was prominent, the tattoos had kind of gone away. Because whites weren't tattooed. So the Indians were prior to that pretty tattooed. So it's just sort of what we know, what we think. We did have a couple of legitimate portrait artists that painted him. Yes. And so I guess you had seen those.

I had seen those and I used some of what matched up with what I'd read and so forth. The ostrich plume was something that had done before. You know, that always throws me off. You kind of have this romantic idea of Native Americans wearing a feathered headband, but you think of a native bird. Right. Right. And then Tecosa has this huge ostrich plume. Yeah.

It's just interesting. Because that's what they said he wore. I read it somewhere, yeah. Yes, absolutely. He was described. You know, back in those days, they didn't have video. They didn't have photography. So writers wrote about what they saw to report back as journalism.

And they described, they would describe what Tecumse looked like when he met with these U.S. military generals and British guys. And he would often have this big white. ostrich plume in his Yeah, well, that's The original went to a collector in Ohio Pretty close to where to come from How big was the original painting? I don't remember.

It's a little bit bigger than that. That's probably 9 by 12-ish. I think what we did to Prince, but it's a little bit bigger, but I don't remember. But it wasn't a big... No, no, no. Yeah, I thought maybe it would be a big one.

Maybe 12 by 60s. You've been taking some heat for that. Straight up, man. It's a, it's a, the beep that you just heard was not a burrito going off. It was not a garmin. It was not a burrito in a microwave. It's a battery pack for my computer. Somebody wrote me a very long, thoughtful email this week about how they thought it was my laptop.

And they were worried that my laptop was going to die. And so I'm working on that. Actually, every time that beeps during a render, we're going to give away a burrito. $30,000 to Misty's favorite conservation organization. That's a joke. You know, one benefit of not being able to hear real well out of my left ears, I don't hear it. You don't hear the beep? Okay, it was loud.

Oh, shoot. Oh, I was going to say, or I was going to ask you, what's your favorite, like, do you have a bunch of art? I mean, like you've got a lot of this kind of pain. What's some of your favorite stuff you've done? I use what I like, at least, and I'm not talking so much about what I do, but what I like, which is end up what I do some of, is something that's historically accurate that portrays frontier people, whether it's natives or us or whatever, in a historical setting. So you get all the, you can use your imagination, but you can see this nice, beautiful,

historic setting with a historic scene in it that's accurate. Or if you're just doing figures, I like to make sure that the Kutche, and the gun and everything's right for the time. So it's a little harder to do historic art than it is just to do a portrait. Yeah. You do that with something historical. You still have to do the art well, but then you have to do some research. But that's the fun part because it comes out of stuff that we read.

Yeah. Like what you read. The detail in this is unbelievable. The latest one that you did that I saw on your Instagram, that mutual surprise. Oh, that's a new one, yeah. Yeah. What was that one? It's a guy, it's a dude in the canoe, a trapper, I guess, and he,

He's sculling down next to the edge of the bank, and all of a sudden you see him. He's kind of taking him back, and there's a bear standing up looking at him. Oh, nice. In the fog. And they're looking at one another. Is that one you just kind of created out of your own mind?

Yeah, that's not from any, that's not from like a reference or anything. That's just I had some good reference that I shot with a buddy in Tennessee that had made the dugout canoe and stuff. And so then I just put all that together. So sometimes you just make it up for fun. It's just, I just posted it. Okay. It's a fairly recent posting, so.

Yeah. Yeah, I got to see it. So were you ever, so you did some art for the Missouri Department of. Actually, I never did work for them as an artist. There might have been something in a magazine. I can't remember in the past, but all the time I spent there was as an agent, as a concentration officer. Yeah.

Yeah. I want to come back to that. I want to come back to your game ward and stuff. Bear, what do you got there in your hand? This is the rough outline of self-bow that I'm making, an Osage self-bow. So right now I'm probably like five hours into this one. I've got the limbs to where they can bend

and kind of just like the general shape of the bow. I don't have it quite, though, to where it's... Tell us what a self-bow is. So someone who doesn't just knows that archery means something that shoots an arrow. Yep. So self-bow would pretty much just be like a one-piece, traditional bow that would be, like, carved out of a stave or like a log.

So, like, it wouldn't be stacked wood, like, a lot of traditional bows. A lot of wooden bows are laminated wood. Like, most recurves you would buy in the commercial market are multiple pieces of laminated wood. A self-bow is made from one. piece of wood. Yep. That's it. Yep, and so it split like an Osage log and then we cut off our place here.

Yep, that's been sitting for a few years and then just pretty much cut the outline of this bow and yeah, it takes a while. It's pretty hard work. How is that to draw? How is it? How is it to draw? How is it to draw? It looks like it'd be hard. Yeah, it definitely is

because Osage is real tough and the drawknife I have isn't very sharp. It's kind of old, but especially now. But, yeah. O'Sage Wood is, it's really interesting.

We live where we live in Western Arkansas. We're really on the eco-tone, which is the transition zone between the eastern deciduous forest and the, the great plains. And the O'Sage Orange is kind of a plains-type tree. And so a lot of times people are really

surprised that we have Osage Orins, Bodark. Yeah, I didn't realize that it was a plain history. And even two hours away, any direct, well, two hours south of here, you might $30,000 for Mr. Mr. Williams Conservation Organization of Chores.

Even two hours south of here, there's not very many Osage Orange. You get east of here very far, and there's not many. And so, Osage Orange is a wild, wild wood. When you cut it with, chainsaw, the wood chips almost glow. Literally, they're bright orange. And as the wood is exposed to the sunlight, it darkens. And it ends up darkening into kind of this deep, robust orange. But right

now it's almost yellow. Yeah, I was going to say yellow is how I would describe it. Yeah, right now it is. And unfortunately, it doesn't keep that color. But, yeah, bears getting into some primitive archery. And a self-bow is the most primitive methodology of making a bow. There's no more primitive way. Yeah, you won't find one of those where I live. A bow dart. Just two and a half hours from here. Yeah.

And it's closer than that in a straight line. Yeah, yeah. Bears going primitive, so he's making a self-bow until we get an atlattle season. And then he's going full-on Adeladdle. Yeah. He's going to look like that, too. What was that guy's name? we did you did the podcast on had the hair like crystal gale oh uh what was his day uh who are we talking

about yeah um the guy the the the had the long hair i met the guy no you did a podcast about him oh louis wetzel yeah yeah that's where bears goes bears going yeah no wait a minute Louis Wenzel was a pretty notorious. Like, more criminal. I'm not saying anything like that. We're just trying to figure out what you are saying. Well, he's a good ladle.

I thought it had something to do with Adelis. No. He's just going to be going through the woods and taking control. When Bear was a little boy, he would gather up, you know, all sorts of stuff, anything he could find. Wood, rocks. pieces of metal and he would make stuff out of it. And I always thought he was going to be an engineer. That reminds me of, you know that meme on the internet?

Y'all have all seen it, the meme on the internet of John Daly, Arkansas's son, standing there in like a pair of like pink golf pants smoking a cigarette. And then there's this like really prestigious looking golf guy looking at him. And it always says, yeah, is it Tiger Woods? Yeah. And it says. Slightly more famous. What my parents thought they wanted me to become and what I became.

And the best one I've ever seen is it's John Daly and they've cropped a coonskin hat on him. He's holding a bag of corn and a bow. And then it said, what my parents wanted me to become, what I became. That's kind of like what you're saying here. You thought Barry would be an engineer. He still might be an engineer. He's engineering that boat. That's right.

Uh-huh. Yeah. Yep. I'm pretty happy with how bears turned out. I'm good. He's not done yet. He's just a kid. Yeah.

I don't think he's headed towards engineering, though. Nope. Nope. 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 Connors. 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.

So, Kyle, you were in Missouri-game warden for 27 years? Yeah, that's right. Just patrol. Like, you had, what region of the state did you patrol? I worked in the northwest part. Okay. All the time, pretty much before I grew up, the northwest part of the state. So that's Rolling Hills, Prairie, you know, big Coons.

Nice. When I was thinking on the way down here, how much that changed from when I started in 1980, Coons were $40 a piece. Wow. So what would that be in today's dollars, $70 or something? Be crazy. It'd be crazy. It'd be better than $1.5 because that's what it is.

You'd be better at Coon hunting than engineering. That's for shame. I've got a question to ask you. It would be engineers coo hunting this one. You can shoot me straight here. Okay. So we did this Donnie Baker series about Missouri. Yeah.

It occurred to me as we were doing this that that could, I don't know, did you feel like that in any way undermine the law enforcement people in Missouri at all? No, no, I didn't think so. I thought it was fairly handled. I thought that was a hard-hitting podcast. Holy cow. Yeah, though, I mean. Because basically I didn't, I didn't give them, I tried to get the guys that dealt with Donnie. That's who I wanted.

Wasn't that. I couldn't do that. So I could have had other people in the department on kind of speaking on behalf of the Missouri game and figure. And I chose not to do that. That's kind of what I'm getting out. No, I thought that was completely fair. I thought it was, I understood what you wanted to do. I understood why they kind of were doing what they were doing.

I thought it was all good. It was fine. Yeah, I don't think it was, there were a problem at all. Yeah, yeah. Good. That's good to hear. So what's the major in your 27 years? What would you say was the bulk of the, what were you patrolling for?

Like, you know, if you were in some region of the country, it might be spotlight and deer. Another part of the country, it might be people fishing without a license. What was going on? Well, in that period of time, it changed. obviously when four coons were $40. I mean, I remember stopping a car one night that they had a spotlight plugged in and they had alligator clips on the wires and the light going out both sides. I mean, they were getting every, well, they had a rifle and a 22.

I mean, a deer right, so they're going to kill anything. But at that time, it was just, you know, you had a lot of that at night because furs were so high. The deer and the turkey population was just developing, just booming. And so you'd work that pretty hard from protection standpoint at the daytime. As soon as it get dark, the calls that start coming out on spotlight. So there was a time there where you just worked and worked to work. It changed. A lot of spotlighting.

Yeah, it changed. I mean, just like it probably has everywhere, I think people are, well, for one thing, we've got plenty, lots of deer. Now the turkey situation is different. That's different. But over time, it changed. It changed with a season. You'd work fishing in the summertime, over-limit.

no permits, littering, stuff like that. Every once in a while, you'd just, you'd be off on some, you know, drug investigation that you'd come across, you know. Probably one of the craziest ones was quail and closed season that turned into a multi-state working with DEA and everything else on a drug thing. Oh, really? Can you go in any more detail on that? Well, yeah, I guess I could.

It was a marijuana growing operation. the guys that shot a quail off of a fence post. Somebody called us about that. When I went with, actually, they called another agent friend of mine. When he and I went to investigate it, something just didn't add up. It didn't smell right there.

Like, all those guys, they were from Kentucky. They worked for me. I'll just pay their fine. It's okay. Well, nobody just wants to pay the fine. You know, so we did a little checking with Kentucky, figured out who we were dealing with, figuring like something else.

Long story short, it was with the highway patrol and investigation through the summer and take down the fall. It's a couple farms seized. So they were looking around corners. They had a marijuana. They were growing illegal marijuana in Missouri. Yes.

And these guys from another state had come in and shot a coil. Well, the guys were from another state that were doing it. They were all from Kentucky. Oh, okay. And they would take it back to Kentucky and trucks, look like Farmgate equipment. I thought the grass was blue in Kentucky. Yeah. That wasn't.

And that's kind of what was going on there. So, yeah, that got to be a pretty hairy situation. And we had a couple people ended up dead. Oh, man. And it's questionable suicide. It's supposed to be suicide. I don't know if it was or not, you know, kind of thing. So, yeah, that was an interesting time for a little while.

Sometimes people steal more chains than they can swim with. That's right. And they sink. That's what that means. I just got done with a very interesting book. I wish I could figure out a way to do a bear grease podcast on it. It's a book called When Money Grew on Trees. And it's about, I just picked it up.

Oh, is that the about to share? It's about, it was written by a guy named David Mack. It's kind of, when I got the book, it was like a, I felt like it was going to be like a homegrown, like self-published. I'm sorry, I'm just so cold. Yep. You're hurting my bear. I'm really sorry. There we go.

Just trying to move out of it. I thought it was going to be like this homegrown, not that well-put-together book. It's called When Money Grows on Trees by David Mack. And it's about the sheriff in Madison County, Arkansas, named Ralph Baker, who's dead now. And he was a really crooked sheriff. But basically the story is about how this guy, David Mack, who's also now dead, for about 10 years, he was growing marijuana in Madison County. at the marijuana boom, it's kind of funny. Like, Brent spent his life fighting illegal drugs,

and then now a lot of these drugs are not a lot. Some of them are legal. Yeah. Do you know that like makes, it's crazy, isn't it? Upset Brent. That's the next verse. Yeah. Anyway, there was a lot of marijuana was a big deal.

Marijuana was being grown in wild places, so gay mordons interacted with marijuana. Right. Is that right? Yeah. We didn't have it so much in the northern part of Missouri. That was more like... Hard to hide it in the plains.

Well, what they did were they'd plant it in corn. See, corn was so cheap back then that they would go in and take out individual rows of corn and hide it in the corn. Unless you flew over it, you weren't going to see it. And so that's kind of what that. But what these guys are probably you're talking about is in the national forests and places. They'd hide it back up the haulers. Yeah, they were growing it all over.

Which is this is just like 30 miles from here. Yeah, they were making a ton of money. Wild, wild, wild stories. Just unbelievable stories. Ralph Baker was like... Copperhead Road, baby. Yeah. That's what that's like.

So, Kyle, your game warden. What's, are you, are you, like, how do you approach enforcement? Were you, I don't know, you're such a nice guy. How could you be it? way too nice to be in law enforcement yeah yeah you're way too not yeah were you able to put on a hard face and bust somebody in the chops not physically like metaphorically when you needed to you never wanted to do that you didn't enjoy doing that but yeah the only way i could describe but if i was telling somebody like if bear's going to take my job and he's going to run he's he's

going to start yeah i'm going to say look you you're going to be here for a long time your your kids are going to go school with everybody's kids here, you know, treat people the way you want to be treated. And you can't be behind every tree. You have got to have cooperation. You've got to have people that will say, look, you need to know about this. You didn't hear it from me. So that's the only way that works when you have four or five hundred square miles.

There's one of you. It's not like other kinds of law enforcement. And in a way it is. I mean, you have to have that kind of same rapport with people you work with. Even the bad guys. If you don't treat them with respect, you're not going to get respect. expect. Yeah. So you have to do that. I think that's a prerequisite, you know. Yeah. So that makes sense. Yeah. So then when it when it does go bad, you know, they'll they're actually,

sometimes will come come and help you or, you know, if you're fighting somebody on the bank, which I never had this happen to me, but I had other guys that they have guys come pile in, help them get, get everything straightened up, you know. Yeah. What's the, this is such a cliche question. And I've asked this to almost every law enforcement person I've ever dealt with. I'm sorry, law enforcement people. This is equivalent to someone asking me, hey, Clay, have you ever been attacked by a bear? And I'm just like, come on, don't you have a better question than that? What's the wildest thing you've ever been a part of in law enforcement?

Like a big sting or a shootout? Like what? But here's the thing. If I thought for five minutes, I'd tell you something. I'd tell you something different tomorrow, probably. Right. I mean, it just depends on what the thing was. Did you ever feel really in danger?

There were times. I mean, there were some times where the hair stand up on your neck pretty good, you know. Yeah. I mean, I probably as a trooper, you had to deal with that more often than as. So you were a state trooper, too. I retired as a trooper. I went over when I was. So you were game warden for 27 and then worked as a Missouri State Trooper.

Right. That's why I retired as a trooper. So got you. And the context, a number of contacts is a trooper does in a year's time or like 10 times what a, what a game ward does. So game war is all around people with firearms and everything all the time, buy yourself a lot.

It's different, you know, but just approaching cars, nighttime stuff, searching buildings, drugs, people, you don't,

people are just, on a cell phone hitting you on the side of the road it's probably as scary as anything. That's not quite as flashy to talk about though. No, it's not the way you want to go out in a shootout. You don't want to go. Well, you know, it's like, it's kind of like training a mule.

If you do it right, he doesn't buck. It all comes back. Troopers and mules, that's pretty high. Yeah, it makes perfect sense. I'm surprised y'all didn't go over with the analogy of yourself. If you do it right, the mule doesn't buck and it's non-climactic. So in a way,

if you're doing it right, like you de-escalate situations, you don't get in trouble, you don't get shot at. That's the skill is you're trying to get somebody to do something you don't want them to do. They don't want to do, and you're going to talk in them into, it's easier than forcing them into. Yeah.

Right? I mean, that's, I mean, that's fair? Yeah. Yeah, 100%. You just try to, I always let them dictate the level of how we talked, you know, how I talked to them. Yeah. Lots of times, you know, it escalated quickly.

But you got to be on top of that kind of stuff. Were you a game warden in Missouri in 2009? No, 07 would have been my last year. Okay. Right. So you know what I was thinking about, though, when you had that date timeline with Donnie was the $500, I think, was the maximum fine you could get. Really?

At that time? I think that was... For whitetail? Well, for any misdemeanor. Is that right? Yeah. So now, once in a while, there'd be a hunting privilege and could be revoked or something like that. That'd be the most serious thing probably would happen.

Yeah. Even if you seize a firearm, unless the judge orders it destroyed, usually that went back. Huh. Yeah. It's a lot stiffer now, probably, I would imagine. I don't think it's... I think there was some adjustment to that in general. but it's not that much

stiffer. They don't have liquidated damages, I'm pretty sure. What about trophy penalties? They don't have that. Iowa has... 30 grand. We're up to 90 grand.

It's like a big day for me. I don't hear it. Interesting. Yeah, so you don't think they have a trophy penalty? No, a lot of states do. Yeah. I know Iowa does. I think maybe Kansas does.

I'm not sure, but not. Not so much for so many points or what the deer scores, we don't have that. Unless it's changed after I was there and I don't think it has. Yeah. Okay. Interesting. Why would it have only been $500? That's the maximum for a misdemeanor crime.

So whether it's, you know, you threw a beer can out the window. Maybe it's $25. Maybe you threw the whole box out. Maybe it was hot. You know, it could go up to that. It was a range. Yeah. It's a thousand here unless it's changed.

Yeah. It may be a thousand there now, too. Because there was an adjustment to that whole criminal code about that time. And, of course, once it's not your thing every day, well, it could get by me. But it wouldn't shock me if it's a thousand, put it that way. So. Interesting. We need to talk about American wilderness.

All right. Kyle told me that he's been reading Roderick Nash's Wilderness in the American Mind, which is, didn't you tell me that? Yeah. Teachers pit. Yeah, I get to, yeah. Man, I sent that book to two people who will remain unnamed. They're not in this room. For obvious reasons.

That were. A couple of nerds. Yeah. And I actually sent it to him to read because I wanted them to be a guest on the podcast. and they were basically like, uh, no things. So I love the book. It was interesting to hear some criticism of the book from some of my guests. But, um, American Wilderness.

Oh, there's so much I want to, I want to talk about. Let me, let me run through the list here. So we talked about the myth of American Wilderness. and the myth was connected to this in a way towards the end of the podcast about the irony of American wilderness how we perceived a wilderness but then also later

tried to, after we had destroyed all the wilderness tried to save some of it and that's when I wrote the fourth verse to ironic by Alanis Morsef. My friend Colton Poezer down in Texas he sent me a message. Friends don't let their friends sing a language. When I...

I like Colton, he's gone rogue, man. I can't ever. I told... I literally sent it to Phil Taylor at Meat Eaters and said, Phil, I fully intend for this to be taken out. You let me know. And he wrote me back and he was like, I love it, Clay.

You got to take it. Risk it for the biscuit. And I was like, I guess that's what we do. every week is put our necks on the line. Okay, myth of wilderness, and then we talked about how scarcity is a more powerful thing than plenty. We talked about pragmatism, rock and ice, and then on the Bear Greas Academy pop quiz, who wrote the frontier thesis?

Oh, shoot. Who wrote it? You know, Kyle knows. We'll tell them, Kyle. You've talked about Frederick Jackson Turner? That's right. Bear, could you have got that? No.

Come on, dude. This is on the Bear Grease Academy. Now, this series leans on more of the academic side of what we do on Bear Greece. Okay? The Donnie, I feel like this year we've kind of gone to the pendulum,

the pendulum of kind of topics. Like the Donnie Baker story was this modern, you know, didn't have anything to do with history. And it was this very... Human interest. It was a human interest story about wildlife crime, which is really cool, which those are hard to come by. I mean, I'd probably do one like that, you know, 10 times a year if I could get them in hand. They're just hard to come by

when they work like that. There's not very many Downey Bakers. That's the problem. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good one. It's true. Yeah. And, but this one to me is just as core to, I feel like, what we're doing here at Bear Grease. Because I think these things, like, I think these things, like, I was an adult, really, before I learned about the, really American history, the history of wilderness, and all this stuff. And I looked back into the previous 30 years and was like, oh, that's where all that came from. So it's almost like I was reading a history book about myself. I wasn't learning new ways to think. A lot of these ways I thought.

And it was so revelatory to me to come into a position of understanding about why as Americans we think about wild people. places the way we do. And particularly as Americans that love to hunt and fish, we would be on the extreme of people that probably are thinking about wild places. There are others that don't hunting fish that think about wild places, but we think about it in a particular way. And to me, that's really fascinating when you look back and see how you've been influenced unknowingly by culture. And that kind of goes back to the first episode when I was talking Steve Renella. And I'm, I messed up and brought up throat. But what I really was trying to ask him,

what I was really trying to ask him was, how have you been influenced unknowingly just because you're an American to think about wild places, you know? And I think if I'd asked that question, he might have answered a little different, but I know how I would answer is that I'm like, dude, I have a, I feel like I'm very much so influenced

by my culture. Yeah. But who would like to start? What stood out to you about the second part? I'll tell you what was cool to me, was listening to the rough draft talking about Yellowstone while you and I were riding through Yellowstone.

Yeah, yeah. The stuff they were talking about of finding value in something and looking out the window and being able to see it. Yeah. That was a double whammy for me. But it's just... Brent and I were in Bozeman last week.

And, yeah, I had to listen to the podcast before it came out. And so we were in a truck with Corey Cox and from Meat Eater, driving through Yellowstone, looking at bison. We saw Brent saw a wolf. Yep. That's pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah. It was very cool.

We saw Big Horn Sheep. We were like driving through and we're listening. to this podcast about wilderness where we talked about the creation of Yellowstone. Yeah. And it was just very, I wouldn't have gotten, I didn't get more out of it by being there, but it was something I could hear. And usually when I'm visualized in my mind, like you're talking about DeCumse or any Daniel Boone or anything else. But I was able to look out and see the tangible benefits of what had taken place and what had been preserved.

and it was pretty awesome to be able to do that. And during that time of year, there wasn't a lot of people there. I mean, there were stretches of road that we drove down there that we were only folks driving for a few minutes. We didn't see anyone. Cool. So it's easy to see. I'm glad they saw the value back then.

I'm glad they saw it. It could have been any number of historical things that could have happened and that never taken place. You think about what it took for all that to happen, for Roosevelt to be president, for him to have the feelings that he had towards things that everyone in this room still has that same love and respect for wilderness, whether it's a capital W or either one,

which wilderness is wilderness to me. I dig it all. I dig the scope of woods right here behind your house that you talk about not being really big. but it's all relative to where you are. It's a wilderness experience. You can only take up so much space regardless of where you are. So, you know, 100 acres doesn't look any different than 2 million because you can see so far.

We had a review on iTunes where a guy that I think is a, like likes the Bear Grees podcast. But you're not sure. He's written several reviews and he's, I'm going to call him out. I love it. He says, I'm a bison, not a buffalo. That's his name.

And he said, listening to a bunch of Easterners squabble that Yellowstone isn't wild or wilderness is laughable. Over two million acres of backcountry of an intact ecosystem, pre-European contact

and harboring the most remote area from the lower 48, da-da-da-da-da. I was trying to remember, did we talk about, I think maybe in the first render somebody said, well, if Yellowstone's really a wilderness.

That was Josh. I think Mr. Buffalo. It wasn't me. Mr. Buffalo, our dear friend, Mr. Buffalo. I alluded to that there were wilderness areas in a not capital W wilderness areas. And Mr. Newcomb shot me down. So now we're going to. I mean, it may have been me, but I don't think if we got down to it that I was saying Yellowstone isn't wild.

What I was saying is the highway corridors. The highway corridors. Is he accusing you of being an Easterner? Luke sounds like it. Oh, that's a first. Well, I mean, we're, is the cardinal direction is all a matter of perspective. That's true. That's profound.

That's a t-shirt. No, so I stand correct about it. I mean, yeah, Yellowstone is a massive wilderness. Yeah. It is. The highway corridors during the tourist months, like it doesn't feel like a wilderness. Yeah. 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 back. Backwoods. Each story begins in the wilderness and ends in darkness. Because out here, there are no witnesses, no cameras, just fragments and the people left behind trying to piece them back together. He's not an honest person. He's incapable of being honest. Somebody somewhere knows something. I'm Jordan Sillers. Season 2 of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, Iheart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

There was a statement in the tail end of that book of Nash's book about the lower 48 anyway, whatever the figure is when you see that, what the wilderness number of wilderness acres in the United States, sounds like a lot. Yeah. It's equal to what we have paved. Wow. Wow. That's interesting.

That gives you kind of a perspective. Really? That's quite a. It's in the last part of that. If it's in Nash's book, he did a revised version of that book in the last like 15 years. I think that's one. He originally wrote that book in 1966. Right.

As a like a doctoral thesis and then he revised it. But I was surprised to learn and it still seems like a lot to me, but this is the research that I found that there's a hundred and eleven million acres in America that are designated as federal wilderness, which is about five percent of the total landmass of America. I still don't think that's a lot. You kept saying that's a lot. Dude, that's a lot of land. Five percent. Five percent of federal wilderness. But that includes Alaska now probably.

It does. and much of it's in Alaska. So if you take... Yes. I think it was something like 2%... Whatever it was, the figure in the lower 48 equals the paved acres. Okay. 2% is what I think that's it.

Worked off of before that 2% is wilderness, but maybe it's 2% in the lower 48. I'm not sure. Yeah. But... I found it interesting that the census caused so much of a stir. Wilderness angst. Yeah, that people had the...

That that was a thought to say, wait a minute. Yeah. This is what defines us and it's gone? Like, what are we going to do now? How are we going to raise American kids? They're just going to be like every other kid in the world. Well, think about 1890.

Yeah. And the country was founded in 1776. So for 10025 years, basically, or well, 115 years, there had been a frontier. Yeah. I mean, for a century. Right. There was a frontier. If you were an American, you could go.

to that frontier. Like if you wanted to risk it for the biscuit and go west, twice. We're using that phrase a lot. Twice I've said. And you have not said wimpification. Yeah. Oh, that should be on my list. Yeah, I got it right now. We've got to talk about whimpification. Yeah. Yeah. Well,

just you can see how it could be etched into American ideals of just what it meant to be an American. I messed up on the naming of this podcast. I named this podcast haste. I should have named it Homo Americana's. That's what Dr. Sarah Dant

said. And that's a term that's used by historians when they talk about America. And the idea is that there was this new kind of person created in the world, you know, the American.

It is a pretty unique experience, the American experience, especially during that time. Yeah. another thing that happened that helped turn the tide, you know, from the howling wilderness to the wilderness we wanted to protect was, as a young country, we didn't have these big fancy, you know, Taj Mahals and all these things over back in Europe, but we had wilderness. Yeah. And once it looked like we were, we could run out of that, that changed it. We wanted, we've identified with that as Americans, you know.

Yeah. To me, that's one of the most fascinating things is that, yeah, our artists, our painters, they focused on wilderness. Misty, what was the stat you said about? Two-thirds of the world lives in urbanized areas today. And I was actually just looking just at a map here. So if you look at this map, it's like a line graph that has a huge jump in the 1800s, and it, you know, continues to peek out in the 1900s when,

when people were moving to urban areas and I was looking at that and then you can see it compared to this map, like... The graph? The graph. Do you want me to re-say that? No, no, just interpret it for me.

Well, I'm just, I was just thinking about, I was looking at that graph because I was thinking about the time that Josh was saying, the angst was happening. It was happening when there was this huge upswing in people move into civilized areas. And now it's, you know, it's increased so much more

and they project that, you know, by 2050, I think it's like maybe even 80% of people. And there's arguments. There's arguments about those numbers. It really depends on how you define an urban area. You know, if you, a town and a suburb, you know, it really does depend on how you define the area. So there's a lot of arguments around it. But it's dramatically increased and we're becoming more urbanized. And, yeah, it's just kind of fascinating how.

how if you're in an urban area, how you would, and if people were at that time, if the U.S. was becoming more urbanized, how it would create that sense of anxiety. But it's interesting to me, it's a sense of anxiety, but there's still no one's staying in the wilderness. Right. It's kind of funny.

Well, and it would be way different now. Back in those days, people were so much more in touch with, you know, the natural landscape. Yeah. What I think about when you say that two-thirds of the world is urbanized, and I don't know what that would be in the U.S., but what does somebody that's lived their whole life in one of the major cities in the U.S., and you talk to them about wilderness, like what did they, what's their thought on it? And, you know, I'm sure there's some people that live in the cities that would love wilderness and value it, but I'm sure there's a lot of people that have never been there. They have no context for the... like a thought.

The value of it. Well, that part where you were talking about definitions of wilderness was pretty interesting because that is, I mean, when you guys run the Mississippi, excuse me, and it's nighttime and you're inside those levels, you're pretty much out there by yourself. Yeah. But it's not a, it's not designated wilderness, but it's a wild country. Yeah. Yeah.

So. And I think it's interesting. If you look, I mean, and let's just take the U.S., if you look at the U.S., and you look at where all the population centers are. I mean, this comes up every year, every single year when we talk about voting because so much of the U.S. population is those people live in New York City, L.A., you know, these big hubs on the coast. And that's why they call the middle part of the U.S., the flyover states because it's, you fly over. And it's a big deal because they're making decisions politically that impact the whole country.

Right. Because there's more of them than there are the people in the middle. And so if you're thinking about the value of wilderness and you think about the people who are choosing to live outside of the wilderness, not just outside of it, but far, far away from it and maybe never experiencing it. And that's the majority of the people now. Yeah. Then how does that impact the decisions that are made in those places and whether people value it or not? And it's, I've heard people, I would not call us urban. Like some definitions would put us urban right here where we're where we're sitting right now.

And I would not, there's nothing to me urban about this location. But I've talked to people and they talk about like research and things that we're spending money on. And, you know, the, what's that little lizard? Is it the Ozark Hellbender? Is that what it's called? You know, and they want to know, like, why are we spending any money? Who cares if that little. It's a salamander.

It's not a lizard. It's a salamander. Yeah. But who cares if those things are extinct or not. And I just think about some of the things that you value about the wilderness areas, you have to, that value comes from exposure. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Bear, what stood out to you? Well, whenever I was listening to the first one, whenever you said it was going to be about wilderness, like just looking at the title, hearing you talk about it, really makes sense to me like what story could even be behind wilderness and I thought it was interesting how like you kind of you talked about how like even just being an American can shape your perception of wilderness whenever I really thought about it like I was just thinking about like the

way that I look at everything like whenever I'm like in a city and I see like you know a strip mall I'm thinking like what was there before that like what would have been there 200 years ago Yeah. And so I think part of it could have just been like the way that, you know, I was raised. And even like the way that like we hunt is like we try to go as deep as we can. And there's more value to something if you really kill it like wild, like with a self-bow. Or like way back in a wild area. And a hard place.

Yeah. And so I thought that that was kind of interesting just seeing the way that that actually did change my perceptions on. like what I do. Did you see, you saw some of the value systems that you had, you connected it back to some deeper stuff than more than just like, right, just what we've done together. Yep. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Interesting. Man, I really believe, and it's happening today, so it's not that profound to say this, but the most scarce and valuable, commodity on planet Earth will one day be places that are unscarred by humanity. I mean, there's no way, you know, like Renella said so emphatically, you can't get it back. Very rarely do you get anything back from civilization in any reasonable amount of time. I mean, like if the Earth persists another 10,000 years and, you know, civilizations rise and fall, I mean,

You know, I'm foreshadowing about what's going to be on the next episode, but perhaps one day what we've done here will be ruins like what's in the Amazon that they're finding with LIDAR and all this stuff where they're finding like these civilizations that nothing is left except just for a few ways they've crafted the land. And is that considered wilderness? You know what I mean? If there's ruins. Right, right, right. I mean, at what point does it go, could it ever go back to wilderness? Right. It just...

Won't matter to us because we'll all be dead. Well, you're right. And here I have my 18-year-old son in the room with me, and I think about... Like, there's something about seeing Bear and my other kids grow up a little bit and become adults and think about them having kids. Yep. And you think it's not just like a couple of generation jumps,

and you realize time is marching on. And what will... the interface with wild places look like to my great, great grandchildren. Right. I'll be gone. You know, will they have the opportunity to interface with wild places like I have? And it goes back to this whole homo-americana's thing. I feel like for them to be like Newcombs, they would have to have a wilderical.

place to interact with. You know? Yep. It's kind of a romantic idea because maybe by that time that just won't be important or there's, you know, I let go of the legacy. Like you can't hold on to it that tight. But that's why. I mean, we are reaping the benefits of stuff that all these guys did back in the day.

I mean, kind of basically around the mid-19th century in the 1850s. You know, the first preservation of land in America. Leopold and Marshall and all those people. Well, it was in the 1830s. And best I could tell, somebody correct me, bison not a buffalo, you can correct me. I'm pretty sure Hot Springs, Arkansas was the first designation by the federal government of something that was blocked off, which was surprising. I didn't know that.

They call it the first national park down there, which is not quite. there's a way to spin it but point being those guys started doing something and with the trajectory as it was going they might have said man what in in in 224 those futuristic humans

will they be able to shoot a deer with a bow will they be able to hunt elk will they be able to see a bison will they be able to interact with you know maybe I don't know what they would have thought or if they would have cared but we're living inside the fruit of that. So people will live, point being, people will live inside the fruit of our conservation decisions today. Should the earth persist? And, you know, I don't know that it will,

but we're going to be 250 years from now and they're going to be talking about what we did during this time of massive expansion of civilization, like unprecedented ever before in human history. It's so, you know, you wake up and planet art, time is so deceptive. You wake up and you just think it's normal. You wake up and you think having a Ford truck is normal that uses fossil fuels that have been dug out of the ground and you think that getting water out of a tap and you think that not having polio is normal. No, it's not normal. Those things would have been normal to most of humanity. And then we also just think that it's just we're on such a fragile, a fragile place with wild places in our interaction with us.

When you and Steve were talking about the, he used the analogy of the Brady Mixed concrete. Yeah. It's like there was a point in time when really the life of an American was about dominating the frontier, going to the frontier. Right. And now it's like our philosophy is teaching our kids and imparting our kids into values that just because you can do something doesn't mean you.

should. Yeah. And that that spills over into way more than just wilderness. I mean, that is a life principle that just because you can doesn't mean that you should. That was how Herring touched on that, you know, the last barrel of oil. Couldn't we get it? Yeah, we could get it. But as Americans, and you know, because of capitalism and our way of life, we have the ability to set, we have the luxury of setting those things aside.

But it's a, yeah. Yeah, the thing that stuck with me through all this is that you see. through all those different periods reading that book that they'd come up with the idea and we'd do we'd do Yosemite but then they couldn't save Hetch Hetchy. And then we'd, you know, it is a constant, just because there's wilderness designated out there now doesn't mean that when Bear's sitting here someday, it'll be there. If somebody decides they want to go get something, they can get the political, you know, what you guys are doing with this with podcast and what media is, it's important. Yeah. I mean, I feel like I'm handing the baton off now.

to you guys, it's your turn to run with it, and you're doing a great job. But it's important that that message is understood. Yeah. Yeah. Because it's a constant, got to stay vigilant, you know? Mm-hmm. Yeah. For sure.

I could be wrong, but I think that the inspiration, it was somehow influenced because they saw what was happening to Niagara Falls. Have you ever been to Niagara Falls? Mm-hmm. You've been there. and, you know, it's super commercialized, and that was happening way back in, in, back of the day. And, I mean, can you imagine what Niagara Falls would be like if you just stumbled on that? Like, no, none of all the thing about none of the shops, none of the, none of that, and you just kind of walked up on that.

I mean, that would be so incredible. That would be so incredible. And they were, Teddy Roosevelt saw what happened there and how it had become commercialized and had basically been like, you know, a circus built right on top of this incredible wilderness area. And that was in part the inspiration for preserving the other things. 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 Phelpsgamecalls.com. I think you'll be glad you, 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. This series for me has been trying to understand if in fact America had a unique ideology on wild places.

That was a given to me that we did. But, you know, there's a lot of American myths that aren't real. You know, and we talk about American exceptionalism. and all this stuff. You know, we like to pat ourselves on the back and say, oh, we're this great civilization and all this. And, I mean, I want that to be true. And so that's kind of like, do we,

has the way that we've handled wilderness, is it really unique in the world? That's part of what I've been asking. And as I get to the end of this, I think the answer is an emphatic, yes. We're not the only people that value wilderness. but we were we did set a trend in the world but it's not really comparing apples to apples if you're trying to establish like some like moral hierarchy of well we were the civilization that that set aside

wilderness because we did it and going back to what you said and what house said we did it because we could we we America became economically prosperous and we had the liberty to say set aside these huge wild places that we didn't have to extract resource from to feed our families. You see, prosperity is what allowed us to do this. I kind of made an analogy, maybe even in the first one, about, you know, sometimes you see somebody and you're like, man, why do they always, why is their truck always clean, and their yard always mowed, and they're this always that, and they're this and this and this, and it's literally just, they've got the, they got the money, they got the time, they got their life in order,

and it's like finances is the fuel of their ability to do a lot of stuff. Not the perfect analogy, but... I claim to be in my garage this weekend. And you're rich. Now I look at you to think you're rich. But you know, like I think about like Japanese farming practices and their, you know, how they,

their belief was that they were not farming for themselves, but they were farming for a future generation and the way they had to do it was. So it's not, It's interesting to me because we're not the only ones who valued preserving natural spaces for the next generation. It just looked, it is a little different here. Yeah. But we're not the only ones.

Well, and it's different because of, and this goes back to what Dan Flores was talking about, which to me is probably the most interesting part of the whole wilderness conversation, is that when Europeans got here, the bulk of Europeans got here, there had already been enough pre-contact from Hernando de Soto and all these guys that had come in and basically spread disease in the interior of America that, you know, what did he say? De-peopled or something like that? D-people, but I believe he said there were nine, they believed there to be nine million Native Americans that dropped down to a million. Wow. So imagine, I told I was with Shepard and one of his other basketball buddies the other day, we're at least.

this and this in the car, and I said, imagine that there were 10 people in your family, and only one of them lived. Like, that's essentially what happened to the Native American people. So by the 1700s, when a lot of European started coming here, what they perceived was a, what we called a wilderness, but really it was a great American civilization, a great Native American civilization on the decline because of disease, caused. ecological boom with animal. I mean, it's just fascinating.

And so that peculiar history made us come on to this, the only kind of, Dan Flores called the last undiscovered continent. Now, Ms. Dr. Newcomb over here earlier today was like, what about Antarctica? And I was like, well, okay, if we want to talk about Antarctica. I mean, I'm just saying, it's not like it's. She's getting a tattooed Antarctica, the last frontier. I've actually got lots of arguments for you.

Even what you just said about prosperity. I thought you were going to say I have lots of tattoos. No, I have zero, but about prosperity enabling us. It makes me think about, do you remember this is like 20 years ago? There's someplace out in the Buffalo. No, it's a fun story. There's someplace close to Buffalo River. You know, and it's an economically depressed area.

I can't think of the name of the city. But the guy was talking to you about how everyone out there people would come in and it's such a well-put-together little town. but it's impoverished. Was it Yelville, Arkansas? It was not Yelville, but like all the houses were clean, all of those. And someone asked them, someone came to the little diner, but that guy said out, and they said, man, how do they always keep this place look so nice and so well put together

and everybody's poor. And he said, well, pride's cheap. Pride's cheap. In other words, you don't have to have the economic, it's not necessarily a prosperity that that causes you to value certain things and keep things in order and keep things protected. I mean, I don't know.

I don't like anything you're saying. That's a great point. Because what you have, your possessions are precious regardless of what they are. Stewardship. I would argue that in America, the heartbeat,

the blood that runs through the veins of this place. The Chevrolet. It's Chevrolet. It's... From polar bears to Chevrolet. just like that. Capitalism.

Yeah. Capitalism. Yeah. Money. I mean, I think it's, I think we saved a lot of this wilderness by the skin of our teeth. And I think if we had been not as prosperous, we wouldn't have done it. And, and, uh, but we did it. So we saved some of it, you know, which is honorable.

But, uh. Man, I just. I just want to argue with that. Come on. Really, I want to hear what you said. Well, I think that it, I mean, a person could argue that capitalism is actually what keeps us from saving the wild places. That is actually a threat. You nailed the fourth verse of my Alanis Morse.

You want me to sing it again? No. Isn't it? No, that's okay. In fact, as Brin said, it's irony. Yeah, we wiped out the wilderness. Yeah. And then right at the end, we skid to a halt.

and saved 5%. It's both. It's both. Well, what Hal Herring said? He said John Muir and Gifford Pinchot were like two turbines spinning in opposite directions. Pincho was utilitarian conservation. Like, utilize the land, take the resource. Greatest good for the greatest number.

And then John Muir was like, he's sacralized wilderness. He was like, let's save it all. It's sacred. It's holy. It's this temple. And so it was these two things that created. created what we have, which is this very vast, vast ideology. Like some people are like, put an oil pipeline through Alaska.

Yeah, we want to keep this thing, we want to keep this economy running, which is, and I got to say it, it's wild to me, the political positions that a lot of hunter and fisher, hunters in the country, like, typically most hunters would be very conservative, like politically conservative, which we are. But at the same time, politically conservative usually means very light on or very, what's the right word, anti-environment, you know, and then to be liberal means to be pro-environment. And, you know, I've heard, yeah, it's kind of wild. It'd be cool if we could be a couple of those things switched around, you know, and not be.

Flying cars, I think it would be really cool. We ain't seen those yet. Flying cars, buddy. A turkey ain't safe anywhere if I got a flying car. That was a good segue. Get us out of that. That was great. That's all Brent's been thinking about this whole podcast.

Yeah. Flying cars. Hey, wimpification. What a great curve. The Google algorithm is going to pick it up? I sure hope so. If someone... Because I'm using it for everything.

Yeah. Not just wilderness. I got a good Hal Haring impression. The wimplification of America. I mean, Gifford Pinchot and John Muir, there are like two turbines. And I'm telling you, by God, the eastern deciduous forest of white pines were falling like corn in front of a combine. That's pretty important. You know, Clay, I love that guy.

I love that you had Ben Masters on there, too. This film was really impacting to me when we saw it years ago. Years ago. I think it was at the Banff Mountain film? possible, wasn't it? And man, have you ever seen that film? I did, but I didn't recognize the name, and we were listening to it driving through Yellowstone. Yeah, what an incredible story.

He said his name, and I didn't realize who it was. And then he said the name of that movie where I thought, oh, man, I watched that like last year. Yeah, yeah. Man, Ben's done a lot of, he's a documentary filmmaker now, made a lot of documentary films. So I'm sure me bringing up unbranded would be like someone bringing up some silly. I did back in the day. Dead eye sitting on your dance? Yeah, yeah.

And I'd be like, haven't you seen something I've done more recent than that? No, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was cool having been on. Wimpification, okay, I mean, did we talk about that or did we just laugh about that? We laughed. We laughed about it. I think we all know what it means. We got it.

Wink, wink. Okay. Pragmatism, that was one that I wouldn't have understood. Hal said almost all the wildernesses in the West are headwater. of major, major, uh, water reserves. They're watersheds. I was, when we listened to that with Corey, you know, and Corey's from out there and has lived out there his whole life.

And he didn't know that. Right. That surprised me. Right. Yeah. Talk about the Bob Marshall. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, a lot of it was forest service ground before it was wilderness. And it was because of watershed stuff. So it was protected before it was designated. You know, that came later. But yeah, it was pretty interesting. Yeah. And then I have one more thing here, rock and ice. I thought, I like how, how.

He got away with words. Well, he just knows. He has a good grasp on the history. And I didn't give him a chance to touch on all of it. I just kind of cherry-picked some of the stuff that he talked to me about. But how, yeah, we kind of get this sense of nobility about, yeah, we saved all this wilderness. and we were first in the world to do this kind of stuff. We also saved all the places that were completely, like,

we couldn't do anything with it. Like he said, there's no national parks in Iowa. Yeah, that was very good analogy. And you think about if you had a national park, and they kind of tried to do this, but it was way late in the Flint Hills area in Kansas, how cool that would be. And it's still pretty cool.

They've protected it with that grassland preserve, and they've got agreements with farm. They still ranch. of it and stuff. So it's cool what they've done. But think about a national park there, but it's not rocking ice. It's pretty good stuff. Right.

Yeah. Right. So. Well, what we're going to get into this and we're going to do one more episode. Okay. I'm sorry, Josh. I've had it to win it now, man. It's, it's, it's, this is core to the bear grief's way of life.

We have to understand wilderness. We must suffer in order to succeed. have to. What doesn't kill us, folks. Risket for the business. That's four times. I had somebody I trust very much. I won't say his name.

It was like, it was good. It was pretty academic. I'll be interested in seeing how many people listen to it. I thought, man, you have bit off a wad here. But it's good. I mean, it's been good. I absolutely. I love it, man.

I just think it's, we have to, you know, the good thing about having loyal people that listen to something, and I realize that there's a lot of people that don't listen to every bearerese. Like if you listen to bear, maybe they've listened to 25% of them. But if you just, if you, if you could just bear with me and listen to them all, you would have a pretty strong position. I've actually got a buddy who only listens to these podcasts. but won't listen to the render. Oh, yeah.

There's a lot of people like that. Why? I mean, do you remember, Clay, do you remember when we were in Saskatchewan, bear hunting? It was like day four. And we were seeing 10 and 15 bears a day, but they were all the same bears. We looked at it, and they're standing 30 yards from where, inside of 30 yards of where we're sitting.

And we've been doing this every day. And we're in like hour six of day number four. Clay's our trail looks at me and I said, boring but the best it came we got a bear later on

so I mean you just wait this is foundational stuff here exactly foundational to the bear you have a good way

you have a good way of bringing it all to get podcast can all be Donnie Baker okay I'm sorry can all be uplifting and encouraging

got us suffer through a bit we're in the Bear Greece Academy of backwoodsmanship philosophy and culture. You guys are maybe going to be graduates if you finish. If you finish the series.

Is there going to be a test at the end of this? Dude, that's going to be a problem. Yeah. It's going to be a big, huge test. Yeah. Kyle, I'm going to give you one last chance to tell me your best game word and story. Oh, man. I'm just going to tell them what pops in my head.

So this was a day when we had a lake that opened, a new lake. And so they're closed to fishing until they opened. And then when they opened, usually got all kinds of fishing pressure. So we had a boat in the lake, an agent in the lake watching. I'm on the shore. They watch everybody on this shoreline. They say, okay, they're all fishing going. Go go down, check them.

So I walk down and I walk up to this. The first people I come to are this older black couple. and I'm, I think, older then, they're probably my age now, you know, but they were retired, we'll say, fishing. And, of course, the lake has a 15-inch length limit on bass. And they're on a little stringer is obviously a short bass. And I'm like, I do not, I do not want to, you know, ruin their day. They're just down here fishing. This bass is fine.

And I said, it was kind of way from them just a little ways. I said, what's the deal with the bass here? They said, oh, we don't know. We don't know about that guy, you know. So I said, well, if that guy comes back, tell him it's 15-inch length limit and need to let that fish go. So I go on down the lake, check everybody, everything's fine. I come back and now the stringers, the bass is gone. The stringer is sitting right by the gentleman.

I'm like, oh, great. They've claimed this fish. The guys in the boat are probably going to say they've, you know. So I said. I don't understand. When you came back, they had not released the fish. No, they released the fish and took this little. 25 cent rope stringer and put it with their stuff.

Oh, so do you think they've lied to you? No, I knew whose fish it was. I just wanted them to just, I'm trying to just tell them that fish is not cool, you know. And so I come back and now they have the stringer and I know the guys in the boat probably saw him let the fish go. So I said, well, did you guys decide that fish is yours after all? And the lady said, no, sir, but we decided if he wasn't going to come back, we might as well have that stringer. Sorry, say good enough.

He never good at that. And he never came back again. And I walked up the hill. That's a good story. That's a good story. That answers my question about how you handled dealing with people. If you could, if you could. I mean, you know, most violations were not intentional.

Yeah. Something happened, right? A bird flew up. Your shot the wrong bird. You didn't plan to go out and, you know, something just happened. Yeah. So a lot of times you have to write those anyway, you know, like Donnie's deal, but it all works out in the end. So, hey, I brought something for it.

Oh, yeah. I wanted to not forget this before. Now, it's not, I don't want to get your hopes up too high here. Oh, they're high, man. I mean, it's not, it's not from Cabellas. But I had this on my desk for years. This is salt that I rendered from a salt lick at Boone's Lick in Missouri. No, way.

Yeah, it's Nathan Boone and Daniel Morgan Boone ran that salt work. works. And so it still comes out of the ground. It's not a salty, but I went there one time with the buddy, and we got to, that's from maybe a gallon of water. Wow. So that's, man, that is a major gift. Heck, from Boone's lick. And I didn't want, I didn't want, I didn't have two of them. Hey, that is, so you've nailed it. You know, what I tell, I have a lot of people give me stuff, which I'm always grateful for. Yeah. Hey, there was a lady, I'm going to call them out, uh, Snake River Produce up in Idaho. I met. I met.

I met this lady up in Utah, and she gave me a pack of free-dried onions. Oh, yeah. So people give me stuff all the time. Nice. And I gave me that Tecumsev painting. This is like spot on. This is probably as good as the Tecumse painting. Well, you could sprinkle it on.

Look, it's going to go right here by the bear grease. All right, there you go. Cool. Well, anyway, I'm having to move stuff out of my office. to do some new flooring. So I appreciate you, man. That's cool. So, Brent, I don't have an old decoy for you, but I got a paper shotgun shell.

Oh, nice. And I don't know if you collect patches, but there's an MSHP patch. Thank you very much. I've been getting a lot of these. I never was a patch collector. I've given away hundreds. But since I've gotten on this platform, I get them from all over. I got them from a guy, a sergeant, Michigan State Trooper,

had sent me some, and some that he wore on his uniform. Oh, that's pretty cool. Well, there you go. Thank you, brother. Yeah, yeah. I appreciate it very much. Well, thanks for coming, Kyle. Really appreciate it.

Enjoyed it. Everybody, great conversation. We got one more, and it's going to be racy. I hate to tell you. I hate to tell you. It's just going to get downright. Are you rewriting any more song lyrics? You're not going to believe the song I'm going to sing on there.

Z-Z-Z-Tub. Yeah, let's be careful. Lots of foreshadowing here. Oh, man, hey, I got to say this. I met Evan Felker in Montana. Josh, do you know who that is? Should I? Yeah.

Oh, yeah. The lead singer for the Turnpike Tributors. Oh, okay. I do. Me and Brent met him. And you guys best friends now? There's not many. We're in a band, pal.

I wish. Yeah, he doesn't even know that I have like five hit songs ready to be recorded. None of us do this. Literally, as we speak, all he needs to do is say the word. All he needs to do is reach out on Instagram, DM. Yeah, I mean, you know, whatever. But, no, I enjoy it. I think he's the first musician that I've ever met that I actually wanted to meet.

I guess. No offense, hawk and horse. Well, no, hawk and horse doesn't count. He's like my friend. I'm just kidding. Andrew Wills is my friend. But no, so I

so I was like, I was like, you kind of favorite. Hey man. Are you like, can you sign my shirt? What are you doing? Sign my shirt.

He's like my shirt. Sign my back. Yeah. Anyway, I've been jamming out to the Turnpike Trudors a lot. They're great.

So maybe I'll, maybe I'll probably write a fourth verse. Toronto there, I love it. Love it. Don't do that to turn by Troveadors.

They just got the band back together. All right, guys. Well, oh, March 9th, Brent and I will be at Black Bear Bananza. I'll be there too. Josh will be there.

Josh, Lambridge will be there. I got a ticket. I'm going to try to be. Kyle's going to be there. Dr. Newcomb probably be there. I'm betting, I'll just be honest. I'm betting that Shep Newcomb's going to play in the state championship.

Yeah, we got major problems. That is. It is. If Shep's in the state championship, which we have four games to win between here and there. It's not very many. Misty basically prophesied 10 years ago that Shep would be the state champion in 2024. I said that he'd play in the state championship in 2024. Okay. You know that she has done a lot of that.

And it usually comes true. I'm telling Noah about the flood. Yeah, I'm talking about it. Yeah, that it comes to fruition. Very good. Shep Nukum hit nine and threes two nights ago. In the regional championship, I mean, that's hard. He was in a haze.

Yeah. It was like watching a wolf catch up, like a bison calf, and then just go catch another one for no reason. Yeah. They did lose, though. That's all right. The regional championship. Regional championship. They lost the regional championship.

Yeah. They've gone pretty far. They were a pretty good little scrappy team. Yeah. It's a lot of fun to watch. This was like a bonus segment here. Yeah. So all of us most likely...

You don't have to pay extra for this part, folks. Yeah, yeah. So Misty may not be there. She may be at the state championship. And I may be streaming on my phone, the live podcast that we're going to do. Oh, man, we got a lot planned. We're going to have some live music. It won't be me, Brent.

I'm out. Okay. But we got some... You won't be the musician is what you said. I won't. It's going to be our friend, Brent. I might just step up and take over. You know you will.

I mean, there's no chance you won't. All right, guys. Is it Atlanta Morseb? Maybe. All right. Thank you, guys. 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 bed. 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. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.