Bear Grease - Ep. 199: This Country Life - Mississippi River Expedition

Episode Date: March 22, 2024

Brent's spilling the beans on how his and Clay Newcomb's Mississippi River Expedition film all came about with some behind the scenes information on how it was put together. It was a journey for the books and quite the production. Brent's talking boats and boating safety, if you can call it that, this week on MeatEater's This Country Life podcast. Connect with Brent and MeatEater MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube Shop Bear Grease MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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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 got a thing or two to teach you.

Mississippi River Expedition. Back in January, me and Clay Nookam, you know the Mule Man extraordinary and questionable meat eater turkey calling contest winner. That guy. Well, we purposely acquired a boat and enough possible to zip down the mighty Mississippi on a 250-mile trek to hunt fish. I'm going to tell you some stuff on how that all got started, but first, I'm going to tell you a story. Since a boat was a major fixture on our most recently aired adventure, here's a story about one. I've owned several over the years, and while at present I can temporarily be counted among the boatless, boats and I have a storied partnership.

Lots of my misadventures that I've detailed on here have involved boats. Everything from nearly buying the farm on the Arkansas River during a severe thunderstorm to sitting in the heat of summer on Lake Shiko eating sardines for breakfast or unintentionally mooning an elderly couple as my brother and I swam like Tarzan minus his loincloth at Bug Island on the Saline River. But a boat was and remains important to me. I like them. I like to use them doing the things I like to do, whether it's catching fish or gigging frogs or chasing animals to feed me and my family. Some folks say that boat, B-O-A-T stands for bust out another thousand, referencing the cost of upkeep on a boat.

Now, I have found that the more you use one, the cheaper it is to operate, especially the smaller boats that I've had my experience with. That may be true with party barges and big ski or bass boats, but my minimalist approach to the boats that I've owned have always been pretty simplistic. I want to be safe, stay dry, and not paddle, where I'm going. I don't ever recall turning a boat over, dangerously swamping one or having a wreck of any significance by which I mean at all. I've never been one who wanted to go faster than what I consider to be safe even in the ignorance of my youth or last week. My dad taught me at an early

age. We were brim fishing on the lake and he said, son, you have got to be careful out here. There's more water on the outside of this boat than you can safely drink to save yourself should you fall in it. Well, I never forgot that. I love the water. I ain't scared of it, but I respect it. And there were times when you could question that last statement, and here's one of them. Opening day of the last split of duck season right after Christmas in the early 90s. An acquaintance of mine wanted to go hunting with me and Tim.

Tim's my older brother and my duck hunting partner. And we took him to Cain Creek Lake near Star City, Arkansas. He was a large lad, not obese, just a big human. If y'all been keeping score through the podcast, that's the spot where I nearly got driven into the ground like one of John Henry's railroad spikes into a cross tie when a big snag broke off that I was standing beside and almost fell on me. It's also the place that I killed my first duck, long before it was a public lake.

If you hadn't heard those stories, skip back to episode 171 of this country life, Ducks, Trees, and Danger, and catch up with the rest of the class. Anyway, we were early to the boat ramp that morning, and it was cold. Anything that had water on it or in it was frozen, including the fuel line going from the gas tank to the 9-9. nine horsepower motor that belonged to our acquaintance. Now, I don't recall the circumstances of why we were using his boat. Obviously, Tim and I, neither one of them had seen it before, or we'd have been using one of

ours. It was 12 feet long and 36 inches wide. You ever wonder how they figured the passenger capacity on a boat? Well, wonder no more. You multiply the length of the boat times the width and divide it. it by 15. The answer is the number of people your boat is rated for. Now here's something that seems important to add.

The person that equation is referring to is a human being that weighs 150 pounds. So doing a little more math and channeling my most favorite math teacher of all time, Ms. Brenda McDougal, if we could multiply three times 12, we get 36. You divide 36 by 15, you get 2.5. So that meant our boat was rated for 2.4 humans that weighed 150 pounds. 2.4 humans. That's a ratio, Opie, and we're taking him fishing. If you're younger than 40, you ain't getting that joke, but watch season one, episode 8 to the Andy Griffith Show, and you will.

Moving on. Our boat was rated for 360 pounds, and that's not counting the gear we total. Just the items that don't float without assistance and breathe air. We were all above that 150 pound average, way above it, and we had a giant bag of decoys. Other items plus shotguns and shells. Hmm, sketchy. But we were there to go duck hunting, and duck hunting we would go. Except the motor wouldn't start with water in the fuel line. We removed the fuel line and melted the ice from the inside. Now, don't ask me how I did that, because only having y'all think of me as a complete idiot

is good enough without me confirming it for you. Let's just say that Tim used to smoke and did so when this story took place. Thankfully, he quit a long time ago, and if we were faced with that same situation now, as we were then, I'd be unable to borrow the item from him that I used to thaw at that fuel line.

Now, if you think that was dumb, get a load of this. With the fuel line thawed, empty the water, reconnected and primed with fuel, we fired that little 9-9 Johnson up and it was purred like a kitten when Tim and I stood on opposite sides of that boat as our captain sat at the helm. We had a huge bag of decoys, three shotguns, ammo boxes full of shells,

a grub box full of snacks, and enough coffee to wash a car with between us left little room for a matching set of exercise professional duck killers, like me and Tim. So we climbed in at the same time with each of our inboard legs and two-thirds of what was attached to them inside the boat as we lay flat along the gunwales of the boat. Our outboard knees were hanging overboard and skimming the surface of the water as that boat struggled to stay afloat.

Now, we had less than three-quarters of a mile ago. from the boat ramp to the spot we had picked out. And in one of our boats, it would have taken about three minutes to get there from the time we unloaded until we were chucking out decoys at the spot. But the brain trust of what would become the dynamic duo of duck guides

that formed Southern Waterfowler's Guide service were laying on the edge of a boat that was rated for one and a half of the people that were currently occupying it. I just read that sentence out loud, and while visualizing that memory, I automatically heard the tune, Dumb ways to die,

playing in the background. It could have been the theme song on so many of our exploits, but as fate would have it, we all lived. I remember going to the hole that morning before daylight, half hanging out of that boat with my in-board hand squeezing the sugar

out of the straps on that decoy bag that I was going to use as my life jacket should the boat decide to give in to physics and tried to kill us. And I felt guilty about it after we got there. It was selfish of me to think that I was going to be holding that decoy bag should be turned over. What about my brother?

I wasn't even concerned about the other guy. Well, I mean, I was, but not near as much as my brother. We killed some ducks, a limit, as I recall, and haphazardly made our way back to the boat ramp the same way we went out there. Tim and I both laying on the edge of the boat on opposite side. that was cutting through the cold water at the breakneck speed of whatever a 9-9 Johnson could manage,

pushing 700 pounds of dumbness across the lake with barely 4 inches of freeboard sticking above the waterline. And when we coasted to the boat ramp, Tim and I both rolled out of that little boat once again, planting our feet on the safety of the concrete.

No longer at the mercy of aluminum unsteadiness, the bozo that was driving, or the two morons that went along for the, the ride. The boat captain walked up the bank to get his truck and trailer while Tim and I stood at the water's edge holding the boat to keep her from floating away. I looked at my brother and I said, Tim, were you scared when we were coming out and you could see how close the water was to the top of the boat? He said, I didn't like it, but I really wasn't that scared. I got to be honest with you, Brent. I didn't know what you had planned, but I had a hold of that decoy bag on the way out there this

morning and on the way back. And I knew if that boat went down, I was taking it with me. And that's just how that happened. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps game calls and building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called prime cuts. Now, I'm going to tell you, I love mine because it's easy to use. I'm not going to go, I'm not going to go, I'm not going to going to win a turkey calling contest it's just not going to happen but when i run this call i get the sounds that gobblers are looking for i have a great turkey hunting track record if you go listen to real turkeys out in the woods they're not going to win calling contests right that's who i listen to i can make those sounds on my cut i also hunt with phelps's cut and i hunt with clay's cut because

they're all three great cuts check out prime cuts at phelps game calls 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. In the late spring of 2023, I got a call from Clay that went something like this. Cameraman, Brent Reeves, what you doing? After all these years, that's still how I'm listed in his contacts. Anyway, for those of us who get this, those calls from Clay, we know that the reaction to and how you respond is very important. There's no telling where this conversation comes from or where it'll end up, so you've got to measure

your response before you inadvertently commit to some ridiculous project he's dreamed up, probably after waking up in the barn lot after one of his mules kicked him into sleepy town. But I could tell we were going somewhere. I just didn't know where or how soon. and I usually respond with something akin to where are we going. Whatever my response was, he followed it up with, I want me and you to put a boat in the Mississippi River at Memphis and hunt and fish our way down to Vicksburg. Probably take 79 days depending on what we get into.

I immediately flashed through a lifetime of navigating up and down the Arkansas River and all the perils me and my brother encountered with just me and him and also the scores of people that we guided for and transported in boats in good and terrible weather, and I weighed those near-death experiences against all the times that we got off the river alive with all our charges. Pretty sure I'd remember if we'd lost anyone or each other, and since none immediately sprang to mine, I responded with, why stop at Vicksburg? The coffee's better in New Orleans. He said, yeah, man, I like it. And from that conversation, the plan was in action. It would also be the easiest part of the whole expedition.

Shortly after that initial conversation, I was surfing the web and ran across a clip of President Kennedy, given one of the most motivational speeches about the space program when he said, we choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard. Because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept,

one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and others too. Now watching that after Clay in my conversation, what I heard him say was when he said we was Britt and Clay, and when he said Moon, it was me. it was Mississippi River plain as day. I was all in, but Arkansas ain't the big muddy. The differences in them was like the difference between the small Saline River that I grew up on

that I could swim from one side to the other and back right now compared to the bigger Arkansas River. I respected them all, but the Mississippi would have a whole new set of challenges compared to the Arkansas. Most notably would be the amount of barge traffic. Add that into the mix that the river was at an historically low level, significantly narrowed the river to mostly operating within the channel markers. Every boat out there, including the barges, that meant we would all be in close proximity of each other, and they traveled constantly up and down the river,

and we wouldn't be able to skirt to the outside edges of the channel, giving them and us a whole lot more room to operate. It wasn't going to happen, not on this trip. Now, people do it every day, but most of those folks are more experienced than I am, even with over a quarter of a century of running up and down to Arkansas, which has an average flow rate of 150,000 gallons a second. As far as I know, the boat we would wind up with would be one of the largest boats Clay's ever been on, and 100% the biggest one he would ever drive,

and we were going to do it on the Mississippi River, a river that averages almost 1.6 million gallons per second. More than 10 times that of the Arkansas. We were going to need a bigger boat, and they left it up to me to find one. Other than deciding I wanted to do this adventure, picking a boat was the easiest thing I did. It's got to be a sea arc boat. Clay's like, do you know anybody down there? And I said, no, but they're in southeast Arkansas.

I used to have an office in Monticella where they're located. I'm from southeast Arkansas. These are my people, and I will know someone there soon enough. Clay just fired off a generic email to the customer service desk at Sea Arc, and in short order, we had a meeting scheduled and done, and I would eventually drive to the boat plant to see the boat being built for us to use on the trip. I can't say enough good things about Steve Henderson, the president of Sea Arc. He more or less said, just tell us what we.

what you want and we'll do it. He then introduced us to Jesse Cartwright and John Ed Row, both of whom I'd work closely with over the next few months designing a boat for what we'd need on this grand adventure that we were planning. Now my contributions to the boat design was limited to asking questions and deferring to the experts of John Ed and Jesse, but I'd been stewing on an idea for a color and I finally asked John Ed, hey man, what's the chances of getting this thing wrapped in first light cash camo. Now let me tell you this. Don't ask them folks to do something that you don't mean,

because they're going to find a way to get it done. And they did. They invited me to come down and visit the plant and see our boat in the very beginning stages when it was just a big flat piece of aluminum that to me looked like a big flat piece of aluminum. That's what I saw. But those folks, man, they saw a whole lot more. What I was smart enough to see was a group of people working in southeast Arkansas in August,

fabricate metal in an environment that's not conducive to cool temperatures. As a matter of fact, it was hot in there. But the vibe, that was cool. They took me around to the different stages of boat building, and I got to meet the people that Steve and John Ed and Jesse bragged on from the moment we came to them with the idea of using a Seahark boat. Those folks were working hard and it was special to me to see the obvious pride and the craftsmanship that these men and women were putting into the boats that they'd never set foot on. To me, that made it just all the more special. I told some of them that would slow down long enough to talk to me about why I was there and what we were planning to do with their boat.

Man, in some places it was noisy in there, but they all smiled and nodded and gave me a thumbs up or a few words of encouragement. It was good and I was thankful for the opportunity to meet them. Every one of them. A big majority of them were from where I'm from, and a lot of us had mutual friends. Before I left that day, our mutual friends list would get a lot bigger. By now, most of you have probably seen our film on the Mediter YouTube channel

of our Mississippi River Expedition. If you hadn't, you better stop now and slide over there, watch it. Last chance if you don't want to know what you. happens because I'm fixing to talk about it in five, four, three. We killed one duck, one hog, and three deer, and had one heck of a time. Now, there's not a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff that we didn't talk about in the film, but that boat, my gosh, that sea arc boat was an absolute fortress. We were in some pretty nasty cold rain on the last leg of our trip, but Clay, our cinematographers, Isaac Nill, and Drew Stickline, me and all our gear. We stayed safe.

and dry. Once we hit the bank between Greenville and Vicksburg, Mississippi, the hunt was on. Our catfishing plans got canceled when the windy weather got so bad that it was unsafe to be on the water. Luckily, that happened after we made it to Thad Miller's hunting camp

where we were staying. Our friends Jordan Blissitt and Lake Pickle, a couple of Mississippi boys that know how to gather groceries from the woods pointed us in the right direction. And we concentrated on chasing deer once we saw the the ducks just hadn't made it down in enough numbers to be predictable where they were going to be

hanging out. Deer hunt every day, all day, okay, I'm in. And we did, and we fought the wind. My goodness, we hunted in wind that had I been at home, I would have rolled over and went back to sleep, and it picked up nearly every day. The day I shot that Mississippi buck, the wind was blowing, sustained above 20 miles per hour and gusting up to 40. Bow hunting was really out of the question where I was, but we didn't want to leave because we were consistently seeing deer, good deer. Now, that's a lesson for me. When the rut is on, all the rules go out the window on what deer are going to do in reference to weather,

except be unpredictable. Drew Stecklein and I was hanging in tree saddles about 20 feet off the ground, and the wind was whooping on us like we were rented mules. He saw the buck first, and I thought I'd have to pass on it. because I could never get my rifle settled in on the right spot. Then, as if a miracle, everything came together for one split second and was like that rifle fired itself. Bingo!

Riding the boiler room. I'd have lost money on betting whether we were going to see any deer that day, and in reality we didn't see many. We also didn't sit long because before 9 a.m. that morning, Drew and I were bailing out of that tree to go hunt up a blood trail. It was an incredible adventure from start to finish. We left Memphis at the beginning, headed down the river, slept under the stars on an island.

We persevered through bad weather and wet and cold conditions and stuck it out because a lot of folks had gone to a lot of trouble to help us see this crazy idea become a reality. We owed it to every one of them and to ourselves to see it through. We rolled out of Mississippi after a week. with some new friends and an ice chest full of tasty critters. I'm going back this spring to try and put the old razzle dazzle on Delta long beard and I'll keep you updated on how that goes. If you hadn't watched the film yet get yourself over there and check it out. I think you'll enjoy it. I know we had a great time

working on it. There's still tickets available at the Meat Eater Live tour. I know they need to come down south. Y'all just keep holding their feet to the fire and we'll see if we can make it happen. I like our chances. In the meantime, I know we have lots of friends out west, and that's where the tour is headed in a few weeks. You can find all the information on when and where at the meat eater.com slash events.

Thank y'all so much for listening, and for those who voted early and often for yours truly in the calling contest during Meat Eat Eaters turkey week. Man, that was a lot of fun. Until next week, this is Brent, Reeves, signing on. Y'all be careful. 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.