Bear Grease - Ep. 20: From the Earth - Civilization, Humans, and Whitetails

Episode Date: September 22, 2021

On this episode of the Bear Grease Podcast, we’re going to the very footing of natural systems and human existence. Empires have risen and fallen because of soil health and the equalizing grasp of the topic at hand is inescapable from both the wealthy and impoverished people. We’ll be discussing the bewildering complexity of the soil and our connection to it. We’ll nerd out with Clay Newcomb's old soil science professor, Dr. David Miller exploring soil uniqueness. We’ll also talk with Dr. Grant Woods and learn how he transformed a degraded Ozark cattle farm into a whitetail paradise through building soils. And we’ll talk with an Arkansas farmer, Terrell Spencer of Across The Creek Farm who was inspired to live close the land because of what he saw in the Middle East. Understanding soils will upgrade as woodsmen as we’ll understand more about the heartbeat of wild places. Connect with Clay and MeatEaterClay on InstagramMeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YoutubeShop Bear Grease Merch Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee 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. The principal elements that compose us and that compose soils are effectively the same elements. I really think this is the best tool we have to improve our planet. Soil health. Soil health.

On this episode of the Bear Grease podcast, we're going to the very footing of natural systems in human existence. Empires have risen in fall. because of it, and the equalizing grasp of the topic at hand is inescapable from both the wealthy and the impoverished people of the earth. We'll be discussing the bewildering complexity of the soil and our connection to it. We'll nerd out with my old soil-sized professor Dr. David Miller exploring soil uniqueness. We'll also talk with Dr. Grant Woods and learn how he transformed a degradated Ozark cattle farm into a white-tail paradise through building soils. And we'll talk with an Arkansas farmer who has been inspired to live close to the land because

what he saw in the Middle East, understanding soils will upgrade us as woodsmen and will understand more about the heartbeat of wild places. I've got some questions that need answered about the dirt. You're not going to want to miss this one. Even though we have this advanced industrial society, the fragility of our soils is something that we can never forget about and that we need to continue to pay attention to. My name is Clay Newcomb and this is the Bear Grease podcast where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant. Search for insight in unlikely places and where we'll tell the story of Americans who live their lives close to the land. presented by FHF Gear, American-made, purpose-built, hunting and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the places we explore. Guys, we've got an exclusive bear grease discount code for FHF gear.

That's fish hunt fight gear. I've been using their products for the last year, and I love carrying my gear in a chest rig or my binos in their bino harness. It's easier and more accessible than a backpack, and it doesn't get in the way when I'm riding my mule. For a limited time, you can head over to phfgear.com forward slash bear grease, and listeners to this here podcast get a discount on purchases for your FHF Gear system, and you can see how I build my gear system. So go to FHFgear.com forward slash bear grease for a special code if you're buying stuff from FHFGear. Check it out.

Fish Hunt Fight. FHF Gear. I want to introduce you to a friend that we both know. That may sound oxymoronic, but I think you'll understand what I mean. This friend has played a part in defining humanity. No man has escaped its sculpting grip in the literal and physiological sense. Every great beast that has walked the planet has been swallowed by it. buy it and the so-called great men of the earth have amassed wealth from its bounty,

but also intimately met it in the end. Oddly, it's a persnickety bedfellow and easily offended, often distributing poverty in its anger. It's the great equalizer of mankind. No amount of power excuses a man from its authority. Men arise from it and return to it when the spark of life leaves their body. What I'm talking about is the soil. I want to read for you some ancient text. Even removing any sense of its religious context, I'm astonished by the scientific accuracy of the primitive writer as he tries to interpret and understand his existence. Genesis 2, 7 through 9. Then the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground. He breathed the breath of life into the man's nostrils, and the man became a living being.

Then the Lord God planted a garden in Eden in the east, and there he placed the man he had made. This text is extremely simple and complex at the same time. The knowledge of the chemistry of soil and the makeup of the. the organic matter of human flesh is kind of wild. I bet that we can all agree that mankind's original and deeply innate connection to the land is unique. We're the only species that practices agriculture and manipulates natural systems to grow and produce food. I want to read a short excerpt from Daniel Hillel's book titled Out of the Earth. You'll hear more about this book soon from my old soil science.

professor. These are Halel's words. Readers of the Bible in translation miss much of the imagery and poetry of the evocative verbal associations in the original Hebrew. The indissoluble link between man and the soil is manifest in the very name, Adam, derived from Adama, a Hebrew noun of feminine gender meaning earth or soil. Adam's name encapsulates man's origin, and destiny, his existence and livelihood derived from the soil, to which he has tethered throughout his life, and to which he has fated to return at the end of his days. Likewise, the name of Adam's mate, Hava, rendered Eve in translation, literally means living. In the words of the Bible, and the man called his wife Eve because she was the mother of all living. Together, therefore,

Adam and Eve signify soil and life. The ancient Hebrew association of man with soil is echoed in the Latin name for man, homo, derived from humus, the stuff of life in the soil. This powerful metaphor suggests an early realization of a profound truth that humanity has since disregarded to its own detriment. Since the words humility and humble also derived from humus, it's rather ironic that we should have assigned our species so air, arrogant a name as homo sapiens,

wise, wise man. It occurs to me as I ponder our past and future relation to the earth that we might consider changing our name to a more modest homo sapiens curans, the word curins denoting caretaking or caring as in curator. Of course, we must work to deserve the new name, even as we have not deserved the old one. End of quote. First of all, I've got to say that my name means from the earth.

I've always felt like that was significant. Juju says they almost named me coal, but in the last minute, audible, they named me a formal soil science noun. In college, I studied soils, almost by accident. Sand, silt, and clay are the three architectural definers of all soils. We're going to meet my favorite professor in just a bit, but the seed thought of the soil's importance was put in me by my grandfather, Lewin-Nookum. He would grin ear to ear and sarcastically proclaim that he was a farmer as he stood overlooking

a small 20 by 20 garden in his backyard. As a young boy, he talked to me about the process of soil composting as he'd throw banana peels and watermelon rinds in his garden. I'd be shocked if he realized how impacting those moments were for me because I don't think I gave many visual cues of the garden. my interest. Later in college, as a student in the soil science department, those early sensations of fascinations stirred by this complexity in natural systems came to fruition. Curiosity, I believe, is a key part of the definition of being a woodsman. Daniel Boone taught

us what a woodsman was and that it is a noble identity. I think we have the right to continue to add complexity to the idea of being a woodsman. To understand the flora of the woods, wild beast, untamed rivers, and the overarching ecology of wilderness, we have to possess a fundamental understanding of where it all begins. Dr. David Miller was my advisor in college, and honestly, I was a poor student. However, in his soil science class, he had us read a sand county almanac by Aldo Leopold. And secondly, he had us read a book called Out of the Earth by Daniel Hillel, which discusses the importance of soil health on civilizations. It was fascinating. Dr. Miller's passion for soils and his engaging lecturing style stood out to me, and I never forgot the

basics of soil science. It had been 15 years since I'd seen him and his office looked almost identical as it did in 2005, though his hair was a bit longer. It was actually a way longer. I want you to meet Dr. David Miller of the University of Arkansas. In Daniel Hillel's book, the book that you had me read 20 years ago. Well, I'm glad you still had. Hey, I was underlining stuff even back then. I've noticed. But he talks about the rise and fall of civilizations based upon how they treated their soils, which is bizarre. Like if you, if you were to ask anybody and say, show me what are the key factors of a civilized? civilization success. I mean, they would name every single thing except soils. But it's fascinating to

look back across history and look back across the footprints of humanity across the globe. And you see this. Can you talk to me about that? Yeah, I mean, number one, I'm impressed that you still have the book. It's a great little read, isn't it? It really is. It's a wonder I didn't lose it in one of my old dirty trucks somewhere. Or sell it for $2, you know, to buy a hamburger. or something. Yeah. But yeah, Hillel's book is real good about that.

He goes back and documents, and he tries to warn us not to over-simplify that, of course, take the Roman Empire. You know, there's a lot of factors that went into the decline of the Roman Empire. Sure. It wasn't just so as, but he does point this out, that the Romans, as technologically advanced as they were,

they were actually sort of stupid when it came to agriculture. You know, I mean, the Italian uplands, are not flat. There tends to be a tremendous amount of slope to many of the soils on the Italian peninsula. As Hillel points out in his book, and so the Romans go in there and start clearing the native vegetation. They cut down the trees, start planting crops. Originally, I suspect it was wheat and other grains. Well, those kinds of crops are notoriously erosive when you try to grow them on slopes,

because when you plant the seed, it takes a long time for the plants to emerge and to close the canopy and protect the soil. And so they had massive amounts of erosion. According to Hillel, and I've never been to Italy, so I can't speak to this firsthand, but you go to the Italian peninsula these days and there's hardly any soil left on any of the hills. It's just a bunch of bare rocks. And the evidence of massive amounts of erosion is still evident to this day. And so, according to Hillel, one of the things that the Romans did not realize was that exposure of soil to rainfall after clearing of the native vegetation resulted in massive land degradation as a result of water erosion. Now, you would think, wouldn't you? Yeah.

The Romans would be able to figure that out. Apparently not. And they just continued to do it until the soils were so eroded that they wouldn't even grow crops of wood. wheat and barley and so forth anymore. And they had to resort to what? Permanent crops like olives and grapes. And so they switched over. And so where did they get their grain? They started to import their grain from North Africa, Egypt in particular. Their empire, and this is one of the things that Hillel argues, is that they were forced to expand their empire in order to acquire lands that were capable of producing sufficient quantities of food for their people.

Because they had ruined their soils to the extent that they were no longer able to grow enough grain to feed their own people. As one example of the inability of a civilization to take care of their soils. Right. So that decentralization caused them to spread and expand. Expand out. And basically become vol—I mean, they were prosperous for a long time, but became— vulnerable because of that. And now, so they're, yeah.

I mean, instead of growing their, quote, own grain, they're importing grain from foreign countries. Another good example was the Mesopotamians who tended to salinize their lands with inappropriate irrigation techniques. So this was even before the Romans. This is the fertile crescent and all that, right? Some of the first civilizations in Babylonia,

they irrigated so heavily that they rose their water table. When it reached the surface, it evaporated. and deposited salt. It left what was in it. It left what was in. Of course, the water leaves, but the salt stays. Yeah. They salinize their lands by improper irrigation.

That particular example would have been, like, the cradle of life. Yes. The Tigris and Euphrates rivers that are referred to in Genesis. Yes. And is that in modern day Iraq? That is correct. Is that right? And the area that we're talking about here is down in that southern town near Basra.

It's a southern town. And the fields around. north of Basra are still waterlogged and salinized as a result of improper irrigation thousands of years ago. Is it clear that the soil usage is what has what attributed that to becoming like almost desert-like? Yes, they are the archaeologist in particular and I think Hillel says are pretty convinced that's why that area is as desolate as it is now. Wow. And as a result, the Babylonians continually move north as they screwed up their soils with too much irrigation water, and finally, civilization disappeared.

Terrell Spencer is my longtime friend and a thought leader in our region for pastured poultry and family farming. He's always had a unique insight into the soil, and it came from a unique place, far from northwest Arkansas. I want to learn about his operation, how he builds soils, and where he became inspired to be a farmer. and meet my friend, Terrell Spencer, also a student of Dr. Miller. Terrell Spencer, also known as Spence to me for decades. Tell me what you do. Tell me about your farm.

Yeah, I'm a pasture poultry grower. I raised chickens out on pasture, and then I have a process and plant that I partner with. We butcher them, deliver them to customers across northwest Arkansas, eastern Oklahoma. I also am a grass farmer. I cut hay and sell it. Just more than anything, man, I just, I love working with nature. So there are independent growers like you, and then there are people that grow chickens under contract with some of these bigger companies. Talk to me about the systems that you have in place, particularly how soil really is kind of a foundational part of it.

I'm like one of the one percenters when it comes to just raising poultry, right? Because 99. Something percent of poultry producers. Does this mean you're one of the billionaires? Is that where this is going to one percent? I'm kind of another end of that spectrum, too. If I could find a way to flip-flop them, we'd be doing pretty good. No, like most chicken growers are growers.

They grow for someone else. They grow someone else's birds. About in the 80s, poultry companies realized that the least profitable part of the chicken industry was actually the risk of raising chickens in that. And so they kind of outsource. that to people that sign up for it, you know, no one makes you do it. And it works well for some folks and for some folks it doesn't. And we're just not in that system at all. We're just independent. It's just right now myself, my boys, my daughter, my wife, across the creek farms.

Across the creek farm. Talk to me about the sequence of moving these pens. Like describe pasture poultry, how it works. Yeah, it actually works really well. Chickens lay down, manure, right? Like we bring in feed and then they eat it and it goes out the back end. And about half of what they eat becomes chicken and the other half goes out the back end. If you went to your farm, you would see these mobile pins that you move every day. Yeah. Every couple of days. Yeah. So you're getting two crops. You're getting hay, which around here is very valuable. Yeah. But you're also getting chickens. But the catalyst of it all is this soil. Yeah. Because chicken manure is going down in, and then the grass comes up, very nutrient rich, grows fast, grows good.

We don't spray. The edges of our fields are intentionally messy, which is hunters-like. I don't personally hunt. I love hunters because beer constantly grazing down stuff or other critters, you know, popping coyotes. Telling your true unfiltered thoughts on raccoons. Man, I think. Let me start a sentence for you. A good raccoon is a dead raccoon.

or is on someone's wall or a hat. A good rat cane. And see, I don't even like the word rat cane. I like the word trash panda. And, you know, a good rat can is a hat. Long live the beast, but not on your farm. Yes. Now that we understand the process of soil inputs from the chickens

and the subsequent grass harvest, I want to hear about where and how Terrell decided to be a farmer. My first realization of the destructiveness of human beings, like just to the soil, was I was in Iraq. My job was I was a gunner and we'd go in the U.S. military. In the U.S. military, yeah. This was back in 2004 and we would go down and escort convoys and stuff. That was one of the things we did. We'd go down to Kuwait, bring them back up.

I was in Baghdad. And we would go through these areas that were like they had irrigation ditches. They had pumps. They had, you know, all this stuff for agriculture. And at the time, I kind of had my eye on some rice farmer's daughter in East Arkansas. So I knew like a good setup for growing rice, right? And so I thought we'd head south and it'd be like, they're going to plant rice here, you know? And one day...

Not to digress, but she did become this woman, became the rice queen. Yeah, yeah. Cross County rice queen. Okay, take us back to Iraq. And so like we, one day we were heading down and the fleet, all these fields were flooded. And I'm like, oh, okay, they're going to grow rice. And at the time, I didn't zero about farming. I'd been a punk rocker before I went into the military, you know, no agricultural background. And then over time, we'd pass it again and it was all white.

I don't know what's going on here. And then we came back, you know, like a couple days later. And there were all these families filling bags of salt. And it just like, what is going on? And then I got back. I went to the University of Arkansas and got a degree in soil science. And it just like blew my mind because this is the fertile crescent, right? Like we all learned that in school. And as I started thinking back and as I kind of went through pictures and like southern Iraq, man, that was like where they think the Garden of Eden was, you know?

Yeah. And it's just a wasteland. And it's all because humans, well-intentioned humans, their actions like just destroyed the foundation of life in that area, you know? And it's crazy even looking at, like, here in the U.S., we've been here kicking around for like 150 years doing agriculture, and we're seeing the same problems. You know, and I guess what I'm passionate about is just, like, not leaving that mess for someone else to leave it better than I found it. Especially coming back from the war, it was like, when I realized through farming you could be creative instead of destructive,

Man, I was hooked. Yeah. And that's why I raised chickens on pasture. I want to jump back to Dr. Miller. I think we need to go back and try to understand the fundamental aspects of soil. Welcome to Dr. Miller's Soil Science Class 101. Here's Dr. Miller. Dr. Miller, talk to me about how soils this thin layer on the outer crust of the earth

is so essential to not just human life, but every part of life. Because it's kind of bizarre. When you think about this big rock floating around the star and this, you know, whatever the volume of the earth is, it's massive. And this, this outer, tiny, tiny fraction of that volume of the crust of the earth is this brilliant, intricate, wild thing called dirt, which is what humans disdain in so many ways. But talk to me about the uniqueness of that. You know, it is interesting. It's a good point that you bring up, too. By volume, the earth is a minuscule fraction soil, right? Because as most of us know, it can range from, oh gosh, six inches thick to, I don't know, down near the equator, there are probably soils that are 50 or 60 feet thick, but in general, two to three, four,

five feet thick is all soil is. And it has unique properties. It's more than, just crushed up rock. A lot of people say, well, dirt's just, you can take rock and crushed up and you have dirt. Well, no, you can't. Crushed up rock is not soil. It's crushed up rock. You need to undergo what we think, what we scientists, what we soil scientists, called pedogenesis, which is the process by which this stuff called parent material, which can be rock or it can be sediment or it can be plant tissues, for that matter. Pedogenesis is the process by which that material is converted into this special stuff that we call soil. And yes, it does have minerals in it, but it also has organic materials in it. And then incredibly importantly, it has lots of pores.

And porers is where the water is held. And then, of course, the other thing that's special about soils is the fact that it's so biologically active. It's got some of much stuff living in it. So, I mean, there's this combination of factors, I think, that leads to the uniqueness of soils. Its composition clearly, it's chemical composition. It has a very interesting and unique chemical composition, sand silt, and clay, poor-sized distributions, biological activity, and then this organic fraction is incredibly interesting. Those features combine to make soil unique in its ability to support plant life, but then these other things that soils do that are remarkable. And most people, when they think of soils, they think of soils support plant life. And that is true.

But they also help control the composition of the atmosphere. Through what? Through their CO2 production and or sequestration. Methane is produced by soils. Nitrous oxide is produced by soils. So soils through their production and consumption of gases help regulate the composition of the atmosphere, which these days with people, you know, talking about global warming. That's an important thing that soils do.

How about the ability of soils to hold and purify water? Every drop of rainfall pretty much interacts with soil, and the quality of the soils then tends to impact the quality of the water. Where would we be without soils to hold water? We would have massive floods. We would have no mechanism by which to store water for plants to take up later on. I asked Dr. Miller about the composition of soils as, compared to the human body.

Here's what he had to say. Dr. Miller, in the book of Genesis, it talks about how man was formed from the earth. But I remember when I've, because Hillel, first chapter, he talks about that event. Can you explain to me just about how literally the human body is made of the same things that the soil is? There's no question. That's true. I mean, there are only what, I don't know how many naturally.

occurring elements there are on the periodic table these days. There used to be 92 or something like that. The principal elements that compose us and that compose soils are effectively the same elements. In fact, interesting story. And that is that some people are proponents these days of what are called green burials. Are you familiar with green burials? Okay, instead of embalming the human body and instead of putting it in a casket, which then gets put into a sarcophagus, The green burialists will call them, advocate non-preservation of the body, and burial within 24 hours directly into the soil. And the idea is, it's a kind of interesting idea, but rather to allow the elements that are in the human body to return to the soil in a natural way. Interesting stuff, Dr. Miller. In modern times, soil degradation continues to define our existence.

Dr. Miller will now go into a modern example of a soil issue that nearly snuffed us out here in America. Hang on with me, boys. We're about to get out of all this nerdy soil stuff and talk about whitetail deer. Or maybe soils have a ton to do with white-tailed deer. Stand by. I think a lot of people probably would say, well, the Romans and the Mesopotamians, they lived thousands of years. They didn't know any better. We know better.

They might say the gym on the street or Mary on the street, you tell them about the importance of soils. And they go, we got nothing to worry about. The scientists have figured this out. We know how to take care of our soils. Well, it wasn't that long ago in this country that we had a massive erosional event called the Dust Bowl. Right? I mean, 1930s, early 1930s, south central United States, we had plowed up from fence row to fence row, because suddenly we had tractors.

I mean, that was kind of the same time that tractors were becoming available. And we had had plentiful rainfall over a period of several years. And so people just planted wheat right and left, and all of a sudden one spring there was no rain. And so they had pulverized the soil. They had cleared those southern prairies

of all native vegetation. So here they were, overtilled, powdery, dry as a bone, and these huge Santa Ana winds came out. out of the West. And I wasn't there. I'm old, but I'm not that old. But my dad was alive. My dad was born in 23. And as a kid, he remembers dust in Indiana, blown in from the dust bowl and said the morning, sunrises and the evening sunsets were absolutely remarkable as a result of all this dust in the atmosphere. Well, the amount of soil that was removed from the southern plains was

unbelievable as a result of this wind erosion event. So, while you, you know, you're not a result of this wind erosion event. So while, yes, we have learned a lot since the time of the Romans and the Mesopotamians, we did the same thing 80, 90, 100 years ago, right here in this country where we allowed this tremendous degradation of the land to occur. That's a good place to explain to us how soil, in the span of human lifetimes, really is not a renewable resource. Oh, good point. It is not. Because we think of, we think of the soil is, well, that's part of. the beauty of soil is it can be restored and you can do things to bring back soil health, but it is a long-term process. It is, in fact, and we didn't talk about that. But I mean, the kinds of times frames that we're talking about here in order to produce one inch of soil,

let's say that under a natural kind of a setting, hundreds to thousands of years to produce one of soil. And so this is a very, very, very slow process. The soils outside our window here, outside my office window, have been in the process of being weathered and turned into soil for literally millions of years. Really? These soils are millions of years old out here. Yeah. Really? And so how rapidly can soils erode? Well, think about an erosional event like the dust bowl. You can remove two feet of soil in a matter of an afternoon. And I emphasize this in my course. They are essential to life.

They are delicate. You have to be gentle with them. As soon as you remove the vegetative cover, you have exposed that soil to potential disaster through erosion. Even though we have this advanced industrial society, the fragility of our soils is something that we can never forget about and that we need to continue to pay attention to. No matter if you live in urban or rural areas, whether you're a farmer or an insurance agent, we're all connected to the soil. I now want to ask Dr. Miller about the fertile soils on the earth called mollasols, some of which are in the great plains of the United States, and these soils are very rare. Are molassals in the U.S. developed under tall grass prairie, immense herds of grazing bison and other ungulates, and the perfect mix of rainfall, freezing and thawing of the soil. Freezing solid of soils, like in the Midwestern United States,

slows down the decomposition of organic matter, allowing it to build up over the years. Organic matter is dead stuff that used to be alive. Soil in the southern latitudes stays warmer, longer, and decomposes this organic matter, the good stuff, quicker, which ultimately makes the soils less fertile. Here's what he has to say about mollasols. So it was kind of like the perfect storm. Indeed it was. To have this incredible soil just in these pockets. And you know, you find that in other parts of the world.

The other place that you can find soils as good as the ones there in central U.S. are in the Ukraine. Central Europe. Central Europe, East Central Europe, I would say. Okay. The steps, the steps of, that would be Western Russia. You know, during the Second World War, Hitler wanted to conquer the East because they had what they had. They had resources.

One of the things he was thinking about it was the Ukrainian molassols, these absolutely fantastic soils. Germany doesn't have the kind of soils they needed to grow their food. Molossols. Molossils. Do you remember molassol? That triggered. That's like the buzzword of soils. You'd had a flashback there. I could tell you had a flashback.

Molassol. I mean, that would be like, it's like the greatest soil on earth for growing stuff. Oh, yeah, soft, black, high and organic matter, deep. Just grow virtually anything without even trying. How many places on the earth have a mollasol? Well, that's a good question. Central United States, the Ukraine, there are also molossoles in Argentina, the pompous area of South America. Again, that would be what on the other side of the equator, approximately...

In the same latitude, south as we are north. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. What about Africa? Molisals in Africa? Virtually none. What about Asia? I think there are some molossols in China, but they're rare, and that's why we're so lucky in this country to have those.

Do you feel like that, that the Great Plains, the breadbasket of America has been part of our success? There's absolutely no question. There's absolutely no question. That's wild. That have been able to, I mean, just this huge number of tens of millions of hectares of soil that are so productive, we've never had to worry about food in this country. Wow. Ever. Yeah.

That's really bizarre when you think about the incredible, vast differences in topography across the earth and that there's these pockets that jump started civilizations. It's like they had a passcode that nobody else had. That is so true. And we were lucky enough to sit. right on top of one here in North America. Wow. 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 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, I Heart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Dr. Grant Woods is a wildlife biologist and is known as one of the top deer biologists in the country. He's wearing a yellow fire-retarded shirt and his pants are stained with black ash. He's just walked in from a controlled burn on his family property. 20 years ago, he embarked on a land experiment, a proving grounds, if you will,

when he and his wife purchased a large, degradated property in the Ozarks of southern Missouri. He actually named it the proving ground, the region not being known for high-quality deer. I want to learn about his story and its connection to the soil. Dr. Woods, tell me about the history of this property. You've worked extremely hard for almost the last 20 years. I'm interested in how the property started, your overall objectives, and ultimately how the soil quality tied into that. So it's just a fabulous story. My wife, Tracy and I were living in South Carolina.

I'd schooled at George in Plymston and got out and we'd gotten married. And we were looking for land and we'd scraped up her money and had about 13 acres and, man, I had a food plot. And my dad shot a little buck with his long bow. We're living high on the hog, you know. I'm from the Ozarks, as you know, and back visiting family. And Trace and I went to get a little ice cream, and she picked up real estate guide. And she said, well, here's a property for it. Kind of sounds like we'd look for him.

Before I even read the ad, just called a realtor. Anyway, we got here, and a guy, a gentleman had passed. He'd been a cow farmer, and he'd passed seven years previous, left it to a local hospital, and never going to sell it to some big developer because we're next to Branson, Missouri. And I think they'd, in fact, had it so, but didn't close and just put it back on the market. And we looked at it, it meant as rough as a cob. I mean, you know, locust sprouts in the opening where they'd fed hay and bear rock showing all over the place, being grazed to the, you know.

Yeah. The neighbors have been running cows without the hospital knowing. So we made an offer, and it wasn't near what they were asking. We just felt as well, we could take down. And they said, no, no, heck no, in a real short letter. And a year later, 9-11 happened, and they wrote us and says, your offer's still good. Oh, wow. Yeah. And we said, heck yeah.

I like a story with some risk involved in it, one that took some guts. The Woods investing in this property was just that. They put it all on the table. I want to hear what his first step was in working with the property and will meet an influential player in Dr. Woods' life, a man of the land. I called the local co-op to get some fertilizer because I'd been schooled in fertilizer and soil test you live by that soil test and the guy made one pass around the little food plot and said no it's too rocky i'm going to turn my equipment and he drove out my driveway with the fertilizer i'd paid for in the back of the truck

and like many things you hear about this in hindsight you know that was a blessing but at the time i thought i don't beat that guy up for something you know and so it's going to rain next couple days and he get a food plot in or so i drove down to arkansas closest equipment dealer and was going to buy a fertilizer spreader and so I could spread moan and this old boy said you don't need that my uncle galen he makes compost and I'd heard about compost in college poultry business is course really big in arkansas winter and meadow uncle galen he's crazy said man i'll drive your slopes ain't no problem for me so sign me up you know here we go and galen he's a man of the land and he understood soil i understood soil chemistry. He understood soil. And he started teaching me about the soil, not trying to sell me

his product. And it was too rocky to even do this. So the county here where I lived, the NRCS office, rents no-till drills. They're primarily made for pasture, not going crops here, and they're beat up from the last guy that rented it, you know, and rented that and planted a little food plot and published some pictures and some magazine back in the day. And they're like, man, you're crazy to be planting those rocks. And men, crops are growing. We started with the grazed out, earned out cattle ranch. And 20 years later, in some of those same plots, we've built over six inches of rich, black, lush topsoil. And of all the accomplishments, whatever, my career, probably one gives me the most satisfaction is there's no plaque on the wall or anything. It's

when I walk out there in those fields. And I just reach down and grab a handful and smell it, and it smells like really rich garden dirt here on top of Ozark Mountain. That's what dries. me. Yeah. So what were you trying to do with this place on a general scale in terms of wildlife? Yeah. So again, I was raised in the Ozarts and I clearly remember the first deer I ever saw. My oldest daughter is Raleigh, Old English for Dweller by the deer meadow. My youngest daughter is Ray, R. A.E. Hebrew for dough. Deer kind of a big thing in our lives, right? Yeah, yeah. And so I wanted to have a place that we could see deer, that my dad and brother-in-law and family could hunt deer, friends could hunt deer. and in the first year, I saw one deer.

I saw a tail going around a cedar tree. We did not hunt deer here for five years. Now, for Tracy and I, this was a investment of a lifetime. You know, we don't have a main stock market. This is what we were pouring into. And I bought it a lot for deer, and there were not deer here. And the deer that were here, the old statement, well, deer looks like a shepherd dog or, you know, a small,

well, that's kind of what we were seeing, you know. Yeah. And so my goal was to improve the habitat, both in food plots and native habitat and to where we could just have some good quality family hunting. That was my objective. And food plots were going to play

and have played a big role in that, but through time of learning about soil and the potential of native habitat, that's when you came here, we were getting ready to a prescribed fire, which has big implications for the soil in reasons some ways people

may not think of. And so I got hooked on in this path of having better deer hunting in proving that, habitat quality. And here in the Ozarks, of course, Lewis and Clark passed north of here, the Missouri River, depending where you are. But an early explorer to come through here is schoolcraft. And you can buy his journal and reading his notes and all the wildlife he saw and the lush creek bottoms. And he passed pretty close to right here. I'm thinking, this land

has potential. Some of it's eroded down the White River and into the Mississippi, but the potential's here. and reaching that potential, which I'm not, and I would like to state that I don't think any person living right now or very, very few have ever seen the soil or the habitat's potential because almost ever on this planet has been degraded. Yeah. Not intentionally necessarily when the early settlers come to this continent. As a matter of fact, they're trying to make a living. They're hacking it out of wilderness and they're plowing of mules and dirt's going down to, you know, the river's like crazy. They weren't all I'm going to cause erosion. They're just trying to make a living.

There's no anger in me over this. That's hard for us to understand, isn't it? Because we walk out into a big eastern deciduous forest like this, and we just assume that this is what it's looked like for the last thousand years, which is just untrue. One of the comments from one of the early explorers that really stuck in my head is that all the forest he rode through, he said loved it because he could ride a horse through there and never knocked a hat off his head.

And so the great forest of the eastern United States primarily have been harvested about three times. And so, yeah, we're looking. at leftovers. Yeah. After 20 years, I want to understand what's happened. You'll hear Dr. Woods mentioned using a scoring system to measure white-tailed deer antlers. Many of you would be very familiar with this.

But if you're not, it's a prescribed way to measure the length, width, and circumference of deer antlers. There are multiple record-keeping organizations. Two of which Dr. Woods refers to are the Pope and Young Club, which is for archery kills only and the Boone and Crockett Club. These organizations were originally designed to incentivize harvesting older age male animals and their influence on North American hunting culture and management has been invaluable to the success of wildlife populations here. They help move our hunting culture out of a market hunting, quote, if it's brown, it's down mentality, into a selective

management-based mentality which prevails in hunting. hunting culture today. So what's it like today? So I'm not really a score guy. I don't mean it's boastful, but I think as a measuring stick, when I got here, I was more into scores back then. Boy, if I killed a, you know, 125 plus a bow, I was right in Popin Young, you know. Well, a lot of people did back in the day, right? Especially in areas like this where they were rare. Right. And the record still, I think last I checked here, no Boone and Crockets, and one that made P.Y. And that was like 131, 132, I forget somewhere in there. It's pretty common now that we're going to take, you know, 140s, 150s every year multiples

and we have a 170 plus on the wall. So it's change. And, you know, and everyone wants to, well, that's Jeanette, he shipped in some deer, you know. No, folks. And along that line to talk about how important soils are and sun reaching the ground, northern Missouri, of course, is known as record book deer country. Right. And the bulk of those deer were restored.

They were wiped out. I mean, they were gone. There wasn't even residual populations. And they were restored from one of the refuges, about 20 miles from years of crow flies, and a couple other here in southern Missouri. They're Ozart's genetics on better groceries. And better groceries requires better dirt. Yeah.

And so massive deer there, I got thinking, well, you know, that's a big area. People know they grow big deer. They're passing up a lot of deer. But what can I do here? And I consider for, you know, mountain country, timber country, man, 140's a dog-old good deer. Oh, yeah. 170's like a 220 in Iowa. I mean, that's cooking with gas right there.

There are many indicators in evaluating ecosystem health, but if one of your primary objectives is to produce a healthy deer herd, analyzing deer antler growth is a great way to do it. Where nutrition is poor and animals are stressed, antler growth will be minimal. Large antlers in the presence of mature adult males indicates positive herd health. By understanding the historical antler development patterns,

patterns in the region, if you remember he said the biggest deer in the county was in the 130 inch range. It's clear that the proving ground has a healthy deer herd. In the last few years, they've taken 170 inch plus buck off the property. That's about the difference between a mid-sized SUV and a monster truck in the deer world. But how did he do it? The answer might surprise you. If you till the soil, you decrease the value of soil. There's I know, and you're saying, well, man, in Illinois, I see these farmers pulling 60-foot shank plows. I mean, that's all true. They do, but there is no chance.

And there's one real simple reason. All the other debates, there's just one reason. When you till soil, or of course, you let more air, oxygen touch, more surface air or soil, than if you didn't till it. Think of the Great Prairies, Buffalo run around. Okay. Well, that oxidizes, very powerful chemical reaction, portions of the soil, and terminate some of the good microbes that live in soil.

and allows the microbes that kind of are anti our mission of building soil health to populate more. Just that one simple thing. No one can defeat that argument. Because it was so rocky here, I started renting the no-till drill, and I've always no-tilled. I have not disc in over two decades. I've never had a disc on this property, period. And that's been a big secret to improving our soils health and growing bigger deer. Wait a minute.

I thought tilling was good. This is an ancient human practice. You till a garden when you want to control weeds and break up the soil so that new plants can take root. Well, what Dr. Woods and many others are learning is that tilling has its place in some applications, but undoubtedly degrades soil health creating a vicious cycle in agriculture. Tilling destroys that natural soil structure and soil microbes, which are the MVP of soil health and plant growth. It's a complex story. by because we're about to learn the importance of carbon. You may be saying, Clay, I don't give a rat's

tale about carbon, but its influence in human life is incredible. I wonder if Dan Boone knew anything about carbon. I digress. In college, I was caught in P&K and Mlibdium and zinc and boron and all that's all cool stuff. But you know, we humans and deer and most plants, the biggest element in our bodies is carbon. Carbon. is the limited resource, and there's a lot on the news about carbon now. But I'm just talking practical, boots on the dirt, carbon's what we want. You probably notice, you know, really good soil. We talk about Iowa, some, places like that, the delta, it's black. Carbon's black. Poor soil. You have your farmers say, well, my soil is light. And I always go, oh, light soil is light colored. It's had all the

carbon taken out of it. And here's, this may be a little heavy. You can slap me around a little bit here, but there's an economy in the soil. The economy is if you have a healthy microbe population, okay, they need carbon. Plants are photosynthesizing. C6, a whole bunch of carbon. First part of photosynthesis equation. Okay. Microbes actually go around the plant root or in the plant and trade phosphorus, potassium, boron,

molybium, and what the plant needs for that carbon coming out of exudates. That's a beautiful, beautiful economy. It's a win-win economy. And one disking putting oxygen in soil kills that economy. And therefore, we must use synthetic fertilizer. Now, we can grow crops. A wicked cycle there, doesn't it? And we can grow crops.

You know, we didn't know what nitrogen was or we could produce it anyway until World War II. And that was part of building bombs. And the German scientists that figured out how to make nitrogen escape from Germany and brought it here. And when the war was over and they felt we didn't need these bombs, what were going to do? So, well, maybe we didn't use a fertilizer. I don't know. That's how the whole nitrogen fertilizer thing literally got. start. Wow, that's interesting. But we think about this over every acre on the planet. That's a

big statement there. There's about 30 tons or more of nitrogen in the air. Why would anyone ever pay for nitrogen? Or we look at buffalo. We think there's about 60 million buffalo on the Great Prairie. There's about 60 million cattle now. And no one was putting out synthetic fertilizer to feed all these bison. What you'll learn when you dive in deeper to this philosophy is that chemical fertilizers, though they've been instrumental in modern agriculture and feeding the planet, they're also a massive source of soil degradation and the fuel of a wildly unsustainable cycle. Dr. Woods, along with many others, say there's a better way. In a world that talks a lot about excess carbon in the air, intact soils have the ability

to sequester or store incredible amounts of carbon. As you've heard, Dr. Wood says he's built up to six inches of rich soil in his food plots in the 20 years he's managed the proving grounds. This is massive. I want to learn more about this process. So talk to me about the accelerated soil building. So, you know, when I was in school and always, you know, wildlifeers need some good soil classes, there always one thing stuck in my mind talking about a thousand years to make an inch of soil. I just seem, man, I can't even really envision a thousand years. I mean, we throw out these big numbers, but a decade's a big change for most humans, right?

And I think a thousand years is true if you're talking about the Green Canyon weathering and making a little dirt and a crevice somewhere. You know, it's a slow, slow process. You know, that's probably why humans have such a hard time connecting with soil. It typically is a slow process. Yes. And it's something that you inherit a baseline of understanding of what a place looks like. like, and the human life is so short compared to the life cycles of planet Earth.

Ecosystems, yeah. And we got misled. Boy, that place has good dirt or that place will never have good dirt. There was never a process talked about. And so Galen, back to my friend Galen, was a very, is a very wise man. And Galen started teaching me these principles, and I've just simplified them a lot over time. And I've learned from other, I've done not come up on this my own. Maybe I've made some observations to tweak it over time.

But there's basically a couple principles that work anywhere, equator to anywhere that plants grow. You need the soil covered every day out of year. When I say covered, maybe it's in the winter, but there's a thatch or a mulch on top of it. So the soil is always covered. We call that armor. Soils always are covered. You need a living plant as many days out of year. Some plants grow better in the spring.

It's all due to daylight and soil temperature, some in the summer, some in the fall. So just having soil always covered, minimal disturbance to the soil. And that's not only physical, we're talking about disking, plowing, but chemical. Synthetic fertilizer is, we all think the chemicals, I think, is herbicide. But man, synthetic nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, those babies are, you know, I think I'd probably rather, I don't know if I'd say it's some air or not, but I'd probably better drink a teaspoon of glyphosate than I would suck a teaspoon of synthetic nitrogen down because the results of that second one's going to be really bad, I promise you. Yeah. You're not going to honey more. And then this one is just an observation.

I mean, I used to be a work as a little naturalist out in Yelstone a little bit and a few places like that. And I was young, roaming around America. And, man, there's a big diversity of plants. I talked about us identifying over 170 species of plants here. That's a native habitat. And that's part of my release process or native habitat. But how about in our food plots? We're all thinking that perfect row of corn, perfect patch of soybeans, perfect cloverfield, monoculture.

Well, if we go back, the real reason we have monoculture, so a combine would work. or the planter would only plant one size seed at a time or, gosh, you know, we can only use this herbicide on top of this. It's going to kill everything else. And I've learned through other wise people, I want as much life out there as I can get. Man, I want bugs and earthworms and microbes. And if I got a ragweed and a food plot, I, deer can eat that too. But, man, I want diversity.

So my blends will typically, I always want at minimum. One legume. I think beans, peas in summer, winter peas, alfalfa, something like that in the cooler season. I want a broad leaf plant. That could be a lagoon like a pea or bean, but sunflowers is a great broad leaf. And I want a brassica. It can maybe collards in the warm season or summer and turnips rashes in the winter. I want those four.

I want a grass. And again, summer could be corn or milo. Those are all in the grass family. There's other grasses. Fall, wheat, rye oats are common when hunters use. people use. And once you find out, when you get at least members of those four types of plants, you stimulate more microbes. So again, you know, the textbooks used to say, maybe still say it takes a thousand years to build an inch of soil, which I think is true on raw rock. But I think, and I've

witnessed here, I think it's very possible, very realistic. If you're planting a blend of species, not a monoculture, a good blend, and you have a decent growing season, I think you can realistically build a quarter inch of soil a year. And that's cooking with gas. And on this place, you've seen how much soil. So you started with more or less rock on the tops of these knolls. And you have soil six inches deep of good. Yeah.

But that's not a linear because I keep learning. And at first I was planting monocultures. And I think our rate increases even faster now. Tell me in short the cycle of growing and then crimping and then planting into it. Yeah, our system's really easy and simplified. We take way less hours we used to to plant way about 95 acres of food plots. So in the spring, I'm going to always have cereal rye and probably crimson clover or Balancia, some really good annual clover.

And this is going to be, I'm going to wait a little later and other people are planting food plots, so I'm going to plant a little later because I want those plants to maximize their value, right? So I call it the dough stage when I can take that wheat, rye, or whatever, seed head, and squish it, and it's formed like it's mature but it's moist. It's not hard. It's obviously not viable. going to drill right through that. It's called planting green. I'm going to take my no-trial. So you've got a stand of

these things you've just said and you're planting right back into it? Right. I haven't treated a herbicide. I haven't done anything. I haven't done nothing except crank the tracker up and put the drill on. Yeah. Put a good warm season or summer blend of seed in there. And you're fine at drilling through standing. I started by terminating the crop first with the crumper, but then you got this thick mat and I don't care how good a drill you got. I won't hardly cut through there. It's not designed for that. So planting green, I learned from a farmer in Ohio is much better. And then I'll let that, I'll probably let that germinate. I'll let my new crop get an inch or too tall.

And then I'll use a crimper, which is like a flat roller or a round roller, but has a fin about every eight inches. You're dragging this behind your tractor. And it's rolling, but a crimper is designed to break the plant's circulatory system every few inches. And it terminates the crop. So it's got these ridges. It looks like a tire. It looks like a mud tire.

It's got ridges. Yeah, but they're six inches sticking off, you know, well distilling. And so, but the brand new plant. plants are so pliable, they just pop back up. If you had a really good fall crop, you're going to have about four inches of thick mulch. So you've killed the stuff that was standing, but the plants in the dough stage are going to come up. Yeah, we started last fall and we planted the fall crop, a blend, had some big cereal grains in there and some legumes and peas or whatever. And now it's spring.

The soil temperature is at least 60 degrees at two inches deep at 9 a.m. Sounds really picky. So that's how you're building a quarter inch of good soil here. Well, and everyone, me and pluted for years, we look at what's up top. Galen taught me to look below the soil, like an iceberg. 90% of an iceberg is below the water. Only 10% you can see above. If you didn't catch that all, Dr. Woods has an incredibly informative weekly show

called Growing Deer TV, where he explains all these processes in great detail. For White Tail and Turkey-related land management content, his stuff is incredible. Hey, that was a pretty cool analogy on the icebergs. And microbes, there they were again. Diversity of plant species stimulates microbial activity and monocultures degrade microbial activity. I think it's wild how something so small and invisible to the human eye is the fuel of the soil and thus the heartbeat of life on the planet. We can't talk about soil without understanding something about erosion. Dr. Woods has a pretty wild example that will paint a vivid picture. So obviously you can't lose soil and improve its health. You can't have

erosion because the smaller particle usually the better quality dirt. So if you're seeing rivlets or ditches go across the field, it's being degraded. The best stuff's leaving. So how can you stop erosion, man? Everyone thinks it's some expensive system or people tile fields to let moisture out. You don't need doing any of that stuff, right? Plant roots should go six feet deep, easy. That's your tiling system. So, again, if we've got the soil always covered, we've got thatch from the previous crop, I call that mulch, and a living crop, the raindrop never really strikes the soil.

It hits the living crop, or it hits the thatch in the winter or whatever, slows it way down, and then it infiltrates through that satch, and it just soaks in the soil. And if you've got a really good root system, it's just going to run right down that root, right? It's just going to infiltrate versus. running off. What are the stats for the soil and our agricultural belt for how much is running off? Yeah, I know exactly in Iowa because Iowa does a great job monitoring these things, and they do it through weirs, you know, Little Creek, you have a weir, so much sediments going down. It's really scientific stuff. They average about five tons per acre per year. Running off. Running off.

Leaving, going to Mississippi River, and you say, you know, I can be, yeah, can be. Remember that the thickness of a piece of typing paper over an acre, 218 feet by 218, feet is a ton. Just the thickness. So if you see a couple of ditches six inches deep through a field, there's some tons. That's tons of dirt.

Tons right there. If you start paying attention to soil erosion, you'll see it everywhere. And it's pretty eye-opening when you understand the value of that soil. Dr. Woods has a strong opinion about the significance that soil health plays on the earth.

He has strong words about the agricultural systems in this country. And I want to reiterate Dr. Wood's position. He is pro-agriculture. He's been a farmer. He was raised by farmers, but is very adamant

that there is a better way. I'm very excited about this. I really think this is the best tool we have to improve our planet. Soil health. Soil health. I mean, electric cars are great and all these earth things are great,

but practicality, pricing, timing. Farmers, this is well-proven, can make more profit and improve the soil at the same time. And the obvious question is, why aren't they doing it? And I'll just tell you, besides white-tailed deer hunters, farmers are the hardest headest people I've ever tried to work with my life. And that's being unfair.

I mean, there are livelihoods at stake. A big massive change is a big risk for them. That'd be like saying, Grant, we want you to go be a music composer. It'd be a total life change for me to relearn that. Well, the whole system is set up for them to be successful by using the old system. So what I'm hearing you say is there needs to be a reform, in the way, the whole architecture of everything. Yes, and to take that further, and I'm angry about this, not just mad, angry.

The system is absolutely not promoting soil health improvement. It's promoting use of certain products. And I'm not anti-herbicide. I look at herbicide, as I explained, just like a root canal. I don't want to have one, but it's better than my jaw rotting out. Yeah. You know, I think farmers are, I was raised on a farm. I'm passionate about farmers.

They got a hard life. I'm not talking to 50,000 acre of a crop farm here. I think it goes even further than that. If you really want to know how I really think, why don't you just ask me. Here's what I wrote up. I want to hear you say, in short, why you feel like soil is the way that we can turn this planet around. Yeah, so we know, and you know, I talked about soft air that when society, civilizations, harm our soil to society or civilization fails, Romans, whatever, whatever. I think we can turn a society around for a couple real simple reasons.

We can reduce pollution significantly. Ag is the second largest provider of carbon because of disking, not the diesel coming out of tractor because they're releasing carbon from the soil. Remember, soil that's black has a lot of carbon in it. Yeah. Red, gray, white soil is depleted to carbon. It will not be productive without a huge amount of synthetic inputs which are leaching into our groundwater. Two, used to farms were 100 acres, 300 acres, and you were making a living, mama got a new car every now and then. Not that way anymore at all, right?

corporate farms with government subsidies. If you're doing the regenerity bag, and I know some beautiful examples of families that got 60 acres, 100 acres, and they're making a good income because they have such reduced inputs, and their land is so healthy, it's so productive. I'll share with you just one because a lot of cattle farmers out there, right? I used to raise cows. There's an old boy up here north of me about an hour. I met at a farmer's market, got talking to him.

He's got 100 acres of land here in the Ozarts. he will sell 50 calves a year off 100 acres of grass pasture, no supplemental feed. And he's doing what's called mob grazing. He may have the equivalent of a quarter, 250,000 pounds, quarter million pounds of beef on an acre for an hour. And it's replicating what the buffalo did. And they're urinating and defecating, and a rumin is full of microbes. They're about a trillion microbes to a teaspoon of rumen fluid. So they're salivating, urinating, defecating,

and they're putting those microbes right back in there, which makes the plants grow faster. He's not using any fertilizer, no worm, no fly medicines, because they're always moving. And then his wife has a chicken trailer, and she follows the cows three days, and they're cleaning up all the maggots out of cow poop.

Pasture eggs are about $12 a dozen, dollar an egg. That's pretty good money. Rural America's dead. There's no doubt about this. It's sad. I was raised in rural America. I love rural America. A family can move out there and get 60 acres, 80 acres, put in a good day's work.

Work five, six days a week. They can make a living using this process. And to me, if we can get people making a good living with no government subsidies, improving the soil, improving the water, providing us better food to eat, did you know that a lot of oranges right now have no vitamin C in them because the soil is so depleted? Did you know that spinach has 40% less iron in it than it did on average 30 years ago? because of the depleted soils. Many of the diseases we're facing now that wasn't heard of when you and I were boys

were probably because of depleted soil health and therefore depleted nutrients in the food we eat. Take a pasture-raised egg. Stick your finger and skillet for the heats on. You can't hardly break the yolk. Take an egg out of a chicken house. It's like water. I'm not being mean. We're feeding a bunch of billion of people on the planet.

But if our acres are more productive, we can feed even more people. We do not have to have these other inputs to feed more people. That is a myth. We just need to restore the health in our soil. I'm so passionate about this. I've shared with you all my transplant patient. I go to a Mayo Clinic once a year, every year for my annual checkup. Always have to meet with a dietitian, right?

But the difference between an Ozark Mountain deer that's eating really high-quality native vegetation, we're burning right now. As soon as it rains, it's going to be really succulent, grow full of nutrients, full of minerals. First is the middle of Iowa, soybean deer growing on a lot of, synthetics, there's no comparison. Bite per bite. In the nutrient content. Yes. And my

dietitians at the Mayo Clinic tell me, keep eating, watch you eat, I'm 29 years of a kidney transplant. I've been so blessed in life. Part of that is eating a healthy diet of wildlife. This is really affecting the quality of your life. Big time.

And at the end, I mean, I'm a hunter. I'm alive when I'm hunting. I'm in tune to everything around me when I'm hunting. But I hunt for me. I feel great pride, not in, you know, a vacuum-packed role. I feel pride in being a provider for my family of high-quality meat. Man, that's just so cool when your family's involved and you kind of feel good. It's like a big stack of firewood going in the fall, man. You feel good, right? Aldo Leapel said it, you know, good oak warms you twice, once when you cut it and once when you burn it. And the thrill

of having a buck or dough or turkey or whatever after, I got thrilled one time and then we get it out and cook it. And that thrill to me has become at this season of my life just as big as their first thrill. Yeah. I'm made up with it, man, no pun intended. And I think if America had healthy venison, healthy pheasants, healthy whatever to eat that wasn't loaded

up with herbicide, pesticide, pesticide, man, that'd be cool for America's health. Yeah. No matter what we do as humans, it's hard to get away from the importance of soils on the quality of our everyday lives, but I'm still amazed at how

little most of us actually think about it. The soil is literally the foundation of our existence. Halel wrote, Perhaps our most precious and vital resource, both physical and spiritual, is that most common matter underfoot, which we scarcely even notice and sometimes call it dirt. I continue to be amazed at the complexity of natural systems, We'll never know all the answers but an internal bewilderment in the fact that we're players in a complex and ancient system should cause us to pause. When we look across a vast landscape, whether it be in the Ozarks or Montana or in the Adirondacks of New York, with our eyes we see the 10% of the iceberg, and it's spectacularly decorated with mountains, trees, plants, and animals, the things that we love. But beneath it is the 90%, the soil which gives it all.

all life. If nothing else, next time you're in your favorite wild place, scratch back the leaves or the grass and take a handful of dirt, roll it through your hand. And while you do, think about how it's the rocket fuel of wildness. And consider how it's often the unseen things that define the things that are visible. And while the dirt touches your skin, also consider the incredibly short lifespan of a human compared to its ancientness and that the very atoms of your body will one day return to it and see if that changes the way you live today.

Thank you all so much for listening to Bear Greas. We've got some cool stuff coming up this fall, so please tell your buddies about our podcast and feel free to leave us a review on iTunes. Hey, if you're in the Northwest Arkansas region, check out across the creek farms. My friend Terrell Spencer's pastured poultry and eggs are off the charts. It's some good chicken. Keep the wild places wild. And hey, here's what Gary Newcomb does with dirt.

All right. Dad, tell me your philosophy on cleaning your hands. What's the best way in the world to clean your hands? It depends on where I am. If I'm in the house, I like to use soap. Okay. If I'm out at camp, if I'm deer hunting, I use dirt. Okay.

And I have no idea of why, but just my gut feeling is that dirt is about to clean something around. And it works. Oh, yeah. Yeah. If I clean a deer and I don't have water and soap, I prefer really dirt. It takes the odor away. I, you know, I might eat a sandwich after. using the dirt.

I mean, you ever brush your teeth with dirt? Never have. Never have. 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 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. I'm Jordan Sillers. Season 2 of Blood Trails premieres April 16th.

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