Bear Grease - Ep. 204: BEAR GREASE [RENDER] - Slate and Glass with Nathaniel Maddux

Episode Date: April 10, 2024

In today's Render, host Clay Newcomb is joined by Luke Naylor, Wildlife Management Division Chief with Arkansas Game and Fish, and Nathaniel Maddux of Slate and Glass, as we discuss the topic of turkeys forward and backward and share highlights of the Turkey Stories (Part 2) podcast. Nathaniel discusses his latest film, "The Colonel & The Fox," a documentary about turkey hunting, some of its iconic figures, and the incredibly successful wild turkey restoration program of the 1940-1970's. Also on the Render are Gary “Believer” Newcomb, Josh “Landbridge” Spielmaker, and Bear John Newcomb.  Connect with Clay and MeatEater Clay on Instagram MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube Shop Bear Grease MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. First Lights fieldware collection is made for the work that happens long before opening day and continues when the season ends. Products built for early mornings, full days and real use. Hard wearing where they need to be versatile where it matters. No shortcuts. Just gear designed for the work that earns the season.

Built to perform, built to last. Check out. First Light's new field. Worldware Gear at firstlight.com. My name is Clay Newcomb, and this is a production of the Bear Grease podcast called the Bear Grease Render, where we render down, dive deeper, and look behind the scenes of the actual Bear Grease podcast. Presented by FHF Gear, American Made, Purpose Built, Hunting and Fishing Gear that's designed to be as rugged as the places we explore. Welcome to the Bear Greas Render.

This is going to be a good one. This is going to be a good one. It's been a while. I'll tell you who I got around me here. Gary Believer-Nookum, it's been a while since you've been here. Good to have you back. Yeah, I thought I was fired. Did you stop getting your checks?

We thought maybe you were, too, but it turns out you weren't. Well, I told Bear, I said, you know your daddy's really desperate when he calls me to guy up. No, good to have you back You still got your retinas Or did you burn them out in the clips yesterday? Hey, I'm fine, man I couldn't see good before and I still can

Yeah, so yesterday was Mena Where Dad Lives was in the path of totality So we went down there Pretty incredible experience We'll talk about that I'm going to skip over my two mystery guests Bear John Newcom is here Good to see a bear

Good to be here You ready for turkey season? I know you are been doing a lot of scouting. Yep. So hopefully we can make it happen this year. Yep. Yep, yep, yep.

I've got Josh Lambridge spillmaker here to my left. I'm here. I'm here. I'm here. Josh and I are wearing the same hat. We didn't coordinate, but we got the same first light hat on. It's a good looking hat. It is a good looking hat.

I want to make a hat like this with a bear grease patch. I'd wear the heck out of that. I'd wear the heck out of that. Our guest, though, I've got Luke Nailer. What don't you introduce your position, Luke, with the Arkansas game and Fish Commission. I'll be happy to do that. Yeah, I'm the Wildlife Management Division Chief for the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission.

Wildlife Management Division Chief. And so you oversee for the Arkansas Game and Fish all the different, like all the turkey projects, bear projects, deer projects, duck projects. You're all those biologists and people's oversight. Correct. Yes, we've got real simply, we're divided up. We've got about 14, I think, what we call program coordinators, which what I use. to be as a waterfow program coordinator or bear program coordinator, Turkey, all those, the ologist type positions we've got.

And then also all our wildlife management area staff. So we've got seven different wildlife management regions and several different staff out there doing doing WMA work. Yeah. Along with a whole lot of other things on top of the guys. And you were the waterfowl biologist for 16 years here in Arkansas. Yeah, yeah. It's almost two years now since taking the switch over here to the,

to an office jockey, I guess. Administrative role. Did we get you out of any meetings today? Yeah, I got to cut one short, but let's make sure our boss doesn't hear about that too much. Well, this is very important public outreach. It is very important, and it's talking turkeys, so I'm passionate about that. Man, I want to talk some turkeys. We need to introduce our mystery, mystery guest.

Luke's been here before. Nathaniel Maddox from Lebanon, Missouri, not Lebanon. Lebanon. You'd be tempted if you were just driving through Missouri to say... Looking for a case knife. Where's Lebanon, Missouri? Lebanon. That's how we spot a newcomer.

They said Lebanon. Yeah, yeah. Nathaniel is from Lebanon, Missouri. Yep. And tell us what you do, man. Yeah, so I'm a filmmaker. Own a company called Sladen Glass, a production company. and we've been established in my hometown of Lebanon, Missouri since 2014,

moved back there after starting the company in Seattle, and ended up back on the family farm. Slate and glass. So there's a, that's a turkey hunting. Those are turkey hunting words. Yeah, and their production words as well. Really? Glass for lenses and a slate is the little, you know, action.

Well, is it, was it meant for turkeys, though? Both. It's a double ontario. Yeah. Seattle things. If you'd have really been from Missouri, you'd have called it, turkey video work. Yeah, yeah, that's right.

But slate and glass, double meaning, I like it. Yeah. So you've been in full-time video production for 10 years with your own company. Since actually I had a company before that, I started in 2010 that I sold to a guy in Seattle. So since 2010, so 14 years. Okay. Yeah.

So I got to get this on the table. Nathania, the reason I know Nathaniel, we have a mutual friend in Isaac Neal. But the main reason that your name has popped up in my world the last 10 days is that you, your company, you made the film, the Colonel in the Fox for Mossy Oak. That's right.

Which came out April 4th. Yeah. Last week. Yeah. And that film, golly, man. When I saw the trade. for it. I was with, I was in Mississippi turkey hunting. I saw the little, little two-minute trailer, and I was just like, that is going to win. I really, I mean, I was like, that film is going to be good. I can tell

it just from the quality of the trailer, but also the content. So, Dad, so Gary, the believer has not seen this film. The film is about Toxy Hayes is the one who started Mossy Oak. His father, Foxhaze. How old is Mr. Fox? He's born in 1930, so I'll do some quick math. Mid-nine. He's like 93, 94, 92. He was, so the film is a documentary about his life, but also the documentary of a man named Colonel Tom Kelly,

who they call the poet laureate of turkey hunting. He wrote a book in the 1970s called The 10th Legion, which is an incredible, turkey hunting book that kind of shaped turkey hunting culture. And these two guys are still alive and they'd never met. But the story is about them, but it's really about their lives and the restoration of the wild turkey and their influence on the restoration. I probably should let Nathaniel tell me this. Yeah, he probably might have a little more knowledge.

What if Nathaniel was my guest? He drove down here and he never spoke. I just looked at him and talked about what he did. He's actually over here mouthing to you. I'm like, I've known Nathaniel for like eight minutes. Let me tell you about this guy. I mean, you know, he's, he is from Seattle. He's got his, what kind of shoes are these?

These are P.F. Flyers. See, okay, this is the first. This is the first in here. Now, Barry's got some interesting shoes, too, though, that Gary made a few comments about these lacrosse. I'm never the guy with cool shoes. Ocean blue shoes. But no. Those are cool.

So I could talk about. about Nathaniel. Tell us about the film. Yeah, so really it's been an overwhelming past week, so try to figure where to start. I've been working with Moss Yoke for a while. It's a company that's been important to me since I was a kid because my parents got a satellite dish in 1995, and the first thing I got introduced to was TNN outdoors. And so on Sunday afternoons, there was all of a sudden these hunting shows, and hunting the country was one that I had gravitated, to and watched all the time. So I grew up watching these guys turkey hunt. They taught me how a turkey hunt. I live on a cattle farm in Missouri, and there's turkeys all around me, but I don't

know how to kill them, and my parents don't know how to kill them or hunt them. And so those guys taught me how to do it, you know. And so I have a stack of VHS tapes that I actually recorded, you know, you hit the play and the record button at the same time. And all these years later, wait a minute, was that a technology hack you just saw on that? There you go. What do you mean you recorded them? of the TV, you know, you're on the TV. Like pop the VHS and recording off the TV. Well, I'm glad the statute of limitations is gone.

Right. Yeah, there you go. So all these years later, you know, I've been working with the NWTF since 2016, doing a lot of the content for them because turkeys have always been a very, very important part of my life. Turkey hunting has been. Would you say turkey hunting is the main thing you're interested in in the outdoors? Oh, yeah, absolutely. Okay.

That's it. Slate and glass. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I love to bow hunting and do a lot of different things, but turkey hunting is just, for whatever reason, has grabbed a hold of me, you know, since I was a kid. So over the years, I've gotten to know Toxy and Daniel and Neil and everybody at Mossyoke and done a couple commercials, 30-second commercial spots for new products and things. And they had come to me and said, hey, we got, you know, Pop-Off Fox and Mr. Tom Kelly at camp together. And there's a couple guys that grabbed some footage, but we're not sure how to. how to put the story together.

Oh, so you didn't film that part? I did not. No. Got it. So they came, Daniel and Neil came to me like maybe a year ago, and they said, we've kind of got this collection of footage.

The camp was one of them. They had a couple of other interviews with Tom Kelly's daughter and a couple other people, and asked if I would kind of take on the, you know, responsibility of figuring out how to make a story that honored both of these guys. And started going through that footage, and then I got really deep,

into the weeds with putting together this big storyboard. And I'm like, man, maybe it can be a 30-minute film, but it feels like there's a lot here. And so I started, me and my guy started doing more interviews and really decided, you know, yes, this is a story about these two guys that have been turkey hunting since the 1940s and not too many people can say that. But a lot has happened since the 1940s in America as a whole in our culture.

And so how did not only, this idea that these turkeys were almost gone when they started and now we've got you know this beautiful thing called turkey hunting and a population that all of us get to enjoy they came through that but they also came through World War II and Vietnam and all these other things right and so my goal kind of became how do we tell the story of the wild turkey through the eyes of these two guys who have who are still hunting now but also through the eyes of America you know like our culture and how it's shifted and changed over the years and it ended up becoming an hour and 20 minutes instead of 30 minutes. Man, what you did there by connecting the restoration of this turkey to people is really powerful.

And I mean, I think that's a key component to just all of our endeavors as hunters to to show a non-hunting public, which is becoming increasingly important in the sustainability of what we do is that the non-hunting public understands and is empathetic towards us and sees the real value that we bring in so many ways. And man, anybody would watch that film and just be like, wow, I kind of get it. You know, because you just see these guys who just dedicated their lives to turkey hunting, but then you also see the human effort involved in the restoration of the wild turkey. And specifically, these two guys, in different ways.

I mean, like, Tom Kelly was more influential at a cultural level in writing this book that put words and put some, yeah, just he helped build the turkey hunting culture through this powerful work of literature. And then through Mr. Fox, who was more hands-on in some ways of getting turkeys brought back in and released into Mississippi. But you just see their lives. Dad in the film, they, it's like a documentary in a way about America. Like they show World War II

and Colonel Tom Kelly was in World War II and that shows, I don't know, there's a, how did you, is that a good description of it? I think so.

I mean, I feel like in my head we're all very unique people. You know, we all loved a turkey hunt, but that's not all of us, right? Like, it's not the whole of who I am

is not just a turkey hunter. And I wanted this film to show that. And I think that, sort of connects people who maybe not turkey hunters to understand a little bit. And we had a really cool screening down in Mississippi and everybody from Ossehoke was there and it was really fun. They were like, hey, you need to do one in Lebanon. I'm going, man, we've got like the Ritz 7 theater. I hope it's still standing kind of thing. So we had a premiere last week and 200 people there or something and a lot of them came out because they were our friends and family.

But it was cool to me. So many people who know that I'm obsessed with turkey hunting, but they're just kind of like, oh, that's just what this guy does. He always has. Coming up to me and being like, I get it now. Like, it makes sense. And a couple people who I never thought would ever want to hunt were like, I think I'm going to, I might want to try this.

To me, that felt like a success, you know, people in my community who were going, I get it, you know. Yeah. And so if we could create a piece of content that makes someone who doesn't hunt or doesn't understand hunting, have a little glimpse into what we're passionate about, then I feel like we've done something cool. Have you made feature-link films like that before?

Not that long, no. How long did you work on this? That's a good question. So I was thinking about that on the drive-up, like, how many hours went into this? I started really, really focusing on it hard early December, and I think I finished it at the end of February. Oh, for real.

So this isn't like, I thought it was like a year, I thought you were going to say, oh, we've been working on this since 2022 or something. Well, we were doing archiving and research work probably since June through December. And then when I finally got what I felt was all the pieces of the puzzle, started putting it together. And it was my wife will attest that there are a lot of nights when the kids went to bed. And I ran back over to the studio until one or two in the morning because I have other clients too. But I wanted to put everything I could into this project. because for me it's like turkey hunting is the most special thing that I know of when it comes to relationships with people.

You know, that and in my faith, obviously my faith is first, but turkey hunting is this way that I build relationships, that I maintain relationships, I spend time with people I love. And so I knew this was my opportunity to really like sort of put that into a story. And I wanted to pour everything I could into it. So what did y'all think about the film, Josh? I thought it's fantastic, man. I really appreciated getting to see because I didn't know all the history of the reintroduction of the turkey. So I love being able to see all that old footage. And, you know, you get the impression of, you know, you think about market hunting.

And then you think about hunting in the around the turn of the century, even into the 50s that was, you know, you just went out and you hunted. You hunted anything you could to watch these guys with such a commitment to bring it back in the work. And I mean, even looking at the turkeys that they were releasing, they look so scraggly. You know what I mean? But it's produced this thriving population. Obviously, population decline in some areas. But we still have this. We actually have a turkey population thanks to these guys.

Yeah. Even in the woe, the current woes of the southeast and specifically here in Arkansas, we still got it pretty darn good. I mean, compared to what they had, I mean, yeah, we're all, all, you know, bummed out about our turkeys here in Arkansas, but, Dad, gum, we still got it exponentially better than what they had in the 60s, 40s, 50s, you know. Big time. Dad, how aware, when did you kill your first turkey? The 80s? No, I think the late 70s. Yeah.

There was that Polaroid picture. You and a guy holding a turkey that I remember being your first turkey. Yeah, it could have been in early 80s. How aware were you of the restoration efforts going on? Not too much. It's just kind of like there's turkeys and people are hunting. Yeah, yeah. And I took a interest in it and, you know, learned how to call.

You know, when you were a little guy, I was always going around a house calling. Yeah. So, you know, that, you know, that, uh, This relates to bear. Luke, how old are your kids? Almost 16 and 13. Do they do some hunting? Daughters now, she decided she's an angler now.

Yeah. I sent Josh a picture of that little Dry Run Creek trout not long ago. So she got hooked on fly fish in last summer in Colorado, where I learned fly fish. My son kind of comes and goes on it. We've done some dove hunts, a few duck hunts, and we'll go turkey hunting this year a couple times. He's not tore up with it like bear seems to be. at this point, but he's, there's a little, there's a spark there. Okay.

Okay. Well, here, this is the reason I asked you that is when I was a kid, Baranukum, burritos are ready. It was like, I was like in military school to learn how to call turkeys. I remember you were just like, you got to learn how to call turkey. This is the, the Ph.D. in hunting. And I remember I was so proud of myself. because one time I was working for Buck Titsworth, a construction project, and I saw a turkey

and the guy I was working for backyard. I was 16. I saw a strutting turkey, like, down the hill. I'm working, and I had a mouth diaphragm call, and I walked around the house and got on the other side, and that turkey strutted in, and I came home and told dad about it, and he was like, let me hear you call. And I, whirk, work, quack, quark, quack. And he was like, that's okay.

Yeah, I remember you being like, I don't know if that'd work on a real wild turkey clay. And I was like, Dad, I called him up. I mean, he was a backyard turkey. It was a real wild turkey. It was a wild turkey. But it was in his backyard. But point being, Bear needs to work on his turkey call. And I'm going to bring in the Gary Newcomb critique and be like, buddy, you got to get on the wagon.

You're about to run through the gauntlet, my friend. I mean, he's called up and kill turkeys. But, man, when you're down in Mississippi, an 11-year-old kid in Mississippi can out-call grown men in most states and so, Bear, we've got a lot of work to do. Yeah, I remember. I hope all that made sense.

None of that may have made sense. It made perfect sense of my head. Well, from my perspective, I could call in a bird, but I wasn't that great of a caller. And I taught Clay what little I knew. and within a week he could call better than I could. I mean, he had a natural ability to do it. It might not be.

Now I'm the best caller or meat eater. For sure. Yeah. So, proven. Anyway, you had a, you had a knack for it. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps game calls in 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 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 Felps. 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. Well, when I go to Mississippi, I don't even call.

When I'm around, all those guys in Mississippi, Lake Pickle, Jordan Blissitt, Keith Polk, I hunted with Brad Ferris the other day. And I just shut up. I don't even call. I'm serious. When you're in the presence of greatness, you just keep your mouth shut. They can hoot and gobble and, yep, I mean, it's crazy listening to him on the video.

And that kind of comes back to his film. Yeah. I've decided that, and as much as I, you know, I'm prone to be very biased towards the state of Arkansas, I believe that Mississippi is the cultural epicenter of turkey hunting. Yeah, it is. I believe that. I mean, just everybody in Mississippi, Luke, has written a book about turkey hunting. If you lived in Mississippi, you'd be like, hey, Clay, Merry Christmas.

Here's a book I wrote about turkey hunting. One of my best memories ended up living in California. I met a Mississippi boy, and we're friends to this day. And he introduced me to the old pro-turkey hunter book, which we read every season. Once I got to know him, and we turkey hunted together a lot out there in the coast. range in the foothills and such out and out there and and he i got that was my first introduction to the it was remote removed from mississippi but it was a mississippi guy born and raised and he i got i got i understood maybe not fully like like like you have now but i got a pretty good taste of what

it's like to be a mississippi turkey with his mouth didn't do much al hootin no bard owls out there when we were okay but we'd do it anyway because i mean they're turkey agaublo whatever but i'm not going to say that he would win the Al-Hoot contest. Okay. But I'm not going to denigrate him by saying like you've done with Bearers turkey calling here. You say that he couldn't pull it off. See, Dad, now's talking good about my turkey hunting.

All I remember as a kid was it like. It was no good. Like never measure out of it. Yeah. Well, um, the, what is the, are we in the middle of Turkey biologist in Arkansas right now? We don't have a turkey biologist. We have one starting Monday, which whenever this comes out.

The opening day of turkey season? Yes, correct. The opening day of turkey season. If he doesn't call in that day and say, I'm busy, I'm not buying into him. You know, I had a guy call me a friend, and still to this day, he's kind of a prankster, and he called me up Sunday night, the seventh. And he said, man, I'm getting all my stuff laid out to go turkey hunting. I let him go on for about five minutes.

He'll listen to this. And I said, man, are you? you're like are you just trying to get a game warden to come find you tomorrow morning he said what do you mean so adult turkey season starts the 15th not the 8th oh wow he said well i'm glad i'm glad i talk to you and i still do this moment don't know if he was just pulling my leg right i really don't know but but yeah our new guy starts uh march 15th april 15th april 15th um he's coming out he's finishing his phd at north carolina state studying turkeys up in appalachos so um he'll be green but he's coming in and we're ready to have him hit the ground running and keep things going

that Jeremy got rolling here for a while. Got a pretty good stable place here with our turkey management program right now. We've had some support to kind of keep things stable, keep our turkey regulations kind of set here for a while. You know, he alluded to it a little bit ago. It's a good place to be that we definitely are not at a point where anybody's worried about losing the opportunity to hunt turkeys. Yeah. Anytime in the near future, we're not going to lose turkey populations again. like we did back, you know, nearly 100 years ago, 80 years ago now.

But we are definitely in a place, as we all know, that we're in a decline. It's maybe at the bottom of it. I don't know for sure. But it's definitely gotten rougher for everybody, for turkeys and for turkey hunters. But it is, the good news is it's still a lot of opportunity out there. There's still a lot of turkeys. It's just not quite a slam-done. Boy, late 90s.

I'm a self-taught turkey hunter, too. Nobody in my family turkey ended and, you know, wanted to just got passionate about it when I was, you know, early teens and taught myself out of Turkey. I probably watched some of the videos you were talking about. Same deal. Primo's true stuff. I don't know when that's already coming out, but the same boss of Mississippi. Also from Mississippi. And it's hard to say now that, boy, we kind of learn when it was easy.

I think if we're honest with ourselves, I think we did kind of learn when it was easy. Yeah. No doubt. Late 90s, early 2000s. Boy, it was, you know, when I was going to undergrad at Kansas State, boy, we'd go out and duck hunt in the winter. And it was flocks of 200 plus burrs and every creek bottom, you know. And that's just not the way it is anymore.

Probably, for all of us, probably won't come back to be in that. But we're still going to have turkeys. Can you lay out, like, simply the, what is the turkey? Is there a way to verbalize it? turkey management plan in Arkansas. And I mean, can you do that? Yeah, I mean, we're always focused on habitat first, right? Trying to continue.

That's a long-term thing. And that's working with Forest Service. Yep. Private landowners. So in Arkansas, there's, we have quite a bit of national forest, which Game and Fish works with Forest Service on some of that land or all of it. A lot of it. Then we have state-owned land like Arkansas Game and Fish WMAs.

Correct, which a lot of that's in the Delta, which is less. It definitely has turkeys, but less so than the western part of the state, which is the hill country. Most of that, most of the public land there is national forest land. We've got some awesome, large wildlife management areas in the Ozarks. I'm in the Washtasas as well. They're not that good, though. Well. Yeah, don't come.

No, don't come here. I won't name any names at all because that's, I know better than that. but, you know, people still find places to find turkeys on public land. Yeah, it's a long-term issue to keep managing habitat. So managing habitat would be burning. I know there's a lot of places where they're planting food plots. I mean, like specifically for, I mean, for wildlife, but turkeys too. Right.

What would be habitat work that gaming fish is managing? Yeah, so long term, we're trying to push habitat toward desired forest conditions, desire conditions. So this kind of terminology we use in habitat management where we have, okay, here's what we think this habitat should be. And you can debate that for months. But let's just take a look at it. A lot of times go back to the GLO records. What is that, General Land Office or whatever, the early records, first settlement, when people go to survey trees, and they'd go take every section, they'd assess it.

And those records are out there and available. They're really, really fascinating to look through. And if you were going to summarize it real quickly, it'd say there's just way too many trees, which is funny when you're talking about turkeys. But there's like the whole Boston Mountains you drive through up in northwest Arkansas. I mean, that's a second growth forest that was the Wachita records, talk about folks driving covered wagons with never having to dodge.

trees, right? You take a wagon train through it. It was so open. Wow. So much grass cover. So most of our forests are too dense, which support fewer numbers of species. So we're talking about all kinds of critters, not just the ones we like to hunt, but all sorts of different wildlife. Use this diverse forest ecosystem that had lots of forb and grass and shrub understory with overstory pine and oak, depending on what slope you were on and generally just a lot fewer trees and a lot more fire. So the fire, do y'all, so I see quite a bit of fire. I've seen quite a bit of burns going on this spring in national forest.

Are y'all asking them to do that? Or is that forest service that's wanting to do that for timber management? Forest service, I'm not going to speak for them, but a lot of what they do throughout the country is fuel reduction fires. So that just it's just a, they have an objective to reduce fuel loading across the certain area. So it just kind of happens to be that that's good for turkeys too. It can and it's, it's maximized when there's some sort of forest management practice done in cooperation with the fires. Yeah, you cut trees, you know, thin things out, let some grasses grow up, then develop a burn regimen after that. Then you kind of, you kind of reset that forest to back to a more diverse.

better, you might say. That's a judgment call, but a little better system for lots of critters. Just burning without thinning has reduced benefit, because it doesn't have the same sunlight on the ground. Yeah. The sunlight means diversity and sunlight helps regenerate stuff that may have been shaded out by an 80-year-old oak tree.

Everybody thinks it's a virgin forest maybe, right? Nobody's ever been here. Human beings never touched this place. Well, you know, most of the records of the Boston Mountains in northwest Arkansas was prairie. I mean, it was, there's a, what's Pea Ridge, National Military Park up here, is a good representation of what things probably look like in the Civil War era. Wide grasslands, open spaces, and most of it was cut over and now just shaded out by too many trees.

But that and just trying to maintain. Now that prong one would be habitat. Habitat. It's always habitat. I stopped you there. It's always habitat. What would be other things? like season,

season dates. Yeah, you try to work on that and try to maintain some stable. You know, we've had what most folks would probably consider later turkey seasons

here recently in Arkansas, but some stability in that so we can start to understand the impacts of different things, whether it's wet springs, right? We know we had a bunch of them the last 10 years that we know aren't good

for ground nesting birds. Yep. But it's hard to tease that out if season structures are changing a little bit. So, and you're starting to see more states at least talk about and try to implement a later season to start, right? More people are going toward that now because we're, and we're doing some neat stuff that we can hopefully talk about, you know, 12 to 18 months from now about gobbling credology, looking at an autonomous recording units, ARUs, you hang them up in a tree and they just record sound. And then you can go in, some algorithm finds out, yeah, it's a turkey goblin and you can go check it.

So we're going to have unbiased data on goblin. chronology across the state. Can you send me some pins of where the... I probably won't do that, Josh. But I'll make sure to screen the data before we write a report on it. Now, that's going to help us understand goblin chronology because you're really talking about almost on purpose trying to hit the second peak of gobbling for birds, like let birds get through that first peak.

It's frustrating as a turkey hunter sometimes. When they're doing their breed. You hear them doing it. They're leck building, their harem building, that whole kind of stuff. boy, they're noisy. They can be really susceptible to calling at times. Other times, not at all, of course. We all know turkeys.

But that's kind of by design is to make sure all that stuff gets done. And then we start going out and removing males from the population. Yeah. So habitat, season structure. Is there anything else? And we just keep like the monitoring work to try to keep making sure we have contemporary information on what's going on. with turkey. So, you know, we've done gobbler and conology work over the years. It's funny with a lot of things we've done with like dove call counts. There's been quail and pheasant call counts all across

the country for years. It's kind of funny to watch those trends over the years and a bunch of old men going out and doing these surveys. It's funny. Those indices drop over time. Well, guys can't hear anymore. So you kind of like we say, we say bias, but I don't mean like somebody purposely doing something, right? This isn't somebody faking data. This is just a reality when you have a human observer. If you sent me out there, I would report that all the turkeys were to the left. I would be like, I don't know what happened.

They were all over here. Chief wildlife officer, Luke. Because he's deaf and his right. All the turkeys were always to the left, no matter where I was standing. Yeah, now we have the technology to remove the human element from it. Yeah, yeah. But we haven't done a real goblin chronology work for, I mean, almost 20. 20 years now where we systematically had people go out and run routes with different levels

of hunting pressure, with different habitat types, different ecoregions. So now we're working on this with these ARUs. A lot of states are doing this now because it's a really cool way to figure out, okay, what is the actual breeding credology? If you think goblin credology means breeding credology, like what is it really across the country? Because we have all got our own stories we can tell. But this should be really cool for a lot of states across the country to have. this information the next several years.

Wow. So the new guy starts Monday. Right when John Calipari starts for the Arkansas Razorbacks. Yeah. Yeah, that'll be, well, yeah, I'm not sure which one will give him the most press. Time will tell, right? I was, okay, I had a little scenario in my head when I knew that you were going to be here, Luke. And so for those who aren't paying attention to college basketball,

John Calipari from Kentucky is now going to come be the Arkansas Razorback Head Basketball. basketball coach. And there was a lot of press about that. There's a lot of mixed feelings in the state about it. And I thought, wouldn't it be something if it was just as big a deal about who the new Arkansas turkey biologist was going to be in the equivalent of bringing in John Calipari, though, for the game in fish. And if y'all had had a marketing team doing this, you could have created this environment. Like if you'd have brought in like Craig Harper or the turkey dock, Mike Chamberlain, And it'd be like, whoa, Chamberlain's leaving Georgia and coming to Arkansas. And like, people would be mad and people would be fired up. Would have been a lot of posts about that. Yeah, probably going to have fewer about our new turkey biologists, I had to guess. Well, yeah. But it was a fun little game in my head.

Well, just a few minutes. Good luck with Calipa. They couldn't get Kansas States coach. That's my own water. And our new turkey biologist's name is. You're going to make me say it. He's got a last name that's hard to pronounce. David Muscicki.

He's going to get mad at me. It's got a lot of confidence. Okay. So David Muskicki, I think is how you say that. Well, I'll have to get him to come on the risk at some point. Yeah. Well, you're getting ready for Missouri turkey opener, Nathaniel? Yeah.

Next Monday. Yeah. Same as Arkansas. It is, yeah. 15. They're in alignment. Yeah. We've already had a really good turkey season.

Y'all have pretty good numbers of birds where you're at. It's been a lot better this year. I've seen so many jakes, which has been a huge deal. And I've got my family farmer I live, I've been hunting turkeys there forever. So I have a pretty good idea of how the population is doing, at least in La Cleek County. And it's been really nice to see this year. And we had a good youth season. My son got a bird and one of his buddies.

Just this weekend? Yeah, just this weekend. Really? And then. They gobble good this weekend? Oh, it was great. Yeah. It was a really, really good weekend.

And then before that, my son and I went to Florida and got, he got his grand slam. Oh, no. Oh, really? That's awesome. It's a big deal. He's nine, and he's been on the road a bunch with me turkey hunting over the last few years. So that was a cool, a cool moment. Did you do any turkey hunting when you're out in the Northwest?

A little bit, yeah. Man, as soon as turkey season hit when I lived there, I was ready to get on the plane and be in the Ozarks, though, you know? So, because I love being here in Kansas and just kind of our little spot. But we go to Wyoming every year, which is my favorite. Oh, really? Turkey out in Wyoming? Yeah, Miriams. We have a spot there that we go. It's close to South Dakota, but I look forward to that. We usually do Florida and Wyoming and then wherever else I have to go for work.

Luke, are you hunting anywhere out of state this year? Yeah, we'll go to, we'd kind of make a loop through Missouri, Kansas, and Nebraska. Okay. Yep, I've been doing that for long, I mean, going on 15 years. Oh, really? Kansas side of stuff. And I had some work trips that worked out very conveniently. Several years ago for Nebraska, then took a little break in that.

And then, yeah, so go back to Missouri. We'll kind of make a whole circuit. Go there, hunt for a few days, go up to Kansas, Nebraska, and hunt for a few days, drive back. If we want to spend a couple more days in Missouri, we will. Will you get to hunt Arkansas at all? Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Will you? Yep, I plan to hunt a little bit next week. Where are you going? Good question. I will never answer that question. I joke with a lot of people. He was like, I was like a deer in the headlights. He was like, wait a minute.

I thought we were, what? I thought we had an understanding. No, no, like two living people know where I turkey hunt. And one of them will go on that trip with me. So that's how we treat turkey hunting spots, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. But yeah, public land in Arkansas. Let's just put it that way.

Public land in Arkansas. And then after turkey season, Luke's getting on the boat and we're going to go fly fishing. We'll go fly fishing. Yeah. Yeah. I'm ready for that. Yeah. On Blood Trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is over. They just get darker. I've seen something in the road. I instantly thought it was a sleeping bed. And there was a pool 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, IHeart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. So the Turkey Stories episodes that we do, truly some of my favorite episodes to put together. Mainly just going and meet. I meet face to face with almost all these people. occasionally if I run into somebody that has professional equipment and lives a long

lays away they film they record their story but 98% of the stories I've ever had I'm sitting across from somebody in there telling me stories and there's a lot kind of like looking behind the curtain and kind of like we did with his film like you may hear a four minute story on the episode I was there with that guy for an hour and a half you know like talking about turkeys and you kind of just have to like whittle it down but uh this was the second episode uh which which did did one story stand out to you nathaniel i mean as soon as you started talking about that Honda big red three wheeler i just certainly that took me back to being a kid again you had a picture of a big red of um um um man that was nostalgic i was like we all had those when

we were kids you know um yacht yacht that story to me was um yeah yott that story to me was awesome just uh well he got shot and then didn't even tell the guy yeah exactly did you would you have known to david ellis before i know i know who he is yeah yeah yeah yeah it's a different it's a different uh way of life down there for turkey hunting in mississippi yeah yeah now i thought that story was really and he's a great storyteller so oh man yeah he he's a pro i mean like he actually goes around and does like public speaking so like he's told that particular story a lot of times you know but it was uh that was wild when he first told it to me i actually had to uh here's behind the veil he told the story and it was unclear to me at first

whether he was trespassing or not and i and i was like wait a minute this guy just told me the story about trespassing like i can't use this and i and i said wait a minute were you trespassing and he was like, no, I wasn't trespassing. And he went back and I actually edited out my question, took his explanation of not trespassing, dropped it in to like the climax of the story. And you'd never know it. For an editing nerd, it was like, oh, that's good. Well, you're really telling how the sausage is made. Yeah, for real. Because I didn't want it to, I didn't want people to question what had happened. But it, but it was real clear in the story, right? Like he, oh, yeah. Yeah.

He crossed this big ravine, went up there, was bushwhacking these turkeys. He wasn't even calling them because it was the last day and he was just like, man, I got to kill a turkey, get shot in the face. Yeah, it's wild, a scary story. Yeah. No kidding. Scary story. Luke, which, which story do you like? Well, I always enjoy listening to Andy.

Yeah. Tell a story. I think I can tell a story like really, really well. One thing, maybe going back to last years, you did turkey stories last year too, right? Yeah. One thing I've noticed about all of them, and nobody, I don't know if I've ever heard anybody tell a story about a small turkey. Yeah. It's always, I'm a big old gobbler.

Every one of them is a big old gobbler. Every single turkey story told. But I always enjoy just listening to him talk. I always use, I typically learn a new word or two. Which word? Which word was it? What did he say? Tumped?

Yes. Tumped. I was trying to figure out how that spelled T-U-M-P-A-P-A-P-A-Postrophe D. I had multiple people bring that up. It's true, though. Did that blip on your radar when he said tumped? Like that would be an unusual word? I've heard him talk so much.

I think I would just... You know the dialect. Yeah, it never even crossed my mind that that was an unusual word, and I had many people say they'd never heard tumped over. But, ma'am, I tell you what, Andy, I said it on the podcast, but Andy is number... You could be a great storyteller and not be that competent in hunting. That's one possibility, which is fun.

I mean, that's great. You could also be very competent in hunting and not be a great communicator. You could also be a good storyteller, competent, but not funny. Andy has like all of it. I'd put Andy Brown up against any turkey hunter in the country. I mean, for real. For his home turf. And everybody is, you know, Andy's one of these guys.

He's not, like, hunted all across the country. I mean, he's just dedicated to. You're saying skill-wise. Just for, if you were to say, yeah, for where he hunts, you just couldn't be much better. I mean, you just send out 100 guys and say, bring back turkey. I mean, there's people that are as good, but, like, he's just good. But then he's just a very, just a very. Very good story.

And his dang laugh. I mean, he laughs at himself. He's got a high-pitch giggle. Oh, gosh. Yeah. Andy, what a guy. What a guy. Okay.

I keep going back to Andy's house and saying, Andy, we're going to have to do it again. Turkey story. And he's like, Clay, about run out of him. I go to his house. I heard three new stories I've never heard. It actually held them back.

Any one of those stories would have been as good or better than any story that I put on there. I mean, it could have just been Andy's story time. So I saved him for next year. I told it, I was like, I'm just going to put one on, and then next year I've got two in the hopper that are incredible stories. So anyway, oh, Andy, yeah, he's a lot of fun.

But, Dad, which one stood out to you? Well, what impressed me was they were all so good. The first one I thought, well, this is going to be the best. Then the second one, you know, so all the way through, but Russ author, I really loved how that came together. I mean, it was unbelievable. In fact, it is unbelievable. But I've heard you talk about him so much.

I mean, it happened. Yeah. And then I finally decided that the Yacht Yacht and Po Daddy. Yeah. Forget the story. Anybody that has those nicknames, I mean, these are the coolest guys I've ever heard. I mean, they've got the lingo. And I mean, when Yacht Yacht gets to talking, it's like he's in a road race.

You know, I'm after they started out of the United States. You can't even hardly keep up with it. I had to replay it three or four times. And I go, man, I was going to try to repeat it in here. But it was just amazing storyteller. And when you say he's a pro, you probably wouldn't know it unless somebody told you. But when you really think about what he's saying, how clear it was, how entertaining it was an amazing guy.

And they'd have names like, how many people do y'all know that have goofy names like that? I mean, yeah, yeah. Y'all, y'all, and po-dadi. And they call po-dadi because, you know, he's too cheap. He said, he said, Po-Daddy ain't poor. He's just cheap. Like, we save $10 and get a hotel with one bed. So I guess Po-Daddy was my favorite.

Yeah. David Ellis has to be at the top end of natural voice mouth callers. Like his gobble, just him being able to, oh, oh, I mean, there's probably people that are better, but not much better. I mean, I guarantee you he'd be at the top end of, with his al-Hoot, I actually put a video on the TikTok. It got like 1.2 million views, and it was me just standing there saying, David, gobble, Al-Hoot, do your, you know, Yelp, and just, he can just do it. I love it when guys can do that. That's impressive. Sound effects added a lot to the story.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then the Russ Arthur story, you mentioned it, but I'll rehash it. that was an incredible that was an incredible story and Russ oh man there's never been a straighter string on the earth and Russ Arthur

I mean I love the guy I mean and he such history he's the one that told the story about his father passing away his dad I think was about his dad passed

away I think in 2014 same year Lew and Newcomb passed away. And his dad was just a significant player in National Wild Turkey Federation over in East Tennessee and was one of these guys kind of like Fox and Tom Kelly. You know, like I mentioned it, but you could have missed it. Russ Arthur said in the 60s when they were trapping turkeys out of East Tennessee because East Tennessee had some turkeys where they hunted.

and that's the reason they had such a hunting culture there. They were trapping their turkeys and taking them away. And Russ said his dad would set around campfires and evangelized to those guys like, hey, this is good because all the guys were like, they're taking our turkeys, just like we do today. Oh, I picked up on that for sure. As a folk, you know, somebody who's in the wildlife management field and always need really strong advocates like that. helping us out but not

part of the crowd, you know? Like, we need those advocates. And I picked up on that right off that that's the kind of guy we like to have that understands the bigger picture. Well, I mean, and a lot of people had sight back then, obviously, because they were doing it, but it was controversial.

They didn't know if it was going to work. That's what Nathaniel's film talked about. Because they started catching all these turkeys across the country. And I think they, did, Did y'all say that there were 250,000 turkeys relocated? Yeah, yeah. Between like the 40s to the 60s or something or 70s?

There was hurdles in there too in trying to figure out how to not break federal laws by transporting wildlife across state lines. And I think at one point they decided to get somebody that had an airplane that they could somehow get around it by flying them from place to place in the back of this guy's private plane. Wow. So there were all these different. different methods until they could work out with the federal government how to do that legally. Wow.

But it was just a bunch of honestly rednecks who loved the wild turkey that were like, let's figure out how to do this. Let's take this technology and make it work. Yeah. Pretty cool. Boy, that just reminded me of Yelville, Arkansas. Oh, wow. Yeah. The turkey column.

The turkey drop. Yeah. So I grew up in Yelville. Yeah. And back in the day... You say that as if we should know something about Yaleville. Well, it's home of the turkey trot. The turkey trot is the annual festival in Yelville.

And they had the wild turkey calling contest, but not only that, in years past, and even after it was outlawed, they would drop turkeys from airplanes in the middle of town. And people would chase these turkeys down. You know, the festival is in October. and people would chase these turkeys down and take them home and raise them for Thanksgiving. And I mean, turkeys can fly. It really makes me proud. From 5,000 feet, maybe not so much.

Yeah. They sort of plummet at an angle. But man, it was a zoo back in the day. You were part of some of this? I'd never did it, but we'd go down to the festival and we'd see the plane. And after they outlawed it, they would tape over the end numbers on the size of the airplane so they wouldn't get busted. Oh, and they kept down. And they would drop turkeys, yeah.

And you see these turkeys, and people just run through town trying to get one of these turkeys. Yeah. We looked at doing a story about it because we thought it was a cool cultural thing. But then we learned about the survival rate of the turkeys. Yeah, it was not real high. Oh, y'all wanted to do a film about that. We thought it would be cool, like a little history story.

Someone brought it to my attention about Yelville, and we dug into it. And they're like, hey, most of them died when they hit the ground. Yeah, I like how you described that as, I've never heard free fall. out of an airplane described as plummet at an angle. That's kind of what they do. They plummet at an angle. It's a good description. And then they tumbled over.

Yeah, then they tumped over. Tumped over. Tumped over. Tumped over. Hey, what about Russ? Well, okay, I started all that to say, to talk about Russ. Russ was the undercover agent that worked Louis Dell and Charlie Edwards back in the 80s in Mena, Arkansas.

Yeah. That's how I know Russ. And so they sent a real. turkey hunter in to infiltrate with the real turkey hunters of these guys, you know. But I started all that to tell the story. So Russ told, Russ was the guy in the first episode that Turd told about finding the journal of his father and opened one of the journals up the first day. Well, yeah. And so this story, to me, in its own way, was equally as impressive that, you know, way back in this,

and it was a wilderness, a federal wilderness, no roads, no GPS. They literally carried paper maps with them when they went back in there. Everywhere they went, they carried paper maps. And, you know, just the way he told it, you know, he's like, I heard this turkey, and I got up my map, and there was a little leg. I went to the leg and thought if I can get to that hickory tree, I can kill that turkey. Gets to the hickory tree, takes his sling off, kills the turkey,

tells his dad where it's at, just over the phone, just tells his dad. But they're miles back in there, not a place they know. And the next day, his dad goes in there and kills one the same hickory tree, but not on purpose.

You know, phenomenal story. He came in from a different direction, you know, if you remember. Yeah. He didn't follow his footsteps. If I can just get to that tree. Yeah, if I can just get to that hickory tree.

Yeah, that was astonishing. Yeah, those guys used the word bonded. He said my dad and I were bonded. You know, they really, like, operate as one. So it's kind of phenomenal deal. So when I saw the film, we had a guy on the first Turkey Stories episode like two weeks ago named Jack Hall, who's 92. Wow. That's a steel turkey hunting.

It reminded me of Fox Hayes and Tom Kelly. that bracket. I mean, I don't know. I wonder how many active turkey hunters there still are that are in their 90s in the country. It had to be less than 50. Can't be that many. I actually heard about another guy in Arkansas. Somebody reached out to me when they heard Jack Hall. They said there's an old guy where I can't remember where he was from. I'm supposed to go talk to him sometime. But he was in his mid-90s still like good health turkey hunting. So there's a few around. But when I was listening to those stories, it made me think about, you know, you've got these guys from all over the southeast, and they all have a different dialect, a different accent. And you think some people are like, oh, a southern accent's a southern accent, but you can start to see.

Oh, yeah. And like Mr. Fox and Colonel Kelly, they have a real distinct Florida Panhandle kind of accent. And it just made me think about and wonder how much longer we have of that, because most of us don't speak like our granddaddies do, you know? I think probably TV and all this cultural stuff that comes to us every day ruins that, right? Because those men grew up and they learned to talk from the people that were around. Kind of isolated primarily other than probably some television radio. Right. But small pockets with different dialects and different accents.

And like, man, there's a time ticking on that. Yeah, I hadn't really thought of it. Tom Kelly has an amazing, like, it's a foreign, even being from the South. It's a bud. The buds was, how does he say bird? Can you say it, Nathaniel? Boyd. He says it like that, yeah.

Oh. It sounds like foghorn, leghorn. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's really, it's really cool, though. It's unique. Did you do the voiceover?

I did. Well, I thought you did. It was going to be a scratch voiceover, and then we just left it. Oh, for real? Yeah, we didn't, we never settled on a voiceover artist. It was very soothing. It was a very soothing. Thanks.

It fit well with the film. Well, we kept looking for somebody, and everybody, and everybody, tries to sound like a home deep poke commercial, you know? Really? Yeah, it's like... Could you use speechify and had Snoop do it. Snoop do it.

And we never found anybody and we just decided to stick with it. That would have been good. Bear, which ones did that to you? Well, definitely the Russ Arthamon one. Been working on your calls? Do you want to call for us and have us all critiquing for you?

I'm happy to help. Definitely the Russ Arthur The one was pretty wild just that they can go back in there in the same tree, killed two turkeys. But also the David Ellis one, there was a lot about that story that was, like, it was crazy. Like, that the trespasser shot two turkeys with one shot. That was pretty wild. I didn't realize that, like, that would happen.

And I was unclear. Did he ever, like, did the trespasser ever know that he shot him? No. So, like, that guy's still running around and has no clue. Yeah. And I didn't get, I didn't go much past just what David told me, but I asked him, I said, did the gaming fish, like, go get this guy? And basically nothing ever came of it. Like, they didn't even, and maybe it's because they didn't have anything, and David just went back to Mississippi and called the landowner.

Like, David didn't, like, try to press, he, he, he, it just wasn't worth it to him. he was just trying to get back home to Mississippi, probably to go back to work, you know. So he just told the landowner, hey, there's a dude trespassing, and I got eight pellets in my face. We're headed back to Mississippi. And I don't, it wasn't like the guy got a ticket, I don't think, because they probably would have had to, I don't know, it just would have been a bigger deal. But, yeah. I wonder what distance you have to be from a 12-gauge blast to just catch a little bit to make you mad. I would not like to find out.

He said the pellets did not actually. did not actually like penetrate. He said he just had little blood spots on his face. Wow. Like the bullets weren't in his face. Because I asked him, I was like, how many pellets did you get?

Did they stick in your, and he said it just, I mean, imagine like getting hit with gravel, just like, you know. Like a red rider to the face. Yeah, it was wild. So how did it, like,

how did his vision go dark? Did it just like, Oh, I think he hit him hard enough. He's being a drama queen. I think he just probably flinched. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if you heard a blast pointed at you like that,

you'd definitely flinch up, you know. Yeah, that's the way I took that. How would a game warden react to a guy? You know, he shoots one time at one bird. He kills two. I mean, he didn't kill. I might have seen it happen. Yeah.

I know a real life case that I might bring up. I doubt it. But I mean, what do you do? I mean, you can't help it. You just see a bird and all of a sudden you go, wow, there's two birds there. Yeah, not being a game warden, but working with a bunch over the years,

just honesty is the best policy, man. The sooner you can just call somebody and say, here's what happened. I think you got a lot better, a lot better chance of things coming out in your favor. It's better to just own up to it. I actually work, Kansas had a governor's one-shot turkey hunt for years. It was this event held out.

That sounds like a good place for two turkeys to get killed with one-shot. One-shot, exactly. It's a great place. And I was, anyway, long story, I got a college scholarship through this thing, this wildlife artist. Anyhow, was guiding another different wildlife artist to go out on the hunt. And we worked all day on these birds. and finally they came in and he he took a shot and two went down like well that's not exactly what they mean by a one-shot turkey and you've got you know he had one tag whatever and there

there was a game warden on site for that event we just kind of it was a unique situation of course I mean the governor's hunt but but you know walked right in and just talked to him and said hey here's what we're going to do we're going to salvage tag this one and he only had one tag Head one tag. So the way for people who might not know, a lot of states have a two bird limit, but one bird per day. So, I mean, technically it's,

it's illegal and you, you're, you know, you got to. Tell me what that means, Luke, a salvage. If you wanted to, if you felt inclined to pick up a roadkill and take it home and process it, I believe one of our game wardens could write you a salvage tag for that.

Don't quote me on 100%. One of them will listen to this and come back. So the guy got to keep both birds. To one of them was not. Well, I think one in that case, I think they just probably donated to somebody else who was helping with the hunt and said, hey, here you go. But it's not now. It wasn't just kind of in limbo and illegally. They're just an unclaimed bird laying around at this event, right?

It's like, no, this is a tag bird. We've claimed that, yep, here's what happened. There's a report on it. Like, this is what happened in this situation. We've all, it's been claimed one way or another. Yeah. That's an honest mistake that happened. Sometimes one of our gay wardens in Missouri did it and wrote himself a ticket.

Is that right? Yeah, it was in the newspaper. It just happens. You know, you turkey out long enough. One of them is going to have a head. But there's also times where people know that they can just report it. And I don't know. I've seen that happen a few times.

My son, I've trained him pretty good on making sure those birds aren't too close. And we were on our trip to Florida and there was seven birds that came with this giant group. And I'm like, are you ready? And he's like, too close together, dad. I'm like, you're patient kids. It's good, boy, it's good. It's tough to wait. It is, but I think it's really important because you're getting a watt of seven

and you can take out a big bunch of turkeys with one load. Yeah, it's tough. You know, you almost have to write a ticket if you see a guy with two turkeys. I mean, I mean, I could understand it, really, because, you know, you start letting people go and anyway can get out of hand. Josh, which story was your favorite? You hadn't gone yet, have you? No, and we've talked about most of them.

but I love listening to Andy Brown. You can't pick Yacht Yacht or Russ Arthur. I love listening to Andy Brown. I mean, the whole tumped over thing. And as soon as he said it, you know, that whole motion of thumping over. You get it. You get it. Yeah.

And so I just, I love listening to him. He does such a great job with the whole buildup of everything. You know, he's describing this bird behind the tree. And, you know, you can just see this mental picture of exactly what's going on. And he got him, you know, you picture him with that gun. leaning over and just dumped over. So I think that was the one

that I really enjoyed the most. It was funny when he said I mean, anytime you're telling the story and just something unusual happens, like he was like, we had to wear a suit and tie to work that day. Yeah, exactly.

And I was in my black slacks, white shirt, black tie. And then, you know, just the details of, I saw a little piece of plywood out there. I wanted to sit on it. And then,

And the other time he laughed was when he said the next morning when they went in on that turkey. And that turkey apparently had flown up, well, I mean, like within 30 yards of sitting on that pliboard. And it took me a time or two to listen to it, but he said he looked over and he saw the pliboard. And he was actually on the side of the turkey. Do you see what I'm saying? Yeah. Because if he'd have been 30 yards on the other side of the pli board, he'd been about 60 yards. turkey.

I think they were like 20 yards. Like he said, that turkey was right above us. He blew his head off. Yeah, yeah. Oh, that was funny. That was funny. Yeah, I'd have to say the three-wheeler one was fun. Yeah.

Two three-wheeler wrecks at one time. That makes me want to do a film Nathaniel of turkey hunting off big red three-wheelers. Yeah. How cool would that be? I love it. What if we had like, we're going to give away. a great film idea. But what if you had all your turkey hunting buddies, like, five of you on Big Red

Three Wheelers? I love it. I mean, and at the premiere, someone could win a raffle of a Big Red Three Wheeler. I saw one on Facebook Marketplace a while back, and it was Cherry. Yeah. I know a guy who runs one. Co-worker and friend. Still got it?

Still got it? He still a duck hunting. He loads up the... Is it like a real thing? That's all he's got. So that's what he uses. He doesn't know it's cool. No, no.

Because my cousin, my cousin's Sean Marriott. He has one, and Sean's just like a cool guy. He's got like cool forerunners and just kind of like fixes up stuff. And he had one when he was a kid, am I right? Todd and Sean had him, my first cousin. Yeah, really as an adult, I think. And so he bought one as like a throwback, you know, like cool to have an old Honda Big Red. Your buddy, he ain't trying to be cool.

No, no, I don't know. if it knows how. So it's, you know, now this is just the one his dad bought way back when. He grew up in Mississippi too, and they had the big red,

and we're going to go duck hunting. It's just him and me, and wanted to ride down a rice levee. He said, well, I got the three-wheeler. I said, what?

Do you have a three-wheeler? Aren't those outlawed? He was dead serious, and he loads the thing up. He's got the tires, you know, kind of like those flotation, kind of balloon-like tires on it,

you know, with hardly any grip. and it's quite a difference from today's, you know, souped up, lifted UTV with the big knobby tires in the cage and all that I can't even play in that game. I mean, when people, Dad plays in the high-end UTV. UTV market, I'm kind of a mule man, but you had a, now you had a Kawasaki 110 I mentioned on the podcast.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it was a lot of fun, man. And I always had a, I always thought everybody was like me until I got a little older where I just loved to jump and run and three, you know, two wheel or three wheeler. And I'd go to Deer camp and I'd think, well, let's go fast. Let's ride these things. And these guys are like, well, what's wrong with you? But he, Jeff Ennis had a big red. And I'd take my little Kawasaki down there and he'd outrun me.

Oh, that big red would run that caravocchi? Then I got a 200 Yamaha the next year went there. could still outrun me. On the big red? Yeah. Wow. And so the next year I found a warrior, a used warrior, man. Oh, 350 warriors.

Yeah. So I took it. Hey, I remember a turkey. There's a picture of you with a turkey laid across that old, that first Yamaha 350 warrior that you had. Didn't you bend a shotgun barrel backing that thing into a tree? You did. Probably.

The shot at a barrel that was bent. Memory's getting foggy. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, boy, I love those things. It still do. You know, I still, it's still one of my major hobbies. Hey, did you all, I mean, the render is a time for me to, like, kind of reflect on the craft of building a podcast.

Didn't y'all think it was funny when I said, Misty would be like, Clay, don't, just stop. When I said it was like a middle. age man in the 1980s walking into a Honda dealership to buy Big Red. Do you remember when I said that? I don't remember that. It was funny, wasn't it, Luke? It was funny.

Sure. Thanks, Luke, yeah. Luke, you're the favorite now. I was saying, I was saying, I can't even remember what I was saying. But it was funny. Go back and listen to it, folks. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was saying someone got suckered into something.

Like a middle-aged man in 1980s walking into a Honda dealership to buy a big red. A middle, middle class man. You had to be middle class down one of those. You're talking about a turkey coming in. Maybe so. Maybe so. Was the big red, a pull start? Oh, yeah.

It was a pull start one. I think so. I don't really remember. The one, I think we're all pull start. Yeah, I've watched that one be pull start in the last couple years. Yeah. It fires right up and it purrs. Yeah.

It sounds great. It's amazing. Wow. Wow. They're pretty cool. Wow. Wow. Well, Nathaniel, where can people watch your film?

So, Massey Oaks YouTube channel. It's been up for a few days. How many views it got? Close to 200? Around 200,000, yeah. Is that? 200 views. Yeah, and I watched it like four times, so that's like, you know, like 2% of the views are for me.

There you go. If you have 200 views. Yeah. What was the goal of the film? Like when you were commissioned to make this, where they, like, we're going to be happy if this many people watch it. I don't think we had any kind of

thing in, you know, viewership in mind. Everything that I've been able to do for Mosey Oak has been less about moving a needle or numbers and more about really like solidifying the legacy that they have, you know, and the story

of who they want to be and who they are. So we just wanted to tell the story of those two men and I think even talks he said. Nathaniel, you had a number in head. Well, I caught him. I caught him.

See that? I don't know. No, I mean, I feel like you've got to be pretty happy with that. Very happy. I mean, because it's just started, too. That's the question. Yeah, very happy with the numbers. Yeah.

I mean, it's, turkey hunting is a niche market. It's like a community, a small community of people. So we're thinking, you know, if most of the people within that community love it, have see it, get to respond to it, then that would be a big win. And I think it's gone beyond that. You know, we make a lot of films at meat either. and so I'm aside from just loving hunting and telling stories and all these things, I kind of geek out about YouTube stuff, stuff I don't really talk about because it's not

that interesting unless you're in the locker room. And now I've got Nathaniel here, fellow video man. No, when I first saw it, I knew it was going to be incredible. I wasn't sure how, I mean, I'm not going to say I didn't think it was going to do good, but it's just hard to, there's so many variables. Like, you put that film on a small YouTube channel, and if it's the best film in the world, it still doesn't do good

because it doesn't have a huge YouTube audience that it's feeding it out to. Also, you know, there's always this thing about a shorter film versus a longer film. You know, is it intimidating for somebody to start off watching an hour and 20 minute film? So I was kind of thinking, I wonder how it's going to do.

And I was rooting for it big time by watching it and telling people about it. I thought it was a big win that after a week it's got 200,000 views. It's a huge win. And for me, my work is always slower-paced and sort of in our social media climate right now that is not attractive in a certain way to people. So when you were making the film, you felt like you were kind of bucking the trend of like just fast-paced. Yeah, I'll put work into a five- or ten-minute piece that I feel really really. good about and sometimes a brand is like let's do it in 30 seconds because tick talk it's got a quick you know you got to get to people quick and i'm like dang it i wanted this to land with people in an

emotional way we can't do that in 30 seconds um and so my work is always longer form and moving at a slower pace and so but i just felt after we got done with this and so did everybody at maseyoke that um there's a place in the in this community for something like that and this kind of proved that that's that's true so Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Cool, cool, cool. If you, I was a little bit fascinated with that Mr. Fox turkey vest. Yeah. Yeah, that was going for. How much did it go for? $31,000. So I, they were numbered. I got on eBay to see what it would take for one to acquire one. And they're anywhere from $2,000 to $5,000 on eBay. We ought to go to the guy that's selling that and just...

We're coming after you. I mean, you don't get that best and sell it. Do you? Am I wrong, Barry? How many were there? 1,986. Because 1986 was the year. The most show was funny.

Yeah. Yeah, that was a cool little piece. They made a turkey vest honoring Fox Hayes. and just sold out of them. Yeah, they thought they were going to just have an inventory to sell, and there were people camped out the night before to get them. And they went. They auctioned one off at NWTF, right?

Yeah. And it went for $31,000, and all the rest of them just were gone. It was the number five vest. That's one of the reasons why I went for so much, because the top 20 of them were given to close family and stuff. But the number five was reserved for the Grand National auction. Hey, Barry, go get my turkey vest right there. I want to show you all this.

This is, uh, this is, uh, yeah, yeah, yeah. This is FHF, this is FHF gear's new, uh, turkey, it's a turkey belt. So it's just a, it's a belt and you can molly on all your different attachments. So it's got a pouch with all my, you know, calls and shells and, gloves and different stuff. But it's got, it's, it's on suspenders. And then I'm getting a little backpack attachment, just a small backpack attachment.

But it's just like ultra light. I'm talking to turkey vests. Turkey hunters are big into turkey vests. I got my little, my little slate call pouch right there in front. But that's like a minimalist turkey vest, Dad. What do you think? I like it.

I like it. Make sure put that back in there. You're going to run out, have a bird goblin, and you won't have your little striker. You're going to have a wrong striker. Yeah. That's right. Hey, I like that. That is really neat.

Yeah. Well, Luke, closing thoughts. What do you want to tell us about the gaming fish? Tell us everything that we need to know about gaming fish in 10 seconds. Everything. Thank you for your support. Now, yeah, I mean, I think just turkeys are in a state of flux. We all know that as turkey hunters.

and I think it's just as a turkey hunter myself and a wildlife biologist, it's kind of, we're all just going to have to work through this together. Like we're in a new, new reality, I think. And so I just, I just think it's a time for everybody to kind of work together on it,

realize that the new normal is different, maybe when a bunch of us started out turkey hunting in. Yeah. And, but it, it can, it can still mean it's good. It can still mean it's sustainable for a really,

really long time. And so we're just going to have to, keep pushing through to if there's things we can solve we'll work on solving them together right on right on well good to see everybody thank nathaniel thanks for coming luke thanks for coming thank you all the regulars thanks for coming you know my dad should probably get an award he drives further and more often brint when brent's here brent drives about actually a little bit further than yeah you'd get second place yeah second you get second place yeah but uh

No, great conversation, guys. And, yeah, check out the Colonel and the Fox on YouTube, Mossy Oaks YouTube channel. And, yeah. Thanks for having me here. Awesome, guys. Yeah. We'll see you next time. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps game calls

in building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called prime cuts. Now, I'm going to tell you, I love mine because it's easy to use. I'm not going to go, I'm not going to win a turkey calling contest. It's just not going to happen. but when I run this call, I get the sounds that gobblers are looking for. I have a great turkey hunting track record. If you go listen to real turkeys out in the woods,

they're not going to win calling contests, right? That's who I listen to. I can make those sounds on my cut. I also hunt with Phelps's cut, and I hunt with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts. Check out Prime Cuts at Phelpsgamecalls.com. I think you'll be glad you do. did and you'll find out that the Steve Ronella cut is an easy to use cut for beginning callers

who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.