Bear Grease - Ep. 209: This Country Life - When it All Comes Together

Episode Date: April 26, 2024

Brent's opening week of Missouri's 2024 turkey season went better than he'd hoped. Along with that, a lot of you found the picture of Tim and him on Google Maps that he challenged you to find. The opportunity for Brent to read a listener-submitted "My TCL Story" received a lot of attention, and he's got one for us today. Turkeys, pocket knives, one of your stories, and a little political intrigue are all here in this week's episode of MeatEater's This Country Life podcast.  Connect with Brent and MeatEater MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube Shop Bear Grease MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

First Light's fieldwear 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 in 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 fieldwear gear at firstlight.

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

when it all comes together. Seldom to things work out just the way you want them to, and having them continue to stack up at every turn is almost unheard of, at least in my case. Opening week of turkey season in Missouri, 24, would prove to be one of those rare occasions. I'm going to tell you all about it. But first, I'm going to tell you a story.

I asked and boy, did y'all answer. My partner in Crime, Reva Hansen, who edits and publishes this podcast every week, and I have gotten a great response from folks telling their own stories to be considered for sharing here. I'm going to tell one today just so y'all know I wasn't kidding about doing it. Also, before we get started, congratulations to Mike Davidson up there in Connersville, Indiana, who was getting a case mini-trapper pocket knife from my personal collection. Mike was the first person to submit the Google Maps photo of me and Tim in Kansas back in 2014 that I challenged folks to find in last week's podcast.

Now Mike had just enough time to listen to it after it was published before he found the picture and sent in the screenshot. When I had the idea and started looking myself, it took me 45 minutes to find it. Well, I called Mike on the phone, and I told him he'd won. and I gave him the option to have a brand new, still in the box, case knife, or one that I'd toted. Mike surprised me when he laughed and said, I've probably got a hundred case knives here in my collection. I want one that you've carried. Well, that's pretty cool. And what's even better?

Mike's trading me one of his that he's carried. I can tell you one thing. The one that Mike sends me ain't going nowhere. that's mine forever. What a blessing this job is. Now this story comes from Jake Miller up in North Central Ohio. Thanks to Jake for sending this in. In Jake's words and my voice, here it is.

For as long as I can remember, I have always had a need to be outdoors doing something. Hunting, fishing, working, I 100% owe that to one man. my grandfather, Richard S. Miller, also known as shotgun. If you bring that name up around my area in Ohio, most likely someone will know who you're talking about. My grandpa was an avid deer and turkey hunter. He also enjoyed hunting morels in the spring and ginseng in the fall. He loved to fish, too. And from the time I was old enough and responsible enough to tote my own shotgun, an old

single barrel 20 gauge at the age of nine, he was right there with me. He was there with me for my first deer, my first turkey, my first squirrel, my first morel, even when I caught my first fish, he was there. To say that man was my best friend would be an understatement. During the late winter of my sophomore year of high school, he became very sick. Hospital stays, the whole nine yards, and I'd be I'd be lying if I said I wasn't scared we were going to lose him. Being in his 80s, it scared me. I spent as much time with him and my grandma as I could. And as winter turned into spring, he pulled out of it.

He was too tough to let that take him. Now I'd tell him he'd better be ready to go by late April for the start of turkey season. He was still unsure if he'd be in good enough health to get out. We're starting in early April, I took over here. his role of scouting for turkeys. I'd go listen before school or on the weekends. I'd give him a daily report on what I'd heard and seen, and he would always ask me, did you get a couple tied up for us? Well, early spring rolled into late April, the start of the season. I went down to their house to check on my grandpa and see if grandma needed anything done around the house. And when I

walked through the door, I saw him sitting at the kitchen table, getting his shotgun ready to go for. opening day. I can't begin to explain how happy I was that he'd be going out after we'd been so unsure that he was going to be up for it. We each got to our different spots with plenty of time left before daylight on opening day. And it was a picture perfect spring morning in the woods. And before long, we had three gobblers firing off all around us. After 20 minutes of goblin, like their lives depended on it, I could tell that at least two tarms had flown down over by him. Fifteen minutes later, I heard the sound of his old Baretta 12 gauge.

Boom! I jumped up and ran as fast as I could, and there he was. The man himself, standing on the head of one of those long deer. From the smile he had that morning, I could tell he was happy to be out there too. I hope I always remember that hunt. We got to hunt a couple more seasons together after that spring morning. A grandpa passed away in July of 2012 and I miss him every day. Spring turkey hunting and the Ohio gun deer season still doesn't seem right without him.

I wish I had a little more time. Like you mentioned in the episode 207, The Gifts of Time. That was just one of many stories I have of him and I together. I'd have to say it's the one that I think about around the opening day of turkey season every year. I'm actually sitting at the base of an old white oak tree right in this now. I haven't heard a turkey gobble this morning, so I might as well go look for some mushrooms. Well, North Central Ohioan, Jake Miller, grandson of Mr. Richard Shotgun Miller, I appreciate you sharing that wonderful story with me and allowing me to share it everyone else.

We're going to do these from time to time, so if you send one in, just hang on. maybe we'll use yours when time is right. But according to Jake Miller, that's just how that happened. When it all comes together, just last week I went to my second favorite place to turkey hunt. The show me state of Missouri. Now, my most favorite place to chase them is in the Saline River bottoms of my ancestral home in Cleveland County, Arkansas.

A county founded eight years following the end, of the war between the states. It was originally named Dorsey County after Stephen W. Dorsey, a Vermont-born, carpet-bagging United States Senator that represented Arkansas during the period of reconstruction. Now, Dorsey was a Mustang officer, having risen from the rank of private to colonel during the tumultuous time of America's greatest struggle.

Following the war, he was a successful businessman, working for and eventually become president of a tool manufacturing company in Ohio. He was soon afterward named president of the Arkansas Railway Company and relocated to the natural state taking up residence in eastern Arkansas along the Mississippi River in Helena. Then in 1873, he was elected to the United States Senate. Shortly thereafter, a county named in his honor was formed. My family had been there for decades prior to Dorsey's arrival, and as far as I know, that Joker never made a track in the county that was named after him.

So how did Dorsey County become Cleveland County? Apparently, Senator Dorsey and some of his pals were indicted and charged with defrauding the post office out of $412,000, which is the equivalent of over $11 million today. Now, he was eventually found not guilty, but the tarnish to his reputation was more than the good folks of the day could bear, so 12 years later, they renamed the county Cleveland in honor of the newly elected president, Grover Cleveland, in 1885. What's that little bit of history trivia got to do with turkey hunting in Missouri? I'll tell you. Not one thing.

I just thought it was cool and wanted to share. dude got canceled before canceling was cool. Anyway, last week I was in my old stomping grounds of central Missouri on the eve of what would be my most successful two days of turkey hunt anywhere if we're measuring the totality of the hunt, like producing video content for you folks to see later on and calling up turkeys for my friends. I'm the first one to say and have said it here recently that success. is measured in a lot of ways, and y'all know that already, but I'm trying to avoid the internet police who'd have me arrested for saying I had two great days of hunting because I had three hunts in a row where I watched a turkey get smashed. It was already successful because

of where I was, who I was with and what I was doing. That's the biscuit. The turkeys were just the gravy. Now, with that said, I was about to witness enough gravy. Flood of John Bo. On Blood Trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is over. They just get darker. I've seen something in the road. I instantly thought it was a sleeping bag. And there was a full of blood.

Oh, my God, he doesn't have a hit. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors. Where the terrain is unforgiving, the evidence is scarce, and the truth gets buried under brush and silence. Indications were he should be right there. but he wasn't. This season, we're going deeper. From cold case files to whispered suspicions, from remote mountains to frozen backwards.

Each story begins in the wilderness and ends in darkness. Because out here, there are no witnesses, no cameras, just fragments and the people left behind trying to piece them back together. He's not an honest person. He's incapable of being honest. Somebody somewhere knows something. I'm Jordan Sillers, season two of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, Iheart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. I stood on my friend Toby's back porch after supper and unsuccessfully tried to see or hear a turkey going to roost.

I've been coming up here for more years than I care to remember. It didn't really matter that I didn't see or hear anything. I knew where I was going the next morning and 30 minutes before daylight. was standing where I had stood a jillion times before, waiting on goblin time and preparing myself to second guess every move I was going to make over the next couple of hours, just like always. Now, I'll admit that I do not lack self-confidence. That has never been a weakness. But turkey hunting is such a dynamic activity at times that the slightest error one way or the other can have you scratching your noggin on what you did wrong this time to not kill a turkey hunt.

again. Then there are hunts like this one. My good friend and workmate, Isaac Neal, was with me filming this hunt. It wasn't even close to Gobbling Time or so I thought, as I stood there drinking my gas station coffee in the dark and whispering to Isaac that I thought we'd hear the first gobble of the season in this direction. While I was talking, I saw the whites of Isaac's eyes grow big at the same time I heard what I thought was a dog in the distance.

I said, was that a turkey? Isaac said, yes, it was. I asked him if he was sure, and he told me, yep. And it was right in the direction of where I expected to hear one, but not nearly that early. I figured it wouldn't be for a few more minutes, so for confirmation, I out. Bam!

Two turkeys got. One right where Isaac had pointed and another one to the left, but a lot closer. Now, he had a juvenile sound, and I was confident that one was a Jake. We opted for the grown turkey, but held fast to our listening spot. I knew where both of those turkeys were from hunting that ground for so many years. I had the advantage of the knowledge of the terrain and how the turkeys in that place used the landscape, but that's only an advantage that goes so far.

Roosted ain't roasted. And knowing where a turkey is a turkey, he is in relation to shooting him is about as easy as knowing where the moon is to flying up there to walking around on it. It's better than not hearing one, but it really only confirms his existence. Time would tell on how it all played out. Leo Tolstoy, the Russian novelist who penned war and peace, wrote, The two greatest warriors are patience and time. In the context of which he used it was referencing how to maneuver your army. against that of your enemy.

Or so the experts say. I think that dude was a turkey hunter because of all the items a hunter has at his disposal, those two things will kill one before a cat can lick its behind. I knew the lay of the land. I knew exactly where those turkeys were, and I didn't get in any hurry. I wasn't going to set up on that Jake,

so I acted like he wasn't even there as I slipped past where he was roosted and formulate my plan in my head how I was going to get set up on that far turkey as we slipped slowly toward the edge of a field I was going to use to make getting to him faster, quieter, and going through the woods. Here's where knowing the ground

and not getting in a hurry paid off. I know the turkey sometimes roost around the edge or close to the edge of that field, so before I ran any of them off by jumping the gun and heading toward that initial turkey we heard, I outed again. Now bam, bam! two gobbled in the east, which was right down the right side of that field we were fixing to step into.

They were less than 200 yards. The initial turkey we heard that morning was twice that far to the west. We had chosen wisely by not rushing toward the first one. And back in the day, when I heard one, it was make a bee line straight to him as quick as you could and get set up before he had time to fly down or someone else had time to fly down. or someone else had time to get set up on it. In the days before leasing where I grew up, timber company land might as well have been public wildlife management area ground.

Deer hunting was really the only thing that folks had dibs on. Turkeys, for the most part, were anybody's game. But this wasn't back in the day. This was right now, and right now, I'd waited and been patient. And instead of hurriedly trying to cover 300 yards crossing the creek, And finding a spot to get myself and Isaac set up on turkey number one, we tiptoed 25 yards and sat down under a big cedar tree that I'd sat under and killed a turkey a few years ago

and listened to Turkey's number three and four. My first thought was to go a little further east, just a little further to the right down the edge of that field. It was getting light enough to see now, and I was eyeball on a gum tree about 30 more yards closer to the corner of that field, where I'd seen turkeys walk into that field many times before. Something told me I'd gone far enough, so the old killing cedar tree would have to do.

Allen, before walking into that field, was correct decision numero uno. Sitting down under that cedar, and not going any further, would be solidified as correct decision number two when multiple hens started yelping directly behind that gum tree that I'd almost move down to before decided. that I'd gone far enough.

I have no doubt I would have scared them off the roost, and who knows what would have happened had that been the case. It may have had no effect on the goblers, but it could have. Regardless, we didn't go too far, and they didn't spook. The gobblers answered my tree yups just like they did the actual hens, and the only decision I had made that day up to that point that was suspect was not bringing my Jake decoy. I brought only the hen, and had I not brought only the hen, and had I not brought the hen,

I may not have gotten the opportunity that I was about to get. I set her up 25 yards north of us, which was straight out in front of me. And I angled to the northeast to my right, Isaac took up the spot over my left shoulder. We were hid good. Fly-down time came, and five or six hens sailed into that field and started feeding our way.

They were 50 yards away and slowly moving northward. The gobblers were on the ground now and hadn't entered the field, but with every gobble they were getting closer and closer. I yelped on a glass pot call, and they both answered me from the edge of the field. We were tucked inside the edge of the wood, so neither of us could see the goblers when they entered, but I knew they were getting closer by the sound of the drumming that was getting louder. Plain as day. Eventually, I caught glimpse of them through the Blackberry briers on the edge of the field

as they made their way towards where we sat. One of them was in full strut, and the other one was a half step behind trying to look like he didn't care what was going on. The second one tried to go into strut a couple of times, but it looked like he thought better of it. I assumed they had already worked it out between them as to which one was running the show. The live hens were directly in front of me now in the middle of the field about 80 yards away, and the gobblers, while still moving painfully slow, had begun to veer off to the north, just kind of splitting the difference between our decoy that Dave Smith had worked so hard on to make look real and the live hens that were paying zero attention to a couple eligible bachelors that had rolled into the mix.

Now, here's where I second-guess my decision not to bring the Jake deco. and the reason I immediately thought it was a mistake. The Jake I heard that was the second turkey that morning hadn't made a peep since the two birds to the east started telling folks how the cows at the cabbage. Now, there wasn't a Jake among any of the hens out in front of me, and while turkeys probably don't have the power of reason, they do know that there is safety in numbers. A half a dozen walking, talking, feeding girl turkeys are more enticing than one lone hen decoys, regardless of how good sheep. she looks. Now, had I brought my Jake Decoe and placed him near that hen, I felt confident that strutter would have come in hot looking to issue that youngster a headache while adding one

more hen to his bevy of beauties. So when I could see that they had started getting further away with each baby step they took, I y'eped with my mouth call causing that strutter to run his head out and gobble. And before he got to the letter E in gobble, I sent him a jawful, and that was the end of that. Now I know that second gobbler, who was well out of my shotgun pattern, had to be wondering what had just happened. Isaac and I didn't move a muscle. I didn't want to spook him or any other turkeys out of that field, but I got to laughing to myself watching that gobbler. Imagine him looking at that dead turkey thinking about the month of butt-wopens he'd been getting from him. Now they'd come into this target-rich environment, and he wasn't letting him show off for any of the women.

and folk. Making him walk a step behind and making him be quiet, I imagine he was thinking, I wish this strutton bully would drop dead. Then boom, he did. What an empowering moment it must have been for him. I'm sick of Frank. I wish he'd die. Bang, Frank's dead.

I bet he was like, daugum, I got to be careful with this. Anyway, they all eventually walked off except for Frank, of course. none of them any wiser as to what it happened. Now, we'd see that dude again in less than 24 hours, but like I sometimes say, that's a story for another day. Like next week, next Friday, I'm going to tell you about the rest of that day and the morning of the next one.

It was an awesome 24 hours with some really good folks. I'm finishing up part one at a hotel in South Haven, Mississippi. My daughter Bailey and her competition dance team from Priscilla School of Dance are cutting a rug over in West Memphis. We got to get ready for the final struggle this afternoon. My granddaughter Piper had a great show of today at her 4-H cooking contest and will be heading to the district event next. Looks like lots of my folks had it all coming together for them this week. I hope y'all did too. I know I've seen a lot of grinning faces with turkeys from all over the country.

I will have already rolled back north toward Missouri in an attempt to fill my other turkey tag, and who knows? Maybe by the time you hear this, I'll have another paragraph or two to add to next week's offering. Man, it's good when it all comes together. Now, don't forget, you can submit a story for me to tell on here, and if you do, be sure to include the who, what, when, where, and why, and send it to my TCA. Story at the Meteor.com. Now, thank you so much for listening, and until next week, this is Brent Reeves.

Signing off. Y'all be careful. First Lights Fieldwear 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 earned. the season. Built to perform, built to last. Check out. First Lights new fieldware gear at firstlight.com.