Bear Grease - Ep. 215: This Country Life - Messing with Critters

Episode Date: May 17, 2024

It won't be long before family vacations and interactions with nature increase. Schools are out for most, but for some the real education in the outdoor classroom begins. The temptation of getting that perfect profile picture with a seemingly docile bison can turn a vacation into tragedy. It can happen quicker than you can say, "Where'd Frank go, and why is that buffalo standing by his shoes?" It's "Messing With Critters" this week on MeatEater's This Country Life podcast.  Connect with Brent and MeatEater MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube Shop Bear Grease MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

Messing with critters. We are a curious species. That curiosity fuels the desire to find out what's on the other side of the mountain, the river, the ocean, and ultimately the universe. Unfortunately, it also makes us wonder, what do you reckon that sleeping tiger will do if I poke him with this stick? I said we were curious, not smart. It's all about messing with critters this week,

but first, I'm going to tell you a story. Hurricane Katrina was a Category 5 hurricane. The cost of lives and loss is still being felt today. And I was in charge of a group of highly motivated individuals I had brought from the Union County Sheriff's Office in Eldorade, Arkansas on a mutual aid mission supporting Louisiana Sheriff's Association. We were allocated to the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office initially, then after the initial chaos immediately following the storms,

we moved across Lake Pontchartrain with the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff's Office. Slidell, Louisiana would be our home for a few weeks to come. It was a desperate time for a lot of folks and us included. The conditions were poor, stress, and danger were high, and shifts were long and unended. But when it would eventually end, we all had homes and families to go home to. A lot of the local officers who we were serving alongside, they weren't that fortunate. But our mission was clear,

we were front-side focused on restoring order in a chaotic mess of lawlessness and devastation. A week after we'd relocated to Slidell, we started doing Marine patrols, and we were teamed up with some Alabama National Guardsmen, and I was assigned to two of Alabama's finest. Specialist Lord and Private Clark. We were running big bay boats

that were part of the Sheriff's office fleet, and our main mission was to patrol along the banks of Lake Pontchartrain, keeping an eye on the property and houses that were left, and enforcing the curfew to try and curb the looting. By this time, almost everything could set it down pretty well, and our calls for action were few and far between down on the water. Now, the one thing that hadn't slowed down was the duty. Twelve-hour shifts from sundown to sun-up, they can be long and long time for a bunch of folks that have been in the thick of it for weeks at a time. The calls went from stacked up one behind the other to almost zero around the lake

homes and the condos and the marinas. It was boring. It was necessary, but it was boring. Like, we need to figure out something to do to pass the time while we patrolled amongst the floating logs, lumber, and alligators. Alligators. That's something we can do. Let's make a content.

to see which patrol boat can find and photograph the biggest gator. And that was fun for about two nights. Then it got to be an argument over who saw the biggest one because the majority of the time we were comparing photographs of glowing eyes and gator heads. Now, how are you going to settle that argument? Well, I had a solution. We all met just before dark at the marina

to link up with our guardsmen from Alabama. Now, there, I informed everyone that, what we were going to do to settle once or for all whose gator was biggest. We had a 12-hour shift, and if the call volume stayed low, while we patrolled our sectors, we were also going to catch the biggest gator we could and lay a tape measure beside it and see who won. Now, we'd all watched Steve Irwin catch him on TV.

How hard could it be and what could possibly go wrong? Everyone thought it was a great idea. We were doing team building with our counterparts, from the Yellowhammer State, blowing off some steam, taking a break after some long days and weeks of seeing the worst of Mother Nature. See you in 12 hours, chumps, was the last thing I said before we all divided up. An hour or so into our patrol assignment, we started seeing a size gate as we were after, big ones. Lord and Clark made a catch pole out of some floating lumber and repurposed wire.

One end was attached to the end of the pole. and formed a loop that we could slip over the gator's snout, pull it tight, keeping his mouth closed, and then haul his behind in the boat for a measurement and a picture. After that, we'd cut him loose to go back to doing what gators do. But the big ones, they don't get big being dumb, and they don't get big by letting folks lay their mitts on them. Time after time, we'd slip up on a qualified candidate only to have him slip beneath the surface of the water and disappear.

the instant the wire touched us now. Now, we located some prime targets. Some would guess to be in excess of nine or ten feet long. Now, how do you guess the length of an alligator when all you can see is his head? Well, I'll tell you. You estimate the number of inches from between his eyes down to his nostrils. Now, that estimate in inches will be pretty close to his total length and feet. 10 inches from eyes to nose equals 10 foot of alligator,

Mississippi Innsis, the American alligator. It was one futile attempt after another, however, and had we been stalking them on the ground, I feel confident we could have stood a better chance at putting one in a half-nelson long enough to tape him out and take his picture. Floating up to him with the limited reach of our catch pole just wasn't doing the trick. Now, in retrospect, I'm more confident that this story would be a whole lot different than and one I'm telling now, had we had the opportunity to wrestle one into submission on dry ground, I'm forever thankful that opportunity never arose.

But a few hours in, the radio crackled on the scramble channel that we used to say things that didn't need to go out under the scanners, not that anyone was around to listen, but regardless, we needed to at least present a modicum of professionalism to our counterparts. Here's what was transmitted. Bravo 1, this is Sierra 1, Alpha 4 certified. I responded, Roger that Sierra 1. All right, let me explain. Bravo 1 was my call sign.

Sierra 1 was the call sign of my teammate and point man who was running the boat we were competing against. His name was Greg Stevenson. Alpha stood for alligator, and four meant that he was four foot long and certified meant they'd stretched him out measured him and got a picture. Now, all we had to beat was four feet.

Are you kidding me? We were actively hunting gaiters over eight feet long. I'd caught a baby that was about two feet long that I had riding in the boat with me for half a shift the night before. This was going to be easy. All right, boys, you heard him. Next gator we see that's at least six foot long. We're snatching him up out of the water and putting the end of this contest.

Pressure was off. We didn't have to mess with. but the big ones that were slipping away as fast as we slipped up on them. We're hunting yearlings now. We might as well be robbing him out of the baby bed. The next one we see is getting kidnapped just for practice. If he ain't over six and a half feet, he's going back in the water till we find one that is. Three of us scan the surface of the water as close and calculated for a decent-sized gator

as we had been looking for looters. It wasn't long when one of my soldiers said, there's one about six foot. We can warm up on him if you want. I told him to get the stuff ready, and I eased the boat over to where he was floating in the middle of a cove amongst smaller gaiters and the rest of the stuff that used to be part of the neighborhood. The stuff that they had to get ready was only a catch pole and a yardstick that we'd found, a roll of black electrical tape that we were going to use to tape his mouth shut once we got him in the boat.

Now, everything in our world was timed. Our shifts were calculated in hours. our fuel consumption on how long we sat at idle and how fast we drove from one patrol area to the next. How fast we safely cleared a building during training or in reality, it was a habit of subconsciously estimating the time it took for us to clear an obstacle or accomplish an objective. 20 seconds. 20 seconds from the time we pulled the wire tight around his jaws until we were ready to start taking pictures. That's what I estimated.

It was going to be clockwork. Clark dropped the loop on that gator's mouth like he'd been doing it all his life. In one big pull, he and Lord snatched that gator in the boat just like we planned. I couldn't believe how easy it was going to be. The clock had started. The plan once we had him in the boat, Lord would lay on top of him, grab both sides of his mouth, holding him closed. Clark would hold steady pressure on the wire noose and catch pole

while I ran a few rounds of tape around his jaws to keep them shut. The amount of force required to hold a gator's mouth shut is minimal compared to the amount they exert on closing it, and that's around 300 pounds per square inch. They'll leave a mark on you. But with our foolproof plan, he wouldn't have a chance. I threw the throttle into neutral and was halfway around the console and going to my knees with the tape when the soldiers hauled that dinosaur into the boat

and the wire came loose from his mouth. Time seemed to slow to a crawl. I was moving in slow motion. Clark and Lord were moving in slow motion. Everything was like it was covered in molasses, except the gator. He was making laps inside our boat so fast that when you jumped over him as he went under, before you feet hit the deck, he was coming around again. And this seemed to go on forever.

Now, I don't know how many laps that joker made inside that boat. boat, but I do know that I was about to give out from jumping over him every time he cruised through the straightaway before going low into turn three. But where are we going to go? There was only one of him in the boat with us and a whole bunch of him out of the boat in the water where I had momentarily thought about going. Then when all hope was lost, specialist's lord dove on him like a hobo catching the last train out of town.

Whammo! We got him. Clark held his mouth shut and I ran a half a roll of tape around his jaws. We had him caught. Finally, we measured him, and then the great gator catching contest of 2005, we'd won. We'd tried half the night to catch one over eight feet. The one we caught was six foot even. In the grand scheme of alligators, he was just a pup.

But had he been six foot and one inch, I firmly believe he'd killed us all. And that's just how that happened. 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 did, and you'll find out that the Steve Rinella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning calls. who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. Messing with critters. Every year, the headlines from Yellowstone National Park make their way around the outdoor channels of social media. There, the internet wildlife experts comment on how dumb folks from other countries,

the inebriated residents of this one, and the seemingly ignorant get a lesson in mess around and find out. It's become quite a spectator sport watching the... the unsuspecting get a lesson in the transference of kinetic energy. Science can be fun, especially when the lab experiment is someone walking up to take a selfie with a bison. One smile and click later, and they're texting for a ride to the ER from where they landed in the next zip code. I've watched so many compilation videos of foreigners and residents alike getting the old one-two

from a seemingly tame bison that even though I know what's coming, I can't turn away until I see with my own eyes that frontier justice has been dispensed. You've been found guilty of buffoonery in the northern portion of the Montana West, and your sentence is a permanent hitch in your get-along and the embarrassing video clip that will haunt you for the rest of your days. Court adjourned. 47,000 people each year seek medical treatment for being bitten or attacked by wild animals with an average of eight each year being fatal.

Now, if you count domesticated animals, that number climbs to one million attacks or bites. Cows, of all things, send 20 folks a year to the last roundup. A bunch of nerds down at the CDC got together and they found that from 2008 to 2015, there was 1,610 animal-related fatalities in the U.S. with the majority of the deaths being the result of encounters with non-venomous animals, like 57%. One of the researchers is quoted as saying, importantly, most deaths are not actually due to wild animals like mountain lions, wolves, bears, sharks, etc.,

but are a result of deadly encounters with farm animals, allergic reactions from bee, wasp, or hornet stains, and dog attacks. So while it is important that people recreating in the wilderness know what to do when they encounter a potentially dangerous animal, the actual risk of death is quite low. Well, the good doctor forgot about the idiot factor and the additional encounters brought to you by what made Milwaukee famous. Now, I'm no scientist or researcher or even a gambler, but I am an observer, and I made a living and stayed alive by watching folks engaging if they were friends or foe. By watching those that pasture the huge hairy prairie cows,

I'm not coming away with much in the friend or foe category. I'm also not getting the impression that a lot of country folks are walking up to the Native American symbol of abundance and prosperity for a close and personal TikTok video and winding up meeting their yearly insurance deductible in one visit at the local trauma center. Now, on the other hand, it was the country board by which all my qualifying standards and qualifications for being one that thought catching a copperhead was a good idea. Remember him?

I won't say his name, but his initials are me. Now, being from the country and being familiar with livestock and wild creatures doesn't vaccinate you from poor decision-making. On the contrary, sometimes it gives you a false sense of natural ability. and not being scared of something is not a qualifier for interacting with it. Case in point, a friend of mine from out west. This fellow who shall remain nameless is a large lad. He's the kind of guy that you'd think fear would be the last of his worries. But snakes, snakes of any kind would run him up a locust tree.

But being scared of snakes isn't really a big deal. There's a name for it, Ophidiofobia. One study says that Americans fear snakes more than anything else. It's 56% numero uno on the spooky chart. No idea where badgers rank on that chart, but they should have been higher on his. He told me about a time many moons ago that his dog made a badger up in some sagebrush. They were out hunting sheds when the incident occurred,

and my friend was Sands any type of firearm with which to dispatch it. Now, before anyone gets their drawers in a wad, the state where this happened had an open season on badgers. They could be hunted year-round, and this dude wanted one for the fur. He'd always fancied himself some sort of mountain man and a badger-skinned hat was his top priority. His dog had cornered him up a badger, and even though he didn't have a gun, he didn't have a big knife and a leather scabbard on his belt. He had it on every time I ever saw him, and he kept it sharp as a razor. He told me and he said, I just decided to wait in there with my knife and stab at Badger, skin him out, tan his hide, and make me a hat.

Now, remember when I was talking about noticing things? In my former career, it became a habit that helped me make it to retirement and mostly unscathed by doing so. I do it to this day subconsciously. Well, while he was telling me that story, I noticed that as he told it, and mentioned the knife, he touched the handle of it as it hung on his belt, just as it had been ever since I'd met him. Every time he mentioned the badger or the hat, he looked at his left arm. Now, I'll spare you the details, but my friends attempted taking a badger's fur by stabbing him, it didn't work out.

As he maneuvered in to take a stab, the badger latched hold of my pal's favorite arm on his left side and proceeded to gnaw and claw it down to the white parts that all the meat was attached to. Nine stitches a second is what we figured it out to be in the end, and he hung on for 36 of them. Stitches, that is, not seconds. He showed me his scars, and I said, he did all that in four seconds. He looked at me with his eyes as big as saucers and said calmly, I think he did it in one second.

It took me three to get him shook off in about 30. 30 more for the squealing to stop. I said they squeal when they attack, and he said, No, I was doing the squealing. That sounded like my little girl when she sees a spy. Messing with critters, it'll turn grown-in into little girls. Speaking of little girls, when my littlest girl was five, we had a pet coon, and we named him Buster.

I'd gotten him from a friend of ours that we went to church with. She's a vet tech, and if there was ever a real, life showed enough Ellie May clamped. It's Madeline. Madeline is as pretty as they get inside and out. She and her husband are good country folks with horses and the usual animals you'll see on a small country farm. And at one time, she had a squad of tame coons living as pets in their barn. She was telling me about them one day at church, and I told her that if she ever came across an extra one, then I wanted it for Bailey and for me. I told Alexis about her. I told Alexis about our conversation, my wife, and she didn't seem overly excited about getting a pet coon.

She also didn't seem overly confident that I'd get one. Well, she thought poorly. A few weeks later, someone brought in an orphan kitten coon to the veterinarian's office where Madeline work, and she called me. Does Bailey still want a baby coon? Yes, definitely. Still wants a baby coon. Bailey does.

Okay, I'm coming y'all's way, and I'll drop him. on. Twenty minutes later, I was cradling a baby boy bandito and bottle feeding him some kitten milk replacement. Alexis picked Bailey up from school and when they walked in, surprise y'all, meet our new baby. Bailey immediately reached for him and squeezed him tight. Alexis immediately reached for me and squeezed me tight, mainly my neck, concentrating on the part where the air goes in and out. She got over it, and Bailey and I named him Buster. Now Buster was a curious little guy as one would figure a baby Coon would be. If he wasn't asleep or eating from a bottle, he's crawling all over and creation.

He and Bailey played together, and I sat on the steps or in front of the house and watch her running up and down the sidewalk with Buster and tow doing everything he could to keep up with her. Bailey was learning to ride her bicycle, and before we took her training wheels off, Buster would sit and ride in her basket or follow her down the street and back. They were buddies. A month after two-thirds of us welcomed to Buster into our home, I left for a bear hunting trip in Idaho. I'd been the main caretaker and clean her up her after Buster. Bailey helped some, but she was also five, and while she was most likely the more mature of the two of us,

it was still ultimately my responsibility. And when I left, the duty fell on to Lexus, both figuratively and literally. Buster either struggle with incontinence or he had no shame, and I leaned toward the latter. Either way, if you think kitten milk replacement smells bad when you mix it up, you should get a whiff of it after it filters through a coon named Buster that only moments ago was sitting peacefully on your shoulder when nature came calling.

That smell would drive a buzzard off a gut wagon. I checked in with Alexis to see how they were doing when I got a little signal on our hunt. Alexis told me that she'd said something earlier in the day that she'd never dreamed, as she would say. She said there was no way anyone could have ever convinced her even two months ago, which was still seven years into her indoctrination in the world of hunting dogs, dead animals and everything else that she was happily ignorant of until she met me. She said, I could have never imagined me saying, Bailey, it's starting to rain. Get your coon.

We're going in the house. But I said that very thing today as we sat on the front steps of our home, Brent. Brent, I love you, but I have no idea how I got here. Me either, honey. Just lucky, I guess. We kept Buster until he got big enough to take care of himself, and I purposely left his sleeping cage open one night, and he left, and he never came back. He started to get a little rough,

and I didn't want him hurting Bailey even on accident. We miss him, and we have some fond of memories and some of the cutest pictures and videos of that rascal and Bailey that I'll share on my Instagram. Messing with critters can be fun and entertainment, it, but it's best when both sides enjoy it. I'm going to post some pictures of the winning gator, me and the boys from the Alabama National Guard hemmed up in the boat on Lake Pontchartrain 19 years ago.

If anyone recognizes those guys, get in touch with me. I'd love to talk to them. Y'all keep sending in the stories to me and Reville, and let's focus on things that are funny or amazing that happened to you and yours while in the outdoors. We've got some really good ones and we're planning on doing some new things I think you'll enjoy in the near future. School's almost out.

Time to get them young ones out of the house and the end of nature. That's just as important a place for them to learn as any. They'll be taking over one day to make sure they've got some sense when they do. Until next week, this is Brent Reeves. Signing off. Y'all be careful.

Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps Game Call and building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called prime cuts. Now, I'm going to tell you, I love mine because it's easy to use. I'm not going to go, I'm not going to win a turkey calling contest. It's just not going to happen. But when I run this call, I get the sounds that gobblers are looking for. I have a great turkey hunting track record.

If you go listen to real turkeys out in the woods, they're not going to win calling contests, right? That's who I listen to. I can make those sounds on my cut. I also hunt with Phelps's cut, and I hunt with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts. Check out Prime Cuts at Phelps Game Calls.com. I think you'll be glad you did, and you'll find out that the Steve Ronella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action.