Bear Grease - Ep. 216: BEAR GREASE [RENDER] - Long-Range Shooting, Killing a Bear with a Rock, Coon Supper Breakdown

Episode Date: May 22, 2024

On this Bear Grease Render, Clay Newcomb is joined by Kolby Morehead, of Bear Hunting Magazine, along with Misty Newcomb and Josh “Landbridge” Spielmaker.  Clay brings the heat playing his original song “Ballad of Backwoodsman.”  The group discusses long-range shooting and bear hunting. Dr. Misty Newcomb takes a deep dive into her field of expertise, "social capital," as they review the Coon Supper podcast. 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.

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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 Grish Render, everybody.

I'm going to open us up with a little song. I don't think I've ever sang this song on the Bear Gris Render at all. This is called Ballad of a Backwoodsman. Josh, this is the first song. This is the song I opened up with on the tour. Will this be your first single off the album? Probably so. Okay.

But it's about, this is what I would say, Miss the Other Live Tour, I'd say. Welcome, everybody. My name is Clay Newcomb. I'm going to sing you a little song. that I wrote called Ballad of a Backwoodsman and then they put up a real cool picture of James Lawrence and I'd say this song's about this man right here from Polk County Arkansas that goes something like this in the washtalls of Arkansas he loved his mama and he loved his paul raised by his grandma on the shade of the tree on the banks of the cossetite

he was free she taught him out of hunting out a shock pouch of deer that's an Indian trick in case you didn't hear carry a buck on your back ties legs in the knot so he could get in there deep and hunt his richwood spot. James Lawrence is a backwoods man. Made a living with his own two hands. Didn't work for the man. Like a white-tail buck, he knows the land. Humble and earnest, I can tell you, I know James first had.

Second verse. By the sawdust pile, he would camp, use a saddle for a pillow, keep his head from getting damp on the ridgetops and gaps. He would slip along. When he'd find a buck scrape, he'd be there before dawn. He done three full days In the same spot

He says you'll kill that buck If the sign is hot When a big old stag Would come a slipping along His 308 would sing its song Boom James Lawrence is a backwoods man Oh

James Lawrence is Mm-hmm James Lawrence is a backwards man Madelead with his own two hands Didn't work for the man Like a white tail buck He loved the land Humble and earnest.

I can tell you. I know him firsthand. Last verse. What's the last first start? Oh, man, I'm messing this up so bad. I've rarely met a man. It's genuine. He stands as tall and strong as a long-leaf pine

with them bucking horses and motorcycle wrecks about did him in and broke his neck. Younger once was, but now he's old. Still got fired his bones like times of old. And when you need a friend to be by your side. And if you kill a bear, it'll up your skin. to hide. James Lawrence is a backwoods man. Made a litter with his own two hands.

Didn't work for the man. Like a white tail buck, he loves the land. Humble and earnest, I can tell you, I know him first hand. I feel like a guy who's spent decades on the road singing, and he's kind of reliving it, like the glory days, you know? kind of reliving the glory days of being on the road, the fans, the people. But in your situation, you spent 10 days on the road? You remember that Jay-Z, the Jay-Z song about New York City when he says,

rap stars, NBA players, addicted to the limelight? Yeah. That's basically clay. You got there. I felt it. I felt it. That was Clay's low play. That was Clay's low.

Makes me think of a rap song. My point of his life was playing music for 10 days. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, that was a lot of fun. It really was a lot of fun. That's a fancy guitar you got there. Yeah, so this guitar, this is not my guitar.

Bear Newcomb graduated high school this week. Yep. And his buddies went together and bought him this guitar. Oh, man, what a sweet. Did you know that? Yeah. It was like really... Did not know that.

You know, there's not a lot of teenagers or 20-year-olds, you know, because it was a range of ages. Who would do that? It really, I thought that was the sweetest friend. It was pretty thoughtful. Friend gift I'd ever seen a bunch of them went in together on it. Yeah, I thought it was really nice. And it's better than the guitar that I have. Oh, yeah, it's way better.

And it's really beautiful. Yeah, it is. It's going to see a lot of campfires. Well, I've got Josh Lambridge spillmaker here with me. Hello, everybody. We've got Colby Moorhead from Bear Honey Magazine. Good to see you, Colby. Good to be here.

And we've got Dr. Misty Newcomb. The crew is light, man. Brent Rees is in Canada. we were Gary Newk, guess where Gary Newcomb's at? Where is he? Alaska. What? Are you serious?

Gary and Juju are in Alaska. Like probably on a whim or something. They were just like, let's go to a line. No, they plan. This Juju's first time to fly. Oh, like ever? Uh-huh. Juju Nukum's first time to ever be on an airplane, and she was a nervous wreck.

Are you serious? Yeah. And she may listen to this. Oh, she probably will. Love you, Juju. Hope it everything went well. Hope you made it. Yeah, I hope you made it.

Yeah, we got a text one day, and they were like, saw bears, saw this, all that. And I just thought, Juju, looking at bears. They're doing, like, the classic Alaskan tourist thing, which is cool. They were on a boat for several days. It's like a cruise. It's a cruise, but they got off the cruise, and Dad told me they went to a guy that had sled dogs, and he had run the Iditarod, and this guy kind of gave him, you know, all these people a little spiel about his dogs and the I did a rod and they got on a train and went through somewhere on a couple hour train ride

they've been to Fairbanks they've been to anchorage they've been all over pretty fun yeah they've never they've never been up there before yeah sounds cool yeah I wonder if any of those sled dogs are half German Shepherd I don't know are they supposed to be I don't know just a random thought is that trickled past your mind no that's what the guy in the podcast this week was getting Coons with. Oh, yeah. German Shepherd. Oh, oh, that's, that was the connection.

Yeah. I'm clever sometimes. Pulling that out of obscurity of the podcast. We got a real listener here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I've been, I've been pretty, working pretty hard lately.

I'm building a stone masonry fire pit. I noticed it when I drove up today. Did you see it? It's looking solid. Oh, I see what he did. Yeah, yeah. It's, man. It's, man.

It's, so. This will be the work of my life. We call it the magnum opus. Clay's Magnum. I thought it was singing in front of people. There's a lot for Clay. Well, that's not about magnum opus. But the fire pit.

So it's going to end up being probably about 14 foot tall. Oh, it's going to be that tall? It's going to be tall. From the ground. It's like, yeah, it's going to be from the ground, not from the deck. So the deck is elevated. And it's basically a freestanding chimney like fireplace. It is a hat tip.

So if you were on my porch and I were telling you about it, I would say this is a work of art. This is a statue. This is a hat tip to, listen up, the Ozark pioneers that came through here because you can still, when you're riding out through the Ozarks and a lot of different places, you'll see these old chimneys.

And I imagine they're all over the country. But where there used to be a house and like there's no evidence whatsoever of a house left. There's just this rock freestanding chimney just out in the middle of nowhere. So this is kind of a hat tip to that. It's a big freestanding chimney. But I used a fireblock on the inside. So it's a legit, just native fieldstone.

If you've never been to the Ozarks, the Ozarks grows rocks. Yeah. You can't, you can't. Yeah, you can't. rid of the rocks here. They're everywhere. Yeah, and I gathered all the rocks out of the creek, about a quarter mile stretch of creek right in front of my house. And so it's probably going to have

about 10 ton of rock in it by the time it's done, I think. Just guess. But it wears your fingers down. Yeah. I can only work. There's only so much I can work before the skin gets all wore off and the ends of my fingers. Yeah, it's not that. It's the line from the concrete. just eats it and then it is the sand

and the mortar but like you know for eight or ten hours however long you're working it's just just

lime on your hands but if you don't do it every day which I used to do it a lot more than I do now if you don't do it

every day your hands are just like little little kid hands yeah yeah it's hard going

it's hard going from being a rock star to a rock layer it's true yeah yeah well that's what I did that's what I went from

before though from rock layer to rock star and then back and then back yeah yeah colby you just got back from oregon how long were you up there i was up there i think about 10 days 10 days wow we had some stuff we had to do on the front end uh just like photography and stuff like that and then uh moved into the bear hunt it was a it was i they were they were seeing bears before i got there i got there and it's like they disappeared and then the day that i left they started seeing again. You scared them. They knew you were coming. Yeah, but it rained for a good solid like five days and heavy fog. We couldn't, it was hard to glass. You would come into a new unit and you

just had to wait for it to clear or just move on to the next one. Like it was, it was, so you didn't even see a bear. We, we end up seeing 11, but none that we could really get on. Yeah. Oregon is such a dramatic landscape. Like, it's so wild. I, and it's crazy too. like how guys that hunt there have adapted to their style. Like those guys are shooting bears like way out there. Like much further than I would be comfortable doing. And it's just like normal to them. Just shooting across canyons out of them.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And those guys, they really, like you can even tell it inside of their gear, like they're shooting these, these heavier, more like bull barreled, like where my gun would be, you know, like a seven-pound gun. Like they'll have like a 14-pound gun. And they'll just haul it around.

And like they're really dialed in for those longer shots. What's a long shot for him? I mean, I know a guy up there that shot one a couple weeks ago at a thousand. Really? Yeah. But he's a rarity. He's just Brandon's a stud as far as that goes. But typically, like, they'll shoot them within like 600 or so, 700.

Yeah. Yeah. Stuff I would have never dreamed of. Yeah. I shout out to 630 whenever we were just out shooting one day. And I felt pretty good about that. That's awesome. man so miss newcom there's a there's a controversy in the hunting world

about long distance shooting so the technology's increased so much guys are now able to be pretty accurate out to long distances and used to the game was getting close to animals that's what was fun about hunting and now some some guys are on purpose staying out far like that so the the measuring stick of what a unique hunt is is like how far that you're shooting an animal. And there's, you know, I could argue either side of it and have a strong argument for, you know, if you're, if you're a good shooter and if you're practiced and, you know, you can take a long shot, you know.

Yeah. The ethical side of it to me is you could go either way. Yeah. But what do you think? Well, you know, I've always thought that you should probably get as close as you can. It's probably the side I land on. What's the longest shot you've taken on game, Misty? I've taken one.

Deer? Uh-huh. With a rifle? Yep. Uh-huh. He went pretty close. About 65 yards. And you just drilled it?

Yeah. Pretty much. Basically. At a girl. Yeah. What kind of gun are you shooting, Colby? Me? I've got a Seekin's precision 7 PRC.

Seven PRC. Yeah. Yeah. And those guys, like, I learned a lot on this trip because when you shoot out that far, there's much more that comes into it of whether you're a good shot or not. Like you also are looking at the round and how much energy it's carrying at different ranges. And the guy that made that long shot, he was even, like he was using a kestrel and checking the wind and the humidity. And like he was super dialed in.

Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, I'm shooting that 7 PRC. It's just real flat and it's real fast round. It's kind of popularized. It's been newer like these last few years become more commercial. How accurate, how far would you shoot it to bear? Well, I haven't had it that long, so I would say that I would keep it within, it depends

if I had someone with me that really had experience because of windage. So like if it was calm, I would shoot further out, like maybe like four to 500. Yeah. If I had like two points of, you know, security, like where I had my bipod and had something And on the back of the stock, I would shoot it a little further out to about five. If it was super calm, I think that would be where I would cap it off. Yeah. Five.

Yeah. But if I were shooting and there was wind, and I don't feel like I'm good at guessing what the wind's going to do to my round. I just haven't shot it enough. So I probably wouldn't go out past like, probably like, 354 with a slight wind. I've been doing some longer range shooting. And there's an amazing science to it. I mean, just using ballistics calculators and all that kind of stuff, it's pretty amazing.

And it's, I mean, even from one ammo to the other, there can be huge differences. Yeah, yeah. Man, here's, I think this is a pretty general statement that I think will hold true for a while. is that with archery equipment, 40 yards is a long shot. Yeah.

Like I, when I'm shooting a lot, shooting good, I've shot a much more proficient with archery than I would be with rifles in terms of just hours in the field and shots fired. Yeah. I could be able to, let's say, ding in softballs at 60 yards, which I've never focused on long-range shooting

because I'm usually hunting in places where I'm killing animals inside of 20 yards. That's what I like. But I don't care who you are. If you're the best shooter in the world, shooting 40 yards in an animal is a pretty long shot because there's so many unpredictable things that can happen with the animal. And so, you know, you asked me,

well, how far would you shoot it in an animal? And I would typically say, max 40, but I want them inside a 30. Yeah. You know, any animal. Now, obviously, the weather. Western hunters are shooting elk, which is a huge target that's three times as big as a white tail. So you're going from needing to hit a volleyball-sized kill shot to a paper grocery bag.

To a beach ball-sized kill shot. And with a rifle, though, I think that number is like 400 yards. I've hunted with a lot of really good, proficient Western hunters. Yeah. Steve Ronella being one of them. And, I mean, he doesn't claim to be like some big long-range shooter, but, I mean, the guy's proficient with a rifle. So there's Yonis Patelis, like serious shooters.

And I guess I could speak more for Steve than Yonis, but they're wanting them inside of 400 yards. Yeah. Like, you're wanting them inside of 400 yards. Yeah. And so, I mean, I think you're right on. Most people don't know how long of a shot that is. It's a long.

That's a long way. That's a long shot. Yeah, here looking at 200 yards, I'm like, what? And I just shot this other. You can't hardly see a white paper plate at 400 years. Yeah. I was trying to think of the longest shot I've ever made, and I honestly, I remember a 350-yard shot at a bear one time. That may be the longest shot I've ever made.

Good, good clean shot. Yeah, just, yeah. In British Columbia. What were you shooting? I was shooting a, I was shooting a, I was shooting. 300 win bag, best of the west. Yeah. Huskimo's scope had it all dialed in.

And that is a thousand-yard gun. I mean, like they send it to you as a vetted thousand-yard gun. What's the longest you shot on the target at? Like, not in a-thousand-yard. Yeah. Oh, yeah, I remember that video. Yeah. Yeah.

And it wasn't super, I didn't have a great, I was just shooting off the hood of a truck with like jackets and shirts and stuff. Yeah. But I mean, I, like the pros. Dinged some iron at a thousand yards. Yeah. I mean, it took a couple shots. Yeah.

It took a couple shots. Yeah. But Josh, so I'm shooting this, uh, Sig Cross 300 win mag right now. Josh has been shooting for me. With carbon barrel. I want to see it. Oh, dude.

It's pretty sweet. It is a, it's a sweet guy. Got a 300 wind mag and a 6-5 Creedmoor. And I, I, I, now I get, I get the 3rd. 300 win mag like it's a it's a powerful round that's 6 5 creed more is just a tack driver man yeah yeah we got a bear last year with a 6 5 creed more in Oregon and yeah did the job yeah full pass through really i've seen two okay i like it did the job i know for a fact that a 6.5 creedmore will do the job on any bear uh tyler frill my friend tyler frill alaska killed a big grizz

with a six five. Yeah. Really? You kill a grizzly with a 22 mag, you know, if you hit it in the right spot. Yeah, but I have seen two bears get away

that we're shot with six-fives. Really? That I just feel like if it had been a 300-win mag did it kill them. I'm not picking a six-five. Like, I won't... Yeah.

What do you think, I want more hydroshock? I agree. You know. You'd rather like a seven, seven, eight, nine, five? I don't even think that those are the fives that exist. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps game calls and building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called prime cuts.

Now, I'm going to tell you, I love mine because it's easy to use. I'm not going to go, I'm not going to 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 Ronella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. for a big-boned animal,

you're hoping to have a bigger cartridge. Not to say, we're taking that 6-5 when we go to Montana. Bear and I are going to Montana. We're taking a 6-5 and a 300 wind mag. But my round is a 300 win-mag for anything. Yeah. Loose hunting, bear hunting, anything in the world.

There's definitely more room for error. Like, I mean, if you're a little forward... With the 6-5. No, with the 300, wind mag. More room for error. Yeah. Just believe. ballistics, weight, power.

Yeah. Oh, I see what you're saying. Power. You got more flexible. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. You have more grains. You got more mass, you know, pushing that thing.

It's a big cartridge. Yeah. And if you hit bone or something, it's going to, if you have the right ammo, it'll go through it. Like, you can be a little less choosy with your, with your shots selection. What do you think, Misty? I feel like we're kind of broing out here. Well, yeah, I don't, I don't care. I was just teeing you up.

Yeah. I was just teeing you up. Like there was no intelligent thought coming. You teed me up and I was like, okay, now fill the void with words. And it was like, no, none coming to mind. This is just, we are outside my scope of expertise. Well, we're about to dabble into Misty's scope of expertise. Misty's big time scope of expertise.

My actual scope of expertise, yeah. What do you see when you look through your scope? When I look through my scope, I don't look through scope very often. Colby, how's bear hunting magazine going? It's doing good. It's doing good. Just got an issue out earlier in the month and they'll start building the next one next month.

Yeah? Yeah. Yeah, things are pretty solid. We're putting out a lot of stuff on social media. We're getting ready to launch a podcast. You know, it just... Exciting. Awesome.

Branching out more into the digital world. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. I got that bear... Do you see that bear hanging in the middle there that has the... The...

Buzz cut. It's got the buzz cut. Yeah, it's got, it had hair slippage up around the ears. Oh, really? I just got that back from the taxidermis after three years. Oh, that's what? Maybe even four years. Which bear was that?

That's the bear I killed in Montana. That was on the Meteeter episode with Ronella, the turkey bear. The year after we went, yeah, yeah, yeah. It had, that bear had a big chunk out of its jaw. Yeah. You could see its teeth. Like, if it was just standing there, you'd been able to see its cane or. From what?

I'm sure just fighting. Just fighting? Just got his lip ripped off. But yeah, man, I get so many bear hides, or just have had a lot of exposure tanning bear hides. About every single possible scenario that a tax thermist can do that's wrong. I've had done wrong from, like, this guy sold his business and the new guy, it took them years.

But finally I got it. So hat tip to the new guy for making it work. I've traded, well, I've had all the bad stuff happen. But I've, anyway, I'm glad to get that. The fur looks good. That's Montana. Yeah, it looks good. It looks good.

I like it. Yeah. What do you think cause that slip is just, you know, not taking the skull out here? It must have been, yeah, it must have been just the way it was watered up in a cooler on the way home. Because I carried it home from Montana. Must have just been the head in on the inside instead of out maybe I mean I don't remember doing that I and I typically take pretty good care of them wrapping them in ice and stuff because if you if you killed bear Josh or green hide and you just wrapped it up

Yeah which is a good way to store them is like roll them man that the center part of that role is now insulated by like layers and layers of fat and hair right so it might be days before the middle of that hide freezes. So what do you have to do? Well, the ideal situation is if you have a green bear hide that you're going to freeze, is that you would kind of drop it into a big freezer, semi unrolled for about an hour or two and let the whole thing chill. Okay.

And then roll it up. Well, it's still soft enough to roll it like that. And then before it freezes hard, you roll it up. How long can you keep a hide in the freezer before you have it tanned? Long, long time. I mean, probably not indefinitely, but years. Okay. Years.

I've never tested that particular thing because, I mean, I've usually had them done pretty quick. Okay. They take up a lot of space. Well, that one clearly sat in the freezer for a while. Well, I think it was in, I think it was stretched and salted for a while. Okay. I don't think it was in the freezer for real long. Okay.

I think they worked on it, and then the business sold, and then... I see. It just kind of was in this. Now, a salted hide will last for years. Really? Like, if you dry and salt and flesh, what do you think, Misty? If you do that, it'll last almost indefinitely. Okay.

Salted and dried. But, yeah, bear hides. I know that Clay likes to... Like there's a section in our freezer for furs and hides. And I like to keep our freezer very organized, very organized. And I have little containers and everything. And Clay likes to take my chicken feed bags and roll up hides and put them in there. Yeah.

And I mean, I guess it's semi-organized. At least I know it's in there. You don't ever just accidentally pull out of Coon Hyde and like cook it like a roast? No, I've never done that. Degong on it, Clay. Shoot. Yeah. But now you can sell the Coon Hides.

What do you mean? Well, I knew you could sell them before the podcast. It's the Coon Meat. Yeah, it was suspicious about. I knew you could sell the hides. Yeah, we got in that car. And Clay got hit with a moral conundrum. That we were all going to the punky.

We used to sell the meat when I was a kid to people dad would work with. Oh, really? Yeah. Sold a lot of Coon meat. Really? Interesting. It's not bad. You know, there's a lot of talk on this particular podcast about Clay being a hillbilly.

Are you sure? This one? Well, on all sorts of podcasts. America's favorite hillbilly. Oh, I thought you're talking about this Gillette Coons. No, no, not the Gillette. Yeah. Podcast in general.

And I was actually, my people actually were hillbillies. And they're the kind of people who wouldn't like to be called that. That's why I hesitate to even say it. because one time I said that, kind of meaning it as a term of endearment, and I could tell by everyone's face, it was like, don't bring that in here. Like records crack. Yeah, not interesting that. And at Thanksgiving, we would, my dad was like a real finicky eater.

And before Thanksgiving, he would say, hey, why don't you all eat something here? He's going to say, he was talking about his grandpa, who was my great grandpa, and he would say, he's going to ask you to guess what's in the dressing. and it could be possum, it could be Coon, and I'm not into that. Like, I'm not, and I don't want y'all to have to eat that either. And they, the way they cook their dressing, I mean, I'm not convinced there wasn't Possom or Coon in there. There was always something mystery.

Yeah, there's some mystery treasure in there. And they really, they really, and I asked my, I took the kids to see my aunt, not my great aunt, not too long ago, and I just wanted them to hear, because they were really fun people and really colorful, and I wanted them to hear some of the stories. And I told her that. I said, you know, were they really serving us, possum and coon meat? Like, is that something that I've partaken in a lot just kind of casually? And didn't know it.

And she said, well, we did. I mean, she was on it. She said, we did. She said, I've only had skunk once. You know, she kind of went through the, I mean, they grew up during the Great Depression. They traveled. They were migrant farmers. They traveled all over to make ends meet.

And she told me different stories about when they would kill things and he'd bring it back to the camp with all the people who were traveling and working in the timber, you know, different, different areas. And both sides of my family, they did that. They traveled so that they could, I'm trying to think, was my mom born in Wyoming? Or did she, do they just, that was where she was raised her early years because her dad would go up there. Yeah, they would go a log up there.

That's why they would travel. So they were loggers on both sides of the family. And then they'd take their kids out of school early on my mom's side. So Misty's grandfather's, well, great-grandfather. grandfather. He was my great grandpa. It was named Lewis Joplin. And I just barely, my time with Misty just barely overlapped. And so I knew Lewis Joplin. I think he died when he was 89 in about 2001 or two. He lived to see our oldest, and his wife lived to see our oldest two kids. Right. And Lewis Joplin, he lived in Hatfield, Arkansas. And he, there was a family story about him killing a bear with a rock.

And so I asked him about it one day. And let me just say, he was kind of this Paul Bunyan type of guy. I would tell people who my great-grandpa was, and they would say, oh, Louis Joplin, strongest man I ever knew. One time I saw him catch a whole truck, diesel truck of logs on his bareback. And I'd be like, are you sure? But like every story had a little bit of truth in it when I would repeat it. He was a big guy.

And really, he was a logger's whole life. And they did some migrant farm work. They would travel around to different places. And, well, that was your other side that actually did that. No, they did both sides. A lot of people, almost everybody that was in. Arkansas, specifically Western Arkansas in the

30s and 40s left to work. Gary Newcomb, Gary Newcomb was not born in Arkansas. He was born in California. And now, because his family left to go get work, they were in California two years

and then ended up coming back. Now, I still claim that, and I don't claim, it's the truth, I'm a seventh generation Arkansas. Gary Newcomb's not a California. He was born in California. My mother, my mother was born in Minut, North Dakota.

Her family had been in Arkansas in Oklahoma for generations. He was my grandfather, when my mother was born in the early 1950s, was doing, working for the civil service. Is that what it is? Yeah, CCC. The Civilian Conservation Corps. He was working for them as a bricklayer. Oh, interesting.

And they just toured around the country. and so he took his wife, my grandmother, Natalie Millsap. And so my mother, their family lived out of Arkansas for just like this short period of time, but it was when she was born. When you watch the documentaries, it's usually single men traveling, but when you hear the stories of...

They took her. So, Lewis Joplin, killed a bear with a rock. So I feel really fortunate that I... Did you ask him about the story? I did. And he told me, he said that he was a young boy. I got the feeling he was like, you know, between 12 and 13, 14, something like that.

And he was walking down a gravel road in Polk County, Arkansas. And we've tried to nail down the time frame. It would have been sometime probably in the 1920s. And he saw a small bear cub cross the road. And this was the time when bears were supposed to be extirpated out of Western Arkansas. If you look in the textbooks today, they will the scientific literature

it'll say bears were extirpated out of western Arkansas during the 19 you know basically from the 1900s until the reintroduction in the 1950s

there was this big gap of no bears yeah well Louis Joplin killed one with a rock in the 1920s he said he saw

a small bear and I don't know how big it was but I get the feeling it was a 40-50 pound bear and he said it ran up a little bitty tree right by the road

and what did he do, started chunking rocks at it. He's just a kid, you know, and he ends up chunking a rock and just kills this bear. Falls out of the tree, and then he's scared to death because he thought he was going to be in trouble. And so he, like, never told anybody about it for a long time. And then later in his life, he's like, I killed a bear once with a rock. And so when people would find out, they say, I saw him catch, you know, a whole load of logs on his,

He killed a bear with his bare hands I mean these are the stories I grew up with And he was just the sweetest kindness You know simple Simple man But he was a really good man A good servant of the community Very extremely giving

And generous and You know so So TL Jones The He did We did the podcast with him about Plot Hounds and Barry Tarleton

The Moonshine Sheriff Plot Man and, you know, he talked about possum poverty about how his, they would, and those guys would have been in the same generation, like Louis Joplin and Barry Tarleton would have been in the ballpark.

Well, actually, Louis Joplin would have been older than Barry. Because, yeah. But he said they would fatten up a possum in a cage. They'd catch a possum. Yeah. They would catch it, fatten it up in a cage until it was gained some weight and then dress it, kill it, you know, eat it.

But, um, Gillette Coonsupper. I, from a, the way that I think about the work that we do here at Bear Grease, I always have a kind of like a journalist meter. Okay. Regardless of whether the podcast is well received or, because there's all these variations in stories. I mean, like the Donnie Baker's story was just exciting and dramatic and personable. And moving.

And yeah, so there's all, it was a very dynamic story. Some stories are not as dynamic, but they have, but they're, but they're meaningful in different ways. I feel like this is one of them, but on the, on the journalism meter, I felt like it was, I felt like we did a good job of telling this story. And then Tim Carney was an incredible, incredible guest and expert on social capital. And now, Misty, tell us about your research. Oh, well, I mean, social capital, the reason that we knew about Tim Carney, fun fact, let's tie this into bear hunting. Okay.

During one of your most recent bear seasons, I went up into a bear stand where they just had an extra stand, and they said, you ought to take a, you ought to take a gun up there, and if a bear comes to it, you can hunt too. So I had a license, so I set up in there, and I read Tim Carney's book because I was right in my dissertation. Did you really? I did. I read it up there.

You read Tim Carrey's book in a bear stand. In a bear stand, alienated America. Read it in a, in a, and so when we, and that was part of my, that was one of the most enjoyable parts of my dissertation, because most of the things I read were just like scientific studies about social capital, which isn't as interesting. And your dissertation is on social. Yeah, my dissertation was on educational outcomes and social capital and whether or not, because it's kind of an interesting topic, you know, in a, in a community, there's a, there's

this one big study that's been done, and it looks at like what are some of the factors, social capital-related factors that improve outcomes for children, which is something that I was super interested in. And they found that whether your own parents stayed married or not, being in a community where there's a lot of two-parent families was more predictive of your later life outcomes than even your own parents' marriage. And it really speaks to the value of the context that you're raised in. And the challenge is if you're not in a community that has a lot of social capital. And so I was really interested in his book because he kind of delved into some of that.

And he looked at it from a more political standpoint. I was interested in what happens to academic achievement. Like if you're, do kids perform better in school? Do they learn more? If what? If there's a strong social capital. Tell us what social capital is. Like give us a review.

Well, people just listen to your podcast. But I mean, social capital is. you know, Tim, Tim Carney described it as reciprocity. And I don't really want to describe social capital. He described it as things that have value in your life that you can't, that you couldn't buy or sell. And typically they are,

the value is found in relationships. So he talked about like if you have a best friend that you often call upon to help you. Or if you sent your kids over to your neighbor's house, which is such a northern thing to say. to shovel snow. Well, we would say, and it's trust. I think that's one of the challenges of defining something that you've spent so much time. It's really hard to take it into, you know, just like a two-sentence.

I had to write pages on what social capital was. But I think one of the things, it's not just the relationships, but it's the outcomes of those relationships. So you have trust in a community. He talked about reciprocity in the sense that if you need something, there will be people there for you as well. And I think that's really, really powerful. And so I was looking at Arkansas, and Arkansas doesn't, has, you know, people sometimes, meanies make fun of us. Haters.

And we aren't known for having really high academic outcomes. And we've got, there's a lot of challenges in a state like Arkansas that people don't really necessarily understand. And one of the things, you know, I grew up here. grew up in the poor, one of the poor parts of Arkansas in the southern part of the state. And I saw things in my own life. I had a really strong community around me. And even inside of like our church context, there was just a group of us and we all went to college and that wasn't something that really normally happened. And I was just curious. Like, are there things

about your community that can kind of almost invisibly help you overcome some of the challenges in your context? I didn't know. I grew up. in a tough context until I started... So someone told you? Until I was told repeatedly when I started working in education policy. Like Warner Glen. Nobody ever told him this life he chose was a...

What's the song? Hard road a hoe. This wretched life was a hard road a hoe. Yeah, I remember... Ballad to Warner Glen. Thanks for bringing it back to... Yeah, that's good, Clay. Go ahead.

Bredos are ready. But yeah, I didn't know. I remember telling people they'd say, where are you from? and I would tell them, and they'd be like, no, really, where are you from? And one time one guy said, I was at a big conference

and I told him where I was from, and he said, how do you explain that? And I said, what do you mean? He said, like, how do you explain how you overcame that? I was like, what a horrible thing to say to a person. I didn't realize I overcame anything. These were these academics

that had moved in here from other places. No, these were education leaders in the state. Well, where were they from? Yeah, Mina. In that pretty clear case, I think the guy was actually from Mina, which is like 20 minutes north of Hatfield. So that's kind of funny. It's like hilarious that he said that. But yeah, they were people in central Arkansas that was call all the shots.

So what I looked at in my research was, are there, there's this index, this social capital index that's kind of divided up into four different sections. And I had education data. I had education spending. I had wealth, you know, per capita inside of each different county. And we took all these different data sets and said, does a social capital index basically predict academic achievement? And we were looking at younger kids. So we weren't just looking, do you go to college? But does it actually predict your performance in school?

And the first... So you were grading communities based upon... Someone else had already graded them. Someone else had to use all these different factors to create this index. And I took their index. And I... But that index... was...

And it had four parts to it. It had nonprofits. Like how many nonprofits are in your town? How many civic organizations? It had religious participation. It had... How many people are attending a church in the area? Something like that, yeah.

Yeah, okay. And then it had voting records for presidential elections because that's... How many people are engaging in the vote? Civic... And that was one of the things that they talked a lot about in your podcast with civic engagement. And then there was one more... There was one more thing, and it was super fascinating. Because when we first ran the first test, and I was expecting, like you would, that social capital would be, there'd be a correlation between academic achievement and social capital. And it was the, or that there'd be nothing, that there would not be, like there would just be no impact whatsoever. But there was an impact and it was negative. So the more social capital, that according to this index, as measured by this index, the, the worst the education outcomes. And that, yeah.

Yeah, very counterintuitive. And that was where I was like, that is shocking to me. And so I have worked in the state, you know, pretty in depth for a while. I've been involved in education in Arkansas for, you know, 2008, 2009. And so I just started looking at places I knew. And this is not, this is terrible scientific research.

This is not what you're supposed to do. So anyone listening, that's not really the way you're supposed to do it. but I was like, that doesn't make sense. And I saw some of the places. And I had a suspicion. I already thought, I think this index is flawed. I think this nonprofit thing. And that's what I saw is that basically the nonprofit part of this index.

So let me just cut to the chase. I started to take the different, I had the breakdown of the index. And I saw I could look and compare each part of it. And basically, the more nonprofits in your community, the worst your social capital. And that does make a little bit of sense to me, because why would you have, you know, a soup kitchen? if there weren't people that were hungry. You know, like that, that made a little bit of sense to me. And it's not saying that nonprofit work is not valuable.

It's just saying you probably need those kind of agencies. But it turned out to be the thing that was the most significant predictor in every single subject was voting records. And there was some suspicion. So the more people that voted, the better the academic outcomes. I mean, and it was huge. Interesting. So that would have been a correlation that could have been a correlation that could have been. all over the country. Yeah, I just looked at Arkansas. I just looked at the state of Arkansas,

because I had really good data, really specific data for academic achievement and for school spending. And that was one of the suggestions was that maybe because often voting is correlated with income. Let me just say that we did run some tests to make sure that that wasn't just like a proxy for wealth. And we kind of eliminated that. What I think it showed was just the value of civic engagement in a community. When people, I think we're, I think, when you, when there are enough people who feel like their vote matters, because I mean, really, if you look, look at all the people to vote, and you could argue that one single vote doesn't matter. But if there's enough people in a community that go out there and engage in the practice,

engage in the ritual, engage in the tradition, I think it says something about your community. People think that they have a say in the game, and they're invested in their community, and they're voting. And that means a lot. Yeah. I think if you feel like you can, I think there's two ways to read that. One is if people feel like their voice makes a difference, and that's why they get out and vote, that matters. And I think the other way of seeing is, even if my voice, my individual vote doesn't make a difference,

I'm part of a practice or I'm part of a ritual that makes a difference. Yeah. I think that matters. And I think that communicates unseen things to the kids in your community. I think that was highly visible in this podcast talking to these people that were in attendance at this event. that it wasn't just an excuse to get together. It wasn't just a fundraiser for the high school students.

Yeah. The tradition of it was almost like a sacred thing to them. And it gave them an identity. And even people beyond just the citizens of the town, anyone who had touched it or been involved with it, they felt like it was theirs and they felt like it was important. And really, I mean, it is kind of a hotbed of political attendees in that place. Were you all surprised to hear Bill Clinton on there? I wasn't surprised at all.

I didn't know that you knew Bill Clinton and you could get him on the podcast. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps Game Calls and building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called Prime Cut. 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 Rinella cut is an easy to use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. No, I think that's, I think that's actually was part of Clinton's political genius is that he was, he was, you know, one of us. That was part of he. He engaged people.

Yeah. He really engaged people. And, you know, regardless of your opinion on his politics, people always talk about his charisma and engagement of the person. Yeah. And so. I wish so bad. Brant was here. Brent's in Canada.

Brent was a officer at the state capital. He wasn't necessarily there when Clinton was in governor. The governor of Arkansas. But in Brent's. I'm pretty sure Brent was at the state capital when Clinton was president, though. Okay. And so Clinton would come back here,

and Brent had some interaction with the Clinton presidency. Yeah. Just from a law enforcement standpoint at the Capitol. We should have had him phone in from the bear stand. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, I'm going to text him right now. Y'all, keep going.

Keep going. Well, one of the things, when I was at the Coon's Supper, there were two things that I thought were really interesting about it. I set across from a very old man, we actually tried to record him talking to me, but his voice was so in that loud room, you just couldn't pick up his voice on the thing.

But he was there with his son and his grandson. And, you know, they were from Central Arkansas. They were from Little Rock, the Big Town. They had long hair, had it tied up. And then there was grandpa. And he said, I've maybe missed one since my childhood. And it was really sweet because his, and I asked the grandson, who is probably,

you know, a freshman in high school. I said, did you eat some of the schoon? And he said, no. And I said, is this your first coon supper? And he said, no, we come with them. And it was like this tradition that their family, he was from that area. They had all moved to Little Rock,

but they still came back for the Coon Supper. And then I saw those high school kids up there. And one of, there was a girl that was like missed something down there. And she came up and she said, I was part of the last elementary class and that went through the school. And as they called the kid's name out, I just thought what a powerful experience that was for all those kids in there, you know, as they shared what they were going to do and everybody applauded for them. Because it's just saying, you've got a place. You've got a place that you come home to you.

And that's an important, a really important thing to have in life is people who know you, people who cheer for you, people who, you know, recognize when you graduate and acknowledge it. And there's so much anonymity in the world today. There's so much, it's so easy. I mean, I go to these big graduations up here where. I don't know, there's probably a thousand kids that graduate, and there's no real sense of even the students know each other. Right, right. And so to get up there and to sit down and have everybody cheer and hear your plans for the future,

whether you two of them or not, but to just know, I've got a place I can come back to. I can bring my kids back if I move away from here. And that's to me what's really important about places, things like the Coom Supper. And I think it's a real tragedy that they've shut down those schools in that town. I don't think it's produced any necessarily any good academic benefits, and I think it has stripped one of the few symbols that they had left of community. What about the, so the school consolidation, we didn't get into it. I just didn't, I just didn't feel like I had the info, but the several years ago, they were, and it's happening all over the country, where these small rural schools are being consolidated with bigger schools.

and they were doing that in part financially. Is that not true? I mean, I think that's part of the justification for it. I don't... But you told me that it has absolutely been negative for children outcomes. Well, I told you of some studies that were not published that I saw that show that when they consolidated,

it was bad for the kids that got, you know, the schools they went into, and it was bad for the kids who went in. Why didn't they publish those studies? it's a conspiracy. I mean, there's a lot of reasons. Yeah. Okay.

There's just a lot of, there's a lot of free, and maybe they have now. That was like... Maybe we need to put a bear grease podcast on this. Maybe so. That was like 20 years ago. Bear grease exposé. Why didn't you publish the study

while the kids didn't do good when you can tolerate it in their school? And, you know, it's been a while since I've worked in a shop that just looks at data. So maybe they've published those studies since. Maybe, but that was the initial findings was, you know, and the other. part of it and they talked your guy you the guy you interviewed he kind of alluded to this in these

situations oh jillette's top politician randy woemak yeah the way they he's he talked about the tensions you know tensions were running high in addition to just shutting down the school they didn't take the the central you know the central government that shut down the schools in in little rock didn't take any initiative to create a plan for what that would look like and they left it up to the communities oh wow well the communities couldn't decide i mean there was there were people who wanted to consolidate with this school or do this. And there was no blueprint. And so it really, the process of consolidation was really difficult on community school boards.

It actually was, to me, growing up in Arkansas in a very tiny school where every couple years a principal would come in and tell us, you guys, we need your parents to call the state politicians. I mean, that happened every couple years to us. They're going to try to shut schools down this year and there's a law and we need you to call your politicians or else they're going to. going to close Hatfield down and Hatfield's going to be just like Gillum, which was, you know, a school when they were all. Those hillbillies and Gillum. Yeah. Well, it just, it kind of tore the town was just a drive-through, you know, it was just a place you drove through, just a speed trap. And,

and so we were always going home and telling our parents, hey, they're going to close down our school if you don't call your state legislators. And so that's kind of how I grew up. But it was just such a tragedy because you lose these things, these schools and these symbols of community in your area, but the way it was done was also tragic because it turned people against each other in the process. There was no, it just was very unstrategic. And it's kind of, it, it actually tore at the actual relational, the relationships that did exist at that time. So it tore it in a couple different ways.

It was poorly done, in my opinion. So Juju taught for decades at a school called Acorn School. You mean Acorn? Nope. Acre and school. And that was a school system. And that school system no longer exists. Now, kids still use those school buildings.

What are they using for? Well, they still have a school there. It's just not Akron school. They administrated. So what they did is they administered. And I thought that, again, that that was good? The people who consolidated later kind of learned from the people who consolidated. My school was in the first round of schools to be consolidated.

And so there was no real blue pit for... Did they shut down your school? I mean, it's empty. I drove Shepherd by it last week when we were... So there's no. It's no. No, there's no. The building clearly has been empty for a while.

Now, the gym still operates and they have community events in the gym. But, yeah, it was kind of sad that I haven't driven that way in a while. So for all these people out there that, like, have never been here, or we're naming all these specific town names. I think this is relevant to a wider picture of what's going on in rural America across the country. Yep. You know. And in the Northeast, there's a lot of really small schools that have maybe 43 people in it.

In the north, they have not consolidated. Is that right? It's true. You have friends who have kids in schools with less than 100 people in it. Really? I could tell you names. All schools? I'm just kidding.

You don't tell me. All schools. Yeah, absolutely. Now, what was their justification? Why did they not consolidate it and we did? You know, I know that the governor that we had in place at the time. it was kind of his thing. He just felt like kids were not getting good opportunities.

And I think that's what I hear a lot is people assume that going to a bigger school means better opportunities. And I'll give you this. I would have loved to have access to AP classes. Like my kids have access to AP classes, and I see what they learn in high school. Does AP mean American Panther? No, it means advanced placement. But they're just really, really incredible. They're rigorous, but very incredible, you know,

it's a great curriculum and good, good instructional challenge for kids. And I would have loved to have been challenged like that in high school. And those classes weren't afforded to me. But I feel like going to a small school, because we had less than 200 people, K-12. And you were a cheerleader. You played in the band when you could have a band.

You couldn't always have a band, and that's one of the arguments pro consolidation is, but you were a cheerleader, you played in the band, you played basketball, you did public speaking. and I felt like it gave me so many opportunities for leadership. I see what you're just saying. Because if we didn't play basketball, I mean, if all of us won't play, then we can't play. There's a lot of pressure to play.

Yeah, it's true. And I feel like, you know, we moved to a big town and I've done just fine. But I see other kids who are in these really huge schools and they can't find a place. They can't. Think about sports, too. Like, if you're, if you have to be an elite athlete to be in these six schools. If you're one of these big high schools, I was graduating. six, seven hundred kids.

Yeah. You basically got to be about a Division I athlete to play basketball. Yeah. Yeah. And so I, to me, I think, I don't know,

I don't know many areas in life where you grow up and there's just 2,000 people around you all the time. Yeah. Like if you think about most of workplaces, most workplaces, even in big cities,

you're working with 50 people max. And so I don't feel like a big school system really prepares you, I mean, prisons might have a whole lot of people in them. Wow. Dark.

I'm just saying where we think about the places where we just heard people together in mass, you know, with schools, prisons. The Coon Supper. The Coon Supper. 800 people. The Tad only has 500 in it. NCAA basketball games. I mean, these are, those are the types of places. There's not, I don't feel like we spend a whole lot of our life in just gigantic context, you know, with thousands of people surrounding us.

So why would we assume that that would be better for children who actually benefit from very close relational orbits? When I'm governor, deep thoughts. What could, you could be the, you could be the, what? The secretary of. Education is what you're thinking, I think. Well, yeah, when I'm governor, you could be a great game and fish director claim. I'm out. The entertainer statesman.

Yeah, yeah. When you're governor, I'll just go on the road. You'll just go on the road. Take the music. I've got five ballads already written. You've got five ballads already written. You're ready to roll. I mean, that's like a 30-minute show.

Your first album is going to be called Ballad of a Ballad. Ballad of a Ballad. I like it. The Ballad. Well, I really enjoyed that Coons Supper podcast. Yeah. I had the opportunity to have a conversation with Seth Place, and that guy is a riot. Yeah.

Yeah, he's quite a character. I remember, we were talking about the, the school consolidation. I remember him saying, it was awful. It was terrible. Tore our town apart. But he told some great stories when I was talking to him about early coon suppers.

Because it's like a week long for those guys that cook. It's like a week long ordeal them preparing this this coon. It's something. Are you going to go next year? Definitely. I'm definitely going. I'm going until I die from now on.

But apparently late at night there. It gets a little rowdy. There's a, they have some, some, uh, post coon supper shenanigans. No, no, no, while they're cooking during the week. Oh, okay. They play cards back there and they

shoot some craps and, you know, in the evening, so. Colby, what, said out to you, what was your favorite part of it? Well, like, I just want there to be a shirt with a coon on it that just says, all prime, all prime, all prime, all prime. All prime. All prime. That was good when he said that. Yeah. No, I like the whole community aspect.

And in the beginning, he was talking about how back in the day, and it might even still be that way, that you couldn't even find a babysitter, you know, to go to that thing. And I was like, I just, I think that put my mind into a space to where it was just, I just saw, like, families and stuff inside of that. And I think from, like, a journalistic standpoint, I think that was one of the coolest things that produced imagery inside of my head, to where I feel like I could kind of see what it might be like,

you know, just that whole community engagement. And I like the fact that it continued on even though that school doesn't exist anymore. Yeah, that was pretty cool. Yeah. And just like how some things, I actually thought about whenever you got this painting, how it's like there's some things that just don't exist,

but, you know, it could still be celebrated through time, you know. Yeah. Cool. Yeah, it's like that community stepped up when some of the symbols stepped away that community had, the advantage they had is that they had something else in there to stand in the gap, you know?

And I think we're in a season in the U.S. where a lot of those community symbols are being eroded. I mean, it's not like they're being eroded. They have been eroded. And it's important to have, it's important to have something that says you've got some place to come home to.

You know, I had a thought about, you remember in the podcast when Tim Carney talked about Civic Engagement has been going downhill since the 1960s. And it's kind of at rock bottom right now. And it really was almost a surreal moment when I realized that my dad was a young man, an aspiring young man in the 1960s. And he was involved in everything.

He really was. Like, Kwanah's Club, Lions Club, Deacon at the Church, all this stuff. And he, I said it on the podcast, but, you know, He always wanted us to, like, do more stuff, and we kind of didn't want to. You were a huge disappointment. Well, I was at times. And the, you know, I was kind of just a product of my generation. But what I felt, the application, I think, to the broader hunting community and where we're at inside of standing in a way, an ideological battle on a lot of different.

not just with anti-hunters, but with the way state game agents, Cesar run with firearms stuff. Like there's all these things that are kind of tearing at the, they're eroding the foundation of really the North American model of wildlife conservation, a lot of different ways. I think that a key play for the hunting community would be to be a very engaged community inside the hunting space. So like in the hunting space,

be civically engaged because there's all these great organizations that are, and I mean, I could just go through and start naming all these incredible organizations that are doing a ton of incredible work and some of their biggest challenges are getting people just to join them,

just to be participants. And I would imagine that our user base is pretty active compared to a lot of user bases in terms of people being engaged. But what if the hunting community was able to exponentially increase our power, cultural power in this space just because if the average person in the United States is maybe a member of one club or actively involved in one thing, what if most of us were involved in two?

You see what I'm saying? Like what if we were giving money, given time, given effort to, I mean, that's the way I feel about, there are so many things that I would love to give myself to that it's like, just like pick and choose. And sometimes there's the, you know, so many you kind of get frozen of who to help. Yeah. And I think the, and Tim Carney talked about this, I think he talked about it in the podcast, but it's also a lot in the literature that a lot of people are happy to give money right now, but don't want to put in the time and don't want to do. And I think the more local you can bring that stuff, the better it is.

The more you can bring it into your local community. I mean, I think the Arkansas BHA has done a great job of doing that very locally, putting their volunteer work to help local the people in this state. And that's a great, great example of people who've done something like that. And it's something that the kids can see. It's something that has a visible impact on your community. So valuable. So very valuable.

Well, thanks guys. Thanks to telling you. I'm going tomorrow to pick up banjo from the Amish Mule Trammer. Bitter's sweet. Well, no, he's doing good. This was like, he wasn't going there to get reformed. He was going there just to get ridden just while I was gone. And then I'm delivering him to my buddy up in Wyoming.

That's going to. Are you sad to see him go? Well, I really enjoy riding him, probably better than Izzy. Misty Nukum is very sad to see him. Yeah. As the person who feeds those meals, I think Banjo is, he is just, if a mule had personality, Banjo would have the best of the mules that we've had. He's been your favorite.

He does. He comes in, like when I walk out there, he comes and visits me. He comes, I feel like he, he's just. He cares about you. He's a good, yeah, he's a very, you. he's a very personal meal more so than the others. Misty's prone to anthropomorphification. And I'm fine to us.

Like, Izzy is kind of a pistol. Like you go to feed her and there's no thank you on that food. You know, it's like it's about time. That's kind of the attitude. And sometimes when I'm late, like in the summertime when I can sleep in a little bit, I'll come on the porch and just be enjoying the beauty of our, you know, front porch in our front yard. And I'll look over there and there's Izzy. And she's like, hello.

Oh, she's literally huffing. like she's huffing at me like get out here and feed me and banjo he never does that kind of nonsense he just kind of is like he's more respectful thanks for enjoying i'll just wait for you but he's he's a good mule so it's a big win but banjo is uh the funds from banjo are going to cover something very uh very special for us and uh he's going to pay for our our daughter's wedding

true story wow translating equine animals into life covenants. Yeah. Wow. So much of writing a book on that. We basically told our daughter. Forget social capital. We said, I told her what I projected to get for this meal and I said, it's all

yours. That's your budget. You can have the wedding you want or you can use it to do whatever you? Did you offer her banjo? Just like she could give her a wedding or just give her a bandjo. I should have just offered her the meal. Yeah. Yeah.

She could have made a living off that meal. The dowry. He's already got another mule he's training, and we just let the other daughter know this one, this one, cheers. So we're just kind of going through the line. Now that bears graduated, we should probably. She should probably find a guy first. Yeah, she should.

True story. She's got what, like 30 years? Yeah, a good meal will last a while. It'll take me the way that I, my entry point into the high-end mule world, it takes me about five years to get one where I want to sell them at their peak right as they start to going into their peak. Yeah. Which is Banjo 100%.

He's... Yeah. He's coming on six years old, so Banjo's five. Yeah. He's coming on six. Are you ever going to get rid of Izzy? No. She's a family member.

Yeah. Kind of a family member with an attitude. She's a very moody family member. Well, but Izzy, yeah. See, Misty's queuing in on things that I don't care about at all. Well, I think he likes his mules flashy, and he likes him. Sassy, flashy and sassy. Flashy and sassy, full of spitbar.

Well, Izzy has been ridden literally thousands of miles in the backcountry. I mean, there was a time when I kind of kept track of miles ridden on her. Right. And, I mean, it's... Can you write that off as an IRS deduction? What's a mileage rate on a meal? And she's never done anything crazy. Not a single thing crazy.

Which is really saying something. Was it Ellie Mae that ran down the hill with river? Well, okay, Josh. You just brought up so that it's not even relevant. That was Izzy. But that wasn't Izzy's fault. That wasn't it. Cut that out of the podcast.

Well, no. We don't need to blame the victim here. But, no, it's saying, when you just have long, long exposure on an animal and nothing goes wrong. Like creep crossings, walking long cliffs, having birds jump up in front of you, deer, bicycles, cars, bear hides. We went turkey hunting and we took Banjo. Yeah. And he had an area where he was reluctant.

I'm just going to say reluctant to go over this hill. Would Izzy have gone over that hill? I mean, you're going to always, yeah, yeah, she would have. And would Banjo go over it now? Yeah, I think you I think he would Any animal Any animal, especially a younger one,

is going to get in a bind Where they don't think they can get out And it was a unique place Where it was tight trees Dark water And big rocks And I was having trouble Getting him to just kind of do something

He was uncertain of Yeah He eventually did it Just took a little coaxing Yeah, took a little coaxing But yeah So Banjo Banjo will no longer be on Newcomb farm

I wish him the best. I wish him only the best. I wish him the best too. I think banjo, I like banjo too because Bear was a part of that. And Bear, we got banjo with those long legs and that blonde hair about the same time that Bear was kind of shooting up

and being like long and skinny and that blonde hair. They kind of reminded me of each other. Yeah. Man, Bear got him broken where he'd lead really well. Yeah, Bear helped me a little bit. Bear worked on that meal. Yeah.

Well, thanks guys. Really appreciate it. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps game calls and building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called prime cuts. Now, I'm going to tell you, I love mine because it's easy to use. I'm not going to go, I'm not going to 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 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 I-Heart podcast. guaranteed human.