Bear Grease - Ep. 230: Run't Over

Episode Date: July 10, 2024

Russ Arthur entered his post with the US Forestry Service in 1985 with a dedication to protecting the lands he was taught to cherish and appreciate back when he was a young child, but little did he know the twists and turns it would take him down. In this episode of the Bear Grease podcast, Clay Newcomb interviews this Bear Grease veteran as he recalls some wild stories of attempted murder, high-speed chases, and illegal drug rings. His storied career and commitment to law enforcement will amaze you! Connect with Clay and MeatEater Clay on Instagram MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Youtube Clips MeatEater Podcast Network on 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. And they're loading me on the stretcher to put me in the back of the amulence. And I looked up and the guy attended me I'd had in federal court before. And I remember looking at my boss. I remember grabbing him by the shirt and pulling him down.

And I said, don't leave me. On this episode, we'll be peeking behind the veil of the sane world. as we hear a wild story of attempted murder, a high-speed chase, illegal drugs, and steaming hot irony, all on America's public lands. The host of our story is an old bear grease friend who spent his career as a special agent

with the United States Forest Service. He spent time undercover, and in a past life, he was a bricklayer from southeast Tennessee. His name is Russ Arthur. We first heard snippets from his career in our genuine outlaw sense, series on Bear Greece, which started at episode 52. In this, Russ described his memorable covert interactions with Louis Dale Edwards in Polk

County, Arkansas in the 1990s. But in Russ's real life, he's a real turkey hunter and a good one, and he told two gobbler chasing stories on our spring 24 turkey stories series. You might remember him finding his father's journal on the day of his dad's funeral. Russ has lived an adventurous, interesting, and rich life embedded in the hunting community of Appalachia, bringing law and order to public lands. But he's also worked all across America. And in the latter years, even into the far reaches of Southeast Asia, we'll learn where that passion came from on this podcast and hear the story of attempted murder on his life. I really doubt that you're going to want to miss this one.

And hey folks, remember that you can watch the Bear Grease Render our every other week roundtable discussion podcasts on Meat Eat Eaters' new podcast YouTube channel. Check it out. And I said, why would you be telling me this? In a true Appalachian spirit, he just said, you know, you didn't do anything wrong. Those boys in prison are the ones that did something wrong. And I can't convince some of these members of the community that you've done nothing wrong. My name is Clay Newcomb, and this is the Bear Grease podcast.

where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant. Search for insight in unlikely places and where we'll tell the story of Americans who live their lives close to the land. Presented by FHF Gear, American-made, purpose-built, hunting and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the places we explore. I'll never forget it.

I was on the passenger side's front and it was in a sedan. The agents drove Crown Vicks. and they laid the seat back and the agent from Georgia got the back and it tore his shirt off down to his t-shirt and would wrap my head my head was bleeding and it's funny how your mind will drift and uh I reached up and I felt this real warmth in my ear this may sound a little crude but it's funny how your mind works I'm coming and going don't know if I'm going to pise out or not, but I'll never forget my thoughts were, if I'm bleeding out my ear, this is not good. I've seen Daddy put down too many dogs, and, you know, son, this dog's been hit by a car,

it's bleeding out the ear, we've got to put it down. I mean, you know, you grow up in the house and around dogs. I mean, bleeding out the ear is a bad sign. I mean, I don't mean to make a lie to that, but that's what was going through my mind at that time. How fast do you think the truck was going when it hit you? It probably wasn't going, but I'm going to say when it accelerated, because it slowed down like it was going to stop, and it just immediately turned and gassed it. And I can remember hearing the gravels. I can remember seeing, you know, and it just, that front end and that front tire just clipped me and flip me, and it raced off.

After that truck hit Russ, it would bust through a roadblock and lead officers on a high-speed chase through the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina leading into a three-day manhunt. What twists and turns in a man's life would lead him into a scenario like this. I think we need to go back to the very beginning. My name is Russ Arthur. I was born in 1959 in southeast Tennessee. My parents raised me and two sisters in the Hickson Red Bank area of Tennessee and graduated high school in 77. I did a lot of construction work during high school and during my few years in college,

did brick block work. And always was a passionate turkey hunter. My dad was always a passionate turkey hunter. He was turkey hunting when turkey hunting wasn't cool. and he would always go to the mountains and turkey hunt. And when I got about 10, 11 years old, he started taking me. And he always camped in an area up there close to where our ancestors were born, which is now National Forest.

And there's an Arthur Cemetery right there next to that campground where it goes back to five generations of Arthur's that's buried there. This camp would be the philosophical craze. of Russ's life's work. He was enamored with the men that hunted there, their conversations, and like the bedrock forming at the bottom of an ancient ocean, he developed a foundational appreciation for the land.

But I want to go even deeper into Russ's foundations. My dad was very well respected in the community. He respected law enforcement. He was a philosopher. Son, I always do the right thing when nobody's life. looking. He was all about honor, all about integrity. He was a man of many talents. He was a beekeeper. He was a houndsman at one time with beagles and rabbit hunting was his thing. He loved the art of shooting. And he was a very good father to our family. Anybody he was around, he would gain

their respect. But he was a true woodsman. He knew everything there was to know about, the mountains. Not only their history, but he knew every plant species. He really took in everything in those mountains, and he was a self-taught naturalist. At Russ's core, I think you can perceive a genuine and deep appreciation for wild places, stretching a net of knowledge that supersedes a veneer of simply knowing about and hunting on some land. His appreciation is informed by a complex sequence of data points. It was real. As this story unfolds, you'll see the extent to which Russ will go to do his job with

the Forest Service, and at the heart of it, going back to his father, is a sacred respect for wild places. And I was just infatuated by their skills, by their turkey call making skills, by the types of tactics they used, and just love the mountains. And I always would interact with the Forest Service as they came through. Really admired them, really respected them. And I would always ask them, how do I get a job with you? How do I get a job with you, even as a little kid?

And they would just always talk to me and be cordial. And when I got on up in high school, one of them told me, he said, you need to get in college, son. My dad wasn't very high on this, but when I told him I wanted to get a degree in forestry, he said, son, have I not told you and taught you enough about trees? So, but I'll never forget that. And I said, well, Daddy, it's a little more than that. It's a, I think it could be a good profession.

I just knew I wanted, I wanted to ride around those green trucks. And I wanted to be part of managing that land that I cared so much about. The things that catch our eyes, children, and the decisions we make early in life are critical, often determining outcomes far beyond the site of the time. When I meet people that I respect, I find their formative influences interesting. And Russ would never turn his gaze from these early directions that he was looking. But I don't think that it played out the way that he would have predicted.

Russ would end up graduating from the University of Tennessee with a forestry degree in the spring of 1982. and his first job was a volunteer position as an intern for the Forest Service where he lived in a camper without electricity. Then they offered him some seasonal work. For the next two or three years, I marked timber. I was a firefighter. I held the dumb end of an engineer tape on laying out, you know, logging roads.

Just anything that they had at the lowest grade level, I took it. All the time, not knowing which direction my career was going to go. I just enjoyed the diversity of the work. I enjoyed the people. I enjoyed the environment. It was just a tickle of death. Then one day, Russ literally got a knock on the door from two Forest Service agents from North Carolina. They said, look, we've got a job opening coming into North Carolina.

We want you to apply. And I said, well, guys, what is it? And they said, well, it's a full-time law enforcement officer job. And Forest Service is just now getting into these positions. Most of the positions are, you know, you'll do 10% law and 10% fire and 20% recreation and, you know, 30% timber marking. But this one's full-time law enforcement. And we think you'd be a good fit. Prior to this, the Forest Service hadn't heavily dealt in law enforcement, but the need was now rising for full-time officers.

He applied for the job and got it. I'd always wonder who I beat out for that job because I didn't have that much experience. And they finally told me I was the only applicable. That made you feel good. That made me feel real good. Sometimes just showing up is all that it takes. And to go back to the guys that told him to apply, sometimes we aren't able to see the potential in ourselves,

and it takes someone else to spot it. That's why it's critical to surround yourself with selfless, honest people. In July 1985, Russ would relocate to the mountains of rural western North Carolina, but he had no way to predict the direction his career would go. That duty station in North Carolina was a pretty remote area. He was in Robbinsville. I think at the time, Robbinsville was 70 or something percent of US Forest Service, and the rest of it was private.

So there was a lot of animosity there against the Forest Service. And that goes back to some of the things that TVA did with Fontana and the flooding of some homes and things. But they just weren't a good fan of the government back in the 80s. On blood trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is over. They just get darker. I've seen something in the road. I instantly thought it was a sleeping bag.

and there was a full of blood. Oh my God, he doesn't have a head. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors, where the terrain is unforgiving, the evidence is scarce, and the truth gets buried under brush and silence. Indications were he should be right there, but he wasn't.

This season, we're going deeper, from cold case files to whispered suspicions, from remote mountains to frozen backwoods. Each story begins in the wilderness, and ends in darkness. Because out here, there are no witnesses, no cameras, just fragments, and the people left behind trying to piece them back together. He's not an honest person.

He's incapable of being honest. Somebody somewhere knows something. I'm Jordan Sillers. Season 2 of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, Iheart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is the perfect entry point to understand. the full story and all its twists and turns of Russ with the bleeding ear in the crown Vic. You're going to want to pay attention and don't get too comfortable.

Here's the whole story. Back in 1986 while working in Robbinsville, North Carolina, you know, again with a Forest Service law enforcement, my first position, there was an unusual group came to the National Forest. And Robbinsville was a very quiet, very calm, very southern-type small town. You know, one red light, two places to eat. One small hotel, just good, easy living. Very proud people, love their community, love their national forest. Most everybody there had some type of a tide of the national forest,

whether it was hunting or working in the logging business. and one day we got notified Forest Service did that there was a group going to set up a camp in a place called Maple Springs which was one of the most remote areas you could drive to in that county and there was going to be a national gathering there

called the Rainbow Living of Light and said there's going to be about 10,000 people come in here with this community this group had become well known in the 1970s. traveling across the country, gathering in the name of world peace. However, every place they went to they'd set up in national forest,

intending to protest the government through their right to gather without a permit. However, the Forest Service required gatherings of over 75 people to have a permit, and thousands were coming. So there was some head button with the Forest Service. However, it wouldn't be the rainbow people that wanted to kill Russ Arthur. It was kind of like a freak show, if you will, for the locals. They'd hear about it. They don't want to drive up and see it.

Well, one Friday night, we forced service, along with the state, set up a roadblock just to check for DUI, DUI checkpoint, and one of the curves that went up and down there, because we were now allowing vehicles to drive up and down, but they couldn't take equipment in and out. Now, so we've got a roadblock going on, and I'll digress a little bit. The fall before that, I had a run-in with a young man up there that suspected of hunting bear illegal. And when I got up with him in a remote area up there, he had a rifle, but it wasn't a large caliber.

And he claimed he was only squirrel hunting. So I cited him. I think it was a $40 or $50 collateral citation for hunting squirrels out of season on the wildlife management area. And that type of collateral ticket was the lowest level of enforcement action that you can take other than a warning. And he can mail it in if it's paid on time. It don't even go on your record.

So it wasn't a big deal to me. Well, time passes. We're back to the national gals. gathering and we're at a road check. And it's starting to get a little bit dark. And this truck comes down the road and it was a, I'll never forget, it was a 77 Ford, F-150, because I've got a 78, still got it. This truck's coming down the hill. And I recognize the truck of being tied to that family of that boy I'd wrote the ticket to. You live in a small community, you get to know everybody's vehicle up they drive. And I was what's called the point person.

and I turned my flashlight on and stepped out and held my hand up to stop the vehicle. And it immediately accelerated and turned toward me and ran over me. And it caught right side of my leg, flipped me over in the ditch, head hit the gravel road,

and I went out for a few seconds, the vehicle's gone. The next thing I know, The agent out of Asheville and the agents out of Georgia that was there, loaded me up in the back of their vehicle. It was taking me, trying to get me to the hospital. Of course, immediately, you know, we had five or six marked units at that roadblock, and I can remember in that ditch laying there just seeing them go by.

Blue lights blazing. Where this happened was probably running wide open more than an hour of the close. was his hospital. And it's back before the days of Medivac. And I remember the agent getting on the radio and he radioing to the amulets, meet me. I'm going to be headed to town. Of course, the hospital wasn't in the town. The hospital was in Bryson City. You know, if you know anything about Western Carolina, that's, you know, that's a pretty long way from Robbinsville. But they did have ambulance service in Robbinsville. So he's communicating with the amlets. I'm coming up 129. They almost met each other and it was almost a wreck just meeting each other.

And I'm still just didn't, just can't figure out what's going on. And they're loading me on this stretcher to put me in the back of the amlets. Only this can happen in a small town now. And I looked up and the guy attended me I'd had in federal court before. And I remember looking at my boss and I did go out after this is I remember grabbing him. by the shirt and pulling him down and I said don't leave me so next thing I know I'll wake up I'm in the hospital and praise God I'm good I had bad concussions I had stitches in my knees I had stitches and I have to hide off my back of my head and they had to wait

a while for they could give me the the pain medication because of the concussions or whatever that process was. But when they finally, I was able to sleep for eight or ten hours, I know what the feeling is of a bent up and run over by truck. And I just couldn't hardly move all over. I think the main thing keeping Russ's injuries from being much worse was simple. He was six foot two in the neighborhood of 240 pounds in his late 20s. He was tough, but he was bleeding out his ear,

and that's never good. But an even more interesting question is what madness would cause someone to think that they could get away with this or even want to do it? But then the situation escalated even more.

They came and took statements from me, the State Bureau investigation got involved, and that's when I learned that there was still a manhunt. There were three people in that truck. And if you know anything about that area, Highway 129 goes from Marrival all the way up through the mountains, around by the smokies,

comes around the bottom of Fontana Dam, and people call it the Dragon's Tale. It's a very windy road. But that's where they were fleeing to, and it was ironic. My old boss, the one that first mentored me into getting into law enforcement, was the one right behind them. and if you knew less, you'd know that they're probably not going to get away from him.

And I learned all this, of course, after the fact. The truck went around so many of those curves, it couldn't hold a curve like a crowned vic. Literally, he was pushing them all accounts that I heard later. So these guys knew what they were doing. Now, all three of them were locals from that area, very avid hunters, and it all of a sudden ditched. and they all three jumped out and ran into the smokies. He was able to catch one.

It was a juvenile. It was just a passenger. So you've got one caught that's a juvenile that you can't prosecute. And there was a huge manhunt. State of Tennessee got involved because this was closest Tennessee state line. The state of North Carolina got involved with their highway patrols. And they set up roadblocks trying to catch these guys. So three days hadn't called.

them. And let me get this straight. It was one of the guys who was still in there. Dad came to the authorities and said, need to talk. I know where they're at. I'll get them to come out on their own if you'll get rid of everybody. They've got a spot over there. There's an illegal hunt camp in the smokies that they're holed up in. And only I know where it's at. you all back out of here I don't want them shot I don't want them hurt I'll go get them within two days they'll turn herself in and evidently this man did a good job of convincing

the authorities that that that would happen and he held true to his word and they brought the guys out and one of them was the guy that I had written a squirrel hunting ticket with the squirrel hunter why did he do this they were about to find out why in federal court.

Him and his brother were prosecuted, and he got three years. He was not the driver. He was the passenger. His brother was the driver, and he got three years in federal prison. The brother that was the driver or the squirrel hunter? The squirrel hunter. The squirrel hunter got three years. He got three years in federal prison.

We were able to find a person in that encampment. that actually came to the courts and testified. They were on their way up. They stopped that truck as that truck was coming down to the roadblock, and they told the driver, y'all need to be careful. The Forest Service has a roadblock set up down there, and I don't want anybody to get in trouble.

The passenger, which was the squirrel hunter, leaned over the driver and looked at the guy and said, do you know Russ Arthur? And this guy said, yeah. said, is he down there? And they said, he said, yeah. And he then got back, you know, leaned back in, got in the middle of the seat and told his brother, said, come on, it's time for him to die. Wow.

This came out in federal court. This came out in the testimony. So both found guilty. They go to prison and, well, that was a very tough time in my life and my career. I mean, it really was because he just didn't know what would happen next. And about six months after that, one of the members that family called me at 1 o'clock in the morning, and these guys are both in prison. He said, I need to talk to you.

And I knew this guy, and I called him my name. I said, man, it's 1 o'clock in the morning. I said, are you drunk? And he said, no. He said, but there's some talk down here in this community that you need to know about. I said, okay. And I'm thinking, is this a setup? And I said, well, listen, I'll talk to you.

but it's going to be where I want to meet you. And I told him to meet me in the parking lot of the Forest Service. Well, I called my boss, who was a district ranger then, an assistant ranger, and let them both know what was going on. And they didn't like it. They were not law enforcement. They were very, very supportive of everything. I mean, two of the best guys you've ever known.

And they had my backing anytime. He said, well, just be careful and let us know when you clear from there. And again, this is back before cell phones. So I got there 15 minutes before I told him I'd be there. Parked my truck in a different place where I told him I'd park. And walked around and did surveillance of that area before he pulled in. So he pulls in, gets out, we have a conversation, and he was sober. He just said there was a couple of guys down there that's talking about, you know,

doing some harm to you. I just want to warn you you need to be careful if you get any calls at night. And I said, why would you be telling me this? And in true Appalachian spirit, he just said, you know, you didn't do anything wrong. Those boys in prison are the ones that did something wrong. And I can't convince some of these members of the community that you've done nothing wrong. So a lot of respect up for that gentleman. And we talked for about an hour there.

And he went on his way. And when he got in the truck and left, my two supervisors, I heard of Russell in the bushes, came out and they each had their personal shotguns. He said, just won't let you know, we had you back. You didn't know they were there? No. Wow. No.

And those guys weren't, your bosses at that time weren't law enforcement. No. They were just. They were professional foresters and running a district. They just wanted to make sure that I was covered. They would lose her job today. There's an old saying about true friendship stating there's no greater love than someone who's willing to lay their life down for a friend.

These guys didn't have to do that, but it sure seems like they were willing to defend Russ at all cost. 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 Ronella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. Time passes, things settle down, and Russ's career moves on. He's actually relocated to another state, back to Tennessee. But then one day he gets a call from his old boss.

And one more thing we haven't mentioned about Forest Service law enforcement in the 80s, 90s, 2000s, and even today, was all the drug work that they did with marijuana being illegally grown on the forest. The guy was just mean. So he goes on to prison and him and his brother both. Then I fast forward and I moved to Tennessee. And, you know, I'm sitting in Tennessee and I get a call from the authorities over there that said they need my help. They had not yet hired a new officer to fill my place in Robbinsville, could I come over and help them with this huge marijuana operation?

You know, you know the area and you know the players. Can you do this? I said, yeah, that would be fun. So me and the agent from Carolina went over there, and we did a recon of the area, and we found a huge operation in a clear cut, huge. How did you find it? One of our timber markers checking some timber,

inventory had found it. And it was in a pretty remote area. So we laid a plan to surveil it, and he said, you know, what we'll do, we can do this with four people. He said, if you can get another officer, we'll drop you off, and we found a vantage point where I could watch the side of that hill with binoculars and a camera of the zoom lens. You take notes as they come in. They've got to park a vehicle somewhere.

and we're just going to completely clear the area, then once they're in there, we'll send an undercover truck in there to try to find their vehicle, and we'll arrest them at their vehicle. That way there's not a confrontation in a chase in the woods. So wait until they all go in there and then catch them on the way out.

Exactly. And you just figured you could find the vehicle somewhere. A lot of roads around or something. There are not that many roads. Yeah. So me and another officer were sitting there, watching and three guys come in. I'm looking at them through binoculars and I'm watching them and they're picking up plants

and they're putting it. It's like they went to work. You know, they had a huge potting area that they had the plants in pots and the plants were eight to ten inches tall or taller and they would take a plant and they'd already had pre-dug holes and they'd put it in there and they'd water it and go get another and they'd and they'd go get another and they'd run. And they had over, I think it's 1,500 plants they were going to do this way. And I'm watching these guys, and I don't recognize any of them.

And I radioed my boss. I said, he said, we found the vehicle, and we're going to set a surveillance on their vehicle. So when they're leave, you tell us when they're leaving, and we'll rest them as soon as they get in the vehicle. So those three have worked about an hour now, and three more show up. So now we got six. Well, I started logging in, and we started naming them all. You know, number one, wearing this type of ball hat, this shirt, these pants. So I gave a good description.

Balls, he's writing that same description down. So when I'm talking, we can chronologically keep up with, okay, number one's going to get water. Number seven, or number six, is now putting fertilizer. So we confirmed what the descriptions of and had them all one through six. And I still was so frustrated because I didn't know any of them. So they'd been working in there about four hours. Been there, some of them since right at daylight. And I look up and here comes another one.

And I put the binoculars up, and it was the old boy that ran over me. And I thought, I cannot believe two things. Number one, he's out of prison. You didn't know he was out of prison? Well, I hadn't even really thought about it. How long is this after? About three years. And it always is recognizable.

I mean, boom, there he is. Well, in the meantime, the agent out of the road had to call in for other help. Because now not only did we have one vehicle to do surveillance on and take down, we had two vehicles and we just had a third. And they all parked about a half a mile of it from each other. So they set teams, got teams, got other law enforcement personnel around to where we could take them down at the vehicle. They finished their work and they packed up their stuff

and they started down this trail back down to the main road and I radioed down, you know, they're coming out. So we're basically following them but at a distance where we can't be obviously heard or seen and they start hearing them on the radio. Hey, we've got two here. We got three here. I've got two more here.

And then I'm waiting to hear the one and then I hear his name. It was a wildlife officer, a great friend of mine, still friends with him, that actually arresting him at his vehicle. And I come out of the woods and my boss is there with the other six. And I said, can I go up and see this gentleman? He looked at me. He said, you sure can.

So a wildlife officer radioed down and said, just to let you know, I read him as Wright Son of Miranda. And he's telling me that he was turkey scouting, that he don't know why he's being arrested, and he wants to be turned loose. So I walk up to where he's at. Keep in mind, I've got full camo gear on, face paint on. I've got a camera with a 35 millimeter zoom,

and I walked up there, and when I walked up there and looked at him, he's handcuffed behind the back, and he looked at me. And I just, just, I could kill you look in his eye. And he grinned, and he says, I was turkey hunting and you can't prove anything different, Russ. And I just sat down and I said, well, bud, I said,

it's going to be a long day for you. I set my pack down and I pulled that camera out and I set it down on the hood of the car. I said, you're going to be a movie star. I said, I've probably got three rows of film of you. And his lips started quivering. So. Wow.

And it turns out those other six, he met in prison in Florida, and he convinced them he had a good place to grow marijuana. So he goes to prison again, and he had a very, very criminal lived life when he got out of prison. He was trying to convicted for some child molestation, murder, and was convicted. Wait a minute. After he got out of prison the first time? No, the second time. From the marijuana charge, he served a prison sentence for this marijuana charge.

Got out. Got out. And then. Yes, a child molestation. Then he murdered a guy on National Forest. It was a controversial case I understand where he claimed that it was an argument over a card game and they were friends. But basically beat him to death with some firewood at a remote campsite. And, but he since passed on.

I got word a few years ago that he had died. Wow. How old a guy was he when he died? I mean, he died early. He was probably in his 50s. Okay. When he got out of prison the second time, I mean, you would have been, like, highly aware of the sky. Oh, yeah.

Did he come back to the community? Oh, yeah. That's where he got in all the trouble. But I wasn't living there anymore. Oh, you moved away. See, I've since gone from Tennessee, then Tennessee to Arkansas. Wow. So my career had...

That's a wild story, man. It was a crazy sequence of events. It's hard to understand how people could be so warped, so dark. I guess when I hear about crazy people, first of all, I'm grateful for many of you, and a bunch of people I'll never know, that had upbringings of which they had no control over or earned, where men and women in their lives taught them right from wrong. Our society has a lot more great people than crazy people. This guy was missing something.

The only other thing with that, and there's two or three other wildlife officers from that area, that I think if we're interviewed would say the same thing, is that it's just a mean person. you know in law enforcement you you try to develop a six sense by reading people I mean you have to it's like you would with a

I don't mean these people are dogs but it's like you would with the dog how close can I get or you know if you're around dogs enough you know you know where it's space is and you might not ever seen that dog before you can look in that eye and see it see how that tail's doing

how they acting are they sideways into you, you know. People are no different. So you try to develop that. And I can remember telling the probation officer, the first time he went to prison, I said, you better really take a hold on this one because he's dangerous.

That first time you met him in the squirrel woods, how old was he? He was probably early 20s. How old were you? Late 20s. That first encounter with him, could you tell he was, this guy was trouble? Yeah, and something else.

that I tried to do with him. I had all authority to seize his gun that day, but I didn't. Didn't want to, you know, be overbearing. I'd never dealt with him before. And I tried to explain to him, look, man, just can't be doing it. You know, to prove to you that, you know,

I'm not that bad a person. I'm not going to take your gun. Really? So you even showed him a little bit of mercy. Yeah. And he was still that embittered against you. Yep. That he was, he wanted to kill you that day.

What comes over somebody that, The answer is that these people were just crazy, but to be at a roadblock with five wildlife officers with vehicles, to think that they could run you over and get away. I mean, were they high? Were they on drugs? Well, that will never know because, you know, it was three days before they surfaced. Yeah.

I mean, they're just that crazy? I mean, that impulsive? You'd think if, I mean, if you really wanted to kill you, there would have been much easier ways to kill you. I guess crazy people are just, that's why they're crazy. Yeah. Bizarre, man. Do you think particularly wildlife law enforcement,

these guys that are embedded in these communities, and in some ways they're not like standard police in that there's not as many of them, you know, there might be like one or two wildlife officers in the whole community? Or is there more retaliation against guys like that, like just over a career? Well, you know, I guess it could kind of,

of be geographical. I wasn't alive during this era, but you can look back in some of the histories, and it's always intrigued me of the moonshine days. Yeah. So there's been a long history in kind of the South, if you will,

of, I don't want to say retaliation, but resentment. Yeah, yeah. And as far as, you know, conservation officers, I don't know if there's that many more incidences or not, but you have to be a lot more aware that there could be because you're working environment. You're by yourself.

You're by yourself. You're 20 miles down a gravel road. You may or may not have radio service. And even in this day and age, I can take you to several places within 30 minutes or right here where you won't have cell service. Yeah. You know, so you definitely have to have that tactical mindset, you know,

or something could happen. Crazy time of my life. I remember my dad coming over. to the hospital. He was the first one I saw when I woke up. And, of course, he was trying to make light of it. Tell him he's glad to hit me in the head. I should be okay.

Typical to have. That truly was a wild story. On the next episode, we'll hear about the last half of Russ's career with the Forest Service, which will lead this old Tennessee country boy to some far-off wild places, including an unbelievable story about. working undercover and in an illegal elk hunt in Yellowstone National Park. From working in the western U.S. to flying across the oceans to train an international wildlife task force, this next episode is not going to be one that you'll want to miss.

I look forward to talking with everyone on the Bear Greas render next week. Can't thank you enough for listening to Bear Grease and Brent's This Country Life podcast. There are three things that you can do to support us. Share our podcast with a friend and tell them about these wild stories that you're here and here. Secondly, support the advertisers of the Bear Grease podcast. Yep, all these silly advertisers. Man, they're helping us a lot. And leave us a review on iTunes.

Have a great week. 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.

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