Bear Grease - Ep. 246: This Country Life - Safety First, Always

Episode Date: August 30, 2024

Brent's wrapping up his series on safety by giving more examples of how he tempted fate and luckily came through unscathed. Not everyone gets a second chance however, and Brent has a firsthand account that reminds him to stay ever vigilant. Brent's hoping you'll hear this one and take away the same lesson he did. It's safety first, always on this week's episode of MeatEater's "This Country Life" podcast. Subscribe to the MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Connect with Brent and MeatEater MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Youtube Clips MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Shop This Country Life Merch Shop Bear Grease MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

First Lights fieldwear collection is made for the work that happens long before opening day and continues when the season ends. Products built for early mornings, full days in real use. Hard wearing where they need to be versatile where it matters. No shortcuts. Just gear designed for the work that earns the season. Built to perform, built to last. Check out. First Light's new fieldwear gear at firstlight.com.

Welcome to this country life. I'm your host, Brent Reeves. I'm coon hunting to trotlining and just general country living. I want you to stay a while as I share my experiences and life lessons. This country life is presented by Case Knives on Meat Eat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you the best outdoor podcasts that Airways have to offer. All right, friends, grab a chair or drop that tailgate. I've got some stories to share. Safety first.

Always. I didn't get to cover all I wanted to last week, so we're back again with some more safety concerns and a lesson that I will never forget. If there's one thing you take away from these weekly ramblings, I hope it's this one. That's why I'm sharing it today. But first, I'm going to tell you a story. It was beyond dark on a moonless night. I was alone patrolling near where I'd grown up in the north.

end of Bradley County. Working for the sheriff's office in rural counties will have deputies working alone, a lot. The only time two or more of us were on duty at one time at night was on the weekends when the call volumes increased. Now, we lived by that old Texas Ranger creed of one riot, one ranger. That wasn't out of bravado, it was out of necessity. We were a small department covering a big area with a budget you couldn't operate. a roadside stand with three deputies for 649 square miles. We worked alone. A lot.

It had been a quiet night with only the music radio keeping me company. The dispatch radio had been ominously quiet, and I was heading to the house. This is usually the time when everything goes berserco. That's when nine calls all at once come in, wrecks and fights and thievery and other skullduggery-type behaviors. that requires the attention of the sheriff's department. And they usually happen on the opposite end of the county that you're patrolling. But not this night. Nothing was going on, and I was driving down a desolate stretch of highway with no ambient light from anywhere

except for the headlights of my patrol car. I was lost and thought, almost hypnotized by the monotonous drone of the sound of sailing down the road at the blistering pace of 40 miles an hour. I had the cruise set at 40. That gave me time with no traffic to really look at side roads and houses and churches that I passed along the highway that might need a closer inspection.

But on this stretch, there was none of those. Just a straight shot over a few rolling hills as I made my way back toward the town, burning time off the clock as I was getting towards the end of my shift. I lost and thought I became cognizant of something in my peripheral vision on the left side. It was like I knew it was there, but in my car there were colored lights and reflections everywhere. The dashlights, the lights from multiple radios put off a glow inside the car that reflected off of every shiny surface in there, including the windows. Like the driver's side door window.

That's where what I was seeing out of the corner of my eye was. It was like it had been there all along, but all at once I realized that it hadn't, and now I knew there was something different. There wasn't a car or a light anywhere to be seen. I looked to my right in the passenger seat and the floorboard, radio console, and there was nothing new. No flashlight burning under a hat or no interior light burning from a new source that made up the reflection I was seeing on my window on the driver's side door. By the time it is taken to describe this so far is about as long as it took for it to play out. So with the last resort, I actually look out the window to see if there was something actually there. I did.

And that's when I saw a face looking back at me. Sweet Jesus, that's a face! I look back at the highway out the windshield, and the speedometer says I'm driving 40 miles an hour. I mashed a foot feed to the floor, and in an instant I was hitting 60. I look back out the window knowing that I didn't really see what I thought I saw and the face is looking at me saying, stop, stop, but I can't hear them, but I can see them mouthing the words. I've got a death grip on the steering wheel and with all the force I could muster. I took my foot off the gas and I crammed the brakes of the pavement on that crowned vic and the face disappeared, shooting out in front of my car in the opposite lane like a jet. Except it wasn't a jet.

It was a motorcycle. with no headlight. I threw the car and park and stepped out onto the highway as the lightless rider made a U-turn and drove back to me. A small, dim flashlight stuck between him and the gas tank that was shining up under his chin lighting him up like a Halloween punkin. He scared the living daylight side of me, but I knew him, and he didn't live far from where we were just a few miles, but a long way driving in the dark.

Hey, Brent, man, I'm glad to see you. I'm trying to make it home, and my lights went out. I don't even have a taillight. Can you follow me home so I don't get run over? I can, but you're going to have to give me a minute. You scared me to death. He said, I don't think he was ever going to see me. I thought I was going to have to knock on your window.

Now, I have no idea. What would have happened had he knocked on my window? But me turning to see someone staring back at me like Vincent Price, hmm, it scares me to think about it. I turned the spotlights on my barlight, and I followed him all the way home until he parked his motorcycle in his front yard. I went back out on that dark portion of the highway, expecting Nicarbaud Crain to try to kill me at any time,

but I didn't waste any time getting home. Not that time. Not that night. And that's just how that happened. It only takes one. Now, that statement applies to so many things when gauging success and failure. Spending a whole season hunting a big deer and having him put the old razzle dazzle on you every time you think you get him figured out. Then you go home thinking that I should have done this or I should have done that.

But then one day, it all comes together. Now you put in the time, the effort, the heartbreak of almost getting him, but always coming up short until the day you don't. Bingo, you got him. The story of that struggle will live forever, and so will that dear, because something remembered and shared with like-minded souls is immortal. Now, you flip the script and finally get the chance only to mess it up, and that story will seemingly live longer.

same applies to not paying attention or simply ignoring the clues that would normally have a prudent person taking corrective, evasive, or some type of cautionary action. But that describes a prudent person, not a 14-year-old hunter on the opening morning

rifle season. Now, we built this stand as a temporary stand two years before this one. We were going to put in a bigger and better permanent stand in that little clearing where I wanted to hunt that morning, but we never did. I told my brother Tim and Joe Brian at supper the night before that I wanted to hunt there. Joe was Tim's brother-in-law, but he was a brother to us all.

This was back when we camped in an old surplus canvas army tent. We heated it with a propane heater like your grandparents had in the house of the five-foot propane tank, both of which were positioned inside at the center of the tent pole. You regular listeners are starting to jump ahead right now, aren't you? You're thinking, oh, that idiot blew the tent up or something. Well, I didn't. And neither did anyone else. And all the years we camped in that old tent before we built the camp,

I don't remember one instance where we nearly blew up anything, accidentally anyway. I'm just giving you some background and context as to how we hunted. If we could brave the cold and sometimes the heat that comes with the opening week of gun deer season in Arkansas, along with cooking in a separate Viss Queen-wrapped cooking shack, complete with a gas stove and another gas bottle attached with only Coleman lanterns as light, in the bathroom we all used being a designated direction from camp

and not a structure, then a little wobbly homemade deer stand surely wouldn't stop us from hunting. Well, it wouldn't me. Tim and Joe both told me they wouldn't sit in it. But what did they know? I was 14. I knew everything I needed to know at this point in my life.

Not sure why they was even sending me to school. I should have been teaching it somewhere. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps game calls in building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called prime cuts. Now, I'm going to tell you, I love mine because it's easy to use. I'm not going to go, I'm not going to win a turkey calling contest. It's just not going to happen. But when I run this call, I get.

the sounds that gobblers are looking for. I have a great turkey hunting track record. If you go listen to real turkeys out in the woods, they're not going to win calling contests, right? That's who I listen to. I can make those sounds on my cut. I also hunt with Phelps's cut, and I hunt with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts.

Check out Prime Cuts at Phelpsgamecalls.com. I think you'll be glad you did, and you'll find out that the Steve Rinella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. Check that ladder, and if it's rotten or shows any signs of being rotten, just sit under it. You can still see that opening where the deer cross. That was the last thing Joe said to me that morning before we all headed out to our stands.

I told him I would, but I had no intentions of sitting on the ground. deer hunters shoot deer from deer stands. I felt more confident in a tree, regardless of the fact that people have been killing deer from the ground since they decided to add them to the menu. And that was when the first folks set foot here in this part of the world, regardless of how you believe they arrived. I was letting my desire to do what I wanted to do cloud my judgment on what I should do. I got to the stand way before daylight and found it without much trouble. the dim D-cell flashlight burning just bright enough to keep me from wandering off the fence line that I was following on my left side until I got to the gap.

Once I got there, I would hang a 180 inside that fence and walk back less than 80 yards to where the stand was. I walked up to it, and I'm not sure what you've pictured in your mind at this point as to what this thing constructed of, so allow me to elaborate. There were two 10-foot sweet gum poles cut that served as the front legs. They were both identical about the size of my fore-on. Four tuba-fours were nailed together in a square shape, three feet by three feet, and covered with plywood. This would be the floor of the stand. It then sat on the ends of the gum-poles, and each of them nailed to the front two corners of the stand that would face the clearing.

The back of the floor was leaned up against him. nailed to two standing trees on the fence line that would serve as a backrest and help conceal my outline. It was like an extra long legged nightstand. The latter was gum poles cut to fit across the gap in the two trees that served as the back legs, and they were nailed about two feet apart. I hope that offers a good visual of the engineering marvel that I was about to entrust my life to, the one of both my older brothers just told me not to climb in. But I knew better. I shine that light up the platform, no washness underneath.

That's good. The milk crate was still there that would serve as my throne for the morning's festivities. That's also good. I grabbed the left front leg and I gave it a shake to test the sturdiness as I looked up into the darkness. And a big ball of leaves rolled off that platform and into my face. I spat out what I didn't swallow and I shook it again. That seemed all right to me. I walked around to the backside and all the rungs were still attached.

That's another good sign. Knowing full well, there wasn't a round chambered in that 30-30 attempts I was shooting. I checked it anyways just to make sure. Safety first, remember? Usually. I stepped on the bottom rung and it didn't even make a sound when it broke in two. Hmm, that's not good. The last thing I wanted to do was what Joe had told me after supper the night before,

just hunt on the ground. No, I was fixing to get in that stand if it was the last thing I did. And it almost was. I held on to that tree that was serving as the left rear leg and stepped on to where the nails held that sweet gum rung in place. The bark and the wood of the cross pieces compressing under each as I climbed higher to the top, pulling myself up with my left hand while holding the rifle with my wrist. right. My feet placed on the ends of the nails that were poking out of the trees. Finally, at the top, I laid the rifle down in front of the milk crate, and I grabbed the other

tree on my right side and swung my legs off the nails and onto the platform as gently as I could, slowly adding my weight to the structure and the final test for stability. Solid as a rock. Mui Bueno. All is good. Aze down on the milk crate. I put that rifle in my lap, and I leaned back against one of the trees I'd just used to get in the stand and sweat while was left at the leaves off the floor with my foot. And when I kicked them off, I felt the stand shake back and forth a little bit. I made that sweeping motion again just to make sure I wasn't imagining it, and the old pucker factor jumped up to about seven.

Hey, Brent, don't do that anymore. That was what my inner self said, not, hey, Brent, you should get down while you can still walk without crutches. Unfortunately, it would take my inner self just about as long to wise up about life as it did my outer self. And according to my track record, that was still almost a score and a half away from happening. Daylight came and I sat motionless, moving only my head slightly as I scanned the little clearing where I knew something was going to happen. Birds were singing, squirrels were knocking acres out of the trees and the woods were awake. and I was dozing off from having to sit so still. A doe in the earland walked out across the opening on the right side of my stand,

that was the last thing I remember as I dozed off. I don't know how long I slept, but I woke up just in time to see the ground, rushing up toward me at the speed of light while my brain was swimming in my lasses trying to solve the equation of what was going on. Impact with the earth gave me the answer, I was so desperately trying to figure out. Ah, gravity.

That's what was happening. Gravity and carelessness. Two forces when combined can potentially create catastrophic results. Now, I didn't have the wind knocked out of me, and it didn't even hurt. I was lucky because it could have. It could have killed me. But a funny story came out of that. That wasn't the case with a friend of mine on the East Coast.

He was a good friend who helped me get my start in outdoor filming. I and a couple others in him traveled out west on big private film project a couple years in a row, and he taught me a lot about running a camera and how to film a hunt. He was always a phone call away to answer questions and give advice. He spent more time in a tree than most squirrels and produced some of the other. the best outdoor hunts that a lot of you grew up watching just like I did. But he hated safety harnesses, and he rarely wore them. The last time we filmed together was a September elk hunt in the Rocky Mountains,

and he told me to film a hunter at a waterhole that we'd actually hung two stands in. He hunted there the day before. When I asked him if he'd left his safety strap at the tree, he said, you know, I didn't even bring one with me. You use one if you won't. I was shocked. And I asked him if he ever wore him, and he said, no, not if I can help it. It bothered me, but it didn't influence my desire to not wear one.

Two years and a month later, I got the call that he'd fallen out of a tree stand, and he was dead. And I miss him, and I'm still sad about it. And I never climb a tree that I don't think about him, never. He died 10 years ago. When my son Hunter was a teenager, the hard and fast rules to always have your safety equipment. If you don't have it, you don't climb the tree. Now, he learned that the hard way one day when he forgot he is, we turned around and went back home. The trail camera pictures from that morning driving home all that we'd missed by him not being prepared when we got there that afternoon.

But we lived a hundred another day. It only takes one. I was lucky with my one, and my friend wasn't. Now is the time of year when we're all getting ready to chase those white tails, and from the bottom of my heart, I'm asking you to please wear your safety harness. If not for you, for the folks that love you. It's just that simple. It's easy.

It only takes a minute, and it's a little. up to us to set the example for the little folks to follow. Let's make sure we set a good one. Safety first always. That's how we're going to close this one. Thank you so much for listening. Y'all look out for one another, help folks when you can, and be safe getting around out there.

This one's for you, Mike. This is Brent Reeves, signing off. Y'all be careful. Fieldware collection is made for the work that happens long before opening day and continues when the season ends. Products built for early mornings, full days in real use. Hard wearing where they need to be versatile where it matters. No shortcuts. Just gear designed for the work that earns the season.

Built to perform, built to last. Check out. First Light's new fieldwear gear at firstlight.com.