Bear Grease - Ep. 253: This Country Life - Thievery and Miscommunication

Episode Date: September 20, 2024

Just when he thought he was through investigating crimes, Brent gets called back to the job. This time someone has stolen from him and with Arkansas' 2024 Bear season drawing closer, the stakes couldn't be higher. It's time to sort through the clues and crack the case. You'll also hear a tale of two guys who made better television stars than criminals. You now have the right to listen to 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.

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Welcome to this country life. I'm your host, Brent Reeves. From coon hunting to trotlining and just general country living, I want you to stay a while as I share my experiences and life lessons. This country life is presented by Case Knives on Meat Eat Eater's 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. Thievery and miscommunication

Skullduggery is afoot and I'm on the case of a missing game camera and a ransacked bear bait barrel. Just when I thought I'd retired from investigating crimes, they pulled me back in. I cracked this case with the help of a friend and maybe, just maybe, I made some new ones too. I'm going to tell you all about it, but first, I'm going to tell you a story. the church burglars. I'm dipping back into the old law enforcement case files for a lesson about thievery and believe it or not, technology on this week's episode. It involves a couple of naredew wells that operated in three adjoining counties in southeast Arkansas

back in the mid-90s. These cats went on a crime spree where nothing was off limits. They met in a reform school in St. Louis, Missouri, where as juvenile, they served time to get. Each having been sentenced for stealing, but because of their ages, instead of going to prison, they were sentenced to a few months of what was described as refined supervision. They were admitted as wards of the state of Missouri, and they couldn't leave the grounds and had to attend daily classes and such, but it was actually only slightly above being grounded and sent to your room. Now, a punishment I always thought was kind of dumb.

My room was where all my stuff was, all my books, my hunting magazines, my knives and games. A far more legitimate punishment would have been to send me to the utility room. There wasn't anything in there I was interested in looking at or a place to sit down. In my room, there was also a window that I could slip out of, and I did on multiple occasions. I know y'all are shocked, but you shouldn't be. My adolescence was an exercise in futile attempts to thumb my mother. nose and authority resulting in a litany of consequences and repercussions, all of which I learned valuable lessons from, eventually.

Now, I told you this before, but it bears repeat. Miss Marianne Mowbley, my sixth grade teacher, a lady that was in her first year as an educator and got me and a fellow sophisticate equally determined to stick it to the man every chance we got in her homeroom as students. And when she'd heard that I'd become a police officer, she always said, I always figured Brent would be involved in law enforcement, but I thought it would have been from the other side. Well, she had plenty of reason to believe that.

Anyway, back to the boys from St. Louis. They were each released on the same day, and as 18-year-olds, they were free to go where they wished. The money they were released on got them a bus ticket each, and they wrote it to Pine Bluff. Arkansas. In Pine Bluff, they bummed around for a while, sleeping wherever they could lay their heads and pawning anything they could steal for a little spending cash for essentials like cigarettes, and maybe a little food. These two were presentable young men and were well-versed

in manners and etiquette, and they could put the biggest cynic of all at ease with simple conversation. Neither one of them was over five-seven, they had no facial hair, and you could stick both of of them in a tow sack together it wouldn't weigh 250 pounds. There were a couple of runs, and they used it to their advantage. They talked an older fellow into letting them test drive a little compact car he had for sale in his yard. Several hours later, when he called the Sheriff's Department in Pine Bluff, it wasn't even to report his car stolen. He was worried that they broke down somewhere and needed help. That part of the store still makes me mad and it's been 30 years ago.

They took advantage of him. They headed south and it didn't stop until they found an old deserted house in Drew County where they could get in and out of the weather and hide their little crime mobile. The car and house, neither which were visible from the main road. It had been deserted for years and was owned by descendants who lived out of state and never visited the property. There was no local caretaker and if you didn't know there was a house there, it would have been hard to know there was one even standing in the front yard.

It was that grown up and these clowns were lucky enough to have stumbled upon it. They started making rounds stealing everything they could get their hands on and they specialized in rural churches. Now, you have to understand that a lot of small rural churches don't employ a staff or even have a full-time preacher. The pastor could be the local fire chief for a, school science teacher, a farmer, or a full-time preacher that works on a circuit holding church services at different locations throughout the month. Each Sunday, they'd meet at a different small

community church leaving some of the church buildings unchecked for two to three weeks at a time. They also didn't have alarm systems or security devices of any kind outside of, you know, maybe having a night light that shined outside at night. Now, these knuckle have. heads that found the absolute easiest way to steal things and not have it reported as missing until way after they'd gone. Also, who steals from a church? Even though I was in the business to witness the terrible things people would do to one another, there were some things that folks just didn't do, and stealing from a church was one of them.

Or so I thought. Now, that's a bobsled straight to the home of the original Eternal Flame as far as I'm concerned. They were hitting one rural church after another in a three-county crime spree that was driving us all nuts. There was no pattern to what they did, and they were doing it mostly during the middle of the week when the call volumes were normally slow, and the fewest deputies were on duty. Now, these counties wouldn't have had more than one or two cars patrolling to cover the whole county. You get one disturbance or an accident somewhere, and that left no churches out in the county getting checked. until the call was cleared. You're bound to be asking, well, what in the world could they have been stealing from these little old churches out in the middle of nowhere?

PA systems. Nearly all of them had some type of public address system or musical instruments or freezers with food that was kept on hands for events. The latter being something that the church would have given them had they asked for it. But they didn't ask anybody for nothing. They took it. And what they didn't take, they tore up. Nearly every church they broke into, they did some kind of damage, whether it was the damage from kicking the door in,

knocking out windows, busting up sinks and commodes, not to mention the water damage that was done because of it. Now, the one thing we did have was fingerprints. So did the surrounding counties on several of the burglars, but with the state crime lab backlogged with more serious and crimes that were of higher priority than a burglary, getting them identified then was more of an arduous task than it is to date.

What they did wasn't funny, but how we caught them was. McFarland's grocery in the small community of Banks in Bradley County, my county, was the only grocery store for about 12 miles in either direction, sitting almost exactly between Warren and Hampton, Arkansas. My grandfather delivered chickens and eggs to this old country store that had been there for way before I was ever a glint in my daddy's eye and probably before he was a glint in my grandpas. It was an old store, but with the advent of do-it-yourself security cameras, they bought a camera and they hooked it up to a VCR, both of which were obvious to anyone that walked up to the counter. It came with a motion detector, and even in the mid-90s when all that was just getting to be a front of, affordable to some small store owners, it still looked out of date.

The store owner discovered that they'd been broken into when they were getting ready to open one Saturday morning. Store owner was walking around, taking inventory after they called us and we got there, and he was looking and making a list of everything that was missing. And I asked him about the security camera, and he said they'd cut the wires from the camera that led to the VCR. I looked on the counter and there laid a pair of wire. cutters that the burglars had taken off a shelf of the store that hung right behind the counter, right in front of the camera. Was the camera and the VCR working?

I asked him. He said, yeah, as far as he knew, but they cut the wires. Well, I asked him if they'd taken the tape, and he said, you know, I didn't check. With a gloved hand, I pushed the eject button and out popped a VHS tape. We took it back to the sheriff's office, put it in a VCR, and we took it in a VCR, and watched as two wannabe cat burglars walked up to the counter with ski mask on, staring at the camera, and both of them, raising their mask, revealing their faces to get a better look at the security system before one of them grabbed the wire cutter off the shelf, smiled at the camera,

and waved goodbye as he clipped the wire to which the video feed stopped. Apparently, they thought that was all they needed to do. It was not. We sent their pictures out to the surrounding counties, and lo and behold, they were already in jail for shoplifting in Drew County, the county just east of ours. Several stores and 20-some-odd churches had been burglarized by these clowns over three counties, and when I interviewed them, I asked them, how do you boys sleep at night? One of them looked toward the floor of the interview room before he answered. I thought, yep, his conscience was finally catching up with you. I could tell he was putting some thought into his answer,

and then he looked up at me and said, well, if it was raining, we slept in the car, that roof of the old house we broke into, leaked like a sill, and the only room in there that didn't leak, we had full of the stuff we stole from all of them churches. At least he was honest. They went away for a long, time. That trip that they took to the penitentiary wouldn't be described as refined supervision. And that's just how that happened.

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

That's who I listen to. I can make those sounds on my cut. I also hunt with Phelps's cut, and I hunt with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts. Check out Prime Cuts at Phelpsgamecalls.com. I think you'll be glad you did, and you'll find out that the Steve Rinella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action.

So what in the world has me talking about thievery and miscommunication? I'll tell you, someone stole my game camera and wrecked the bear bait. I had been counting on that spot to give me an opportunity to poke a hole and let all the air out of a big old Arkansas black bear. But it won't happen in that spot. not this year anyway, and it was all one big misunderstanding. I spent the last two weeks traveling for work going back and forth to Montana to host the Media Radio Live show and to Northwest Arkansas for the World Championship Squirrel Cookoff.

Now, all of that left a little time for me messing with the bear bait I had going in the north-central part of the state. I was relying on my cell camera to keep up with my bait, and I had just enough time to get it set up and the barrel out right before I left for the meat eater office and bones. Started getting pictures the day I left and had a small bear coming in. No worries. Small bears, just like big bears, get the set of bait on their feet. And when they walk away, they leave a scent trail that leads right back to the barrel for all the other bears in the area to investigate. I was getting coon picks at night and after the second return of the small bear of the day,

after his first pictures, all the pictures stopped. No bears coming in isn't that unusual, but no coons coming in night after night, that is. I figured something had happened to my camera, since I didn't have it in a bear-proof cage, I assumed the curious little bear, or maybe a different one, had knocked it off the tree. The signal was weak at best in that hollow where my bait was,

and it wouldn't take much at all to lose it, especially if a bear had knocked it to the ground or chewed it up. It's happened to me before in that same area a few years ago. This was my first time coming back, and I had high hopes for a good bear since it was an area no one else hunted, and I was the only one with permission to bear hunt there. Unfortunately, I wasn't the only one with permission to be there. I got home from the nine days away,

and as fast as I could, I made the two-hour drive up through the mountain. check the camera and see what caliber bear I had coming into the bait. I didn't think I'd ever get there when I finally did and unloaded my side-by-side. The last couple of miles into the bait seemed to take the longest. The old cable that was stretched across the lane where I'd gone in with my host had been moved. Before, when we were in there, it was barely above the ground. I had driven over it easily at the urging of my host who had permission to hunt there. You've been hunting there for several years and got permission from absentee landowner.

Hmm. Now, this was different, but there was no phone service to contact my friend unless I drove back two miles in my truck. Or if I crossed the cable and walked on up the mountain to my bait where I had sent a text out to my brother Tim the day I set the bait out almost two weeks ago. From there, I could get an answer. But now, had I known what I was about to find, I absolutely would have went back to my truck, but at that time I was still under the impression I could be there. I stepped over the cable and up the mountain I went. Every step I took reminded me why I love the river bottoms of flat ground so much,

but also knowing I was getting closer to checking my bait and see what happened to my camera. Now finally, to the top and over the other side, I walked down the trail to my bait. And my barrel was what I saw first. It was on its side with the lid removed and nearly all the bait gone. I left it strapped with ratchet straps top and bottom to a gum tree. It's not unusual for a bear to pull a barrel off a tree, but they don't usually tote the straps off when they do. And the straps were nowhere to be seen.

Oh, I immediately smelled a rat. Now, when I looked over to where I'd hung my multery, I saw that it was gone. Something else bears don't usually do. I've had them chew on cameras and absolutely destroy them, but seizing them for evidence and taking them back to their bear office. Well, that ain't ever happened. Not to me anyway. So what do you do in a case like that?

Well, Brent from back in the day would have been mad as a mashed cat and declaring war on any and everything I could kick, punch, or cuss at until I found what was going on, and maybe even more so afterwards. But that wouldn't have done any good. It would have been different if it had been on public land, anything you'd leave laying around, hung up, parked, or even locked on public land is subject to disappear. Like my dad always told me, and I repeat to my kids, a lock keeps an honest man honest. It doesn't matter to a thief. like the two I talked about in the story at the beginning of this episode.

A lock to those folks is merely a hurdle to get across to get what they're after, which is anything of value the lock is supposed to protect. But this wasn't public land. It also wasn't in a place where a lot of folks had permission to be, so the suspect list was going to be pretty small to begin with. Now, you add the fact that someone had raised the cable to keep me out and had my spidey sense tingling from the get-go. Maybe I was the one trespassing.

I called my host who granted me his pass to bait the spot and explain what had happened. He was floored, embarrassed. And like me, he lived more than an hour away. He vowed to find out what was happening the following day, and I drove the two hours back to the house more disappointed than mad. I was hoping I hadn't done anything wrong. And I also felt bad for my husband. friend who'd so graciously invited me to hunt there. He's an absolute pillar of his community

in a well-respected career professional who retired from education with an exemplary record. It wasn't like I'd met some random guy at a gas station and he offered to take me into a place that had no history with and said, go get him. He was also a landowner in that vicinity and had been hunting those hills for years. And the next day, after he drove up there and talked to some locals, made a few calls, he in turn called me. Now, y'all want to guess who was trespassing? Go ahead. I'll give you a second to the side.

Time's up. No one. No one was trespassing. And he had my camera. Now, I didn't see it the day before when I was there, but the person who removed it from where I'd hung it at the bait site, hung it on the opposite end of the cable from where I'd driven across it, when I first established that bait.

It was there when I tried to go in. I just didn't see it. The person that dumped my barrel and moved my camera leased the land from the landowner. They had hunted it before and quit moving off to another property. Afterwards, my friend was given written permission. The landowner didn't tell the lease folks about my friend, and my friend didn't know the old crew had moved back and just leased it again. They came up to the property to scout for deer season and found a fresh bear bait and camera that wasn't theirs.

Now, I'd have probably done the same thing. My friend explained our side of the story. They invited me to bear hunt there. I thought it was very gracious of them. I'm going to take them up on it next year. Now, some may call this hunt a bust. If you score it by the bear, I'm not going to have an opportunity to hunt this year. I'd have to agree if that was the criteria, but I ain't looking at it like that.

I was granted an opportunity to make a decision on how I reacted to something that went against what I had set out to do. It even cost me some money. Bear bait ain't exactly cheap. I may not live to see another bear season to use what I'm going to have to store up from this hunt. I may not live to see breakfast. You may not have lived here this podcast. Nothing is guaranteed. But I've come to the part of my life that smart folks arrive at sooner.

But it has come upon me in the last few years that everything is a test. And you have the capacity to pass it or fail me. And any opportunity to pursue the things I like to do and make new friends in the process, that's a win for everybody. They invited me to come back and hunt, and I'm going to. I'm going to get to know those guys. a little bit better. Thank you all so much for listening to this country life in Bear Greece.

It is truly a blessing to hear from so many who enjoy the content, and I do my very best to respond to all the messages. Keep sending those stories into My TCL story at themeetor.com, and remember, they can be about anything related to your country life, even if it happened in the city limits. The Meat Eater Radio Live show I hosted the last. two weeks are available on the YouTube podcast channel and there's a new one coming out every Thursday at 12 p.m. Central Time with different hosts each week.

Until next week, this is Brent Reeve. Signing off. Y'all be careful. First Lights 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 fieldware gear at firstlight.com.