Bear Grease - Ep. 279: This Country Life - Working at MeatEater

Episode Date: December 13, 2024

Brent's answering the question this week of how he got a job at MeatEater and what it's like to work there. It all started, in a roundabout way, over twenty years ago. Even though the path hasn't been the straightest, it got him there just the same. He's also got a story about his first camera and the muddy water of an Arkansas green tree reservoir. Pull up a chair, it's time for MeatEater's "This Country Life" podcast. Hurricane Relief: https://www.redcross.org/donate/cm/onxmeateater-pub.html/ 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. From coon hunting to trot lining 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 the Airways have to offer. All right, friends, grab a chair or drop that tailgate. I've got some stories to share.

Working at Meat Eaters. People often ask, and I love telling the story of how I wound up working at Meat Eater and what it's like. It's been a long journey that started many moons ago, and I'm going to tell you all about it. But first, I'm going to tell you a story. I was contacted by a regional hunting show from South Carolina back around the turn of the century, which used to mean a long time ago, and I guess it's starting to again. But anyway, the host of the show, was originally from Arkansas. He had a cousin he grew up with that was still here, and he

contacted him about finding someone to guide him and a cameraman on a filmed duck hunt. The cousin worked with me at the sheriff's office in the Eldorado, Arkansas, and made the introduction. He and his cameraman came out for three days of hunting in the flooded green timber, we had a great hunt. I made friends with both of them, but I was most of them. I was most mostly interested in what was going on behind the camera and in front of it. I saved up and bought a Sony PD-170 camcorder that recorded onto many DV tapes, and at the time, it was the industry standard for outdoor video. I remember the day the UPS man dropped it off at the house.

It was like a new shotgun, but better. I would be able to shoot everything all the time and good, honest to goodness, Quality green timber duck hunting footage was scarce in those days. Now, I'm not saying there wasn't any. There just wasn't a lot that I thought was very good. There were shots I had in mind that I hadn't seen. Most of what I saw wasn't shot from a tripod, so the cameras were pretty unsteady.

So I set out to film my own and show the world what real duck hunting footage looked like. I bought a tripod and a fluid head to mount the camera. I spent half the season when we didn't have clients collecting footage of ducks coming into the timber. I had a Pelican case I custom fit for the camera and double bagged it with thick contractor trash bags to keep overspraying, wet dogs, and folks getting in and out of the boat from kicking water and mud on the camera that cost twice as much as my first truck. It was my baby and I treated it like one. Dust was one thing, but water was a whole thing. whole other set of problems.

Those cameras would shut down in heavy-damp environments. The circuit boards just couldn't handle the exposure to moisture. I was like a man possessed any time I had it in the field, especially around water. I guarded it like my life depended on it and kept people and dogs away from every conceivable situation or path of travel that would likely bring either in my proximity. I would make everyone get out of the boat and move over to where they were going to stand. Then I'd get out and walk the boat to where I was going to be standing. Uncased the camera while it laid on the deck, attach it to the tripod, and set it up.

Never taken my hand off the whole time we were there. I didn't walk anywhere with it after I took it out of the boat or take any chances whatsoever when it came to keeping it above the water. It stressed me to no end, but just like a hammer and a two, toolbox, it won't do you any good unless you get it out and use it. When we were riding, I would hold that double-wrapped case to my chest and lie down in the bottom of the boat like I was guarding the nuclear codes. I had some great footage, but I was still missing one scene that I hadn't seen yet. The zigzagging ride through

the timber that everyone loved that hunted with us. Some even said it was their favorite part of the trip, and the anticipation leading up to it was one of the the main reasons they came back year after year. Well, that and they wanted to be there when Tim and I eventually started duking it out because the longer the season went, the dumber he got. He would say the same thing, but he'd be wrong, remember? He's dumb. But Tim wasn't the one taking the equivalent of a Craigslist truck

as my friend Nick Gillenland rates everything above a certain dollar amount. He wasn't taking it out in a boat with a clumsy bunch of, bundled up waiter wearing clowns whose first concern was not weather or not my camera got wet. So the best thing to do was to go after the season was out when those buffoons weren't in the boat. I'd go by myself. There'd be no one else in the woods and I could film to my heart's content. It was 6.30 in the morning when I unloaded the boat and there wasn't a cloud in the sky. I set the tripod up in the boat and spread the legs out with the camera.

at eye level. It was rock solid. I fired the boat motor up, pointed it up the bio, pressed record, and showered down on the throttle and shot away from that boat ramp like I was late for work. I could have pulled a fat dog on skis behind that boat. I hit the trail that led away from the levee and never let off the gas, zigzagging like I'd done a million times around stumps and under low-hanging limbs, cutting hard and left, staying on plane and it's a lot. Staying on plane and full throttle from nearly a mile. Leonard Skinner's called me the breeze, was playing in my head, and I wondered how big the lawsuit was going to be

when I put their music to my video during that portion of the production. As I approached the whole, ducks were getting up in front of me by the hundreds. I was in a hurry now to get out and set up the camera and catch them all when they started coming back to the calls of all the ducks in the woods that had never left. This was going to be epic like National Geographic. I cut the power to the motor and as the kinetic energy drained away from my vessel,

I shucked my life jacket, hung my right leg over the side of the boat and followed it with my left, rolling out onto my feet like a navy seal, and kicked my camera out into the knee-deep muddy water of Biomeda. It would cost me another $1,500 to get that camera dried out and clean. And after all that costly calamity, I never made that film. And that's just how that happened. 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 hit. 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 backwards. 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. I get asked all the time on what it's like to work at meat eater and how in the world I managed to pull it off.

It's still kind of a blur to me, but not one day that goes by do I take it for granted or fail to of thanks for the blessings of what this job entails and the opportunity it has afforded me and my family. Some of you, I'm sure, have heard me tell the story of how I got here. But for those that haven't, I'll do a quick recap so everyone's up to speed before I go any further. After dunking my camera in the Biomita, I obviously got it replaced and upgraded cameras eventually. And eventually, I started out filming my favorite hillbilly, Lay Newcomb, before he was everyone else's favorite hillbilly. He was using video content to support the promotion of his former publication, Bear Hunting Magazine.

Now, that content, along with his freelance right in the magazine's podcast he produced and his singular focus in years of hard work to make a living in the outdoor space, did just that for him. And Meat Eater offered him a job. Well, when that happened, he had professional cinematographers and photographers and producers and editors and sound engineers and others who were doing all the individual duties that he and I used to share and mostly him. And they were way better at it. So understandably, I was out of a job. I mean, it wasn't like I got fired because I'd been volunteering my time all those years.

He covered my expenses and I worked hard to help my friends succeed. just because he was my friend, and I believed in what he was doing, the content he was creating, and the message he was sharing, but my talents paled in comparison to those folks. Fast forward a year or so after he went to work, immediately gave anyone who worked for the company the opportunity to submit ideas for a podcast through a form. You had to list the name of the show, who would host it, the theme of the content, the length of the episodes, and the general idea of the podcast. the format. Well, Clay convinced me to submit an idea, even though my only connection to working

there at the time was being a guest on a couple of his first podcast and a regular on the bear-gree surrender every other week, which was another voluntary effort that included a five-hour round trip drive to help my friend. He told me over and over that he'd repay me one day, but I was already being paid. I was an adopted member of the entire Newcomb clan, and I felt as though they belonged to me just as much as I did to them. So one time my wife Alexis and I were in northwest Arkansas and staying in Clay and Misty's guest room after I recorded a podcast with him, and we all wound up going out to eat supper that night.

I asked him again about that application process for the podcast ideas, and about 45 minutes the four of us had hashed out ideas in a format for what the show is today. What we came up with that night is about 80% of what you're here now, so if you hate it, it's not all my fault. Now, fast forward through a couple of mock episodes I recorded and submitted for me to to listen to, and here we are now. Most don't know that the monologue format of what I'm doing wasn't the original idea.

The first one I submitted was me talking to my good friend David McDaniels from East Texas, much like I talk to all of you now. Steve Renella took one listen and said, you know, there's something there, but that ain't it. You need to redo that episode, and instead of talking to someone one-on-one, just talk to the mic.

I changed it, and here we are. Now that you know how I got here, let me tell you about what it's like working here. Now what I didn't mention in the opening is my favorite part about, working here and what I'm most thankful for and that's the people that I get to work with. The on-camera folks are just as you see and hear them. They're authentic and unapologetic in their opinions, open to hear posing views and respectful even if they disagree. You know,

like grown folks should be. But it's not the ones you regular see and hear that are involved in producing content that I'm talking about, even though they are as big. a blessing to me as well. It's the whole dynamic world of people that make this company what it is. We come up with ideas for our content all on our own and occasionally through suggestions from our colleagues and sometimes even listeners. My weekly podcast content is recorded here in my home and edited in Bozeman by Riva Hansen. Then she sends it back to me for approval once she's done.

and they say you can't make chicken salad out of chicken well you know but each week riva takes the ramblings of a mental equivalent toddler and turns it into something a lot of you find mildly entertaining and i can't tell you how many times i've sent in a recording and thought that would be the one that gets me fired only to receive and return a polished piece of media that i'm proud to attach my name to you never see or hear Riva on here, but I do every week. I hear her in how she sees the message I'm struggling to communicate and accentuates the mood by adding the layers of sounds and music that adds to the story and feeling that I failed to capture with my limited vocabulary. Fixing the ramblings of an adolescent is only a portion of her duties. And yet she remains calm in a sea of day. deadlines and commitments that have her working far more hours than she's required because it matters to her how you hear the stories that I tell.

Now, everyone I've had the pleasure to work with has been singularly focused on making the content we put out to be the best available. And it takes a whole lot more folks than the ones you see and hear to make this work. None of what we've produced is left a chance or crafted with the attitude that that's good enough. It's never good enough, and there's always room for improvement. A strapping young lad named Roman from Minnesota counts among his daily duties as reading and responding to every email and piece of correspondence that comes into meeting here. Let me tell you, there's a lot of them. Then there's Alyssa and Christine and HR and Valerie in accounting, Hannah, Matt, Will, Maggie, Tressa, Samantha, Hillary, Hillary, along with a host of others who all play a pivotal. to roll in keeping this ship running in the right direction.

It's a complicated mass of moving parts that have to all be in sync to put out the outdoor related content that I feel is second to none. On top of all of that, we have to deal with the weather and the animals we're chasing. Sometimes they don't always read the script. The films we produce are planned months even a year before the actual event takes place. It's like rolling the dice. every time you plan something. Now, don't get me wrong, this is fun. It's a great way to make a living and one that I never thought that I'd be able to do, but the reality of it is we can

only prepare and control so much. The most important parts are left up to Mother Nature, and sometimes that don't work out. But that's what makes it good when it all comes together, and more times than not, it does. Here's a generic rundown of one project that I and a whole bunch of folks have been planning for over nine months now and how it goes from idea to finish product or how it's supposed to. My friend Connor Flanagan, the brand director over at First Light, walked up to me when I was at the office in Bozeman

and says, Brent, would you be interested in doing a duck hunting film in Arkansas for First Light? Why? Why, yes, Connor, I would be more than interested in doing a duck hunting film for First Life in Arkansas. From that conversation and approval from my boss, Montana's own Garrett Long, we scheduled the first of what would be several meetings regarding where it would be, when it would be, who would be in the project, and the story we would try to tell.

There's always an underlying story and message we're trying to tell amidst the framework of a hunting film. To go along with that, we make a list of what is needed equipment-wise to use for the production. Everything from firearms and clothing and cameras is gone over and decided upon weeks and usually months in advance. If public land has chosen to hunt, there are certain licenses and permits that have to be purchased. If it's private land, there are releases and fees to pay and food and lodging is secured and travel is arranged. All the pertinent information is logged into what's called a production binder. It's a big notebook with all the instruction of who's doing what, where they're doing it, when they're doing it, shots that are required for the film and any and all emergency medical facilities in the area should the need arise.

Nothing controllable is left a chance. Multiple Zoom meetings, countless emails, a dozen or more phone calls, and a novel of text messages goes into every production. For this duck hunt, there would be about 10 of us total on the production center. And that's everyone associated with the project on location with only four of us. of us actually being on camera. And once all the hours of unedited footage makes it back to the editors in Bozeman, there could be another handful of folks working on it there. And that's just one project.

There are others creating content at the same time all over the country during this time of year, especially, and they're all working in the same manner. That's why we have to schedule so far out in advance to accommodate all the projects and make sure everyone has what they need. And then something happens that'll throw it all out of whack. People get sick. The weather turns bad. The animals don't cooperate.

And these folks just deal with it. Usually, with a smile. We affect change on what we can to alleviate any and all obstacles that would hinder production and accept that when we're dealing with nature, there's only so much that we can control. The project that I hinted to you, the Arkansas duck hunt with first light, we had to postpone it in a meeting yesterday because of low water levels in the area that we're chosen to film. We'll reschedule and maybe even change locations if necessary and go through all the motions again that we did before just to make sure we've got everything covered that we can cover. It's fun.

It's not easy. It's frustrating at times, but it's so rewarding when it all. all comes together and the final product represents the people and their stories that deserve to be told. Then when the project comes to a close and the final draft is ready for release, months or even a year's gone by, and we've already done the same thing all over again, somewhere else, multiple times. I never thought I'd be making the living doing these things that I would pay to do even though I dreamed of it as a kid and even a young man. Making a living, doing the things that my dad taught me to do for fun.

It's different than what I thought, and I've been associated with the outdoor business for several years now, but to do it in a professional manner that is the standard here is beyond what I'd ever experienced when it was just me and whoever I could talk into letting me tag along with the camera over 20 years ago. I've never seen a more dedicated group of people whose singular mission is to do their part in the machine that turns out relative, entertaining, and conscientious content. And the majority of them, you will never see or hear. It's easy to overlook them unless you're privileged to see how it all works from the inside. They're the real stars of the show, this one, especially. So what's it like to work at me, Dieter?

for me it's like going to bed and dreaming about having the best job I could ever imagine for myself with countless opportunities to travel and see and experience things that I could only dream of and work with the most professional and supportive group of professionals in the outdoor business and then wake up and find out it's all true every bit of it. I thank all of you who listen to every week And those are not just words. I truly mean it from the bottom of my heart. I also want to thank all the people I'm so blessed to work with

who each play more than a modicum role in the success of this weekly struggle. It's for them and you that I do my dead level best to provide entertaining content that at least is prayerfully entertaining and enlightening at best. Do you know that we have another channel on YouTube called Meat Eater Clips? You can subscribe to it as well and you'll see some short form videos on there that you won't see any place else.

Check it out when you have a chance. I think you'll like it. Until next week, this is Brent Reeves. 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.