Bear Grease - Ep. 299: This Country Life - The Helpers

Episode Date: February 21, 2025

No one gets through life without help. That's the topic this week and the specifics Brent's sharing are all examples of people needing help and people helping. It's a perfect example of how we can make big differences with just a little effort. It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood and you'll know why after listening to this week's episode of MeatEater's "This Country Life" podcast. Follow's Atticus's story on Instagram @atticus.hunts Black Bear Bonanza: https://www.backcountryhunters.org/black_bear_bonanza_2025 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 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 Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you the best outdoor podcast that airways have to offer. All right, friends, grab a chair or drop that tailgate. I've got some stories to share. The Helpers. We get by in this life never on our own. All of us at one time or another need a little help, sometimes a lot of help, but help just the same. And I'm going to talk to you today about the ones that give it, but first, I'm going to tell you a story.

It may have been January or February, regardless of the particular month, it was cold, raining, and nasty outside when I was awoken from a nice, warm slumber to the telephone in the middle of the middle of the day. the night. Such is the life of a deputy on call in a rural county for an undermanned sheriff's department. You were really never off even when you were off work. But sometime after midnight, you know when the good calls come in, I answered the phone

trying to be coherent enough to decipher what the dispatcher was telling me from the other end of the line. Brent, are you awake? Yes. I usually am when I answer the phone. That was my normal smart aleck response to being woke up in the middle of the night knowing I was fixing to have to go somewhere I didn't want to go, which was anywhere that wasn't under the warm covers where I was currently positioned. She said, I'm waking another deputy.

There's a burglar in progress at the old Simpson place. Burglar in progress? That got my attention, but I immediately knew that the old Simpson place was vacant. The elderly couple that lived there forever were both deceased and there wasn't an alarm system there that I knew of. Actually, there weren't alarm systems at all at any of the rural businesses that dotted the county, much less of residents, especially one that no one lived at during that time. Did someone call it in? Yes, they drove by there just now and saw a flashlight of someone walking in front of the big picture window that faces the road.

I have them on the other line. Call the Simpson's son and make sure no one is supposed to be there. Tell them we're on their way and to stay by the phone. I'm getting dressed. And with that, I hung up the phone and jumped in the uniform coveralls that was staged in the living room along with my gun belt, radio, and boots, just for such as an occasion as this. Now, in less than five minutes, I was pulling up to the sheriff's office where I would jump into the car with another deputy and the two of us would paint the road red to the address of the complaint,

knowing full well that no one would be there when we got there. That's the way it always was. They were never there. Our response time was fast considering what all had to transpire before we actually got to the address of the call, but still never fast enough to catch anyone on the scene. Someone had to see something to report, get to a phone like a real phone that was connected to a house and call it in.

There weren't no cell phones. Describe what was happening to the dispatcher who then had to figure out where they were talking about. And if no one had informed the dispatcher who was on a call, they had to call the sheriff to see who he wanted to send. Then they had to call and wake up the deputy and explain everything all over again. It took a while. And by the time all that happened, even if it was legitimate burglary, and not a false alarm or someone out hunting or checking on livestock,

the bad guy would always be gone. Rolling up on an actual burglar in progress is the Super Bowl of patrol calls. What better way to catch a burglar than red-handed. Surprise, Jocko. Better drop me mall's silverware and reach for the sky if you don't want to leave here with more holes in your person than you showed up with. Now, imagine saying something like that, and there may have been a few more colorful metaphors thrown in to spice it up,

but you get the idea. But in all the burglary in progress calls I got dispatched to in the middle of the night, most of them turned out to either be a false alarm or the perpetrators were long gone when we got there. It was the nature of the beast. This one would more than likely be the same. But we had to respond to it like we knew they were there and we were going to catch them. The rain was getting harder and the temperature was just north of freezing according to the bank thermometer that we just blew by going faster than we probably should have in those conditions. There was no need for the siren of blue lights. There wasn't anyone else out except for us and the burglar who, if what was reported was true, was another 15 minutes away at a country home that sat 200 yards off a gravel road that no one had been to in weeks.

The rain is slacked up enough that when we got close to the driveway, the deputy that was driving turned off the headlights, and we stuck our heads out the windows and watched the house in both ditches as he turned in, and we crept up the long drive in the dark stopping a short distance from the house. The interior was dark as a tomb, except for the glow of a single light bulb that I could see through the picture window toward the back of the house. The rain picked back up along with the wind. It was cold and miserable outside,

but it was masking our approach to the house. We slipped in through a cracked door that led from the carport into a utility room. There were muddy footprints stacked on top of one another on the carport steps and interior. Some weren't dry that led back and forth to the rest of the house. My spidey sense started tingling.

Someone may be there now. But someone had been very recently. The floor creaked with every step we made through the kitchen toward the rear of the house where the light was shining. Guns drawn, I prayed the wind and the rain wouldn't let whoever was in there, if they were in there, hear us coming. I peeked around the corner of the door that led from the kitchen into the living room and that's when I saw there was no floor.

The floor joists were exposed and all the floor and had been removed. Every room that I could see from where I stood had no floor. The single light bulb was from a lamp with no shade that was landing across two spans of floor joists. We cleared the rest of the house. There was no one in there. Burglary in progress had once again turned into a burglary after the fact call. But where'd the barefooted guy go? The one that made all the tracks that were still fresh on the steps of the utility room.

We hadn't passed any vehicles on our way there. They had to be close. no one was walking. I looked behind the house and grown up in the trees and bushes was an old barn. A hallway that went down the center of the structure was dark as a cave. There are probably law enforcement folks listening to this right now thinking, well, you need to call some backup before you head out to that barn and they'd be right. That's exactly what you do.

However, there was no backup. It had not been for the foresightedness of the dispatcher, one of us would have been there alone. It's just the way it used to be and how we were used to working. As the saying went that was made famous by Texas Ranger Captain Bill McDonald back in the early 1900s, one riot, one Ranger. But thankfully, there were two of us, and we hit the hall of that bar, and we turned on our flashlights and cleared all the stalls in both rooms. There was nothing there. The only place left to search was the hayloft. Back near the entrance was the ladder that went up the hole.

in the loft floor. It was nearly a carbon copy of every old barn loft ladder that I'd ever seen or climbed. The old barn on our farm was almost the exact same, except the ladder was at the opposite end of the hallway as you approached the barn. There was mud on the rungs, and when I put my hands on it to climb up, some of it squished up between my fingers. I turned off and put away my flashlight, and I ascended up the ladder with one hand while I held my pistol and my right side. hand. I dug down as I climbed staying below the opening of the floor, even though I could have easily stood up on the middle rung and seemed clearly into the barn loft. Placing both heels of my boots on the same rung, I stood up with my pistol on one hand and the light in the other,

heading shoulders above the opening, and in one fluid movement, I leaned forward with my chest against the floor of the loft, pointed my pistol and turned on the flashlight at the same time. less than a foot from my face was the business end of a shotgun that was pointed directly between my eyes. The rest all happened in slow motion. I could no longer hear the rain. I didn't feel the cold. The whole world was like molasses, but I was thinking and reacting two moves ahead of everything else that was going on around me. Instantly, I shifted to one side, laid my flashlight on the floor still shining in the same direction.

and placed my finger on the trigger of my duty weapon, aimed at the man's head, and I pulled that shotgun down and handed it to the deputy below me. Now, in the time it took me to tell you that, I could have done what I did ten times. That's how fast it happened. That's not something you practice. That's a blessing you received when it ain't your time to go. I could plainly see the top of the man's head, his shoulders, and his arms laying alongside where the shotgun is. been. He had fallen asleep. Sound asleep. Had he been waiting to ambush us and just went to sleep,

I don't know. I never will know. The man was off his meds and had been in and out of mental facilities the majority of his adult life. This would get him sent back to one eventually after he'd been adjudicated for burglarizing the old Simpson place and removing all the flooring. He'd taken it and stacked it up on the other side of the barn. Now, one curious thing that made me scratch my head and thankful that I still had one after staring down the barrel of that shotgun was the coon hide that he had wrapped around the stock, tail and all. He said in his statement that he shot that coon when he was tearing up the floor, and apparently

the coon had taken up residence under the house before he got there. Anyway, he shot the coon, cooked, and ate him, and adorned his hat on his shotgun. is a trophy, which would have made getting clobbered with that shotgun just a little bit worse for me anyway, if there could have been such a thing. But what wound up happening was he got help. He didn't know he needed any, but he did. I counted as a blessing to have been the one he nearly scared to death with that shotgun. I'm proud of the way it turned out.

I'm thankful that the good Lord let me see the situation clearly enough that I didn't react in a way that I would have been justified. in doing so. It made me value my life and my opportunities to help others that much more. That guy needed help. I needed to see that he got it. And he did. 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 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 Ronella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. Being a helper, that term I learned from Mr. Rogers. Yes, that Mr. Rogers, the one who sang about being a good neighbor and showed generations how easy it was to be one. But his quote about being a helper was explaining to the little folks and adults like me who were watching with them that any time he saw something scary on the news as a child that his mother told him to look for the helpers. But there was always someone going to help those in trouble.

He said it was reassuring and it made him feel better knowing that there was always someone who was willing to help. And just like always, Mr. Rogers. was right. I spent my whole career trying to help folks, and so did a lot of other people right along with me, but that's not the people I'm talking about now. I'm talking about the helpers who, regardless of the situation someone is in, step up and be a helper. I saw it firsthand over the course of the last few weeks. Two events were well publicized as tragedies. A local Arkansas duck hunter was severely injured in a boating accident and nearly where I and a group of my friends and colleagues had been filming for a future first light production.

Then a horrific plane crash in Washington, D.C., that counted among its many victims a group of hunters that had hunted with friends of mine in Kansas. A place a lot of us at Meeter had hunted this year. Whole nation and an outdoor community rallied around each other in prayer and raising money to support not only our fellow sportsmen but their families as well. through both of those events. We are a giving people, and when called upon in times of darkness, the helpers bring light to the shadows of sadness and despair. We have no ability to erase the pain

or bring back those that have been lost, but we each have a way of helping through, given whether it's prayer, labor, or donations. It shows we care, and we'll share as much of the burden as we can to allow those who can to recover or those who can't to grieve. And then there's the other helpers, the ones who stepped forward unprovoked by dire circumstances, the helpers who, through the goodness of doing what's right, is their only motivation.

I met him almost five years ago. He was a local fireman who had to supplement his income by working his days off mowing yards. Now, that told me something about him right from me. the start. He served his community in a noble and dangerous career and his compensation required augmentation for him to live comfortably and yet he still served. I would later find out he served his nation too, although he never talks about it. I invited him to give me an estimate on moan and after meeting me, we talked about coon hunting after he saw whaling. I had been in the podcast arena for a while and after watching my...

my tree and Walker running around, he blurted it out, is that whaling? I smiled and said, yes. He said, I've seen that dog on Facebook. Who are you? Just when I thought I'd gotten famous, the fireman and old whaler put my feet squarely back on Terraferma. First time he mowed our yard, I hid behind the fence and sprayed water on him like he was raining when he was making laps in the front yard. jungle. The look on his face when he stood up and saw me laughing over the fence with a water hose of my hand is one I'll never forget. And over the last five years, we've hunted a lot

together, Hunter, Gulloch, and me. He moved on from the fire department and now serves our community as a lineman whose main task is keeping the lights on in mind and everyone else's home around us. So far, so good. I'm switching gears here, so hang. with me, you're going to be glad you did. But over the past few months, my wife has been getting Bailey's haircut by a lady in town who cuts a lot of our friends and kids' hair. She and her husband both work hard to support their family. A family made up of eight children, two of which mom and dad share their DNA. Six of them just share mom and dad's love.

Mom and dad are helpers, the best kind of helpers. And of all the members of this octet of kids, one has shown a keen interest in coon hunting. Six-year-old Atticus. Alexis and Bailey would return from visits to the salon where Atticus's mom works with tales of how he loves everything about coon hunting and coon dogs. Atticus and his dad listened to your podcast and watch your videos, Alexis told me.

That's cool. Please tell him I said thank you. These reports from Attic's mom were a regular highlight whenever Alexis was there. They have a Pomeranian that Atticus calls his kundo. So the next time she went, I sent him a signed case hat and a wooden knife kit that Atticus and his dad could be together. Shortly afterwards, I saw a video of him on social media wearing that hat, holding that wooden knife kit, and watching Steve Rone and Claibos skinning a coon on TV. His mama told Alexis how Atticus was at school working with his teacher on writing his letters

when out of the blue he asked her if she had a dog. When his teacher said, yes she did, Atticus replied, I can teach that dog how to tree a coon. Now, much to his teacher's delight, she said that's good to know, but first he had to continue working on his jays. Atticus could have been me, and at one time I was Atticus. The only difference is I've never asked a Pomeranian to tree a coon for me, although I've hunted with some dogs that couldn't have been any worse than one.

But what does all this have to do with being a helper? Once again, I'm glad you ask. Hunter, remember him? Well, he and I were grabbing some supper last week before going Coon Hunt. Alexis and Bailey met us at our favorite burger joint, and we laughed and talked about everything under the sun, including the young dog of hunters that he and I would be taken that night, wailing.

But out of nowhere, Hunter made the statement that he had one too many cunounds and needed to find a home for John. John's a tree and walker and a litter mate to a good friend of mine's dog that is second to none. I've hunted with John on many occasions and he'll run in tree of coon, nothing fancy. Never going to be a world champion, but if you had to survive on coons to eat, John wouldn't let you starve. Hunter said, I'd really like to see him go to a kid. He'd be perfect for a kid. He's gentle.

He minds well. He would fit a kid that wanted to get started into hunting or needed a dog. Oh, you know anybody that might want him? No, I don't guess. And with that, I focused back on my cheeseburger and whatever the conversation was that Hunter had continued after announcing he wanted to rehome John. Finally, I processed it all, and I said, wait a minute.

Alexis, text Atticus's mama and see if they'd let him have John. Two days after we had supper, Hunter, Atticus, and John, all became friends. I posted a picture on my social media about getting Atticus a tracking collar and a handheld and the outpouring of folks wanting to help was immediate and a little overwhelming. Both of those items are quite expensive, especially to a family whose income is already prioritized. The pictures I've seen of Atticus and John since are a testament of helpers and helpers. People who saw an opportunity and took full advantage to help sponsor something wholesome and good.

What could be better than a little boy named Atticus is Coonham. John. Thank you so much for listening. All of us here at the Bear Gries Channel. Be a helper with good intent. Little can go a long way. We'll be seeing more of Atticus and John right here. But until next week, this is Brent Reeves, signing off.

y'all be careful don't forget march the first is the black bear bananza at the benton county fairgrounds Arkansas BHA has all the info or you can just google black bear bananasza 2025 come see us 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 backwoods. Each story begins in the wilderness and ends in dark. 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.