Bear Grease - Ep. 33: Bear Grease [Render] - Juju's Christmas Party

Episode Date: December 22, 2021

On this episode, the crew exchanges gifts, eats Christmas cookies, dissects the Folsom site even more, and introduces a new guest. Clay makes an apology to early Christmas light hangers. The crew tries to understand why the Folsom hunters killed so many bison. Clay gives away Josh's muzzleloader in the gift exchange and Josh handcrafts a belt buckle for Daniel. This episode is full of good Christmas vibes, and though Brent couldn't make it, he leaves a special holiday tribute to the crew. Merry Christmas!Connect with Clay and MeatEaterClay on InstagramMeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YoutubeShop Bear Grease Merch Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. 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 and 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 field. Worldware Gear at firstlight.com. My name is Clay Newcomb, and this is a production of the Bear Grease podcast called the Bear Grease Render, where we render down, dive deeper, and look behind the scenes of the actual Bear Grease podcast. 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 have a, I do have a big, I do have a big mustache. It's a fact.

Yes. And I have a pretty big beard. But Dan's beard has, has like mass to it. It's coarse. Like a hedgehog. Like it's dense. It's coarse. Is it not? Yeah.

It's a good beard. I've always said that. That's the main reason I like Dan. I had no reason to like him before. Gary hates birds. No, Dan looks good in a beard. I'll be honest with you. Thank you, Gary.

Josh. not going to tell all your people what I think about your beard. Gary, the world saw that picture of me and Clay at the Costa Tott River, and Clay Newcomb without a beard is a handsome man. Clay Newcomb with a beard is a handsome man. Josh Spillmaker without a beard is a, it hurts the eyes to look at. Hey, you were a handsome man. You saw it.

Did you see what I wrote on Instagram? the reason I didn't have a beard was probably because you told me it held too much scent, and I would never kill a deer without a beer. This is going full surface. Here's the thing. Dad, listen, Gary Newcomb was a banker. He had to look professional when he went into the bank every day to be successful. He's sporting a little go-toe right now.

The way he lived influenced me in a positive way. I mean, I think this is a good thing. And so I've always had a beard. Clay, when I met you, your hair was like wild and you had a beard. How did that? Gary's upstanding career imprint on you. Why don't you, do you want to give your philosophy? Yeah, I know what it is.

Sure. Go ahead. He just wanted to go opposite of anything that I was. And I mean, and that's. And you know, one other thing, look where you ended up. I mean, you're one probably inch from Folsom. Not New Mexico, but prison. All he's lacking is a neck tattoo.

He's got one. It's just a little deeper than the color shows. Welcome to the Bear Greas render. Man, yeah, this has started off great. Hey, this is, we have a secret guest. We will reveal this guest later, but this guest is... Has committed not to make a peep. The energy.

The energy of the bare grease-render Christmas party, which you are all a part of. Congratulations. This is a Christmas party. It's exciting. Dan, why don't you describe the decor that you see around here? Well, it's lovely. It's seasonal. There's a lot of antlers and old books.

It actually looks like it always does. Except for the Christmas cookies. That's what I was about to say. There is, and I've already had at least one, but I've been told I can't eat anymore because it makes a lot of noise through the mic. He's being a little testy about. The mic today. If we're a Christmas party, there's, I will say there's tension in the room. Yeah, it's a little hostile Christmas party.

I'm not being like it's a safe environment. There's a lot of unspoken expectations, I think. The bar has been set out. It's like going to a Christmas party with a lot of signs about what you can and can't do. You will have fun on my terms. That is exactly right. That is exactly right. Hey, we're, we are going, no foreshadowing here, folks.

Uh-uh. We are going to have an actual Christmas party. We have gifts. We're going to have a gift exchange. There's going to be singing. There's going to be refreshments. This is going to be incredible. The saddest part of this is that Brent Reeves couldn't be here.

Too sad. Yeah, that is. So, Britt. We have an empty chair for him. We have a special holiday greeting for us all, though. It will be on this episode, okay? Wonderful. So I will introduce my guest, though,

To my left, Dr. Dan Rupp. Hey, great to see you, Dan. Great to be here. Yes. To your left, my lovely wife, Misty Newcomb. Always good to be here. Yes. Great to see you.

Good to see you. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas. Okay, guys. To your left, Josh the Lambridge spillmaker, which I'm thrilled that the Lambridge came up once again in this episode. It did. I feel like every time the word Landbridge is mentioned, there should be like a little

jingle or something. do do the language hey I got your new tattoo though that you need on your neck now that Gary thinks we should be in prison they walked there quote unquote oh I like that it's a good tagline they walked there I mean he said it like a real matter fact yeah he said they walked there like it was like he he started it and stopped it in such a way with the enunciation of his voice like there was no arguing I noticed you wanted there was a small part of you that wanted to kind of bring up a different view. Yeah, water route.

And then you quickly were like, okay, let's move on. Yeah. I love it. I mean, I'm pro-Landbridge, but I'm also pro, you know, Taylor Keen saying the Cherokees came from the south via water route. This is a lot. This is deep waters, pun intended. But your tattoos should say, they walked here. I like it.

Yeah. I like it. And the Vikings made it to Hevenor, Oklahoma. We know that for sure. The Roonstone. Look it up. Okay. To Josh's left is our secret special, very dear special guest.

But to her left is Gary Newcomb back from wherever he's been. Back from the grave. Good to be here. Where have you been, Gary? Well, I can't tell you. It's secret. It's all the secret. I'll tell you what, I will give you a little hint, though.

I've been doing some research thinking about writing a book. Okay. On the Black Panther. Oh, yes. Yes. Hey, I think I can go ahead and foreshadow this. Meat Eater, we are coming out with a hat that is going to be the design of the bear grease hat.

It's going to have those same colors. It's going to be a patch hat with the same colors. And it's got the silhouette of a black panther. And it says, Believer. Yes. That will be for sale on the Meat Eater.com. I'm just going to say, soon and soon when we're talking about geologic time might be like you know like February

soon might be like when this thing comes out are you with me well everything except for when we're talking geologic time well okay when I say soon there are many qualifications to that term soon to some people might be like tomorrow got it soon but I don't know exactly when soon is so there's a believer hat so well it's good to see you yeah Good to see, Dad. Good see. So to Gary Newcomb's right is our special guest. My dear mother, Judy Nookam.

In her festive green cable-knit sweater. Welcome. Well, it's good to be here. It's an honor to be here with all these. With clay, but not with us. With witty, bold people. Idiots. Not idiots.

I didn't say that. You realize that your name comes up a lot. Oh, I listen to the render. I hear it. Well, just in my life. though. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, Juju. Like, I don't even, I quit qualifying who Juju is when I talk to people.

I just say, she needs her own hat. I just say, she does. Juju said, and they're like, oh, yeah, that's Clay's mom. So, great to have you. And the reason Juju is here is because Juju is the queen of holiday festive energy in life. Yes, 100%. Okay. Do you agree, Dad?

I do, absolutely. Like when you go to Juju's house, day after Thanksgiving, man, the Santa Clauses come out of wherever they live the rest of the year. It's true. And they're all over the house. Angels. Hallways. Nativity scenes.

Immaculate Christmas trees. We opened some gifts the other day at Juju's House for our kids. And the wrapping paper on those, there was more intent put into the wrapping, inspirational-like wrapping that I was like. rapping that I was like, you put more thought into this than I did. Buying our house. The first 20 years of your life. Designing our house. And that is a true statement because I didn't know what our house was going to look like

until they framed it. Just to be clear, I did. True story. So, Juju. Wow, that's not a line. That's quite a tribute. And she did bring this festive tray of cookies. Very festive.

Christmas trees and stars. We could only eat one, but they're really good. because her son is Clay How many did you have? Did you have the Christmas tree or the star? The star. That means something.

Juju, what is your What do you think about What do you think about the bear greece like our format? Are you cool with the way we're doing this? Oh, I enjoy it. I love listening to the, I love listening to the bear grease,

then I love podcast, and then I love listening to what y'all say about it, the narrative of it. It's interesting and y'all are so funny. I have to laugh at what you're your favorite beggary's character. Oh gosh. Careful. I'm going to renege on that.

I'm not going to say. How do you feel like Clay has been? I told them not to ask me hard questions and they're asking me hard questions. Just one. How do you feel like Clay has been with all the commenters? Oh, well, now I've had a little talk with him about that. Yeah. I tell him not to be so hard on a few of them to listen to them because they are really saying what they think.

Yeah, they are. They do say what they do. They do say what they think. Not that they're always right, but you have to be a little gracious with them. I think you could be gracious with a lot of people in your life, Clay. So do you feel like the format's working, though? Do you think there's any kind of marketing problems with having this document? style podcast and then the render people getting confused did you have any difficulty with the transition

so several of my friends listen and they enjoy it they they enjoy the talk among you guys the kidding and the laughing and uh but they also enjoy when y'all are serious and you talk about the the concept or the subject you're talking about so okay who do you think who do you think the smartest person on the render is i told you not to ask you mr newman oh i'm going to say mr news I'm here. Oh, there you go. Nice. Wow.

I have to live with him. Oh, my. No, everybody here is, you know. Oh, we're all smartest. Guess what? She's a kindergarten teacher. Of course, she's going to say that. I'm not a kindergarten teacher.

Welcome to my life. You're all great. You do notice that she's kind of leading us like we were a kindergarten class. All of a sudden, I feel really special. And I know everyone else does too. I feel like nap time is right around the corner. And I remember all the letters of the office. a bit.

Everybody gets a ribbon. It's all coming back to me. Okay, all right. Here's what we're going to do. We're now going to have our, okay, it is now time for us to have our Christmas gift exchange, okay? In white elephant fashion? Yeah, so, Josh, why don't you describe how it's going to go down? We have a few gifts here, for those of you that brought gifts, whoever gets to go first

gets to pick a gift. Okay. They're going to open it. Yeah. And they're going to be excited about what it is. The next person can either steal that gift. or they can pick a new one and sew down the line. However, whoever the last person is, they can steal or they can open, but then it goes back

to the first person. They can keep what they've got or they can steal one of the gifts that are already in possession. Yes, question. Do you need to draw numbers? Who goes first? Juju, how about you decide? You pick a number between one and time. You decide who goes first.

We'll close their eyes. Just go for it. How many gifts do we have? We have five gifts. Missy is number one. She's going to go first. First. Okay.

Gary's number two. Clay's number three. Okay. Daniel's four. And we're going to let Josh be last. Oh, wow. I actually think a white elephant. All right.

Let me say five. So should we announce what we've got in here? We've got a gift hidden underneath. A bear hide. We have a gift that's long and skinny wrapped in a bear hide. We have a very large gift. About a 16 by 20, 30 by 40. I'm not really good with numbers.

This is a gift. I know that's a big range. You're good. Just keep going. We have a box about the size of a cordial cherries, chocolate-covered cherries box. Oh, that was a festive analogy. And then we have about a shoe box. I'm just thinking about things that I've bought in my life.

Is it bigger than a red box? Okay. So you're first, Misty, what will you choose? Chocolate covered cherries. Okay. Wow. This is, Josh says this is a good one. This is from the Land Bridge.

Oh, this is from the Land Bridge. I don't think you're supposed to tell. So I've got a small box. Very great wrapping job. I have to attribute that to Ava Spillmaid. To Ava. I was in a ask. She loves rapping gifts.

And she's very crafty. I keep asking her to come and help me do things. Okay. And inside the box is a smaller present wrapped in bubble wrap. Okay. Oh, whoa. Holy moly. I told you.

A belt buckle with like Josh's beatwork on it. What? Is that a black? I made that last night. Is that? Look at the back of it. Commemorative. Commemorative.

And it says bear grease, 2021. Wow. And it's a bear. It's a silver belt buckle with beadwork of a bear on it. Very classy. I told you. It won't change your life. That is great.

I would like to keep this. Well, you really don't have much choice. How many steals can it have? It can only be stolen once. Okay. Gary, you're up next. What are you going to choose? Let me look at that.

Don't look too close, Gary. You are so good. I have to say that I stayed up until 4 o'clock in the morning making it. You're so much more talented than you look. You know what? I don't mean that a bad way. I'm going to take this guy right here. Okay, Gary's taking the...

I feel like I need a vaccination to even touch it. Yeah. Gary has chosen the... Should we take a picture of it so that you can post it on Instagram to see what it was? Hold that up, Dad. I can't tell if it's an old rifle or if it's like the front quarter of a white-tailed deer. Do I get to keep the bear hide? If you want it, yes.

No, I'm not sure I want it. But I might. Man, I'm excited about seeing it. Like, everybody's sitting here with their mouths open. I'm going to say this. It's a muzzle loader. Hopefully, it's not my muzzleloader. Would when you hit on it.

Holy. That is my muzzle loader. What? Oh, man. That's my muscle load. What? Are you sure? How do you know that's yours?

The bolt is gone. That looks familiar. Okay. That is Josh's musloader. Well, thank you, Josh. And I've chosen to give it away in this gift exchange. I guess I have the opportunity to steal the lens. What about?

No, okay. Okay, this is a decoy. This is a decoy gift. The funny part of this is that that is Josh's muzzloder, that he lent me that I haven't given it back yet. I'm keeping it. Okay. Is he got a bullet in it?

No, I took the breach out of it. Okay. Just for safety, so we didn't shoot anybody. Okay. Hold on. We got to work through this because this is... Hang on. Ju-ju.

You listen to Juju. We've actually got to work through this because I don't have the right to give away Josh's muzzle. That's what was funny. Okay. That was funny. This is the actual gift. This is a... This is a first light, dirt bag, duffel.

Oh, my man. Read the tag. So First Light has a series of. Is that like? This came from salvage. Oh, he wants to keep this. Clothing salvage. It was, it's been, it was built 10 or 12 years ago.

It's been used. It's been to Alaska twice. It's got COVID inside. Boy. No, really, this is a nice. This is a nice piece. First Light. I mean, this is, this is, I'm a bag.

There's certain things I like. And I got my eye on them. Wow. Okay. All right. Moving on. I feel a little bit like this is the Michael Scott white elephant where. It kind of is like the eye.

Yeah. Yeah. This is not even a white elephant. I mean, I will. I tell you, boys, I look like an old guy, but I'll whip your fanny if you take this thing. Believer. Believer. Right here.

Oh, wow. I got, there's two of us now. Okay. Josh. No, you're next. You're next. You're next. Hey, don't forget.

There is one underneath the bar. Oh yeah, there is one. I'm just reminding you, y'all. I'm taking this one. All right. Okay. So I'm, I've got a, this clearly was wrapped by Judy Nukham. This is intricate.

If archaeologists dug this out of the ground one day, they would go, why did they spend that much time wrapping it? Why would they do that? What all the trees are? What? Couldn't they have used their resources in other ways? They would have said that. Okay.

All right. It's in a target box. It's in a target box. I think it's from Target. Could be. Oh. Very nice. Look at this.

Oh, nice. Big Buck hitch cover for the back of your truck. That's nice. Classy. And some Christmas socks. Oh, nice. Wow. This is a good gift.

Pulling out the big guns. And a little sign that says genius at work. You need two of those. Very good. Thank you. Dan. This is terrible on two fronts. Leave my bag along.

Because number one, my gift is way below the level of all these gifts. Wait, is your, my gift is unwrapped under the bear hide. Okay. Number two, why this is terrible is. You're going to steal my present. I'm going to steal Misty's belt buckle. You stinker. Dan will wear that sucker.

I will wear it right now. Well, the only... He'll take his... Wow, this is getting... It stays with Dan. It's dead now. So I have the option of the gift I brought or dance. Who could change their belt buckle that quick?

That's, I know. A man. It was like he keeps a spare in his pocket. It was like he was just waiting to do that. It looks good, though. Did you all go with this in advance? No. I love this.

It is awesome. Thank you, Misty. You're welcome. I mean, I'm going to be fairly reasonable. It's my... He took it from me. So now I go. No, please do not choose mine.

It's terrible. No, it's awful. This is old. That's wild. It's, otherwise you're taking your own. Okay, under the bearskin. Dance is under the beauty. That's cancer.

There's two cases of Mountain Dew. Well, not like Mountain Dew. Mystery flavor. Mountain Dew. Let me just tell you, these are. Mature Melon and Boodoo. I mean, I don't, well, I kind of downplayed this, but I'll, let me just introduce this gift a little bit. These are experimental.

Mountain Dew flavors that we acquired, and it is my joy to turn them over to you. Wow. You can either drink them or use them to kill plants. Buzz, experimental mountain dew flavors. Does that mean y'all have tasted these and have chosen? So these are used. This is like a half open box. I think if you save this like a Star Wars figurine, these would be worth a lot of money someday.

Both of these 12 packs have been unspoiled. Okay. So I've got 24 mystery flavor mountain dudes. That's right. Okay. So who doesn't have a gift? Josh Spillmaker. Like I said,

bigger is better. So I can steal. You can steal. Or Eyeball and Gary Nukham. Or Misty Newcomb's gift here. It's a winner. It's,

ladies and gentlemen, I will tell you, it's the size of a large picture frame. has kind of a picture-framy feel about it. Mm-hmm. Very nicely wrapped. Very nicely wrapped. It's going to be a Black Panther. I think I'm going to keep this one because I need...

You'll regret it. I'm pretty certain it's artwork and I need smart work for my shop. Mm. Yes, you do. This... The look Clay Newcomb's giving me right now is it, like... Do you know what this is? Do you know what it is?

No. He just... You're the worst liar. I can't say. I can't, I can't say it. He's done. I'm going to let Gary Newcomb keep his bag. Although I'm going to say, I'm going to take whatever's in this and my muzzleloader. What?

That's part of the reason I gave it away because I was looking for a reason to give it back to you. Josh, just don't wind it. This is what I always dreamed of. Oh, no, I can't believe it. A picture of clay. A giant picture of fun. Giant portrait of a big Cheshire cat grinning. Oh my goodness. Clay Newcomb.

That is a museum quality frame from someone you know very dear to you. Yes. I mean, I'm serious. That is a probably a $300 frame job on that. It's an excellent frame. And what I like about it, Josh, is that it was given to us. It's a wonderful picture by a very skilled photographer. My head is like 14 inches big.

Yeah. At least. At least. It's bigger than Josh's torso. Like when I just took a picture of it. It's a giant picture of my face. And so it was that. high quality was given to us.

I'll sign it for you right now. It just always felt a little big in our house, almost idolatrous, you know, like to put this up in your... Hey, the one thing that, okay, for the record, we did not ask for this, nor did we... If the artist of this portrait sees it hanging in my shop. I'm nervous a little bit about that. I'm nervous a little bit about that. So the second thing... Hey, the one thing that we have learned is that wherever you put it in a room, those eyes, buddy, they follow you.

When Clay was traveling. Like that statue of Jesus that follows you? We would say Clay's watching. Like whenever the kids would get in trouble when they were little and Clay would be on the road, I would just point to the wall. Can you turn it away from me? I like that you're wearing the Arkansas Barham Buck. Arkansas Black Bear Association. I'll have you know that the reason that little grin is there so big is I had just killed a beautiful white-tail buck that had a four-inch drop-time on Christmas Eve.

Really? Yeah. Waterwich, the buck I called Waterwich. It is a Christmas photo. That photo was taken on Christmas Eve. Well, I mean, I tell you what that's good for. Like those little darts, those little suction cup darts to shoot at. I have two thoughts.

A lot of dictators make everybody put their picture on the wall and they're wherever. That or the fact that that, Misty, you really need to keep that. That's the kind of thing. If you don't want to put it out like you're egotistical, you put it in the attic and think what the little grandbabies. Right. I mean, they'd go, wow. See, that's been in our attic for about a decade.

It needs to be in the attic about three or four decades. That photo has taken a tremendous value. It should have stayed in the attic. It's 10 years old. I killed Waterwich in 2011. Well, that's a highlight of my life. Fantastic. I just want to give everybody an applause.

Thank you for it. Great job on the gifts. Really put your heart into it. And Josh, sorry about keeping your motor so long. I've also got all your gear with it, okay? Great. Do I have to wait another year to get that? Excellent.

We'll wrap it up and drop it off at your house for Christmas Day. Okay, so now we'll get into, so this was like a holiday specialty section, okay, at the Bear Grays render. Now we're getting into the serious part of the render. What did you guys think of the last render? crew. You know, it was the guys from Onyx, it was Jared Larson, Zach Sandow, and then Rusty Johnson, Rustin Johnson, Hunter Rood, Justin Michaud. I mean, they did pretty good. I have to say that there was a lot of them. And it always kind of hurt. I have to say that also that, you know, we're such distinctive personalities. Hmm. They kind of just all ran together. There was a couple of distinctive personalities in there, but they kind of all ran together. I think that really

So Josh is saying None of them has as good personality As any one of us With the render crew that you have here If it ain't broke, don't fix it Clay Oh wow Okay That's one viewpoint

I will say after the The previous time That another crew was brought in I will admit But they stepped it up And I went into this one With pretty low expectations I thought they were fantastic

I actually really liked them I thought they were great I thought, man, they did just as good as us. I did listen to it. Did you think they did okay. I thought they did good.

What did you think about Rusty Johnson getting anxiety sickness before he hunts? I thought that was interesting. But he would gag and get so nervous. Do you ever get excited about anything that much? Well, I can't say that I have. Like before you would teach school in the morning.

No, no. The day before Thanksgiving when Juju's cooking, she is like, pumped. I mean, just like, I cannot wait to get him to get you. Is there a time in the year? This isn't fair, I'm telling you.

That you are just like absolutely stoked to be doing what you're doing. Oh, yes. What? Shopping. Ooh. Seeing my grandbabies? Yes. I get excited about that.

I'm pretty pumped up about teaching kids to read too. Well, yeah, I do love that. Maybe you can teach Josh to read. I enjoyed those guys' comments, though. I remember them talking about one. One cameraman in the tree stand would talk your ear off. And the other cameraman wanted to talk, but is Hunter. I guess it was that Rusty.

It was Hunter and Rusty, yeah. He wouldn't talk and he'd sit there for hours, not saying anything. And I thought that was funny. It was so, Hunter, Hunter is like, he has like long red hair and he's just a funny guy. You're just around him and you're like, he's really funny. And so Rusty is real serious. Is it Rusty's son that's a lawyer that's studying to be a lawyer? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, and so when Rusty and Hunter went together, and it was just real funny because Rusty's this dead serious white to Hunter, and Hunter's this like, he's a good hunter. I'm not taking anything away from him, but I don't know that he had been around somebody like Rusty, and so it was real funny. But they came together in the end, Juju. Okay. That's what the render is all about. Unity. Unpolarizing the nation.

I feel like I need to unpolarize. I mean, you've polarized a bunch of our friends now with your statements. about their performance on a podcast. I will say that Willow Newcomb, and I don't want y'all to be mad at her about this. Oh, yeah. But after the first, like, non, what do we call us, regular render. Non-regular crew render.

She called us. Yeah, N-R. She called us and said, hey, that was really great. The ones that you thought weren't great. She said, that was really great. Sometimes I feel very overwhelmed by the regular crew. And she said it actually gives me, She described it as, I'll just say, anxiety inducing to listen to us.

Well, I mean, I could see if she's having trouble sleeping, enjoying listening to the first non-regular render crew. So she said that it was great. Then we do this one, and she's like, she came home for the holidays, and she said, Dad, that last render crew you had, she said, it's always my favorite whenever it's a different crew. Willow said that. Willow said that.

Willow said that. I mean, you guys don't take what she said to me. She's dead to me. You know, I think, you know, I just think that the insecurities of this render crew is just glowing. It's like job security, you know, you can't brag on the guy next to you. You got a badmouthed him. I thought the second. It's a zero-sum game, Gary.

I thought the second irregular crew was probably the best. The first irregular crew was probably second best. And this bunch right here, myself included, we're probably third. I'll be honest, I enjoyed Mark in that bunch, maybe because I just had met them. That's what I was going to say. If you had known those guys, because they were the nicest guys, Mark and Andreas and Tyler and Joe. Yeah, I only way nicer than all these guys. You know, Daniel's feeling.

You know us too, okay? You guys are nice too Really truly I like both groups I think a little variety is pretty cool You know maybe we could arrange a fist fight Between the two crews Between us and Willow

Just sitting in as a guest on a Render when you're not used to doing it I can say that right now It's hard to think of something really cool to say Every time And you guys You guys never had any trouble thinking of something cool to say. You guys have mastered it.

You two. You too. Oh, wow. Big compliment. So it's fun listening. Okay. Well, there's a little bit of housekeeping to do here. Now that it is Christmas time, it's now that it is Christmas, I would like to make a formal

apology to all the render listeners who put up their Christmas lights before Thanksgiving. You want to apologize to them? I do. One. Because now that it's Christmas and we're all pumped for Christmas, I'm like... Maybe they were instrumental in helping you get pumped. Maybe they were right the whole time. Maybe soon.

Clay, flip-flops again. And my friend Ryan Pedigrew called me out on it. And he said, Clay, I put up Christmas lights on November the first. And he said, I do it because of... my wife wants me to do it. We love Christmas. And he's a real big dude. And like, I wouldn't want to fight him.

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 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 calls. who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. We had some petty criminals come through our neighborhood night before last and steal Christmas decorations out of people's front yard. Really? I wish they would still Halloween decorations. They leave those.

Okay. So, two, get after the heart of the podcast here, guys. We're three podcasts into a four-part series. the fourth part is going to be one of my favorites. I'm working on it as we speak. What did y'all think of this third one? So to clarify, sometimes it probably jumbles into one big section. The first podcast in our series was on George McJunkin.

And for those maybe who haven't heard it might want to go back, George McJunkin was the freed slave who in 1908 found the Folsom site, reported it. the people, it wasn't until after he was dead that they recognized what it was that he had found. And so the whole first podcast, we dove into George McJunkins' life and him being a cowboy. And it was all about him and very little about the Folsom site. But that's part of the Folsom story. Part number two was diving into Folsom. And I introduced, well, the authority on the Folsom site in the nation, Dr. David Meltzer from SMU,

incredible guy. And the reason he is the authority on Folsom is he literally wrote a textbook on Folsom. It's right up there. See that book? I mean, it is... Very pretty. It is like an academic textbook. It's not a book that you would give away and be like, hey, you'll enjoy reading this.

I mean, it's like... You would hate reading it. Yeah, you would give it to them. You'd be like, you're going to really struggle with this. Why'd you look at me when you said that? I loved it. But I'm just saying it wasn't like written like some entertaining, purposely entertaining nonfiction book. And so we talked about the archaeology. And I needed to sort out just a general understanding of archaeology.

So we talked about the processes of verification of a site, and we learned about the drama of the Folsom site, in that there were other sites that were probably as legit as Folsom that had human points with old Ice Age mammals, but they didn't count. because of the way they were excavated and found different ways. So that was really interesting. The third, and then we just established what happened to the Folsom site,

which was 32 Bison Antichlis killed by human hunters. And the only reason we know that, we would have thought they got struck by lightning, and I'm going to come back to that, Josh, had it not been for the 20-ish stone points that were found amongst the bones and that there were fractures in bones that were clearly impact fractures from stone points.

So while these animals were alive, humans were chunking spears, Adel Adelaidell Darts. We don't know. You will learn whether it was spears or Adelotle darts in part four. And there is a question. Okay. I figured they were Adelaide. In general, when you talk to people,

they, almost everyone just for sure 100% says, yeah, they were Adeladol. But when we talk to the expert on Adilatals, there is question because you cannot necessarily determine an Adelattle point based upon its size as compared to some of the bigger arrow points. And my future guest, who y'all don't know who it is yet, Deb and Pedigrew, he talks about, I mean, he just dives into it big time. Probably it was Adelattel's, but it's not definitive. So we talked about that, and then in part three is when we talked about gourmet butchering, and then we talked about the cultural impact of dating human arrival in North America back seven, eight thousand years further than we thought.

But what did y'all think about the gourmet butchering stuff? You know, that was very interesting to hear because one of my biggest questions about the whole thing is, you know, if we're talking about a small group of people, you know, maybe 50 people, why did they want to kill 32 bison? I mean, that's just a huge pile of work, you know, thinking about, you know, 30 to 40,000 pounds of meat. Yeah. Why did they need to kill all that? What drove them to kill that many? Why didn't they kill five and, you know, say, hey, we got our work cut out for us?

They were Americans. They were Americans. Just consumption. Yeah. All the way back. Conspicuous consumption. Why kill five if you can kill 30? But, you know, the fact of them thinking, well, I'm just going to take, you know, there was no sense of ethic, hunting ethic back then.

So the idea of the gourmet butchering, you know, they might have just seen, hey, we'll get 32 tongues out of this. You know, there was no thought process inside of that. So I felt like that kind of helped me understand the thought process behind it of these ancient people's doing that. Well, you know, the question too would be, why wouldn't they kill? I mean, you're people that are living, it's almost hand to mouth. I mean, there is no, you're not storing up a 501K for 10 years down the road. You are literally killing stuff that can, not a 501K. 401K.

Hopefully, Misty does a lot of the finances. Yeah, she does. She does. You guys are. A 401k is a nonprofit retirement account. Okay. Okay. I'm sorry. So the 401K, they don't have 401ks.

Or 501Ks. They don't have any case. And the only security for the future that they have is what they've killed today and whatever the preservation techniques would have been, which could have been the ice and snow and them storing the meat in the snow through the winter. Or they made pemmican. there was a whole section about Dr. Meltzer talking to me about pemmican, which I just, we just couldn't put it in there. Would that have been made then? Well, I mean, they would have used the meat to make pemmican. Oh, yeah. Did they make it back then? They believed they did.

It would have been a mixture of meat and berries and other stuff, dried out and flattened. And it could have lasted, you know, months. Could they not also smoke the meat? I'm presuming, you know, I think there are hunter, gather, like, banned societies today that will kill. a giraffe and you know you've got 1,500 pounds of meat and there's 25 of them and they'll smoke the meat to preserve it to preserve it. You know, it's not rock solid preservation, but it's better than just letting it go bad and wasting it. Yeah, for sure. So the question would just be why wouldn't they kill as many as they possibly could? Because they would not have, I mean, it wouldn't have been even in the thought process for them to think, you know what, we're going to let a couple of these guys go. We presume there was not that thought process.

Well, that they're like, what do you think? Steve Rinella mentioned that they took the hides. Mm-hmm. And, you know, could it be possible they didn't take all the meat, but they took what meat they needed. I'll be darned. And took the hires for shelter. Well, they could use the hides to build shelters and TPs or whatever you.

Incredible thought. Their huts were called. Was that brought out? Was that something? Well, that's a good, that is a great answer to a potential, potential answer to the question of why they killed that many if they weren't going to use all the meat. Presumably they used all the hides because there were no tailbones, zero tailbones. And the tailbones were left in the hides when they carried them off.

I think Jujus beat all your experts. Yeah. Exactly. What do you think happened, Juju? I'm not sure, but I thought about leaving all those fulsome points how hard it was to make those fulsome points, how long it took to chisel out. But I guess it was deep in the animal and they couldn't pull it back out. But I thought, wow, if they could have taken those.

20 points back with them. They would have saved a long time. Classic, uh, mother. Like, I would have come back from that hunt and Gidu, Gigi would have been like, Clay baby, where's your Folsom points? And it would have been like, I broke her, but she would have been like, Clay. Didn't you reach your hand in it? Daddy worked hard for those.

Whereas, was Dr. Meltzer able to determine the points that were at the Folsom Museum? Were those legit? No, we don't. None of those that we saw at the Folsom Museum. were from the Folsom site. Oh, okay. None of them. All the points from the Folsom site are in big museums,

and there's several that are unaccounted for. Dun, dun. And they might be this one. I was looking for that to show up in the White Elephant Gift. You know what? If I had thought about it, a White Elephant Gift, I would have got a Folsom replica. That would have been awesome.

They are one of the coolest stone points I've ever seen. I want one now. Yeah, I know. They're awesome. The way they're so thin and delicate. They're beautiful. Yeah, they're awesome. You know, it's one of those things that if you didn't know it was beautiful,

if no one, if you didn't know the backstory, you'd look at the point and you'd just go, oh, cool, stone point. But when you know the history and after episode number four, every household in America is going to want a fulsome record. Wow. That's a, same for the fence. Foreshadowing. This is not foreshadowing.

This is like a straight up shadow. We make a fulsome point on episode four. Oh, that's awesome. I mean like clickety clack, make it. I wonder if like the Folsom peoples ran into the Clovis peoples and they were like judging their points. We'll talk about that too. Do you really? I'm being dead serious.

Because those Clovis points, they're okay. But have you seen these Folsom points? Technology differences. Hey, I want to bring up a couple. I had a couple of comments. I had a buddy of mine, Scott Brown, a good friend of mine. He wrote me and he sent me a link to an article of something that happened pretty recently where 19 cows. were killed by lightning.

It was a big pile of cows. And all of their tailbones were evaporated. Right? And the lightning shaped these stones into stone points. Well, he wasn't trying to say that that's what happened. But he was just bringing up a good point. He said, have you ever thought about a lightning strike for it? Because it is unusual how the bones were piled up.

And there's lots of reasons why that didn't happen. Number one, the stone points, but they could have been struck by lightning, and then fulsome hunters came by and found them and butchered them. But that would not explain. Dr. Meltzer, if he's listening to this right now, which I'm hoping he's not, he would want to fight me for saying that. Because they did find impact fractures in a few bones, not many. I mean, it's not like every single bison, they were able to see where it was pierced by stone point. That would be, you would expect not to find a bunch. That's right.

That's right. I'm just trying to get my mind around. And maybe this, you talk about this more in the next episode. We may. A spear with a stone head. I mean, I take my bow with a 70-pound draw weight and I shoot. And if I have a bad shot on a white tail, it hits the shoulder. And I mean, it might crack a bone in there for sure.

But just my hand with a wooden shaft on a spear and a stone, I don't know if I could throw it hard enough to crack a rib. yeah how does that go down well they could have gotten close enough literally to jab well so there's a lot of things going and what the fundamental thing is physics momentum the calculation of momentum which is a calculation of the velocity

and the mass of this thing and when you start doubling tripling quadrupling the mass compared to the modern eras which we're shooting which are in the 450 to 600 grain range You start like multiplying that times 10 in the momentum, which momentum is people that are familiar with Ed Ashby's ideas or not his ideas. He made this famous an archery community. When you're talking about how much an arrow, a projectile point will penetrate into something, the correct calculation to use is momentum.

Because momentum measures a vector, which a vector has a direction. You hear a lot of people talk about kinetic energy. Dad, that's what people in the 90s used to talk about. We used to do the kinetic energy. We used to figure... Factor is mass times velocity, right? Square or something. Well, the kinetic energy, but basically kinetic energy is not the right one, momentum is.

And to answer your question, really, we go into great detail. Devin Pedigrew is probably the nation's expert on Adilatles, and he has actually done experiments on bison carcasses with atlattles. And I mean, they just like punch right through them. You know, they probably would have found more impact fractures too, but weren't they taken rib racks out of there? You know, because if you're going to shoot something and shoot a broadside, that's a good point. They probably hauled off.

I'm surprised Juju didn't think of that. Yeah, yeah, because if the main target on a bison is going to be his ribs and then you were taking rib racks, you're taking away the evidence of probably where it went through. They were covering their tracks. They knew we were going to be sniffing them out. 10,000 years later. I'd like to read another, because my mother's here, and she has asked me to be nice to people that write in,

I would like to talk about this guy. No, it was actually really good. Love the last episodes on Folsom and George McJunkin. Here's his question. How did they know it all happened in one day? Could this not have been a great place to herd and reliably make successful and repeatable kills. Given that it was said they could go there their whole lives without coming into contact

with someone outside of their relations and that they were probably in groups of around 15. Doesn't it make sense that killing 32 is a little excessive, he says? Yeah, I'm with them. I would think any hunter would want to care for their tools and killing so many at one time would seem, this goes right back to what Juju said. As a hunter, I would think I would want to take care of my tools and killing so many at one time would seem to be not only a waste of resource, but potentially costing their time and hard work on making these tools.

So basically he says, could that many bison, could it have been spread over multiple years in a unique kill site? This is a honey hole. This is a honey hole. Primitive honey hole. This is the killing tree. That makes a ton of sense. What do you think, Dad?

I think that guy in the aisle let him take my place on the render. Wow. Yeah. Nick Brown. Yep. I like that. He must be from Canada. He said cheers.

Uh-oh. Didn't they say, though, that they could tell by, like, the bones when they were laid down and sediment, the sections that were white or how long they stayed white? It would be interesting to hear Dr. Meltzer tell us why that that is wrong, because he probably would. But presumably, I mean, if you, I don't think they could whittle it down to if it was even just a couple of years. Like, maybe it was a five-year period. I don't know that they would be able to go to that much detail. It all. That's a great.

I mean, because if you've got to, if they find this little box canyon and the, you know, the first time it happens, they get a few of these bison. They're no dummies. They're just going to keep going for days and leave this thing behind and it worked

perfect. I mean, you get a good spot when you're hunting. Yeah. You never forget that spot. Never. And you're going to go back. Yep.

Yeah. Well, Well, it, I'm not, I'm not saying, I'd give this, I give Nick credit for coming up with a good idea. I really believe if Meltzer were here, he would be able to say, well, because man, I'm telling you, the amount of research that they did on this site and the, the, the technology that they, that they used to understand the stratification over those animals and the, what was going on with erosion is just mind blowing. And that's part of the book that I couldn't even follow. It was just so technical. What do you think? Did they have any estimation of the number of people involved?

Well, we have no idea. Well, I mean, 32 could be a very small number if I've got, you know, a million people in my group, even though I know there wouldn't be that. Right. They said, I mean, if there was, you know, you got a little community of 300 people or something. I mean, well, okay. So they believe that these people were in much smaller groups than that. Yeah. Just by the size of their camps in different places.

They think they stayed in groups of about 25 and at different times the year would come together. But could it have been 100 people? Sure. Yeah. Could have been. And they don't know what time of year it was either. Well, they do. They do.

In the fall. Okay. So, you know, I'm just thinking if it was closer to winter, then they could have preserved them in the cold weather a lot better. Right. But they think it was the fall and they, well, they know it was the fall based upon the teeth of the baby calves. Okay, yeah. And but so let's just say it would have been September.

Meltzer said, you know, September, October. And it was colder back then. I mean, it was in the end of the ice age. I'm just thinking, I'm thinking in terms of whitetail, you know, but they, bison don't just walk around in twos and threes. Right. It's an entire herd and there's calves. And they basically found a herd. slaughtered.

Okay, here's another, here's another. It's probably not going to be multiple years because they're looking at the behavior of the animals as well. Well, because it's a cow-calf herd. Yeah, it's a cow-calf herd. So if it had been a mix of bulls and cows and calves, that's a good point. I still give Nick credit for having a good idea. I like Nick.

Do they have plans to excavate further? You said that was a 60 by 60 square foot? Yeah, it appeared to me to be very small, the area they had. actually excavated. But when I brought that up to Dr. Meltzer, he didn't think that, he just kind of acted like that it was kind of silly for me to think that.

Because probably it's a big site that they excavated. I mean, archaeologists, you know, they might look at a place like half as big as this room and they might spend two years inside of it. So the fact that it was, you know, maybe 60 by 60, which would be like a 10-yard bow shot by a 10-yard bow shot.

He thought that they found everything. He really did. Well, they said they didn't find any evidence of their living quarters or camping or anything that they... There's got to be something nearby. I've got it. I mean, part five,

Juju goes back to Folsom. Jiu goes in. I'm seeing like Indiana Jones music. Find of the century. Give her a whip. Give her a... That is hilarious. Put you a lot of best.

Definitely a best. We go camping in the woods. I mean, these guys are hunter-gatherers. They're on the move. They're 20-some-odd of them and they're carrying everything on their backs. You know, two years after camping a spot on a piece of land, you'd never know I camp there. Right. And I've got a tent and a stove and all kind of drive my truck in there.

They're packing even lighter than that. Yeah. You know, they're not, it's not like they're. The campsites that they find, they're typically looking at fire, you know, charcoal residue. and then just bones and whatnot of what they ate because they were eating meat and then stone points. I mean, like, that's about it. And then if it's in some kind of,

if it's in some situation where it can be preserved, whether it's a really arid place that doesn't have a lot of moisture that gets covered up quickly or if it's in a cave or, you know. But, yeah, I mean, just the idea that we could go back and find where they camped is, to me, kind of wild to think that you could. I can't remember who said it,

but I was pretty taken. by the gentleman's comment that even though you might not have art like cave paintings from this period that their art most likely would have been in songs and stories and yeah so like immaterial art immaterial art so when culture shows up which is immediately when you have us as humans arrive everything you talked about with like being uniquely human yeah it really added a whole another layer on top of the fulsome site for me is clearly these people however it went down they're working together and they're working in mass and you don't have people working together without culture and relationships and stories and that kind of blew my mind it's

like wow that goes all that goes all the way back and you know there were there were other parts of the world where we do have evidence during that time of art and music and stuff just for whatever reason the fulsome hunters and the way they lived we don't have evidence of it which i was introduced to a new term by my future guest, Devon Pedigrew, called Preservation Bias. Preservation bias, though, is this idea that we are only looking at and studying stuff that there is physical material evidence left by. And so we find stuff like stone points and think, oh, man, this whole culture was based around stone points. But that's just the thing that lasted. So what's all the other stuff that didn't last, you know? I loved it so much.

when Steve talked about, he brought up the idea of what kind of a day was this. And it's, think about this, 10,000 years later, we are devoting this, all this time of us talking about one single day in the life theoretically. We're devoting so much now to this one single day. You would have had to have thought that this was a pretty unique day for them. But, Then, like Steve said, if you were just a freezing American household, what are the chances that you're going to freeze it when something radically unusual is happening? And so, you know, his point was this was probably just a day in the park for these guys to go out and kill a bunch of them. You know, we talked about that potentially being a honeyhole.

Maybe that was, you know, September, October. They're there. What do you think, Dad? I mean, do you think this was unusual or this was just normal? This is just what Folsom Hunters did? Well, I don't know. I mean, no one knows. I would think it would be fairly normal occasionally if that makes any sense.

I mean, it's like you hunting, Dan. I mean, some days you have, or maybe every four or five years, you might have 10 or 15 deer come by, you know. And most years, you're lucky to have one or two. But, you know, I think to survive, they had to have days like that occasionally. That would be my thinking. But that would be an unusual, unusual day. Think about the preservation bias of that, though.

The chances of us finding something really unusual would be wildly statistically improbable. Would it not? The fact that we found anything is statistically improbable. But then whatever you, if you find something, there had to be a whole lot of that happening in order for you to find it. So, yeah, I think it's got to be somewhat kind of,

Gary Stee-Jew, if your life was frozen in time. On a Tuesday afternoon. What would you be doing? Praying you out of prison. Gosh, any number of things. Planning for Thanksgiving dinner next year. I could be planning for Christmas next year. Taking notes.

Decide not to make that one cassero. Juju Nukum is a legend where she comes from in the school systems. True. Tell them, Misty. I think the best way to demonstrate this is your trip to the s-fri-bar. Oh, wow. Merry Christmas. No, someone there.

I did. I don't know if that's too off the... Well, I mean, you've opened up a whole can of words about when I... The one time, the one time I went into this bar. The one time, so if we were just to randomly find you... If you would have... 10,000 years later and... Oh!

Clay's remains are at the line bar. I bet that happened once in his whole life. That's weird. This is such a good story. What are the odds of that? Hey, Clay, I have a thought there. I just looked up Maslow's model before we started this. Yeah.

And they've changed it. This is crazy. But when I was in college in the 70s, early 70s, late 60s, Maslow's model. Hierarchy of needs. Yeah, I mean, and the very first one was security. I mean, you don't worry about a four-wheeler. You're not worrying about shopping for Christmas.

You're worried about where's my next meal coming from? And so their whole life, I would say, they didn't move up to that next section of insurance or security or whatever it might be. I mean, they're not for a 9012 our system or whatever you're going to make up next. but totally different in the way we are. You just think it's so unusual that we have so much time to go monkey around. Yeah. I mean, you know, we work 40-hour week.

I mean, what do you do with the rest of that time? I mean, we're out monkeying stuff up. Or what we think our needs are. We live a bizarre human experience compared to the vast majority of humans that have lived on planet earth. I mean, you remember those statistics about 117 billion homeless sapiens that have ever lived, 7.8 billion on the planet today. Ninety-nine percent of humans that have ever lived. There's no demographic data on them because their lives are lost before history was recorded. I remember it, sir. Hey, I remember my dad. I mean, when I was a kid, I mean, it was like,

we didn't have time for all this recreation. I mean, you know, I mean, it wasn't like, you know, We were going out and eat two or three times a week. We know, we weren't. I mean, you know, it was just different. I remember you, so when we, when I was a kid, I remember us going to a piece of property or something, and you were oftentimes looking for a piece of land or something. And we'd talk about the view. You know, boy, this is a pretty view on this property.

And that view gave it value. And I remember you told me, you said, man, back when we were kids, people didn't think like that. Never. People bought a piece of property because they could make a living or homestead on it or, Like they weren't, they weren't thinking about this aesthetic things that we now attribute value to. So when you think about those people, what they did, they got up in the morning and they had their coffee and they weren't talking about some fishing trip like Josh would be doing. They're trying to catch a fish on a fly. It's like, hey, we got to feed the family today.

They would have been using sains. We got to feed the family. Yeah, yeah. Now that's a very, that point is what most impacts me about understanding who these people. were is just they lived radically different lives than us yet were just like us. Absolutely. They were just like us. If you would have took one of their babies and put it into Juju Newcomb's class at her school,

that kid could have grown up and been the president of the United States. And you know, the other interesting. I'm sorry. Go ahead, dad. Well, you know, I just say that we can adapt to anything. I mean, we could actually go back to almost those times and get adapted, get, you know, how we've handled COVID. When they put through me into basic training, man, I could have spent the rest of my life in basic training. I mean, I just adjusted to it.

So hard times, we adjust to it. You know, we look, we set new goals and objectives, and we enjoy accomplishing them. And I think these were happy people. And they love life. You know, when you started describing the things, how would you like to live in this extreme cold weather? How would you like to wear animal stuff? I was going, I like it. I like that.

I like this. And then when you got to the park, now today, I go, I don't like this. I mean, I probably would have enjoyed where. The thing is, is you wouldn't have known any different. That's right. That's right. You would not have had anything to compare it to. They thought they were living high on the hog.

That's right. When I was in college, if I had known that these girls were. going to have cell phones and all this stuff they have, I would have been unhappy, but I wasn't unhappy because I had no idea I'd ever have a cell phone or all the technology that we have today. But are you going to leave your listeners wondering what Juju was doing in a bar? I wasn't there. Yeah, yeah. So this is what happened.

is again, we're talking about how famous and loved juju is in the community down there. And so one time, me and Bear were hunting and we lost our mule. Okay. We're out in public land and the mule got away from us. We were camping. Mule got away from us, ran off. We come back to camp. Mule's gone.

And where I was hunting, the closest civilization was this establishment was this establishment. that was a bar. Okay. And so it was a Saturday night and we hiked off in the dark because I'm not going to go into full detail. You can watch me tell this story in its entirety on the Barney Magazine YouTube channel. And so I was afraid that we were camped way in the back country and it was dark. We came back to the camp, the mules gone. I figured the mules run back to the truck and it's going to be just wreaking havoc out by itself.

And I figured somebody was going to drive by, see a mule with a broke lead road. and think I was dead or something. And so I envisioned, like, the sheriff's coming and looking for me and whatnot. So I said, Bear, we got to get at, we got to go find this mule. We got to go to the bar. I haul my saddle out all the way out, like carrying the saddle on my shoulder along with our whole camp. And get back down to the truck and the mule's not there. Well, I drive to the closest place, which was this bar.

And I go and I walk, it's Saturday night. I pull up. And Bear was a young kid at the time. This was years ago. Bear was like 10 years old. And I go, Bear, if I don't come out, if I'm not back here in 10 minutes, you get in this truck and you drive until you find somebody. What did you think? That was actually a joke.

I didn't say that. What I did tell him was I just said, Bear, you hunker down in this car, his truck and do not answer. I mean, if somebody walks over here to this truck, just hide, okay? There's a rough place. It is a rough place. And so I walk into this bar and I'm fully decked out in Cammo and I walk through the door and the place is just bouncing, you know, with country music. And there's, I don't know, 10 or 15 people there and there's just a classic bar, you know.

And the music is so loud, you can't hear anything. And I walk up to the bar and the bartender pretty quickly comes over to me. And I just go, I just remember I said this almost word for word. This is like a bad joke. My name's Clay Newcomb. and I lost my mule and I'm yelling this okay because the music's so loud I lost my meal and I want to leave you my phone number in case somebody sees it or you find it and you can call me and he goes what he can't hear it so I yell it even louder and by this time everybody in the

whole bar is looking at me and they're all listening and I guess because I'm yelling so loud they all can hear me can we turn the music down you can't do it no I should have said that I should have said, Alexis, turn the music down. And so I just remember yelling at this guy, and he's just like looking at me, just like, and like a guy, two people down from me goes, have you ever been in there before that mule? And I go, duh, the mule's never been back there. And he goes, you'll never find that mule. I remember that.

And then, and then. For all the listeners, the guy is now standing up. I just want to make it clear for you. Everyone listening, Clay, was sitting. Now I'm standing up. And I'm talking to this bartender. And then to my left, like seven or eight people down at the end of the bar, this guy, this guy stands up. And I'm telling you, he was wobbling just a little bit.

And he said, what's your name? And I looked at him and I realized he's talking to me. And I said, Clay Newcomb. And he said, is your mother Judy Nookam? And I go, and like a thousand things are going through my mind. Mainly, why does this man know my mother's name? And I didn't know what to say. I didn't know if we're about to get in a fight.

I didn't know. You're about to learn a deep, dark secret about your father. I'm your father. And so I just kind of bow up and I say, yes she is and he goes his his his his his his countenance

turned from like stern and inquisitive he just kind of like melted into a smile and he said she's my teacher he didn't say she was he didn't say she was my teacher

he said she is my teacher this is a grown man like older than me and he loved juju much that apparently he is like, Juju Nukum was my teacher. I just wanted to be said that straight.

Did you do a lot of teaching in the bars, Judy? No. And so I came home, I went back and I said, I walked in and I said, Juju, boy, they sure know your name down at the bar. And I had a few questions for her. Did you find the mule? Yes. The mule came back to our original campsite.

Was that Izzy? No, it was a mule I don't have named Elie. Ellie. She was wild as the wind. She nearly killed me multiple times. Good reason to get up. Yeah. I warned the guy that I gave her to or that I traded her to.

I told him, I said, she'll kick you and she'll run off with you. I fear that he didn't tell the guy that he, I have not heard from him. You cannot find that man to save your life. I was honest with him. All right. Hey, Merry Christmas, everybody. Merry Christmas. Thank you, Juju, for coming.

I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it. His cookies were delicious. Oh, thank you. Mm-hmm. All right, we got it. Before we send you off on the render today, we got a little song for you. Woo!

Josh Spillmaker. We wish you a Merry Christmas. We wish you a Merry Christmas. We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. We wish you a Merry Christmas, we wish you a Merry Christmas, we wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Good tidings we bring to you and your kid. Good tidings for Christmas and a Happy New Year.

We wish you a Merry Christmas, we wish you a Merry Christmas, we wish you a Merry Christmas, we wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Very Christmas. Our good buddy Brent Reeves couldn't make it to the Render Christmas party. Very sad. But here's a message from Brent. Hey, this is Brent Reeves of the Bear Grease Render. I hate I couldn't be at the party today.

I know it was a good time because there was a lot of good folks there. I got everybody the presents that they wanted. Except for you, Clay. I'm sorry, buddy. they just don't make a Steve Ronella action figure. Best I could come up with was an old naked G.I. Joe we found in the attic that belonged to my son. I made him a suit of a clothes out of a squirrel hide that we were saving the Thai flies with. That's just going to have to do until we can come up with something different.

I do want to thank you guys for allowing me to be a part of this and wish everyone of you and everyone listening, a very, very Merry Christmas. anything. That was terrible. First Light's 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. This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human.