Bear Grease - Ep. 330: This Country Life - Trucks, Boats, and Airplanes

Episode Date: June 6, 2025

Packing multiple adventures into a short period of time can sometimes make a mediocre experience of them all. Brent's sharing a recent trip that had him fishing in the Gulf one day and then in the heart of Texas chasing hogs the next. Two distinct and contrasting activities performed in such a short time span can diminish the returns of each. They key to fun and meaningful returns though, according to what Brent found out, is the people with whom you spend time with. He's also sharing a listener story where a lazy river float trip nearly turned tragic. All that and more on this week's "This Country Life" podcast. Subscribe to the MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Connect with Brent and MeatEater MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Youtube Clips MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Shop This Country Life Merch Shop Bear Grease MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

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 that airways have to offer. All right, friends, grab a chair or drop that tailgate. I've got some stories to share. Trucks, boats, and air.

Airplanes. Unexpected results from a planned outing can test your medal. Scheduling those outings back to back and test your stamina. But good or bad, we reap what we sow and we'll never get anywhere standing still. Sometimes in my eagerness to please everyone and do everything, I overextend and don't really enjoy the opportunities afforded me. I'm going to talk about if that's the case today on a recent trip, but first I'm going to tell you a start. story. Corey Coleman, a crane operator, native Texan, and one of the 1,109 folks calling Oar City home sent in this little jewel he calls the Jasper Disaster, a Buffalo River story. Now, I think Corey's missing his calling running that crane. He ought to be

naming books and movies for a living. He wrote this store pretty good, too, and I'm about to turn it loose. So in my voice and Corey's words, here we go. I'd been itching to see the Buffalo River ever since I listened to the Bear Grease series that featured it. Something about the wildness, the history, and the raw beauty stuck with me. After eight months of talking with friends and slowly putting together a plan, we were ready. The goal float 39 miles through some of the most breathtaking terrain any of us had ever seen. Four couples. Eight people, a mix of kayaks and canoes. None of us were pros, but we weren't clueless either.

When we checked in with the park office, we were told the river was low, but floatable, and that sounded perfect, especially for a group with varied experience. We figured slower water meant fewer surprises. Now, that first night, we set up camp during a lull in a decent storm, and when we woke up the next morning, our first full float day, the river had come up about eight inches. Still floatable, still within reason, but a little faster than expected.

We were optimistic. A little more current, a few less portages, and that optimism lasted about four hours. By then, we'd only made it about five and a half miles. Our goal had been ten. More concerning, two kayaks and a tandem canoe had flipped into rapids. People were okay, but it rattled us. With another storm forecasted, we decided to stop early and set up camp what we thought was safely above the high water mark.

We were wrong. The thunderstorm rolled through heavy but manageable. We thought we were in the clear and finally drifted off sleep until about 3 a.m. When we woke to find our sleeping pads floating, in the span of a couple hours, the Buffalo River had risen nearly 10 feet. It was immediate chaos. We knew the boats were gone, no chance. The priority became clear. We were in waste deep water, hauling packs and supplies to higher ground in the dark.

One guy didn't even have time to get dressed. He was ferrying gear in his underwear. About 30 minutes, we'd moved a week's worth of camping supplies for eight people. One heck of a scramble. By sunrise, we'd regrouped while we started affectionately calling hobo camp. The early light did a lot for morale, and we took stock of what we had and what we didn't. One gal had gone the whole morning barefoot.

No one had dry clothes and the bull nettle, man, we were calling it fireweed by the end. It earned the name. We knew the Buffalo River Trail was somewhere north of us, so two of us set off to find it. Eventually, we made it to Irby and were able to get a shuttle back to retrieve our vehicles. And while waiting at Irby Landon, we met some outfitters who were trying to track down lost rental boats and clients.

We weren't the only ones, apparently, who were caught off guard. By the time we hiked back in, our group had already broken down camp and started hauling gear out. Everything was dried out as best as possible. Everyone stepped up. Nobody complained it was a full-on-team effort to get ourselves out of the woods, literally, and figured to. We hold up at the Gordon Motel in Jasper, Arkansas to regroup and get cleaned up. At the Ozark Cafe, one of our crew spotted a t-shirt that read Jasper Disaster, and it felt like a sign. After hot showers and a bitter reflection, no one wanted to quit.

We found another campsite and finished the trip the best way we could. We didn't let the river beat us. In the end, we lost four. kayaks, two canoes, all of our fishing gear, and maybe 10% of our camping supplies. But we came out of it tighter than ever. This was the kind of trip that could have broken friendships, but it didn't. Made them stronger. And according to Corey Coleman of Orr City, Texas, that's just how that happened.

Well, Corey, I appreciate you sending in your story. That's some great lessons and perseverance and adapting to a city. situation that could have turned dire, making the best of it out of that trial the bonds with those you care about, strengthens. That's one way to know that you're running in the right circle of folks. Thanks for sharing. I have a problem with saying no. I spent a career wanting to be a helper and help folks, but most importantly, I was raised to put others before self. I know I can be selfish at times, but it is the flaw of humanity and something I consciously work on and struggle with daily. There was only one true selfless person to walk this planet, and he paid the

ultimate price for it, which validates Oscar Wilde's saying of no good deed goes unpunished. But saying yes, nearly all the time to folks doesn't have to be at the cost of oneself. And while I have on occasion bore the brunt of coming up on the short end of the stick, sometimes, sometimes it works to my advantage. And such was a recent trip with my friend John Howard. John's a lifelong resident of our town and served our community and stayed as a firefighter for quite a while. He builds houses now, a lot of them, and has a dirt moving operation.

He's quiet, reserved, and he doesn't talk a whole lot. His daughter dances with Bailey at the dance studio, and it was through that relationship that My family became friends with their family. And what prompted the invitation to go fishing? I know you're thinking what's the issue. It's fishing. An invitation to go fishing. Who wouldn't want to go fishing?

Grant, you love fishing. I know all that. But this three-day fishing trip was eight and a half hours, 520 miles away in Venice, Louisiana, which isn't a big deal. I love Venice. And the funny talking folks that live there. Aside from their overwhelming affinity and love for that football team,

I shall not name that they all seem to support down there. The people of Louisiana are my people. I love them all. The issue was I needed to get some podcasts and other non-funn work-related stuff done prior to leaving for a hawk hunting in Texas that would start the following day, the fishing trip ended. Now, that was a hunt with the good folks at Magpull, at the Selmark Ranch an hour and a half from Dallas near Teague, Texas.

Y'all don't start chunking rocks at me. Having to coordinate back-to-back fishing and hunting adventures is a problem a lot of folks would love to have. I'm blessed beyond measure to be where I am. But I have other obligations with this job in my literal outdoor adventures compared to my talking about them weighs heavier on the setting behind a computer screen than stomping around out in creation. I write all this stuff I say on here so I can make sense of it to explain exactly what I'm trying to say.

That means I have to type it. My typing abilities are only slightly comparable to Edward's scissored hands who's probably faster. So I got to work, wrote and recorded two shows ahead of time for my gal Reba. Packed a bag and took off with my friend John for South Louisiana. We skipped breakfast and left later than anticipated. So we stopped in Pine Bluff, eat dinner, what most everyone else calls lunch. Anyway, after our Google search for fish, we rolled up to the underwater seafood on Main Street. It's a family-owned concern, turning out some of the best fried catfish I've ever eaten in a restaurant.

It was good. The hush puppies were good. The coleslaw was good. But what impressed me the most was the man who brought out our food. He stood at the front, greeting people as they came in and visiting with what were no doubt regular customers. When he came to our table, he sat down our food, and before I could say thank you, he said, bow your heads. I was going to do that anyway. I do it before every meal, either out loud when requested or to myself, but regardless of where I am.

But this is the first time I've ever had a waiter, bless my food, and thank us for coming in. I appreciated the effort and the food was outstanding. And it pretty well set the tone for how the rest of the trip was going to go. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps game calls in building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called prime cuts. Now, I'm going to tell you, I love mine because it's easy to use. I'm not going to go, I'm not going to win a turkey calling contest. It's just not going to happen.

But when I run this call, I get. 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' cut,

and I hunt with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts. Check out Prime Cuts at Phelpsgamecalls.com. I think you'll be glad you did, and you'll find out that the Steve Rinella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. Continuing on our trip, we stopped near Gillsburg, Mississippi and visited the memorial dedicated to the members of Leonard Skinner, who were killed in the infamous plane crash on October 20th, 1977. I was 11 when that happened. The band was set to perform in Little Rock at Barton Coliseum two days later.

It would be 10 years and seven days before the survivors of that tragedy reunited and finished that tour. And me and some friends were there in the audience when they did. We hustled through New Orleans and made it to our destination of Venice sometime around midnight that night. We weren't fishing until the next afternoon, so we lacked the area of urgency I usually have on these trips. There was no production schedule or deadlines, just time and the opportunity. to see the sights and fishing environment vastly different from what I normally do with my friend John. We checked into my friend Renee Cross's Cypress Cove Lodge. I met Renee when me and a whole host of meat eater folks were there last October.

It was my first experience fishing on our southern coast and I absolutely loved it. On that trip, we spent two days fishing inshore for redfish and speckled trout. Offshore was for tuna. Holy cow, was that ever exciting? Water's so clear you could literally see a hundred feet deep. And when I was fortunate enough to hook into one, good night, nurse, that was a whole lot like work. I wasn't sure who had who, but in the end I put him in a headlock on the back of that boat

and got my pitcher to it. He wound up feeling the heat of my Blackstone grill back at Casa Day Reaves when that trip was over. Man, what a time. This time we'd be fishing offshore once again, it would be for Red Snapper, no trolling for chummed-up tuna. We fished with Patrick and his son Paxton. Patrick is a friend of Johns, and Paxton, he's a baseball player, just making time until he gets called up to the big leagues. He's filling his hours with elementary school and fishing while he waits. We became friends pretty quick. Paxton and I have a lot in common.

We both like playing outside better than sitting on the couch. And naps after fishing, they are a welcome to activity. The first afternoon, we didn't venture far off the bank, maybe a 40-minute ride offshore to an abandoned oil platform. It looked banding to me anyway. Once we got there, we cut up some frozen fish called Pugies. The proper name I found out is Menhaden. Little did I know as we were cutting up these thin silver football-shaped

and mental-looking fish about the size of a dollar bill, that these were of great historical importance. Historians believe that these were the fish that Tisquanim, better known as Squanto, encouraged the pilgrims to plant alongside their seeds as fertilizer after those big brass buckle-loving folks started tilling up the gardens back in 1620. Here I am, 405 years later, baiting up a hook 1,6404.640.

50 miles southwest of Plymouth Rock, with the descendants of fish I'd only been anecdotally learning about in school when I was Paxton's age. My education has now come full circle. I have now learned everything. Anyway, we were fishing 186 feet deep. That's so foreign to me. That's like that's six first downs plus two yards. In the 105-year history of the NFL, only a handful of kickers have made field goes from beyond that distance. distance, and we were fishing with a 16-ounce weights that took a while to get to the bottom as they free-spooled off the reels. Above the weights, we had two drop hooks rigged. They were on eight-inch liters, and the cut bait was secured with circle hooks that had a point so fine

you couldn't see it. Man, those things were sharp. You dropped your bait, lock in your reel, and wait for a bite, which didn't usually take long. The key to catching them, believe it or not, not sitting the hook when you got a bite. You were just supposed to commence to reeling to let the fish catch himself. Now that was harder than reeling in two-thirds of football field worth a line, which if you're wondering, equates to 155,0006 cranks of a fishing reel or somewhere thereabouts. We filled the ice chest that afternoon in the next day with more Red Snapper, Amberjack, and a possible record Al-Macko Jack that John caught that we misidentified as an amberjack that got himself filleted and is now lying in a state of cryogenic suspension waiting to be revived on my blackstone. It was a fantastic trip called lots of fish, made some new friends, ate a lot of good food, and slept very little.

Three quarters of which would be repeated starting the following Monday about four hours after I went wheeled. down at the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport that according to Mo Bandi in 1976 was the biggest airport in the world. Now, if you don't know who he is, do yourself a favor and let Google tell you how Mo got his heart broke there 49 years ago. Anyway, I was meeting up with my colleagues, Matt Miller, and my boss, Garrett Long for a nighttime hog hunt on the previously mentioned ranch, guests of Magpull, and hosted by Kevin Reese and Jeff Hamilton. The majority of the next 45 hours would be spent behind a rifle either at the range, shooting footage, and steel targets, or in the field shooting footage, and pork chops.

The first night I sat in a blind with Dwayne Liptack, a former fighter pilot and bronze star with valor to vice recipient for his actions on the ground during the global war on terror. Now, we poked holes in a couple hogs before the sun lit up the other side of the planet, and when it did, we sat in the dark, scanning the field for more baking factories. I was glad the pilot was there. He was going to come in handy when it came time to land the box blind that we were sitting in after the thunderstorm that blew up pounded us with high winds and big fat rain. I just knew at any minute we were going to be airborne and flying nap of the earth to a yet-to-be-determined

new area of operations. Fortunately, the anchors held true, and the only thing that got wet was us as we abandoned the blind and got in Jeff's truck. The most dangerous part of that night was the ride back to the house with Jeff. Ah, I'm just kidding, Jeff. No, really? I was terrified.

I'm not sure Duane had a scary flight in Afghanistan. I'm kidding, Jeff, kidding, Jeff. No, I'm not kidding at all. The next day was more than the same, minus the high winds and storming. The rides with Jeff varied from between driving Miss Daisy and fast and furious, much like the hog hunting. Long periods of time in the field spent waiting on something to happen. A lesson in patience.

All hunters learn to accept as time for relaxation and deep thought and reflection. Opportunities really to learn more about yourself, and if you're fortunate enough to be spending that time with someone who's volunteered to put his life on the line for his nation in any capacity, an opportunity to learn more about why they do that. I've seen the same thread through all of them that I come to know in the military and first responders who outdoors people are not, and regardless of religious affiliation, political beliefs, or ideology about foreign affairs, all held true to a similar idea of others before self. It's not hard to recognize the sacrifices that they make, but

it's hard sometimes to see the prices that they pay. Folks, I had the pleasure of being in the company on both of those trips, make me appreciate even more how blessed I am to get to do the things that I do. Keep company with the people I get to spend time with, doing things and being in places with people we all find important enough to protect to the last measure. Now, that's what makes me say yes to just about everything. I met some pretty incredible people and shared some incredible adventures because of it. No good deed goes unpunished? No.

How about no great reward comes without a little sacrifice? Just like Corey Cole, our protagonist in the first story and John, Duane, and all the others in the second, and everyone listening. We all at some time in our lives have been or will be asked to step up and do something that we didn't plan on or sign up for. Or we will volunteer or say yes to an invitation that turns out better for someone else. But life isn't measured in an upset float on the river or a lack of rest on the river. or a lack of rest on a series of sleepless trips. The measure is the journey from start to finish and a trip without obstacles.

Well, that just makes for a shorter, more boring ride. Father's Day is next week in my case signature mini-trapper pocketknife and the new This Country Life merch is online at themeatater.com and at the store in downtown Bozeman for all you folks that may be vacationed in the trip. treasure state. Stop by and see my buddy Alex Zimmerman and his band of untouchables and they will hook you up.

Thanks for listening to us here on the Bear Grease channel, home of history, science, and buffoonery. Until next week, this is Brent Reeve, signing off. Y'all be careful. First Lights Fieldware collection is made for the work that happens long before opening day and continues when the season ends. products built for early mornings, full days, 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 fieldwear gear at firstlight.com.