Bear Grease - Ep. 332: Render - Real Estate Scams, Short Pants, and The Southern Outdoorsmen

Episode Date: June 11, 2025

In this special episode of the Bear Grease Render, host Clay Newcomb, Bear Newcomb, and Josh “Landbridge” Spielmaker are joined by Andrew Maxwell and Jacob Meyers of the Alabama-based Southern Outdoorsman Podcast as they share some of the highs and lows of creating their popular hunting podcast. Clay shows off the Ben Rogers Lee box call gifted to him, and also talks about a new devious real estate scam. If you have comments on the show, send us a note to [e-mail] Connect with Clay and MeatEater Clay on Instagram MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Youtube Clips MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Shop Bear Grease MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. First Lights field wear 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 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. All right, I have a very, very strict agenda today.

Very strict agenda. And I've got to go through a list quickly so that we don't forget anything. Got it. We're ready. We're going to talk about... Nobody talk. We're going to talk about real estate. I'm just going to hit the high points.

I don't want to foreshadow too much. We're going to hit... We're going to talk about real estate. We're going to talk about Ben Lee. We're going to talk about money laundering and cockfighting. And Josh, you know how much I love you, right? I don't like how this is being set up. We're going to start off the podcast by me asking you why you decided to wear your kid clothes today

and not wear pants like a grown man. Well, let me explain this to you because there are men who hunt and there are men who have real jobs and they take people fishing. This is my work uniform. This is not kid clothes. This is my work uniform. And you're lucky I don't have sandals on, flip-flops on. Yeah, I wouldn't.

That's my working for. You couldn't have that. You look good. I know I look good. I don't know that you've ever worn shorts than a render. I've worn shorts on a render hundreds of times. Oh, you haven't. We're going back.

After this, guys, we're going to sit down and we'll watch every render we've ever done. Yonis Futellis thinks there's something wrong with me because I do not wear shorts. When I go to the gym and run. Honest Patelis wear shorts all the time. I know. We honest, usually when he's around me for more than a couple days and I don't wear shorts, he's trying to like psychoanalyze me. It's like, Clay, tell me about your childhood.

And I tell him the story. What do you wear at the gym? I tell him the story about when I was at the bow shop in Mina, Arkansas. I remember the man's name. I remember the man's name. I can tell you his name. He's probably still alive, so I won't. and I remember there was a picture of me on the wall with a bow.

I had won a bow tournament, and he said, who's the chubby little kid in the short pants? Are you Scott? Is that what Janus was able to, like, dig out of you over time? Actually, I don't know if I told Yonis that. But I found it to be pretty good advice for life. So you look good, Josh. I took a buddy, I took a buddy fishing recently, and this guy is like a cowboy.

I mean, he's a real cowboy. And I was like, okay, let's go fishing. And I go to pick him up. And he comes out in his wranglers and his cowboy boots and his button-up shirt. And I mean, he was ready to, I'm surprised he didn't have spurs on. But I mean, we went fishing. And he's in his pressed wranglers and cowboy boots. I like it.

I like it. So Josh is a trout fishing guide. Oh. If you need to go trout fishing in Arkansas. Josh is your man. I'll be honest, when I first fetching, that's what I thought. I was like, he gives off that kind of guy. The guy's got his working on, didn't you?

Yeah. So we have two guests with us today. We've been trying to do this for a while. This is Jacob Myers. This is Andrew Maxwell. Yes, sir. From Alabama. From Alabama.

And so you guys are podcasters, Southern Outdoorsman podcast. Yeah, it's been a long, crazy journey. It's been fun. Glad to finally be here. We have talked about this for a while. We have. We have. Hey, just a quick note on the shorts.

Jacob almost wore shorts and flip-flops this morning. And he saw him be putting on these jeans, and he's like, you're wearing jeans? I'm like, yeah, I'm a grown-up. And so he put those on. We just got, or I just got back from fishing in Venice, and we were tuna fishing for a couple days. And I'm like, that's the first time I've worn flip-flops in years. And I'm like, man, I'm like, I'm kind of feeling it. And I was, yeah, anyway.

So I'm like, probably I shouldn't wear that today. Plus, I'd be freezing. You would have had an advocate, man. Josh, if I would know you're on my side, I would have done it. Well, it is comfortable, but it's just... What do you wear to the gym? I do wear shorts at the gym when I go.

You're going to have like paparazzi now trying to get pictures of you in shorts. Yeah. Well, you know, just functional, functional is what it's got to be. That makes you think of about me. Well, we're going to talk about what you guys do, but I've got to go through my list. We've got to talk about real estate.

I want to tell you all a story. I heard this yesterday. Tell me if you've ever heard. heard anything like this. This happened to, this is not like an internet story. This happened to my friends. Like I know the people this happened to. And I actually heard the story from their daughter. So like the story happened just like this. There was a piece of landlocked property in a state that borders Arkansas. A piece of landlocked hunting property that's been in this family for several generations. no really bad access, no houses.

It was just a hunting property. Guys had trail cameras out there. There's a group of the family that had trail cameras. They randomly, in May, they still had batteries in their trail cameras from deer season. And one of the family members who lived out of state just decided to check his cellular cam. pulls it up and sees a truck drive past the gate. Bear, we go hollert that dog. Yep.

Give him a good one. We're leaving this in. This is just part of life. You tell a lot about a man, by the way, hollers that's dog. So he sees a truck drive by, and he texts his relative and says, hey, I like your new truck. And the guy goes, my new truck, what are you talking about? And he said a white truck just drove by yada yada. Well, they don't think much about it.

They go out there and put a padlock on the gate or something. And two days later, two trucks drive by. And they get the license plate. And they call the sheriff. And they say, who is this person that are trespassing on our land? The sheriff runs the plate. And it's a local realtor who's in on this land. And he goes, what are y'all doing in there?

And the realtor goes, is a small town they kind of, I knew each other, you know, and the realtor goes, sheriff, that land is being sold and we close in five hours. And the sheriff calls the family and goes, is your land for sale? And the guy goes, no, the land is not for sale. What are you talking about? And they say, you know, whoever is a good realtor, they're going to a closing in five hours on that. you know, 160 acres or something.

And it is a scam where people from somewhere find, like, obscure land with nobody living on it, that has tax records that, you know, somehow they're able to be like, nobody's paying attention to this land. You know, it's been in a family for generations. That's one thing where, like, they just think, like, people have forgotten or people have forgotten. or people have moved off. Like if it changed hands three years ago, you know somebody's paying attention. And they forge all the documents,

put it up for sale on out-of-state websites. So it wasn't for sale in the state that it was in. And somebody from, some family from Colorado was going to buy the land and move there and build a house. That's crazy. So I've heard that on a podcast. podcast and on social media that that's happening right now.

So that's really interesting that you just had that story. Yeah. Because I'm like, I haven't personally heard of anybody that had it happen to them, but that's insane. How do I get in on this? That brings up money laundering. Oh, I was kidding. That is on the list.

That's crazy. It truly is. And they were able to stop the closing, obviously. But they were told that if it had gone through, and the money was like completely lost that they probably would have had to have fought like in court to I mean it would have been a massive ordeal between the people that bought the land like it seems to me like it'd be like

well you just flushed your money down the toilet like this is our land but they apparently it would have been harder than that which would have just been crazy but the realtor wasn't in on it no that's my understanding so who's benefiting like how how is that that money getting back to the people that it... Well, I mean, they're the seller. The seller. The crooked seller.

Interesting. We just get the money and then I'm sure they got some elaborate plan to make it disappear. Wow. That's crazy. What a nightmare for the people that were trying to buy it, too. Because what if you bought that land and then someone shows up and they're like, no. Well, I mean, they're the people that would lose. I mean, because they're the ones that would have all the money would be gone.

So anyway, I thought that was an astonishing story. Just crazy. But, yeah, I thought about, I mean, I can't imagine a human that could live with that kind of, I mean, we all know there's crooks and thieves in the world, but like you think about some guy just like you pass in Walmart that you don't know. Yeah. That would have stolen $250,000 from somebody, just literally stole it from them. I mean, somebody, it was a, it was.

It wasn't like some overseas deal. It was somebody from here that really knew the system. Nobody's stealing $250,000 for me. I can tell you that. Because I ain't got $250,000. Well, okay, that's part one. That's part one. This is part two.

Are you guys familiar with Ben Lee? Oh, yeah. Y'all would be from Alabama. Oh, yeah. Very familiar. What's Ben Lee's reputation in Alabama? Everybody who's like a died-in-the-world turkey hunt. knows like all the Ben Lee stories.

Yeah. And he's like an icon in Alabama. Almost every single person we interviewed in Alabama this year about turkey hunting brought up Ben Rogers Lee, all of them. And then we found out that his son is still living and I think still selling some of his turkey calls. And so we're like, we ought to track him down and get him on the show. But yeah, he's huge. Yeah. Yeah.

Is he, is his reputation good? Long pause. Yeah. I mean, with the turkey hunters, yeah. I don't know. With some of the maybe state officials and stuff. Yeah. Yeah.

And that's the thing. And like, we know some guys who hunted a lot with Ben Lee and did a lot of seminars with him. And he said he'd all, you know, none of the stories he ever told supposedly were true. But he liked to move. Yeah.

And move a lot of stuff around. Yeah. Like, he'd be doing seminars. And like one of his, like, jokes he would do in his seminars would be like, the best turkey sign is a no trespassing sign or a posted sign.

And like, there's a story about him saying that. And the director of wildlife. and freshwater was sitting in the audience. He just got up and walked out, you know? So there's a lot of stories like that. Yeah. Or having spray paint tennis shoes.

We're some white Nikes or white new balances, spray paint them green just so you could run if, you know, that lane over finds out you're on the property. Stuff like that were some of the stories. Yeah, yeah. He was pretty rough, rough around the edges. So, yeah, apparently the turkey poaching culture goes way back in the southeast, apparently.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, so we did an episode, a couple episodes back, it was called Confessions of a Former Outlaw. So we interviewed this guy who had hunted with Ben Lee and had spent quite a bit of time with him. And our guy was a former outlaw. Had a real shift in his life.

And that was kind of the story. But he started talking about Ben Lee. And somebody, well... Aaron Mansfield. Aaron Mansfield. Where is he from? Probably Alabama. Yeah.

Aaron Mansfield from Alabama, just a listener, sent me This is a Ben Lee box call Which these are hard to come by And it's signed up Ben Lee. That one apparently Belonged to Ben Lee Like that was one of his calls and he gave it away Wow He gave it to his neighbor

The dude just sent it to me But sounds good I mean I didn't chalk it I just like picked it up And it actually sounds really good And it's called a twin hen Because I think the other side sounds Quite a bit different

He also You guys need to check him out This APM Woodworks. Yeah. He made us two nets, actually. I was about to say, he's from Georgia. That's right. He didn't know if we were talking about the same person.

But yeah, yeah, he makes these beautiful hand nets, man, all custom made with inlay for the fishermen in the group. Yeah, he's a great guy. We met him at a trade show. And, yeah, he sent us a couple of minutes. Yeah, he's a great guy, man. Okay. So he made us some nets, and I feel bad because we don't have trout in Alabama, really. I used it on some croplies.

I was going to say, you can send them to me. I feel bad about using macrophy fishing because he's got a trout laden in mine, and I'm like, dude, I just feel, I feel terrible using this for a different species. Very talented. Yeah, isn't that's crazy? What else is on my list? I've lost a list. You lost the list? The list is lost.

Cockfighting. Well, okay. It's just come up a lot lately. You want to go in on some? I would like to have fighting roosters. I don't want to gamble. I don't want to fight them. You just want to have them?

They're beautiful, beautiful animals. And I could take you about any direction from right here. Is it the same way in Alabama where you'll see people that are raising, fighting chickens? I got some trailer parks in Alabama. I could take you to if you want some. Yeah. Well, I don't want to fight. I don't want people to be confused.

Like, people could hear me talking about outlaws and think Clay, an outlaw. I'm not perfect, but I'm the furthest thing from an outlaw. You might think my interest in cockfighting as like,

oh, Clay wants to cockfight. Nope, I don't. I just think that I think it's, I think it's an interesting sport and it, it, it's just been coming up a lot. So I'm working on

a potential episode about cockfighting. Oh, I'd listen to that. Because there's some, there's some, I mean, it's a, it's terrible. Like, I'm not trying to say that it's good.

But, so... Are we going to have, like, voices, like, the voice-changing thing, like, they do on these exposés? Yeah. That'd be awesome. Yeah. John Doe. Yeah. Wait, so what's so different about it?

They look different? Are you... They're just... They're just big, big pretty roosters. Okay. Are they, like, aggressive to people? You get you like a home-defense chicken? That's pretty much...

I think they're pretty much aggressive to anything. Yeah, you're probably right about that. There used to be a turkey here on this property that was pretty aggressive. We've had some mean foul on this place. I mean, if you showed any kind of weakness at all, that Tom would come and just attack you. If you were a female, it was coming after you. So we had a, it was a wild turkey. We didn't like gather it from the wild, but it was bought as an Eastern Wild Turkey.

It was tame. We started out with seven. and we ended up with like three and so it was a gang of Jakes that were running around our house free we just let him run free and there was a gentleman that came here quite often, dear friend of ours

that had had a stroke and limped really bad. If you twisted your ankle and man when he would get out of the car like a normal person get out of the car Turkey doesn't doesn't do anything when it saw that guy limping

they would just just come over there and stretch and just they would attack him that's terrible and then when Misty's grandmother would come over here

no white-haired lady you know kind of slow when little kids would come over here if a little kid would get out of the car

and run out in front to the house before their parents boom I'd be on people People's cars when they left. You know, they're like come in the house and they come back out. Smoking cigarettes.

Turkeys are in their car, you know, like scratching up the paint. Like, hey, we're really sorry about the turkeys. Anyway, they ended up getting killed by our neighbors. I actually shot them thinking they were wild turkeys, for real, like half a mile from here. It was a different era. 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 Phelps gamecalls.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. You guys both from Alabama. Did you grow up in Alabama, Jacob? Yeah, I did.

I've lived all over the place, but from Alabama, yes. What's your, like, tell me about your, Well, first of all, y'all are full-time podcasting? Yep. Both of you. Yep. That's pretty incredible. Yeah.

That's good. It's been a cool journey. It's been, it was never a goal, first off. Never a goal. Just kind of happened. So it was like the decision of, there was one point where we're like, either we need change something with the podcast or we might not be able to continue the podcast because of how much time was taken with our careers. Yeah.

And I made the decision like five years ago. I drew a Iowa, late season Mosler tag, and I ended up losing my PTO time at work. Some stuff had happened. And clocking in, clocking out stuff. Anyways. So you didn't clock in or clock out for seven months. I was present. I was

working at my career. I was 100% commission. So I was there making sense. What did you do? So I was working in the field. I'm going to ask you the same question, Andrew. So I sold prearrangements for funeral arrangements. Oh. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So that's what I did for a handful years. And anyway, so I was there doing what I needed to do. But anyways, just wasn't going through

the whole clocking clockout system. I lost my PTO time. So I drew that tag. And it was getting to like second week in November and the hunt started in December. And I'm like, I'm not not going. And I talk to Andrew. I was like, hey man, like, you know, talking some financials with the podcast. And I thought I had talked to you previously, Andrew, about like maybe leaving. And all of a sudden, like, I was like, I just got to go. Like, if it doesn't work, I had money saved, if it doesn't, if it doesn't, work out, I'll just go back into that career path or get back into sales. I love sales. And I ended up going, going out there, killing a buck, spent like 12 days out there, killed a buck, came back, and never looked back. And that was 20.

You quit before you left. Yeah, I quit. Yeah, correct. You quit the funeral home. Quit the funeral home. And never been back, been doing the podcast for the last five and a half years. Are you okay talking about your career in the funeral industry? Yeah, absolutely. Okay, because that's way more interesting than anything that's happened yet. Andrew, help me here. I got details to add to this. Well, I've always, when I've been to funerals and seen people there, I've always wondered, how did you get here? Like, how did you choose this?

How did you get in the funeral industry? So I was doing previously before that, I was in medical sales, and I'd lived in Nashville. You just went to the dark side. That's one way. I've never looked at it, that one. That's a good point. It's like, we're either going to help people live or we're going to help them when they're dead. Okay.

Well, that's one way to look at it. So I was doing that for, I did that for a couple of years. I was living in Nashville and then got transferred to Atlanta, Georgia, and then moved back to Birmingham. When I got back to Birmingham, wasn't working for the company anymore. And I was trying to find something else sales-wise, and it just came across, like, it was a friend of a friend was talking about it. And I'm like, because you had to be a licensed insurance agent in order. Because how the policies are held, it's held through a whole-life policy. Really?

So that's how the funding goes into the account so that when you pass away, everything's taken care of. So I was like, oh, that's kind of interesting. I was thinking about doing insurance anyway. So I went and applied that interview and they're like, yeah, you're hired. Started talking to people. And one thing I liked about more so than when I was doing the medical industry, in the medical space, I was talking to imaging directors at hospitals and stuff. And it wasn't very personable.

It was very much bottom line, who can get me a certain piece of equipment at a certain price, and that was it. When I was in the funeral side of everything, it was very much like you built relationships with everybody you were working. working with and helping through hard times and make sure everything was taken care of. I was not. Andrew keeps joking. I was a grave digger. Which I was not. Never touched that.

Never touched. Never touched the show. I was always working with the spouses and everything else in family members. But I really enjoyed it. But I did that for a handful of years. So, I mean, I don't know what all you want to get into. No, that you answer my question. And I knew there would be a real answer.

But that, I like it, that you were, you actually. actually saw it as you were helping people that were in a difficult time and the relationship. Yeah, because I'm amazed at, I mean, there's something about human death that's close to you that alters your life. I mean, that's an obvious statement, like people dying is significant in your life. But even beyond that, like, I like for my kids to go with me to funerals. I think sometimes people are like, I'll protect the kids from that. We're going to go. I've always in like, come on, let's go. Yeah.

And it's just like a unique moment in people's lives. So interesting. Very interesting. Yeah, it was one of those things like getting dealt with so many hard situations with, you know, all kinds of stuff. You know, children passing away, very elderly, people pass away and everybody in between. Yeah. And working with families, it was tough to work in that environment. But it was something that at the end of the day, making sure that just the family was taken care of.

and everything about the arrangements were situated in a way that gave them more peace of mind was fulfilling on that. But it was, dude, it was a lot. But it was one of those things. So I was doing that. And the problem with that career path, not a problem, but one aspect of it, was you're working typically six days a week, and then every other week you would work 13 days straight, you'd work a whole weekend and the whole following week as well.

So it did not lend me very much time at all. I think a couple years I was there, three years I was there, I probably hunted. a total of maybe 10, eight to 10 times a whole deer season. We have a very long deer season in Alabama. And after a while, I get to the point where it's hard for me to do the podcast. I was living my life through the podcast,

interviewing these guys that got to hunt all the time. And I wasn't getting able to do that. And finally, you know, with the Iowa tag, get me and we're like, okay, I'm bouncing. So what year was that? That was 2020, it was 2020? Maybe. I think it was 2020.

I have no idea. Yeah, it was 22. That's when I killed that first year was 2020. So when did y'all start? your podcast. The Southern Outdoorsman started in October 2017. We're about to go to Wyoming. Me and Jacob were buddies.

I think we were both in college at the time. He might have just dropped out of college. Yeah, I was out of college. Oh, he dropped out of college. Oh, that's very interesting. He was trying to get me to drop out too. He's like, hey, there's this medical sales thing. I used to work at a bow shop in Birmingham,

and he came over there, and he was there for like four hours talking to me on my shift. He's like, dude, you need drop out and do this? I didn't do it. But anyways, yeah. What was the question? I forgot. When we start the podcast? Oh, yeah.

It was October 2017, started the website, and I was doing it for like a blog because I wanted to get into outdoor writing. 2017. 2017. And I was like, I don't know, 18 or 19. I had like no business writing for like a field and stream type magazine, but I was writing for local magazines at home. And I was like, well, I just need something where I can put stuff out there and like publish

my own stuff and get reps and kind of build a portfolio. So I started that over the next couple months and people were like, hey, y'all ought to do a podcast because we all liked, you know, wired to hunt and a meat eater and people like that. We listened to those. But there was nothing for the southeast. And so we're like, we ought to start something. And I approached Jacob about it. And he was like, absolutely not. Not interested. And after a couple months, I wore him down. And in February 2018, we started the actual podcast. Okay. Yeah, $50 microphone from Amazon. Man, I remember when y'all started because your name stood out to me because at the time, there was so little media, podcast media, specifically coming out of the southeast. Yeah.

For real, wasn't it? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. No, that's why we started it. I mean, because we wanted something. Like I mentioned Wired to Hunt. I enjoyed his show a lot, and he did a great job with it, but he was talking to so many guys in, like, Iowa, Michigan. Yeah, Midwestern.

Yeah, and they're talking about cornfields. I'm like, I don't have a cornfield within 50 miles of my house. else. It's all, it's pine farms. It's all pine plantations. So we just needed, we just tried to go create what we wish was already there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Do you guys ever think about what, like, so they'll look back in history at some point, should the earth persist? And they'll say, wow, podcast really blew up right there. Um, because they have. They're like, everybody's got a podcast. Like, it's a flooded market. what service i mean and i know it's like you could say well you know we relay information but

have you ever thought about like on a broader scale the impacts of podcasts like the what is it what will they say about us at some point well it depends but like the one thing about podcast is a way to be able to get out information very very quickly to the masses as long as the masses find that show no matter what the conversation is i got a lot of my news from some of the different podcast because how quick they can turn stuff around. And some of the hosts I listen to, they don't really have a certain lean to it. They just kind of tell you how it is, which is really nice. But even the outdoor space, you're able to get so much information out from hopefully reputable

individuals and people that have a lot of experience that you can share that with other people and help shorten learning curves. And that's really what we do. We focus very much on the educational side of everything. But, I mean, like you said, a couple hundred years from now or whenever, they start talking about, you know, if podcasts is still a thing or a conversation. or maybe they changed to a different name, it would be interesting to kind of see how everything's progressed because the one thing we've noticed in the last three to four years is that the movement towards

video podcasts, this is not just audio. And people are now, you know, they're not, they don't have a TV, they're not subscribed to cable TV or anything like that. They're watching on YouTube. They just have YouTube at the house and they're listening to podcasts or watching stuff on YouTube. And now with podcasts being on YouTube, people can watch at the house. And that's the thing that's really blowing us away. It's how many people are actually watching the show, not just listening to the show. Yeah. Yeah. Also, with us specifically, we try to focus a lot on just woodsmanship, and I don't know, some people call it the old-fashioned way of hunting with a lot of people. We try to interview a lot of older people for that exact reason, like 50 plus, you know,

especially like really older people. Like we've had a couple 80-year-old guys on the podcast. Yeah. And I like to think that one day people look back at that, and it's kind of like an archive of what was hunting like in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, earlys. early 2000s, especially now with how technology is. I mean, who knows what it's going to look like in 20, 30 years. And so I feel like we're kind of preserving that a little bit. Yeah. You know, there's never been access to this type of information before in society. You know, like, that's, that's to me what's interesting about podcast. I don't take, I don't, I, like, don't take any, like, pride in being a podcaster. Like, I don't like to, I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm

not a podcaster. Like, I don't, I don't, to me, that's not a, that's like being a used car salesman almost. Like, I don't, but the, the access to information and, and the, the informality of human conversation being recorded is unprecedented. I mean, like, all media from all, all time has been curated. Like, like, I mean, think about the 1960s. You could not have consumed.

media that wasn't planned, intentional. I mean, whether it was a game show or a radio show or tele... But like, informal human communication, like, there's something to it that's significant. Well, that and also not having a time constraint put to it. Like, if it's on television, you know, depending on what the show is, you know, might be a quick little interview with somebody

for eight minutes and then they're off to the next subject. Yeah. On podcasts, I mean, you can run as long as you want. We don't do this anymore, but there was time. back in the day, we've had multiple five-hour-long podcast. Oh, my Lord. And it was sit-down interviews. Maris-on.

I mean, and looking back at it, I'm like, we were insane. How many people actually got to the end of us? I don't know. I don't know, but it's their form if they want to go check it. Five hours. But see, a lot of the stuff we did with the podcast was very much for me and Andrew. As in like, we were curious, talk to these people and curious getting some questions answered and learning more about the guests.

Right. And it was never so much like, oh, what would do good with the audience? It's very much like, what would we like to hear? and what are we interested in it? If the audience mimics that, then great if they don't. That's perfectly fine, too. Yeah, they don't have to. And, yeah, that's how we've ran it for the last eight and a half years.

Now, we don't do the five-hour podcast anymore, but we have done that in the business. So, Andrew, how did you get, you kind of told us a little bit how you got into us, but what obscure careers have you had in your life? I mean, in college, I just, I worked at that bow shop. I did night shift, Home Depot. What did you go to college for? I was trying to go for forestry. Oh, I got a good story for you about that.

that actually. I was going to go to Auburn for forestry. And I went to a community college in Birmingham to get all my core class out of the way because it's cheaper and I could live at home. And so I was doing that. And for summer, for forestry at Auburn, you have to do a summer practicum before you go into your junior and senior year. So you go and it's kind of like the like forestry boot camp or whatever. And it was my last semester before I was supposed to go to practicum. And I had this music appreciation class that I had to go do because they make you do that. And it was in turkey season.

And I thought the final was on Thursday. And so on Tuesday, I went turkey hunting. And then I showed up Thursday and there was nobody there and I missed my final. And so I failed and that lowered my GPA and I couldn't get into forestry school.

No. Yeah. And then I had to spend a year taking throwaway classes to get my GPA back up. I just talked right there. who in your life did you have to tell that story to and they were real disappointed in you? My mom. She was thrilled.

She was just thrilled. So then when I got to Auburn, they had just introduced a new program called geospatial and environmental informatics. Makes me sound smarter than I really am. But it's just GIS maps, data in like with forestry and ecology. So I was like, well, I like maps. I'll do that. and I didn't have to go to the summer practicum so I could get back into the school of forestry earlier. So I went to the school of forestry and did that.

And then when I graduated, I was trying to go into some kind of wildlife of forestry-related field. And I ended up getting a job doing, you know, like call before you dig 8-1-1. Okay. I was doing that in Alabama and I was the GIS guy for the 8-1-1. Both these guys are into digging. So, yeah, I managed a database. I sat behind a computer for a while. How long did you do that?

like four years, four and a half years. When I got out of college, I started doing that. And that was when the podcast was starting to get serious now. I graduated college in 2020. And right after I graduated is when Jacob quit, his job and started doing the podcast full-time. And so I was like, you know what? I'm just going to stay at this job until I can go full-time. And so that's what I did.

And I went full-time last year. It took me a little longer. Oh, so you were in full-time. You were full-time first. Oh, yeah. A couple years before. I was thinking it was the other way. Yeah, no, no, no, he went full-time first.

Oh, single prangle, man. I saved money, and I was living dirt poor for a while. Yeah, that's one thing I was going to say. Jacob didn't, he didn't like, not to get into his finances or anything, but he took a- How much money do you have? Dude, he took a gigantic pay cut. I don't want to say what he made the first two years, but it was not a lot. Yeah, because I don't even know how he lived on it.

Yeah. I'd save considerably at that last job, but it was. dude we're making money with the podcast but very like not enough money for like i didn't think either one of us could quit but then he just did i was like we'll figure it out hey penburn jelly sandwich it's for more man yeah that's some deer meat so yeah well i admire you for that man i mean it it you know some people people talk about people that are in the outdoor industry full time and there's sacrifices i mean there's been i'm sure there's been good stuff that's happened to y'all that wasn't your fault you know i mean something just good happened on its own i know that's been it's the way for me

I can't take credit for being able to do what I'm passionate about. But there are conscious sacrifices that you made that got you where you're at today. And that's like when we've had conversations with like Cuzz Strickland, we were talking to him about that. And he's like, everybody's in the space. If they started taking it seriously, they had to make some kind of sacrifice like that. It's a leap of faith. You don't know.

I mean, and I had the confidence. I'm like, if it doesn't work out, I'm just going to go back to doing what I was doing beforehand and I was good at it and just can get back into that space. but it was one of those things that once you got into it and you started making more content, I'm not saying everybody trying to go out and be a content producer or creator, because I don't even think of it that way. I look at like we're trying to add value now to people's lives and help shorten learning curves. That's like really what we're trying to do.

And also telling the stories and adding some entertainment mixed into it. But I mean, every time we do this, like we're traveling right now for nine days, interviewing a bunch of people, it doesn't really feel like work. I mean, it's a lot of work, especially behind the scenes and the editing the producing and all that kind of stuff. But we enjoy it, I mean, to the utmost degree. And Andrew, so Andrew, I'm a little bit different. So I'm not married, don't have kids.

Andrew's got a kid, a two-year-old daughter, and he's been married now for, I don't want to put you on the spot, because Tiffany might listen to this episode. Like six years. Like that. Right around. That's good. That's good.

So he was really trying to work with her on making sure that we can get everything taken care of so that he could go full-time. And then she was actually just now able to quit her job to be a full-time stay-at-home mom, which has been awesome. Oh, that's incredible. Yeah, man. American Dream, baby. That's great.

Yep. Now, y'all been doing this for eight years together. Mm-hmm. You all have navigated partnership. I don't really know, I don't know this, but I know this. How do y'all, usually partnerships don't work out? Usually if, like, two people go in the media together as like, you know, I want to say equals, usually that breaks up. How have you all managed?

Anything with more than one head of stuff? Is there any mediation, the reason I bring it up, is there any mediation that you need me and Josh to do between you guys? Jacob, I'm going to have you go first. Tell us the thing you hate most about Andrew. No, it's a serious question. How do you all manage just like being partners? So we've heard that from multiple other people in the space that have done the same thing. They're like, dude, it never worked out.

A lot of it, I think, comes down to personality types. and also are both of you bought in to the same level? Because if one's real casual and one's trying to take it real serious, it's not going to work. If both are super serious to the point that they want to do it their own way, it's not going to work. The thing about me and Andrew is it's a mix of like, we take this very, very seriously,

but also like we're both very humble and we'll listen to each other. Like Andrew has plenty of ideas. I'm like, that's fine. Like, dude, it don't have to be in my way and say anything vice versa. So I think you have to have that in order to make it because that is true. I mean, Andrew's wife jokes with us all the time that, like, it's almost like me and him are in a marriage because, like, we spend so much time together and working together that, like, just like a marriage, like, you're going to have arguments and stuff, but you've got

to be able to work past it. And the same thing with a business partner that you're working a ton with. Yeah, that's exactly what I was about to say. It's like a marriage. And it's just like, you know, sometimes, like, I slack and he has to pull the weight. Sometimes he slacks and I have to pull the weight. And you just have to be willing to do that with somebody. Yeah, yeah.

And be forgiving about it, like, whenever the other person messes up or whatever. because, I mean, eight years, I mean, we've had our shared disagreements and stuff, but I got a good story on that. Oh, God. So the second time I went to Iowa, okay? I went to theirs. Oh. Anyways. So I was, this is it.

I was there for 14 days, okay? And completely neglected everything I had to do for the podcast. And Andrew called me a couple times, and he was living. I'm talking about upset, man. And after, because I'm like, I was so focused on killing a big buck. and I was hunting with my uncle and we were driving me we were hunting a bunch of the evening

and we were scouting bird hunting and a bird dog we were pheasant hunting quail hunting the mornings and the deer hunting the afternoons late season and when I got back me and Andrew Andrew had a conversation with me

because he's like dude you cannot do that like that is not going to fly like we can't do this because responsibilities and everything else like that and really you gotta have like a humbleness of like not being super selfish that oh I'm full time

now I can go hunt all the time because that's not the case like there's other stuff that has to get done were you ever get in the woods. So, yeah, that was a good lesson for me. So how did you, how did you take the rebuke? Did you get mad at it? No, not at all, because I'm like, it's rightfully so. I mean, dude, if you do that to me, I'd be upset too, but I was so hyper-focused on hunts like that. That is, man, he just got in the way.

Wow, that's pretty, that's good. I mean, that's the word through conflict. That's the key right there, because that's one thing about him. He's always been like that, and I try to be like that as much as I can, but, you know, like, if you mess up, just own up to it, you know, and that'll get you far, especially, you know, whatever you're doing. Yeah, leave your ego at the door. Yeah, man, that's great. That's like a high-level humanness, for real. Just being able to get along with people.

And surprisingly, it's difficult for a lot of people. Why are you looking at me like that? Yeah, you sure. That's the reason I brought these two guys here. So we need to mediate between you guys. Exactly. Thanks for asking. Okay, Josh.

Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps games. 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 Phelps Game Calls.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. One thing I wanted to bring up just because I thought you'd find it a little interesting. So I actually, so I lived in Arkansas for four years. years. I went to Subiaco Academy. That's right. Oh, really? Private school up here in northwest Arkansas. And at the time, we had a hunting program. They don't do this anymore, okay? But we could have firearms at school. I was living in the dormitories. Those were the good old days right there. And we could have, we couldn't have center fire

rifles, but we had 22s, muzzleloaders and shotguns. And we would go hunt. The school has a bunch of acres. We would go hunt all the time. Like, I'd play sports, but if I didn't have practice or something, we were going hunting. I got in so much trouble. So one day, I was going to tell you this story. So this is, this is, great. So it's a Bend Dington Monastery. So there's monks on campus. They have a monastery there. And one of the monks who was overseeing the hunting program, he came to me one day and he's like, hey, y'all want to go rabbit hunting. I'm like, yeah. And we had gone rabbit hunting with him and some other guys down on the river with some beagles. He's like, well, we got a bunch of rabbits around the barns on the property. He's like, just get your shotgun, get your buddy Marshall, go down there, go hunt.

I'm like, cool. So we'd go down there. With the monk? No, no, he left. No, no, no, we'd go unsupervised. Okay. Like, he'd go check, we'd check out the shotguns, whatever, get ammo, and, uh, walk down to the barns and the barns are close to campus. Like, barns are like, maybe 300, 400, 400 yards from campus. We'd go down there and there's just cotton-tail rabbits everywhere. I'm just shooting them. And like, they weren't running or nothing.

Like, we'd shoot them. Round sliding them with a 12 games. Yeah, like, it was like, you just walked, or anyways. So we got like six or eight of them. I started going around the hill, and the school's up on a big hill. We started going around the hill, kind of falling rabbits. We got all the way to, like, a cemetery right there. and killing some rabbits.

And at one time, I was like, we are very close to school buildings, but it's like, it's okay. Like, you know, brother I just said we'd come down here. We ended up going back, cleaning the rabbits on one of the park benches on campus, took the shotguns back, put the shotguns away, but sort of cleaning rabbits.

We had a lunch lady that would cook us wild game. So they don't do that anymore either. Wow. But like if we... Thanks to you? Probably. Yeah, well, so we'd run trot lines. They had a bunch of ponds that we'd run trot lines on.

We'd fly fish and we'd bring. I'm back in the lunch ladies with cooking for me and my buddies. That's cool. But the next day I go to class and the principal comes in and me and him were pretty cool. Like I'd go send in his office

to him a good bit and he came in. He's like, Hey, Jacob, I need you to come to the office real quick. I'm all right, cool. So I went to the office and I was like, hey, what's going on?

And he's like, well, tell me about this rabbit hunt. And I'm like, what are you talking about? And he's like, well, I got reports that you were shooting rabbits on campus yesterday. And I'm like, well, brother, I kind of went to like, brother, Richard told me, I'm like a 15, 16-year-old kid at a time. And he's like, yeah, you can't do that.

And I lost my hunting privileges for the rest of the year. This is like I've read, I think small game rabbit season, I opened summertime October or November or something like that. And lost the hunting privileges for the rest of the year. And I got Saturday detention for it for, I think, a month, me and Marshall both. But anyways, got in a bunch of trouble. And I was like, come to find out. I learned this later.

There was another monk on campus. that, I don't want to say his name, but anyways, he was going out there and feeding the rabbits. Oh. Brother Adrian, which I'll mention his name. He's a fun guy, older guy. Actually, he was old when I was there, and he's still kicking a great guy. I saw him a year ago. They weren't getting along, I guess, a whole bunch.

Oh, no way. So we went down there and shot some rabbits that he didn't want rabbits around the barns and stuff like that. But it was one going to hit out on his fellow monks rabbits. That's why they were just standing. Oh, yeah, exactly. They were like, oh, you're going to come feed me. Oh, no. They just didn't realize he was going to feed him a shot.

Yeah, so number seven shot. I mean, yeah, exactly. Wow. But, yeah, we hunted a bunch out there, had bows. I had kept my bow in my climber underneath my bed in my dormitory and all my camo and stuff under there. It was a fun time. Wow. Subiaco.

We played Subiaco. Yeah, we played Meena a bunch. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I actually not, it wasn't Mina. Oh, it wasn't it. I broke my arm playing football. Oh, really? Yeah.

Yeah. Wow. Crazy, man. Good times. Crazy. That's a good story. So you guys were the people that introduced me to Pablo. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. What an incredible guy. I love Pablo. Now, how did y'all meet Pablo? Pablo, kind of like he was talking about, he got to know all those good deer hunters up where he lives, like Tony Myers, Michael Perry, Daniel Williams, Jamie McKay. these are like local legends in Alabama. I mean, just killers.

And they all kind of live in the same area. Well, those are a lot of the guys that we interview. And we had some mutual friends that also knew him. And we kind of knew of Pablo. And then he came to me at the World Deer Expo, like, I guess it was three years ago now. That's where I actually met him, met him. And I talked to him for 10 minutes. I mean, he had me in tears.

He's hilarious. And I was like, we've got to do a podcast with you. And then late last year, we finally made it happen. And, yeah, it was just. And he's so fun. We're going to take him on a deer trip this year somewhere. Oh, nice. We've got to get him in a deer camp.

Yeah. Yeah. So he's one of those guys that he's so humble because of like where he came from, the opportunities that when he came to the states, he's like he wanted to get into and it just still as a sponge soaking up information. And he's fun to be around because he's super positive. No matter how bad the situation is, super positive. Like our buddy Daniel Williams, who did the episode with us, Pablo,

they hunt a bunch together. And they're just telling all these different stories of all these clubs. close calls, not like close calls killing animals, but close calls like flipping kayaks over and an alligator infested river and like getting bit by snakes and all kinds of stuff. That, I mean, Pablo, he, he's such an interesting guy that first off, when we did the episode with him, a lot of people were like, where is he from? Because of his accent, they're like, is he Cajuns? He from?

It's like South Louisiana. I'm like, no, not at all, man. But, but yeah, just like a guy like that, it's nice to meet somebody who's, you know, not a younger guy by any means, but is someone. who's still so hungry for information and is willing to go out there and grind and go, like his first couple of years hunting, never even saw a deer. Yeah. And like, but still kept going.

And it's like, man, it's amazing to hear those stories. He's so respectful that he earns other people's respect. I mean, like, we've got, we know guys who've taken out in the woods, taking him out in the woods, scouting, like, just trying to show him stuff. And they'll be like, hey, drop a pin on this. Like, you can come back here. And, like, Pablo, like, doesn't even have his phone or something. He's like, I'm not going to steer your spot or anything.

Yeah. Like, just very respect. Like, like, he does everything the right one. and people just appreciate that. And so it, like everyone loves Pablo. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Well, he was, it was, it was cool having him on this podcast. So, yeah. He was so excited, man. Yeah. I was like, I called him. I was like, guess he was just asking about you. Yeah.

Man, he was so excited. So, yeah, he's a great guy. I love to see it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, cool. Who, I want to ask both of you a question. Who and all the people you've interviewed would be like, People ask me this all the time, so it's a fair game.

Favorite interview you've ever done. I think we, like, I'm going to take the easy one and just say it's got to be episode 116 with Glenn Solomon. Glenn Solomon. Glenn Solomon. He's a gentleman from South Georgia. And he was one of the guys that kind of showed us what direction we should go in. It was episode 116. I always tell people it took us like 100 episodes to figure out how to not suck at it.

And when we interviewed him, it just, just like it really clicked and he gave us great information and uh we started getting success stories from it we started having more success but also right after we interviewed him he passed away like three weeks after we released the episode uh and so it kind of gave us the perspective of like hey we got to record these people's stories and everything and and that that episode kind of changed the game for us and it kind of gave us a direction that we should go was he like really technical in the way he described hunting or was he a good storyteller or was he a character he's a he's a good old character just South Georgia Woodsman.

He's not talking about like, you know, all this crazy technical stuff that you hear about in like mobile hunting today. He's like, man, find you a thicket, get up in there, you know, do whatever you got to do, that kind of thing. The interesting about him, he was a, he's the one of the only guys we ever met in the southeast who was successful being a bed hunter for bucks on public land

and killing the fire out of bucks. Because I think it's two state tags you get in Georgia. And then there have bonus buck hunts on different WMAs where, like, you can go for that day or that weekend and get an extra buck tag if you kill one, and he'd kill five mature bucks in one season in Georgia on like four different pieces of public land. And most of them were like bed hunting roughly.

But he's just doing cool stuff. Like he was hunting those long-leaf pine savannas where the long-leaves aren't super tall yet. And all the grass underneath him is four or five feet tall. And he was talking about taking a bar stool in there and sitting on top of a bar stool in the middle of that stuff just so he could barely see down into that grass. Wow.

And killing deer that way. Wow, that's cool. It was just like ratcheting. a couple of small pines together so he'd get a tree stand on it. You know, it's just cool stuff like that. Wow, that's cool. And he was also an outdoor writer,

so even though he had real country drawl, he was very well spoken. And his riding style kind of mimicked that. And his family, when he passed away, he ended up putting a lot of his stories together that he had written for all these articles into a book form, which was really kind of cool as well. It's called Hunting on the Fly.

Yeah. Glenn Solomon. But selfishly for me, just so that changed my hunting was a gentleman. He's a gentleman from Alabama. His name's Ron Waters. We call him coach. He's old football, baseball coach in the state.

He's in his 70s, and he is a turkey killing, publicly in turkey killing fiend. And I learned a lot from him. He was kind of cut from that old school cloth, third-generation turkey hunter. His granddad got killed turkey hunting in 1939. Had a guy killed on National Forest with a shotgun. mistake 10 for a turkey. So he's got a ton of family heritage of turkey hunters in the state of Alabama. And his big thing that he really was talking about in the episode with us that was impactful for me is what he calls covert calling.

Like, you know, you got all these guys in public land. You know, they kill a lot of birds early in the season being loud and aggressive. But after a certain point, like it's not going to work as well. And being a little bit more of a soft call or being a little more patient can play huge dividends. And I started doing that. And it was unbelievable like a light switch had changed for me. So, but yeah. So I'll take a little bit different angle.

but we've interviewed so many different guys. The problem is we've interviewed so many guys at this point, we're at almost, I think, 700-something episodes now, that it's hard to remember everyone unless we've had them on multiple times. There's some guys we had on, you know, one time five years ago, and unless someone brings it up, like, I kind of forgot about the episode because we have so many. That's a lot of episodes. Yeah.

So it's been amazing, though, because again, one thing, especially when it comes to deer hunting, one thing I've learned after we've interviewed so many guys, is there's so many different ways to be. be successful. There are some guys that are big into scent control. Some guys absolutely don't care about scent control. Some guys are like mo hunting rub lines. Some guys like hunting scrapes. And they'll talk like, oh, you can't do this one thing because it won't work. And then we interview somebody who's like, no, that's what I do and have a lot of success. And that's one thing I like about white tails. To me, white tails specifically, it's so much based on your confidence

level and experience that mold you to who you are as a deer hunter. And that's how you kill deer. And it's not necessarily like someone else that's out there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Wow, I didn't know y'all had that many episodes. Yeah, man, it's a lot. That's a lot. Yeah, I think today we released 692 on the day we're recording this. That came out this morning, so yeah, we're about to hit 700. Wow, that's great, man.

This is one of those things that, like, the journey. One thing I really enjoy is just talking to so many different guys from different parts of the southeast in the experience level, because there's some similarities between guys, and there's some that, like, their upbringing is completely different. Like, we interviewed a guy in North Carolina last year, Western North Carolina, who didn't get into deer hunting until he was, I think, 31, and he's like 35. He's killing the fire at a big deer in the mountains, both of the bow and a rifle. And his background was rock climbing and like long distance hiking.

And he took that endurance athlete perspective into white tail hunting and had a really good mentor hunting public land and just took up on it and killing big deer in areas that like aren't. They're known for big deer but have very small population size and herd densities. and he's going out there killing big deer every single year. And it's amazing just because you never know who you're going to talk to and what their background is. Because I didn't grow up in a hunting family. Like my dad specifically never hunted. I got in hunting through my mom's two brothers.

And they were big deer hunters, casual turkey hunters. And that's how I kind of get the itch to go hunt. And then when I was Subiaco, it was like full-fledged. Like I can go run wild and go hunt like crazy. And then college it was like exponentially more because I found out about public land. Yeah. That's cool, man. Bear, do you have any questions for these guys?

When we talk about the Anzik child? So what are you guys hunting most? I know you said white tails, but what do you do personally like to hunt? It depends on what time of year. You ask me that? Yeah, yeah. Because in the spring, it's turkey, in the fall, it's deer, but I really would like to kill a bear at some point.

So I think I'm going to try that this year. But, yes, it's white tails, man. Do you guys have a bear season in Alabama? Not yet. I think we're getting there. Yeah, we're getting close. I've killed a bear, mule deer. I still love white tails, and I love turkeys.

It's one of those things like I traveled a little bit this year, turkey hunting. It was an absolute blast. And my biggest thing is I like the adventure of going other places and seeing new scenery, even if it's the same species. Like, we've hunted white tails in Wyoming, and it was wild because we're out there, and it's like finding white tails, getting on white tails, killing white tails. But we're so far, we're 29 hours from the house, almost 30 hours from the house, but you're still hunting an animal that act similar,

but the habitat is completely different. And I love that aspect of just what we have the opportunity here in the United States is you can travel all over the place. If you have a little bit of funds, and if you want to sleep in your truck for seven days, you can do that and have that opportunity. But yeah, I love white tails. Yeah.

I've killed one bear in Arkansas. Oh, really? Yeah. And killed a bear. My brother was going to school up here in college, and he started running some cameras on one of the pieces of the public up here. and he was trying to find deer and ended up just every camera he had in this one canyons system

had bears on it like every day one of the cameras would have a bear on it he went out there killed one with his bow and then I came up here for the muzzleder hunt and opening day of muzzler season seen two bear killed one and had an opportunity at a buck and I'm like I know that never happens like Clay your dad told me that as well because I texted him about it I was talking to Mo about it too and he's like that does not happen

so I'm kind of just like I don't know I want to get back in a bear hunting the meat was delicious, but it was one of those things that that blew me away because I'm like, I wish we had that opportunity in the deep south, but we don't have that currently. We hunt a little bit of everything too, though. We both have bird dogs. What kind of bird dogs? I mean, like for pheasant or ducks or quail?

He's got a GSP and I've got a small monster lander. And actually, yesterday my wife picked up our new English setter puppy. Really? Yeah, just got an English setter yesterday. Are you going to train the English setter to quail hunt? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I actually have wild quail.

We have some. I actually just joined a hunting club by my house, and it's a timber company, and they've started doing mitigation areas on it where they're reestablishing some bottomland hardwoods and stuff like that. And I keep jumping quail out there. I've been out there a couple times. I've been jumping them. But we got a lot of woodcock in Alabama.

That's our main bird. When you get a good push of them, because they're migratory. When they're here, it's awesome. When they're not there, they're not there. And I'd rather travel with my dog. I've gone to Montana, a hunter, Iowa. Wisconsin. Wisconsin was fun northern Wisconsin hunting grouse. Rough grouse. And then eastern Montana was unbelievable.

So that's the cool thing, is kind of diversifying what we like to do in small game hunting too. It's like, that's why it's southern outdoors, not southern deer hunters or southern turkey hunters. It's like there's so many opportunities for to be able to be in the woods and hunt. It's like, don't just do one thing. 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 sweet, that 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 darkness. Because out here, there are no witnesses, no cameras, just fragments and the people left behind trying to piece them back together. He's not an honest person.

He's incapable of being honest. Somebody somewhere knows something. I'm Jordan Sillers. Season 2 of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, Iheart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. So these guys were able to listen to the podcast. So the last, well, it was actually two episodes ago, right? That we had the mystery of America's oldest bones.

And we had the one filler episode, not filler, but we had Lake Pickle and T.L. Jones on. Special render there. So this one is coming out then. But, man, my wife makes fun of me, like ridicules me for how much I talk about. this kind of stuff. But, you know, the Ice Age, Paleolithic people, who were the first Americans,

and now the Anzic Child. Pretty fascinating to me. And I love having really qualified guests. Like Dr. David Meltzer from SMU. I mean, I don't really know the hierarchy of archaeologists and anthropologists in America,

but I mean, he's probably at the top of the heap in terms of his specialty, which is the ice age, stone age, and like who was here and what they were doing and stone points. But he's a fascinating guy and a really good communicator. It's like he's a really good communicator. And so, y'all listened to it. What stood out to you? What was most interesting thing? What did you learn? Would you be interested in stuff like that? I mean, like, when you listen to it, where you're like, ah, this would be cool or it won't be or this boring? I didn't know really what it was going to get into until the conversation really got started. But to me, the most

fascinating thing was the ghost gene in South, and I think it was Southeast Brazil, where they found a gene that connects to or is associated with Australia, but it's not really found anywhere else in Central and North America. It's like, well, how did that get there? And Andrew's like, maybe those boys did have some boats and some wild boys get together and started paddling. But, I mean, the thing is, is, I think everybody, especially if you're an out, even if you're not an outdoorsman. You're fascinated with how North America got populated and how just these early humans settled all across the globe and specifically across North and South and Central America. And it's one of those things that's like, there's so many questions because it's so old.

And Andrew made the comment about like the Anzic Child when they found it in the 60s with the backhoe. It's like, we found that, but we can't find evidence of Bigfoot. What's going on? Yeah, that podcast kind of ruined Bigfoot for me. even more. I'm like, how can we not find Sasquatch bones, but we can find this 15,000-year-old bones? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, the

data points we have seem so obscure to me. That's what's so wild. I mean, every time that I, as I learn about archaeology, which I wouldn't have any formal training in it, so I'm learning all this stuff, and I'm always amazed at, like, some dudes were out digging

with a backhoe and found that. You know, and then all this academic science builds around this, like, one data point, you know, and it's just astonishing. But going back to the ghost population. Yeah, when I heard that, my first thing was, well, do you think people came over on boats? I actually asked him that. And he was like, no. I mean, a lot of those, a lot of times those guys aren't always real certain about stuff. but he was so certain about it

I mean the guy's spent his career understanding this stuff but I mean basically I understood him to say that we pretty much know when people develop the technology to be able to float across huge oceans and it was like thousands and thousand I mean way before that

but where'd they come from I mean I told somebody I was like it may have been by accident somebody floated across the ocean on a big log yeah man and a woman i don't know you know i mean it's like it is such a it is such a mystery no it is and that's the fascinating thing about it and that's why like i know a lot of these researchers have up until the data they have

now like as much confidence as possible and what they've found but it's also like the randomness of them finding that child like what's what's what's the the stat and the statistic of that actually happening. Like you're just digging one hole doing whatever kind of ex-fation you're doing and you find that one thing. And you made a good point about like

tilling up like the whole earth and like trying to find. But it's like it's not possible. Yeah. And you know who knows what's like. And how many, if you know backhoe operators, how many backhoe operators could see a stone point from the cab?

Exactly. And stop and get out and look at it. And not have just completely ruined it. Yeah. Yeah. So it's just like how many of those things have been ruined or not just not ever not I mean and the answer is thousands and I mean some aren't in existence like the bones just were in a place where they decayed and they're just like literally no longer human bones but certainly there are other human specimens of that age that just never were discovered by science you know well you brought up a good point when he was talking

about the the dam builders and the guy found that clovis point yeah and you're like I bet the Ambuilders appreciated that. And he was like, no, it didn't disrupt it. But, I mean, you hear about that all the time where maybe it's a farmer, maybe it's this or that, but they uncover some bones or something. And they just toss it in the river because they're like, I'm not dealing with this. Yeah. Because it's true.

Whatever regulations might come with it. So that's a good point because I always think about that. I'm like, man, there's probably been, like the best ones maybe even, but the best sites are probably lost due to things like that. Either people not even realizing it or people maybe realizing it and just want nothing to do with it. Well, it's like the bone yard guy up in Alaska that's been on Rogan that has this incredible place. It's a gold mine. Literally.

And who knows what's on that place. It just sounds, the guy possibly he embellishes it a little bit. I mean, he loves to kind of like stir the pot. But I have no doubt that it's an unreal place that for the most part is not been studied by, by, the establishment of archaeology. Well, and I think Rogan's talked about it, because I've listened to all those episodes, which I can't remember the guy's name,

but when he comes on kind of at the end of the year, last couple of years they've done episodes. It's a small area that they're excavating. I think he's like, because only a few acres in size of like all the property the guy has. So it's like, who knows what else is out there. Yeah. It's astonishing.

It's astonishing. Yeah, I love the subject, though, for real. Every time I find a stone point or a tool or a flake or anything like that. I just, I love that stuff. Because we went and found a bunch of arrowheads in Mississippi this year back in January on a buddy of ours property.

And, I mean, they're everywhere in that field. You find, like, a little bitty high spot in that field, Mississippi River drainage. And, I mean, they're literally everywhere. Walking around, we're finding little, what do they call them, like, seltz or whatever, like little axe heads. Oh, okay. Points, like big, giant points, little bitty points,

and everything in between. And I'm like, these guys are hunting, too, like, right here. And this is where we're, like, I'm hunting that tree line over there. And here's this point where some dude was here, I don't know, a long time ago. In the middle of a beanfield. Yeah, it's in the middle of a bean field now. But back then it was like, you know, who knows what it even looked like. Yeah.

What's that to you, Andrew, in the whole, in the podcast, anything stand out to you? The part where the guy was talking about that Clovis discovery at the dam site. Right. And he was just saying, like, hey, it's out there. And if you know where to look, you can find it. And I don't know, that just kind of. That was really cool to me because I've spent a lot of time listening to that kind of, you know, subject. And I try to find it.

Like every time I'm in the woods, I'm looking. Like if I'm in a creek, if I'm in a field or whatever. And that was just, it kind of makes you think there was probably, I don't know, maybe not talking Clovis, but after Clovis, there's so many people around making stone points. Like, there's just no telling how many. I read a, I think it was a book one time talking about early settlers in the east. and when they started plowing up the first fields, you know, on the edges of rivers, and they were talking about just how many,

like they didn't like the arrowheads because their horses would step on them and get hurt. And they were talking about the big, giant, long, flat arrowheads skip the best on the water. And it's like nowadays, you find that, you like frame it and put it in your house, but they're like, oh, it's one of these things, skip it. So it's like, what's been lost?

Yeah, that's incredible. Or what's, I live next to a lake in Alabama, and all of our lakes are man-made flooded, and a lot of those sites are underwater. because they flooded, you know, those, the river and creek confluences, and you have a nice little high spot, high flat spot right there. There's almost always a sight on it, and a lot of it's underwater now, whether you're talking the lakes and rivers in Alabama or the southeast or even the coast,

because the ocean used to be lower. Someone's what's under the air. Yeah. It's cool. Wow. You know, to me, there was something peculiar that stood out with the Anzic Child because they linked this. this Stone Age human back to Northeast Asia.

And we've always known that. Like we've always thought that's where Native Americans came from. But it truly wasn't until 2014 that we were able to actually say, well, modern Native Americans here, they can trace their genealogy back to there. But we didn't know exactly the sequence. So to find this 12,700-year-old human and then go, they came from Northeast Asia was like this confirmation of what we already knew.

And this is what stood out to me. So I randomly talk about this. I don't talk about this a lot. I'm in the process of writing a book. The reason I don't talk about is because it's so far out. It's ridiculous. This book will be published in 2035. But there's this idea that this anthropologist,

came up with back in 1926 is when he published the paper on the on the what he called the circumpolar bear cult okay and basically he was studying the people in the boreal forest in the northern latitudes you know because i mean you know the globe has similar like asia and north america and even northern europe all has similar boreal ecology you know and as he studied he was in bear ceremonialism, basically like how these ancient people interacted with bears. And I won't go into all the detail, but he found oddly peculiar bizarre similarities in the way that all the people around the earth talked about, had stories about, had, yeah, here's one, this will give you one odd, odd example. In all these indigenous stories, they talked about how bears

suck their paws in the den to get nourishment to be able to hibernate through the winter. It's just a random thing. He found that all the way around the boreal forest, that's what all the indigenous people kind of were in their lore. And basically, the circumpolar bear cult, his thing back in 1926 was that all these people were connected culturally, even though they would have never, it's like how did the people in northern Europe, how would they connect? to people in North America.

And basically, the Anzic child confirms that they actually were physically connected. So like some of the biggest indigenous, the most wild indigenous bear ceremonialism

comes from northern Japan. There's these people called the N-U, A-I-N-U. And the stuff they did with bears, It's just bizarre, raising them in pins and fattening them out like cattle. And they did that in North America, too. But anyway, when I heard that, like, yeah, these people in America are from Northeast Asia, I was like, I could have told you that because they all said that bears suck their thumbs in the den.

You know, like you can confirm things culturally too. Anyway, just a long-winded way to. See, I've always been fascinated, and there's only so much information out there, I've always been fascinated with their hunting style back then because he talked about that that woman had a like the dietary right down was similar to like some kind of cat because they're eating so much large mammal meat. Right, right.

I'm so fascinated with like how do they hunt and especially if there wasn't that big of a population of people, how did they keep from getting super injured and just getting killed all the time and be able to populate? Because like that's something that I find. super fascinating. Just as a hunter, it's like, how do they bring down some of these large animals, these large mammals? Yeah. Well, I mean, they probably had a 30-year lifespan. And, I mean, the population was small. I mean, you know, I mean, just think about, they don't know,

but, you know, I mean, think about, you know, 50,000 people spread across all of North America. I mean, that's like an incredibly small population of people, but enough to, you know, like, keep it going if you had a 35-year lifespan, you know, and kids were dying. And, I mean, you know, but. Well, that and also, he was saying that there's been no evidence found of any kind of inbreeding or anything like that. Yeah. So you're thinking about if there's like these small groups of individuals, you know,

for a generation and they're traveling, at some point you think that would happen just because the lack of people. But, like, again, they haven't found evidence of that, which is fascinating as well. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So this is what I was going to say about the ghost population.

and the study on how much these people were carnivores. It's so hard. Every time that you learn something, you learn that it's like, but some people don't buy it. Like the whole ghost population, there's a whole group of people, and I don't know how credible they are, that have that thing completely figured out,

and they believe it's an error in the way that we read genetics. so so like melzer who and you know you can just like kind of trust the expert you're standing in front of at least that they've like done their homework and and i trust what he says he believes it he thinks the science is legit there's a point i'm going to make about what you just said too that i didn't i thought about saying the ghost population it's there but there's skeptics well so there was this so with the anzic child these people modern people period the reason I emphasize it was a peer-researched academic paper in this reputable journal is that they published it and they did this deep isotope analysis. And basically they said that they can tell what the mother was eating when it breastfed this child. And that she was a carnivore. And her diet was most similar to the bones of a scimitar cat, which would have been killing large mammals.

There's a caveat, and I didn't say it on the podcast. Those guys that wrote that paper, as I understand it, sold, they were heavily invested in the Blitzkrag hypothesis that man was very involved in all the Pleistocene extinctions. And basically, they used that paper to say, man killed out all the big game, which is a political play of just like, it's a political environmental play

about how a terrible man is. And anyway, so like, actually, Meltzer said it so I can say it. I just didn't put it on there. When I told him about that study, he was like, eh, yeah. They think they know what that mama ate, essentially is what he did.

So anyway, so I put it on there because it was so dang interesting. And there are legitimate people that think it's credible. But anyway, it's just like when you're talking about, and I think this is what's most fascinating because I love it. I think what I find interesting in modern times is kind of our hubris of how smart we think we are. And then when you really dive into stuff, you realize even in modern times we can fly to the moon. We know about the rings of Jupiter. but, you know, as Barry Lopez says in his book, Arctic Dreams,

we know more about the rings of Jupiter than we do narwhals. Like, there's all these things that we like, we don't really know. And when you're talking about deep human history, man, a lot of times we're just kind of guessing. Yeah. And that's, I love that. Oh, yeah. Because mystery remains in the earth. I mean, it's like we hadn't figured it all out.

But that's what I like about a story like the Anzic child is just like the mystery of it. I was fascinated by hearing the whole thing in the grand scheme of things of what made those people migrate so fast. You know what I mean? Against the odds. I mean, it was not a favorable environment to be able to migrate across this vast amount of land. And just, you know, it didn't seem like there was a shortage of food. Didn't seem like there was a shortage of places to live. what caused them to move across the country so fast.

Yeah. You know, and like Dr. Meltzer said, he's like, our job as archaeologists is to make huge assumptions on very little evidence, you know. And it's, it's, it kind of blows your mind to think about, but it happens. You know what I mean? We have evidence that there are people all over at this, at this point in time. And I just, I find the idea of, of humans moving down the Pacific coast very, very. interesting during the Ice Age there that was I mean just try to imagine that

yeah you know I said on that podcast and obviously I didn't I said it kind of tongue and cheek in a way but I said what if there's a technology one day in the bones of humans that will tell you their motivation yeah you know like like because if you would have said a hundred years ago that you could in someone's bones yep be able to know

what their mother ate when you were breastfed. I mean, it's like you would have been like, that's witchcraft. And then, and, who knows? The thoughts of our mind, like, you know, stress can cause you to die. Happiness can cause you to overcome actual physical ailments and live longer. Maybe that's inscribed in our bones. Yeah. And one day they'll be able to be like, hmm, it looks like Andrew's DNA.

and he looks like he had a bump of stress in 2017 when he started out. He had a bump of stress when Jacob went to Iowa with him. They'll be like, hmm, it appears if a business partner went on a very uncalled for absence. Looks like it happened in the fall. Oh, man. On the migration thing, too, by the way, something my brain just kind of ties it back to, they think that the people moved across this big giant landscape and like relatively a short amount of time talking Alaska

to the southern tip of South America. And you just think about those people migrating and moving. It's not the same people that walk from Alaska, but through generations, they were in, you know, rainforests, deserts, yeah, prairies, rocky mountains, and it's just all the different places. It's like, imagine if you were one of those people that was nomadic and migratory,

and you went from like Montana to Mexico or something in your lifetime, just the amount of change in the animals that you'd be hunting, the habitat that you'd be living in, the scarcity of resources between, you know, if you're in the Pacific Northwest versus the desert. Right. I don't know. That's fascinating to me.

Do they have any idea of how many generations it took for them to get from Alaska to South America? I asked Meltzer, and we just kind of passed over it real quick, but I initially said, did they do that in like a couple, of generations and he said no no no no not a couple and i said 5 000 years and he's like no no no way faster than that i mean you get the i got the impression it was a couple hundred years yeah yeah that's what i'm getting at too is like that's not a long amount of time really no especially when you don't know where you're going you don't know where you're going and you don't have like a headlamp or

anything is there a lot of evidence stacked on like the panama canal there because i mean like so many people like everybody would have funneled like you're deer hunting that's where you put your stand. If you were man hunting, if you're plasticine man hunting. Imagine when they were cutting the Panwall Canal and anything they might have found that they're just like disregard it.

Yeah. Because of all that excavation. Yeah. I mean, in all honesty, I mean, that's a great point there. Well, I mean, but in the tropics, everything just bio-recycles so quickly, the only thing that would have been left would have been lithic points, you know, stone points.

Yeah. But I thought it was fascinating when he said that in Europe, we have just copious amounts of, maybe not copious, but like there's lots of ice age, human remains, animal remains. In Meton, Aaron, a former podcast guy, he said that they have all kind of human mastodon kill evidence in Europe, but here we have very little. And basically Meltzer said, well, it's because there were so many,

people there. Like Europe was, there were way more people there than there were here. But, I mean, it's just, I don't know what it is. I mean, we all know what it is because we all feel it, like people that are connected to the land, especially through hunting. When you think about North America, from Alaska to Florida, from, you know, northern Canada down into, you know, old Mexico, there being like 5,000 people on the continent. I mean, it's just like, it's just like.

it's just hard to fathom. Yeah. Hard to fathom. What everything even looked like, too. Because one thing he said that kind of caught me off guard was that those artifacts are below like nine meters of dirt. Yeah. I'm like, oh my gosh.

We're not going to be fine in many of these. Yeah. I mean, that's insane. Talking about people navigating the landscape. This book, I'm reading a book called, or a real. read a book called Arctic Dreams. It's about the Arctic. And they, he was talking about how when the Westerners came to the Arctic and engaged with what they now call Inuits at the time they called them Eskimos. Still, some people call them Eskimos. He called them Eskimos in the book.

He said that the Westerners felt like the, the Inuits didn't have a good sense of direction. Because when they would talk to them, they would be like, hey, how do you get? from here to here. And the language differences, like they could interpret what was being said, but the way they thought about the landscape was so vastly different than the Europeans

that they had a hard time communicating. But in the book, he shows a modern map of this intricate peninsula that's surrounded by the ocean. And it looks like southeast Alaska or something with like just unreal coastline.

And they showed a real map of this peninsula. And then they show a map of a hand-drawn-by-memory map drawn by an Inuit man sometime in the 1800s when a guy just said, hey, draw me a map of, and this is like a 1,500-mile-long area. And the accuracy of the hand-drawn map by memory it was unreal. I mean, it looked almost the same.

I mean, and my point is, when people are turned loose on the land, people that, I mean, we've lost so much. I mean, the human ability to navigate land, to find food, to understand natural systems, I mean, it just unreal. But just thinking about,

You know, it'd been interesting if you could have asked these people generations later who were in South America, draw a map of this continent from the stories of where you came from. I bet they could draw pretty decent. I bet they would draw a big landmass that got real skinny and then open back up. I mean, because that's what, they would have known that. You know, they would have known there's an ocean over there and an ocean over here. Anyway, just all that's so fascinating. Yeah. Well, I was actually talking to some guys about this previously that with the implementation of newer technology in the last, say, 15, 20 years, truly how bad, not everybody, but a lot of people's memory is because you don't have to remember as much as previously. Just when I'm like growing up and remember phone numbers.

Yeah, yeah. Now it's like all on your phone and like you just don't even think about it. You just click it and go to their name, their contact. And it's like, imagine like those, everything was by memory. And it's like, it's something that like, it's harder like even think about of how good probably their memory had to be in order to not only navigate, but also communicate with younger generations of where they've been, where they're going and things around them. Because it's all memory. They didn't have any other way to, you know, document it. I think that's probably a modern person's biggest Achilles heel.

What if all the contacts in your phone got erased? It's like, how would you call your wife? You know, it's like, yeah, we don't remember. That's a good example. Yeah. Well, hey, guys, we've been going for an hour and 22 minutes. Any closing thoughts? I really appreciate you guys coming up here.

Nothing. I mean, I don't really have any other than, it's great to kind of see the studio now and spend some times with you guys. Because, I mean, the thing is, it's awesome when, you know, we can see each other maybe once a year or something like that, but also be able to spend some time together and get everybody's different thoughts on, like, topics that we've done. discussed. I love this. The reason why I love podcasting is because it gives you a chance to express this that you might not be able to do in other settings and be able to document it. So,

no, we would just appreciate it, Clay. Yeah, man. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't have much to add to that. I appreciate it. It's really cool to be here. Did you say something maybe a little more? Church it up a little bit. Yeah, church it up a little bit. I don't know. I'm just happy to be here, man. Thank you guys for coming. Southern Outdoorsman podcast. We're on episode 692 out here. Yeah. So these guys have been pounding it out. We've got a bunch more to do this week, too.

Yeah. Yeah. That's the one thing. Where's your tour going this week? We're going to go to Missouri after this. So we'll be in Missouri for a handful of days and back to Arkansas. We're going to more guys as we're hitting back south.

Okay. And then a two-week break and then we're hitting the road going up to eastern seaboard. Okay. Yep. Thanks. Awesome, man. Well, thank you guys for coming.

Yeah, absolutely. Keep the wild place is wild because that's where the bear's there. 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 Ronella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers

who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. This is an I-Heart podcast, Guaranteed Human.