Bear Grease - Ep. 391: This Country Life - A First Buck in PA and My New Office

Episode Date: November 21, 2025

The lengths parents will go for their children is immeasurable. It's even more impactful when it puts them completely out of their element. Oh this episode, Brent's sharing a listener story about a deer hunter's mother that's sure to put a smile on your face. Then, he's finally talking about his new office and promising a tour of its contents in future episodes. It's not hard to believe there's some really cool items in there. Get cozy! It's time for MeatEater's This Country Life podcast. Shop This Country Life Merch Connect with Brent and MeatEater MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Youtube Clips Subscribe to the MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Shop This Country Life Merch Shop Bear Grease MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

Welcome to this country life. I'm your host, Brent Reeves. From Coon Hunting to Trotlining and Just General Country Living, I want you to stay a while as I share my experiences and life lessons. This Country Life is presented by Case Knives from the Storemore Studio on Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you the best outdoor podcasts that Airways have to offer. All right, friends, grab a chair or drop that tailgate. I've got some stories to share. A first buck in Pennsylvania and my new office.

I talk a lot about dads on this show. Being a dad is the best job I've ever had, but there's some mamas out there that are equally towing the mark, and if you've got a good one, there ain't nothing better. I also got a new office studio secret hideout that I want to tell you all about too. But first, I'm going to tell you this story. Today's efforts come from way over yonder in Pennsylvania. This country life listener, who we're going to call Chris.

Chris has a job where it's best to keep his name out of public domain. Trust me, he is one of the good guys and hails from the Keystone State and says he wants to share a story about how he has the best non-hunting mother a son could have. Well, that's a lofty claim, Chris. let's take a listen and decide for ourselves. So in Chris's words, if that is in fact his real name, and my voice, here we go. As I sit here during the White Tail Rudd in 2025, I think back to my first archery book that I killed in the fall of 2006 in Pennsylvania.

It was November the 7th of that year, and I was still in high. high school. We had a half day of school that day, and I begged my parents to let me skip it to go bo-hunt on property that we had started hunting the year before. My parents were hesitant to let me go since I wasn't familiar with the new property like I should have been and hadn't hunted without my father being there with me. He had to work that morning. My mother was a stay-at-home mom who is not a hunter, and she supports us, honey, but she isn't one to get in camouflage and go sit in the woods for hours like my father and me. I didn't think they would let me go. But to my surprise, my parents agreed to let me skip

school to go, and it was thanks to my supportive mother. She agreed to sit in the truck all morning with blankets to keep her warm while I sat in my stand hoping for any sort of deer movement. My father would let me take his pickup truck and he'd take my car to work that day. I would have to check in with Mama periodically to let her know that I was okay by cell phone. The morning came and my poor mother woke up extra early and got all the stuff to keep comfortable to sit in the truck before the crack of dawn until midday. I remember being excited because the weather seemed great. It was cold. It was overcast and the rut was in full swing.

I drove us to the parking area off the stone road where we hunted. I got myself ready and made sure that mama was set before I bade my way across the creek and up the hillside where she wouldn't be able to see me anymore. When I got to my stand, I called my mother and let her know I made it in and had my safety harness attached to the tree. Now it was the waiting game in anticipation for shooting light. It was the perfect cold, overcast morning with a little rain spitting off and on. Movement was slow to start, but around seven that morning, a group of dough came in right behind me.

They were moving quick. I wasn't against taking a dough during the rut at this point of my hunting career. I'd only killed one with my bow before this season. I drew back and I waited for the shot that they never gave me. I was frustrated as a young hunter, and this property had not been very very very much. very productive at this point, and the landowner logged a bunch of the property which had made hunting kind of tough that year. I thought I had missed my opportunity. I settled back, hoping things would be different. I wouldn't have to wait long. About 20 to 30 minutes later, I caught

movement behind me and to my right. I saw an eight-point buck following that same trail as the group of dough used that morning. Felt like he had just appeared out of the a thin air. He had his nose to the ground trying to find those dough I had just saw earlier that morning. I turned around and had to position myself off to the right-hand side of the tree in order to shoot. I remember being at full draw and the wind coming around my glasses that I wore at the time. It was making my eyes start to water. I had to keep blinking to try to clear my water and eyes so I could see my pen. The whole time the biggest tear I ever had a chance was walking 20 yards behind me.

To my fortune, the buck stopped to make a scrape and lick a low-hanging branch on a beech tree. I got my eye to hold itself together as the buck started to walk again. Fighting the urge to rush the shot, I remembered my father's teachings of being patient. He said to wait for him to step the closest front leg forward and placed that pen in the pocket behind that front shoulder. That buck took one more step at 20 yards, broadside, and extended that front right leg as my 20-yard green pin rested in the pocket behind the front shoulder. After probably punching my release like I was Mike Tyson, I watched my green and orange fletching bury behind the front shoulder of that buck. He twisted and he bolted back in the direction from where he came.

I started shaking worse than an aspen leaf during a windy day. I told my mother what had happened and I would be back to the truck shortly before trying to track this deer. I got out of the stand and I walked to where I was shot and I found blood and a lot of it. My excitement took over at this point and I just took off running for the truck. I called my father at work while I was sprinted down the hill and he wasn't able to answer. So I left a voicemail that was an instant classic. He still has it on a recording. You can't make out anything I was saying, but you can just hear me trying to breathe while running.

And the only discernible thing being, I shot the big one. I let him have it. I got back to the truck and I gave my mother a step by step of the events that morning as I jumped up and down like I was doing jumping jacks in the road. As much as I wanted to look, I told mother I had to wait 30 minutes. She offered to walk with me. My father called me in the meantime. He had played my voicemail for his boss who told him to go home and help me.

He was a good distance away and told me to go ahead and track without him, but if I lost the blood, I should just wait for him at that last spot. My poor mother, who was set up for taking a nap in the truck, was now walking across the creek and up the hill with me. She found herself up on the ridge where I had my standing and listening to me talk a mile a minute about what had happened. I started tracking and had good blood. We got to where I lost side of the buck and I found my arrow.

It was absolutely saturated. I was able to follow the trail to where the ridge line makes a drop down to the creek. As we started down this hill, my mother probably was wondering what she had gotten herself into. I saw a set of antlers sticking out of a thicket just ahead of us. My mama probably got one of the biggest hugs ever. I was so proud of that deer. I remember making sure those time tips stuck up in the back of the truck

so anyone behind me on the ride home would see that I had a buck back. My friends started getting out of school after half a day and I was calling them to come to my house and see the deer I got that morning. My agriculture teacher had a bulletin board that the students could post their deer kills for that year. my buck ended up being the best one taken. I've killed more bucks and some nicer ones than that one on that November morning 19 years ago and each with their own story. That first archery buck skipping school and having my loving and patient mother

sitting there in a truck so her son could do something he loved will always be a hard one to top. That A point hangs on the wall in my house today and each time I go in that room where it hangs, I think about that special morning and that special moment with my mother. And according to Chris, that's just how that happened. In Pennsylvania, Chris is one of around 650,000 deer hunters

with a one in a million mom. Thanks for sharing, brother. Stay frosty. 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 Game Calls.com.

I think you'll be glad you did, and you'll find out that the Steve Ronella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. Last April, I was in Bozeman at the meat eater office to record and film a lot of different content in one week. Clay and I did Janice's Meat Eater Roast show and once as contestants and once as judges. Then I did a couple rounds of trivia, a Meat Eater Radio Live show, and an experimental production where Janice and I tried to knock a scope off zero by abusing it with an extreme prejudice. You may have seen that one on the Meat Eater YouTube channel. There's never enough time to see all my friends at work there,

traveling, lodging in cheap, and if they're, they've gone to the expense of getting me up there, time is understandably scheduled pretty tight, working on projects and making the best use of my time while I'm there. It was during the break for one of those shoots that my friend and colleague Matt Miller asked me if I would ever have use for a storage shed. I thought it a rather odd that he'd ask me that specific question. The look I gave him before I answered resembled the look I had a few years ago. That was when Bailey's second grade teacher was a explained to me how the new way of adding and subtracting was better than the old way. The old way being what we'd used to settle the frontier, kick Germany's butt on the world

stage twice. They used the metric system, FYI, and go to the moon and back a half a dozen times. Yes, Matthew, I absolutely would have use for one. The reason I thought it would a lot that he'd asked me about that is because my wife Alexis and I had been on a three or four months search for just such an item. And we talked about it at length the night before I left from Montana. She said we're running out of room in the garage and your upstairs room is packed with all your stuff. The all my stuff she was referring to is all the clothes and gear that come with doing this job.

Please don't misunderstand either one of us. I'm not complaining in the least and neither is she. I go to sleep. and wake up counting my blessings daily to have this job that I have. But in doing so, I represent First Light and all the other companies we own and all our partnerships. It doesn't take long, especially with clothing and equipment, to amass a bunch of stuff, as Alexis refers to it.

We'd also talked about moving my studio into a separate space out of the house, and we could combine that with the storage shed. It would be the best of both worlds. until recently I've recorded every episode except for the remote ones in our son Hunter's old room upstairs. It's bigger than Bailey's room and has a walk-in closet, and she deserves it for her room more than me using it to record 20 minutes of shenanigans every week. I know there's some of you saying, hey dummy, just swap rooms. Well, believe it or not, we'd already thought of that, but decided to move the computers and record and equipment just once, when we found the perfect building that we wanted to buy and finish out ourselves.

Plus, there wasn't any room to move that stuff into Bailey's room. So we started looking. They're easy to find. It seems like there's a lot full of them on just about every corner or big building supply store that you come to. All of them in various stages of completion, but none really compatible with what we were looking for. I didn't have a need for a door big enough to drive a lawnmower. more through and some of the workmanship on a few brands was less than what I could do and I ain't

no carpenter. I'm sure we could have gotten them up to speed but it would it take us hiring a contractor or doing a lot of the work ourselves and with my travel schedule I don't have time to do that not to commit to a project like that. So we were kind of stuck in limbo. We found some decent buildings here and there but we'd have to insulate it, do this and do that and it was going to wind up being a bigger project than we could take on. Then I went to Montana, and Matt Miller asked me that question. Why'd you ask me that, Matthew? He just smiled and said, no reason.

I told him the story I just told y'all about how Alexis and I had been looking for months now and had discussed it just the night before, and he looked at me dead in the eyes and said, don't buy one. Don't tour with my emotions, Matthew. you have no idea how important this is to my family. I'm not kidding. We've been actively searching for a building. Well, old Matt works in the Content Partnership Division here at Meat Eater,

without telling me anything that would violate the nondisclosure agreement that all those folks work under during the negotiations part of those deals. Matt said there was a storage building company that really liked Meat Eater and they acquired as to how they could work with us, and specifically me and my show. I was absolutely floored. Alexis and I had been praying about this, and now it looked like our cork was datching from getting a bite from a fish

that looked a whole lot like a storage building. Well, as in cases like this, meetings between Matt and his boss, Art Brady, and the storage building folks eventually included a meeting where yours truly was invited to attend. My brother, anytime I'm telling him about suicide, someone he has met that he's about to, he will ask me, are they one of us? Now, this question has nothing to do with politics, race, religion, gender, or where they're

from, and all to do with an observationally perceived attitude for having fun regardless of what we're doing, treating others like we'd want to be treated, and standing behind what we say. Well, from the moment I met all the folks at Stormoria was plain as day that they were definitely one of us. Now, before anyone gets their drawers in a wad thinking, here Brent goes doing a commercial for one of his sponsors, let me stop you right there. As I have said before, I have 100% control on whatever is said or isn't said on this platform. And what I'm telling y'all now would have helped me tremendously when Alexis and I started

our journey down the road looking for a quality storage building. but I didn't know the first person who'd bought one from any company. This is our experience, and if it helps someone get pointed in the right direction, whether they buy one from these folks or not, then I have done my job. Here's some background on Stormore. First, I'd never heard of them before Matt and Art briefed me on their company. I had no reason to be familiar with them. Up till now, I didn't need a building.

The last three months have had me neck deep in research on the ground and online, and let me tell you, there is a noticeable difference in what I've found. These folks are headquartered in Kentucky, and it was there that Darren Warren opened store more portable buildings in 2017 with his cousin and co-owner Chris Burnett. Now, in eight years, the company has grown to service 26 states and nearly two dozen different partners manufacturing their buildings to various. defined specification. You can do all your shopping online or pull up to 400 different places where you could look at someone eyeball to eyeball and figure out what you're looking for. To say they built a successful company, be an understatement. To say they're a business that's all about themselves will be an absolute lie. Darren Warren was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma at the age of 16. It took 120 chemotherapy treatments over multiple years before he and the good folks at St. Jude kicked cancer out of his life.

Since then, Darren and every business venture he's been involved with and encouraging all his business partners have made a goal to share their blessings with St. Jude Hospital. From the onset to the end of this year, Stormmore is on target to raise and donate nearly 1,000. $1 million to save you. That's not only being grateful and remembering where you came from, that's supporting the people who helped you to continue to help others. Those are the kinds of people I'm dealing with and still getting to know. A humble bunch of folks who take their business seriously and their philanthropy, even more so.

During the first series of meetings that included me began in June. of this year. Art and Matt introduced me to Graham Hale, Kevin Chevaria, and Caitlin Collenberg, and John Stevens. I'd get to know others along the way, but it was during this process that my storage shed morphed into a new studio and secret hideout for me and old Whalen. It was the easiest most difficult thing I'd ever done. Easiest by having a 3D model on their website where I could design my own layout from the interior. Difficult. by having so many color combinations to pick from.

I enlisted my daughter Bailey's helping after trying just about every combination imaginable. We settled on what I'm sitting in right now. Absolutely living this thing. My description won't do it justice, but I'm going to share pictures of it on my social media. I'd love y'all check it out there. I wouldn't have had a place to set it up, had my good friend John Howard not leveled and prepped the space

that we picked out in the backyard. He and his team went above and beyond anything I could have dreamed of, so much so that when Stormmore delivered the building, they were blown away by how good it was. Then the day arrived and delivery was at hand. There's a video of it being driven into my backyard, how smooth and professional that was done is something to see. I'll be sure it's posted, so if you're interested, you can watch it.

Now that brings us to what I really wanted to talk about, and that's the stuff inside this structure. The mementos, new and old that adorn the walls and the shelves that surround me, and I'm going to tell you all about them in the next episode of this country life. And that's terrible, and I should be ashamed to myself, but I ain't. I get mouthing and I run out of time, and there's some items laying around and hanging in here that I want to tell you about, and I'm going to. next week. The Big Black Friday sale is upon us,

and I know there's some folks waiting for it. Well, here it is. First Light, Phelps, FHL, Dave Smith, B-Cores, and the meat eater store have all got it going on right now. If you're shopping, it's time to get busy. Until next week, this is Brent Reeb, signing off. You all be careful. First Light's fieldware collection is made for the work that happens long before

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