Bear Grease - Ep. 40: Secrets and The Hidden World of Whitetail Hunters

Episode Date: February 9, 2022

On this episode of the Bear Grease Podcast we’re exploring the secret world of whitetail hunters. We want to know why these rascal’s keep secrets, who they share them with, but also who they’re holding out on. The answers might surprise you. If you’ll listen I’m sure you’ll learn something about the people you THINK are your friends, but also yourself. You may be more slippery than you think and not as pure in motivation as you think. We’re going to interrogate two whitetail hunters and wring the truth out of’em, we’ll talk with an anthropologist about deep human phycology, and learn how social media has changed how we distribute knowledge. You’re not gunna want to miss this one….Connect with Clay and MeatEaterClay on InstagramMeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YoutubeShop Bear Grease Merch Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. First Lights fieldware collection is made for the work that happens long before opening day and continues when the season ends. Products built for early mornings, full days and real use. Hard wearing where they need to be versatile where it matters. No shortcuts. Just gear designed for the work that earns the season.

Built to perform, built to last. Check out. First Light's new field. Worldware gear at firstlight.com. As a human, I'm going to share knowledge that's important to me with another individual in order to bring them in. I affirm you. I'm willing to kind of share my lot with you. On this episode of the Bear Grease podcast, we're exploring the secret world of White Tale hunters.

I want to know why these rascals keep secrets, who they share them with, but also who, they're holding out on. The answers might surprise you. And if you listen, you just might learn something about the people you think are your friends, but also yourself. You may be more slippery than you think and not as pure in motivation as you think. We're going to interrogate two hardened white-tail hunters and ring the truth out of them. We'll talk with an anthropologist about deep human psychology and learn how social media

has changed how we distribute information. You're not going to want to miss this one. Without your son knowing, have you ever shown those pictures to someone that you told him you weren't going to? Yep. Believe it or not, yeah. My name is Clay Newcomb, and this is the Bear Grease podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant.

Search for insight in unlikely places, and where we'll tell the story of American who live their lives close to the land. Presented by FHF gear, American made, purpose-built, hunting and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the places we explore. I have a secret. This secret has plagued me, causing me to consistently lose sleep over the last two years.

It's caused irrational excitement, but also grievous pain. I have exercised, extreme caution in the dissemination of information regarding this secret, and it might surprise you who I've shared information with and who it's been withheld from. It's clear why people keep secrets, but it's not so clear why people tell them, and oh, they do, and I'm in search of why. The choices I've made about my secret have been more instinctual than conscious. I've released information with strict stipulations. And every time I've done it, I've wondered if my trust would be betrayed, and I'm certain that at times it has. Interestingly, my secret didn't have to be

shared. For me to reap the potential reward of it, I didn't have to share it with anyone. But some madness beyond conscious choice drove my wandering lips to mumble. It drove my fingers to type messages that had information that I wanted no one to know about. Or maybe I did want them to know. While sitting 30 feet up in a walnut tree on November 1st, 2021, I had a peculiar revelation. This thing that I was hiding was the thing I most wanted to share with the world. It was an odd paradox, a moment of internal confliction wrought with irony. I recognized that I was being driven by levers I wasn't pushing, perhaps a mechanism as old.

is mankind. If there's one thing I've learned growing up in rural America, it's that hunters have secrets. I've spent a lifetime trying to unravel why some are so reckless and others are like a sealed bank vault. I've also evaluated my own propensity to mumble things best left unspoken. But one thing is consistent. Hunters love to talk and if you listen, you'll learn a lot. We're about to hear two exclusive expose interviews with some men who've been hardened by decades of immersion into the white-tail world. I want to know why and how these accomplished white-tail hunters keep and distribute their secrets, and l'dy, l'dy, do they have them? These men know every trick in the book and have used them all. And because of the gravity of his conscience, Mo Shepard has put his reputation.

on the line. Here's Mo, you better buckle up. On your cellular phone, how many pictures of whitetail deer do you have that are secret, that you would not show just a stranger? Several. Several. How many? Can you give me a number? I probably, a dozen pictures, probably that I wouldn't show anybody unless they were really close friends or something that we were hunting together and then I might still not show them. Why wouldn't you show somebody? Like if you were just at Walmart down here and you met a guy and he was a hunter and you're like, hey, look at this picture. Why wouldn't you do that? Well, for starters, even if I didn't know the guy very well, he might know somebody that knows me very well.

And it said it's a deer I wanted to hunt or was trying to hunt or had been hunting. And he says, hey, I've seen old Mo up there and he showed me a picture of this monster buck. Well, you know, I've been seeing his truck parked over there and such and such on this road out there on public land on this national forest. That must be where he's hunting at, you know. But phrases and stuff. together they can track you down. Okay, so from what you've said, it's clear to me that you've thought this through multiple stages. So how many times have you done that to someone else? Several. Because I know that if you know that people do this, it's because you've done it.

Well, yeah, that's why I said, several. Many, if not most of the things we do as humans happen beyond the purview of our conscious choice. Part of the reason we're still here on planet Earth is that we've developed strategies for survival, and the foundation of all of it is the acquisition of knowledge. Knowledge is the vehicle by which we acquire the essential material things for survival, like food, mates, skills, etc. We constantly use the clues around us to gain knowledge, whether looking at how crowded a restaurant parking lot is to determine how good the food is,

or noting that the same truck has been parked near a big old white oak ridge for three days straight during deer season, we're hungry for knowledge. Much of it is unconsciously filed away. Thomas Jefferson once wrote, knowledge is power, knowledge is safety, and knowledge is happiness. Jefferson didn't create this idea, but he put words around something very old. Humans want knowledge, and it's the key to success. the way in which we distribute the knowledge we have is as important as the gaining of knowledge or information we don't have. We gain information and give information at its foundational level.

This is the architecture of daily human life. The second whitetail secret holder whose conscience has become too heavy a burden to carry without confession is Rusty Johnson. Here he is. How many bucks on your cellular phone? do you have pictures of on your phone that you could not show me without breaking your word to someone? Just an estimate. I'd say at least a dozen. At least a dozen.

Mm-hmm. Okay. Now, are these pictures that you have gotten, that you have made a vow that you're going to show no one, or are these pictures that people have shared with you that you have swore that you would not share? I would say a combination of my own pictures and my son's pictures. Without your son knowing, have you ever shown those pictures to someone that you told him you weren't going to? Yep. Believe it or not, yeah.

Okay. Yeah. But, I mean, it's like one or two people. Who do you share whitetail secrets with? Only two people, really. I mean, who are, so describe the relationship you had with these two people. You don't have to say their names. One's my son.

Okay. And the other is a really good friend. Okay. I know some intel about you. You have a wider-knit group of people that you hunt with. Are you telling me that there are things between you and your son that are not shared inside of that wider community? Yes, absolutely.

Okay. And my dad, but my dad's kind of, he's out of the hunting. Okay, this is important. See, if we were in a criminal trial here, you would be held in contempt of court if you had said you weren't going to lie. So your dad is a part of this? He is. Okay, so close-knit family.

Hmm. Very. Interesting. Dads can often be the vow busters of whitetail secrets, but I bet there's more to this. Here's Mosley. Okay. Has someone shared a dear picture with you that you swore to secrecy that you'd never share,

that you shared, you did share with someone? Tell the truth. I'm thinking. It's a long, awkward pause. Yeah, that's, I'm just saying. He's staring off into the distance. I don't think I have. because I

Okay, now this I've only had like... I know how this goes down. I say, I'd send you a text and I go, hey, I'm going to send you a picture and I don't want you to send it to anyone ever. And then when you get home, you show it to your wife.

I mean, you've already done what you said you weren't going to do. Yeah. Or this is the other way it happens. You end up showing it to a guy in Illinois and you justify it because you're like, this is totally irrelevant. information to this guy.

He's not going to come down here. So I'm going to ask you the question again and give you a chance to be honest with me. Okay. Have you ever shared a photo with someone that you said you never would? Yes or no? That I told the person that showed me the photo. Yes. That I never would.

Maybe one time and... I said the answer had to be yes or no. Okay, yes. One time and it was to my wife. Very interesting again. wives seem to have some vile-busting capabilities too. Let's get deeper. Here's Curley.

How would you feel if you shared a picture of a deer with someone, and then you found out that they had shared that picture with someone else? If I had asked them not to share it, I would be disappointed. What level of disappointment? Would you go fistfight them? No. Would you? The level of disappointment would be that I would not send them anything else or share anything else.

They would lose that trust. They would lose my trust. Yeah. Okay. It wouldn't cost a friendship or nothing. I would just definitely lose a great deal of trust. Have you ever fist fought anybody over a deer? No.

Way back, I did almost get into a fist fight over a fishing spot. Oh, for real? Yeah, way back, though. So it boiled down to, I had some fish found. And I had a small boat with a small motor. And they saw me fishing in that spot. And we fished. What kind of fish are we talking?

Bass fishing. Okay. We fished bass tournaments. And so they knew where I had those fish located. They had a bigger boat with a bigger motor. And when we took off in this particular tournament, they beat me to that spot. It's anybody's lake. You know, it's a public lake.

But still, I thought that was a very unsportsmanlike. And, of course, I was young back then. When I got back to the way in, I let them know about it. What'd you do? I confronted them about it. What did you say? I said, why did you go to my fishing spot? They said, well, this is, anybody can go anywhere on this lake.

It's a public lake. I said, yes. But I found those fish. You saw me fishing there, and you deliberately went to my spot. And boy, they started bowing up, you know. And we didn't fight. We didn't fight, but we did have some words. Yes.

And we didn't speak for a while. When information is distributed, like these guys saw Curley catching fish, even if it's not on purpose, it's clear that Curley has. had an expectation of how that knowledge would be handled. And when it wasn't, he got upset. We're getting deeper. Here's Mosley. Have you ever had legitimate concern that showing a picture to someone, family members, friends would have resulted in them actually going to your hunting, spot, and hunting? I have made a mistake a few times of telling a few people that I saw something big or saw some big sign. And a couple instances, I had people to come back to a spotter.

I'd run into them there and they'd never hunted there before. They claimed it was just out of the blue that they were there. But I figured it was because we discussed it and they knew I was hunting in that area or something. Okay. Well, let's turn the tables here. How often has someone given you information that you capitalized on later? Very little because. Oh, tell the truth.

I'm telling the truth. Very little that I've capitalized on. Most of the time, that's just the way I am. If they're a friend, especially of me or somebody that I've hunted with before, whatever, then if they tell me something, then I'll be straight up with them. I'll say, you know, I'm a hunt that area once in a while, but, you know, if you're going to keep hunting in there, I'm not going to go in there, you know. But a total stranger that I've run across somewhere and heard them talking about something, that's a different story. And I have used that to my advantage,

especially I've used it three or four times. I've heard people talking about turkeys, hearing lots of turkeys, but they were so smart they couldn't do nothing with them. Okay, so you've said to me that if it's a friend that gives you information, you're going to be real clear and up front with them. If it's a stranger that gives you information, it's fair game. Fair game. Okay, Mo, that's a problem because there's multiple layers of friendship. Okay, so there's people that are in between stranger and friend. And so where is that line? For instance. Well, first off, let me butt in on you here. First off, you have to be your own judge on what much information you let loose when it's somebody that's, you don't know very well.

You're putting personal responsibility on the person distributing information out. Okay, give me a categorization of friends. Where does a direct family member fit on this? Family members are different from friends. Oh, okay, so there's many stratifications here. Now, wait a minute. I thought family was inbound for sharing secrets and responsibly handling their secrets. Not so, it seems.

This is a bit more nuanced than I really. originally thought, here's Curley on why he keeps secrets. And I still haven't told you my secret. So why do you think you are so secretive about White House? Because of my dad. Why? Because I learned growing up hunting with him, he got burnt a few times by some friends. He always taught me to be, he's secretive about everything, but he was always really secretive about hunting and fishing. Really, so as a boy, your dad told you. He was like, man, if you know where a deer is, you better keep it tight-lipped. Absolutely.

From a young boy. Yes. I mean, we're talking like back in the 80s. Can you go into any kind of detail without names of what happened in those scenarios that branded your dad like this? Yeah. He had a friend that he had hunted with a little bit, and that friend went into a certain spot. My dad had found a really good buck. We didn't have game cameras back then.

I mean, he had found a good buck, seen this good buck, told this friend about this spot, and the friend didn't say a word to him, and went in right behind his back, and went in there and killed that buck. How did your dad find out about it? Well, he saw the buck. I mean, the guy killed it, and he brought it back into town and everything, and was bragging about it, and, of course, you know, word of mouth. Did your dad confront the guy?

My dad does not, he doesn't get mad about things like that, but. He just learned from it. He learned from it. He learned from it. Yeah, it did not ruin the friendship or anything like that. Really? Yeah, he's not one to get mad about stuff like that. He just said, I will never.

He's like, okay. These interrogations should have us all thinking about ourselves. Do you keep secrets? Do you share the secrets of others? Be honest. How do you justify it when you do? There's an ancient statue in the country of Turkey, which is ironic because we know Turkey hunters are such liars, called the statue of diogenes.

It's believed to have been created in the year 412. It's a man standing beside his dog, and he's holding up a lamp, and he appears to be searching in the light cast by the lamp. It said that he's looking for an honest man. This is old stuff. It's clear that there are spectrums of secret keepers. Some people are loose-lipped, and others have tight-lips, but one thing's for sure.

we all have a strategy for how we disseminate and use information. This is deep human psychology, and I continue to be fascinated by the things that govern our lives beyond our conscious control. Being aware of our actions and the way we make decisions is important stuff. You all know Dr. Dan Rup from the Bear Grease Render. He's a professor of anthropology at John Brown University. Strangely, he seems to know a lot about secrets, and I want to be a lot. to get the details. We've been talking about hunting secrets, but we'll need to broaden our search criteria. Here's Dr. Dan. Dr. Dan, talk to me about the general ideas of the dissemination of

knowledge amongst humans, which is like the most common. We do this every single day of our life from the time we wake up to the time we go to bed. We are distributing information. Just make me informed about human psychology and how we do that. Okay, so the gentleman who really wrote the book on exchange. And so that's what you're talking about when you're talking about the dissemination of knowledge. People are sharing knowledge that they have, but they're not broadcasting it near and far. They're selectively sharing information with others. And then that is an exchange. They're hearing things back and they're trading information in a sense. That's called reciprocity. Okay. And so the gentleman who really wrote the book on reciprocal.

book, metaphorical book. A literal book. Got it. And the name of the book, it's a French sociologist. The name of the book is the gift. Okay. The whole point of the entire book, Marcel Moss wrote it about a hundred years ago, is that every gift has strings attached.

We, every exchange has strings attached. I don't just give you something for free. I want something back. Even my most well-meaning thing. And certainly, the thing that's been shared the most among humans for millennia long before we had money, long before we had products, long before we had an economy, long before we had brands of clothing or different things like that, was information. How do you make this stone tool? How do you hunt this animal? How do you engage in this agricultural

activity? So the currency of humanity was knowledge. Yeah, knowledge is power. I mean, that's where we get this saying. And so when it comes to the sharing of knowledge, it's always, it's always a loaded exchange. The currency of humans is knowledge. And we'll need to remember that the term reciprocity describes the exchange of knowledge. And it's extremely important to know that knowledge is never free. It always has strings attached.

If you're like me, I think you'll begin to see that this is true. Everything has a string. As a human, I'm going to share knowledge that's important to me and who I am or who we are as a group with another individual or another group in order to bring them in, in order to say yes to them. I affirm you. I'm willing to kind of share my lot with you. Whatever happens to me happens to you. Whatever happens to you happens to me. So we need to know the same stuff. So sharing information would be a very primitive act of trying to be. to build human relationship.

Because you wouldn't share information with your enemy. No, you would not. So if I'm a hunter-gatherer tribe and we have a knowledge of how to make a certain type of arrowhead, you've talked a lot about the Folsom points or the Clovis points,

that information was over a thousand years disseminated near and far. You can guarantee that as it was disseminated, there were hunter-gatherer bands that were in competition with other bands. They would not be that quick to share with them. Or if they did share, they did it for advantage, for security, for peace, for safety, because they thought it would be better for them. You know, when you think about

humanity and kind of this idea of a primitive human, it would make sense that there would be kind of a deep psychology around how we distribute knowledge. It's so close to us, though, most of us, including myself, have rarely really thought about it. Yeah. To help understand this fundamental currency. It'll help to get some deep history on secret knowledge and how we've used it. Humans have been keeping secrets and sharing secrets since the beginning. That's certainly the case. No one would debate that. But really in a kind of a historical, written down literature sense, when it really first hits the fan, when it comes to secret knowledge, is in something called Gnosticism in the Greco-Roman world. And the word nosis, where we get Gnosticism, means

secret knowledge. And so the Greco-Roman world for the first time, humanity, at least in the Roman empire, a lot of them have money and a lot of them have means. And so they're not living day to day, and they're not depending on practical, tangible activities to define themselves. So now they're looking for a new way to have kind of this home that consists of now theoretical knowledge, a home that they share with other people who also know these secret facts. And so all throughout the Roman Empire have these things called mystery cults that creep up. Some of them were religious and would offer what, you know, we might call a way of salvation. A lot of them were just social clubs, like fraternal orders that have these secret rights and passages. And a lot of the fraternal order

that exist today are kind of rooted in those things. Came from the Roman world. Yeah, came from this kind of Roman philosophy of a way to have a sanctuary, a place of peace and security and validation, is to know something secret and share that secret knowledge with others, select others. Wow. And so really, it goes far back. And then today, you can see, I mean, humans haven't changed. We're still doing the same thing. People love secret knowledge because me and the folks who know what I know, we're in the in group and everybody else is in the out group. And all of a sudden, because I have a stable, steady in group, I can take a deep breath. And all the time we are doing identity in this way. Someone who hunts like me, you know, someone who maybe as a bow hunter, somebody who

watches their scent, the way that I watch my scent. I hate to bring this up. You know, I'm thinking this is the in-group. Someone who doesn't do that, well, they're on the out-group. And you stay, and, you know, you stay loyal to the things that we know and the things that we do, because that's who we are. It's a powerful mechanism. And what you don't do is share your knowledge, your secret knowledge, with anybody you wouldn't want in your group. Now we're starting to see the complexity of how we manage knowledge. Think about that fuzzy feeling, the bond between you and someone else, when you share a juicy piece of information. It's very real.

But at a deeper level, we use secret knowledge to build our personal identity. Our personal identity is who we believe ourselves to be. So, Dr. D, are you saying that me sharing a secret is more about me than the person I'm sharing it with? It can be. So when you think about validation, if I'm in an in-group,

as a hunter who is an established hunter and I know my trade and I know my skills, I'm going to look around me and I want to add members to my group. And there are going to be people who just have no question mark by their name. It's my children. Without doubt, I would share anything with them so they could be in my group and be like me and do what I do if they want to. But then there are other folks who maybe there's no way I would want them. competing for the same resources in the same way that I do.

So in not sharing my knowledge with them, I'm invalidating their identity. But it's a powerful, powerful statement. This is why knowledge is power for me to give that knowledge to someone because I'm saying, I want you to be like me. And I want to even more than that, I want to share identity with you. There it is.

We often share knowledge to validate others, but ultimately so that they'll validate us, whether it's family, a close friend, or someone you want to be friends with, that reciprocity, the exchange of information signals and validates relationship. Why do you want to share a trail camera picture of a buck to someone that it's completely irrelevant to? You want them to think you're cool, legit, and in the know? Probably. This is as consistent as gravity. Think about this. What do you do when you see the best deer hunter you know? You go and tell them about your deer hunting. You're signaling that you're the same. Remember when I said dads can be vall busters? It's because most of us have a desire to show our dads that we're legit.

And we want to share our lives with them. We do this stuff all the time. This might explain why on that cold November morning, I wanted so bad to share my secret with the hunting world. The release of that knowledge would have validated my personal. identity. If I would have told them my secret, they would have said, oh man, that Clay is a real deer hunter. But I still haven't told you what my secret is. I may not. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps game calls in building

each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called prime cuts. Now, I'm going to tell you, I love mine because it's easy to use. I'm not going to go, I'm not going to win a turkey calling contest. It's just not going to happen. But, when I run this call, I get 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. Talk to me about how dissemination of knowledge is a request for relationship, and that relationship has a string attached, which is this personal identity that I'm after. Absolutely. Identity construction is something that every human engages in almost every conscious minute. of their day and even their subconsciousness.

Whether we know it or not. Whether we know it or not, we are constantly constructing identity and we're constantly asking for a secure, socially accepted identity. Even the people that say they're loners and they don't need anybody, that's their identity. That is their identity. The people that are extroverted and involved in social groups and that's their identity. There's not a human on the planet that is exempt from this.

even a hermit living on a desert island, he is in pursuit of identity. He is in pursuit of an identity, and he's forming it socially, even if he's forming it by being antisocial. It's still, social is still an antisocial. It's still a social identity. And so when you look at identity formation, J.A. Walter is a British sociologist, and one of the main points that he's long since dead, but one of his main points is that, as he was watching individualism, really kind of gain its stride and just hit its pace. One of his main points was that we are incapable of assigning our own identities. We try all day long, but it just leaves us insufficient.

And what we need, every single one of us, to some extent, needs external validation. And so when we talk about the dissemination of information, hunting secrets in this case, and we're relating that to identity, I am sharing. information with you in no small part because I want you to validate me. I either want you to look at that photo and say, boy, Daniel, you are awesome or you did it. Or I want you to turn around and share your photo of your big buck with me. And it says to me, we value each other. We look at each other, if not as equals, as worthy of being in the same in group. Yeah. There's no rejection between you and I for sharing that knowledge.

Yeah. But if we're kind of playing our cards close, then either you or I, one of us, does not validate the other. Yeah. And that's an assault on my socially accepted identity. So people are always ferreting out and hunting, as it were, for these in groups that they can fit in. There's not a person on the planet that I think wouldn't see that in themselves if they

really looked at it because it's so true when you really think about why you do what you do. So I asked some of these guys that I interviewed. I said, why do you share a picture with these people that you're close to? And I was kind of surprised because some of them weren't really able to articulate why. But when we boiled it down, it was clear. They're not sharing information with someone that they don't want to be friends with. They're not sharing information with their enemy. They're not sharing information with someone that they don't perceive as kind of equal to themselves. And they, oh, man, we're all, we're all looking for validation from people. Yep. In some ways, you know, trying to receive validation from someone else, you can quickly

go down that road and see that that is not healthy, but they're parts of that that are very healthy. Sure. We are designed to live inside of community. We are, I mean, we're designed for relationship. And, Dan, I say this all the time and I go back to it all the time. I think much of hunting, as would be much of any other kind of activity we engage with that involves other people, is really fueled by a relationship. So, and I think one of the things that makes hunting in particular so powerful relationally is it's practical, it's tangible, it's out in the world. You can't learn it off of video. You really need to be with someone who is an expert who has done it. You need to watch what they do. And this is what humans have been doing forever. It's a powerful interaction that as humans,

we just don't normally get. Because, well, think about the way that a lot of humans right now, a lot of us do identity. It's digitally. So if the need for validation is so huge and we all need it so deeply. And you would think all of these folks who have huge social media presence and they have all these followers and they have all these likes, you would think, man, good night. They've got validation off the charts. Yet study after study after study, you don't, it doesn't matter if it's a psychologist, a psychiatrist, the counselor, whoever did the study. Social scientists, psychologist, doesn't matter. Mental health decreases. Wow, there's a correlation between mental health and number of Instagram followers. Yeah, you're in trouble, buddy.

That's true. Because so the longer you get pseudo-validation from an impersonal source, the lower your mental health goes. Golly. The more validation you get from a real life, real human being who cares about you by sharing information with you, they're validating you, they're caring for you, the more stable and robust your identity is because it's not exclusively yours. It's shared. And that's the myth of the rugged individual. We were not made. Always bringing it back to the myth.

I love it. We were not made to have identity in and of ourselves. We need it validated externally. This is fascinating stuff. And when we swoop back down to our specific topic, which is how we share hunting secrets, it even gets more interesting. When you are engaging in trading hunting information,

you just stepped into the shoes or sandals or moccasins. Crocs. Crock's, Brent Reeves, of humans for millennia. Whereas when we swipe our credit card, when I get out on my phone, I'm doing something that humanity has done for all of five minutes. But as a hunter, when I'm engaging in sharing hunting secrets or even just hunting knowledge, how do you shoot a bow? When I teach my son how to shoot a bow, I mean...

That's an ancient transaction. It almost doesn't get me. more ancient than that. It just really doesn't. And because as a people, we are provided, thanks to, you know, major supermarkets and the supply chain, where most of us are not connected to farming. Most of us are not connected to agriculture. As hunters, we are connected to an activity that humankind has been engaged with from the beginning all the way back.

That's a fascinating thought because there's got to be, in as much DNA and data that are mind, spirits, bodies operate off of that is not controlled by us, I've got to believe that something triggers inside of the human when something really primitive is done. It's got to trigger something. I think on like a, I don't know if you want to call it on a soul level or a deep cognitive level, when you share something that's tangible, practical, that came to you at a cost and you share it in a way where you have to live it out in front of me. You know, I remember the first time I was in a tree, I was with you and you had me shoot at a stump. Yeah.

And I shot at a stump. And you shared with me a way of being that I could emulate and do. That hits a person on a profound level. Most of our interactions and exchanges on a day-to-day basis do not do that because they're so impersonal and they're so abstract. And I think because deep down, you're showing me a way to be. Whereas in every other transaction,

I'm trying to essentially purchase an identity. I'm trying to gain an identity. Or I'm trying to learn about something else, just merely like up here in my mind theoretically. Yeah. But now when I go out into the woods, I'm looking at a new plot of land and I'm trying to figure out

what's the best white oak or red oak to be around. And I find myself thinking, if Clay were here, what would he think? and what would he do? I'm emulating you. I'd be looking for those acres, buddy. He'd be looking for my acres. And that's a powerful way.

I think one of the myths of the rugged individualist is I can create and select an identity for myself. So much of the modern exchange of knowledge is impersonal and abstract. Think of the simple example of buying a banana. We've basically assigned abstract value to a note of tender, a dollar bill. And we trade that material object for the knowledge that it takes to farm, the work, and the delivery of that banana to a grocery store.

Money depersonalizes the exchange of knowledge and takes the relationship right out of it. We don't have to go to the farm and meet the farmer to get bananas. This idea leads us to and is connected to why we can't get healthy personal identity from things that can be bought with money. True and healthy identity comes from relationships. That's a mic drop moment. I want to step back into my conversation with Rusty Johnson. He'll lead us into a discussion about social media, how we use it, how it's changed the way we share information and knowledge and receive validation. Here's Rusty, and I think we got him trapped.

And I still haven't told you my secret. So you are very tight with the information that you would portray. But, sir, you have an Instagram page where you guys post pictures of a live deer all the time. Right. Justify this for me. That's a tough one right there. I'll just put it this way. We don't post everything, but we post, we do post a lot.

Have you ever thought about putting like a disclaimer on the tagline? of your Instagram page that we post a lot of deer but not all of them. No. But you, this Instagram page, though, clearly shows that you have a deep desire to share these deer with people though. Right. I mean, would you agree? Further viewing pleasure.

Yeah. But what I've found is that usually the thing that we're trying to guard the most is actually the thing we want to talk about the most. Would you agree with that? Yeah. I do agree. The secret pictures that you have on. on your phone, the dozen secret pictures.

Are those not the photos that you want to show me right now? I would like to, yeah. I don't know, yeah. I mean, I like to see people have enjoyment through what we post on our Instagram and Facebook page. So it's about them. You sure about that? No. Social media has undoubtedly affected the way we share knowledge and build identity.

It's unprecedented in human history. Here's Dr. Dan and I exploring this topic. If we're talking about secrets, we're talking about the dissemination of knowledge, some of it intimate knowledge. Man, only in the last 15 years have we had at our fingertips, the ability to communicate with people. How do you think social media is scrambling the human brain? Oh, my goodness. So I think what social media, one of the positive things about social media is you don't have to say goodbye to as many people. So we can keep acquaintances and people in our lives that normally, apart from the internet and connectivity, we would lose touch with.

I see. Humans, not only were we not made to be alone, you know, like we said, even the kind of the monk who's on an island by himself, is still creating a socially constructed identity. Yeah. We also weren't made to stay in touch with everybody we've ever known ever. This is new, man. Okay, if you think about it like this, humans used to be full-time hunter. So we filed away hunting info. Now we have less hunting info, but more like a rolodex of people because we keep up with

these people. So maybe there's a correlation between having smaller Instagram followings and being better hunters. Oh. Do you see what I'm saying? I do have much fewer followers than you. Because there's only so much space in a man's brain. Especially certain men.

This is nonsense. This is nonsense. But so the more people you are connected to. doesn't necessarily result in the more actual validation you can get. You don't necessarily need more pseudo relationships. You need a healthy number of real solid relationships. And so if one of the kind of the crazy things that social media does to us is it's just this compounding ever growing as you go to college and then you move to another city and you move to

another city, you can keep up with everybody. Another thing that's... Or like me and the kids are TikTok. Oh, TikTok in it. You know, so another thing that social media does is it gives you the illusion of validation or invalidation. If I post something, I'm either getting a false positive feedback loop if a ton of people like it. But maybe there's no value in it.

But there's no value in it. Or I get a negative feedback loop because nobody likes it. And either way I lose if I'm going to social media for validation. But the problem is, is my brain, when I pull up Facebook. or Instagram, I'm not thinking I'm going to social media. I think I'm interacting with people because I'm looking at people. I'm seeing people's names. I'm seeing their faces. I'm remembering times that we were connected together. And because I'm wired as a human to construct identity and share it with others, I think I'm interacting with people, but I'm not. And so I'm bound to fail

unless I'm approaching social media from a secure place. What does it cause us to fail in? It's, It's where do we see the breakdown of a human inside of a false leaning upon this for their validation? So you're going to have people who, or they begin to orient larger and larger chunks of their days around their online presence. Or chunks of their finances, chunks of their resources, chunks of their time means fewer personal resources to give to actual people who can return actual validation. and then depression, anxiety. Okay, so begins to go up. So basically a human has this allotted amount of energy to spend on relationship.

You're finite. And if we start leaning so heavy into social media that we're expending this into this like false thing, then we neglect. And this is maybe where the functional aspect is, we neglect, could we neglect the real relationships that we have? Absolutely.

I mean, this is you go, my family went out to eat last night at a restaurant. You look around the restaurant. everybody's on their phones. Because what happens is relating with real people. Probably trying to find my Instagram. They're looking at you. So think about it.

What happens if I share a hunting secret with you and you don't reciprocate? That's scary. That affects who I am and my value and worth as an individual. But the cost, the short-term cost of going online and looking at Facebook is nothing. but setting across from a real individual and not just opening up my hunting knowledge secrets, but opening up who I am as a person, now you're talking things of real value and worth. And so now you're talking about real risk. And so it's supposedly kind of, I'll do quotations around this.

It's supposedly safer for me to go to social media to be validated than it is for me to turn actually go and be a real thing in front of a real person. And one of the things that hunting forces you to do is just that. You have to go out in the woods together and do it together. You know, I listened just yesterday to a podcast about the metaverse, which essentially is this idea that started a long time ago about how humans could one day live in a digital world. It was like a sci-fi section of a book from some, you know, in the 80s. or 90s, there's now with these video games and a bunch of different stuff, there are big groups

really trying to build out commerce inside of the metaverse where, I mean, it's happening. It's like, I think Microsoft just bought an online game for like $70 billion. And it's because they see the market going to this digital market, which, man, just like every single thing that we see happening in life. It's like everything is going to a facade of what it appears to be. Everything is propped up by a veneer of what it seems like it is, but when you tap into it, it's not that. And that is also the nature of humanity in a lot of ways. Facades make us a really good facade makes you feel supposedly safe, secure, and validated.

But on the inside, you're still not. So most of the things that we modern, contemporary humans, with a certain amount of wealth that we can expend, most of the things that we are purchasing are a facade. Think about even in the hunting community, all the gear, all the stuff, I can have all this amazing gear, but if I don't relate with another hunter

who's willing to validate me and share with me his wisdom and me the same, I'll never be a good hunter. I've just purchased another facade. And so, you know, meta, they're betting on humanity's propensity to go after facades. And I'm not at all.

I mean, I'm on Instagram. I'm on social media, of course. But as humans, we have to understand our tendency to do identity in counterproductive ways. Yeah. The idea with social media is that you almost have to be on it in some ways to be relevant. Of course.

And that's dumb to say, because you don't have to have social media to survive in today's world. Most people do. And it's just got to be handled in a balanced way. you know and I think when we understand how the mind works how we are on a constant search for identity that it that that knowledge can give us tools to know how to manage stuff and I know for sure inside of my life because I mean I do a lot of stuff on social media part of my job I work

extra hard to make sure that the real human relationships my life are dialed up and dialed in because yeah it's just like you know you just don't want to be the guy that is a facade. Yeah. Fascinating stuff, and we've just scratched the surface of it. As we come to a close, I want to summarize what we've learned and get back to our original question. Why do white tail hunters keep secrets?

Why do you think we're so finicky about the way that we distribute white tail hunting secrets? Several things. Because I don't want you in my spot. I don't want you in my spot. That's the first answer. It's a competition for a limited resource. So you're not going to share it with everybody. I think another thing is a fundamental insecurity.

I'm not going to just share my important knowledge with anybody because, again, what if they don't reciprocate? Oh, wow. Well, in a fundamental insecurity on the, like, I'm hiding because I'm afraid it's going to be taken from me. Yeah. People are just insecure. We are insecure. Just like someone is going to go on Pinterest. You know, my wife might get on Pinterest and selects.

certain things to be on her Pinterest page. She's going to select the things that she feels like reflects who she is. If I go to Lowe's or Home Depot and pick out new light fixtures for a home and do that, I'm not just going to pick out random ones. I'm going to pick out the ones that I feel like reflect who I am. Same way when it comes to choosing who I share information with. I'm going to share information with people who I feel like are sufficiently like me or people that I want to be like. And so that's a very finicky kind of particular process. I don't just share with anybody. You've made a lot of jokes about how someone says acorn or acorn. You know, we have all these kind of earmarkers. It's not a joke. You're an idiot. We have all these these earmarks of who

is in and who is out. And so much of human thinking is in-group, out-group thinking. You know, you think you look at our nation and how polarized it is. And, fairly quickly, I can tell who is in whatever my supposed in that sphere of influence in group is and who is out. And that's where information goes or with the out group, that is not where information goes. In closing, I want to tell you just a little bit about my secret. In 2020, I had a big deer on camera. For me, it was like a once in a decade type deer, 150 inch deer. After a bullet malfunction on my muzzleloader and amiss the deer lived. In 2021, he grew a lot and turned into a once-in-a-lifetime deer.

The prior season, my strategy had been locked box lips, especially with neighboring landowners that had access to this deer. But later in the season, I adopted a different strategy of openness. I made an unusual move. I decided to co-op information with the other people that I knew were after him. I agreed to share all the info I had, no secrets. It was risky and went against everything I'd ever done. I chose to share all my trail cam picks within a few hours of getting them

with the other guys that were hunting this deer. Why? And I didn't ask for anything in return. But if I'm being honest, I imagined that I would get stuff in return. I was willing to be the first to release information. I was desperate. but my motives were probably far from altruistic. I knew that they would give me information that I needed as well.

But it seemed kind of fair. The results of the experiment were entirely positive. Though none of us killed the buck, I shared valuable information that helped the other landowners, and in turn, they shared info with me. At the end of the day, the release of that secret information did exactly what Dr. Dan said it would do. It built trust and relationship between myself and these guys that I don't think will go away anytime soon.

Sadly, we believe the buck to be dead. Who else did I share these secret pictures with, you might ask? I can't tell you. That's a secret. I've learned a lot about myself by talking with Mosley, Curley, and Dr. Dan. I continue to be amazed at the undeniable magnetic attraction for humans to build personal identity. You do it even if you don't think you are. Like an emerald-headed ballard duck going to the acorns and rice, we just can't help it. These secrets we keep and release are important components of relationship and identity building.

Keeping secrets also has some really functional aspects to them, like we don't want a bunch of hillbillies piling into our spots, but it's deeper. The quickest way to offend someone is to invalidate their perceived personal identity. Fist fights, murders, wars, and unbridled wrath have been released by, people because of infractions on their identity. We spend our whole lives building it and appealing to someone's personal identity is also the quickest way to someone's heart and to engender their trust. Obviously, this can be done in healthy and unhealthy ways, genuine and non-genuine ways.

But in the end, we want to be surrounded by people who view us as we believe ourselves to be and hopefully who we actually are. Humans are designed to live in close orbit with people and these people around us build our identity. It's grounding to me to realize that people's perception of us is far less important than the me to the matter, which is who we actually are. Better to be thought an idiot but be intelligent than to be thought intelligent and be an idiot. In a world that's increasingly digital and impersonal, it's easier than ever to live behind a facade. Knowing that external possessions give the illusion of identity and that that's a really old trick.

I'm hoping that all this talk will help me focus on actual character and actual substance. Who I am when nobody's watching. I'm a big fan of that kind of talk, but talk is cheap. Anyway, next season, when you get a picture of a big buck or a big bear, keep track of who you share it with and how you manage your own secrets. and you just might learn something about yourself. Thanks so much for listening to Bear Grease. Hey, check out Meat Eaters Season 10, Part 2 on Netflix if you haven't,

and check out the Bear Grease merch on themeat eater.com. And thanks a ton for all your support on this podcast. Please share this podcast with friend and foe. Even share it with your grandma. Who knows, she might like it. And, hey, before we close, Here's a bonus section of Dan Rupke ringing the truth out of me. Clay Newcomb, how many photos do you have on your phone that no one else has seen?

Secret photos. Secret photos. These photos would be a combination that are mine that I don't share, but also photos that people have sent me that I vowed to not show. And I would say that at any given time, if you were to scroll through my save pictures on my phone. There would be three to six pictures of white-tailed deer that have some semblance of a vow made to someone else or to myself that I wasn't, that I wouldn't share freely with anybody. I'm not going to show. There's different variations of this because there's some pictures that I would share with Joe on the street. If I was walking down the street and he had a camo hat

and we stopped together, and I'd be like, man, you're a deer hunter? And I'd be like, look at this here I got a picture of, but there are also, there's three to six that that would never happen to. Now, here's a question for you. Let's say somebody shares with you their inside info. Maybe it's a picture from a lot, man. Trail cam. Oh yeah, you're Mr. Go-to. My question is, can you be trusted? Hey, that is a very real question that every one of us wager on our friend all the time. And so you're asking me if I'm not, if I'm trustworthy. Yeah, this is a, it's a yes or no. You've not answered. The answer is yes.

If you sent me a picture that you specifically asked me not to share with anyone, I would honor that. Okay. Sounds to me like, one, you're trying to convince yourself that you're trustworthy. Two, what if I sent you a photo? And I didn't explicitly say, hey, Clay, keep this one to yourself. But you knew I didn't want this going everywhere. Okay. Then it's sort of off the table. If you give me information that does not come with specific instructions, then it's off the table.

Now, granted, I'm not stupid. And if somebody's sharing information with me, like, I'm going to typically act inside of, like, a code of honor. I'm not going to go, like, put that on Instagram and say, Jim, sent me this picture of this buck you got on his lease. But if you send me a picture and you don't say, don't share this. with someone and I'm compelled by that picture. I'm compelled by something about it. The size of the buck, where it was at, the time it was at, what it was doing. I mean, I'll show that to Bill on the street.

So that's, okay. I think what's disturbing to me is even when you said, I would say, don't share this with anybody, you said typically you would act within a code of honor. Well, listen. So there is, there are, therefore, instances where you would betray my trust. regardless of the situation. I guess what we're talking about is how to the letter of the law

that someone is going to be. I don't think we're talking about someone. I think we're talking about you and what you're made of as a man. Listen, you send me a picture of your big buck that, and you say, Clay, don't share this with anybody. Can I show it to my wife? Is your wife anybody?

She is. So I've broken your trust. Can I show it to my dad who will not know where that information came from? Will not. I mean, it has no connection. Don't you understand that this is how the floodgates get open. It's exactly how they get open, Dan.

And that is exactly why that I've been burned. I have been burned by people. Because this is what I've learned, okay, is it's not me that you have to worry about. It's the person I share it with. So I get your picture, and I'm sharing this with you because I have grown, okay? I have grown. You're a changed man. I get a picture from you, this giant buck.

and I go, man, oh, Gary Newcomb, he's not going to go in there and kill that deer. He's not going to, it doesn't matter. And so I go, look at this picture that Bill sent me. I've sworn to Bill that I wasn't going to show anybody. This is a made-up scenario. This has never happened. Purely hypothetical. I show it to Gary.

And again, I'm not the one you have to worry about because I'm not going to go on your spot. I'm not going to tell the information to someone that would use that information to capitalize on your spot. But you know who doesn't have loyalty to Bill? Gary. Gary Newcomb. And so Gary, now, doesn't have any loyalty to Bill, doesn't know Bill. You know, Gary, the next day, goes, man, I saw a picture of a big buck that came out a bleep-de-bleep management area just yesterday. And he tells that to pick someone and bam, the thing just, you've lost it all.

So that's where people aren't trustworthy is the trusted person that they tell. Because my trusted person isn't your trusted person. You see what I'm saying? say that again. Yeah. And so I have started to when I share deep secrets with other people, I like say, don't share this with anybody. Not even your dad, not even your brother. You know, can you keep this secret? So one of the things about being in a relationship with you that's challenging is you are actually dividing families. I mean, you are keeping people from communicating with their own family members. I mean, then tell me you don't want to

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