Bear Grease - Ep. 421: This Country Life - Expectations and Reality

Episode Date: February 13, 2026

For many of us getting our children and the younger members of our family outdoors is a priority. How we get them outside and what we do once they're there can set the stage for how they view that experience for years to come. Brent's sharing a listener's story along that theme. Brent's also offering his own thoughts how he handled getting his own children outside; what he did right and maybe what he could've done better. 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.

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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 Eat 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. Expectations and reality.

I've been traveling a lot lately and had the great fortune to meet and interact with families from Tennessee to Pennsylvania and several other states as well. The common thread among the majority of them was the eagerness of their youngans to continue with mom and dad in the outdoors or the eagerness of mom and dad to get them out there. We're going to talk about that this week, but first, I'm going to tell you this story. Kyle Lankford is a police officer with the YDOT Nation Police Department in Miami, Oklahoma. Now, it's spelled like it should be pronounced Miami. But if you call it Miami and you're referring to the city in Oklahoma and not the one in Florida,

the okeys are quick to correct you. Now, Kyle has been in law enforcement for over a dozen years, and a decade of it was spending patrol. Now he's a resource officer at the local school and has been for a couple of years. This story is about a hunt with his father and brother when he was a kid and how he passed that tradition down to his children. I've talked enough about what we're going to hear, so let's just get in there and sort it out. With Kyle's words and my voice, here we go. As far back as I can remember, I can still hear the stories from my dad and Uncle Jerry about hunting and deer camps and trips to Colorado and funny pranks. The stories they told captured my imagination with adventure and camaraderie,

and I remember wanting nothing more than to have stories like those of my own someday. Growing up a couple times of season, my dad would take my younger brother and me along with him. And back then, deer hunting was tough. Taking two small kids, well, that made it even tougher. There was no such thing as a ladder stand or pop-up blind for us, and if there was, we had never heard of it, The dad's only option was to rake the leaves away from the base of a big tree, and there in the dirt, we would wait like a litter of raccoons.

I don't remember seeing any deer on those hunts, but I wouldn't trade them for a boon and crockett-sized buck today. A few years later, the year before I was able to hunt on my own, I remember sitting with my dad and seeing two doves. They were about 70 yards away through the timber, and just seeing them was. the most amazing thing ever. I'd gone deer hunting with dad for years and I'd seen deer from the car, but I'd never seen

one while hunting. I was blown away. The next summer, I took my hunter's safety course, and my uncle was gracious enough to let me borrow a spare 30-30. That fall, with a tag in my pocket, I was on the road to adventure. My borrowed Marlon 30-30 had a fixed four-power scope, shoot-through bases, and wide. white stitching on the leather sling. It wasn't mine, but I'll never forget of holding it.

Looking back, it was more empowering than sitting behind the wheel of my first car. With rifle season approaching, I got it just in time to sight it in and become familiar with it before opening weekend. And on opening day, I remember getting dressed by the fireplace. A dim brass lamp lit the room as I pulled on stretched out long underwear, overly thick wool socks and zipped up a pair of old faded camo cover-alls that were a couple sizes too big and likely twice my age. Or an orange sock cap and even older orange vest with string ties in the corners that had been broken

and re-tied at least a dozen times. In that same room, Dad kept our guns in a locking cabinet under the staircase next to the fireplace. Like it was yesterday, I can still smell the wood. wood smoke and hoppies when he opened the door and passed out guns early in the morning. We left the house and dad's 63 Chevrolet, half-ton pickup. It was a 15-mile drive from our house to our hunting spot. When we parked the truck, it was about 20 degrees, and there was a light dusting of fresh snow. Stepping out of the truck, I clipped on my camo fanny pack. Inside it was a grunt call, some fresh earth-scented wafers and a buck model 119.

I threw my rifle over my shoulder and took a deep breath of the cold, crisp morning air. We climbed to the top of a big hardwood ridge. My dad and my brother walked me to an oak tree I had never seen before. Dad helped me kick the snow and leaves away from the base of the tree and wish me good luck before he and my brother walked into the darkness with the only flashlight we had. As the sun came up that day, it was hard to describe the feeling I had. I was actually hunting.

I'd been trusted to carry a rifle and possibly even take the life of a deer. It was a freedom and a responsibility I had never experienced before. I wanted that morning to last forever. We hunted that evening and went to church the next morning. We were back in the woods on Sunday evening. I didn't see a single deer that weekend. It wasn't uncommon back then, and it didn't bother me anyway. I was just excited to be in the woods.

The following Thursday, after school was out, I returned to my oak tree. I hadn't been there long when I heard something. Scanning the hillside, I saw movement and quickly made out the brown color of a deer under a big white oak. She was walking slowly toward me, eating acres. I waited for a good angle. I cocked the hammer. I took aim and pulled the tree. trigger. In a matter of moments, I was standing over my first deer. She was all of 55 pounds,

and she wasn't a she at all. It was a button button. But I was so excited I could hardly contain myself. And with light fading, no flashlight, and a dead deer on the ground, I went to find my dad and my brother. When I reached the top of the ridge where dad had dropped me off, I waited what felt like an eternity before I saw his flashlight cutting through the woods. but he didn't come down the ridge toward me. It was as if he had forgotten. He and my brother were headed toward the truck. I ran toward him yelling loud enough to be heard over the crunching leaves,

and they finally stopped and yelled back. I hollered that I killed a deer, and he yelled back in surprise he didn't even know I had shot. Over the next 15 years, I continued to hunt with my dad, Uncle Jerry, my cousins, and my brother. We all hunted on or near that public land in McDonnell County. For the better part of a decade, we had an annual deer camp. We played poker, and we ate a lot of fried backstraps with gravy,

and on a good year, half of us would kill a small forkenhorn or a six point, and if we were lucky, someone would drag in a 100-inch eight-point. Most of the most fun years of hunting of my life, and for better or worse, it seems to the culture of deer hunting. has now measured success in different ways than it did back then. I'm so thankful for the years I spent hunting on that public land with old hand-me-down equipment and for the time together with friends and family. I have no doubt those experiences shaped me into the outdoorsman I am today.

I'm 40 years old now. My wife and I have a 19-year-old daughter, a 16-year-old son, and an 11-year-old daughter. I sometimes question the way I've run. raised my kids, not only in the outdoors, but in all walks of life, have I held their hands and spoon fed them too much? Have I catered to them to ensure instant success? Keeping them comfortable and bought them too nice of equipment and clothing? Today, my 11-year-old Angeley Pearl has killed three bucks, hers all bigger than anything I had killed by the time I was twice her age. My son Hagen has a quiver for his bow that cost more than my entire archery setup when I was 16.

And my 19-year-old, Katie Mae just killed her fifth buck two days ago. As we sat in our heated shooting house, she squeezed off the suppressed rifle, and within 45 minutes we were headed back home with a nice buck in the bed of the truck. I'd like to think in today's world I'm doing the right thing to make sure my kids have good and fun experiences in the outdoors. My goal is for them to want to continue being outdoorsmen and women for the rest of their lives and to someday pass on to their kids what my dad and uncle passed on to me. But I often wonder if I made it a little too easy on by not challenging them the way I was challenged. Will they grow up and perceive the outdoors the way I do? Is it selfish for me to even want

that? Maybe I should let them struggle a little more. Maybe I should drop them off on the side of a big oak ridge and walk out of sight for a while. Maybe I should just be happy that they're enjoying the outdoors and sharing time with me doing things that I once did with my dad. Truth is, today's world with social media, instant gratification in busy lives, none of us really know the right answers. Only time will tell. One thing I do know is this. One thing I do know is this. this. I'm going to keep taking them hunting for as long as they'll let me, and someday I hope they can remember their first hunt as positively and with as much detail as I remember mine. And according to Miami tribe native Kyle Langford, that's just how that happened.

Well, Kyle, you bring us some interesting things to think about, and I think we ought to talk about. 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 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. Expectations and reality.

Now I'm probably going to get some heat for some of the stuff I'm fixing to say, but this is just my opinion. Y'all don't have to agree with it any more than I have to agree with yours. Some of you will and some of you won't, and I absolutely couldn't care less which side of the fence you're on, mainly because I seldom see a fence these days. I haven't always thought this way. I'll readily admit there was a time when I had narrow views on just about everything,

but maturity and experience have changed or adjusted the way you see things. I think that's the way it's supposed to work. You form an opinion based on what you know to be true through your observations or information provided to you by trusted sources, and when you learn better, you adjust your opinions to coincide with the facts presented. And the theme and purpose of today's episode is weighing our expectations against reality. And I pose this in regard to how we interact with our kids while hunting and fishing. I've heard people say that kids these days just don't know what it's like to be wet and cold like we did back in the good old days.

Well, kids have hunting clothes made for them now where back in my day, they didn't. Mama had my feet stuffed in three pairs of socks and jobbed inside bread sacks before putting on my shoes or boots and heading out into the cold and wet. Well, I'm not about doing things for Bailey. my grandkids or any younger I happen to be hunting or fishing with, but I do want to make it enjoyable for them. And just because things can be more comfortable for kids these days, does that mean there's any less impactful? I don't think so.

It's important for me to remember that my first experiences with outdoor sports aren't theirs. If I project what I remember feeling or how I think they should feel about a particular activity, I'm setting myself up for disappointment and adding unnecessary pressure to them. Let them enjoy or dislike based on their own experiences. It's just as hard to get a child to like something they have no interest in as it is for me. We all have an idea that everyone, especially the little ones that we introduce to the things we all love,

should feel as passionate about them as we do. That's why we want to share them with them in the first place. It's been my observation that the real reason the little ones want to be there isn't for the particular activity. It's because we're there. During the COVID lockdown, which started when Whalen was a half-year-old and Bailey was seven, there were very few times initially when I left the house to take him out that she wasn't with me. She was just as excited to put on her rubber boots and ride with me and Whalen to the woods as she was going to the park to play. It wasn't the activity we were going to do together.

It was just an activity that we were doing together. Of course, as she's grown older now, her attention has been directed elsewhere as she's matured and discovered that other activities she finds they may be more interested in coon hunting with her daddy. It's hard to believe for a 13-year-old girl as that is. But did I judge the success of what we were doing and how much she enjoyed it by how much I enjoy it now and how I remember enjoying it with my dad?

Nope. But I did with my son a decade earlier, and when his attention turned elsewhere, I incorrectly took it as an affront to me instead of seeing it for what it was. It was merely a different interest by a different person, raised in a different environment, with different social pressures, and at a different time. I remember feeling almost heartbroken that his interests weren't aligned like mine were. We hunted a lot together when he really didn't have much choice about going and may have not expressed the fact that maybe he, maybe he really didn't want to go.

Maybe he wanted to do something else. Or maybe I put too much pressure on him to have the same love for something that I did and I pushed him in the other direction. Can I go back that far at my memory bank? can accurately relive the emotions and adrenaline-filled moments of my life? I like to think I can about some things, but I can assure you that how I feel about killing that squirrel on my first solo hunt that I talked about last week,

well, that's only sweetened with time. The reason being the totality of the circumstances that surrounded it, the distance, not only in decades, but the physical distance from that spot where it occurred, and where I set now, unable to return to that location or see those things again that I saw there 50 years ago. And that only happens with the passage of time. I value that memory because I know I can never go back there physically

and can only wax as poetic as I can about that time from long ago. No one else should be expected to feel the same value I do, even though they may see that there's some, real value in it. The true investment is mine alone, just as their initial experiences will dictate the importance of where they place that activity in their own lives. There's nothing enjoyable about doing something you don't want to do or being somewhere that you don't want to be.

I think the best thing we can do is to expose the outdoors to the young ones while making it as comfortable as possible. with no other expectations but allowing them to make up their own minds. Then, in their older, they can make the decisions with our guidance as to the level of difficulty and commitment that they want to make for themselves. We hope in our hearts that reality lives up to our expectations, but seldom is that ever the case. But I'd love for Bailey to march in this office right now and say,

Dad, I want a new pair of hip boots and one of Mr. Michael's life. Well, you bet I would. Is she going to do that? Probably not. But if you ask her if she had fun when she used to follow me in that old hound around in the woods, I bet she'd say yes. She'll remember it as a time when she wanted to go along with me instead of being forced to do so. That's the difference.

And how we approach those first outings will set the precedent of how many will follow. I thank you all so much for listening. And hey, check out the new Bear Grease YouTube channel, which is really the old Bear Hunting Magazine YouTube channel. It ain't hard to find, and there's very little math involved, if any. It's going to be a lot of good stuff on there, and I think you really enjoy it for my very own boy wonder, Bear John. Until next week, this is Brent Reeve.

Signing all. Y'all be careful. First Lights Fieldware collection is made for the work that happens long before opening day, 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.