Bear Grease - Ep. 428: Render - Black Bear Mitts and Loggers

Episode Date: March 4, 2026

On this episode of the Bear Grease Podcast, host Clay Newcomb is joined by the OG Render crew—Brent Reaves, Dr. Misty Newcomb, Bear Newcomb, Gary “Believer” Newcomb, and Josh “Landbridge” Spielmaker. Clay shows off his new bear fur mittens for his upcoming Arctic expedition, and Brent and Bear detail their coin hunting with self bow exploits, along with a deep discussion of the Bear Grease loggers episode featuring Teddy Villines. Thank you to our sponsor, Tecovas. If you have comments on the show, send us a note to [e-mail] Connect with Clay and MeatEater Clay on Instagram MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Youtube Clips MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Shop Bear Grease MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human. 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 field. Worldware gear at firstlight.com. My name is Clay Newcomb, and this is a production of the Bear Grease podcast called the Bear Grease Render, where we render down, dive deeper, and look behind the scenes of the actual Bear Grease podcast. Brought to you by Toccova's boots. I'm a cowboy bootman, and I've been wearing Tocobas for years.

They're the most comfortable boot I've ever put on. Good boots for good times. It's been a while since you've been on the render. It is. We let you have a little cool off period. Yeah, that's good. After the last time. Yeah.

After the incident. After the incident. Yeah. We're kidding. We're kidding, Dad. There was no incident. Just kicked off completely, but I got a reprieve and here I am. Well, it's good.

We're glad to have you back. I knew better than coming in here and not wearing clothing. Yeah. I knew I'd get it. You had all. That one. We cut that one. We've got,

man, we've got the, we've got the crew back together. Truly. Oh, not only do we have Gary Believer, Newcomb,

but we've got Brent Reeves. Here I am. Who's the phone is ringing? Wow, after all that. Oh, my goodness. It's you, Clay.

No, it's not. It's dad. That's what gets you. That's what gets you on the render. Brent, great to see you. Hey, buddy. It's been a while.

It has been. It's been, it's been a while. It's been a while. I can't tell you when it was the last day. It's been a while since you've been up here. I've been busy. I think it's one of the meat eater crew is here.

Yeah, it probably was. They're on the road. We're on the road. Yeah. We also have Dr. Misty Newcomb with us. Happy to be here. And we've got Gary Newcomb and the Tukov's hot seat. Bear John Newcomb's here.

We're going to start off with... Hello. Josh Lambridge spillmakers here. Oh, there he is. Oh, yeah. I just now seen him too. That guy with the immaculate mustache. Yep.

Bear, tell us about your bow. What do you got? Well, this is the same bow I brought last time. I've got something crazy on here. Probably the craziest thing that I've worked with yet. I glued on last night a piece of a sperm oil tooth for the tip overlays on my bow. That was given to me by Alaskan guy, David Bennett's. Oh, very good.

But the thing about sperm whale tooth is it has to be over 100. It has to be grandfathered in. before the Marine Mammal Protection Act in order to be able to use it. And this, so this sperm whale tooth is over 100 years old. No way. So cut some little pieces off and put it on the bow. Very cool.

Yeah. Very cool. And it's an Osage Orange bow. Yep. I got it shooting. Got the handle. Finished up. And, yeah, now I'm just putting the art on it.

Got some wood burning I'm going to do in it. Mm-hmm. What kind of art are we looking at? You'll just have to see. Okay. Secret. TBD. Patent pending.

Excellent. Well, we're just going to go around the room here to do just a small show and tell. For those of you that aren't watching the YouTube video, I am wearing my new boxing gloves. Boxing gloves. These are my black bear mitts made to me by Jacob at New England Naturals on Instagram. And this is a prime black bear fur. envision big huge mitts that go up almost to your elbow, like to your forearm. Inside of these mitts, though, is sheared beaver.

So on the outside, it's prime black bear. On the inside it's beaver. But the paws of it are leather and merino wool. So there's actually some dexterity. Like, you know, you could like pick up rocks. or ride a snowmobile. Eat a hot dog. And I'm down to two.

Also, you could. You could also draw two eyes. Do hand puppets. And do hand puppets with it. It looks like a furry cookie monster. Easily convert to hand puppets. Yeah. So I'm really excited about these because I'm soon to be in the far north.

You're departing soon. To the far north and going to be in the most extreme temperatures on the globe for a while. So I'll be wearing these. These aren't show bear. These aren't for show. These are for go. Yeah, some socks. Just a whole bear suit.

Yeah. Yeah. Because everybody, there's going to be something up there wearing a bear suit. Mm-hmm. No doubt. That wants to eat you. No doubt. No doubt.

No doubt. So we, I just want to say as a, like a news alert, the Bear Grease YouTube channels up and rolling. We've got three episodes up. You bet. And the last episode was cooking with mom. I loved it. It was a banger.

I loved it. It made me want to eat egg rolls real bad. Yeah, they looked good, didn't they? Yeah, they did. Yeah. It was a lot of fun. Yeah, so there was a hog hunt with bear with a self-bow where he killed a hog. There was a squirrel hunt.

and then now this one. And again, if you went there, you wouldn't, you'd be looking at what appears to be a fully built-out YouTube channel with, you know, 80,000-something thousand subscribers. And that's because me and Bear, pretty much, when Bear was a little kid,

I'm going to give Bear the credit for it. We started a YouTube channel. And at the time it was Bear Honey magazine. And there's a bunch of the stuff on there that Brent filmed for me. A whole lot of the films on there. he was Brent Reeves. Before he was Brent. Back when he was just...

Camerman, Brent Reeves. Camerman. He didn't even have a name. I didn't. He just... It was like, cameraman. I know how you feel. I don't even get introduced

on the render anymore. So the... We just changed the name of the channel. Bear is primarily taking it over. But, I mean, I'll be on there some. Brent's going to be on there some. Brent and Bear filmed some. Yeah, we filmed.

a good video this week. I filmed a little Coon hunt with a bow. With a bow. With a bow. Yep. Yeah, next week we've got an elk hunt with the self bow that I did in New Mexico where I stayed in the cabin that is seen on the movie Lonesome Dove, and I'd hike out of there every morning and go Elkunt.

That's a twist. Yeah. How cool is that? Oh, that was a super cool trip. What else we got coming up on the bear grease channel? So the week after that, we've got a hawk trapping video where I'm. I went down to South Texas with my buddy Aaron Kincaid, and we trapped Harris Hawks.

He's a falconer. We trapped Harris Hawks out of the wild, and then he trained him for six weeks, and then we went hunting with him in North Carolina. So it's a pretty crazy video, but we're going to get into a lot of the ethics around it, but also the just partnership with the natural world that you don't really think about

whenever you're thinking about falconry, but it's this ancient sport. It's as ancient as far as we have written history of. And it's just like using a dog, except you're actually going and trapping it out of the wild. It's really wild. Yeah. Yeah.

I'm looking forward to that one. Yeah. Yeah. We also have a hog hunt on mules in Oklahoma with Dale Brisbane. Yeah, that'll be after that. Turnpike Tributors coming up. We went over there, had a big expedition with those guys. over in Oklahoma.

That was super fun. That's going to be an episode on that channel. Yeah. So lots of cool stuff coming up. We've also got a real bear grease Instagram page, which you can catch all the action. You bet. There. And you guys are going to be at the Black Bear Bananza.

Is that right, Brent? Yeah, March the 7th. March the 7th. Well, when this comes out, it'll be that Saturday after this comes out. Wow. So, yeah. Three days after this comes out. So the Black Bear Bananza in Bentonville?

Bentonville. Be there or be square, as we say. What do y'all know about? So it's unfortunate. This is one of my favorite events of the year, but I won't be there. But someone better than me will be there. Completely better than me. Brian Callahan.

Okay. All of us thought it was going to be us. Yeah, exactly. We were all like, oh, it's going to be me. It's going to be me. But you should have rephrase that as somebody else better than me will be there. Someone else better than me, along with Brent, Josh, Bear. You might be there, Misty.

I'm not sure. You might make a cameo. But Brian Callahan, who's now the CEO of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, who are doing the hard work of conservation of wild lands and hunting rights in this country. They truly are. I had a guy that I really value and appreciate this morning and send me something out here in Arkansas about a dog-related issue. Basically, they're trying to make it where all dogs,

any dog turned loose in the state, has a track and train collar on it, where you can track it and you could tone the dog to get it, you could shock the dog, essentially, to get it back if it crossed on a private land. Boy, that sounds really great. I mean, it's hard to even argue with, except that it probably will functionally shut down any kind of dog pack hunting in the state.

I mean, like when you run deer with dogs and you need more than one dog, like the coon hunters, it's not that big a deal. Most coon hunters probably have that already on their dog, most. No, I think it's going to be, it would be. I know this is not what we're talking about, but I'm not for it at all. I think it would be a, if I was just getting into it as a young man, That stuff is expensive. Yeah.

It's going to keep some folks out that want to do it. Right. I'm absolutely not for that at all. Well, it's just, it's an issue, you know. And, you know, I'm currently addressing it here. But it's basically legislation that is inadvertently going to dramatically hurt hound hunting. But at the same time, like private land ownership,

issues deserve to be addressed. Because I could be a private landowner and people's dogs are constantly running through my land and I don't like that. I mean, I understand that. We just have to acknowledge that. And I think dog hunters like me have to acknowledge that.

So what's the solution? I don't know. Have control your dogs. I can control, I can call my dog away from a tree could. Yeah. With your track and trade, though. No, with my voice.

Well, I, I saw it. Oh, I believe that. It's a different story when you've got packs of dogs running big game, though, because they're long ways off in different places. So those are the kind of things. And to me, it's like a bigger issue of, well, talk to your, talk to your, there's questions on the game and fish right now.

Fill out that survey. Point of all this is that there's issues going on all over the place. Can y'all take me seriously? No, I can't. It's really distracted. We're going to talk about the fur ban in Colorado. It's guys like Ryan Callahan. I think Dan Gates and those guys with Colorans for responsible wildlife management are doing a great job.

How for wildlife doing an incredible job. North American Bear found. I mean, you could just go through the Wild Sheep Foundation, National Wild Turkey Federation. Turkey's for tomorrow. Just like everybody's doing all this stuff. so bear great segue into I like to

we need a name for this actually is going on yeah I mean a lot of us don't like to talk about really what's going on we need a name for this segment so be thinking okay

Bears Conservation Corner yep oh yeah there we go bear's conservation corner now so we can all quit thinking now yeah yeah thinking done okay well you were talking about the fur ban

And that's what we're talking about today. Yeah. So basically, I've got my notes here pulled up. Colorado is trying to make it to where you can no longer sell furs. So like trapping and trapping coyotes and beavers and stuff like that can no longer go up on the fur market. And it's not based off of any scientific evidence is the issue. It's based off of a lot of. a lot of politics and a lot of like basically yeah the you know like wildlife was managed by the state

and there's biologists for every critter that know exactly what that population is and they're studying it making sure that all the numbers are good and they're the ones who need to be setting the regulations for what can be taken out and what needs to be left alone but in colorado what's happening is it is not those guys that are making the regulations. Right. It's the politicians. And so they're on May, okay, March 4th and 5th. Here's what you can do about this.

March 4th and 5th, you can actually go, sorry, you could actually go in person to a hearing in Denver, Colorado. May 6th and 7th, there's another one. and you can do it online, you can do it virtually, you could say something about it, you could write into the senators, or you could actually go in person to that event. But the key here is that we can't let the wildlife be managed by people who don't understand the science behind it. It needs to be scientifically regulated. And that falls within the North American model of wildlife conservation. The further away we get from that, the less and less opportunity that we'll have,

which ultimately will result in the fewer and fewer wild places that we have to go. So the dates that you're talking about in those places, that's where citizens and voters can make their opinions known. Yeah. Voice their opinions in public. Yeah. So if you live near Denver, you would be someone that might could consider going to something like that. But you can find all the addresses and everything.

on the Coloradoans for Responsible Wildlife Management website and Instagram. It really does make a difference when people show up to that kind of stuff. It's good if you don't live near there to join online, but in legislative circles, it makes a difference, the body count in the room. Good old civic engagement. Yep. Yeah. Good job, Bear.

Bear's Conservation Corner. Nice work. Yes. BCC. Yep, yep. No, I do. I want to find ways. to just continue.

I mean, part of being a hunter in the days ahead and loving wild places is going to be just being more of a activist and understanding what's going on. So that's just part of what we do. So that's good. Brent, it's been so long since you've been here. I'm craving a story from Brent Reeves. I was reminded. Just Bear came down for this video. It was coming at whenever I'm on the.

baguress thing. And he said, he calls me, he says, do you think that Waylon could treat a bear that I could shoot with my bow? And my immediate response was, and I thought, Coon, yeah, I'm sorry, Coon. We're not running. There's so many bears. He's illegal. There's so many bears in here. And I actually talked about it on the podcast that came out this morning. And my immediate response was, the question is, do you think you could shoot a coon that my dog whalen could tree because I know he could tree one. Right.

So he came down. We got dates together. He came down and he stayed at the house and for two nights we chased him. And it was a valued effort. I'm not going to give anything away. He can talk about anything in particular that happened in there.

But on the second night, I squalled a coon down a tree to get it lower and calamity ensued. And it reminded me of a hunt that my dad and I went on when I was just a kid. I was in high school, I think I was a junior in high school, and I just got a new coon dog. And I had just had an appendectomy that would kept me from playing in a football game.

So instead of playing that game, as soon as it was over with, I got to leave me and my dad went cunun to take this puppy out. I said, Dad, we got to find something easy. And I got these stitches. I had staples and where my appendix had been. And I was sore moving around. He said, well, I know where there is a persimmon tree. We'll go over there.

And it's probably loaded with persimmons. And we'd drive over to this place right in front of an old chicken house. And sure enough, it was loaded because when we turned the corner and they looked like a Christmas tree. All the eyes were looking at it. And the tree wasn't very big. So we pulled up to it. And I got the dog out and laid him out. And he's just a puppy.

he don't know what he's doing. And Dad said, we need one of them coons down here on the ground. Well, when he said that, I started going up the tree. I started climbing up the tree. And he's like, oh, no, son, don't, don't you're going to tear your stables loose. I'm good. I'm fine. So I got up there with them.

I started shaking them. And there's like five or six coons up there. And they all hit the ground. Well, my dad and the dog was there. There wasn't another tree within 100 yards of where we was at. So they all started coming right back up the tree I was in. and it got kind of loud and a little western up there for a little bit.

I got coons going behind me and beside me and crossing my leg and I shake another one out and then finally it runs over and goes up on a fence post and I get down. All the other coons are still up in the tree. So I get down and my dad said

we need that dog to wrestle and the coons do a little fight and he said I'm going to find something kind of addle that coon that's on the fence post there and get him down there and maybe that puppy will wrestle We'll fight him a little bit.

And the only thing we could find, we didn't have the tire tool was in the back of the truck that we tried to, that's a whole different story. But the only thing we could find was a board laying on the ground there. He said, I got this board here,

and he said, it's too heavy for you to pick up. You'll tear them staples loose. And it was a two-by-12. It was 12-foot long. It weighed. It had been laying out in the rain. There's no telling how much it weighed, 100 pounds or so.

And my dad picked it up is all he could do to hold it. So that's what he's got this thing. It was like a helicopter blade. And he said, I'm just going to kind of just touch him on top of the head when I'm going to knock him off of that fence post in the dog. And fight him. It's going to just instill the vigor and the fire in him. He'll start chasing these coons.

And he swung that thing around and hit that coon. It was all he could do to swing in. And when he did, his aim was just a little off. and he hit that tune, got Coon on the top of the head and killed him dead for he hit the ground. He just, boom. He fell off the fence post. The dog run over there and made two or three sniffs and looked back at us like, what's the big deal about Coonan?

And that was the end of the story. So we loaded the dog up and he eventually made a pretty decent dog, but he wasn't from that night. It was just way too much going on. It was reminding me. Buddy Reeves in the helicopter Coon. Yeah. It reminded me of the.

what me and bear did the other night. It got loud there for a while, didn't it? Well, it was loud there that night. It did. So, Brant's always trying to get us to get a walker, and Bear is now, and I hunted plots for a long time,

have now one for seven on plot coon dogs, basically. And Bear's thinking about getting a dog, thinking about getting a blue tick, much to the sugar. grin of Brent. No, there's a famous line of dogs of blue ticks out of Arkansas, and now they're in Arkansas and Missouri,

and they're very good, and I can't... Is it Vaughn? Yeah, that's them. Vaughn, Blue Ticks? Yeah, they're good dogs. Yeah. Yeah, there's pretty good blue ticks. Yeah, whenever I went Coon Hunting

with Brent, I was reminded of how much I enjoyed coon hunting. It's a fun way to hunt because you can bring people and have a good time. Like, there's no pressure on the hunt at all. It's not like you have to be quiet or anything. Yeah, we were sitting there drinking coffee and talking about everything.

Yeah. Of course, we were toting arrows too, so that was new. A lot of arrows. A little element to it. Now, I'll tell you something interesting, though, is we shot at two coons total. The first night I shot at one and is too high up in the tree. And so I didn't, the arrows didn't have enough power by the time they got there. but they'd go flying past this coon into the woods hundreds of yards away

and I would just think there's no way I'm finding those arrows but I walked in a straight line from where I shot it and all 10 of my arrows were within like 20 feet of chip are you shot 10 times oh yeah oh yeah I unloaded up there and one arrow got stuck up in the tree right next to the coon yeah oh my gosh and so that's the only arrow I lost filming a cowboy moved there for a little bit and it wasn't now it wasn't hundreds of yards it was tens of yards

where they were laying oh really they weren't going that far no well you would so so steep yeah it was probably like the second coon is probably like 60 yards from where

we were shooting at it okay yeah yeah the arrows were and and hey I said you know we should have thought and put some reflective tape on this thing yeah oh that would be that would have been smart and then when we walked out there

you were like here's one here's one Here's one. So you found all of them? No, I came in there with a dozen, and I left out of there with eight. That's pretty good. That's not bad. Was it big bottom lands, though? Kind of open ground?

We had initially hunted this place because it's got a ridge. It's full of blackjack oaks, and they're maybe 30 feet tall. And I've tree coons in there all the time. They're 15 feet off the ground, which would have been just perfect for him to come out here and shoot with his self-bow. but it's been so dry there wasn't any coons in there and I hunted there four nights in a row trying to find them up there and they were all down in the bottom down there. So that was the shortest timber in that area that we could have went to. Both coons were at about 40 foot or a little over.

Yeah. It was our estimate. It was a poke. 40 feet, yeah, that's a long ways. The second one, my arrows, they weren't quite making it up there. So that's why we squalled it down. But you can watch the full video here in a couple of weeks. To find out what happened?

On the very secret channel. You're not going to want to miss it. Lots of suspense. Lots of suspense. I'll be waiting until noon. As soon as noon, that video better be out. Noon on Wednesday. On blood trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is over.

They just get darker. I've seen something in the road. I instantly thought it was a sleeping bed. And there was a full of blood. Oh my God. He doesn't have a hit. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors, where the terrain is unforgiving, the evidence is scarce,

and the truth gets buried under brush and silence. Indications were he should be right there, but he wasn't. This season, we're going deeper, from cold case files to whispered suspicions, from remote mountains to frozen backwoods. Each story begins in the wilderness and ends in darkness. Because out here, there are no witnesses, no cameras, just fragments and the people left behind trying to piece them back together.

He's not an honest person. He's incapable of being honest. Somebody somewhere knows something. I'm Jordan Sillers. Season 2 of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, Iheart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. So speaking of the arrow that's stuck in the tree that will one day be cut down by a log, Okay. We just We just came out with a series called American Lager.

And we had the Vlian's cousins and brothers on the last render from part one. And part, if you haven't caught up on it, and just maybe you're new to the podcast. And, you know, our render this podcast is where we talk about really what we're here to do. my main thing that I enjoy doing is these bare grease documentary style episodes and we we talked to cody and kalem vallions about their multi-generational history with their father's grandfather and even further back than that of logging in the ozarks and these guys are logging cutting trees by hand which that's a phrase that would be used in the industry because so much of it now is mechanized and they're cutting trees with big cutters and And there's a lot of people that still cut by hand. It's not like it's unheard of.

Cut by hand doesn't mean a hand-powered saw. It means using a chainsaw to cut trees. But it's a dangerous, dangerous occupation. We, you know, the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that login is, I'm pretty sure it's still the most dangerous industry in America. Oh, really? Yeah. But it's less dangerous than it was. In 1990, there was 128 deaths per 100,000 loggers in America.

Wow, that is quite high. The number two was commercial fishing, which Brent is a commercial fisherman. That's right. He's died three times. It was like in the 50s or 60 per 100,000. So you can see, it was almost. I think it was double the amount of guys that were getting killed by logging. And I explained this on episode one, but today, logging is much safer.

And I think there's in the like 60, well, just between the 50 and 100, longer deaths per 100,000. So it's come way down. And it might even be in the 60s. It was unclear to me like today what that statistic is, though it had come down a lot. and it was a lot because of mechanization, but the danger still exists. And I just found it so interesting that these guys that I knew who, I mean, I didn't pick them,

they were just randomly the guys that I knew and was friends with. And I've known they were loggers for as long as I've known them and have talked to them about it and always been intrigued by it, but it's not like they're doing anything really even that unique in that part of the world and in the industry. here in the Ozarks. And it's like, hey, do y'all have any stories of dearly getting killed? And it's like filling up.

I mean, they didn't even, those were just the stories they told just almost off the cuff. Yeah. I mean, without even much preparation. And you kind of start to see how dangerous that logging is. And so this part two, part one was Kailin and Cody. who are about my age, a little bit younger in the early 40s. Guys in our prime, you know, as we say. Right.

But on the second episode, we talked to Teddy Valines, who is Cody's father. Yeah. And he told some wild stories. Dad, what stood out to you about the episodes? Did you enjoy them? Oh, I really did. I enjoyed their character. Wonderful.

wonderful family. Yeah. And I guess my favorite story, even though I enjoyed every second of it. But when the guy got, I think it was Teddy, got the chainsaw hung up in his shoulder. Yeah. And it's still running. Yeah. You know, well, there's a lot to look at there.

I mean, he had some old equipment. Right. The breaker bar was broken and another piece was broken. And he couldn't. It wouldn't stop. It's running in his stinking shoulder. And the muscles falling off. That's so crazy.

And he just kept work. You know, he finally got it out, got his finger where he could get it out. And he like, hey, man, patch this thing up. We've got to load of logs. We've got to get out of here. Yeah. So anyway, I mean, they're amazing people, dedicated people. You know, the objective was to make a living for their stinking family.

at all cost and do it with integrity very impressive very impressive it is it is and man those those stories you know when you're around people and maybe you've

you've come into their circle and you just start hearing their stories and I do that a lot in this podcast just interviewing people you quickly see kind of an emphasis that comes from just the lifestyle that they live.

And these guys talk a lot just about toughness, honestly. But it doesn't come, it struck me, especially with Teddy and Kaylin Cody, it doesn't come from a place of bravado. Like I'm macho, masculine, I'm tougher than you. You get that sometimes. And that's not that appealing for somebody. You understand what I'm saying? Oh, yeah.

When Teddy told that story, he's just like, well, you ask me if anything crazy ever happened. happened, this happened. I mean, it wasn't, it wasn't, I've known those guys for quite a long time, and he never told me that story, you know. But I want to emphasize that because you might, I noted that, like they're not trying to be macho. It's just kind of the lifestyle, but they do value that toughness. And it's not just toughness for toughness's sake. I think there's a lot behind it. I mean, you know, another thing I noticed about that, and I've experienced it, we all have, I think women experience this. But, you know, you're out in the woods, you're doing things, and you're hot, you're tired, and you sit down and eat a sandwich with a buddy.

I mean, that's like going to Disneyland. And, I mean, they treasured that time where they could sit down and talk and eat a stinking baloney sandwich. probably. Yeah. And I mean, they loved it. Yeah. And it was just, the stuff they're doing seemed extreme, but we all experienced a little of it in our own little world, you know.

Yeah. Yeah. And they're just high character. You know, they had a lot of camaraderie. They value that. I mean, even Cody at the end, he summed it up so well. He was basically like, Clay, you asked me about the danger stuff. and I've told you those stories.

He said, but that's not what I think about when I think of logging. He said, I think about the good days when nothing bad happened and we got a load of logs out and we didn't almost die

and we had a good sandwich together at lunch. Yeah. One thing, too, I think was really cool. They knew from communicating what people wanted to hear. I mean, they don't want to hear, you know, we went out and got a load of logs,

we got paid. It was so wonderful We want to hear the tragedy Yeah And you know they acknowledge that That you know they They have these stories if you want to hear them Yeah

And people, that's what they want to hear You know Yeah That's what I want to hear Yeah So They're entertainers too Yeah they're good storytellers

Yeah They're good storytellers Yeah Brent what You listen to them What'd you think man Well Well, to go along with what Gary said, it's a sense of duty that they had about the toughness.

I mean, they were absolutely tough as woodpecker lips, but it was just what they had to do to get the job done. Misty can't take it. Well, I mean, describe them any other. I mean, it's not to derail the conversation, but the other day, Brent and I were at National Wildlife, Turkey, this is totally derailed. in the conversation. We're at National Wild Turkey Federation. Brent, we're in the same hotel room. Bears on the floor. I'm in a bed. Brent's another bed. Brent wakes up, goes to the bathroom. He doesn't know anyone's listening. I'm like asleep over there. And he walks into this little bitty bathroom and I hear him mumble under his breath. He said, it's so small in here you couldn't cuss a cat

without getting hair in your mouth. He's a little bathroom. And I woke up like out of a sleep and I said what did you just say? And he said you couldn't cuss a cat in there without getting hair in your mouth. And he said, my grandma used to say that. He just went on, brushed his teeth, went on about his day. Carry on. What did you think about the logging episode? Well, tough as woodpecker lips.

Yeah. And it wasn't out of, I'm so tough I can do this. I have to do this to provide for my family. I broke my collarbone when I was a senior in high school. And I have yet, unless my mother hears about this, this will be when she learns about it. But it wasn't, I kept playing football. Because you can feel it right here. It's side steps.

For the folks that ain't seen my hands, it grew back wrong. Because I loved playing football so much, but I felt a sense of duty to all the folks on my team to stay there. and now to chainsaw in my arm I'm probably going to tell somebody but I get that sense of duty in my profession that I worked in for so long that was how I was able to make it through a lot of places and a lot of things

and a lot of the folks that worked with me were because we trusted each other and we depended on each other for so much that that sense of duty is very very strong and the same with taking care of your family. I got a lot out of it. I appreciated to listen to it.

It was very good. What I appreciate about tapping in and what I would try to do every time. I would talk to Teddy Velines and those guys, people like that, every single episode of Bear Grease, if I could. Like I like tapping into people

who never dreamt their stories would be told to the world. I mean, like Teddy Valines, he wasn't doing that so he could tell a story. And I value that. Yeah. Authenticity. And

I was just thinking about that just in terms of just yeah, just kind of the rugged nature what they're doing. It's just one of those things that, I mean that was what was that? Wednesday? Yeah, that happened on Wednesday. But Thursday

was a great day. Yeah. Yeah. Nothing happened on Thursday. Yeah. Misty, what do you think? Well. You want to put the bear gloves on? I would. I'd like to speak with puppet hands. I'm good. I don't have the colorful analogies that Brent has, but I thought it's pretty amazing. You know, I had two grandpas, a great-grandpa on my dad's side and a grandpa, my mom's dad, they were both loggers. And so we kind of heard pretty crazy logging stories growing up. And so a lot of that

was familiar. And as I was listening to their stories, one of the things that kind of stuck out to me as he was telling the story about the truck, you know, going high speed down the hill. I was listening to it one morning and there was just a lot going on in my world. And I was trying to, you know, resolve some problem solve, resolve some kind of complex situations. And I was listening to that. And he was talking about this crazy situation with this truck flying down the mountain and he's going to die. and he's got, he's calculating all this stuff. And he just says,

Lord help me. And, and I thought, you know, there's some of the things that people, that people do, there's some, or they used to do, there's,

there's a level of simplicity when everything, you know, when you're in a high risk, high danger situation, everything, all the other options go away. Like,

he's thinking through the complex things, like if I get in that field, I'm going to, or if I hit the, go over here, I'm going to hit the bluff. And, You know, so he's thinking through all these things.

But at the end of the day, it's just like, Lord help me, there's really not much left, but that. And this was before he got to kind of the point of the story. And I just thought, man, that's, there are a lot, that's a simple solution and a good solution, like the best solution. And then he goes on and talk about just, you know, you're not in control.

You're not in control. And he kind of got to that place rapidly, as his life, you know, could have had minutes. left in it, you know, as he was, as he was calculating what he needed to do. And he got, he got to this most simple solution. And I just thought there's a, I think sometimes life can be so complex. So, and that really those simple solutions still, still work. Still, still, still, Lord help me work for about every solution. Every problem you got, you know, that, that'll help. And, and then when his son was talking about it, and he said, I just saw him,

and I just said, oh, Lord, help him. Lord, help him. And that was kind of both of their both of their response in that in that situation. And I just thought, you know, that we could simplify things a whole lot. And I kind of thought about my own situation that I was dealing with. And I think raising kids, raising a family, there's just a whole lot of challenges that come in. And I've got some ideas about those things. I've got ideas about raising kids, but I've got ideas about, you know, I've got degrees in child development and family. and at the end of the day

sometimes just all that stuff goes away. Acknowledgement of that control is powerful. Yeah. That's what I said in the podcast about what Teddy said because somebody might hear that

and in that moment in that situation he said he learned that God was in control and it's like, well, why would that be important? I mean, because that's not actually an answer to the to the to the problem. I mean, the answer to the problem would have been

for the truck to stop or for it never to have happened or for him to be able to turn it and gain control. And that's, I just got to thinking about it. Like, why is it so, why is it so revelational? Like, it's not

intellectual knowledge. There's probably nine out of ten Americans, maybe seven out of ten would say God's in control. But why it valuable and and and I think it's really about like what I said about reality there's something that shifts inside of us when when we recognize truth of the situation it's helpful for the next time you get in that bind you know that's when you pop one of those out rather than milking along

when you realize do you have one what one of your deals there are you trying to get it out no Oh. I'm playing with it. Well, don't do that. Is it too noisy? Yes. This will get you kicked off the render. Right now I'm thinking Lord help Gary with that racket he's making.

I thought you're trying to slow, like when you're in church and you're unwrapping buttercotch or something. You can actually hear that, huh? I got ears like a eagle. He really doesn't. He's got very weak ears. He's got one. But it realizes. will help you get to through the next thing.

With confidence. Yeah. You know, that what it is is what it is. Yeah. You can control your fate, your destiny, you know, you can get in the sleeping bag and lay down in the highway, and your chances of survival are a lot slimmer than sleeping in the woods, you know. but your path, not getting into all that. It's just comforting to know that if you keep your mind right

and your priorities are in order, it's going to work out probably the way it's supposed to, whether you live through it or not. That's not our plan. Bear, what stood out to you? Well, the first thing that stood out to me was similar to what I said last week, but I feel like Teddy kind of emphasized it a little more this week.

But one thing that he said was, I hate clear-cutting. Like he said it passionately. He hates clear-cutting. And I thought that was interesting. Just, again, a look inside of the reality of what the loggers are doing, and especially loggers that already live their life close to the land, that, you know, they really rely on the resource, therefore they want to protect it.

They're not clear-cutting. Whereas, like, I would imagine a big company, would be much more likely to just go clear-cut someplace and destroy the habitat. So I thought that that was interesting. But also kind of like what you guys were saying was like the whenever he was going down the hill in that truck, how the reality of a very simple principle kind of like made it pass his mind into his heart in that moment and he could actually implement it in his life and how sometimes that's like that's the way that that god speaks to us is like like it might be a very simple principle

like if you've read through you know the gospels you'd probably have a good idea of just like the principles that you need to live by and but whenever it really makes it past your mind into your heart that's whenever it becomes a reality that you live and it's not a it's not a discipline Like if it's a discipline, it won't last. But if it's a reality in your heart, then you'll be able to do that for your whole life. But sometimes in order for that to become reality, you've got to experience, you've got to experience the reality. And so I thought that was interesting whenever he said that, because that was a pretty extreme version of that. But that does happen to everyone in their everyday lives.

Like a reality is imparted to them through a situation, even though it was something they are. already knew. Yeah. But it's actually made a reality. And that's the, that's the question, did he know it? Or did, do any of us know it? Know it. What does know it mean?

I mean, like, there's an intellectual hat tip to a bunch of stuff that people actually don't know. Like, you could say that you know something, but until it's, you know, that heart knowledge, that, you know, we could describe it as revelational knowledge, experiential knowledge, you know, that's what. It was a, it was a, it was a transactional event. It jumped past his mind, you know, like there's knowing with your mind and then there's knowing right here.

And that's the complexity of being a human is that you can know something. You can know the answer to the test, but really not know the answer to the question. Yeah, I doubt, I seriously doubt that he had a master's degree in physics. But in that short period of time, he had worked it out, the equation now that that truck in that sycamore tree, and him in the middle was not going to work out well. And you can, I used to say it all the time working wrecks. You know, you can violate the laws of man, but the laws of physics will get you every time. And he had come to that realization.

And that's, you know, it took longer, I'm sure it took ten times as long to tell that story as it did for that to happen. Oh, yeah. It probably was, like that. I mean, he said it was a tenth of a mile, which, you know, that's a, you know, that's a, couple hundred yards, tenth of a mile, it would be 500 feet. I could walk that in less time than it took them to tell that. 500 feet would essentially be 150 yards. I put a picture of it up where it went down.

And some very ill-informed human was like, it doesn't look very steep to me. I envision it being steeper. First of all, if you've ever been in steep country and you take photos of it, you recognize that photos don't show steepness. and when you're going to a log truck 80,000 pounds, a slight incline can be all you need. Man, when I heard the story, the physics of it is pretty interesting that it had been very dry and just a frog strangler came. And he said it was one of those flash floods where like there's two or three inches of water flowing on top of, not in gullies, but just a...

cross the ground. Top of the ground, yeah. Like before it soaks in. And I mean, he was just floating on water, basically. It just makes it greasy on top. Cody's saying he looked over and that, that 10-wheeler was, I think it was a 10-wheeler. Not a tire was moving, and he was going 40 miles an hour. I mean, it's pretty astonishing.

And I cannot relate. I don't want to pretend like I can relate to what Teddy, the fear he experienced. But when I worked for Buck Titsworth in Mena, Arkansas, back when I was in high school, he lived at the top of a mountain and he had a mile-long driveway. And you gained about at least 500 feet of elevation, if not 600 or more, going from the valley floor to his house. You know where I'm talking about. And he had like the first 80 yards of the driveway paved in the line. last. And so for close to a mile, it was dirt roads. And it was a road that they'd cut in with a dozer. And it wound like this. Well, I was cleaning up construction. He built his house. And I was, I had a

four-wheeler, a Yamaha, Big Bear, four-wheel drive, four-wheeler, and a trailer, about an eight-foot, like trailer you pull behind a truck. And his four-wheeler had a ball on it. And I loaded that thing up full of construction debris, just heeping to overflowing. And we had a big burn pile at the bottom of the hill. So I had to go down that almost mile-long driveway with that Yamaha, big bear, four-wheel drive with the trailer. I didn't think a thing about it. I just pulled out, pulled out, pulled out, and just barely got started down that hill

and came to the first corner, which was within sight of his house. And I hit the brakes, and it just starts sliding. And I knew enough from being trained by Gary Newcomb in driving is that when you're sliding, you cannot break. Yep. And, you know, Teddy was trying to show that, like, he gassed it. At one point, Teddy really knows what he's doing. And he said at one point, he gassed it trying to get traction. He put on the Jake brake.

He pumped the brakes. He tried to turn it to flip the truck up. Like he had all these solutions going through his mind. None of them worked. Well, when I hit the break and slid while I was still within sight of Buck's house and I knew I had a mile to go, I knew I was in, like, big trouble. And I knew I couldn't hit the break. And I was in whatever gear I was, and I would gear down and it would slide.

I mean, so there was no stopping it. And basically, I just rode that thing like a bucking horse down that mountain. And when I got to the bottom, I mean, I was just like, I mean, the heart was pounding. I mean, it was just a miracle. I didn't drive it off that mountain. Why didn't you tell me about that? I probably did.

I wouldn't, I didn't try to hide it. You also cut into your leg with a chainsaw at that same place. I've got a scar, I got a scar at this angle right across my leg right there. Is that, man, Buck Titzworth. I wonder if he wants to pay me some more. He probably owes me. Yeah. No, he was a great boss.

Yeah, I was cutting trees with a chainsaw. I think I was 16 or 17. And I just got done cutting a tree. Whoa. And just laid the saw down right on my leg while it was still running. And it cut me, cut through my pants. And I got a scar about that long. That's weird.

To this day. Yep. Yep. And I also called up my first gobbler turkey in Buck Titzworth's backyard. I was picking up trash around the front, and I saw around the corner of the house, the backside, I saw a gobbler strutting with two hens like 60 yards from the house. Luckily, Clay Newcomb had a diaphragm in his pocket. And so I took the diaphragm, snuck around the house, got behind a big bull pine tree.

On the clock. And here he came. Yeah, it was pretty bad. And here that gobbler came, and he's strutted with the, his hens right down below me. I mean, like, while there's like construction workers, like 20 yards from me, like hammering on the building. But that was a detour.

Josh, that was a detour to say how incredibly scary it is to be out of control. Yep. Anything out of control, your body picks up on it quick. You are out of control. This is dangerous. You're going to die. Yeah, because your brain is actually just a prediction machine. You know, that's the way the brain works.

And so it's constantly making predictions. And when you're, I mean, that just sets off the fight or flight response. And you're in trouble at that point. I mean, this is like you're going down. On Blood Trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is over. They just get darker. I've seen something in the road. I instantly thought it was a sleeping bag.

And there was a full of blood. Oh, my God, he doesn't have a hit. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors, where the terrain is unforgiving, the evidence is scarce, and the truth gets buried under brush and silence. Indications were he should be right there, but he wasn't. This season, we're going deeper,

from cold case files to whispered suspicions, from remote mountains to frozen backwoods. Each story begins in the wilderness and ends in darkness. Because out here, there are no witnesses, no cameras, just fragments and the people left behind trying to piece them back together. He's not an honest person. He's incapable of being honest. Somebody somewhere knows something. I'm Jordan Sillers. Season two of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, Iheart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You know, what wasn't really said overtly but was implied is that,

He hit that timber and just dodged all the big trees because he could have hit a big tree that would have stopped him. And it would have been like a head-on collision with a train. Like it just would have. And what didn't come out of there too is, and I've worked these kind of accidents, when those log trucks come to a sudden stop, the logs keep moving. Yeah. They come forward. That's what I was worried was going to happen. Yeah.

And it worked a few of those. I want to ask you about that. Okay. Brent spent a lot of time in law enforcement in an area of Arkansas, South Arkansas, that was big log country. You had some pretty serious run-ins with logging accidents. Yep. A couple where they lost control and turned over or, you know,

weight shifted, log shifted, or went around a corner too fast. I remember one where two was a log truck and a semi-hit, and the fatal, the fatality happened to the log truck driver because of what I just said. Once they hit, the logs kept moving, and he came forward and crushed him in the cab. But one of the ones that made probably the most, the biggest impact on me that I think about a lot was one, there were some, folks that lived in the southern part of the county. And they were migrant workers. And this guy went to work on this logging crew, and he had gotten killed. A tree had fallen and killed him.

So at that time, I was a patrol deputy. And it was my job to take, to deliver death messages to people. And there was no next to kin or what his next to kin was like is in South America somewhere. So once the accident, the coroner called and said, you know, we've got this duty to do. You need to send a deputy out to this address. And I don't think that, you know, the people speak English there. So I got an interpreter and their parish priest where they went to church and went down there and drove up to the house. And this lady comes out and there's a little kid and she's told him one there.

and I introduced myself and asked her if she spoke English. And she looked at the interpreter, you know, and the interpreter started talking. So then I had to tell her that her husband had been killed in a logging accident. And as I'm telling her in English, she knows what's going on. And I said, it is my sorrowful duty to inform you that, your husband, and I said his name, was killed in a logging accident this morning. So when I'm looking at her and telling her that, she's looking at the lady who is the interpreter

beside me, and I can see tears welling up in her eyes because she knows that whatever I'm saying is terrible, because here's this man in uniform. And he's my priest is back here in this other lady. So something's bad, so she knows it's bad. So the interpreter then, tells her in Spanish. You know what happened? And one big old tear came out and just rolled down her cheek, and she grabbed her kids up, and the kid started crying, and the priest and the lady went in, and they didn't need me anymore, so I left.

And I talked to her, I talked to the priest two or three days later. I went by that church and asked him how she was doing. He said, they're fine. They had family coming in, you know, as good as they'd, Parish was taken care of them. But I asked him, I said, man, I said, I don't, there was something I didn't, I got a question about. I said, I have delivered death messages before to people

and from car wrecks and different things. I said, and nearly everybody's a wreck. I said, this lady, she took it like a champ. I couldn't believe how stoic she was about it. I mean, you could see she was visibly upset, but how, just the way she took it was, it impressed me a lot, how strong she was.

And he said, well, you got to remember that these folks come from places not like where they live now. And death comes all the time. You know, they don't live to be old. The places where they work and the things they have to do where they live down there and wherever it was that she lived or where they were originally from, life was a lot harder than it was here.

And it was kind of expected. And it's been, I think that has been the biggest thing for me to deal with over all these years of thinking how good we have it and how good, how bad they had it. And the long ways that they went to be here to make a better life of themselves. and then that terrible thing happened to that man that she was more or less expecting, would have expected to happen to him where they lived, where they were from. So, I'm not a happy note.

Wow. It's just tough. It's, um, there was, there was several of those, a lot of those. And I think about them, I think about them a lot. So, I don't, I don't, I don't have, an answer really for how to where you go from that but um it's a it's a dangerous job for sure yeah

you know that that kind of stuff do happens does law enforcement still deliver death messages to families now with with cell phones like i was just thinking about like back in that time i mean people would have had landlines i mean probably in the 90s or early 2000s or something i don't man I don't know. You know what I mean? Because it feels like if something happened. Well, I mean, now, I mean, people are putting stuff on the Internet, you know, on Facebook and all social media stuff that before. They can say, you know, a vehicle, there's an accident and the next to kin they're waiting.

When you hear something about they're waiting on the next to can to be notified, that's a law enforcement agency somewhere going to deliver the next. So they still do that. Yeah, far as I know they do. Yeah. Yeah. Holly, that seems like a tough part of the job. It was terrible. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Josh, what stood out to you? You know, the danger, the danger just reminded me of a story of a family friend of ours. And the inversion of Teddy Veline's, this family. friend, close family friend of ours, he had spent some time as a logger out in Washington State. And he was a man's man. I mean, just a big guy, big fiery red beard. And he kind of went out west to go be a logger. And there was a lot of that bravado and macho. And he told me the story of when he got there, he went into the steel chainsaw shop. And he said, I want the biggest, baddest chainsaw you got. And the guy behind the counter said, here you go. and he hands him this chainsaw, and it's got a 60-inch bar on it. And they're cutting big furs out there.

And he said, you can take it out back and try it. And they had some logs out back. And he said, I went out there. And he said, I fired that bad boy up. And I laid into this three-foot log with this chainsaw. And he said, it got about halfway through. And this is a big man. He's probably 6 foot 2, 6 foot 3, probably 250 pounds in his prime.

And he said it, he said it just cut through it like butter. didn't hang up until it got about halfway through. And he said, when it got halfway through, it picked me up off the ground. And he said, I was able to get it out. And I walked back in and said, do you have anything smaller? And it just, I was reminded of that story because thinking about Teddy Veline's, Teddy Velines, is probably five foot eight. He's a small guy. He's a hundred and thirty pounds, probably soaking wet.

and he just doesn't carry any of that. You know what I mean? I have great appreciation for men who are humble and men who live by a code. And these are those guys that embody that in their day-to-day life. You know what I mean? They're men of integrity, men of honor, men who care about their family and their friends. I mean, what's more honorable than that? And so I think, you know, and these guys, you know, none of those guys are big old, huge macho

guys, but they'll probably work just about anybody under the table, you know what I mean, just because of their commitment to diligence and hard work, you know what I mean? There's no showing off. And yeah, I just, I think that inside of it, you know, I like how you said that there's a fine line between being reckless and just working hard and being caught in a profession that's dangerous. And they probably, they probably teetered that line a few times. But, you know, There was no intent to just show off. There was just this intent to a commitment to do what they had to do to get the job done. And, yeah, I just, I really appreciate it.

I got to see Teddy Valon a couple weeks ago. I went and visited their church with Justin House. And Teddy stood up and just in the middle of the service and just thanked the Lord for how he's doing. You know, you mentioned that he's fighting cancer and he got a pretty good report. and you just thank the Lord for that. And I mean, that's a, that's a guy that's worth celebrating on a podcast. You know, it was,

there's always judgment calls inside of people's personal stories that we have to make all the time. Like, and, and the Vlans boys talked about, in the Render, they actually brought up Eddie's dementia. And they,

they brought up, Teddy's situation too So I felt like I kind of had You know their permission in a way to To say that but it was just part of the story To hear you know because Because Teddy said you know that that wreck helps him see who was in control and then Now he's got you know he's got this cancer and and

You know I just couldn't give too much information, but he's doing really good He is that's the report that we've got right now. It's doing really good. And so that's fantastic. Yeah. I even heard he was logging with him this week. Oh, really? Mm-hmm. He was. He's out in the woods with him probably right now. I love it. Yeah. I would say Teddy wins the award for best laugh on the bear grease. Yeah. When I was listening to it, that's what I kept. I kept laughing every time he would laugh. Yeah. Hey, what about the story happens so quick and it was kind of the cold open, the story of his dad, Ari, going in the middle of the night

to Granny Henderson's house. I mean, that was a neat connection. Yeah. Well, and I've heard Willard, the other brother, tell that story before, too, and he said that the dad was woke up in the middle of the night, just like, it's time to go. It's time to go. You know, like, you know how we all would do. Oh, yeah.

But then we'd look at our alarm clock or our clock and be like, oh, it's four hours before I need to be up. I was just nervous. Well, he woke up in the middle of the night. This is the story that Willard told, which was the same story, but Teddy just didn't quite have to tell this particular thing. But, you know, he woke up and was just like, oh, my gosh, it's time to go. And, you know, the wife, Cynthia jumps up and cooks breakfast and goes and harnesses the mule. And then he rushes off to Granny Henderson's house and knocks on the door. And then Frank Henderson's like, what are you doing here, man?

And I mean, maybe they had an alarm clock. I don't know. Maybe they somehow knew exactly what time it was. But those stories of those guys are, I like those old stories. Go back and listen to the Granny Henderson podcast. Yeah, Ozarkian Martyr. Yeah, there's a lot of connections. between a lot of these stories we tell, it seems.

But you probably did business with a lot of loggers back in the day. Yeah. Yeah, it sure did. Down in Mina, a big log country. Yeah, yeah. These guys are all cutting hardwoods up here. Down in Mina and the wash towels, they're cutting primarily pine. Mostly.

Pine, yeah. I don't have any stories about them. I mean, they were just hardworking guys, and most of them made a lot of money. Yeah. My neighbor, logger. Mm-hmm. And he lived in a bigger house and I did. You know.

I hope he was content. Oh, me. They were all good people, though. I mean, you know, you just didn't find a... I never encountered a logger that I thought was not worthy of loaning a little money to. Mm-hmm. I grew up with... I went to school with a lot of kids.

whose dads were loggers. And the one of them, his dad, I won't say his name, but he was a logger and he was all, we always knew him as he got shot in a bar

in Oklahoma. Yeah. It was my, well, I hate to say his name. I don't know why. I feel like I'm violating like HIPAA or something.

He's been shot. You should be careful. Okay. Yeah, well, My friend in high school, his dad was shot in a bar in Oklahoma and survived, and he was a logger. He was a good guy. In their defense, if you find yourself in a bar in southeast Oklahoma, there's a high likelihood you're going to get shot.

Yeah. Yeah, we learned that. My great-grandpa was a logger, and we heard stories every time someone would find out, oh, Luz-Joplin's your grandpa, they would always say, Strongest man I ever saw. One time I saw him catch a whole truck of logs on his back. I mean, I promise I heard that story. Really? Yeah, and it's not true at all.

It's not, I asked, I asked about it. Great story. But that's, everyone would tell me that, but he was a really strong, he was six, four, really, I mean, even Clay met him before he died. He died around close to 90, and he was still a big old guy. Well, we heard the story. So there's a famous story of Misty's family, and we, we, we, I got, all. I'll foreshadow about the book. Yeah.

Lewis Joplin, Misty's great-grandfather, there's a section about him in the book, because in the Black Bear book that's coming out, spring of 27, get ready, is about trees because black bears need trees, and it's about the logging industry, which actually had more impact on black bears than market hunting. Was he the one that killed the bear?

Yes. Yeah. So Lewis Joplin killed a bear with a rock. and one of the first times I ever... Was it after we were married or while we were dating? Oh, it was probably while we were dating. While we were dating, I went to Louis Joplin's house. He was in his late 80s in Hatfield.

And Misty had told me her great-grandfather killed a bear with the rock. And I just was like, oh, really? And so anyway, I went and asked to talk to him about it myself. He told me the whole story. But there's a story of him being by a log truck and the chains breaking and a big load of logs fell on him. But there was a sapling right beside him that bent over like a fishing pole being bent by a fish.

And he was able, he survived basically because that tree took some of the pressure of the logs off of him. And while he was under the logs, he's talking to his buddies. and their equipment was out of gas. It was out of gas. And they were a long ways from gas so they couldn't just pull it off because he kept saying, you know,

get the thing that pulls them off. So Lewis is down there and Misty remembers him saying that he couldn't see. And he calls for a mule. Yeah, and the guys go, well, the skitter or whatever they had, the mechanized equipment they had

was out of gas. And so the guys on the outside are like saying, what do you want us to do? Lewis Jopping from underneath the log pile says, well, the guys over the mountain have a team of mules, go get them. And they were like, well, do you have time? I mean, he's hurting.

Right. The sapling is not completely saving him. Like, they think he's dying. And they think the sapling's going to break. Yeah. I mean, that's the other thing. And it's just like a loader logs big as telephone poles, you know, on top of him. And basically, one of the guys says, well, let's siphon some gas out of the truck.

So they siphon gas out of the truck. put it in the skitter or loader or whatever they had. This is probably back in the 50s. And they one by one start pulling logs off of him. And Lewis told how he could feel the pressure with each log. Every log he took off, he would just feel a release of pressure. Wow. And it just kind of, and he survived.

That's how people die. I mean, that's just like wild, you know, just like we heard from the vines. I mean, there's a thousand ways to die when you're getting, when you're messing with logs. Now, I will tell you, we'll close down, I'll give you all a chance to close out the podcast. I will tell you the story that I told Teddy Villains when I walked out of his house after the episode. And it's one of those stories that you kind of wish you didn't tell because it's kind of like, it's not as cool as you think, Claire. But we were talking about getting hit in the head with logs.

I mean, like, Kaelan had talked about how, you know, got knocked out and all this. And I said, I've been hitting ahead with a log once really hard to the point that it didn't knock me out. But I actually, it's the only time in my life I've ever actually seen stars, you know, just kind of like seeing stars. And it was, it happened while I was leading a mule that had paniers on it. So I'm leading a mule that has these big wide bags on the side of it. So the mule's about five feet wide. and I'm just plowing down the top of a mountain down in the washhtaws, just walking fast, just pulling this mule.

I'm in a hurrying by myself. I'm hot and sweaty, and we're just plowing through saplings or bending over and all this. And basically that pantier hits about a 12-foot tall, 6-inch at the base, dead snag. And that snag just, I'm just walking. Chip-pig. That's that just T-Barras to the back of the head. It was like getting hit in the head with baseball bat from behind. And I mean, I just, you know, had no idea what happened.

I told that to Teddy. I could see while you were feeling embarrassed about telling that story to Teddy. And they were just kind of like... And then I found $5. Okay, Clay, yeah. Then I found $5. I'll be darned. Good story, Clay.

Yeah, Britt has a deal. If you tell a story that's kind of a dud. That's my wife. Yeah, when you get done and like no one laughs or no one thinks it's cool, you go, And then I found $5. Works every time. Closing thoughts from the team. Gary, Bear, Josh?

Hey, I do. I have one. You know, I'm not a very good storyteller, but I've got one story I just love, and I'm going to make it real short. I'm just going to tell end of it. You're a great storyteller. Well, I don't know about that, but you talk about banking, you're talking about eastern Oklahoma. You're talking about bars. I have this big old boy.

He's the toughest guy in Oklahoma, at least in the... are part of the state. You know, everybody knows this guy. He's tough as nails. He's a good guy, pays his bills. He's my customer. I love him. And I go, hey, what's all this stuff I hear about you taking nine shots over at the

bar on a certain certain highway? We can say the name in the bar. We're not protecting them. The candlelight, right? Yeah, yeah. And he goes, well, hey, let me just show you. He unbutting his shirt, pulled it open, nine bullet holes. Nine holes.

He said the bartender... You saw it yourself. The bartender... Yeah, oh yeah. The bartender had two guns. One had normal rounds, which would have killed him. The other had... Arnard Pearson, their ball...

Yeah, it would just shoot... All ammo. Yeah. And he said, the bartender grabbed the wrong gun. He walked in intimidating this guy. I mean, I won't get into the story there, but he was doing something really bad. Bartender just goes, bah, bah. And so, anyway,

A bartender's got a good eye. Actually, a lot of people got shot. That's where Cody, that's where my buddy's dad got shot. Actually, actually, my buddy turned and ran to get his 30-30, and the bartender ran out to the side. You got a guy with a 30-30 and a guy with his pistol, and they're having a shootout, and he got hit just around his heart, you know, around his liver, you know, and he survived.

Wow. So. Well, this is not the first time the candlelight has come up on Bear Gris. That's where Louisdale and Charlie got shot at. Yeah. Wow, there's a lot of shooting at the candlelight. Oh. What's that county?

Is that where, that's not where Judy Newcomb's name was mentioned. No, that was also in Oklahoma, though. I'm telling you. Southeast Oklahoma is the Wild West. It's a rough place. I don't think we could say this. Everyone from southeast Oklahoma They know

They like it Well Now that I I start I know some guys over there They all think the guys in Arkansas Are the rough ones They talk about us

Like we talk about this That's good Reciproc Closing thoughts, Brent It was good Thanks for being here, man That's so nice to have you It was good

I like I like the stories About people Real folks and real folks that I can identify with and those folks are tip of the spear. I liked it.

Yep. Well, thanks everybody for coming. I'm I'll see, these guys will see you at the Black Bear Bananza. Yep, yep. March 7th. Make it March 7th, Bentonville, Arkansas. And we'll see you on the Bearers YouTube channel,

Baghery's Instagram We've got Mediter has what they're calling 12 and 26 That we're Every week there's a new video That comes up on the Media YouTube channel

But they're having 12 Long-form films That they're putting out Like hour long Top films that they're putting out this year That are kind of different edited a little different Yannis just had a film

That came out About his Manitoba Bear Hunt with Craig McCarthy Yeah, Craig and Mill. And so that's out right now. And you can check that out. Absolutely. And man, hat tip to Misty's new Tocovas.

Look at those. Flushy. Those are flashy. They are flashy. Tocovas all around. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

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