Bear Grease - Ep. 434: This Country Life - Jessi, Lily Beth, and the FFA

Episode Date: March 20, 2026

Brent's got his young hound Jessi out in the woods and her learning curve is falling flat. Patience is paramount during these times but Brent's is running thin until he realized sometimes, it's just the way it is. He's got two examples of that for you and a coon hunt with some folks that he donated as a fundraiser, which may have given him more than he gave away.  Lily Beth's IG and Facebook page: FB: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61557455325075 IG: https://www.instagram.com/lbs_cookie_co/?hl=en Thank you to our sponsors, Case Knives and Stor-Mor. 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 Hutton 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. Jesse, Lily Beth, and the FFA.

I have long been a fan of the FFA. I grew up on a farm. I was raised by farmers, and I was a member of that organization all through high school. I believe it's people and its mission. On this episode, Coon Hutton and FFA meet for an intended purpose, and I'm going to tell you all about it. But first, I'm going to tell you this story. Jesse, the Coonhound puppy I purchased several months ago has been slow to get going.

I got spoiled with old Whelan who more or less came out of the box, pun intended, hunting the way a hound should, nose on the ground, and moving with the purpose. He had no idea what he was looking for. He was just looking for something to bark at. He had natural interest in the drive to get out and hunt. I remember not long after I met my friend Rex Whiting that he was. he and I were hunting with Whalen and his dog's shadow. I've talked about Rex's shadow on here before,

but for those that may be new to this weekly struggle, Rex stopped by my house one day and introduced himself because he saw me cleaning out the dog box I had in the back of my truck. We made friends in short order, and a few days later, we were hunting together. We turned the hounds loose and shadow left on a mission to sniff out of coon, and Whelan, he just left

Shadow moved off in one direction and Whalen went in the opposite Shadow treed on the bank of an old pond about 200 yards away when we got to his tree I expected to see Whelan there with him but he wasn't We searched the tree for several minutes and finally found the coon hiding in a fork

Shadow was a bark dang near every breath tree dog and was plenty loud for Whelan to have heard him And I kept looking around thinking I was going to see that buffoon loping up to greet us all at the tree and he never showed up. I checked my Garmin tracker and that dude was 798 yards away doing his own thing, exactly what he should have been doing. Independence in a hunting hound is a priority one for me. And Whalen, well, he had it from the start. Jesse, not so much. Last night I took her and wailing over to a spot close to the house, just me and them.

I turned her loose right behind him, and for 200 yards, she kept up with him and eventually peeled off on her own for a while. Recent rains had put some water in a drain that sneaks off the beginning of a hardwood ridge that's filled with short timber. The same place, I tried to hem up a low-hanging coon for Bear John to pick off with his self-bow a couple weeks ago. I knew it was a gamble then because of how dry it had been, and just like I figured we didn't strike a track until whaling hunted on down toward the creek where he promptly worked one up and eventually treated him about nine miles high

effectively out of bow range. What I wanted to happen then happened last night. I cut whaling loose 80 yards or so from that drain, a place he'd struck a coon track just, I don't know, many times before. I wasn't as concerned with whaling's success as I was getting Jesse in the game. He was going to help me in her coaching. I needed an easy win for her and in my plans while making the drive down the old power line in my can-em. I thought the best chance of getting wailing her on a coon at the same time would be shortly after I cut him loose.

I needed him to get struck quickly on a hot track while she was still with him. and before she got distracted by something else or realized that she wasn't close to me and started coming back to make sure I was still there. At the 200-yard mark, Waylon hadn't cracked his jaw, and she started meandering around on her own, which is a good thing too. I needed her to find something out there that gets her attention more than missing the security of being with me, something that would trigger her prey drive, and I didn't care what it was. Whalen started looping back around to the right

and she was less than 100 yards away when he opened up with a long ball letting me know that my plan so far had worked just like I'd hoped it would. I was watching her on my garment moving toward where Waylon was pushing that track which in a finished coon dog is less than desirable but she ain't a finished coon dog.

She's just a coon hound by breeding and at this point wouldn't qualify as starting. She might as well have been a goat running around out there with that tracking collar. But Whalen was heating that track up and was less than 150 yards for me when she made it over to him. And for the next 80 yards, she was running with him. Man, if he could just pull up on that coon and tree and while she's still there, this might be the best plan I'd ever devised. But you know that he didn't already, don't you?

Because that ain't the way this dog is going to be. As Whelan put the pressure on that track by getting louder and faster, his path was going to take him across the road where I was sitting less than 50 yards away. Miss Brenda McDougall, my junior high math teacher, who threw love and swinging a paddle with the average weight of a stick of stovewood, would be proud to learn that I was doing some math in my head that she taught me. And if my calculations were accurate about the time Jesse saw me, sitting in that buggy with my face lit up like I was at the drive-in movies watching her

and Waylon on the big screen. She was going to get distracted and run straight to me. And that's exactly what happened. She came to where I was sitting on the side of the road as if she was on a rail while Whelan continued to run that track, another 140 yards across the road, and came treed. Man, I had figured everything exactly how I wanted it to happen and had never. I had never, nailed it on every level, except where I was going to sit being a factor in anything. I was the unknown variable in that equation. Miss Brenda hadn't prepared me for that one. Whelan was blowing it out, and I walked across the road, and Jesse followed me across, and I

stopped, and then she went to Waylon's location. I let him tree for a minute or two while she was there, and then made my way the short-wash. to where they were. Now, once while walking in, I heard her bark. It was no doubt. I heard her bark one time. It wasn't a long ball of a locate bark, just a bark. Like it was inner and it just blurted out on accident.

Like most of my funniest comments, a lot of which fly under the radar, which is the only way I figured I have successfully dodged HR so far. But I made two mistakes on that cast, one of which I really had no control over, but if I'd turned that display off on my garment when she crossed the road, she may not have noticed me so easily. Who knows? But when I walked to Wayland's tree and she was at the base, milling around sniffing here and there, after I had heard her bark at least once, I didn't leash her up immediately. That is a total rookie mistake that I let pass me by when I started looking for that coon. It took me a minute to find him, and after I did, I looked around to hitch her up to a tree,

and she was gone. What was I thinking? A quick check of the old Garmin, and I could see her just getting back to the Can Am. I had a golden opportunity to teach her that once you're a tree, you stay until I decided that we leave. And also, I was going to knock that coon out and see if I could ramp up her prey drive. Two opportunities squandered on the same tree. I wanted to climb that tree and jump out of it my own self. I decided to make one more cast, so Whalen and I met Jesse back at the Canaan and moved on down the road to a different spot. Now, I cut them both loose again and she took off like she was late for work.

And when they passed 300 yards, they split off, and she went left again and Whelan went right. He was 800 yards deep, had never said a word when she started looping around back toward the way that she'd gone in the woods. Well, I told him to Whelan on his collar and he started heading back to where I was. And since I knew it was unlikely that he'd strike a coon in the area he was crossing through, I decided to at least make a positive out of it for Jesse. She never crossed her track to come back, but made a big enough loop that I could see she was genuinely out there snooping around. And that's progress. Sometimes it has to be measured incrementally.

In her defense now, she hasn't had the opportunities that Whalen had as a puppy. Fewer reps in the woods means further behind, and that's on me, not her. Progress is progress regardless of Michael Roseman reminded me of. that the next day when I was giving him to play-by-play on the phone. I've said it a million times. All dogs are different. I have to learn to adjust with the reality of it all. It's just the way it is.

Like this morning when Alexis and I were in Walmart, I'm driving the buggy. And as we reach the end of the aisle, she says, I need to check on something real quick. You stay right here. Then as she rounds the end of the aisle, she asks me what I think about something. she's looking at that I can't see since she and it are on the other side of the aisle from

where I'm standing. A lady is walking by at the very same time and turns her head from Alexis to me as she's walking. She's taking all this in. And out of the three of us, that lady and Alexis are the only two people in the Milky Way galaxy that knows what she's talking about. Well, I cocked my head sideways to let slip the dogs of war with my sarcastic wit, which I intend to make this stranger laugh with while calling out to my wife that she's just asked a question

that I can't answer. And without slower in her gait, any hesitation or change of expression, that lady looked at me in the eyes as she walked by, placed her indexed finger up to her lips, and the international symbol of be quiet, and softly said, marriage, as she contingent on her way. I followed her advice. And I didn't say a word. Just like Jesse being slow about learning to hunt coons, sometimes that's just the way it is. Thank you, wise woman of Walmart.

And that's just how that happened. 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. Body doesn't have a hit.

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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. Relationships built through the outdoors aren't uncommon. I've talked specifically about several on this very platform.

My friend Terry Garner that I met while fly fishing on the little red is one that comes to mind when I think about it, Rex Whiting and Michael Roseman, my fellow compatriots up at the Cash River Hound and Mallard Club and a boxcar load of other folks that I've met over the years that happened to be at the same place at the same time that never go away. It's not the person you sit next to on the plane that's pleasant to talk to while hurtling through the atmosphere at 350 miles an hour, and when you get to the next airport, you never see them again.

No, these are the people that you meet, and from the first conversations you know, these are folks you want to see again. Folks, you want to learn more about. Well, I did that last weekend. I was contacted weeks ago and asked about the possibility of donating a hunt to the fundraising banquet

of the Greenbrier, Arkansas chapter of the Future Farmers. of America. The stars aligned and I actually had some open dates and was happy to accommodate the request of Miss Lily Beth Hill. I also reached out to my friend John Pantuso with Case Knives to see if they were interested. I already knew they would because they absolutely love FFA and were all in on sweetening up the donations.

But Lily Beth is a senior serving as an officer in her chapter and has to be a officer in her chapter and has her own business. And every kid I've ever seen being successful in FFA has been an above-average hard worker. The ones that show animals have to take care of them 24-7. Critters don't take days off. Then there's a practice for showing the animals and all the things that come with taking care of them. Then there's other commitments and responsibilities as officers that take time and all of that on top of the rest of school and other activities.

But the good ones, the ones that stare at burst in the face and push forward because hard work is just another day, they make their own way. Lily Beth, or L.B., as everyone calls her, has done all of that and more. She's shown goats, pigs,

competed in leadership development events, parliamentary procedures, and won the state contest for veterinary science. And, and, I'm finally going, getting to what I want to tell you about that L.B. does. She does something else that she excels at. She has her own cookie baking and decorating business. L.B.'s cookie company. You can find her on Instagram and Facebook under that name. I've seen the cookies that she makes, but I and a whole squad of coon hunters participated in a sampling of a strawberry cake that

she made that was what I imagine an angel would taste like if you bit one. when it flew by you. Now her mama, Miss Jennifer, sent a couple pieces home with me and David McDaniels. They didn't last long. Riva's going to add the link for her Instagram in the show description. I encourage you to give her a follow. She's working hard and like a lot of kids in that organization, she's doing good work. Which brings us to the event itself.

The Coon Hunt. We all met at the Hill Home for supper. I could smell the groceries when we walked in the house, and after the introduction, we fixed our plates and thanked the good Lord for the vittles we were about to share, sat down at the supper table, and dug in. In the south, I'm sure it isn't a lot of places. You look for a commonality when you first meet people, and then you run the conversations of things that aren't as evident. We already had things in common. We all like to eat fish and support our children's education in the outdoors. This is going to be easy.

It didn't take long for the stories to start, and let me tell you, Troy Weatherly, Lily Beth's ag teacher and FFA advisor is quite the character, a big man with an even bigger passion for his students and his community. It's leaders like him that are the inspiration for the next generations of ag professionals that will lead us from where we are now to where we can't even think of. It was obvious that everyone sitting around the table had the best interest of that group of kids in their front sites. They talked and told stories about events and happenings that they'd all been at for different reasons that involved school functions and the betterment of all those students. The point of their different stories was something usually humorous that happened in the course of the contest or meeting, but the common thread among all the tales was they always took.

place while they were doing something in support of those youngans. I'd love to see the day when an ag teacher's salary was looked at with the same importance as a coaches. Before we saddled up and headed out, Troy Weatherly handed me a box. And inside the box were some t-shirts, a handmade fixed blade knife, and an official Future Farmers of America jacket, just like the one I dreamed of owning in high school, but couldn't afford. My name embroidered and cursive on the front

and Warren, Arkansas, stitched in bold letters on the back, a simple gesture of thanks that struck me to my core. 41 years later, I put on a personalized FFA jacket of my very own in front of a group of strangers, and I'll tell you, it was a little emotional for me. I get overwhelmed sometimes by the wonderful people I get to meet because of this job or better yet this life. And I'm blessed to live it and sometimes it leaks out through my eyes.

But we were hunting on Darren Hill's ground and Darren is Lily Bell's daddy and the one that came up with this idea to begin with. Jim Bo Elliott bought the hunt at the auction and he brought his dad Jim and his son Bo. I know. I know Jim, Jim Bo and Bo, three generations. that made me laugh a little bit too, and I'm from Arkansas. Anyway, Troy's 11-year-old son, Cooper was there, and so was Trey Kelly. And all in all, we had seven coon hunters, one cameraman and one coon dog, quite the ensemble.

I only know one thing. When I cut whaling loose in the woods, he's fixing to do his dead level best to find a coon. If it's closer or a mile away, he's looking from the moment he comes off the chain until I call him back. He's focused, and his instincts and internal drive takes over when he's on a track. He's hard to distract away from it. He opened up and treed shortly there after less than 150 yards from where we all stood talking and laughing.

A process that would repeat itself over the course of the night. On one tree, he'd crossed through a tuple-old gum swamp and was barking his brains out on the other side. Now, our deal is he finds them. and I come to him every time if there's any way possible for me to get there safely. The wading water above my hip boots doesn't qualify as being unsafe, so the majority of our crew pulled our boot tops as high as we could and into the breach we went. I was halfway across when I felt the water running past both pocket hives on the inside of my boots.

Gravity pulling downward at terminal velocity. So much for a dry night. Man, it was cold. It was also my duty to get to that dog, and when I and the others that came with me got there, whalen was telling the truth once again. Five stories up was a turkey nest bandito looking back at us. One of the Elliot boys permanently revoked his meal card with a 22, and we all headed back to the rest of the crew for one more cast before calling it a night.

Now, you've heard me talk about the infamous one more drop curse. Michael Roseman is notorious for turning a long night into a marathon by not knowing when to say when. So much so that I call him one moe Mike. It's the last one that always has the tendency to be miles away from the truck through an impenetable thicket or across a river in the middle of a swamp or after the tracking caller has lost signal. It's always something and usually not fun, and yet I let him bully me into it nearly every time. Okay, it may not always be one of the old Mike's fault. And it may not always turn out bad. But we've just made a handful of trees at this point and clovered a sack full of coons.

We could stop right here and end it on a good note. And I heard myself say it as I did it. It was like I was having an out-of-body experience. We got time for another quick one before it gets too late. And everyone sounded excited and wanted to continue from how they acted. It would have been a perfect time for anything. anyone to grab me and give me the old Humphrey Bogart slapped to the jaw while shaking me and saying, have you taken leave of your senses, man? But no one did that. So whatever was fixing to

happen was going to be on all of them, mostly, kind of. Well, I was going to blame it on them anyway. But we moved a little further down the road and once again I cast Whalen the Wonderhound into the darkness in search of Procyon Loder and watched him fade into the night, traveling quite of ways so far in fact that we relocated to more or less cut him off after several minutes of him not saying anything i watched him on the garment alpha from the seat of m can am or as i like to call it coon tv he was following the edge of a creek right to us and 40 yards out he opened up with that big booming voice of his and i just sat there and watched him come in and go back out of sight trailing what would hopefully be the last coon of the night

and bypassing a perfect opportunity to end the night right there. But all you dog hunters know, you don't stop a hound in the middle of a track, not a coon track anyway, and since whalen don't mess with anything else, I let him go. This is the part where it usually goes wrong. But it didn't.

He treated 550 yards away, and we were able to drive within easy walking distance to his tree. Then half a box of 22 shells later, I thought I might have to climb the tree and knock him out myself, but the coon finally succumbed to lead poison and gravity. We gathered back at the buggies, made fun of the boys shooting, took our pictures, and headed home. It was a great time, and I truly enjoyed meeting and hunting with these folks.

They have a lot of fun, and they're truly appreciative of the blessings they have and they pay it forward in spades. Thank you, Greenbrier FFA. Lily Beth, Darren, Jennifer, Troy, Cooper, Trey, Jimbo, Bo, and Whalen. We ought to do it again sometime. Support the folks and the future Farmers of America.

They truly are doing some great things. Well, that's going to knock this episode in the head. for the week. I hope you enjoyed it and I hope you know that Clay Lake and I work very hard to bring you the stuff that you like to hear and we couldn't do it without you. So until next week, this is Brent Reeves. Signing

off. Y'all be careful. 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 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 fieldware gear at firstlight.com.