Bear Grease - Ep. 461: This Country Life - Brooklyn, Bradford, and Butterflies

Episode Date: May 29, 2026

With one last trip, Brent's 2026 Turkey Season is over. In this episode, he relates how a statement he made two years ago in New York City has come back around and will more than likely prove him wrong. Then it's an Arkansas wrap up with some sneaky gobblers before ending the season in Pennsylvania for Brent's first hunt in the Keystone State with his friends at Case Knives. We know you'll enjoy this one. George Lilikakis Turkey Calls on Instagram: @brooklyn_bones Turkeys for Tomorrow Flock on Instagram: @tft_gothamspurs  Butterfly Research: www.monarch.org 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 MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

Brooklyn, Bradford, and butterflies. For all you folks that thought O'Brently was done telling turkey stories, guess what? He ain't. This one's going to be more about the people in the stories than the turkeys themselves, but it's going to wind up 2026 anyway, the whole turkey season, that is. So, join me at the fire, and let's get started. Two years ago, a week or so before Thanksgiving,

I was in New York City standing near Rockefeller Center, looking down on the skating rink where Bailey and Alexis and a whole herd of our friends and their children were scratching up the ice only like wide-eyed tourists from Arkansas can. I abstained from participating in that struggle. Walking on flat-level ground is a big enough challenge for me. Why would I want to add any degree of difficulty to that by attempting it on ice with shoes,

out of brogans and meat cleavers. No, not me. And as I stood there, propped up against a building where Kate Spade was selling shoes that cost more than our plane fare from Arkansas, I watched the people going by. Sideseers, just like me. Most not dressed like me, or that sounded like me, but fueled my imagination and desire to be funny. And in doing so, I filmed myself saying this. I go out on a limb and say nobody within a mile of me killed a turkey last year. Little did I know that erroneous declaration from two years ago would come full circle this last spring in Alabama.

Remember a few episodes ago when I was chasing turkeys with Reed Duval, who is the CFO of Turkeys for Tomorrow? Well, Reed and I were talking about how their membership was growing all over the country, and they had a chapter referred to as a flock in New York City. I told him about that little video I filmed while I was up there, and he laughed saying as crazy as it sounds that I might have been wrong. Less than 10 miles to the south and across the East River from where I stood poking fun at all those city folks is Brooklyn, New York. Within the 2.6 million people,

rubbing elbows on the sidewalks of Brooklyn lives a man named George Lillacoccus. George is a first-generation American born in Brooklyn following his parents' arrival from Greece years before. I discovered George the way people meet folks these days, and it was on Instagram. I started following the TFT Gotham Spurs, which is the first turkeys for tomorrow's flock in the state of New York. And while I was checking out their page, I saw a post highlighting a handmade Brooklyn Bones wingbone call. Now, one thing led to another, and with a peek in curiosity that could have killed the whole litter of cats,

I started looking at the beautiful handmade yelpers and messaged the Instagram page of Brooklyn Bones inquiring about them. Well, George introduced himself through direct messages, and in short order, we agreed to schedule an online meeting to visit. Old George hit the ground running in 1972, and growing up he participated in an archery at school. He was introduced to hunting by his father Paul and bow hunting by his uncle Mike. They hunted the Catskill Mountains, and George killed his first buck with a bow when he was 18. The next year, he'd smash his first turkey, and when that happened, George found out what his true passion was in the outdoors. weekends, holidays throughout his childhood were spent on the Beaver Kilt River, a 44-mile free-flowing trout habitat known as the birthplace of American dry fly fishing.

George's parents have had a weekend home there for many years now, and it was from there that many of George's hunting and fishing adventures would kick off. I was waiting for him to tell me that his father, his uncle, or some crusty old New York mountain man taught him how to make calls when he was just a young man and that he'd been making them now for many years. That's what the calls on his page looked like, artfully turned pieces that looked like they were better suited for display than in a hunting vest. Two years ago, George has been making wing bone calls for two years.

He's made a living following in his father's footsteps in the auto repair business and his accent is like no other turkey hunter I know. He can probably say the same about me, but folks usually find their calling if they keep looking around and paying attention. And I have no knowledge of George's day job expertise, but if his mechanic and skills are anything like his call-making, the fellow would be hard-pressed to find a better garage to fix his car. We talked for an hour or more about hunting and heritage and family. It was an absolute joy for me to spend some time listening to him tell me about how his family came to the United States

and the living that they carved out for themselves. Now, to me, George's family story is the great American success story. Faith, family, hard work, and a determination to succeed. I challenge anyone to find me a better recipe. for success than that. Now, back to that assinine statement I made about being the only fellow within a mile of Rockefeller Center that killed a turkey last year. Had the scaffolding for that big Christmas tree not been in place at that time on the backside

of that skating rink between me and the Comcast building, I could have seen the relief carbon above the main entrance of the world-famous 30 Rock skyscreen. In 1933, when that building was completed, the biblical inscription from the book of Isaiah chapter 33 and verse 6 was permanently affixed. And that verse reads, Wisdom and knowledge shall be the stability of thy times. Two virtues that escaped my thought process as I pushed record and turned that phone toward my stupid face.

Now, had I had sense enough to do a little research, I might have found George while I was in New York and visited with him face to face instead of over the internet. Don't check him out. It was going to put the link in the show description. And that's just how that happened. I had just left the Shepard Hills Cutlery store in Lebanon, Missouri. Now, it's spelled the same way you pronounce Lebanon, the country, that says, sits north of Israel and is the only thing keeping the Mediterranean Sea from washing the flip-flops off the folks in Syria. But I found out real quick that you don't pronounce it the same way

in the show-me state. If you do, someone, actually a bunch of someone's, will email you with the proper pronunciation and make fun of you until you get yourself squared away. It's Lebanon, None. Period. Anything different will get you beat up. But anyway, I was Tulin West down I-44, keeping up with the flow of traffic, looking out for the Buckey's exit to snag some beef jerky for my daughter Bailey, and I had a freshly skinned turkey in the cooler I'd throat punched two hours early. I was feeling good about that new case knife I'd just purchased for myself. I needed a new one. Then I thought about the invitation I'd gotten from my friend Jimbo Elliott to turkey hunt with him at his place back in Arkansas, and not all that far from where I live. Well, I rang him up, and we made a plan to get after him the next morning. It took a minute, but the next morning, when they started gobbling, they were kicking off in three different directions, and none were very close.

We stood in that same spot four days before and had enough turkeys to field the basketball team within a quarter of miles. in any direction. Of course, that was before the season opened. Finally, we heard one in the same zip code, and after he teased us for 30 minutes strutting and goblin 200 yards away, we watched him walk out of our hopes and dreams with a hen who wanted no part of Sharon her feller. We moved with him only to be completely ignored while listening to another one fire up a half a mile away on the other side of the truck. We made the pilgrimates to his area. We made the pilgrimates to his area. We found a comfortable spot and we waited. And for an hour, we heard nothing.

I'd call every 20 minutes or so. Nothing loud or forceful, just medium purrs and yelps. Three turkeys had slipped in on me this spring, and none of them had done it early. When we initially sat down at nine, I told Jimbo, let's just get comfortable. We'll hear him at 10. He gobbled 250 yards,

further to our east and I looked at my watch as we were getting up to move toward him. It was 9.58. I wasn't feeling smug about my prediction, more like it was just another validation of what my turkey-hunting mentor, Mr. Billy Brown, had drilled into my head that patience will kill more turkeys than anything else. Jimbo and I eased our way toward the goblin turkey who was sounding off every little bit. We got sat down and hid. I pushed a soft cluck and purr out to him, and he responded immediately and every so often moving closer with each gobble. He was just out of sight, over the lip of a ridge, and we estimated him to be no more than 60 yards away.

A hen started fussing at us and let him back down the ridge where he went silent for five minutes or so. He gobbled again, and we confirmed with Onex that he was at the bottom of the ridge, probably 200 yards, a little further east. He started moving and gobbling his way north and Jimbo and I compensated with the terrain by repositioning in about 50 yards as well. Now that put us on top of the ridge with a good view of the slope I figured that gobbler would use to come to us. It wasn't wide open by any means, but with the rise in elevation from where we sat and where the turkey was, he wouldn't have time to get jubis of not being able to see the hen that was calling to him until he was plenty close enough. for Jimbo to shoot his brain off. I put Jimbo 12 yards in front of me at 2 o'clock.

The timber was smaller, so we each picked out a spot that had several trees close together to hide our silhouettes. Plus, I wanted him out front to shoot the turkey. I was his guest and was just thankful to be there. The turkey kept inching northern, and we were separated too far to whisper or even talk real soft, so Jimbo and I were sending on X-Bins

back and forth on our phones where we thought he might be trying to, just trying to figure out where he was going. I started looking at the possible approach routes from that pen to Jimbo had sent. Talking it over in my head, I imagined that turkey coming up a pipeline that ran east and west and bordered us to the north. I followed along that map with my eyes, and I guess the easiest route to come into our location would be kind of behind me at like about 7 o'clock. The turkey gobbled again at the bottom of the ridge, still is in his way northward, but a little bit closer you could tell.

I glanced in his direction. Then I turned to look behind me at the imaginary route I was expecting him to take to get to us, and I saw three gobblers sneaking in like they were going to try to rob us. They were 40 yards and closing fast, walking steady with the purpose of not letting the dude that was making all that racket at the bottom of the hill, know what their intentions were. My shotgun was laying in my lap, and I was twisted as far as I could go back to the left. Jimbo was facing the opposite direction to my right front, and as far as I knew, he didn't have a clue what was about to happen behind him.

I wasn't sure myself, because the turkish were plenty close to kill, and my shotgun was still laying in my lap. For a brief second, I thought they were going to skirt around me. Now, had they done that? I was just going to keep still and just hoping Jimbo would hear him coming and eventually be in a position to shoot one of it. That thought hadn't quit bouncing around in my cranium when the lead gobbler hung a left and started tracking straight toward me.

In one fluid motion, I raised my shotgun to my shoulder, aimed and pulled the trigger, missing him slick as a gut at 23 yards. Now, being used to failure from a young age, I was unfazed, and I pumped another turkey bomb into my son's old 870 that I had chosen to take with me that day. Less than a second later, and before old sneaky Pete could get his running shoes laced up, I sent him another one catching him in the back of the noggin. Now, in the meantime, Jimbo had become suddenly aware of the calamity that had turned a tranquil morning of purposeful silence into an unplanned and surprise explosion

of shotgun blast and flapping wings. It happened so fast a cat wouldn't have time to lick his behind before it was all over. It was an unexpected rush of adrenaline that ramps up now thinking about it a month after the fact, almost as much as it did when it happened. I'm blessed with wonderful invitations to hunt places with even more wonderful people. Jim Bo was one of them. And another invitation would have me in the Northeast last week hunting with my Case family in the Appalachian Mountains of Pennsylvania.

I stayed near Bradford with my friends John and Adriana Pantuso. Audrianna is a teacher down the road in Smithport, and John is a marketing manager for the W.R. Case & Sons Cutlery Company. And people think I have a cool job. I couldn't imagine being in an office surrounded by case knives all day, every day. Looking around my office now, Maybe I can. Anyway, John invited me out, and I went.

Tom Taylor, also with Case, would join us on the first morning, and by the third morning, we'd covered a lot of miles with John's dad Bill, gotten hot tips from his uncle John, gone fly fishing with his brother Andy, and heard turkeys every day but warm. On two separate occasions, we had public land gobblers, almost close enough to shoot but just out of sight following hens to a safer venue. On the evening before the last day, I was treated to supper with John, Tom, and a pair of septuagenarians.

And for the uninitiated, that's someone in their 70s. Tom and John are part of an everyman golf club that meets once a week to pair up and play around golf with other members. This week, they were paired with these two Italian Americans who were. were straight out of central casting. One minute after joining this for some for supper, I knew why they wanted me to meet them. Loud, boisterous, and unapologetically Italian. These two guys have been best friends since the first grade,

and seven decades later, they were still side by side, trading jabs, laughing, and entertaining the whole clubhouse. They were a stereotypical pair of attention. Italian-American friends who valued each other's company. Telling me of adventures they'd shared before I was born and asked me what my childhood was like and the things that I did to occupy my time back in Arkansas. That, in itself, was worth a trip.

But I still had one more day. The next morning before the sun ever had a chance to peek over the mountains, John and I were standing in the dark with his friend, Kevin Winchie. Kevin's alignment, working hard to keep the lights on up there. And before that, Kevin was working hard to keep us free in the Marine Corps. Humble and gracious to a fault, Kevin took us to one of his spots on public land, a place he'd been keeping tabs on since before the season opened,

a place he'd been saving for when John and I got there. I've said it before that the gift of Turkey is something special. Just being allowed permission to hunt a person's private property that doesn't hunt is an expression of generosity. To follow Turkey's on public land waiting to chase him with friends, one of which he'd never met. That's beyond a lot of folks' understanding. But not Kevin's. Turkey gobbled on the roost and we took off in his direction. And for the next six and a half hours, we chased that goblin monkey from the bottom of the ridges to the top of others.

John put some Jedi juju on him and called him down a ridge and across a creek only to have him hang up just out of sight with a gaggle of hens. It was one of the best hunts I've ever had where no one walked out with a turkey. It was done around 1.30, and I wasn't disappointed. I was elated that I'd gotten to spend that time with my good friend John and my new friend Kevin. That evening, we all collected at Kevin's family's cabin just across the state line in New York. Kevin grilled burgers and hot dogs and something I'd never heard of. Sausage made from leaks that he'd gathered from the same mounds we'd been chasing turkeys on. It was good. Kevin's wife, Jackie, is a schoolteacher in New York, not far from where they live just north of the state line.

Besides educating all the little folks with the regular studies, Jackie tags monarch butterflies. It's like banding ducks except it ain't. Instead of catching the butterflies in the wild and crimping an aluminum band around their legs, Jackie and a whole bunch of other folks volunteer at their own expense to buy the supplies, go to the training, raise the caterpillars,

and place a small coated sticker on their wings before they release them to start their job. journey to Mexico. If and when they're recovered, there's a code on that decal where you can report that number to monarchwatch.org. The data is all compiled from there, and the research determines the best avenues to study and help protect this beautiful creature that has been on the decline for the past two decades. I asked her to tell me about it, and the joy she had on her face as She detailed her and especially the children's involvement. It was incredible to see.

Educators, educating outside the mandated curriculum for the common good, showing how even something as whimsical as a butterfly is important. It shows a reverence for nature and helps build a foundation for stewardship for all creatures. Check out the link in the show description for more information. Reva's going to put it in there for you. But Kevin's family was there, John's family was there, and I was there. Grandpa's, grandma, sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, grandchildren, and a dog. Kevin built a fire, and for about three hours the kids played and fished while the rest of us sat and visited and watched.

It could have just as easily been in Cleveland County, Arkansas. But we were 918 miles northeast as the crow flies. from where I grew up. I say it all the time, and I'm going to keep on saying it. We're more alike than different, and if we look harder for the things that are similar, the differences will work themselves out. Can't help but do it.

I'm grateful and beyond blessed to be able to travel all over this great nation and Canada, and I'm so thankful to be able to bring these stories and these people to you each week. And it's because of your support. that I can. Thank you all so much. Sharing these stories and writing reviews is a great way to help the calls and I appreciate all the folks that's done it.

And that goes for Bear Grease and Backwood University too. Until next week, this is Brent Reeve. Sign it off. Y'all be careful.