Bear Grease - Ep. 57: Bear Grease [Render] - Outlaws and Undercover Stings

Episode Date: June 8, 2022

Clay, Misty, Josh, Brent, Isaac, and Gary talk about Clay's pawn shop of an office and his stack of most influential books before diving into Charlie, Louie Dale and Russ Arthur, the agent who went undercover with Louie Dale. They spend more time with the tension of liking someone (except Brent) while rejecting some of their actions as well as parsing out the nuanced differences between Poachers and Outlaws. Be sure to stay tuned until the end for a Black Panther update from Gary "Believer" Newcomb.  Connect with Clay and MeatEater Clay on Instagram MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube Shop Bear Grease MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

Built to perform, built to last. Check out. First Light's new field. Worldware Gear at firstlight.com. 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. Presented by FHF Gear, American made, purpose-built, hunting and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the places we explore. I always feel like a kid in here.

Like I'm just poking around to see what... Man, I really wanted to clean this place up before y'all came because when the death starts looking like this, it's like time to do something. Yeah. But you know what? I got something to say about this. Where there are no ox and the stables are clean.

That's right. But you need a big ox to have a great harvest. Yeah, you need a big one. You got to have 17 hats to get your harvest. Every one of these. This is in here because I traveled to Tennessee. to meet a special undercover agent. And I had to take this back in the truck.

This is in here because when I first started using mules, like, years ago, somebody told me Vicks Vaporub, if you put Vicks Vaporub in the nostrils of your mule that you could put any type of wild game on their back because they couldn't smell it. Is that true? Turns out it sure didn't work for me. But I still have the Vix Vaporub. That wasn't they. So I had to take this out of this drawer the other day because the drawer would.

and shut because of it. So that's why that's there. That was a Vicks Vaporiborub sales. These things right here. Yeah. I don't know why those are there. Mules, you say. There goes our sponsorship for Vick's Rafer Run.

It's like a bad pawn shop in here. Maybe a good pawn shop. Bad because it's like nothing's organized. You know where you go into the pawn shops and you've got to kind of rifle through things to see what they've got? That makes you feel like you're getting a deal. Like somebody's passed over this because they didn't want to go through it. It's true.

A blind man's garage sale. And you pick up things and you're like, what is this? What is this? Outside of the case. You know, like the glass case and the pawn shop. Yeah, exactly. You can just pick it up and pilfer through it. I got to introduce some international folks that are staying with us for a wedding.

What Bass Pro looks like. Their mind was blown. I bet. Really? Did you go there with them? Yeah, I took them there yesterday. They were also surprised that you carried a pocket knife. Yes. And they assumed it was a weapon.

And I was like, absolutely not. This is a tool. Just a tool. I got a good pocket knife. my story. Okay. When we were, y'all know I work at a school. And I got a call from a parent one time trying to see if they should arrange for us to.

There's some pocket knife trading going on here. Yeah, it's a little distracting. They, to see if they needed to arrange for my son to meet their son off campus for a purchase of a pocket knife or if I was okay with it if they sold this pocket knife on campus. So two boys wanted to sell a pocket knife? One being my, our son. And I was like, well, hold on just a second. I don't know much about this.

Let me get the details. Bear Newcomb had been taken pieces of steel metal, fingernail clippers, anything you could find. Oh, this is an old story. Right, yeah, he's young. I thought this happened like this week. No, no, school's out. Gotcha for some. This was like a long time ago.

And Bear was taken, like gathering up any spare piece. Saw blades and stuff. Or fingernail clippers. That was a pretty popular one. And he, what did he have? He had a grinder. He had a grinder. He had a electric grinder that would, like a wheel grinder.

He was like nine years old and making these. He had a little side hustle. Yeah. These off-marked songs. He saw. Actually, I had to talk to him about ethics inside of business ownership because I'm pretty sure he's sold a pocket knife that he'd ground out of a sawsall blade and wrapped paracord around the handle. Exactly. To some kid at school for like 20 bucks.

That's what I'm talking about. I'm pretty sure that's a shiv. Yeah. That came from a prison. Or he's going to a prison. I'm the principal of the school, so I have to write all these parents and say, hey. This is years ago. Yeah, this is years ago.

And I had to write him on and say, hey, I'm really sorry about there's apparently like an off-market deal going on. We weren't aware of it. We were aware that Bear was making knives. We thought it was a cute thing for him to do at the house. We are not encouraging enterprise at the school. We will refund you your money. How are these transactions happening? Oh, kids are bringing cats?

I asked you school. Here's the way I talked to him about it is I said, man, I said, don't you think that's pretty high for the what you, the amount of time you had making this and what you paid to get the raw materials? You know, you kind of got to take into consideration your customer too. Like, 20 bucks is pretty high price. And he's like, dad, they, I mean, they'll pay that. They'll pay that point.

Yeah. And I said, I said, man. I don't know what to tell you. I'm out of stock. Exactly. Yeah, you don't pay for the amount of hair. cut. That's cut off your head.

You pay for the expertise of the man cutting hair. Oh, that's right. So was it like, hey, meet me around back. No, it was done. Don't tell my mom. No, unfortunately, Bear thought I'd be proud of them. And to be honest, there was a little bit in me that was like, well, that's kind of entrepreneurial.

You know, I wasn't a real proud. And I told Clay, I don't really know. Like, I clearly have a responsibility as a school administrator to not let there be the sell of weapons on our property. It's not weapons. It's a tool. Well, welcome to the bear grease render. Man, this is a exciting one.

I have with me, I have Josh Lambridge filmmaker to my left. Greetings. We're in a nice believer hat. Yeah. Looks good. Yep. Looks good. To his left, my wife, Misty Newcomb.

Nice to be here. Nice to be here. Always good to be here. To your left, Brent Reeves. You got a shout out on the podcast this week. I do. I did. I liked that.

It was good. And used accurately. Yeah. I thought it was. It really was. Very good. Brent's beard's a little trimmer. It is.

Is it normal? A little close cropped. It's summertime. It's summertime. I did it yesterday. And Bailey walks downstairs and said, Daddy, your glasses are bigger. Like, nope, same glasses. Beard smaller.

I had this revelation just a second ago about Brent Reeves. He has a way. of making you feel like you're with him when you're just listening to him. I was thinking about seeing him today. But you are with him. Today. But I was like, I had this feeling of like very familiar. You felt this yesterday.

No, earlier today, anticipating seeing Brent, thinking it didn't feel like it'd been two months since I'd seen him. You know what I mean? What do you attribute this to? I don't know. Velvet pipes. Oh. That's what it is.

The timbre of his voice. Fairmo. It brings you right into the moment. I'm in season. I have to reevaluate these feelings now. You're probably going to have to take that out. To Brist's left. Not far enough.

Isaac. Isaac, now we introduced you back in February as the assistant producer of Bear Grease. Now, we could, I think I have the authority to change your title. You could be assistant to the producer. Assistant to the regional producer. No, man, Isaac has a lot of fingerprints all over the Bear Gries podcast. Isaac does a whole lot for media during for us. But on this one in particular, and I think we'll go into the origins of why,

how this came about that we decided to tell the story that we told over the last three episodes. But Isaac was there right in the middle of it. And Isaac was actually the one who said you could do it like this. Anyway, we'll talk about that later. To your left, Gary Newcomb. Gary, good to see you, man. Yeah, good to be here. Yeah, I'm looking forward to see what Gary has to say about all this.

Oh, my, Lance. I look forward to what he has to say about anything. Yeah, me too. Hey, I want to, before we dive in too deep here, and I really wanted just like straight up talk about the podcast. Yeah. So last time you guys got, weren't involved in the render because we were in Montana. Yeah.

And so we didn't really talk about, you know, there were just three of us there, bear was there. And so we didn't talk about episode two. So I want to do like a full encompassing, full encompassing conversation, have one about episode two. We had a really good render about episode one where we, where we talk. Well, we can encompass that. Can we just say something about the render crew last time? Yeah, sure. Because I feel like we always get to evaluate them.

Sure. I'd like to evaluate Clay Newcomb's statements in that podcast. I learned that Clay sent our barely walking son to bear. Here we go. I'm listening to the render, and it's Shep and I in the car. I thought I told you to take that out, I said. Yeah. No.

Just news to me, your parenting tactics always amaze me. I trust you. And then I hear things like that. Four out of five have made it. Yeah. Isn't it a proverb says train a child up in the way he should go and then send him towards the bear? It's something like that. It's a right of passage.

Really, what were you thinking, though? I think about how much I trust Clay. And I tell people all the time, like we don't have to worry. I trust Clay. If he says it's okay, it's okay. And then I hear that story. And I'm thinking, well, it ended up being okay. It was just a small bear.

Not wise. A small innocuous bear. Yeah. Think about this. Take comfort in this. That's the story that you know about. I know. Yeah.

You should let that go. Let it go, Misty. Well, where I was going to go, though, before we get into our big discussion. Y'all see these books right here? This stack of books. Yesterday, a couple days ago, I looked across all my bookshelves and was trying to it all started just when I saw a book. I saw this book biophilia.

Yeah, this book right here. And I was like, oh man, I hadn't seen that book in a while. And it's got all kind of handwritten notes in it and stuff. And I was like, this book was really influential to me. And I was like, you know what? There was another book that was really influential. And I started looking for Ian Tattersall's becoming human. And I was like, you know what?

Another three books that were influential. Anyway, I started, I made a stack of what I think is the most. influential books to date. Yes, Josh. Where's the Bible? I noticed that too. That was going to be the thing I was going to say next. Aside from the Bible, here.

Okay, yeah, would it make you feel better? Would it make you feel more comfortable if I had a Bible stacked up there? Make sure the Bible's on top. Yep, okay. Definitely make sure the Bible's on top. Very true story. Books not written by, you know, that aren't the Bible. They aren't divinely inspired.

Okay. But all these books. So there's Wild Sports. There's Boone by Robert Morgan. There's my father, Daniel Boone, which those two books together were really unique. And I just always thought that book written by Nathan Boone was about his father, the interview that he did. Nathan Boone did with his dad was really wild.

There's a couple of non-history hunting books. This book, Atomic Habits, have any of y'all ever heard that? This is like a pop culture, like New York Times bestselling, self-help, quick self-help, kind of book that I typically wouldn't read. But man, I think about this book all the time. Atomic habits, man. It was really good. Tiny changes, remarkable results.

And then Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold, which I read in college, Dr. David Miller, who was on the Bear Grays podcast one time. He had us read that. And little did I know that that book would be influential. And then Boys Adrift, man. Golly. If you have Boys, you ought to read that book. Yeah, it's a good idea.

Boys Adrift. That is a cool. And it talks about five factors driving the growing. an epidemic of unmotivated boys and underachieving young men. It's a really good book. And then this book right here, the account of Cabezza de Vaca. Watch your mouth. These guys.

Watch your mouth. That was soap. So this is the account of the first Europeans that made it inland into North America. So it was Cabezza de Vaca. And, I mean, they were the first guys that like went inland. and he describes, it's been a while since I've read it, but they describe the tribes that they encountered. Oh, nice.

But they describe the topography and the land. And this book is a document that tells current biographers of just what this place look like in terms of vegetation and stuff. And it's really interesting. Well, you hear what that would have been. You know what? I hadn't read this book. several years.

The answer's still the same. I know. I'm just saying I've kind of forgotten exactly. Cabezza de Vaca landed in Florida into 1528. Nice. Yeah. First guy's pretty wild, man. I remember there was a story in here about a man getting killed crossing the river.

Oh, I do remember. They came to this raging river. So they had this like regiment of men that they had animals with them and pigs with them. and like they had to carry everything they would need to survive. And they came to this raging river. And there was this young guy that was like, we can cross here. And everybody else was like, man, I don't think we can. And this dude jumped in the river with his horse and tried to cross this river.

And he drowned. He and his horse drowned. And they went and found his body like a mile and a half downstream, buried the man and ate the horse. Wow. Pretty serious. Wow. Cabesa de vodka means cat of a cow

cow's head So these two books by Bear Greys hero and alumni Brooks Blevins A history of the Ozarks The Old Ozarks Part 1 Isaac's read it

So good It really is It's so good Wherever you live You ought to know About the history Where you live This one is really one of my favorites

Arkansas Arkansas By Brooks Blavins How Bear Hunters Hillbillies And good old boys Defined a state Really incredible

It's a good bit. Yep. And then we're almost done. And then Wild Sports by Frederick Gerstocker. That was a good one. And then against the grain, Richard Manning. This book is kind of controversial. But guess what?

So it was a bearergreece podcast. The outlaw podcast. Which brings us to our current topic. You forgot two really important books. Oh yeah. This one that took off. Meat Eater by Steve Ronella. I read this years ago.

long before I would have known Steve. This was in my list. And it was just, it's just kind of a memoir. It's just like stories from his past. And I remember really being impacted by this book and just kind of the musings inside of it. And then the last book that was in the stack

was this book called The Life of Elijah by A.W. Pink. So Elijah is a guy in the Bible. Wild guy, man. I loved Elijah because he was, he was from he was from a region basically he was like a hillbilly in the Middle East for real

like they there's very little known about where he came from except that the place he came from was like a wild rural rugged place and he in the indication is that like he was like that

you know that's an old book too the people of the hills reflected the nature of their environment they were rough and rugged Solomon Stern, dwelling in rude villages, subsisting by keeping flocks of sheep, hardened by an open-air life, dressed in a cloak of camel's hair, accustomed to spending most of the time in solitude, possessed of a sinewy strength which enabled him to endure great physical

strain. Elijah would present a marked contrast with the town dwellers in the lowland valleys, and especially he would be distinguished from the pampered courtiers of the palace, because he interacted with the Kings. So, oh, Elijah, A.W. Pink.

I don't really know where to start other than to say this series has been the most enjoyable of any podcast series I've ever built.

And it's been because I have always been had a deep sense of place inside of my life. Like I like being from somewhere

that we've kind of just been from there a long time. And so the fact that these were not stories that I was reading about in a book, even though I wasn't there, and I didn't know these men well. I mean, on a personal level, I did not know these men well. I was just a kid growing up while these guys were kind of in their prime. And I mean, I probably haven't seen these men since I was 18 years old or something, You know, so it's not like I was close to these guys.

But it kind of felt like, and what, and I think, and I've attributed this to Dad so many times. But when Dad would, so Dad was a banker. And I remember he used to take us all over to see customers that had killed a big deer or for whatever reason. I remember multiple times going to people's houses way out in the country. and it was just, I mean, you probably wouldn't have known that I was impacting, and I probably didn't know it was impacting until later in my life, but you know, you were kind of, you enjoyed these rural people and these stories, and then you told me stories about Charlie and Louisdale, and you did take me to a bow shoot out at their house when they had a catfish fry and a bow shoot.

In a mule ride one time. Now, that was when you were an adult. Not with Louisdale. Not with Louisdale. Yeah, yeah. It just, so I enjoyed going back to where I'm from and mining out these stories with these guys. So, no, and I'm very interested in, like, I thought it was great last time when Brent was like, no, I'm not endeared to these guys. That's why I have you here.

I don't have you here to, no. I don't have you here to, you know, tell me something I want to hear. but I think it would be good to have a discussion about the different components of it because I think sometimes it's easy to hear one, well, I don't think this, I know this. And I'm not saying that's the case here. But a lot of times inside of a robust story, people get, you can get hung up on one thing and you hear that throughout the whole thing when maybe that's not even exactly what you're even talking about. Do you understand what I'm saying?

Yeah. And inside of this series, I tried to make a distinction between two different things. We use the words differently. But poachers and then this outlaw archetype. You know, so there's a difference. Like, I'm not endeared to coaching. At all. Yeah.

I mean, like, that's not what this is about. It was more about why an endearment to an outlaw. archetype, which, in my opinion, is an undeniable thing that's inside of our culture. It doesn't mean that every single person responds to that the same way. So I just want to... Yeah, so it's like, not everybody's... There might be something inside of someone that really responds to that and maybe less and something else, but pretty much undeniable that in our culture that that is something

that's happening. How do we start this? I sent a message to Clay and said part three was fire, fire, fire with a side of fire, fire, fire, fire. Man, it's like I felt like I was watching the CSI on podcasts. But what a fascinating, fascinating, fascinating story. It always amazes me that these kind of stories happen and nobody really knows about it. Right. You know, who would have ever known about Louisdale and Charlie Edwards and the game and fish sting operation that was going on with them?

I love that someone reached out to and said, listen, I got a little insider information for you. Yeah. That was pretty cool. But just to listen to him talk about his interactions with Louisdale, I mean, it was clear that I love the relational aspect of Louisdale. I mean, even with someone like that, he legitimately just wanted to help this guy. You know, there's a side of, I've met guys like Louis Dale, and there's a side of them that wants, that they want to take you under their wing. And at the same, I knew a guy in the construction business that, that kind of took me under

his wing when I had a construction company. And I knew I didn't want to necessarily be like him, but I appreciated what he had to offer me. and I think there's a lot of people that that's part of the thing that they appreciated about Louisdale is his care and consideration and is taking people under his wing. I mean, he was, he was in essence of provider for a lot of people in some way or another. But I thought I thought this last part of the podcast was really, really fascinating to hear, I forget, what's the gentleman's name? Russ Arthur? Russ, yeah, Russ talk about his interactions with them. And also the Game and Fish's desire to just really,

they really wanted to catch them red-handed with something. It just couldn't seem to do it. Clearly, something was going on there that there were kind of protected somehow from that ever happening. Well, to me, it was so interesting talking to Russ because there was actually another story that was told a totally different story of them in an undercover guy that Louis Dale took and we know there was multiple stings and so I only talked to one guy so this this you know happened according to the family Louis Dale took a guy and he called up a gobbler for the guy before season and the guy wouldn't shoot it and you know he made in Louisdale's mind made

excuse why he wouldn't shoot it. And that all of a sudden was a red flag that this guy, you know, all the different circumstances that surrounded it. And Louie Dale came out of that one confident that he had entertained an undercover officer. And then in this situation with Russ, you know, clearly he was tipped off by someone on the inside about it, which was reason to believe. But he also came out of it apparently extremely confident that. Russ was a undercover agent because he told that to Andy just so strongly,

just like, yeah, for sure this guy was an undercover agent. And the way that I thought about it is you only get so many strikes at somebody. I mean, it's just like, do they just keep sending a guy from another state? I'm from Kentucky. Where you take me turkey hunting in March? Where is your gun? You only get so many strikes at these guys. and pretty soon you just run out of options.

And what Russ said, though, was so valuable, I felt like when he said, how hard is it to not be able to catch a guy that's got so much land and wardens with so many limitations? And basically, he said off air, he said, guys like that are almost impossible to catch. Yeah, that's true. True. I mean, he just said, he just straight up said, you just almost can't catch these guys. And so you get a couple of shots. You know, the thing that hit me, and I'm a little hesitant to say it because I really respect this Russ,

and I really feel like he's probably top echelon. I mean, you couldn't have gotten a better guy. So I'm not taken away from his professionalism, but undercover on a Turkish thing, you're probably okay but undercover in another situation you get killed so if you contact me and go you won't go undercover i'm going to go who knows about this you know if i go you and i are the only two that know about it your wife doesn't know about it my wife doesn't know about it so probably because it was a turkey operation it was handled a little too loosely i would say because that should have never gotten out see see I have a feeling that that's just the structure. Because, see, they would have to let the gaming fish know.

They would have to let other people in enforcement know. I was thinking about it because what happens if Russ Arthur is out with Louisdale and gets stopped by the game warden. Or if one other person he knows, something happens to him and he dies, and Russ Arthur's out there doing illegal stuff and no one knows but him and this other person, you know, like say a person has a heart attack. Who died? Say the other person he knows has a heart attack.

Like if it's you and one other person that knows. And that person has a heart attack. This could be a movie. It is a movie. I mean, there's a couple different... Like where it's an undercover sting. They're trying to keep it tight. Yes.

Two people know one guy dies. So the other guy is involved in criminal activity. Yes. And no one knows it's sanctioned. Oh, you didn't think this through, Gary. Well, you understand what she just said? Yeah. Yeah.

Well, hey, hey. You'd be stuck for life. I don't buy any of that. I mean, you know. I can tell you what happens. Yeah, here's our man. That's what I wanted to hear.

You go to jail because that's what I did. When you're out with the folks and you're playing the game, and I'm using air quotes for game because it's not a game. Yeah. You're literally putting your life on the line for your paycheck. And what happens when you go, in my case, it was to... Tell us what you did. Because people wouldn't know.

Is he allowed to do that? Well, I can tell this has all been adjudicated. I've been real nervous about all the people involved in this podcast. Long time ago. But I was in a place in South Arkansas in a bar. We were in there buying drugs. And the local police did not. You were an undercover agent.

Yep. We weren't just buying drugs. I can you tell you my name. My name was James, Jay David Miller. I've got an Arkansas driver's license at home that has its own number. And had a whole back story. So, Brett's been in law enforcement. his whole life.

We're in this place that's known to be selling drugs, and that's why I was in there. Me and another agent were in there. And we were working, and then the local police comes in, and they running folks out, left and right, and people are getting arrested, and we fell right in there with the rest of them. So, and you don't tell anybody, hey, you don't arrest me. I'm really, I'm really a policeman. No, you don't do that. You just go with the flow.

And you sort it out when he get the gym. Yeah, when it's all over with, yeah, because they're not going to get the right guy anyway. But that's what happens. That's what you do. And that's exactly what Russ would have done. Yeah. The local game warden, unless he walked up, you know,

and recognized him like, Russ, what are you doing here? Why are you hunting with Louisville? Don't you know this guy's an outlaw? You know, it would. But that's, that happening to him, somebody knowing and talking when they shouldn't have talked is the very thing that the reason why nobody knew that we were working in that in that bar is because loose lips sink ships that's yeah that's the old saying you know during world war two so you and i'm not saying i

disagreed with him i'm just saying so you it obviously well even russ said it he said the structure of the forest service came back to bite him yeah that's what he said and And he actually went into a lot of detail with me about the structure of the Forest Service today and how it's much different. Like basically back then there was a lot of room for, he went into a lot of detail that was, basically he was like, basically he was like, most of the stuff these days is now all self-contained. It's kind of operates autonomously. Yeah. Without, it's all on a need to know basis. And that's the way that we did it in the drug culture and the drug enforcement was we would talk.

Normally, the prosecutor in a district would be the only person that knew that we were in there working. And it would usually be at the request of them that we were there anyway. Did Russ say that only four or five people knew, though? Didn't he say that on the podcast? Well, I don't remember how many he said new. He said very few people. Yeah, like a handful of the way up. He may have said that, but it wasn't very meaningful.

Yeah. What did you think of the sting operation part? I mean, not dissecting how they did, but just was it... He caught him. Yeah. He caught him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, and had it not been for the person that gave him the warning,

I think they would have got him even more so. So, I mean, he was caught. Yeah. And to his point about evading, you know, most counties in Arkansas have two wildlife officers. Some of them, even back then, only had one. And some counties back then didn't have any. So you had one wild life officer spread thin, you know, between two counties. And he's got, you know, the Edwards guys, they had to look out for Mr. Martin.

Mr. Martin had to look out for everybody. Right. It's a lot easier for them to do what they did. And because he didn't catch him, didn't make him not a good game warden. I think a really interesting thing to that point is the idea that their community connections were not happenstance part of this. But it seems like if you keep running back to it, it's like it's not that nobody knew. It's that they're standing in the community and people's fondness for them, kept protecting them. Sure.

If you think about, like, there are plenty of poachers to get caught all the time, and they're usually pretty, there's, they're scoundrels. You know, they're not, they're not upstanding citizens or whatever in these other aspects of their lives. But the reason this is so unique is probably the reason that it's so unique. I cannot argue with that. You know what I mean? Sure. Like, it's, it's not, it's not that they were great edivating the law in a, in a vacuum. it's that these facets of their life work together to continually pull them out of the fire.

Yeah. And when I was thinking about it, this last podcast, I was thinking that all the, you know, they, if they've been one out and killed three turkeys or whatever the limit was back then, and those other 20, 30 or 40 or however many it's supposed to be, if they would have took that many kids out and let them kill their first turkey, how much we wouldn't be having this podcast today. We'd be talking about some criminal. These guys would be beyond a pedestal beyond anything we could see.

Because that would have endeared me to them. Sure. Sure. So that was my only, my biggest takeaway. And I want to reiterate, I'm not saying these guys are bad people. Sure. They can't, if Gary Newcomb thinks of them, then I've got to, because I respect him that much.

You, not so much, but Gary, yeah. But I'm just saying that there was a lot of, what's the old saying, one mess up will take away a whole bunch of add-a-boys, and that just, I couldn't be endeared to it. Yeah, sure. So that was just my take on it. When I listened to that, Rinder, after the first episode, I wondered if your experience in law enforcement

and some of the conversations we had had helped to inform your understanding of that dog story. Oh, yeah. Well, it's just, I can, to me, that was a no-brainer. There's no way. I love that cune dog at my house. My wife would give one of her kidneys and both of mine for it. Yeah. And I love that dog, but there's no way I would put that dog in front of your life or somebody I don't even know.

Well, so like in my brain, I hear that, Anna. And I go, that's a funny anecdote. But I've never been on the receiving, like, in a legitimate position where, like, am I going to get killed right now? Yeah. Like, does this guy really mean that he'll shoot me if I shoot his dog? You can only take somebody at your word. Yeah. When it comes to that.

Yeah. So, you know, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's really a, to me, it's black and white. Yeah. That's, it's not right. Yeah. That's wrong. That's the wrong way to look at it. And, and I will go so far.

as to I don't want to upset anyone in the room or anybody that's been on this podcast before. But those guys were only successful doing that because people didn't talk about it or they wouldn't talk about it. Yeah. And if they had, you know, the way I look at it and the way the law looks at it, if you, if you witness something, witness them do something wrong and you don't talk about it and you don't report it, well, then you're just as culpable as they. are in some form. You know, I just think it was, going back to the reason why we did this, because it certainly would be maybe unusual inside the outdoor space to talk about outlaws, poachers, and put

any kind of positive light on them. and I'll tell you the reason I did it is because the real world of my like I wanted to explore this thing that I experienced which was wait a minute we like these guys but they're notorious turkey outlaws

and then to hear Russ say that this is very common and man hey all foreshadow we're probably going to have Russ back on because he's got some stories man and and he did y'all think it was wild what the list of things he pulled out of the air about the type of people that these would be he he intentionally he told me he said clay i did not listen to these podcasts before he said i didn't want to be fed any kind of narrative about who these guys were and so i mean these would have been one of you know i don't know of hundreds probably not hundreds but of undercover operations. So it's not like these guys even would have stood out much to him probably inside of his career.

It had just been some guys that he worked, you know. It's not like he knew them. He was just involved in their life for about a month. And then for him to say what he said. And then at the end, him saying like, this is a southern phenomena, which, you know, there's only so much you can do in a 20-minute conference. Like I talked to Russ Arthur for two hours, solid, non-sendomero. stop action-packed two hours.

Y'all heard 22 minutes of it. And what he said was that this thing is a phenomena of the southern United States. And it's not that there aren't poachers everywhere. So it's not to say poaching only happens here. Right. But these deeply entrenched families and they have a lot of similarities. to the situation we're talking about. People that live way back in some area,

they usually have a very tight geographic area that they're working. They've been there for a long time. A lot of community support. And I just thought that was so interesting because I was a part of that. Like, I was in that community. And so it's like, I want to talk about this.

I think it's interesting that you're saying that, as well as, if you combine that with what Daniel talked about, inside of that because if you look at the south the south has a long history of being the inferior to the north as as a function of its identity um if you look at in even as early as like the 1700s early 1800s you'll see that all of the people the writers the intellectuals of the day the influencers of that day would talk about the south as like the other and they even had other names for the South. And this is pre-Civil War. This is, this was like a beginning. So there was a sense of inferiority. And I think that that kind of connects a little bit to what Daniel was talking

about with the outlaw. And even like you, you played a clip of the Godfather. And there's this, there's a, you like that, Brent? That was ridiculous. But there was a sense of we have to pursue justice on our own because we are on the outs of society. In the instance of the Godfather, you're talking about a family that would be newly migrated to this nation. In the instance of the South, you're talking about people who are separated for all sorts of reasons and perceive themselves as inferior. And if that's a southern phenomenon, that is interesting to me how it goes along with the theoretical belief that your outlaws exist when people don't trust the authority structures in place.

And a lot of times you don't trust because you feel on the outside. curse of. Yeah. So the genesis of like figuring out how to tell this story came on a road trip, right? Mm-hmm. And you were just sort of talking about this story that you wanted to tell. Well, I was talking on the phone with my buddy. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And he was telling, for whatever reason that Louisdale came up. Yeah. Like just naturally on the phone. Yeah. And then you told me a little bit about the story and we're saying like, man, I want to tell this story, but how do we get there? Yeah. just started kicking around ideas. And I was really enamored by the nuance of the story,

the idea that like we, we have these people in our lives. I can think of somebody in a totally different sphere, but like really endeared to them. They're really good to us or whatever. And also have this part of their being that you don't like. And so like in the like popular zeit guys today, not just with people, but all things, we wanted distill it down to a binary operation, good or bad, black or white. And I thought it would be really interesting to take a look at it from a perspective of like, I just, just basically like a peek behind the curtain. I really like these guys and I really don't like this thing.

What's that about? Yeah. Right? And I think like the aspect of their personalities, that outlaw aspect that you like is really interesting and nuanced because in this case, it manifests in a way. way that is abhorrent, which is poaching. My dad brought up, I was talking to him about the podcast, and he brought up the irony of doing a podcast series about turkeys and how they're all disappearing and how your kids aren't

going to get latched on because the turkeys aren't here and then following it up with this podcast about guys who are killing too many turkeys. Yeah, exactly. So, but in this case, the outlaw predilection manifests in a very negative way. but talking about Brooks Blevins and the history of the Ozarks, I'm reading the third installment of that now. And one of the things that he touches on is the U.S. Forest Service erecting watchtowers for wildfires, right? Well, one of the main reasons that they did that was to prevent locals from doing controlled burns on their lands.

And people continue to do it even after they outlawed it. So they erected these things to watch for it and basically nark on their neighbors. well, history has looked back on that and said, controlled burns are really good, and they actually help prevent forest fires. And so that outlaw manifestation was right. And so, like, what do you do with this thing that, like, is endearing, but, like, sometimes it has really negative and bad consequences.

And sometimes, in the course of time, it's proven to be correct, you know? Yeah. What do you do with that? That's an interesting tension that you just have to kind of sit with. And that's kind of what we were getting at with the conversation with Daniel Rup. Yeah. Is that the archetype of the outlaw is very valuable. Yeah.

And there's artifacts of it inside of all of our lives. Like, you know, we were joking about our neighbor down here being a tomato plant outlaw. Because he does stuff a little different than other people. Yeah. And so it's like, and it's like, yeah, he's the bad guy. He's doing it different. He's a pioneer in a new way to do it. Yeah.

It's like that is a, that is a Western culture thing where we hat tip to the guy that's outside the system. The nonconformist. That calls the system out. Yeah. And so the fact that, and again, if Louis Dale and Charlie had just been poachers, I wouldn't be that interested in them. Sure.

It wasn't, it's that, it's that they were outlaws. Like that, that was the idea that they had, they, they, they, they should. showed that in the way that they, just like everything that they did. Like they, and, and there's a nuanced thing because like you said, like so much of what they did. Like, I don't condone fighting. I don't condone making illegal moonshot. I don't condone all this stuff. It's just interesting. It's not just that they're outlaws, though, right? It's the enigma of like everybody has so many good thing. They paid off the farm. They help with my medical bills. They, whatever, and their outlaws, right? Yeah. Just a straight up outlaw, you know, you can think of instances of people in the wild

West where a guy just goes from town to town murdering people. I don't find that endearing. But like, the guy who sees injustice and is willing to trespass the bounds of the law in order to bring that into alignment is fascinating. The guy who's sort of doing good. It's in the context of like poaching that you go, so are you saying poaching's okay? Is that, were they doing the right thing there? Negative. Right. Yeah, they were not doing the right thing. And I think that's the whole thing that you said in our initial conversation in the truck is that it's like, it would be super nuanced. Yeah. So like, yeah, you could go, oh, they made a podcast and they're soft on poaching.

If you say that, you're an idiot. Absolutely. Go ahead. You just didn't listen. Yeah. You didn't go listen to someone else's podcast. It's nuanced and it's deep. Yeah.

And this is what I was going to say a minute ago. There's something inside of it about personal relationship with someone. Because I promise you, if this was a story about some guys from Alabama that I didn't know, I wasn't connected to that community, I didn't, I would probably just be like, what a bunch of bugs. Well, I can tell you from firsthand. I didn't know these guys. So when you talk, I'm like, man, I like these guys. And then when Brent talks, I'm like, man, I don't know about these guys.

Yeah, like, I don't have anything personally. But there's something about, and again, I'm not saying it's right. I'm not, what I said on the podcast that it probably makes me a hypocrite. So, like, on the record, like, I realize, but there's something about knowing someone that makes you more compassion. And Russ said it. You know, Russ actually scripted out real well. He said, if you know these people in your community that are generous and compelling people and you like them, like, you don't want to get them in trouble.

Yeah. And these tight-knit communities function off of personal relationships. I mean, before we made this podcast, I didn't think I could get people to talk. I went to my dad and another friend, and I said, would y'all talk about Charlie and Louie Dill? And basically, I mean, without the family's permission,

I don't think dad would even open his mouth about any of this. But it's like, I was like, no, they're okay with this. They said we could do this. They like this. that's the only way that like I had people that I interviewed calling the family to make sure that I was telling them the truth. You know, just like that personal relationship is super meaningful and it's just interesting how that personal connection could make you see something not different. Because again, we're not talking about whether poaching's right or wrong. We're just talking about these guys.

It really shows the effect of being that being cared for produces in someone. Because I think a large portion of the community there felt cared for by Louis-Dell. Like Don Carleone. Like Don Carleone. Some more fiction. And because of that, I mean, think about it in your marriage. If you love your wife, you're going to overlook things. You know, you're going to.

Right. Here we go. You're going to overlook things because. you love her and you care and you see the side of her that makes that other thing a moot point and so i think in in people's minds they felt very cared for it and that is just a natural response to that to that expression to them well also the community was not reporting these guys for killing too many turkeys i don't i would be willing to bet all the people that wouldn't snitch on them for that. If they drove by their house and they were beating the young gun out there with a stick,

they'd have called somebody. Right. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps game calls and building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called Prime Cuts. Now, I'm going to tell you, I love mine because it's easy to use. I'm not going to go, I'm not going to win a turkey calling contest. It's just not going to happen. But when I run this call, I get the sounds that gobblers are looking for. I have a great turkey. hunting track record. If you go listen to real turkeys out in the woods, they're not going to win calling contests, right?

That's who I listen to. I can make those sounds on my cut. I also hunt with Phelps' cut, and I hunt with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts. Check out Prime Cuts at Phelpsgamecalls.com. I think you'll be glad you did, and you'll find

out that the Steve Ronella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. What do you think, Dad? Well, it's really too complicated. For me, I like Russ's ability to a mouth call, which is what I've That was a dang good.

I mean, you know, I tell you what, the rest of this stuff to me, you know, you can, you can tell what you think. You can study this. We don't really know why we like certain things. But we like entertainment. I like Michael Jordan. He's different. He's special.

He's worked hard. Jesse James. You know what I mean? I like to hear the story. It's entertaining. Charlie and Louisville being nice guys, man. Our whole community's made up a nice guys. But they were a little different.

And you can go anywhere you want and pick one guy out of the community. And you probably could make an interesting podcast out of it. You know, you look at history. We need to do that. We need to just pick a guy. You probably could. Podcast roulette. You look through history and Kit Carson and, you know, Daniel Boone and, you know, these guys made a name for themselves, but there was probably a thousand other guys that were really vital to what happened.

And, you know, but you didn't have somebody, you know, so I don't know. There may have been somebody else down there making a smashing turkeys more than they were. But they just didn't talk about it. I mean, Martin's, when I said were Louis Del and Charlie, like, the most notorious guys you ever caught? And he just said, or chased, and he said, oh, not really. I mean, like, they weren't, they were, they were, they were guys. Like, Russ was just, he was just like, oh, yeah, a dime a dozen guys like this. I mean, he really said that.

You know, I didn't like them because they were turkey poacher. It had nothing to do with me liking those guys. I'm telling you, I might be different. It had nothing to do with it. it was intriguing you know like if if you walked in the bank and you were involved in some criminal activity that everybody and mina knew about like the mina connection deal yeah i mean it was i mean you just wanted to sit down and talk to them hey what happened you know i mean it's just intriguing but these were just good people that we liked and every now and then it would come up

that they were turkey poachers you know and you go well yeah they're good people turkey hunters. It was brewing. You know, I mean, you didn't think of it as turkey poachy. They were good hunters. And, you know, I don't know. It's, you know, maybe I'm a little too close to it. But I just think about people, I like heroes, man.

I like Sergeant York. You know, I enjoy Bonnie and Clyde. I've watched that movie so many times. Yeah. Jesse James. I mean, I just like the tough guys. I like to hear stories that happened at the bars in Oklahoma where. Did you like?

those stories. I did. I think, yeah, I mean, a buddy of mine walked in one day, pulls his shirt up, I might have told these guys about it, pulled his shirt up. I say a buddy, his acquaintance. How close were you to him? He said, look here. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, seven bullet holes in his chest. I mean, I like this guy, but because of the bullet holes and the stories that he had, I mean, you know, it's pretty cool. It's just entertaining. Entertaining. And hey, of all the things, like, I am never going to tell much of a story on this podcast that isn't entertaining. Like, that's part of this thing.

Like, people don't listen to the Bear Grays podcast because their mama makes them. You're not going to do a three-part series of boring stories. Yeah. Not anymore. Hey, you know, another thing about these guys. Scratch it off the list. If they had not been chased by the law, so hard, you know, they would have just spent, I can name two or three other guys in that

community that killed lots of turkeys. That's kind of what's interesting to me is in all these stories, it's like, wow, this is a lot of resources. They kind of drew attention to it. It's because they drew attention to themselves. Yeah, I think so probably. Just flouting convention, flouting the law showing up in front of the check station with your three birds unchecked, that type of thing.

Well, and you can't take out the. human component of it of like Jimmy Martin saying his supervisor wanted to catch these guys. Yeah. I mean, humans make decisions. It's not like just the government has, you know, drones out that, oh, they killed 36 turkeys. They will now have an undercover operation. No, it was like somebody heard that. I was like, these guys are, you know, they deserve this.

Where there's other guys in the community that maybe weren't throwing around as much, probably kill as many. Somebody didn't like it. Yeah. Or they would have never known about it. Yeah. Because they wasn't talking that way in front of Jimmy Martin. So somebody in the community thought what they were doing was no bueno enough that they talked to somebody about it.

It kind of makes them an underdog when they say, I'll give anyone a steak dinner who gets these people. Like it, you know, we love. Makes you almost root for them? Yeah. I mean, I feel like some. sort of terrible way. Because America also lives an underdog. I mean, or at least our...

And I don't think that would have been stuff that was known. You don't think so? No. I don't think so. Oh, no, but I mean like now, listening to the story, it is another thing that endears them. Like, all right, you got the whole force of the law breathing down your neck. Can you do it? Can you pull it out?

You know? Yeah. It's like that when you watch movies about these guys and you find yourself just in your heart, not about Louis L. and Charlie, but about outlaws. Routing for them, like, when it's time, you know, the law gets close to them, and you're kind of wanting them to. Yeah. Brent doesn't.

Brent doesn't. Never. Gary does. You kind of want them to get away. You want them to, you're, and of course it's the directing, it's the producing, it's all that, but it's. Bonnie and Clyde, they were murderers and robbers. I ain't seen a movie yet where I was cheering for them to win.

Not one of them. I'm always like, go pulleys. Amen. And you know what? I didn't shoot, I've said this before in this podcast. I did not cheer for these guys. Right. You know, if, I don't know, I, you know, when you turn them in, it's not going to do any good.

Everybody already knew, yeah. I mean, you know, how are you going to catch, you know, you got to catch them. So calling the game and fishing going, hey, man, these guys killed a couple of illegal birds. Well, forget it. You ain't going to catch them on a deal like that. But, you know, they were just good. They were just good guys that I think most people enjoyed being around. They love the notoriety, though, I think.

Yeah. And that's what Russ called ego, which I thought was good that he did. I mean, if we're being fair, I mean, you know, and when I went to the family, I told them, I said, I'm going to tell both sides of this story. So, I mean, we gave him a lot of room to, to tell the good parts of their story. And then I really liked it that Russ just came in and said,

yeah, these guys had a lot of ego, which his definition of ego was exactly what they all said Louis Dale did, which was he wanted to be the guy that couldn't be caught. You know, it was a game to them. That equals ego, you know. We all like to be good at something known for something, you know, fly fisherman, great teacher, you know, All of us have something that we're a little better at than other people.

Isaac tattoos, leg tattoos. Yeah. Yeah. You haven't seen Brent out of his overall. When they walked into a building or a room, you know, they had, you know, I'm Louisdale. You know, I'm the best hunter in the county. I mean, it was something to be proud of it, except it was illegal what he was doing. But anyway.

Yeah. I mean, so much of what all of us do is motivated. by ego. So much of what I do is motivated by ego. And on my best days, I recognize that and try not to be motivated by that. Did you think about that when you got that cow face drawn on there? You got to talk to John the Revelator about that. But like, you know, like we like to be liked. We like to be known. We like to be like. And if that is our sole motivator, it can trend towards negativity. But if we recognize it, sort of react to it and say like, hey, maybe that's not totally healthy. Like, that's when we're thriving as humans.

Yeah. So, like, when he said that, I was like, it didn't feel like an insult to me. It felt like, yep, I can identify with that. I can identify with sort of getting caught up and when we get to drink in our own medicine or whatever. It sends us maybe down a less healthy path. Mm-hmm. Correct. I still go back to just the idea of you had to know in their mind they felt these, the sense of restrictions being put on them by game laws. And I think they had to justify things in

their mind. You know, I think about like Bonnie and Clyde. There's no justifying, justifying, just murder and people. But when it comes to like game laws and that kind of thing, and I guarantee that if you had confronted them on violent tendencies, they'd probably say, well, I ain't never done anything to anybody that they didn't do to me. But when it came to poaching, I'm sure they, in their mind, they thought, well, I'm not hurting anybody. Yeah. And I'm actually helping people.

And we're eating. You know, Russ had a whole, a big part of what he talked about. And we may talk about this more at some point, but just about the damage that's done by recreational poaching. And in his mind, it all goes back to opportunity lost to other people, which is, by the like entirely true. I just like Brent was saying a minute ago. And,

and so it's easy to say, you know, well, nobody's getting hurt from this or that. But, but if you have, if you have a bigger picture of mine, you know, I mean,

it's like incredibly, it is incredibly detrimental, taking away. And now in a time of great surplus, it's different. It does feel different. I mean, like in a time...

It's hard to tell the difference. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And what I'm saying is surplus of wildlife. You know, so like in a time. And I thought it was interesting. And I thought it tied back into the other turkey podcast that most of this went down during a massive blowup of turkeys in this part of the world.

Yeah. And so, I mean, like, that coincided. It's kind of interesting when you think about it because we talked about Will Primos who built his business. and we made the connection that his Primos blowing up like it did corresponded with wild turkeys blowing up Yep And so this was the same thing

I mean they were kind of riding a wave And they weren't the only ones doing it I mean they were you know I told you I talked to A guy at meat eater that knew some people in In another state Yeah, Missouri Last time I was afraid to say Missouri I don't know why Or I didn't want to disclose

too much, but yeah. I don't know if anybody's done anything wrong in Missouri. Missouri is perfect. Clean slate. Yeah, that's what I heard. But guys that were killing turkeys for every year of their, how old they were, killed turkeys up until they were 40. You know, they'd try to kill as many turkeys in a year as their age.

It's like that, you just couldn't do that today. I mean, there's not that many turkeys. It has to be a full-time job. Well, but then how detrimental that. that would be, but it corresponded with this surplus of animals, you know. But, no, I think deep down the story, it was just a good story. And you know what, we've got to believe that we don't have to believe. I'm not saying this is something you choose to believe or not.

This is just the architecture of human life, is that we learn about the present by connecting the stuff from the past. It's a matter of fact. In this book, Biofelia, the author Edward O. Wilson, E.O. Wilson is talking about, he's talking about

human's ability of memory, historical memory, is unprecedented in the animal kingdom. And that's what, it's something that distinctly makes us human, is our ability to remember back 50, years to an incident and by all indications there's no other animal that has that clear of a memory or most animals don't live as long as humans but he said the subject of greatest immediate interest is

long-term memory we are essentially what he said we are essentially what we remember or can remember at some time in the future literally what we're standing on right now the platform of consciousness that we stand on is what we remember. We don't know what's going to happen a minute from now. We cannot forecast that very clearly. And he said, people build memory by linking new images and concept to old ones. In its size and the space it fills, the mine expands like a coral reef, adding new branches and cross ties out from the edge of those parts already established and anchored while its central body sets aside and coalesces.

Point being, why would we tell a story that obviously we're saying is negative in some ways, but looking at it through any positive lens that we can pull from it. It's like, we got to look back at our history to learn what we should do in the future. And it is my... Or shouldn't do. That's my biggest hope inside all this is we talk about poaching and the culture around hunting and protection of wildlife, wild resources, is that this wouldn't happen again.

I mean, that we would just say, hey, part of my driving inside of this is where are we driven by things we don't understand? And if I were back inside, if that happened today in the community I live in now, I would be like, wait a minute, I'm being endeared to a guy that maybe, I shouldn't be,

or, you know, however it played out, out and just like not to get caught in something. I think it's maybe important, you know, when this gets locked in the vault, nuclear fallout has happened. They dig out this episode to learn how to manage game species and not poach in the future to talk about the North American model of wildlife. And that is to say that the game is a collectively owned thing that needs to be managed at a community level so that all people have access and opportunity, as opposed to

previous models in which their aristocracy would fence off their land, manage their game and get to hunt, and the proletariat would be able to do nothing. And so the problem with poaching is to say, no, I know better. I know you're telling me this is what we need for the herd health, but I know better and I'm going to take what I want. So when we distill it down, that's really the problem with poaching. And that's the rub when you get into people like Charlie and Louisdale who are looking at the turkeys in their area and going like, we got more than enough, this is not a problem. I got this. And if they perceive the game laws as someone fint enough saying you can't.

Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. And that's part of the, that's, it's not true, but it's part of the problem. Absolutely. The thing about this, the system that we have is it's not necessarily perfect, but it's the best system we've got. I've not seen a better system. Like, yeah, you can't kill as many turkeys as you used to be able to.

But this is so that everyone can have an opportunity to kill a turkey or whatever. Hey, I've got a question for you. If this were made into a movie, who would be the star player? Who would be the Tom Selleck or? Who would be the lead? Tom Selleck would play you. No, no. No, no.

No one actor. Okay. I mean, who would be the protagonist? Who would be the main guy? Yeah. Is it Louis Dale? Louisdale. I say it would be Russ.

Oh. Okay. That's who I say it would. I mean, I could go either way. I've never seen the movie Donnie Brasco. You know, that's what makes this story interesting is the law enforcement chasing these guys. If you didn't have that, it's not a movie.

Yeah. So, I mean, you know, behind the scenes, you know, you're sitting it around the desk and you're going, okay, here's the, you know. I really want to see Billy Bob Thornton in this movie. I feel like he'd be a good fit. I'd like Kevin Koster to play Russ. Ooh. It'd be good.

Yeah, yeah. I could be involved in the casting if they're interesting. Yeah, Kossis. Okay. Whoa, that is a bombshell. What did he say? And you know what every one of your favorite scenes is going to be? Is when they get caught when they're young.

Yeah. And the Game Warden goes, hey, would you give me a ride back to my truck? And Louis Dale goes, sure. Yeah. And then they take off down that skid trail. That brings me back to something I wanted to say about Russ earlier. One of the things that I loved about Russ. Hey, wait a minute.

Hold on. Okay. Let me say one more thing. Yep. And that's why you're all. hypocrites if you didn't like this because that would be your favorite scene go ahead Russ I one one reason that I loved him on a top level was that it validated the story yeah when you go into this it can be easy to be like oh yeah it like every all

these stories get inflated or whatever over time because it's a community like you want your community to have this thing and then to go to this guy who hasn't listened to it who hasn't been there only spent a month there and then like basically corroborates it overall It corroborates the stories, but also I feel like what I really liked was that he mitigates the stories in which the beginning narrative is like, they never got caught. And then as you like parse it out, it's like, well, they got caught when they were young. Well, there was that one time that they, and then he's like, well, we had them on a few things, but it just really didn't warrant breaking cover or whatever. And so all of these things together come together to paint a more organic picture of a human being

as opposed to like a Robin Hood style legend or whatever. Yeah, yeah. That was one thing that I really liked about Russ's. You know, even Russ's thing about he could have caught him, but they didn't. It's like they didn't do it. Yep, they didn't get caught. They still didn't get caught. I mean, in Brent's, I understand, yes, they did get caught.

They just didn't get prosecuted. They didn't get prosecuted. You know. They lost is what you're saying. They didn't win the game. They didn't win the game. I don't think that would go down like that today. I think they would prosecute.

I don't know the circumstances of that, but the mitigating factors of that tell me that the reason they didn't because they were planning to do it again. They were going to send somebody else. Yeah, to get something bigger. Yeah, it wasn't like, all right, well. No, just forget it. Let's go home.

No, there was something else happened there. And that may have been the first one. Could have been. You know what I mean? Because there were multiple attempts. But also, wouldn't you agree that there would kind of be a shelf life? Like, you can't just. Right.

Like eventually you'd be like, okay, I wonder what guy is going to show up this year. It wants to go to Turkey out with me. Yeah. And that's hard, man. That is so hard. It's not, it's different than the drug culture because in the drug culture, they're either addicted to the money or they're addicted to the drugs. And one of the other is going to get them.

It always does. This is a totally different drug, a totally different addiction of being able to sneak back into the house with a turkey before the season or whatever. So it's, that makes it twice or ten times as hard to get somebody doing that because they, while they feel the need because it's springtime and turkeys are gobbling, they need to go kill one. It's not going to physically keep them from functioning if they don't. because they think the police are getting close. Right. We've had a undercover operation one time where I sent a guy in with a wire. And he walked up to the door and knocked on the door.

And the guy comes to the door and he calls him by name. And he says, Bob, I know you're working for the police. And Bob, not his real name, pulls a $100 bill out of his pocket. And you can hear the guy say, but I see you've got that money in your hand and I'm going to sell it. to you. And he did. Wow.

I know you're working for the police, but I see you got that money, so I'm going to sell it to you anyway. And he did, and he went to prison. Well, yeah, I mean, I suppose that's another interesting factor that Russ brings up is there's no, like, commercial side to it. Like, there's no walking up to these guys and pulling out $100 bill and saying, kill me a turkey. Right.

Take me to kill a turkey. That makes it also. so harder. It has to be off of that personal connection. Sure. And we could have a whole podcast just talking to Brent about undercover work. That's what people are going to want. They're going to be, why are you all talking about all that

silly stuff when you could have talked to Brent about undercover? Tell us your best undercover story, Brent. I can't. Oh. You can't? No. What do you mean? I can't tell you about it. Why? Because it's happening right now.

That's right. There's still people working. Child protective services over there. Hey, did it surprise you that Russ was able to talk to me? No, huh? Something that had been adjudicated, and he's retired. So, I mean, it wasn't an ongoing operation. Okay.

Plus the, those guys are, you know, passed away. Well, what I asked him is as I said, why would, because he got clearance from where he needed to get clearance before he talked to me. And they were like, pretty much whatever. Right. And I was trying to figure out how that would be good for the whole system for the whole world to know that there are undercover agents out there that are working. Well, because I'll tell you his response is he said, Clay, he said, us talking about what happened 30 years ago is irrelevant to today. Yeah. Because he said the tactics that we used back then are not even in the same ballpark.

Basically, he said today, you've got to have a digital history. like if I come to you and say my name's Bill Jones I'm from Tennessee I'm a bricklayer like you got to have a Facebook account oh yeah you got it was not started yesterday they could go to Google they can go to Google how I did it back then was a billfold I had a billfold and it had receipts in it from a transmission place in my undercover name I had an arrest record that if like if you had a friend that was in law enforcement he said hey man I met this guy, Jay David Miller, and he's from wherever I was, wherever I said, I'm not going to say that, but wherever this guy's from. This is date of birth.

Will you run him see if he's legit, and he may give that officer or that someone who had access to that information a totally false story, somebody that they trusted, and they run a check on it? That check is going to come up that me, Brent Reeves, also known as Jay David Miller. All it's going to say is Jay David Miller, date of birth, the address that's on there, and my criminal history. I had a fake criminal history on there of violence with the police, resisting arrest, all that kind of stuff. And that's, that was how they did. Yeah. Did they just photocopy your real one? I've said this before.

I've said this before. I'll say it again. I am still not entirely convinced that Brent Reeves is not an undercover agent sent by whoever, I don't even know who, to come bust me. Because if they make a podcast one day about my life and it turns out he is undercover, it'll be like, man, I called him and I played on his ego. Because Brent called me just out of the blue. I don't even know how I got my phone number.

and was like, hey, man, I really like what you're doing. I'd like to come film for you. Really? I'm going to film for it? That's weird. Okay. And then he was just... I see you got that camera, so I'm going to let you tell it.

Yeah. And then, so I... Brett's been like compiling video footage of me, waiting for me to break the law for all these years. And just, we're still waiting. You think three-part series is something. It's going to be like the last dance. But how great?

Would it be to be a double, double agent? Yeah. Like, what if Russ Arthur had come in and been like, man, Louie Dell, I used to work for the government. I used to be an undercover agent. Louisdale would have been like, getting a truck, brother. I trust you. Let's go. Revisiting a podcast series from yesterday year was Wilson Rawls, an undercover agent.

Oh, he might have been. Oh, and he just never surfaced. I just went to... His handler died. I'm just saying. Hey, I had it. Exactly. Well, I guess I have to read it right at a young adult model now.

His handler died. Construct a nuclear power plant. Okay. So I feel like we're... We've given some justice to the series. I would like to go around and like what was the most... If you don't... If you choose not to have...

There's some of us that may choose not to have a favorite part because they don't want to have... anything to do with this because they're that good of people. Well, I feel self-conscious with Prince sitting here now. So you can say the most interesting part. So we'll say what was the most interesting story in all the series? Josh. I think you've got to go with Russ.

I mean, just listening to his interactions with Louisdale and just the covert nature of it. I mean, it's, that's... Hey, did you like the intro how I had Andy tell the story? Uh-huh. And then I had him Al Hu. Did you like that? Yep. I also thought what Daniel talked about, Ego.

He was ego. Ego. I also thought what Daniel talked about was very interesting. We didn't even talk about what Daniel talked about. Yeah, he goes his own there. I, you know, in his conversation, I thought, you know, people always want someone to blame, too, for my law, for my freedoms being taken away and all that kind of stuff, which which always fuels, fuels the outlaw nature. So, yeah, I thought that was really interesting. But the whole part with Russ, listening to that was just cool.

Man, I can't wait for y'all to hear some more of Russ's stories. I can't even tell you the punchlines to them because there's two of them that are pretty incredible. So, Russ. Go around this way. Okay, Misty wants to go last. What was your... Misty, I'm not ready. Isaac, what was your...

Hey, I'll tell you. It turkey calls. next russ arthur turkey calling yeah him calling yeah those all these well i'm really just kidding i mean i like the whole thing i enjoyed the whole thing uh i'm with josh on his part validated it made it really special uh no one of them made it special but uh i mean just i'm just the whole thing was high quality you know i just i enjoyed every bit of it and uh um You know, Dr. Dan's take was interesting. But I think you've created a scenario where you could actually make a movie out of this thing.

Like you could many lives. This guy right here probably. We need a movie out of him. Brent will be the guy. They'll have a podcast scene at the end of the movie and Brent will be on there. And the end of it will just be him just nursing whaling back to help. Every week. That's what I do every week.

And, you know, it's just, it was just, did any of those stories surprise you? Like, because I would not have known the specifics of the fighting stories and all that. And I know you're usually kind of intrigued by that kind of stuff. Yeah. No, I didn't know that stuff. And him getting his rifle when he was on that sky lift down in Texas, putting the ceilands in probably at Walmart. You know, I kind of enjoy that. I mean, it's entertaining.

I don't condone that stuff, but, man, I love a good fist fight. I mean, you know, I'll walk a long ways to see two kids fights. Not really not kids, but. Roosters. Yeah, that's our nature. I mean, you can say whatever you want, but, I mean, anything unusual out of the ordinary, we're attracted to it. Sure. Yeah.

I thought it was a heady play of Daniel to bring up Mark. because you can't be like, that's not what he wrote, because then you read Marx and then you're a communist. Obviously. You can't fact check him. Right. It's true. I always knew Daniel was a communist.

He's a communist. I think the most interesting thing for me was the context of their history moonshining, which I think is important to talk about because on our side, like moonshining has always been viewed as an illegal or illicit activity, but it started as just a way to get our crop out of the holler. Like, how many wagon loads am I going to have to take this corn out? But if I distill it into whiskey, I can take it out in one load, right? And that evolves into, you can't do this anymore, evolves into a circumstance where one of their uncles gets murdered, one of their whatever. We don't really know.

This is not to excuse their behavior, you know, 50 years of poaching turkeys from there. But it helps contextualize it from me that it wasn't just like a group of guys waking up one day going, you know what? I think I'm going to go kill all the turkeys. I think that history, and like to have the newspaper articles, to know that this is such a part of the identity of the family. Yeah. And that, that I think makes it so interesting. And I think that's part of why I wanted to tell the story is that people don't just pop out of the box and act the way they act because they decided to. most people have a long and robust history that led them to a certain place. And inside of saying that, I also say that we have the ability to change that.

Like we're not muzzled by the narrative of our past. But to not be muzzled by it, you have to be aware of its driving force. I don't know if it's Brent that said it or somebody else that said it that. No, I was somebody else. Somebody else, a good friend of mine, message me. And he said, no, I'm not endeared to these guys. He said, I'm endeared to people that have a bad history and wake up and do something different than their forefathers did.

It was a great comment. I, 1,000 percent, I'm like, yep. I mean, that's like all we ever talk about on this podcast is people that do something different. Do you remember when we talked about Roy Clark, whose family, they were big in it? alcohol. And he just was like, I didn't want to be that way. And we were like, that is good. That's what we're talking about.

So, you know, we're not trying to encourage people to be, to be dominated by their past. But to not be dominated by your past, you've got to be able to see it and understand it and to see the track. And so I thought that was really interesting. Very interesting. Brent. I have, Chris, like, nothing was interesting to me. No, that's not true. I thought there was a lot of interesting parts.

Russ talking about the operation because I just, when he was talking about it, I was seeing it in my head. That's exactly, you know, he was verbatim exactly how it happened. I know the stories, I spent the better part of 31 years living and chasing folks that were, you know, on the other side of the law. So it wasn't as intriguing to me as it was I'm sure a lot of people because anytime I get around another person that I've worked with over the past, old war stories always come up, you know. Yeah. And I've seen a million people like that.

Yeah. A million people. And I've said it before, you know, in my career, everywhere I went, I was seeing more than likely good people. on their worst day. And it's, I know these guys were good people. And I know that what they were doing was not amassed up there with who we've mentioned

Bonnie and Clyde and those kind of folks up there. But I've seen a gillion folks make poor decisions. And so it, and I say all that to say, I wasn't endeared to them in any way. I was intrigued by their story because it's just one of a, a million that I've heard that's very similar. And they were authentic people, no doubt about that.

And you got to, I got to give them props for that, for being who they were. I think that's been brought up a couple times. Yeah. But I do, I also think about, you know, Jimmy Martin's viewpoint on it and his supervisor, whoever he was and the things that they were up against. And probably the ridicule that they probably got, you know, behind closed doors or when he got up he walked out of the coffee shop that, you know, they couldn't catch those two guys. Well, if that's all they had to do, they'd probably come a lot closer.

And that's what I took out of it. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I'm going to, I think the most interesting part of this is some of the responses we've heard from people in response to you doing this podcast. And so I feel as your wife, like I need to summarize a little bit. Okay. what we've gained from and help people.

Clay Newcomb is not a poacher. He does not glorify poaching. He doesn't like poaching. And in fact, I think you're one of the most upright people. I mean, really, that I've ever met in terms of like ethical right and wrong, you know, very clear rights or wrongs. I'm not talking to Brent. Brent knows he, right? Absolutely.

I mean. Brent's been documenting that for a decade. On camera. Wasting his life. You go tell you your boss. I said this very same thing. First time. First time around.

But I think what you were just trying to understand, like your whole podcast is just trying to answer questions because you yourself felt conflicted because there's things about these guys that you see as unambiguously wrong. And yet you were endeared to them. And the whole community around you was. And you're just trying to answer the question. Why? And part of that answer came through looking at them, not through the lens as poachers, but looking at this dynamic of outlaws and the outlaw archetype and trying to understand why are we culturally drawn to that.

Not every culture is drawn to the outlaw archetype, and that's interesting to us. And that's an interesting dynamic. And that Russ pointed it out as a southern phenomenon, that's interesting to us because we look at a lot of rural, southern types of people. I mean, even like the little book you just read about Elijah, I thought, how interesting. I mean, that is written by a theologian, and he's kind of describing the types of people that you find interesting a long, long time ago. Yeah. And you're just trying to answer those questions, and we're real comfortable living with that, those questions and asking those questions. And we don't, by saying why, we're not shifting our views on morality here.

Yes. We're not, that's not up for grabs. We're not shifting. No one in this room is. We believe in morality. We believe in right and wrong. We're not glorifying wrong. We're trying to understand why do we cheer for that guy in the movie?

Why do we find them endearing in the community? What attributes make this guy endearing, but other bad guys not endearing? What makes it interesting? That's all we're trying to do. Yeah. Have you been getting some of that? Like, you guys are condoning poaching? Very little.

Because if you are, they're not listening. Right, right, right. No, I would say, I would say the vast majority of the commentary I've gotten has been positive. But for sure, a few, a few people have just outright been like, yada-da-da-da. And, you know, that's okay. The way I look at it is if you, I mean, it's the truth. If you, if everybody likes what you're doing, you're probably doing something wrong. You know, one thing I've noticed is that we use that word,

outlaw. It's a marketing tool. You know, you've created a heading there that people look at it and go, man, I'm going to listen to this. We never viewed those guys as outlaws. I mean, you know, they were just people in the community. They were socially, it wasn't really socially accepted, but, you know, half the guys I knew in that town, I mean, they're going to shoot a deer out of seas and they're going to shoot an extra turkey or two. you know, it's just, it's not like some major crime like we've just read or seen on TV where a guy, DWI, is driving down a highway, you know, and he gets picked up.

Well, he could have killed your kids. You got a neighbor down here that's a drunk and he's, you know, you got kids, you know, so it's not like destifying outlaws here. Right. You know, they're, they're breaking the law, so they are outlaws. but it's socially not criticized as bad. I mean, we never just sat around and go, man, these are terrible people.

I mean, we didn't even talk about it. Yeah, you just knew that they were killing turkeys. Yeah. It wasn't like they were robbing 7-Elevens or, you know, shooting up the neighborhood, dealing in drugs. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah.

But, well, I love telling the story that's not really, been told, you know, in a big way. And so I'd tell stories, I'd tell stories like this every week if we could, you know. I mean, not not breaking the law stories, but stories that are hidden kind of behind the scenes of unique stuff happening in just like, you know, common, common little places, you know. and so it was a lot of fun. And I think Andy Brown deserves some form of award. Hey, I mean, if I could have a co-host on the Bear Grease podcast, it'd be Andy Brown.

He is a great storyteller, man. I love his laugh. Oh, my gosh. Andy, Andy, he has the most contagious laugh. I, when the story that that I put in there of him telling about the squirrel, uh, jumping out onto, and it just so happened, the other insurance agent he was with was named Charlie. So that story, if you didn't really listen, it could have been confusing. You might have thought the squirrel jumped on Charlie Edwards.

The squirrel jumped on Charlie, the insurance agent. I was set in this chair in this office at night when I was working on that podcast and would just belly laugh out loud listening to Andy tell that story. But now Andy made the podcast, man. You know, it wasn't necessarily his stories. It was him laughing. You know, you'd just get caught up in the moment. I did the same thing you're talking about.

I just get so fickle. Oh, man. You know what? I learned so much by talking to all these different people. Like, yeah, Andy's just, yeah, he, that's just the way he, he's, he's, he's always like that and he's just always always as somebody told me the other day he's always always laughing you know but yeah Andy Brown he'll be he'd be my co-host of the burgers podcast he'd make a good one mm-hmm I've had a couple people come up that I've known for years

I've actually hunted with a couple of these guys and go turkey violets you know I kill 15 turkeys four season one time you know it's just like Englander podcast talk about. Yeah. They just don't walk in the big restaurant in Mina and pull out of water turkey beards. I mean, you know, those guys would kill them and go home. You know, in Charlie and Louiedale, man. They're entertainers, man.

Yeah. So you did a good job, Clay, I have to say it. Well, I appreciate it. He just had to say it. Yeah. I agree. It's fine. I think as we move more into whatever direction the world's going,

these stories like this are meaningful in some ways. They give us like markers for something. And so, yeah, I don't know why, but I like these kind of, I like a good story. Gary, you've got a story about Black Panthers? I do. You guys are not going to believe this, but I'm telling it, right. I swear. Nice caveat.

I mean, I walked out of the garage the other night. And a Black Panther was in my yard and jumped into the shrubs. And you want to know why I know as a Black Panther. It was young, you know, it was a baby. So, you know, there's got to be, I mean, I swear, I saw Black Panther jumping to the shrub. So you know there's got to be a mom. of this joke. There's a breeding population.

About five pounds? Yeah, about probably less, a little less. Did it run through the kitty door of your neighbor's house and go in? But it had the long tail just like we talk about. It just was young. I don't know if it was a house cat? I thought it was a black panther. I think Gary is taking possession of old great uncle's steel.

Yeah, maybe so. I think he's moved the baseline. You're saying not only do they exist, there is a breeding population in Arkansas. Take that admiring means. You need to have a biological conference about the breeding population outline, Black Panthers in Western Arkansas. Pretty soon we're going to have Calicoe outlines. Thank you so much, guys. Everybody, really great.

Keep the wild places wild. That's where the black pandthers live. That's where the poachings live. Keep the domestic places domesticated because that's where the Black Panthers are. That's where the poachin takes place. Laudy. Laudy, laudy. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps game calls

in building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called prime cuts. Now, I'm going to tell you, I love mine because it's easy to use. I'm not going to go, I'm not going to win a turkey calling contest. It's just not going to happen. But when I run this call, I get the sounds that gobblers are looking for. I have a great turkey hunting track record. If you go listen to real turkeys out in the woods, they're not going to win calling contests, right?

That's who I listen to. I can make those sounds on my cut. I also hunt with Phelps's cut, and I hunt with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts. Check out prime cuts at Phelpsgamecalls.com. I think you'll be glad you did, and you'll find out that the Steve Rinella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning calls.

who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. This is an I-Heart podcast, guaranteed human.