Bear Grease - Ep. 6: Searching For Akerns

Episode Date: June 16, 2021

In this podcast, we're going to get a PHD in acorns, or as 20% of the country says, "akerns." We're going to do a biology deep dive with the nation's leading expert in oaks and acorns, Dr. Craig Harper of the University of Tennessee, but the main thing we're trying to understand is how we use language to define cultural identity--we all do it everyday. We talk with anthropologist Dr. Daniel Rupp about language, dialects, and how important they are in forming social groups. This is a winding road between biology and social science where we'll debunk the American myth of rugged individualism and learn how to make your oak trees produce more acorns. It's going to be a wild ride!YouTube clips heard in this podcast:Ross Sauce. (2010, April 28). Pronouncing Appalachia [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGCqWrsAZ_oRob M. (2012, November 3). A Quick Lesson on Southern Linguistics [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNqY6ftqGq0 Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee 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 in real use. Hard wearing where they need to be, versatile where it matters. No shortcuts. Just gear designed for the work that earns the season.

Built to perform, built to last. Check out. First Light's new field. Worldware gear at firstlight.com. What is that? An acorn. What is this? An acorn.

An acorn. Yeah. What do you think when you hear someone say acorn? Like where... I would. I don't know if I'd know what that was. On this episode of the Bear Grease podcast, we're going to get a PhD in Acorns.

Or as some of you might say, acorns. We'll deep dive into acorn biology with renowned wildlife biology. with renowned wildlife biologist Dr. Craig Harper, learning some fascinating stuff that every woodsman should know. And we'll explore how we use language every day to define cultural identity with Dr. Daniel Rup. We'll debunk the American myth of rugged individualism as we discuss the value and the preservation of regional culture.

Put on your seatbelts, boys. This is a windy road of biology and social science as we search for the significance of acorns. One of the things I am most pleased with is your correct pronunciation of the acorn fruit. Hmm. Music to my ears, Dr. Harper. My name is Clay Newcomb, and this is the Bear Grease podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant. Search for insight and unlikely place. and where we'll tell the story of Americans who live their lives close to the land.

Before you get too indoctrinated, I want you to take a second and note the way that you pronounce the word spelled, A-C-O-R-N. Say it out loud and remember it. It means something. I've always been interested in Akron's. I've looked for them relentlessly since I was a boy. It wasn't until I was an adult that I realized there was now. national tension about the way the word was pronounced. I've been in the arena, so to speak, on this debate for some time. I imagine it's kind of like being born into a war you didn't know you were fighting, and maybe you were even the one instigating it, but you didn't know why. Acorns are important. I've always felt this. We're going to discuss the puzzle piece they

play in acquiring wild meat specifically for white-tailed deer, but I think we'll find other reasons why they're important. In 2013, I cooked bear cracklings for Andrew Zimmern on his show Bizarre Foods on the Travel Channel. The episode was titled The Ozarks. Somehow, the pronunciation of acorns came up. Our bears are acorn fed. So when you see bear fat, you see an acorn, same stuff.

That is sweet and clean. Oh, my gosh, that's those acorns. Or acorns. as you would say. I was trying to fit in and be one of the guys. As I listen to this audio, I have to ask myself, why? Why do I care how someone pronounces a word? Almost a decade later, I'd find myself in the heat of incoming fire

from none other than my own dear pal, Stephen Ronella of Meat Eder. In this clip put on Instagram by Steve, he's got his back to the camera with his children by his side, and they're watching a video that I made about oaks and acorns. He's pounding the table and emphatically telling his kids how to pronounce the word acorn correctly. I could only watch and gasp, as I'm certain many of you did as well.

They're bear turkey's favorite, but the acorns forget to sprout immediately in the fall, which means why do acres last... I'm a lot of highly valued by wildlife, red of bacon, like the horns, and are less about wildlife. I love a flame deer come back. What a hillbilly. What a hillbilly? Come on, bro. I'm trying to understand what all this means. I did a little experiment at a get-together the other day. I pulled aside three couples from different states, handed them in eight. Acorn and asked them how they pronounce the word. I was pretty surprised at a few of their answers.

Okay, I'm going to take something out of my pocket. I'm going to show it to you. And you just tell me what you would call it, okay? So, what is that? An acorn. Okay. What is this? An acorn. An acorn. Yeah. Where are you from? South Dakota. South Dakota. Is that normal in South Dakota to say Acorn? No. A corn. Have you been in documents? by Southerners? I have. Now, where are you from? South Dakota. So you were born raised in South Dakota?

Yep. And like, without a doubt, acorn. I would say acorn. What do you think when you hear someone say acorn? Like, where would? I probably, I don't know if I'd know what that was. Yeah, it's not going to hurt you. Acorn, definitely an acorn.

Acorn, not an acorn. I'm not a good one for this in Clay because I've heard you correct people. And I deliberately try to say, Acron now. Do you really? Yeah. What would you have said before, though, Jeff? I think I would have said acorn. Acorn.

No, what you would have said? I think it would have been like a blend of one of the other. So tell us where you're from, Casey. Oh, I grew up in Louisiana, deep south. So you would say acorn, though. Acorn. From New Orleans, Louisiana. Yes, sir, because it is A-C-O-R-N, correct?

That's right. Acorn, because that's what we call back town. Yeah, where are you from, Jeff? Southwest Arkansas. It's an acorn. Say it again? An acorn. How would you say?

Acorn. Really, you'd say acorn. Where were you from? Where did you grow up? That would be New York, Acorn. Where did you grow up? Florida, but St. Petersburg, which was a lot of Ohio and Michigan. What do you think when you hear somebody say Acorn?

I think they're from the South. Really? Absolutely. Do you think, this is like a hillbilly? No, I just think they're from the South. No, that's South. They said in North Carolina, they'd say Acre. Acre.

I'm still trying to understand what all this means. means. Sharon McCrum is a New York Times best-selling author from Southern Appalachia. She has a knack for celebrating the history and folklore of the Southern Highlands in her writing. Like me, she's particular about the pronunciation of words, specifically the word Appalachian, and she considers it a non-negotiable. In this clip, she gives the reason why semantics are important and how they tell a bigger story. But first, take note of the words. way that you pronounce the word spelled A-P-P-P-A-L-C-H-I-N. The safest way to say it is Appalachia.

And I have to explain this to people because when I go off on book tours, I find myself being appointed as cultural ambassador. And I will get somewhere west of the Mississippi and people will say Appalachia. I will correct them and they will say, well, that's how we say it around here. So I finally had to come up with a story to explain to them why it's not optional. If you're in Ireland, in the north of Ireland, and you start out in Donegal, that city on the west coast, and you're headed for Belfast. It will take you most of a day to get all the way across Ireland, and you'll be driving on the coast road, where if it's a clear day you look off to your left, you'll see Scotland in the distance. Well, about halfway between Donegal and Belfast, there's a walled city, which is hundreds of years old.

It was built by the Irish, and they named it the Irish word for oak tree, which is dairy. But a few hundred years ago, the British conquered Ireland, and they changed the name of that town to London Dairy. So it is one town with two names. And so if you stop at a little store along the way and ask directions on how to it. how to get to the walled city. You can walk in and tell the man behind the counter that you want to go to Derry or you want to go to London Derry.

And either way, he will tell you how to get there. But you need to know that when you choose what you're going to call that city, you have told that man whether or not he can trust you. You have told him your politics, your religion, which side you're on, and how open he can be with you in one word. because dairy is what the Irish call it,

and London dairy means you sympathize with the British rule. Appalachia and Appalachia work exactly the same way. Appalachia is the pronunciation of condescension, the pronunciation of the imperialists, the pronunciation of people who do not want to be associated with the place, and Appalachia means that you are on the side that we trust. In Sharon's example, we see, the transfer of information in an accent. And in many cases in history, that personal info is carried with

at high stakes. Jeff Shreve is a podcaster, biblical scholar, author, and longtime friend of mine. In the book of judges in the Bible, accents were used to determine the region of the country that soldiers were from during a regional war, and life and death were in the balance. For context, the word we're going to use Shibboleth was the name of a river crossing. Or maybe it's Sibboleth. Jeff Shreep, I am trying to understand how language is used and has been used in the past to define people groups and culture, specifically for my word that I'm dissecting here, Aikern.

But I know in the Bible there's a story that very clearly. clearly shows that this has been going on for a long time. Right. Using pronunciation of words and accents to identify people. Tell me that story in Judges. Yeah. So there's, I think it's Judges Chapter 12. And there's this, he was really kind of like a warlord type of guy.

His name was Jephtha. And he was kind of an outcast in the land. He had his own band of ruffians that he roamed the land with. The tribes were being oppressed by this other nation, which is what we would call them today, the Ammonites. And so the tribe, they reached out to. Jeptha and his band of merry men, I guess, and asked for his assistance. He went out, conquered the Ammonites, and everything was good. Well, then a neighboring tribe, they were known as the

Ephraimites. They were upset with Jephtha. They were upset that this battle had taken place without them. And the Ephraimites... They just wanted to be a part. Well, they go to Jeptha and they said, hey, you should have called us. And he said, hey, I did. You never showed up. We had to go and take care of business. And so there's this battle that breaks out. They say, well, you need to leave the land. And he's like, I'm not leaving the land. I'm staying right here. I deserve to be here now. And so this battle breaks out between the Ephraimites and Jephth's people. Jephthah's people. Jephthah and his people take the river. They take control of the river that separates the Ephraimites land from the Gileadites land. And so the Ephraimites can't get back. And he starts

really whipping the Ephraimites. Like they want to get back. They want to get back home. And so they start fleeing and they would come to the places where you could cross the river, and Jeffa's people would go, are you an Ephraimite, are you a gileadite? One of our people or one of their people? And they would say, oh, I'm a gileadite. Assumably, they look the same. Yeah, they all look the same. This is the same nation of people. They're all Hebrew people. So they would dress the same for the most part. They would look the same. They just have different ancestors within the Hebrews, yeah, except for. They have a little bit of a dialectical difference in the way that they speak. And so they would come to the river and they

realized, hey, some of these guys are escaping because they're just lying and saying that they're not Ephraimites. And so they said, here's what we'll do. We're just going to set up a test. When we ask them, if they say, yeah, I'm a Gileadite. Let me cross the river. Say, okay, say Shibboleth. Now, the Ephraimites, they didn't say that, evidently, they didn't say that shah sound right on the word shibboleth. They said Sybileth instead of Shibboleth. And so when they would say it, it was kind of, I always imagine like Daffy Duck trying to say it. It's like Thibboleth. They They couldn't quite get it outright. And so they wouldn't say it like the Ephraimites did.

And that's how they would know, and they'd kill them right there. Wow. There was just this distinction. Exactly. And that's going on throughout history. Like there's always these shibbolets is what it's been called ever since then. In World War II. So this has been used throughout history as a metaphor.

It's used right now. It's used in towns. You know, it's used in warfare. It's used in culture. It's used everywhere. In World War II, the Allies, when they would capture German spies. frequently the Germans had been trained how to speak English, and they would know how to, about the culture and the customs of the allies, about the American allies, they would know about baseball.

I think there's even a Twilight Zone episode about one of these captures of the Nazi people, or Nazi spies, but they were trained in British English instead of American English. And so there were little words that they would say that would give them away. And so frequently they would catch a Nazi spy. He would be speaking real clear English. He would talk about the Brooklyn Dodgers. He would say all of the right words, and they would say, okay, let's hop in that vehicle over there. And they said, okay, I'm hopping in the lorry.

Well, the lorry is what the British would call a truck. And so there's the giveaway right there. There's the Shibboleth, and they know this is a Nazi spy. What does the pronunciation difference mean? It's not a hard word to say. A, C-O-R-N. I've found myself deeply planted on the non-traditional, or at least phonetically speaking, pronunciation of the word. I've learned that the southeastern United States, roughly 20% of

the country geographically, pronounces the word the way I do. The other 80% pronounces it phonetically. There is certainly something bigger at work here, and it might have broader implications. After some research, here's what I learned. Basically, the Akron pronunciation is a throwback to Old English. It's a combination of low German, whose word for Akern is Ecker, spelled E-C-K-E-R. And the Dutch word, it's a combination of these,

and the Dutch word for Akern, which is Akker, spelled A-K-E-R. By the 1500s, the English still had an urn on the end, and that urn still hold strong in much of the southern United States. This is the audio from a YouTube video titled A Quick Lesson on Southern Linguistics. It's on a channel simply called Rob M.

It's a very interesting clip about accents in the southern United States. Most people don't realize that the American Southern accent is not a sign of ignorance, but actually the fact that, according to linguists, we're the only people left in the United States, who generally still sound like our ancestors. because if you listen to native-born southern speakers, the average southern it tends to sound more like this, what we call this Moonlight Magnolia's Draw,

because if you speed up that Southern draw, over time it rapidly becomes a British accent. Most people don't realize that people that came here from Europe were largely from the United Kingdom. So when they got here, this was more along the lines of their speaking tones. But that's the first and second generations coming off the boats, not their children. By the third and fourth generations,

the kids don't quite sound like Mom and Dad anymore, because they're starting to develop a slight elongation of the way they talk. What's today called, the Virginia Tidewater accent? It's not a complete southern drawl because that's a port area. But as you go farther into the southern interior and the years progressed, the accent tends to get thicker, deeper, richer by Arkansas, Alabama, Georgia. Heck yeah, you've got a full-blown southern draw. But people don't realize that in most cases in Louisiana,

many of the native speakers don't sound like that. They tend to sound like this, I guarantee. Spell around the bayou. Because you speed up that South Louisiana, a cajian, ariol accent, over time it becomes en Franca, French, with, of course, certain exceptions in New Orleans, which tend to sound more like New Yorkers because of the Irish and the Sicilian-Italian-Italian influence. So they tend to sound a bit more like this. And people tend to get a little confused because they think, what, you're from New York?

Nah, I'm from Norlands, why? So you have to realize that, at the end of the day, southern speakers, like I said, We're not ignorant, as it's often been assumed, but we simply sound like the ancestors that came here so many years ago. This is my mother Judy. We call her Juju. She has a master's degree in teaching and retired last year after being involved in public schools for over 40 years. She has a professional connection with the word spelled A-C-O-R-N. Maybe this gives some insight into why I'm so worked up about it all. Juju, where are you at?

Here, I've got something here. I used to have them. I'm getting mud on your floor. I'm sorry. Okay. What is that? An Akron. It's an Akron? Uh-huh. Where did you work? Where did you work your whole career?

I worked at Akron Schools for 32 years. 32 years. It's a consolidated school. Mm-hmm. Have you ever in your life heard anybody call it Acorn School? Not anybody associated with a close-knit association with the school. So like the principal, the... Oh, no, no, no. Acorn.

Acorn. We go to Acorn Elementary. We are the Akron Tigers, and it's the best school in Arkansas. People who are connected to the land can become obsessed with natural cycles. For me, a time of celebration is when the acorn start to fall. Typically, I'll commemorate the first white oak I find. on the ground by putting it in my pocket. I just like to stare at it when nobody's around.

Sometimes I keep them in my drawer here in my office. That might seem strange, for many reasons, because I don't eat acorns, but they're highly symbolic. My dad was like an obsessed drill sergeant when it came to finding them. I mean, he still is. I spent the formative years of my life

searching for acorns, and I still search for them. relentlessly. Here's my old dad, Gary Newcomb, the Black Panther man himself. We're sitting on the front porch in a rainstorm. So when I was a kid, we didn't hunt deer. We hunted acorns. We weren't looking for deer.

We were looking for acorns first and then deer sign. Tell me what acorns mean to Gary Newcomb. Well, no one... Yeah, you can tell us a little backstory about it. You know, no one in my family deer hunted. I didn't know anything. about deer hunting and two really intelligent guys, principal of a school and a guy that just had like 160 IQ, had a coffee shop and they'd deer hunting. And I'd go to their coffee shop and they talked

about deer hunting and I got caught up in it. And they would take me hunting and they showed me how to shoot a recurve bow, but they couldn't kill deer. And I related it to play in chess. There's got to be a way to get on these deer. And one day, we were down in South Arkansas and a guy was at our camp and he said, The deer's favorite food is white oak acres. And if you have, it was weird, turkey hunt was real hard for me to learn. A lot of stuff's real hard for me to learn. But when I heard that, I thought, if I'm hunting humans, I'm going to hunt at McDonald's. And I'm not going to hunt at a McDonald's unless it's got a lot of trash on the ground, a bunch of cars.

I mean, there's got to be some activity. You know, I don't want to go to a McDonald's where there's not very many people going. I'm going, this has to be. how to kill them. And keep in mind, I don't even hardly know what a deer track looks like. So, as soon as he tells me, I come back to my hunting turf, and I said, I'm not leaving here until I find white oak acres dropping. And I had enough insight into it to where he didn't tell me this, but I thought, there's got to be deer droppings there. I'm not going to hunt unless there's deer droppings. And so I found two big white oak trees, and I killed more deer, knowing nothing

about deer hunting and all of my buddies who were raised up. Kill them with a bow. Yeah, and I mean, it's like... In a time when very few people were doing it consistently. Yeah, and I mean, I missed a couple of pretty good bucks, too. But the first morning I set up, I remember going home and telling my mother this. And I was a grown man. I didn't live at home, but I went to her house for breakfast or something.

And I said, Mother, you won't believe what happened. I found this white oak acre tree with droppings under it. I put my ladder up a day ahead of time. time and I sit in it this morning and I had 11 deer coming in no more than groups of two. It was just like a movement. They were coming from my left to my right and they'd stop. It was like the most exciting thing you'd ever found. The craziest thing.

Do you have any kind of like emotional high when you find a big old green white oak acreon on the ground in October? I love it, man. I mean, I love it. It just tells me the time is right. It's killing time. On Blood Trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is over. They just get darker.

I've seen something in the road. I instantly thought it was a sleeping bag. And there was a full of blood. Oh, my God, he doesn't have a hit. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors. Where the terrain is unforgiving, the evidence is scarce, and the truth gets buried under brush and silence. Indications were he should be right there. but he wasn't.

This season, we're going deeper. From cold case files to whispered suspicions, from remote mountains to frozen backwards. Each story begins in the wilderness and ends in darkness. Because out here, there are no witnesses, no cameras, just fragments and the people left behind trying to piece them back together. He's not an honest person. He's incapable of being honest. Somebody somewhere knows something.

I'm Jordan Sillers. Season 2 of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, Iheart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. It seems honorable to me that if anybody's going to be particular about the pronunciation of any word, that same feller ought to have some deep knowledge of it, or he might as well be indifferent. Here's what we're going to do. We're going to get a Ph.D. in Akerns. We're going to nerd out on Akers.

biology with one of the country's foremost wildlife habitat experts, Dr. Craig Harper of the University of Tennessee. He's about as tall as an average 2A high school point guard, and he's built like a bobcat. He's got a warm smile and overflows with hospitality. His ability to functionalize and communicate about the natural world is unusually adept. And by the looks of the turkey beards and big racked white tails that adorn the walls of his house, he is a veteran hunter. This is a deep dive into some of the most interesting stuff about acorns that I've ever learned.

If you get lost in this nerd out, please stick around for the last section of the podcast with anthropologist Dr. Daniel Rupp. It's fascinating. But I'll warn you, this talk about Acorns with Dr. Harper will likely change your life too. Meet Dr. Craig Harper. Pretend like I don't know anything. and walk me through the life cycle of an oak tree in the different species?

They flower in the spring. There are two different groups, of course, of oak species. You have the red oak group and the white oak group. There's a couple of real distinguishing characteristics between those. One of the easiest and most recognize is that the lobes of the leaves of red oaks have bristle tips, and those of the white oak group do not. they have more rounded. So a red oak has a pointed lobe and a tree in the white oak family has it. And not just a pointed lobe, but it actually has a bristle tip. The more important points

of those two groups is that, of course, the species within the red oak group, their acorns require two years to develop. So they will flower in the spring and what will become the acorn begins to form and it grows through the summertime, but then it doesn't mature until the following summer and then drops the second fall. Red oak species thus then can have two acorn crops on it at any one time. You know, the tree doesn't produce one year. Oh, and then two years later it might produce again. It can produce each year because it will have flowers and the acre set and then mature acorns. But it takes two years to make a mature acre.

In general terms, the species within the red oak group, those acorns have higher tanning contents, which is a phenolic compound that causes an astringic or bitter taste. They will not germinate until springtime. The acorns of red oak species are important into the following spring and even sometimes into the summer. So what you're saying is that a red oak acorn is going to fall in the fall, and let's just say it falls in late October. And lay there all winter long.

It's going to lay there all winter long, and it's not going to sprout, and it's not going to rot. Most of them will not rot, and wildlife will eat those acorns at that time through the fall and winter. But if white oak acorns and acres of different species have different tanning content, If those that are less astringent are available, you certainly may see various wildlife species select those. And thus those that were more astringent may lay longer. But the point is, those acorns are available for a longer period than the white oak acres. And the white oak acorns, they fall in the fall. Most of the acorn fall of the white oak species, Quercasalba, is in October.

But nonetheless, all of those of the white oak group, they will, germinate in the fall and winter. Pretty much immediately. Very few, if any of them, are available into the following spring. They fall, and it's not that long until they begin to germinate and try to start, you know, sending down a little rootland. Yeah. I want to tell you a story.

Last week, I killed a raccoon over my hounds. I cut a stomach open full of acorns. I mean, they're still in Red Oak Acorns. Yeah. I mean, they are still eating very good red oak acorns in March. And they are extremely digestible. Acorns regardless whether they're eating in the fall, winter, or spring, are highly digestible. And with a very high fat content, which actually increases the digestible energy that is available from acorns as opposed to many other foods.

Another characteristic that distinguishes the red oak acorns from the white oak acres or another factor is that the red oak acorns typically have much higher fat content than the white oak acres. So as hunters, at least me and my dad, are always trying to figure out what the mass crop's going to look like before it actually happens. And I've been anecdotally studying this for 20 years, you know, just kind of keeping track of the last frost and when I saw it. oak tassels. So I'll be driving down the road and yesterday I noticed oak tassels hanging off trees. Is there a way to make even a reasonable guess about mass crop based upon all the weather variations of the spring? Essentially, we're talking about pollination of flowers that ultimately turn into acorns. And if there's not successful pollination or if that flower dies before it's pollinated, there's no acorn. So there's got to be this successful thing that happens.

that's got to be impacted by rain, temperature, wind. It's very complicated, and to my knowledge, it is not highly predictable. There's a number of studies that have looked at all of the different environmental conditions that might influence acrean production and successful flowering and acrean setting. But I remember reading in one paper where it was somewhat predictable based on the number of frosts, in April. Okay. But there's no hard number.

Oh, if we have three or, you know, whatever the case may be. We need to come up with some kind of folklore anecdotal thing with some bear gris. And another influential factor might have been rainfall the previous summer. So there's lots of things going on that we really don't understand fully. Because what we see is a pretty dramatic. Like, if you didn't know anything about natural systems or oaks, you'd just think that's an oak tree it's going to produce every year, which we need. know is not the case at all. And on a landscape level, there's these vast differences from year to year. You know, some years, there's very few of a certain species, or there's no acorns at all.

That's right. And then other years, it's a bumper crop. And it'll vary along a certain slope gradient, you know, up higher there may be acres, but once you get down low or vice versa. You know, you just don't know how the weather variables affected the oak trees on a given slope. on a mountain. Yeah, I remember when I was doing turkey research in the mountains in North Carolina at the top of the mountains, they were about 5,500 feet. The oaks up there every year, they would be flowering the first week of June. Wow. Wow. You know, obviously much, much later than down slow. Yeah. So you're going to have years where there's only going to be acorns that made on the top of the mountains, years where there's only acorns that made lower on the mountains. And usually it's not

quite that distinct, but, you know, as hunters were looking for trends inside of natural systems. One thing we found in the research we did looking at mass production here in East Tennessee and others have found this too, is that among white oaks, you're looking at about two good mass crops, two years out of five. About two years out of five, you expect good mass crops. And of most of the red oak species, you're looking at a good mass crop one year out of three or three or four years or so. It's a little less frequent than with the white oak group. I love it when we find places where still in 2021 we don't really have all the answers. I mean, it's such a complex system. And I'm talking about like predicting math. Yeah, I love it when somebody like you says that, Dr. Harper,

because you get this sense inside of 2021 with everything that we see and with the kind of the frequency that's emitted, that just like the world is discovered. But it's really not. I mean, there's so much that we don't know. We don't understand. And I mean, the natural systems are so complex. It just blows your mind. And just the fact that we could pick something that seems so insignificant in Akron.

And we could dive just a few steps past the surface. and realize that there's things that we don't even know about them. Yeah, you used the word that I believe is accurate when you're talking about nature and natural systems, and that's amazing. I find that that is a way overused word these days that people just, oh, that's amazing. Well, no, it's not. Most of the time it's not even hardly interesting, but it's certainly not amazing. Amazing.

But when you start talking about nature and natural systems and how all of nature fits together, that is amazing. Yeah. Dr. Harper did a research project where he and his students collected acorns under the same trees for 10 years and tried various methods to increase acorn production. The study was in-depth and enlightened. Acorns is one of those foods that certainly can influence the nutritional status of individual animals, as well as influence the populations of some species on a year-to-year basis. and even groups of years, you know, it trends over, you know, like the course of three to five years or so. Something that we work to try and help people understand is that that doesn't necessarily have to be the case.

Right. And, you know, for example, with regard to deer or with bears, immediately, people think, oh, gosh, you know, we got to protect those oaks, you know. We don't want to be cutting down our acrean trees. You know, that's what the deer, you know, they got to have. Well, it's interesting when you discover that, you know, for example, among the white oaks, only 30% of the trees produce 75% of the acres. If you do the math, and this is, in my opinion, this is just math, you literally could cut down in a solid oak stand, half of the oak trees and increase the acreon production. by releasing the crowns of those individual trees that are the good producers. We looked at ways to potentially increase the acrean production.

One was by releasing the crowns of the oak trees by cutting down or killing the surrounding trees that were inhibiting additional sunlight to come into the crown of that oak tree. And another was fertilization because, you know, you read and all the hunting magazines, of course, you know. Fertilize your oak trees. utilize your oaks, and not only do you increase the airman production, you know, it makes them sweeter, too. Do you know that? But anyway, we did, we did this for a number of years. Which is not true.

That's where you're going with that part. It didn't happen. But allowing additional sunlight to the crown did in two ways, and it was really, really interesting. Number one, once the crown is released, we found that on average, that crown would increase in size by about 25% in one year. That's significant right there. But also, after releasing those trees on a per square meter basis, those trees increase their acre production by 67%. Wow. The other thing with regard to deer or bears, as I mentioned, as well as many other species, is if you're killing those competitors, what you're also allowing to come into the stand, of course, is sunlight.

And then you have the increase in the understory. But where I'm going with with this is that if you manage your woods in that way, you're not going to see those differences in health of individuals or fluctuations in populations because deer don't have to have acres. It's nice when they're there. But the goal should be to manage your wood, your property such that they don't have to have acres in order to have enough digestible energy during. the fall winter to make it through in good hell. So what you're saying is that oaks aren't nearly as important for wildlife as we've once, maybe as much as we gave them cultural value. And I think it's because we, most deer hunters,

well, even most people that are hunting any kind of wildlife, whether you're a squirrel hunter or a bear hunter, you're interacting with that animal for the most part during one small sector of that animal's year. That's exactly right. Like, I'm trying to kill a white-tailed deer in October and November. And you're looking at what they're eating in mid-October as opposed to what they're eating the first week of the gym. And Gary Newcomb said, go find White Oak Acorns and you'll kill a deer.

But what you're saying... And there's a lot of truth to that. They'll eat them. I've been under the assumption that acorns were the superfood of the eastern deciduous forest. I asked Dr. Harper how important they actually are for wildlife. Dr. Harper, I have for a long time said that the White Oak Acorn is, the chicken nugget of the eastern deciduous forest. Okay?

My kids, if they walked into a room and there was like a variety of food on the table and one of those was chicken nuggets, three out of four of the kids would go to the chicken nuggets before just about anything. So White Oak Acorns, when they're on the ground, are this highly selected food source for lots of game, for turkeys and deer and squirrels and everything.

I've never heard anybody talk about the actual caloric, content and nutrient value of, it doesn't have to be white oak acre necessarily, but just an acre in general. In general, on average, the kilocalories, there's about 3.5 to 3.6 kilocalories per gram. And that's very high. And the total digestible nutrients in acres is very high. That is higher than corn. That's higher than soybeans.

that's higher than herbaceous forage, that's higher than the woody brows. So it is a nugget. I don't know if I'd call it a chicken nugget. So you're telling me I'm right in my analogy? I would choose some other things out of there and chicken there. But yeah, you're exactly right. It's highly prized.

It's highly palatable with regard to its taste, especially the white oaks. It's highly digestible. And again, the very important thing is the fat content. And that's what really helps increase the digestible. energy in in in in the acres okay three point six calories per gram how can you just guess how many grams would be in a in an average size white oak acre as big as into your thumb if you did the uh the math about eight calories per acre is that all i believe it i mean it's just and that's of that's of a

white oak acre so like meat only eight eight calories per acre that's correct an interesting thing is that the pounds produced is not that much. And I did a little calculation on this. I thought you might ask some of that. What we found in a good year is that there would be, you know, around 80 acres per square meter that have fallen in a good year. Well, we weighed all of these acres. And of white oak acres, about 200 acres are required to reach a pound.

And if you only count the acre and meat, then it would be just over 300 acres required to realize a pound. When you look at the average crown size of white oaks, in a good year, a white oak tree, on average, produced about 47 pounds of acorns or 29 pounds of acorn meat. Would an acorn be considered a nut? Well, technically it is an acorn, but we colloquially, call it a nut. Is a nut a biologically descriptive term of a fruit? A type of fruit, yes.

So an acorn is technically not a nut. That's correct. And it's not an acorn. One of the things I am most pleased with is your correct pronunciation of the acorn fruit. Music to my ears, Dr. Harper. Music to my ears. You don't know how many places I go, especially when I'm up in Wisconsin and Michigan. and, you know, I love those folks up there.

We poke fun at each other, of course. But, you know, every time I'm up there and we're talking about deer and habitat management. Acorn, what an acre? Y'all come on down here and we'll show you what an acre is. And we'll show you how to kill a deer, too. I want to get down to brass tacks about the pronunciation of words, or at least bigger tax than we've already established. Why do people say things the way they do?

we need an expert. Dr. Daniel Rup has a Ph.D. in intercultural studies and teaches cultural anthropology to undergrad and graduate students. Just for a bit of street cred, the man speaks fluent Mandarin Chinese and has lived overseas for 12 years. And he's a bow hunter. Dr. Rup. I love calling you Dr. Rup because me and you are longtime buddies. And so I've never called you Dr. Rup in my life. Finally, I'm getting the respect that I deserve.

But you have, I know for sure that you have some insight into this question that I do not have. And what I'm trying to understand is why are we so particular about the way that we say certain words? There's this thing that's pretty deep inside of me about certain pronunciation of words. No one told me to be particular about those. So what does that tell me about myself? Well, or about our society. Sure, sure. So I think it's a really normal part of the human experience.

Everyone essentially at like a primal level is insecure. And so we're told, you know, certainly as like Western Americans, postmodern people, that you're an individual and you exist apart from everybody else. But really, in some ways you're individual, but not. none of us exist apart from a social group. And the stronger and more solidly defined that social group is, deep down, the more you can take a deep breath. And so we do all sorts of things, all sorts of behaviors, material culture, things we wear.

Think about like, if you want to establish a really clear group boundary, when you're in high school, you wanted to have the right brand tennis shoes or pants or whatever it was. And that's the whole reason why our culture has fast. Fads every, you know, five or ten years, we recycle another fad. It's because everybody wants to fit in, not necessarily with like the popular crowd or whatever crowd it is, but as a, certainly as adults, we want a clearly defined social identity. And identity doesn't exist apart from a group. So Acorn, acorn, this kind of topic is one more tool that people use to. So we use, we use language in really strong way to define what social group we're a part of. Constantly, we invent language and culture

continually changes and we invent new words and languages all the time. And one of the main reasons we do so is we're trying to create, maintain, and establish a secure identity. Yeah. So what does it tell you when somebody's really particular about something? They're highly insecure. Well, I wasn't going to bring this up, but I do think you're very insecure. No, I think a lot of times, I remember, so my wife, you know, is from Michigan. And so 20 years ago, when we got married, I went up there to visit her family. One of the first things my father-in-law did was literally take me next door and introduce me to their neighbors and say, say something, Daniel. Because he just wanted them to hear my accent.

The way you spoke was a novelty to them. Yeah. So I think, of course, it can be very negative, but it can also just be very fun and very in a sense. and really a fun way of doing and establishing culture and language. But as we are establishing this cultural identity and establishing the groups that we're part of, there's got to be some advantage to that. I mean, like going back deep into human history, if me and you were the same, and you knew I was the same as you.

And by same, I mean, we just had this background or some connection point. Sure. Like, there's a higher probability that you would help me survive. I mean, that's the whole point of social groups. Is that about right? So if you think about, like, people and, you know, thousands, thousands, thousands, thousands of years of people, they're pastoralists, they're semi-nomadic, they're agrarian, they're farming.

And you have close-knit extended kinship groups of people who are doing the same practical activities every day, day in and out, all year long. But they are using literally the same lingo to make sure they survive. So we're all talking the same talk means safety and security provision. Just inside of communication. Just inside of communication. You might say acorn and I don't understand what you're saying. Yeah.

And essentially, so this is where kind of the switch flips when you start talking about fundamental needs and somebody is different and uses different lingo. They look different. they act different, they smell different, you know, whatever it is, the switch starts to flip, and the question becomes, can I trust this person at a deep level? So the gentleman who really kind of is a seminal author on this topic of group-held identity, a Polish sociologist of the 20th century, Tajfei, Henry Tajfei. So he was a Jew in Poland, obviously at a time when he was in a group that was despised. So he really looked at this and wrote about it.

And almost every author, anthropologist, sociologist, who interacts with it, is going to talk about him. And so he certainly sees it from a negative view. And a lot of times humans really use it in a very broken, destructive way. So acorn, acorn, not necessarily that loaded of a topic. But it's still the same mechanism. So it's about trust and distrust. Totally. It's totally about trust and distrust.

Do you recognize this inside of your life? Do you see, because I deeply identify with that. Now, I mean, if somebody says Acorn, like, I don't, Acorn, I can't hardly even say it. I don't inherently distrust them. Sure. But when I do hear someone say, Acorn, it's really strange. Like, if I take a step back for myself and try to have this unbiased look, it's like, I feel a connection to that person. Sure.

Like, yeah, when you say that it's an issue of trust, like, I kind of get that. Do you see any, do you recognize that in your life? I think maybe not, I'm not as insecure as you are. So I think maybe, no, definitely. Definitely, I think everybody does because socially every day, we are operating on what is called scripts. And so you kind of have a script of expected ways for conversations to go. And when you bump into somebody and they follow in general your social script expectations, you take a deep breath

when they step out of bounds but it causes you to a little bit of a pause and no matter how small you don't realize it but cognitively you're constantly checking social scripts do people fit my expectations

do they not and almost all the time difference is not seen as a neutral thing or maybe even an interesting thing to be explored but it's seen as a negative thing. The other thing that I'm trying to understand is where is this healthy and where is it unhealthy?

Because, you know, like in this playful, in this playful word that we're talking about here, Acorn and Acorn, described to me in like two concrete blocks, when is it positive, and when is it negative? So we've already described when it's positive. So we're using creative aspects of culture, things we wear, ways that we talk, behaviors that we have, that we do. And as a group with these certain people, I do these things. together and we form a healthy social identity. So I don't feel alone in the world. You know, that's healthy.

That's good. It's normal. It's natural. We're social creatures. We're social creatures inherently. It becomes negative when in order for me to establish and maintain salient or solid social identity with others, I need to tear down or oppress the social identity of another. If I make identity by saying acre and great.

And I can say that. all day long and kind of the behaviors and other linguistic patterns that go along with that. Fantastic. But if I need to like duly construct identity by saying acorn and then saying that people that say acorn are idiots, and you extrapolate that over behaviors, nationalities, you know, whatever it is, places you're from, any number. I mean, humans do this all the time. We make identity in it in a healthy way, but also in a broken way. So what is tribalism? and how does it fit into language? So tribalism would be groups of people, in a sense, they're bounded.

There's a clear boundary around this certain social group. And so every individual exists in the center of concentric circles. And you keep going out with it's like me, and there's my immediate kind of nuclear family. There's maybe the people at my workplace, the people in my hometown, my nation. It just kind of keeps going out. A tribe or tribalism is something.

Somewhere I decide to draw a hard boundary. One of those concentric circles becomes my tribe. And we are out for us and everyone else is out for themselves or potentially against us. And so tribalism becomes problematic because essentially... Is tribalism always negative? No, no, no, no, no. It's certainly not always negative. Because in today's society, it's often used as a negative term.

It certainly has... The contemporary use of the word tribalism or the idea of tribalism, or the idea of tribalism essentially is weaponized identity. So some other group outside of me is going to try to force their identity on me, or they're going to demean our tribe's identity, or I'm going to do the same to them. That would be like the contemporary idea of tribalism. But kind of the concept of tribalism would be like very native to human nature. I mean, that's how we exist.

We all need a tribe. We can't exist by ourselves. We just can't do it. So COVID-19 happens. everybody's in lockdown and like mental health plummets, suicide rates quadruple because we're isolated from our tribes. Yeah, so I guess I'm trying to understand where the boundaries are for being positive and negative. Because for instance, Dan, like, excuse me, Dr. Rupp. Thank you. I was, thank you. You know, I enjoy living in the southern United States. Yeah. Like, it's my home.

Heck yeah. It's all I know. Yeah. I like it. I feel like that's healthy. But at the same time I see examples from anywhere, anywhere, where that becomes so much a part of someone's identity that it becomes almost weaponized. And that's not cool. And I feel like I can be a southerner. I could be a northerner. I could be from wherever. Sure. And like have this love of the culture where you live. Yeah. And that be healthy because you, and I feel like it stems in like respect for your own culture means to me that you respect someone else's culture. Yeah. Because like your wife from Michigan, like very different culture from Arkansas, she loves it up there. Her family loves it. They've been there forever. I don't understand it. They're really strange. They talk through their

noses. You know, they, no, I think so. Like you, there's a, there's a place and a posture and a way of living in which I'm certainly comfortable celebrating my own social identity, my tribe. but I don't need to denigrate another group in order to make that happen. If you look at society and human history really only in the last century, which is a whisper of time and the whole scope of humanity, have people been readily exposed to other groups, other tribes, so to speak, constantly. I mean, we are just, we are more interconnected technology, globalization. But, I mean, even, you don't even have to go globalization technology.

Think about the interstate system in the U.S. Right. I mean, things that really just in a fraction of a second in human history have connected people unlike ever before. Yeah. Whereas for centuries before that, you had thousands of years. Thousands of years before that. Sure. You've had, I'm thinking English in terms of the English language.

You've got centuries of the English language and people existing in certain topographical regions. and they would almost never encounter somebody else unless they were tradesmen or they're at war. And that was really the only other time. And in those times, there was expected differences. Of course we're going to be different. But otherwise, we are in our own little world and our own little tribe. And every day, we play with and create our language. Like you've got a real good buddy and you hang out with this person a whole lot.

Or even like in your marriage, you and your wife, your marriage, your marriage, your marriage, starts to have its kind of own culture and your own way of talking and your family has inside jokes. We do this all the time. Well, then you do that on a social level for centuries with the English language and people are isolated from other groups. And it becomes even more defined. And it becomes even more defined. And then within like a few decades, you build interstates, trains, planes, the internet. And all of a sudden, we're talking to people from all over all the time and we're exposed to differences on a level that we've never been before. So we're the world is being mixed up way more than it's ever been. Sure. And what happens to insecure tribes is that

makes them really uncomfortable. And so we tend to shut that down in one of two ways. We entrench ourselves or again, we leave and kind of deny our own familial identifications group. How can we be balanced inside of this. That is one of the many human problems. Yeah. I think it takes a whole lot of self-awareness, and I think it takes a whole lot of being comfortable with your own insecurities, and just realizing that that mechanism is at work. So I guess what you're saying is you're just kind of throwing in the towel with saying acorn. You're just kind of okay with that. Well, I mean, it's not spelled A, C, there's an O in there. To me, this whole acorn. acorn kind of debate is

proof that we're not rugged individualists and that really is kind of an American myth that we love and there's lots of great things about it but we kind of like that we are self-made man you know I'm kind of pull myself up by my bootstraps did it myself kind of a thing but

the fact that we would argue about things like this or use language different aspects of culture to find and make a social identity, a home, proves that we're not rugged individualists. We're really affected by...

We need community. We need people. We need relationships. And we need them to be healthy. And the more unhealthy our social relationships are, the more upset we're going to get about things like acorns and acorns. Even this idea of rugged individualism, which would have the idea that it's like this solo person, that is a cultural group. that is a cultural group. Yes.

I mean, like, there's a whole bunch of rugged individualists. When we say we are individualists or we are self-made men, I mean, you're always locating yourself in a group. So there's just as many self-made men as there are the group that values, that overtly and purposefully values connection and community. So it's kind of a semantics deal. It is a little. Because the rugged mountain man needed.

The Mountain Man Rendezvous. He needed more mountain men. Dan, Dr. Roup, the first White Tailed Buck you ever killed. What was he doing on that flat? Man, in the Ozark Mountains. He walked up. He was about, what was he eating?

One of these. Right here in my hand. It's a small acorn. That's the biggest mistake he ever made. I'm being serious. when I say that the exploration of this topic was a genuine learning experience for me, and I gained new insight into myself. That's the good thing about being a hillbilly.

I'm okay with not knowing. And perhaps that's the key to really knowing anything at all. I continue to be amazed at the things that drive us that are unperceived and not understood. I think what I want to say is that culture is amazing. It's fun, and it adds context to our lives, can't exist without the structure of culture around us in some way, but it shouldn't be the most important definer of our lives. I love being from the place that I am. I have an unusually strong sense of place. But if I say acorns or acorn, that doesn't fully define me. Human life is bigger

and more profound than the elementary definers of this planet. Perhaps there is another podcast being built as we speak exploring the culture behind pronouncing the word as acorn. My goodness, 80% of the country says it that way. Here's my take home. An appreciation of our own culture allows us to appreciate and value other cultures, and I think that's significant. But I also believe there is great value in the preservation of individual culture. I would imagine as long as there is spring.

and fall, and the oaks flower, and acorns grow, and come to maturity, and fall to the ground. And as long as we can hunt white-tailed deer with bows and arrows and guns, me and mine will be searching for acorns. We're putting everything we've got into these Bear Grease podcast episodes. If you've enjoyed them, I ask you to leave us a review and share this podcast with a friend. I really appreciate the spoon. On Blood Trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is over. They just get darker.

I've seen something in the road. I instantly thought it was a sleeping bed. And there was a full of blood. Oh, my God, he doesn't have a hit. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors, where the terrain is unforgiving, the evidence is scarce, and the truth gets buried under brush and silence. Indications were he should be right there, but he wasn't.

This season, we're going deeper. From cold case files to whispered suspicions, from remote mountains to frozen backwoods. Each story begins in the wilderness and ends in darkness. Because out here, there are no witnesses, no cameras, just fragments and the people left behind trying to piece them back together. He's not an honest person. He's incapable of being honest.

Somebody somewhere knows something. I'm Jordan Sillers. Season 2 of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, IHeart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.