Bear Grease - Ep. 78: Secret Agent Man - R.T. Stewart (Part 1)

Episode Date: November 2, 2022

On this episode of the Bear Grease Podcast, we’re going deep undercover in the rough country of Southeast Ohio to learn about the secret lives of wildlife poachers AND the life of an undercover wildlife agent by the name of RT Stewart. He worked 18 years for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, and in the 1990s, was one of the lead agents on the largest turkey poaching sting in US history. He’s a decorated law enforcement officer, known for going deep undercover – even years at a time -- and was willing to do whatever it took to bust outlaws. In his career, he never had a single one of his target suspects not be convicted of crimes. If the bad guys had known him, they’d have feared him, but they didn’t, because he was a ghost. We’ll hear from author Chip Gross, who wrote the book “Poachers Were My Prey” about Mr. Stewart and we’ll interview Dr. Mathew Sharps of California State University, author of “Processing Under Pressure: Stress, Memory, and Decision Making in Law Enforcement” about the psychology of undercover agents, and the personal cost that comes with living a lie. In this first episode of the series, we’ll meet RT and he’ll show the life of undercover agent – on part 2 – you’ll hear about his biggest undercover job. You’ll laugh, you’ll be intrigued, and you’ll cry on this one boys. We really doubt you’re going to want to miss this one… 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. I hunted men for a living. That's how I looked at it. I went from hunting animals to men. When I captured them, that was my trophy on the wall.

On this episode of the Bear Grease podcast, we're going deep undercover in the rough country of Southeast Ohio to learn about the secret lives of wildlife poachers and the life of an undercover wildlife agent by the name of R.T. Stewart. He worked 18 years for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. He was one of the lead agents on the largest turkey poaching sting in U.S. history. He's a decorated law enforcement officer known for going deep undercover, even years at a time and willing to do whatever it took to bust the outlaws.

And in his career, he never had a single one of his target suspects not be convicted of crimes. If the bad guys had known him, they'd have feared him, but they didn't because he was a ghost. We'll hear from author Chip Gross, who wrote a book about RT, and will interview Dr. Matthew Sharps of California State University about the psychology of undercover agents and the personal cost that comes with living a lie. In the first episode of this series, yep, I said series, we'll meet RT and his. He'll show us the life of an undercover agent. And on part two, we'll talk about his biggest job. You're going to laugh, be intrigued, and you're going to cry. I really doubt you're going to want to miss this one.

Your whole life is lie. So you talk about stress. But when you're young and dumb, you don't even think about it, but it's stress. Was it worth it? You're too good. My name is Clay Newcomb, and this is the Bear Grease podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant. Search for insight in unlikely places

and where we'll tell the story of Americans who live their lives close to the land. Presented by FHF Gear, American-made, purpose-built, hunting and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the places we explore. The foundation of a functional society is that the law of the land is obeyed, by the vast majority of the population.

And much of this is enforced by uniformed law enforcement that patrols our highways, cities, and towns enforcing the law. But there is an underground layer of crime that is very difficult for a person in uniform to stop. And that's where another layer of guile, or cunning action of the good guys kicks in. At some point in history, the undercover agent arose. I admire your courage, Mrs. Trench.

Sovia Trench. I admire your luck, Mr. Bond, James Bond. Mr. Bond, I suppose you wouldn't care to raise the limit. I have no objections. Looks like you're out to get me. The idea of a world-famous secret agent like James Bond is kind of kind of ludicrous. Typical of Hollywood, they glamorized stuff that often isn't glamorous at all.

Dr. Matthew Sharps is a professor of psychology at California State University in Fresno. He studied undercover agents for a long time. Here's what he has to say about old James Bond. We're James Bond, and there he is, Sean Connery back in the day, but the one I like anyway. And there he is wearing his nice tuxedo in a casino, right? And he's like four inches taller in everybody else. He's got two beautiful women on each arm, and et cetera. And everybody else is wearing jeans on a t-shirt.

He's in his t-shirt. He's in his t-suit, right? There's a old song, the second-best secret agent in the whole wide world. But he's a world-famous secret agent. Well, I once asked an actual spy and undercover a man who spends his life deliberately being as nondescript as possible. What would happen to James Bond in real life? He didn't even hesitate.

He'd be dead in five minutes. You can't be a world-famous secret agent. There's no future in it. but you'd like that recognition. And, you know, the client isn't services outside police work must be very, very difficult because you may get medals, but you don't even get to take them home. And there you are with, you know, the veterans of this and that service, you can't talk about it. And those stresses have not really been addressed, but they're a big problem. There's no future in being a world famous secret agent.

That's funny. understanding the psychology of undercover agents is a brand new field. I guess studying it is an indicator that we're in advanced society. Our needs are met to the point we now have resources to study the people hired as law enforcement that we've commissioned to act as criminals and break the law in order to catch the real criminals. When you start thinking about it, it's a complex space. And I'm not sure if that means our society is advanced. Maybe it's regressing.

Undercover work is a necessary evil, one that we're all thankful for whether we realize it or not. And it lies in an odd philosophical and ethical spot. It takes a special breed of person to do this, and we're learning it often comes at a high cost to the individual, but a net gain for society. It's rare that we get a glimpse into the real life of an undercover agent. In 2012, the Kent State University Press published a book written by Chip Gross titled, Poachers Were My Prey. The book is the real-life story of this undercover agent, R.T. Stewart. It's a tell-all book, and its publishing came with its own share of controversy.

But in it, R.T. tells about his top ten covert operations, busting the ruffigan outlaws of Southeast Ohio and West Virginia. Here's author Chip Gross introducing us to RT. It just seems like some people in this world are perfectly matched for the jobs they do. And RT Stewart is definitely one of those people. But first of all, he's a very skilled woodsman. He knows how to hunt. He knows how to fish.

He knows how to trap. When the bad guys see that, that is a positive in their mind. Okay, this guy is for real. And he's very congenial. He could get the bad guys to like him and trust him very, very quickly sometimes with just within a few days. He just got that knack about him. He's a very likable person. Like what does it take for a person to have that, to be able to do that?

I'm not sure because I don't have it. And I don't think a lot of people do. But RT does. He's a real chameleon in that he can adjust to a lot of different situations. As he talked about, he can relate to the kind of scumbag poachers, or he can go to Lake Erie and deal with marina owners up there and charterboat captains that are running boats worth tens of thousands of dollars and still slide in and become a member of that group. So I think a lot of it is kind of a natural ability, a natural skill, and he's very, very good at what he does. He can think on his feet very, very quickly. He mentions in the book that in every undercover operation that he was on, the poachers at one point or another accused him or asked him if he was an undercover wildlife officer, you know, because they've always got that in the back of their mind.

We know we're doing bad stuff. Who's this new guy? And they're looking at him is this the, is this our worst nightmare that we don't know about yet? And he was able to talk his way out of it every single time. And when I asked him how he did it, he said, I don't know. He said it's something I prepared for that I knew I was going to get the question. But every time it came up, I had to work around it in a different way. R.T. Stewart is now in his 60s, and he's been retired from Ohio DNR for over a decade.

I don't know how to say this without just saying it. When you meet him, he doesn't have the vibe of a career law enforcement man. He's got a pen full of blue-tick. Coonhounds and he's got duckboats stuffed under every shed on his place. And his Southeast Ohio draw is surprisingly thick. But that's exactly why he was one of the best undercover agents in Ohio DNR history. Today his hair is trimmed tight and it looks like he hasn't shaved in a couple of days. But at one time he looked like a guitarist from ZZ Top.

Here's RT. I guess as a kid I used to watch television and you know and I always like the I always like the idea of a ranger or a game warden or something of that nature. So you grew up hunting and fishing here in Ohio. Oh absolutely grew up hunting and fishing. My dad was a major. He owned a gun shop for 40 years. So how did you become a game warden then? What age were you and what was your career progression to that point? Well, you know, living in a small town and got married and I ended up working in a car. coal mine you have to live you got kids you got to you got to make a living you know that wasn't my that wasn't my dream obviously but you got to make a living and that's how that I don't around here

being uneducated and so I went to work in a coal mine and then I left there and went to steel mills and got laid off in 1981 and I was 29 or 30 and when I got laid off that's when I was first time they're laid off my life I remember telling them people that I was going to college and become a game Morton. That was 30 years old when I went to college. You've just learned one of the keys to RT's success in living a life of an undercover agent. He worked in a coal mine and a steel mill for over a decade. He'd lived a real life of a rural Appalachian man, which you can't fake. RT's a coon hunter, a cat fisherman, a skilled deer and turkey hunter, and a trapper.

And by the way, Southeast Ohio is considered Appalachia. And as a surprise to me, it's even considered the South by those that live there. And RT has never iced fished a day in his life, so it passes Steve Renella's test. RT was hired by the Ohio DNR when he was 35 years old as a uniformed game warden. They assigned me to Union County, which was, I didn't know where Union County was, because I'd never been much out of this area. You know, that was in the, that was west of Columbus, which to me, that was the city. And that worst thing it could have done was send a, give a hillbilly with a badge and send him to the city.

Well, so I went up there and they put me in uniform and I was up there for about a year and a half. I was in uniform. And then I was always intrigued. So I'd worked with friends of mine that was undercover agents with liquor control. And I was always intrigued about that, you know. R.T. told his supervisors that if there was ever any need for undercover work, that he'd be interested in the job. He had no training, but he had reason to think that he'd be good at it. Turns out he was right.

Keep in mind, I was 35 when I went to work as a wildlife officer. I grew up in hunting and fishing, all my childhood life and all my early adult life. If it flew, swam, or walked, I had been involved. So with my background in that, and I wasn't always an angel. As a matter of fact, they tried to catch me for five years and couldn't, so that's why they hired me. Is that right? So I just felt I had the knowledge in the background that I knew how outlaws worked. I just felt that I could do a better job of catching people, not saying I didn't have a good career while I was in uniform.

uniform, I did. I just felt I could catch people that was more detrimental to the population of the wildlife than I could get in uniform. I was all really rough around the edges. You're right. You're absolutely good. You were dangerous as an undercover officer. I was feared. Did you have the kind of confidence that when you set out on a target acquisition, it was like, man, I'm going to do whatever it takes to get this guy. Yeah. I had the confidence. I felt I had the ability. I felt I had the know-how. And I was a pretty good actor. I hunted men for a living. That's how I looked at it. I went from hunting animals to men. When I'd capture them, that was my trophy on the wall.

RT has the right to be confident and call it like it is, because later he'll reveal some of his mistakes. It takes a special person to be successful undercover. And as we're beginning to see, RT's background set him up to be as good an undercover agent as was ever made. And as a matter of fact, he never worked a case where he didn't get his target suspect. That's incredible. If you're an outlaw, you wouldn't want RT Stewart after you. But like a Black Panther creeping up on you in the night,

you wouldn't even know it was RT. I think with my background, I could talk the language that poachers and outlaws could understand. I knew what they were thinking, I guess. I knew what they were after. I could talk that, and they knew that I wasn't fake when I talked about it. And I was always good at reading people, I think. I was always good at reading people. I always felt that I had a good humorous side to me.

Made people like me. Yeah. And I also discovered early on that if you put this outlaw, put them on a pedestal, that's what they liked. They didn't want competition, but they wanted to be put on a pedestal. They wanted a steam from you or anyone. Would that be like a number one descriptor of what you see that's congruent throughout all the poachers? They all just want to be. They want to be put up on that pedestal.

They want to be the number one person in their peers. they want to be the great white hunter. The motivations of outlaws are really quite primitive to human nature. They're looking for social esteem. And for whatever reason, they can't get that inside the boundaries of the law. So they've got to cheat to get it. I want to understand what goes into an undercover operation. In RT's book, I was amazed at the links he would go to

to infiltrate these poaching rings. On these undercover operations, you would embed yourself completely inside of these communities. Correct. I've heard of operations where, like, an undercover guy would, like, live at his normal house with his wife and, like, drive two hours and show up at a gas station. That's playing game order. That's playing. That's playing undercover. Okay.

So tell me... In my opinion, that's playing. So tell me what you had to do. I took it very serious. I was I was I took it extremely serious. I would go there and I felt the only way to catch these people you got to be part of them you got to be with them. So I'd go there and find a plate day and find a place to rent but you want to have a

target suspect have a target suspect we'd already have a target list I say you know complaints on individuals and they'll from whatever county the agents put together and give us a package you know need to look at these guys and see what's going on. that's what we'd do. So we would, we would go in and rent a place in the surrounding area. We didn't want it too close, but we didn't want it too far away either.

Right. We didn't want it close enough where, you know, just walk down the street and walk in any time, you know. But we wanted it close enough to make it a little effort, you know, for him to come visit. Yeah,

I remember you saying that you didn't want to like live across the street from a poacher because he might show up at a time when you're not needing him. On the phone. with your boss or so but but far enough away that he'd have to go out of his way to come see you but you're still in the community correct that's exactly right why didn't nobody tell me that you know didn't have a didn't have a book to go by right i think it was just instinct instinct so that's what we do is we're in a place like that and my shortest project i think was like 14 months or 12 months and if so you would you would live there for like years yeah my longest one was four

years. Four years. Four years. Would you go back home to your normal life? I would try to come home, but it got to the point where I did not want to come home. I just, it was who wants to come back to reality. I got the point. I didn't want to come home.

This is where things get interesting and take an unexpected turn. What I appreciate most about RT is how open he is about his struggles. It's pretty rare to find a person willing to be as honest about himself as RT. At the time, there wasn't much known about the psychological effects of living a double life. But it turns out RT's experience of having difficulty going back and forth between reality and his undercover work is a common issue. Dr. Matthew Sharps wrote a book called Processing Under Press, Stress, Memory, and Decision Making in Law and Law and, He's worked a lot with undercover agents, but it's an under-researched area. I want to see what he says about this.

We now know that brain cells, if a brain cell is active when other brain cells are talking to it, these synapses, the connections tend to be strengthened. So if you're in the field for a long time, pretending to be a mafiosi, pretending to be a drug dealer, what have you, you're going to stows and those habit patterns start to become relatively automatic in you. So when you go back home to your spouse, your family, lots of times undercover people will emerge back into the, it's a good word, emerge back into their undercover persona and they don't know they're doing it. This is hugely problematic. An awful lot of our life is dealing in terms of automated behaviors. It's possible to be so deep undercover for so long that the functional mechanisms of our identity begin to become.

scrambled. And when you think about it, it's really an odd place for a human to occupy. Normal human existence is based on us functioning honestly in a state of reality. But people who work deep undercover have to live a life, which as it turns out, exerts an extreme amount of chronic stress on the body that we weren't designed for. If you think about our ancient ancestors, they were hunters. And hunting presents tremendous acute stress, especially if you're doing it with a spear. A spear has a magazine capacity of one. Okay, so it's pretty stressful. But it's two or three days of a persistence hunt or the five minutes of jumping up and taking out a deer or back in the day an Irish elk. Okay. It's acute.

Now, we had to be able to deal with acute stress because if you couldn't, you couldn't survive long enough to reproduce. But chronic stress, the symptoms of chronic stress, don't kill you until you're in middle age or for what the them was old age. And so we don't seem to have a good way of dealing with chronic stress. It gets us. One thing is that when you're under stress, you're in the human fight or flight response. And that ups your blood pressure. It ups your heart rate.

It ups your breathing rate. All this stuff is wearing on the body. It also produces, aside from there's three major chemicals involved, aldosterone, which is to do a salt balance, cortisol that gives you more energy, but it also has an erosive quality on some structures. There's research that indicates cortisol can have some corrosive agency on a structure in the brain called the hippocampus where you actually process your memories. But then you have adrenaline, and that's what puts your body into this higher state of being.

It's just very, very expensive. And because you're using all of these, you're doing all of this high-stress stuff, you tend to shut down the systems you don't need. Humans weren't designed for chronic or constant stress. We're equipped for short-term stress, and it all goes back to our hunter-gatherer roots. It's easy to listen to RT's stories and feel the excitement and James Bond-style intrigue of undercover work,

but all things come with the cost, and it certainly did for RT. Being an undercover agent is a dirty job that enables the rest of us, to live normal lives, unaware, even oblivious to what's helping keep things stable. 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 a be. 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. I want to get back to the nitty gritty mechanics of undercover work. And what's a bit mind-twisting is that the key to living a lie is telling the truth. The best undercover agents, and I think any of them will tell you this, that's been deep undercutting. cover you got to stick to the truth you tell lies but you don't tell them in a sense you may you may have done something you may just order the time frame or you just order the name but you stick to the truth of reality what you have experienced and you never go wrong because you don't have remember

and so as an big overview so you've embedded yourself you have your personal story and then you're trying to infiltrate these groups of people or a specific person and you need them to take you hunting. Correct. And you need them to talk about what they've done. Correct. But did you find that these guys wanted to talk? Once you got the credibility, usually there was a group.

When I say a group, it might be, you know, one, two guys to a half a dozen guys that was tight knit. Once you got the credibility of some of those lower members of that ring, that helped get you to the top band. Really? So you would usually infiltrate by meeting some of the lower tier guys. Correct. Really. And they would bring you to the leader.

It took me on one particular job. I was working. It took me 11 months to meet the number one guy. Really? Yeah. Were they protective of him? Was he elusive? He was elusive.

He just didn't expose himself to many people. No, just two or three people. Isn't that common to mankind, though? What you're describing there to me is like the social hierarchy of just the way that we operate. That is correct. There's people that have their spheres and they're kind of the leader and they have these young, maybe younger, maybe guys that are lower than them on the social. And then that guy, top guys kind of guarded in some way.

Well, there you go, the ego, the power. You know, John, there, he's the top man, but we, you know, he calls all the shots, you know. And that's the way it works. legitimate social structures. That's correct. And not just with poachers with any of us. Anything. Racing, racing, sports, you know, all kind of things. It all matches the same criteria. So you would infiltrate the groups by being so convincing and being the real deal. And then you would need to be hunting with, go hunting with these guys. It would take you as long as 11 months to even meet your target guy. And then you'd go hunting with them. You'd go drinking with them. You'd go to

their family events. Correct. All of it. Everything you just mentioned, you know, you try to find good intel and you find out where these guys like to hang out, eat, and then you try to embed yourself into those locations. Sometimes you'll meet some guys. You know, so and so.

Yeah, I know so and so. And next thing you know, you're with a lower guy that knows this guy. And then if you can do some things or convince him that you're an outlaw. And then you do a few things with him, then that's your building. your credibility. So then the web keeps getting bigger, but yet the circle keeps getting smaller. So it took me 11 months to meet this guy, and after I met him one week, I was hunting with him. You were in? So they're vulnerable once you get up to the top?

Yes, yes, because I feel that they feel that you have met the credibility of everybody, and you've been around for a year, you know, and everybody else is vouching for you. Just like a good hunter, putting in the time and having patience is very valuable. And RT understood human nature. He was good with people and had a natural instinct for how to gain trust. In some ways, it's kind of scary how good he was. I'm actually beginning to wonder if any of my friends are real. And I've said it from the beginning.

I suspect Brent Reeves is a double undercover agent sent in to bust me. What a great cover to say I used to work undercover. What thereafter, I don't. don't know and who they are. I don't know. I don't know who they is. They are, who they were. I don't know who sent Britt Reeves is what I'm trying to say. I don't know. But it's typical of the mountain people to be suspicious of Flatlanders. Anyway, back to the nitty-gritty with RT. Keep your eye on Brent Reeves. You had a legitimate new name, new documentation. So what was the name that you used?

Well, I had two of them. First one was Bob Thomas, and the second one was Bill Stone. Was there any strategy in those? Like, Bob Thomas sounds like such a generic name. No. Okay. Did you make, you just made it up? I just made it up.

Okay. I guess not. They were probably like, man, no way an undercover agent would be Bob Thomas. Right, right, right, right, right. So you had ID? That's another thing that we did not know at the time, but I told, I got in trouble, got rested when I'm going to haul, go take me to jail because I got captured speeding in a school zone one time.

I was going 30 mile an hour in a 20 mile zone, and I didn't have the proper identification. So you're working undercover? I had a driver's license, but that's all I had, you know, which was easy to acquire with a driver's license. And you couldn't tell this officer who you were? Absolutely not. You just took it in the face. Yeah.

It comes back knotting file. Would they run the license plates? Not in foul means can mean a lot of things. So you went to jail for that? Yeah, yeah. Well, that and a lot of other things. We'll just stick with that. Okay.

Okay. And they thought I was carrying drug. You know, I was pretty rough looking. I was in a town that I shouldn't have been in, had a truck that said farm use rode on it. And I was in a high dollar out, you know, high dollar town and looked like scum. But you were working undercover.

Oh, I was working undercover. So it was legitimate what you were doing. And so this guy was like, man, I just got me a dandy. Well, it was a female. And I never had good luck with females when they arrested and pulled me over. So I didn't have good luck with her either. But anyhow, oh, yeah. You got out of jail?

I got out, but it took me. Who'd you call? I keep going down these rabbit trails where they're just too interesting. Who do you call when you're an undercover agent and you've been arrested? No one. No one. You just kind of write it out, which is, you know, how far do you go? You know, how far do you write it out, you know?

And finally I got to a point to where, and I was not in a town that I was working. So I finally asked for a supervisor and so I he'd come back here and I was locked up to back the truck Well, they thought I stole the truck. Okay. But when they run it, finally done a search on it, I can hear it come back over the radio. It belongs to a high division of natural resources. And I'm going, holy yeah. What if I was sitting here with a bad guy in the back of the car with me?

So it was a good experience that happened with no bad guy with me. I told him and he made a phone call and he made a phone call and finally they got a hold of him and I found this out later. He said, we got a guy here claims to be. one of yours pretty ruffler. He said, give me anything. He said, yep, he's mine. That's our team. That's mine.

He's mine. He's one of our good ones. Yeah. I'll claim him. So they come back up there, you know, turn me loose. And they let you out of jail. So through that, you learned that you needed really deep cover everywhere. Everywhere.

So what they did for men on when they purchased a new vehicle, when that truck come from the factory, it went to our undercover name. RT was pioneering undercover work in Ohio. This just hadn't been done to this scale here and they were learning a lot, the hard way. I keep going back to the isolation of this type of work. Who do you call when you get arrested while working undercover? The answer is no one. I think we take for granted the social networks we have and probably wouldn't realize how

important they are until they're gone. Our social networks give stability to our lives, and their absence in deep undercover work adds to the chronic stress. And hey, speaking of vehicles, I want to ask Bob Thomas about his specialty hunting rig. You had, on several operations, you had a custom van that was decked out with video recording equipment, and this is back in the 90s, So it wasn't like we got cameras on our phones today. No, we didn't even have cell phones. Yeah. Well, on my very first operation, we were out spotlighting and shooting deer and having a great time.

And all of a sudden, the red light starts flashing, you know, and off we go. The car chase, you know. I'm not driving. We throw the gun out the wind and the gun goes off. This is when you're undercover with a poacher. Yeah. The game warden comes after you. Well, we didn't know, we never do.

We never did find. out who it was because they never caught us. I don't know who it was. A game warden sheriff department or a local farmer. Don't know who it was. Okay. We took off and this guy was going a hundred mile an hour on these roads. I mean, I don't think it was a hundred mile an hour, but very, you know, excessive, dangerous. Dangerous. And that scared me. That scared me. You were out of control. I was out of control. So therefore, I decided I need to drive. I can control the situation. Yeah. And how can you control a situation if you just got a pickup, truck with a cab you didn't have all you have was a single cab so if you got a party at a bar and you

got four or five guys participating in that bar you know in the you know get together whatever it is and all you got to pick up truck and hold free people that uh it breaks the party up so i come up with the idea of a van i thought all right a van you know everybody can participate and i'm driving oh man that that was just that instinct of just knowing what you needed to do yeah like it was Yeah, absolutely. You know, and how do you keep the party going? But if you can take everybody, I'm driving, I got a van, everybody can go, oh, let's go.

The way we went. Yeah. Did your van have a name? Did you call it anything? Poach coach. The poach coach. Now, did you say that, you use that name with all the people? Yeah, let's take the poach coach.

The coach, man, I bet you are their number one guy, man. Oh, they love me. Everybody knows that to fit in, you've got to have the right ride. Think about the boldness of naming your undercover rig, the poach coach. That's almost as bold as Brent Reeves' cover being that he used to work undercover. In RT's book, he tells the details of countless poaching incidents where he was involved in the killing of illegal deer in Turkey. The deer were primarily killed while spotlighting or jacklighting if you live in the land of the ice fisherman.

Surprisingly, he never had to poach a deer to keep his cover. He was the driver, so it was hard for him to be the shooter too. However, he would randomly show up with a fresh-killed set of buck antlers, turkey fans and beards that were supplied to him by the Ohio DNR, that he'd show off to the poachers with a made-up story of how he'd snagged one the night before when they couldn't go. On a separate note, Brent Reeves is constantly showing me Coon hides claiming his tree and walker treated them. But I find that odd because we all know that tree and walkers don't tree real coons.

With the van, they agreed that I wouldn't drink. If we're poaching, I don't drink. I tell them, you know, I said, no boys, I said, I don't mind getting caught for shooting a deer, but I said, I don't need no DWI. I said, so if we're going to poach, I'm not going to drink while we're driving while we're poaching. You were their favorite guy, man. You had a van.

You were the designated. driver? Absolutely. I put them all up there on that pedestal. It was important for RTs and the public safety that there weren't drunk drivers cruising around in the name of covert government operations. And not surprisingly, most of the poaching rings involved alcohol and many even illegal drugs. And that poacher pedestal was also very important too, almost as important as video surveillance equipment. Then we decided, well, we need a van, which we got a van, and then we need to figure out a way to record this stuff. You know, so there was an agency, they called it the bad house, and it was, it was very, it was very secluded.

All they did was, I think it was, they worked under the High Attorney General's office, and all they did was install video equipment. In vehicles. In vehicles. Oh, wow. This is a government agency that did this. Yeah. Yeah, they hooked us up with the great big old VCR boxes, you know, the VCR tape. How'd you hide one of those things?

You don't. Because we built a spatial box and put it in the back there, but you had to get out and go around and plug it all in and run off of D.C. You know, and had to plug it all in and only ran about two hours. So you had to be, you know, know what you're doing. And then sometimes you drop the poachers top, pick up a deer. What you do, you go down the road and jump out real quick and change tapes, you know. And then we had an infrared light and over the, over the sun visor, how do you hide it? We just did hit it by being out in the open.

It was all infrared lights, but it was designed like a Confederate flag. Oh, yeah, hung right over top of the sunvider. So a pitch, pitch black, the guy that's shooting out of the front seat, you know, he's lit up. So the cameras picked him up, see. Wow. And I'd have guys mention to me about that, you know. What is it? And I'd tell them a story about my handicapped son that passed away.

He was into electronics, and he made that for me. It don't work, but I just sit in the middle and I keep it up there. I've had to pull it down. Let's see if we can fix it. I'll put her back up there. Sometimes when you hear about all these government surveillance operations, it makes you scratch your head. Americans have always valued independence from government and our rights to privacy.

All I can say is when you break the law, you lose the right to that privacy in some situations. And there are very strict laws about what type of evidence is permissible in court and how it's obtained. You use that van on multiple operations. Yes, yes. This was just an old Chevy van at the time. Yeah, what year model and make was it? Oh, my, this was probably a 68 or 69 old van. So it was old even back then.

Oh, yeah, it was old back then. And then that one, the first one was. But then we graduated a little bit, probably got about a 70-some model, maybe an 80, 85 model. Okay. But then when they, we done a full-time undercarry operation, Kevin asked me who was my supervisor. He said, time to get a vehicle. What would your favorite vehicle be? I said a four-wheel drive van.

Next thing I know, I had a brand-new, jacked-up, four-wheel-drive. No way. Yes. Then we had a little modern day equipment, you know, where I didn't have to get out and turn the switches on. I could do them by a little switch here by my. Wow. And I had videos in the front. I had videos in the front seat. I had videos coming out the side, videos going out the back. And I got to control all of that by a little switch. What was your story for why a guy like you would have a van like that? Well, there you go again. You have to have a good cover unit. Like a brand new van especially. Well, I worked in a coal mines and I have a, and I have a van like that. I have a good cover unit. I have a caravan. And I have a car. I have a car. I have a car mine. And I have. And I have. And I have. And I have. And I have. And I have. And I have. And I had been covered up, injured, which I had been. And I was on compensation and made a have, and gotten a major, big settlement, big settlement. So. Now, is that true? Absolutely.

Man, I don't even have it. Not. Not. Yeah, I'm confused with reality. But here's what we did. We had a, my boss, he knew of a. an agency that a friend of his that was an actual compensation lawyer. So he approached him and he would draw up.

He had a false foul on me. And he would send me letters in the mail of how much, you know, my claim and everything, you know, what was what it was and how much money I was getting and things of that nature. Wow. I'd leave them paperwork laying around in my house or on the dash or wherever. And we found by reviewing videotape later that when I was not present with these guys, they'd read it. Wow. Yeah, yeah. If you got somebody in the cab of your truck or van and you go in the gas station and there's some personal letter there, they pick it up and it validates your

story without you, without you putting in their face. Absolutely. Absolutely. Deep cover, man. So that's how I proved that I had a lot of money to able to afford it and that they accepted it. Deep cover. Everything had to have a story and to clarify, R.T was covered up in a cold mine in real life. Coal spilled all over him and he was injured. But the lie was that he didn't actually get a big settlement. So he was covered up, but he didn't get a settlement in his real life. In his undercover life, he was covered up and got a settlement and got money. What about checking in with your supervisors and stuff? I mean, would you go months without talking to him? Well, no, he'd get kind of upset if I did that. Okay.

My boss, his real name is Dan Schneider. He was working a turkey cage. And I hadn't checked with him. I had a phone at the house and had a had a recorder on it. And the deal was that you never call, if you call and leave a message, you never say anything about anything. It was made to take code or something. For example, we had a spatial bank account and they'd put money in my bank. And Kevin, he'd call up and he said, hey, I'm going to give you, I'll give you $916. And I'll throw in 32 cents for that dog.

That's how I knew how much money he was putting in my bank. So your supervisor would call about buying a dog and leave you a message. So if somebody's, if I'm in the restroom or outside and them guys are in the house and he calls and leaves a message, you know, they never have caught on to it. Yeah. Now, I hadn't talked to Danny quite a while and he was getting a little concern. I come home from hunting one day. We'd been turkey hunting. I played the message and he goes that.

Calling in, check you on you. See, I mean, ain't talked to you in a while. I just hadn't talked to you. I thought maybe you might give me a call so we talk about hunting in the future here or something like it. And he said, oh, by the way, this is boss goddwer. This is the boss goblin. He was letting me know. He was letting me know he's the boss.

You better call. And I better call. So that's what his nickname, but even to this day, a lot of people associated with us. The boss gobbler. That's boss gobbler. The boss gobbler. I like it. 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 callers

who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. I want to get to a more serious question with RT. To be able to do what you did undercover, you're living a lie. I mean, you're before these people. You're living a lie. It almost feels like you would have to be a good actor. And I don't know if that would be the best descriptor.

No, that is a perfect description. Did it ever bother you to be so deep in with these guys? I mean, live in complete deception. Like their perception of you was absolutely. 100% false and you had fabricated that with them, gained their real trust because they're in the real world. Correct. And you control their future.

These were, these were human beings that at some level, there may have been parts of their life that you respect it. I don't know. I'm putting words in your mouth. No, no, no. You're right. These are like sometimes even maybe likable people. They were.

But did it bother you ever to be that deceptive inside of people's world? Only one time, one time. The rest of the people, I had, they were bad people. I wouldn't be around those individuals. It wasn't for my job. I despise some of those individuals, but I had to act like I loved. However, there was one individual, and it was Operation Redbud, and his name was was, I liked that fella.

And the only difference between him and me was I was on one side of defense, and he was on the other. We were best friends. and I felt bad. There was many times that I would drive home thinking I need to tell him. Really? You thought about breaking your cover because you liked this guy so much. That's how deep I was. And I felt that I was really forgetting who I really was.

I was forgetting that I was here for the good, but yet I felt that much attached to that feller that. that I felt like I need to warn. RT never acted on his desire to warn the suspect. And you guys may remember our genuine outlaw series. The title was a play on words. The guys we talked about were really genuine outlaws. And they were also genuine people, revered by many in the community.

If you're new to Bear Grease and missed that series, you should go check it out. It's one of the most intriguing stories we've ever told. RT brought up a very interesting point about identity. He said he was forgetting who he was, and he was finding himself endeared to the criminal, the person he was trying to catch. However, Dr. Sharp says that that's not uncommon for undercover agents.

And what you're describing here is extremely common. About half of undercover people do start not necessarily to identify with the targets or individuals. who are in the target population. But they start to feel sympathetic to them. They start to become friends with them. It makes an awful lot of sense. That's interesting.

Half of undercover agents find themselves endeared in some way to the people they're chasing. It's really hard for a human to be all business and override human nature. I want to prod a little harder on RT about identity. And he has something to say. You said that there was a lot of, point in your career when you you kind of lost your identity talk to me about that you're so deep

undercover you're living you have your own house you have your own account you can't leave bob thomas correct there was there was i remember in the book there was a time when you said you were like thinking a thought and you thought that you were bob thomas and it kind of scared you yeah i've told chip miss that was with red bud my second project and i was deep i hadn't been home in ages and i was deep and we were in the state of West Virginia on a hunting trip. Nobody had any clue where I was, I didn't even know where I was at. My boss had no clue. And I'm living in this shack here with these guys, I think it's four of us.

Been in there, you know, about four or five days already, staying in the same house, you know. I really had no fear that they knew who I was. I mean, I was just that confident that they had no idea who I was. On this one particular evening, I was out by myself. I was videoing. narrating to myself, you know, on this video. I had two video cameras and I had one for my own personal use, you know,

that I thought I'd used maybe down the road and I had one that worked with, you know, but on this particular one I was talking about being hunting with so-and-so. I'm over here in West Virginia somewhere on this beautiful mountain on this sunset and signing off. Bob Thomas. I went, hey who I am. I am. I am deep cover here, man, you know, talking to myself.

Man, for some reason, that just hit me right in the face, you know. I guess that was the first time I really alone by myself, talked to myself and called myself that, you know. And I went, man, I'm living here with these guys. You know, they ain't got no idea who I am. I ain't even sure who I am anymore. Even if you've never consciously thought about your identity from a philosophical position, it doesn't matter.

As humans, we spend our lives craft. identity and are deeply vested in others perceiving us in the way that we view ourselves. The very definition of instability is not knowing who you are. I've always been very interested in identity. The very nature of this work puts a human in a very odd spot. I had a question for Dr. Sharps. So would you say that undercover work is a relatively new experience? for humans or have people been doing this for generations like where they become a

chameleon becomes something different to fit in with a certain group to get something back? And in this case, we're trying to get justice, law and order. But is this, I mean, it feels like this is a human experiment in a sense and people are doing stuff that they really weren't designed to do. Am I thinking about that, right? It's a very interesting question. If you go back into the hunter-gatherer world, probably not. But I mean, if you look at the Old Testament, you've got spies entering the cities there.

We have World War I of Sydney Riley and Madahari, and the American Civil War, you have a number of agents, male and female, in the Revolutionary War agents. So a lot of undercover work's been going for a long time. But this isn't a very old thing, and the stresses are very old too. So in Bear Grease time, undercover operations are relatively new. Humans have only been doing this for a couple thousand years. When people started grouping up in cities, forming governments, planting wheat, and having political interest.

That's when they started employing deceit to infiltrate tight-knit groups to gain information that couldn't be gotten without guile. I think we could say with some degree of certainty that if a fulsome man befriended you, hang with me, you could trust him. He may have ill intent for you, but you'd see it coming. If he approached you and wanted your meat, your land, or your woman,

he'd just fight you out right. I hope you know that I'm joking, but my main point is that the complexity of society has increased exponentially since our hunter-gatherer days. However, human nature remains the same. And I'm also not saying that undercover work is bad. It's just really interesting that for the greater good of society, We hire men to act like they're bad.

I wanted to get some details from RT about these close relationships that he built with criminals. I'm making a mental checklist of all the plays at Real Friendship Brent Reeves has made at me. Do you have friends that you now suspect are undercover agents? Do they wear overalls, have suspicious beards and dark rim glasses? There was one time when you said that you felt like, you were going to ask to be a Paul bear at some guy's funeral, like a man's dad. Yeah, that was my last one of them. There was another one, I think, where you were at Thanksgiving dinner with these people.

And, like, can you tell me some of those stories? Well, yeah, I'm overrefer to because he's the only one as far as I'm concerned. He got to respect to my respect. I can tell some of his stuff. He had a very, very loving wife and he had two children. that were very young at the time, and he loved dearly. The children, they kind of liked me. And I'd always bring him candy and different things, you know,

and I found out another thing is if you keep the wife happy of one of the outlaws, you're in. If you don't keep her happy, you're out. That's a fact. That's a life tip, right? That's a life tip. Not even poachers. Not even poachers.

But if you keep the wife happy and she likes you, you're good. She was very nice, and she would call me up and ask me what, For example, she'd call me up and say, you know, birthday's coming up or Christmas coming up. What can I get him for his Christmas? What can I get him for his birthday? You know, things of that nature.

I'm thinking, oh, man. And the kids, they'd, you know, call his uncle. Yeah. Things like that. I mean, we were just that close. Knowing what's coming down eventually. That was a hard time to deal with that stuff. You were going to Thanksgiving dinners with these people.

Yeah. I never went to Christmas, but I'd invite me to Thanksgiving dinner and things of that nature. And I'd go, you know, because I'd portrayed not have a family, you know. And if I did have a family, they were far all. I was basically the loner, didn't have nothing, didn't have nobody. And they felt sorry for me in that sense is when it come to holidays and things, you know. So you'd sit there on kids, play on your lap, sit there in the house with them, talk, you know, just like we're doing today.

Yeah. Friends, you know, friends, friends, good friends. And you could, you could fake that, though. Yeah. Does that scramble your? your insides? With him it did. I had to deal with that demon of knowing that I'm going to destroy his life, but yet I've become that close to him. Very interesting and kind of spooky. Today, undercover agents are better equipped to understand the potential hazards of going deep undercover. But back

then, they were just shooting from the hip. But keeping in mind, our supervisors nor myself had any experience in this. We were, you know, we didn't have any policy. You were pioneering this here in this part of the country. We were Lewis and Clark of the Division of Wildlife undercover. That's correct. So, you know, we had nothing. Now, do you look back at it now? You think, yeah, yeah, I was too close. But my boss didn't realize it, nor did I realize it. And we hadn't met the number one guy yet who was after. So I spent, yeah. So that was the project that took me 11 months to meet him. So I had a whole year, 11 months to hang out with cloth. We drank together.

By even helped him move, he put drywall in his house. We did everything together. Done a lot together. Traveled on hunting trips together. I guess people would just, after some period of time, you were so deep undercover that they would, it just wouldn't even enter their minds that you were undercover. Like if some guy showed up at their camp and was like, hey, I want to go hunting with you, you know, kind of bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, they might be like, wait a minute.

Yeah. But, like, helping them hang drywall and being that close to them, like, they didn't have a clue. I don't think they had a clue, no. And they were telling you everything. They were showing you everything. You were video in this stuff. Doing everything. You were doing it with them.

And then I keep going back to the kind of the brilliance of who, and I've just met you, but, you know, you don't come across as a shiny wildlife officer undercover guy. I mean, that. I am shocked in a poll. I am shocked in a poll. Yeah, you've hurt my feeling. What do you mean, not a shiny and polished game warden? Why, I am. You've hurt my feelings.

Well, the only other game warden in Ohio that I know is named Chip Gross. Look at this guy. Now, you're talking top shelf. I know. shiny and polished. He wouldn't have fit in with those guys? Absolutely not. They'd have picked him out in the heartbeat.

They would have... Yeah, yeah. So Chip Gross is sitting here with us right now. Remember Chip Gross is the author of the book about RT. Poachers Were My Pray. You can buy it on Amazon. And he's retired Ohio Game Warden and maintains a close friendship with his old buddy RT. While we're giving Chip a hard time,

He once almost got RT into some serious trouble. Here's Chip. Again, RT's undercover, and I'd been wanting to do a story on just the undercover unit itself, not be real specific, but just that we have an undercover unit and so forth. At the time, I was the editor of the Division of Wildlife's Magazine. It's called Wild Ohio. It was a quarterly publication, so I could pretty much put in there what I wanted to, and I thought, well, it's time to do a story on the other undercover unit.

And I went to the law enforcement supervisors, and I said, is it okay to do this? Because I knew it was very sensitive. And they said, yeah, just don't be real specific. And I said, I won't. So we did a story about that. The issue comes out, and one of the bad guys gets a copy. That RT's working with. Yeah, gets a copy of the story.

He gets the magazine. At the time, the magazine was free. All you had to do was sign up, and it went out by the 10th of thousands across Ohio. So the next time RT meets with him, here he comes with the magazine and says, look at this, the Division of Wildlife has undercover officers. And there again, I put, not unknowingly, I put R.T. on the spot and he's got to somehow work his way out of that because they're suspecting, you know, is this one of the guys? Is this one of the officers? So inadvertently, I put him in a crack and I didn't know that until years later.

RT wasn't happy about Chip's article But later Chip would write a tell-all book About everything RT ever did I guess everything is about timing I want to go back to something that RT touched on in the beginning Something actually very serious It's when he said he didn't want to go back to his real life And as we go into this section

I want to highlight and commend the vulnerability of RT as he talks freely. I'd call it humility and being well grounded. This might sound ironic, but RT isn't trying to portray himself as something that he isn't. At least not anymore. You said something earlier too about

there was a time when you didn't want to go back. Well, when you come home, you got kids, you got bills, you got responsibilities. Who wants that? I was living another life, an outlaw, a rush constantly, doing things. And then when you come home, you know, you go down. Stress goes down. Your adrenaline goes down.

Then you're faced with reality, you know. Oh, kids need this. The kids need that. You know, got to pay this bill. It's past due. The house needs this, you know. Well, I'm going back. I don't have to worry about this stuff.

So I didn't like reality. Is that something that you regret? Yeah, there was a lot of things that, looking back on it, I regret. But now I look back at it and going, that was stupid. I was too engrossed in my job. I didn't play at it. I was it. I never went to my children's events.

If I did go to, was home and went to a ballgame or something, always said on the opposite side. Because you never know who's going to see. I never went to graduations. Never went to none of that. Because he never knew whose kinfolk's coming in to see some guy graduate their grandson or their niece or nephew. And I just never did, I never participated in any of that. Do it a deal? I'd look back and miss it.

Yeah. I missed a lot of things growing up with my children. But today we have a great relationship. They understood it. They understand it. And I think they're proud of their dad. Yeah. That's really good to hear RT say that.

It's a touch of that bare grease redemption that we all want. Here's RT now getting down to the heart of it all. You talk about stress. It's unbearable. It's unbelievable. How do you tell a lie on a lie detector's test? It's measured by the level of stress. Your whole life's a lie.

So you talk about stress. But when you're young and dumb, you don't even think about it, but it's stress. Do you think they had long-term effects on you? Uh-huh. that's why I had to retire. Yeah. Health issue because of stress. Was it worth it?

You're too good. No. If I look back at it, if I had to do it over again and I knew what I knew right now, I'd say no. But at the time is the only thing I knew and the only thing I wanted to do. Yeah. I, you know, I'm proud of what I did. I'm proud of what I've done. And I have no regrets in that regard.

But would I do it over again? Would I do some things different with my family? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It takes some guts to say that it wasn't worth it, and I respect the honesty of that. I think many people might have found a way to lie to themselves about the choices they'd made. However, he's proud of the work that he did, and that's a complex place to stand. RT is complex. There's one thing I can guarantee you.

It's that if you met RT in a grocery store, you might be tempted to judge his book simply by its cover. But I'm here to tell you that this man was a brilliant undercover agent and a master of understanding the nuance of the peculiar version of humanity that lives in the rural regions of Appalachia. He dedicated himself to his craft and his work ethic pushed him to be the best. And there's some nobility inside of that. He left it all on the court. I want to ask RT one more thing. Here's my synopsis of undercover and you tell me what you think about this, is that you're being asked to do something that is incredibly unnatural and goes against everything that should be the fabric of a human that keeps them together, which ultimately is the truth and authenticity

and you are being paid and have to, and by choice, I mean, nobody made you do this. And for the good of society, it's such a complex space. Because for the good of society, you were serving our communities by doing this, but also at a human level, at the RT Stewart level, you were doing something that was like really unnatural, which is completely living a lie and making it seem like the truth. And it just feels like that would have a tendency to like tear somebody apart. You're good at what you do. You. because you're asking some questions that's rarely been asked, but you're absolutely right.

It is something hard to deal with, and I think that's why I decided I didn't want to come home. I didn't have to deal with it. I could just deal with one side of my life, and that was the bad side. They were the saying, and I have it out there hanging out there is one of my real close friends, who was an undercover agent,

gave it to me, and it says the eagle and the wolf. Have you ever heard this? The eagle and a wolf. The wolf is a loner. He does this. He does all the bad things. Or an eagle is a sore high in the air, stands for good,

and all the good parts, the eagle and a wolf. And the bottom question is, who am I? And the answer is the one I feed. And that, there's a lot of truth to that. Who am I? Well, at that particular time, I was the wolf. I eat it, lived it, and did it.

But yet knowing at some point in my life, I would be that eagle. I'm a bit at a loss for words. This is usually part of the podcast where I wrap everything up that's been said in a nice little bow and we're all happy. But I think I'll just let what RT said sink in.

I can't thank you all enough for listening to Bear Grease. On the next full Bear Grease episode, we'll be right back here with RT as he tells of his biggest undercover operation ever called Operation Redbud, which at the time was the largest turkey poaching sting in U.S. history. It's a fascinating story that you and your bros won't want to miss.

And hey, please leave us a review on iTunes, keep telling your buddies about bear grease. And on another note, you can watch Meteeter Season 11 on the Meteor website for free. All you have to do is sign up with your email address, and the episodes will roll out one per week until the season is complete. So, Meteeter Season 11 ain't on Netflix. It's on the meat eater.com. And eventually, my moose hunt is going to be on there. So you have to check it out. So anyway, have a great week.

I look forward to talking with everybody on the render. On Blood Trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is over. They just get darker. I've seen something in the road. I instantly thought it was a sleeping bag. And there was a full of blood. Oh my God, he doesn't have a hit. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors, where the terrain is unforgiving,

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

He's not an honest person. He's incapable of being honest. Somebody somewhere knows something. I'm Jordan Sillers. Season 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.