Bear Grease - Ep. 80: Secret Agent Man - Operation Redbud (Part 2)

Episode Date: November 16, 2022

On this 2nd episode in our Secret Agent Man series we’re going deep into the trenches of the darkside with undercover Ohio wildlife agent RT Stewart to get the full story on Operation Redbud, which at the time, was the largest turkey poaching sting in US history. RT is going to take us on a tour in the Poach Coach and we'll hear how he videoed over 100 illegal turkey kills in two springs. How would you like to see that on VHS tape? He’ll talk about the incredible owl hooting of his number one target, and take us right into the courtroom where the defense lawyers tried to discredit his character with accusations regarding drugs and alcohol. We’ll hear from Darth Vader, Bill Clinton and get the details of the coordinated bust involving 26 men and over 275 wildlife violations in Morgan County, Ohio. If you skip this story, you’re just plain yeller. I really doubt you’re gunna wanna 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.

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Built to perform, built to last. Check out. First Light's new field. Worldware gear at firstlight.com. They were taken by a total surprise. And at that particular time, it was the largest turkey poaching ring in the country. On this second episode in our Secret Agent Man series,

we're going deep into the trenches of the dark side with undercover Ohio wildlife agent R.T. Stewart to get the full story on Operation Redbud, which at the time was the largest turkey poaching sting in U.S. history. R.T. is going to cruise us around in the poach coach while videoing over 100 illegal turkey kills. How would you like to see that on a VHS tape? He'll talk about the incredible al-Hooting of his number one target and take us right into the courtroom, where defense lawyers tried to discredit his character with accusations regarding drugs and alcohol. We'll hear from

Darth Vader, Bill Clinton, and get the details of the coordinated bust involving 26 men and over 275 wildlife violations in Morgan County, Ohio. If you skip this story, you're just plain yeller. I really doubt you're going to want to miss this one. He was laying on her back, leaning up against that tree. He says, you're one of my best friends I've ever had. And I'm going, oh. I knew it was getting close to the coming to the end, you know, and I'm thinking, oh, man.

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. It was in the early 1990s, and the Wild Turkey Hunting Revolution of America was in full tilt as bird numbers skyrocketed with 100-year peak population numbers across the country. Game call companies seemed to be rising up out of the ground.

Every home had a BCR, and like never before, you could rent in 24-hour segments, Turkey hunting videos that showed unprecedented excitement. America was hooked on turkey hunting, and as the cultural value of the turkey went up, it caused a quake, a philosophical rift, a division in rural communities across the country, splitting fathers and sons,

putting neighbors against neighbors. It caught good men and bad men alike, and many turned to the dark, side, which is always looking for recruits. Many became turkey hunting outlaws. It is useless to resist. With our combined strength, we can bring order to the galaxy. These outlaws began to cheat the system, hunting before season, trespassing, killing exorbit numbers of turkeys. They weren't just cheating others. They were cheating themselves, causing a disturbance in the wildlife galaxy.

There are varying degrees of lawbreakers, and law enforcement is dedicated to stopping all levels. Our beloved North American model of wildlife conservation only works if we obey the law. In Morgan County and Southeast Ohio, numerous informants had reported to the Ohio DNR about a gang of turkey-slaying ruffians who touted killing unbelievable numbers. of turkeys. They didn't know if the numbers were true, but if they were, they had to be stopped.

There was only one thing left to do. And I'll give you one guess who they sent into the ring of fire. R.T. Stewart, also known as Bob Thomas. The number one suspect in the case was believed to be killing over 50 turkeys each spring, and the

second suspect, who was thought to be his protege, was probably killing just as many. And the early spring of 1995, RT infiltrated this ring to see if the informant's information was correct. Little did he know that the operation would have him living full-time undercover for 15 months. They called it Operation Redbud, and RT was the lead man on the case. Here's how it started. I want to make one note about this episode.

You're going to hear a lot of bleeping. It was very difficult in this interview to not use the actual names of these guys. But we didn't want to put it in the episode. So there's lots of bleeping. So old Phil Taylor had to do what he had to do. Bear with us. We were given, I was given two individuals that was notorious for taking mottable turkeys.

And the intelligence provided to us was that was a hung out and was a manager of a bar. And he lived up over top. of it. I drove around there. I had my van at the time, and I had it stuffed full all kind of turkey props, spurs and tails and had them hidden, obviously. So I go in there one, in there one afternoon, and made a tactical air right off the bat, but it helped in a sense. I'd always try to go to, if you got a name of a local person that sent you to them, that helped. If you just come out of the blue, knocked on their door or something, whatever, however he did your approach, and you just

knocked on the door and say so, you know, and introduce yourself, it's kind of suspicious. Yeah. So I'd always go to yard sales, stuff like that, in the local area. I didn't even pitch up hickhikers if somebody pitchhiking, you know, just get me a name with somebody in that community. And if they knew them, that was even better, you know, but I would go to these yard sales, get a name and ask them, you know, get to talking and they'd say, do you know,

you know, so I'd say, yeah, yeah, he lives right up there, you know. And I said, what's your name? So if I had to go knock on the door, I said, hey, Jim down there, what's your name? He told me he's a big hunter. Yeah. He knew Jim. Yeah.

So that broke the eye. You're tapping into a social connection, even if it's a distant connection. Yeah. Well, this particular day, how coincidental it could have ever been, I do not know. But at the time, I've seen an ad. A guy in McConnellville was selling tools. So I called him up. Told him I was going to be down there looking for a place to hunt.

I said, I'll stop by here and look at your stuff. And he said, well, I can't say afternoon. I'm going to be busy. I said, oh, okay. I said, well, maybe I'll stop by some other time. He said, all right. And he said, where are you from? I said, I'm from Marysville.

You know, that's portrayed to be from. So I go in this bar and all the locals come through the back. Unbeknownst to me, I come through the front. Tactical error, you know, because everybody comes through the front, everybody in the bar automatically looks, you know. You know, it ain't from around here because he's coming in the front door. that was a bad move but anyhow so we're sitting there talking i'm at the end of the bar and i got a hat on it got a turkey on it camouflaged and g-g was a bartending and we get to talking

and uh he was very approachable now did you know this was your target yeah i knew this was my target so he was easy to connect to right he just had to go buy something from at the bar yeah i went to right i went to the bar to hang out that was my goal to go there to hang out well based on the information he He shared that day. I was pretty sure that we're on the right track. And I used to teach at Hawking College. And we're not very far from Hawking College. And I know some of them people from Morgan County went to Hawking College.

So here I am, you know, knowing that there's allowed to be people there might know me. Well, guess what? The shift changes. Guy comes in. And he said, oh, he said, I know you. He said, you're RT Stewart. And I said, yeah. And I'm going, oh, my land.

This is in front of your target guy. front of my target. This guy uses your real name. This is bad. Bad. First day. Bad. Now I'm going, no, but I said, I think you might be mixed up somebody else.

I said, was he handsome, had a lot of money? And he goes, no, he was handsome, but he didn't have a lot of much. Well, it ain't me. He just played it off. Well, did you recognize the guy? No. Okay. But he knew who I was.

And he said you were a turkey, you bowhunter for turkey. And I did. Yeah. And I used to teach archery. one of the things I taught. Apparently I had him in an archer class. But anyhow, the thing that saved me that day was when I told that fellow, I said, my name's Bob Thomas. And this guy sat beside me, says, you're for Barry'sville? And I went, yeah. I said, why talk to you on the phone today? You're going to look at some tools? I said, yeah. I said, you told me he's going to be busy. Here you are.

You drunk sitting in the bar with me. Oh, it just is perfect. Perfect. Wow. I mean, how else, I mean, you know, this guy basically was a lot of local confirmed I was it who the bartender thought it. Wow. Yeah, that's just talent. Yeah, how does stuff like that? How was that stuff that might work out like that? And from that day on, I've never questioned. R.T.'s deep dives undercover were full of wildly close calls with resolutions that will leave you scratching your head, pondering your philosophy on coincidence. On this first meeting with Target number two, his fake identity was confirmed by a complete stranger, which solicit.

solidified his almost blown cover. The meeting with the sky went so well that that very night they went groundhog hunting together. And before you know it, a few mornings later, Target number two invited RT or Bob Thomas, as he's known, to go turkey hunting. And it was long before the season opener in Ohio. Operation Redbud was on.

We go hunting that next morning, and it's raining, but we're driving around, road hunting. And as we were coming down this road, and we turned left, and it's probably about 15 or 20 turkeys on the left-hand side of the road, which means he's got to shoot. Well, the time we get to them, they ran on my side of the road. And he gives me a gun to shoot them, shoot them. I just pulled up.

I aimed at one, but off of it. But the overspray hit it at one in the back. Oh. So I just bailed out of a truck, went and got it and thrown in the back and took off. You know, that was the only time I ever killed anything illegal. Really? Yep. And I was in like Flint.

Oh, man, because he'd seen you kill one right out of the truck. Right. And had they stayed on that tried, he would have shot it, you know. But when they run across the road, you know, I'm supposed to be a poacher too. So, yeah. His gun, he handed it to me. What do you got to do? You got to do what you got to do.

Yeah. I shot it, killed it. That was the beginning of the relationship right there. This was the only illegal animal RT ever killed himself. And once you see how many illegal hunts RT was on, you'll see how hard. he worked not to kill. He said this was the beginning of their relationship.

If you remember from the first episode in the Secret Agent Man series, R.T. got extremely close with one of the outlaws. This was him. This is target number two. Many of the outlaws R.T. chased. He despised them because of their despicable actions and the wider

despicability of their lives and character. He lived with these folks and saw how they treated their families, their neighbors and strangers. But target number two would prove to be different. And later, RT would become so close to him that he wished he could warn him that he was an undercover agent. We also learned on episode one that this is fairly common amongst undercover agents,

that they begin to empathize with the people they're chasing. And hey, I want to take a minute to bring up something to you. On these episodes, I'm only able to cover a very small section of RT's career. And in this case, he's basically busting a band. of recreational turkey poachers. However, many of his cases involved the commercialization of wildlife involving the illegal sale of enormous amounts of fish caught on Lake Erie and the illegal selling of large quantities of wild game meat to restaurants in Cincinnati.

These are extremely serious crimes that required extreme measures to bust these criminals. Don't think for a second that these undercover stings were on. on rinky dink wildlife violators. You've got to check out the book about RT called Poachers Were My Prey by Chip Gross. Once RT and the guys knew their leads were legit and they had the makings of a case, RT rented a residence and took up living full time in the community.

When you're that deep into these communities, did you, were you surprised at how much illegal activity was going on or was it kind of isolated? and there were a lot of, like, law-abiding people around. It was just these, like, tight little groups. Tight little group. A lot of law-biting people that didn't really like it. And they may have been some of ones that called in complaints.

There was a lot of people there that did not agree with what. They didn't know that it was going on to a magnitude of that level, I'm sure. Yeah. But they knew stuff was going on. Even when we was with some of them guys, when somebody come around, don't say nothing. He don't like what we do. Mm-hmm. So they knew that the,

society wasn't all for them. Yeah. But yet they thought society was, most of the society was okay with what they were doing. That's a very interesting point to consider. What is the socially acceptable amount of law breaking in a nation, a region, in a group of friends, in a family? It's really easy for our doctrine to get challenged when we look at our lives without a filter of justification.

I think most of us would say our goal is to 100% abide by the law. But do you roll through stop signs on country roads? Do you drive 75 in a 70 mile per hour zone? Have you ever stepped a single toe on land you didn't have permission to be on? Every one of us believes there is some gray in the law. But there also has to be a clear black and white section. And these guys were in the deep black. Operation Redbud was originally designed to catch two men. And at this point, RT has only made contact with one of them, which is target number two.

But the web of criminal activity began to grow very quickly. This next story shows that growth and all the different ways that undercover work can get rooted out by the bad guys. We was in there one night in the bar, and we ended up meeting two individuals. They'd talked about shooting a deer the night before. And I never met them before, never seen them before. So they said they just come from the butcher shop picking it up. So we get to talking to them. And then we told them we know we been hunting with you know, yeah, yeah.

I said, where's this big deer at? They said, it's out in the back of the trucks. We went out there and confirmed it, you know. They had. They poached one the night before. Well, good, you know. A couple days later, we was in there. And he was bragging about how good he could shoot.

The one guy, the outlaw. And the other guy was bragging about him too. I said, well, if you're so good, let's go. I'll drive. I said, well, I ain't got a gun. I got one. So, he got one. of us a 220 swift, I think it was, with one bullet.

So, here we go. We find his deer and he loses the bullet. And we're in the process. I'm laughing at this guy. I mean, I'm dying laughing. He said, I'm going to knock you in the head when I sober up. You know, it was just, it's always on videotape. And he ends up killing a deer.

So now we're in good with these guys. And then it just mushroom there with other people being involved. It just mushroom. But now it really got interested. we're in the bar the next night. These two guys that we were out with the night before are complaining that somebody called in to the game ward and turned them in. And they're questioning me and my buddy.

Oh, thinking y'all turned them in. This is a serious confrontation. Oh, this is a serious. We know they were the only ones that was with them. Yeah. You know. But y'all hadn't done it. We had not done it.

It was news to us too. Yeah. Well, this again is how things worked. I had contacted my supervisor and give him the names of these individuals. Our supervisor, calling text the radio room, so we'll get backgrounds on them. Well, at that particular time, our radio room just had a divider between the Divide in the Wildlife Parks and Seas, that nature, and Department of Transportation. What do you call it?

Just a divitition in some way. Yeah, petition, right. These guys had a relative or a kinfolk that worked for the Department of Transportation. Hmm. They heard us on our radios running these guys' information. Wow. They heard you. No, no.

They heard our supervisors. Because you called in there. I called a supervisor, and supervisor does that. Gotcha. And they were running it over the radio, which was a private conversation because he's on the telephone, but this guy in the next booth could hear. And he knows these guys. And he knows these.

He calls them lorns. Wow. It just shows you how tight these communities are. Yes, absolutely. And they told us that. We got a friend that works for the Department of Transportation. They have them running our names today. And the only person we've been with is you.

I said, maybe they're talking about the night you shot the deer before. Did you do anything that night? Well, we thought about that too. I said, well, that's probably where it come from. They were convincing them, but wasn't us. Yeah. What was a scary, it was, it was, could have shot the whole thing right down to tube right there. A ground nesting bird can find uncountable ways to die.

And an undercover operation is kind of the same way. It's like a little baby quail navigating. the drought, disease, coyotes, and hawks. There's a thousand ways to die, even fescue invasion. As the timeline update, RT spends the spring of 1995 hunting with target number two while gathering an assortment of other outlaws into the operation. All of these events he's filming in the poach coach, his four-wheel drive undercover van, and the hidden cameras on his person.

Later they'd learn that Target number two was killing as many turkeys as Target number one. Well, RT was playing his cards conservatively. In the whole spring of 95, he never even met Target number one. He didn't want to push it. So RT goes through the next 11 months hanging out with Target number two until the late winter of 1996. When in February, Target number two, stay with me, finally introduces Bob Thomas, R-T to target number one. Finally we get to

say, come on, we'll go up to meet so he'll go up to his house. In my land, he's got turkey tails and stuff hanging everywhere. Everywhere. And then another thing, I always consider myself to be a good turkey hunter in a pretty decent caller.

But I had to act like I didn't know what I was doing that much, you know. I couldn't be better than them. Yeah. So obviously I put him on a pedestal right off the bat, you know, with all this stuff. stuff. So he said, what are he doing Tuesday?

That's nothing. He said, let's go hunting. So you came in and you just, you just kind of doted on him and just put the charm on. I've been hanging with him for a year. And he's like, I want to take you hunting. Yeah. Two days after I met him went hunting. Do you find a lot of these guys are pretty inviting to have you come hunt with him? I think so after you meet a certain criteria. Yeah.

After you, after you confirm or convince who you really are, it takes the fear away from. And I think back then they had no idea that the Division of Wildlife even had an undercover unit or had an undercover people. With RT being as instinctively good as he was and the newness of the task force in Ohio, these guys were like deer in the spotlight. Poaching, pun intended. You can only imagine after nearly a year of trying to meet Target number one, how exciting it must have been to meet this guy. and would two days be hunting with him? Let the good times and the VHS tapes roll. So they invited me to eventually go to West Virginia.

So we went out the next, back up, we went out the next morning and killed a turkey. He killed one. He killed one. Were you sitting right beside him? Yeah. Video it, audio recorded. I had a hidden video in my turkey vest.

It only had maybe an hour of battery time. I still got the vest. And I had a spatial compartment back there, and that's where I carried my recorder. And then I had a camera here. So if I took my pot, put my hand in my pocket, I could pretty much direct wherever that camera wanted to go, say. Really?

But then I also later on started carrying a little 8mm camera for after the event, not during the event. So every morning when we go hunting, we hunted just about every morning after I met him, I'd always have to go have me a bowel movement. Okay. And that was when I, because if I turned it on before I went hunting,

time you get out there to where everything's going on, your battery life and your machine. Sheen would go dead. I wouldn't get nothing. So I'd wait until we get to the woods and I'd always have to have my bowel movement. During that time span, I would turn on the, so that way I do, I had a good hour working. Yeah, so you'd need to kill a turkey within an hour. Yeah. And normally we did. Normally we did. Really? So how many turkeys did you film him killing? Or were you with him when he killed? Oh my. In that time span from February till we shut it down, maybe 40 to 60. No way.

Yeah. Really? You were there, 40 to 60 illegal kills with this target individual. Yeah. And it's all preseason. These guys are getting a big head start. And this is only like in two or three townships. So you take guys that's waiting for turkey season legitimately.

Yeah. And you go out there to where you think you got some turkeys and you go out there and you ain't got nothing. Because we doesn't wipe them out. Yeah. That's a lot of turkeys you take out two or three township. What techniques did this guy use to not get caught? A hole.

Like, did he hide guns in the woods? Did he have people drop him off? Or did he just drive out and park and go turkey hunting and come back and throw the bird in the truck and go home? All above, pretty much all above. Depending on our location, pretty much all above. But we never did hide a gun in the woods and pick it up, you know, or anything like yet. But we'd go out and call and then soon as we shot, you know, we'd grab it and take off, you know. So there was no elaborate ruse of how they were killing that many turkeys.

They just kind of. The way to drive a road and hit the owl, man, he could call the owl call. Do he owl with his mouth? Yeah. Do you owl with your mouth? No, I can't do that. Okay. But he could.

Man, it was, it was good. I was, first morning I heard it, I was like, holy, moly. Really? He sounded just like a barred owl. Oh, absolutely. I have a deep, deep theory that usually, if anybody can barred alcohol real good, they're probably going to be a really good turkey counter. Yep.

I want to clarify here. You can be a good turkey hunter without having a good natural voice owl hoot. But I've never met someone with a great hoot that wasn't a good turkey hunter. And this is important bear grease stuff from episode number two. I think we probably need to have a national bear grease virtual owl hooting contest. I might work on that. I was interested in learning more about this target number one. I pride as much out of RT as I could.

And later, RT would tell me that this guy was suspected in some other very serious non-related wildlife crimes, stuff that isn't worthy of mention on a classy program like this one. The point is, these guys were pretty rough. And I'd like to highlight the distinction between Target 1 and 2. RT spoke highly of the way Target No. 2 treated his family, his work ethic, in his general demeanor towards people. He was just misguided when it came to game loss. But here's RT talking about Target 1.

He was very good at what he did. Calling, he was excellent caller. And Turkey's almighty. But Al Houten, he was, I was very impressed. And following him through the woods, I was impressed. He wouldn't walk on a trail. You know how you walk down trails, you know? He wouldn't walk on a trail.

He was always off in the brush. That ain't stupid. animals walk down them trail sometimes. But if you're walking off in the bus, you know, not on them trail, you're going, you know, you won't be spotted or run into somebody. You can hide. Yeah.

There's a lot of factors that he was, yeah, had a lot of good wood sense, which impressed me. But he had no knowledge of how to, I used to do taxidermy work back in the day in the 70s. And I'd mount, I would skin his turkeys out to make rog. Mm-hmm. And he liked that, you know.

R.T. was the taxidermas, too. Man, that and the poach coach, he'd have been a good friend to have around. I wanted to ask RT about one of the most bizarre parts of these stories. On most cases, he openly carried a video camera and filmed their illegal hunts. And these criminals were okay with it. RT must have been a wizard. Oddly, Brent Reeves initially introduced himself to me

offering his services as a professional videographer. That is a true story. For years, Brent filmed me when I was doing stuff for Bear Honey magazine. And I've always been suspicious of it and those overalls. There's a lot of room in there for hidden cameras. Sometimes the biggest secrets are hidden in plain sight. You got these guys to trust you so much that you were like, hey, let's make a video. Yeah.

Because that was in the 90s was when people started getting affordable home video cameras. Correct. And people were starting to film hunts. Right. And everybody was wanting to film their hunt. And so here you are undercover wildlife agent. And you're like, hey, poach your man. How I got him to do that was I had them film me first.

You know what I'm saying? I mean, here, here, film the hunt today, but you do the filming. And they finally went, well, I want to be in front of the camera, you know, which is that what I wanted, you know. Yeah. So we've done this several times. But on this particular day, we always narrated our hunt. And we was talking about it. He said, we had to do Kiki Run today because we'd bust them up in February or early March.

And then we'd call them back. Yeah. We had these two turkeys. And he said, we got two. And he holds them. I think he was both Jake. He's holding them both up. He said, let's get out of here for the game work.

Come. Right on, you know, I'm thinking, buddy, you ain't got no idea. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps game calls in building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragm. 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 goblers 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 Ronella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. RT said in the first episode that chasing men for this period of his life replaced his love of chasing animals. It was stuff like this that had to be amazing,

major dopamine drop. He knew that in court this type of evidence would be unbeatable. All he needed now was a lot more of it, and oh, would he ever get it? Here's an interesting part of RT's ruse. What about his choice of weapon? We continued hunting, and I hunted with a 22 rifle. Okay. And my excuse for that was, I had a 1022 ruger with a scope on it. And they said, Why come you use that? And I said, because it don't crack very loud. And I said, I got a scoop one. And I'll shoot him in the head.

And it ain't like a shotgun. Oh, yeah, I never thought about that. But it also helped me miss easy, which I did. Yeah. On timer time or time. Because you hunt with these guys for too long. You don't miss many birds with a shotgun. No, no.

And if a bird comes in on your side, you know, shoot it. If it comes in on my side and I don't shoot at it, something wrong. Right. Because if the shotgun, your chance is hitting that bird. If you miss that bird, you know, more than once, it's like, why is this guy missing? Right, and he's a... Right, exactly. So I used the 22 for that purpose was if I missed, it wasn't that hard to explain.

And I did miss two or three times, but they never questioned me missing. It gave him a good excuse to miss. That's really pretty brilliant. And that's interesting because it sure seems like Brent Reeves misses a lot too. Anyway, The old 22 and the 22 mag used to be, I don't know if it is anymore, the poaching weapon of choice back in the day. So RT was even breaking the law by the type of gun he was using to kill illegal turkeys.

Man, this dude was a bad poacher. But let's carry on with Operation Redbud. I have a question for him. Do poachers get jealous? So you hunt with him for as many as 40 to 60 illegal hunts. over in one spring from February till turkey season i mean y'all upbate hunted every day then yeah and so you were just his buddy you were his hunting i wasn't even running around with you did you ditched ditch ditch that hurt his feelings i don't think so now i'd go back with him every once in a while

but i mean i'll hang out with him poachers get jealous that didn't because it was a mentor as well so it was kind of cool that you were hunting with the guy and y'all both have this friend and we all had yes and and i hung out with which i did not hang out with which i did not hanged out with I hung out with in a whole different type of relationship. Again, RT is emphasizing that he didn't just hang out much with Target 1, but his relationship with Target 2 was different and more personal. So now RT has, let's just say, around 50 documented illegal turkey kills with target number 1 and another 50 plus with target number 2.

So what's he going to do now? they've got to shut these guys down and I want to hear about the actual bust. You now have all this evidence. You got video, you've got your testimony against the guy, you got everything against this target subject. And what happens now? We have enough on everybody, including a whole lot more than what we had anticipated. We now have enough on this guy.

We need to shut her down and keep things from getting carried away. We cannot let it go another year as much stuff as they're killing. And we were able to justify to extending it to the following spring. We accomplished our goal. We have him. We have good testimony, good evidence. Time to take him down. I think they ended up taking him down like 1st of June right after Turkey City.

You know, May, Turkey season. They had a, oh, man, I think they had like 40 or 60 game wardens involved in it. Really? So tell me about the actual bust. What did they do? Well, we have a command center, and they call you in. The uniform personnel, I don't, I'm not involved in that. You're out of the picture.

I'm out of the picture. But I'm at the command center in case they have questions in regards to the search warrants and things of that nature. So they send out notification for all the uniform personnel to come to a certain location at a certain time, not knowing what they're getting into. And the day before, that's when we give them the breakdown of what we've been doing, what's going on. This is the first time you've broken cover to these, goes. Yes.

And you say, hey, I've been undercover with this guy for two years. We have this evidence. He's killing these turkeys. This is where he lives. This is who he is. And now, does the bust have to be correspond? Like, if you're going to bust one guy, you've got to bust another guy at the same time? Everything has to be coordinated.

So they had a team, you know, the search team, recording team. And each team had five to six guys on it. And at 7.30 a.m., it was coordinated. that was 7.30 a.m. That's when everybody knocked on the door at the same time. During those search warrants, they would get phone calls from other guys, and our eyes would answer the phone. And they'd say, hey, the game ordains is here.

Yeah, we know we're here. So our game ordained, our officers was in the house, and they would answer the phone. And so would these wildlife poachers, usually I guess they would give up without a fight. And it would just be kind of, they were busted. Uh, yeah, they, they were taken, they were taken by total surprise. I think we ended up arresting 26 that day.

26 people. That's a major operation. And at that particular time, it was the largest turkey poaching ring in the country. Really? At that time. I don't know what's happened since. But yeah, we even had Jay, the editor of National Wild Turkey Federation. He come up, went on to raid with them.

Did he really? Yeah. So they told him about the raid before. They didn't tell him about it until that day. But they invited him up to, we're going to have a major turkey hunting event. So they were wanting to make a national spectacle of this thing. Yeah. And you were the point man.

I was the point man. How many turkeys do you think were killed in that web of 26 men? People. I don't know if it's all men. All men. Turkeys and deer. I don't know. I'm just guessing.

I know I was involved in at least 100, just in two spring with two people. Were there other undercover? guys working different people no i was working them all okay but that's what i say it mushroom from the spring of uh when i was to the spring of the following year i had a whole season there a whole year to get hooked up with everybody else you just in the poaching wagon you were just yeah it was just yeah it was just it was very difficult to keep it all together wow sometimes well i couldn't do it today but back the time i could look at a shotgun you hand me shotgun look at it i could remember at serial number really I'd ride it in the mud someplace if I needed to.

Go back later the day or next day or whatever, you know, the night or whatever and get it. I've wrote it in different numbers on different spots in the dust on my van. Once I wrote it down, I don't have remember it anymore. I'd go to something else. Incredible. Talk about falling into a brood of vipers. I have no mercy for intentional wildlife violators taking excess game, and RT didn't either. However, remember that RT is a human, and he's deep undercut.

interacting with these guys, their families, and he's actually developed some respect for Target 2 outside of his poaching. I want to ask RT a question, and this shows you just how personal things had gotten. So what does it feel like to work on something that intimately getting involved in these people's lives and then seeing them all busted? I couldn't sleep the night before, knowing that in the morning. his, I know what his future is. It was difficult to just know that, you know, if I've been for a year and a half here, I've been hanging out with a buddy of mine, that he's going to jail in the morning.

And that was difficult. When was in West Virginia, him and I was hunting, beautiful morning, beautiful. Probably about 9.30 or 10 o'clock turkey had some was up. Some was just shining, so it was kind of slow. So we had a big gloat tree there. He was laying on her back, leaning up against that tree. and he'd laying on that side and I'd land on this side and he says,

you are the best things happen to me in years. You're one of my best friends I've ever had. And I'm going, and I knew it was getting close to coming to the end, you know, and I'm thinking, oh, man. So there again, I think about telling him. It was difficult on that particular case. And that was unusual, though, for your career to be that close to somebody.

Yeah, never was that close to nobody ever. You're one of the best friends, I've ever had, he said. That's tough, especially when you know it's a lie, or at least mostly a lie. R.T. said he and this guy could have been friends in real life, but it was real life for this other guy. I want to step in to one of the most interesting parts of this story, the trial, and I'd like to say this overall project was incredible work by RT and the whole team at the Ohio DNR. However, inside the judicial system. Catching people doing a crime and convicting them are often two different things. All these guys now have to go to court and they're innocent until proven guilty.

Oh man, this is going to be fun and our boy RT is the pivotal witness on the stand. What happened to these guys? So the main target... Yeah, we took him 26th guy down and they all pled not guilty, which is normal. But then they file a motion for discovery, which is part of the... system. Not sure if you know what court systems are, you know, your initial appearance if you plead guilty, not guilty, whatever, you plead not guilty, they get an attorney, attorney called a fouls a motion for discovery and that entitles them to know what we have. That's when we present all the videotapes and all of them, not in court, but just like,

to their attorney. But we wouldn't let them have the tapes. They were permitted to view the tapes with the prosecutor, not with the clients, not with anybody else. and they weren't allowed to have the tapes. So once they seen all these tapes and all this evidence, they're wanting to make deals. Okay. But one guy pleads not guilty and wants to go to trial. So here we go to trial.

By that time, they make me cut my hair. I looked like ZZ talk. They called me the missing link when I was working with them because I was not pretty nasty. And I never will forget it. When I walked in, I'd shaved up and had suit and tie on and everything. I walked in and walked right in Bast, his attorney and I heard him say is that him and he looked and I heard him say I don't know I was cleaned up that much he wasn't sure he didn't even recognize he didn't even recognize he didn't even recognize and this

somebody that you had hunted with he was one of them that I'm telling him about that we his friend worked for the department of transportation oh yeah I hung out he didn't even recognize in court and you had to testify so did you have to speak I was someone the court witness stand for eight hours oh wow so your covers and all 26 25 of them were standing in the court courtroom and chairs behind him. Oh, wow. So now everybody knows your whole two years being undercover with these guys is busted. Boy, that's an awkward feeling, I bet. We, there was on one side to, and we had throughout the, throughout the courtroom, there was probably a dozen officers, our officers in there. And all the bad guys were on the left side and all the good guys are

on the right, but we had officers scattered out because we didn't know what was, you know, we didn't know what would transpar there. You remember all those hunting videos R.T made? Well, it's time for their debut. Get the popcorn out because the judge and jury are about to watch them. You know, that's when the prosecutor, you know, had his opportunity to do an exam. And that's when he started presenting some of these videos to the jury. And this is the first time some of their clon, some of these guys had seen the video.

They'd heard about them, but they'd not seen them. I was watching the video whenever I was watching the video of some of this stuff that was taking place on the climb. I could see them guys talking to each other. Yeah. They're like, we're screwed. So he had a big name, and he was a big timber cutter and had a big name in that county. He thought that, and this is what the prosecutor thought or said to us, was that he thought that he had such a name that the people in that community do. You know, we had a, it was socially accepted of what they did, and they would not find him guilty.

Really? He didn't think the jury would find him guilty. No, that's why he went to court. Actually, he didn't think the jury. So this is like a wealthy guy. His family was. His family was. He was. They actually thought that they could discredit me and thought that the jury would find them not guilty, even though they did commit some of this stuff. Unfortunately, having a big name often goes a long way in jury trials in small communities. Or sometimes you don't even have to have a jury. Do you remember from episode three of Bear Greece

when James Lawrence was working as a gay morton and he arrested the county judge's son, spotlight and deer while drunk, and the guy got off Scott Free? James couldn't take the Silver Spoon politics, and it ended up being what pushed him away from the job. Anyway, James and I are still a little bit upset about that. Back to RT, though. Talk about a tense situation.

Can you imagine what is going through these guys' minds, C&RT, the wild man poacher who drove the poach coach coach now on the stand, shaving with a suit and tie on, showing these hunting videos? It's probably what a buck deer feels like when you're at full draw and grunt stop him and the string drops. All these guys were thinking, oh man, we're in trouble now. And this first court case would decide the outcome and the future of all these other guys, too.

This one was big. And the defendant's lawyers were going to try to discredit R.T. And his character. All I've got to say is good luck with that. And, hey, as a slight warning, there are some drug and alcohol references in this next section. So they had me on witness stand, and they asked him me all kind of quick. And they had a jury. They had a jury.

They said, I'll give me an example of some of the questions. was, he said, uh, did you ever buy my client alcohol? Yes, sir. Why did you buy him alcohol? I said, well, my turn to buy, you know, and I'm looking over at them guys, some of the guys on those things. Well, that makes sense. You know what I'm saying?

I mean, a bunch of guys in a bar. You know, he said, why is it you buy him alcohol? I said, well, my turn to buy. He said, uh, do you ever smoke dope with my client? Yes, sir. And see, what he was trying to do was catch me in a lie, you know, had I, had I, said no to either one of them or some of the other ones that he asked. He had 25 other people there that he probably called a causeless witness, proved that I lied. So their defense was to

discredit me. That was one of their defense. So you had to tell the truth. I didn't lie at all. So when you when you talked about him, they knew you were telling the truth because you told on yourself. Yes right. That's right. And he couldn't he couldn't call anybody or to say yeah, He did do that. We were there. Yeah. Let me ask you this. And if you don't want me to put this on there, I won't.

What about, now, you said you smoked dope with them. That's kind of comical because when we was putting up drywall. Yeah. And they smoked dope all the time. Marijuana. Marijuana. When we was putting up drywall, smoking it, you know, and they handed it to me and I just put it to my mouth. That's, it's comical because I put it in hell, did you?

I didn't. Are you serious? I'm serious. But you told the jury that you smoked dope with them. And I explained myself. I said, they passed it around when we was hanging the raw wall one day, and I put it to my mouth, and I act like an inhale and held my breath, and I handed it off to them. And you know what their defense attorney said?

What? Oh, he said, you're so like, you're like our president. You inhale or you smoked it, me didn't inhale. And I said, you got her. That was right during that time, too. It was. You learned something from old slick Willie. And I thought, that's the best defense I could have said was what he just said.

Oh, my goodness. Yeah. So, you know, things like that. So you really didn't. I really didn't. I was the only time I was ever confronted with having to use it. Yeah, yeah. Because I told them, you know, being of my age, which was at that time,

it would probably be about 37. I told them, I, I smoked about when I was younger, but I said, I just didn't, it just don't agree with me. Yeah. So they didn't question it. Now, if I'd have been 21, 22, you ain't got enough experience. But you were just so, you were just so believable. You know, what's interesting to me and goes back to the complexity.

the place that you had to live in. It sounds to me like you were really good at telling the truth, too. I was. You're good at telling a lie and good at telling the truth. The lie, I would usually try to keep my stories of whatever the story may be was as close to my upbringing and my experiences in my real world. Yeah. Just maybe change, tell the story.

You know, but I don't have to give details, you know, as who, who, when it was or when it was, you know, how it was. And it was very convincing. I mean, because I'm not lying. And somebody else asked me a question, you know, a month later about that same topic. You're going to say the same thing. Same thing. Yeah. Oh, man, where do we start from here?

For those of you who might be too young to remember on March 29, 1992, when the Arkansas governor Bill Clinton was running for president, he lit up the nation in a press conference when the reporter asked him, if he'd ever smoked marijuana. This is what he said. I experimented with marijuana a time or two, and I didn't like it and didn't inhale and never tried it again. The catchphrase, I didn't inhale, became a world-famous phrase,

making RT's response brilliant and relevant and true, and it worked magic on the jury. If this RT was honest about this bad stuff, we know we can trust what he says about these poachers. And as for the truth of Bill Clinton's statement, I don't know. And this is a true story. True story, boys. Did you know that my dad, Gary Believer Newcomb,

went to high school with Bill Clinton in Arkansas, and that my grandmother was good friends with Bill Clinton's mother? But I hope you don't get the wrong impression of the old believer, Gary Newcomb. He made a living off staying sober from drugs and alcohol in the midst of a wild time, even when he served in Vietnam, and the trend was to stay stoned. And he taught me that it's cool to stand against the trends, and I'm teaching my sons and daughters the same thing. And I'll also let you in in an odd Arkansas phenomena that we all know.

It's not spoken about much, but even if you disagree with the Clinton's politics, politically. Here, it's taboo to speak too negatively in public about Arkansas's number one son. So, I'm not. I think it'd actually be pretty interesting to have Bill Clinton on the Bear Greece podcast. You never know. But I want to now take another slight side step and ask RT something. I told you you'd hear Darth Vader and Bill Clinton. You didn't believe me, did you? in this situation, you on this court stand and all these guys that you've been, that you have video on, that you've been building relationship with years, you're busting. Did you ever feel fear for your life?

Yeah. Yeah. Not there. Not there because I knew that, you know, I was protected with my guys. But, boy, if looks could kill, I was dead. Yeah. You know, some of them were pretty rough. Some of them, uh, some of them, uh, give me an example.

in Ohio, the state of Ohio, as long as it's legal to record a conversation, as long as one person in the conversation knows it's being recorded. Right. So you can't leave a recorder like in a car and two guys talk. Right. But if you're recording someone... I know it's being recorded, therefore it's legal. Understood. Well, this particular, one particular night, we got back to the club. We'd been out shooting deer and we got back to the clubhouse. I forgot to turn the recorders off. And the door was open on the side van and the picture comes out there. side van. We didn't know at the time, and I was inside the building, and two of these guys were outside, and they were talking about killing this guy because he's the one that turned them in. And we got this. They're planning them. They're killing. They're going to kill the guy. They're going to kill him. They're standing outside in my van, and I got the video on them.

I didn't know I had it on today. I've forgotten all about it. So now we hear this conversation. We're going, oh, man, we can't use this in a court at all because they don't know us being recorded. But man, here we got a situation where we know about it. The planning of a murder. Planning of a murder. To commit murder. And we know about it, but it's not legal. So this was one time we get my boss out of bed like three or four o'clock in the morning.

This is something that the boss gets paid to big mucks to make this kind of decision. And it took the burden off us, you know, took the liability off us. So we call him up, explain to him. We got with him the next day and showed him the tape somewhere, somehow. He goes, well, I don't know what he did. I don't know what he did, but he said, let's let it ride. They were serious.

Oh, they were absolutely serious. And they were going to kill a guy for turning them in. Yeah. And here you are, an undercover agent who is deep inside there. They'd have killed you. Oh, absolutely. There's no question. Basically, basically the two guys that was talking about it.

Absolutely. That just goes to show you the guys he was dealing with were often hardened criminals beyond poaching. And I want to say something here. This really goes to show. you how much that we as a society value wildlife. Really, how much hunters value wildlife. RT is risking his life in the name of the North American model. It's just an interesting thought. But I'm dying to know what this jury decided. Let's get back to the courtroom

with the clean, shaven, suit wearing, civilized, truth-telling, non-inhaling, R.T. Stewart. So the judge presented to the jury their responsibility. They went in. We figured it'd probably be the next day, you know, before we heard anything. We was back in the prosecuting office back there. It was probably 7 o'clock, and they'd made a decision. We're going, holy smoke. The prosecutor said, that's good.

If they made a decision this early, that's good in our favor. We went back in and they found him guilty. The next day, all 25 of them, their attorney had contacted the prosecutor wanting to make deals. Wow. Had they had found him not guilty, we'd probably had to go 25 more trial. Wow. So I think that's why they were all there.

They wanted to see what was going on, and they was wanting to see if they found him not guilty because that meant the, if he found not guilty of them. Everybody. Everybody. But when he got. So what happened to that guy? Did he go to jail? Did he get fined big time?

Probably lost his hunting license. Without looking at the records, I do not recall how much jail he went. I'm pretty confident. and he did go to jail. Fine big time. I think he may have even lost a vehicle. The butcher lost all of his equipment. He had a regular butcher shop, lost these soles, everything,

because he was cutting up all these deer. Lost his hunting license for life. And I think we put liens on their houses. Until they paid the fines. Yeah. Yeah. So they really put the clamp on them. Yeah.

It shut them down. It shut them down. Mission accomplished. Operation Redbud was complete and resulted in 26 criminals convicted of over 275 wildlife violations. RT and his team's work on this case was brilliant. And I can't say enough of how important this type of work is in preserving the integrity of the North American model of wildlife conservation.

We've got one more episode with RT, and it's a doozy. We're going to dive in to all the wild situations in which RT, used his instincts to stay out of trouble. It's going to be good. Thank you so much for listening to Bear Grace. I can't thank you enough. But I will ask of you a favor. Share our podcast this week with your in-laws and outlaws,

your friends and foes, with neighbors and strangers. And if you're looking for some great deals on First Light Gear, saving up to 40% off, and lots of stuff in the Meteor store, we've got a giant Black Friday sale that starts on November 15th. Everything's early these days. And don't forget to pick up one of those sweet bear grease or believer hats. Hey, we're going to get back with the old standard render crew next week,

and I can't wait to catch up with him. And I can't wait to see what Brent Reeves has to say for himself now. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps game calls in building each of our own favorite turkey diaries. frames 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 help with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts.

Check out Prime Cuts at Phelps Game Calls.com. I think you'll be glad you did, and you'll find out that the Steve Ronella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. This is an I-Heart podcast, guaranteed human.