Bear Grease - Ep. 95: Bear Grease [Render] - Hall of Fame Inductions and Big Bear Breakdown

Episode Date: March 1, 2023

On this week's episode, Clay Newcomb is all business. After introducing the render crew - Misty Newcomb, Gary Newcomb, Brent Reaves, Josh "Landbridge" Spielmaker, and Ben Lagrone - Clay gives a quick recap on the Bear Grease Hall of Fame, emphasizing its seriousness and immutability, before introducing not one, but two new candidates! Following the vote, the discussion turns to Clay's Magnum Opus, the most recent episode on "the Big Bear of Arkansas." The gang dissects a few topics like the nuance in culture, language, and accents even within a given region, the importance of the written word, and how remarkably media can impact culture. And stick around, because you're not gonna wanna miss Josh's take on why angling is better than hunting... Connect with Clay and MeatEater Clay on Instagram MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube Shop Bear Grease MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

Built to perform, built to last. Check out. First Light's new field. Worldware Gear at firstlight.com. My name is Clay Newcomb, and this is a production of the Bear Grease podcast called the Bear Grease Render, where we render down, dive deeper, and look behind the scenes of the actual Bear Grease podcast. Presented by FHF Gear, American Made, Purpose Built, Hunting and Fishing Gear that's designed to be as rugged as the places we explore. Welcome to the Bear Grease Rendon.

That sounds familiar. We have a pretty normal crew of the render here today. We're going to talk about the magnum opus of my life. Wow. This podcast is the best podcast. Mr. Newcomb's Opus. That's ever been created, none accepted. Wow.

Wow. That's my opinion. That's a bold statement. It is a bold statement. That's my opinion. Let me introduce who is here today. I have my lovely wife, Missy Newcomb, to my left. Hello.

Great to have you here. Great to be here. To Misty's left. Brent Reeves. He always did it again. Brent Reeves. How are you, Brent? I'm good, brother.

Okay. Glad to be here. I want to hear what you think about this podcast. All right. I'll listen to it. To Brent's left. Ben Legrone. Thanks for having me.

Long time, buddy. You've been here a couple times on the Barry Shrender. A couple times, one time. If you've been here one time, you've been here a couple times. That's right. That's right. And Ben, Ben feels particularly familiar today because he has a 1980s basketball Pro Shop hat on.

Yeah. Those are hard to come by these days out here. Yeah. Or maybe not hard to come by with. They're popular. That's why I wore the meat eater shirt to make sure there wasn't too much of a. A clash of companies. You got his meaty's shirt on.

To Ben's left, Josh Lambridge spillmaker, who's been, is starting to get recognized once every other week. Yes, it's my microcelebrity grows by the every other week, biweekly. Tell us where someone was like. I got recognized by a great young. man by the name of Jacob down at the local tool rental business doing some remodel work on my house had to go rent some tools and he was like are you land-rude hey well he asked me my name and i was like josh billmaker and he goes are you familiar with the bear grease podcast i said way too familiar he said what's your middle name and you were like land bridge that's right saving america one land bridge

that's great to your left the man who's been missing for a couple episodes the patter familius Gary Believer Newcomb. Good to be here. Yeah, man. Good to have you. Yeah. Thanks to Gary. I've been listening to your stuff.

That last render group was really good. Did you like them? Yeah, I really did, man. I'm out at the squirrel cream camp. Did you? Yeah. Good to hear. Good to hear.

Hey, I'm like all business today because today is a monumental, this is a monumental bearerger's render because we are, well, let me back up one step. Yeah, you go in really fast. There is such a thing called the Bear Grease Hall of Fame, which is a very real thing. This isn't a joke. Like one day I believe there will be a mountain somewhere in the Ozarks with the faces of these people carved into it.

Bearerese Hall of Fame, very real. Men who qualify, women who qualify, people who qualify to be in the Bear of Greece Hall of Fame have some very evident and some very intangible qualities about their life that make them shoe-ins. And sometimes these qualities are hard to articulate, but when you see it, you know it, okay? There's a lot of foreshadowing.

The current Bear Greas Hall of Famers are, number one, my dear friend James Lawrence from Mina, Arkansas. Yes. Long time, you know, I've used the word mentor. That's probably not the best descriptor of him to me. But we love James Lawrence. I love James. Mountain Man.

Backwoods man. Incredible. Washetal Mountain Deer Hunter. Humble. Honest. Hard working. A lot of good things about James. Yeah.

Number two, Warner Glenn. Warner Glenn, 87-year-old cowboy from Arizona. We got a film coming out about him that is going to be on the media or YouTube channel. I'm excited about a ticket. And there's a film premiere. Yeah. That on March the 3rd in Bentonville. You want to win?

Oh yeah, I bought my ticket to day. Hey, give, is it too soon? I mean, by this time, I'm certain, I hope that all the tickets are sold. We only had 200 tickets. Okay. The venue we got could just hold 200 people. In Northwest Arkansas. We put it up.

200 tickets are sold. So if you don't have a ticket, I'm very sorry. But maybe we'll do this again. But Warner Glenn, when you meet a cowboy like him, you would think you were going to meet a proud man. Warner Glenn is one of the most humble guys I've ever met Hardest working Just no one ever told him he was cool He doesn't to this date he doesn't know that he's cool

Okay When he sees a film about himself he's going to be like I'll be darn you know that kind of guy Okay James Lawrence Warner Glenn Roy Clark My dear friend Roy Clark in East Tennessee Plot Man Multigenerational Plot Man and Bear Hunter

Just a relic of a man a relic of Appalachia. He grew up in a family where alcoholism was a pretty big deal. Roy Clark made a decision when he was a young man that he wasn't going to touch the stuff. And he has been a bear hunter's bear hunter ever since. I don't think he's ever been out of a pair of overalls. I have never seen the man wear a pair of pants. Incredible world-class bear dogs.

That's Roy Clark. Number four, Daniel Boone. God rest his soul. Daniel Boone was one of America's first heroes, and he forged much of what, especially people who live close to the land and hunting, what we know of the American identity, so much of it came from Boone. The love of wilderness. People used to be afraid of wilderness. In the dark ages, people wanted to get as far away from wilderness as they could. Wilderness is where you went to die. Daniel Boone went into the wilderness, the American frontier, and came back with articulation that the world had never

heard before about the beauty of the wilderness and the beauty of solitude and living one with nature. He was 50-something years old before he ever became famous. So all the stuff he did that made him famous, he did before he was ever famous. So he wasn't trying to show out. Incredible, incredible man, Daniel Boone. Lived to be 84 years old and just had scrapes with death that would blow your mind. Okay, number five,

Frederick Gerstocker. Frederick Gerstocker was a German that came to Arkansas in 1837. He stayed here for about six years. He spent quite a bit of time within 20 miles of where we sit today in the Ozarks. He was a young, educated,

German that just kind of wanted to get away from his background in Europe. And they had money. And he came to Arkansas, and he was the first guy that came to the backwoods of Arkansas and came out with this glowing review of the people and the way they lived, which was massively contrasted with, like, who we talked about in this podcast, about schoolcraft. Most guys came down here and went and reported back to the, world that this was a backwater just rough, dirty place full of scoundrels. Well, Gerstocker came here and he said that these were some of the finest people on

planet Earth. And he stayed with families and he was a big hunter. And one of the first podcasts I did called The Death of a Bear Hunter, that story, we know that story because Gerstocker. And he was on a bear hunt with dogs where his acquaintance, Erskine was killed about 25 miles from where we sit in the Ozarks. Incredible man, incredible writer, an incredible romantic. That's a phrase that people would use to describe how someone views reality in a way.

And I like romantics because you could make a decision tomorrow that your life is terrible and that the world is no good. Or you could wake up and be like, you know what, it's a pretty good place. Frederick Gerrschacher, number five. Number six, the current last member of the Bear Greas Hall of Fame is none other than George McJunkin. He was born a slave in the 1850s in Texas, moved out to New Mexico after the emancipation, became a landowner, became a big ranch hand, and was a very intelligent man, an educated man, learned to read on a chuck wagon cattle drive.

He was a naturalist. He collected bones. Amateur archaeologists. He made mechanisms to measure the wind speed and direction. And one day, he was out riding his horse, and he came across an unusual bone pile sticking out of the ground in this arroyo. And he goes, those are not normal bones. He takes a couple of the bones home with him.

It was in 1908. He spends the next over 10 years trying to get people to come out and look at the bones. He'd go back into town and talk with people and say, hey, y'all, somebody needs to come here and look at this. They never came. He dies in 1923. So it's 15 years he tried to get people to come out there. He dies in literally three months after he dies. an amateur archaeologist goes to this place where they're like,

George said there was a pile of bones over here. They see the bones and they go, oh my, after they send them somewhere, and then they go, these are the bones of a bison antiquist, which is an ice-h bison that is no longer here. And some museum says, well, we got to excavate those bones. They start excavating the bones, and they find stone points inside of the bones. indicating that these animals weren't, this wasn't just a pile of dead animals,

these animals were killed by humans. And at the time, the greatest minds on planet Earth, with all the data, all the information, would have been no different today than the great minds of our time telling us something that was a matter of fact.

No different. I mean, it would be like them saying, absolutely this is the truth. They believe that humans have been in the North American continent for about 3,000 years. Well, they knew that these bison bones were over 10,000 years old.

And that by finding these stone points, it meant that they had, humans had been here for over 10,000 years. And it totally re-scripted how long humans had been in North America. And that became the fulsome point. They found fulsome points there. And so George McJunkin, African-American cowboy, found this site and died before he ever knew that it was there. We salute you. Yeah. So those are the six current Bear Grease Hall of Famers.

Today, this day, we are going to induct Josh. We're going to induct. Because he's famous. Brent's wearing the overall. Yeah, yeah. Okay, y'all are picking up on the wrong intention. Brent's like, Roy Clark wore overalls every day. I'm trying to get in.

None of them had great, or notable mustache. So maybe that's... Tell me, Gerstocker didn't have a notable mustache. I mean, come on. German heritage. There's some photos of him later in his life. So we're gonna... I'm gonna put on the table the proposition to induct

not one, but two men. To the Berger's Hall of Fame. So the way this works, we're going to give Ben voting rights today. Because he's... You know, the rules change as my whims change. The suit our needs. So Ben is not necessarily a regular, but I know Ben's character and judgment for long enough that we're going to give him an active vote. In something that cannot be repealed, no historical revisionist will ever be able to come back and tell me that Warner Glenn did something wrong.

I don't care. All right. So irrevocable. Once and always in. Okay. The man that I would like to. to put on the table to be inducted to the Bear Grease Hall of Fame.

I have no idea where you're going. There will be a vote. We will go one by one and you will vote, yay or nay. Okay? The man I would like to induct into the Bear Greece Hall of Fame, it's overdue. Hulk Collier.

Hulk Collier was born in the 1850s, died in the 18th, and died in the 1930s. And his story is too long to tell. He fought for the Confederate Army. He became a, nationally renowned bear hunter with dogs in Mississippi. He guided President Teddy Roosevelt on multiple bear hunts.

Hulk Collier was a deputy sheriff. Hulk Collier shot and killed. Two white men, shot one white man and was never acquitted. It was acquitted of all charges. He was a brilliant man, and he was from Greenville, Mississippi. He's buried in Greenville, Mississippi. to this day. The series that we did on Holt Collier

was incredible. It's learning his story. And what's so wild is that his story is hardly known by America. There's one book written by Minor Francis Buchanan, a lawyer in Jackson, Mississippi, who wrote a book on Holt Collier.

That's it. And it's hard to get. He now has books, he made, after the podcast, he reprinted the book. Awesome. because I'm still getting DMs. Yep.

He reprinted the book. And so you can now go to Minor Francis Buchanan's website and order the book, Hulk Collier. Well, Brent second the motion. So, Misty, what say you? Yay. Brent. Yay.

Yeah. Yeah. Josh. Yay. Gary? Yay. Yay. Yeah, yay.

Clay, yay. All right, Hulk Collier is now officially in the Bear Grays Hall of Fame. Gary voted twice. I don't blame you. Gary voted twice. Yeah. He's a yay, but I'm all in. Good.

Put me down for five. He's a worthy candidate, right? Yeah. Are we inducting someone else too? Yeah. So this is a big day. Big day for Holt Caller. Okay.

The second person that I would like to induct into the Bear Grease Hall of Fame, irrevocable by historical revisionists 100 years from now. If you're 100 years from now listening to this on some archival mechanism that you can listen to stuff like this, You can't change this. I would like to induct Tecumseh. The Shawnee. The Shawnee leader.

Incredible. Really, when I do these series, I just get into these guys. I just feel like I know them. And we did a big three-part series. Just finished it on Tecumse. His name means a panther crossing the sky. He was a visionary.

He was, he led the largest combined Native American forces against the United States of any Indian leader in American history. Basically, he was the biggest threat to American expansion westward by, by Native Americans. And he was, he was considered by some to be one of the greatest, potentially, and is so speculative, because we don't have no recordings of them. but by evidence by the way that he could move people one of the greatest orators in American history potential great warrior great hunter walked with a limp his whole life because when he was 21 he fell off his horse when he was hunting a bison incredible man incredible resoluteness died when he was 45 years old

prophesied his own death shawnee leader to cumsa misty what say you yes as long as we call him by his property name. To cometheth. That's right. Okay. Good answer. Good answer.

Brent, what say you? Yay. Yay. But I'll have to pull a tooth or two to get to comptith consecutive out. Yeah. Yeah. Yes, absolutely. 100%.

Ben. Definitely. Ben's in. Josh. I'm in. Absolutely. Ian. You're in.

I'm in. All right. Let it be heard. We've now inducted two new people into the Berger's Hall of Fame. There's now eight. We'll have to get the engravers over here What do you, Obrunner say? Monument.

So let it be written. So let it be done. That's right. This is big. This is big. Excellent. Well, now we're going to talk about my magnum opus. I'm told that means that it's like the work of your life.

Yeah. Okay. The Big Bear of Arkansas. This short story, I read it years ago, and I've most likely learned about it from Brooks Blevins book that I read years and years ago. His book, Arkansas, Arkansas, which we're going to talk about a lot. The book is titled, Arkansas spelled the normal way with a, with a hashmark, Arkansas, spelled with a W.

That's the title of the book, Arkansas, Arkansas, Arkansas. And he talked about this short story, Big Bear of Arkansas, the Southwest humorists. And what's so interesting to me is that everything's so complicated. Like stuff just, you kind of have these simple stories of the way things happen. But when you really look into it, it's really complicated. And this guy, this fictional character, Jim Doggett,

kind of branded Arkansas. 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 guess. 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. Brent, what did you think of the podcast? What stood out to you? Was there a part that was fun?

Was it surprising? What stood out to you? Well, I've never heard that story before. I was totally ignorant of that amongst a volume of things. I'm totally ignorant. But it was kind of ironic that he set the tone and the idea that people that weren't from here had of Arkansas. and it was a guy from New York that did it. Exactly.

Pretty crazy. Yeah. That was totally removed. Might as well have been on the other side of the planet, you know, as far as his relationship to what was going on. Right. At that time here, he was, as he was coming down the river on that boat, he was seeing it for the first time too. You know? So I thought that was kind of ironic.

Yeah. But he did such a good job. Yeah, absolutely. Even in the way he told the bear hunt, it was clear, I don't think people told Thomas Bangthorpe about, about bear hunting, because he knew some of the intricate details about the way bears bay a dog and about the way a big bear will walk a pack of bay and dogs. It's something that you would, you got the, or I got the idea he'd seen it before. Well, if I described that to someone who had no context for bear hunting, and then I said,

okay, go write a story, they wouldn't include that because it's really, it's kind of unusual to see a big old bear surrounded by a bunch of dogs, and the bear acts like they're not even there. Nonchalant. Yeah, it's just like, what's happening here? And I think he had to have seen that. And then all kind of stuff. I mean, even the way...

If that was a coincidence, it was like a bolt of lightning. And I don't think it was. Yeah. I think there's some... One of the things, you know, when you see somebody else or when you see another culture, you pick out things about that culture that they don't even realize they do themselves.

Yeah. And so I think that's a piece of this is that he, the description, the man telling the story sounded like my uncles. I mean, it was like, oh, yeah, that's... I know the type of person. that's telling the story. I can see it,

I can hear it, I can feel it. And I think it has to be, you never know what would stand out to someone who had never done something before. And so I agree

he probably did see a bear hunt before because that would stick out, but almost like as an unfamiliar person with it, not like a routine bear hunter, but as someone who saw it once and was kind of surprised by all that he saw. It was clear that he was,

he was enamored with folk speech is what it was said about him. after literature experts were able to analyze his whole, the breadth of his life as a writer. So he always was like going in somewhere and talking like they talked. And so to be able to do that, you've got to be an astute observer of culture. And these guys that were writers, especially back then,

I sometimes think the modern media is so easy for us to get that it dulls our senses about people and perceptions. I don't know, everything's spoon-fed to us so much. These guys, the only entertainment, the only media they had was either going to like a live performance of something, which would have been rare, and the written word.

And so a writer, like Ronella said, back in those days, would have had the average writer back in those days would have had a more powerful command of the English language and of their craft than probably the writer today. Right. But it's clear that, that he was an observer of typically rural culture.

Yeah. You know, if you listen to a, if you're traveling and you're in Alabama and you watch a newscast, the local newscast, they talk just exactly like the people do in California and Montana and Arkansas. There's, and a lot of them, I'm sure, are from different places. But like even the people. The newscasters that are from Arkansas that are on our, local statewide television.

They all talk the same. You talk different than me. We talk different than Josh and Ben. So what I'm saying is back then, he paid a lot more attention to. I guess everything that's now is fed or designed to be appealing to everybody's ear. To the masses.

And back then it was, hey, this is exactly what this folks, what these people sound like or this particular person in this particular spot. Yeah. So that was cool. Well, it's interesting. You say that about newscasters. They try to find people that have, what's the name for an accent that is just so...

Neutral? Like a neutral American accent. Yeah. St. Louis. Yeah. Mid-Missary. Mid-Western or something. Yeah, Midwestern.

I think Christy has one. I think Christy has one, too. Josh's wife, Christy. She has no accent. Really? You think so? Yeah. Do you not think so?

She's from the Midwest. Who? My wife's from the Midwest. How does one come across not having an accent? Well, they do that. Politicians typically do better on a national scale if they have a generic accent. Is that true? I believe it to be true.

I don't know if it is. Do you have anything to back up? Well, I just... I think about... To be honest, of all people that I thought would come up on the Bear Grie's podcast, I heard them say that Barack Obama had a very... generic accent. Like he wasn't southern, he wasn't northern, he wasn't this, he wasn't that.

And they say that he's one of the greatest orators of American presidents a long time. Yeah. And I think that's true. When I think about also other, in terms of like preferences, you know, I agree 100% with a statement. I think Barack Obama was an incredible order. I think if you look at our very own Bill Clinton, You know, he had an accent.

Yeah. And people liked them and they found him charming. And you look at his... But it's because people like people from the South. If you look at his campaign, that is not... That is true. Not where I was going with that. But not where I was going.

I didn't say that wasn't true. I was saying that's not where I was going with that. But I mean, I think he actually appealed to people because he had that folksy capacity. Yeah. So I'm kind of disagreeing with what you said. I think there's a difference, though, between Southern and Folksey. Because there was a charm in the way that Bill Clinton would speak that drew people in. However, you don't always get that just with the run-of-the-mill southern accent.

You know what's wild? Like Brent. There is no run-of-the-mill southern accent. When I go 15 miles from right here to the farm that I've deer-huntered on for 20 years and talk to that landowner who is as connected to this place as it's possible to be, He has a very unique Ozark accent. When I interviewed Ory Province, 35 miles south of here, very isolated in the Ozark Mountains. He had a very unique accent different than this guy over here, also in the Ozark Mountains.

I mean, when I first left my home, the home of Gary and Judy Newcomb and went off into the world, Misty says that when I would come home, we realized how big of an accent like Dad had. Oh, it's funny. And my accent would increase. Yeah. But when I was away, it was kind of less. I mean, like totally unconscious of what was happening.

We have a home video of Clay and his dad talking, and it's almost comical to listen to because in the conversation, you hear Clay talking more Newcomb Southern. Yeah. You know, what's interesting about that to me is that, My dad taught at what we called a country school back when I lived in Hot Springs, you know, a pretty good-sized place for Arkansas. And he was 10 or 15 miles out of town at what we called a country school.

Cutter morning star? No, it was Fount Lake. Now it's a big school, you know, for Arkansas. And I went there third, fourth, and fifth grade, and I picked up this accent. My oldest sister went there, I guess she was about in the seventh, grade when we moved there and she stayed there all through high school she's got the most country accents you've ever heard and my other sister stayed at hot springs and she has what you'd kind of think of as a neutral accent and and just being being in that country school for three years

I developed this country accent which I think it's not as bad as it used to be and bad might not be the right word it's probably not as distinct as it was 20 years ago well and then and then you go down into Brent's part of the world, which Brent lives three hours from me down in the flatlands, and you used to live even further south than that. And the accent down there is very different. So point being, there's not really a southern accent that everyone could get behind. Perhaps there's certain words. But anyway, Thorpe was able to pick up on something very unique.

But truth be known, to me, I would like to. think everybody in Arkansas in 1841 was like Jim Doggett but the reason that this was a fantastic story is because Jim Doggett was exceptional he was a character he was he was an exaggerated caricature of probably a I'm not going to say a small group of people because there were a lot of a lot of backwoods and then hunters but there were also a lot of people in Little Rock that were that were trying to get away from that we're trying to get away from that we're trying to get away from that image that like Bob Cochran said they wouldn't have liked this story they would have been like that's not who we are and and there's still people like that today that are that are

trying to move away from yeah this this image but no that's a good that's a good one um i want to go around the room and just get your just like what stood out to you whatever it was ben what stood out to you well i think what i was pondering a lot during the episode and and i look forward to to the next episode because I think you're probably going to hit on this a lot is just how fast that formed an identity around Arkansasans. Yeah. And I was looking at it from a real broad, like human picture of like, man, why are we all so quick to try to put a certain people in a box to understand it?

I think there is a desire to try to understand and identify the similarity so we can relate to people, identify the differences so we can better understand them. And sometimes as humans, we try to compare ourselves to make ourselves feel better. You know, but I thought that was a really interesting part of that story and how that formed the identity of Americans. And it made me think about just in my own travels. I've been fortunate to travel the world some, but I really like what the professor said about whenever you shine a light, it actually makes the space bigger. Wouldn't that a good analogy? What is his name again?

His name is Bob Cochran. Okay, Bob Cochran. Jessica, my wife, had like five classes with him. Oh, is that right? He is like her hero. I was listening to the kitchen during lunch today. She was like, Bob Cochran. In fact, like.

He's a cool old guy, man. He's like 75 or something. In the honor school, like all these. Like the believer. All these students, like, loved him. And they had this kind of this joke of like, does Bob Cochran know your name? Well, he knows my name. You know, it's like the competition.

Yeah, yeah. Oh, that's awesome. Just a brilliant man. Well, I really like that. You know, I'm talking about when the light shines on something you're... Did that analogy, I had to think about that a little bit before it made sense. Did it make sense to everybody? Oh, yeah, yeah, right away.

Yeah, yeah. Well, and I'm not that smart. And I thought about just my experiences in traveling. So when I was in college, I taught English and Kai-Eye. I wrote Egypt and got to live in a Muslim culture that over over in America. Did you wear that Bass Pro hat? I did not. And, you know, in America, by that point, that would have been like, I don't know, like

2010, maybe 2008, something like that. People had a very preconceived notion of Muslim life. And I really enjoyed getting to know that culture for real. but the more I got to know the culture in Cairo I quickly found out it was very different than the Egyptian culture in Alexandria only a couple hours of north very different than Jordan or Syria

but the more ignorant you are you kind of just lump everybody into a certain group yeah and so the more ignorant not in a derogatory way but literally if you don't know yeah you would think all these people are the same. Kind of like we talked about on the Ticomps episode, that in general, a lot of Americans would think Native Americans were just one group of people.

But they were actually very vastly different in hundreds of tribes. And so it's caused me to do that less, like less generalized and be genuinely interested when I meet somebody from somewhere, not stereotyping. And I used to get so annoyed when I would meet people from big cities and found out it was from Arkansas. You hear the same questions. They all wear your shoes.

Did you marry your cousin? I mean, this is that classic stuff. That's not that weird. You know, I carried that inferiority complex. Like you kind of hinted on by the next episode. But I've changed to where now when I get those responses, I almost not pity them. I was kind of like, oh, wow, like you really don't know that the ignorant.

You've never been to Arkansas. Do you not love Walmart? Yeah. But it's like, wow, your worldview is real small because what I've learned is this everywhere you go, there's something interesting about every place and every person. True. And so, but you could just see back then when media is so limited, how that one story would catch fire and they would just brand your way of viewing that people. And these are things we just didn't have time to go into on this. but that story

just okay let's go back if there was a company if there was a YouTube channel that did really good in a certain space like in the hunting space what would happen that YouTube channel

would be copied and other guys would start doing the same stuff I mean there's a thousand examples from meat eater to the hunting public to I mean just like a thousand like everybody kind of

well when this story came out and it did so good It was published in New York City and went all across the country and everybody talked about. Everybody loved it. And then so what happened is that a bunch of boys in Arkansas started writing about bear hunting. And so it kind of fed on its own, on its own gravy, you know. Yeah, Mark Twain. Well, yeah, and then later Mark Twain would pick up on that type of stuff.

but what I what me and Dr. Blevins talked about which wasn't on the cut which is what's so great about the bear grease render we can talk about this is that as much as I would love to say Arkansas was the bear hunting capital of the world during that time it was I mean it it was as good as there was anywhere but it certainly wasn't the best they were bear hunting everywhere it was the creation state Yeah, that's right. But, you know, in Mississippi, they were killing bears like crazy. In Missouri, they were killing bears. In Kentucky, they were killing bears. So us becoming the bear state was really tied to this media branding it. And that is really interesting. And I said on the podcast that this is a pretty darn near new-to-earth experience of media.

And in Bear Greece, in the Bear Greece world, we think about the world and the massive big picture of history. Humans have been around for a long, long time. And media with printing and audio and video is an extremely new thing to mankind. Not the idea of marketing. I'm sure the Folsom Hunters would have gone to their neighbors and been like, dude, you should try out this. Have you seen this point, Jack? Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, they were marketing.

I mean, they were, they were, buy one today, get one. But, but, but, and, and not that marketing media are different things. They're kind of lumped together, but point being, it's pretty new. And, in, in media like we have today, is a completely new human experiment. Really is. Yeah. It's never been anything like this before. Yeah.

Or you're being so, you're being, you're being, you're being told so many stories and they all have an agenda. I mean, just like the Big Bear of Arkansas, I don't think Thomas Bangthorps was, Thomas Bangstorpe was wanting, to brand Arkansas as a bear state. That was the last thing in his mind. But it did it. People took it for that, you know. And then there's another real famous guy that was actually more famous than Thomas Bangsthorpe

named Pete Wetstone. He wrote under the name Pete Wetstone and wrote hundreds of articles. He was from Batesville, Arkansas, and he talked about Bear hunting all the time. It was during that same time period. A little bit later, a little bit later, like maybe just even a few years later.

Oh, wow. But I thought it was interesting that Thorpe, this was the pinnacle of his writing career. And the second best was, did y'all understand what Cochran was saying? He said that the Big Bear of Arkansas was the pinnacle of Thorpe's career. And it happened early on in his career. And he said the second best, most received, well-received short story that he wrote was called a piano in Arkansas.

Oh, yeah. And he said it was trivial compared to the big bear. It took a minute to tell. Yeah, it wasn't a good story, though? I thought it was a good story, though. I thought it was funny. I thought it was funny. But it was a story like we would tell today. It didn't have all that.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It was like the chandelier story that Jerry Clower told. I mean, it was that quick. I think one of the things that I really appreciated about the story is my, when I was in high school, I had a teacher named Mrs. Shoemaker. and she was a very strict English teacher, but there was something about her

that made you love English, made you love vocabulary. She just, she built that into us. So I've always had a great appreciation for someone who could paint a picture in your mind. And I love the way,

it's not just the story, it's everything surrounding it. Yeah. And so when you picture him on the riverboat and you picture him tall, you picture him in boots, you know what I mean, when he tells,

when he says the line that I liked was, I didn't know whether the dog was made for hunting. Bear was created for the dog. Yeah, I loved that. I love those phrases that just make you, it's a really novel idea, you know. And I appreciate that about the story. Hey, let me say something.

This podcast, we're recording this podcast. You're listening to you right now on the day that this podcast came out. I've already been somebody's already sent me a post that someone put on Instagram and they have their squirrel dogs sitting in the driver's seat of their truck and they take a picture of him

and he's all astute looking out the window at squirrels and it says I don't know if he was made to hunt squirrels and squirrels were made for him to hunt somebody already they stole it to the punch, man that's going to be about the next Instagram post

go ahead and post it anyway that's good so yeah I think that's, I mean, the story of the piano in Arkansas, it's a cute story, but it doesn't create the, it's almost like as you hear him tell the story, it's like the pictures are unfolding and like someone's painting it as you're walking through it. And I really, I have a great appreciation for that. Yeah. I think that was, to me, one of the, I really enjoyed the part where you and Steve Ronella talked about just language and how, how they had such a strong command of the language. And I think it really is something that is missing in modern discourse. And I, you know, Brent and Clay sometimes get on these kicks where they write each other via text in old English format.

So they'll write these like lengthy messages. And it's been a fortnight since I am privileged sometimes to be CC'd on these messages and I get to enjoy them. But you know, they were, there is something to be said about. just like as an educator, and Ben can probably back me up on this. Like, when you are writing, it is doing something different inside your brain than when you're speaking or then when you're receiving knowledge. When like Josh talks to me, different activities are happening in my brain than when I write something out.

And those, when you're creating things, that's how you become a good speaker. That's how you become a good writer is the brain activity that's happening when you frequently write. And these guys were writing all the time. I mean, it's becoming a lost art in our culture. And if you even look at the difference inside of education and curriculum today versus 50 years ago versus 100 years ago, it was much more focused and centered on writing than what we're doing now. And even as an educator, you think about the amount of, and I'm not opposed to this.

Like I'm not 100% opposed to this, but a lot of the emphasis for us as educators is to be entertainers. Like education should be engaging and entertaining. And it's interesting all of those little tiny choices that we've made over the last whether it's, you know,

you look at the internet. Of course, that has a big impact. You have smartphones. That has a big impact. But also just even the basic decisions we're making about how we instruct and how we teach people, it's taking this wonderful,

beautiful thing that we have in written language that translates to beautiful oratorical feats and it's we're losing that as a culture we're losing that. 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 being. on us. Somebody somewhere know something. I'm

Jordan Sillers. Season 2 of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, I Heart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Mr. I don't know if anybody in here is familiar with it, but Abraham there's a famous letter that he wrote

to a mother of I think it's the letter to Mrs. Bixby. Yes. Have you read that? I have. I couldn't quote it for you. Lincoln wrote it. Lincoln wrote it. It's one of the called him by first name now. Yeah, we do. It's one of the most eloquent letters I've ever written.

It's a short paragraph he wrote to this lady who had five sons that were killed during the Civil War. I do remember that. It is un-you-you-know-what? I think it's actually in a movie. I can read it right here. It's so short. Yeah, that's it.

Rinella brought up Lincoln. Yeah, that's what made me think about this letter. Read it. All right. I've got like the original version here. here and I'm trying to see, I've been, dear madam, I have been shown in the files of the war department a statement of the adjutant general of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine,

which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tending to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom. Yours very sincerely and respectfully, A. Lincoln. He wrote that. He didn't have a speechwriter. Yeah. That's, that is. Yeah. It's pretty emotional. Without backspacing and, and Kramer's correct. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Dad, what did you think?

Well, me and y'all said it all, but, you know, I really, really, really, really, really, really like this. It was just, I don't mean, it was, it just created an awe of that culture where orators ran the world. I mean, they were the ones. They were the powerful ones. You know, you think hunters, you think. four years, whatever. The way he spoke, what was that called? The southern something, he's spoken dialect.

Yeah, yeah, folk type deal. Folk speech. You know, his little comments that he would make about the bear, how it moved. And I loved him like a brother. Yeah. And I think we've lost that. You know, one of them mentioned Mark Twent. Wayne and Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer.

I mean, how many kids grew up thinking they were real people? Right. I mean, they created this illusion that, you know, these are real people, you know. And today, we don't need that. We don't have time for that. I want to turn on the news, get it quick, you know. So I was intrigued by that change. our culture where, you know, writing the written word was powerful.

Now, you know. The sound bite. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, anyway, and I made little notes on all these little comments.

What's in your notes? Well, you know, I mean, because it helps me to remind me of some of the stuff. Okay. So much. Actually, Juju did this as we were coming up here. I said, make some notes here. the bar was an unhuntable bear bar who died when his time had come in other words i could i could envision that so much you know we hear about a guy killing or

a girl killing a big old buck and you know they don't know what they're doing they just look up and shoot it shoot it off the front porch and we go that that animal should not have died that way right right and and you know his analogy was that that the bear knows that the bear his time had come. And there was a spiritual aspect to it that when you're with your buddies, don't talk about how you're going to hunt this bear because he might hear you. He might hear you. Man, I love that so much.

I'm total speculation, but that's what literary critics do is that he insin, I mean, basically Jim Doggett said the bear might have heard me talking about what I was going to do. And that is a legitimate thing inside of, for sure the Kau-U-Kon people, but probably if you really dissected, it would be in other Native American ideas. But the Koukan, you know, we have this research, and they absolutely believed.

Like you don't talk about a bear. You speak in code. The example they give in the book, Nelson gave in the book, as he said, Josh, if I went out today and found some bear tracks in the snow and tomorrow I wanted to go and hunt them, I wouldn't say, hey, Josh, let's go hunt that bear. I would say, Josh, tomorrow I'm going to go around the mountain and probably carry a gun with me.

You're interested in going? Definitely. And you would know. Yeah. A wink. You would know what I was talking about. I mean, this wasn't a joke to them. Yeah.

They lived in a very spiritual world. And I just thought that was so interesting. And then more is going to come out in later episodes. but Doggett's doctrine about the creation bear in the creation state, very, very Native American feel. And what you're going to learn, and this is foreshadowing, but I'm shining a light on the shadow so that you see what I'm talking about. There's a deep one.

Okay. And they lived with the qualpals. And they actually intermarried and kind of had this weird thing going on where they just all kind of lived together and got along and traded for a pretty short period of time. But there was a deep indoctrination of some of those backwoods folks and with Native Americans. So it's like Doggett for sure had some Native American doctrine running in his blood. Dad, tell me what else is on your list. eyes flashed with so much fire, it would have scorched a cat. Talking about that bear.

Bear shot, bear shot in forehead and walked down the tree as gently as a lady from a carriage. Yeah. Can you just see it? Just kind of, just kind of sashaying down. And at that point, I think, he slapped a dog. out of sight. It disappeared. I mean, it disappeared.

Hey, let me tell you something. Going back to Thorpe, knowing bear hunting. Right. I'll tell you, there's one group of people in the world who are experts on bears climbing and coming out of trees. Do you know who it is? Dog hunters. Dog hunters. Yeah.

And the first time that I saw a big black bear up a tree, I was in Appalachia and West Virginia. And there was a bear that was tree. I bet he was 60 foot up in some big old gum, you know, big, big tree, setting up there on a limb. And we pulled the dogs off the, we weren't hunting. It wasn't hunting season. It was training season. We pulled the dogs back off the tree.

And the bear could have come down this pole, this is just this big, limbless tree. But he walked across a limb about as big as my leg, probably seven or eight feet. walked across it like a squirrel, jumped onto a little sycamore about as big as a telephone pole, and came down at least 50 foot

as fast as a gray squirrel could have. And I'm not kidding you. I've never seen... I mean, a bear hunter is going to be like, well, yeah. But Thorpe saying, and it was just just one smooth motion, and it was so weird because he walked out on this limb, just walked across this limb,

jumped on a tree and slid down it like a fireman. Hey, right there is a perfect example of our culture telling that story. If Thorpe had told that story, I mean, you would really be glued to your seat and it probably would have taken five minutes, you know. Now, if who would have told it? Thorpe. Yeah, I mean, if he had told what's the story you just told. Right, right.

It would have been so much more colorful. It would have embellished. Yeah, yeah. So you're saying he made a good metaphor that. painted it for us kind of in a more simple way. Is that what you're saying? Yeah, it's like this stuff I'm reading. Yeah.

This bear moaned in a thicket like a thousand sinners, man. I mean, this guy had some spirituality to him. And a little bit later, he said Samson. Hey, man, if this bear, if Samson had. Yeah, biblical reference. He would have warped Samson. Yeah. Hey, there was so much to talk about.

But when he said, he said that this bear groaned like a thousand sinners. This was written in 1841. This was a time of massive revival in frontier America. This was something that was connecting with people because there were these kind of charismatic revivals and people would go into these sessions of repentance and be loud and showy. And so him saying that connected to people.

Oh, but he knew that a bare death moaned. How many Americans could you walk up to today? and say, is there anything peculiar that happens when you shoot a bear and it dies? I mean, I mean, I don't know. I don't know how many out of a thousand. A thousand random Americans, I would say 10. Maybe. Maybe.

I didn't know that. Okay. Yeah, they have a wild death moan. One of the few animals, I tried to look up all the animals that do it. The only one I know for sure that does is the Cape Buffalo in Africa. That's the only one that's that. I did not know. that.

But dad and I, the first bear that we ever killed, death moaned. And we didn't know that they did that. And, uh, but the way he described it was so, was so cool. What else is on your list? Well, hey, hey, one thing you triggered my thought was I was really, um, uh, caught up in the fact that people from the East wanted these stories. I mean, this was like, please deliver something to, uh, us.

Yeah. We want to know what you are doing, you know, out west. Out west was Mississippi, Arkansas, you know. And, you know, we're the same way today. I want to get on the news and I want to find out stuff, you know. Yeah. And they were hungry for these type of stories. The bear fell through a fence like a tree falling through a cobweb.

Yeah. I mean, you know, we just don't talk that way. Every little thought he had, he created it. It's an own image in your mind. You know, you're going like, wow, that's a heck of a bear. Well, when he came over the fence, he came over like black smoke. Yeah. And I mean, it's like all of a sudden your mind just goes like black smoke.

He went from being graceful to barbaric when he lived there. So I tell the story. Josh tells the story. We go right. We tell the story. You know, we put us off in a room. We tell the story. We tell it in five minutes, hunting stories over.

This guy, I mean, he's created 10, 15, 20, 30 different stories. My mind just sees this bear running through the woods being followed by a pack of house. Only reason he's running, in my mind, it's entertainment. Once he gets tired, he goes, okay, boys, gigs up. I'm going to slap you out of sight or whatever the way. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. You know, if you've ever seen a bear navigate an obstacle, it's shocking.

I don't think he would describe a deer jumping a fence like a tree falling through a cobblower. He would have described it different. But a bear, they are extremely articulate with all their feet, and they can just move through stuff. I mean, they are some of the most mobile animals and able to move their body. the description of it coming over the fence like a black mist. It's just kind of like a ball of jello just like, just kind of like, how did he do that? Look up on YouTube, a bear climbing a chain link fence.

And it just, you're just like, how did he do that? So Thorpe, Thorpe had been around bears, I think. I think so too. He almost had to. How many times? To know that a bear would just stop after a little bit, just goes, man, I'm tired of play. in this game.

Yep. And only big bears do that. Yeah. The little bears, the little bears, typically today, anyway, will run and run and run and run and run and not even tree. The big ones often stay on the ground or just barely get up in trees. The mid-sized bears are usually, I mean, a small, you can tree a small bear, but rarely would you tree a big giant, like five or six-hundred-pound bear.

That bear is almost always going to stay on the ground. Yeah. But interesting, interesting. I thought it was interesting in the conversation you could. guys had about, you know, the one that got away or the, or the, you know, after killing the, the trophy, there's a sense of loss, which made me think that that's why angling is superior to hunting. So just want everybody to know that.

Because you can catch him release. I mean, I can catch a trophy fish on my fire rod, put him back, and dream about catching him again. Well, now, if you want to go there, we can do it. I film Clay Catch and Release Bears all the time. Yeah, shoot right under them. Now, with bear hunting with hounds, though, it's the catch and release sport, man. You only kill the ones you want. It's like you with fishing.

There you go. So it really is. You can tree them and let them go. It's tough to tree a deer, though. Well, yeah. You can, I guess. You let them walk. You can let them walk.

Something I never did. I see. I got a whole house full of dope. I had a guy, I want to play y'all something. I had a guy right in. Do you remember I asked people? I said, what do you think he meant by creation bear, creation state, and finishing up state? What do you think, Dad?

I think he was putting a spiritual connotation. It was such a magnificent animal. It was beyond belief, especially to the Easterners. They would not believe what he was seeing in the wild. So it had to be here from the beginning. Samson, he would have got whipped by this bear. And the state was the same way. It was such a magnificent place.

That's the way I thought. I'm going to see, what do y'all think? It's a tough one. I kind of thought, I kind of thought a similar thing. Like this bear was spoken from the word of God, you know what I mean, into the earth. And he had just been a fixture. You know what I mean? He was such a magnificent creature that he'd been a fixture.

on the earth, you know. Ben? I honestly didn't know because, and I used to study a lot of history in that time period, people use words in ways that we don't know. Right. And so, just because we think that's what creation means, I honestly have literally no idea what he might have said. And I've never read it.

But didn't it use like that? Didn't it do exactly what you feel like the author wanted it to do? Probably so, yeah. I mean, there's no doubt, like, you don't hear that and think, oh, this was a inconsequential bear. Yeah, exactly. You hear it and you're like, oh, this is a special area. Yeah, it was very biblical to me listening or my interpretation of what he was saying.

Okay, a guy from Pennsylvania sent me this. He must have listened to the podcast at 4 a.m. this morning. Clay, I hope this voice memo reaches you well. I just listened to your podcast on the bear, the creation bear, and I just wanted to share my thoughts on what I think the creation bear means and what the creation state means. I think it's the platonic ideal of a bear. I think he saw that bear as not only sort of the perfect representation physically,

but also culturally and spiritually of a bear. And I think the use of creation is interesting, because same with Arkansas. I believe he sees it as a, you know, these are two things that represent God's hand, and they aren't muddied up. by worldly impurities. So.

That guy's name is Martin Highley from Pennsylvania. But what he was saying was that it was the representative bear undefiled by anything else. Undefiled by the world. And that fits with him saying Arkansas is the creation state.

The perfect state, undefiled by the world. Like Eden, I guess. Yeah, like it. Like an Eden. Well, see, that's the beauty of the way he wrote is that you create your own answer. Yeah. You know, you see a bear walking down a tree like a lady climbing it off a carriage,

slaps a bear into wherever. I mean, you know, so you can take that. I think your answer would be correct. We don't know what that means. But to me, that's what it meant. It was, you know, it was bigger than life. It was spiritual. And it created an image of Doggett that we would.

wouldn't have had before because it's like, wow, this guy knows something we don't know. He, he, he, and that was Bob Cochran, we weren't able to include it, but he talked about how this story from a literary perspective is really unique and how dog it is set up. And it's because this city slicker from New Orleans is so anonymous and vanilla. Like there's no personality to this guy from New Orleans. It's like everybody is like little and dog it is huge. And dog it becomes the envy and people see him and they're enamored with him and they're there. It breaks the stereotypes like Ronella said of this country bumpkin, rural backwoodsman.

And golly, this guy's deeper than all of us. This guy has this robust life. He talks about his dog Bowie Knife being the most modest dog, but only because he can't talk. And he's the best bear dog in the world. I mean, just he was able to describe life. And like Ronella said, he lived it with this robust lust for life. Yeah. But that create that, the creation state creation bar, so interesting.

Well, guys, yeah, dad. I was just, I think you might have alluded to this, but it was Arkansas created for the world or the world for Arkansas? That was fine. That was fine. You know, you and Rinella really, I, my hat's off to. of you guys on this deal. I think Ronella really hit it hard, you know, right to the heart. Steve's so sharp, man.

He, you know, he's never read that before. He had no knowledge of Thomas Bangs Thorpe. I gave him that essay. Well, I sent it to him. He printed it off. We were hunting together in Mexico. Here's the backstory. We're hunting together in Mexico.

I knew I was going to be with him and have my podcast staff. And I said, I want to hear what you have to say about this essay. All I told him. I told him it was influential. and, you know, and gave it to him. He prints it off, takes it to Mexico, and, like, we're like, okay, we've got to do this, like, this afternoon. And he's like, okay, well, let me read that essay. And so he reads it.

And then we go right into it. And he has, like, some pretty in-depth analysis of it, you know. So, yeah, he's sharp with literature stuff. Yeah, he was cool to have on there. I was disappointed only in one aspect. What was that, Brett? When they said Jim's last name, Wooden Reeves. That's what I was waiting for.

We wanted him all to be our last name. For real. Man, it's interesting to me. So as Newcombs, we're lucky that we had somebody did a pretty extensive genealogy search of the Newcombs, like our last name. And there's a book. I think it's Thomas Joseph Newcomb is written on the front of it. One guy from Scotland that came over, and it's his genealogy.

And it goes all, and Gary Newcomb's name is in the book. You know, and that's how we know our history. History gets lost so easy. I mean, it would be nice to say, like, oh, what. It's amazing how easily it gets lost even in modern day. Yeah. And it's neat for me to think that the first Newcoms came here right about the time this was written and all this was going down. And it was in the early 1830s before Arkansas was the state and, you know, been here ever since.

I love being connected to the place. The next podcast, though, if you've ever thought you wouldn't be interested in something, you'd be wrong on this one. And if you think, I don't care anything about Arkansas, you're wrong. You do and just don't know it because nobody ever told you. The next episode is going to be on Arkansas identity. And it's fascinating. And I think there's a lot of things to be learned just about human nature, but also America inside of this story. Which, I said it on this one.

Arkansas, in the 20th century of the 1900s, was proclaimed by scholars, like, documentably the most ridiculed state in America. That's right where we live. So closing thoughts, anybody? I would just say it gave me a new appreciation for literature and how artists capture the complexity of an experience. I was thinking about experiences I've had standing next to somebody and have a totally different perspective.

And I remember one time working on an airplane and my buddy's business where they refurbish airplanes and he needed some quick help and called me and another guy in and we'd never had any experience there. Worked there for like 10 hours left out. I was like, I never want to do that again in my life. The guy next to me was like,

that was amazing on the car ride home. All he could talk about is how much you want to work on airplanes, how much he loved that work. And it just shows that there's people with a gift that can slow things down and capture the complexity of something. And it makes me want to be more aware of the experience.

I have because there's beauty in it that I may not have seen before. I liked that about the writer. That's good. You know, we have a choice of how we let the modern world impact us. I mean, just because we talk about all these things coming at us and media pounding us every direction, we get to choose how we live and how we develop ourselves. Like Misty was talking about how people are,

they developed the skill to be able to interpret the world in such a way and communicate that to other people through language. And that was a skill that was built and it's less now. Well, I mean, you got a decision of what you do tonight after the sun goes down, whether you're going to go, you know, and not there's anything wrong with watching television, but, you know, you got a decision of whether you're going to do that or whether you're going to read a book or whether you're going to talk to your family. Talk to your family.

Like, actually talk with your family. family and build culture inside of your family. And these are things I think about. And I don't claim to have it dialed in, but it's things I think about. I'm like, man, how can I not just talk about some of the stuff that we admire in the past, but like we don't have to be pushed around by modernity. Yep. So, dad, good to see you.

Hey, good to be here, man. My dad lives two hours for me, so I don't see dad unless he's coming up here. I go down there. Been a little while. Yeah. Yeah, we kicked them out of the house and they ran out. They just hit the yard. And they never came back.

And they never came back. It's like my brother. My brother told my nephews, boys, when you graduate school, you ain't got to go to college. You ain't even got to go to work. You just got to go. Hey, this podcast. comes out on a couple of days before the Black Bear Bonanza in Bentonville. It's Benton, Arkansas, big all-day event.

I'll be there. Brent will be there. Ben will be there. Gary Believer and Newcomb will be there. Misty will be there. Misty had to leave. It's going to be a big deal. We're doing a live Bear Grish Render podcast there on site.

Big event, lots of vendors and stuff going on, Al-Hooten contest. And you can buy tickets at the door. I mean, it'd be good if you bought them before you get there, but you don't have to. You can just show up. And so that's all day Bentonville, Arkansas. You have to go to the website to get all the details. Which website?

Just the website. They'll figure it out. Coil Bar. Just a website. Arkansas BHA. Yeah, they'll figure it out. All right, guys. Thank you.

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

the evidence is scarce, and the truth gets buried under brush and silence. Indications were he should be right there, but he wasn't. This season, we're going deeper, from cold case files to whispered suspicions, from remote mountains to frozen, backwards. Each story begins in the wilderness and ends in darkness. Because out here, there are no

witnesses, no cameras, just fragments and the people left behind trying to piece them back together. He's not an honest person. He's incapable of being honest. Somebody somewhere knows something. I'm Jordan Sillers. Season two of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, Iheart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed human.