May 17, 2024 • 25 mins
It won't be long before family vacations and interactions with nature increase. Schools are out for most, but for some the real education in the outdoor classroom begins. The temptation of getting that perfect profile picture with a seemingly docile bison can turn a vacation into tragedy. It can happen quicker than you can say, "Where'd Frank go, and why is that buffalo standing by his shoes?" It's "Messing With Critters" this week on MeatEater's This Country Life podcast.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Welcome to This Country Life. I'm your host, Brent Reeves
from coon hunting to trot lining and just general country living.
I want you to stay a while as I share
my stories and the country skills that will help you
beat the system. This Country Life is proudly presented as
part of Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you the best
(00:25):
outdoor podcast the airways have to offer. All right, friends,
pull you up a chair or drop that tailgate. I
think I got a thing or two and teach you
messing with critters. We are a curious species. That curiosity
fuels the desire to find out what's on the other
(00:48):
side of the mountain, the river, the ocean, and ultimately
the universe. Unfortunately, it also makes us wonder, what do
you reckon that sleeping tiger will do? If I've pokem
with this, I said we were curious and not smart.
It's all about messing with critics this week. But first,
I'm going to tell you a story. Hurricane Katrina was
(01:18):
a Category five hurricane. The cost of lives and loss
is still being felt today, and I was in charge
of a group of highly motivated individuals I had brought
from the Union County Sheriff's Office in Elderde, Arkansas on
a mutual aid mission supporting Louisiana Sheriff's Association. We were
(01:38):
allocated to the Jefferson pair of Sheriff's Office initially, then
after the initial chaos immediately following the storms, we moved
across Lake Pont Train with the Saint Tammany pair of
Sheriff's Office. Slight El, Louisiana would be our home for
a few weeks to come. It was a desperate time
for a lot of folks and us included. The conditions
(02:01):
were poor, stress and danger were high, and ships were
long and unended. But when it would eventually end, we
all had homes and families to go home to. A
lot of the local officers who we were serving alongside
they weren't that fortunate, but our mission was clear. We
were front site, focused on the stolen order and a
(02:23):
chaotic mess of lawlessness and devastation. A week after we'd
relocated to Slide Done, we started doing marine patrols and
we were teamed up with some Alabama National guardsmen and
I was assigned two of Alabama's finest specialist lord and
private clerk. We were running Big Bay boats that were
(02:45):
part of the Sheriff's Office fleet, and our main mission
was to patrol along the banks the Lake pont train,
keeping an eye on the property and houses that were
left and forcing the curfew to try and curb the looting.
By this time, almost everything could set it down pretty well,
and our calls for action were few and far between.
Down on the water now. The one thing that hadn't
(03:07):
slowed down was the duty. Twelve hour shifts from sundown
to sun up. They can be long and long time
for a bunch of folks that have been in the
thick of it for weeks at a time. The calls
went from stacked up one behind the other to almost
zero around the lake homes and the condos and the marinas.
(03:27):
It was boring. It was necessary, but it was boring,
like we need to figure out something to do to
pass the time while we patrolled amongst the floating logs
lumbered alligators. Alligators, that's something we can do. Let's make
a contest to see which patrol boat can find and
(03:49):
photograph the biggest gator. That was fun for about two nights.
Then it got to be an argument over who saw
the biggest one because the majority of the time we
were comparing photographs of glowing eyes and gaiterorheads and how
you going to sell that? Aregu well? I had a solution.
We all met just before dark at the marina to
(04:10):
link up with our guardsmen from Alabama. Now there I
informed everyone that what we were going to do to
settle once and for all whose gator was biggest. We
had a twelve hour shift and if the call volume
stayed low while we patrolled our sectors, we were also
going to catch the biggest gator. We could let a
(04:31):
tape measure beside it and see who won. Now we'd
all watch Steve Irwin catch him on TV. How hard
could it be and what could possibly go wrong? Everyone
thought it was a great idea. We were doing team
building with our counterparts from the Yellowhammer State, blowing off
some steam, taking a break after some long days and
(04:52):
weeks of seeing the worst of mother nature. See in
twelve hours, chumps was the last thing I said before
we all divided up. An hour or so into our
patrol assignment, we started seeing the sized gators we were
after big ones. Lord and Clark made a catch pole
out of some floating lumber and repurposed wire. One end
(05:15):
was attached to the end of the pole and formed
a loop that we could slip over the gators snout,
pull it tight, keeping his mouth closed, and then haul
his behind in the boat for a measurement or picture.
After that, we'd cut him loose to go back to
doing what gators do. But the big ones, they don't
get big being dumb, and they don't get big by
(05:37):
letting folks lay their mits on them. Time after time
we'd slip up on a qualified candidate, only to have
him slip beneath the surface of the water and disappear
the instant the wire touched his snout. Now we'd located
some prime target, some we guessed to be in excess
of nine or ten feet long. Now do you guess
the length of an alligator With all you can see
(05:58):
is his head, you you estimate the number of inches
from between his eyes down to his nostrils. Now that
estimate in the inches will be pretty close to his
total length and feet. Ten inches from eyes to nose
equals ten foot of alligator in mississippiansas the American alligator.
(06:21):
It was one fiddle to temp after another. However, and
had we been stalking them on the ground. I feel
confident we could have stood a better chance at putting
one and a half Nelson long enough to tape him
out and take his picture floating up to him with
the limited reach of our Catchupole just wasn't doing the trick. Now,
in retrospect, I'm more confident that this story would be
(06:44):
a whole lot different than the one I'm telling now
had we had the opportunity to wrestle one into submission
on dry ground. I'm forever thankful that opportunity never arose.
But a few hours in the radio crackled on the
scramble channel that we used to say things that didn't
need to go out under the scanners, Not that any
(07:06):
one was around to listen, but regardless, we needed to
at least present a modicum of professionalism to our counterparts.
Here's what was transmitted. Bravo one is the Sierra one
Alpha four certified. I responded Roger that Sierra one, All right,
let me explain. Bravo one was my call sign. Sierra
(07:30):
one was the call sign of my teammate at point
man who was running the boat we were competing against.
His name was Greg Stevenson. Alpha stood for alligator, and
four meant that he was four foot long and certified
minute they'd stretched him out and measured him and got
a picture. Now all we had to beat was four feet.
(07:50):
Are you kidding me? We were actively hunting gaters over
eight feet long. I'd caught a baby that was about
two feet long that I had riding in the boat
with me for half a shift the night before. This
was gonna be easy, all right, boys, you heard him.
Next gator we see that's at least six foot long.
We're snatching him up out of the water and putting
(08:11):
an end of this contest. Pressure was off. We didn't
have to mess with the big ones that were slipping
away as fast as we slipped it up on him.
We're hunting yearlings. Now we might as well be robbing
him out of the baby bed. The next one we
see is getting kidnapped, just for practice. If he ain't
over six and a half feet, he's going back in
the water till we find one that is three of
(08:33):
us scan the surface of the water is close and
calculated for a decent sized gator. As we had been
looking for looters. It wasn't long when one of my
soldiers said, there's one about six foot. We can warm
up on him if you want. I told him to
get the stuff ready, and I eased the boat over
to where he was floating in the middle of a
cove amongst smaller gators and the rest of the stuff
(08:55):
that used to be part of the neighborhood. The stuff
that they had to get ready was only a call
and a yardstick that we'd found a roll of black
electrical tape that we were going to use to tape
his mouth shut once we got him in the boat. Now,
everything in our world was timed. Our shifts were calculated
in hours, our fuel consumption on how long we sat
(09:16):
at idle, and how fast we drove from one patrol
area to the next, how fast we safely clear the building.
During training or in reality, it was a habit of
subconsciously estimating the time it took for us to clear
an obstacle or accomplish an objective twenty seconds, twenty seconds
from the time we pulled the wire tight around his
(09:38):
jaws until we were ready to start taking pictures. That's
what I estimated it was going to be. Clockwork. Clark
dropped the loop on that gater's mouth like he had
been doing it all his life, and one big pull,
he and Lord snatched that gator in the boat, just
like we played. I couldn't believe how easy it is.
(09:58):
It's gonna be. The clock had started the plan. Once
we had him in the boat, Lord would lay on
top of him, grab both sides of his mouth, holding
and closed. Clark would hold steady pressure on the wire
noose and catch pole while I ran a few rounds
of tape around his jaws to keep them shut. The
amount of force required to hold of a gator's mouth
(10:19):
shut is minimal compared to the mouth they exert when
closing it, and that's around three hundred pounds per square inch.
They'll leave a mark on him. Over our fool proof plan,
he wouldn't have a chance. I threw the throttle in
the neutral and was halfway around the console and going
to my knees with the table. When the soldiers hauled
(10:39):
that dinosaur into the boat and the wire came loose
from his mouth, time seemed to slow to a crawl.
I was moving in slow motion. Clark and Lord were
moving in slow motion. Everything was like it was covered
in molasses, except the gator. He was making laps inside
(11:01):
our boat so fast that when you jumped over him
as he went under before you feed it at the deck,
he was coming around again. And this seemed to go
on forever. Now. I don't know how many laps I
Joker made inside that boat, but I do know that
I was about to give out from jumping over him
every time he cruised through the straightaway before going low
(11:21):
into turn three. But where are we going to go?
There was only one of him in the boat with us,
and a whole bunch of him out of the boat
in the water where I momentarily thought about going. Then,
when all hope was lost, Specialist Lord dove on him
like a whole boat catching the last train out of town.
Wham hold, we got him. Clark held his mouth shutting.
(11:44):
I ran a half a roll of tape around his jaws.
We had him caught. Finally we measured him, and then
the Great Gator Catching Contest of two thousand and five
we'd won. We tried half the night to catch one
over eight feet. The one we caught was six foot either.
(12:06):
Then the grands came of alligators. He was just a puff.
But had he been six foot and one inch I
firmly believe he had killed us all and that's just
how that happened, messing with critters. Every year, the headlines
(12:29):
from Yellowstone National Park make their way around the outdoor
channels of social media. There the internet, wildlife experts comment
on how dumb folks from other countries, the inebriated residents
of this one and the seemingly ignorant get a lesson
in mess around and find out. It's become quite a
spectator sport. Watching the unsuspected get a lesson in the
(12:52):
transference of kinetic energy science can be fun, especially when
the lab experiment as someone walking up to take a
selfie with a bison, one smiling click later and they're
texting for a ride to the er from where they
landed in the next zip code. I've watched so many
compilation videos of foreigners and residents alike getting theled one
(13:15):
to two from a seemingly tamed bison that even though
I know what's coming, I can't turn away until I
see with my own eyes the frontier. Justice has been dispensed.
You've been found guilty of buffoonery in the northern portion
of the Montana West, and your sentence is a permanent
hitch in your get along and the embarrassing video clip
(13:37):
that will haunt you for the rest of your days.
Court adjourned. Forty seven thousand people each year seek medical
treatment for being bitten or attacked by wild animals, with
an average of eight each year being fatal. Now, if
you count domesticated animals, that number claims to one million
(13:58):
attacks or bites. Cows of all things send twenty folks
a year. To the last roundup, a bunch of nerds
down at the CDC got together and they found that
from two thousand and eight to twenty fifteen, there was
one thousand, six hundred and ten animal related fatalities in
the US, with the majority of the deaths being the
(14:20):
result of encounters with non venomous animals like fifty seven percent.
One of the researchers is quoted as saying, importedly, most
deaths are not actually due to wild animals like mountain lions, wolves, bears, sharks,
et cetera, but are a result of deadly encounters with
(14:40):
farm animals, allergic reactions from b wash for hornet stings,
and dog attacks. So while it is important that people
recreating in the wilderness know what to do when they
encounter a potentially dangerous animal. The actual risk of death
is quite low. The good doctor forgot about the idiot
(15:02):
factor and the additional encounters brought to you by what
made Milwaukee famous. Now, I'm no scientist or researcher or
even a gambler, but I am an observer, and I
made a living and stayed alive by watching folks engaging
if they were friends or foe. By watching those the pesture,
the huge harry prairie cows. I'm not coming away with
(15:24):
much in the friend or fol category. I'm also not
getting the impression that a lot of country folks are
walking up to the Native American symbol of abundance and
prosperity for a close and personal TikTok video and winding
up meeting their yearly insurance deductible in one visit at
the local trauma center. Now, on the other hand, it
(15:46):
was the country board by which all my qualifying standards
and qualifications for being one that thought catching a copperhead
was a good idea. Remember him. I won't say his name,
but his initials are me. He now, being from the
country and being familiar with livestock and wild creatures doesn't
vaccinate you from poor decision making. On the contrary, sometimes
(16:10):
it gives you a false sense of natural ability, and
not being scared of something is not a qualifier for
interacting with it. Case in point, a friend of mine
from out west, This fellow who shall remain nameless, is
a large lad. He's the kind of guy that you'd
think fear would be the last of his worries. But snakes,
(16:31):
snakes of any kind, would run him up a locust tree.
But being scared of snakes isn't really a big deal.
There's a name for it, O if he die. Phobia
in one study says that Americans fierce snakes more than
anything else. It's fifty six percent numero uno on the
spooky chart. No idea where badger's ranking that chart, but
(16:55):
they should have been higher on his. He told me
by the time, many moons ago, that his dog made
a badger up in some sage brush. They were out
hunting sheds when the incident occurred, and my friend was
sands any type of firearm with which to dispatch it.
Now before he didn't want to get the drawers in
a wad. The state where this happened, had an open
(17:15):
season on badgers. They could be one hundred year round,
and this dude wanted one for the fur. He'd always
fancied himself some sort of mountain man, and a badger
skinned hat was his top priority. His dog had cornered
him up a badger. And even though he didn't have
a gun, he did have a big knife and a
leather scabbard on his belt. He had it on every
(17:38):
time I ever saw him, and he kept it sharp
as a razor, he told me, And he said, I
just decided to wait in there with my knife and
stab back badger, skin him out, tan his hide, and
make me a hat. Now, remember when I was talking
about noticing things in my former career. It became a
(17:59):
habit that helped me make it to retirement and mostly
unscathed by doing so. I do it to this day subconsciously. Well,
while he was telling me that story, I noticed that
as he told it and mentioned the knife, he touched
the handle of it as it hung on his belt,
(18:19):
just as it had been ever since I'd met him.
Every time he mentioned the badger of the hat, he
looked at his left arm. I'll spare you the details,
but my friend's attempt at take in a badger's fur
by stabbing him it didn't work out. As he maneuvered
in to take a stab, the badger latched hold of
my pal's favorite arm on his left side and proceeded
(18:42):
to gnaw and claw it down to the white parts.
That all the meat was attached to nine stitches a
second is what we figured it out to be in
the end, and he hung on for thirty six offs
stitches that is not seconds. He showed me the scars
and I said he did all that in four seconds.
He looked at me with his eyes as big as
(19:04):
saucers and said, calmly, I think he did it in
one second. It took me three to get him shook
off in about thirty more for the squealing to stop.
I said, they squeal in that attack, and he said, no,
I was doing this squill. I sounded like my little
girl when she sees a spider messing with critters, and
(19:24):
it'll turn grown in into little girls speaking to little girls.
When my littlest girl was five, we had a pet
coon and we named him Buster. I gotten him from
a friend of ours that we went to church with.
She's a vettech. And if there was ever a real
life showed up Ellie May Clampett, it's Madeline. Madeline is
(19:48):
as pretty as they get inside and out. She and
her husband are good country folks, with horses and the
usual animals you'll see on a small country farm. And
at one time she had a squad of tame uns
living his pets in their barn. She was telling me
about them one day at church, and I told her
that if she ever came across an extra one, that
I wanted it for Bailey and for me. I told
(20:12):
Alexis about our conversation my wife, and she didn't seem
overly excited about getting a pet coon. She also didn't
seem overly confident that I'd get one. Well, she thought poorly.
A few weeks later, someone brought in an orphan kitt
and coon to the veterinarian's office for maddling work, and
(20:33):
she called me, does Bailey still want a baby coon? Yes,
definitely still wants a baby coon. Bailey does. Okay, I'm
coming y'all's way and I'll drop him off. Twenty minutes later,
I was cradling a baby boy Bandido and bottle feeding
him some kitten milk replacement. Alexis picked Bailey up from
(20:54):
school and when they walked in surprise, y'all meet her
new baby Bailey and immedily reached for him and squeezed
him tight. Alexis immediately reached for me and squeezed me tight,
mainly my neck, concentrating on the part where the air
goes in and out. She got over it, and Bailey
(21:15):
and I named him Buster. Now. Buster was a curious
little guy, as one would figure baby coon would be
if he wasn't a sleeper eating from a bottle. He's
crawling all over us and creation. He and Bailey played together,
and I'd sit on the steps or in front of
the house and watch her running up and down the
sidewalk with Buster and tow doing everything he could to
(21:37):
keep up with her. Bailey was learning to ride her bicycle,
and before we took her training wheels off, Buster would
sit and ride in her basket or follow her down
the street and back. They were buddies. A month after
two thirds of us welcomed the Buster into our home,
I left for bear hunting trip in Idaho. I'd been
(21:59):
the main character and clean her up her After Buster,
Bailey helped some, but she was also five, and while
she was most likely the more mature of the two
of us, it was still ultimately my responsibility, and when
I left, the duty fell on Alexis, both figuratively and literally.
(22:19):
Buster Buster either struggled with incontinence or he had no shame,
and I leaned toward the latter. Either way. If you
think kitting milk replacement smells bad when you mix it up,
you should get a whiff of it after it filters
through a coon named Buster that only moments ago was
sitting peacefully on your shoulder when nature came calling. That
(22:43):
smell would drive a buzzer and off a gut wagon.
I checked in with Alexis to see how they were doing.
When I got a little signal on our hunt, Alexis
told me that she'd said something earlier in the day
that she'd never dreamed she would say. She said there
was no way any one could have ever convinced her,
even two months ago, which was still seven years into
(23:05):
her indoctrination in the world of hunting dogs, dead animals,
and everything else that she was happily ignorant of until
she met me. She said, I couldn't have never imagined
me saying, Bailey, it's starting to rain, get your coon,
we're going in the house. But I said that very
thing today as we sat on the front steps of
(23:26):
our home. Brand Brent, I love you, but I have
no idea how I got here me either, Honey, just lucky.
I guess. We kept busting until he got big enough
to take care of himself, and I purposely left his
sleeping cage open one night and he left and he
never came back. He started to get a little rough
(23:48):
and I didn't want him hurting Bailey even on accident.
We miss him, and we have some fond memories and
some of the cutest pictures and videos of that Rascal
and Bailey that I share on Instagram. Messing with critters
can be fun and entertaining, but it's best on both sides.
Enjoy it. I'm gonna post some pictures of the winning gater,
(24:12):
me and the boys from the Alabama National Guard hemmed
up in the boat on Lake Ponta train nineteen years ago.
If anyone recognizes those guys, get in touch with me.
I'd love to talk to them. Y'all keep sending in
the stories to me and Rebel and let's focus on
things that are funny or amazing that happened to you
and yours while no outdoors, we got some really good
(24:34):
ones and we're planning on doing some new things I
think you'll enjoy in the near future. School's almost out.
Time to get them youngins out of the house and
into nature. That's just as important a place for them
to learn as any. They'll be taking over one day
to make sure they got some sense when they do.
Until next week. This is Bret Reeves signing off. Y'all
(24:56):
be careful to be done.
Welcome to This Country Life. I'm your host, Brent Reeves
from coon hunting to trot lining and just general country living.
I want you to stay a while as I share
my stories and the country skills that will help you
beat the system. This Country Life is proudly presented as
part of Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you the best
(00:25):
outdoor podcast the airways have to offer. All right, friends,
pull you up a chair or drop that tailgate. I
think I got a thing or two and teach you
messing with critters. We are a curious species. That curiosity
fuels the desire to find out what's on the other
(00:48):
side of the mountain, the river, the ocean, and ultimately
the universe. Unfortunately, it also makes us wonder, what do
you reckon that sleeping tiger will do? If I've pokem
with this, I said we were curious and not smart.
It's all about messing with critics this week. But first,
I'm going to tell you a story. Hurricane Katrina was
(01:18):
a Category five hurricane. The cost of lives and loss
is still being felt today, and I was in charge
of a group of highly motivated individuals I had brought
from the Union County Sheriff's Office in Elderde, Arkansas on
a mutual aid mission supporting Louisiana Sheriff's Association. We were
(01:38):
allocated to the Jefferson pair of Sheriff's Office initially, then
after the initial chaos immediately following the storms, we moved
across Lake Pont Train with the Saint Tammany pair of
Sheriff's Office. Slight El, Louisiana would be our home for
a few weeks to come. It was a desperate time
for a lot of folks and us included. The conditions
(02:01):
were poor, stress and danger were high, and ships were
long and unended. But when it would eventually end, we
all had homes and families to go home to. A
lot of the local officers who we were serving alongside
they weren't that fortunate, but our mission was clear. We
were front site, focused on the stolen order and a
(02:23):
chaotic mess of lawlessness and devastation. A week after we'd
relocated to Slide Done, we started doing marine patrols and
we were teamed up with some Alabama National guardsmen and
I was assigned two of Alabama's finest specialist lord and
private clerk. We were running Big Bay boats that were
(02:45):
part of the Sheriff's Office fleet, and our main mission
was to patrol along the banks the Lake pont train,
keeping an eye on the property and houses that were
left and forcing the curfew to try and curb the looting.
By this time, almost everything could set it down pretty well,
and our calls for action were few and far between.
Down on the water now. The one thing that hadn't
(03:07):
slowed down was the duty. Twelve hour shifts from sundown
to sun up. They can be long and long time
for a bunch of folks that have been in the
thick of it for weeks at a time. The calls
went from stacked up one behind the other to almost
zero around the lake homes and the condos and the marinas.
(03:27):
It was boring. It was necessary, but it was boring,
like we need to figure out something to do to
pass the time while we patrolled amongst the floating logs
lumbered alligators. Alligators, that's something we can do. Let's make
a contest to see which patrol boat can find and
(03:49):
photograph the biggest gator. That was fun for about two nights.
Then it got to be an argument over who saw
the biggest one because the majority of the time we
were comparing photographs of glowing eyes and gaiterorheads and how
you going to sell that? Aregu well? I had a solution.
We all met just before dark at the marina to
(04:10):
link up with our guardsmen from Alabama. Now there I
informed everyone that what we were going to do to
settle once and for all whose gator was biggest. We
had a twelve hour shift and if the call volume
stayed low while we patrolled our sectors, we were also
going to catch the biggest gator. We could let a
(04:31):
tape measure beside it and see who won. Now we'd
all watch Steve Irwin catch him on TV. How hard
could it be and what could possibly go wrong? Everyone
thought it was a great idea. We were doing team
building with our counterparts from the Yellowhammer State, blowing off
some steam, taking a break after some long days and
(04:52):
weeks of seeing the worst of mother nature. See in
twelve hours, chumps was the last thing I said before
we all divided up. An hour or so into our
patrol assignment, we started seeing the sized gators we were
after big ones. Lord and Clark made a catch pole
out of some floating lumber and repurposed wire. One end
(05:15):
was attached to the end of the pole and formed
a loop that we could slip over the gators snout,
pull it tight, keeping his mouth closed, and then haul
his behind in the boat for a measurement or picture.
After that, we'd cut him loose to go back to
doing what gators do. But the big ones, they don't
get big being dumb, and they don't get big by
(05:37):
letting folks lay their mits on them. Time after time
we'd slip up on a qualified candidate, only to have
him slip beneath the surface of the water and disappear
the instant the wire touched his snout. Now we'd located
some prime target, some we guessed to be in excess
of nine or ten feet long. Now do you guess
the length of an alligator With all you can see
(05:58):
is his head, you you estimate the number of inches
from between his eyes down to his nostrils. Now that
estimate in the inches will be pretty close to his
total length and feet. Ten inches from eyes to nose
equals ten foot of alligator in mississippiansas the American alligator.
(06:21):
It was one fiddle to temp after another. However, and
had we been stalking them on the ground. I feel
confident we could have stood a better chance at putting
one and a half Nelson long enough to tape him
out and take his picture floating up to him with
the limited reach of our Catchupole just wasn't doing the trick. Now,
in retrospect, I'm more confident that this story would be
(06:44):
a whole lot different than the one I'm telling now
had we had the opportunity to wrestle one into submission
on dry ground. I'm forever thankful that opportunity never arose.
But a few hours in the radio crackled on the
scramble channel that we used to say things that didn't
need to go out under the scanners, Not that any
(07:06):
one was around to listen, but regardless, we needed to
at least present a modicum of professionalism to our counterparts.
Here's what was transmitted. Bravo one is the Sierra one
Alpha four certified. I responded Roger that Sierra one, All right,
let me explain. Bravo one was my call sign. Sierra
(07:30):
one was the call sign of my teammate at point
man who was running the boat we were competing against.
His name was Greg Stevenson. Alpha stood for alligator, and
four meant that he was four foot long and certified
minute they'd stretched him out and measured him and got
a picture. Now all we had to beat was four feet.
(07:50):
Are you kidding me? We were actively hunting gaters over
eight feet long. I'd caught a baby that was about
two feet long that I had riding in the boat
with me for half a shift the night before. This
was gonna be easy, all right, boys, you heard him.
Next gator we see that's at least six foot long.
We're snatching him up out of the water and putting
(08:11):
an end of this contest. Pressure was off. We didn't
have to mess with the big ones that were slipping
away as fast as we slipped it up on him.
We're hunting yearlings. Now we might as well be robbing
him out of the baby bed. The next one we
see is getting kidnapped, just for practice. If he ain't
over six and a half feet, he's going back in
the water till we find one that is three of
(08:33):
us scan the surface of the water is close and
calculated for a decent sized gator. As we had been
looking for looters. It wasn't long when one of my
soldiers said, there's one about six foot. We can warm
up on him if you want. I told him to
get the stuff ready, and I eased the boat over
to where he was floating in the middle of a
cove amongst smaller gators and the rest of the stuff
(08:55):
that used to be part of the neighborhood. The stuff
that they had to get ready was only a call
and a yardstick that we'd found a roll of black
electrical tape that we were going to use to tape
his mouth shut once we got him in the boat. Now,
everything in our world was timed. Our shifts were calculated
in hours, our fuel consumption on how long we sat
(09:16):
at idle, and how fast we drove from one patrol
area to the next, how fast we safely clear the building.
During training or in reality, it was a habit of
subconsciously estimating the time it took for us to clear
an obstacle or accomplish an objective twenty seconds, twenty seconds
from the time we pulled the wire tight around his
(09:38):
jaws until we were ready to start taking pictures. That's
what I estimated it was going to be. Clockwork. Clark
dropped the loop on that gater's mouth like he had
been doing it all his life, and one big pull,
he and Lord snatched that gator in the boat, just
like we played. I couldn't believe how easy it is.
(09:58):
It's gonna be. The clock had started the plan. Once
we had him in the boat, Lord would lay on
top of him, grab both sides of his mouth, holding
and closed. Clark would hold steady pressure on the wire
noose and catch pole while I ran a few rounds
of tape around his jaws to keep them shut. The
amount of force required to hold of a gator's mouth
(10:19):
shut is minimal compared to the mouth they exert when
closing it, and that's around three hundred pounds per square inch.
They'll leave a mark on him. Over our fool proof plan,
he wouldn't have a chance. I threw the throttle in
the neutral and was halfway around the console and going
to my knees with the table. When the soldiers hauled
(10:39):
that dinosaur into the boat and the wire came loose
from his mouth, time seemed to slow to a crawl.
I was moving in slow motion. Clark and Lord were
moving in slow motion. Everything was like it was covered
in molasses, except the gator. He was making laps inside
(11:01):
our boat so fast that when you jumped over him
as he went under before you feed it at the deck,
he was coming around again. And this seemed to go
on forever. Now. I don't know how many laps I
Joker made inside that boat, but I do know that
I was about to give out from jumping over him
every time he cruised through the straightaway before going low
(11:21):
into turn three. But where are we going to go?
There was only one of him in the boat with us,
and a whole bunch of him out of the boat
in the water where I momentarily thought about going. Then,
when all hope was lost, Specialist Lord dove on him
like a whole boat catching the last train out of town.
Wham hold, we got him. Clark held his mouth shutting.
(11:44):
I ran a half a roll of tape around his jaws.
We had him caught. Finally we measured him, and then
the Great Gator Catching Contest of two thousand and five
we'd won. We tried half the night to catch one
over eight feet. The one we caught was six foot either.
(12:06):
Then the grands came of alligators. He was just a puff.
But had he been six foot and one inch I
firmly believe he had killed us all and that's just
how that happened, messing with critters. Every year, the headlines
(12:29):
from Yellowstone National Park make their way around the outdoor
channels of social media. There the internet, wildlife experts comment
on how dumb folks from other countries, the inebriated residents
of this one and the seemingly ignorant get a lesson
in mess around and find out. It's become quite a
spectator sport. Watching the unsuspected get a lesson in the
(12:52):
transference of kinetic energy science can be fun, especially when
the lab experiment as someone walking up to take a
selfie with a bison, one smiling click later and they're
texting for a ride to the er from where they
landed in the next zip code. I've watched so many
compilation videos of foreigners and residents alike getting theled one
(13:15):
to two from a seemingly tamed bison that even though
I know what's coming, I can't turn away until I
see with my own eyes the frontier. Justice has been dispensed.
You've been found guilty of buffoonery in the northern portion
of the Montana West, and your sentence is a permanent
hitch in your get along and the embarrassing video clip
(13:37):
that will haunt you for the rest of your days.
Court adjourned. Forty seven thousand people each year seek medical
treatment for being bitten or attacked by wild animals, with
an average of eight each year being fatal. Now, if
you count domesticated animals, that number claims to one million
(13:58):
attacks or bites. Cows of all things send twenty folks
a year. To the last roundup, a bunch of nerds
down at the CDC got together and they found that
from two thousand and eight to twenty fifteen, there was
one thousand, six hundred and ten animal related fatalities in
the US, with the majority of the deaths being the
(14:20):
result of encounters with non venomous animals like fifty seven percent.
One of the researchers is quoted as saying, importedly, most
deaths are not actually due to wild animals like mountain lions, wolves, bears, sharks,
et cetera, but are a result of deadly encounters with
(14:40):
farm animals, allergic reactions from b wash for hornet stings,
and dog attacks. So while it is important that people
recreating in the wilderness know what to do when they
encounter a potentially dangerous animal. The actual risk of death
is quite low. The good doctor forgot about the idiot
(15:02):
factor and the additional encounters brought to you by what
made Milwaukee famous. Now, I'm no scientist or researcher or
even a gambler, but I am an observer, and I
made a living and stayed alive by watching folks engaging
if they were friends or foe. By watching those the pesture,
the huge harry prairie cows. I'm not coming away with
(15:24):
much in the friend or fol category. I'm also not
getting the impression that a lot of country folks are
walking up to the Native American symbol of abundance and
prosperity for a close and personal TikTok video and winding
up meeting their yearly insurance deductible in one visit at
the local trauma center. Now, on the other hand, it
(15:46):
was the country board by which all my qualifying standards
and qualifications for being one that thought catching a copperhead
was a good idea. Remember him. I won't say his name,
but his initials are me. He now, being from the
country and being familiar with livestock and wild creatures doesn't
vaccinate you from poor decision making. On the contrary, sometimes
(16:10):
it gives you a false sense of natural ability, and
not being scared of something is not a qualifier for
interacting with it. Case in point, a friend of mine
from out west, This fellow who shall remain nameless, is
a large lad. He's the kind of guy that you'd
think fear would be the last of his worries. But snakes,
(16:31):
snakes of any kind, would run him up a locust tree.
But being scared of snakes isn't really a big deal.
There's a name for it, O if he die. Phobia
in one study says that Americans fierce snakes more than
anything else. It's fifty six percent numero uno on the
spooky chart. No idea where badger's ranking that chart, but
(16:55):
they should have been higher on his. He told me
by the time, many moons ago, that his dog made
a badger up in some sage brush. They were out
hunting sheds when the incident occurred, and my friend was
sands any type of firearm with which to dispatch it.
Now before he didn't want to get the drawers in
a wad. The state where this happened, had an open
(17:15):
season on badgers. They could be one hundred year round,
and this dude wanted one for the fur. He'd always
fancied himself some sort of mountain man, and a badger
skinned hat was his top priority. His dog had cornered
him up a badger. And even though he didn't have
a gun, he did have a big knife and a
leather scabbard on his belt. He had it on every
(17:38):
time I ever saw him, and he kept it sharp
as a razor, he told me, And he said, I
just decided to wait in there with my knife and
stab back badger, skin him out, tan his hide, and
make me a hat. Now, remember when I was talking
about noticing things in my former career. It became a
(17:59):
habit that helped me make it to retirement and mostly
unscathed by doing so. I do it to this day subconsciously. Well,
while he was telling me that story, I noticed that
as he told it and mentioned the knife, he touched
the handle of it as it hung on his belt,
(18:19):
just as it had been ever since I'd met him.
Every time he mentioned the badger of the hat, he
looked at his left arm. I'll spare you the details,
but my friend's attempt at take in a badger's fur
by stabbing him it didn't work out. As he maneuvered
in to take a stab, the badger latched hold of
my pal's favorite arm on his left side and proceeded
(18:42):
to gnaw and claw it down to the white parts.
That all the meat was attached to nine stitches a
second is what we figured it out to be in
the end, and he hung on for thirty six offs
stitches that is not seconds. He showed me the scars
and I said he did all that in four seconds.
He looked at me with his eyes as big as
(19:04):
saucers and said, calmly, I think he did it in
one second. It took me three to get him shook
off in about thirty more for the squealing to stop.
I said, they squeal in that attack, and he said, no,
I was doing this squill. I sounded like my little
girl when she sees a spider messing with critters, and
(19:24):
it'll turn grown in into little girls speaking to little girls.
When my littlest girl was five, we had a pet
coon and we named him Buster. I gotten him from
a friend of ours that we went to church with.
She's a vettech. And if there was ever a real
life showed up Ellie May Clampett, it's Madeline. Madeline is
(19:48):
as pretty as they get inside and out. She and
her husband are good country folks, with horses and the
usual animals you'll see on a small country farm. And
at one time she had a squad of tame uns
living his pets in their barn. She was telling me
about them one day at church, and I told her
that if she ever came across an extra one, that
I wanted it for Bailey and for me. I told
(20:12):
Alexis about our conversation my wife, and she didn't seem
overly excited about getting a pet coon. She also didn't
seem overly confident that I'd get one. Well, she thought poorly.
A few weeks later, someone brought in an orphan kitt
and coon to the veterinarian's office for maddling work, and
(20:33):
she called me, does Bailey still want a baby coon? Yes,
definitely still wants a baby coon. Bailey does. Okay, I'm
coming y'all's way and I'll drop him off. Twenty minutes later,
I was cradling a baby boy Bandido and bottle feeding
him some kitten milk replacement. Alexis picked Bailey up from
(20:54):
school and when they walked in surprise, y'all meet her
new baby Bailey and immedily reached for him and squeezed
him tight. Alexis immediately reached for me and squeezed me tight,
mainly my neck, concentrating on the part where the air
goes in and out. She got over it, and Bailey
(21:15):
and I named him Buster. Now. Buster was a curious
little guy, as one would figure baby coon would be
if he wasn't a sleeper eating from a bottle. He's
crawling all over us and creation. He and Bailey played together,
and I'd sit on the steps or in front of
the house and watch her running up and down the
sidewalk with Buster and tow doing everything he could to
(21:37):
keep up with her. Bailey was learning to ride her bicycle,
and before we took her training wheels off, Buster would
sit and ride in her basket or follow her down
the street and back. They were buddies. A month after
two thirds of us welcomed the Buster into our home,
I left for bear hunting trip in Idaho. I'd been
(21:59):
the main character and clean her up her After Buster,
Bailey helped some, but she was also five, and while
she was most likely the more mature of the two
of us, it was still ultimately my responsibility, and when
I left, the duty fell on Alexis, both figuratively and literally.
(22:19):
Buster Buster either struggled with incontinence or he had no shame,
and I leaned toward the latter. Either way. If you
think kitting milk replacement smells bad when you mix it up,
you should get a whiff of it after it filters
through a coon named Buster that only moments ago was
sitting peacefully on your shoulder when nature came calling. That
(22:43):
smell would drive a buzzer and off a gut wagon.
I checked in with Alexis to see how they were doing.
When I got a little signal on our hunt, Alexis
told me that she'd said something earlier in the day
that she'd never dreamed she would say. She said there
was no way any one could have ever convinced her,
even two months ago, which was still seven years into
(23:05):
her indoctrination in the world of hunting dogs, dead animals,
and everything else that she was happily ignorant of until
she met me. She said, I couldn't have never imagined
me saying, Bailey, it's starting to rain, get your coon,
we're going in the house. But I said that very
thing today as we sat on the front steps of
(23:26):
our home. Brand Brent, I love you, but I have
no idea how I got here me either, Honey, just lucky.
I guess. We kept busting until he got big enough
to take care of himself, and I purposely left his
sleeping cage open one night and he left and he
never came back. He started to get a little rough
(23:48):
and I didn't want him hurting Bailey even on accident.
We miss him, and we have some fond memories and
some of the cutest pictures and videos of that Rascal
and Bailey that I share on Instagram. Messing with critters
can be fun and entertaining, but it's best on both sides.
Enjoy it. I'm gonna post some pictures of the winning gater,
(24:12):
me and the boys from the Alabama National Guard hemmed
up in the boat on Lake Ponta train nineteen years ago.
If anyone recognizes those guys, get in touch with me.
I'd love to talk to them. Y'all keep sending in
the stories to me and Rebel and let's focus on
things that are funny or amazing that happened to you
and yours while no outdoors, we got some really good
(24:34):
ones and we're planning on doing some new things I
think you'll enjoy in the near future. School's almost out.
Time to get them youngins out of the house and
into nature. That's just as important a place for them
to learn as any. They'll be taking over one day
to make sure they got some sense when they do.
Until next week. This is Bret Reeves signing off. Y'all
(24:56):
be careful to be done.
Host
Clay Newcomb
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