July 29, 2024 • 19 mins
In this Bonus Episode of the Bear Grease podcast, Retired US Forest Service Agent, Russ Arthur, tells host Clay Newcomb one more unforgettable story of one of his first undercover jobs infiltrating a wild group of outlaws stealing Atlantic White Cedar along the Apalachicola River in Florida. Russ uses his construction background to assimilate into their group and gain their trust, but little do they know that the trap is being set for an arrest story worth making a motion picture about.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
I pulled in. He was there at the store and
I got out, and as I got out, there was
an arrest team took him and he said, what's going on?
I said, I don't know what I'm getting out of here.
I got far, I left, drove on down the road.
The next one. They said, hey, what happened Old So
and So? I said, hey, didn't show then come out
and they rest him. So we went all the way
down the line and I'd make an excuse at each
(00:25):
stop of why nobody was with me.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Welcome to Bear Grease's first bonus episode. We interviewed so
many people each year and aren't able to tell all
the stories in our regular episodes, so we're trying to
remedy that. And as many of our regular listeners know,
the Bear Grease podcast has two kinds of shows. We
have our premium documentary style like True Bear Grease episodes,
(00:52):
where we dive deep to uncover some of those wild,
gritty American stories that we love. But we also have
our Bear Grease's Render podcast, which comes out every other week,
where we gather up a group of five or six
folks instead around and have a conversation about the last
Bear Grease. It's a lot of fun, it's a lot
more informal. Well, what you're listening to today is different,
(01:15):
it's bonus content. It's shorter but highly relevant. We've spent
the last two Beargrease episodes listening to two stories from
United States Forest Service Special Agent Russ Arthur from Tennessee.
In the first episode, called runt Over, he told of
citing a man for illegal squirrel hunting and how later
(01:35):
in retribution, the man tried to kill him and ended
up in prison. Later, Russ would work an unrelated marijuana
grow case in the National Forest and sent the man
to prison for the second time. Truly a wild story
with every type of twist and turn. In the last
episode about Yellowstone, Russ found himself working undercover in Montana
(01:58):
trying to bust an illegal outfittering gun thief. Truly and
unbelievable story as well. Well, what you're about to hear
is a story of timber theft, arson, rattlesnakes, and barefoot
criminals in the swamps of Florida. I really doubt that
you're going to want to miss this one, and let
us know what you think of this episode on social media.
(02:30):
My name is Clay Knukem and this is the Bear
Grease Podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search
for insight and unlikely places, and where we'll tell the
story of Americans who live their lives close to the land.
Presented by FHF gear, American made purpose built hunting and
(02:52):
fishing gear as designed to be as rugged as the place.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
As we explore, well, they all got different different flavors
and favorites, but probably one of my first undercover was
one of the most interesting and nerve wracking and kind
(03:18):
of had it all. There was a group of guys
on the Appalacha Cola River that was stealing Atlantic white
cedar juniper, and that's a tree species that kind of
grows between the swamps and what they call the ridges
the hills, and it was highly sought after for decking
(03:40):
wood for cutting up, and it was very resilient and
highly sought after him. And there was a meal down
there that they were selling it to, and the and
these guys were all friends. There was four or five
of them. It turned out Bend and the agent down
there had done a lot of background on on the
(04:01):
best way to infiltrate this ground. But Uh. I went
down and UH basically hired on as a sawyer for
and I portrayed a guy that was down his luck.
I just needed I needed a job. I was from
Tennessee and uh and uh they took me in and
(04:22):
you know, told me not, you know, obviously, not to
tell anybody, and they could get me a little bit
of a little bit of money and it would all
be based on what all we sold. And that was
early years of technology were wearing a wire was very
hard to do, and especially in an environment of cutting wood,
(04:43):
and there's a lot of legal you know, sideboards on
when you can turn a tape recorder on, when you
can turn it off, do you run it continuously? Do
you just run it for you know, a few minutes
or you'd being selective of you know, you turn it
on and off. There was a lot of pressure on
a young kid. I was still in my twenties. Then,
(05:06):
so U hired on with them. And then they would
cut timber all at night, really in the dark, in
the dark, in the swamps, and.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
One of them using headlamps.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
Yep, not even head lamps, it was handhails. I mean
headlamps really hadn't come around on the mid late eighties
yet and uh, they just using handhad lights and uh.
And one of them actually lived in the swamps and
no electricity, no plumbing. It was just kind of sad.
(05:37):
But would later find out what he's done with all
his money. But anyway, he he would always do barefooted
and uh. And I'll never forget one night we uh,
we were riding around through there and they had found
something during the day they wanted to cut, and we
were just throwing these on the on on the back
(05:59):
of the f two fifty in handload them. I shined
my light and he was standing facing away from me,
and there was this huge rattlesnake and it was laying
stretched out about six inches from the back of his heels,
and he was barefooted. And I'll never forget. I called
(06:21):
his name and I said, man, that is a don't move.
There's the biggest rattlesnake that you've ever seen right behind
your feet. And I'll never forget. He mumbled, I know
where that one's out. There's usually two of them. I'm
looking for that second one. And I remember thinking, this
pretty rough crowd. What happened? We continued on, Well, I
(06:48):
mean he just stepped away from Yeah, he just stepped
away from the snake. Now why was he barefoot? He
never wore shoes. I never seen wear shoes. Just he
never did wear a pair of shoes. It drank old
mill while he's best, and he never had a cooler
put it in. He'd always drink it.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
Hot and just logged barefoot.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
Yeah, right right. They'd get a tree hung, you know,
with a maker, into the top of another tree, and
he'd climb up at barefooted, limit it till it shook down.
I mean, it's a wonder they didn't get killed out there.
But uh but I would go down and I'd cut
timber with him, and we'd take it to the meal.
(07:29):
Uh we'd always get the meal right when it opened,
and uh then we would. I'd do that for like
a month with him, and that I'd tell him I
was going back to Tennessee and we'd process everything, you know,
you were recording over a lot of it. I would,
you know, obviously not when the saws running, but uh then,
(07:52):
uh then i'd call him and come back, you know, hey,
you got more work. And they were uh that all
always take me back in and because the rumor had it,
they were setting fires too, and so of course we're
working with our federal prosecutors, and they wanted me to.
(08:12):
They made it clear one night they wanted me to
go with them to said a wildfire. Well it was
my job talking out of it. Now that might sound funny,
but you know, we didn't want to be the ones
part of setting the wildfire that ended up burning up
a community, you know. So uh, we never did.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Like you were there to say no, let's not do it,
and then if they did it, it was.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
All the wrong. I wasn't going to be there, you know.
I voted, hey, let's don't do it, you know, and
that was through guidance from the from our prosecutors. You know,
we're not going to be involved in setting any of these.
You know, a matter of fact, we need to discourage it,
you know. So uh uh you know. So, so some
interesting guys and then one of them, there was five
(08:56):
of them. They lived in five separate four differents separate
communities up and down the Apple Takota River and uh
and one of them invited me down to come down
and help him, and I ended up helping him with
his with his marijuana grow. So you know, went in
and found out who he was selling it to, and
(09:18):
it was a lady in Tallahassee, and so that had
become a spur off of that temper theft case was,
you know, the marijuana grow case, and so it was
that was an interesting case and we had all successful prosecutions,
and it was kind of funny the day of the takedown.
(09:38):
We had it was five separate arrest warrants for each
one of them, and we had it all mapped out
where they all lived, and I had contacted the one
that had a telephone and only one of them had
a telephone at their house and told him said, hey,
(10:00):
said that if y'all want to help me out on
I think it was Saint George Island, that's out there.
You want to help me out on Saint George Island,
I've got a deck to building, y'all. We all make
some good money. Because during that it was a year
and a half spread out, I had kind of established
(10:21):
that I had this this little construction thing going, and
actually the agent that was overseeing the case was seen
out there as kind of a builder. So they all
bet hoo, hookline, sinker on, we're gonna we're gonna meet
this guy Tennessee and we're gonna we're gonna eat, make
us a couple hundred bucks in a day to build
(10:43):
this deck. And I told him i'd pick him up,
and I said, let so and so no, I'll pick
him up at eight at that store. And I identified
these five different areas that I was gonna pick them up,
and they were all, you know, relative to the time.
Said what it would take us to drive between them
(11:03):
from north to south? As we were going to go,
I told him I drive. And the first one we met,
I pulled in. He was there at the store and
I got out, and as I got out, there was
an arrest team took him and he said, what's going on?
I said, I don't know what I'm getting out of here.
I got in the car and I left, drove on
(11:24):
down the road. The next one they said, hey, what happened?
Oh so, and so I said I he didn't show
get and then they'd come out and they had rest him.
So we went all the way down the line and
I'd make an excuse at each stop of why why
nobody was with me? And of course this was back
in the day where they didn't have cell phones and
communications so stuff like that work back then.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
You were in your twenties. Yeah, what what does it
take to be able to hold your cover? I mean
you work up with these guys that are so rough
and man, you you you had to be believable or
it could have been a dangerous situation. How did you
Can you describe what it's like to be deep undercover?
Speaker 1 (12:12):
Well, you know, if if you're going to go undercover
for any length of time, you have to have what's
called a good backstop. A good backstop in today's world
is a social media profile. It's it's the whole nine
yards through the world of electronics. A good backstop. Back
(12:33):
when I was doing it was you had you had
an identification and maybe a little bit of criminal record
that was created by the state for you, and there's
a process to go through with that. And you had
an ID, you had a social Security number, and there's
a process to go through that, and you set up yourself.
(12:54):
You have a phone line at your residence if you're
going to use your residence, and most of the time
you'll do undercover and you'll stay in a temporary quarters
and that's what you would do sometimes is like rent,
like an apartment or something under that same name. Uh.
(13:16):
And but you the biggest thing is is to have
knowledge of don't be somebody or not. And I was
very lucky in that. You know, I worked constructions for
so many years. I could talk to talk of of
of a brick layer, you know, I could talk to
talk of a land mountain stone, you know, some some
(13:39):
some of the construction work. So you want to tell
people your profession is something that you can talk about,
first of all. And back in the day, they didn't
have Facebook they could check you. The only thing they
could check you on is maybe if they had a
friend in the police department, they could They may figure
(13:59):
out a way to get your driver's license and run
your driver's license, you know in some of these small communities.
You know, even though it's illegal, somebody might could do
that and or run your tag number. You know, I
haven't run your tag number, make sure so you'd always
want to have that vehicle tied back to that driver's license.
So so it wasn't that complicated back in the day.
(14:22):
And especially if you set it up to where I'm
not from this area, I'm just down here looking for work.
I'm actually from a state or two a way, you know,
and it seemed it seemed to work. You know, Yeah,
you can be compromised, and if you are, you've got
to recognize the way out. One time I thought I
(14:45):
was compromised before I even left, and I pulled out.
It turns out I wasn't compromised. But the way the
guy was talking to me. We had a case in
Alaska that I was going to be a part of
on a brown bear hunt. I hadn't paid the down
on the hunt yet. We were just communicating. Something came
(15:08):
up to where he he was questioning me, and I
just did just didn't feel right. And it was going
to be me and another undercover agent, because when you're
going into a remote area you need to you really
need two people. And this was actually an agent from
(15:28):
Arkansas was going to go with me, and I called
him up. I said, look, I don't feel good about
this guy. He said, well, I'm not getting that failing Well,
I told my boss. I said, I'm just not failing it.
So he got somebody else and he and the other
agent went and it turned out that that it was
it was legit. He just was really intrigued about my background.
(15:52):
He did he didn't. Oh, so this guy was quizzing, right,
he was quizzing, quizzing me. And it turned out they
went ahead and worked the case and they made the
case and it was a good case. And he said, man,
you missed it. It was some beautiful country. And uh,
but the thing about it is we he he wasn't
on to me, and but it was my own gut feeling,
(16:14):
which you know, that's just that's just the way it goes.
And a lot of people have a misconception. You know.
Some of my friends all talk to him, and you know,
and and I don't talk that much, even to my
close friends about some of the work I've done. I'm just,
you know, just don't. But the ones that really don't
(16:34):
know me, they'll hear about it. They say, man, you've
got it made. You've got to see the bitter roots,
say away wilderness area, you've got to see Yellowstone, You've
got to see all this going on undercover. It is
not fun because normally the only fun part about it
(16:55):
is seeing country that you probably normally wouldn't see. And
and that intrigues me. I love love that. But being
with somebody that you know, it's been violating for a
long time. You may or may not know a lot
more about the resources than they do, and you having
(17:17):
to listen to them and do what they tell you.
It's not funny that there is. There's no glory in that,
because nine times out of ten, the people that do
that are slots, And it's just not the type of
people that you would enjoy hanging around around. You know, uh,
(17:39):
you know. Do I want to hang around a guy
that you know in the swamps of Florida that uses
a hole in the Florida to do his business into
the swamp because he don't have a toilet. You know,
that's not the type of people I want to hang
around with. Do I want to hang around the guy
that's guided me twenty two miles in the back country
(18:00):
that I know is getting ready to try to steal
my pre sixty four Winchester because he's running guns too.
You know, that's not the kind of guy I want
to Yeah, I see what you're saying, hang out with?
Do I want to wake up at five point thirty
in the morning over there in some of the most
pressed in country that God put on this earth and
set there by the fire, drinking coffee listening to Elk
(18:23):
bugle all around me and the guides in there snoring
because he stayed up drunk all night. That's not the
kind of guy I want to hang out with. And
that stuff happens. Yeah, that has happened.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
Yeah, the level of stress on an undercover agent is
hard to comprehend. If you haven't listened to our Secret
Agent Man series we did with Rtie Stewart out of
Ohio in twenty twenty two. Those are episodes seventy eight
(18:57):
through eighty four. You probably should really some wild stories
in there. And I mean, I guess we talked to
an undercover agent almost every week. Brent reeves. You know
he's working me. I think we all do. I can't
thank Russ enough for opening up with us about these stories.
Like was said before, he doesn't talk about this often
(19:19):
and I had to twist his arm to get him
to tell these stories. I hope you enjoyed this extra
drop and we'll see you on the next episode. Thanks
a ton for listening to Bear Grease and Brent's This
Country Life podcast. Be sure to leave us a review
on iTunes and share this podcast with you friends. Thank
you
I pulled in. He was there at the store and
I got out, and as I got out, there was
an arrest team took him and he said, what's going on?
I said, I don't know what I'm getting out of here.
I got far, I left, drove on down the road.
The next one. They said, hey, what happened Old So
and So? I said, hey, didn't show then come out
and they rest him. So we went all the way
down the line and I'd make an excuse at each
(00:25):
stop of why nobody was with me.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Welcome to Bear Grease's first bonus episode. We interviewed so
many people each year and aren't able to tell all
the stories in our regular episodes, so we're trying to
remedy that. And as many of our regular listeners know,
the Bear Grease podcast has two kinds of shows. We
have our premium documentary style like True Bear Grease episodes,
(00:52):
where we dive deep to uncover some of those wild,
gritty American stories that we love. But we also have
our Bear Grease's Render podcast, which comes out every other week,
where we gather up a group of five or six
folks instead around and have a conversation about the last
Bear Grease. It's a lot of fun, it's a lot
more informal. Well, what you're listening to today is different,
(01:15):
it's bonus content. It's shorter but highly relevant. We've spent
the last two Beargrease episodes listening to two stories from
United States Forest Service Special Agent Russ Arthur from Tennessee.
In the first episode, called runt Over, he told of
citing a man for illegal squirrel hunting and how later
(01:35):
in retribution, the man tried to kill him and ended
up in prison. Later, Russ would work an unrelated marijuana
grow case in the National Forest and sent the man
to prison for the second time. Truly a wild story
with every type of twist and turn. In the last
episode about Yellowstone, Russ found himself working undercover in Montana
(01:58):
trying to bust an illegal outfittering gun thief. Truly and
unbelievable story as well. Well, what you're about to hear
is a story of timber theft, arson, rattlesnakes, and barefoot
criminals in the swamps of Florida. I really doubt that
you're going to want to miss this one, and let
us know what you think of this episode on social media.
(02:30):
My name is Clay Knukem and this is the Bear
Grease Podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search
for insight and unlikely places, and where we'll tell the
story of Americans who live their lives close to the land.
Presented by FHF gear, American made purpose built hunting and
(02:52):
fishing gear as designed to be as rugged as the place.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
As we explore, well, they all got different different flavors
and favorites, but probably one of my first undercover was
one of the most interesting and nerve wracking and kind
(03:18):
of had it all. There was a group of guys
on the Appalacha Cola River that was stealing Atlantic white
cedar juniper, and that's a tree species that kind of
grows between the swamps and what they call the ridges
the hills, and it was highly sought after for decking
(03:40):
wood for cutting up, and it was very resilient and
highly sought after him. And there was a meal down
there that they were selling it to, and the and
these guys were all friends. There was four or five
of them. It turned out Bend and the agent down
there had done a lot of background on on the
(04:01):
best way to infiltrate this ground. But Uh. I went
down and UH basically hired on as a sawyer for
and I portrayed a guy that was down his luck.
I just needed I needed a job. I was from
Tennessee and uh and uh they took me in and
(04:22):
you know, told me not, you know, obviously, not to
tell anybody, and they could get me a little bit
of a little bit of money and it would all
be based on what all we sold. And that was
early years of technology were wearing a wire was very
hard to do, and especially in an environment of cutting wood,
(04:43):
and there's a lot of legal you know, sideboards on
when you can turn a tape recorder on, when you
can turn it off, do you run it continuously? Do
you just run it for you know, a few minutes
or you'd being selective of you know, you turn it
on and off. There was a lot of pressure on
a young kid. I was still in my twenties. Then,
(05:06):
so U hired on with them. And then they would
cut timber all at night, really in the dark, in
the dark, in the swamps, and.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
One of them using headlamps.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
Yep, not even head lamps, it was handhails. I mean
headlamps really hadn't come around on the mid late eighties
yet and uh, they just using handhad lights and uh.
And one of them actually lived in the swamps and
no electricity, no plumbing. It was just kind of sad.
(05:37):
But would later find out what he's done with all
his money. But anyway, he he would always do barefooted
and uh. And I'll never forget one night we uh,
we were riding around through there and they had found
something during the day they wanted to cut, and we
were just throwing these on the on on the back
(05:59):
of the f two fifty in handload them. I shined
my light and he was standing facing away from me,
and there was this huge rattlesnake and it was laying
stretched out about six inches from the back of his heels,
and he was barefooted. And I'll never forget. I called
(06:21):
his name and I said, man, that is a don't move.
There's the biggest rattlesnake that you've ever seen right behind
your feet. And I'll never forget. He mumbled, I know
where that one's out. There's usually two of them. I'm
looking for that second one. And I remember thinking, this
pretty rough crowd. What happened? We continued on, Well, I
(06:48):
mean he just stepped away from Yeah, he just stepped
away from the snake. Now why was he barefoot? He
never wore shoes. I never seen wear shoes. Just he
never did wear a pair of shoes. It drank old
mill while he's best, and he never had a cooler
put it in. He'd always drink it.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
Hot and just logged barefoot.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
Yeah, right right. They'd get a tree hung, you know,
with a maker, into the top of another tree, and
he'd climb up at barefooted, limit it till it shook down.
I mean, it's a wonder they didn't get killed out there.
But uh but I would go down and I'd cut
timber with him, and we'd take it to the meal.
(07:29):
Uh we'd always get the meal right when it opened,
and uh then we would. I'd do that for like
a month with him, and that I'd tell him I
was going back to Tennessee and we'd process everything, you know,
you were recording over a lot of it. I would,
you know, obviously not when the saws running, but uh then,
(07:52):
uh then i'd call him and come back, you know, hey,
you got more work. And they were uh that all
always take me back in and because the rumor had it,
they were setting fires too, and so of course we're
working with our federal prosecutors, and they wanted me to.
(08:12):
They made it clear one night they wanted me to
go with them to said a wildfire. Well it was
my job talking out of it. Now that might sound funny,
but you know, we didn't want to be the ones
part of setting the wildfire that ended up burning up
a community, you know. So uh, we never did.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Like you were there to say no, let's not do it,
and then if they did it, it was.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
All the wrong. I wasn't going to be there, you know.
I voted, hey, let's don't do it, you know, and
that was through guidance from the from our prosecutors. You know,
we're not going to be involved in setting any of these.
You know, a matter of fact, we need to discourage it,
you know. So uh uh you know. So, so some
interesting guys and then one of them, there was five
(08:56):
of them. They lived in five separate four differents separate
communities up and down the Apple Takota River and uh
and one of them invited me down to come down
and help him, and I ended up helping him with
his with his marijuana grow. So you know, went in
and found out who he was selling it to, and
(09:18):
it was a lady in Tallahassee, and so that had
become a spur off of that temper theft case was,
you know, the marijuana grow case, and so it was
that was an interesting case and we had all successful prosecutions,
and it was kind of funny the day of the takedown.
(09:38):
We had it was five separate arrest warrants for each
one of them, and we had it all mapped out
where they all lived, and I had contacted the one
that had a telephone and only one of them had
a telephone at their house and told him said, hey,
(10:00):
said that if y'all want to help me out on
I think it was Saint George Island, that's out there.
You want to help me out on Saint George Island,
I've got a deck to building, y'all. We all make
some good money. Because during that it was a year
and a half spread out, I had kind of established
(10:21):
that I had this this little construction thing going, and
actually the agent that was overseeing the case was seen
out there as kind of a builder. So they all
bet hoo, hookline, sinker on, we're gonna we're gonna meet
this guy Tennessee and we're gonna we're gonna eat, make
us a couple hundred bucks in a day to build
(10:43):
this deck. And I told him i'd pick him up,
and I said, let so and so no, I'll pick
him up at eight at that store. And I identified
these five different areas that I was gonna pick them up,
and they were all, you know, relative to the time.
Said what it would take us to drive between them
(11:03):
from north to south? As we were going to go,
I told him I drive. And the first one we met,
I pulled in. He was there at the store and
I got out, and as I got out, there was
an arrest team took him and he said, what's going on?
I said, I don't know what I'm getting out of here.
I got in the car and I left, drove on
(11:24):
down the road. The next one they said, hey, what happened?
Oh so, and so I said I he didn't show
get and then they'd come out and they had rest him.
So we went all the way down the line and
I'd make an excuse at each stop of why why
nobody was with me? And of course this was back
in the day where they didn't have cell phones and
communications so stuff like that work back then.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
You were in your twenties. Yeah, what what does it
take to be able to hold your cover? I mean
you work up with these guys that are so rough
and man, you you you had to be believable or
it could have been a dangerous situation. How did you
Can you describe what it's like to be deep undercover?
Speaker 1 (12:12):
Well, you know, if if you're going to go undercover
for any length of time, you have to have what's
called a good backstop. A good backstop in today's world
is a social media profile. It's it's the whole nine
yards through the world of electronics. A good backstop. Back
(12:33):
when I was doing it was you had you had
an identification and maybe a little bit of criminal record
that was created by the state for you, and there's
a process to go through with that. And you had
an ID, you had a social Security number, and there's
a process to go through that, and you set up yourself.
(12:54):
You have a phone line at your residence if you're
going to use your residence, and most of the time
you'll do undercover and you'll stay in a temporary quarters
and that's what you would do sometimes is like rent,
like an apartment or something under that same name. Uh.
(13:16):
And but you the biggest thing is is to have
knowledge of don't be somebody or not. And I was
very lucky in that. You know, I worked constructions for
so many years. I could talk to talk of of
of a brick layer, you know, I could talk to
talk of a land mountain stone, you know, some some
(13:39):
some of the construction work. So you want to tell
people your profession is something that you can talk about,
first of all. And back in the day, they didn't
have Facebook they could check you. The only thing they
could check you on is maybe if they had a
friend in the police department, they could They may figure
(13:59):
out a way to get your driver's license and run
your driver's license, you know in some of these small communities.
You know, even though it's illegal, somebody might could do
that and or run your tag number. You know, I
haven't run your tag number, make sure so you'd always
want to have that vehicle tied back to that driver's license.
So so it wasn't that complicated back in the day.
(14:22):
And especially if you set it up to where I'm
not from this area, I'm just down here looking for work.
I'm actually from a state or two a way, you know,
and it seemed it seemed to work. You know, Yeah,
you can be compromised, and if you are, you've got
to recognize the way out. One time I thought I
(14:45):
was compromised before I even left, and I pulled out.
It turns out I wasn't compromised. But the way the
guy was talking to me. We had a case in
Alaska that I was going to be a part of
on a brown bear hunt. I hadn't paid the down
on the hunt yet. We were just communicating. Something came
(15:08):
up to where he he was questioning me, and I
just did just didn't feel right. And it was going
to be me and another undercover agent, because when you're
going into a remote area you need to you really
need two people. And this was actually an agent from
(15:28):
Arkansas was going to go with me, and I called
him up. I said, look, I don't feel good about
this guy. He said, well, I'm not getting that failing Well,
I told my boss. I said, I'm just not failing it.
So he got somebody else and he and the other
agent went and it turned out that that it was
it was legit. He just was really intrigued about my background.
(15:52):
He did he didn't. Oh, so this guy was quizzing, right,
he was quizzing, quizzing me. And it turned out they
went ahead and worked the case and they made the
case and it was a good case. And he said, man,
you missed it. It was some beautiful country. And uh,
but the thing about it is we he he wasn't
on to me, and but it was my own gut feeling,
(16:14):
which you know, that's just that's just the way it goes.
And a lot of people have a misconception. You know.
Some of my friends all talk to him, and you know,
and and I don't talk that much, even to my
close friends about some of the work I've done. I'm just,
you know, just don't. But the ones that really don't
(16:34):
know me, they'll hear about it. They say, man, you've
got it made. You've got to see the bitter roots,
say away wilderness area, you've got to see Yellowstone, You've
got to see all this going on undercover. It is
not fun because normally the only fun part about it
(16:55):
is seeing country that you probably normally wouldn't see. And
and that intrigues me. I love love that. But being
with somebody that you know, it's been violating for a
long time. You may or may not know a lot
more about the resources than they do, and you having
(17:17):
to listen to them and do what they tell you.
It's not funny that there is. There's no glory in that,
because nine times out of ten, the people that do
that are slots, And it's just not the type of
people that you would enjoy hanging around around. You know, uh,
(17:39):
you know. Do I want to hang around a guy
that you know in the swamps of Florida that uses
a hole in the Florida to do his business into
the swamp because he don't have a toilet. You know,
that's not the type of people I want to hang
around with. Do I want to hang around the guy
that's guided me twenty two miles in the back country
(18:00):
that I know is getting ready to try to steal
my pre sixty four Winchester because he's running guns too.
You know, that's not the kind of guy I want
to Yeah, I see what you're saying, hang out with?
Do I want to wake up at five point thirty
in the morning over there in some of the most
pressed in country that God put on this earth and
set there by the fire, drinking coffee listening to Elk
(18:23):
bugle all around me and the guides in there snoring
because he stayed up drunk all night. That's not the
kind of guy I want to hang out with. And
that stuff happens. Yeah, that has happened.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
Yeah, the level of stress on an undercover agent is
hard to comprehend. If you haven't listened to our Secret
Agent Man series we did with Rtie Stewart out of
Ohio in twenty twenty two. Those are episodes seventy eight
(18:57):
through eighty four. You probably should really some wild stories
in there. And I mean, I guess we talked to
an undercover agent almost every week. Brent reeves. You know
he's working me. I think we all do. I can't
thank Russ enough for opening up with us about these stories.
Like was said before, he doesn't talk about this often
(19:19):
and I had to twist his arm to get him
to tell these stories. I hope you enjoyed this extra
drop and we'll see you on the next episode. Thanks
a ton for listening to Bear Grease and Brent's This
Country Life podcast. Be sure to leave us a review
on iTunes and share this podcast with you friends. Thank
you
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