August 16, 2024 • 20 mins
From reptiles to rodents, we're talking about all of what could wind up on your supper table. Brent's sharing a story from his brother Tim's kitchen and telling about some friends of his up north who are making the most out of their trapline. Come on in, it's supper time on MeatEater's "This Country Life" podcast.
New England Naturals Jake and Riley DeBow
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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 experiences in life lessons. This Country Life is presented
by Case Knives on Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you
the best outdoor podcast the airways had off. All right, friends,
(00:28):
grab a chair or drop that tail gate. I've got
some stories to share eating what you hunt. I have
always been a fan wild game and eating while I
chase in the field, as at times it's been just
as rewarding as the pursuit. Nothing beats the tug of
(00:51):
a big bluegill on your line, except maybe how it
tastes coming out of the hot peanut oil. We're talking
about eating the game we're after in some of them
that may not be on your menu. But first, I'm
going to tell you a story. Twenty years or more ago,
(01:13):
Michael lived not far from my brother Tim and was
about the same age as my nephews Will and Matthew,
who were separated only by about three years. It wasn't
uncommon for him to get off the school bus at
their house and play ball or ramble around the countryside,
as country boys tend to do, and when school was out,
(01:33):
they'd have bicycle track worn pass back and forth on
the gravel road that passed by in front of both
their houses that were old mile or so apart. Around
meal time, they would all magically appear at one another's
house to be invited to sit down and eat. The
internal clock of young boys taking down the minutes to
supper time is highly accurate, regardless of their location or activities.
(01:59):
It's a silent dog whistle to a sheep dog. They
started making their way towards the source of the call
from way down in the creek bottoms or out of
the barn, just in time to smash a gallon of
milk or sweet tea and to fire a double help
in the whatever was coming off the stove or out
of the oven. This would be the case the last
(02:19):
time Michael would pull up his chair at my brother
Tim's house. Tim walked out of his house one afternoon
and as he stepped off the porch, he narrowly missed
being bitten by a huge timber rattler that was laying
at the foot of the steps. A short time later,
one of them was no longer amongst living and minus
his skin. The incident didn't scare Tim as much as
(02:43):
it made him mad, especially with his son's ripping and
running all over the country, so he decided to get
the last laugh and eat it. After cleaning old jake
no shoulders, Tim cut him up, and my saint of
a sister in law, Barbageing, fried him on the stove.
You would fish. It was a big snake and there
(03:03):
was plenty to go around, and with the timing of
a Swiss watch, Matthew, Will and their friend Michael came
through the door just in time to see her pull
the last bit of snake from the hot grease. The
talk went to the incident of how they were all
about to sit down and eat what Tim had found
crawling in the yard only an hour or so before.
(03:25):
When Michael said he couldn't stay, Mama told him to
be home at a certain time, and the hour was
fast approaching. Out the door and on his bicycle and
in a cloud of dust, Michael made his way home.
Tim and the rest tried the snake and didn't much
care for it. I remember Matthew saying it was chewy,
(03:46):
thus ending the eating a snake store or so they thought.
A Few days later, Michael was once again down at
Tims and playing with the boys. No mention of snakes
or so up or anything had transpired. In the meantime,
Barbijean had fixed supper and walked out on the porch
(04:07):
to tell all three of them to come eat. Matthew
and Will shot inside like they were starving, while Michael
just made his way toward his bicycle. Barbara, see, Michael,
are you hungry? He said, yes, ma'am. He said, well,
come on in and eat. I fixed plenty. He said, no, ma'am,
that's okay. She said, I thought you said you were hungry,
(04:29):
Like I said, I am, I don't ever know what
y'all are gonna be eating down here. And that's just
how that happened. Eating what you hunt and the critters
we pursued just goes hand in hand. Catch a mess
(04:51):
of fish, cook a mess of fish, shoot a mess
of squirrels, fix a mess of squirrels. Almost exclusively, I
hunt and fish for with the skillet, I enjoy the
taste of whatever I'm trying to hem up long enough
to get it skint battered, bake, stew or fried. After all,
that's why our species started hunting in the first place.
(05:13):
I can hear the cavem in talking. Now, Hey, Bud,
see that pterodactyl flying over yonder Yep, let's kill it
with a rock and eat it. Bro That sounds radical.
Count me in. The next morning, Fred and Barney are
sitting out a dozen lizard bird decoys and waiting on
sunrise at the local tar pit. That's how it all started,
(05:34):
probably well my version of it, anyway, and my family
hasn't slowed down since, or so you'd think. But you'd
be wrong. Contrary to what one would assume, my dad,
Buddy Reeves, a country born and raised rural houndsman, horsemen,
(05:55):
and well known pursuer of squirrels, who would easily be
ranked near, if not at the top of the list
for total numbers of squirrels. Being given a twenty two
caliber headache, he wouldn't have eaten one, had even been
starving slapped to death. Neither would my uncle jimm Ray
nor my aunts are first cousins on my father's side.
(06:17):
I took a pole of three generations of the Reefs
side of the family tree, my aunts, my uncle, siblings,
and cousins. Thirty percent of them eat squirrels. We were
all raised right there, more or less within a rock
chunking distance of each other, And seven out of ten
(06:37):
would not eat a squirrel if they were hungry. And
that kind of knocks in the head the old adage
of country folks having country ways. Yet hear me and
my brothers and all our children sat waiting on the
next big mess of squirrels to be brought to the table.
Every one of them will smash the sac full of
cook squirrels, except my two girls Bailey's and tried them
(07:00):
last winter when I fried up a big mess for supper.
Now I knew my wife Alexis wasn't going to eat any,
but she did try it and said that's as far
as she wanted to go. Our daughter Bailey followed suit,
but I think her judgment was biased by her mother's
hard pass and the fact that she's at the age
where girl stuff is more appealing to her than her
(07:22):
crusty old pappy's diet. To her credit, though she loves
bear and deer meat, can't get enough of it. Now
our son Hunter, who's twenty six, cannon has eaten his
wait and fried squirrel and squirrel and dumplings all his life.
He loves them. But let's go back in time when
the oldest daughter, Amy, who at the time was a
(07:42):
little younger than Bailey is now. She literally survived on
chicken and cold hot dogs right out of the ice box,
nothing else. It's a period of time. I like to
call her chicken strip era will. Being the diabolical father
that I am, I know that if she ever tried
squirrel but she'd like it. So I stopped by the
(08:06):
local KFC one day and got them to give me
a box that the meals come in, and I took
it home. I put some leftover squirrel legs in it
that I brought home from the camp and sat them
on the kitchen counter. Y'all know what happened next. She
saw the box, asked if she could have the leftovers,
and went around, no squirrel leggs like a ducking on
(08:28):
on a roast in there, Daddy, this is the best
chicken I've ever ate. She couldn't get enough of them.
I don't remember how many she had, but it would
have been a good accounting of herself at a camp
full of lumberjacks. Look on her face when I told
her what it was was the best part. She was
like she'd been a gut shot with a cannon full
(08:50):
of squirrels. A few months later, I'd get her again
with some frog legs, same thing, ate them like a
hungry hostage. Does you find out what they were? And
all of a sudden ooh, I don't like those? Well,
all that is funny, but it shows the bias that
we all hold for what we consider to be normal
(09:11):
food and how something looks, and not based on how
something tastes. I laughed at seeing an animal rights organization's
online ad once showing a photo of a puppy and
a piglet with the words why I love one and
eat the other, to which someone replied, because only one
of them is filled with bacon? What about birds? As
(09:36):
a society, we eat chicken with reckless abandon We eat
it weekly in some form or another. Here my girls
don't want ducks, doves or quailed. They'd rather eat chicken.
Chickens are everybody as nasty as creature as you can get.
Don't get me wrong. Chicken is one of the many
food items you could bait a trap with and catch
me every time. No one loves chicken more than me,
(09:56):
no one. My nephew, Thomas, more specifically, my great nephew,
came over for supper last Sunday after church. Thomas is
my brother Tim's grandson. I fried up a bunch of
(10:16):
fish and some gator bytes for him and his gal
pall Emma. At the last minute, I realized Emma wasn't
a fish or a gator eater, and we like Emma.
So I chunked the old stand by chicken nuggies in
with the gator and when everybody pushed away from the table,
we were all sporting big smiles and full bellies. Now,
(10:37):
I'm sure there are folks out there that don't like chicken,
but I'm not sure i'd like to be around them.
Chicken is the great common denominator. I want to get
someone to try something new. Hit them with the old
It tastes just like chicken routine. It never does. That's
the old bait and switch that we used to earn
someone's trust. Want me to try something, Tell me a
(11:00):
taste like antelope or grilled coon. I'm all in fellow,
but I've always had an affinity for a while gaming
the food that is associated with the South I more
or less felt it was my duty to eat it.
I know that may sound superficial, but stay in true
to the culture of my Raisin has always been important
to me. Even though the squirrel eating skipped the generation
(11:24):
in my family. My mama wouldn't need it either, but
she did fix it for us kids, and we all
loved quail. It was a treat to go shoot some
early in the morning and come back for her to
cook up a big breakfast with fried quail, taters, eggs, biscuits,
and gravy. The last breakfast of that was when I
(11:44):
was in high school and the quail were disappearing. And
she also fixed the ducks that Tim and I brought home,
and she made a labor intensive duck and rice dish
that would rival anything for the love of humanity. It's good,
but ducks and quail are are beautiful birds. In the
esthetics of how something looks plays into how it's perceived,
(12:06):
especially in food. Don't even get me started on wild
versus domesticated turkeys. I'll save that for another day because
having to argue the advantages of wild over pen raises
enough to put myself into a self induced coma. My
dad also didn't care for deer meat. Again, all of
his offspring subsist in some degree off wild game, with
(12:29):
Tim and I leading the charge. I can't tell you
why he preferred farm stock groceries over wild game. In
the spring and summer, we ate fish too, and three
times a week we happen to be staying at the
river fishing. We ate it every day, and not once
did I grow tired of it, and neither did he.
But my great grandfather, the man who raised my dad,
(12:51):
ate squirrels like there was no tomorrow. I've heard my
dad tell stories about Grandpa taking the tablespoon on his
pocket knife and with a swift blow, cracked the heads
open of a cooked squirrel and eat the contents of
their brain bucket like it was canny. Me. I draw
the line at a squirrel shoulders, I'm not eating anything
above that mark or from in between his tiny derido
(13:15):
shaped ears. There's also a convenient reason for that. Squirrel
brains can kill you like dead, graveyard dead, like groundhogs
are bringing you your mail for eternity dead. That reason
is called crutch felled Jacob disease CJD for short, which
is a variation of mad Cow. Now this all came
(13:37):
about in the mid nineteen nineties. Went over a four
year period, eleven unfortunate souls in Kentucky all contracted CJD.
The only link between them was that they had all
ingested squirrel brands. They had all died within a year
of contracting disease too. Man, it's terrible. Since that time,
(13:58):
cases had been reported in sir states, including New York, Alabama,
West Virginia, Mississippi, as well as here in Arkansas. I've
never fancied myself a squirrel brain eater, regardless of my
family history or the nostalgia associated with it. Conveniently, now
I can add impending doom to that list, and for
(14:20):
that reason I'm out now lead just about anything. My
friend and colleague Spenser new Hearth made a whole meat
eater series a while back called Pardon My Plate. He
had different folks on each week eating things that most
folks wouldn't normally associate with suppertime, like a coyote, skunk, goldfish,
(14:41):
and a muskrat, just to name a few. Folks out
in Dorchester, Maryland have a whole festival every year dedicated
to eating muskrats and crawfish. I may have to slip
out there next year and check it out for myself.
I ain't never add a muskrat, believe it or not,
but I can flat more put a hurting on a
sack of muddy bugs, which brings to mind something else
(15:02):
you can get out of a beaver pond and take
home and put in your belly. Besides muskrats, crawfish, and
Giardia castor canadensas the North American beaver, official state bird
of Canada. I've read story after story about mountain men,
Indians and settlers eating beaver meat. I've never had a
(15:25):
hank or two, although i have spent a jitian of
them in my lifetime when I was trapping and helping
Tim with his trap line. But some of my friends
up in New England are making a dent in the
beaver population and their grocery bill. Jake DeBow and his
wife Riley had built a business around the fur market
(15:45):
and have been teaching beaver's how to ride in the
back of their truck for the last seven years. They
have all the social media platforms, including a YouTube page
filled with great how to content that is simple and
easy to follow. Long and downright entertaining, from setting his
traps to catching, cleaning and preparing the fur. It's New
(16:06):
England natural. You got to look it up. The debos
are living close to the land and lots of time
up there. The land is covered in snow, but that's
when Jake and Riley shine the most. Not only are
they keeping the beaver population and other fur bearing critters
in check, but they also were putting meat up for
the winter, beaver meat. I talked to Jake recently and
(16:29):
he told me that beaver makes up about fifty percent
of their diet. They eat it in one form or
another anywhere from two to three times a week. He
also told me that if the average deer hunter knew
how good beaver was to eat, they'd all be duking
it out for trapping permits like folks sit back in
the seventies when the fur market was strong. The debos
(16:53):
fix it just like you do deer, bear and beef
for that matter. Backstraps and surloins in the back legs
for the crock pot. Their dog gets raw ground beaver
every day. This cuts their yearly dog food bill in
half and it's great for the dog. And I'm paying
almost seventy dollars a bag for my dog feeding. I
(17:15):
think old whaling might need a little beaver meat. Now
you think, well, they must have grown up eating it.
I know I did, but just like me, you're wrong.
When they first got married they decided to try it.
Their goal was to live close to the land and
by utilizing the meat they were adding to their trapline yield.
A beaver is a lot like a hog when you
(17:37):
get one. About the only thing you can't eat on
a hog is the squeal. It's about the same when
it comes eating old Buckie Riley says it compares to
lamb and she fixes it with mint chutney. I acted
like I knew what that was, so maybe Jake wouldn't
figure out how little I know about anything. Jason Ellsworth,
what in the world is mint chutney? And would it
(17:58):
be good on corn bread? I need to know stat Seriously, though,
these folks are putting out some great content that's very
educational and well worth the effort to look up my
gall Riva is going to help you out and include
a link to Jake and Riley's New England Naturals Instagram
and YouTube pages. It'll be in the show description where
(18:20):
you listen to us from that's good stuff and proof
that a country life in New Hampshire is just as
important and relevant as one in Arkansas. I've been saying
it since the beginning that we can all live a
country life regardless of our zip code or whether we
live outside or inside the city limits. Jake and Riley
(18:42):
Deebo live over fifteen hundred miles northeast of my friends
Keith and Lee Brandon in southeast Arkansas. Leave the de
Bos in New Hampshire and you'll travel over two thousand
miles west and northwest of my friends Craig and Medale
McCartney's ranch in Central Mauntito, over Canada. They live their
lives much like the Debos, the Brandings, and the Reeves.
(19:06):
There's a ton of space and people between those three
points on our side of the planet. I'd say the
chances are good that there's many more folks out there
doing their best to make their way just like we are.
Those are the folks I want to be around and
the folks I'm looking for. They're my people, and together
we can turn the tide on those that are fighting
(19:28):
to take away what we all stand for it comes
right down to it, there will be more folks out
there with more similarities to our own and differences. We
just have to talk to each other long enough without
getting mad to find out what they are. Now, that's
(19:50):
gonna wrap it up for me this week. Thank y'all
so much for listening to me in that turkey calling contest.
Cheating mule Skinner, hill billy who puts mushrooms in his
chili clay bowl nukem. We both really appreciate it. Elk
season is right around the corner, and Jason Phelps and
Dirk Durham are busy as cats in a sandbox over
(20:11):
it Cutting the Distance podcast. Those boys know their stuff,
and if you're you're ready for some ELK content, get
yourself over there and check it out. Until next week.
This is Brent Reeves signing off. Y'all be careful
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 experiences in life lessons. This Country Life is presented
by Case Knives on Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you
the best outdoor podcast the airways had off. All right, friends,
(00:28):
grab a chair or drop that tail gate. I've got
some stories to share eating what you hunt. I have
always been a fan wild game and eating while I
chase in the field, as at times it's been just
as rewarding as the pursuit. Nothing beats the tug of
(00:51):
a big bluegill on your line, except maybe how it
tastes coming out of the hot peanut oil. We're talking
about eating the game we're after in some of them
that may not be on your menu. But first, I'm
going to tell you a story. Twenty years or more ago,
(01:13):
Michael lived not far from my brother Tim and was
about the same age as my nephews Will and Matthew,
who were separated only by about three years. It wasn't
uncommon for him to get off the school bus at
their house and play ball or ramble around the countryside,
as country boys tend to do, and when school was out,
(01:33):
they'd have bicycle track worn pass back and forth on
the gravel road that passed by in front of both
their houses that were old mile or so apart. Around
meal time, they would all magically appear at one another's
house to be invited to sit down and eat. The
internal clock of young boys taking down the minutes to
supper time is highly accurate, regardless of their location or activities.
(01:59):
It's a silent dog whistle to a sheep dog. They
started making their way towards the source of the call
from way down in the creek bottoms or out of
the barn, just in time to smash a gallon of
milk or sweet tea and to fire a double help
in the whatever was coming off the stove or out
of the oven. This would be the case the last
(02:19):
time Michael would pull up his chair at my brother
Tim's house. Tim walked out of his house one afternoon
and as he stepped off the porch, he narrowly missed
being bitten by a huge timber rattler that was laying
at the foot of the steps. A short time later,
one of them was no longer amongst living and minus
his skin. The incident didn't scare Tim as much as
(02:43):
it made him mad, especially with his son's ripping and
running all over the country, so he decided to get
the last laugh and eat it. After cleaning old jake
no shoulders, Tim cut him up, and my saint of
a sister in law, Barbageing, fried him on the stove.
You would fish. It was a big snake and there
(03:03):
was plenty to go around, and with the timing of
a Swiss watch, Matthew, Will and their friend Michael came
through the door just in time to see her pull
the last bit of snake from the hot grease. The
talk went to the incident of how they were all
about to sit down and eat what Tim had found
crawling in the yard only an hour or so before.
(03:25):
When Michael said he couldn't stay, Mama told him to
be home at a certain time, and the hour was
fast approaching. Out the door and on his bicycle and
in a cloud of dust, Michael made his way home.
Tim and the rest tried the snake and didn't much
care for it. I remember Matthew saying it was chewy,
(03:46):
thus ending the eating a snake store or so they thought.
A Few days later, Michael was once again down at
Tims and playing with the boys. No mention of snakes
or so up or anything had transpired. In the meantime,
Barbijean had fixed supper and walked out on the porch
(04:07):
to tell all three of them to come eat. Matthew
and Will shot inside like they were starving, while Michael
just made his way toward his bicycle. Barbara, see, Michael,
are you hungry? He said, yes, ma'am. He said, well,
come on in and eat. I fixed plenty. He said, no, ma'am,
that's okay. She said, I thought you said you were hungry,
(04:29):
Like I said, I am, I don't ever know what
y'all are gonna be eating down here. And that's just
how that happened. Eating what you hunt and the critters
we pursued just goes hand in hand. Catch a mess
(04:51):
of fish, cook a mess of fish, shoot a mess
of squirrels, fix a mess of squirrels. Almost exclusively, I
hunt and fish for with the skillet, I enjoy the
taste of whatever I'm trying to hem up long enough
to get it skint battered, bake, stew or fried. After all,
that's why our species started hunting in the first place.
(05:13):
I can hear the cavem in talking. Now, Hey, Bud,
see that pterodactyl flying over yonder Yep, let's kill it
with a rock and eat it. Bro That sounds radical.
Count me in. The next morning, Fred and Barney are
sitting out a dozen lizard bird decoys and waiting on
sunrise at the local tar pit. That's how it all started,
(05:34):
probably well my version of it, anyway, and my family
hasn't slowed down since, or so you'd think. But you'd
be wrong. Contrary to what one would assume, my dad,
Buddy Reeves, a country born and raised rural houndsman, horsemen,
(05:55):
and well known pursuer of squirrels, who would easily be
ranked near, if not at the top of the list
for total numbers of squirrels. Being given a twenty two
caliber headache, he wouldn't have eaten one, had even been
starving slapped to death. Neither would my uncle jimm Ray
nor my aunts are first cousins on my father's side.
(06:17):
I took a pole of three generations of the Reefs
side of the family tree, my aunts, my uncle, siblings,
and cousins. Thirty percent of them eat squirrels. We were
all raised right there, more or less within a rock
chunking distance of each other, And seven out of ten
(06:37):
would not eat a squirrel if they were hungry. And
that kind of knocks in the head the old adage
of country folks having country ways. Yet hear me and
my brothers and all our children sat waiting on the
next big mess of squirrels to be brought to the table.
Every one of them will smash the sac full of
cook squirrels, except my two girls Bailey's and tried them
(07:00):
last winter when I fried up a big mess for supper.
Now I knew my wife Alexis wasn't going to eat any,
but she did try it and said that's as far
as she wanted to go. Our daughter Bailey followed suit,
but I think her judgment was biased by her mother's
hard pass and the fact that she's at the age
where girl stuff is more appealing to her than her
(07:22):
crusty old pappy's diet. To her credit, though she loves
bear and deer meat, can't get enough of it. Now
our son Hunter, who's twenty six, cannon has eaten his
wait and fried squirrel and squirrel and dumplings all his life.
He loves them. But let's go back in time when
the oldest daughter, Amy, who at the time was a
(07:42):
little younger than Bailey is now. She literally survived on
chicken and cold hot dogs right out of the ice box,
nothing else. It's a period of time. I like to
call her chicken strip era will. Being the diabolical father
that I am, I know that if she ever tried
squirrel but she'd like it. So I stopped by the
(08:06):
local KFC one day and got them to give me
a box that the meals come in, and I took
it home. I put some leftover squirrel legs in it
that I brought home from the camp and sat them
on the kitchen counter. Y'all know what happened next. She
saw the box, asked if she could have the leftovers,
and went around, no squirrel leggs like a ducking on
(08:28):
on a roast in there, Daddy, this is the best
chicken I've ever ate. She couldn't get enough of them.
I don't remember how many she had, but it would
have been a good accounting of herself at a camp
full of lumberjacks. Look on her face when I told
her what it was was the best part. She was
like she'd been a gut shot with a cannon full
(08:50):
of squirrels. A few months later, I'd get her again
with some frog legs, same thing, ate them like a
hungry hostage. Does you find out what they were? And
all of a sudden ooh, I don't like those? Well,
all that is funny, but it shows the bias that
we all hold for what we consider to be normal
(09:11):
food and how something looks, and not based on how
something tastes. I laughed at seeing an animal rights organization's
online ad once showing a photo of a puppy and
a piglet with the words why I love one and
eat the other, to which someone replied, because only one
of them is filled with bacon? What about birds? As
(09:36):
a society, we eat chicken with reckless abandon We eat
it weekly in some form or another. Here my girls
don't want ducks, doves or quailed. They'd rather eat chicken.
Chickens are everybody as nasty as creature as you can get.
Don't get me wrong. Chicken is one of the many
food items you could bait a trap with and catch
me every time. No one loves chicken more than me,
(09:56):
no one. My nephew, Thomas, more specifically, my great nephew,
came over for supper last Sunday after church. Thomas is
my brother Tim's grandson. I fried up a bunch of
(10:16):
fish and some gator bytes for him and his gal
pall Emma. At the last minute, I realized Emma wasn't
a fish or a gator eater, and we like Emma.
So I chunked the old stand by chicken nuggies in
with the gator and when everybody pushed away from the table,
we were all sporting big smiles and full bellies. Now,
(10:37):
I'm sure there are folks out there that don't like chicken,
but I'm not sure i'd like to be around them.
Chicken is the great common denominator. I want to get
someone to try something new. Hit them with the old
It tastes just like chicken routine. It never does. That's
the old bait and switch that we used to earn
someone's trust. Want me to try something, Tell me a
(11:00):
taste like antelope or grilled coon. I'm all in fellow,
but I've always had an affinity for a while gaming
the food that is associated with the South I more
or less felt it was my duty to eat it.
I know that may sound superficial, but stay in true
to the culture of my Raisin has always been important
to me. Even though the squirrel eating skipped the generation
(11:24):
in my family. My mama wouldn't need it either, but
she did fix it for us kids, and we all
loved quail. It was a treat to go shoot some
early in the morning and come back for her to
cook up a big breakfast with fried quail, taters, eggs, biscuits,
and gravy. The last breakfast of that was when I
(11:44):
was in high school and the quail were disappearing. And
she also fixed the ducks that Tim and I brought home,
and she made a labor intensive duck and rice dish
that would rival anything for the love of humanity. It's good,
but ducks and quail are are beautiful birds. In the
esthetics of how something looks plays into how it's perceived,
(12:06):
especially in food. Don't even get me started on wild
versus domesticated turkeys. I'll save that for another day because
having to argue the advantages of wild over pen raises
enough to put myself into a self induced coma. My
dad also didn't care for deer meat. Again, all of
his offspring subsist in some degree off wild game, with
(12:29):
Tim and I leading the charge. I can't tell you
why he preferred farm stock groceries over wild game. In
the spring and summer, we ate fish too, and three
times a week we happen to be staying at the
river fishing. We ate it every day, and not once
did I grow tired of it, and neither did he.
But my great grandfather, the man who raised my dad,
(12:51):
ate squirrels like there was no tomorrow. I've heard my
dad tell stories about Grandpa taking the tablespoon on his
pocket knife and with a swift blow, cracked the heads
open of a cooked squirrel and eat the contents of
their brain bucket like it was canny. Me. I draw
the line at a squirrel shoulders, I'm not eating anything
above that mark or from in between his tiny derido
(13:15):
shaped ears. There's also a convenient reason for that. Squirrel
brains can kill you like dead, graveyard dead, like groundhogs
are bringing you your mail for eternity dead. That reason
is called crutch felled Jacob disease CJD for short, which
is a variation of mad Cow. Now this all came
(13:37):
about in the mid nineteen nineties. Went over a four
year period, eleven unfortunate souls in Kentucky all contracted CJD.
The only link between them was that they had all
ingested squirrel brands. They had all died within a year
of contracting disease too. Man, it's terrible. Since that time,
(13:58):
cases had been reported in sir states, including New York, Alabama,
West Virginia, Mississippi, as well as here in Arkansas. I've
never fancied myself a squirrel brain eater, regardless of my
family history or the nostalgia associated with it. Conveniently, now
I can add impending doom to that list, and for
(14:20):
that reason I'm out now lead just about anything. My
friend and colleague Spenser new Hearth made a whole meat
eater series a while back called Pardon My Plate. He
had different folks on each week eating things that most
folks wouldn't normally associate with suppertime, like a coyote, skunk, goldfish,
(14:41):
and a muskrat, just to name a few. Folks out
in Dorchester, Maryland have a whole festival every year dedicated
to eating muskrats and crawfish. I may have to slip
out there next year and check it out for myself.
I ain't never add a muskrat, believe it or not,
but I can flat more put a hurting on a
sack of muddy bugs, which brings to mind something else
(15:02):
you can get out of a beaver pond and take
home and put in your belly. Besides muskrats, crawfish, and
Giardia castor canadensas the North American beaver, official state bird
of Canada. I've read story after story about mountain men,
Indians and settlers eating beaver meat. I've never had a
(15:25):
hank or two, although i have spent a jitian of
them in my lifetime when I was trapping and helping
Tim with his trap line. But some of my friends
up in New England are making a dent in the
beaver population and their grocery bill. Jake DeBow and his
wife Riley had built a business around the fur market
(15:45):
and have been teaching beaver's how to ride in the
back of their truck for the last seven years. They
have all the social media platforms, including a YouTube page
filled with great how to content that is simple and
easy to follow. Long and downright entertaining, from setting his
traps to catching, cleaning and preparing the fur. It's New
(16:06):
England natural. You got to look it up. The debos
are living close to the land and lots of time
up there. The land is covered in snow, but that's
when Jake and Riley shine the most. Not only are
they keeping the beaver population and other fur bearing critters
in check, but they also were putting meat up for
the winter, beaver meat. I talked to Jake recently and
(16:29):
he told me that beaver makes up about fifty percent
of their diet. They eat it in one form or
another anywhere from two to three times a week. He
also told me that if the average deer hunter knew
how good beaver was to eat, they'd all be duking
it out for trapping permits like folks sit back in
the seventies when the fur market was strong. The debos
(16:53):
fix it just like you do deer, bear and beef
for that matter. Backstraps and surloins in the back legs
for the crock pot. Their dog gets raw ground beaver
every day. This cuts their yearly dog food bill in
half and it's great for the dog. And I'm paying
almost seventy dollars a bag for my dog feeding. I
(17:15):
think old whaling might need a little beaver meat. Now
you think, well, they must have grown up eating it.
I know I did, but just like me, you're wrong.
When they first got married they decided to try it.
Their goal was to live close to the land and
by utilizing the meat they were adding to their trapline yield.
A beaver is a lot like a hog when you
(17:37):
get one. About the only thing you can't eat on
a hog is the squeal. It's about the same when
it comes eating old Buckie Riley says it compares to
lamb and she fixes it with mint chutney. I acted
like I knew what that was, so maybe Jake wouldn't
figure out how little I know about anything. Jason Ellsworth,
what in the world is mint chutney? And would it
(17:58):
be good on corn bread? I need to know stat Seriously, though,
these folks are putting out some great content that's very
educational and well worth the effort to look up my
gall Riva is going to help you out and include
a link to Jake and Riley's New England Naturals Instagram
and YouTube pages. It'll be in the show description where
(18:20):
you listen to us from that's good stuff and proof
that a country life in New Hampshire is just as
important and relevant as one in Arkansas. I've been saying
it since the beginning that we can all live a
country life regardless of our zip code or whether we
live outside or inside the city limits. Jake and Riley
(18:42):
Deebo live over fifteen hundred miles northeast of my friends
Keith and Lee Brandon in southeast Arkansas. Leave the de
Bos in New Hampshire and you'll travel over two thousand
miles west and northwest of my friends Craig and Medale
McCartney's ranch in Central Mauntito, over Canada. They live their
lives much like the Debos, the Brandings, and the Reeves.
(19:06):
There's a ton of space and people between those three
points on our side of the planet. I'd say the
chances are good that there's many more folks out there
doing their best to make their way just like we are.
Those are the folks I want to be around and
the folks I'm looking for. They're my people, and together
we can turn the tide on those that are fighting
(19:28):
to take away what we all stand for it comes
right down to it, there will be more folks out
there with more similarities to our own and differences. We
just have to talk to each other long enough without
getting mad to find out what they are. Now, that's
(19:50):
gonna wrap it up for me this week. Thank y'all
so much for listening to me in that turkey calling contest.
Cheating mule Skinner, hill billy who puts mushrooms in his
chili clay bowl nukem. We both really appreciate it. Elk
season is right around the corner, and Jason Phelps and
Dirk Durham are busy as cats in a sandbox over
(20:11):
it Cutting the Distance podcast. Those boys know their stuff,
and if you're you're ready for some ELK content, get
yourself over there and check it out. Until next week.
This is Brent Reeves signing off. Y'all be careful
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