January 10, 2025 • 22 mins
It's a common misconception that success is only measured in material or money. But success can be assessed in many ways and to Brent, there's no better measurement than good experiences with good people in the great outdoors. He's gonna talk about his formula for reaping the rewards of a good investment and share a listener's Christmas survival story that you won't want to miss.
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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 airwaves have to offer. All right, friends,
(00:28):
grab a chair or drop that tailgate. I've got some
stories to share. Measuring success. There's a lot of ways
you can measure success and money in the banking material
possessions are only two. I'm going to talk about one
(00:48):
way that I've learned to calculate it. But first, I'm
going to tell you a story. I know it's like
three weeks past Christmas, but I had to get a
bunch of episodes ahead so our favorite sound engineer and
doer of all things related to the intelligence side of
(01:10):
This Country Life, Reva Hansen, could go home to see
her folks over the holidays. I didn't do a dedicated
Christmas episode because I wasn't really sure in what order
they'd be posted, so I filed this listener story to
be told next year. But it correlates to measuring success.
This week's theme and I can't wait a year to
(01:32):
tell it. It's too good. And it comes from this
Country life listener, Oklahoma's own Dane Fuller. And in Dane's
words and my voice, here we go. Growing up, Christmas
Eve meant one thing, ma'am. I own Papov's house. It
(01:53):
was a tradition of the Fullers dating back to I
believe three days after dirt was invented. RC and Edith
Gert Fuller had a pretty big family, five boys and
one girl. Eventually, as kids back them did, they all
left home to start families of their own, and soon
(02:14):
they began bringing them back for the holidays. Not only
kids and grandkids were there, but great aunts and uncles,
second cousins, and so forth. By the nineteen seventies, there
was approximately four hundred and ninety seven men, women and
children cramed to that old house out in the sticks
of Muskogee County in northeastern Oklahoma every Christmas Eve. Not
(02:36):
really that many, but it sure seemed like it. One
particular December twenty fourth, the house was filled to capacity.
We had all eaten supper and everyone was gathered in
the front room. All of us grandkids were excited because
Pap had finally said we could open presents. Our grandparents
weren't rich, In fact, they had very little. Somehow though
(02:59):
every year they managed to get us off something. This
year times must have been a little tougher than normal,
because instead of buying a tree, Pap had gone up
the hill with his double bit axe and chopped down
a cedar tree a few weeks earlier, and by the
time the festivities rolled around, that cedar tree had turned
into the color of a brown paper bag. Christmas lights
(03:22):
back in the seventies were of the variety that could
rival the temperature of the sun. Twinkle lights weren't anywhere
close to happening, being as how the tree had morphed
into something akin to napalm. The adults in the room
had decided that no string of Christmas lights would be
plugged in. The grandkids tried their cow eyed angel face
(03:42):
best to talk Papa into plugging them in, but he
wouldn't budge. All of us tried, except for one, Scott cousin.
Scott was born in the middle third of the order
as far as grandkid ages went. However, he was lead
off on the kind of kid that when his dad
(04:03):
said not to do something or he'd get a whooping.
Scott would ask how much of a woman? It was
awesome being Scott's cousin back then, I could tear the
barn down, and if he was there, I'd never get
so much as looked at. Everybody just knew Scott did
it anyway. He was seated next to me that night.
Next to him was the television. Behind it was the
(04:27):
outlet that would have had the plugs that were all
lying on the floor going to the lights that were
still draped on the Christmas tree. The duty of passing
out presence this night had fallen to Aint Judy, the
lone girl of the Fuller kids. Being a girl with
five brothers, Judy had put up with a lot in
(04:48):
her day, not enough, though, to have obtained a calm
demeanor capable of taking on anything. To say that she
is easily frazzled is an understatement. After the first twenty
or so kids had gotten their presence, Judy was nearing
the end of her rope. The sound of shredding wrapping paper,
squeals of delight, and parents yelling at the kids to
(05:10):
wait their turn and taking its toll on Judy. It
was at this precise moment Scott made his mood. Without
tapping my knee or giving me so much as hey,
watch this, he slithered behind the TV and picked up
the light stream plug, eager to see the lights and
maybe get him the busting of his life. I didn't
(05:32):
say a word. He gave me a look, and with
a crooked smile, he plugged into the lights. Oh what
a glorious sight. The reds, greens, blues, and orange bulls
came to life. Nobody noticed except for me, Scott's sister Charmon,
and my sister Karen. The adults were too busy breaking
(05:54):
up fights over cap pistols and baby dolls. They had
no idea of the coup that Scott had pulled off.
For about two seconds, almost as suddenly as the light
has appeared, they were being put to shame by the
flame shooting out from that long dead cedar tree. Everyone
noticed now. Uncle pee Wee grabbed the cord and tried
(06:14):
to yank it out of the socket, and doing so
he knocked over the infire older that was once considered
a Christmas tree. Things sort of got blurry after that.
The house was full of smoke. Dad's grabbed kids and
started litterly throwing toward the back door. Moms had to
run in the kitchen to ketch him before any bones
were broken. By this time, Uncle Rudy had waded through
(06:35):
the sea of kids wrapping paper and toys and made
it to the tree. He began trying to stump the
fire out. Somebody no one knows who got the front
door open, the very door that hadn't been opened for
years because ma'ama didn't want it to wear a hole
in her carpet. Terrified me because I was sitting next
to the door and had been threatened with a switch
(06:56):
for even acting like I might open it. I knew
without aut I would get busted for snagging the carpet,
no matter the black hole that had just been burned
in it. Uncle Tuffy, Scott's dad, grabbed the steel burning
torch of a tree, knocked me out of the way,
and threw it in the front yard. Amidst the chaos,
the screams, and the smoke, still in the center of
(07:16):
the room was Judy running for her life with her
hands clasping a frace and she was screaming, oh my, gosh,
oh my gosh, oh my gosh over and over and over,
trying desperately to get herself and her kids out of life.
She never made it one edge farther from the tree
than she was at the moment of combustion. She was
literally running in circles. Pap had never made it out
(07:40):
of the cliner, Dad had never made it off the couch.
Both were laughing as hard as I had ever seen
anyone laugh. By now Scott had made it out from
behind the RC eight. He probably knew that he should
run while he was still label, but he was too busy,
enjoined the fruits of his labor, enamored by the sights
of all the carnage, he never noticed his dad reaching
(08:01):
for him. No one knows exactly what happened to Scott
once his dad pulled him away, but after the tears
dried up, he was as quiet as a church mouse
for the rest of the night. Christis averted. It wasn't
long until all the windows and the doors in the
house were opened to let the smoke down. Everyone had
resumed their positions, though wearing their coach. Now what was
(08:24):
left of the presence was handed out in Scott and
never sat next to that old TV again. And according
to DAMEE Fuller, Native Oklahoma, now spying on the Texans
down in childish, that's just how that happened. Now, this is,
without a doubt, the best submission amongst the sea of
(08:44):
great ones that have ever been sent in by you.
Stories like this will always find a way to the top.
Y'all keep them coming, Thank you, Dame. Measuring success any
(09:10):
purposeful experience we have where we hope to gain something
from the endeavor, whether it's knowledge, a new skill, or
something tangible. Once it's over, we have a reckoning of
how successful or unsuccessful that struggle was. Was what we
gathered from that exercise worth what we sacrifice for the
end goal? And that's a question we can all relate
(09:31):
to now. Every day lies from getting up and going
to work, buying groceries, or for our leisurely pursuits. It's
easy to get discouraged after a trip to the grocery
store when you compare what you paid for for what
you brought home. Soon you have to go back and
do it all over again. The one way to deal
with that is to grow your own, which requires effort
(09:52):
on your part. Once you start down that road to
do it right, it requires daily attention to reap the
best rewards. Now that's an investment in time and effort
versus the rewards and the literal fruit and vegetables of
your labors. The end of the growing season dictates if
the effort was outweighed by the rewards. I liked farming
(10:13):
growing up, but I was not a fan of gardening.
Farming was different in that it was tractors and implements,
and garden was me on the ignorant end of a
whole stooped over with a bucket, picking tomatoes and beans
and peas. It was always what stood between me and
the things I wanted to do. I'm going fishing in
the morning. I'll be leaving before breakfast, to which my
(10:35):
mother would respond, we're picking peas in the morning. You
can go after that's done. A fooled again. Now, I
didn't mind ripping the rewards from those forced efforts when
the time came to mash a double handful of him
into a piece of hot buttered corn bread. But as
a young man with fishing on his mind, breaking the
sweat while bent over in a pea patch trying to
(10:56):
fill a five gallon bucket was the farthest thing from
a plate full of goodness that you could get now
later on, had you asked me if it was worth
the trouble at the sibber table after my first bite
of peas and corn bread, and the Andrew would have
been an emphatic yes, Yes it was. But this is
the magic of the passage of time, both in the
measure of success and the maturity of a person. I
(11:21):
find it a lot easier to recognize where my efforts
are heading with each passing birthday, something I couldn't see
past where I was standing earlier in my life. I
tended to live my life for the here and now,
never thinking beyond tomorrow, because tomorrow was a long way away.
But before I knew it, tomorrow was today. Spent several
(11:44):
days with some folks in Kansas last week at one
of the Meat Eatter Experience events, the lat Vin Eagle himself,
Joannis Vitellius, and I gathered up with nine folks from
all walks of life in all parts of the country
to hunt ducks and geese in central Kansas with a
folks at foul Planes Waterfowl Outfitters. My colleague Michael Reetveil
(12:05):
from first light was there and organizing the whole affair
from the admin's side of things, and had everything squared
away from the moment Jannis and I got there. As
I stumbled my way through this life of mine, I
find it interest in how uncommonly common it is for
me to run into someone that I know or have
a connection with in the most random of places. I
(12:29):
take away the many people I run into airports and
restaurants that follow this show and others I've been blessed
to be a part of, and focus on the ones
that I run into that I actually know or have
been acquainted with, and it never ceases to amaze me.
Michael met Joannis and I and showed us inside, and
shortly thereafter introduced us to one of the owners of
(12:49):
Foul Planes, Chase White, a strapping lad with a beard
long enough to call him esthetically to play with zz
top now. I shook his hand and introduced my my
He said, I think I met you about ten years ago.
Immediately I started thumbing through my minds antiquated roller decks
that loses more index cards with each passing day, trying
(13:11):
to figure out where I could have met someone that
was running a duck hunting operation and a part of
Kansas that I'd never been in before. I wasn't having
any luck. Oh oh, was it in my other career,
the law enforcement one? Then Chase said, I was got
deer hunters down in southeast Candace and met you. I
(13:32):
imagined him without the beard, and I remembered him immediately. Well,
I remember the day that what you were doing, Chase.
You were in a farm shop building ground blinds out
of cattle panels and camo tarps. He started laughing, and
we reminisced about the people that we knew in common,
Max Griffin and Ethan Bennington, who were guiding for the
same concern back then. It's always funny to me to
(13:55):
have those experience and have it bring to mind a
million things that I wouldn't have ordinarily thought about without
some sort of trigger. Chasing his family live in Virginia,
and he and his business partner, Cody Crook, a native Kansas,
own and operate foul planes in the central part of
the state. Now, when Chase comes out to Kansas to
(14:15):
gad he brings his wife, Megan and their little boy
on the annual pilgrimage. A short time later, John Johnny, Sean, Phil, Jim,
Carry Brent, not this Brnt, the other Brint, as I
would refer to him throughout our state. Michelle and Jason
walked through the door and our camp was complete. The
Foul Plane staff worked feverously behind the scenes as we
(14:38):
all got better acquainted with each other. An the collected
group of humans from Michigan, North Dakota, Missouri, Virginia, Montana, Idaho, Kansas,
and Arkansas would share a common space for the next
three days, all seeking the opportunity to bag limits of
ducks and geese and the company of strangers. I talked
about how to be a guest at a duck and
(15:00):
way back on This Country Life episode one nineteen entitled
Duck Camp Etiquette. Now han't been a waterfowl guide myself
for twenty six years, I have a pretty good idea
on what all it entails to put on a hunt
for clients and what hunters like to know to make
them more confident guides than the opportunity to be successful,
(15:21):
I draw all guides can't control the weather or the animals.
What they can do is provide a clean, comfortable place
to stay, good food, and communicate them with their guests
now keeping their hunters up to speed on what's going
on as far as what's expected of them, where they'll
be hunting, the environmental conditions they can expect to encounter,
(15:41):
and the equipment they'll need to keep them comfortable and
it's important. These were all things that my brother Tim
and I focused on when we were guiding it. It
made for a more relaxed atmosphere in camp when the
only questions left unanswered. We're controlled by mother nature chasing.
This crew did an excellent job of explaining it all
in great detail. They also had a grease board posted
(16:05):
in the mudroom. Now on the grease board all the
pertinent information for the next day's hunt was posted, what
time we were leaving, how far we were going, if
we were hunting ducks, geese or both. Another time that
was posted would allow you to roll out early with
the guide crew if you wanted to help set up now.
(16:28):
For those not versed in what goes into prepping a
spot for ducks and geese, is a fun way to
learn the dues and don'ts of decoy placement, the number
of decoys used, why you use that number, and the
rest of the ingredients that go into the mix of
having a safe and successful hunt. When there's nothing left
to question, all that's left is to get to know
(16:49):
one another. Where else could such a diversely located group
of people whose main similarity is a love for the
outdoors gather together to celebrate a com and passion. It's
the main investment in measuring the success of the hunt.
It can't all be about how many ducks and geese
you bring back to camp. Now, there was a time
(17:11):
when it was for me, just like some of the
folks that I visited with in Kansas. Another commonality is
that with age and maturity comes the peace that goes
beyond the ducks and geese we bring home. I've seen
it a million times in people I've guided for who
bring their sons and daughters and younger family members. The
youngsters are chomping at the bit to get to the trigger,
while the older folks kind of set back and enjoy
(17:33):
the riot. I learned that lesson from a client of
hours that I only had the pleasure of honting with
once early in my guiding career. He was from Pennsylvania
and asked me questions about everything we saw that day. Trees, bushes,
farm crops, birds, bugs. Everything that he was hearing and
seeing that he didn't have back in Pennsylvania was of
(17:56):
interest to it. I didn't know half of what he
was asking any He seemed a little disappointed that I didn't.
There were no apps or cell phones then that could
give you the answers. I was supposed to be his
Google for Arkansas, and I had failed him miserably. He
was an older gentleman who, while I only hunted with
him a few days, he made a lasting impression on me.
(18:17):
He was confessing more into this hunting trip than just
how many ducks he could choose. He wanted to know
how I grew up, what it was like living here
at anything he could about everything I didn't know. It
made me see value in my place like I'd never
seen before, Even though there was no other place on
this planet that I wanted to be than right there
(18:39):
where I was, standing beside him in flooded green timber,
ignorant of the majority of my surroundings. I felt guilty
for not being able to answer him. I vowed to
myself to learn more about the things I took for
granted that nours so important to me. Yet at the
time were of little consequence. With each trip outside, I
(19:00):
took note of more of the little things. I looked
them up, and I asked other folks I was with,
and I tried to learn something every day. Still do
that yankee from Pennsylvania taught me to be more invested
in whatever I was doing, and my returns grew way
beyond what I brought home to skin and eat. Jannis
(19:20):
and Chase played ping pong, and the rest of us
cheered and jeered to the monotonous tone of the back
and forth between them. And during that hypnotic demonstration of
hand eye coordination, I learned that I was sitting in
the company of medical professionals, veterans, and engineers, amongst others.
Three sets of married folks, a father and a son,
(19:40):
and one flying solo, all happy to be there, all
with humility, in varied levels of duck hunting experience, ranging
from veteran waterfowlers to novices. They shared a genuine interest
in what mine Giannis's job entailed and asked questions with enthusiasm.
They all reminded me, every one one of them, with
(20:01):
a man from Pennsylvania that I'd taken hunting almost forty
years ago. They wanted to learn everything, and they weren't
afraid or too vain to ask questions about things they
didn't know. They were educating themselves to better understand the
environment in which they were now operating, and in doing so,
they would see the bigger picture beyond the end of
their shotgun and what was really going on. People like
(20:25):
that are my kind of people, regardless of their level
of ability in anything, but especially the outdoors. Some of
them could have taken my place in the hosting duties
and been better at it, I'm sure than I was.
Always looked for a common denominator when I'm talking to
a group of folks, but the only one a parent
it first was I respect for the wild things, And
(20:47):
once we started talking, all the others rose to the surface,
and there was a lot of them, a notable difference
from the eclectic group of folks I sat with for
three hours in the Dallas Fort Worth Airport, all of
them close enough to talk, but miles away on their
phones and laptops. I got home and I unpacked, getting
(21:07):
my stuff cleaned, washed, and ready to leave again for
a film we're shooting in a few days. When I
laid down last night after saying my prayers, my thoughts
drifted back a day to the new friends I had
made and wondered if they'd all gotten home yet. I'd
only known them for a little over seventy two hours,
but in that time I'd invested in them as much
(21:28):
and more than they'd invested in me. I knew their kids' names,
where they went to church, and much of the day
to day things that make up their lives. Things like
that matter, and that matter because we each asked the
other a question, and instead of marking time until we
could speak again, we listened to the answer. I couldn't
(21:49):
tell you how many ducks and geese we shot over
those three days. It wasn't a limit every day, but
we didn't get skumped by any means, and had we
been hunting for the skillet, we'd have all went to
bed foot at night. A year from now, I doubt
I could pick out the places we hunted have shown
a picture of them among three others. I guarantee you
that I'll remember the people, and when I do, I'm
(22:12):
gonna smile, and that's how I measure success. I can
only hope that they do the same thank out so
much for listening to me and my partner, Clay Bowl
and the Old Bear Grease Channel. And until next week,
this is Brent Reeves, Sign it 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 airwaves have to offer. All right, friends,
(00:28):
grab a chair or drop that tailgate. I've got some
stories to share. Measuring success. There's a lot of ways
you can measure success and money in the banking material
possessions are only two. I'm going to talk about one
(00:48):
way that I've learned to calculate it. But first, I'm
going to tell you a story. I know it's like
three weeks past Christmas, but I had to get a
bunch of episodes ahead so our favorite sound engineer and
doer of all things related to the intelligence side of
(01:10):
This Country Life, Reva Hansen, could go home to see
her folks over the holidays. I didn't do a dedicated
Christmas episode because I wasn't really sure in what order
they'd be posted, so I filed this listener story to
be told next year. But it correlates to measuring success.
This week's theme and I can't wait a year to
(01:32):
tell it. It's too good. And it comes from this
Country life listener, Oklahoma's own Dane Fuller. And in Dane's
words and my voice, here we go. Growing up, Christmas
Eve meant one thing, ma'am. I own Papov's house. It
(01:53):
was a tradition of the Fullers dating back to I
believe three days after dirt was invented. RC and Edith
Gert Fuller had a pretty big family, five boys and
one girl. Eventually, as kids back them did, they all
left home to start families of their own, and soon
(02:14):
they began bringing them back for the holidays. Not only
kids and grandkids were there, but great aunts and uncles,
second cousins, and so forth. By the nineteen seventies, there
was approximately four hundred and ninety seven men, women and
children cramed to that old house out in the sticks
of Muskogee County in northeastern Oklahoma every Christmas Eve. Not
(02:36):
really that many, but it sure seemed like it. One
particular December twenty fourth, the house was filled to capacity.
We had all eaten supper and everyone was gathered in
the front room. All of us grandkids were excited because
Pap had finally said we could open presents. Our grandparents
weren't rich, In fact, they had very little. Somehow though
(02:59):
every year they managed to get us off something. This
year times must have been a little tougher than normal,
because instead of buying a tree, Pap had gone up
the hill with his double bit axe and chopped down
a cedar tree a few weeks earlier, and by the
time the festivities rolled around, that cedar tree had turned
into the color of a brown paper bag. Christmas lights
(03:22):
back in the seventies were of the variety that could
rival the temperature of the sun. Twinkle lights weren't anywhere
close to happening, being as how the tree had morphed
into something akin to napalm. The adults in the room
had decided that no string of Christmas lights would be
plugged in. The grandkids tried their cow eyed angel face
(03:42):
best to talk Papa into plugging them in, but he
wouldn't budge. All of us tried, except for one, Scott cousin.
Scott was born in the middle third of the order
as far as grandkid ages went. However, he was lead
off on the kind of kid that when his dad
(04:03):
said not to do something or he'd get a whooping.
Scott would ask how much of a woman? It was
awesome being Scott's cousin back then, I could tear the
barn down, and if he was there, I'd never get
so much as looked at. Everybody just knew Scott did
it anyway. He was seated next to me that night.
Next to him was the television. Behind it was the
(04:27):
outlet that would have had the plugs that were all
lying on the floor going to the lights that were
still draped on the Christmas tree. The duty of passing
out presence this night had fallen to Aint Judy, the
lone girl of the Fuller kids. Being a girl with
five brothers, Judy had put up with a lot in
(04:48):
her day, not enough, though, to have obtained a calm
demeanor capable of taking on anything. To say that she
is easily frazzled is an understatement. After the first twenty
or so kids had gotten their presence, Judy was nearing
the end of her rope. The sound of shredding wrapping paper,
squeals of delight, and parents yelling at the kids to
(05:10):
wait their turn and taking its toll on Judy. It
was at this precise moment Scott made his mood. Without
tapping my knee or giving me so much as hey,
watch this, he slithered behind the TV and picked up
the light stream plug, eager to see the lights and
maybe get him the busting of his life. I didn't
(05:32):
say a word. He gave me a look, and with
a crooked smile, he plugged into the lights. Oh what
a glorious sight. The reds, greens, blues, and orange bulls
came to life. Nobody noticed except for me, Scott's sister Charmon,
and my sister Karen. The adults were too busy breaking
(05:54):
up fights over cap pistols and baby dolls. They had
no idea of the coup that Scott had pulled off.
For about two seconds, almost as suddenly as the light
has appeared, they were being put to shame by the
flame shooting out from that long dead cedar tree. Everyone
noticed now. Uncle pee Wee grabbed the cord and tried
(06:14):
to yank it out of the socket, and doing so
he knocked over the infire older that was once considered
a Christmas tree. Things sort of got blurry after that.
The house was full of smoke. Dad's grabbed kids and
started litterly throwing toward the back door. Moms had to
run in the kitchen to ketch him before any bones
were broken. By this time, Uncle Rudy had waded through
(06:35):
the sea of kids wrapping paper and toys and made
it to the tree. He began trying to stump the
fire out. Somebody no one knows who got the front
door open, the very door that hadn't been opened for
years because ma'ama didn't want it to wear a hole
in her carpet. Terrified me because I was sitting next
to the door and had been threatened with a switch
(06:56):
for even acting like I might open it. I knew
without aut I would get busted for snagging the carpet,
no matter the black hole that had just been burned
in it. Uncle Tuffy, Scott's dad, grabbed the steel burning
torch of a tree, knocked me out of the way,
and threw it in the front yard. Amidst the chaos,
the screams, and the smoke, still in the center of
(07:16):
the room was Judy running for her life with her
hands clasping a frace and she was screaming, oh my, gosh,
oh my gosh, oh my gosh over and over and over,
trying desperately to get herself and her kids out of life.
She never made it one edge farther from the tree
than she was at the moment of combustion. She was
literally running in circles. Pap had never made it out
(07:40):
of the cliner, Dad had never made it off the couch.
Both were laughing as hard as I had ever seen
anyone laugh. By now Scott had made it out from
behind the RC eight. He probably knew that he should
run while he was still label, but he was too busy,
enjoined the fruits of his labor, enamored by the sights
of all the carnage, he never noticed his dad reaching
(08:01):
for him. No one knows exactly what happened to Scott
once his dad pulled him away, but after the tears
dried up, he was as quiet as a church mouse
for the rest of the night. Christis averted. It wasn't
long until all the windows and the doors in the
house were opened to let the smoke down. Everyone had
resumed their positions, though wearing their coach. Now what was
(08:24):
left of the presence was handed out in Scott and
never sat next to that old TV again. And according
to DAMEE Fuller, Native Oklahoma, now spying on the Texans
down in childish, that's just how that happened. Now, this is,
without a doubt, the best submission amongst the sea of
(08:44):
great ones that have ever been sent in by you.
Stories like this will always find a way to the top.
Y'all keep them coming, Thank you, Dame. Measuring success any
(09:10):
purposeful experience we have where we hope to gain something
from the endeavor, whether it's knowledge, a new skill, or
something tangible. Once it's over, we have a reckoning of
how successful or unsuccessful that struggle was. Was what we
gathered from that exercise worth what we sacrifice for the
end goal? And that's a question we can all relate
(09:31):
to now. Every day lies from getting up and going
to work, buying groceries, or for our leisurely pursuits. It's
easy to get discouraged after a trip to the grocery
store when you compare what you paid for for what
you brought home. Soon you have to go back and
do it all over again. The one way to deal
with that is to grow your own, which requires effort
(09:52):
on your part. Once you start down that road to
do it right, it requires daily attention to reap the
best rewards. Now that's an investment in time and effort
versus the rewards and the literal fruit and vegetables of
your labors. The end of the growing season dictates if
the effort was outweighed by the rewards. I liked farming
(10:13):
growing up, but I was not a fan of gardening.
Farming was different in that it was tractors and implements,
and garden was me on the ignorant end of a
whole stooped over with a bucket, picking tomatoes and beans
and peas. It was always what stood between me and
the things I wanted to do. I'm going fishing in
the morning. I'll be leaving before breakfast, to which my
(10:35):
mother would respond, we're picking peas in the morning. You
can go after that's done. A fooled again. Now, I
didn't mind ripping the rewards from those forced efforts when
the time came to mash a double handful of him
into a piece of hot buttered corn bread. But as
a young man with fishing on his mind, breaking the
sweat while bent over in a pea patch trying to
(10:56):
fill a five gallon bucket was the farthest thing from
a plate full of goodness that you could get now
later on, had you asked me if it was worth
the trouble at the sibber table after my first bite
of peas and corn bread, and the Andrew would have
been an emphatic yes, Yes it was. But this is
the magic of the passage of time, both in the
measure of success and the maturity of a person. I
(11:21):
find it a lot easier to recognize where my efforts
are heading with each passing birthday, something I couldn't see
past where I was standing earlier in my life. I
tended to live my life for the here and now,
never thinking beyond tomorrow, because tomorrow was a long way away.
But before I knew it, tomorrow was today. Spent several
(11:44):
days with some folks in Kansas last week at one
of the Meat Eatter Experience events, the lat Vin Eagle himself,
Joannis Vitellius, and I gathered up with nine folks from
all walks of life in all parts of the country
to hunt ducks and geese in central Kansas with a
folks at foul Planes Waterfowl Outfitters. My colleague Michael Reetveil
(12:05):
from first light was there and organizing the whole affair
from the admin's side of things, and had everything squared
away from the moment Jannis and I got there. As
I stumbled my way through this life of mine, I
find it interest in how uncommonly common it is for
me to run into someone that I know or have
a connection with in the most random of places. I
(12:29):
take away the many people I run into airports and
restaurants that follow this show and others I've been blessed
to be a part of, and focus on the ones
that I run into that I actually know or have
been acquainted with, and it never ceases to amaze me.
Michael met Joannis and I and showed us inside, and
shortly thereafter introduced us to one of the owners of
(12:49):
Foul Planes, Chase White, a strapping lad with a beard
long enough to call him esthetically to play with zz
top now. I shook his hand and introduced my my
He said, I think I met you about ten years ago.
Immediately I started thumbing through my minds antiquated roller decks
that loses more index cards with each passing day, trying
(13:11):
to figure out where I could have met someone that
was running a duck hunting operation and a part of
Kansas that I'd never been in before. I wasn't having
any luck. Oh oh, was it in my other career,
the law enforcement one? Then Chase said, I was got
deer hunters down in southeast Candace and met you. I
(13:32):
imagined him without the beard, and I remembered him immediately. Well,
I remember the day that what you were doing, Chase.
You were in a farm shop building ground blinds out
of cattle panels and camo tarps. He started laughing, and
we reminisced about the people that we knew in common,
Max Griffin and Ethan Bennington, who were guiding for the
same concern back then. It's always funny to me to
(13:55):
have those experience and have it bring to mind a
million things that I wouldn't have ordinarily thought about without
some sort of trigger. Chasing his family live in Virginia,
and he and his business partner, Cody Crook, a native Kansas,
own and operate foul planes in the central part of
the state. Now, when Chase comes out to Kansas to
(14:15):
gad he brings his wife, Megan and their little boy
on the annual pilgrimage. A short time later, John Johnny, Sean, Phil, Jim,
Carry Brent, not this Brnt, the other Brint, as I
would refer to him throughout our state. Michelle and Jason
walked through the door and our camp was complete. The
Foul Plane staff worked feverously behind the scenes as we
(14:38):
all got better acquainted with each other. An the collected
group of humans from Michigan, North Dakota, Missouri, Virginia, Montana, Idaho, Kansas,
and Arkansas would share a common space for the next
three days, all seeking the opportunity to bag limits of
ducks and geese and the company of strangers. I talked
about how to be a guest at a duck and
(15:00):
way back on This Country Life episode one nineteen entitled
Duck Camp Etiquette. Now han't been a waterfowl guide myself
for twenty six years, I have a pretty good idea
on what all it entails to put on a hunt
for clients and what hunters like to know to make
them more confident guides than the opportunity to be successful,
(15:21):
I draw all guides can't control the weather or the animals.
What they can do is provide a clean, comfortable place
to stay, good food, and communicate them with their guests
now keeping their hunters up to speed on what's going
on as far as what's expected of them, where they'll
be hunting, the environmental conditions they can expect to encounter,
(15:41):
and the equipment they'll need to keep them comfortable and
it's important. These were all things that my brother Tim
and I focused on when we were guiding it. It
made for a more relaxed atmosphere in camp when the
only questions left unanswered. We're controlled by mother nature chasing.
This crew did an excellent job of explaining it all
in great detail. They also had a grease board posted
(16:05):
in the mudroom. Now on the grease board all the
pertinent information for the next day's hunt was posted, what
time we were leaving, how far we were going, if
we were hunting ducks, geese or both. Another time that
was posted would allow you to roll out early with
the guide crew if you wanted to help set up now.
(16:28):
For those not versed in what goes into prepping a
spot for ducks and geese, is a fun way to
learn the dues and don'ts of decoy placement, the number
of decoys used, why you use that number, and the
rest of the ingredients that go into the mix of
having a safe and successful hunt. When there's nothing left
to question, all that's left is to get to know
(16:49):
one another. Where else could such a diversely located group
of people whose main similarity is a love for the
outdoors gather together to celebrate a com and passion. It's
the main investment in measuring the success of the hunt.
It can't all be about how many ducks and geese
you bring back to camp. Now, there was a time
(17:11):
when it was for me, just like some of the
folks that I visited with in Kansas. Another commonality is
that with age and maturity comes the peace that goes
beyond the ducks and geese we bring home. I've seen
it a million times in people I've guided for who
bring their sons and daughters and younger family members. The
youngsters are chomping at the bit to get to the trigger,
while the older folks kind of set back and enjoy
(17:33):
the riot. I learned that lesson from a client of
hours that I only had the pleasure of honting with
once early in my guiding career. He was from Pennsylvania
and asked me questions about everything we saw that day. Trees, bushes,
farm crops, birds, bugs. Everything that he was hearing and
seeing that he didn't have back in Pennsylvania was of
(17:56):
interest to it. I didn't know half of what he
was asking any He seemed a little disappointed that I didn't.
There were no apps or cell phones then that could
give you the answers. I was supposed to be his
Google for Arkansas, and I had failed him miserably. He
was an older gentleman who, while I only hunted with
him a few days, he made a lasting impression on me.
(18:17):
He was confessing more into this hunting trip than just
how many ducks he could choose. He wanted to know
how I grew up, what it was like living here
at anything he could about everything I didn't know. It
made me see value in my place like I'd never
seen before, Even though there was no other place on
this planet that I wanted to be than right there
(18:39):
where I was, standing beside him in flooded green timber,
ignorant of the majority of my surroundings. I felt guilty
for not being able to answer him. I vowed to
myself to learn more about the things I took for
granted that nours so important to me. Yet at the
time were of little consequence. With each trip outside, I
(19:00):
took note of more of the little things. I looked
them up, and I asked other folks I was with,
and I tried to learn something every day. Still do
that yankee from Pennsylvania taught me to be more invested
in whatever I was doing, and my returns grew way
beyond what I brought home to skin and eat. Jannis
(19:20):
and Chase played ping pong, and the rest of us
cheered and jeered to the monotonous tone of the back
and forth between them. And during that hypnotic demonstration of
hand eye coordination, I learned that I was sitting in
the company of medical professionals, veterans, and engineers, amongst others.
Three sets of married folks, a father and a son,
(19:40):
and one flying solo, all happy to be there, all
with humility, in varied levels of duck hunting experience, ranging
from veteran waterfowlers to novices. They shared a genuine interest
in what mine Giannis's job entailed and asked questions with enthusiasm.
They all reminded me, every one one of them, with
(20:01):
a man from Pennsylvania that I'd taken hunting almost forty
years ago. They wanted to learn everything, and they weren't
afraid or too vain to ask questions about things they
didn't know. They were educating themselves to better understand the
environment in which they were now operating, and in doing so,
they would see the bigger picture beyond the end of
their shotgun and what was really going on. People like
(20:25):
that are my kind of people, regardless of their level
of ability in anything, but especially the outdoors. Some of
them could have taken my place in the hosting duties
and been better at it, I'm sure than I was.
Always looked for a common denominator when I'm talking to
a group of folks, but the only one a parent
it first was I respect for the wild things, And
(20:47):
once we started talking, all the others rose to the surface,
and there was a lot of them, a notable difference
from the eclectic group of folks I sat with for
three hours in the Dallas Fort Worth Airport, all of
them close enough to talk, but miles away on their
phones and laptops. I got home and I unpacked, getting
(21:07):
my stuff cleaned, washed, and ready to leave again for
a film we're shooting in a few days. When I
laid down last night after saying my prayers, my thoughts
drifted back a day to the new friends I had
made and wondered if they'd all gotten home yet. I'd
only known them for a little over seventy two hours,
but in that time I'd invested in them as much
(21:28):
and more than they'd invested in me. I knew their kids' names,
where they went to church, and much of the day
to day things that make up their lives. Things like
that matter, and that matter because we each asked the
other a question, and instead of marking time until we
could speak again, we listened to the answer. I couldn't
(21:49):
tell you how many ducks and geese we shot over
those three days. It wasn't a limit every day, but
we didn't get skumped by any means, and had we
been hunting for the skillet, we'd have all went to
bed foot at night. A year from now, I doubt
I could pick out the places we hunted have shown
a picture of them among three others. I guarantee you
that I'll remember the people, and when I do, I'm
(22:12):
gonna smile, and that's how I measure success. I can
only hope that they do the same thank out so
much for listening to me and my partner, Clay Bowl
and the Old Bear Grease Channel. And until next week,
this is Brent Reeves, Sign it off. Y'all be careful,
Host
Clay Newcomb
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