June 23, 2021 • 60 mins
On this episode, we introduce you to a new weekly podcast called Bear Grease [Render], where we dissect and distill the documentary-style Bear Grease Podcast. You’ll meet a cast of people, some of whom you’ll be familiar with if you listen to our podcast. This week, Clay is joined by Brent Reaves, Dr. Dan Rupp, Dr. Malachi Nichols, Josh Spielmaker and Gary Newcomb. These guys have an enlightening conversation about the Bear Grease Podcast.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
M. My name is Clay Nukeleman. This is a production
of the bear Grease podcast called the bear Grease Render,
(00:21):
where we render down, dive deeper, and look behind the
scenes of the actual bear Grease podcast. We're going weekly, guys,
and I want to explain this very clearly. The bear
Grease Podcast is a documentary style podcast that we release
(00:43):
every other week. We are now going to start releasing
on this same stream on the bear Grease Podcast what
we call the bear Grease Render. So every other week
you will hear a conversation between me and my buddies
where we do just what we said, render down, dive deeper,
and look behind the scenes of the actual bear Grease podcast.
(01:07):
So you're gonna be hearing from us weekly from now on.
It's spend years since I've worked on it. It has
gotten pretty bad. Do you have a decent outhhood? Years
(01:29):
ago I started to get it, like, I started to
get that that that there's a certain characteristic about it.
But it was in my truck. Okay, I gotta get it, Brent.
Let's hear your best out man, very nice. Hey, this
(01:54):
is the bear Grease Render podcast. Okay, this is the
Beargrease Surrender and the Bargrease Surrender. If this is your
first time listening to the podcast, the Bargrease Podcast is
a documentary style podcast where we explore all kinds of stuff,
all kind of interesting stuff, and have these documentary style podcasts.
(02:18):
We do that. We release those every other week, so
by the time this comes out, there's gonna be like
six Bargrease podcasts out. This is the Beargrease Surrender Boys,
and the Bargrease Surrender is every other week. So now
the Bargrease Podcast is weekly because every other week we're
gonna meet and have like a informal conversation that reflects
(02:42):
and dissects. Ah, that's good. We're gonna use that reflects
and dissects the Beargrease documentary style podcasts. Okay, we're bowling
a cabbage down. That's right, we're bowling the cabbage down,
chewing the tobacco thin as they say. So before we
get started it here where we're talking about the what
the render is, I want to introduce my guests. Okay,
(03:06):
so we are we are at the the global headquarters
of Bear Hunting Magazine and Meat Eater South. Okay, like that,
and uh I have. Really every single one of you
is like you wouldn't be here if you weren't like
super important in my life. And most of you, well,
(03:28):
all of you have been involved in some way in
either the Bargrease podcast or in one of the guy's cases.
Not the Barghreas podcast, but my former Barony Magazine podcast.
I won't mention his name to my direct left to
my to my left is my dear friend Brent Reeves,
(03:49):
who could uh, Brent Reeves could teach a doctoral level class.
I'm reading this, okay, Brent Reeves could teach class us.
He wrote this, This is Brent spio. No, this is
my bio. And Brent Brent Reeves could teach a doctoral
level class on folksy Southern Saints. And ironically he has
(04:10):
also seen two Arkansas Mountain Lions. Brent was also filming
when in sixteen the big color phase of Baring, Saskatchewan
that's hanging on the wall right over there, touched my
arrow and sent. You know, Brent was the one like
sitting right behind me. So Brent, good to have you here,
(04:31):
good to be here. Man. To Brent's left is Dr
Daniel Rupe, who, now that makes two times I've called
you doctor in your life, and that'll be the last
time I'm gonna do it one time. So Dan was
on the acron podcast. Okay, Dan is man. Dan's like,
I'm not even gonna get into really what he does,
(04:51):
like neither with Brent. This is just when I thank
you guys. This is what I think of. Dan has
never combed his hair and has a aired like a viking,
and ironically he himself as well, has seen in Arkansas
Mountain Lion. I've seen it, which we want to get
to later. All Right, I'm gonna call that particular podcast
(05:14):
not a I'm gonna call it a docu drama, stirring
up controversy. Me, you and Gary gonna get jackets made
believers Jack. Okay, And interesting fact about Dan that you
guys may not have known. Dan Rupe was the first
guest on the Bare Hunting Magazine podcast. Did you know that?
(05:37):
I didn't even know that I was there? You were
actually you didn't know we were recording that in British Columbia, Me,
you and Devin Jewel. That was the first one. Dan,
It was a turning point in my life. Yeah, consciously apparently. Okay,
So that's Dan Rupe. To his left is Dr Malacott Nichols.
(05:58):
Now I call this guy doctor or sometimes because he
just has the look. He didn't get his off the internet. Okay, now,
Dr Maliki Nichols here his credentials. He was on the
Burgar's podcast episode number two, the Thing about al Hooters.
He was the guy that I interviewed about the social
(06:21):
science question of correlations and how they can be connected
or not. But Dan, Dr Malachi Nichols is a current
Arkansas license holder hunting license holder. He has a yeah,
show us you're hunting license and alikai there it is.
He's pulling it out of his wallet just to prove it.
Dr Maliki Nichols is a one time He's got He's
(06:46):
also got an Arkansas concealed care licenses. He's got a
hard card and the ducks down. Okay. Dr Maliki Nichols
is also a one time coon hunter. One time. That's
the only how you've ever been on. They've never got
an invitation back. No, but here here's what I think
(07:08):
of when I think of Maliki. He is the only
person that has given me the stiff arm on a
legit outdoor related partnership venture requests. I mean, I mean, Okay,
Malachi and I we've talked about this before publicly and
we've worked it out together privately, So there's no this
(07:29):
is not like an offense that I need to like
go to my brothers about. No. No, No No, we've already
done it. But it's just like there's just things that
you remember about people that you never forget. No. Me
and Malachi we've fried fish a couple of times together
for our wives and families, and we just had a
great time. I was like, man, Malachi loves to fry fish.
And yeah, we talked about fishing a little bit here
(07:51):
and there, and then I was like, likes to fry fish,
likes to fish. He's my friend. How about we going
partners on a boat? Malachi? Is my question? Hard? No,
I mean just like he went from like twenty five
miles per hour to like seventy interstate real quick. He Yeah,
(08:11):
it was like, I want to get fishing poles first,
you know, I want to take small steps. Do you
want to keep it at his house for your convenience?
So okay, you're not the first one. And then so
to his left is Josh Spillmaker Sands, doctor Sands, doctor Spillmaker. Okay,
(08:34):
true story. I bet none of you know this true story.
Ten years ago, Josh Spillmakers mustache inspired me to read
a book on the Baring land Bridge. This is not
a joke. Ten years ago, Josh Spillmakers mustache inspired me
to read a book on the Bearing land Bridge, which
(08:56):
got me interested in early human history and anthropology. And
he is a legendary adult onset fly fisherman. No, let
me tell you the story. One day, me and Josh
were standing there and I mean, you gotta admit, the
guy's got a great beard. But the mustache, the way
that it was like it was connecting to continents, that's
(09:19):
what That's what it felt like. I said, Josh, you
got an awesome mustache. And I was like, that reminds
me of the Burying land Bridge. That night, I went
home on Amazon and ordered a book that's right up there,
um and it was all about the Burying land. I
read the book, was fascinated, and I think about all
the time, and now I've got to I've tried to
(09:40):
emulate your mustache. So you're welcome, America. You're welcome. Okay.
That's Josh and then our guest of honor. He's got
the chair, My father, Gary Nukem Man. So, Dad, you've
been on by the time this comes out, you've been
(10:03):
you will have been on the Barriers podcast a couple
of times. Okay, So this is the way. This is
what I think of when I think of Gary Nuclem.
Once while in Vietnam. This is a this war story,
true story. Once while in Vietnam, he reported to his
commanding officer wearing only a bath towel after he was
(10:23):
summoned to report to the officer while he was in
the shower. Okay, that's part one. We're gonna need a
little bit of explanation. Number two. Gary Nucom is single
handedly credited with keeping the myth of the Black Panther
alive in North Arolicia. That give us just a short
(10:48):
version of the when you report it to your officer
and your bath Now, well it's you know Vietnam, you're
always looking for something to keep your saying it. This
little clerk me in and he was like, this is serious.
You gotta go see the captive. So I just walked
out neckd with my towel over. He didn't even started
hitting towards his office. Of course, by the time I
(11:11):
got there, I covered myself up. But anyway, what you
were trying to say was bro let me at least
get out of the shower. Is it that important? That
was kind of that was kind of like the it
had to be so important, it didn't matter I was
going so anyway, it was kind of funny. Great, great, Well, okay,
(11:36):
now that we've done proper introductions, let's get down to
business here boys. Um So, the Bargrease Render is the
short version of the Bargeras podcast where we talked about it. Man,
I've had the time of my life building the When
this comes out, there will be six Burgeras podcasts out,
and the podcast is formatted in such a way that
(12:01):
it's it's it's hard for me to like, I when
I get done making one of these, I want to
call one of you guys and talk about it, like
and there. There's so much more that can be said
because we're trying to make it an efficient listen and
so you know, it's fairly scripted, you know, scripted in
the sense that everything is thought out, but it's also
(12:21):
you know, there are sections of of informal interviews but
for instance, you you will hear interviews on the Burgaries
podcast with experts with whoever, like Dan Rupe Uh that
we talked for probably an hour Dan and I whittled
it down to like seventeen minutes easy. A lot of
(12:44):
fluff in it, but so like this is gonna give
kind of me an outlet to like say some other stuff,
to make corrections. There's a couple of corrections. Man, when
you're spouting off this much information, boys, you know sometimes
you get it wrong. Tall tales, tall tales. Um. But
it also is you guys a chance to like talk
to me about any perceptions that you have, anything I
(13:10):
could have done better, um. And so I know all
you guys have something to say. We're at a little
bit of a disadvantage on the first Bargera Surrender because
we've already had six podcasts come out, okay, and so
as we get on the weekly schedule, there's gonna be
like one podcast that's gonna come out, and so it
will be a little bit more focused. But so so
(13:32):
on this one, we're just gonna kind of hit and
miss over the different six podcasts that have come out.
But what I haven't had a chance to do on
the Bargrease podcast is talk about the name beargrease. Do
do y' all know why it's bargrease? Do y'all understand
the metaphor? Is the marketing strong enough that you understand
(13:53):
the metaphor? This is an open question. What are you
talking about of a podcast you don't understand? Good? Okay,
so you don't understand, No, listen. Beargrease is literally, I'm
holding a jar in my hand right now, is literally
the rendered fat of a black bear. Okay, I put
(14:15):
on your deep philosophical thinking caps. Okay. At one time,
bear grease was a medium of currency, and it was
a staple of life on the on the American frontier.
Beargrease stayed stayed good longer than pork lard. So like
if you were if you homesteaded in Arkansas or Tennessee
(14:37):
or Kentucky or wherever, you would render down this fat
and it would be extremely valuable to you. It was
a form of currency. Did you know that an eel
of bargrease, that is an archaic unit of measure for
a beargrease was the tanned neck hide of a deer
sewn together. Beargrease poured into it and then it was
(14:58):
sealed up, and an eel of grease was like a
unit of currency. It is just perchance, boys, that we
the US dollar isn't nickname an eel, okay, like it,
but it's nicknamed a buck because a buck skin was
worth about one U. S. Dollar. Actually I'm making that up.
(15:19):
That bare eel was almost almost the same thing. So okay,
philosophical thinking caps This at one time was highly important
and everyone would have known about it. And this has
been like normal, like you'd have had it in your house,
you'd had it in your house, you'd had any more.
About Old Trough, Arkansas, Well, that's that is a that
(15:42):
is a city artifact of what I'm talking about, because
it was a city in northern Arkansas that had a
processing plant for bar oil and they ship that bar
oil down the white That's right. Yeah, you know, the
first time I du rectly met you was through a
(16:02):
jar bear grouse. Your daughter came into my class. I
was teaching teaching school and your daughter came into my class.
She had a she had a ten fox hide on
her left shoulder. This is this story, true story. Ten
fox hide on her left shoulder and a jar bear grease,
and she just walked into my classroom like nothing's happening.
(16:26):
It was just a regular was Tuesday. She walked in,
you know, with this with this fox hide in this
jar bear grouse and she said, my dad sent this
with me. I'm gonna put it on the window, supposed
to tell us what the weather is gonna be like.
So I want to know if it's gonna rain before
we go outside. And she sat down and it's like,
(16:48):
I have been in Arkansas like a year, and I'm thinking,
like where am I at right now? And that is
the first time I indirectly met Clay nucle I've never
met him before and met him through his daughter with
a jar bearer Jar Bargers. That's awesome. So I had
forgotten about that, and that's why this jar is where
(17:14):
it is. This is my this is my weather forecasting
jar Burgers. You see this chart right here. I'll send
you boys home with one of these one day. This
is a chart. This is a chart made by by
Gordon Websat out in New Mexico that I you can
read the weather. It's man that bargaries changes all the time.
(17:38):
It really does, every single day. It looks different um okay.
So now we've all come together to this point of
that Burgaries was like this valuable thing, and then now
it's not. It's erased from people's memory. I mean like erased,
like you go and like pull the three thirty million
people in the United States, I mean like point oh
(18:00):
oh oh one percent would like kind of know what
it was. The Beargrease podcast is we are exploring things
that are forgotten but relevant, searching for insight in unlikely places,
like telling the weather off of jar burgheris you know
where that came from? Alachi was the Native Americans Channel seven?
Then is that where you get your weather? No, Native
(18:23):
Americans in the southwestern US. They would take the dried
and scraped bladder of a deer pour bearg grease in it,
and when it dried it became almost translucent and you
could see through it like a glass jar, and they
forecasted the weather based upon the bear grease in that jar.
Thanks forgotten but relative insight and unlikely places. And our
(18:47):
tagline is we're going to tell the story of Americans
who lived their lives close to the land. And so
bear grease is a metaphor something that's forgotten and man,
bear grease. We use it for all kinds of stuff.
We use it for frying, We use it for pastries,
We use it for oil and conditioning leather. We use
it for rubbing down gun barrels. Um. We use it
(19:10):
for forecasting the weather. You see this bar of soap
right here. You can go to the meteor dot com
and see me and Colby Moorehead making this bar of
soap out of bear fat. It's animal tallow, lie fat soap.
Incredible stuff. If I had more of it, I'd give
you all some, but I don't, and I gotta stay
clean somehow. But that I'm telling you that that lie
(19:33):
soap is incredible. Is it in your shower? You bet
you it is. I've actually got something. Yeah, I'd like
to have some and not like to have something for
my time. You want to bring something, Man, we're not
getting paid. This is actually a multi level marketing. Well
we're soap so guys, That's why I brought you here.
(19:57):
You can get on he can get it on the ground. Yeah,
I actually have some of it in my shower. Colby
give me. Oh yeah, it's great. It's great. So it's great,
so good for your skin, good so so you see
the metaphor so like we're we're like basically that gives
us this broad window to explore all these different things,
(20:17):
and for instance, the inside like inside the Mountain Lion
podcast like that was like a like the first podcast
was called The Myth of the Southern Mountain Lion, which
was a really fun podcast where I interviewed people A
few people that have seen mountain lions claim to have anyway, yeah, yeah,
And and I interviewed a biologist and they interviewed a
(20:38):
psychologist about how people cognitive bias, like if you're it's
a wonder I've not seen a mountain lion because my
dad believes in black panthers? Do you see what the
cognitive bias means? If your dad told you there was
something there, even if there was a chance to defend yourself, dad,
do you believe in oxygen? I do? Oh? Can you
(20:59):
see it? No, I saw a mountain lion, Garrett, you
see I saw a black panther pants. Did you question
after you listen to that podcast? Did you question yourself?
I questioned my friends, a circle of friends and the
people that I called your relationships, the dynamic of that relationship,
I thought who was a psychologist. What's he going to cognitive?
(21:22):
What was cognitive? And the problem the problem is that
no one ever told me there wasn't mountain lions in Arkansas,
and no one ever told me there was, And so
you're saying you're totally unbiased and the one you saw
it was just like for real, yes, are you convinced
you saw it hundred percent? What was it behind bars
or on a chain or outside of a restaurants wearing
(21:45):
a pink tutu? No, I told you in the podcast
there It wasn't like I was by myself and my
wife was with me. Well there you go, Hey, you
don't have to defend yourself. I'm just kidding. The the
point is, well I don't believe you, but but um,
the insight though, Like so I'm trying to describe like
(22:08):
the Burgers podcast, because somebody could be listening to this
and never even heard the Burgers play. The insight came
inside of like we explored this thing, Like there's this
artifact and I like that word of from when lions
were actually here because indisputably, there are a lot of
people that claim that ce mountain lions that didn't And
I absolutely a d percent believe every one of you.
(22:28):
I said it on the podcast too, I said, I
punched somebody in the teeth if they didn't believe you,
didn't anything, but bands went on there. But the insight
came in just looking at how we want to believe
our brother Like do you remember at the end, like
I came to the conclusion like and I didn't fabricate that,
(22:50):
like after I talked to all these people, like it
was like the redeeming factor of it all was that,
like the way we survived, and it's natural for me,
I trust Brent Reeves if he tells me sees a
mountain line, then by GOLLI he saw a mountain line.
And I'm just giving you guys a hard time. So
basically what you're saying is that you can love your
(23:12):
friends even when they're delusions. Okay. The deeper thought is
is that what has made human successful in the earth
is that we want to trust our brother are we
It's like a mechanism like because if I can't, it's
just it's a mechanism of trust, like I want to
(23:32):
believe you, and and then I think that has produced
a lot of false mountain Lion you know, sightings from
people who maybe had some you know, thought they saw vaccinated,
like being vaccinated against line. Very good. Yeah, now, Dad, okay,
I've I've credited you with keeping the myth of the
(23:53):
black panther alive. How do you feel about that? I
think it's wonderful. I mean, it's nice that you put
up the truth. I mean, it's it's against science. But
I mean, who are you gonna trust you because you
saw one? Well, I mean, I don't think that's any
of your ba You know, when I go down to
(24:15):
Aunt Olie's, she lives in a dog trot house with
trees over the road, and at night we're we're awakened
by a screaming black panther. I mean, who are you
gonna trust? And Ali tell us what a dog trot
house is. It's got a porch right down the middle,
one side of your kitchen, living room, one side of
(24:37):
your bedroom, big trees out. I mean, it was an
amazing place. It's an architectural style that they used to
use before air conditioning. Yeah, so you would cook on
one side and then you would sleep on one side.
And the little community was almost as neat as the house.
It was Buck snort, Yeah, yeah, Buck snort, Yeah, a
(25:01):
lot of panthers. There a panther country, panther country. Hey
listen though, no, I on like they're a legitimate mountain line.
I mean the biologists even confirmed it. I mean, like,
(25:21):
if you listen to the whole even talking about I'm
just giving you a hard time. The man confirmed it. Yeah,
there are mountains here. Now black panthers. Now, that is
where I draw the hard line. And neither of these
guys have claimed have seen a black panther. Dad's just
just heard him and you just could tell by the
sound that it was black. Absolutely so. The but you
(25:44):
would be shocked shocked at the number of grown men who,
after listening to that whole podcast and listening to Myron
means saying science, from the position of science, there has
never been documented a melanistic mountain lion ever by science.
Did you get some documentation in the mail? In the email,
(26:06):
you wouldn't believe the grown men that messaged me, some
of them friends of mine, and they're like Clay, I
listened to podcast. It was awesome. I believe every word
of it. I've seen a black panther though, I mean,
like it's like rocks people's boats. Man, I mean like
(26:26):
I think like splits families. Like this idea of black
panther iron means got off of that interview. Was he like,
there's really black panthers. It was like they reached over,
turned the taper quarter off of it was like I
killed one last year. No no I. I had two
(26:47):
different people claimed that their father's well. One of them
claimed that their father had shot at a black panther.
One of them claimed that their father killed a black panther,
killed it with a bow. This I'm telling you, this
guy's like I've know this guy, and I'm like, send
me a picture, and if he's listening out, I hope
he'll send me a picture. I want to believe you.
(27:08):
I want to believe him. Um. I had a guy
uh called bring up a good point that there is
a there is a cat like critter down in South
Texas called a jagger undi, which is a cat like
critter that lives in deep South Texas and they can
be melanistic. Okay, So there's so like, could a jagger
undi walk nine miles to Arkansas or four five montes? Possibly?
(27:32):
I had another guy say that he thinks black panther
sidings are big otters, river otters, because a river otter
is black and you don't see him very much. And
if and they have big long tails, what do you
think of that? JAGGARUNDI there, all the guys are like
looking at their phones. Yeah, absolutely, I don't know about that.
I mean, think about that at dark, Yeah, I can
(27:54):
see that if it's especially dark dusk, just like charcoal,
it looks like a mountain lion with a housecat's head. Yeah.
I've never even heard of that until you just said it.
See if that's what Gary heard? Does that look like
what you heard? That's not black? Well, but see the
(28:21):
sides panther. But so that could have been melanistic, Got you,
got you, got you so um. But you know, the
whole point of it was is that jaguars and leopards
can't have been documented as melanistic. The American mountain lion
has never been documented as melanistic, and so to see
(28:43):
a black panther would just be like, well they're not here,
so anyway, super fun. And guess what, I am the
biggest proponent of black panther in North America. When those
guys sent me that stuff. I'm like, heck, yeah, brother,
keep it, keep this thing alive. Yeah, keep it alive.
Long Live the Black Panther. I love it. Any further
(29:12):
comments on episode number one that was I can tell
you from a from like a creative standpoint, just kind
of like behind the scenes of that podcast. That was
the first party I built that podcast, like in January
or something. You know, it just came out like in April,
and I had all these interviews and had no idea
(29:32):
if they how they would stitch together to tell a story.
And when Phil Taylor and Mediate did it all put
it all together, and I had edited all the little
sections and put it together. Man, I was so excited
when I heard it. I was just driving down the
road and just listen to it, and I was like, Yes,
that is what I want to do with burglaries, you know,
like tell these interesting stories about rural culture and they're
(29:58):
not always gonna be about hunting. Like that pod didn't
have anything at all. I mean it was good because
it you know, it gave it gave a lot of
depth to everything. It wasn't just I saw this when
I was nine. Team. There was a whole lot of
a build up in basis to all of the all
the claims you know, and I witness reports, and then
(30:19):
you know, somebody to set back an unbiased view and
look at all of it and say, you know, you
may have seen something, but the possibilities of it being
you know, this particular color or that particular animal, you know,
it's you know, while not impossible, you know, highly improbable.
Did you just give you know, food for thought? Yeah?
And if by unbiased you mean Myron's section, I can
(30:42):
support it was far from Yeah. Yeah, yeah, you know
what I really liked about it was, um, it kind
of made me And this is probably one of thost
naive things I'll say, but it just seems like when
when we weren't so detached from the land and from
wild places, that it might have been easier to trust
(31:04):
one another. When you talk about trusting your brother and
trusting your fellow man. When when the biggest you know,
argument or polarizing you know, one of them is are
there black panthers or not? Or are there mountain? Yeah?
You know, whereas there's so many things today in our
current age that just it just seems like it inhibits
that so much more that was thirty years ago, man,
(31:27):
almost And you know, I've never had an outlet to
even you know, tell that story where in any setting.
That was when you saw your Mountain Lions thirty years ago,
almost thirty years and your old friend Clay was the
only one who cared. He on the one that listened,
and then he tried to sell you some so hey,
(31:49):
so right here on that you got. This is a surprise.
You don't know what this is. That's a number three
of the Bear Grease podcast was a shed horned buck
of nineteen dear dear friend James Lawrence. This is this
(32:12):
is the butck. This is okay. I refused to allow
him to give them to me. Man. I was at
James's house and this is before he had even heard
the podcast, and he just said take those home with you.
(32:33):
And he also allowed me turn around and look up here.
So on the on the ceiling of my office, there's
a picture of my dad, Gary Nucom with his first buck.
There's a picture of Steve Schultz, who's my father in law.
And there's a picture of James Lawrence back in the
mountains of Arkansas with a buck. And that buck that's
(32:54):
hanging on the wall is a buck that James Lawrence
killed on one of his big soul Low hunts back
in the seventies. Now, he killed that one in the sixties.
He was like twenty one years old when he killed it.
Those three guys are my heroes. That's why they're there.
And those there's like sixteen by twenty frame pictures, And
what's so cool is they were all about the same
(33:15):
age in that picture. So, Dad, how old were you.
That's Dad's first buck. Oh, twenty six, twenty seven or
something like that, So you were you were older than
that when it was nineteen seventy eight. I'm just glad
you're thirty years old. Yeah, I'm glad he's wearing clothes.
Well no, maybe, yeah, yeah. I wouldn't like most of
(33:40):
these listeners. I didn't start hunting until real late in
life because my dad was so much like Clay. You
didn't want to hang around him and he'd kill you hunting.
I mean, you'd go with him and it's like, come on, Dad,
it's time to go home, and we're just getting started.
I quit. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, So Dad started bo
(34:02):
hunting when he was in his late twenties. But you
grew up bird hunting and stuff with your dad. He
kind of burned you out. Yeah, I had to lay
rules down when I got a little older that hey,
we're only going for four hours. So there's dad's picture.
And then Steve Schultz, my father in law. He was
a falconer and that picture was taking the late seventies
in Florida, and uh, he's Steve's had an incredible influence
(34:25):
on my life. And then James, who in his own
unique way has had a significant impact on was like,
but this this is the shed horn buck that he picked.
He picked up these sheds, those actual sheds are from
the sixties. Man, let's look great. He picked up these
sheds in in the early nineteen sixties. And actually he
told me that he made a set of rattling horns
(34:45):
at a one pair because he's got three sets of sheds,
but he can only find two. And this is actually
two different years sheds. I'm holding a left handler and
a right handler. So this was the buck the year before.
If you really dissected and held it, you could see
a difference in mass, in time length. This was the
(35:06):
buck at his prime. Okay, this is a left antler,
a five point side. People can go to my Instagram
and see a picture of James and me with these deer. Okay,
I scored this buck this side as a shed ten
twelve years ago, and I just remembered that it scored
around a hundred seventy. And that's what I said on
(35:26):
the podcast. I kind of got to not doubting myself,
but I was just like, man, I wondered that thing.
I mean, I just kind of like to re score
that thing just to make sure you know I'm I'm
interested in the facts. Boys. Yeah, I scored this right
before you guys came, and that shed has eighty inches
(35:48):
of antler on it, which eighty inches would be eighty
times two, which would be one sixty plus the spread,
So this would have been a mid one seventies white tips.
It's deceptive though. It's got a twenty two inch main beam,
eleven inches, ten and a half, seven and a half,
five and a half plus two kickers plus you know,
(36:09):
four inch mass all the way out ends up being
eighty inches. So like, but this is that's the horn.
Here's to a to a non hunter, this is like
a prized if you were to kill this this buck,
this will be up None of us in this room
have ever killed a deer that big, much less how
many years ago in Arkansas? I mean, that's the that's
(36:29):
one of the big things that is the ecosystem in
Arkansas that many decades ago. This was that set of
antlers might as well have been grown out right in
the middle of his hand, like a white tailed unicorn.
And after sixty years a hunting, they called you the unicorn.
(36:51):
N Is that what this is about? You wanted to
talk about my high school day? Is? Yeah? This is
you now? Yeah, so Malicho would be like just a
really nice white tail deer and uh, now, what what
do you guys think of? That podcast? Was great? I
listened to it again yesterday. You know what I I thought,
How wonderful was it for him to have that story
(37:14):
and that, you know, talk about I mean, say, with
the are there panthers or not? You want to be trusted,
You want to trust your fellow man. Basically none of
his family trusted him, you know. But then for you
to do that podcast and have all these conversations with them,
I mean that had to really I had to be
healing for him. It's kind of what I was taken
(37:36):
away from him. You know what struck me about it
was that he was not a mainstream hunter. He did
something different than everybody else. All the hunters that knew
how to hunt, had all the experience, were out running
dogs and James is sitting there going, now, I saw
a deer out here, and I mean he pursued his
(37:56):
own thing and and in a way if you know,
I don't hunt bucks like that. I mean, it's just
too boring for me. So I'm not gonna kill deer
like this unless really heavy to carry out the woods. Yeah, yeah,
that's right. You've been with me when I picked a
little but anywhere I've had a chance to kill him
a deer close to that, but it didn't work. Anyway.
(38:20):
That's a great point. And see, the whole the whole
point of that podcast to me was that James took
something that was negative and turned into something positive, going
back to insight and unlikely places like that would have
crushed most people and and did Jane. I like, it
was a little bit tricky for me because James trusts
(38:42):
me so much. I feel like like he he would
just tell me whatever I asked him to tell and
wouldn't question what I was gonna do with that information.
If you told him you'd seen a mountain lion, he'd believe.
He would believe me. He's never seen one. James Lawrence
has never seen a mountain lion. I believed the subject.
But like, there was some pretty pretty deep stuff there,
(39:03):
and I was drawing conclusions about like him, like that
impacted him in a negative way, But he didn't get
bitter about it. He and I said this before, he
is the guy that you want with you when you're successful.
So like he didn't go and oppress people even more
(39:24):
like he was oppressed. Like he just instinctively was just like, man,
I'm not gonna ever let that happen one of my friends.
And you know one thing too, You take Malachi that's
not hunted much, and you kill a big buck. He
didn't even know it. I mean, those guys might have
come at that a little more honest than what we think.
(39:45):
It might not have been. I'm kind of jealous of
James for killing it. It could have been. I just thought, man,
we're out here for the meat. We're trying to survive,
you know, forget the horns. I'm worried about my belly.
You know, I can see that I think that makes sense.
So if you've got a group of guys who are
not hunting for sport and there's a socially accepted way
to obtain sustenance and he's going against the grain in
(40:09):
the use and the quickest way possible, that kind of that.
You know. I didn't feel like at all in the
podcast though, that his family were like demonized or anything.
But it makes a little more sense as to why
I couldn't figure out why are they so unkind to
this kid? You know, why does some of the men
in his life come and be like, man, that's awesome.
That's where it was a little bit touchy and I
(40:32):
and I had to be careful and I actually asked
a few people before I said, do you think that
would hurt? Do you think? I mean, I didn't want
to disclose more than but but James is the one
that said it, you know, I mean, like he just
told his story and he was kind of he was
kind of discounted. And that is also pretty normal too.
I mean, like to kind of discount a kid when
(40:54):
they're saying something, and I didn't. And James has the
utmost respect for his family too, And you could tell
that at the first a podcast when he was talking
about his grandmother and grandfather, how much you respected them
and how they never said anything negative about anybody. Man.
That's that's that's James. But from from if we're talking
about the Burgaries podcast and kind of forecasting where this
(41:16):
thing is gonna go. These first six episodes I think
are all very diverse. You think about it, like we
explore this like folklore of the myth of the southern
mountain lion. Every podcast I want to have an expert,
like a biologist or an academic guy, or just someone
who's a subject matter expert. And then the ideas also
(41:40):
that we're interviewing in the field, people that have information
about the topic, like Brent and Dad's and mountain lions.
And then here Daniels said, Daniel's like waving his hand,
He's like, why what on the first now? And and
and uh, every podcast is gonna have kind of this similar,
similar structure, but all gonna be very different, like this
(42:02):
folklore about mountain lion, anabiology lesson, and then the next
one we're talking about the correlation between being a good
al hooter and a turkey hunter and talking about Colin
Turkey's you did good man? Yeah, well you're getting there.
And and then the third podcast was the shed hornbuck
(42:25):
in nineteen sixty two, which was just this guy's story.
And then the fourth podcast was Death of a Bear Hunter,
which was fantastic. Man meant okay, that one was a
historically based podcast about a guy in a book and
one single story of the book, but we painted the
context to the whole scene. You listen to that podcast,
(42:46):
you understand what's going on in the eighteen thirties in Arkansas.
You understand who gir Stalker was. You understand a little
bit about Native Americans that he was hunting with, And like,
what what do y'all think of that one? I got
a bone to pick with you on that. Okay, hold
this deer horn while you're doing it. Three years this
is a weapon. Okay, past the deer horn, if you
want to talk three years ago. Three years ago, you said, Brant,
(43:12):
have you ever seen this book? Yeah? That one? I
never heard of it. He said, you got to read it,
he said, And this is why I want you to
read it. This is three years ago, he said, I
want you to read this book. And when you get done,
you and I are going to do a podcast on this.
I heard him say it. I was there, so he's
(43:33):
I buy this book and I read this thing from
cover to cover. I can speak Germany. And then the
next thing, I know, when the podcast comes out of like,
I don't hear myself on there? That does That doesn't
even sound like. So basically I gave you an assignment
to do a book report and then there was no
(43:54):
never got a grade. It was absolutely It was incredible, though, man,
that that book. I sent that book to my brother
and both of my nephews. I think I've read it now.
It's incredible book. Yeah, I passed the horn. Hey, well
you read it too, Dan, Yeah, you read it years ago.
When I just told you the story, Well we were
(44:16):
on a bear hunt together and something had reminded you
of the story, and you, Clay retold the story and
the way that I remembered it was you. You got
to kind of the climax of the story and this
gentleman gets knocked out, everything goes black, wakes up, his
hunting buddies dead. I mean, it's just like just this
amazing story. I went and got the book and read
(44:39):
it and it was just fantastic. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah,
Well that that story has been on my mind for years.
I mean that's the reason I told it. But we're
gonna replicate that into other podcasts with historical stories, and
I've already got some ideas that i cannot share. I'll
share what you got after this? Yeah, a few books
(45:00):
you want Brent to read? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, Um what
Josh your thoughts on that one? Well? I love that
one A couple of times. I loved the I mean
when you're when you're reading that story, you are transported
into the what is happening? And gay Stalker does such
(45:24):
a great job Josh, as German describing, does such a
great job describing the scene. It's like, who needs Netflix
when you got that? You know? You know, and you
mentioned this I think maybe on the podcast, but a
lot of the places that he talked about in that book,
I've been, you know. It's it's it's between here and
where I live in Central Arkansas, up and down the
(45:48):
Little Red River. Well, you know it's I was serious
when I said on the podcast, I was offended at
people that I didn't know that story till I was
thirty years old. I'm serious. I'll tell you where about.
It was not in this country. I was in another
country reading a book in a hotel room, and I
(46:08):
had no idea that, well, I this this college professor
had said, Hey, there's some stories about Arkansas bear hunting.
There's all I said, terrible marketing, Like the first half
of the book. The guy's not even Arkansas. So I'm
just kind of like, oh, this is cool. I mean,
you know, it's cool, but like I wanted Arkansas stuff.
And when I get to that story, I'm I'm not kidding.
I remember where I was sitting when I read that story,
(46:30):
and I was just like, holy cow, he was eventually coming.
I didn't know that he was. Well, no, no, I knew.
All I knew was that Arkansas bear stories. I had
no idea that it was just right down the road.
And I'm like, why don't we know that? Why don't
they teach this in Arkansas public schools? Why? And like
just it's just and the and the truth is there's
(46:53):
stuff like that littered all across history. Like wherever the
people that are listening to this live, stuff happened right
where they live. Substantial Emory day, this guy hand him
the horn no in okay, going back to the insight
(47:13):
like Bear Grease can give you insight beyond what you
would have thought it would, is that I really have
had the question of why does that story impact me
so much? Like why? And and that was my exploration
inside of that podcast, is why do stories impact this?
Because that story has no consequence on my life in
a rational sense, like a guy got killed by bar
(47:34):
out here with dogs, but that guy's story has shaped
my family and it's just you know. And then and
then the conclusion was humans are massively impacted by stories,
whether you want to or not. And so you got
a choice of what stories you let impact you. Netflix
(47:57):
tells stories. That's what Netflix is in the business of
telling stories, you know, absolutely, and so like and and
you know, you could say, well, Clay, why are you
letting a story about a English guy you didn't know
getting killed by bear you know, like impact your family.
Like that's kind of aside from the point in that
(48:18):
it's like we we get that, we get to choose
what impacts us and how it impacts us, you know.
And I would like if Gerstalker had just been a
dirt ball that story, like like if he had just
been known as like an outlaw and like a scrupulous character,
like I wouldn't have had respect. I respected the guy.
(48:38):
He did love people, like I said on the podcast
when he left Conwell's house, like these are people that
he had just met. He couldn't even speak their same
language that well, and he cried when he left Conwell's house.
He said, Conwell had hair as white as snow. And
he loved his family and he went into you know how,
he stayed with them and they begged him to stay.
(49:00):
And it's just like I like it. I like that guy.
And then and then just his insightfulness and and he
wasn't like a conservation hero, like I wasn't trying to
paint Gerstalker as a conservation hero. But he did have
insight that the market hunting of the times of which
he participated in was unsustainable. And like so that then
(49:22):
becomes like a stamp on that story. And like when
I think of that, I think of, man, will never
do that again. He was hunting bears in February in
Den's and it's like, man, that was really cool Wayne
doing that no more. I mean, there there are stories
in that book of them crawling into dens crawling in
(49:43):
caves with Litward. They call him Torches, but pine Kindler's
pine Kindling split climbing into caves, killing a sal bear
and then smacking cubs up against the rock to kill him.
I mean like they were in the business of killing stuff,
and it's like that did happen. That's not good. It's
not gonna happen again. Because it happened, then, do you
(50:06):
see what I'm saying. It's like me like talking about
conservation based bear hunting, where we're highly selective and we're
trying to target these older mature males. That happened because
ger Stoker, he didn't know any better, was clubbing you know,
baby bears over there. I mean for a better term,
(50:26):
we listen. We have the right as humans to correct
our paths and learn from our past. It's like James
Lawrence redemption inside of something that was negative. Well, you
you recognize that that that is obsolete, and you have
to be able to recognize the obsolescence of that thing
and move on and say this this worked for the time,
(50:48):
it's no longer relevant. Yeah, And we'd still be doing
that today if we hadn't. Well, we wouldn't because the
bears will be gone, but and they were for a time.
They were in Arkansas. Okay, closing comments here, Dan, I'm
gonna throw this horn to you and you'll get to speak.
Just what do you think I'm gonna say? Overall? It's
(51:11):
the podcast is solidly mediocre. Um no, no, no. I
think what as I've been listening to them and really
enjoying them, I think, you know, when you think about
podcasts and stories, a lot of today's kind of stories
and podcasts either are really critiquing a part of life
(51:34):
and usually not a very beneficial way, or it's trying
to kind of escape life, you know as it is.
And I feel like what I really like about what
you're doing is I leave having listened to one of
your podcasts, and I'm thinking about how I see things
and how I relate with people and choices that I make,
(51:55):
and to me, it helps me feel more connected. It's
your insight. You know, you're gonning, You're gonna inside from
unlikely places, and I feel like that is what I
walk away with. Yeah, I like it. I think about
where this all started with me and you, and we
were in Oklahoma on a bear bait and I was
(52:18):
running the camera and we've been sitting there for that
one day for a week. It seemed like and hadn't
seen a bear. And you turned away from me and
I was looking off back to the left. I was
sitting on the to the left of clay, and when
I turned back around, you had taken mud and I
(52:38):
assumed water and covered your face and mud, and I thought,
how did I get here? I've carried forty pounds of
camera equipment on the side of this mountain in the
Washington Mountains, and this guy has just put mud all
little I don't know what it was, but I thought,
(52:59):
this is this gal never go anywhere, But look what
you've done. Buddy. I'm very proud of you for what
it what it's turned into and the drive, you know.
I say that facetiously about knowing you wasn't gonna go anywhere,
and the drive you had has been outstanding. It's inspired
me to do a lot of stuff too, and I
(53:21):
just appreciate you let me come along for the ride.
Right on, man. Yeah, As as the non hunter in
the group, I think hearing the podcast and watching you
tell people stories, I think it's a very powerful tool
to continue the legacy and culture and give people who
(53:44):
haven't had that exposure a correct way of seeing things.
I think hunting, I think the Southern culture. I think
Arkansas has, you know, nationally not a good rep and
hearing the story is in seeing how you hunt and
it's being driven by principles and patterns and the way
(54:06):
that you you share, the way that you've been influenced
by your dad, the way that you influence your kids.
I think it's a powerful medium and tool to give
people a cleaner, more pristine, more correct picture of hunting,
of Arkansas, of the South, of relationships, of of everything
(54:28):
that is built inside of a commodity that was once
you know, valuable that is but is lost and so
bringing that back and giving giving people a better picture
of that, I think is is awesome. Yeah, it's good. Well,
I think that I've really enjoyed the podcast, and uh,
(54:50):
I think just having known you for a lot of years,
I appreciate um. First of all, like Malick I said,
I appreciate the relational aspect of of the podcast. I
think it I think when it all boils down to it,
it's relationship that makes us rich and so to be
able to connect with people and to to draw stories
(55:11):
from people. I think storytelling and the ability to draw
stories out of people that that thing has been lost,
um in a sense that that shows the depth of
what's been built in people over a long journey. And
so I think to be able to hear that from
you who have a passion to to mind that out,
(55:33):
I think it's valuable for people to be able to hear.
And so I'm really looking forward to to the future
podcasts and the things that I get to learn by listening.
And uh yeah, I mean I think you eagerly await
being on the very grious podcasts, eagerly render, and and
I may might become so popular on the render that
(55:55):
I don't I don't need to be on the point. Hey,
this is look good for Edwards were passing to their horn, Dad,
What do you think then? Well, I hate to burst
your stinking bubble, but these guys are obviously on the payroll.
And I am really disappointed in you, Daniel. I think
(56:17):
you sort of have a spiritual religious background. And it's
it's obvious again that she hadn't been vaccinated against Lyne.
That's that's brist deal. I podcast. When he's talking about
But you know when I listened to it, I look,
I look at it from a deadly standpoint. That's a
(56:37):
new word. We'll take it. Uh. You know, it's just
like when you were a kid. You know, your brain
is not totally formed. I mean, you miss about half
the good stuff. It's like on the deal with the
with the Dogs, I mean, nowhere did you mention that
the dog is your best friend? But why is he
your best friend? It's because he loved you first. He's
(56:59):
the only animal that loves you more than him. And
I mean you didn't even cover that. I mean I
was embarrassed. It was embarrassing that you went into all
that rhetoric and didn't mention the love the dog has
for you. And if you look at life in the
way I'm serious about the love, I think you can
(57:20):
detect that. But I only love people that love me.
And if they have the ability to show me that
they loved me first, you know, they exposed themselves. It's
it's like I'm open, vulnerable the words. Yeah, there you go.
So I mean that's that's a powerful tool, is love.
(57:42):
And people that are have enough confidence to expose themselves
to hate. And a dog does it immediately. Now how
that came from a wolf to domesticated dog? But it's
really powerful. But no, really, all these podcasts, they're different
in a lot that I've heard where you have a
(58:05):
lot of meat, a lot of science, a lot of humor,
all of it mixed up into a recipe that it's
pretty entertaining and education. So obviously I need to tune
your daddy. It's a solid six. Gary nucle gives The
(58:34):
Brigs podcast two stars. Okay, hey, I need people to
leave iTunes reviews on the Barrious podcast like so this
is my unashamed solicitation for all our listeners to go
to iTunes and apparently that drives the needle on these
(58:57):
podcasts with the higher ups, you know. So, uh, I'm
asking everybody out there do me a favor and just uh,
you know you can. You can do as little as
just giving it like stars. But the best thing to
do would be to leave a comment, you know, just
just say what you think. Um, that would help us.
And UM, I think my guests so much for being here. Really,
(59:19):
you guys mean the world to me, all of me,
so that's why you're here. Uh. Check out Brent's podcast
Nightlife Nation. Brent's got a coon hunting podcast. Check out
Josh on Instagram, Kiki and the Beard Um nobody else
has any like uh big social platforms. Yeah on the Twitter.
But again, if if you hadn't been paying attention, We're
(59:41):
gonna do this every other week, So the bear Grease
podcast will come out every other week, the Bear Grease Render,
which is us just shooting the bull, and it'll be
a different you know, it might be different, people might
be the same people. Y'all may never want to come back.
Brent drove three hours to be here. Did y'all know
that Yerry drove to two and a half. Two and
(01:00:03):
a half. He'll never get those two and a half. No,
thank you guys so much. And uh yeah, I can't
wait for the next episode. Keep the wild places wild
because that's where the bears live and that's where you
get barglaries. You know what, when Malachi left the house
(01:00:28):
this morning, he thought he had the coolest socks on
Those are those are coon dog socks? Oh me, I'm crazy.
M. My name is Clay Nukeleman. This is a production
of the bear Grease podcast called the bear Grease Render,
(00:21):
where we render down, dive deeper, and look behind the
scenes of the actual bear Grease podcast. We're going weekly, guys,
and I want to explain this very clearly. The bear
Grease Podcast is a documentary style podcast that we release
(00:43):
every other week. We are now going to start releasing
on this same stream on the bear Grease Podcast what
we call the bear Grease Render. So every other week
you will hear a conversation between me and my buddies
where we do just what we said, render down, dive deeper,
and look behind the scenes of the actual bear Grease podcast.
(01:07):
So you're gonna be hearing from us weekly from now on.
It's spend years since I've worked on it. It has
gotten pretty bad. Do you have a decent outhhood? Years
(01:29):
ago I started to get it, like, I started to
get that that that there's a certain characteristic about it.
But it was in my truck. Okay, I gotta get it, Brent.
Let's hear your best out man, very nice. Hey, this
(01:54):
is the bear Grease Render podcast. Okay, this is the
Beargrease Surrender and the Bargrease Surrender. If this is your
first time listening to the podcast, the Bargrease Podcast is
a documentary style podcast where we explore all kinds of stuff,
all kind of interesting stuff, and have these documentary style podcasts.
(02:18):
We do that. We release those every other week, so
by the time this comes out, there's gonna be like
six Bargrease podcasts out. This is the Beargrease Surrender Boys,
and the Bargrease Surrender is every other week. So now
the Bargrease Podcast is weekly because every other week we're
gonna meet and have like a informal conversation that reflects
(02:42):
and dissects. Ah, that's good. We're gonna use that reflects
and dissects the Beargrease documentary style podcasts. Okay, we're bowling
a cabbage down. That's right, we're bowling the cabbage down,
chewing the tobacco thin as they say. So before we
get started it here where we're talking about the what
the render is, I want to introduce my guests. Okay,
(03:06):
so we are we are at the the global headquarters
of Bear Hunting Magazine and Meat Eater South. Okay, like that,
and uh I have. Really every single one of you
is like you wouldn't be here if you weren't like
super important in my life. And most of you, well,
(03:28):
all of you have been involved in some way in
either the Bargrease podcast or in one of the guy's cases.
Not the Barghreas podcast, but my former Barony Magazine podcast.
I won't mention his name to my direct left to
my to my left is my dear friend Brent Reeves,
(03:49):
who could uh, Brent Reeves could teach a doctoral level class.
I'm reading this, okay, Brent Reeves could teach class us.
He wrote this, This is Brent spio. No, this is
my bio. And Brent Brent Reeves could teach a doctoral
level class on folksy Southern Saints. And ironically he has
(04:10):
also seen two Arkansas Mountain Lions. Brent was also filming
when in sixteen the big color phase of Baring, Saskatchewan
that's hanging on the wall right over there, touched my
arrow and sent. You know, Brent was the one like
sitting right behind me. So Brent, good to have you here,
(04:31):
good to be here. Man. To Brent's left is Dr
Daniel Rupe, who, now that makes two times I've called
you doctor in your life, and that'll be the last
time I'm gonna do it one time. So Dan was
on the acron podcast. Okay, Dan is man. Dan's like,
I'm not even gonna get into really what he does,
(04:51):
like neither with Brent. This is just when I thank
you guys. This is what I think of. Dan has
never combed his hair and has a aired like a viking,
and ironically he himself as well, has seen in Arkansas
Mountain Lion. I've seen it, which we want to get
to later. All Right, I'm gonna call that particular podcast
(05:14):
not a I'm gonna call it a docu drama, stirring
up controversy. Me, you and Gary gonna get jackets made
believers Jack. Okay, And interesting fact about Dan that you
guys may not have known. Dan Rupe was the first
guest on the Bare Hunting Magazine podcast. Did you know that?
(05:37):
I didn't even know that I was there? You were
actually you didn't know we were recording that in British Columbia, Me,
you and Devin Jewel. That was the first one. Dan,
It was a turning point in my life. Yeah, consciously apparently. Okay,
So that's Dan Rupe. To his left is Dr Malacott Nichols.
(05:58):
Now I call this guy doctor or sometimes because he
just has the look. He didn't get his off the internet. Okay, now,
Dr Maliki Nichols here his credentials. He was on the
Burgar's podcast episode number two, the Thing about al Hooters.
He was the guy that I interviewed about the social
(06:21):
science question of correlations and how they can be connected
or not. But Dan, Dr Malachi Nichols is a current
Arkansas license holder hunting license holder. He has a yeah,
show us you're hunting license and alikai there it is.
He's pulling it out of his wallet just to prove it.
Dr Maliki Nichols is a one time He's got He's
(06:46):
also got an Arkansas concealed care licenses. He's got a
hard card and the ducks down. Okay. Dr Maliki Nichols
is also a one time coon hunter. One time. That's
the only how you've ever been on. They've never got
an invitation back. No, but here here's what I think
(07:08):
of when I think of Maliki. He is the only
person that has given me the stiff arm on a
legit outdoor related partnership venture requests. I mean, I mean, Okay,
Malachi and I we've talked about this before publicly and
we've worked it out together privately, So there's no this
(07:29):
is not like an offense that I need to like
go to my brothers about. No. No, No No, we've already
done it. But it's just like there's just things that
you remember about people that you never forget. No. Me
and Malachi we've fried fish a couple of times together
for our wives and families, and we just had a
great time. I was like, man, Malachi loves to fry fish.
And yeah, we talked about fishing a little bit here
(07:51):
and there, and then I was like, likes to fry fish,
likes to fish. He's my friend. How about we going
partners on a boat? Malachi? Is my question? Hard? No,
I mean just like he went from like twenty five
miles per hour to like seventy interstate real quick. He Yeah,
(08:11):
it was like, I want to get fishing poles first,
you know, I want to take small steps. Do you
want to keep it at his house for your convenience?
So okay, you're not the first one. And then so
to his left is Josh Spillmaker Sands, doctor Sands, doctor Spillmaker. Okay,
(08:34):
true story. I bet none of you know this true story.
Ten years ago, Josh Spillmakers mustache inspired me to read
a book on the Baring land Bridge. This is not
a joke. Ten years ago, Josh Spillmakers mustache inspired me
to read a book on the Bearing land Bridge, which
(08:56):
got me interested in early human history and anthropology. And
he is a legendary adult onset fly fisherman. No, let
me tell you the story. One day, me and Josh
were standing there and I mean, you gotta admit, the
guy's got a great beard. But the mustache, the way
that it was like it was connecting to continents, that's
(09:19):
what That's what it felt like. I said, Josh, you
got an awesome mustache. And I was like, that reminds
me of the Burying land Bridge. That night, I went
home on Amazon and ordered a book that's right up there,
um and it was all about the Burying land. I
read the book, was fascinated, and I think about all
the time, and now I've got to I've tried to
(09:40):
emulate your mustache. So you're welcome, America. You're welcome. Okay.
That's Josh and then our guest of honor. He's got
the chair, My father, Gary Nukem Man. So, Dad, you've
been on by the time this comes out, you've been
(10:03):
you will have been on the Barriers podcast a couple
of times. Okay, So this is the way. This is
what I think of when I think of Gary Nuclem.
Once while in Vietnam. This is a this war story,
true story. Once while in Vietnam, he reported to his
commanding officer wearing only a bath towel after he was
(10:23):
summoned to report to the officer while he was in
the shower. Okay, that's part one. We're gonna need a
little bit of explanation. Number two. Gary Nucom is single
handedly credited with keeping the myth of the Black Panther
alive in North Arolicia. That give us just a short
(10:48):
version of the when you report it to your officer
and your bath Now, well it's you know Vietnam, you're
always looking for something to keep your saying it. This
little clerk me in and he was like, this is serious.
You gotta go see the captive. So I just walked
out neckd with my towel over. He didn't even started
hitting towards his office. Of course, by the time I
(11:11):
got there, I covered myself up. But anyway, what you
were trying to say was bro let me at least
get out of the shower. Is it that important? That
was kind of that was kind of like the it
had to be so important, it didn't matter I was
going so anyway, it was kind of funny. Great, great, Well, okay,
(11:36):
now that we've done proper introductions, let's get down to
business here boys. Um So, the Bargrease Render is the
short version of the Bargeras podcast where we talked about it. Man,
I've had the time of my life building the When
this comes out, there will be six Burgeras podcasts out,
and the podcast is formatted in such a way that
(12:01):
it's it's it's hard for me to like, I when
I get done making one of these, I want to
call one of you guys and talk about it, like
and there. There's so much more that can be said
because we're trying to make it an efficient listen and
so you know, it's fairly scripted, you know, scripted in
the sense that everything is thought out, but it's also
(12:21):
you know, there are sections of of informal interviews but
for instance, you you will hear interviews on the Burgaries
podcast with experts with whoever, like Dan Rupe Uh that
we talked for probably an hour Dan and I whittled
it down to like seventeen minutes easy. A lot of
(12:44):
fluff in it, but so like this is gonna give
kind of me an outlet to like say some other stuff,
to make corrections. There's a couple of corrections. Man, when
you're spouting off this much information, boys, you know sometimes
you get it wrong. Tall tales, tall tales. Um. But
it also is you guys a chance to like talk
to me about any perceptions that you have, anything I
(13:10):
could have done better, um. And so I know all
you guys have something to say. We're at a little
bit of a disadvantage on the first Bargera Surrender because
we've already had six podcasts come out, okay, and so
as we get on the weekly schedule, there's gonna be
like one podcast that's gonna come out, and so it
will be a little bit more focused. But so so
(13:32):
on this one, we're just gonna kind of hit and
miss over the different six podcasts that have come out.
But what I haven't had a chance to do on
the Bargrease podcast is talk about the name beargrease. Do
do y' all know why it's bargrease? Do y'all understand
the metaphor? Is the marketing strong enough that you understand
(13:53):
the metaphor? This is an open question. What are you
talking about of a podcast you don't understand? Good? Okay,
so you don't understand, No, listen. Beargrease is literally, I'm
holding a jar in my hand right now, is literally
the rendered fat of a black bear. Okay, I put
(14:15):
on your deep philosophical thinking caps. Okay. At one time,
bear grease was a medium of currency, and it was
a staple of life on the on the American frontier.
Beargrease stayed stayed good longer than pork lard. So like
if you were if you homesteaded in Arkansas or Tennessee
(14:37):
or Kentucky or wherever, you would render down this fat
and it would be extremely valuable to you. It was
a form of currency. Did you know that an eel
of bargrease, that is an archaic unit of measure for
a beargrease was the tanned neck hide of a deer
sewn together. Beargrease poured into it and then it was
(14:58):
sealed up, and an eel of grease was like a
unit of currency. It is just perchance, boys, that we
the US dollar isn't nickname an eel, okay, like it,
but it's nicknamed a buck because a buck skin was
worth about one U. S. Dollar. Actually I'm making that up.
(15:19):
That bare eel was almost almost the same thing. So okay,
philosophical thinking caps This at one time was highly important
and everyone would have known about it. And this has
been like normal, like you'd have had it in your house,
you'd had it in your house, you'd had any more.
About Old Trough, Arkansas, Well, that's that is a that
(15:42):
is a city artifact of what I'm talking about, because
it was a city in northern Arkansas that had a
processing plant for bar oil and they ship that bar
oil down the white That's right. Yeah, you know, the
first time I du rectly met you was through a
(16:02):
jar bear grouse. Your daughter came into my class. I
was teaching teaching school and your daughter came into my class.
She had a she had a ten fox hide on
her left shoulder. This is this story, true story. Ten
fox hide on her left shoulder and a jar bear grease,
and she just walked into my classroom like nothing's happening.
(16:26):
It was just a regular was Tuesday. She walked in,
you know, with this with this fox hide in this
jar bear grouse and she said, my dad sent this
with me. I'm gonna put it on the window, supposed
to tell us what the weather is gonna be like.
So I want to know if it's gonna rain before
we go outside. And she sat down and it's like,
(16:48):
I have been in Arkansas like a year, and I'm thinking,
like where am I at right now? And that is
the first time I indirectly met Clay nucle I've never
met him before and met him through his daughter with
a jar bearer Jar Bargers. That's awesome. So I had
forgotten about that, and that's why this jar is where
(17:14):
it is. This is my this is my weather forecasting
jar Burgers. You see this chart right here. I'll send
you boys home with one of these one day. This
is a chart. This is a chart made by by
Gordon Websat out in New Mexico that I you can
read the weather. It's man that bargaries changes all the time.
(17:38):
It really does, every single day. It looks different um okay.
So now we've all come together to this point of
that Burgaries was like this valuable thing, and then now
it's not. It's erased from people's memory. I mean like erased,
like you go and like pull the three thirty million
people in the United States, I mean like point oh
(18:00):
oh oh one percent would like kind of know what
it was. The Beargrease podcast is we are exploring things
that are forgotten but relevant, searching for insight in unlikely places,
like telling the weather off of jar burgheris you know
where that came from? Alachi was the Native Americans Channel seven?
Then is that where you get your weather? No, Native
(18:23):
Americans in the southwestern US. They would take the dried
and scraped bladder of a deer pour bearg grease in it,
and when it dried it became almost translucent and you
could see through it like a glass jar, and they
forecasted the weather based upon the bear grease in that jar.
Thanks forgotten but relative insight and unlikely places. And our
(18:47):
tagline is we're going to tell the story of Americans
who lived their lives close to the land. And so
bear grease is a metaphor something that's forgotten and man,
bear grease. We use it for all kinds of stuff.
We use it for frying, We use it for pastries,
We use it for oil and conditioning leather. We use
it for rubbing down gun barrels. Um. We use it
(19:10):
for forecasting the weather. You see this bar of soap
right here. You can go to the meteor dot com
and see me and Colby Moorehead making this bar of
soap out of bear fat. It's animal tallow, lie fat soap.
Incredible stuff. If I had more of it, I'd give
you all some, but I don't, and I gotta stay
clean somehow. But that I'm telling you that that lie
(19:33):
soap is incredible. Is it in your shower? You bet
you it is. I've actually got something. Yeah, I'd like
to have some and not like to have something for
my time. You want to bring something, Man, we're not
getting paid. This is actually a multi level marketing. Well
we're soap so guys, That's why I brought you here.
(19:57):
You can get on he can get it on the ground. Yeah,
I actually have some of it in my shower. Colby
give me. Oh yeah, it's great. It's great. So it's great,
so good for your skin, good so so you see
the metaphor so like we're we're like basically that gives
us this broad window to explore all these different things,
(20:17):
and for instance, the inside like inside the Mountain Lion
podcast like that was like a like the first podcast
was called The Myth of the Southern Mountain Lion, which
was a really fun podcast where I interviewed people A
few people that have seen mountain lions claim to have anyway, yeah, yeah,
And and I interviewed a biologist and they interviewed a
(20:38):
psychologist about how people cognitive bias, like if you're it's
a wonder I've not seen a mountain lion because my
dad believes in black panthers? Do you see what the
cognitive bias means? If your dad told you there was
something there, even if there was a chance to defend yourself, dad,
do you believe in oxygen? I do? Oh? Can you
(20:59):
see it? No, I saw a mountain lion, Garrett, you
see I saw a black panther pants. Did you question
after you listen to that podcast? Did you question yourself?
I questioned my friends, a circle of friends and the
people that I called your relationships, the dynamic of that relationship,
I thought who was a psychologist. What's he going to cognitive?
(21:22):
What was cognitive? And the problem the problem is that
no one ever told me there wasn't mountain lions in Arkansas,
and no one ever told me there was, And so
you're saying you're totally unbiased and the one you saw
it was just like for real, yes, are you convinced
you saw it hundred percent? What was it behind bars
or on a chain or outside of a restaurants wearing
(21:45):
a pink tutu? No, I told you in the podcast
there It wasn't like I was by myself and my
wife was with me. Well there you go, Hey, you
don't have to defend yourself. I'm just kidding. The the
point is, well I don't believe you, but but um,
the insight though, Like so I'm trying to describe like
(22:08):
the Burgers podcast, because somebody could be listening to this
and never even heard the Burgers play. The insight came
inside of like we explored this thing, Like there's this
artifact and I like that word of from when lions
were actually here because indisputably, there are a lot of
people that claim that ce mountain lions that didn't And
I absolutely a d percent believe every one of you.
(22:28):
I said it on the podcast too, I said, I
punched somebody in the teeth if they didn't believe you,
didn't anything, but bands went on there. But the insight
came in just looking at how we want to believe
our brother Like do you remember at the end, like
I came to the conclusion like and I didn't fabricate that,
(22:50):
like after I talked to all these people, like it
was like the redeeming factor of it all was that,
like the way we survived, and it's natural for me,
I trust Brent Reeves if he tells me sees a
mountain line, then by GOLLI he saw a mountain line.
And I'm just giving you guys a hard time. So
basically what you're saying is that you can love your
(23:12):
friends even when they're delusions. Okay. The deeper thought is
is that what has made human successful in the earth
is that we want to trust our brother are we
It's like a mechanism like because if I can't, it's
just it's a mechanism of trust, like I want to
(23:32):
believe you, and and then I think that has produced
a lot of false mountain Lion you know, sightings from
people who maybe had some you know, thought they saw vaccinated,
like being vaccinated against line. Very good. Yeah, now, Dad, okay,
I've I've credited you with keeping the myth of the
(23:53):
black panther alive. How do you feel about that? I
think it's wonderful. I mean, it's nice that you put
up the truth. I mean, it's it's against science. But
I mean, who are you gonna trust you because you
saw one? Well, I mean, I don't think that's any
of your ba You know, when I go down to
(24:15):
Aunt Olie's, she lives in a dog trot house with
trees over the road, and at night we're we're awakened
by a screaming black panther. I mean, who are you
gonna trust? And Ali tell us what a dog trot
house is. It's got a porch right down the middle,
one side of your kitchen, living room, one side of
(24:37):
your bedroom, big trees out. I mean, it was an
amazing place. It's an architectural style that they used to
use before air conditioning. Yeah, so you would cook on
one side and then you would sleep on one side.
And the little community was almost as neat as the house.
It was Buck snort, Yeah, yeah, Buck snort, Yeah, a
(25:01):
lot of panthers. There a panther country, panther country. Hey
listen though, no, I on like they're a legitimate mountain line.
I mean the biologists even confirmed it. I mean, like,
(25:21):
if you listen to the whole even talking about I'm
just giving you a hard time. The man confirmed it. Yeah,
there are mountains here. Now black panthers. Now, that is
where I draw the hard line. And neither of these
guys have claimed have seen a black panther. Dad's just
just heard him and you just could tell by the
sound that it was black. Absolutely so. The but you
(25:44):
would be shocked shocked at the number of grown men who,
after listening to that whole podcast and listening to Myron
means saying science, from the position of science, there has
never been documented a melanistic mountain lion ever by science.
Did you get some documentation in the mail? In the email,
(26:06):
you wouldn't believe the grown men that messaged me, some
of them friends of mine, and they're like Clay, I
listened to podcast. It was awesome. I believe every word
of it. I've seen a black panther though, I mean,
like it's like rocks people's boats. Man, I mean like
(26:26):
I think like splits families. Like this idea of black
panther iron means got off of that interview. Was he like,
there's really black panthers. It was like they reached over,
turned the taper quarter off of it was like I
killed one last year. No no I. I had two
(26:47):
different people claimed that their father's well. One of them
claimed that their father had shot at a black panther.
One of them claimed that their father killed a black panther,
killed it with a bow. This I'm telling you, this
guy's like I've know this guy, and I'm like, send
me a picture, and if he's listening out, I hope
he'll send me a picture. I want to believe you.
(27:08):
I want to believe him. Um. I had a guy
uh called bring up a good point that there is
a there is a cat like critter down in South
Texas called a jagger undi, which is a cat like
critter that lives in deep South Texas and they can
be melanistic. Okay, So there's so like, could a jagger
undi walk nine miles to Arkansas or four five montes? Possibly?
(27:32):
I had another guy say that he thinks black panther
sidings are big otters, river otters, because a river otter
is black and you don't see him very much. And
if and they have big long tails, what do you
think of that? JAGGARUNDI there, all the guys are like
looking at their phones. Yeah, absolutely, I don't know about that.
I mean, think about that at dark, Yeah, I can
(27:54):
see that if it's especially dark dusk, just like charcoal,
it looks like a mountain lion with a housecat's head. Yeah.
I've never even heard of that until you just said it.
See if that's what Gary heard? Does that look like
what you heard? That's not black? Well, but see the
(28:21):
sides panther. But so that could have been melanistic, Got you,
got you, got you so um. But you know, the
whole point of it was is that jaguars and leopards
can't have been documented as melanistic. The American mountain lion
has never been documented as melanistic, and so to see
(28:43):
a black panther would just be like, well they're not here,
so anyway, super fun. And guess what, I am the
biggest proponent of black panther in North America. When those
guys sent me that stuff. I'm like, heck, yeah, brother,
keep it, keep this thing alive. Yeah, keep it alive.
Long Live the Black Panther. I love it. Any further
(29:12):
comments on episode number one that was I can tell
you from a from like a creative standpoint, just kind
of like behind the scenes of that podcast. That was
the first party I built that podcast, like in January
or something. You know, it just came out like in April,
and I had all these interviews and had no idea
(29:32):
if they how they would stitch together to tell a story.
And when Phil Taylor and Mediate did it all put
it all together, and I had edited all the little
sections and put it together. Man, I was so excited
when I heard it. I was just driving down the
road and just listen to it, and I was like, Yes,
that is what I want to do with burglaries, you know,
like tell these interesting stories about rural culture and they're
(29:58):
not always gonna be about hunting. Like that pod didn't
have anything at all. I mean it was good because
it you know, it gave it gave a lot of
depth to everything. It wasn't just I saw this when
I was nine. Team. There was a whole lot of
a build up in basis to all of the all
the claims you know, and I witness reports, and then
(30:19):
you know, somebody to set back an unbiased view and
look at all of it and say, you know, you
may have seen something, but the possibilities of it being
you know, this particular color or that particular animal, you know,
it's you know, while not impossible, you know, highly improbable.
Did you just give you know, food for thought? Yeah?
And if by unbiased you mean Myron's section, I can
(30:42):
support it was far from Yeah. Yeah, yeah, you know
what I really liked about it was, um, it kind
of made me And this is probably one of thost
naive things I'll say, but it just seems like when
when we weren't so detached from the land and from
wild places, that it might have been easier to trust
(31:04):
one another. When you talk about trusting your brother and
trusting your fellow man. When when the biggest you know,
argument or polarizing you know, one of them is are
there black panthers or not? Or are there mountain? Yeah?
You know, whereas there's so many things today in our
current age that just it just seems like it inhibits
that so much more that was thirty years ago, man,
(31:27):
almost And you know, I've never had an outlet to
even you know, tell that story where in any setting.
That was when you saw your Mountain Lions thirty years ago,
almost thirty years and your old friend Clay was the
only one who cared. He on the one that listened,
and then he tried to sell you some so hey,
(31:49):
so right here on that you got. This is a surprise.
You don't know what this is. That's a number three
of the Bear Grease podcast was a shed horned buck
of nineteen dear dear friend James Lawrence. This is this
(32:12):
is the butck. This is okay. I refused to allow
him to give them to me. Man. I was at
James's house and this is before he had even heard
the podcast, and he just said take those home with you.
(32:33):
And he also allowed me turn around and look up here.
So on the on the ceiling of my office, there's
a picture of my dad, Gary Nucom with his first buck.
There's a picture of Steve Schultz, who's my father in law.
And there's a picture of James Lawrence back in the
mountains of Arkansas with a buck. And that buck that's
(32:54):
hanging on the wall is a buck that James Lawrence
killed on one of his big soul Low hunts back
in the seventies. Now, he killed that one in the sixties.
He was like twenty one years old when he killed it.
Those three guys are my heroes. That's why they're there.
And those there's like sixteen by twenty frame pictures, And
what's so cool is they were all about the same
(33:15):
age in that picture. So, Dad, how old were you.
That's Dad's first buck. Oh, twenty six, twenty seven or
something like that, So you were you were older than
that when it was nineteen seventy eight. I'm just glad
you're thirty years old. Yeah, I'm glad he's wearing clothes.
Well no, maybe, yeah, yeah. I wouldn't like most of
(33:40):
these listeners. I didn't start hunting until real late in
life because my dad was so much like Clay. You
didn't want to hang around him and he'd kill you hunting.
I mean, you'd go with him and it's like, come on, Dad,
it's time to go home, and we're just getting started.
I quit. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, So Dad started bo
(34:02):
hunting when he was in his late twenties. But you
grew up bird hunting and stuff with your dad. He
kind of burned you out. Yeah, I had to lay
rules down when I got a little older that hey,
we're only going for four hours. So there's dad's picture.
And then Steve Schultz, my father in law. He was
a falconer and that picture was taking the late seventies
in Florida, and uh, he's Steve's had an incredible influence
(34:25):
on my life. And then James, who in his own
unique way has had a significant impact on was like,
but this this is the shed horn buck that he picked.
He picked up these sheds, those actual sheds are from
the sixties. Man, let's look great. He picked up these
sheds in in the early nineteen sixties. And actually he
told me that he made a set of rattling horns
(34:45):
at a one pair because he's got three sets of sheds,
but he can only find two. And this is actually
two different years sheds. I'm holding a left handler and
a right handler. So this was the buck the year before.
If you really dissected and held it, you could see
a difference in mass, in time length. This was the
(35:06):
buck at his prime. Okay, this is a left antler,
a five point side. People can go to my Instagram
and see a picture of James and me with these deer. Okay,
I scored this buck this side as a shed ten
twelve years ago, and I just remembered that it scored
around a hundred seventy. And that's what I said on
(35:26):
the podcast. I kind of got to not doubting myself,
but I was just like, man, I wondered that thing.
I mean, I just kind of like to re score
that thing just to make sure you know I'm I'm
interested in the facts. Boys. Yeah, I scored this right
before you guys came, and that shed has eighty inches
(35:48):
of antler on it, which eighty inches would be eighty
times two, which would be one sixty plus the spread,
So this would have been a mid one seventies white tips.
It's deceptive though. It's got a twenty two inch main beam,
eleven inches, ten and a half, seven and a half,
five and a half plus two kickers plus you know,
(36:09):
four inch mass all the way out ends up being
eighty inches. So like, but this is that's the horn.
Here's to a to a non hunter, this is like
a prized if you were to kill this this buck,
this will be up None of us in this room
have ever killed a deer that big, much less how
many years ago in Arkansas? I mean, that's the that's
(36:29):
one of the big things that is the ecosystem in
Arkansas that many decades ago. This was that set of
antlers might as well have been grown out right in
the middle of his hand, like a white tailed unicorn.
And after sixty years a hunting, they called you the unicorn.
(36:51):
N Is that what this is about? You wanted to
talk about my high school day? Is? Yeah? This is
you now? Yeah, so Malicho would be like just a
really nice white tail deer and uh, now, what what
do you guys think of? That podcast? Was great? I
listened to it again yesterday. You know what I I thought,
How wonderful was it for him to have that story
(37:14):
and that, you know, talk about I mean, say, with
the are there panthers or not? You want to be trusted,
You want to trust your fellow man. Basically none of
his family trusted him, you know. But then for you
to do that podcast and have all these conversations with them,
I mean that had to really I had to be
healing for him. It's kind of what I was taken
(37:36):
away from him. You know what struck me about it
was that he was not a mainstream hunter. He did
something different than everybody else. All the hunters that knew
how to hunt, had all the experience, were out running
dogs and James is sitting there going, now, I saw
a deer out here, and I mean he pursued his
(37:56):
own thing and and in a way if you know,
I don't hunt bucks like that. I mean, it's just
too boring for me. So I'm not gonna kill deer
like this unless really heavy to carry out the woods. Yeah, yeah,
that's right. You've been with me when I picked a
little but anywhere I've had a chance to kill him
a deer close to that, but it didn't work. Anyway.
(38:20):
That's a great point. And see, the whole the whole
point of that podcast to me was that James took
something that was negative and turned into something positive, going
back to insight and unlikely places like that would have
crushed most people and and did Jane. I like, it
was a little bit tricky for me because James trusts
(38:42):
me so much. I feel like like he he would
just tell me whatever I asked him to tell and
wouldn't question what I was gonna do with that information.
If you told him you'd seen a mountain lion, he'd believe.
He would believe me. He's never seen one. James Lawrence
has never seen a mountain lion. I believed the subject.
But like, there was some pretty pretty deep stuff there,
(39:03):
and I was drawing conclusions about like him, like that
impacted him in a negative way, But he didn't get
bitter about it. He and I said this before, he
is the guy that you want with you when you're successful.
So like he didn't go and oppress people even more
(39:24):
like he was oppressed. Like he just instinctively was just like, man,
I'm not gonna ever let that happen one of my friends.
And you know one thing too, You take Malachi that's
not hunted much, and you kill a big buck. He
didn't even know it. I mean, those guys might have
come at that a little more honest than what we think.
(39:45):
It might not have been. I'm kind of jealous of
James for killing it. It could have been. I just thought, man,
we're out here for the meat. We're trying to survive,
you know, forget the horns. I'm worried about my belly.
You know, I can see that I think that makes sense.
So if you've got a group of guys who are
not hunting for sport and there's a socially accepted way
to obtain sustenance and he's going against the grain in
(40:09):
the use and the quickest way possible, that kind of that.
You know. I didn't feel like at all in the
podcast though, that his family were like demonized or anything.
But it makes a little more sense as to why
I couldn't figure out why are they so unkind to
this kid? You know, why does some of the men
in his life come and be like, man, that's awesome.
That's where it was a little bit touchy and I
(40:32):
and I had to be careful and I actually asked
a few people before I said, do you think that
would hurt? Do you think? I mean, I didn't want
to disclose more than but but James is the one
that said it, you know, I mean, like he just
told his story and he was kind of he was
kind of discounted. And that is also pretty normal too.
I mean, like to kind of discount a kid when
(40:54):
they're saying something, and I didn't. And James has the
utmost respect for his family too, And you could tell
that at the first a podcast when he was talking
about his grandmother and grandfather, how much you respected them
and how they never said anything negative about anybody. Man.
That's that's that's James. But from from if we're talking
about the Burgaries podcast and kind of forecasting where this
(41:16):
thing is gonna go. These first six episodes I think
are all very diverse. You think about it, like we
explore this like folklore of the myth of the southern
mountain lion. Every podcast I want to have an expert,
like a biologist or an academic guy, or just someone
who's a subject matter expert. And then the ideas also
(41:40):
that we're interviewing in the field, people that have information
about the topic, like Brent and Dad's and mountain lions.
And then here Daniels said, Daniel's like waving his hand,
He's like, why what on the first now? And and
and uh, every podcast is gonna have kind of this similar,
similar structure, but all gonna be very different, like this
(42:02):
folklore about mountain lion, anabiology lesson, and then the next
one we're talking about the correlation between being a good
al hooter and a turkey hunter and talking about Colin
Turkey's you did good man? Yeah, well you're getting there.
And and then the third podcast was the shed hornbuck
(42:25):
in nineteen sixty two, which was just this guy's story.
And then the fourth podcast was Death of a Bear Hunter,
which was fantastic. Man meant okay, that one was a
historically based podcast about a guy in a book and
one single story of the book, but we painted the
context to the whole scene. You listen to that podcast,
(42:46):
you understand what's going on in the eighteen thirties in Arkansas.
You understand who gir Stalker was. You understand a little
bit about Native Americans that he was hunting with, And like,
what what do y'all think of that one? I got
a bone to pick with you on that. Okay, hold
this deer horn while you're doing it. Three years this
is a weapon. Okay, past the deer horn, if you
want to talk three years ago. Three years ago, you said, Brant,
(43:12):
have you ever seen this book? Yeah? That one? I
never heard of it. He said, you got to read it,
he said, And this is why I want you to
read it. This is three years ago, he said, I
want you to read this book. And when you get done,
you and I are going to do a podcast on this.
I heard him say it. I was there, so he's
(43:33):
I buy this book and I read this thing from
cover to cover. I can speak Germany. And then the
next thing, I know, when the podcast comes out of like,
I don't hear myself on there? That does That doesn't
even sound like. So basically I gave you an assignment
to do a book report and then there was no
(43:54):
never got a grade. It was absolutely It was incredible, though, man,
that that book. I sent that book to my brother
and both of my nephews. I think I've read it now.
It's incredible book. Yeah, I passed the horn. Hey, well
you read it too, Dan, Yeah, you read it years ago.
When I just told you the story, Well we were
(44:16):
on a bear hunt together and something had reminded you
of the story, and you, Clay retold the story and
the way that I remembered it was you. You got
to kind of the climax of the story and this
gentleman gets knocked out, everything goes black, wakes up, his
hunting buddies dead. I mean, it's just like just this
amazing story. I went and got the book and read
(44:39):
it and it was just fantastic. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah,
Well that that story has been on my mind for years.
I mean that's the reason I told it. But we're
gonna replicate that into other podcasts with historical stories, and
I've already got some ideas that i cannot share. I'll
share what you got after this? Yeah, a few books
(45:00):
you want Brent to read? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, Um what
Josh your thoughts on that one? Well? I love that
one A couple of times. I loved the I mean
when you're when you're reading that story, you are transported
into the what is happening? And gay Stalker does such
(45:24):
a great job Josh, as German describing, does such a
great job describing the scene. It's like, who needs Netflix
when you got that? You know? You know, and you
mentioned this I think maybe on the podcast, but a
lot of the places that he talked about in that book,
I've been, you know. It's it's it's between here and
where I live in Central Arkansas, up and down the
(45:48):
Little Red River. Well, you know it's I was serious
when I said on the podcast, I was offended at
people that I didn't know that story till I was
thirty years old. I'm serious. I'll tell you where about.
It was not in this country. I was in another
country reading a book in a hotel room, and I
(46:08):
had no idea that, well, I this this college professor
had said, Hey, there's some stories about Arkansas bear hunting.
There's all I said, terrible marketing, Like the first half
of the book. The guy's not even Arkansas. So I'm
just kind of like, oh, this is cool. I mean,
you know, it's cool, but like I wanted Arkansas stuff.
And when I get to that story, I'm I'm not kidding.
I remember where I was sitting when I read that story,
(46:30):
and I was just like, holy cow, he was eventually coming.
I didn't know that he was. Well, no, no, I knew.
All I knew was that Arkansas bear stories. I had
no idea that it was just right down the road.
And I'm like, why don't we know that? Why don't
they teach this in Arkansas public schools? Why? And like
just it's just and the and the truth is there's
(46:53):
stuff like that littered all across history. Like wherever the
people that are listening to this live, stuff happened right
where they live. Substantial Emory day, this guy hand him
the horn no in okay, going back to the insight
(47:13):
like Bear Grease can give you insight beyond what you
would have thought it would, is that I really have
had the question of why does that story impact me
so much? Like why? And and that was my exploration
inside of that podcast, is why do stories impact this?
Because that story has no consequence on my life in
a rational sense, like a guy got killed by bar
(47:34):
out here with dogs, but that guy's story has shaped
my family and it's just you know. And then and
then the conclusion was humans are massively impacted by stories,
whether you want to or not. And so you got
a choice of what stories you let impact you. Netflix
(47:57):
tells stories. That's what Netflix is in the business of
telling stories, you know, absolutely, and so like and and
you know, you could say, well, Clay, why are you
letting a story about a English guy you didn't know
getting killed by bear you know, like impact your family.
Like that's kind of aside from the point in that
(48:18):
it's like we we get that, we get to choose
what impacts us and how it impacts us, you know.
And I would like if Gerstalker had just been a
dirt ball that story, like like if he had just
been known as like an outlaw and like a scrupulous character,
like I wouldn't have had respect. I respected the guy.
(48:38):
He did love people, like I said on the podcast
when he left Conwell's house, like these are people that
he had just met. He couldn't even speak their same
language that well, and he cried when he left Conwell's house.
He said, Conwell had hair as white as snow. And
he loved his family and he went into you know how,
he stayed with them and they begged him to stay.
(49:00):
And it's just like I like it. I like that guy.
And then and then just his insightfulness and and he
wasn't like a conservation hero, like I wasn't trying to
paint Gerstalker as a conservation hero. But he did have
insight that the market hunting of the times of which
he participated in was unsustainable. And like so that then
(49:22):
becomes like a stamp on that story. And like when
I think of that, I think of, man, will never
do that again. He was hunting bears in February in
Den's and it's like, man, that was really cool Wayne
doing that no more. I mean, there there are stories
in that book of them crawling into dens crawling in
(49:43):
caves with Litward. They call him Torches, but pine Kindler's
pine Kindling split climbing into caves, killing a sal bear
and then smacking cubs up against the rock to kill him.
I mean like they were in the business of killing stuff,
and it's like that did happen. That's not good. It's
not gonna happen again. Because it happened, then, do you
(50:06):
see what I'm saying. It's like me like talking about
conservation based bear hunting, where we're highly selective and we're
trying to target these older mature males. That happened because
ger Stoker, he didn't know any better, was clubbing you know,
baby bears over there. I mean for a better term,
(50:26):
we listen. We have the right as humans to correct
our paths and learn from our past. It's like James
Lawrence redemption inside of something that was negative. Well, you
you recognize that that that is obsolete, and you have
to be able to recognize the obsolescence of that thing
and move on and say this this worked for the time,
(50:48):
it's no longer relevant. Yeah, And we'd still be doing
that today if we hadn't. Well, we wouldn't because the
bears will be gone, but and they were for a time.
They were in Arkansas. Okay, closing comments here, Dan, I'm
gonna throw this horn to you and you'll get to speak.
Just what do you think I'm gonna say? Overall? It's
(51:11):
the podcast is solidly mediocre. Um no, no, no. I
think what as I've been listening to them and really
enjoying them, I think, you know, when you think about
podcasts and stories, a lot of today's kind of stories
and podcasts either are really critiquing a part of life
(51:34):
and usually not a very beneficial way, or it's trying
to kind of escape life, you know as it is.
And I feel like what I really like about what
you're doing is I leave having listened to one of
your podcasts, and I'm thinking about how I see things
and how I relate with people and choices that I make,
(51:55):
and to me, it helps me feel more connected. It's
your insight. You know, you're gonning, You're gonna inside from
unlikely places, and I feel like that is what I
walk away with. Yeah, I like it. I think about
where this all started with me and you, and we
were in Oklahoma on a bear bait and I was
(52:18):
running the camera and we've been sitting there for that
one day for a week. It seemed like and hadn't
seen a bear. And you turned away from me and
I was looking off back to the left. I was
sitting on the to the left of clay, and when
I turned back around, you had taken mud and I
(52:38):
assumed water and covered your face and mud, and I thought,
how did I get here? I've carried forty pounds of
camera equipment on the side of this mountain in the
Washington Mountains, and this guy has just put mud all
little I don't know what it was, but I thought,
(52:59):
this is this gal never go anywhere, But look what
you've done. Buddy. I'm very proud of you for what
it what it's turned into and the drive, you know.
I say that facetiously about knowing you wasn't gonna go anywhere,
and the drive you had has been outstanding. It's inspired
me to do a lot of stuff too, and I
(53:21):
just appreciate you let me come along for the ride.
Right on, man. Yeah, As as the non hunter in
the group, I think hearing the podcast and watching you
tell people stories, I think it's a very powerful tool
to continue the legacy and culture and give people who
(53:44):
haven't had that exposure a correct way of seeing things.
I think hunting, I think the Southern culture. I think
Arkansas has, you know, nationally not a good rep and
hearing the story is in seeing how you hunt and
it's being driven by principles and patterns and the way
(54:06):
that you you share, the way that you've been influenced
by your dad, the way that you influence your kids.
I think it's a powerful medium and tool to give
people a cleaner, more pristine, more correct picture of hunting,
of Arkansas, of the South, of relationships, of of everything
(54:28):
that is built inside of a commodity that was once
you know, valuable that is but is lost and so
bringing that back and giving giving people a better picture
of that, I think is is awesome. Yeah, it's good. Well,
I think that I've really enjoyed the podcast, and uh,
(54:50):
I think just having known you for a lot of years,
I appreciate um. First of all, like Malick I said,
I appreciate the relational aspect of of the podcast. I
think it I think when it all boils down to it,
it's relationship that makes us rich and so to be
able to connect with people and to to draw stories
(55:11):
from people. I think storytelling and the ability to draw
stories out of people that that thing has been lost,
um in a sense that that shows the depth of
what's been built in people over a long journey. And
so I think to be able to hear that from
you who have a passion to to mind that out,
(55:33):
I think it's valuable for people to be able to hear.
And so I'm really looking forward to to the future
podcasts and the things that I get to learn by listening.
And uh yeah, I mean I think you eagerly await
being on the very grious podcasts, eagerly render, and and
I may might become so popular on the render that
(55:55):
I don't I don't need to be on the point. Hey,
this is look good for Edwards were passing to their horn, Dad,
What do you think then? Well, I hate to burst
your stinking bubble, but these guys are obviously on the payroll.
And I am really disappointed in you, Daniel. I think
(56:17):
you sort of have a spiritual religious background. And it's
it's obvious again that she hadn't been vaccinated against Lyne.
That's that's brist deal. I podcast. When he's talking about
But you know when I listened to it, I look,
I look at it from a deadly standpoint. That's a
(56:37):
new word. We'll take it. Uh. You know, it's just
like when you were a kid. You know, your brain
is not totally formed. I mean, you miss about half
the good stuff. It's like on the deal with the
with the Dogs, I mean, nowhere did you mention that
the dog is your best friend? But why is he
your best friend? It's because he loved you first. He's
(56:59):
the only animal that loves you more than him. And
I mean you didn't even cover that. I mean I
was embarrassed. It was embarrassing that you went into all
that rhetoric and didn't mention the love the dog has
for you. And if you look at life in the
way I'm serious about the love, I think you can
(57:20):
detect that. But I only love people that love me.
And if they have the ability to show me that
they loved me first, you know, they exposed themselves. It's
it's like I'm open, vulnerable the words. Yeah, there you go.
So I mean that's that's a powerful tool, is love.
(57:42):
And people that are have enough confidence to expose themselves
to hate. And a dog does it immediately. Now how
that came from a wolf to domesticated dog? But it's
really powerful. But no, really, all these podcasts, they're different
in a lot that I've heard where you have a
(58:05):
lot of meat, a lot of science, a lot of humor,
all of it mixed up into a recipe that it's
pretty entertaining and education. So obviously I need to tune
your daddy. It's a solid six. Gary nucle gives The
(58:34):
Brigs podcast two stars. Okay, hey, I need people to
leave iTunes reviews on the Barrious podcast like so this
is my unashamed solicitation for all our listeners to go
to iTunes and apparently that drives the needle on these
(58:57):
podcasts with the higher ups, you know. So, uh, I'm
asking everybody out there do me a favor and just uh,
you know you can. You can do as little as
just giving it like stars. But the best thing to
do would be to leave a comment, you know, just
just say what you think. Um, that would help us.
And UM, I think my guests so much for being here. Really,
(59:19):
you guys mean the world to me, all of me,
so that's why you're here. Uh. Check out Brent's podcast
Nightlife Nation. Brent's got a coon hunting podcast. Check out
Josh on Instagram, Kiki and the Beard Um nobody else
has any like uh big social platforms. Yeah on the Twitter.
But again, if if you hadn't been paying attention, We're
(59:41):
gonna do this every other week, So the bear Grease
podcast will come out every other week, the Bear Grease Render,
which is us just shooting the bull, and it'll be
a different you know, it might be different, people might
be the same people. Y'all may never want to come back.
Brent drove three hours to be here. Did y'all know
that Yerry drove to two and a half. Two and
(01:00:03):
a half. He'll never get those two and a half. No,
thank you guys so much. And uh yeah, I can't
wait for the next episode. Keep the wild places wild
because that's where the bears live and that's where you
get barglaries. You know what, when Malachi left the house
(01:00:28):
this morning, he thought he had the coolest socks on
Those are those are coon dog socks? Oh me, I'm crazy.
Host
Clay Newcomb
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