December 17, 2020 • 65 mins
In this episode, we break out the Bear Hunting Magazine Podcast highlight reel. We take a look back at our journey, and the amazing people we've met -- and conversations we've had -- along the way.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
My name is Clay Nukeleman. I'm the host of the
Bear Hunting Magazine Podcast. I'll also be your host into
the world of hunting the icon of the North American
Wilderness Fair. We'll talk about tactics, gear, conservation. Will also
bring you into some of the wildest country on the
planet chasing Fair. This week on the Bear Hunting Magazine Podcast,
(00:34):
we're taking a look back at the last two and
a half years and we're gonna have some highlights from
our conversations with the incredible people that we've had as
guests on this show. This isn't all the highlights. There
just wasn't a way to include every special moment, every
(00:54):
special conversation, but this was some of them. I really
think you're gonna enjoy this podcast and you'll be able
to go back and listen to these full episodes if
you want to. It's wintertime and it's time to get
the dogs out. We've been squirrel hunting and coon hunting
even this week, and if you need dog stuff, you
really need to support our guys at w Hunting Supply.
(01:17):
But don't do it for them, and don't do it
for me. Do it for yourself because the selection. They
have the customer service that they have down there, this
top notch. These people are Houndsman, the people you're gonna
be talking to and dealing with her Hounsman, or just
order online. Buddy Woodbury and his team, they they're they're
masters at the garment products. They've got the new Garment
(01:39):
Alpha two D, which is garments new most recent dog
tracking system. Check it out w Hunting Supply, north Woods
Bear Products. Man, if you're baiting bears, you've gotta be
using this stuff. Spring is coming. I know nobody's really
thinking about baiting bears right now, but you can, and
you should, and when you do. North Woodspear Products. Check
(02:00):
them out. C v A Muzzloaders and make an incredible
line of muzzloaders. They have an incredible guarantee if you're
gonna be muzzloader honey, check out c v A. I've
been carrying one this year. Some of you have heard
a few of my stories about carrying them, and I've
learned a lot about muzzloaders this year, and I truly
love carrying, love shooting my c v A Accura Mountain Rifle.
(02:25):
Check out c v A and all that they have
to offer. Check them out Western Bear Foundation. These boys
are doing good stuff out West. Speaking on behalf of
bear Hunters bear Lovers. That's us, We're bear lovers. Joe
Condellas and his team at the Western Bear Foundation are
(02:45):
doing a great job their nonprofit hunting conservation organization. Membership driven.
Check out their organization, become a member. This first excerpt
was taken from episode twenty one. The episode was called
(03:07):
Old Mountain Hunter or a Lee Province. This conversation that
I had with Ori was one of my favorites of
all time. Since the recording of this podcast or Lee
has passed away, but this was a very unique conversation. Well,
(03:28):
give me, give me just a little like kind of
a bigger glimpse of your life. So, bord Ninete, dad
was a logger, and you grew up just you stepped
right into the family business and just logg right with him.
And uh and then so you did that until when
and what other kind of occupations did you have? Well,
(03:49):
my dad died in forty four, but okay, and forty
one what the World War two broke out? And uh,
my brothers, three of them waiting to service. Okay, and uh,
I was oldest one left at home. Okay. I took
him my mother and uh my nephew, and uh two
(04:13):
sisters and a brother brother. Mm hmm. Yeah, so you
were just just a few years too young to be
drafted into the war. I was. I was my dad
daughter's sixteen, okay, and uh when I become eighteen to day,
I was eighteen. A day after I was eighteen, My
(04:36):
birthday come on Sunday that year. On Monday, I registered
and I went down in past examination eight David July
I got my calls for examination, went down passed, and
then Dave August got my call service, and uh, ministers
out here, and I had a big tomato crop out
(04:59):
right and acres formats and uh, I mean the family here,
we had to have something to live on. And uh
but anyway, why there's ministra out there? He said, this
boy they had to take care of his mother and
these children. And so he wrote, I got deferred until
(05:23):
two locked over the fifteenth and uh another words of
the cropper was over then. Uh, I've still got one
one eight classification, but the war was over that time.
Oh wow, so you just barely missed it. So what
year would that have been? Nineteen forty four. Well, let's see,
(05:43):
it been h forty seven. I believe it was something. Okay, okay,
forty that would have been somewhere longhe six, he's over
and forty six the war was, so you would have
gone if the war would have Oh yeah, yeah, the
lords and I went to school with him. There's in
(06:05):
there they went Germany. Yeah, I'll be done. Wow. So
so what it so? You logged up until how old
were you? Well, you grew to you grew tomatoes, you
did some farming, you had some cattle. Well I couldn't
worked in Timor. That was the main line up to
(06:26):
him years and years later. Yeah. But anyway, I went
and h man, my brother we uh that he never
did have to go to war, and so but he
went him, went and cut timor and logged it. I
hold it up, I hold it on a wagon. Yeah,
(06:47):
and uh he skipped it out and I wouldn't hold
it and dumped it off at the mail mhm. And
that was I forgotten that one year. That was as
in the late forties. Anyway, Now, the Great Depression, you
were just a kid during the Great These hills weren't
(07:10):
really I mean, they were affected by the Great Depression,
but people were already poor. Yeah, I mean there wasn't
much you could do to somebody that was just living
off the land basically when it comes to economic stress,
is that right, right? Right? Yeah, we lived off the land. Yeah.
And nineteen thirty six that was dry here, you know, okay,
(07:31):
and uh we had a miter crop and we haul
water and set them out and they got up and
just the blooming and everything turned off dry. We never
got a too mater and nineteen thirty six and that
was hard to take. Yeah, I remember that way all too. Yeah. Yeah,
(07:55):
but we we worked in a tamer and uh, you
know they paper back then they finally got where they
brought out food stamps and thanks, but we never got any.
My dad just wouldn't have nothing to do with that,
just by principle, he didn't need any help. We we
(08:16):
made it. We made it without it. We worked and
they made it. Yeah. What would have been a normal
meal for your family back then when you were a kid,
had plenteteet? Yeah, had plenty teet. Yeah, we had anything. Yeah,
as you raised hogs and can vegetables, had had a garden.
(08:38):
I know you still have a garden, don't you well
yeah or yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we we made
it fine, well done, good. Yeah. I had about dirty
swarms of bees back during the war. While you couldn't
get sugar. Every food is all right, and you couldn't
(09:00):
buy nothing. Everybody's out of sugar. And I had bees
and we got to you could get permitted to feed
the bees, you know, because it used to the honey
somewhere another end guns. Yeah. I don't know this what
but that's what I heard it. So you were selling honey.
(09:22):
Well I didn't sell it, but we eat it. Okay,
you just had it. Yeah, we had it, and we
got penny of sugar to feed the bees, and so
we didn't have run out of shar A lot of
people never had no sugar, flour or anything. They couldn't
give this so much. Huh you come buy you come
buy a truck, tar or nothing. Not a pair of shoes, hardly. Wow. Yeah.
(09:50):
The next excerpt is my conversation with Roy Clark over
in East Tennessee this episode sixty seven, and it's called
Appalachian Hound Honey with Roy Clark, Part one. Mr Roy
is a special guy. He's very dear to me. He's
a master bear hound breeder and just a relic over
(10:15):
there in the Appalachian Mountains. It's a pretty incredible, pretty
incredible thing. And it's a unique you know, there's a
unique social structure that happens inside of like what I
see coming from the outside end looking at you guys.
I mean, just the relationships that that you guys have,
and I mean if you go bear hunting, whether you
(10:37):
see what it's all about. I mean, from daylight tell dark,
how many days a year are you guys together and
you're working together to accomplish a goal. And then now
Scott is over here every day helping Roy with the
dogs and stuff. Now that's a whole Another side of
the thing is just keeping dogs year round, you know.
(10:58):
I mean that's a lot of work in and of itself,
but uh yeah, it's a ton of work. It's a
ton of work. Yeah yeah. And you know that's something
that that all of us at some point of have
taken our turn. You know, Scott's taking jobs out on
the road, and then it'd be me or Matthew or whoever.
And that's the thing that you know, we've always took
a lot of pride and was the dogs and that's
(11:21):
you know, we're always talking about catching bears on the
ground and Matthew and and uh um. One of the
things that we're always looking out for is protecting those
dogs because that's our lifeline. You know, there is no
bear hunting for us without that pack of dogs. So
one of the most important things us when we go
into one of those bears is watching out for him
and doing doing our job to take care of them. Yeah,
(11:44):
that's our main priorities, the dogs first and whatever games
there that you know, well we handle it that way. Yeah. Yeah,
making sure the dogs are tied up for any bars
are shot out of the trees and you know all
that stuff. So yeah, if we ain't got them coldly
and kissing a little bird, that's right. Well, Mr Roy,
(12:06):
why don't you tell me about when you well, how
your dad. We'll just your first memories of bear hunting,
of going back to Alvin David Rights hunted with us
or how old you well, fifty four fifty four years
ever since he's been big enough to go and his
(12:30):
daddy honey with us, and his daddy like my daddy,
like Josh, like me. His daddy did and uh and
he hunted and we went to school together up here,
and and HiT's in there some more. I've got a
(12:54):
Mountaintine's card in there that he sent me when we
was about in the fourth grade. I and on that
Valentine's card he shent me. He said, we bear hunters,
ain't we rolling? That was his dad, Alvin David's dad. Yeah,
his dad, he said, we bear hunters. What grade would you?
(13:16):
How old would you have been? Was in the fourth grade,
So every every when that was how long ago? That
will be about nine years old? Yeah, and something like that.
So you stuck with you went ahead and just stuck
with that identity, didn't you. Yeah. His dad he short
of left us coming and went something. He's back now.
Maybe you'll stay. But that board, right, Chanter ain't never
(13:39):
bird today, buddy, mm hmmm mm hmm yeah, m hmm,
I love him. M Yeah, I know it, dude, Yep.
(14:02):
That that just shows you, Clay, what I mean it
means to us. You know, it's a it's beyond just
uh going out and having a big tim hunting. It's
beyond just uh um a group of guys here hanging
out in in Broy's house. You know, it's our life. Yeah,
you know, it's a something we've all grown up doing
(14:24):
all the way back through and it's just, uh, it's
a bond. Yeah, it really is. It really is. Should
He won't leave you bad, He won't leave you out
there and correct one yesterday, Yeah, leave you or the dogs.
He'd be the last one to come, and he'd be
(14:45):
the last one they're hoping to get the last dog. Well,
you know, I've hunted with you guys for three days
of the last sixty eight years. This guy's been bear hunting.
And the one time we had to fetch dogs after dark,
he he went, I knew that. Yeah, we've spent a
(15:06):
long nights in the in the truck together and and
uh stayed all night and freezing cold and whatever we
stay there with those dogs. Episode seven, that's for sure.
Dear to my heart. I had some of my close
friends in the room with me and it was called
(15:28):
Beginner's Guide to Building Your Family On Purpose. We talked
about building families, the transfer of family values into our children.
Really stuff that's super important to me. All this testing,
so what we're talking about, the building family culture, building
(15:48):
family culture, and all you guys, I respect every all
of you for the way that you have built your families.
And I think nobody's doing everything right. I mean that
that the word right is a tough one, but we're
doing it intentionally. And I know all you guys well
enough to know that you're very intentionally building family culture.
(16:10):
And if if you don't hear anything else on this podcast,
and you know you're just listen to this and like
you just want to chew on something, my question to
you is are you being intentional with the way that
you're building your family? And that word building could throw
you off? And let me let me let me say
this right here? Is that there. I've got a couple
of written statements here. Um, let's see. Let's see. We
(16:37):
we research and consult almost everything that we want to
be proficient at. Do we not, Like if you're gonna
go on a big hunting trip, you're gonna learn about it.
If you want to get into cycling, like you go
to cycling experts and see what they say. Um, but
with family stuff, a lot of times people are really isolated. Um.
(17:00):
Why why do you think that is? I think it
can be perceived as weakness to have to rely on
some on advice or counsel from someone else to build
your own family. You know, when you when you see
you know someone who's proficient at hunting, and and you see,
you know, I like to fly fish, and so you know,
I watch other guys, it's like, well, they've had a
(17:23):
long history of this, and I want to glean from them.
But when it comes to your own family, it's a
it's a really a sensitive spot because you don't want
to be seen as weak or there's there's the other
side of you. You get isolated because you don't want
to build like mom and dad, or you don't want
to follow their pattern and so so I'm gonna do
it on my own. I'm gonna find my own way.
And so it's it's almost a comparison of I don't
(17:45):
want to do that, so I'm gonna do it my
own way. And that can that can make you isolated, Yeah,
I think, and I think we as people a lot
of times are insecure and and to open ourselves up
for somebody else's input, it's pretty vulnerable. And it you
it takes time of doing that a lot that you'll
(18:07):
learn the value of it. And you're like, man, the
more I open up my life to input, the better
my life gets. The more I learned, the more my
the better my marriage gets. And so I remember even
early on um in my marriage, and then the same
with early on when I first had kids, like maybe
(18:27):
like the first time I kind of like went to something,
went to maybe one of you guys or you know,
people older than me, the married longer, had kids longer.
I remember, it was almost like, you know, what are
they gonna say? And like, what if I'm doing everything wrong?
And what if I'd yeah exactly. And then every time
that I did go to people wiser than me, always
(18:51):
got two things. I always got. Number one, they related
to me. I've never had an issue in my family
or marriage. Somebody was like you struggle with that? My gosh,
like you're you're a terrible person, Like you have a
marital struggle, are you? So it's like everything it's almost
like my friends would like fill in the sense, oh yeah,
(19:11):
and I bet you said this after you do that, Yeah,
that's it. And then I bet you felt like this
and yeah, and uh so that was one and that
right there is comforting and it shows you that it's safe.
And then the second looking at somebody that you you
perceived has made it through that and you're like, well,
they're okay and they had this problem. And then the
(19:33):
second thing is I've always had and I've always from
that received an alternative perspective that I didn't have before.
And it's like every single time I learned that I
can't do this on my own, you know. And I
know I'm jumping right into all this, but like that's
one thing I learned with building my family is like,
there ain't no way I can do this on my
(19:54):
own as exactly exactly. So I think it's it's like
this double edged sword. It's like we're kind of insecure,
but we kind of I want to do it on
our own, but at the same time that's really hard.
So we ended up just kind of feeling well, I
think people either just feel like a failure or they
just kind of build up. They kind of just say, well,
(20:14):
this is how I am, and this is the way
my family is gonna be forever, not really getting to
experience what could be better. Yeah, I think it's a
pretty American cultural thing to be really independent with your family.
I mean, just you know, cultures, cultures are built based
upon national history. I mean, and like you think about
(20:39):
the people that like settled in this region or heck,
every region of this country unless they're unless they're Native Americans.
They came here and there was like this pioneer spirit
that was on people to like bust through the wilderness
and make it on their own. People had to be
self sufficient, and like here in the Ozarks, that is
(20:59):
a right that is honored. Self sufficiency. I mean, like
at the Newcom Farm, we hat tip to the idea
of self sufficiency big time. That's okay, but that cannot
be the definer of every part of your life or
you're a fool, you know. So like, yeah, we we
like to hunt some some of our own food, butchering
(21:21):
our own animals, grow some stuff, train or you know.
But when it comes to things that I am not
an expert on that I'm incapable, Well, anybody could can
have insight into their family and make decisions on their own.
We're not We're not suggesting that somebody is incapable of
making decisions on their own. But what I'm saying is
(21:44):
best practice inside of life is for people to be
connected inside of some network of people that they trust.
You know. Episode nine one is one that I'll never forget.
It was a conversation that I had with Jonathan Wilkins.
The title of the podcast was the history of Racism
and African American Hunting. This is a unique conversation, man.
(22:12):
You know, there's what you just said about African Americans
being so connected rurally for such a long time, it's
almost been like erased from the culture in a lot
of in a lot of ways. I heard a stat
today that there's three hundred thousand African Americans that hunt
(22:35):
in the US today. Three thousands of like eleven million hunters,
so less than less than one and ten. Does that
start ring with you? I mean, I've heard that from
a seventeen I believe that if you took that nationally now,
I'd say the I would almost have I would hazard
(22:59):
to guess that a bulk of black hunters are in
the South. Uh, but yeah, I bet if you you know,
if you look at the centers of African American life
in this country, uh, they're gonna be mostly in coastal
or northern cities. You know that. And these these are
(23:21):
population remnants of the Great Migration, you know, people leaving. Uh,
structural racism and and you know, physical violence in the South,
which moved to and they moved to the industrial cities
of the North because you know, you have you also
(23:41):
had a you had an economic shift out of agriculture
into production, and those production centers were in the North.
So you had these waves of people moving to you know,
uh St. Louis. Like my my dad's fami was originally
from Kio, Arkansas. That's about thirty miles away from here.
(24:02):
But you know, I'm from St. Louis, uh Indian Indianapolis, Detroit, uh, Minneapolis, Baltimore.
You know, these are these were big industrial Boston, big
industrial cities that black people moved up to. Uh yeah.
And and it shows you kind of how short our
(24:22):
collective memory is because you know, just colloquially, you start
to think that you know that I don't know that
maybe there's something inherent in blackness that uh that is
disassociative with the natural world. And if you just look
back a little bit further, or you just you drive
(24:47):
around like the state that we live in, like you know,
you live in a part of the state where there's
not very many African Americans. If you drove over to
the opposite side of the state, you would see black
people everywhere. You would see the whole towns. I mean
now small you'd see small towns, but like Cotton Plant,
which is about ten miles from Brinkley, Like it's probably
almost entirely African American and that's all remnant of Yeah,
(25:11):
that's agricultural populations where people lived. Um and you know,
and it's like you probably most people wouldn't think of
black farmers, but across the delta, across the South, there
are black farmers. They're you know, multi generational black farmers.
Uh so yeah, I don't know. Man, the rich what
(25:36):
I was shocked at, Jonathan inside of this book and
the first chapter, it's like, I mean, just is if
somebody could just even just read the first chapter of
this book, the rich history of hunting that was built
upon kind of this plantation model. If I don't know
(25:57):
another way to say it, but like, uh, the black
people were in charge of there was a lot of
hound hunting, a lot of dog hunting. They were running deer,
they were running rabbits, they were well and so the
a lot of the black guys were the hound handlers,
and a lot of them were master houndsman fast, I
(26:19):
mean that blows my mind. The next section is from
episode seventy three titled How Bear Hunters and Hillbilly's Defined
the State. It was a conversation with Dr Brooks Blevins.
He's a historian, he's a serial book writer, he's got
he's written so many books about history and the Ozarks,
(26:41):
and that conversation. I just loved it to the core.
You're gonna enjoy this segment just to spend there natural
historic range. I mean, it's just this incredible animal and
and with that incredible animal comes all this incredib history.
So there's been this like resurgence of the idea of
(27:04):
the Ozarks being a place to hunt bear and a
lot of that happened, and it's really happened the last
twenty years as the bear populations have increased in the
Ozarks and so the hunting regulations have liberalized in order to,
you know, manage bear populations. So all of a sudden,
guys are able to hunt bears in a in a
in a more in a fashion where they can actually
(27:25):
harvest them. Kind of liberalize, liberalize this season a little bit,
and so all of a sudden, those arcs are on
the national radar for bears and I think that's cool. Yeah,
it's and you're right. I'll admit I didn't know that
they were on the national bear radar until until today.
But uh, but yeah, you know, one of the things
(27:47):
I've noticed through the years is, uh, you know, regions
sort of come into vogue and then they slip back
into the background, they come back, and it's kind of
a cyclical thing. And you know, if you go back
to the sixties and seventies, the Ozarks and the nineteen
sixties and seventies, the Ozarks were really hot. You had
the Beverly Hillbillies, and you had all these folk festivals
(28:09):
going on around the region, and there was a lot
of stuff, those Arc Mountain Darred Evils, you know, one
of my my favorite bands from the seventies, and a
lot of stuff. And then the regions sort of disappeared
and then and then, and I think you're exactly right.
And uh, just in the last decade, it's it's really
made a comeback on on TV. And the movie Winner's Bone,
(28:32):
a terrific novel and movie that came out a few
years ago set set in the sort of meth cooking
uh element of the Ozarks, and and uh and so
I think, uh, you know, this, this resurgence of bear
hunting and interest in and bear hunting is perfect and
(28:52):
uh and at least as far as I'm concerned, there's
no better headquarters than than the Ozarks for that from
the history, from the history that I know about, that's
that's pretty perfect place for it. Well. The first book
that I read of yours, I've got it right here
in my hand, is uh, it's that. Well, it's titled Arkansas.
And there's two ways to spell it on the title Arkansas,
(29:15):
the historical way that ends with an s and then
Arkansas spelled with the W at the end, the way
we all say it. That's right, that's right. Yeah, we
don't say Arkansas. We say Arkansas. And then the tagline
and this is what man, you had me at this
which may have been the may be the only person
that ever read this book. I don't know, but uh,
(29:36):
how bear hunters, hillbillies, and good old boys defined the state. Yeah,
I can see how that. That's subtitle we get you.
It took me hard, man, that hooked me hard. And
that's really what I want to talk about. It's like, uh,
is how you know I'm interested in how me specifically,
(29:57):
how hunting culture influences the region, you know, because I
think what's happening inside of modern hunting is we're trying
to redefine our relevance, you know. I mean with a
lot of things that happen urbanization, people being disconnected from
the land, disconnected from where they came from, um anti
(30:18):
hunting sentiment, people just not understanding the culture people are,
people are disconnected. So as hunters, it's kind of like
we're we're trying to say, we know we're relevant, we
know what we're doing is beneficial for wildlife, beneficial for economy,
is beneficial for non game animals that were not hunting
because of funding for wildlife that we're trying to protect.
(30:41):
So all these amazing benefits that come from modern hunting,
but we're trying to like carve out our relevance in
a modern time. And so when I look at a
statement like that, how Barren hunters, hillbillies and good boys
to find a state like, I think, really, what I'm
trying to do is I'm i'm I'm I'm curious about
(31:02):
how other parts of my life. And I told you
right before we started this that I'm a seventh generation
are Kans and my kids are eighth generation. Uh you know,
we we've really been hunters all the way through. And
and I'm trying to figure out where hunting as influenced
my life in maybe ways that I don't even understand,
(31:22):
you know, right right, And uh yeah, I think, uh yeah,
I think there's a lot to that. As you were
talking about, I was thinking about a lot of things
that have happened just in the twenty one century that
these sort of revivals, And in a way, I think
what you're talking about is sort of hunting revival in
a sense. And I think about these uh you know,
(31:46):
this this fad for we called acts throwing or whatever,
where this thing is and and and a lot of
these uh uh and and I think there's there, well,
I know there's here in the you know, twenty years
into the twenty one century, there there's a renewed interest
(32:06):
in going back to the land amongst uh you know,
a younger generation again. And I think a lot of
that is a reaction to the fact that our society
is so urbanized and it's modernized, and it's it's gotten
farther away from uh that you know, that past, that
(32:28):
many of us probably romanticized a certain degree that that
sort of that sort of hunting uh and and farming
close to the land past that people are trying to
reconnect with. And sometimes it's people who have who have
been away from the land for a generation or two
and they feel some sort of I don't I don't
(32:48):
want some sort of emptiness or some sort of vacuum
that that needs to be filled by by making contact
with the land, whether that's you know, growing their own
food or killing their own food or or or whatever
that is. So I think I think it's all part
of what I call it, uh, part of the primitivist spirit.
(33:09):
And I don't want to get, you know, too too
far into lengthy words here, but but I think I
think primitive ism is a I think it's a it's
a very strong uh force in in human society, especially
in civilized human society, that extends well beyond this kind
of stuff. It's in religion and politics and all that
(33:31):
kind of stuff. It's it's a desire to reconnect with
your origins in a very real, uh you know. It's
just a very hands in the dirt sort of sort
of way. And I and I think this is that
a Is that a feature of a really modern prosperous society?
(33:56):
I think I think it is like people back in
the eighteen hundreds that were farming and bear hunting, Like
you said, we romanticize that so much. They as sure
as they weren't trying to reconnect with their past, They're
trying to get away from it. Is that's right, That's
exactly right. I mean, that's that's that's the insight right there.
It's this next excerpts from a fellow Arkansan by the
(34:18):
name of Keith Sutton. The episode was nine four and
it's called a gunfight, a world record ray and mauled
by a bison. I didn't know Keith real well when
I sat down to talk with him, but as he spoke,
I realized what a unique man I was sitting with,
and he had some incredible stories of adventure, and this
(34:40):
just stood out to me as a really unique conversation
when he talked about catching a world record ray in
the Amazon River. You know people always asked about Brazil,
weren't you scared being in those remote places? Was never scared.
(35:01):
It was totally the opposite. Really, I'm scared going downtown
a little rock at night. But I'm not scared being
on the Amazon, six hundred miles from nearest town because
there's nobody there. That's what made it exciting. You're in
a place a few people visit, a few people are there,
(35:21):
a few people lived there, and so you have all
these amazing opportunities, especially fishing wise, uh, that are just incredible,
and uh I was. I was never I never felt
in danger. I mean we saw things that could have
been dangerous. We saw fifteen foot anacondas and things like that,
(35:46):
but I never felt like we were ever in any
danger down there. I loved going to Brazil. The people
down there really wonderful, and there's nowhere in the world
got better fishing. I mean, it's incredib peacock Mass. At
the time, nobody was really promoting the catfishing down there,
(36:07):
and I didn't know my first trip down there that
there were huge cat fishing. And when I found out,
it's like, why am I fishing for peacock mass when
I can catch us exactly. So my second trip, on
my first trip, something happened that was kind of incredible.
(36:28):
I was in the boat with a friend from Brazil
and we saw this massive fish that was probably seven
or eight feet across, round as a circle, that swam
under the boat, and I'm like, what the heck was that?
And he called it a hia and I didn't know
what that meant at the time, but it means ray.
(36:51):
But it was seven or ft seven or eight feet around,
and I didn't had those in freshwater, no nowhere closed
three thousand miles from the ocean, And so when I
got back, I started trying to find out what could
that be. Nobody knew. There was no information about a
(37:13):
fish like that, So I decided, I know where I
saw it, I'm gonna go back and try to catch it.
So my second trip, I went an Arkansas boy named
Catfish down there to do a man's job. I went
to the same place my second trip, and I caught
that fish. And it's called a discus ray. It had
not been seen or described since the early eighteen hundreds,
(37:38):
and it turns out there there's more of them than
people really knew. Uh. Anybody catch well, Uh, I figured
it's a ray. I'd caught a lot of big rays,
and I'd caught the southern sting rays that were seven
or eight feet across and they lay on the bottom
(38:02):
and eat dead stuff. So I put a dead fish
on the hook, threw it out on the bottom where
I had seen this fish before, and within fifteen minutes
I had it on. Why didn't something else e? I mean,
like if that well fish so full of fish, I
mean they are amazing difficult and fishing with those kind
of baits. But I was just determined, you know, I
(38:23):
was gonna try to hit the right spot, and just
fortunately I caught it and it was like the most
incredible fish I've ever seen. When I got back, I
just said it, well, it needs to be a world record.
I wanted to enter it the record book, and you
have to have the fish identified by an expert. Uh.
I couldn't find an expert knew what it was. I
(38:44):
had all these great photos of this fish. None of
the ray experts had never heard of it. Finally I
found a guy in Germany who's a ray expert, and
he said, this fish is painted in a book from
the very early eighteen hundreds. It's the same fish, I
have no doubt. In this book it was called a
spine tailed the leposaurus, and the picture was identical. It
(39:08):
had a short tail covered with spikes. Yeah, for sure.
It's Uh, it was an incredible fish and uh it's
still the world record. That particular fish was about six
feet across, weighed almost two hundred pounds. Uh, and I
caught several more while I was down there. I can't
(39:32):
even imagine reel in a fish like that, like it was.
Did they fight? Well, it's kind of like dragging a
barn door, you know. It's it's like most raised you know,
a lot of people who hook a ray here in
saltwater just want to cut the line because it's so
difficult to actually land one. You know, they're huge and
(39:53):
they're flat, and they suck up on the bottom and
don't want to come up. Uh. This one was the
bottom and eight feet of water. I had to sit
there and strum my fishing line to make him mad
enough to get off the bottom. And what do you
mean vibrate the fishing. Yeah, you kind of vibrate it
like a guitar string, and it aggravates them and they
(40:14):
eventually come up. And that or just that's that's a
ray trick I learned in Virginia with some anglers out there. Uh.
But when it came up, then I knew I had him,
and it was an incredible dish. No, they don't eat
them at all. I wanted to release his fish a
(40:35):
live but by the time we could get it weighed.
I took a certified scale with me. By the time
we could get to the boat, it had expired, so
we couldn't release it. And I asked, you know, can
we can you eat it? And they're like, no, We're
not gonna eat the piranhas, which was pretty incredible to
(40:58):
all the anglers on the boat came been watched. Did
we cut it up and fed it to the piranhas?
That was pretty incredible, And that's an incredible story. It
wasn't say the name of that fish again. We discus
Ray is the same uh. And before there had been
some small ones in the record book, I think eleven
(41:20):
pounds something like that prior to you catching Yes, but
it was they were smalls, Yeah, almost two hundred pounds. Uh.
It was. The whole story was really incredible because it
was such a rarity to you know, to be able
to find something nobody knew anything about. I was just dumbfounded.
(41:44):
When I got back and I'm talking to all these Uh,
I can't remember for sure, but I believe it was
two thousand one. I mean, that's like, is it We're
not talking about like the nineteen sixties or something. I mean,
so that's amazing to me that in one that you
can still go to Brazil. My last trip, I went
(42:04):
to the Shingoo River in Brazil, which is in a
different area, and uh, we actually caught some catfish there
that had never been described by science at all. Well.
I came back with uh photos of fish that I
needed to get identified, and I found an expert in
Massachusetts at Cambridge University who spent his lifetime down their
(42:29):
studying fish, and he found out I was going down there.
He learned about this big ray and he said, if
you go to Brazil and you could photograph fish, send
send me the pictures. I'd like to see what you're catching.
And it turned out some of the fish we caught
had never been described by science. The local people knew
about them, but science didn't know about it. They didn't
(42:53):
have a name. A lot of them were unusual armored catfish.
I mean to imagine you can go out this day
and age and catch something science doesn't know about me.
That's incredible, you know, if you think about it, though,
we live in such a unique time as humans, because
(43:17):
hundred years ago that would have been kind of normal, maybe,
I mean so we yeah, we well normal in the
sense of so much had yet to be discovered. But
in the last hundred years, it's like all of a sudden,
we're sitting in your living room in Arkansas, and we've
got the world at our fingertips, and we feel like
everything's been discovered. Ye and and it hasn't. And to me,
(43:41):
that was always one of my things I love doing
the most, was finding what's out there here in Arkansas.
Even I found things over the years and nobody knew
was here in Arkansas. Salamanders and birds and and snakes
even that nobody knew were here. Uh they're kind of
(44:03):
obscure animals. But Uh, there was a type of worm
snake I found when I was Nobody knew it was here,
and back then I would publish those findings in scientific
journals so people wouldn't know. Uh, there was a salamander
called a mole salamander. Nobody knew we had those here. Uh.
(44:26):
Even today, Uh, if you dig and read on the
internet every year, there's literally hundreds of animals being discovered.
Nobody knew about it at all. I just did an
article recently about just new fish that have been discovered
every year. Yes, and every year there's several hundred new
(44:51):
species being described, so we're learning more and more. A
lot of it has to do with DNA and genetics
or in and out. Fish that we thought were all
one type of fish are really several species. But sometimes
it's something brand new we didn't know about. And to me,
(45:11):
those adventures when I was able to find something nobody
knew about, that's the coolest thing in the world. It's
really fun. That really is This next excerpts from episode
ninety two, when I talked to Steve Rinella and Janie
Pould tell us there's some guys I look up to,
(45:34):
and I think you'll enjoy this little snippet of the conversation. Um,
I just had a few just quick. I'm gonna run
through these questions and then we'll be done. Um. So
these are unanswered questions that people have about um, celebrities.
(45:54):
I'm I'm, I'm. I'm a little leary to use the
word celebrity because we don't we count man. I'm not sure,
but no, I asked a few people and they were
like they were joking, but they were serious. Question number one,
and you can just give a short answer. Are you
nice to your wife? We'll start with you honest extremely
(46:15):
he is. Um, it just depends for me, man. I mean,
you know, my wife's mad at me a lot. I'm
mad at my wife a lot. We've been together twelve years. Man,
We've got three little kids in the house. I'm not
gonna sit here and tell you that, right. You're not
gonna paint a super rosy because a bottomless uh, but
(46:37):
your intentions like yeah, I mean there's a tremendous amount
of love and respect and I would never do anything
to disrespect my wife. But it's just like anybody knows, man,
like get a kids. Yeah, you spend a lot of
time on each other's nerves and yeah, just so people,
it's just right. I don't I don't like the Actually
(46:58):
it's not. It's just a reality. But um, but yeah,
it's all it's all based on respect and love. But
God just gets stressful sometimes. What I like to make
sure that I do. And again I answered that question,
you know quickly, so you could get through these questions quickly.
But since we're getting into Um I tried to at
(47:19):
least when I am to then, uh be humble and
apologize and you know, okay and know that, Hey, Jana
speaks very highly of you behind your back about your
being a father and husband. That's nice. I'll do a
little checking around. Um you're just a reference checking yeah, yeah, yeah, okay,
(47:42):
Um let's see, uh number two, what do your wives
think about all this? Like just you guys, like like traveling, hunting.
You know, there was just short for me real quick.
There was never not There was never like it wasn't
like a thing got introduced. It was just always that way. Yeah,
(48:02):
it was always that way. So I never had to
go through a hurdle of being like, hey, I have
a new life because you didn't. You didn't start it. Okay,
that makes sense. Yeah, um, it very much was introduced.
We've been married now seventeen years and uh so halfway
through this thing kind of started and started traveling a
whole bunch more. Although we had always been a part
of some because I was a hunting guide and would
(48:24):
be gone for most of the fall, and she spent
a lot of time in the field all summer, so
she would be sometimes gone in a different state for
three months. Um, but uh yeah, she's very supportive of
whatever I do. And uh it's also you know, you know,
a source of income, and it's nice to be able
to do something you love to do, you know, to
(48:46):
you know, for your income. So yeah, I can't say
no to that. Okay. So Meteor was built on this
authenticity inside of a context, and the hunting world that
was had lost a lot authenticity. And so the question
is and that's and that's what would characterize you, Steve,
(49:07):
and you're honest too, and just kind of the brand
I feel like it's is authenticity. And so how do
you maintain that authenticity in the midst of massive growth
when we know, like like everybody knows that consumes honey
media that it has to be paid for? I mean,
so what what stole authing that you don't think? So?
(49:30):
I mean what stole authenticity that really irritates people? Well,
is that guys' of providing like basically free media? Right? A.
Podcasts are free? Right? I mean it's an advertising comporment,
but you're in producing like free media. Um, Netflix, you
know it's not free, but it's a very low subscriber fee.
(49:51):
It's an it's a bottomless pit of content, right like
you know, I don't. It's not transactional per episode. How
are people are very irritated when confronted with the idea
that you need to finance this operation, the operation that
you need to finance your ability to make free content.
(50:13):
I get it, yeah, but people know it's not understood.
I don't think it's why I understood. Well, so how
do you how do you maintain because I mean what
I was saying was that you've you've done a good
job of maintaining that authenticity and inside of the context.
So how do you keep doing that? Hey? Let me,
let me let me. Uh, I've got it. I digressed
(50:36):
to uh, but go ahead. But but I think the
questions you kind of the questions like there, but it's
eluding you. Well that's the question. How do you how
do you build a business like you like you have
and maintain the authenticity that got you here? I mean
I think it's this because because because it'd be like
(51:00):
let's say you make shoes, okay, and you make good shoes,
and then pretty soon you have a big company that
makes shoes. People aren't going to say to you, um,
how do you continue to make shoes? Like, well, that's
what we do. Well, so I'm saying, like, what got what? What?
What got? You know what? What created the situation? Anyways,
(51:25):
it's just still what's creating. It's just like making a
thing that was making a thing that felt real and
you could feel passionate. If you stop doing that, you've
stopped making shoes. Do you see that? You know what
I'm saying, Like people, what you're saying, like, what is it?
If you're not doing that anymore, then you're not doing
the thing that that right that people want it anyway?
(51:47):
But do you not see that? That's what happens to
companies though, is they They they lose that when they
get big. And that's certainly not what I'm saying. I'm well,
they might, but I don't know how you keep Yeah,
I don't know. I can't really well. I think in
our context though, in the hunting industry, I think maybe
what you're getting at is that because of the way
(52:09):
that you have to pay to make this stuff keep working, right,
you have partnerships and advertisers and you have to make
them happy, and so at some point you come up
to a thing where there's a huge check that's associated
with baby a product or a brand that you don't
align with. But if you need that check real bad,
(52:31):
you have to go that route, right, and then you
end up endorsing maybe a product or a brand that
you necessarily don't align with, and people see that you
are being inauthentic, and then it could cost you your authenticity,
not like in the material you make, but well in
a holistic the holistic place and not just that, but yes, that, yeah,
(52:55):
I mean speaking to that, I think we've just always
stood our ground and when that's off comes around and
I mean there's there's just boxes and boxes of gear
that comes across through the doors and meteor and across
our desks where we just look at it and it's like, hey,
it might be good, but it's just not us, you know,
and we know we just passed on it. And we've
you know, speaking to Steve's loyalty, I mean First Light
(53:18):
was the first clothing brand that he got in with
and been with them for ten years now, you know. Yeah,
the first two people to get behind our show, we're
first Light and Vortex. Yeah and read to this day. Yeah,
they're still there. Yeah, but I think and I don't
have like and and um to endorse talk about recommend
(53:44):
Vortex products is not painful. It's authentic because you and
I have it like a, yeah, there's a product connection,
but I have an emotional connection there. That's not all,
you know. I don't want to tell you that that's
something that's like that that emotional aspect is always present,
(54:05):
but there's parts of it that I'm I'm like quite
proud of that fact. I don't view it. I don't
view that I'm able to have like a long term
relationship and a you know, a sponsorship arrangement, um, the
reciprocal relationship with Vortex. I don't look at that as
being like, oh, it's just a thing I had to do.
I'm like proud of that. And see what I'm what
(54:26):
I what I see is that I think there's an
internal component inside of inside of somebody that's got to
be pretty strong to maintain that kind of authenticity in
the midst of success. So, I mean, I guess and
maybe it's so deep inside of you guys that you
don't you don't even know. No, that's not true, man,
(54:47):
you don't think I don't want to like act like
I don't understand your question. Ah, No, we can. We
have conversations all time about about what what do you
mean we have? What we do is deliberate. Yeah, it's
(55:07):
not accidental. Okay. We have conversations every day about what not,
like how to what not? Turning laughter, turning right. But
it's like conversations every day about like getting it right,
(55:28):
like getting it right. Detail. We did a hunt last
year with these guys at this place called Crickets, Guy
Outfitters and Wyoming great dudes, like great, great dudes. I
love those guys. Um And I was having a conversation
with the sun landed Uh Peterson, and he was observing
(55:51):
one day to me, he was like talking about how
he tried he like observes, he's I would regard him
like like a successful person right, like does things intentionally.
And he was observing. He was telling me how he
observed successful people and he said, a thing that he's
noticed is that they pay attention to all the details.
(56:13):
They pay attention to the details at their home. They
pay attention to the details of how they raise their children.
They pay attention to the details of what they do
at work. They pay attention to the details of their vehicle.
They like, pay attention to the details always. You can
make a there can be a you can have a
facade of carelessness or a facade of shooting from the hip.
(56:38):
But I think that most people are able to do
something for a long time, are very cognizant of details.
And I think that we sit around arguing about the
people will be like, I cannot believe these people are
arguing about something that seems so mundane. It seems so silly.
(56:58):
But we as an organization whever, like, we don't think
it's silly. Yeah, So when I say it's deliberate, there's
like there's like I'm like aware of what we do
and how we do it. Not to say that, you know,
you don't make all kinds of screw ups, but you know,
we discuss things. I like it. I like a great
(57:21):
length things that would be silly. When we're making our show,
we argue over like like seconds of things, like really
like seconds considerable back and forth. Last like, how could
we talk about the Bear Hunting Magazine podcast without including
(57:43):
Ted Nugent's performance of Fred Bear a highlight for sure.
We spent that last October together for about a week,
and then the next spring he died and I went
out to do my chory one day, and we're all
shattered at his death. It was just he was just
(58:06):
unbelievable because he made such an imprint on everybody. He's
a great, great man. Did you ever meet him? Well,
you're going to meet him right now. And so I
went out to do my chores. I had my dog,
biscuits and my Irish setters now porch. I went and
I grabbed the guitar and I just I didn't know,
(58:27):
I had no idea. I wasn't thinking of Fred. I
just sat down, I went. I always played killer licks
when I picked up the guitar, but I never played
one like this before. There I was back in a
(58:47):
while again, and I felt right at home where I belong.
And I had that feeling coming over me again, just
like it happened so many times before, so many times.
(59:24):
The spirit of the woods. He's like an old good friend,
makes me feel warm and good inside. I know his name.
It's good to see him again because in the wind
(59:45):
he's still a live talking about Fred Bear, walk with
me down the trails again, Take me back, Take me
back where I belong. Fred Bear. I'm glad to have
(01:00:05):
you with my side, my friend, and I will join
you on the big hunt before too long. And it
(01:00:30):
was kind of dark, another misty dusk, and it came
from a tangle down below. And I tried, I tried
to remember everything he taught me so well. I had
(01:00:50):
to decide which way to go. Was I long or
in a hunter stream? The moment of truth is here,
and now I felt his touch, I felt his guide
(01:01:13):
in hand, and the buck wars mine for evermore because
of fred Bear. I still walk down those trails again.
He takes me back, takes me back. I belong fred
(01:01:35):
Fred Bear. I'm glad to have you in my side,
my friend, and I will join you on the big
hunt before too long. And we're not alone when we're
(01:02:30):
in the great outdoors. We got his spirit, we got
his soul, and he guards my steps, guid's my arrows home.
The restless spirit for ever roams and it roams with
(01:02:53):
Fred Bear. When I walk down those trails again, he'd
take makes me back, takes me back. I belong fred Bear.
I'm glad to have you went my side, my friend,
and I will join you on the big hunt before
(01:03:16):
too long. Because in the wind, he's still alive in
the wind. He's still alive in the wind. I can
(01:03:37):
hear I hear Fred Bear, I hear you, Fred. Hey Fred.
Let's go hunt, buddy, Calm, you go up that ridge.
I'll go down this swamp. Baby, get that book. I
(01:04:22):
hope you've enjoyed these highlights from the Bear Hunting Magazine
podcast over the last couple of years. These were all
special moments that were memorable to me, and they most
certainly were not all the special moments. Holy cow, every
single episode, every single guest had extreme value to bring
(01:04:42):
to our listeners. Thank you, Thank you for your support
of Bear Hunting Magazine and our podcast and what we're doing.
I hope you have a great Christmas. I hope you
stay safe. I hope you have a great New Year.
You'll hear from us again, but it might be in
a condensed version in the next podcast. Merry Christmas, boys
(01:05:03):
and girls, have a good one.
My name is Clay Nukeleman. I'm the host of the
Bear Hunting Magazine Podcast. I'll also be your host into
the world of hunting the icon of the North American
Wilderness Fair. We'll talk about tactics, gear, conservation. Will also
bring you into some of the wildest country on the
planet chasing Fair. This week on the Bear Hunting Magazine Podcast,
(00:34):
we're taking a look back at the last two and
a half years and we're gonna have some highlights from
our conversations with the incredible people that we've had as
guests on this show. This isn't all the highlights. There
just wasn't a way to include every special moment, every
(00:54):
special conversation, but this was some of them. I really
think you're gonna enjoy this podcast and you'll be able
to go back and listen to these full episodes if
you want to. It's wintertime and it's time to get
the dogs out. We've been squirrel hunting and coon hunting
even this week, and if you need dog stuff, you
really need to support our guys at w Hunting Supply.
(01:17):
But don't do it for them, and don't do it
for me. Do it for yourself because the selection. They
have the customer service that they have down there, this
top notch. These people are Houndsman, the people you're gonna
be talking to and dealing with her Hounsman, or just
order online. Buddy Woodbury and his team, they they're they're
masters at the garment products. They've got the new Garment
(01:39):
Alpha two D, which is garments new most recent dog
tracking system. Check it out w Hunting Supply, north Woods
Bear Products. Man, if you're baiting bears, you've gotta be
using this stuff. Spring is coming. I know nobody's really
thinking about baiting bears right now, but you can, and
you should, and when you do. North Woodspear Products. Check
(02:00):
them out. C v A Muzzloaders and make an incredible
line of muzzloaders. They have an incredible guarantee if you're
gonna be muzzloader honey, check out c v A. I've
been carrying one this year. Some of you have heard
a few of my stories about carrying them, and I've
learned a lot about muzzloaders this year, and I truly
love carrying, love shooting my c v A Accura Mountain Rifle.
(02:25):
Check out c v A and all that they have
to offer. Check them out Western Bear Foundation. These boys
are doing good stuff out West. Speaking on behalf of
bear Hunters bear Lovers. That's us, We're bear lovers. Joe
Condellas and his team at the Western Bear Foundation are
(02:45):
doing a great job their nonprofit hunting conservation organization. Membership driven.
Check out their organization, become a member. This first excerpt
was taken from episode twenty one. The episode was called
(03:07):
Old Mountain Hunter or a Lee Province. This conversation that
I had with Ori was one of my favorites of
all time. Since the recording of this podcast or Lee
has passed away, but this was a very unique conversation. Well,
(03:28):
give me, give me just a little like kind of
a bigger glimpse of your life. So, bord Ninete, dad
was a logger, and you grew up just you stepped
right into the family business and just logg right with him.
And uh and then so you did that until when
and what other kind of occupations did you have? Well,
(03:49):
my dad died in forty four, but okay, and forty
one what the World War two broke out? And uh,
my brothers, three of them waiting to service. Okay, and uh,
I was oldest one left at home. Okay. I took
him my mother and uh my nephew, and uh two
(04:13):
sisters and a brother brother. Mm hmm. Yeah, so you
were just just a few years too young to be
drafted into the war. I was. I was my dad
daughter's sixteen, okay, and uh when I become eighteen to day,
I was eighteen. A day after I was eighteen, My
(04:36):
birthday come on Sunday that year. On Monday, I registered
and I went down in past examination eight David July
I got my calls for examination, went down passed, and
then Dave August got my call service, and uh, ministers
out here, and I had a big tomato crop out
(04:59):
right and acres formats and uh, I mean the family here,
we had to have something to live on. And uh
but anyway, why there's ministra out there? He said, this
boy they had to take care of his mother and
these children. And so he wrote, I got deferred until
(05:23):
two locked over the fifteenth and uh another words of
the cropper was over then. Uh, I've still got one
one eight classification, but the war was over that time.
Oh wow, so you just barely missed it. So what
year would that have been? Nineteen forty four. Well, let's see,
(05:43):
it been h forty seven. I believe it was something. Okay, okay,
forty that would have been somewhere longhe six, he's over
and forty six the war was, so you would have
gone if the war would have Oh yeah, yeah, the
lords and I went to school with him. There's in
(06:05):
there they went Germany. Yeah, I'll be done. Wow. So
so what it so? You logged up until how old
were you? Well, you grew to you grew tomatoes, you
did some farming, you had some cattle. Well I couldn't
worked in Timor. That was the main line up to
(06:26):
him years and years later. Yeah. But anyway, I went
and h man, my brother we uh that he never
did have to go to war, and so but he
went him, went and cut timor and logged it. I
hold it up, I hold it on a wagon. Yeah,
(06:47):
and uh he skipped it out and I wouldn't hold
it and dumped it off at the mail mhm. And
that was I forgotten that one year. That was as
in the late forties. Anyway, Now, the Great Depression, you
were just a kid during the Great These hills weren't
(07:10):
really I mean, they were affected by the Great Depression,
but people were already poor. Yeah, I mean there wasn't
much you could do to somebody that was just living
off the land basically when it comes to economic stress,
is that right, right? Right? Yeah, we lived off the land. Yeah.
And nineteen thirty six that was dry here, you know, okay,
(07:31):
and uh we had a miter crop and we haul
water and set them out and they got up and
just the blooming and everything turned off dry. We never
got a too mater and nineteen thirty six and that
was hard to take. Yeah, I remember that way all too. Yeah. Yeah,
(07:55):
but we we worked in a tamer and uh, you
know they paper back then they finally got where they
brought out food stamps and thanks, but we never got any.
My dad just wouldn't have nothing to do with that,
just by principle, he didn't need any help. We we
(08:16):
made it. We made it without it. We worked and
they made it. Yeah. What would have been a normal
meal for your family back then when you were a kid,
had plenteteet? Yeah, had plenty teet. Yeah, we had anything. Yeah,
as you raised hogs and can vegetables, had had a garden.
(08:38):
I know you still have a garden, don't you well
yeah or yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we we made
it fine, well done, good. Yeah. I had about dirty
swarms of bees back during the war. While you couldn't
get sugar. Every food is all right, and you couldn't
(09:00):
buy nothing. Everybody's out of sugar. And I had bees
and we got to you could get permitted to feed
the bees, you know, because it used to the honey
somewhere another end guns. Yeah. I don't know this what
but that's what I heard it. So you were selling honey.
(09:22):
Well I didn't sell it, but we eat it. Okay,
you just had it. Yeah, we had it, and we
got penny of sugar to feed the bees, and so
we didn't have run out of shar A lot of
people never had no sugar, flour or anything. They couldn't
give this so much. Huh you come buy you come
buy a truck, tar or nothing. Not a pair of shoes, hardly. Wow. Yeah.
(09:50):
The next excerpt is my conversation with Roy Clark over
in East Tennessee this episode sixty seven, and it's called
Appalachian Hound Honey with Roy Clark, Part one. Mr Roy
is a special guy. He's very dear to me. He's
a master bear hound breeder and just a relic over
(10:15):
there in the Appalachian Mountains. It's a pretty incredible, pretty
incredible thing. And it's a unique you know, there's a
unique social structure that happens inside of like what I
see coming from the outside end looking at you guys.
I mean, just the relationships that that you guys have,
and I mean if you go bear hunting, whether you
(10:37):
see what it's all about. I mean, from daylight tell dark,
how many days a year are you guys together and
you're working together to accomplish a goal. And then now
Scott is over here every day helping Roy with the
dogs and stuff. Now that's a whole Another side of
the thing is just keeping dogs year round, you know.
(10:58):
I mean that's a lot of work in and of itself,
but uh yeah, it's a ton of work. It's a
ton of work. Yeah yeah. And you know that's something
that that all of us at some point of have
taken our turn. You know, Scott's taking jobs out on
the road, and then it'd be me or Matthew or whoever.
And that's the thing that you know, we've always took
a lot of pride and was the dogs and that's
(11:21):
you know, we're always talking about catching bears on the
ground and Matthew and and uh um. One of the
things that we're always looking out for is protecting those
dogs because that's our lifeline. You know, there is no
bear hunting for us without that pack of dogs. So
one of the most important things us when we go
into one of those bears is watching out for him
and doing doing our job to take care of them. Yeah,
(11:44):
that's our main priorities, the dogs first and whatever games
there that you know, well we handle it that way. Yeah. Yeah,
making sure the dogs are tied up for any bars
are shot out of the trees and you know all
that stuff. So yeah, if we ain't got them coldly
and kissing a little bird, that's right. Well, Mr Roy,
(12:06):
why don't you tell me about when you well, how
your dad. We'll just your first memories of bear hunting,
of going back to Alvin David Rights hunted with us
or how old you well, fifty four fifty four years
ever since he's been big enough to go and his
(12:30):
daddy honey with us, and his daddy like my daddy,
like Josh, like me. His daddy did and uh and
he hunted and we went to school together up here,
and and HiT's in there some more. I've got a
(12:54):
Mountaintine's card in there that he sent me when we
was about in the fourth grade. I and on that
Valentine's card he shent me. He said, we bear hunters,
ain't we rolling? That was his dad, Alvin David's dad. Yeah,
his dad, he said, we bear hunters. What grade would you?
(13:16):
How old would you have been? Was in the fourth grade,
So every every when that was how long ago? That
will be about nine years old? Yeah, and something like that.
So you stuck with you went ahead and just stuck
with that identity, didn't you. Yeah. His dad he short
of left us coming and went something. He's back now.
Maybe you'll stay. But that board, right, Chanter ain't never
(13:39):
bird today, buddy, mm hmmm mm hmm yeah, m hmm,
I love him. M Yeah, I know it, dude, Yep.
(14:02):
That that just shows you, Clay, what I mean it
means to us. You know, it's a it's beyond just
uh going out and having a big tim hunting. It's
beyond just uh um a group of guys here hanging
out in in Broy's house. You know, it's our life. Yeah,
you know, it's a something we've all grown up doing
(14:24):
all the way back through and it's just, uh, it's
a bond. Yeah, it really is. It really is. Should
He won't leave you bad, He won't leave you out
there and correct one yesterday, Yeah, leave you or the dogs.
He'd be the last one to come, and he'd be
(14:45):
the last one they're hoping to get the last dog. Well,
you know, I've hunted with you guys for three days
of the last sixty eight years. This guy's been bear hunting.
And the one time we had to fetch dogs after dark,
he he went, I knew that. Yeah, we've spent a
(15:06):
long nights in the in the truck together and and
uh stayed all night and freezing cold and whatever we
stay there with those dogs. Episode seven, that's for sure.
Dear to my heart. I had some of my close
friends in the room with me and it was called
(15:28):
Beginner's Guide to Building Your Family On Purpose. We talked
about building families, the transfer of family values into our children.
Really stuff that's super important to me. All this testing,
so what we're talking about, the building family culture, building
(15:48):
family culture, and all you guys, I respect every all
of you for the way that you have built your families.
And I think nobody's doing everything right. I mean that
that the word right is a tough one, but we're
doing it intentionally. And I know all you guys well
enough to know that you're very intentionally building family culture.
(16:10):
And if if you don't hear anything else on this podcast,
and you know you're just listen to this and like
you just want to chew on something, my question to
you is are you being intentional with the way that
you're building your family? And that word building could throw
you off? And let me let me let me say
this right here? Is that there. I've got a couple
of written statements here. Um, let's see. Let's see. We
(16:37):
we research and consult almost everything that we want to
be proficient at. Do we not, Like if you're gonna
go on a big hunting trip, you're gonna learn about it.
If you want to get into cycling, like you go
to cycling experts and see what they say. Um, but
with family stuff, a lot of times people are really isolated. Um.
(17:00):
Why why do you think that is? I think it
can be perceived as weakness to have to rely on
some on advice or counsel from someone else to build
your own family. You know, when you when you see
you know someone who's proficient at hunting, and and you see,
you know, I like to fly fish, and so you know,
I watch other guys, it's like, well, they've had a
(17:23):
long history of this, and I want to glean from them.
But when it comes to your own family, it's a
it's a really a sensitive spot because you don't want
to be seen as weak or there's there's the other
side of you. You get isolated because you don't want
to build like mom and dad, or you don't want
to follow their pattern and so so I'm gonna do
it on my own. I'm gonna find my own way.
And so it's it's almost a comparison of I don't
(17:45):
want to do that, so I'm gonna do it my
own way. And that can that can make you isolated, Yeah,
I think, and I think we as people a lot
of times are insecure and and to open ourselves up
for somebody else's input, it's pretty vulnerable. And it you
it takes time of doing that a lot that you'll
(18:07):
learn the value of it. And you're like, man, the
more I open up my life to input, the better
my life gets. The more I learned, the more my
the better my marriage gets. And so I remember even
early on um in my marriage, and then the same
with early on when I first had kids, like maybe
(18:27):
like the first time I kind of like went to something,
went to maybe one of you guys or you know,
people older than me, the married longer, had kids longer.
I remember, it was almost like, you know, what are
they gonna say? And like, what if I'm doing everything wrong?
And what if I'd yeah exactly. And then every time
that I did go to people wiser than me, always
(18:51):
got two things. I always got. Number one, they related
to me. I've never had an issue in my family
or marriage. Somebody was like you struggle with that? My gosh,
like you're you're a terrible person, Like you have a
marital struggle, are you? So it's like everything it's almost
like my friends would like fill in the sense, oh yeah,
(19:11):
and I bet you said this after you do that, Yeah,
that's it. And then I bet you felt like this
and yeah, and uh so that was one and that
right there is comforting and it shows you that it's safe.
And then the second looking at somebody that you you
perceived has made it through that and you're like, well,
they're okay and they had this problem. And then the
(19:33):
second thing is I've always had and I've always from
that received an alternative perspective that I didn't have before.
And it's like every single time I learned that I
can't do this on my own, you know. And I
know I'm jumping right into all this, but like that's
one thing I learned with building my family is like,
there ain't no way I can do this on my
(19:54):
own as exactly exactly. So I think it's it's like
this double edged sword. It's like we're kind of insecure,
but we kind of I want to do it on
our own, but at the same time that's really hard.
So we ended up just kind of feeling well, I
think people either just feel like a failure or they
just kind of build up. They kind of just say, well,
(20:14):
this is how I am, and this is the way
my family is gonna be forever, not really getting to
experience what could be better. Yeah, I think it's a
pretty American cultural thing to be really independent with your family.
I mean, just you know, cultures, cultures are built based
upon national history. I mean, and like you think about
(20:39):
the people that like settled in this region or heck,
every region of this country unless they're unless they're Native Americans.
They came here and there was like this pioneer spirit
that was on people to like bust through the wilderness
and make it on their own. People had to be
self sufficient, and like here in the Ozarks, that is
(20:59):
a right that is honored. Self sufficiency. I mean, like
at the Newcom Farm, we hat tip to the idea
of self sufficiency big time. That's okay, but that cannot
be the definer of every part of your life or
you're a fool, you know. So like, yeah, we we
like to hunt some some of our own food, butchering
(21:21):
our own animals, grow some stuff, train or you know.
But when it comes to things that I am not
an expert on that I'm incapable, Well, anybody could can
have insight into their family and make decisions on their own.
We're not We're not suggesting that somebody is incapable of
making decisions on their own. But what I'm saying is
(21:44):
best practice inside of life is for people to be
connected inside of some network of people that they trust.
You know. Episode nine one is one that I'll never forget.
It was a conversation that I had with Jonathan Wilkins.
The title of the podcast was the history of Racism
and African American Hunting. This is a unique conversation, man.
(22:12):
You know, there's what you just said about African Americans
being so connected rurally for such a long time, it's
almost been like erased from the culture in a lot
of in a lot of ways. I heard a stat
today that there's three hundred thousand African Americans that hunt
(22:35):
in the US today. Three thousands of like eleven million hunters,
so less than less than one and ten. Does that
start ring with you? I mean, I've heard that from
a seventeen I believe that if you took that nationally now,
I'd say the I would almost have I would hazard
(22:59):
to guess that a bulk of black hunters are in
the South. Uh, but yeah, I bet if you you know,
if you look at the centers of African American life
in this country, uh, they're gonna be mostly in coastal
or northern cities. You know that. And these these are
(23:21):
population remnants of the Great Migration, you know, people leaving. Uh,
structural racism and and you know, physical violence in the South,
which moved to and they moved to the industrial cities
of the North because you know, you have you also
(23:41):
had a you had an economic shift out of agriculture
into production, and those production centers were in the North.
So you had these waves of people moving to you know,
uh St. Louis. Like my my dad's fami was originally
from Kio, Arkansas. That's about thirty miles away from here.
(24:02):
But you know, I'm from St. Louis, uh Indian Indianapolis, Detroit, uh, Minneapolis, Baltimore.
You know, these are these were big industrial Boston, big
industrial cities that black people moved up to. Uh yeah.
And and it shows you kind of how short our
(24:22):
collective memory is because you know, just colloquially, you start
to think that you know that I don't know that
maybe there's something inherent in blackness that uh that is
disassociative with the natural world. And if you just look
back a little bit further, or you just you drive
(24:47):
around like the state that we live in, like you know,
you live in a part of the state where there's
not very many African Americans. If you drove over to
the opposite side of the state, you would see black
people everywhere. You would see the whole towns. I mean
now small you'd see small towns, but like Cotton Plant,
which is about ten miles from Brinkley, Like it's probably
almost entirely African American and that's all remnant of Yeah,
(25:11):
that's agricultural populations where people lived. Um and you know,
and it's like you probably most people wouldn't think of
black farmers, but across the delta, across the South, there
are black farmers. They're you know, multi generational black farmers.
Uh so yeah, I don't know. Man, the rich what
(25:36):
I was shocked at, Jonathan inside of this book and
the first chapter, it's like, I mean, just is if
somebody could just even just read the first chapter of
this book, the rich history of hunting that was built
upon kind of this plantation model. If I don't know
(25:57):
another way to say it, but like, uh, the black
people were in charge of there was a lot of
hound hunting, a lot of dog hunting. They were running deer,
they were running rabbits, they were well and so the
a lot of the black guys were the hound handlers,
and a lot of them were master houndsman fast, I
(26:19):
mean that blows my mind. The next section is from
episode seventy three titled How Bear Hunters and Hillbilly's Defined
the State. It was a conversation with Dr Brooks Blevins.
He's a historian, he's a serial book writer, he's got
he's written so many books about history and the Ozarks,
(26:41):
and that conversation. I just loved it to the core.
You're gonna enjoy this segment just to spend there natural
historic range. I mean, it's just this incredible animal and
and with that incredible animal comes all this incredib history.
So there's been this like resurgence of the idea of
(27:04):
the Ozarks being a place to hunt bear and a
lot of that happened, and it's really happened the last
twenty years as the bear populations have increased in the
Ozarks and so the hunting regulations have liberalized in order to,
you know, manage bear populations. So all of a sudden,
guys are able to hunt bears in a in a
in a more in a fashion where they can actually
(27:25):
harvest them. Kind of liberalize, liberalize this season a little bit,
and so all of a sudden, those arcs are on
the national radar for bears and I think that's cool. Yeah,
it's and you're right. I'll admit I didn't know that
they were on the national bear radar until until today.
But uh, but yeah, you know, one of the things
(27:47):
I've noticed through the years is, uh, you know, regions
sort of come into vogue and then they slip back
into the background, they come back, and it's kind of
a cyclical thing. And you know, if you go back
to the sixties and seventies, the Ozarks and the nineteen
sixties and seventies, the Ozarks were really hot. You had
the Beverly Hillbillies, and you had all these folk festivals
(28:09):
going on around the region, and there was a lot
of stuff, those Arc Mountain Darred Evils, you know, one
of my my favorite bands from the seventies, and a
lot of stuff. And then the regions sort of disappeared
and then and then, and I think you're exactly right.
And uh, just in the last decade, it's it's really
made a comeback on on TV. And the movie Winner's Bone,
(28:32):
a terrific novel and movie that came out a few
years ago set set in the sort of meth cooking
uh element of the Ozarks, and and uh and so
I think, uh, you know, this, this resurgence of bear
hunting and interest in and bear hunting is perfect and
(28:52):
uh and at least as far as I'm concerned, there's
no better headquarters than than the Ozarks for that from
the history, from the history that I know about, that's
that's pretty perfect place for it. Well. The first book
that I read of yours, I've got it right here
in my hand, is uh, it's that. Well, it's titled Arkansas.
And there's two ways to spell it on the title Arkansas,
(29:15):
the historical way that ends with an s and then
Arkansas spelled with the W at the end, the way
we all say it. That's right, that's right. Yeah, we
don't say Arkansas. We say Arkansas. And then the tagline
and this is what man, you had me at this
which may have been the may be the only person
that ever read this book. I don't know, but uh,
(29:36):
how bear hunters, hillbillies, and good old boys defined the state. Yeah,
I can see how that. That's subtitle we get you.
It took me hard, man, that hooked me hard. And
that's really what I want to talk about. It's like, uh,
is how you know I'm interested in how me specifically,
(29:57):
how hunting culture influences the region, you know, because I
think what's happening inside of modern hunting is we're trying
to redefine our relevance, you know. I mean with a
lot of things that happen urbanization, people being disconnected from
the land, disconnected from where they came from, um anti
(30:18):
hunting sentiment, people just not understanding the culture people are,
people are disconnected. So as hunters, it's kind of like
we're we're trying to say, we know we're relevant, we
know what we're doing is beneficial for wildlife, beneficial for economy,
is beneficial for non game animals that were not hunting
because of funding for wildlife that we're trying to protect.
(30:41):
So all these amazing benefits that come from modern hunting,
but we're trying to like carve out our relevance in
a modern time. And so when I look at a
statement like that, how Barren hunters, hillbillies and good boys
to find a state like, I think, really, what I'm
trying to do is I'm i'm I'm I'm curious about
(31:02):
how other parts of my life. And I told you
right before we started this that I'm a seventh generation
are Kans and my kids are eighth generation. Uh you know,
we we've really been hunters all the way through. And
and I'm trying to figure out where hunting as influenced
my life in maybe ways that I don't even understand,
(31:22):
you know, right right, And uh yeah, I think, uh yeah,
I think there's a lot to that. As you were
talking about, I was thinking about a lot of things
that have happened just in the twenty one century that
these sort of revivals, And in a way, I think
what you're talking about is sort of hunting revival in
a sense. And I think about these uh you know,
(31:46):
this this fad for we called acts throwing or whatever,
where this thing is and and and a lot of
these uh uh and and I think there's there, well,
I know there's here in the you know, twenty years
into the twenty one century, there there's a renewed interest
(32:06):
in going back to the land amongst uh you know,
a younger generation again. And I think a lot of
that is a reaction to the fact that our society
is so urbanized and it's modernized, and it's it's gotten
farther away from uh that you know, that past, that
(32:28):
many of us probably romanticized a certain degree that that
sort of that sort of hunting uh and and farming
close to the land past that people are trying to
reconnect with. And sometimes it's people who have who have
been away from the land for a generation or two
and they feel some sort of I don't I don't
(32:48):
want some sort of emptiness or some sort of vacuum
that that needs to be filled by by making contact
with the land, whether that's you know, growing their own
food or killing their own food or or or whatever
that is. So I think I think it's all part
of what I call it, uh, part of the primitivist spirit.
(33:09):
And I don't want to get, you know, too too
far into lengthy words here, but but I think I
think primitive ism is a I think it's a it's
a very strong uh force in in human society, especially
in civilized human society, that extends well beyond this kind
of stuff. It's in religion and politics and all that
(33:31):
kind of stuff. It's it's a desire to reconnect with
your origins in a very real, uh you know. It's
just a very hands in the dirt sort of sort
of way. And I and I think this is that
a Is that a feature of a really modern prosperous society?
(33:56):
I think I think it is like people back in
the eighteen hundreds that were farming and bear hunting, Like
you said, we romanticize that so much. They as sure
as they weren't trying to reconnect with their past, They're
trying to get away from it. Is that's right, That's
exactly right. I mean, that's that's that's the insight right there.
It's this next excerpts from a fellow Arkansan by the
(34:18):
name of Keith Sutton. The episode was nine four and
it's called a gunfight, a world record ray and mauled
by a bison. I didn't know Keith real well when
I sat down to talk with him, but as he spoke,
I realized what a unique man I was sitting with,
and he had some incredible stories of adventure, and this
(34:40):
just stood out to me as a really unique conversation
when he talked about catching a world record ray in
the Amazon River. You know people always asked about Brazil,
weren't you scared being in those remote places? Was never scared.
(35:01):
It was totally the opposite. Really, I'm scared going downtown
a little rock at night. But I'm not scared being
on the Amazon, six hundred miles from nearest town because
there's nobody there. That's what made it exciting. You're in
a place a few people visit, a few people are there,
(35:21):
a few people lived there, and so you have all
these amazing opportunities, especially fishing wise, uh, that are just incredible,
and uh I was. I was never I never felt
in danger. I mean we saw things that could have
been dangerous. We saw fifteen foot anacondas and things like that,
(35:46):
but I never felt like we were ever in any
danger down there. I loved going to Brazil. The people
down there really wonderful, and there's nowhere in the world
got better fishing. I mean, it's incredib peacock Mass. At
the time, nobody was really promoting the catfishing down there,
(36:07):
and I didn't know my first trip down there that
there were huge cat fishing. And when I found out,
it's like, why am I fishing for peacock mass when
I can catch us exactly. So my second trip, on
my first trip, something happened that was kind of incredible.
(36:28):
I was in the boat with a friend from Brazil
and we saw this massive fish that was probably seven
or eight feet across, round as a circle, that swam
under the boat, and I'm like, what the heck was that?
And he called it a hia and I didn't know
what that meant at the time, but it means ray.
(36:51):
But it was seven or ft seven or eight feet around,
and I didn't had those in freshwater, no nowhere closed
three thousand miles from the ocean, And so when I
got back, I started trying to find out what could
that be. Nobody knew. There was no information about a
(37:13):
fish like that, So I decided, I know where I
saw it, I'm gonna go back and try to catch it.
So my second trip, I went an Arkansas boy named
Catfish down there to do a man's job. I went
to the same place my second trip, and I caught
that fish. And it's called a discus ray. It had
not been seen or described since the early eighteen hundreds,
(37:38):
and it turns out there there's more of them than
people really knew. Uh. Anybody catch well, Uh, I figured
it's a ray. I'd caught a lot of big rays,
and I'd caught the southern sting rays that were seven
or eight feet across and they lay on the bottom
(38:02):
and eat dead stuff. So I put a dead fish
on the hook, threw it out on the bottom where
I had seen this fish before, and within fifteen minutes
I had it on. Why didn't something else e? I mean,
like if that well fish so full of fish, I
mean they are amazing difficult and fishing with those kind
of baits. But I was just determined, you know, I
(38:23):
was gonna try to hit the right spot, and just
fortunately I caught it and it was like the most
incredible fish I've ever seen. When I got back, I
just said it, well, it needs to be a world record.
I wanted to enter it the record book, and you
have to have the fish identified by an expert. Uh.
I couldn't find an expert knew what it was. I
(38:44):
had all these great photos of this fish. None of
the ray experts had never heard of it. Finally I
found a guy in Germany who's a ray expert, and
he said, this fish is painted in a book from
the very early eighteen hundreds. It's the same fish, I
have no doubt. In this book it was called a
spine tailed the leposaurus, and the picture was identical. It
(39:08):
had a short tail covered with spikes. Yeah, for sure.
It's Uh, it was an incredible fish and uh it's
still the world record. That particular fish was about six
feet across, weighed almost two hundred pounds. Uh, and I
caught several more while I was down there. I can't
(39:32):
even imagine reel in a fish like that, like it was.
Did they fight? Well, it's kind of like dragging a
barn door, you know. It's it's like most raised you know,
a lot of people who hook a ray here in
saltwater just want to cut the line because it's so
difficult to actually land one. You know, they're huge and
(39:53):
they're flat, and they suck up on the bottom and
don't want to come up. Uh. This one was the
bottom and eight feet of water. I had to sit
there and strum my fishing line to make him mad
enough to get off the bottom. And what do you
mean vibrate the fishing. Yeah, you kind of vibrate it
like a guitar string, and it aggravates them and they
(40:14):
eventually come up. And that or just that's that's a
ray trick I learned in Virginia with some anglers out there. Uh.
But when it came up, then I knew I had him,
and it was an incredible dish. No, they don't eat
them at all. I wanted to release his fish a
(40:35):
live but by the time we could get it weighed.
I took a certified scale with me. By the time
we could get to the boat, it had expired, so
we couldn't release it. And I asked, you know, can
we can you eat it? And they're like, no, We're
not gonna eat the piranhas, which was pretty incredible to
(40:58):
all the anglers on the boat came been watched. Did
we cut it up and fed it to the piranhas?
That was pretty incredible, And that's an incredible story. It
wasn't say the name of that fish again. We discus
Ray is the same uh. And before there had been
some small ones in the record book, I think eleven
(41:20):
pounds something like that prior to you catching Yes, but
it was they were smalls, Yeah, almost two hundred pounds. Uh.
It was. The whole story was really incredible because it
was such a rarity to you know, to be able
to find something nobody knew anything about. I was just dumbfounded.
(41:44):
When I got back and I'm talking to all these Uh,
I can't remember for sure, but I believe it was
two thousand one. I mean, that's like, is it We're
not talking about like the nineteen sixties or something. I mean,
so that's amazing to me that in one that you
can still go to Brazil. My last trip, I went
(42:04):
to the Shingoo River in Brazil, which is in a
different area, and uh, we actually caught some catfish there
that had never been described by science at all. Well.
I came back with uh photos of fish that I
needed to get identified, and I found an expert in
Massachusetts at Cambridge University who spent his lifetime down their
(42:29):
studying fish, and he found out I was going down there.
He learned about this big ray and he said, if
you go to Brazil and you could photograph fish, send
send me the pictures. I'd like to see what you're catching.
And it turned out some of the fish we caught
had never been described by science. The local people knew
about them, but science didn't know about it. They didn't
(42:53):
have a name. A lot of them were unusual armored catfish.
I mean to imagine you can go out this day
and age and catch something science doesn't know about me.
That's incredible, you know, if you think about it, though,
we live in such a unique time as humans, because
(43:17):
hundred years ago that would have been kind of normal, maybe,
I mean so we yeah, we well normal in the
sense of so much had yet to be discovered. But
in the last hundred years, it's like all of a sudden,
we're sitting in your living room in Arkansas, and we've
got the world at our fingertips, and we feel like
everything's been discovered. Ye and and it hasn't. And to me,
(43:41):
that was always one of my things I love doing
the most, was finding what's out there here in Arkansas.
Even I found things over the years and nobody knew
was here in Arkansas. Salamanders and birds and and snakes
even that nobody knew were here. Uh they're kind of
(44:03):
obscure animals. But Uh, there was a type of worm
snake I found when I was Nobody knew it was here,
and back then I would publish those findings in scientific
journals so people wouldn't know. Uh, there was a salamander
called a mole salamander. Nobody knew we had those here. Uh.
(44:26):
Even today, Uh, if you dig and read on the
internet every year, there's literally hundreds of animals being discovered.
Nobody knew about it at all. I just did an
article recently about just new fish that have been discovered
every year. Yes, and every year there's several hundred new
(44:51):
species being described, so we're learning more and more. A
lot of it has to do with DNA and genetics
or in and out. Fish that we thought were all
one type of fish are really several species. But sometimes
it's something brand new we didn't know about. And to me,
(45:11):
those adventures when I was able to find something nobody
knew about, that's the coolest thing in the world. It's
really fun. That really is This next excerpts from episode
ninety two, when I talked to Steve Rinella and Janie
Pould tell us there's some guys I look up to,
(45:34):
and I think you'll enjoy this little snippet of the conversation. Um,
I just had a few just quick. I'm gonna run
through these questions and then we'll be done. Um. So
these are unanswered questions that people have about um, celebrities.
(45:54):
I'm I'm, I'm. I'm a little leary to use the
word celebrity because we don't we count man. I'm not sure,
but no, I asked a few people and they were
like they were joking, but they were serious. Question number one,
and you can just give a short answer. Are you
nice to your wife? We'll start with you honest extremely
(46:15):
he is. Um, it just depends for me, man. I mean,
you know, my wife's mad at me a lot. I'm
mad at my wife a lot. We've been together twelve years. Man,
We've got three little kids in the house. I'm not
gonna sit here and tell you that, right. You're not
gonna paint a super rosy because a bottomless uh, but
(46:37):
your intentions like yeah, I mean there's a tremendous amount
of love and respect and I would never do anything
to disrespect my wife. But it's just like anybody knows, man,
like get a kids. Yeah, you spend a lot of
time on each other's nerves and yeah, just so people,
it's just right. I don't I don't like the Actually
(46:58):
it's not. It's just a reality. But um, but yeah,
it's all it's all based on respect and love. But
God just gets stressful sometimes. What I like to make
sure that I do. And again I answered that question,
you know quickly, so you could get through these questions quickly.
But since we're getting into Um I tried to at
(47:19):
least when I am to then, uh be humble and
apologize and you know, okay and know that, Hey, Jana
speaks very highly of you behind your back about your
being a father and husband. That's nice. I'll do a
little checking around. Um you're just a reference checking yeah, yeah, yeah, okay,
(47:42):
Um let's see, uh number two, what do your wives
think about all this? Like just you guys, like like traveling, hunting.
You know, there was just short for me real quick.
There was never not There was never like it wasn't
like a thing got introduced. It was just always that way. Yeah,
(48:02):
it was always that way. So I never had to
go through a hurdle of being like, hey, I have
a new life because you didn't. You didn't start it. Okay,
that makes sense. Yeah, um, it very much was introduced.
We've been married now seventeen years and uh so halfway
through this thing kind of started and started traveling a
whole bunch more. Although we had always been a part
of some because I was a hunting guide and would
(48:24):
be gone for most of the fall, and she spent
a lot of time in the field all summer, so
she would be sometimes gone in a different state for
three months. Um, but uh yeah, she's very supportive of
whatever I do. And uh it's also you know, you know,
a source of income, and it's nice to be able
to do something you love to do, you know, to
(48:46):
you know, for your income. So yeah, I can't say
no to that. Okay. So Meteor was built on this
authenticity inside of a context, and the hunting world that
was had lost a lot authenticity. And so the question
is and that's and that's what would characterize you, Steve,
(49:07):
and you're honest too, and just kind of the brand
I feel like it's is authenticity. And so how do
you maintain that authenticity in the midst of massive growth
when we know, like like everybody knows that consumes honey
media that it has to be paid for? I mean,
so what what stole authing that you don't think? So?
(49:30):
I mean what stole authenticity that really irritates people? Well,
is that guys' of providing like basically free media? Right? A.
Podcasts are free? Right? I mean it's an advertising comporment,
but you're in producing like free media. Um, Netflix, you
know it's not free, but it's a very low subscriber fee.
(49:51):
It's an it's a bottomless pit of content, right like
you know, I don't. It's not transactional per episode. How
are people are very irritated when confronted with the idea
that you need to finance this operation, the operation that
you need to finance your ability to make free content.
(50:13):
I get it, yeah, but people know it's not understood.
I don't think it's why I understood. Well, so how
do you how do you maintain because I mean what
I was saying was that you've you've done a good
job of maintaining that authenticity and inside of the context.
So how do you keep doing that? Hey? Let me,
let me let me. Uh, I've got it. I digressed
(50:36):
to uh, but go ahead. But but I think the
questions you kind of the questions like there, but it's
eluding you. Well that's the question. How do you how
do you build a business like you like you have
and maintain the authenticity that got you here? I mean
I think it's this because because because it'd be like
(51:00):
let's say you make shoes, okay, and you make good shoes,
and then pretty soon you have a big company that
makes shoes. People aren't going to say to you, um,
how do you continue to make shoes? Like, well, that's
what we do. Well, so I'm saying, like, what got what? What?
What got? You know what? What created the situation? Anyways,
(51:25):
it's just still what's creating. It's just like making a
thing that was making a thing that felt real and
you could feel passionate. If you stop doing that, you've
stopped making shoes. Do you see that? You know what
I'm saying, Like people, what you're saying, like, what is it?
If you're not doing that anymore, then you're not doing
the thing that that right that people want it anyway?
(51:47):
But do you not see that? That's what happens to
companies though, is they They they lose that when they
get big. And that's certainly not what I'm saying. I'm well,
they might, but I don't know how you keep Yeah,
I don't know. I can't really well. I think in
our context though, in the hunting industry, I think maybe
what you're getting at is that because of the way
(52:09):
that you have to pay to make this stuff keep working, right,
you have partnerships and advertisers and you have to make
them happy, and so at some point you come up
to a thing where there's a huge check that's associated
with baby a product or a brand that you don't
align with. But if you need that check real bad,
(52:31):
you have to go that route, right, and then you
end up endorsing maybe a product or a brand that
you necessarily don't align with, and people see that you
are being inauthentic, and then it could cost you your authenticity,
not like in the material you make, but well in
a holistic the holistic place and not just that, but yes, that, yeah,
(52:55):
I mean speaking to that, I think we've just always
stood our ground and when that's off comes around and
I mean there's there's just boxes and boxes of gear
that comes across through the doors and meteor and across
our desks where we just look at it and it's like, hey,
it might be good, but it's just not us, you know,
and we know we just passed on it. And we've
you know, speaking to Steve's loyalty, I mean First Light
(53:18):
was the first clothing brand that he got in with
and been with them for ten years now, you know. Yeah,
the first two people to get behind our show, we're
first Light and Vortex. Yeah and read to this day. Yeah,
they're still there. Yeah, but I think and I don't
have like and and um to endorse talk about recommend
(53:44):
Vortex products is not painful. It's authentic because you and
I have it like a, yeah, there's a product connection,
but I have an emotional connection there. That's not all,
you know. I don't want to tell you that that's
something that's like that that emotional aspect is always present,
(54:05):
but there's parts of it that I'm I'm like quite
proud of that fact. I don't view it. I don't
view that I'm able to have like a long term
relationship and a you know, a sponsorship arrangement, um, the
reciprocal relationship with Vortex. I don't look at that as
being like, oh, it's just a thing I had to do.
I'm like proud of that. And see what I'm what
(54:26):
I what I see is that I think there's an
internal component inside of inside of somebody that's got to
be pretty strong to maintain that kind of authenticity in
the midst of success. So, I mean, I guess and
maybe it's so deep inside of you guys that you
don't you don't even know. No, that's not true, man,
(54:47):
you don't think I don't want to like act like
I don't understand your question. Ah, No, we can. We
have conversations all time about about what what do you
mean we have? What we do is deliberate. Yeah, it's
(55:07):
not accidental. Okay. We have conversations every day about what not,
like how to what not? Turning laughter, turning right. But
it's like conversations every day about like getting it right,
(55:28):
like getting it right. Detail. We did a hunt last
year with these guys at this place called Crickets, Guy
Outfitters and Wyoming great dudes, like great, great dudes. I
love those guys. Um And I was having a conversation
with the sun landed Uh Peterson, and he was observing
(55:51):
one day to me, he was like talking about how
he tried he like observes, he's I would regard him
like like a successful person right, like does things intentionally.
And he was observing. He was telling me how he
observed successful people and he said, a thing that he's
noticed is that they pay attention to all the details.
(56:13):
They pay attention to the details at their home. They
pay attention to the details of how they raise their children.
They pay attention to the details of what they do
at work. They pay attention to the details of their vehicle.
They like, pay attention to the details always. You can
make a there can be a you can have a
facade of carelessness or a facade of shooting from the hip.
(56:38):
But I think that most people are able to do
something for a long time, are very cognizant of details.
And I think that we sit around arguing about the
people will be like, I cannot believe these people are
arguing about something that seems so mundane. It seems so silly.
(56:58):
But we as an organization whever, like, we don't think
it's silly. Yeah, So when I say it's deliberate, there's
like there's like I'm like aware of what we do
and how we do it. Not to say that, you know,
you don't make all kinds of screw ups, but you know,
we discuss things. I like it. I like a great
(57:21):
length things that would be silly. When we're making our show,
we argue over like like seconds of things, like really
like seconds considerable back and forth. Last like, how could
we talk about the Bear Hunting Magazine podcast without including
(57:43):
Ted Nugent's performance of Fred Bear a highlight for sure.
We spent that last October together for about a week,
and then the next spring he died and I went
out to do my chory one day, and we're all
shattered at his death. It was just he was just
(58:06):
unbelievable because he made such an imprint on everybody. He's
a great, great man. Did you ever meet him? Well,
you're going to meet him right now. And so I
went out to do my chores. I had my dog,
biscuits and my Irish setters now porch. I went and
I grabbed the guitar and I just I didn't know,
(58:27):
I had no idea. I wasn't thinking of Fred. I
just sat down, I went. I always played killer licks
when I picked up the guitar, but I never played
one like this before. There I was back in a
(58:47):
while again, and I felt right at home where I belong.
And I had that feeling coming over me again, just
like it happened so many times before, so many times.
(59:24):
The spirit of the woods. He's like an old good friend,
makes me feel warm and good inside. I know his name.
It's good to see him again because in the wind
(59:45):
he's still a live talking about Fred Bear, walk with
me down the trails again, Take me back, Take me
back where I belong. Fred Bear. I'm glad to have
(01:00:05):
you with my side, my friend, and I will join
you on the big hunt before too long. And it
(01:00:30):
was kind of dark, another misty dusk, and it came
from a tangle down below. And I tried, I tried
to remember everything he taught me so well. I had
(01:00:50):
to decide which way to go. Was I long or
in a hunter stream? The moment of truth is here,
and now I felt his touch, I felt his guide
(01:01:13):
in hand, and the buck wars mine for evermore because
of fred Bear. I still walk down those trails again.
He takes me back, takes me back. I belong fred
(01:01:35):
Fred Bear. I'm glad to have you in my side,
my friend, and I will join you on the big
hunt before too long. And we're not alone when we're
(01:02:30):
in the great outdoors. We got his spirit, we got
his soul, and he guards my steps, guid's my arrows home.
The restless spirit for ever roams and it roams with
(01:02:53):
Fred Bear. When I walk down those trails again, he'd
take makes me back, takes me back. I belong fred Bear.
I'm glad to have you went my side, my friend,
and I will join you on the big hunt before
(01:03:16):
too long. Because in the wind, he's still alive in
the wind. He's still alive in the wind. I can
(01:03:37):
hear I hear Fred Bear, I hear you, Fred. Hey Fred.
Let's go hunt, buddy, Calm, you go up that ridge.
I'll go down this swamp. Baby, get that book. I
(01:04:22):
hope you've enjoyed these highlights from the Bear Hunting Magazine
podcast over the last couple of years. These were all
special moments that were memorable to me, and they most
certainly were not all the special moments. Holy cow, every
single episode, every single guest had extreme value to bring
(01:04:42):
to our listeners. Thank you, Thank you for your support
of Bear Hunting Magazine and our podcast and what we're doing.
I hope you have a great Christmas. I hope you
stay safe. I hope you have a great New Year.
You'll hear from us again, but it might be in
a condensed version in the next podcast. Merry Christmas, boys
(01:05:03):
and girls, have a good one.
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