Moore Outdoors With Chester Moore 12/06/24-- Chester tells stories of his wildlife work with children

• Host Chester Moore tells stories of his wildlife work with children and explores some inspiring recreational opportunities for all outdoors lovers.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to More Outdoors on News Talk five sixty k
l V. I. This is Chester Moore. When I met
Rianna Holloway, she was seventeen years old and she was
sitting up in a bed at Texas Children's Hospital and
had been there for about two weeks. Rihanna has cystic

(00:22):
fibrosis and we had met her actually through the passing
of another young lady in our program named Madison Belden.
Madison also had cystic fibrosis, and on the day we
went to Texas children to say goodbye to Madison, who
was being taken off life support, I met Rihanna's mom.

(00:45):
It was really a sad day, but out of that
came something beautiful because we met Rihanna. And why am
I talking about her on More Outdoors because she has
an incredible inspiring story. You know, this year has been
a great challenge for a lot of people. I mean
I talk to people all around the nation and around
the world, and whether it's socioeconomic issues or just the

(01:08):
crazy things that are happening around the planet. People are scared,
people are depressed. There's all kinds of stuff going on.
So I wanted to start off this last program of
twenty twenty three with something inspiring. When I met Rianna
once again. She was seventeen years old, sitting up in
a bed at Texas Children's Hospital. Our Wild Wishes program

(01:33):
we do through our Children's Kingdom Ministries, grants wildlife encounters
for children with a critical illness, loss of a parent
or a sibling, or other traumatic issues. And cystic fibrosis
is something that's near and dear to my heart. My grandmother,
Ruby Pickard had an organization called My Wish Incorporated, and
it granted wishes to children with terminal illnesses. She founded

(01:57):
this in eighty two, only a year year and a
half after the Make a Wish Foundation was founded, and
she had never heard of the Make a Wish Foundation.
As a matter of fact, you know, there wasn't the
Internet back then, so people really didn't know about it
too much. And she founded this here in Southeast Texas
and Grenda Wishes from about nineteen eighty two to I
think around nineteen ninety seven nineteen ninety eight before she

(02:20):
stepped away as she got older. But her mission was
to grant wishes to terminally ill children. And there was
this awesome girl named Brandy, beautiful, sweet girl became good friends.
She lived in Kots and she had cystic fibrosis and
she passed away. Broke my heart. Loved loved Brandy, And

(02:42):
you know, when we got into the Wild Wishes program,
immediately the terminal illnesses we started dealing with were primarily
cystic fibrosis. So it was always when I went to
meet these kids, always thought of my friend Brandy from
out in Koots and I thought about that as a visitor.
And we asked Rianna what her favorite animal in the

(03:04):
world was. Now we'd already cheated, we already talked to
her mom and nude, but she told us a sea turtle.
She wanted to meet a sea turtle. And it was
very difficult for another organization to find a sea turtle
to do an encounter with. But by the grace of
God and all my contacts in the fisheries world, Rihanna
was out of the hospital in a couple of weeks,

(03:25):
and about a month or six weeks later, Moody Gardens
hosted her. They let her meet a sea turtle they
had from behind the scenes. They let her go up
above the top of the big aquarium and throw fishing
and feed the sharks. And they let her have an
encounter with their giant river otters from South America and
just treated her like absolute royalty. It was an incredible,

(03:49):
incredible thing. Well, Rihanna turned eighteen right after that, and
then she gave me a phone call one day and
said his parental loss count for a wild wish, and
I said, absolutely it does. Her friend Lauren Scott had
just lost a father to cancer and wanted to know
if she could also meet a sea turtle. I'm like, well, yeah,

(04:10):
we got this, It's easy. Not so fast, Chester, Lauren
wanted to meet and injured, rehabbed sea turtle and release
it back into the wild. So back to the drawing board.
But thanks to my good friend Jeff Kaiser, he recommended
the Amous Research Keep, and about six weeks later, both

(04:32):
Lauren Andreanna were in the surf at the Amos Research Keep,
right outside of their facility, right down the road from there,
releasing injured, rehab green sea turtles into the Gulf of Max.
You and actually go see that clip on my YouTube channel.
Chester and Ware a wildlife journalist and investigator. So Rihanna
starts school that semester and I was not real happy

(04:55):
with what she was doing. She wasn't really sure that
the degree she was planning on really for her. And
she called me and Lisa and said, I needed to
talk to you about my life. I would love to
tell you I'm such a great man of faith that
I was inspired and ready to talk about her life
and how far she could go. But she has cystic fibrosis,

(05:16):
and I've already lost kids in the program with that,
and I lost a friend named Brandy Gallop back in
the nineteen eighties to that, so I was a little
nervous when we met with her. She said that the
encounter at Moody Gardens and the one of the amous
research keeper was so impactful that she wanted to dedicate
her life to wildlife conservation. How would she do that

(05:38):
as a career. So for the next month or maybe
even longer, I wrestled with Rhianna on the phone and
texx and emails over every possible aspect of making a
living doing something for wildlife conservation. And an opportunity came
up not too long after this. And that opportunity came

(06:00):
from the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. My good friend
Freylan Hernandez, He's been on the show a couple of times.
He's they had a desert big horn program out there
at Alpine, and an incredible thing he offered. He let
Rihanna go out and take part in a desert big
horn sheep capture. You can also watch a video of
this at my YouTube channel. It's really really cool, fun video.

(06:22):
See how much spunk Rihanna has. And she got to
take part in everything. They let her take blood samples,
tissue samples, and put a GPS caller on the biggest
ram they caught that day. It was a defining moment
for her, and it was so inspiring for all the
wonderful Texas Parks and wildlife people who made that possible,

(06:44):
Mark Garrett out there and the others. And when she
came back, she was really motivated and she became a
student at Texas Tech and I'm proud to say this
December she graduated with a wild Life Manager degree. Now
I don't have the notes here in front of me,
the exact degree, but it was a very wildlife intensive

(07:07):
degree and it's something that she plans on using in
her life. And I think she's actually probably about to
start a graduate school. So all of that came out
of wanting to help hurting children through wildlife encounters and
to see someone thriving through a vicious disease like cystic fibrosis,

(07:31):
and to see that wildlife can make such a beautiful
impact on someone is something that stays with me. It's
what gets me up in the morning, it's what I
go to bed with at night. And I'm happy to
say that that very wild Wishes program has now granted
two hundred and twenty five wishes and that program is

(07:53):
entering its tenth year in twenty twenty four. And Rihanna's
story is a shining example, and it also goes into
something we're going to talk about more in the next segment.
The next branch of our outreach Higher Calling Wildlife, and
that was the very first Higher Calling Wildlife expedition. The
idea of that is take kids in the wild WISHESS

(08:14):
programs on conservation centric expeditions to places like West Texas,
in Colorado and Florida and have them learn how to
use photography, videography, etc. To raise awareness to wildlife conservation.
Rihanna was the very first person whoever did that. We
actually founded that particular part of a program about what

(08:37):
we saw Rihanna do. So you know, a lot of
times we think that, you know, we can't do things
for people, but we have the power to spend time
with them to invest What we have might be a
deer lease, it might be a fishing pond, it might
be access to something like a big orang chet capture
or an exotic animal capture and transfer or whatever it

(08:59):
is is, but that can have great power to inspire people.
And my good friend Rihanna is now a graduate of
Texas Tech and she'll end up working somewhere in the
wildlife world doing good for wildlife, good for people, good
for our environment. I'm so proud of Rihanna, and I
can't help but think of my friend Brandy, and I

(09:22):
know she's in heaven without any doubt in my mind,
and I know she would be very happy to know
that our program, which is an honor to my grandmother's program,
which was found in eighty two, still helping kids out there.
And it's such a thing that me and my wife
and my daughter who's growing up in this I love
so much my mom and all of our volunteers. And

(09:46):
when we come back on more outdoors, I'm gonna share
some more inspiring stories about how encounters with wildlife help people.
It's a beautiful thing, folks, and we're gonna talk more
about this on More out Welcome back to More Outdoors
on News Talk five sixty kliv I learned more about
the wild Wishes program at kingdomzoo dot com. That's kingdomzoo

(10:08):
dot com. Also my blog at Higher Calling dot and
that has a lot of information on the Higher Calling
Wildlife part of that. You can abscribe to my blog
there get all kinds of crazy updates. Now. I had
mentioned Rihanna's story a little bit on episode a couple
of weeks ago, and I went deep into it in
the last segment because I had a ton of response

(10:29):
on that and I want to give a more in
depth part of that because that story deserves to be told.
And our Higher Calling Wildlife Outreach is what we do
to inspire kids to take up the cause of wildlife conservation.
And we're target kids that are the least Kids that
have lost parents, siblings, kids that are facing critical illness,

(10:51):
kids dealing with depression, kids that have attempted suicide, and
these are things that we're working with and we got
to take it Doddible expedition this summer to southern Florida
and take a young boy named Jerry out on a
special fishing expedition. Jerry's brother was murdered. His brother, I

(11:13):
think was seventeen years old. He was murdered, and it
was a horrible, of course, situation. And when something like
that happens to a young kid, that makes you think
of mortality. And we shouldn't be thinking of mortality so
much when we're you know, preteens, and Jerry's now a teenager.
But we want to do something special for Jerry, and

(11:35):
he lives now. He lived in Texas, now lives in
the Tampa, Florida area. So we took him and his
family on a special expedition. And what we got to
do was I got to take him ditch fishing for
peacock bass. I have some ditches that I fish south
of Miami, Florida when I'm in Florida, and I always
catch peacock bass. And of course, peacock bass one of

(11:57):
the most sought after game fish on the planet, and
the ones in Florida the smaller but still beautiful and
hard fighting butterfly peacocks. And we took Jerry to a
particular ditch that I fish, and within an hour he
had about a five pound peacock bass. And this kid
had only caught two fish in his life before this,

(12:20):
and this was one of those things. Just seeing the
smile on his face was absolutely epic. And you know,
Jerry is a very very smart kid, and he you know,
he gets it, and we took him out the next day.
I have a good friend down there, Captain Moe Estevez.
If you ever want to book a trip fishing for bonefish,

(12:43):
permit snook, tarpin or even sharks down south of Miami
in Biscayne Bay. Captain Moe Estevez is the guy. He
always delivers, and he donated a trip to take Jerry
out on Biscayne Bay. Now, Biscayne Bay is basically the northern,
the very northern hip of the Keys, and you can
see Miami to the far north of it, and you

(13:04):
go south, you've got Kiva Skane right there. And I
fell in love with this place the first time I
went there three years ago. I caught my dreamfish, a bonefish.
And it is super clear waters, seagrass flats and when
you're get in some of the deeper water and these
big sand flats and you just see these big white
sand expanses under the clear water. You see manatees, you

(13:24):
see sting rays, you see sharks. You hear snook attacking
stuff up inside the mangroves, or a bonefish and permit
and tarp and it's just a dream for a fisherman. Well,
the original plan was to take Jerry fishing for whatever's
gonna bite for a few hours and then spend like
the last two hours trying to catch a bonefish. And

(13:48):
that didn't work out. There was a bait shortage. So
he decided Captain Mo that we're gonna take him fishing
for sharks because he could get cut bait. Now, Jerry
told told me on the way down to fish, he
didn't care what we fished for, but he said his
dream was to catch a shark. We get in the
boat and Captain Most says, we're going shark fishing. It

(14:08):
was such a godd thing. So we went out and
went on the Atlantic Ocean side of Biscayne Bay, and
you see these signs when you go out and it says,
you know, warning crocodiles there are American We actually have
crocodiles and America a dangerous species called the American crocodile.
We didn't see one that day. I actually hadn't seen
one down there yet, but they're around and Jerry thought

(14:29):
that was super cool. And we're cruising out there. We
get on the backside and we throw a couple of
rods out with cut bait, and within about forty five
minutes Jerry caught a nurse shark. It was probably a
fifty pound nurse shark. And this is from a kid
who the biggest fish you ever caught was with me
the day before, five pound peacock mass. Now I was

(14:49):
catching a fifty pound shark and it was this smile
on his face just said it all. And he caught
another one about twenty five pounds thirty pounds later on
and was just as happy as he could possibly be.
It was so cool. We had a big about a
huge southern stingray come up and swim around the boat,
and it was just a beautiful day in the water.

(15:11):
My good friend Captain Moe Estevez, and if you want
to book a trip with him or something and forget
his name, send me an email Chester at chestermore dot com.
I'll be glad to hook you up with him. And
then after that we took him down to the Everglades
he got to go photograph manatees. And then the next
day we took him down into the Keys. We took

(15:31):
him on a helicopter tour. Him and my daughter Faith
got to go up with me and a helicopter. We
got to see manates from the helicopter, some sharks, some steamrays,
see the seagrass flats. And I was telling him about
how the seagrass flats are important for our wildlife and fisheries,
and now those flats are probably you're probably looking at
bonefish and permittent, all kind of cool stuff in there.

(15:51):
And he was just transfixed. And maybe my favorite part
of the trip was taking him down to Big Pine
Key to photograph the key dear. The key deer are
the smallest subspecies of white tail deer in America and
they're a federally endangered speci He's only about seven hundred
of them and only in the southern tier of the
Florida Key that's the only place they exist. They are

(16:12):
about the size of I'd say they're a big one's
fifty pounds maybe fifty five tops on a buck dose
are probably a big dose, forty five pounds, really cool animals,
and Jerry took the photography like a pitbull to a
pork chop. He was all over and got to photograph those.
And then we got to publish those photos at Higher

(16:34):
Calling dot Net, at my blog, and we got to
publish one of his photos at Texas Fishing Games Facebook
and the forthcoming Higher Calling Wildlife magazine, and we were
just so thrilled that he got to teach him about
these things. I've been promising to send Jerry a camera
and if you're listening to this, Jerry, in the next
week or two, you're going to be getting a camera
in the mail courtesy of a good friend of mine,

(16:55):
Todd Jurasco donatd one for you. Jerry is just a
great kid. He's doing good in school. I'm proud of him.
And these are the kind of things we do with
Higher Calling Wildlife. And we did the one expedition in Florida.
This year, we did two in Colorado and both were great.
I mean, we got to spend time with a young

(17:16):
girl named Camille at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado Springs,
which is my favorite zoo in the world built into
a mountain. They got like mountain goats and grizzlies. It's
a super cool place on top of exotic stuff like
snow leopards. You know, we got to let her feed
the giraffes, which is spent like forty five minutes feeding
the giraffes and just had this huge smile on her face.

(17:40):
And she got to feed the elephant in by hand,
and so did her little sister. And then we got
to go take pictures. That's funny. When they first arrived,
I said, you want to take a picture of something.
Now she goes where And there was a couple of
mule deer in the parking lot, and we shot a
couple of pictures of mule deer doz in the parking lot.
And I just saw this beautiful kid smiling, and you know,

(18:00):
this kid had been through some stuff in her life,
and just seeing the beautiful smile in her face inspires
me and touches my heart. So while we do what
we do, you know, we don't get paid in our outreach.
We haven't ever got to the financial level to get salary.
It takes thousands of hours from us a year, but
every time I see a smile like a them on

(18:21):
the face of Camille when she got to feed the elephant,
or on Jerry's face as he's catching this shark, or
a peacock bass or a photographing key deer manatees. I
know that my life has been enhanced to have that
opportunity to enhance other people's lives. And I thought it
was important this last episode of twenty twenty three to

(18:43):
share some inspirational things with you. Life can get tough,
and you know, in my life, my pecking order as
a person is a follower of Christ, father, husband, children's advocate,
and then I get to the wildlife stuff. Kids and
what happens to kids in our culture is horrible, and

(19:05):
we have a chance to help a lot of them
through our program. And we're so excited that we're planning
in twenty twenty four to do Colorado Expedition, Florida Expedition,
and a Tennessee expedition this year. We did a little
thing in Tennessee last year where we're talking about a
full scale, higher call of wildlife expedition into Tennessee this

(19:26):
year in the Smokies in the month of October. So
we're super excited about all of that. And you know,
if you want more information on how you can help,
you can go to Kingdomzoo dot com and learn more
about our program. Also, if you know a kid that
loves wildlife that might want to take part in an
expedition or just wants to meet some cool wildlife at
our Kingdom Zoo Wildlife Center. We're not open to the public.

(19:48):
Our public is children that are hurting in different ways,
So reach out to us at Kingdomzoo dot com. We
come back on More Outdoors. We're talking more wildlife inspiration.
Welcome back to More Outdoors on News Talk five sixty
k l v I. This is chestermore sharing inspirational tales

(20:09):
from the wild through our Higher Calling Wildlife and Wild
Wishes programs of just stuff that I've experienced in the
wild that has inspired me and is so motivating, and
we need that kind of stuff ending a year, going
into a new year and a world that's gone absolutely bonkers.
You know, And when I think of back to my childhood,
I can't help but think about the Gully. The gully

(20:33):
was a tiny branch of Adam's Bayou that ran through
my neighborhood in West orange, and it was a mecca
for the kids, especially the boys in my neighborhood when
I grew up there in the nineteen eighties, and we
spent so much time down at that gully fishing, and
you know, it's interesting. We just wanted to catch fish,

(20:53):
you know, And I was probably the most fisheries a
knowledgeable kid of the bunch was almost cataloging all of
my catches, and I would argue with them, though, this
is not you know, this is not a readier sunfish.
You know, this is you know this or whatever was
going on. This is a bluegill, you know that kind
of stuff. But I had such a good time down there,

(21:15):
and most of the time what we caught was spotted gar,
long nose gar, bluegill, readier sunfish, mudcats aka bullheads, and
sometimes we would catch grinnel and that was like one
of our trophy fish because those thing fought so dang hard.

(21:35):
And I remember catching one one time that was in
the breeding sort of coloration where they got almost luminescent
colored fins, and I was like, whoa, this is awesome.
But I remember just always going down there with my
friends and fishing, and we'd catch crabs, down there, turtles
that kind of stuff, and some of the kids would
eat the fish. I would always catch and release because

(21:58):
at the time it was quite a bit of play
that balu and I didn't know if I wanted to
put that into my system, but we had such a
good time down there. But there's one thing that really
stands out, and it was Big John. Now, the first
time I fished down there, one of the kids told me,
you got to watch out for Big John. I'm like,
what is Big John? The only Big John I knew

(22:18):
about was my grandpa sometimes called himself Big John. And
then you had a big bad John the Jimmy Dean song, right.
This was allegedly a gigantic alligator garfish about seven to
eight feet long, and they said it lived in the gully. Well,
I had a hard time in my mind thinking that
there was this small canal with a guard that lived

(22:41):
in it full time when it was title and things
moving and out. So I thought there's probably several Big
John type, you know, gars running in here. But the
tale of Big John lived on. One time we were
there and I'm fishing on one side of the bridge
on the bank, and other kids fishing from the bridge.
By the way, if you know where this bridge is,
is a no fishing from bridge sign and that was

(23:02):
put up during my tenure down there. You know that
literally happened when I was a little kid, because we
were always fishing on the bridge anyway, kids fishing on
the other side. I can see his feet dangling, and
I always he had a hand line. This kid would
fish with a hand line. And I saw his like
hand jerking and something bowling the water and huge and
a big garroled and almost pulled him in, and the

(23:25):
legend of Big John grew. Well. There was an ag
farm there. It's now a private farm, but this agriculture
farm was part of the West Orange Cove School district,
the West Orange Stark School and there was a pond
in the back. It was probably maybe two or three acres,
but it connected to the bayou and it was deep,
and for whatever reason, we snuck back there a fair

(23:46):
amount to fish on the weekends. And yeah, I met
that statute of limitations over with folks, and we saw
big Gar rolling and stuff like that in there. And
some of the boys that were in high school were
able to go out there and go fish, and they
had the idea that they're gonna take a whole fryer
chicken and they're gonna put it on a rope with

(24:08):
a big shark sized hook for Big John and put
it out in the water. And as I remember that
weekend fishing from the gully which I could see over,
there was a few hundred yards away from which you
cand se everybody gathered. And the story was they that
this they had like a jug line on it and everything,
and all of a sudden, jugs started balancing and the

(24:29):
rope started pulling, and they drove up, thinking they're gonna
pull up Big John, the big alligator gar and they
pulled up about a seven or eight foot long alligator instead.
I'm not sure what happened to the alligator. Remember hearing
the fracas from the other side of the thing. Maybe
they got Big John ended up being an alligator. But
those are the kind of things that are so important

(24:50):
for kids to get to experience and us to get
to experience real life adventures in the wild. And the
point of this is that it doesn't have to be
something so m I just talked about an expedition of
Biscay Bay. I mean, I've been to South America fishing.
I've been to Spain fishing in all kinds of places
and I'm blasting to do that. But man, I can
still go to a local canal and catch catfish and

(25:14):
have an absolutely incredible time in my life. And that's
something that I plan on doing, you know, my whole life,
and taking my daughter and taking other kids and doing
stuff like that. Adventure for kids doesn't have to be
somewhere crazy. And I think because of social media, particularly Instagram,
TikTok and even YouTube, a lot of people think that

(25:35):
everyone has apex level looks for everyone's catching a tarpain
on a fly rod, or everyone catches forty pound blue cats,
everyone catches eight to twelve pound bass, and it's not
the reality, but that's what people show on these social media,
you know platforms, And the fact is most people just

(25:58):
go for catching fish and you have these big fish
at or a highlight. Your life doesn't have to be
a social media highlight reel. And don't think that because
of your economic status that you can't take your kids
to a local canal with some dead shrimp or some
chicken liver and a little cork and catch catfish. Because
you can do that I do that I've had like
apex level experiences my whole life fishing because of my career,

(26:22):
but I still love going. As a matter of fact,
I have a place I call the nonco Closure Agreement
Location that if you go there with me, I'm probably
gonna make you sign an NBA C. Don't tell anyone
else because when it rains man the catfish up to
ten pound channel cats. I've caught this one spot and
one of my funnest days of my entire fishing life
was this spring. Me and Lis send Faith down there

(26:43):
and we end up catching I think seven catfish, but
they were all like three to ten pound channel cats.
It was. It was awesome. What a fun time in
a local canal. And I fly fish a lot. I've
got into fly fishing really heavily five years ago, and
you're very likely to see me fishing some canal in

(27:04):
Mid County. There's one canal in Mid County that I
stopped the fish and I caught like thirty bluegill within
an hour and a half. There just have an amazing time.
Or I'm trying to catch a garfish on the fly,
and I had one spot where I had like probably
ten different gar on, but they just spit the little
fly out hard to give them to like hook on.

(27:24):
They're those hard beaks they have. But this is the
stuff we do, local, global, whatever. But getting your kids
out in some of these little hotspots is a fun
way to have, you know, a great time with your
family and just you. Maybe you're that guy where you're
retired or you're a single mom and don't know what
to do. Just go fishing, man, Just go out there

(27:47):
and hit it. Hit the local canal. It's all kind
of cool stuff in these canals. Like I said, I
fished ditches in Florida. Now I do believe we got
the short end of the stick here in Texas on
cool ditches because in this one ditch in Florida, I've
caught peacock bass, I've caught mayan cichlids. I caught an
eight pound large mouth and another section of the ditch

(28:09):
and I saw snook crazy stuff. You know, we got
cool stuff. We got grennel bass all that here. But
I think Florida may top the ditch fishing thing. But
no matter where you're at, whether you're listening online from
Florida or you're listening from California, or you're right here
in southeast Texas listening on the airwaves, and these taught
five sixty KLVI there's adventure to be had in your

(28:31):
local gully, in your local ditch. Some of my favorite
outdoors memories are at that ditch. And had such an
incredible time at that ditch slash gully. And one of
my favorites was this. There was this kid who was
fishing with me, and this kid was kind of rotten.

(28:52):
I never really liked him that much. Need to fish
down there. And I was taking a little flow, like
a popping cork, and I said, man, look, I was
reading in like sports a field. If you take these corks,
you pop it a few times, let it sit. It'll
draw fishing, especially help you catch a catfish. He goes,
you're always trying to quote from some outdoors magazine. He
never works for you. And I popped the cork and

(29:15):
a big catfish hit and I caught a big catfish
right in front of them. That made me smile. That
was a fun time, a fun memory out there. But
these are the kind of things you can do, So
get out there and get fishing. And I think someone
might be listening out there that thinks maybe they're better
part of their lives. Over look, if you can go

(29:37):
out and you can sink a dead shrimp on the
bottom of the water, and adventure lies ahead for you.
I still do it, and I get to catch bonefish
and stuff, and I still love this local stuff. So
go out, find a gully, find a local pond, find
a ditch, or find where Parks of Wildlife is stocking
these rainbow trout one of these places locally, and have

(29:58):
a good time in the great outdoors. Welcome back to
More Outdoors on news Talk five sixty KLV. This is
Chester Moore. Follow me at the Chester More on Instagram.
That's the Chester More on Instagram. Subscribe to my blog
at Higher Calling dot net. I've already got blogs scheduled
through the end of March, plus a bunch of stuff

(30:19):
I'm adding so Higher Calling dot Net. Subscribe to that
a great place to be. Find me on YouTube Chester
More Wildlife journalists and investigative of course, every week here
on news Talk five sixty KLV, I trying to end
the year and begin the new one with inspirational wildlife stories,
exciting stuff from my archives of wildlife, life and also

(30:41):
just things that are going on right now through our
wild Witchness program, our Higher Calling Wildlife program, and I
appreciate the opportunity to share these things here on news
Talk five sixty klv I. For me, it's always been
about a question what is out there? I've shared this
on the program before, or that I'm often motivated by

(31:02):
looking at a forest and going, I wonder if there's
a big buck in there, or looking at a roadside
pond and going, I wonder what the biggest bass in
that pond is, or a by you thinking I wonder
there are any flatheads in that thing? What is out there?
Inspires me to go look for what is out there?
Sometimes that means I'm going to carry a deer rifle

(31:22):
in a backpack and go in and try to hunt
deer hog. Sometimes that means taking my fly rod while
I'm traveling to some ditch in Georgia and catch a
species of sunfish I've never caught. Sometimes I just putting
a game camera somewhere and saying, hey, what walk by there,
And sometimes just taking that walk and hike in the
National Park or something and going wow, look at the

(31:46):
majesty of this amazing creation. Out here? What is out there?
I literally cannot drive through forest without wondering that very question.
And the think about that is it's an inspirational question.
It makes me want to take action. So what is
it that motivates you to get outdoors? What are the

(32:08):
things that get you most excited about the great outdoors?
I know for me it's the encounter. It's trying to
figure out what is in those woods. And have a
project I've been doing since two thousand and nineteen called
Turkey Revolution. It was a five year project. So we're
concluding that here. And one of my goals was to
be able to photograph color phase turkeys. That means a

(32:32):
turkey that's not your typical wild turkey coloration. And I
was able to in twenty nineteen photograph a stunningly beautiful
Miriam's bearded Merriam's hen turkey that was cinnamon phase. I
photographed her in your Ess Park, Colorado, my favorite place
on the planet, and I got to see her with

(32:55):
thirteen pulse she had and it was amazing moment. Photographed
her about nine thousand foot elevation and here in my
office I actually have a photo of her hanging on
the wall. It was so incredible. But this October, me
and the family were wrapping up our expedition to Tennessee
and we went into Great Smoky Mountains National Park and

(33:16):
I got to photograph a white phase or smoke phase
eastern turkey hen and she was with four standard colored
turkeys and it was it was incredible, so so beautiful.
I've seen photos of those, I've seen taxid ermy of those.
To see one in person was mind blowing. And that's

(33:38):
one of the anomalies out there. Anomalies in nature are
the things like you're at hunting camp and yes, people
are going to talk about that giant buck they saw,
but maybe someone saw a black white tail or an
albaiino a few years ago. That's usually the talk that
people just can't stop talking about. These enigmas. And I
love the enigmatic part of nature, and getting to photograph

(34:03):
those turkeys was so rewarding for me because it helped
me raise awareness to turkey conservation. And turkeys are important
because as turkeys go, so do America's forests. And we're
losing forests in the eastern United States right now, and
we're losing turkeys as well. We're not an alarming place
where like losing whole turkey populations. But there have been
some stunning declines in turkeys, and there's a lot of

(34:25):
research being done right now. We've had some guests on
the program talking about that. Over the last few years.
We're gonna have more some new research that's been going on,
and we're gonna have exclusives here or more outdoors in
twenty twenty four. But I think that, you know, being
able to highlight stuff like a smoke faced turkey makes

(34:45):
people think more about turkeys, if that makes any sense,
And I think it does, at least does to me.
But I know when I post something like that that
I get a whole lot more reaction, a whole lot
more responses, like shares that kind of stuff, And it
reminds us that everyone one who loves nature loves a
good Michie. Maybe everyone is asking themselves what is out there?

(35:08):
A lot of cool stuff that I'm working on in
twenty twenty four, a lot of great media, but I's
gonna be on my YouTube channel. I'm working with a
friend of mine on a project called Wildman in the Woods.
I'm doing narration for his series on that. I'm just
doing the narration for he's producing this really really high
level series, and then I'm doing a lot of other

(35:29):
stuff right now in terms of, you know, some investigations
on wildlife and things like that. And that's the other
part of what I love about all these mediums. I
get to share with you stuff that matters, stuff that
a lot of people are never gonna share with you
because it's not the typical hunting and fishing talk. But
I never could just restrict myself to that. There's so

(35:51):
much more interesting stuff out there and a lot of
wild things going on in America with wildlife, they're sort
of flying under the radar, and that's what inspires me
to be on the cutting edge, the bleeding edge, and
figuring out what's really going on in America. And one
of the programs that I was real proud of this

(36:12):
year on More Outdoors was the odd Dad program we did.
I did like half a show on Awdad, and we're
gonna do more on Awdad coming up. There's such a
rising animal in terms of popularity with hunters. The Added
also caught a barbary sheep from North Africa, first brought
to Texas in the nineteen fifties. Stockton, Pallader and Caprock

(36:33):
canyons and then put on exotic branches, and now they
are everywhere from the Edwards Plateau into South Texas and
of course all over the Transpacos. They're causing problems for
desert bighorn sheep, they're causing problems for mule deer in
terms of fighting over water and food sources. But they're
also an animal that a lot of hunters get to

(36:54):
hunt and enjoy. And I have been doing some research
on auded and come across some mind blowing information and anecdotes.
We talked a little bit about that, but I have
way more now they're gonna be talking about coming up
in upcoming episodes in twenty twenty four, and I've got
some great stuff on hogs. The best show I've ever

(37:15):
done on hogs. Go back and listen to the archives,
go to KLVI dot comflict on the podcast and you'll
see the episode dead Doctor Jackmeyer, and man, that's definitely
the best hog show I've ever done, best hog interview ever.
And working on something on hogs now on like the
maximum size of hogs in the wild, and we're gonna

(37:36):
have some cool stuff to talk about on hogs out there,
and that's something I need your help with. If you
have photos or videos of like extra huge hog like
mega five hundred pound plus, like say four hundred pound
plus wildhawks, email me Chester at chestermore dot com. That's
Chester at chestermore dot com because that will help with

(38:00):
my project. Don't have to share some of this information
out there on more. Maybe hear your name and your
video mention here on more photo mentioned here on More Outdoors.
And I'm really excited about that too, because man, a
lot of us love to hog hunt. I'm about I
didn't get the deer hunt much this year, but I'm
about to get heavily involved in hunting hogs. Already baited
up a spot on my dear lease and gonna go

(38:21):
full boar hog hunting here soon. And learning about how
big these hogs can get and what's going on with
our Texas hog populations in Louisiana as well is intriguing.
So got some great stuff coming up. If you can't
hear it in my voice, I am motivated, I am focused.
I am ready to rock in twenty twenty four and

(38:43):
give you the best programming I've ever given you here
on News Talk five sixty klv I, and there's gonna
be a lot of investigations, a lot of deep stuff,
a lot of great interviews coming up with the top
level wildlife, fishing and hunting experts on the planet. And
that's the only way we roll here on news Talk

(39:04):
five sixty klv I, always delivering the best, whether it's news, sports, outdoors.
We got you covered. And I want you to subscribe
to my blog, Higher Calling dot net. It's a very
very active blog, Higher Calling dot net. You can scroll
down here the subscribe and you'll get email updates and
those blogs come out about twice a week now, a

(39:24):
lot more blogs than I've ever done. And my YouTube
channel Chestermore a while after and listen an investigator a
lot of cool stuff beginning a series on black panthers
on that January first, and at the Chestermore on Instagram
and Higher Calling Wildlife on Facebook. If you want more information,
but our children's outreach we do Kingdom Zoo dot com.

(39:46):
Lots of stuff going on. By the grace of God,
I'm still here doing this more motivated and excited than ever.
And I can't tell you how much I appreciate you
listening to program all your wonderful feedback. God bless you
and have a great, great last outdoors weekend. At twenty
twenty three,