Ep. 128: BEAR GREASE [RENDER] - Thalweg, Flintface, Landbridge, and a River Quiz

My name is Clay Nukleman. This is a production of the Bear Grease podcast called The Bear Grease Render, where we render down, dive deeper, and look behind the scenes of the actual bear Grease podcast, presented by FHF Gear, American Maid, purpose built hunting and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the place as we explore.

Josh, Yes, what about Jeremiah Johnson? Okay, so.

Last week I apparently slowed down just enough for COVID to catch up with me. I have been running hard for three and a half years and have managed to dodge it. And for the very first time ever, I get COVID and I'm laying in bed feeling terrible, and I thought I was I was actually scrolling through one of my movie streaming services. I don't remember which one it was, and lo and behold what pops up Jeremiah Johnson.

You've never seen that.

I've never seen it, you know, fighting bear. I'm sure there's gonna be bear fights. I'm sure there's gonna be shooting game, you know. I'm just really looking forward it. Having been a kid who grew up on the Wilderness family, Yeah, I mean those were like the greatest movies ever when I was a kid. I've seen that thing a hundred times. So and then a few minutes later, Christy comes in, lays down and she she's Sart's watching watching it, and she's like, no, no, what's going on? What's going on?

That's a tovey spoiler. Is everybody in here seen it?

I don't even know what you're talking about.

Johnson the movie?

Ever seen it? Oh?

You're? I thought it's considered one of the American greats.

You are. It's Robert Redford is a frontier.

Josh's Mississippi in education, we're always just one step ahead of Mississippi.

But so Josh has finally seen the movie and you had I was.

What what stood out to you the most significant thing about the movie.

We are about to spoil this movie.

Yeah, the movie was made in nineteen seventy four, okay, or whenever it was made.

I didn't.

I thought it was going to be like again, having been raised on the Wilderness family, I thought it was going to be a great you know there. Surely there had to be something redeeming in the end. And in the end, the redeeming thing was the hand up by the lone Indian there and he waves back.

But the the death and destruction.

Man, it was a lot of death instruction.

Yeah, I mean I didn't see the until you know, he gets the look on his face when he's in the burial ground like, oh my god, they're going to kill his wife.

He knew what was coming. And yeah, well but it was a great movie.

Very well done nineteen seventy two.

I have to be honest and say I did have to turn on the subtitles a couple of times just to catch everything that was said.

Oh really really yeah. So Will Primos. Will Primos, who was on this episode of the Mississippi River Bear Grease, is a big, big Jeremiah Johnson movie buff. He has in his office. He has some original photography from the set like nobody else has, and he I got big time Jeremiah.

This is for This is for Robert Redford and that beard.

It's a good beard.

That's a good beard.

Makes a meme to send to people.

Yeah, welcome to.

The Welcome to the Bender everybody, if if you are new to the bear Grease universe. The Bear Grease Render is where we talk about the actual bear Grease podcast, which is our documentary style podcast. This week we had a very what I thought was what I loved the episode. I learned so much about the Mississippi River. So we're going to talk about that. But before that, we have we have some very special guests this week on the

Left cheek of his face.

Yeah, it was like Alaska and Russia. And I was like impressed, I said, I said, I know nothing about the baring Land Bridge. And I went and bought a book that's up here called Barringia. And so Josh to Josh's right, Our dear friend, longtime friend, Arrell Spence Spencer.

Could I change the Spence for thal Wag.

Ooh, that's a good name. Yeah, that's a good name, Terrell thal Wag Spencer at the bottom Wag means the bottom of the river. Spence is our local pastured poultry man across the Creek farms.

Good to have you.

Spence has been on here several times. He's been a featured guest on the Bear Grease podcast.

Yeah, unlike some of us.

Unlike some of us. Yeah, we're gonna skip over the mystery guests and go to Brent Reeves his country Life Good to see you, brother, good to be How you doing good?

And great podcast?

How's this country Life?

Good man?

Rocking and rolling?

It's just it gets.

Better and better, keeps getting better and better. Yeah, Hey, Brent Reeves is an incredible writer. You might not know it, but the writing like this the This Country Life podcast, which is also on this bear Grease feed. If you're paying attention, you know this. If you're not, you do now if you're paying attention now. But so, Brent has a podcast that comes out every Friday on the bear Grease Feed. It's about twenty thirty minutes long. And this

Something that's not fantastic.

It's really really.

Wouldn't think you were that interested in like watermelons.

I thought that Watermelon podcast was fan fantastic.

Yeah, thank you, Josh. Yeah, it's actually been my favorite one so far.

I honestly, it's in the in the running for me.

It's it's in what it is when you get down to the granular nature of it really is is excellent writing.

Yeah, Brett, do you want.

To tell him how the Watermelon podcast came about?

Yeah?

You and I were coming back from matter of fact, what we're talking about right.

Now, Mississippi River.

Yeah, episode we went down there with talk to doctor David. You have to say pronounce it last.

Night, Yeah, Biden Horn and we were on the way back and we just started talking about you know what, what's what's the next podcast going to be about?

We started kicking ideas around. He said, you know what you ought to do?

Watermelons?

And he said it is he said, he said, I don't care what you do, but I'm want this included in it. I said, all right, what's that?

He said, I, Clay Nukem, have vowed to myself to eat a watermelon every day of watermelons.

Just to clarify, it's not a whole watermelon, some watermelon, it's some water No. Really, we were deep in the heart of watermelon country. I bought a watermelon this week at in Arkansas that was grown in Mississippi. What Yeah, it had grown in Mississippi on it. We're deep in the in the heartland of watermelon country. And I just I just said, Brent, I really want to hear you talk about watermelons.

Yeah.

So that's what he did.

He was, great, you might have heard of the whole thirty Yeah, and you know, we're like, you do this horrible restrictive diet for thirty days, bringe your family's lives and in the hopes of like like cleansing your body from whatever. Anyway, Yeah, it might bring some out. But Clay does a He does a watermelon thirty.

Watermelon sixty from first to August thirtieth.

And when he's doing the watermelon thirty.

Don't look like this. On accident, the kids and I have.

Committed to doing an ice cream where we ice cream all thirty days of during this there's a parallel. Water thirty is ice cream thirty.

So to Brince, we're still intro Oh, I got I got to speed it up here we're deep to Brin's right, my lovely wife, mistery Newkelem. Great to have you, doctor.

Nukelem, Thank you so good to be here. Thank you for that formal introduction.

Yes, yes, but our mystery guest is Ryan flint Face.

Yeah I know.

Hey, if you've been paying attention to Bear Hunting magazine stuff that I've done in the last decade, Ryan Greb is one of my dear friends from for a long time. We've been buddies, and Ryan is man to describe. Okay, first of all, flint Face. The first time I saw a picture of Ryan, it was on the Arkansas Game and Fish website and they just randomly selected his photo of a bear Heed killed to be on the page. Do you remember that?

I do?

And I on accident, I was like, no, I don't want to be the face of.

The So yeah, he was the face of the game Fish bear page. And it was this beautiful photo, this huge bear, and he just had a face like Flint, I mean, like Wooden crack a smile and for every picture I've got him to smile since then. But Ryan doesn't do much smiling in the photos. But Ryan, I told Bear this the other day, there's not many people in this state that are better outdoorsman than Ryan Grebb.

What mean?

Yeah?

No, Like Ryan has killed more bare pounds pounds per pounds, per pounds of bear. He's killed more pounds per person, pounds of per person kill. I mean, there's a lot of guys that have killed big bears, and and certainly some incredible bear hunters that have killed like you know, they've killed like two five hundred pound bears, and then and then you know some three hundred's and this and

I've laid off of them the last three four or five years, so I'm sure somebody give them.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, well you were, you were hunting bears in the glory years of the Arkansas bear days. Though, Yeah, when you're baiting bears, it gets harder and harder. I mean, I'm pretty solidified on that statement. I'm not saying it's you can't kill a big bear in Arkansas anymore. People do every year. But the first ten twelve years when we could bait bears, it was you.

We was a learning curve all them.

Now every bear, every bear that's alive, has their whole life been been under some baiting sea.

It was easy first five, six, seven years, you know. Yeah, but now you've got generations of bears that is born and raised into the baiting game. And yeah, it's a different bear now, yes, and just more people out your average bears. Yeah.

Hey, I want you to tell us the story of when that cub you told this to river and bear the other day. I don't want to spoil the story, you know what I'm talking about.

Yeah, And I'd actually had forgotten about that. Sitting in the tree middle of the day, I'd sitting all day bear hunting, Yes, and it was hot, you know, NAT's biting you ninety degrees, and I just looked down the hill and I see bear coming. Here comes another one as I, oh, it's a sal. One ends up being triplets, you know, so three cubs they come up there and feet around, you know, do their moaning and squalling. And I think I'd kind of forgotten about this till they

Survival of you and you were probably twenty plus.

I was probably twenty two twenty three feet up.

So the cub runs up the tree, sees you like you could have like poked it down the balls, Yeah, and it runs out on the limb, falls out of the tree, bounces like a basketball from a twenty two to twenty three foot fall. Yes, sir been sprints towards his mom and t bones and oak tree like.

He'd never seen the tree.

I guess.

He just says, yeah, and he hit it hard. Wow, And like I say, he just knocked him for a loop. He had together his thoughts and off he went. And I was like, well, that was my fun for the afternoon, was Yeah.

What's the biggest bear you've killed Darkansas? Well anywhere, but I think Dancer will.

Be in five Was it five oweight or that's a bear? Yeah? I shot one the next year. The five O eight I didn't think was all that big when I shot it. The next year, I'm talking a true monster come in and I was like, if this bear ain't six hundred pounds, you know? And I had a ten twelve yards thought. I made a perfect shot and never found the bear, And I would love to go back in time to that day to do.

All over it.

Yeah, probably shot it too low.

I think I hit it too far forward, is what I think.

Too far forward, too far forward?

Yeah, How big do bears get in Arkansas? Oklahoma?

Like?

What would be the record?

I mean there? Unfortunately, there's no weight record keeping systems because it's too arbitrary in terms of having certified scales and gutted weight versus live weight, so that that's not the way people measure them. But I have heard of a six hundred and fifty pound bear that I think was legitimate. Have you heard of any bigger than Arkansas?

No? I haven't, So this was up there that it was. It had a you know. It had the frame monsters pigeon toad, big blockhead, but its belly was pretty much dragging the ground. He literally there was a fence force fence and the bottom strands was broke, and I can't remember there's one strand or two strands above it. He got down on his elbows and pulled himself under, not with his front feet, with his elbows when he come onto the property.

That's three and half four feet.

Yeah, but it was a monster, a true monster. Yeah.

They can for sure, way over six hundred here, you know, but it's it's being abnormal though it would be abnormal, yeah, for sure. But they make them that big now, they make them that big they do. What do you have any what's your most memorable bear hunt?

Ryan?

Probably the booner I killed up here in Zone one on a buddy's place by the had the old rock fireplace, some beautiful pictures. Yeah, that was. I never even got in the tree. Just as I was sneaking into the bait, I seen him making his way up to the bait. I lost sight of him and I was like, well to back out of here.

He went in there at like one o'clock.

Yeah, because I kept getting pictures of this bear. He never would come at night. He always showed up in the day, like every hour of the day, except I noticed from one o'clock to two o'clock I wouldn't get no pictures of him. I was like, that's when I need to ease in. Well, as I'm easing in there, I'm forty yards from the bait site my stand and I see him come up out of the woods to the bait. But there's so much foliage I couldn't, you know,

It was that bear weighed three No, it was four four twenty something, yeah, and he had a but he had an over twenty inch skull.

Twenty you scored a twenty and five.

Twenty five sixteenth or something, which is over the Boone crocket minimum.

That's a horse.

Yeah, And what's wild about all these bears? You can kill a five hundred pound bear that doesn't make Boone crock Yeah. The biggest bear that I ever killed Boone Crockett score weighed three fifty five or something interesting. And then the biggest weight bear that have ever were killed for weighed five point fifty. Did not make Boone Crockett.

Batman didn't make Bonnacrost.

He did not make Boone Crockett. So is it just a frame well, that they're measuring the skull. So for a bear, you measure the length and width of the skull. So part of it is genetic, just like I might have a bigger head than you, even though you're taller than me.

That's not if you do have a big I.

Have a big head, saying yeah, it's kind of like that, and then a I still really haven't decided. I have never talked to anybody that gave me a convintion biologist, anybody in the country that has given me a legitimately scientific answer of whether a bear adds mass to his skull with age. Do you understand because people have that idea, Oh, that's a twenty year old bear, he's going to be boone Crockett. Not necessarily because if he was a smaller

Yeah, I'll just say I think it's the coolest thing because our kids, they've they've gone with Ryan and Clay since they were little. I'm trying to think about the first time River went.

She was she's probably twelve, a little.

Dainty thing at that time.

I mean.

Twelve, okay, And I'd actually never heard of Nudland before. And I would tell people, Yeah, River's going Neodland, and they would all look at me and be like, River's going Newland this afternoon. I said yeah, and so people kept You know, I learned a lot by watching people's faces and how they respond to stuff. So I came home and they were getting in the car.

To let on if anything's abnormal, like we're going rattlesnake hunting, we'll see you later.

I just gotta trust Clay. So they they're getting in the car. I come home from work and they're getting the car and I said, hey, they're literally pulling out backwards. I said, hey, this is safe, isn't it? Because people just kept going rivers, going are you concerned? No, Ryan was there. Clay looked at me and this is I promise this he's He hits the car in reverse. They're starting to pull off, and he goes, hey, we'll see you.

But he had.

I mean, our Daughter's been in the er off the back of Klay's mules, I mean a lot. So I don't know if I should be trusting that ship has sailed now, But at that time, when she was twelve, I trusted him.

Hey, the most dangerous thing about uh Neoglan in the in the warm weather is probably flesh eating amoeba's in the water.

Don't I think about that from time to town? You know, one of these days you.

Know, yeah, there's there's I remember one year we went and somebody had like maybe died.

Yeah they usually do.

Yeah, yeah, from just being in that nasty water. It wasn't in this water system we were in, but it was like kind of in the realm of where we're at.

I hate this story, and.

I mean it's like what you do?

You just say yeah and pull back in reverse that.

And then Ryan and his buddies have their big time noodlers.

And now our kids just kind of bypassed Clay and call right. I don't even care if in town.

Called me and said, hey, you got to get my kids out of the house, rivers watching the Kardashian get them involved than something.

I got your Clay, I got you.

They had it.

They had a great time though. Now we've had a lot of fun over the years. And you know, y'all rarely keep a fish. No, I mean, like hardly ever catch so many fish and rarely keep a fish. When the new coms going Newland, we keep we have we don't keep them all, but we usually keep one big flatthead a year that will have a big fish fry, well multiple fish fries, and uh so, anyway, we like some flathead.

When I talked to Clay yesterday is like, I'm sure there's no flathead left and you're probably just gnawing on the head the spine or something like that.

So the story that I want Ryan to tell us to tell came because the kids reminded me of it. But when we were in Canada and the first trip that I ever did for Bear Hunting magazine, which kind of marked like an era of my life when I started traveling and hunting, and for about a decade I prioritized bear hunting over all other types of hunting and was traveling all over hunting. Just it was an incredible time.

Do?

You know what I'm talking about. I don't want to give away the spoiler. We were loading a bear on the four wheeler? Was it my bear? Okay? Well, we go with this outfitter and we weren't incredibly impressed at first, just by the looks of where we were at. It was kind of a do it yourself deal. They gave you a camper and some bear bait and had some places set up and just were kind of like you're on your own, which we knew that, so we were happy, very happy about that. But we hunted for two or

It was a whopper.

We weren't able to weigh it, but we were shocked, and I killed it with my trad bow and right and I were kind of thinking we were going to go home skunk and so easily four hundred plus.

Well, we did wet four.

Two or something, right.

We did wet, yeah, four thirty seven.

Yeah.

Cautious about weights. I was thinking we didn't wet on the hoof, Yeah, guts and all.

It had the biggest front pads of any bear I've ever seen. I mean it was huge.

Yeah, and it did not score Boon and Crockett it it green scored before drying twenty and one sixteenth and dried under twenty.

Wow.

But it was a great bear. Nine years old.

It's twenty of them.

Twenty is the boonekrouckt minimum twenty one is the all time. Okay, it's a complicated story, but we're loading this bear up on a four wheeler four hundred. We'd gutted it by now, so it weighed less than that we're putting it on the rack of a four wheeler. And what happened.

Y'all were on the ground gonna lift. I got up on top of the four wheeler, which is four wheeler had like a bed on the back of it, a rack. Yeah, and I was gonna pull as they were gonna lift. Well, this bear weighed four hundred something pounds. You think, well, it's gonna be a struggle. Well, when it was one, two, three, I pulled, they lifted. Will that come up way too fast? I had one foot in the bed of that four wheeler and they put that bear up on my leg

Is on the rack, up against the rack. The bear comes over the top and pins his foot on the rack, and Ryan falls off the four wheeler.

No, it had a like a bed, like a six inch Yeah, I thought it did.

Man, Hey, when I saw it happen, I still cringe when I think about it, because I thought our trip to Canada is about to get really weird because we're going to be and Ryan's broke. I mean, I didn't know how it would be physically possible for because his foot never moved and his body is on the ground. I still, to this day don't know how it didn't break.

You still don't have I've got an ankle bone here.

Hold on, let's see.

Let's see that.

There's an ankle bone here, not one there shifted over?

Does it feel funny?

No?

Can you see in the dark? Yeah?

Yeah, that was that was bad. It was gonna be bad. And he just kind of bounces up and just kind of like lamps around for a minute, and he's like, all right, we're good man.

You know why I don't smile.

That's when I was like, yeah, I was like at the threshold of something was fixed to shatter.

All right, well, Mississippi River Podcast. You guys don't know it, but there's a quiz we're gonna so we just we just started a three part series, Mississippi River. It's gonna be a significant series. Let me let me start off by saying, this is one of the hardest series that I've ever done, because everybody, well, first of all, if you're gonna tell a story about the Mississippi River, like,

Josh, hold on, No, you hold on, Jack, You're the cheat who can't count.

The on the podcast.

On the last render, you were like, Okay, we're gonna do a quiz on never did it?

Well, we actually did a quiz for Clay on Coleria that what was.

Yeah, we're gonna do a quiz. We were going to do a quiz and but the conversation was just so rich. Quiz would have gotten the way.

So there's two quizzes quire Crocket quiz.

So the way this works is the first person that blurts out the right answer gets gets the point. All right, I think there's seven. Do you want to do it?

You want to yes? I think hand is what.

If everybody had a buzzer?

I think we need a family feed style. Yeah, yeah, I can get shakers shakers, but then everybody would shake NonStop.

Okay, I think this is what we're going to have to do.

We can make our own beeping. Josh, what's your son?

Okay?

We heard.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight questions. The one at the end of this with the most points wins. Okay, I feel very first one, there's going to be some low hanging fruit. What is the foul wag of a river?

The deepest point of the channel?

Terrell Spencer deepest point of the channel, blurted out.

When I take people fishing on my river, I tell him about foul wag. Yeah. Yeah, this is when we knew this before. I wanted to be friends with Spence getting Spencer's dead.

He has a He definitely has a competitive advantage today.

Yes, but because Malachi Nichols wouldn't be a boat partner with me, Me and Brent are getting the boat. You trade it up, buddy, and we were going to name it the thou Wag.

That was never that was never an option.

Well, but then I was like, you don't want to name your boat the bottom of the So I'm gonna go ahead and say this. This is going to be big news in the future. Most likely the name of our boat is going to be the Lauren Toidde.

Come on, you took a lot of shots at Lauren Tide.

The I mean, how cool are you name?

Is that?

The Lauren Todde the Laurentide ice sheet. Two mile thick ice sheets get carved.

You were taking a lot of shots and now you're praising it.

And well, no, no, no, I didn't about the Laurentide ice sheet. I just said it seems kind of arrogant to me that we would name it like it was a pet.

I feel like you didn't really appreciate all the top soil we have.

No, I have a big time.

You would appreciate alluvials up.

The holler from me, and he stole all his soil.

And if you guys have the same degree environmental.

Science, environmental soil water science, yeah, pretty close school for stream ecology.

We are to do. I forgot jar and shake him up and see if they'll fight. Right.

If it came across as negative about the Laurentide ice sheet, it wasn't. I I just was making note of no human like it actually has no correlation to like thinking.

It is crazy. It was just it was just like, it's amazing.

No human that we've had correspondence with actually saw it, but we know it was here because of the cryptic Diary of the Earth. Here's interesting stuff one for till this might this might stick. What is the name for a concrete map placed on the river bank to stop erosion? Brett Reeves?

What was.

Brett Reeves? One? Thou wag one Ryan misty zero.

It comes a fly fish and he'll get it.

I had COVID, so.

It made your brain a little Listen to this, Hey, Josh has a real boat.

He has a.

Name your boats land Bridge?

Oh are you kidding?

Yeah?

Excellent? Got what's the name of your boat? Ryan? Ryan? So dead serious, He's like, name your boat, miss.

Well.

I fit on the road. Oh hey, I got a honey of a canoe that you didn't mention. It's a locally made canoe. Oh yeah, it turns on a dome. Two brothers canoes on the side.

Of locally rogers.

Yeah.

Really, two brothers sweet canoes. Okay, okay. Question number three for the last how many miles does the river's bed lie below sea level?

And twenty it's fifteen question.

That question probably could have been worded with a little more clarity. How many miles up the river is the river below sea level? This? This, This was stated twice on the podcast.

How many miles up the river?

I mean.

We can.

Yes, New Orleans well, the answer lies in how far Vicksburg is from the coast.

Was it four hundred and something? Come on, come on, four twenty four fifteen.

Yeah, So for the last four hundred and fifty miles of the Mississippi River, the bottom of the river's.

Sea level like not a little in like two and forty foot? Is that what they said?

Well, no, there was a two hundred and forty feet, but that it's it's fifteen feet below sea below Vicksburg and like one seventy at the mouth of the river. Did you guys understand why I needed clarity? I felt like John Barry kind of dismissed me when he was like, yeah, it's always been like yeah, but I was I thought perhaps it was because you know, doctor Beidenharden he told me he's like when man puts his foot in the river, a river system is so dynamic. Any any water flowing

Cash wrote a song about it. Did he really How high is the water, Papa?

And that's about the nineteen twenty seven flood. Oh dude, that's big. I didn't know.

That big river and that song are my two favorite Johnny Cash, my grandpa, and I'm not even a potomologist.

My grandfather went to Southeast Arkansas when he was He was born in nineteen thirteen. That happened in twenty seven, so he was fourteen and he went down there to help recover folks and really flood victims.

How far did it get? How far west? Today?

They went to Lake Village, which is right there, right on the river. Yeah, he said it was. It was horrible.

Wow.

Well, we are going to talk more about the nineteen twenty seven flood in different ways they did things, but but the.

Uh on a different podcast.

Yeah, like actually on some of the later ones. So we'll save that. So four hundred and fifty miles up, it's below that money, Yeah, yeah, Okay. What is the term for a river whose banks are mobile and shift, meandering and weaving through its floodplain? Alluvial bam flag to an alluvial river? Yeah, an alluvial river its banks are mobile and shift and meanders and weaves through its floodplain.

Josh, did you even listen to this?

I did, Josh, Yeah, Josh. Josh's daughter got married.

My daughter got this weekend.

We had a fantastic time, but man, marrying off a kid isn't a lot of work.

We were tired and we didn't even do anything.

We just celebrated.

Yes, all right, for Josh's oldest daughter getting married, we're giving him one bonus point. Okay, question number four. The current score is two for thal wag Spencer, one for Ryan Flint for a screb, and one for Brent this country Life reeves.

And zero for Josh, zero for Missy.

Okay, the Mississippi and the Amazon rivers are the only two major rivers to not have this damn damn Well needs a little more clarity where where at the mouth? Josh Lambrigg's filmmaker points. So what what doctor kilgorever two L said was that the Mississippi and the Amazon were the only of the big rivers of the world that don't have a damn at their mouth, which is a pretty big deal. And you know what, I didn't want to say this on the podcast because it kind of

Yes, sometimes sometimes careful just stop talking.

Imagine that. Imagine that and imagine four hundred and fifty million of those little boxes.

Are too fast.

Steve Ranella have a great example about He said, it would be like seeing four hundred four zero point five million soccer balls go past you. The soccer ball is about one cubic foot.

I thought that was good.

That would supply to Texas for.

A couple of days, like two days.

Wow.

But the Amazon has twenty million cubic feet for times at high water. Wow. And but what's interesting about the Amazon is that all the other big rivers of the world, like the Nile, Mississippi, the Congo, the Yangees, the Ganges whatever, what's it called yan yank See.

We're representing our major here, yeah.

Bumpers environmental science. Most of those rivers run north and south for the most part. The Amazon runs east and west, or it runs from the west to the east. But but and it runs across the widest part of the South American continent, and so it is just has this huge drainage basin and it's very little is developed around the Amazon. So there's very few maybe no, I don't want to say how many dams, but it's relatively an undamned river. Christ Spielmaker's Amazon, Has you really I would

Yeah.

Yeah. My friend Keith Sutton down in central Arkansas, who is a in Arkansas. He's kind of a legendary hunting fishing rider. He for a time was going down to the Amazon quite a bit and he caught an undiscovered stingray freshwater stingray that no one had ever documented. He was down there fishing one year and caught this stingray and he pulled it up or he's saw it. Maybe he pulled it up to the boat and it got off,

So you may be misrepresenting him.

I mean a little bit, but it's possible. I just want to say that because I've recorded him tell the story before, so you could go back and actually hear it from him on the Bare Hunting Magazine podcast with Keith Sutton. But the next year, he goes back down there to the exact spot he lost that fish, and within like ten minutes catches another one. I'm serious, he did. He went and caught it and it was a two hundred pound fresh water stingray that had never been documented by science.

Him.

I don't think they named it after him, but he was able to get in touch with a fish guy that they believe eve that somebody in the eighteen hundreds had documented it one time, but that's all they had seen, so it was never But it's just like that kind of stuff can still happen on the Amazon River.

It's been crazy.

Yeah, it was. It was I thought it was crazy. So Josh, your score is two.

We don't have too.

One in like, at least at least my extra points were awarded by someone else and not myself.

Like, yeah, Brents, I feel like this is the kind of thing I talked to my kids about.

Okay, question number uh number five, how long did it take the Europeans revisit the Mississippi River after De Soto discovered twenty one hundred and twenty years?

Yes? Nice?

Did y'all like hearing what Mark Twain thought about that? Yeah?

That was really good.

I thought that was interesting and I was reading fat it's wild to think that De Soto saw it and it was one hundred and twenty years.

But isn't that like that's the thing with rivers. We take them for granted. Yeah, you know, you just see herriver and you think it's just a river. You see a mountain, and everybody wants to name it and climate.

Yeah, yeah, it's true. Well, but when Mark Twain put it in the contexts as he said that entire time, there were there were people on the East coast, you know, there were there were Europeans that were about around and about on the East coast, and then they still didn't even know where that river went.

Okay, there was some good stuff in that book. Yeah, Life on the Mississippi, And I sent you I was actually reading that and you're used to that section that when we.

Started and then is it a spoiler if I read that thing that I sent you to the day that I liked, that was in.

The part that I well, you know what I skipped over. I skipped over.

Yeah, read it read, Yeah, my favorite part of that whole.

And it was actually in that same paragraph Mark Twain said, if somebody should discover it creek in the county next to the one that the North Pole is in Europe and America would start fifteen costly expeditions, thither one to explore the creek and the other fourteen to hunt for each other. That made me laugh out loud because that's so true.

And then eighteen eighty three, that's what was going on. That book was written in eighteen eighty three. Yeah, so like there was some genuine exploration going on in this continent, unlike is going on today. You know, they were exploring land like today we're exploring technology.

Yeah.

Yeah, you think about like Elon Musk and these people doing wild stuff going to the moon, making electric cars, making chat GPT, and we're kind of like, wow, the frontier you know this back then it was what's that direction?

We don't really know the actual frontier.

That's not the best analogy, but you guys get it, okay. According to doctor Biden Haarn, the deepest point of the river is how to forty feet? Bam that wagon?

I definitely I did because I like to hear the whole question.

That's not Spenser's fault, No, it's his fault.

Last question, this question.

Don't think at half point.

Don't know? It's all yours. It's all yours. You said it for rules, you know.

Like before this question?

Okay, what year was the Mississippi River Commission formed? This is kind of a boring question.

Is it is?

And I still don't know the eighteen nineteen forty eight and.

That's what I was gonna say, nineteen forty eight too, But I think I think there is.

I don't feel bad if I take it wrong.

Answer it was one hundred years before the year of my birthm mis get I get right?

Who won?

Who won that wagon?

I think I had five estion of how many miles un free flowing water.

That's a great one, which I'm fully expecting Isaac Neil to walk in here with that tattoo.

Yeah, you think about the tattoo suggestion twenty four hundred or a hawk eagle yeah, I had a lot of people. There's there's a lot of hype around that the Mississippi River should have been called the Missouri River because the Missouri River is longer than the Mississippi, and people say things such as the Mississippi's river is not great until the Missouri comes in.

I got a question, okay, I think it said that there was not a dam on the Missouri River for twelve miles.

It said, why.

Is I don't know anything about the Missouri River, so it's compared to the Arkansas, and you don't come very far out of the Mississippi until you get to what's the first one?

Is it Murray?

No?

Down it? Uh uh domas Domus. Yeah.

I don't understand what would make the decisions around not that?

Is there not commerce or commercial on that like there is Arkansas River.

I don't know.

I don't know.

I really don't know. That's a good question.

Are the Arkansas damns navigation wise or are they power?

It's mostly navigation, Yeah, mostly navigation.

I think they go as far as Tulsa. Maybe on the Arkansas River.

Yeah, some rivers it could be there's some. I don't know. I don't even know enough to I'll figure out the answer, because that's a good question. You don't get no point, I get zero. You know, I'm gonna have to say this again. I'm gonna address this again in an actual bear grease podcas cast in a probably a tighter way. But I think naming rivers is really interesting because rivers are named typically from their mouth, the bottom, the bottom, and the way this country was settled by the Europeans

Yeah.

So I mean, in theory, it seems like there's more namesake. This is the Colorado River started in Colorado, but just simply based upon where the people, the direction the people were coming from when they named it. And that's exactly why the Missouri River is called the Missouri River and the not the where's the headwaters of the Missouri in Montana.

Or I'm not even sure I think it was Montana.

Yeah, I think it's Montana, you know, and and so the Mississippi. It was kind of the same way that most of the interaction with that river was down in the lower part of the river with LaSalle and these got you know, LaSalle and the Tante were the first guys to It was a transliteration, meaning that it was a it was a word in a different language that we just kind of were like Mississippi sounds like they're saying it was tough. I struggled with that. It was, yeah,

I've got a question, how confident are you that that I'm.

The pronunciation of that high very high? You like that very high? Okay?

And how how confident were you of cholera low?

What I like to think about these things? What is it? What did it make you think when it was suggested on Bear Grease that maybe one day the Mississippi River won't be called the Mississippi.

And just how our society will be forgotten like the Catahokians or all the others. Yeah, that was that was I was cleaning out a chicken brewer at the time, and that was a thinker.

Yeah, yeah, I mean I can tell you where I was at. I was I was checking.

Wow, where were you.

When we talked about renamingnant.

Well, I mean that's the point. Think about the great civilizations there. There were incredible civilizations. You know, this whole idea we came in into a wilderness is just untrue. These people walked into great civilizations that looked different than European cities. We translated his wilderness and these people had I mean, they they knew what that river was called. And then here we are a couple hundred year i mean, five hundred years later, we're guessing at what they called it.

The ones that survived, Right, And there's yeah.

And then and then this Peter Pitchlin the chalk taw he in this letter, this official it was a letter that.

Was the one that said that we always pronounced everything wrong.

Yeah, and so he was like, heck, they didn't even get the transliteration right. It was this meaning the river without any age, and yeah, you can just imagine how louly translated some of that stuff was, and so yeah, I saw it was an interesting thought.

All the will remain will be our plastic water bottles and dirophones.

Yeah.

Yeah. What what stood out to you most misty about that podcast? Well, what you learned.

My favorite part was actually the very beginning, hearing John Barry read the poem. I thought that was pretty pretty.

Amazing, pretty strong brown god.

And my second favorite part was hearing Hank Berdine his voice described as the voice what a crocodile? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that was pretty good, pretty good description.

Yeah, after the voiceover for Foghorn Leghorn.

That's two.

That's two podcasts I think in a row with with good descriptions, because the other was Davy Crocket where we talked about being like a wildcat and was half out wildcat.

Description and cans AND's has been the half.

My half alligator, half horse.

That's right, my middle son, We're like, that's you, buddy.

Oh yeah. I thought John Barry's intro was cool. That was his favorite poem, and I asked him if he would read it for me, and he read it Bret, what's that to you? What was your favorite part?

I like talking to uh and I still can't remember.

Yeah, doctor was with me when I went down there.

We went it was cool, man, That whole complex is Wow, it's pretty pretty cool to get in there.

And talk to those folks. But to hear he talked about a lot.

Of stuff that I'm sure that that they won't be out there because it's just it meant it was so technical.

Yeah, but it was really the.

Best thing that I wish that people that are listening to this could have been there watching him talk about it, because seeing some visiting with somebody and watching them talk about something that they're very passionate about. And he's been his whole life studying that thing, and to me, he looks like he's just, it's excited.

To talk about it today. How long has he been down there? Years?

Like, yeah, thirty or forty years he's been doing it? Would he seems to be just as excited about it now as he was in But the him talking about that revetment, one of the questions I got right in the challenge that Josh didn't get how cool that was that it scoured out sixty feet below that thing, and then before they could get in there and do something about it, he feel back in forty feet.

Yeah, and it was.

But that's I mean, and that's going on everywhere all the time, and that thing, it's the river is changing. How he talked about it, he talked about it like it was an animal, you know, like it will have life to it, And I guess it does in that way because it's always changing and growing and going. Well, it was really cool just to sit there listened to that guy who who really knows it.

Brian, what stood out to you.

Was it, Burdine? You were in the boat with The very first thing you hear before anything is spoken is the tilt trim. I'm thinking, here's a guy that is hands on, he's immersed in the river. He he's on it while he's talking about it. So I'm thinking this is a big deal to this guy. He was probably born and raised and is on it day in, day out. So I was really entertained by his conversation.

Yeah.

Yeah, he's a cool guy. He's a cool guy. Hey, you gotta tell me, but we're going to end with you telling this is your best near death story on a big river. Ryan be thinking about it, Spence whatsod what stood out to you? Excuse me?

I lit up like a Christmas tree when I heard that word.

He's the farmer that in potomologists. So but now I I when he when he was talking about just the a river's ability to do work, and he talked about slope, and he talked about volume, and you know, I couldn't help but thinking of you know, we've got a creak in our haller, We've got our farm land where the river runs through it, and I just think of floods. You know, I've been at this proper on our properties for shoot a long time now, and you know I've seen some big floods.

I don't know.

I just that's where my mind goes. And then extrapolating that to the Mississippi when he talked, you know, like when you look at old maps and you see how much it's changed, and I don't know what you're going to talk about in the future.

Like a lot of this was me.

I really am interested in this, So I just I was like, oh, I hope Clay has a talks about that. I hope, I hope this is a ten part series. Yeah, yeah, you know I'm all in urd, but I enjoyed that so like just all the scratches. I mean, it was almost like you're going on a Deli tray with the sampler platter, all the little thing and maybe you'll get into him, maybe you're not, but I don't know. It

Yeah, oh yeah, I've never heard that punk rock.

They used to call like the West Coast, Left Coast, so like, I don't know, it's just like it made me chuckle him calling it the fourth Coast be a good T shirt.

Coast, the fourth Coast, Oh hank, oh hank. Yeah that's good, Josh.

I just I'm always fascinated and my family makes fun of me because they're like, oh, dad's doing math again. But I love I love the statistics, just like the twenty four hundred miles without a damn, all the soil that gets moved, all the volume of water. It boggles my mind that I mean, honestly, it makes me more amazed at our creator.

And when I think about this stuff, like.

To design this, and and it makes me you know, I was out on the river this morning and I took a couple of guys that were that were in town for my daughter's wedding, and I took them up to the dam, and and the dams we have here in Arkansas are pretty impressive structures. I mean, they're amazing structures. And then to think about the the Mississippi River and how we've learned to utilize that, it just it puts me in a state of awe a little bit that we've been able to harness a lot of the power

There was a quote where it talked about trying to master it like hubris. What was that? Do you remember that quote?

Well?

John Barry a lot in his book Rising Tide talked about the hubris that it took for man to even think he could tame the river.

Yeah, and we've had some We've got a bridge in our county that has washed out repeatedly and they just keep adding more and more concrete to it. And there's a part of me that rejoices every time that end up on my property because I never learned. But it's just that hubris, you know, and the amount of force and power, and it looks so simple, but they're so deep and there there's so much under the surface in

Yeah, you know, I think, to me, the the what I wanted to communicate and what I'm maybe most interested in is I want people to understand the complexity of a river system. When I was in college, I took a stream ecology class, and I was blown away by the complexity of even just a gravel based stream like here in the Ozarks, Like if you remove this gravel, what it does downstream, and even more so on a big, giant river that drains forty one percent of a continent.

Yeah.

How about him talking about, uh, the topsail the depth of top soil in most places that's compared to the alluvial plain down Yeah.

Yeah.

Are you Are you going to cover the fact that we're like shotgunning all that out in the gulf, like.

I will, that's a whole Yeah, there's some major ecological problems down at the mouth of the Mississippi River. Uh, And it's yeah, I will, but not in detail, honestly. Yeah, just because I'm there's talk about that's. Yeah, it's so complex.

Private podcast for me.

Yeah. Ryan, have you almost died on a big river?

I don't want to say died, but probably done some stupid stuff when I was younger, duck hunting when the river is flooded, too smaller boats, too much current, trying to drive across flooded rock jetties to get to the other side the duck hunt and thinking, you know, as the trucks pushed sideways, you're thinking later, this is a bad It would have kept sliding. I'd been fifteen twenty foot.

Under the white the truck water running across.

Running across the levee, and you're trying to go from drive across that drive across the levee to another point. And it was stupid.

You know, Hey, do you have it. Do you have a specific story or now you don't, Okay, No.

I try to be prettyself.

I told her about that story on one of my podcasts about my brother and I getting hung up on the Arkansas River. In the Arkansas River in a bad storm. You know, we made it out to a sandbar in the middle of the river and pulled to just run, running the boat up on the bank. This this cloud had a big storm had come through and gone and we were still before daylight. We look up and we see stars. We think it's fine, we're good to go. We get in the boat, we go up the river.

Currents going down, but the pushing it so it's going against each other.

Yeah, this was like three foot swells were coming over the front of that john boat. We was a sixteen foot john boat that was fifty two inches wide and it was like a cork floating out there. So we hit the We hit a sand bars as fast as we could go and got off of it and lightning is popping all around, the winds blowing like crazy, and finally it got it stopped.

The lightning stuff stopped.

And it got daylight where we could see, and we killed like one or two ducks, and uh then we got back.

In the boat and scared you to death and got home. Yeah, it was it was tough.

It was, y'all. Ever seen like a canoe that's been pinned when you're faddling, or or wrapped around a tree, Yeah, and you trying to pull it out and you realize how much forces are there.

There's a well, Josh and I saw a boat, an all John boat wrapped around a tree.

But I've seen big, big boats like that on the Arkansas, big commercial, like commercial sized fishing boats that are just wrapped around like nothing.

I know, Misty probably don't want to hear this, but if you remember what two three years ago, there was five of us in my eighteen foot duck boat.

Was one of my children, many of.

And a live well has a big live weel in it that was full of water, full of fish for them to bring home. We kept watching the cell come from the what was it north northeast?

Well?

What threw us off was that it was coming from the east, and we thought thinking that it was already passed us. Gotcha, because of the weather usually in this part of the world comes from west to east. So we were looking back to the west and the clouds were there was no storm, but to the east there was a storm. And I thought it was a storm that was kind of moving from the north to the

And that's the way the river's flowing down to the east. The wind's coming out of the east. So yeah, it was actually didn't start with any rollers. It started with three foot breakers with a loaded boat. And we should have stayed put. We should have stayed Yeah, we should have. Yeah, But once you get halfway back.

We had probably three miles or so to get back home.

And actually took a deep tur in to a bay to get out of the wind that I know probably wasn't three foot deep, and I'm thinking, I hope I don't hit a stuff.

I remember. So while that is going on, guess what flint face looked like? Just messy. Always we're just like you're just getting soaked wet, and I'm kind of looking back at Ryan to see if he looks nervous, and we don't really even talk. I mean, do we just go back to the boat ram And once we get out, I go, hey, Ryan, was that pretty sketchy? And he was like, that's pretty sketchy. That reminded me of the time when rode with Warner Glenn up a big mountain yard.

It really is.

Yeah, milling your own feet, yeah, man, and tomatoes for the neighbor for chickens.

Brought some tomatoes. Check out this country life podcast land Bridge. You selling anything, it's just tell him to hit me up.

I'll sell them something.

I just if you.

Something Josh has that you want.

Ryan's coming up, Man, I appreciate it.

You know.

Legend has it that Robert Redford is jealous of Josh's mustache. That ain't no legend. That's a fact.

This new com Thank you, You're welcome.