![Ep. 140: BEAR GREASE [RENDER] - Dad Class, Squirrel Championship and River Finale - podcast episode cover](https://assets.metacast.app/images/episode/artwork/D0xO0sko)
My name is Clay Neukleman. 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 f h F Gear, American Maid, purpose built hunting and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the place as we explore. Welcome to the Bear Grease Render. This is the late August edition The Bear Grease Render.
The hottest one of the year.
The hottest bear Grease render of the year was it one? Three? Do you know what is on you usual about ursus American? It's the American black bear. Is that it's an animal with a black coat, lots of fat, thick hair all year round. They're not like a mule that has like a thick coat in the winter and then sheds it like they're pretty much hairy the whole year. Temperature doesn't seem to affect bears for real, Like when Guy's hunting
the fall. The best thing that could be Joe on opening day for an Arkansas bear season would it would be there would be a ninety degrees No kidding, no, I mean it's totally backwards from deer hunting.
Well, you know I've got some black hair fat.
I mean, you like the heat too. What's your take? Oh?
My take is is I've been searching for a town named November April. Oh, and if I can move there, I'll be at peace for the remainder of my life because I just think that those two months are the premium months.
Of the year, some l primo months.
Let's just honor this bear for being able to tolerate all the d.
Ah. Well, we've kind of got a skeleton crew here on the render. This week we had we had one guy that was coming was charged by a bear as threw him off. Must have thrown his schedule off. Colby Morehead, owner a bear hunting magazine, on his way here, had a great story. But I guess the bear charge messed up his schedule and now he's not get Yeah, maybe so pa to go and change clothes, didn't I believe.
His schedules messed up for a few hours.
To be fair, if a.
Bear charged me, I'd need more than an afternoon to walk that off.
So but we do have Joe Wilson, the founder of the World Championship Squirrel Cookoff. I told you we were going to have you back on before the event in September, so it's good to have you. Joe's kind of like a one man circus when it comes to podcasts. Joe's the Joe's the l primo podcast guest. I could just be like, welcome to the bear Greasehrender take it Joe and Joe. Yeah, yeah, but we have we have Joe's sidekicks. No, not you guys just met Joe today, but longtime friend
Ben LaGrone, good to see it. Ben, It's good to have you. Ben's been uh, he's been after he's been getting some pictures of some nice deer. And then, uh, my other longtime friend, Jonathan Webster.
What's I'm really just here for the Apple Butter. I was hoping that there might be a second render. I miss an opportunity.
You know what, if I'd have thought about it, I'd have brought a jar out and I would have said, the most valuable guest of the day gets the jar.
Joe gets the jar of we're talking to Apple butter. Yeah, I ain't do anything for Apple butter and that Apple butter man.
So okay. My conversation today is kind of revolving around bears, because yesterday we started baiting bears. We did our inaugural trip into the mountains to bait bears. So I'm thinking about bears, apple butter. Though. Fifteen eighteen years ago, when we bought this land, it's we've lived here almost twenty years. I started buying apple trees, and I'm going to give you an orchard lesson. Inside the lesson you going to learn about a little bit about bears, not much, but
you're gonna learn more about orchards. The best time to start an orchard was five years ago, so you better start it now so that five years from now you'll be happy. When I bought this place, I started buying discount apple trees in like mid summer at Low's leaves. Yeah, yeah, the little crooked ones with like four leaves that are like twelve ninety nine.
The floor model applied to agriculture.
Oh yeah, that's the same way I buy a ribb. I wait till they get that yellow tag on them.
Yeah, half rotten, half priced te Yeah exactly.
Okay, that's mistake number one. If you're going to plant an orchard, you need to go not to your big box stores. You need to go to a local nursery and find the disease resistant and the good species of peach, apple, cherry, whatever you're after that will grow in your region because
Low's doesn't care. So I started planting these trees. Yeah, I started planting these trees, and basically today, seventeen eighteen years later, I have six good apple trees that are probably six inches at the base, I mean like full grown apple trees, and they have produced sporadic yields for all these years. But the life lesson from this, Joe, is that I've got six beautiful trees. I bet I've planted twenty.
Five that black hit them.
Wow, man, weed eaters got them, deer got them, drought got them.
Did you know the history in Arkansas with the apple trees?
Yes, what's that?
I mean this has come back to apple. But the podcast I want here we go.
So like if you're driving through uh Bentonville, we got a street called Moberley and that was home of Moberley apples, right, and so between apple cider, apple vinegar, and apples, Arkansas.
Was the place it was export. Northwest Arkansas was exporting America's apples. Yeah, we were for the time period.
Where Washington gets the credit. Now, that's what Arkansas was for a few decades, multiple decades, and then a blight come through. It's the same black that took out the chickapin the chick bent oak and wiped out these apples, and so our farmers had to come up with a new idea. And just so happens, they that feathers on. We started poultry directly, chicken farm. Yeah, you know.
So the apples used to be big here, export and apples all over. So there is an apple blight and so those traditional like mainstream strains, apples die, So you need to get like I think there's one called Arkansas Black that's real good. But these are big box store apple trees that have survived. They just produced a real good crop every couple of years. But this year they
produced a good crop. But the whole point of the story, Jonathan, you keep distracting was I planted those trees for baar bait. That's why I planted them. I mean that that's one hundred percent. While I planted them, I wanted good, cheap bear bait. But today my family makes apple butter off of those trees. It's secondary use. It's kind of like, not best use, but good enough.
How many sacks of apples did you carry off in the woods?
I didn't use very many other bears. It was a great idea back in the day. But uh no, I only yesterday, I only took about probably thirty forty pounds of apples that were on the ground once.
The prime apple or the prime bear bait. I mean, what would you is it? Little debby treats, dy old donuts.
Anything that will make a human fat and unhealthy, a bear will love. I'm getting my bait from a commercial bar bait distributor. There's there's commercial several big commercial bar bait distributors that send stuff all over the country. There are companies that deal with the waste by product big how. I don't know where it comes from, but there's a lot of really great food that goes to waste and
goes to animal feed and bare bait. So like yesterday we were buying granola stuff with candies and gummies and marshmallows and circus peanuts and stuff like that. But we also use corn and dog food. I mean, I man, I've baited. Bears are just about everything. They like bread, doughnuts, all that stuff.
Back in two thousand and nine, I was working at a local restaurant and you called me up and asked about getting into the grease trap and getting the leftover fried grease. And I think we did that happen that you were going to bring this up worked, I guess, I mean you came and got it.
Oh yeah, grease grease is really good.
Got on the render. He hadn't forgot.
That's that the fourteen years ago. The solid contribution of five pounds of grease is.
A spring bear taste here than a fall bear.
I have never been able to tell the difference, really because I have not because you know, like for our squirrels, for the squirrel cookoff, a spring squirrel is twice the squirrel as a fall Really.
Well, that's because when squirrels are climbing up the trees and they're eating that old bitter you know, a whole off of the hickory nuts or the walnuts or gone or whatever, and so that bitter taste actually transfers into the meat.
So I now, is that in the spring the fall?
That's in the fall. Okay, So in the spring, the squirrels eating berries and sweet you know, sweet grains, and all of this nice good food that translates right in. I mean, it's no different than a finished beef cow. Yeah, compared to a grass joe.
I don't think my palette is delicate enough to be able to tell the difference. But they do say, they do say that for sure, in the spring, a bear is going to be more lean than a fall bear, and so people would like a fall bear would be. And I don't like using this term because I don't think.
The greasy deal.
Yeah, I mean, bear's not any more greasy than a ribbi beef steak or Yeah, you take my bear meat that I grind that we make burgers out of meat loaf, every spaghetti tacos in brown hit next to a plate a deal of eighty twenty beef, and you're gonna have way more fat in that eighty twenty beef than you are in my bear meat.
That bear you got in Alaska this year we were there, we got a bear week before you. Yep, we got two bears, and neither of them had any fat on them. I mean, those bears. I think if they would have stayed in their holes for a couple more days, they probably wouldn't have made it, but you're the favorite. Yeah, I mean these were the scrawniest, skinny, no fat bears.
Huh.
They were low fat, low fat. Yeah, they were probably better for you than that greasy one that you got. But yeah, I've always thought that bears is not greasy. I don't know where that come from.
Yeah, yeah, well, I mean there's good reason to say that, because they do in the fall, can have a huge amount of fat on them. But it's not in the meat. It's not marbled like beef yeat, and if it was, it would be even better than it is. I mean, like marbling and beef is what, yeah is what your Yeah? Yeah, and wild game just doesn't marble quite like that. But but yeah, they.
Got to handle on like those Kobe cows where they go out and you know, massage them and play music.
That's high quality there.
That's what we call our black squirrels. Oh yeah, Primo, they're the angus of the squirrel world.
You know, if I should leave some like classic music playing at my bare bait, you think it would make you.
Get Primo marbles?
Well, Joe, well, before we before we get into Joe, before Joe takes over the podcast, I'm sorry no, No, this is good. It's good. Ben. You have a Ben has a Dad Class.
And I heard about it on a previous show Austin.
I think it's pretty good. Tell us what's what's the dad class?
Okay?
This is this is like my magnum opus. I mean, I mean it really is. So for some context, I'm an influencer and like the father hood space, and I've had the privilege to work with a lot of men, do a lot of teaching, mentoring inside men's ministry and other contexts. In January, I went on like a pilgrimage basically to answer two questions, what specifically makes a great
father and how do I become one? And through that and I talked, I've have survey data and talked to people probably like one hundred and thirty dads, and through that developed a something called the Framework for Fatherhood. And it's like a document that just captures succinctly what makes a good dad. And it's a tool that you can think about your strengths as a man and a tool that you can think about areas to improve. And from
that I developed like a curriculum. It's an online course, it's self paced, and.
This is what you guys do with your business. Yeah, so you as you make on line courses for families, and so this fits right in this lineage of what yard exactly like.
We hope someday that it's an online learning hub for learning how to build an awesome family. And so the dad Class that's what it's called, and you can read about it at dad class dot net, Pretty class dot net.
I'm surprised elms that.
Yeah, well he's making a bid.
That's actually true. That's actually true. I can't afford that.
So it's a self paced program that you can go through, but we have I know, guys that are going through it together, like as friends. You could go through it as a men's group at your church or something. And it's not necessarily Christian base, but there is a really in depth Bible study companion that goes along with it.
If you didn't.
But anyway, there's four modules.
The first one is about manhood, and Joe and I were talking talking about earlier about a simple question like what really makes a man and diving into that, and so in that module, we look at that question, and we look at the influences your father had on you, You look at all the things that influence you as
a man. We talk about marriage in that module. The second module we dive into the framework for fatherhood and that's broken into fatherhoods in four big overarching skills or competencies, Leadership, relationships, shepherding, and legacy.
And that module is awesome. It is awesome.
It's been life changing for me to develop, and it's been life changing for guys that are going through it. And then the third module is called Fathering over Time, and it's where I take a lot of my knowledge of childhood development from my early education days. I used to work in public schools and so we look at the stages of child development and talk about how fathering shifts and changes as your kids age all the way up into young adult. And then the fourth module is
something called brand New Dad boot Camp. So the whole course any dad of any age, there's there's there's a one guy in the taking the course. He's a grandfather, So guys of any age can take it. But that's a special module for brand new dads. It's like a crash course, a survival guy. If you are a new dad and you know nothing, and and I'm really excited, so we just launched it a couple of weeks ago and you can learn about it.
So people are already taking the class.
Yeah, all over the nation, and it's mostly guys that have taken My wife's my wife and I was childbirth class and stuff. But that that's one of the biggest requests that I've got. It was it was it was, Hey, I really want to be the best dad I can be? Do you have any resources from me? I get that question all the time. And then number two, where can I find support? So actually, if you when you buy the class, you get on this online private group that I moderate, and you can get on there.
And ask questions.
In the future, we hope to have like special live sessions and stuff like that.
That's cool, man. I just just this week I sent Ben a screen clip from a private message somebody had sent to me a Bear Grease Render listener who said, Clay, I wish I wish you had more stuff about your family and how you raise your family, and and he was very he was a young father, interested in fatherhood. And I clipped it and sent it to you. Yeah, and that's that's what we're looking for. People are interested in at that's the point I'm interested. Yeah, you know, Joe,
you said on your podcast you ask everybody. One of the questions is what does it mean to be a man?
We've asked one hundred men what it means to be a man, and and traditionally you have about four responses. One is is do what you say, and it's hard work, and it's being a member of the community, and a lot of times friendship, you know, being a good friend, being a good father, all of that comes in. We also asked the question did your dad ever tell you
he loved you? And for people I'm about fifty years old, you know, and for people my age and older, the answers almost always know, really almost always no.
Man, that is shocking, But for.
Fifty years and younger, the answer is almost always yes. And so there was something that happened maybe in the eighties, I don't know that changed this now. Unless that guy that we asked a question to went through some major physical or mental abuse, the response is he didn't have to tell me. I knew. And so that's across the board. You'll hear that. The reason why I'm interested in your class is I have a seventeen year old daughter and
an eight year old son. We kind of gap them apart a little bit.
One on the way with this mash.
Trust me, the doctor said that can't happen.
The deal is, I do.
I believe in miracles, But the deal is to me is I had a phenomenal relationship with my daughter until she was probably twelve and a half going on thirteen. This little girl caught every perch with me. We deer hunted, she cleaned deer with me. She was my shotgun rider. We ate donuts. Every time we could eat donuts, we hit the park. And then the dear Lord decided he was going to turn her into a woman, and things kind of changed, and it it's been a struggle. Now.
My goal right now is I'm playing kind of like Batman. I live in a cave and if she ever needs me, she can shine that light and I'll come and run in and fix whatever it is as it needs to be fixed. But I'm playing the game right now where space keeps her from hating me. You know, I mean, you want to talk about getting your heart broken, and I guarantee you're gonna have a ton of your listeners say that that teenage year is evil. I mean it, It changes, and I was that I was that kid.
I remember getting angry whenever as a teenager. I mean, we're not in rut, We're well maybe we were.
But we were at that.
Point to where, you know, we're trying to prove who we are and we're a man we can handle her, or you're a girl and a woman. It's a tough, tough time, brother, and I'm sure you'll have a lot of men if they open up to you, they'll tell you that a little girl can break a tough guy's heart pretty dang easy. And it sucks. It's a bad, bad deal. But being older, I've watched men go through this,
and I know what the end game is. Those little girls are going to come back and they're going to find out that dad was just trying to protect them.
Would he say, you know, when you brought up the deal about older the older generation not telling their kids they loved him, and then now it would be unusual for any any group of people probably to not tell their kids they loved them. And my question was, do you think that the kids that are being told they're loved really feel loved? You know? And I don't know
the answer. It's not really a trick question. But the idea is that if you say something, well, because you said that, a lot of the guys that dad never told them they loved them, they knew they were loved because of the action. And now there's probably just as many guys that would say, man, my dad was a warlord, you know, and like at some level he loved me, but he was kind of a yeah. I mean, there's probably different versions of it.
I think that that's the part that made us know that they loved us, is because they gave us rules and restrictions and guidance that if they didn't love us, why would they tell us that? And so you know, for a dad to enforce it and all of a sudden you're wrong.
Well it cars. What is love is love letting your kid do whatever they want all the time and giving them everything they want, or is love, you know, discipline them in the right time and giving them correction and putting boundaries on their life and not letting them do this, and that.
It's the highlight of our life to have our children. It's our legacy. Is what we leave behind in the Clay's deal, taking bear out and dropping them off in the woods, letting them kill a bear. I couldn't get away with that deal at my house, right, But well, I sure woo.
But would I want to? Absolutely?
What Clay has shared with the listeners about how he's raising his family is very very interesting to me. But I'm old school, and so to a lot of people. You know, they don't want our kids playing out I live in the country. They don't want our kids playing out there because the Boogeyman's gonna come kidnap them. There ain't no saber tooth tiger that's gonna take my kid. I'm that kid who would walk just like Brett Reeves.
You know, he's talked on his show, This Current One to where he would walk on forever and we knew what time dinner was, we had to get home to it. We'd leave with a pocket full of bullets or a couple of hooks, and nothing bad.
You know what happened.
Everything was good, even the bad times were good. And I kind of feel like we're missing a huge opportunity to our kids by not doing what you're doing. Clay, in my opinion, that's often wrong.
Well, you know the other thing that you wouldn't you wouldn't see about the freedom that I do give my kids or it's just not as it's just not something we just talk about all the time. Is I've placed a lot of really strong boundaries on their life too. The reason I can trust Baron Neukom to go in the woods for three days by himself while he's fifteen with a bow and all this and just trust him to be confident enough is that his whole life.
I have been there.
I've been there number one. But I've but I have tested him. I mean I've been I've been like, Okay, here's the rules. The playing field is really huge, but don't go outside the boundaries. And I'm not contradicting like letting free range kids. I mean my kids have kind of been free range, but inside of a controlled environment. And he's proven to obey the rules and do what's right, make sound judgment.
And you know, I had to go cart one time for fifteen minutes.
That's the beginning a story, for sure. Story.
I watched my dad in the summer sun put together this go cart, and I believe it had a husk of army chainsaw motor right, and he worked hard, wrenching and bleeding and stuff putting this still together, and he said, son, this is your go cart. Don't touch the highway with it. And I got on the gold cart and I drove all the way down the road and I turned around, but them outside tires touched this thing that he considered the highway. I come back. He said, what'd you think?
That's awesome? You know that's a cool deal. Get off, and he took it all apart and I never seen it again.
Wow, because you broke the rules.
Broke the rules.
Wow, I'd tell you that's a good dad, and some boundaries.
I mean so. And you know that was at a young age, that's nine, ten years old, and I understood at that point what the man said was what the man meant. And if I broke it, I paid the consequences, you know.
The dad.
If Gary Nucomb were here, the believer himself, i'd tell this story. The most intense moments of my life would be when I was let's say I was eight or nine years old driving the truck on dirt roads. He'd let us drive. He was very serious dad. I don't know why. Maybe he had kids when he was in school that got killed in car wrecks and he was very concerned about us being good drivers and safe drivers. I mean like he coached us about that so much.
So he let us drive on dirt roads and he'd be in the passenger seat and we'd be controlling the truck, you know, at some point after proving competency, and he would say, would be deer hunting, looking for deer signed he'd see a deer track on the road, or something would be in he'd say stop. And I remember just kind of like coming to a long stop.
That's when the state troopers get mad at you.
Right, yeah. And he would be like, I said stop the car. When I say stop, I mean stop. When I say turn, I mean turn. And I mean we learned real quick. You did exactly what he said, even if you didn't understand it. If he said stop, you stopped. Except Wills didn't squeak on dirt roads.
So for the dad expert, I think that's where I've dropped the ball. I think that just like training bad comparison, But just like training a dog, you give them an inch, they're gonna take a mile, right. And I have never been real good at drawing that line. Is drawing that line important in your class?
Absolutely? And First of all, I wouldn't say I'm the expert. I just say I'm a learner. And there's no perfect dads. You know, actually, Mom, Ben, we know you're perfect. What makes a great dad is somebody who's able to learn and reflect and make changes, even small changes. I think that's what makes a good dad become a great dad, because the world's full of good dads. I mean, honestly, I think ninety percent of the guys are good dads
and love kids, doing the best. But when you think about sitting down, reflecting and making a practical change in your life, that's hard. It's hard work, and that's what this course we try to do. But we absolutely talk about boundaries and we talk about finding balance. So like some guys they might struggle with being way too harsh, way too strict. They just they can't build relationship for nothing,
and that's gonna bite you in the end. And then you got other guys that struggle to set those boundaries and be consistent. So being a great dad's being aware, Okay, what's my natural tendency and trying to identify how to practically change that. That's what I'd say to that We've all.
Got it in that awareness of yourself.
Yep.
And yeah, all of us have a tendency to either be too loose or too strong. Ye you go to one one side of the other and just being aware and knowing that probably somewhere in the middle.
And I'm having you on our show. I would love to because I I think you'd be perfect on our show because our show is dominated by men listeners and the majority of them being a father, and and it will play right in with what our goal is. One you're a younger guy, and one of the values that we've tried to put on our show this season is to prove to the public that the younger generation is absolutely as strong as the older generation. Y'all just do stuff a little different. And because that's.
Hey telling the name of your podcast, cooking.
Up a story with Aaron and Joe's we drop a new one every Thursday and on all the all the things you can listen to them on and and we're a lot different than Clay's show. We are very open to listening to all.
Kinds of things.
But if you're a truck driver and you need three hours down the highway, tune in because it's a three hour show. But man, you fit in perfect to that, and and it's it's it's a characteristic because I work in construction industry and so I depend on young men to build America right. And one of the things that we deal with is that older guys say, young guys don't know how to work. Here's what I know. I
know young guys. We've got to depend on them because they're going to fight for our freedom in this country and and and protect anybody that needs protecting. So we better respect them enough and treat them solid. But your dad and your grandpa and everybody. It's it's built into us to think that the next generation has done lost it right?
Does not every generation feel every generation And so when you hear it, you just got to understood understand that we heard it and they heard it.
And so it's just one of those deals. And technology plays a lot into it because y'all can do stuff faster than we could. I'm pretty good at that Google. But we think that because we don't see you breaking your back, that you ain't doing nothing, and so they call it lazy. You've heard it, right, and it's not
the truth. It really ain't like it's just one of those deals to where we need a better bridge between the younger generation and until we get it, it don't be like every other generation, you know.
So mm hmmm, yeah, you coming on stuff playing on it that's stuck. Yeah, man, I'll be listening in.
So we got a couple to listen to.
Yeah, I do shoot, man, Joe really does have a really interesting podcast. They do good.
They do a good thing with the cube on Bear Grease.
If I gave you a free squirrel? Is that worth another call you?
You've landed in a good place here, sad class, doesn't it?
Right on? That's awesome class.
See a little something over there, that's a that's a sharp looking thing with your signature on what you going there?
Oh? This is uh did you hear us talking about the son last I heard it?
I heard?
So this is this is the this is the acron grunt call. And they it's a it's made by Phelps. Phelps is a it's a meat eater company. Jason Phelps. Me and Jason Phelps worked for the same people. We're co workers. And we were in Mexico talking about deer calls and I said, man, I want a deer call.
That's an inhale exhale grunt bleat deer call. And I'm telling the call master this and I don't think much about it, but I tell him some specifics that I wanted about it, and he's like, okay, okay, and then he makes this call and turns out it's there's nothing like it. There's not another inhale exhale grunt call in the market. I didn't realize that he had to overcome some real, uh engineering challenges to make a call that
would do that. I thought I was asking him to do something that I just hadn't found yet, you know, in a call. But now these what I forgot to mention on the last couple of podcasts is that these are going to be for sale sometime around the first of September, so close to when this podcast comes out. But uh, yeah, for real, it's it's not it's not a gimmick. This is like a legit, really good call an. Yes,
it's the acron Grunner. It's the acron Grunner because as as you all know, uh, when when the acrons fall in the early part of the season, that's when you can kill deer. So the acron the acron is the chicken nugget of the eastern deciduous forest. It's the pinnacle, pinnacle of the deer hunter, bear squirrel hunter's year. And it's the acron grunner. It's the deer hunter's call. It's uh. When you see the acrons fall, that's when you need
to be blowing that call either way, sucker blow. That's amazing, that's pretty amazing. It made a white oak.
Why were you intent on having in hell excel.
Just so you didn't have to carry two calls? You typically had a grunt call and a bleak call that you had to carry and uh and in the early season the ring you wouldn't want to do a buck if you saw some doze that you're interested in shooting a buck. Grunt is not necessarily going to get them to come into you. A dough blea would, so you need the dope blea. A lot of guys use the cans,
which are really good. Yeah, that primost can. That that call kind of revolutionized the deer call world with its simplicity. But this call makes a more in my opinion, a more robust, louder or soft. You have more control with this than that can, and and and it's and you don't have to keep up with a can.
You know, I'd never use anything but the can. I didn't even think about.
Yeah, that's all you can.
I always start like a soup can with dried corn.
In it, shake it around.
Yeah.
I just think man if I had a soup can with some dried corn, I just rattled this old deal and the deer would come a running.
Work in Texas.
Yeah, you can put your name on that and probably sell a whole heap of them too, limited edition.
Yeah, Squirrel cookoff Man September twenty third.
September twenty third, in Springdale, Arkansas.
I saw that you move locations.
Oh okay, well yeah, it's in my neighborhood.
Yeah. So you know, Arkansas Game and Fish put a pile of money into putting that place in Springdale.
It's beautiful, it's a.
Beautiful facility, and they're just not getting the traffic they need, and so they needed a circus act like myself health to come out to that deal and show people where it's at. And so on September twenty third, starting about nine o'clock in the morning, the teams will be doing what they do. And let me tell you We've got forty well qualified teams based off of the last time I was on Bear Grease. We brought in a lot of people that had never even heard of the squirrel cols.
Really.
Yeah, We've got a fellow coming from Kentucky that he claims he's number one fan of yours. He's bringing his Kentucky squirrels down, maybe in like an oak barrel or something, and he's he's going to bring his Kentucky squirrels in. We've got a team signed up from Massachusetts. We've got a team coming from Washington State. So when we claim we're a world championship, if those people in France or China or whatever want to come over and partake, they're
more than welcome to you. But we're going to crown the next world championship or a champion on September twenty third. And this is big. It's gonna be big. We're doing squirrel cleaning competition. We're doing uh.
Hey, can in the squirrel I've been meaning to ask you this. Can you bring your own implements for skinning?
Yeah? You can't. What was the crazy thing that you said?
Snippers? Oh? Yeah, snippers are good. Snippers are good now.
But the problem is, Clay, is these squirrels have been in the freezer for a month and a half.
You don't think that matters, not in the least. But I will don't. I don't want to make any big claims, but I can skin squirrel fast.
I know you can't. I know you can't.
But and the reason I know that it doesn't matter if they're frozen is a lot of times in the winter, come in late, come in late, and that squirrel's been you know, it's probably forty degrees outside, so you're not worried about the squirrel, and he's been in your pouch since nine o'clock that morning, and you skin him at six o'clock in the evening and he's hard as a rock.
It's are you not? You're not playing that game on a fox squirrel.
Oh you can do it just the same. I'm not saying it's it's easier with a warm one, no doubt, No, a warm one. I mean you can just you can. You can claim quick.
We Clifton Jackson who works for Arkansas Game and Fish. He has the Jackson squirrel rifle. It's named after him. Uh, he's the reigning champion.
How fast? Does he do it fast? Okay?
Well, the reason why we don't have to stop watch what we it's it's you against somebody else.
Oh really, you lose, You're gone, Hey man, you ought to start doing the stop. Actually, do you.
Think Guinness would put us inside.
Of a blunder the sun? Why not?
You'll have your own.
But then you can compare. You could you could actually crown a world champion, like a like a.
World record a goal for somebody.
I mean, and it would they would need to be squirrels of similar size and temperature.
I'm thinking you could absolutely get Guinness out there.
Now. Here's what's gonna happen though, and I'll go ahead and cut the mule off at the game, is that when I bring my clippers up there and beat everybody, they're gonna be like, oh he was using clippers. You know, you gotta say it's it's fully legal.
Right now on the Bear Grease podcasts, you know, one of the most successful podcasts you can listen to. So, I mean, if I was gonna get it out, here's the joint to do it. You can use your clippers if you want to use your clippers. Okay, that being said, this ain't no walk in the park, Clay Nukele. This is a bona fide. I mean, have you ever been
to a drag race? It's the same thing with a squirrel. Okay, okay, Not only do we have that, we have the world's it's always been the world's hottest wing eating competition, squirrel wing eating competition. We're gonna up that this year and we're going whole squirrel.
What do you mean you gotta eat the whole squirrel.
We're gonna do a single whole fried squirrel with lava poured all over the top of it. I love it and whoever can eat it, and I don't need anybody choking or do anything stupid like that. But we're going to take away points if you let a little bit of protein on the bone, you know. So we're going to have that event. We also were debuting a white Tail movie at the game and fish Yeah, yeah, yeah that.
A bunch of people have spoken in. Yeah. We're having a youth bb gun competition in the morning where they'll be shooting at squirrel targets. There's all kinds of stuff to do. The only thing I'll say is our parking is really lacking so you may have to find a place and skip down the road a little bit.
But kind of it's kind of out there. It's kind of an unusual spot.
And an unusual spot hard to get to that. I mean, it's like off the inn.
But yeah, it's a The goal, the goal behind it this year is to really promote that facility and show people because it's an upland facility, they're trying to put habits at end, really build back the prairie, get the quell population going. And you know that's how nature is is. If you try to rebuild that Upland bird, everything else is going to be more successful along the way. Game official has been spectacular.
The Brent, So, Brent Reeves is going to be a judge.
He's been training.
Oh, Brent trains year round.
He'll pull out that case pocket knife and try to.
Yeah. Yeah, So so Brent's gonna be there, and and I'm gonna be there. I'm not I'm not I'm not like making I'm not like doing anything. Yeah, but I will. I'm planning to be there. Joe, Okay, well we expect you to be there. Yes, I want to be there. I want you to be there too.
Yeah, I mean your little documentary you made, was it one thousand dollars squirrel? Hundred dollars square, one hundred dollars squirrel? Y'all seen it? He pulled a documentary when they were out on them mules riding around And what was the premise of that deal.
Well, we were eating. We killed two squirrels in the morning, a hunting and my buddy said, that's one hundred dollars squirrel. It costs us two hundred dollars to drive out here. And uh shot, as you know, shot two boxes of shells and killed two squirrels.
And that's kind of the moral of the whole squirrel cookoff, as you're taking these squirrels that are the smallest of game and you're turning them into a premium meal. And so if you can do it with squirrel, you can thank sure to do it with a bear. There ain't no doubt you could do it with an elk. And and just enjoy enjoy the gifts that we have. So yeah, I'm looking forward to seeing everybody out there.
I'm gonna be there. That's that's in my neighborhood too, I'll be there.
That's a lot of.
Fun facility hosts so much like educational stuff, to the to the post. My wife is going there tomorrow. They're hosting a charcooterie board building class. My wife's gonna learn how to do it. No carpentry stuff. It's it's amazing you could find fishing stuff. The Arkansas Game and Fish has done a really great child.
I think most Game and Fish organizations are suffering on trying to get people back in to hunting and fishing. And so they got it. They got to depend on photography, and they've got to depend on the culinary side, because if you can get someone through their stomach, you can, dang sure that's a pretty quick trip right to their brain, right and teach them the value of what.
Hey, I got it, I got it. If we're talking about game fish, Austin Booth the new director of the Game and Fish. He's been there for about two years now. I mean, I didn't know the guy before he became the director. After the after he became a Director's when I met him. It's not like we're longtime friends. But he man, he's he's a heck of a guy. Well he's a heck of a leader. It takes youth right. He man his uh, his leadership skills with the department.
I mean he's grabbed that thing by the horns, the Arkansas Game and Fish and has has doing some incredible stuff.
They they've got a big piece of property they got to worry about, which is the whole state. And in that there's a whole bunch of smiles that can be developed in this state if people just go out and take some of this free entertainment. And uh, it's available in every state. I mean, you're going up to Alaska here before too long. If you were ever bored in Alaska, there ain't no hope for you. That ain't no hope for you.
Man, except the winter time when it doesn't get daylight. That's the only time. Yeah, all sorts of stuff.
There's things to do.
Mm hmm. So the bear grease render on the Burgers was the introduction. Yeah, welcome to the bear grease Render. Now we're going to talk about last week's episode of the Mississippi. This is the fourth episode in the Mississippi series. Man, I had some people that were like, Man, I wish you'd do four more.
I want to hear about the coastal erosion and the nitrogen bloom. I want you said, you skipped right over it, just said I'm not gonna well, but I was hoping.
There's so much. And then I was talking to my dad, Gary Biliver Nukam my biggest fan, and he's like, Clay, I'm tired of Missippi River stuff. No, no, it's he was like, he said, it's interesting. But I you know, I.
Like that about Bear Grease. I mean, like I'm probably like a part of the atypical crowd for Bear Grease, but I found this series fascinating. Really, Oh yeah, absolutely, And I think he really brought like to the forefront of my understanding why the Mississippi River is important, how it impacts like the country as a whole. Like I really, I have enjoyed every episode.
What would you have known about the river before this?
I knew it was, well, you know what's funny. I was about said, I knew it was the longest river in America, but actually that's the Missouri.
River, right.
Yeah, yeah, I didn't know much, I guess. I mean, I know, I drove over it and it doesn't look very pretty. But that was one of the things that I really loved about the series, and Specifically, this episode was talking about the health of the river because you do have this impression when you drive over it, Like the areas I drive over would be near Memphis, right,
it's a I mean everywhere around it. It just kind of looks muddy and the banks don't look that great, and it just kind of you get a bad impression.
And see, that is when you talk about natural systems and you talk about beauty. If an alien came from another planet and stepped in.
They always go to the desert.
Yeah, yeah, good point, Joe. Yeah, like what would they perceive as beauty, Like what what would you know? Would they look at the rocky mountains and say that's beautiful, or would they look at this muddy, dark river system and say it was beautiful? To me, a natural system that is functioning like it was before humans got too
involved is beautiful. Yeah, you know. So, I mean like when you cross over the Mississippi River on a bridge and look and see this big flat water that looks like it's still, but it's actually screaming down towards the
Gulf of Mexico. That is equivalent in terms of natural systems that impact the landscape to an Appalachian Mountain Range, a rocky mountain range, the Ozarks, even on a smaller scale, I mean, and just to appreciate it, is like that is a dynamic, wild, ancient, hard to control, dominating piece of a geologic feature of the Earth. That is like, we'll be here longer than we will be here when we're along gone, that river will be here.
I'm like, I'm like you man. When he talked about the health of the river. Yeah, I think we get so shocked because when we open up our game and Fish book and it talks about, well, you should probably want eat fish like twice a month or whatever, lead mercury all of this, and we think about the runoff
that's going inside of it. For him to state that the nitrogen and the things that were actually we're not bad for that part of the river, they're bad for the ocean right for the golf to hear the fishing store to understand that a flathead isn't its valuable, Yeah, it's a blue cat. I think a lot of our listeners who aren't from someplace that borders the river would find that eating buffalo, if they even know what a buffalo is. Buffalo ribs are real good, and it's kind
of just like a southern delicacy. Mm hmmm. They also they're kind of like a drum, you know, a buffalo is.
It's a big, scally rough fish. I mean, you wouldn't think people be eating.
But they're they're good. It was. It was an excellent series. I learned a lot about the river. The two hundred feet of top soil.
Yeble, because how much.
Top soil do we have here? Inch?
Yeah, yeah, pretty rough, Yeah, you know the top That's a good place to insert a a a dendum when you talk about I kind of gave some If you actually listened to what exactly I said about top soil, it would be a little bit contradictory because top people use top soil in different ways. A soil scientist would not say that the topsoil layer of the alluvial floodplain of the Mississippi was two hundred feet.
Deep because it's not on the top.
Well, no, because the top soil technically would just be like the surface that was impacted by organic matter. And probably some of the deepest top soils in the world are like forty to fifty feet deep. But the alluvial deposit made by the river over the last gazillion years in places is three hundred and fifty feet deep. But
it's not all top soil. It actually would be like if you dug down one hundred and fifty foot and brought that soil up to the surface, it would be of a different constituency than the soil right on.
The what's our guy from Mississippi.
Hank Burdon See? I let him say what he said because I knew what he was thinking. He said, the average soil depth top sol depth the Mississippi River Lousville Floodplain is like one hundred and eighty feet deep.
If Hank doesn't get like a TV show to where he can have thirty minutes of conversation across the globe, we're missing out as a world.
Hank, Hank. I love Hank Burdon. He is He's everything that you feel like he is.
I watched him on a YouTube video singing a song about a hot Tomolly, have you seen nothing?
No, don't surprise me at all?
Yeah, variety, And I thought, you know, Hank needs a whole album.
Yeah you know who else?
You know who else was really I mean quite capturing, was mister Bill. I mean, yeah, Bill lancash, Next time Meat Eater does another campfire stories, you guys need to include his his story about getting tossed out of his boat. I mean, that was a great story.
Man, Bill, Bill Lancaster, this is behind the scenes burgery stuff. He well, move back up. The hardest part of my job is getting the right people to talk to you. Some of the right people want to talk to you, like Joe Wilson and Hank Burdine like they're ready to talk. Sometimes the right people don't want to talk to you. Bill was he was I could tell he well, not
that I could tell. He told me like he wasn't so sure that he should talk to me, just because it's like Bill is, he didn't listen to podcasts.
He's been doing all right without you for seventy years exactly. You know.
It's like he's not doing this for show. He's not doing this to show off what he does. He literally fishes almost every day, has for the last since nineteen eighty four, and fish before that a lot from nineteen sixty nine, but professionally for a living every week of the year since nineteen eighty four. Is he a one man showing up? He doesn't. He doesn't take anybody with him.
Yeah.
You know a lot of shrimp people, shrimp boat captains were like that. They were just one guy on a shrimp boat. And you that's like the life of a boxer. You're the one who determines if you're winning or losing. Yeah, And that's what I got out of him. His work ethics unbelievable.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, and then uh two he had two stories about finding dead bodies in the river. You did second one. I mean it was just you know one. You heard them all.
How about the comparison to Tracy Lawrence.
Did you see the picture of it?
I don't think I may. Does he look like Tracy Lawrence?
That's what I immediately thought. What I like?
Is this the thin, youthful Tracy Lawrence or the chubby, the young, a young, thin Tracy Lawrence with a mustache and the and the hair. Paint me a Birmingham, a Birmingham Tracy Lawrence or.
After well, I don't know, I don't know when he was in Birmingham.
Oh, it's his song you Paint Me a Birmingham.
Shoot, I don't even remember that one, young Tracy Lawrence. It's a compliment to mister Bill handsome handsome fella. So, mister Bell, if you're listening that you're a handsome man. Bill Bill Bill for rell.
A podcast A father.
Yeah, No, he was one of my He was so fun to talk to. And uh, you know, somebody that's dedicated that much of their life to anything is going to be good at it. You know, you ever fish the river the Mississippi, I never have never had. We fished.
We fished the Mississippi three or four times. And just like they were talking for what catfish, things with things with lips, I can tell you. One night we set up trot lines by a coal dog somewhere by Rosedale, Mississippi, or a grain dog, I guess, you know. And there was a light and there was some grain floating on the water and we could see things popping and above and son, this is where we're going to do it. So we set out a hundred hook line. We went out, fished,
come back, pulled this line. We maybe had three or four three or four hooks without a fish on there, but every hook had a fish. And let me tell you what they were. They were about sixteen inch gar. Yeah, it was miserable because there was just a garfish on every hook. But we've caught some big fish. Man sixty seventy pound blue cats out that.
It's amazing.
Man.
My wife heard that and she was like, we have to go. We need to find somebody to take us.
Your wife listens Tosh.
And she likes to fish.
We should have had her on the podcast.
So she so Kolby, who was supposed to come today. He he went noodling and got a flathead catfish. He gave us some of that and my wife cooked it up and she was like, I just want access to this. I was like, we can go find.
Some cat I like it when a lady gets so dead set on meat that she's like ruthless.
That's my kind of woman.
Well, she's going for it for catfish.
Sometimes I see that in people's eyes. I'm like, this woman would break the law for a cat.
Austin that my wife had never known how to cook venison, and once she started figuring out her own stick and what she wanted to do, she's like, get your butt in the woods. You know, it just totally changed the whole you know, I go hunting this weekend, It's like the wood.
What are you at home.
That's my excuse to get to go to Alaska every year. My wife likes eating that halibit, So I ain't going to Alaska for myself. Bullys is servant leaver lead right here trying to U beat this poor economy. You know, you provide for your family. Yeah, gotta go lass than number three.
Uh, Claire, I have a I have like a slightly anecdotal story about experience with the Mississippi. So I I'm into bicycling, right, and I do two bicycle touring, and so last year I actually went on a bicycle tour from Kansas City to Saint Louis and half of that when I met Booneville was along the Missouri River.
Met Boonville. Boonville, Yeah where Missouri. Okay, boon Missouri, and you go from. I bet every state has a booth east of the Mississippi and touches the Mississippi River has a boon Yeah, we have a Boonville in Arkanitas. That sounds about right. This one has.
I mean it is where the trail that I was riding goes over the Missouri and it is a huge bridge. I mean, but I've run.
Along like a bicycle bridge. It's a car bridge, a traffic.
Bridge, bicycle bridges. I'm moving.
Here is the kind of like roughly related part of my story, which is we did that. It was an amazing and I have planned this year. I planned, I don't know when I'm going to do it, a biking trip from northwest Arkansas down to Arkansas City, very near Greenville, and it goes along Arkansas State is builting the Delta Heritage Trail State Park, which is beautiful and right along the Mississippi River. Goes from like West Helena, West Memphis
down to Arkansas City. So it's like eighty five miles and there's a section in the middle where the White River, Arkansas River all meet the Mississippi River, and there is there is not a bridge for seventy miles. And I was frustrated. I spent days on like GPS apps and maps just like hot in this modern day of twenty twenty three, can I not get across this body of water?
And you called me. I called you.
I called the State park and I said, hey, like I know that the trail's not finished. You got an incomplete section, Like how can I cross this body of water?
Yeah?
So it's basically built along the the levees, but also along some old railroad trestles. Yeah, there's a beautiful section that's that's down there near the Trust and Holder Wetlands, And that's the section that's incomplete, and it's basic based around this trestle. And uh so one day I will ride it. But I just could not believe that in the year twenty twenty three, I called the state agency and said, how can I get across this like four.
Miles the same problem that Hernando to.
So exactly And she told me, She's like, you're gonna have to go seventy miles around. That's the closest bridge. And I said, hey, do you think that I could like, I mean, I'm on the other side of the state. Do you know any I see there's hunting clubs? Do you know anybody that I could like, ferry me across? This is a soft pitch to all the bears. Is
there anybody give him a ferry? Got told. I got told that that was a lost cause because apparently the hunting clubs were not a fan of this, of this burgeoning state park, which made the section of your podcast talking about the hunting clubs being this wildlife mecca really interesting because of the story kind of conflict of like, well, I want access to that.
Two points of conflict there you're there, Well, I don't even want to get into this. But the conflict that you're stepping on that you wouldn't have even known is that you know public lands there there is conflict around kind of who controls those, and so there there's a it's so it's such a big topic. It's hard to want to talk about. But hunters are paying users of of of the land that we hunt because we buy licenses that go to do stuff for that land. A bicyclist doesn't do.
I mean, I'll pull out my game and fish card and.
Fishing pull on your back.
Well you're a hunter, but but but as a bicycler, like using public land, you don't have to buy a bicycle license. And so there's there's this there's this conflict, the second conflict that we could get into. I had somebody reach out to me and say, Clay, thanks for highlighting in a positive way the land inside the Mississippi Levees because no doubt that is some of the highest priced land on planet Earth. I had no idea.
Oh, those clubs along the river, Yeah, there's one hundred thousand dollars memberships.
Yeah, oh Joe, that's that's outdated.
Is one hundred thousand?
Really?
Oh?
There are clubs down there that first of all, someone has to die and they don't have to have an air that would inherit the club membership. I personally know clubs that you couldn't buy into for two hundred and fifty grand, no kidding, I mean version of like Yankees like this, so that that to to a god that just doesn't in my opinion. And now I could pitch the other side of this and have a good argument against it, but I just don't see it that way.
And I got no steak I wish like crazy. I got no steak in the inside levees of the Mississippi River anywhere. Like, I'm not a member of a club, don't have any connection to them. But they would say that is a rich man's thing that is unattainable for the common man to hunt inside the levee.
So there was a guy that I was working with through the Squirrel Cookoff ten years ago, and he reached out to me. He wanted to write a coffee table book based off of all the hunting clubs from about where the start of the levees are down to Baton Rouge. And because the history of those structures, you know, these are old plantations. There's presidents and governors and every banker.
You know, it's been inside these clubs, and we wanted to do a book, coffee table book showing the history and their favorite meal at that club, because hunting club is a place to eat, socialize and maybe shoot something, you know, and so the history behind those things is phenomenal and it's hidden history.
I would not have known anything about it. I mean again, I'm kind of the atypical listener, but it would have been completely invisible to me, except I was just trying to say, how do I get from point A to point B? There is not a single road.
Well, you're on a bicycle.
Bicycles don't do good than swamping.
You know that that rub between bicycles and all kinds of things is happening in our state. And there's actually an initiative in Benton County to where they're branding dirt roads yes as gravel roads. Very cannot be paid and it's a for bicyclers. Yeah, and so it's a unique idea. The idea is is in order to preserve the farmland and the wild lands in that area, if you don't pave that dirt road, therefore there will not be a subdivision.
It stays rural.
And you could imagine who's behind this, some big money. And so this is just in the last month I actually cooked for that group. A buddy of mine, Wes Evans, is part of it. He's a big time farmer in the county. And it's hard to change that paradigm that we're going to accept bicycles. And so this grassroots effort is there and now the.
Way, now, who wants it to stay rural? The farmers, the bicyclers, well, and the farmers. You know, most of the farmers could sell their property right now and never have to worry about it again with the price of real estate. They're holding onto the farm because that's their
history and their heritage. And so in order to maintain that they can have their animals without some person in the eighteen hundred square foot house living next door to them complaining they're getting with the bicycle groups.
Yeah, I say, somebody unlike Yeah, gravel is like kind of the thing right now for for bicycling, because it's more of an adventure. You get out into more of the rural areas, and honestly, you don't have to worry as much about getting killed by a car man.
It's I didn't mean.
I didn't mean to turn this into the bicycling podcast, but that was my access point to appreciating the area around the Mississippi River, the rural areas, the levees and all the stuff that I would. I'm really excited about visiting the Delta Heritage Trail State Park once it is completed, which I believe is sometime in twenty twenty four.
So I what about the Sultana Museum.
Yes, I talked about it, and I had never heard of that, but that sounded awesome, you said.
Fel Yeah, it's out in a private I mean, it's on private land. You can't go see it, but the Sultana is in somebody's sweeping field.
I'm about the tie in with Holt Caller on your One of my favorite episodes or a series was Whulk Collier, right and knowing that his killing of the bear and the deer fed the people that built that levee system.
Built the railroads and the levee system.
And then you got the nineteen twenty seven flood, which I was aware of the flood because it even affected us in northwest Arkansas when the White River backed up and flooded. But that flood, being the worst flood, killed more people than any flood that we've ever had. And most Americans don't know anything about nineteen twenty seven.
I didn't I and I had heard that there was a flood back in the day, and that's about as much as I knew.
Hey, let me do something here. I want to go back. I want to talk about the two thousand and eleven flood. We're going to hold the flood stuff. I got to go back to my comments about the Mississippi River and have to finish a thought that's really important. I think it's important. It's the whole rich guy inside the levee thing. And yeah, the land inside the levees for hunting is not accessible to just average people. It's just not. And it's not that everybody that hunts theres rich, that's not
it either. It's just they know a guy well, A lot of the guys that have memberships in those clubs aren't rich at all necessarily, They've just had memberships in the clubs when they were not valuable. And that's the point. Hunting, recreational hunting has made that land extremely valuable, more valuable than the timber. I wish I had made this point more clear. Y'all can tell me if it was clear.
Timber companies owned all that land because it was not valuable for farming, it was not valuable for houses and living. Because it was inside the levees, it could flood. So timber company owned all the land from Baton Rouge up to you know where the levees ended around Saint Louis or well, from Memphis, let's just say Memphis to Baton Rouge. Timber companies owned it. Timber companies are gonna do whatever it takes to make money. They're gonna cut the cut
timber heavily. There came a tipping point when the cultural value of recreational hunting became more valuable the RD than the timber. And at that point, that's when all that land and there's still some timber company land inside the levees, but not near as much as there was before. Like the nineteen eighties.
These islands are what twenty five thousand square feet. I mean, they're a huge, huge.
Oh there's hundreds of islands on out there too that are literally islands of the river. But Point being the recreational hunting value of that land became more value than the timber it was bought by these private clubs. And in the nineteen eight eighties you could have got into an l primo Mississippi River hunting club for probably pennies on the dollar of what it's worth now, So you didn't have to be a rich gut you see what
I'm saying. So if my family had been down there within an hour of the river and we'd been like, heck, we'll just become a member of Diamond Point, and we'd have bought into that. Today that membership might be worth
one hundred thousand war dollars. Let me say this though, but I say to somebody that would say that's bad because there's this whole idea that we're becoming more like Europe where it's a pay to play game for hunting, I would say, in this case, which was such a specific, unique, delicate Riparian zone of one of the greatest rivers, in the world. I don't care who's making it healthy.
As long as it's healthy. Yeah.
So it's like, bro, I salute and love watching Will Primos hunt inside the levees of the Mississippi River and kill John Deere. I love hearing the stories and and and at different times I'll ply, I mean, I'm supposed to go hunt inside the levees. As a matter of fact, this this year.
What kind of fall will you be using?
I'll be using.
But don't you don't you think that not only that particular area of hunting clubs. You know, guys used to be able to scrap together some money and go out and buy a piece of property and start a hunting club. I mean, that's so far out of reach for people these days. Working men, you know, common working men, because there's men that work, work hard and make a lot of money, the common working with these social media influencers. I say, I had a deal that made dads better.
Yeah.
I was hanging out with a podcaster and stuff, and we decided that we were going to buy us a hunting club. And hunting club's got to be for or five hundred acres or you know, it probably ain't worth it. That's that's a million bucks or better. Now in Arkansas. Yeah, you know, it's it's just out of reach unless you have so many members that at that point the population of hunters, that's the.
Value would be less because of so many people.
I don't know what public access to hunting inside the levees is like, but that's one of the reasons that I like seeing things like the Delt Heritage Trail State Park, which obviously you can't hunt in the state park work for them, but times that Arkansas even fish in Springdale too, We're gonna hit all of it. No, I like seeing that. I don't know what public access is like that.
Along the Mississippi River, there is some public land that touches the river, but not a lot. I mean, it's the vast majority of anything from Memphis to Baton Rouge is going to be private land.
If y'all ever just stood there and watched the barges going up the river, I mean they're pushing forty six barges up a river with one engine. It's an amazing thing. And if you actually think about how many semi trucks that would have took for rail cars that river, I think ninety percent of all of our agriculture comes down that river. Wow, I mean all of our grains everything. And the unique thing is like, was it early this year or last year? When it was this year when
the river was going dry? Right, it was making national news all the time, and we'd watch the news and think, boy in Memphis is getting hammered. That river is going to come up. That water comes from Ohio that fills up Memphis. It has nothing to do with how much rain is coming through Arkansas. It's the Ohio Valley is where that water is troughed down. It comes down the river and feeds the Gulf, and it's it's our biggest highway. Yeah, I got a.
I have a barge story that wasn't on the Mississippi, but I grew up in the Gulf coast of Florida and there was an intercoastal waterway built between the Choctahatchie Bay and a Bay and Panama City. They would move cargo via barges, you know, inland, and so they just dug it out in the middle of nowhere. And so they threw the sand out. You know, Florida's flat, but
they threw the sand in these great heaps. So we would go when I was fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, camp on the side of what felt like a mountain to a Florida and right, it's probably a thirty foot drop down to this.
To the thirty feet above sea level.
Yeah, yeah, I know Florida.
I have a distinct memory.
I went out there with some high school friends and we camped out overnight and we cut down a tree and we with hatchets, like, you know, just totally out
of our debt. But we were having a great time and we uh each catalog were carrying it along the bank at probably two in the morning, just having a great time, and a bar is coming and of course that wake just is immense, even in this especially in that small and so we all started hoofing it and there was a down tree and uh we were trying to like hoist logs over this tree, and we were the barge getting closer and we're sixteen and we're freaking out.
That barge were in the water. No, we're on the bank.
There's clothes, yeah, and it's not going to drag us out, but it's gonna get us wet, right, sixteen man, Yeah, you know, having a great time and that barge points that million looming spotlight on us, and we are in the middle of nowhere, and I have this log on my shoulder and I was kind of a bigger kid, and I'm struggling to get up, and this barge pilot gets on his loud speaker and goes, go, go go.
I got to the top of ya. It was the best things. That's my barge story.
I loved it was It was an awesome series. Clay, it really was good. Four was probably the right number.
I'd love it well, Jose with Gary's like, I get a little tired of the river. I like the diversity of topics.
Coming from a former history teacher, all always thought about the economics of waterways and that port and role that played in our history. But I learned a lot thinking about the geography, and it really it never hit me just how pivotable, how pivotable, how pivotal it is, just having it in the middle and America is so biodiverse and huge that we just don't think of that river substantially as say, like Egypt. So in two thousand and eight, I went to Egypt and I boated on the Noile River.
Egypt is the Noile River. Now river is Egypt, Like that is the country. I mean, it's a desert. There would be nothing without that river. I've been far south in Egypt where you can stand on one side of the desert, look over the river valley and see the other desert. I mean, it's just ninety percent of people live right there in the in the valley and into the delta. But in America we take it for granted.
And I think when I was listening to this, I was like, what would I take away from this if I lived in like this other distant part of the country, And I think I would become a lot more interested in the waterways around me. You know, if you lived in way in Southwest or wherever. It's like our lives are defined by water, not just the economics that I've always thought about, but are biodiversity and survival. And then and then you think about the planet like eighty percent
of its water in the oceans. I mean, water is everything. And so this series definitely caused me to think a lot bigger about that.
For sure.
Well it it was a gap in my understanding that I felt was a liability for real, Like two years ago, I was like I just woke up one day I was like, I gotta know more about Mississippi River. It's like, I'm not I'm incomplete.
Unless if you weren't a Mark Twain guy.
Me too. I never did the public schools where I came from, never never had his read them. I never read a single Mark Twain book.
I like Mark Twain so much. My son's name is Clem.
Is that right?
Based after Samuel Clemens? Because I thought that if I gave him names such as Clem, he'd have a fight chance of telling the story when he got a little old.
So yeah, there you go.
Yeah. Uh. The Mark Twain stories about the river, the country songs about the river.
They so that I have. I have a whole episode that is that I could do. I could do a fifth one. I'm not going to about the blues.
Oh yeah.
I felt like when I was scripting out this thing, I thought, I'm going to talk about the blues, And actually I had a whole section where Hank Berdine talked to me about the blues that I didn't use.
I got to put out a poll.
Well listen though, the first guy that I started looking for to tell me about the Blues. I was driving down the road and I was looking for a podcast and and it was called the Chris Thomas King. Yeah, no, I don't think so. Chris, Chris Thomas King. You guys know the movie Oh Brother, Where Artell? Okay? On that movie, there's a boy that plays Tommy Johnson. Okay, Tommy Johnson is the guy that is supposed to have sold his
soul to the devil at the crossroads. And and when the guys that are Oh Brother, Where Artell guys are driving down the road, they come to a crossroads, they pick up this African American guy who gets in with the guitar, and it's Tommy Jones Johnson Johnson And that guy ends up playing a blues song by the fire on the movie Oh Brother, Where art thou? That is Chris Thomas King.
A podcast.
He has a podcast. I interviewed a full interview with Chris Thomas King. Chris Thomas King came out with a book and basically he says that the narrative that the Blues started in Mississippi is not true.
What we're tell me. It's not Saint Louis.
No, it started in New Orleans, according to him, and it's so basically there it is so and he I want it to be a whole bear grease, but go fur five.
I can tell already after this render you're going to go five.
Difference between Jackson don't. I don't have the bandwidth to like get more. But basically he says that there is a If you ask anybody in the country where the Blues started, they're going to say, uh, Clark's I believe Clarksdale, Mississippi is what they say. And and just like that's where it started. He says that Alan Lomax, this storyteller from the nineteen seventies and eighties, nationally known, really really renowned storyteller who told some major stories and made some
major documentaries about the Appalachians. He gained national fame and basically went to Mississippi, and he says that Alan Lomax is the one who kind of was the guy that said, Hey, the Blues started.
Are you doing this for safety reasons? Not throwing this out this fifth episode?
Because safety I'll get killed.
You start saying that the Blues ain't from the Delta.
Well, now it's from the Delta. Chris Thomas King just says it. And he says that that narrative doesn't add up, and he wrote a whole book about it and has a really strong thesis about how the word blues actually came from sat basically musicians in New Orleans making fun of blue laws, which blue laws would have been like religious laws, like you can't buy alcohol in a Sunday, or you can't your your juke joints can't be opened
on Sundays, stuff like that. There was a heavy influence in New Orleans, I believe from the Catholics, and there was it was heavy blue laws. And then there arose this music scene that defied that, and it was about kind of rebellion against that. Then that's why the name they called it the Blues, because it was it was it was rebellion against blue laws. Well, and then the
Blues went up the Mississippi River. And his whole thing is, which which tracks with the history of the settlement of the Delta, is that there weren't even African There were not vast numbers of most of the Mississippi Yazoo. Delta
did not have slaves in it. But because it wasn't settled after the Civil War, if you know what I'm saying, like the place where they say the Blues started before the Civil War, because they talk a lot about the Blues being gang chain gangs of enslaved people singing and there's ingie dancers. He says that that's he doesn't buy it.
If you did part five and you said the Blues weren't from that region, and you said that the Delta Tomali is where all Tomali's come from.
Canceled.
My career.
Yeah, he has to go on that alternate career path that people from Mississippi. I've gained their trust bye by doing all this Mississippi stuff and then at this last one drowned in the Mississippi River and mister Bill, finally, what a movie?
What a movie? Phenomenal? What do you got coming up on?
Lord of Mercy? I don't know if I should tell Should I tell the world what we're gonna do?
Just a hint?
Well, just us no, no, no, no, yeah, I'll just tell you guys, Okay, don't tell anybody, don't put it on social media. So it's actually gonna it would be good intention. I've had some people, that's a good question, man. I've had some people I've heard to our podcasts referred to as regional, which I didn't necessarily like. And region will be in the South. Like I heard some people be doing a show on the Baltimore Orioles. Yeah, that's right, Baltimore Oriols. Well, I don't see I don't see bar
Grease as regional. I view berg Grease is what I'm interested in. Happens to be a lot of what I'm interested in is in the South. We're doing an Alaska Stories series nice where I have a very diverse, eclectic group of storytellers that are going to tell harrowing, near death wild experiences in Alaska's got nine stories right now.
This is like a Campfire Stories Part three. Oh yes, I'm excited.
It's so it's each episode is going to have multiple, like full length stories, not interviewed. Like I'm not even on the podcast other than just through the like i'll introduce. I'll say, like, here's this guy and uh and he's gonna tell a story. There's there's I don't even want to tell you what's on there. Beard beard stuff, there's bear stuff, there's uh, near drowning stuff. So it'll be good, it'll be good.
Yeah.
I like the I like the storyteller, the story episodes. Yeah, just just with different people telling their stories.
You know, the when I tell people about the campfires stories. The story I tell them about is the guide in Alaska who lost his boat across the bay and tried to go walk and find it and then tried to do that terminal burrowing and had to tell himself like.
Stop, you're digging your grave.
Weird.
So I mean more Alaska close calls and stories that that sounds awesome.
Yeah, Alaska the Hollywood of the hunting world. Ooh, no, kidding.
And you can make a movie anywhere, but the best movies seemed to always be in Hollywood. It's like Alaska, man, unending story plots there.
Yeah, it's a wild place.
Didn't you start this episode talking negatively about Alaska in the wintertime.
Well, not negatively. I just said sometimes the sun doesn't rise there and it's dark twenty four hours a day. Conflicting information here, Okay, I love Alaska. September twenty third, twenty twenty three, Springdale, Arkansas World Championship Squirrel Cookoff. It's big. It's going to be big, man, It's going to be big. Brent Reeve is going to be there. I'll be there at some point. Just I'll just be there.
We'll tell Alaska stories when you get there.
Okay, I will have been to Alaska, so Ben, Dad Class sad Class dot net, Dad Class dot net elon Muscow's dad Class dot com. Don't go there. Only look out.
For that special podcast on cooking up a story.
Yeah, I'll be Joe. Just podcast cooking up a Story. Okay, dad Class, check it out. Jonathan, you peddling anything podcast over so good. Now we're done.
That's it.