Ep. 187: THIS COUNTRY LIFE - Things Lost and Found

Lost and Found. Recently, I made a trip to Kansas, and while I was there, I searched, along with some friends of mine, for an item i'd lost eight years ago. Got me to thinking about things you lose and a little bit about the things you find. I talked to Clear about he said, man, you ought to do a podcast about it. Well, there's some lesson in there, and it's my job to figure out what those lessons are. I'm gonna tell you what I think, but first we're

gonna tell you a story. Bow Hunting was popular in my part of the world long before it was the cool thing to do on TV and the internet. Heck, TV just barely existed. There weren't any bow hunting shows to mount to anything. At that time that this story took place, an occasional mention of archery hunting on the American Sportsman TV show was all you'd see outside of magazine articles and outdoor life or Field and Stream. But there was a core community of bow hunters that everyone

knew about as being pretty good hunters. There was a lot of timber company land where I grew up. Before leasing started. You could legally hunt anywhere you wanted. There were established clubs with historic boundary lines between deer camps, but there was no legal recourse. If they caught you hunting on their claim land, you weren't trespassing, You were

just violating a gentleman's agreement. So, just like turkey hunters play their cards close to their vest, the bow hunters didn't talk about where they hunted and what they were seeing. You do only know if they'd been successful, if they took their buck down to the local paper and warn and had mister Bob Newton take their picture to be published in the Eagle Democrat that came out every Wednesday, and only a small percentage of them did that. They

were secretive, and rightfully so. It was during this time that the following conversation took place at my brother Tim's house. He lived right down the road from us, and a couple of his hunting buddies were meeting him there early one morning to go hunting themselves. And they walked into his house with their eyes wide from excitement, said, you ain't gonna believe what we just saw. And Tim said what they said? A buffalo? Tim said, you're right, I

don't believe you because you didn't see one. They said, yes, we did, And the guy that was driving said, I had to stop to keep him hitting it. It was crossing the road right in front of us. Well, Tim, that's where they've seen it. And they told him just down the road. TEMPSA, y'all are crazy, and they swore they weren't telling a lie. Now, seeing a buffalo ain't that big of a deal. Really, Over three million people,

that's the entire population of Arkansas. The same number of visit Yellowstone National Park every year, and I'm sure a large portion of them, if not nearly all of them, can lay claim to seeing alive on the hoof buffalo. Now that number and percentage gets smaller and smaller. The further south you go. Oklahoma, sports are good numbers, and I used to run in formation, passed several during basic

training many moons ago at Fort Seal. But after you cross Arkansas River heading southeast, where this story takes place, you'd be more likely to see a mountain lion in a buffalo. Now I've seen two of those down here, remember with witnesses. But we're not talking about mountain lions. We're supposed to be talking about things lost and found, and I promised we are. I just I just have to set the stage for bringing it all together. We're

almost there. There was another member of our community out in the country who was known far and wide as being frugal. We're gonna call him Frank. Now, Frank wasn't his real name, but for the sake of ease and keeping the character straight, that's what we're calling him. I saying Frank was frugal somehow doesn't do it justice. As far as I know, Frank didn't burn the light in his house after it got dark for fear of running

up his electric bill. I don't guess there's nothing wrong with that, But I never recalled passing his house and seeing so much as a lamp burning inside. He was a good fellow, but tight as bark on the tree. Frank was tight as a field string. Frank was so tight that he squeaked when he walked. Get the picture. Frank was a tightwad. Frank was also an archery hunter, and I figure he bow hunted because he could shoot the same era over and over without having to buy more.

If he'd done it with firearms, he'd had to keep buying ammo. Theoretically, a fellow only needs one era and a broadhead put meat in the freezer. But old Frank was cutting corners and saving money at every opportunity. Over the course of the next couple of weeks, buffalo sightings were popping up sporadically throughout the farming community. Old mister so and so said he saw the buffalo over at

his place. Then another important the opposite direction would filter in that they'd got a glimpse of the mystical creature at another farm running through the woods. All of this was in the gossip circles that filled the party line telephone system that we all shared. They all know what a party line is. Hang on to your britches, kids,

but believe it or not. But up close to the time that I went to high school, where I lived, there was one telephone line for several houses, and to use the phone you had to pick it up and see if anyone was already talking on it. The honor system kept you from listening on other folks conversation, supposedly. Anyway, back to Frank, about the same time that the buffalo report stopped, we started seeing Frank grilling in the backyard

on a new grill. He just got a few evenings, a few evenings during the week and every weekend there was Frank standing in his backyard rain or shines grilling his steaks and burgers, smiling in the smoke. You can see him flipping them sometimes when you drove past, big old steaks the can that were expensive even back then. Frank didn't have any cows and was notoriously cheap. It was a safe bet he wasn't buying all that meat down into Dixon Dandy. So what about the buffalo? Did

they really see one? Where the reports of the buffalo sidings that Tim's hunting friends and all the other folks in the community seeing, were they're legitimate? And where did this buffalo come from the people have been claiming to see all sorts of things for years, but that doesn't make it so. But here's the skinny on the buffalo. He was real. He and a couple of his brethren had escaped through a fence weeks before they were seen

in our part of the world. They were the first buffalo in that country that had ever plopped their chips down on terra firma since being extirpated throughout the natural state in eighteen thirty seven. Now, it's worth noting that in nineteen twenty nine, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission released one buffalo near Lake Catherine in Garland County for undocumented reasons, and no other restocking program has ever been

done since. Now we're pretty sure it wasn't that one that they cut loose, because this happened in nineteen eighty two. That'd make that'd make him my fifty three year old buffalo, and seeing how they don't live past twenty, it's a safe bed. If Frank was cooking one in his backyard that he wasn't that one. The buffalo Tims hunting partner saw was from a farm several miles away that had gone rogue. And slipped the bonds of confinement. I kind

of liked that. I hate that fella lost his buffalo stock, But how cool would it have been to be sitting in a tree with your bow and raw, waiting on a white tail and look up to see a buffalo easing down the trail. Now, no one ever knew for sure, but old Frank was a bow hunter, and a pretty good one, and he lived right in the epicenter of all the buffalo reports. The buffalo, the buffalo sighting stopped, and then the sight of Frank working his magic, and

that charcoal arena and that new grill it started. That could all be a coincidence. It could be, but the detective in me says there was reasonable suspicion to further than an investigation if anyone had been so inclined, But no one was. We didn't find out that someone had legitimately lost an American icon until long after the fact of seeing the animal in our midst and then seeing Frank routinely man in the grill in his backyard. The animals had been written off as a loss before Frank's

probably encountering. Frank had a heck of a tale to tell. But bow hunters were secretive back then, and no confirmation was ever made between Frank and the buffalo except in my heart. In my heart, I know he got him. And so it's tem one fellow lost a buffalo and one guy found a freezer full of meat, and that's probably just how that happened, things lost and found. Was Frank wrong for shooting a buffalo? Well, it wasn't his. And I can't say I wouldn't have at that juncture

in my life. Just last week I talked about looking at things from other folk's viewpoint, And if I had been Bob, a well known skin flint famous for saving Nichols, Yep, I'd have drilled up buffalo just as sure as I'm sitting here and add every piece of him. But it wouldn't have been the right thing to do. Even though the circumstances were somewhat extenuating. The thing was expensive. It wasn't the ever elusive ten millimeters socket that you never seemed to be able to lay your hands on when

you need one. Find one of those laying in the sand as I'm walking through the desert, and I assure you I'm not putting an ad in the paper looking for the rightful owner. When I get back to civilization, that rascal is going in my pocket. The question is where do you draw the line? Supposed to draw the line at the point right before I put the ten middimeter socket in my pocket. It ain't mine, and I'm not supposed to claim it as such, But come on, man,

it's the ten millimeter. A good friend of mine was duck hunting by himself on public land in another state. He completed his hunt and was now loading his boat back at the ramp that had been full of folks when he got there that morning, But when he got back, he was the only one there. Everyone else was long gone. After getting all this stuff squared away, he walked over to the edge of the parking lot to turn the

thermos of coffee loose he drank that morning. He said he was just standing there and joining a moment, and something caught his attention. Then he realized he was looking at a brown lightning graded tory over and under broken, open and leaning against a tree. It's one of the many legacy symbols amongst duck hunters of my era, and this one was well used but well taken care of. It was immediately recognizable to him as being left there by had to be somebody's grandpa, or maybe a grandpa's

son or a grandson had done it. These types of shotguns rarely left the family in my circle, and those like mine, they were passed down as inheritance and revered as such. My friend said, he looked around and he saw no one. Then he picked it up, snapped it shut, and he ran his hand along the smooth, cold, still admiring the craftsmanship, noting that the warn varnish and bluing that told him volumes about that shotgun and its people told him everything he needed to know about them, except

who they were and where they were. He snapped it to his shoulder, as if shooting a big mall of drake decoyed into his spread in the timber. He said, it felt good, natural, and he would have been physically ill had he been the one who had forgotten it. It was late in the afternoon now, and he waited well beyond dark, missing an employment he was supposed to be at waiting for someone to come back, but no

one ever did. He left only after pinning a note to that tree at the spot where that shotgun had been leaned up and it read I have it called this number. He took that shotgun home. He wiped it down and placed it in his gun cabinet, alongside several shotguns of his own that were of considerable lesser monetary value,

but equally as rich an heirloom legacy. In a few days, he got a call from a frantic duck hunter who had all but given up over He also didn't live in that state, but he drove all the way back and retracing his steps, and what he he guessed was a vain attempt to find his grandfather's shotgun that he mistakenly left leaning against a tree. He stood there, heart broken, in tears and just happened to see the rained onwn note lying at the base of a tree. The numbers faded,

but legend. That's a happy ending about something lost and something found. It's my favorite kind of story, A true representation of a story arc and how to craft a narrative, and the best part that it ain't fiction. I lost to pocket knife in Kansas during the archery season of twenty fifteen. I knew when I lost it, I knew where I lost it, and I searched and searched, but I never found it. It was my dad's last case of Minnie Trapper. It was the one he was carrying

when he got sick. Hospital folks gave us his long as when he was admitted, all the things that he was told. That case pocket knife was one of the items. My dad would never carry it again, or any other one. Forty two days after he was admitted he died, Tim gave me that knife. Being the older brother, he took the lead on the yoke of responsibility in seeing after our dad's affairs, and I helped him. I don't know why he told me to take that particular pocket knife,

but he did. For a long time, I just had it setting on my dresser. I'd pick it up and hold it in my hands and think about the last time my dad used it, probably opening up a sack of dog food for those walkers of his. It made me smile well. I left for Kansas that dear season, and as an afterthought, stuck it in my pocket when I left the house. Feeling it in there made me think about him. It made me secure somehow, and then I lost it. Now. I look as hard as I could,

but I never found it. I vowed to come back one day with a metal detector and look again, but that opportunity never came until a few months ago when I was invited to speak in an event in Independence, Kansas. Chris Alexander is a volunteer with the Hunters with Mission organization there, and they are a nonprofit group that supports a Christian mission orphanage in India. In reality, they're not only feeding orphans, but children that the parents can't afford

to feed. I save your comments about religion, politics and anything else. Hungry youngins are everywhere, and I'll help with that mission, regardless of the zip code. I met Chris at the Black Beery Banans in Arkansas last March and made plans to go speak at this event. Ten months later, I found myself standing in front of four hundred and fifty of the prettiest folks I've ever had the pleasure of spending the evening with all working toward filling the

place of some hungry children. After it was announced that I'd be speaking there, I received a message from a man who invited me to bring old whaling and go coon hutting with him. We talked several times as the date got closer, and we finalized the arrangements for me to arrive a day early so we could hunt the night before the event. I got to the lodge in the afternoon, was still plenty of daylight left, and I told Tuffy Graham about losing that knife, and coincidentally, I

thought it was pretty close to where we were. I described the property to him as best I could for a place that I hadn't seen in eight years. We looked at a parcel ground on all next that he thought sounded very similar to what I was describing, and we drove to it and that was it. I knew it immediately when I saw it. Tuff said he knew the land on and would call and get permission for us to look. It was also just over a quarter of a mile from his house. It probably takes the

rest of the evening to hear from him. So we went back to the lodge hat supper, and we went coon hunt that night. Everything was falling into place. The story art was being built all through organic means. There had been no artificial or purposeful manufacturing. But now I can relax and go coonhut with my new friend Toff. He brought his eleven year old son Dakota, and Travis Blend,

the preserve manager. We loaded whaling up in the side by side along with the rest of us, and in short order we were cutting whaling and tough as dog Boone loose in a creek bottom in Kansas. We made two trees and Dakota knocked out four turkey nest banditos to the delight of Whaling Boone and Travis, who was responsible for the health and balance of wildlife on the ranch. Good job to Coda. Those trees were lay up coons. The heavy miss that was falling had them stirn very little,

so last drop was outstriking a very good track. We called it a night. My friend David McDaniels made it up from East Texas just in time to go to bed. He missed the hunt due to working late, but was excited to photograph and document our attempt to find the pocket knife the next day. He brought his camera gear to shoot the hunter with mission banquet the next evening. Tuffy met us the next morning after breakfast and we struck out for the spot where I had lost the knife.

We followed him over to that property next to his and parked along the muddy road that had seen a whole bunch of rain in the last twenty four hours. The roads had only recently thalled from the frigid weather that had locked up half the country, and the new rain had made the hardest of roads rather spongy. We started across the road, and coming up as fast as two eleven year old legs could go was Dakota, kicking mud up with every step and getting faster the closer

he got. We waited on him while he ran straight from his house to where we were. He stopped once he got to us, drew one big breath, and was as rested as if he'd just gotten out of bed. Oh to be eleven years old again and not just act like it. As we walked toward the spot, Toffy said,

I talked to the landowner. He said that we could look at anything we wanted to, and he didn't know where you lost the knife, but he hoped it wasn't around the corral because he had several tons of rock hauled in to build up a low spot that always stayed wet. Well, that's exactly where I lost it. Toughy's metal detector made several hits and we dug through eight to ten inches of pack down rocks that had been dumped there six years ago, only to find small scraps

of metal, no pocket knife. There would be no happy ending to this story arc, not yet anyway, now tough. He told me that when he got a chance, that he'd come over and search for me. Dakota told me that he'd help his dad. That's exactly what I would have said had my dad promised to help someone. So maybe this story arc does have a happy end. I came to terms a long time ago about losing that knife. I stopped beating myself up over it several years ago.

Although this whole ordeal has kind of picked at the scar a little bit, but a chance meeting in Arkansas with Chris, a guy from Kansas, afforded me the opportunity to help some children that I'll never see. In doing so, I met Travis, I met Tuffie, the best of all, I met Dakota, and I met them in a place that has forever held a melancholy memory of a loss. All that changed when I met these folks, all eager to help me find something that I'd lost, while helping

me find something better that's new friends. The banquet that night to that immeasurably I lost to pocket knife, but I gained a whole lot more that my dad would approve of. If you lose something, dear to you keep looking for it and don't give up cop No tell them what you might find. Black Bear Bonanza, where all that started, is happening again this year on March the ninth, twenty twenty four, at the Benton County Fairgrounds, Benville, Arkansas.

I'll be there, Clay Bow will be there, and we'll be aul hooting, podcasting and having a ton of fun. Y'all need to get your tickets early, and you can do that by hitting the old Google with Black Barry Bonanza, follow the lank bringing youngs. I thank y'all for listening. Lots of good stuff coming from the media or YouTube channel from me and my Mississippi River cub pilot Claybold Nukam and some of this country life announcements to y'all. Just hanging there until next week. This is Brent Reeve

signing off. Y'all be careful