Ep. 246: This Country Life - Safety First, Always

some stories to share. Safety first. Always. I didn't get to cover all I wanted to last week, so we're back again with some more safety concerns and a lesson that I will never forget. If there's one thing you take away from these weekly ramblings, I hope it's this one. That's why I'm sharing it today. But first I'm going to tell you a story. It was beyond dark on a moonless night. I was alone patrolling near where I'd

grown up in the north end of Bradley County. Working for the Sheriff's office in rural counties will have deputies working alone a lot. The only time two or more of us were on duty at one time at night was on the weekends when the call volumes increased. Now, we lived by that old Texas Ranger creed of one riot one ranger that wasn't not a bravado. It was out of necessity. We were a small department covering a

big area with a budget. You couldn't operate a roadside stand with three deputies for six hundred and forty nine square miles. We worked alone a lot. It had been a quiet night, with only the music radio keeping me company. The dispatcher radio had been ominously quiet, and I was heading to the house. This is usually a time when

everything goes berserko. That's when nine calls all at once come in wrecks, fights, fevery, and other skullduggery type behavior that requires the attention of the sheriff's department, and they usually happen on the opposite end of the county that you're patrolling. But not this night. Nothing was going on, and I was driving down a desolate stretch of highway with no ambient light from anywhere except for the headlights

on my patrol car. I was lost in thought, almost hypnotized by the monotonous drone of the sound of sailing down the road at the blistering pace of forty miles an hour. I had the crew set at forty. That gave me time with no traffic, to really look at side roads and houses and churches that I passed along

the highway that might need a closer inspection. But on this stretch there was none of those, just a straight shot over a few rolling hills as I made my way back toward the town, burning time off the clockets I was getting. Towards the end of my shift, I lost and thought I became cognizant of something in my peripheral vision on the left side. It was like I knew it was there, but in my car there were

colored lights and reflections everywhere. The dashlights, the lights from multiple radios put off a glow inside the car that reflected off of every shiny surface in there, including the windows, like the driver's side door window. That's where what I was seeing out of the corner of my eye was. It was like it had been there all along, but all at once I realized that it hadn't, and now I knew there was something different. There wasn't a car

or a light anywhere to be seen. I looked to my right in the passenger seat and the floorboard radio console, and there was nothing new. No flashlight burned under a hat or no interior light burning from a new source that made up the reflection I was seeing on my window on the driver's side door. By the time it is taken to describe this so far as about as

long as it took for it to play out. So with the last resort to actually look out the window to see if there was something actually there, I did, and that's when I saw a face looking back at me. Sweet Jesus, that's a face. I looked back at the highway out the windshield, and the speed of it says I'm driving forty miles an hour. I mashed the foot feed to the floor and in an instant I was hitting sixty. I looked back out the window, knowing that I didn't really see what I thought I saw in

the faces looking at me saying stop stop. But I can't hear them, but I can see them mouthing the words. I've got a death grip on the steering wheel, and with all the force I can muster, I took my foot off the gas and I crammed the brakes of the pavement on that crown VIC and the face disappeared, shooting out front of my car in the opposite lane like a jet, except there wasn't a jet. It was

a motorcycle with no headlight. I threw the car and park and stepped out onto the highway as the lightless rider made a U turn and drove back to me, A small, dim flashlight stuck between him and the gas tank that was shining up under his chin, lighting him up like a Halloween punkin. He scared the living daylights out of me. But I knew him, and he didn't live far from where we were, just a few miles but a long way driving in the dark. Hey, Brent Man,

I'm glad to see you. I'm trying to make it home. My lights went out. I don't even have a tail light. Can you follow me home so don't get run over? I can, but you're gonna have to give me a minute. You scared me to death, he said. I think he was ever going to see me. I thought I was gonna have to knock on your window. Now now I have no idea what would happen had he knocked on my window, but me turning to see someone staring back at me like Vincent Christ. It scares me to think

about it. I turned the spotlights on my bar light, and I followed him all the way home until he parked his motorcycle in his front yard. I went back out on that dark portion of the highway, expecting nikobot a crane to try to kill me at any time. But I didn't waste any time getting home, not that time,

not that night. And that's just how that happened. It only takes one Now, that statement applies to so many things when gauging success and failure, spending a whole season hunting a big deer and having him put the old rastle dazzle on you every time you think you get him figured out. Then you go home thinking that I should have done this or I should have done that.

But then one day it all comes together. Now you put in the time to effort, the heartbreak of almost getting him but always coming up short, until the day you don't, BINGO, you got him. The story of that struggle will live forever, and so will that deer, because something remembered and shared with like minded souls is immortal. Now you flip the script and finally get the chance, only to mess it up, and that story will seemingly

live longer. Same applies to not paying attention or simply ignoring the clues that would normally have a prudent person taking corrective, evasive, or some type of cautionary action. But that describes a prudent person, not a fourteen year year old hunter on opening the morning the rifle season. Now, we built this stand as a temporary stand. Two years

before this one. We were going to put in a bigger and better permit stand in that little clear where I wanted to hunt that morning, but we never did. I told one brother, Tim and Joe Bryant at supper the night before that I wanted to hunt there. Joe was Tim's brother in law, but he was a brother to us all. But this was back when we camped

in an old surplus canvas army ten. We heated it with a propane heater like your grandparents had in the house of the five foot propane tank, both of which were positioned inside at the center of the tent hole. You regular listeners are starting to jump ahead right now, aren't you. You're thinking of that idiot blew the tin up or something. Well, I did it and needed to anyone else. And all the years we camped in that old ten before we built the camp. I don't remember

one instance or we nearly blew up anything accidentally. Anyway, I'm just giving you some background and context as to how we hunted. If we could brave the cold and sometimes the heat that comes with the opening week of gun deer season in Arkansas, along with cooking in a separate visc queen wrapped cooking shack complete with a gas stove and another gas bottle attached with only coal and lanterns is light. And the bathroom we all used being

a designated direction from camp and not a structure. Then a little wobbly homemade deer stand surely wouldn't stop us from hunting. Well, it wouldn't me. Tim and Job both told me they wouldn't sit in it. But what did they know. I was fourteen. I knew everything I needed to know at this point in my life. I'm not sure why they was even sending me to school. I should have been teaching it somewhere. Check that ladder and if it's rotten or shows any signs of being rotten,

just sit under it. You can still see that opening where the deer cross. That was the last thing Joe said to me that morning before we all headed out to our stands. I told him I would, but I had no intentions of sitting on the ground. Deer hunters shoot deer from deer stands. Felt more confident in a tree, regardless of the fact that people have been killing deer from the ground since they decided to add them to the menu. And that was when the first folks set

foot here in this part of the world. Regardless of how you believe they arrived. I was letting my desire to do what I wanted to do cloud my judgment on what I should do. I got to the stand way before daylight and found it without much trouble. The dim decealed flashlight burning just bright enough to keep me from wandering off the fence line, and I was following on my left side until I got to the out and once I got there, I would hang a one point eighty inside that fence and walk back less than

eighty yards to where the stand was. I walked up to it, and I'm not sure what you've pictured in your mind at this point as to what this thing constructed of, so allowed me to elaborate. There were two ten foot sweet gum poles cut that served as the front legs. They were both identically on about the size of my forearm. Four tube fours were nailed together in a square shape three feet by three feet and covered with plywood. Now this would be the floor of the stand.

It then sat on the ends of the gum poles, and each of them nailed to the front two corners of the stand that would face the clearing. The back of the floor was leaned up against it nailed to two standing trees on the fence line that would serve as a backrest and help conceal my outline. It was like an extra long legged night stand. The ladder was gum poles cut to fit across the gap in the two trees that served as the back legs, and they

were nailed about two feet apart. And I hope that offers a good visual of the engineering marvel that I was about to entrust my life to the one. Both my older brothers just told me not to climb yet, but I do better. I shined that light up the platform. No washing nests underneath, that's good. The milk crate was still there. That was served as my throne for the

morning's festivities. That's also good. I grabbed the left front leg and I gave it a shake to test of sturdy, and I says, I looked up into the darkness and a big ball of leaves rolled off that platform and into my face. I spat out while I didn't swallow, and I shook it again. That seemed all right to me. I walked around to the backside and all the rungs

were still attached. That's another good sign. Knowing full well there wasn't a round chamber in that thirty thirty attames I was shooting, I checked it anyway, just to make sure safety first. Remember usually I stepped on the bottom rung and it didn't even make a sound when it broke in. Two hm. That's not good. The last thing I wanted to do was what Joe had told me

after supper the night before, just hunt on the ground. Now, I was fixing to get in that stand if it was the last thing I did, and it almost was. I held on to that tree that was serving as the left rear leg and stepped on to where the nails held that sweet gum rung in place. The bark in the wood of the cross pieces compressing under each as I climbed higher to the top, pulling myself up with my left hand while holding the rifle of my right, my feet placed on the ends of the nails that

were poking out of the trees. Finally, at the top, I laid the rifle down in front of the milk crate and I grabbed the other tree on my right side and swung my legs off the nails and onto the platform as gently as I could, slowly adding my weight to the structure. And the final test for stability solid as a rock, MOI bo ain't know? All is good. I aised down on the mill crate. I put that rifle on my lap and I leaned back against one

of the trees. I just used to get in the stand and sweat walls left of the leaves off the floor with my foot, and when I kicked them off, I felt the stand shake back and forth a little bit. I made that sweeping motion again, just to make sure I wasn't imagining it, and the old pucker factor jumped up to about seven. Hey Brent, don't do that anymore, that was what my innerself said. Not Hey Brent, you

should get down while you can still walk without crutches. Unfortunately, it would take my inner self just about as long to wise up about life as it did my outer self, and according to my track record, that was still almost a score and a half away from happening. Daylight came and I sat motionless, moving only my head slightly as I scanned a little clearing where I knew something was going to happen. Birds were singing, Squirrels were knocking acrons

out of the trees, and the woods were awake. And I was dozing off from having to sit so still. A door in the yearland walked out across the opening on the right side of my standing. That was the last thing I remember as I dozed off. I don't know how long I slept, but I woke up just in time to see the ground rushing up towards me at the speed of light. While my brain was swimming in my glasses trying to solve the equation of what

was going on. Impact with the earth gave me the answer I was so desperately trying to figure out, ah gravity, That's what was happening. Gravity and carelessness, two forces, when combined, can potential create catastrophic results. Now I didn't have the wind knocked out of me and it didn't even hurt. I was lucky because it could have It could have killed me, But a funny story came out of that. That wasn't the case with a friend of mine on the East Coast. He was a good friend who helped

me get my started outdoor filming. I and a couple others in him traveled out west on big private film project a couple of years in a row, and he taught me a lot about running a camera and how to film a hunt. He was always a phone call away to answer questions and give advice. Now he spent more time in the tree than most squirrels and produced some of the best outdoor hunts that a lot of you grew up watching, just like I did. But he

hated safety and harnesses and he rarely wore them. The last time we filmed together was a September el khunt in the Rocky Mountains, and he told me to film a hunter at a water hole that we'd actually hung two stands in. He hunted there the day before. When I asked him if he'd left his safety strap of the tree, he said, you know, I didn't even bring one with me, you use one if you want. I was shocked, and I asked him if he ever warm me.

He said no, not if I can help it. That bothered me, but it didn't influence my desire to not wear one. Two years and a month later, I got the call that he'd fallen out of a tree stand and he was dead. And I miss him, and I'm still sad about it. And I never climbed a tree that I don't think about him never. He died ten years ago. When my son Hunter was a teenager, the hard and fast rules to always have your safety equipment. If you don't have it, you don't climb the tree. Now.

He learned that the hard way one day when he forgot his. We turned around and went back home. The trail camera pictures from that morning driving home all that we'd missed by him not being prepared when we got there that afternoon. But we lived to hunt another day. It only takes one. I was lucky with my one. My friend wasn't. Now is the time of year when we're all getting ready to chase those white tells them. From the bottom of my heart, I'm asking you to

please where your safety artists. If not for you for the folks that love you. It's just that simple. It's easy, it only takes a minute, and it's up to us to set the example for the little folks to follow. Let's make sure we set a good one. Safety first always. That's how we're going to close this one. Thank you so much for listening. Y'all, look out for one another, help folks when you can, and be safe getting around out there. This one's for you, Mike. This is Brent Reeves.

Sign it off. Y'all be careful,