Ep. 434: My Mule Deer Can Kick Your Whitetail’s Ass

Oh, hey, if you're listening, you're gonna have to just finish listening to the show later. There's something more important that you need to be doing. If you remember back a few episodes we had on some anthropologists and archaeologists, and we talked about a project in which me and some other folks from the Meat Eater crew went out

If this is the me Eater podcast coming at you, shirtless, severely, bug bitten, and in my case, underwear.

Listeningcast, you can't predict.

Anything presented by first Light creating proven versatile hunting apparel from Marino bass layers to technical outerwear. For every hunt, first Light Go Farther, stay longer. Phil's got a new haircut.

I do, yes, very boyish.

Oh no, he looks like Yeah, he looks like one of my kids if I took a scissors. If I took a scissors and just clicked the little in the front, he'd have exactly my eight year old's haircut. Looks great. Does your wife like it or not like it? She likes it?

Yeah, yeah, I was. I I was getting shaggy.

I had a haircut scheduled when we went to NWTF be honest, and then we ended up leaving town, so I had to cancel. Whenever I cancel an appointment, I don't know if anyone else is like this. If I have something set on my calendar and I have to get rid of it.

For some reason.

I never have the motivation to reschedule it. I just forget about it until it catches up with me.

That's what keeps happening with my thing where they're supposed to put a probe in my butt. Oh, Beau, I'm that age, Huh. I just like I just can't. It's not that I don't want the experiences. I don't want to know if there's a problem. Yes, I get that, So you're you want the experience. No, I'm indifferent to it. Man, if we weren't, if this wasn't a bro like listen, if we were just talking privately and I and I

Story that'll curl your hair.

No, that would explain why how I've come to be, What what medical experience I had? That would that made me indifferent to the experience. Okay, but it's like I I like I would be. I just don't. I don't want to find out that I know I have a problem. Can't they do that by blood work?

Now?

Though that's what I thought you.

I thought that my doctor was telling me that there's at least for a while the next ten years, that we didn't have to go down.

Well, they changed it and then someone brought it back up not long ago, and for a while they bumped it Like I got aged. I was I aged in and an I aged out? Am I the oldest person here? Oh you, Brent Reiths fifty seven just turned fifty. You got a clear long time on me. I gotta lead. How's your colon? I could be? Situation pretty good. I don't want to talk about it. We're all good. One more thing, Clay, have you switched to all fire retardant clothing?

Paid quite a bit of money for it, and when I got out to.

The truck, I was like, this sucker's fire retarded man.

And I felt really good about it, and I've been wearing it all over just I feel like.

I feel bulletproof. You know. When the back and oil field was like totally kicking ass and had half the country living over there, I went into a store there they have like fire tardant lingerie because you have to have fire retardant close. So they supply all your needs, not your personal needs. Wow. Joined today by Tony Paterson. You you disagree with Kansas trailcam thing. I think it's dumb. Yeah, I do.

I mean, I know, I know the reason why they said it. They're going to ban it because there's hunter conflicts. But I just I don't think that's the issue.

What do you think the issue is.

I think the issue is people are just really bitching a lot about too much pressure out there, and they're finding ways to try to cut it down. I mean, what we're seeing in the white Tail space is Western hunting moving east. You know, people are really gatekeeping on the public land thing, and that's moving. You know, we're seeing that, you know, South Dakota and Nebraska and now Kansas and it just keeps coming east.

Explain that more. What do you mean?

I mean, it's the classic resident non resident fight, right, and you know, residents have power over the non residents and they will wield it. And I look at that and I go, you know, if you have if you have a problem like oh, there's too much pressure on this Kansas public land. The first reaction we have is take something away, and we take something away and we never give it back, and it's either an opportunity or

I just don't think it was that big of a deal.

I know, twelve years ago you could bow lift over tags. On your way to Kansas's bow hunting opener. You could stop in Walmart and buy a lift over tag. And now it's they go when they go out for the draw, they're gone before midnight.

That's it. People got wander lost now.

Man.

But are you saying the West companies is more like the West problems are now all so arising and showing up.

The strategies are showing up, the strategies that the problem is actually moved from the East to the West, and now the strategies are coming back, you know, because we've been dealing with hunting pressure. You know, public land has been real busy in a lot of wait till states for a long time, and now you know that kind of moved out west. Everybody wanted to go hunt ELK and over the counter units and we're just kind of watching that wave wash back.

But I just I look at.

That and I go one of the solutions that I think we should be looking at is more public land, Like how do we do more walk in programs? How do we fund this better? Because when you look at these problems, it's always an access thing. We don't have enough space for people anymore. And I'm like, let's let's try to make some more space instead of always just defaulting to taking away something.

So you think that there was a conversation in which someone said, I want to stick it to non residence. The way I'd like to stick it to non residence is make it that no one resident or non resident. Can you use a trail cam on public land in Kansas, but let's act like it's hunter conflict.

Did you see the meeting that they had, Oh, I think I think partially. I think you know, when you when you do something like that, you're disproportionately affecting non residents, right, I mean, what do you think.

Because they're not around to run their cameras. Well, they're and they're the ones are they able to put you don't think? So you don't run cameras in any other state? You've never done that? Well I would, I I'm not there. Have you ever been to another state? Yeah, because I run states. I run a camera. I run a camera basically aimed into the woods from my fish shack.

Now, I know guys in Arkansas that have like thirty plus cameras in Kansas all round.

Oh listen, I'm not like, I mean.

I can tell you that cameras in Wisconsin.

Yeah, but wait, you don't live in Wisconsin, do you no? How'd you do it? That's a good question. Listen. I'm so all right, listen, Okay, that's wrong about that detail. But I just think it's like, I think it's too It feels to me like it's too sort of uh indirect. Maybe it's too indirect, maybe like it's an indirect way to stick it to them.

Yeah, I mean I don't think that's like, I don't think that's like the primary reason.

I think it's just one thing that happens.

But I and listen, I'm super sensitive to this because you know, Clay, you and I have talked about this where we look at like when I was growing up, I started bow hunting in nineteen ninety two, right when I turned twelve, and the enemy was the anti hunters, Like that was when animal rights activists and stuff like that was like the boogeyman, and like they're taking away our opportunities. And now I look at it state to state to state, and we will take away opportunities from

Do you think you should be able to do you think you should be able to hunt moose with a drone? I don't really know the answer is no. So you're comfortable that's stripping that opportunity away from somebody?

No, no, no, no, listen, I'm not I'm not like a super defender of trail cameras.

Like I don't really care about that part of it.

Like if they took it away, wouldn't affect my success hunting at all. Same thing, like if they were like, oh, no more food plots, no more bait or whatever, Like I don't care personally. I just look at when these things go away, they just don't come back. And I don't think that's a resource issue when you say no more trail cameras on public land, it's not. It's not like that was causing, you know, the white tail population

To do it. Well you should, because I'll explain why. Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up. I think that I'm trying to develop a principle. I might call it the I think I need a name for it, Ronella principle. No, so it sounds too self serving guard the gate. No either way, I'll work on the name of the principle later. But what you do is, are you familiar with with

I don't think so. I mean, I really, I actually think it hurts people.

Yeah, I've never seen an argument that since cameras, since cameras became prevalent, that public land efficacy is shot through the roof. I've never seen that.

I hunt white tails a lot, and I think that they're I don't think they do us as many favors as people think. And I think people look at them as like it's a shortcut to scouting and it's just not. You know, and listen, I get the argument in Kansas or I get the public land argument of like claiming a spot because that sucks, right, like you walk in somebody's got a stand or somebody's got a camera.

Like.

I get that, So I get that argument about it. I just don't think, like, I don't think this was the answer to their problems.

I don't. So, you know, I laid out like this because we kind of straight into this idea of you would defend trapping, and I think you ought to. I don't know that that the trail cam thing, like I've never seen any evidence or any argument the trail cams were increasing efficacy to the point where they had like cut back on how many people were allowed to hunt

Sure, I think it's really hard. I mean for me to think, Okay, you could probably go walk through seven thousand miles of public land in Kansas and you might not have gotten your picture taken.

I can tell you about a spot in Florida where you did.

Yeah, listen, I've seen it seven hundred yards. But I just I look at it and I just go I just don't. I get why people are pissed at it. I get why they want it to go away. I understand that. I just don't think it's the solution to the problem.

Is part of it, not disturbance at non hunting times of the year, those guys are just like year round running trail cameras and they're going in and they're monkeying around with stuff. Was part of it, not just disturbance. It's kind of like them putting limitations on shed hunting. You can't shed hunt until this time because we're trying to give these animals a break.

That might have been part of the We pause real quick so I can finish introductions, because now you got this the whole. You got this hold of ball there, doude, And there's a lot to say about that. Sure, let's do. Let's do some introduction. Joined today for the first time ever. Boy Brent reeves glad to be here. Man, if you haven't heard them before, you're gonna hear about them all the time, true story, all the time. I heard a lot of people talking last night about Taylor Swift. Mm hmm.

Yeah, this Country Life, How to cheat the system, How to beat the system. You gotta beat them, beat them at their own game.

Brent.

People would know if they listen to bar people would People would know Brent from the bear grea surrender and just lots of bear grease stuff. So Brent's a longtime friend of mine.

M hm. Clay has been an advocate. Tell the whole story Clay about about Brent. We'll come back to it. Join Today by Jordan Bud.

What's up.

How's it going?

It's going good, Glad to be here.

You got guiding coming up.

Yeah, had three archery guys for turkeys and really it had to miss and a snowstorm. So yeah, it's been a little rough.

That was tough. Yeah, probably just because the season is it's not like springy.

It's really not springy. No, and it's currently a snowstorm there right now too, So I think a future I'm just gonna hold off on the archery season till you know, further into April.

How many clients you got coming for regular turkey?

Eight?

I think?

Are you filled up?

Yeah?

Yeah, filled up? Yeah, So that's good and people want to want to book out to twenty four to twenty five.

So excellent. Crazy you got eight turkeys running around?

Yeah, there was eight shredders. My dad sent me a picture in the arm yesterday morning.

Yeah, and I filled his new haircut. Jason Phillips is here. Thanks for having me. It's a packed toiles. Clay Nukem, Hello, and Janus Putiless.

Good morning.

Okay, finished off what you're saying now, Well, just about Brent and his podcast.

No, no, no, no, no no, we'll get to that. We gotta go.

Yeah, you got you're bringing up a whole other thing that that that that.

The effect on wildlife effects on because because this is the thing you've been here, listen, I got, I gotta, I have a go ahead. Well, I just I just said what I had heard.

I just asked somebody that was I felt like in the know, and I said, why did they do it? Why did they bend trail cameras in Kansas? And he said the first thing he said was it was an issue of disturbance of wildlife, yep, And that was that was his interpretation, probably many many things.

Let me Okay, you know how when you're normally like a normal person who has a real ax to grind, and they like we see with the media, right like, depending on where you get your media, you see that they omit a lot of information in order to accentuate the parts that they're interested in, right right, that's like a so people who are ideologues, and in some ways I am would never say a thing that would damage their own argument. But in the spirit of not being

But no, don't you remember we did a whole podcast yes with mill the warden from Colorado, and it was the fact that it was a twenty four hour a day, three sixty five pressure where he's like, look, yeah, hunters apply a lot of pressure, but it's we're about two months.

Yeah, yeah, you're right, I forgot about that. He did acknowledge the thing, But there are a few months out of the year where I'm talking public, private, whatever, there's a few months out of the year where most things need to adjust their behavior in radical fashion because hunters are disturbing wildlife. So I'm just saying, like people in glasshouses don't throw stones and some respects. But there's a churn to the three hundred and sixty five days a

And I don't know the legs that that argument actually had in terms of was that the real reason, But you know, it feels to me like it it feels to me like a like an action point that an agency was able to take to kind of slap down just the encroachment of technology on to the traditional way

And people would go, what are you serious?

I mean, the trail cam thing is wild, and man, I'm I play the game, so don't you know, don't hate the player or don't hate the don't hate the player.

Yeah, Holms, you can fool me once, but you can't fool me. What I'm trying to say that you can't fool me again.

The this trail cams are crazy, man, And I mean I use them like I use them like crazy.

It is.

It is wild how dependent we are on technology for that. And if you want to talk about fair Chase, I say this privately to people, like people want to talk about using dogs or bait or something, and say, fair Chase, Lord of Mercy Son, take the GPS on your phone

You went from a jury and this I would win. Yeah, pick which one of these guys is unfair? I mean, it's true. I gotta ask you this though.

If I said, Clay, in the next week, you got to kill a deer, I said, you can take this trail camera or you can take this bag of corn.

You picked the trail camera.

That's a that's a great that's a great comment that what would you? I would pick the corn too, But but I'm just saying that in the broader.

In the bread, that's can we change the question? That's a great You have a year to kill a big smoker buck, trail camera, corn, trail camera?

Really, I mean, I have to think about it.

All.

I'm saying, that's a great comment. I'm not saying what you're saying is true. But I'm just saying I kill a lot of stuff because of trail cameras. It encourages me beyond like I work harder because of trail cameras. I mean, like there's intangible factors like I got a picture of a of a I got a picture of I don't even want to say what kind of animal it was on my trail camera yesterday on my cell phone. I'm sitting here in Montana and I'm pumped, and I'm

Big old coon, Hey man, I could have caught it. I could have caught a raccoon off trail camera, but shows not to caught one. Oh every night he crosses on this beaver. Damn easy pickings. Mm hmm. But I let him walk. That's that's fair. Hey Tony, let me say this. Let me what response to you.

If you're out west, I would totally take Like if you're in the eastern deciduous forest where I live, yeah, a bag of corn is going to be.

But if you were in a place where you weren't allowed to use corn.

Well, I mean, if you're out west, like the GPS on your phone is taking people into places they would never have the courage to go or the guts to go or know was there. I mean, just the point is is that there's a lot of stuff going on.

It's not always Apple styles. Dude, I totally agree with you.

I honestly think one of the biggest advantages and one of the biggest problems we have now is it's so easy for you to pull up your phone in scout a spot. I mean, you can find public land anywhere private landowners, and I love it. But it's just opened up this world to everyone that you know, twenty years ago just wasn't there, and that I think that's a at least as big of a game changer as the proliferation of trail cameras.

You know, it's possible to have both because even like I've always loved alcohol, to drink too much alcohol me too, And when I drank too much alcohol, I was like, you know what, they should probably never have a repealed prohibition. Even when I was having a drink, I would think that it's like you know who you know, Like, I love it, but I mean, really, is it really doing anybody he favors.

Yeah, you're going to see the same thing though. I mean they outloud alcohol, people kept drinking it. There's people gonna be putting game cameras in cabs.

Well, no, because what I just heard, you weren't hearing. We talked about this. But I got a friend in Arizona who I thought would have been livid about Arizona's trail camp ban because he is not only is he a guide, but he does a lot of scouting, okay, and he'll so he's got different guiding clients, and he'll go find stuff. Yep, He'll find something that catches his interest and he can then go, you know, he can go to an outfitter and get a client and be like, listen,

Uh?

He was all for it. And he said, what's interesting now is says you can't find a trail cam. He's talking about public opinion and where it really came from and where the public sort of sat on the trail cam issue.

Right.

He said, I haven't run into a trail cam since, and that wasn't that long ago. I haven't run into a trail cam still hanging in the woods that doesn't have a bullet hole through it. Really, I've heard that now you just shoot him when you see him, because they're not supposed to be there. They'll just start hiding them better. Yeah, but I mean, if you hide it too good, it's not gonna get any pictures. I can't find it.

You're not an undercovered well lef agent.

Have you had, Tony? Have you had it? Just before? We need to get off this topic. I know, but have you had any on public land that your experience has been negatively affected by seeing too many other people's trail cameras in the woods?

No, in fact, and I don't. I don't run trail cameras on public land ever. It's just not part of my strategy. And when I drew Iowa last time and I was down there, I was walking past trail cameras. I was dragging deer past trail cameras. They were all over and I just look at it and I go. One of the things that trail cameras do is they convince people to not hunt you put them out and you're like, oh, these bucks aren't consistent, or they're only

Forgetting pictures of Tony Peterson all the time. I just.

I just walked by a wave and so no, but I don't. I'm just kind of used to it, you know. I mean, it's just like a part of the thing, and it listened it does it piss me off a little bit kind of you know, like I'm getting old enough where that kind of stuff makes me a little grumpy. And it's the same thing when I walk in and there's a you know, a ladder stand chained to a tree on land. You're not supposed to leave a stand

If you have a trail camera, picture come part of the game.

But it's been for a while, you know.

If you have a trail camera picture if Tony Peterson on your phone, and you'll send it somehow to me, I will send you a bargery's hat.

Now you know, uh, you remember earlier I mentioned I have a trail came at my fish shack. There's like a really good game trail behind my fishack. Well, one of my friends went back there and she peeded and then she saw that the camera pulled my cards. Has to give you my card back. So here's a person where uh, here's a person that you know, not on private land, but here's a person that really didn't like that h feeling.

I acid beyond trail cameras. I can remember being a young guide and thinking hunting public land, guiding public land in Colorado and thinking, all, there's just beautiful, serene places, and that's what I came to expect. And the first time you go into a meadow and you think, oh,

You know.

I like the woods just looking like no one's been there, you know, maybe a boot track here and there.

Can I tell you about my sweet trail cam setup that I have Right now, dude, there's this biggest picture, the biggest nastiest scree slide you ever seen in your life. I mean from the bottom of the mountain to the top of the mountain scree slide. H But then imagine that there's like a finger timber that noses out into that scree slide, and a finger timber on the other side that noses out into that screen slide, and a little band of brush that connects those fingers of timber.

June on this time, we think, and I got wolverines bulbs.

Who knows what's waiting on that thing? So I'm talking out of both sides of my mouth here.

Tony Peterson might be on there.

Dragon White, I think that's highly unlikely. Okay, moving on. This is the most amazing news story I have a come across. Where was this supported? Oh? The Guardian? You know, the Guardian always has a lot of We're I was getting scooped by the Guardian, which is a British rag. The Guardian is. So here's the deal. In northern Japan. Japan has prefectures, which I'm not sure what that means. Let me just tell you what's going on there. They have a bear meat vending machine. Which has proven to

One hundred and fifteen bucks one hundred.

And fifteen dollars per pound of bear meat. Not a bad deal. That puts a bear. That values a bear at about a per pound. I killed a big bear one time and got the bat. I had the backstraps, I had the backstraps, and eighty three pounds a ground off it.

I'd say that's eight thousand dollars bear.

Yeah, So what they're selling at they're selling at two thousand and two hundred two thy two hundred yen for two hundred and fifty.

Grams of bear meat, which comes out to tummygin iink one fifteen one fifteen pound. There's a nearby railway station in the town of Semboku, Okay. This guy sets up a bear meat vening machine, and now he's got people, he's got requests for mail order deliveries into Tokyo. There's a there's a hunt club nearby, and the hunt club got permitted in the mountains the hunt club got permitted to kill a certain number of bears during the hunting season, and they set up a vending machine to sell it.

Incredible, it would happen in our country if it was legal.

Yep, yeah, I think so. So the number here's the thing you don't really think about with Japan. The number of bear encounters has risen in recent years from an estimated four thy eight hundred like human bear conflict encounters in two thousand and nine, to more than twenty thousand and twoenty twenty two people killed in one hundred and fifty eight injured from bears in Japan. H A shortage

Acorn in Japanese is donguri in Japan.

I wonder how the hill folks say, here's the earth that you might not think of when you think of Japan.

A eight point eight five foot brown bear three hundred kilograms? What's that?

Put them at four fifty.

Four hundred and fifty pounds? Brown bear killed good size bears. Listen to this. Oh sorry, this is going back to nineteen fifteen, but it's still warrants discussion.

It appears there's two species of bears pan a brown bear and a Asiatic black bear like they call They called a Japanese black bear ursus the bitanus jeppanikus.

We used to do a trivia question at our live shows where you had to name I can't remember how many of the world's bears you had to name. Some of the bears you know what used to stump the shit out of people at the trivia show the live show is name five of the was it six of the seven or five of the six cats? Wild cats natives of North America and uh, people had a very

Now that would get made the weasels cause.

They don't know what to put in, like skunks and badgers and stuff. So continuing on, check this out. In nineteen fifteen, a brown my own bear killed seven people and injured three others on the northern main island of Hokkaidu. A hunter tracked down and killed it. Can you imagine that would be quite a news story here in the US today? Was it like over a period of time or does it say? Doesn't say? Isn't think about that?

I know a story and I don't know it well, so I'm going to tell it very generically.

But in.

The last forty years, there was a guy, an American guy that took hounds to Japan and hunted for an extended period of time in Japan with American.

Bear dogs bear. Yeah, did he do good?

I think so. I think it was a very specific reason that he was there. It was they were having some trouble and like they recruited guy to come, and he went and took his as I recall, he took his plot hounds and went to Japan and hunt for a short period of time. I don't remember the context of the story, but interesting.

Likely story a plot guy would tell detail.

I remember this is this is interesting. If you listen to the show. You heard recently me talking about a guy ran into at the Cabo airport who had a fanny pack. You know Rogan Wars fanny packs. I sent this to him as well, has a fanny pack made to look like a human gut overhanging your belt. So I see him in the airport, slender Feller, and I'm like,

What are the chances that Steve that this guy would have known Steve manny pack.

In the longgoing debate about golf courses that we've had, and this whole wrinkle has emerged about how golf courses make great a golf course person pointed out, and I gave him a lot of credit for pointing this out. He pointed out, like they live in a suburban area and they have a golf course. It's got woods, it's got I don't know how many hundreds of white oaks that he's counted up, water holes, all the wildlife that

You couldn't golf course. Just take the flags out of the hole.

No, dude, one.

The club house, he removed it. It's gone.

Oh he didn't want to hunting camp. He took some of the fairways and planted him in oak I mean he did.

The golf course. Yeah, if you drive by there now, there's no way you would ever know that it used to be a golf course. And it wasn't that long ago. The first time we went, you could tell it was a golf course.

He undid it as a wildlife property. That's pretty cool now.

The place that I grew up, so my dad always wanted us to play golf and I never did. And the old golf course that we used to play on when we were kids in my hometown in Arkansas is now no more. And it's like a it looks like a cutover, it's like grown up at least the last time I saw it.

Refugia Wildlife. Yeah, and it's true. We have a local golf courses plaster through the wildlife. So I get it. This means you know, I mean, this is like listen golfers whose golf courses not the same thing. A little update here. A long time ago. You know what's funny. We were recording so we had the Atlanta Braves player Austin Riley on the podcast, and we were recording the podcast in Atlanta, and at as we were recording it, the Walleye cheating scandal in Ohio was erupting. That's how

Sounds like they had to give her a punishment, and so this is what they came up with.

What they came up with, that's one heat cycle oh for oh a conservation. So she was charged. She had a misdemeanor offense for animal cruelty. M hmm. Does anybody have anything wildly different than how I view it? I mean, I can.

It's a mistake that could be made. I mean, if you're in wild country, you could legally shoot a wolf. You're three hundred and I don't know the details of the story. It's reasonable that someone could shoot a husky and think that it was a wolf. And if you and if you were not an experienced person in the in the woods, you'd never seen a wolf up close before, I could understand it's reasonable to think that someone would think a husky puppy or a husky was a young wolf.

I didn't have a cow, and it was like a guy had dumped a guy had I don't know why this sum bitch isn't that the guy had taken a whole litter of dogs and dumped them up in the mountains. Who's that? Maybe he is in trouble.

He must be if he's been caught.

They just had to leave a They just had to leave a paper trail. It sounds like I mean, they had to they had to do something. They had to do something. Yeah.

Uh, that's what the game warden said to me at the time that my legally caught and legally kept wild buck got loose and went and roughed up my neighbor. That's what the game warden said to me everybody about. He said, you're gonna have to We're gonna have to leave a paper trail legally. I had a deer, a wild caught deer in a that we kept. We raised several of them, and one day.

My already you were a captive deer breeder. I was for a time my kids were young.

I set out to raised deer and a long story short, a pit bulldog ended up in the pen with my forked horn buck and they were going round and round. I mean, the deer was going to get killed. The dog got in there. It wasn't my dog. And so the only way to remedy the situation was to open the door. They're running circles, and when that buck came around, he just went straight out the gate, and I shut the gate and captured the dog, you know, called the called the dog owner, and the buck was gone for.

He was just gone, okay.

And he had a collar on and what kind of collar like a dog collar? Get a dog collar on a It was a really dramatic scenario where I hear a dog bark and I look out and there's just this like chaos, and you have a collar on your deer. Uh, just so somebody wouldn't sneak up in my yard and shoot it thinking that it was a deer. Just when you when you have when you have deer steve, you put collars on them. I want to this is no longer legal in Arkansas.

But for years you could.

You could keep up to six handcuught deer from the wild, and I wanted my kids to.

Catch them by hand. I mean, okay, but okay, if I gave you the rest of today.

Camera and all the cameras you want, I'll tell you stories about hand catching deer. An catch them as you got to catch them. Man, there was a period of time when my kids were young, about four or five years that I became an expert at when fawns were born in the Ozarks.

I would go hunting for him. No, I've come across some hunting morels because you're looking right, Yeah, so I don't do that anymore. So you can.

You know it's not legal anymore.

But you gets out. Okay, but I want the whole damn story. But I do want to catch Like walk me through catching one.

Well, I'll tell you how I caught one. I was driving down the road, and boy, if I want to say it was May eighth, I would have remembered the date ten years ago.

And there's a dose stand in the road with two little fawns, and.

The dough jumps off and the fawn beds down in the ditch. I literally got out of the truck, picked it up, put it in the back seat, and we raised it bottle fed up.

And the other one my father in law picked up for me.

I used to go out when when guys were cutting hay and walk hayfields, and when they're about four or five days old, you can't hardly catch them, but when they're young, you can catch them.

And uh so, yeah, we raised three deer.

Oh.

I mean, I could bore you with stories, and I've told some of them on the media podcast, but.

Well, I mean, I'm afraid people have heard them now.

I raised a dough that we called Lulu that lived in our house like a like a like a pet dog for a long period of time. And eventually, again, you can't do this anymore, so this is like not okay, but this at the time it was and we ended up kind of releasing her back into the wild, and she raised at least three pairs of fawns that she she became wild. She raised three pairs of fawns that

One time, tell about your daddy. Yeah.

One time I was bow hunting a mile from my house and Lulu walked underneath me with her fawn. One time, another buck that I had, great that we let this.

I've told this story before. Stop me someone.

One time I raised the buck and I let him run wild, or just let him run loose around my house. The older he guy, he was a button butt. No no, no, let him run just like like loose out in the yard like a dog.

And when he.

Became a when he became a button buck, he would run.

He he just started to become more.

He would just be gone for a little while and just disappear for like hours at a time. I go muzzle oder hunting across the road from my house. I'm sitting on the ground. The wind that's hitting me in the back of the neck, blowing down into this little drawl. I see two deer coming and it's a antlerless deer and a small buck and they're coming, and I go, here we go. There's a deer and the wind's blowing straight down the hill, and I see that they're going

What are you doing?

Man? And the buck took about four or five steps towards me, and then the buck spooks and then me and and uh uh, shoot, what do we call him?

We had? That was road runner?

Me and road Runner walked back to the house.

Story, you've got like that?

The deer, I mean, I knew what it would do when it caught my wind. The deer walked up, but I just never moved and I got we've got videos of these deer.

But I wonder what year buck would have thought about what your deer would have thought if you'd shot that deer. Probably thought nothing of it.

Man, it just doesn't have the frontal cortex to be able to process abstract thought like that dude just shot by buddy.

Imagine somebody stand watching you walked back.

That's a jen a trail camera.

What if I have been on your trail camera walking? No, so to finish the stop me someone?

Uh no, we want to hear about that. I said, the paper.

Trail, I said.

The game warden said to me, we got to have a paper trail for this, mister nukelem uh was somebody my my buck gets loose because he's been I saved his life by opening the door and shutting it on this pit bull. The buck is gone for like a week. I told this story on the Badory podcast. One day, I come home, Misty comes home and she had seen blue lights.

Up at the front of the road again, and and she comes.

She comes home and the phone rings and it's our neighbor. And he goes, Clay, they're after you, man, They're after you.

He said.

The game Warden came by here and said, does anybody on this road own a deer? And my neighbor goes, no, I've never heard.

Of anybody having a deer around here. And he picks up the phone.

He goes Clay there after you, and he says, he says, your buck is hurt. And he names the person, this elderly gentleman on the road, and I go, oh no, I mean, I'm just like, think my life's over. I get in the truck, drive down there to where the game boardings at and I'm like, this is my deer?

What's going on? And he didn't hurt the neighbor.

But he walked up to my neighbor while he was doing chores outside and just started pushing around.

On him, just just messing with him.

And the neighbor obviously is like what is going on? They call the game and fish game and fish comes out. I go turn myself in. You know, I'm like, kids, is great being your dad. I'll write you from prison and the game. I tell the game ord exactly what happens. You know, this deer I had it had to let it go the dog and and he he gave me a warning. Citation for releasing captive wildlife. No jail time, no jail time.

That's the story. You can't own a deer for six months.

So the best, the best photo of the nukes that we have is my son Epherd when he was three, and he's sitting on a rock wall, ball in his eyes out. It's like a cell phone photo. He could tell. He's just like he's balling his eyes out and there's a half eaten apple on the wall beside him with a deer eating it. And I came outside because Shepherd was crying, and I said, what's wrong, Son? And he said, road rudder took my apple. That deer had walked out

It's Shepherd. Yeah, guy wrote in this is interesting, this is interesting deal. He's first off, he says he's dusting off everything he knows about proper grammar so that his email doesn't wind up on a T shirt of ours, which the thing we've had appen for exemplary emails. He's he's gotten tuned down to a program in the Netherlands called visder bell put that make that sound Dutch, but here Dutch vist bell. It means fish door bell. So

Uh.

Here's a piece from the news from the Northern Ontania. What is this from Northern Ontario CETV news. A Northern Ontario man has been banned from license hunting and fined five thousand dollars. So this is whatever this is is much worse than shooting a husky. After pleading guilty to having more than six times the legal limit of grouse and obstructing conservation officers. This guy had ninety one grouse, which is seventy six over the legal limit of fifteen.

Dany Wow, not per fish, per person.

Per yeah, a thousand bucks. No, not a thousand bucks per fish. Oh so this guy shoes too many grouse? Five thousand What else happened to him?

He lost his hunting privileges for life. They don't mess around in Canada.

These dudes kill. It's a big there's a picture of the confiscated fish. Just a big pickup truck load of king salmon heads and bags of flays uh thousand bucks apiece. Great inconsistent.

I would have at least taken away their fishing privileges on the Mannassee River for six months, not the minimal clay. I like those deer stories. I think you should do a whole podcast about deer stories on bear Grease. That's a good deer stories, Yeah, because I bet you could interview some other fellas down there in Arkansas who also have crazy pet deer stories, because any there's nobody has

So basically, my my buck, my buck got dangerous.

You know, the bucks get dangerous. Sure, and so that spooked me a little bit.

As the kids got older, and when that dog got in there, Like there was just complications with having a deer, and there're a lot of work, I mean an incredible amount of work to bottle feed, you know, a very young deer.

I mean it's like having a newborn baby.

You're waking up for multiple weeks, You're waking up every four hours to go bottle feed that thing. So it's a legitimate tax on your life to raise one successfully. And I think we just kind of had our feel of it, and you know, what were you.

Hoping to get out of it? Do you'd raise a giant buck and then pretend you got it?

No.

I remember, Steve, when I was a young kid, they took us on a field trip to the Walston Farm way out in the Washington Mountains in Arkansas, and everybody where I'm from will know who I'm talking about. They had this like just a neat family in this neat farm, and I remember they had they had deer there just walking around and I was just a little kid that had my dad was a hunter, and I was intrigued by it, and I was just like, this is living.

That's just kind of what I thought to have a pet deer.

And so I always wanted that for my kids, and so I just set out to We're gonna We're gonna be people that have pet deer and or raise our kids having pet deer.

Do you know during the American Revolution, there was an American there was an American officer who had a pet buck and one day he leaned over to put on his pants and the pet buck charged him and ran a time through his artery. Really is for moral artery, and the guy bled out right on the floor. An officer in the an American officer in the Revolution.

Wow, it's not surprising. They're real dangerous and during the run, even when they're young.

So if it's illegal to release captive wildlife, how did you get rid of the pet deer you had?

Well, you're honest, I don't really want to talk about that.

No, I had to.

It was it probably was illegal. I wouldn't have even that wouldn't have even entered my mind at the time.

But you just release them.

I did. I did.

Yeah, Well, no, I had to put down the buck, the buck that roughed up mister Mitchell. I had to put it down, but I had it processed, gave it away. Yeah, because it's hard to eat your.

And and I mean the story of it coming back was a week.

So the game warden gives me the give gives me the deal, and he says, I say, well, what do you want me to do? And he says, if you see the buck, put it down? And I said, yes, sir. And so like a week later, I'm sitting in my office and it's like late October, and I have a big window right by my computer. Brit seen it, and I just look up and there's road runner like three feet from him, and and I, yeah, I could go into the details of.

Yeah, just going. I mean, if you want the whole thing, I'll tell you this.

I walk outside and he's been running wild now for like ten days, and he was he was invigorated by his by his experience.

And when I walked out, he immediately.

Started roughing me up like he was I'm not going to say he was attacking me, but he straight up just came and started pushing me around, pushing on. Jason Phelps here, just pushing me around. And I have a twenty two mark t Ruger pistol on mind.

So he was trying to rough you up with his antlers? Yeah, oh yeah? What kind of rack was he throwing out there? He had a little forking horn rack.

I still got it, uh uh. And he starts pushing me around, and the house is here, and my office is here, and I'm and no one's home, and you got a pistol and I've got a pistol, and I'm trying to figure out a way to safe way to shoot this deer in the head to put it down. And I mean, it's pushing me and I'm like just dancing around, dancing around, and it's more intense.

So if I never had I've never done this. When you think of his power, He's a year and a half old at this time, yep, could you is it if you grabbed him by the antlers and you pushed him out and held him at arm's length? Is he able to overcome that?

The more aggressive you get, the more aggressive he gets. And I would have said it a year and a half old and me weighing, you know, like one seventy a man of average strength, it would have been all I could do to if he had full throttle come out. I mean, it would have been all I could have done to keep him off me.

But picture that, you picture like I'm saying, You've got you got his antler's wonder in each hand. Yeah, and you stiff arm him, right? Can he overcome that resistance?

He wouldn't overcome it by pushing your arms in, but he would flop and flip and get spun around. And be on your back before you know, seriously, really, yeah, they're a handful.

So the more they're strong, the more we.

Tussled, the more intense he gets. And and and he realizes I'm fighting him back. He's just sparring me.

Like at some point he's got to register the pistol. Well, he try to wrestle away from you.

We already went through that part about the frontal quartex.

He's not able to process abstract thought that the deer eventually gets distracted. As deer do, something happens and he I remember, he just threw up his head and looked away from me, and and there was a gap between my house and the office, and.

I just Joe, Yeah, put him right down.

Did you feel terrible? I mean no, I didn't feel terrible. It was it was a it was a shame that it had to end. I felt like I was doing my due duty. I mean it's like, if you play in the dirty game, you're gonna have to do dirty stuff. The game warden told me to put him down, So I put him down.

It's interesting that I've been to the new com You guys raised pigs, chicken, slaughter them, eat them.

Yeah, but you raise.

It was just it was it was it was a family deal, you know, all all the kids knew this deer. And I told him exactly what happened. And uh and and it just was not an appealing idea to eat roadrunner, you know, but it was a good meat. So I did salvage the meat.

Yeah, hmm, that's my story. Okay, how'd you meet Brent Reeves? Now we were fighting.

Now I've known Brent for it's probably since twenty ten or so. And uh, Brent actually first called me when I was doing I had a regional magazine and a regional hunting organization called Arkansas Black Bear Association, and and Brent had reached out to me because Brent was a videographer. He was doing a lot of filming and he was like, hey, it's a guy in Arkansas film some bear hunts. I'd like to he he he offered to help me. It's like, hey, if you want, if you want somebody to film a

Yeah, it was the next year you called and said, hey, you're still interested in doing that, and because you were doing those fundraisers for the magazine, and then I can went over to West Arkansas and filmed the first hunt over there, and then it was after that it was I'd get a call, hey, man, can you go here? Yep, I can do that. And I had had a job that where I could pretty well take off when I wanted to. And what was that job? This is what

Got it, so he still has a badging a gun.

Kids, listen off. If you want to have a lot of free time, good chame job, pretty flexible hours.

There's a cryptic position.

Yeah, that's only been for the like the last eight years, and there's there's only five of us in the state and we're mainly dealing with the tobacco laws. So's that's our concentration there. The federal it has a lot a lot to do with taxes.

And you don't have to tell him what you do, but tell him what you did before. Like you're well, a little bit about your law enforcement career.

Yeah, I started out as a deputy sheriff and then I went into undercover work. I ran a drug task force in southeast Arkansas had we had six counties in that district, and I was the agent in charge and had a number of undercover agents working as well. It was all undercover positions and for that period of time, our one hundred percent focus was drug investigations. And this would have been during the height of methamphetamine movement coming into that part of the world, and it was one

That was the reason that now when you go into buy science medication you had to sign for it. That was the reason. Right there. We're going to stray from the normal subject matter of the show here for a second. But to what degree do you mean to understand this? To what degree did the opioid crisis eliminate myth from the landscape.

I don't know that it's eliminated it, but myth was still number one when I got out of that. Opioids was just coming on. Now by far, opioids are the most abused drug you know that you can get from the doctor's office, from the drug store.

It's more abused than anything. And at that time.

When I was in everybody made their own methopetomine. I mean, if we this group of folks right here, five of us would be manufacturing and the rest of them would be using it.

And out of how many people, how many people we got in here?

I know, but I mean, like, where is that.

In that part of in that part of Arkansas?

It was that bad.

Oh yeah, it was that bad, And it was so easy to make.

I mean you could get the you could get the recipes for it right off the internet. There was there was no everybody in their brother was cooking and selling men.

So they were making it for just personal use.

Probably no, no, they a lot of them were. You know, it's it's it's a real big, out hard algorithm to get around. Some folks manufactured it and their deal they're high, was making the best having the best methamphetamine in this area, and other folks were making it just to get the next fixed. But if they made enough, and they were friends, Me and Claire friends, okay, man, we got to find some somewhere.

Well, heck, let's just make some. Then we started making it.

Well, I've got a cousin that you know, he likes it, or he'll his girlfriend does it occasionally, so okay, well we'll make them some if they'll go get pills.

So that that was.

People started catching on to it, and then you you couldn't go to Walmart and get everything you needed. Then you had to go to one Walmart and get one thing. Then you had to go to another store and get another piece. Because people started putting it together. You know, why is this guy coming by all this siinus medicine and you know, and solvents, charcoal lighter and all the So it's not.

Clear why opioids now are better than that.

Is it just?

Is it?

I guess there's just trends inside.

Of well, there are trends, and you know, some of them may be contributed to the consistency of what you could get, because obviously pharmaceutical grade narcotics are you get what you pay for. Every one of them is the same. If you're getting meth from me this week and then meth from Tony next week, you know, is a big difference in what you're and what you're getting. And now the there's hardly any manufactured here compared to what it was. It all comes out of you know, Mexico and other places.

Now, do you think it was effective to go after it? Like, did you meaningfully reduce what was available? I know that, Yeah, you think so. I think so. I think.

You know, we were working at that time anywhere from four to five methaphetamine labs a month, on top of undercover bides and all the other investigations we were doing for one one calendar year. Our for our budget, the state funded budget for every one dollar we spent out of the whole budget. We took three hundred dollars worth street value of drugs off the street. Wow, well it was a big deal.

He's got wild stories about and he may not want to share him He probably doesn't. But of some of those busts and all the different stuff they had to do.

So would you just hand off when you phone the locations? Would you guys hand it off? And then someone to go in there and tear the place apart? So am I working on the meth labs?

No?

We It was me and three other guys from Little South of Little Rock that were certified in dismantling methamphetamine labs. We went to DEA put on, a big class or a school in Quantico, Virginia. So we had to go and get certified and all the different hazardous materials you had to deal with, and at that time, most big urban fire departments would have a hazardous material disposal team for like working accidents on the highway or train derailments, you know, with carrying hazards materials, and.

We would go.

We'd have to wear SCBA's you know, suit containment suits, masks, whole bottle of wax to go in and run these warrants and rate on these raids, make the lab safe if it was in operation, because you're dealing with chemicals and things, they're all corrosive or explosive. Render it safe, and then stand by with it until a hazmat team could get there to properly dispose of it.

So you had to raid it in a hazmat suit. Yeah, because you have no idea what you're interrupting or what's going on.

Yeah, you never know. And you go in there and there'd be kids playing in the floor. Oh it's yeah.

Yeah. What was was, if you had to generalize, was resistance compared to other illicit activities. Was a resistance to arrest higher four math folk. Then people engaged in other illegal activities because of the stereotype of them being like kind of crazy and jacked up and ship you know.

Just depending on the on the individual in what stage they were in. Some of them actually thought it was it was a relief and they knew they had a problem. They could see, you know, they could look at themselves every day and think, you know, hey, I lost another tooth today at work.

And and then.

It became a release for him now some of them. Yeah, there was one guy. I remember the Marshalls had a had a warrant for a guy in the southern end of our county or one of the counties that was in my district. So they called us. We had an SRT team and he said, what's that stand for a Special Response Team LAS of SWAT team. So and I was the commander of that. So it said, we want to use you guys going there. We're going after you know,

We get a positive ID on him with a spot and scope.

Yeah, that's him. That's the guy we're looking for. So I said, Okay, three o'clock in the morning, we're going to hit this Hit this guy, get him arrested and get out of there, we'll catch him in the bed while he's asleep. So we deplore the team and four of the guys go creeping up to this this property and we get just like half a mile through the woods. We get up there and we can see the lights on in the garage and we think, so we'll sit there and listen a minute, and we can hear him

God? Man, Yeah, I need to get some of that for the people work here. You have to take something like I'm doing all that podcast? What's next? Because I that one nine times? Yeah? Yeah, You're dental insurance is going to go up. No, that's incredible, man, What it was strange? Did you want to get out of that pretty bad?

Yeah?

It was pretty rough. You know, remarried all through it?

Uh huh off and on? Uh yeah, what does that mean about sixteen years?

Yeah? I had a starter wife. Oh, I got it.

You know, it's it's rough on the family's it's rough. It was rough on everybody.

I get it. But to explain it, how like what as well? It was?

It was all encompassing. I got a high off of the work. I couldn't rest thinking. And I'll take it back to the very beginning. The first time I saw a house full of children that were in a bad way because of it, that was it just lit a fire and I couldn't rest. I thought every child should should grow up like I did, and every child should be like my children and that and have to worry about missing, you know, a cartoon on them, or not

That was the focus. Did you give up hunting and fishing during those years?

No, we still did I still did it. I didn't have many hunting dogs during that length of time because I couldn't. It was just it didn't work. But no I did. I hunted and fish and I did that with my family. You know, that was the time that I spent with them.

But you got you were in the waterfoul business for a long time. Yep.

My brother and I ran a guide service for about twenty six years. And this is some of this overlap. Some of some of that time I was in patrol and in the uniform part. So but yeah, there's there was a lot of a lot of time. Yeah, we did that on the Arkansas River, Like I said, for twenty six years. We got it folks from all over the nation.

Do you are you worried that Clay thinks that maybe you're an undercover game warning investigating Clay. I have never heard that story. That is news to me.

Of course, he's he's always When I when I interviewed Artie Stewart, I was like, Artie and Britt have a lot in common.

An undercover agent's like the best friend in the.

World, always ready to go, always got an extra cash, and always missing, always missing, always wanting you to take the shot.

Always wanted to video you.

Yeah, that was my biggest saying is like, finally I was like, Brant wants to video of me everywhere I go. No, no, yeah, that's our I mean, he's in there, just still he's if he's still in he's in deep, which I'm pretty convinced he is.

So tell me now get to the part about about you. Start like like, how did you guys? I remember when Klay came to me and said, I think Brent Reeves should do a show.

Can I segue from Brent's That's some of the most I've ever heard Brent publicly talk about his law enforcement stuff, is it?

Yeah? Absolutely?

Like and so this segue, well, I'm just telling you, Brent. We talked on the phone yesterday and we're we're yeah, there's a new podcast coming out called This Country Life with Brent Reeves and if you're if you're around Brent, he does not talk about law enforcement stuff like I'm like you, Steve, I'm constantly like, tell me about this or that, and he like usually wants to get around it.

Be it's about the guys that got away on that.

Yeah, no, it's a it's it's uh, it's gonna be well.

And I don't want to steal Brent's nunner.

But but that segue into this is gonna be a lighthearted, fun short podcast. And Brent, aside from having this law enforcement career, has lived a very robust rural American life.

I mean, there's a there's.

A boat ramp on the Saline River at Arkansas named after Brent's dad. They squirrel hunted and had lines of cur dogs and and just anything any kind of like Southern hunting cred that you want to get, Brent Reeves has it. And Brent, of all people, and here I am talking over Brent. Brent remembers stories like nobody I've ever met like he. Every time I'm with him, he tells a story or remembers something and I go, did you just make that up?

Did you?

And And it's like, so this Country Life with Brent Reeves is a podcast that capitalizes on stuff that Brent's really good about. It's telling great stories, teaching country skills, yep, to teach you how to beat the systems.

Yeah, yeah, that's a that's a throw in, just recent but it works. And it's not like getting away with it's going against like corporate thinking or doing things that give you an advantage, getting you get a better lesson out of it, you know than the and.

Going along with it.

Give us an example, because Clay was saying, you had something that he that you had a thing about the first time you beat the system.

Yeah, that was when I was in the sixth grade. It's kind of a long story.

Yeah, yeah, do you want to I don't know if you want the whole story here because it's this is the opening podcast.

Is him telling the extended version of the story. Oh, I don't know. You want to hear it, I'll tell it, tell me a truncated version. Okay.

When I was in the sixth grade, you know, I like to do things, and everything that I like to do had nothing to do with school. There was other things to do, all of it outside. I grew up on a little farm and if I wanted to be in the woods. I wanted to be outside. I want to be if when I got my chores were done, I had to go. I didn't TV was not a I didn't care about watching television. So when I was in school, it wasn't that I was missing something on TV.

Grew the extended version.

Man, Well, you got to have this context for the rest of it to make sense. And they were on each side of town, and they ran a little railroad that took lumber and wood chips from one side of the town to the other, back and forth to those to those between those meals, and it rolled right beside the elementary school, the sixth, fifth, and sixth grade school

We never got caught. We walked all over town and nobody, I mean we're seeing people. This is a town of mine.

Lucky Strike cigarettes out of a vending machine, fifty cents a pack.

I remember those that they always had that something like clear handle. Yep. I know. I was never a smoker, but you can just be able to walk up, yeah, instead of getting bury meat and spin out cigarette cigarettes. Yeah.

Yeah, So we beat the system. My mother and they never knew about it. I told him about it. My mama didn't believe me. She said, you did not do that.

You tried to tell it, tried to Yeah, I mean, this is I'm grown. She's like, you didn't do that. Yeah, I did.

And so in my buddy, I don't name him in the story, but he went there. We were both involved in what's coincidental about it? We both we ran in separate crowds after that as we as we grew up, and we both became involved in law enforcement, me on the badge toting hen and him on the other end of it. So, oh he got involved in the arts. Yeah, he got involved on the other side. So I've always thought about that up until the sixth grade. We were the he got he got arrested.

He became a criminal.

Oh yeah, criminal, Yeah, yeah, I think he's squared away now. But what kind of crime did you get into? Oh, it's just you know, drugs and drinking and all all of the sort that you love. I think he's doing fine now.

So so I was just going to ask what this takeaway or the skill is that we learn from jumping the train.

That's a prelude, Well we beat the system.

Well, let me explain this. I'll answer your question. So in the podcast, you're going to hear the stories that you need to hear. Yeah, Brent's gonna teach you the country skills that you need to know to beat the system. So every episode you're going to hear some great funny story, like a five or six minute story, and then he's going to talk about a country skill for instance, Like there's one of the episodes is how to train a squirrel dog. One of the episodes is how to run

What does a what does?

What do you need to carry in your pockets if you're a countryman? One of one of the episodes might be about how to buy a truck?

And and and there at what point, I don't know if you guys are doing this one or not we talked about it is how to know when it's okay to bring your own dog hunting and when you go duck hunt with other people and you're not sure of your duck calling skills, how do you know what it's okay to blow your duck call?

So one of the episodes is du camp Etiquette. So it's it's fun, it's a it's a it's a very fun, you know, Jerry Kloer esque, but also gonna teach you something fun podcast and it's and it's gonna be I think I can say this. It's gonna be on the Bear Grease feed. So if if you if you subscribe to the bear Grease podcast, They're now going to be two drops per week on the bear Grease podcast. Bear is going to come out and the Bear Grease Render, which brand is on most of the time. And then

The same way that the Trivia show runs on the Mediator podcast feed. Yeah, So what would really be great is if picture that This Country Life starts outperforming Bear Grease, does it become to this Country Life feet.

Hey, I believe this could happen. Man, people are gonna love Brent's podcast.

I think so. I think they're going to. I think we need to be prepared for change the name of that feet.

I'll be wearing that this country life hat, this country patch. Now it's it's kind of a perfect story too, because I would say that if anybody, I mean, people might have a lot of criticisms of the Bear Grease podcast, but one of them could be that it was just kind of like a heavy listen, like you got to pay attention.

It's not like easy listening.

It's you know, we're usually telling some in depth story and if you miss half of it, you don't know what's going on. Like now what it's it's it's it's like a it's like a robust chunk and it's and it's longer. Bear Gree's podcast. Is This Country Life with Brent Reeves is gonna be like twenty minutes long?

Yeah, fifty. It's just gonna be fun.

So it's kind of the but it's still gonna be in the vein of rural American life.

When does it launch a twenty first Tony, can you tell me why I'm Uh, can you tell me about why you think I'm wrong about how mule you're cooler in white tails?

H sure, I think and we you know, we were talking about this before we started recording. But I think you look at them in a certain way because where you live and where you hunt. No, no, all right, why don't you tell me why you said better first?

No, Tony, go just ignore his Well they're anyway. No, okay, I won't go. No, I want you to.

I can't even really, I mean, Tony, you can knock this out of the park.

They're just more like more mysterious, Okay. They they drift around and show up places. They have a hot, greater tendency to be migratory. They're they're a lot of them are gonna go and never be glimpsed and never like owned by anybody. They're harder to lay a hand on, and they're harder to buy. Meaning when I see a true when I see a truly giant white tail rack, okay, hanging in you know wherever, hanging in some guy's house that I don't know, well, I see a big old

I would say that you might be like twenty percent right, Okay, So I look at that and I go and listen. I'll preface this by saying, if you were to say, Tony, if you're gonna go have a week of fun hunting, what would you pick? I'd go spot in stock meal deer with my bow. Oh okay, I would huge fan. But I also look at this, and I go, when you say, meal deer are this?

They're wild?

And I go to my buddy's house and Aspen and I see giant meal deer feet in his backyard.

I go, well, not those, okay, But listen, a turkey once beat up my dog in my yard. Yeah, does that change how I think about turkeys and turkey hunting? There's always a there's always there's always the mildier land in someone's ear.

It's not like it's that that uncommon. And it's also I look at it and go, Okay. You can say you've got a trophy room full of public land meal deer, I have a trophy l in it. Or I have a trophy room full of public land white tails, Like what does that matter? Like there's still asked there, like the high fence thing exists in white tails, but so does the other end of it. Dude, Okay, the mule deer, Okay, let me say it this way. The mule deer just

I don't know. I don't understand the question. Are they Is it the same hunt? Is it as easy? Is it as hard?

Because what I think you're doing is you're lumping white tails sort sort of in a negative way.

But I'm like, I'm not No, No, I was. I didn't talk about what I was talking about why I like Mulder? No, I know, but the reasons you list. So if I talk about why I like my wife, are you like, man, why are you so hard on my wife? No? I'm like, no, I don't know. But if you what was the original statement, not.

About that giant white tail on the dude's wall.

Yeah, And if you said coming down to I was at a friend's house and there's like this freaking giant. He's got a giant It's not even it's like a giant Whitetail Mount and you look at you, there's no way, there's no way, there's no way, and sure enough is bought from one of them places in Pennsylvania.

Well, what about the fact that there are exponentially more white tails and more white tail hunters than mule deer. So for sure there's gonna be some apples inside of that crate that are not the pristine, romantic, best way, best practice way we want to kill them, And that's not the white tail's fault, it's just the fault that people have. Well, white tails range is so much bigger, there's been so much more biologically successful, There's been so much culture built around them.

I mean, the things that you hate about white tails are because they're great.

I mean, the reason guys have high fence operations and dedicate their lives to growing big deer is because of the wild deer that Tony hunts on public land. And when the guy killed one and they wrote about it in nineteen ninety two at North American white Tail, the world went crazy and we're living off of that vibe and so people cheated the system.

And so, I mean, white tails are easier to hack. Like we know this.

We know how to make big white tails, and that's like an undeniable part of the hunting industry. But I just don't like the broad statement of being like that. And people do this to me all the time. They're like, that's white tail hunt. You go sit on a food plot, you name your bucks, and I'm like, there's so many

Right.

Oh, there's plenty of giant box to get shot underneath a pivot.

Yeah.

Yeah, a lot of alfalfa field bucks. So I just don't like the generalization out here.

Let me let me let me blow your mind then, please. I love muskrats. I like beaver's better than muskrats. Okay, I like otters better than beavers. Now it's some muskrat. It's just like it's it's it's always like this. Like ducks, I like big fat mallards better than some other duck, but I like wood ducks most of all. This isn't the hack on other things.

I get that, and your your your story about mule deer is compelling. I mean, like, I get what you're saying, but I mean what we're we're arguing about something that's silly to argue about, like the people that turn this into a big thing about Oh, Ronella said this about white tails. I mean, it's fun to debate it, but I mean, really, you're just telling us what you love, and Tony's telling you what he loves.

Yeah, let me let me distial it down more. When I see a big old hue, huge mild your mount, I feel like I just know, I know I'm looking at a more interesting story. The odds are I'm looking at a more interesting story than when I see a big, huge way to I think it goes back to numbers.

Though there are let's say, there are a million white tail mounts of Giant two hundred engineer in this country, and there are let's say one hundred thousand, one hundred thousand milder amounts, And again it goes back to the to the numbers thing.

I see what you're saying in your right I'm talking about percentages, not total numbers. Well, but I think you're right.

Yeah, you see a big mulder like it was, it wasn't a high fence milder. That's your point for me, and that's good.

I mean, I like them both. Conversation Jason Phelps. Jason Phelps once told me he will Jason Phelps has vowed not to shoot a white tail. I did kill them last year, and I absolutely love it.

But I'm Steve on this one, and not necessarily because of ones better than the other. I think when like when we're out there doing it, like the boxes that you get to check, the adventure most likely is going to go to meal deer. Every time you're gonna the places that you're gonna go chase these things. I mean, yeah, we've hunted them in the breaks, we've hut them down in the Bilm flats, but I can't go chase a white tail at the top of a mountain above tree line,

Now.

I love sitting in a tree stand in Kansas just as much, you know, not just as much, but it's still fun. It's still something I like to do, but it's not the work that goes And this is where it really gets like a measuring stick, Like you're not trying to say this meal deer was way harder to kill, and not everybody could do it because I had to

See, it's all about mind frame and worldview. Because to me and Tony, setting in a tree stand for four days daylight, tail dark and killing the big buck is the same boxes checked is going into some remote canyon, and it's just different. It's the same buzz, it's the same you know, you'd say adventure and then this one you might say strategy and chess match, and I mean it's.

Just kind of your worldview and I have to throw into there's a personal experienced component of this that's very impressure. I grew up only hunting white tails. That was the only we had one big game animal. I mean, you could go north of us and draw bear tag. We had one big game animal all through growing up, all big game focus was on hunting white tails. So to move away in your twenties and also here's this whole

Wait till you get yourself a little twenty acre chunk and you start thinking about making some habitat back there for those white tails, Buddy, you're gonna get some nostalgia.

Put some sale cams out. When I was a kid, making habitat was dumping carrots. That was habitat improvement. Yeah.

Oh, your Milder, I love it. I mean what you said about Mulder. I've never killed a Mulder. I've never never hunted a Milder. But yeah, I love what you're saying there. But I also love what Tony said. I mean, just it's just different. It's not a legitimate argument. It's like, you know, there's no argument.

I disagree. Plant your flag. Jordan Giannis team mule Deer, which definitely Muder.

Your team Mulder.

Oh yeah, I think honestly, I'm just team big Buck too, because they're hard to kill.

Man, Jordan's killed some giant Mulder, haven't you.

A couple of big ones? Yeah?

Yeah, yeah, what's your giant Milder. You're killing secret? Jordan?

Uh, I don't know if there's a secret. I think it's just uh not quitting, just like keep going.

I don't know, haven't you killed?

Yeah?

That was in Nebraska. Yeah, yep, that was in Nebraska.

And that was like a I mean, I've never seen one like that ever before then, and I haven't seen one since. So that was definitely kind of a wild card.

But we call that taking the cream off the top.

Yeah, taking advantage of a situation, I guess, yeah, or yeah, opportunity.

So yeah, yeah, do.

You ever talk about mule deer tactics in your new podcast? Jordan, No, because we're.

All about the gear Talk, just about the gear, talk about your show, Jordan. Yeah, so yeah, some guy you partnered with.

The Johanni Yeah, Yanni and I are partnered up on the Gear Talk podcast and talking about gear, doing deep dives into lamin it's and you know, breatheabowlel of whatever clothing, talking about boots and all kinds of stuff. So hopefully just to educate consumers on when they decide to buy a piece of gear, they have a place to go look at and listen to what they should look at when they're buying something.

So yeah, and y'all talk about Mulder because I've heard your Mulder story told on there.

Yeah, I mean, we definitely's right because every week I asked Jordan what she's been up to, and then she tells me she's been scouting for mule Deer, doing whatever she's been doing.

Yeah, it's true.

Tell me Annie, Joannie.

I couldn't have said it any better. But in the end, Yeah, don't feel like you're getting sold something. You need to look at it as though you're learning about When I had to make a sort of a PSA, Yeah, it wasn't quite a PSA, but it just had I had to get off my chests i'd read I'd been reading too many comments, too many people thinking like I was selling them something, or Jordan and I were selling them stuff.

Yeah.

Yeah. We've already done a couple of pack dump episodes talk about what was in Jordan's bear pack when she's going bear hunting. My turkey Vest did a pack dump on that.

We talk with people in the industry that are making boots and making jackets and kind of educating people on how stuff happens.

That's right, that's right. We recently did a podcast of Taylor Chamberlain, who's shot I think more dear than anybody else. I know. We talked all about all the different broadheads he's tried and the results that he's seen with different broadheads.

That's a downtown deer hunting guy or no, that's right.

Yeah, he's killed a lot of deer to almost so many that he doesn't like to say the numbers because it kind of makes people a little sick when they think about people killing that many animals.

But he kills them all downtown like nuisance deer.

Yeah, one percent.

Yeah, that's why he kills so many.

Sometimes three and four to sit and I don't want to like applaud you know, this sort of like mass killing. But yeah, I mean there a lot of these suburban areas have these deer problems, and there are a lot of bull hunters that are in there trying to help it out, you know, and help out the people that don't want their fancy flowers eating up, and probably help the deer population in general, right because they're eating themselves

No, that's a really good example, man, it's a really good example. I remember thinking something similar when it's not the same, quite the same example when people argue about shot placement right on different things and calibers on different things. But remember back when all the bison migrating out of Yelso National Park used to just get shot by the Department of Livestock I do and not go to hunter tags.

Yeah. The guys that work for for aphis for Wildlife Services, right, I mean those people literally they kill for a living and so that's their job.

Right.

There's people that have killed thousands and thousands of hogs and you know, whatever else happens is becoming a.

Nuisance like what I like to do the time I did it, but.

I did it once for twelve out of fifteen last years, so I know.

Yeah, that's a good point. That's a good place to go for some information. Yeah, can you can you give you a spoiler alert? What's his take on broad heads? We take a guess.

I mean, I will tell you what his goal is and then you can guess as to what it is. But as he puts it, he likes to take a large chunk out of the animal.

Really mm hm, so she's an expandable Nope, Oh, he doesn't fixed over expandable. Really. Oh, I thought you're gonna tell me this one of the freaking you know, like when I think of a chunk, I wasn't thinking fixed here.

But it's a. It's a it's a it's not a standard fixed. It is wider, it's got very wide bleeder blades. But yeah, he's putting a big hole through these animals to stop him quickly.

Hmm. I'll be tuning in. Yeah, what do you think about all that? Phelps? I don't know there.

But see, you guys already like cut my legs off of my argument because I've only shot fifty, you know, or thirty thirty five and then maybe seen a hundred get killed by an arrow. So it's like, all right, you guys have already like taken the wind out of my cells. But I don't know, like having something like designing a the energy in a arrow isn't meant to necessarily drop stuff. Yeah, we've dropped elk with a shot,

I don't know. Yannie didn't give me the answer to where what's his average shot distance?

Oh no, I mean again, this is a very specific situation. He will not shoot past twenty yards right because he has to you know, he has to hit the ring. But his ten ring is definitely very far forward into that. He said he actually doesn't like to hit the heart itself because he feels like that deer is going to go a little ways, but basically a couple of inches above the heart where it's going to cut that main is it the order connection right to the heart and

All right, Yeah, I agree with that shot placement. With a big, solid cut, that's probably the best location. You know, high shoulder with a big setup. I know I'm opening myself up for a whole lot of debate. But with a big setup elevated stand like high shoulder will work and the thing will become immobile. But there's always a chance for a mess up. So there's another wrinkle of this too.

You talk. You mentioned like aphist guys that kill tons of urban deer. They shoot him in the head, but you know what they can. So there's a fair amount of you needing to be open about what your actual capabilities are, and that might change your approach where some guys like at night how I do it, And I've done it hundreds of times when I'm shooting deer out of people's yards, I hit them all three eighths of an inch down at a four o'clock pattern, down from

Turkey seasons getting close, We're heading out to me and you're heading the Kansas what.

In two weeks? Yeah, it's gonna be fun. Man, finish up the line one saga. When we did our line one call, I vowed to someday take the one of the people that got a line one call, and I was said, I'm gonna take him and we're gonna try to kill a turkey from that walnut stump. Yeah, I don't know that we're I actually gonna.

Okay, we've been I've been dealing with I've been dealing with Chester and Sam a little bit, and I'm like, Steve said something in passing. I don't know, like how dead set he is, Like, cause if we just move forward twenty yards of the field, that it's gonna be a way better set up than sitting on that stone.

Oh, no, visit. So so we took we did. We did calls where we went to a place and chopped down a big wallnut and chopped down some osage orange and made a line one our line one call out of that wood. And then we wanted to we were we couldn't. Like I always tell people that are going into law to go into sweep steaks and raffle law to help you out. No, just a general like if I was going to start my life over, I would spearfish instead of anything else, and my job would be

Which number uh well called that he had.

I remember how we did.

I don't even know if we did. I don't know if we even though what number he had because it was kind of random. We just picked from the original plan, the original plans.

I wanted to get all them ping pong balls that got the number on him and that blowing machine, but we never were able to do any of that.

Anyways, I called in and killed more than a couple of gobblers last year with that call.

Dude, sounds good my call. Anyways, we're gonna take someone hunting at that spot. And I was saying that I wanted to go in there and hunt off that stump. That's thick briers there. Now, you'll be to come in there. Now, as he opened up the canopy, it's probably figure. But we're gonna go in there and take a look. It's gonna be awesome. We'll go see the stump.

Yeah, he's been Randy's been sending his pictures of birds everywhere every day, So it's looking good.

Yeah, that's the thing people like to do. But man, it's gonna be good. No, I think it'll be good. It'll be good. What else going on.

About it? Starting to plan fall hunts? Disneyland got in the way of Spring Bear for me this year. So I'm still recovering from that depression. Taking your kids to Disney Yeah, we're gonna do Disneyland, which got right in the middle of my at.

Some point or another. It has. It happens to everybody. Man, there's nothing really due. Yeah, and then it's like, man, the big you're going to get out of it, Yanni.

Yeah, I'm already out of it. My kids are nine and eleven.

You don't have to go to Disneyland.

Man, Well, when your wife tells you I tried very hard to get out.

Of and I did something wrong, it's a long time before that.

The good thing about it is we went and they weren't really they didn't really care, like it's never come back up again. They didn't. You didn't go, No, we took them. They didn't really care. It's never come back up again. But one thing that came funny out of it is they had a Lego Land. It was like

I had it planned thinking for some reason, we were like going to these land at different time, So planning my big hunt with lampers, We're gonna go, gonna go do all that, and it just landed wrong. And then business kind of always gets in the way, Like we don't spell, we don't sell a whole lot of we do sell predator calls, but turkey is definitely like the priority, and so the time I do have needs to be spent chasing turkeys around.

Got it? Yeah, it's hard to justify it.

Yeah, yeah, So yeah, got got some new out hooters and you know, we brought out this year in new small bat calls, so kind of took a little bit of a dive back and really wanted to like hone in on the designs that we were working on make sure they were buttoned up. So brought some world champion

Yeah, that and what we do? So are you and me gonna be able to hang out because we never hunt turkeys together? I think so, I think we.

I mean, it's your show, but I imagine we all start together as a group, and then we'll just break apart as people start harvesting turkeys and we'll.

Tell the dude that won, like you're on your own buddy. Yeah, yeah, you see that stump off of them, We'll take it, show you where you're supposed to wait. And then me and Phelips are going to going to run and gun.

And I'm excited trail camera over by that stump. Gobblers coming by every.

Day, and I got coming right up, I got coming right up youth, the Wisconsin youth turkey, which is the highlight of my ear, one of the highlights of my ear. And I'm in that thing now of looking at like like looking at ten day forecasts, but then at trying to extrapolate out days from that ten day forecast, which is a nerve wracking experience.

Man, there's other things be spending your time on Steve.

No I like, I check it every morning. I do too, taking my little girls over there to Wisconsin. Right now, the last the farthest out date I can look at is a doozy. It is a turkey killing madman. But it's by my man, if that turkey season open on that day, that'd be a good day at turkey hunting. We'll see, all right. I hope everybody out there, uh gets out and gets after some birds this spring. Check your trail.

Camps, sir, on public land in Kansas.

Shot you're seeing any trail KANSA on public land in Kansas. Shoot them all, everybody, thank you?

Oh right A Ride on land on the seal, gray, shine like silver in the sun. Ride ride on alone, sweet heart.

Were done beat this damn horse to death, taking a new one.

Ride.

We're done beat this damn horse today, So take a new one and ride on.