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Listeningcast, you can't predict anything.
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All right, ladies and gentlemen.
If you're sitting there on a and you and you look at your feed, and you and you think, what in Sam Hill? Is this a special episode of the meat Eater podcast, Well, you're correct. This is a special edition called truck Stories met Eaters truck Stories. Maybe you've heard meters campfire stories. This is truck Stories. And here to share in this event with us is as though dealing poker, not the dealer.
Clay nukelemb Yeah, Clay nukelemb here, glad to be here, Gamble.
That's probably why you don't know what I'm not as No dealing old maid.
Little horse, little horse racing, dealing old maid Texas hold them yeah, Clay nukelemb from Barrier's podcast.
Casey Smith Casey Smith from The Element, Tyler Jones, Tyler Jones from The Element.
Big Truck Guys out Here, Chester Floyd.
One time I won rent money off of a poker game.
Chesterha has a big concert coming up the har Dady asked him how long till the concert? When was the concert? And he gave it to me in hours days and said he wasn't nervous, but the fact that he knew how many hours the way it was suggested nervousness.
No, I'm excited. I saw a great concert last night Paul Coffin, and I took some mental notes of performing and it should be fine.
The Big Velvet they call him, do you know that?
Yeah?
I did.
I like that guy.
Yeah, he's good, talented.
I texted him about coming on the show. Yeah, we should get him. Well, he's like referred me out. It's just got complicated.
You're like, was like head talk to like the manager is. But if you're out there at Paul Cough, we still like to have you come on the show. I just want to like not have to make it so complicated.
Ye.
Jason, Jason Phelps cutting the Distance.
And Dirk Durham cutting the distance.
And you boys are going weekly. We are changing it up from bi weekly to weekly. Yeah twice, How are you gonna double the output?
Oh?
Just add Dirk every other week? So right now I'm every you just got to every other week.
So if you're cutting the Distance podcast fan, now you can listen to every week.
Yeah? What if that cuts into my listenership?
Here?
It shouldn't.
Should the name of the podcast now not be twice as long as opposed to cutting the Distance?
Brent?
Who?
Okay?
Who's Who's gonna start out? I mean I could tell my story. I could tell my truck story and listen, my story is so old I had to call I had to call the person it's about to go over all the details this morning.
You should?
I mean, I think I think this is what we should do. I think we should go around the table rate our story based upon the what how we think the world is going to perceive it, and then you could assign because you know, I may have like a really happy, fun story about family that people are gonna go, oh, that was cute. And you may have a story about a truck, you.
Know, inferno.
Yeah, and you may we may order it a certain way. I would say mine is like a It is like a four point eight on the scale of like fun And then there's a smaller story that's like a seven. It's got a great punchline.
Mine is a is maybe a seven, and it's a love story. Listen, you're gonna think it's about wrestling in Infernos.
It's a love story.
It's hard to be What about you, guys.
I think everybody thinks their own story is the best.
Usually.
I gave mine a seven, but you know that's the best we got to offer seven.
I don't I don't think mine it would be the best.
But you know, mine just got like a funny part at the end, and then like it's a lot of a lot of build up to a funny and then there's a predator issue at the end. You know, poor Kren had to really talk to a lot of people to find a room full of people with a good truck story. So you guys better bring it.
Mm hmm, it's gonna be good. What are you guys rating?
Mmm?
I'm I like to under rate but overachieve, you know, like four, probably because I don't know how people perceive out of ten.
Oh, you know, my jersey never was a five, So I'm gonna go with that.
Okay, who goes first? You had the highest number at seven. Here you go.
Okay, So that's for last though, right.
What's that stories?
No?
No, no one story.
I got one story that I'm very committed to and I even made phone calls about it, so I'm there's no backing out now, Clay, go ahead.
I was just gonna say this. This isn't even on my roster of stories, but just to get as started. When I was a junior in high school, I had a four wheel drive pickup truck.
This is the story or not.
This is not the story. This is a appetizer story. And I started complaining to my dad that there was there was mud getting into the cab of the truck. I said, Dad, the cab of my truck leaks. There's something wrong with my truck. I don't know what's going on. And so we were like, what's wrong with this truck? And a few weeks later, is back when we developed film. You know, you had film cameras and you took to
the store and got filmed. Well, he took a camera to the to Walmart, got the film developed, and there was a picture of me in my truck and you could not see the truck. I was, I was deep. I was, I was you know, rear view, like side mirror, deep in mud, going like twenty miles an hour. And he came home with a photo and said, Clay, this is why your truck leaks. And it never occurred to me. So that's your appetizer story. That truck was an incredible truck.
It was a it was a it was a reclaimed, it had been salvaged, had a salvage title because it had been in a flood somewhere down south. And so for like eight years while I had it, I didn't have it for eight years. However long I had it, it blew sand when you turn on the air conditioner, had like wearing glasses in the truck was blowing sand ambience. That would mean that wasn't even my story.
Guys, are you going to do I go out No.
That somebody else. I passed it off. Now right, well, yeah, I.
Feel like the main course comes after the appetizer.
I'll go, okay, all right, I'm tired of this.
All right, gell and buckle up for a four.
Let's go Uh, okay, so I'll start it.
Uh. You know last song was on the podcast you had talked about kind of our story and it involves being a true white tail bone. So just completely broke trying to kill white tail deer on video and make something you know that we can people would like, right, So we Uh I had. I was living basically.
In my truck for the season.
I mean like I would camp some, but I would sleep in the back seat. And so I had uh I had a let's see two thousand and seven half ton, is that acceptable you're staying and and I killed a couple deer that year, one on Texas public land, which was my first Texas public land buck that I killed.
This is twenty nineteen.
And then we spent I had an Iowa tag, which is like a five year draw. I mean it's like and it's six hundred bucks you got to put in every year. It's like fifty bucks, sixty bucks every year. So you're like racking up an expensive tag for a whitetail deer, I mean close to one thousand bucks probably. So it's an important tag. It's you have the chance of shooting the biggest buck you've ever you know, seen in Iowa. It's just it's the greatest state in my
opinion for deer hunting. So anyway, the first time we went up there was in October, and Case and I went together and we hunted last part of October all the way up to Halloween, like eight days, and there was like two snowing events, and I mean, we're from Texas, so that doesn't happen in October. We get up there and have a pretty good hunt, we don't kill a deer. So I got to go back. Well, on the way home, I'm going to edit some footage, so I get the
computer out. He takes my keys, and we were driving right and uh, we get down into Missouri and it's it's icy, and we come up over this big hill and it's just flat prairie, you know, come.
Up with this big hill.
It's pretty ice. So we've been driving for like two or three hours and I'm like, hey, look at that eighteen wheeler right there. It's turned over. And about that time, it was like the top of the hill turned and went to the left and we just kept going and black Eyes.
I mean, it was absolutely.
And it was like there was a bunch of cars that had the same problem that day. But I mean we tore through a fence like two hundred yards of pasture I had. I had a tree about that big around that was coming right at me in the pastures.
And I'm held as he held his hands out as though gripping Clay's head.
That's right, a solid tree, like you don't want to hit that, you know, And it came so close it blew the mirror off side.
For sure.
And then and it was like it was deep snow, you know, Well we somehow I'll come to a stop. Finally, I mean, way out in this pasture. We limped the truck back up to the road and got it fixed that day. Enough, it had broken a tyrod or something, and so anyway, ended up getting it fixed that day and made it home that night with no rearview mirror on one side and like some of the lights weren't working. But uh, you know, I got to borrow a truck and come back in the rut because it was a
special tag. So I come back in December and I'm doing and I'm literally I leave my house with a dollar sixty seven in my account. I had played, I played guitar, I had played a show and I made like two hundred bucks, which is pretty good.
Yeah, it was.
Interesting.
I'll tell you.
I'll tell you the venue name later on. You know, get to Inner Bucks, you know, pretty easy. Uh, but I I had the cash, so that was what I was gonna pay for gas to get up there, and I was gonnaigure it out. I think we were supposed to have like a deposit. Happened, you know, happened when I was up there. But my wife, she's been very faithful through this whole thing.
So, uh, we get up.
I get up there and I'm by myself and I have to sleep. I have no money, so I have to sleep in the back of this this new truck that I got, and I'm borrowing across it in a sleeping bag. It's it's cold out, and I'm in a Casey's parking lot.
You know what a Casey's is anybody?
Yeah, like a convenient Uh, the general store, some pizza, they have great pizza. You can get gas there, Yeah, you can't get gas there, and so anyway, I mean it was just terrible, like all night, just big trucks were coming in and waking me up. I slept terribly, but I end up like the third or fourth day that I was there on that trip, I'm hanging like eighty yards off the road. This road was too too slick to for cars to come through at the time,
it had been raining. And uh, I see a deer pass across the road and then I hear the buck before I ever saw him, and I thought it was a motorcycle coming down the road.
He was he was doing.
He was grunting so loud and long that it was just like I thought of dirt bikes coming. He's fixing a mess. This whole thing up. It was, It's crazy. It's all on videos on YouTube on the Element channel. Yeah, and I shot him and he ran like twenty yards and fell over. Could see the truck from the stand too, Yeah, yeah, it was up the hillways.
Oh that was your punchline. Yeah, it's not like I can see the buck yeah from the stand.
Yeah. No, but I you know, just sleeping in the bed of my truck. Is poor boy in it? You know?
So that's great?
Yeah, No, no, like no infernos or I was sure happy to shoot that buck.
For sure.
Whose truck was it? It is my wife's granddad. He had uh had gotten to where he couldn't really walk, and so he wasn't using his truck much.
And so, yeah, it's a nice truck. I still have it.
That's great.
Yep, yep, digging in Chester, let's go.
So I took my sister's truck from her senior year of high school. The day I graduated from high school, I took her truck out to Montana. I drove it all the way out because I wanted to be a fishing guide. The truck that I had in high school was not going to make it kind of out west, make the big trip.
So my parents, did you let her know what you were gonna take it?
I let her know, Well, my parents basically let her know that that's kind of how it was going to work.
So young Chester is flying the coop and it will be in your truck.
Basically, it was more of like the family truck, right, But she drove it. Yeah, So I took that out west the day after I graduated, just like super excited to kind of start my own life. So I drove it across the country and I got a job working at a drift boat shop, and I wanted to become a fly fishing guide. So that was like the job. I was like, I can work at this drift boat shop. This truck can handle, it handle pulling a light drift boat. I'm gonna work my way up and buy a drift boat.
So I did that and got a drift boat and was kind of eager to fish as much as I possibly could. So I would work and or I'd get up real early, fish then go work or fish after work. And I was fishing with my buddy Steven Smith. It was in Yeah, it was real high water year twenty eleven. I remember, great hopper fishing. So we were it was
like late July. We were literally going burning the candle on both ends, getting up before the sun comes up, and driving out to the Yellowstone and we had a pretty phenomenal day of fishing hopper fishing, and the wind was blowing and it was blowing all these hoppers in the water, I remember, and grasshoppers. Yeah, we were on like you know, cloud nine, two young kids. I've got a drift boat. I moved out from Wisconsin. You know. It was like the as good of memory as anyone
could have. Meet some buddies at the boat ramp talking about our day and we get in the truck and I turned the AC on and we're cruising down I ninety, just feeling great about life. And my buddy's sitting there in the passenger seat and he said the next thing. He looks over at me, and I got my eyes shut, which is never good, man, never good. We got that AC going, we got music going, and I was tired.
And you know, if we were in like today's trucks, this probably wouldn't have happen because there's all these alarms and safety things that are in him. But I hit the rumble strips and I was out cold sleeping, and I woke up and kind of from a dead sleep and over corrected.
Ooh.
We had the drift boat on the back. And at any moment I was like, it's one of those slow motion things in life that you're like, we're going to go, We're going to start rolling. Well we didn't. We like slid sideways on going eighty miles an hour, which is the speed limit out here on cruise control. Slid sideways and launched the truck off the side of the road airborne for like sixty feet. Whoa with a drift boat on the back and we land in a farmer's field.
There's cattle around us, and they're like, what's that happening? And I'm just as surprised as the cows because I had just waken up from a nap, and you know, my buddy is like, you know, like shaken, and we did not have a scratch on us, So like, how was the boat? The boat was completely fine. It was an aluminum drift boat, just a burly boat and uh, but the trailer was kind of messed up. But yeah, I remember old rancher coming and looking over the side and being like, you boys are lucky.
Why is it always an old rancher? There's ever a young rancher?
There is ny no nervous isn't a young rancher came up to me.
He might not have been a rancher either, he.
I didn't ask him at the time, but dude, we yeah, I mean we drove that truck back home that night. My buddy brought a subway sandwiches, and we went and went to the drift boat shop and got a flatbed trailer and drove right back out there and went back whinch the trailer in the drift boat back on the the flatbed and we were out there fishing that day. No, no, no, we were out there fishing a couple of days later.
But then was your sister mad?
Was my sister mad?
Nothing to be mad about.
Man, The truck just ramped her truck sixty feet.
It just but I think what happened there was what saved us was the boat trailer. I think because when we turned, it stayed, you know, parallel to the road.
Like a rudder.
And I think that exactly. Yeah, I think that's what kept us in there. But man, that was, like, you know, one of those life lessons that like, you do not drive tired.
We all learned that young man, like around twenty.
It's it's something.
It's such a thing when with young I don't know if it will be in future generations, but it just that I am so far away from that now, but it was just a real thing. Yeah, I gotta pull over, you gotta drive. And like ten minutes later I got pulled over.
You were so tired. We didn't stop and jumping jacks together a whole bunch. Man. My buddy hit on this strategy. He would get it.
He would stop at a gas station, get a cup full of ice and I'm not joking. We'll just drop ice keeps down his back of his T shirt and then lean into the ice cube against the seat and now it was his whole like, well, I know how to get a long ways.
Yeah.
But man, lucky to be fishing, that's for sure.
Here you are now.
Didn't hurt the truck much?
No, didn't hurt drove it out of the field. Didn't hurt the truck at all? Man.
Yeah, did you go through any fences or did you ramp the fence?
One?
One fence?
Yeah?
How did you have to fix it?
No?
That we the guy said we were good.
We were good.
When we talked to him, he'd fix it.
You know what I like about Chester's little Genesis story about a fishing guide is he had no idea what he's doing or talking about, but he actually did it, just.
Drove away from home mm hmm and became fishing guide.
Yeah, that's what I wanted. My guidance counselor in high school asked everybody, like, they want to kind of help you with your career goal in college, and I said I didn't. I don't want to go to college. I want to be a fishing guide. And saying that in Wisconsin, in the Holy Land of Dairy Country. She's like, you know, like you're not you can't catch.
They were like cheez and fish don't go together, right, So.
When I I went down, this would never happen anymore. I went down to my guidance counselor. In fact, people don't believe that I'm telling the truth that this happened. I went to my guidance counselor in high school and I had I signed up for a zero hour so you started like seven in the morning and I and I had to do a gym credit. Still, I went down to the guidance counselor and said, listen, when I get out of school, I'm going check on my traps.
So I'm gonna be active. And if I didn't have to go to gym, I could get out an hour earlier.
And that's what I'm going to be doing anyways, is out canoeing and all that.
They're like, okay, really, you got a credit they for trapping.
They let me leave, so I was leaving at noon or whatever, and no one would ever be able to do that anymore.
Now that just goes to show what's happened in this country.
Something wrong.
Dude, that's great. Oh yeah, just excuse me, my pe credit sweet man. That's a good guy. I should find that guy.
Make a little side money, you know, trapping krin. Do you want me to mention the other quick story I have? Okay, I'll make this brief. This is about a truck that is like larger than life. You know, everyone like maybe knew a guy that he had a truck, and you'd see that guy and be like, oh, there's old old Bob, you know, doing something, and like the truck has its own careacter.
Yeah, the truck is the person.
Yeah, so my my grandfathers.
It is an accessory to the truck.
The person's an accescerated truck. And yeah, this person was my grandfather and uh he was a great, great man. He raised seven girls, my mom being one of them.
And baby truck it.
Was a it was a it was a half This one was a half ton. Yeah, Scotch bigger than the truck I drove out west.
Is that a mom joke?
No, just saying seven kids, But it was a truck.
It was a fifty three to fifty five I don't know the exact year, like a blue truck just like that, like that truck right here, right here. Yeah, I have I have some pictures that I want to show you. I'll pass my computer around. Oh wow, he's got this is This is a truck. This is a picture with my dad, his brothers and his father with some deer in the back of the truck, with some foxes on the ground in a coyote. There were more trappers than hunting,
real mixed bag the Chikowski family. And he bought this truck new, which was like one of the only things he bought new ever for a farm truck. And he you know, the neighbors would see this truck coming down the road and they'd be like, oh, there's John Chikowski coming to help out, or you know. It was just that kind of character of truck. Anyways, he's ninety six years old right now.
Wow, and he still Yeah.
His sister lived to be like one hundred and seven and his grandma was like one hundred and nine. Anyways, my mother is right now getting this truck fixed and refers. So I'll show you these photos.
Really wow, this should have been well.
Yeah, next time Chester, we can put them up on the TV and have everyone.
Oh see them, but this is big.
Yeah, let me find these real quick. Sorry, I didn't have them pulled up. So here's a little text from my brother in law who's fixing them, fixing it up. Just waiting on a little of everything for parts because you cannot find it. Wasn't It's not like one of those trucks where people want to fix up nowadays because it will have no value. But it's just sentimental value
to the family. He's waiting on some clutch parts, transmission parts, parts for the steering box, seals for the rear axle, some brake parts, some.
Interior parts, parts parts.
Yeah, the engine was completely rebuilt with possibly the last set of pistons that were ever made in the factory. He got all the six pistons from a different store in different states. Really, so here's here's the color of it.
But so my mom's getting it redone and my grandfather is not doing great right now, and the plan was to have my grandfather surprise him with this truck and then take him to the local warehouser parade and he would ride in that with my mother or whoever, and all the people like his nieces and stuff that are still around there would be surprised and see my grandfather in the truck at the parade like he was meant to be, like he was meant to be, and they would,
you know, see that, and it would just so hopefully this can happen.
God puts my faith back in America.
I lost my faith thinking about counselors these days and not letting kids out.
Of good story.
Yea so good story.
Yeah, Grandpa Chicklsi, good Man, good truck America, the story, last name Chaikowski, Chikolski.
Yeah, think a one or too long? Where that guy come out of?
Yeah?
Holding, all right, who's up? I'll go okay, okay.
Twenty fourteen, I trade into my fresh store, my half ton gas rig for a three quarter ton diesel. And this is this will be important later. I'm not just showing off. It's a beautiful truck. Eight inch lift, thirty seven inch tires, just an eight inch lift, just a nice truck, truck fourteen.
It's a humble brag like a monster truck.
Yeah, but this is gonna be important detail later when we get to something trying to get in it. So twenty fourteen, my my Hunt and buddy Charlie Smith's wife draws a coveted bluestag there in our state of Washington, so it screws up our whole plans. We gotta go film that. I'm gonna run camera. He's gonna call. We go get that one out of the way. She kills a great bull. On September fourteenth, when me and Charlie, like,
our plan was to still go to Idaho. That was back in the good days when you could buy a tag over the counter. We go home because we had all of September off, wash our clothes, and then we take off Rida home and this is really twenty fourteen, my first time really hunting out of state for ELK. You know, I'd hunt a deer in Montana and stuff, but this is like my first on my own, no dad uncles around, I'm gonna go go out of state.
So we leaving the brand new truck the night before and so we get to nowhere, Idaho at three am in the morning, just waiting for the gas station to open up.
We're gonna buy one tag.
We're gonna be real thrifty, buy one tag in case we you know, don't need the other one. And so we go up look at the spot we intended to go a few elk tracks. Nothing we get we get up there and hunt. So it's about two o'clock we're coming out. I remember, like vividly, he's chewing on a purple bag of skittles, and I bugle out the window like this is how this is how like exhausted I am. We just did like five miles in, five miles out, no elk a little bit like maybe our spot we
pick sucks. Begle out the window and I'm like, will you stop chewing on your damn skittles. I just heard a bugle and he didn't believe me. So he's over there, still rattling the bag, and I'm like, Charlie, stop with the skittles.
I said, I want to hear this bull. Be there't a bull out there.
So we get out and listen again, and there's a bull answers and it's like, well, it's getting pretty late. It's like kind of a one track road. Let's fly up here. We have a fourler trailer on the back on a one track road. Let's go cut it and then we'll get on the fourll or drive back to this point and drop in.
Successfully.
Fortunately, my first day in Idaho, Like kill a bull and then we're kind of yet the bull, doub bull cut the distance, no pun intended cut the distance, got him killed. And I'm like, first thing, You're like, nobody's ever, Like we did nothing wrong, but this looks real fishy, Like we bought the tag three o'clock this morning.
We got a bull in the truck this night.
Like it's just not exactly but everything was legit, and uh, get it to the truck and uh like it's hot, it's real hot. We got to get to a cooler, so we drive to a town later and then we go buy his tag the next day. Very fortunate get into bulls that morning. Can't make it work that evening he kills his bull well a little bit of a tough shot. We watched it through our binocular state on its feet, so we had to go camp in the truck. At this point, I had kept my head in the truck.
The guy the cooler didn't want us to keep the head, and I'm like, well, I'm just gonna do a euro so I'll skin it out. But like we were just tossing it in the brush. And I'm always like man predators around here, like it's a little iffy, it's warm, it's gonna get stinky. But we're we're making it work. So we're we got to sleep in the truck. Now, we throw it off and pack it. We go find his bowl next morning, get it all broken down, get it out. So now normally we would just like bomb home,
but my meat's in a cooler. I can't get to cause it's five o'clock at night. So I'm like, well, what are we gonna do? Like he's like, oh my, my childhood cousin I grew up, who lives up here at the ski resort. We're gonna go. I'm gonna give her a call, calls her up. She's like, yeah, come on over, blah blah blah. My, you know, the the in laws are over and come hang out. You guys
can shower up. So we I mean, it's nice. You know, you've been living like dirt bags for the last last three days, all sweaty, so you get to go take a shower. We drink, you know, have a few drinks, eat some pizza, and just kind of refresh.
But there were some bad decisions made along the way.
You know, Normally people would say like, why is your meat in the back of your truck? Why are the heads in the back of the truck. Charlie's attacks a drymas so he wanted to save his cape. We were able to save it and get it out, and you know, you're always like, well, there's houses everywhere. You're in a
ski resort, like we should be fine. So we get my bedroom, you know, a bonus room kind of over the top of the garage which directs directly overlooks the trucks, and Charlie's down the hallway and so it's a I don't know somewhere in the middle of two am, and Charlie comes sprinting into my room like wakes me up out of a like middle sum's.
In your truck? I'm like, how did you hear that?
Way down the hall But so we kind of peek out my blinds and you can see something like in some some sort of light out there, you can see that there's a bear in the back of my truck. And in the short five seconds, like I don't know how it'llked out, but you could see that he's also trying to get on your bumper and he's coming up like the side of the tire and like trying to get Charlie's cape out right at this point, so.
Me, good, think you got that lift?
Yeah, so I know he's working hard, right and you can you can hear horns banging and this is my brand nude truck and all right, we gotta get down there quick. Well I had to wherewithal to put my pants on. Charlie is in a hurry. So Charlie flies down to the garage. Well, my pistols and like, we're not too worried, but he was like, there's a bear and once he's decided he wants to eat, Like who
knows what we're dealing with. So we get down to the garage and it's this point I realized Charlie is still in his whitey tidies and I have to paint the picture of Charlie for you, and I paint it with a white brush because he is an Italian ger or no, an Irish ginger. He's about five foot seven pere redhead and he's in tidy whities, but you really
can't tell where the lion's at. So it's at that point where we turn the garage light on and I'm like, well, you didn't evident'ly hit your cousin and her family.
I'm like, why at least put my pants on him? You get down there.
And so we're sitting in the garage kind of trying to peek out the glass line of windows, like is he still in there?
Yeah? And then you could just hear him just beating the piss out of my truck. So what do we do?
And these people live on the ski resort, well, skis and ski poles are available, So before I could like think of any good sense, Charlie has a ski pole in his hand and is running out the side door at the bear with his ski pole like a joust.
Yeah he was.
I don't know if he's braver than I am or just less, like it doesn't take the time to put all of the things together. But I'm like, I just don't know. He's got meat, he's got hide, He's already on it. And Charlie runs at this bear and gets about two feet from its butt with a with a ski pole before it decides to take off. And then instead of I mean he didn't have any way to tell where it was gonna go, it runs up a
dang tree ten feet away from my truck. Like that was okay, he's not in my truck anymore, but we're not gonna be able to go back to sleep now until we go back in. I'm at this time, everybody else is awake and Charlie's now just in his underwear talking to everybody. So we kind of evaluate the situation and sure is I mean five minutes later, that bear's coming back down the tree and he doesn't run away, he goes back for the truck, and so we have to basically load up and leave at two am, get
out of that country. Go down well, evidently when you park with elkheads in the back at a gas station. So we had sheriff stop us at three point thirty, woke us up, tapped on our window like what's going on. At five o'clock, a different game warden pulls in, asks us what's going on, and it's just starting to get daylight. And it was at that point when the game warden tapped on the window with his flashlight that I was
able to evaluate the damage. Yeah, I had my brand new truck had bear scratches down all three corners of the truck bed.
It is. It was cool, that's like a sticker.
The punchline that story was just Charlie like I could never remember, like he was.
I think he was more.
Interested in protecting his cape than he was protecting my truck. But he just ran around the corner ski pole in hand, was gonna joust that bear. And yeah, I've had bad luck with bears. Two years ago, we were in Colorado, frozen cold. I lay a four x four post across the bed brails right from side to side and just try to get my wife's meal deer up off of and that bear decided he was going to lift the entire deer hanging on the post out in it like wrapped the side of my truck and smashed that four
by four post, scratched it. Bear scratches all over my brand new pickup truck on that that time. But yeah, I've had I'm not keeping meat in the back of my truck anymore. You have a topper, now I do have a ton but that I had a topper. Then I had the tunnel cover, but I rolled it up so that I can kind of seem I hang the meat.
I bet your insurance guy's like, come on, yeah, another bear.
Listen the first time the whole bear thing. Yeah, the first time I was going to roll it. Second some of them up buying it.
We followed that second bear down to the creek where you'd try. We could see the drag marks in the snow, and that bear was just I thought it was late in November or middle of November, cold as heck, like that bear be gone. He was down there by a big old oak tree or cottonwood or something whatever Colorado grows along the rivers, and I think he was just
sitting there picking at some of the front quarters. Fortunately he didn't touch the back quarters or the backstrap, but yeah, he was just down there munch and we scared him off and got the meat back, and oh did Yeah that's cool.
Yeah, yeah, I got.
A topper on my truck. Yeah, you know, it's like a hunter thing, you know. Apparently for sure we got told or comment on a video. Somebody's like, people can tell you're from out of state because you got a topper. I'm like, you get you instators, get your stuff wet.
Yeah, we like our stuff. Yeah. Yeah.
So Tyler not traveled the country hunting deers kind of what we do. You know, you heard historical bombs. He has the topper, had toppers on both of those trucks. You know, you can sleep in the back of it, like he was saying. You know, and I in particularly got the six and a half foot bed because of that, you know, and make sure you can sleep back there. The five and a half foot bed doesn't really work for me very good. Yeah, you definitely. Yeah, So I got a it's not an old Drugs twenty sixteen a
half ton, you know, four world drive. But it's like you gotta be comfortable for the road, you know what I mean, Like, uh, we don't do the lift thing, not the big tires, but just like some good smooth all terrains, you know. And and we we just like spend a ton of time trucks scouting. It's like a thing we do. So you drive, you know, you go to said state and you just drive around, get a
feel for the land. Elk is a lot like that, right, Like you're bugling out the window, you know, it's cool, so like.
You're just one out the window, like Jason, did I.
Have not you know, I just might have to, you know, be an experiment.
He usually takes his have Alina call and it's right and it gets him to stop out.
You do a quite loud call to make an animal.
Like should have Oh yeah, you were saying about this sound.
Yeah, he has to sound again.
Well, it's very loud.
It's very loud.
Should a back up from the mic and do the thing?
I want to hear this? So this is your universal animal stop? Yeah?
This yeah, this, this, this makes sense in the story right now because he does this from his truck like a deer jumps across the road, running across the field. Roll down the window and.
And you make the noise. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's why it's I got this from the old days as being a government trapper, like you got to stop the coyote and shoot it. So you got to figure out the sound that makes things stop.
So he's gearing up for the sound I didn't do right.
Hold on, I can't do it.
I don't know if have I lost my call.
Once more?
Heard it first, I believe somewhere.
I don't know if I can do it.
Try it again?
You got it?
Come on? What it?
Sometimes when people put you on the spot, barred out.
Literally, you know how when a grenade goes off in a war movie and everything goes like, oh, put you.
He did that one time.
We're looking at have Alena's in the HeLa actually, and he did that to the back of my head and that happened.
I had the high pitched grenade sound.
It was like, try, but it just might be an outdoors thing. You know. There's thing.
Diaphragm.
I can't do it, guys, I can't do it. It doesn't it doesn't work in uh.
Yeah.
Anyways, there's nothing to do with my story. So sorry, but.
The story.
It doesn't roll the story at all, but it may. I don't know.
I tend to use it.
Did you hear it in Arkansas?
I do it?
Yeah, so it is impressive.
Did he stop an animal with the universal animal stop call?
Uh?
I think we were talking about the universal animal stop call, and I said, let me do it, you know, show it to me, and he did it.
It will yeah.
So anyways, we're driving around trucks out and doing the thing, and I'm a public land deer hunter. I always have men. Tyler kills a awesome buck. This is all on film. We produced a series called buck Truck that's on meat Eater, you know, And so he killed an awesome dear early and that kind of puts me in a pickle because I'm like, my buddy's waiting on me to kill.
A deer the first of November.
Yeah, you killed a deer on November one, and it's the best week of the year, and you're like sitting around being the best buddy ever camp chef, you know, like just making breakfast and stuff, and I'm just struggling so bad. And we decide, all right, we cannot find a deer on public land. We're gonna get on the phones.
Get on the phones, do some calling. Tyler somehow, some way gets a hold of this guy, remembers this guy's dad's name from like six years ago when he talked to him and like had that personal connection thing, and gets us permission to go hunt. Like it four thousand acre place, except there's no trees on the property. It is like rolling hills nothing. So we drive the truck out there. We're driving through. You got to go through like another property, gonna easement.
Go out.
We scout the place. Looks great, see a giant buck run, get glass on that thing, and decide, Okay, tomorrow morning's the push. We're gonna go out there and we're gonna find a deer to shoot like I'm gonna get it done. Well, just so happens that, I don't know. Three days before this, Uh, one of the other guys that travels with us got
sick in the back of my truck. And uh, he's a young lad, and I guess he doesn't have as much experience with the you know, feeling it coming on, so he has a hard time getting the window down in time. So the sickness then perforates throughout the vehicle.
Of course, look, he puked back, he up chucked the back of the truck, hits the back of the hits the back of the headrest, you know, and all down the side. Ye doesn't have the wherewithal to clean it up off the truck, so I have to do all that.
And then he's gonna be mad that I'm telling that part, but whatever. And so we're out scouting this bad to the bone property, like just the private land thing. Being able to drive around a property is not a thing I'm used to, right, And so I get a rumble down deep while we're out scouting, like this ain't good. I have to go find a bush and I'm like, okay, well that's over. Well, no, for the next ten hours. I have the most violent sickness that I've probably ever
had in my life. And I'm thinking, like, this is the baddest opportunity I've ever had at hunting, whitetail, deer, private ground, Giant Bucks, some of the best dates. And I'm sick and I just can't do anything right. I can't even get out of bed, which is not like a me thing to do. I'm a high energy guy.
And so about like three point thirty, I finally get everything worked out or something I don't know, and I get an hour of sleep, get up the next morning, go up, make coffee, and I'm like, huh, all right, I can do this. Tyler actually woke Tyler up and he could not believe that I was moving. It was a weird thing. And go out to that property. Run a little bit late. Tyler drops me off. He's gonna go do some more scouting for me while I am gonna go on a hunt at least try, you know,
like you got to give it a go. It's like November fifth, It's the the best day of the year, probably one of the best. It's a cold front, and uh, go out just kind of like have a beautiful morning sunrise. You know, it's just frosty. We're on the planes glass and it's just it's just enjoyable. I'm just thankful to be there. And all of a sudden, I see a giant buck at like five hundred yards and thinking, well, I don't know if I can do anything about this,
but these deer are amped up. I'm gonna rattle with this deer, and uh, I get my antlers, and just if you've a hundred whitetails, you know that, like sometimes the things you do with antlers actually isn't realistic, but you're playing on their instincts, right, So I'm just cracking these things as hard as I can. It's five hundred yards away, right, and I this thing isn't gonna hear me.
Sure enough, whips his head up and looks, and this thing just makes a bee line straight to He's trying to get down wind of us, five hundred yards away. I run down the hill, sickness and all about to pass out, and uh get to where I'm gonna be able to make a shot on this deer, and long story short, I uh get an opportunity at thirty two yards and shoot this deer. It's the biggest deer of
my life. And I'm just recovered after being like death sick, and it's just one of those moments where we've all had them, you know, out in the outdoors, where you just kind of in awe of just the situation. It's it's a bigger thing than what you are, you know, and you you have to like kind of step back and be like, Okay, I didn't really accomplish this. This just happened to me, and I was blessed to be a part.
You were the recipe.
That's exactly right, man. And so I'm so pumped about all this. Right, well, Tyler's out scouting and I want to share this with my best bud. Well ends up, he gets a flat tire in the truck while while I'm waiting on him to get there, and it's like an hour and a half before and I'm just like sitting out on the planes, just out here with this deer,
you know, just hanging out. And we get to back the truck up, put the deer in the back of the truck and just do the thing as opposed to like what we're used to, you know, with just packing stuff out and you know, cutting it up or whatever. Just kind of a neat different experience to be able to kind of like what that pictures showed that you showed. You know, it's of like what people have been doing for a long time, loading de arup in the back of the truck.
Yep. I could work for NASCAR. By the way, changed a lot of tires. I've changed a.
Lot of tires turning around the country with trailers and stuff.
We're buying the cheapest tires we could we could find.
Oh yeah, keep the used time places.
Yep.
But yeah, that's my truck story.
Excellent nks. Who's next, I'll go dirt hit them. So.
I don't know about you guys, but in my twenties I had a lot of really good opportunity to learn life lessons.
And I continue to do that.
But in my twenties it seemed like they're really a lot of times where I, you know, maybe made the wrong choice. So, uh, picture this North Idaho. It's nineteen ninety seven, and my best friend and my brother in law. We grew up hunting together and he married my wife's sister, and so we're brother in laws. And it's February and on back up, your best friend married my wife's sid.
They married sisters.
Wow, so we're.
Brother in law.
She told me that before, and I was equally surprised. Wait a minute, that's great.
So yeah, so we we went out to our old Elk Hunton's spot right out of town in North Idaho in the winter time and especially in February. So by this time, we've had quite a bit of snow on the ground and it's in its thawed and we've got more snow and then it's it's frozen, and it's been in the below zero you know, probably five ten blow zero at this point. Beautiful crystal clear days, but it's ice cold out and the snow has a crust like you can't believe. I mean, you can walk around on
without falling through. Well, we're out on this old road and he has a quarter Ton pickup if you will. It's a compact quarter Ton pickup and we're driving on top of the snow and it's beautiful sun. It's yes, yeah, and it's like a you know, standard cab, little light truck and piece of junk. You know, this is so.
Hard to picture, the floating on the floating on the crust on snow.
Yeah no, no, no factory and they were worn out as good. There's a coar toime, yeah yeah. And I'm looking out the window and the sun is starting to shine. It's about seven o'clock in the morning. And I tell I look over her handy and I said, you know, you might want to And about that time it fell through the snow.
I'm like, oh no.
So we get out. And of course the young men we were we weren't prepared. We didn't have a shovel, we didn't have a come along, we didn't have anything. There was a handyman jack in the back of the truck, so handyman Jack's. I don't know if you're familiar with those, but they're really good for a lot of things, you know, jacking up your truck. I mean, you can put chains on them and use them for like a come along.
You can, uh, but they're dangerous. You gotta be careful because if you're not, if you don't have a real good grip on that handle, it'll it'll come loose and whack you in the chin and then go and ratchet back down and let the truck down. Widow Maker, I've got to if I didn't have my beard. You'd see a scar on my chin from another time.
Yeah.
But anyhow, so we get and we're facing the wrong way. We're faced away from where we want to be. So we get the old handyman jack and jack it up and then push it off, and we're going to try to turn this truck around so we can maybe get.
By jacking it and pushing it over. Yeah, yep, so ten inches over yep.
An hour later we got it turned around.
Wow.
And mind you, we're not prepared. We don't have what we're in tennis shoes. You know, this is usually always if I get stuck or have some bad decision made in a truck, it's always wearing tennis shoes or loafers or something. I'm not prepared. So we get this thing turned around and we're just not going to get out. So we're in the middle of this old logging road. There's probably three feet of snow there, and I'm like, well, we better walk back to town. So it's six miles
back to town. We walked back to town. It's the end of the day. It's like, all right, tomorrow we're gonna get reinforcements. We're gonna come out. We're gonna get this truck. So my dad's got this old wood truck. It's like a nineteen fifty eight that he's kind of that he's had refurbished and he cuts a lot of firewood with. It's got a winch, it's got positive traction rear in. This thing's a bad mambajamba. So we drive
back out there the next day. But it's an automatic and we're going up up this little hill and the snow is deep and the truck's working hard, and I'm like, man, something's getting hot. Well I get out and that truck is just bleeding automatic transmission fluid underneath. It over overheated, the transmission boiled, all the automatic transmission fluid out, and now we got to walk back not six miles. We have another We have another truck parked back on the
on the gravel where it's plowed. So we walk back, getting the other truck, drive to town. And this is a small town of five hundred pe right, So a local convenience store. They've got like four quartz of automatic transmission from ATF. So we buy everything they got, take it back out there, pour it in there, and then get the old truck out of there. Well, we got to do something else. So the next day, my wife's uncle. He's got the ultimate hunting rig. You know, it's got
a bit of a lift. Kid's got big tall mud tires, it's got a winch. It's like, oh yeah, this thing'll get up there. It's got posic, it's got a rear locker in that. This thing's gonna get up there and get this truck out. So we get up there and we make it past where my dad's truck boiled over. Well, he had an automatic transmission too, and it's boiled over as well. You're just like he was working so hard
it just overheated the transmission. So well, we bought all the atf in town the day before, so we'd walk back to the other truck, drive all the way to the next town over that have six hundred people in it by a little more at okay, drive back out there, rescue that thing, and he's like, yeah, you're on your own, guys,
I'm out of here. So well, I grew up my first car or my first vehicle, I can't It was a a nineteen sixty nine four wheel drive, so it was basically kind of a kind of an antique almost, And then this thing is a brute, but it's not the most you know, roadworthy machine. Right, you don't run that gray, but man, that thing will wheel. But I didn't really want to take it up there because who knows it may breakdown to So I get this old
machine out there. We start going up there. I go right past where everybody else went, and it's just going great through the snow, like like nothing, and it's just cutting and it's got real skinny mud tires on it. It's just digging and it's going. And we get to the we get almost to Randy's truck, the freaking gas pedal breaks off.
It breaks off on the floor.
I'm what the hell, So now what do we do? Well? This thing had kind of like a manual cruise control up on the dash. You have this knob you pull, and this little knob has a little cable that reaches in to the carburetor and will operate the throttle. So kind of like an old school huh h, old school.
Yeah. Yeah.
So I'm like, and I'd never used it, but I knew what it was. I'm like, man, I got to get this thing working. So I jerked on that thing and finally got it moving to where I read the motor up enough where we could get that thing kind of turned around and we got out of there. I said, I don't know, Randy, I don't know what you're gonna do. So we had to leave that thing literally for a month. We had to leave it for a month in the wood, and I said, you know, maybe we can get it
off the road. At least we had some shovels, so we dug a trench to where we could get it off throw jumped it up on the on the bank next to the road out of the way, because who knows, a road grader may come through, or people on snowmobiles, or you know, just hooligans in general, they may you know, vane it. It's kind of a piece of junk truck anyway. But anyway, we had to leave that thing for a month and UH in March we went back and UH was able to drive it most of the way out.
We had to shovel a little bit in a couple of places, but we're able to get it out.
But a lot of casualties.
Yeah, yeah, that was like, that's that's my worst. I think my worst trucks do. Oh no, no, we were both poorous could be. You know, we're dumb kids in our twenties. We didn't have any money to pay you know. Fortunately, you know the old timers, they had money.
To pay for stuff.
So that's good.
It was good. But yeah, life lessons, you know, it seems like I've I keep learning my Even last fall, my wife and I were out there hunting and we were driving along like I'm gonna pull into this landing here with my pickup in the snow and and and do some glass. And I pulled over there. It was pretty deep, you know, about a foot of snow. Well I couldn't tell because it drifted, but the landing had
kind of sloped. As soon as I pulled over there, I started sliding over towards this little cliff and have to stop. So I'm prepared. I'm prepared now because you know I'm forty nine years old.
Were prepared by your twenties, man.
That's right. So I've got to come along. And I got lots of cable and chains, you name it. So I sat there for an hour and demonstrate and showed to my wife out how prepared I was, and how you you know, recover a vehicle with a come along and lots of chains, and about an hour of that moving that come along and getting my truck out inch by inch, But we made it out, didn't have to walk.
And didn't nothing to drive by transmission fluid.
No, no transmission fluid perfect. Yeah, and I shot a buck about an hour later. No man, Yeah, timey, hell of the day.
It was.
My turn, Clay, Yeah, bring the inferno.
This is our number seven story.
Well, I don't want to give it a seven? Did I say that earlier? You did? I'm not in the story.
So long ago, way back in history, they introduced a fish called a rainbow smelt into the Great Lakes and you go smelt dipping after dark. So when you're talking about driving real tired, that was a trademark of smelt dipping. And thinking about my favorite truck story, which now I'm not even in, I called my buddy from high school who I'm still friends with, Craig Christensen, today, to say, hey, remember that story about your truck smelt dipping, and he said,
we wasn't smell dipping. I'm like, oh, I've been telling that story wrong for a long time. So he retells me the story. The first part of the story is this Craig wrestled in our high school wrestling team.
Okay, he.
Had a pair of shoes that he wrestled in all through his high school wrestling career, and he got up to where he was gonna. He got up to where he said, when I get my when I win my one hundredth match, I'm going to retire my wrestling shoes. Okay, red wrestling shoes. He goes on to have a thirty six wrestling match winning streak and hits his one hundredth win on his thirty sixth his one hundredth career win
high school career win. He was good on his thirty sixth match in a row that he won, so his hundredth win was his thirty sixth consecutive win.
I imagine he was a state champion.
He had all that kind of stuff going on.
So he then says he's going to retire his shoes, and he borrows a pair of shoes from another buddy of ours, John Merchant, puts on John Merchant's wrestling shoes and goes out and gets pinned by a guy who for that who had a thirteen loss eleven win record declares these shoes to be cursed.
What does the wrestling shoe look like? I've never very.
Minimalist converse like boxing shoes like they're kind of yeah, okay, so.
Yeah, minimalist, like a minimalist, a little high topper ankle support. So hold that in the back of your head. That little wrestling shoe deal.
Craig's he he had an eighty four three quarter ton truck and his dad had a much newer half ton truck. But Craig's ice shanny won't fit in Craig's dad's truck.
Dude, I love this story already. Wrestling It's very common, man.
I have no clue what's going on here.
It's listen.
Craig is now so that that Hunters match when the wrestling shoes were in he he's a senior in high school. He's now at Skiing Community College. I went there, Merchant went there, Craig went there, everyone went to the Skiing Community College. He's at with Skiing Community College and his dad wants to go ice fishing, and his dad goes ice fishing. It's Craig's dad, Craig's grandfather and Craig's wrestling coach want to go ice fishing, but they can't fit the shanny in.
Craig's dad's truck. So they take Craig's truck. And there's a.
Real heinous corner as you're approaching White Lake where we grew up, and it's icy on the way to ice fish, and they blast off the corner off into the woods and hit the guy that just blasted off.
The road prior to that.
Oh man, gosh.
Somehow when they hit, Craig's truck is racing and won't shut off.
So his dad, Craig I even pressed him on this. He doesn't understand.
Why or what, but his dad's idea is to pop the hood and cut the battery cable.
Not unhook it cuts the battery cable.
Okay, I mean it's probably quicker than getting out of Criss Ranch because he desperately wants to get the truck turned off. Now they a week later fixed, the truck appears. The truck appears to be fixed. Craig drives the truck to the Skidon Community College and parks truck under an oak tree. Okay, does his classes and everything, and at the end of school comes out and goes to start the truck and turns it and just clicks like a dead battery. He thinks, whatever, I don't know, click dead
battery something or another. He's got all his stuff and in another friend is going to drive him home. He happens to have John merchants losing wrestling shoes, okay, the pair he lost in the year prior. He has those wrestling shoes and he also has a dual cassette tape boombox belonging to John Merchant. Places the cursed wrestling shoes in the truck with the boombox, a box of twenty two AMMO, a box of twenty gage shotgun shells, and half of his clothes. Goes about his evening. They go out,
they go to some bars and whatnot. Craig gets home to his mom's house late at night and the phone is just ringing up a storm at night. He never picks it up. Later realizes that was the fire department. He gets a ride to school and still unbeknownst to him, unbeknownst to him until later, his truck has melted into the ground. Everything in the truck is gone. He said, the steering wheel is laying on the ground. Everything is melted. Glass is gone. It burned up a oak tree. It
defoliated oak tree he was parked underneath. Okay, burned up. The cursed wrestling shoes, which he blames this whole thing, are gone. The dual cassette tape, boombox gone. Oh, his term paper is gone.
Oh no.
He goes to a teacher and says, I don't have my turn paper. It was destroyed in a fire. And she's like, come on, Craig.
Heys no, it was burned up right out in this parking lot and she goes, oh, that was your truck. So he then goes to a wrestling match after all this happened. He has a wrestling match to go to. Goes to a wrestling match and he's telling a buddy of his this story. At the wrestling match. Behind him, he hears a girl laughing, turns around, doesn't know her, and says, what are you laughing at? And she said, that's a pretty funny story about your truck. This year
they're married twenty five years. Wow, you catch that, Phil, It's a love story.
Wow about the love story.
It's a love story that's better than.
I tell that story all the time, but I tell it, uh that he was coming back from smelt dipping, not ice fishing.
Did it kill that oak tree no more?
Acres Cerig said, it defoliated it. But I haven't heard the oak trees dead. My favorite.
Those oaks are tough.
Story.
That's how, that's how his that's how your wife has met his wife, Brittany.
That's good, beautiful children.
So the s so going from what seemed like something so negative, these cursed shoes to a burn up truck. That leads to.
When I was talking.
I was talking to him today, he says, I like to blame those shoes for losing that truck, but considering that halving my wife is a good thing, I suppose it was all good in the end.
That's no, it's a great story.
It's like a it's a love story.
Good story. Should things go well for him throughout life after.
The shoes are always once the shoes were gone, everything picked right up.
About that, he sounds like a heck of a wrestler.
Things picked right up.
What if the truck burnt and the shoes were just still.
There.
Hey, I've got so I've got a couple of just like machine gun stories, yeah. So once me and my buddy Nick Cunningham were coon hunting in his dad's hunting truck, which was a half ton four wheel drive pick up, and we called it Old Gray. It was as gray as it called it.
Old Gray. Yeah, I knew where this is going.
So we went. We went coon hunting one night. It was in the wintertime and it was cold. It was just him and I we were both about sixteen. And we got way back into an area we called wolf Pen Gap and uh, and we had two dogs named and Macy and Maddie, my first blue Tick registered blue Tick coonhounds. And we got way back in the mountains. Don't remember anything about the hunt, but we went to the dogs, got back in the truck and the truck wouldn't drive forward, but the truck would drive in reverse,
and so we drove nine miles home in reverse. We took turns because our next week get a crick. We it was so late at night and it was just back roads the whole way, and so we drove nine miles all the way home.
Was that a parking break issue?
It was the transmission went out, a transmission dial transmit.
We had this meme my dad did duck hunt.
When I was a kid.
The parking break froze in place, but it would go in reverse, so went reverse in circles in the pasture till it warmed up enough to thow the parking break down. That's my first story.
I just remember that short me and had some pretty good some pretty good times coon utting. His dad also had another truck that was a long bed extended cab, full size three quarter ton pick up. Huge. It was like a boat. I mean it was like eighteen feet long, you know. And we're sixteen year olds and at this time we were at a place called two Mile Motorway,
which was a long stretch that went through national forests. Basically, basically it's like a one way road and the way you hunt two mile Motorway is you start at this end and you road hunt your dogs all the way to the other end, which the other end of two mile Motorway ends up in a really small rural community outside of the bigger town we lived in. Which town we lived in was like five thousand people, but this was like a community way out.
That community was called hell Fire Wolf Can.
Yeah, that's exactly what it was. Look it up on a X. Well, we get out there and and and it's cold. And I remember we'd played basketball against a Catholic high school that night and afterwards we went counhuting Subiaco. Now they always beat us, man, Catholics are good at basketball.
Not this one.
We got the truck. This story and this is a machine gun story, so there's not there's no this is not a love story. But we we tried to do the eighteen point turnaround in this one way road and turned this eighteen foot truck around and it didn't work. And you along, we we banked it like the front bumper was embedded in the bank on the back, and the in the in the back bumper was embedded on the bank of the road in the back of the truck. And basically we got the truck just dead stuck across
the middle of this one lane road. And I mean we dug and tried to do everything we could and could not get the truck on stuck. And it was one o'clock in the morning, and we walked. The story we tells we walked five miles. I could probably go on on X and actually find out it was, you know, like three and a half. We claimed we walked five miles to the nearest house, which happened to be our English teacher's house. A man named Mike McMaster was an
incredible man. Yeah rarely, and he was known for being the nicest guy in the world. And we were nervous as we could be, but we went up to his house in the middle of the night before cell phones and knock on his door. Nothing, knock on his door, and finally his wife. We hear his wife like, who's there, and we're like, it's Clay and Nick. We're mister Master's students. And we got our truck stuck, and she was like okay,
And like ten seconds later, here comes mister McMasters. And he was always just energetic and just the greatest guy in the world. And he literally pops out of the door.
Hey boys, Oh, it's great to see you.
Oh you got your truck stuck.
Well, hop in mind, we'll take care of you. I mean, it's like out of a movie. And he goes and pulls us out.
Gotta tell you quick, rapid fire because that brings it to mind. Uh, Michigan Dear. Season one was November fifteenth, and back then, the way you would do things you'd make your ground blind late at night November fourteenth, just just not thinking clear anyways, get real stuck out at the Zeldnros Farm like buried up to the frame in my truck. I can't remember how we went about it, but somehow got word or got a ride to my friend Matt Jones. He comes out in his truck and
blows the engine out in his truck. At this point, we got no recourse and I had my then girlfriend Kelly with me. Me and Matt Jones and Kelly then walk to the nearest house and it is a blizzard at this point. Bang on the door and this woman is no way know how gonna let us come into her house, but she's like, I'll make a phone call
for you. So she makes a phone call and we're within forty yards of her front door in a snowstorm, laying in a drainage ditch to get out of the wind, Me and Matt Jones laying on top of Kelly to try to keep her warm, while this person stares at us out of window, waiting for a rescue to come.
M M.
Yeah, it's that Michigan hospitality.
That never happen. They would never do that to you in the South, Well, it wouldn't be cold. They wouldn't need to.
Explains the Michigan Hello.
Yeah, I could take it. I don't know who lives there now. I can take you and show you that house right now.
Probably the same woman lives there.
I don't know. You know, I should step in there and say, you know what one time? You know what happened to that ditch in front of your house? One time?
Do we need a closer?
Do we have? Well? That was I thought that was the rapid fire.
I mean I got another rapid fire. I mean you sure? Yeah, when I was landscaping one time.
So these are all rapid fires.
I Well, my long story is that my twenty fourteen Chevy Silverado pickup that I bought brand new in twenty twenty fourteen V six. I have carried my mules literally all over America in that V six pickup. And when I got it, people were like, man, you can't haul those trucks not made for pulling. You can't, I mean for real, like guys that haul livestock and trailers, and they're like, man, you're gonna burn the training out of that truck. It has two hundred and twenty two thousand miles.
And I have hauled my mules from Arkansas to Montana at least three times, to Colorado, once to New Mexico, all over the country and it's still still rolling. That's my long story. That's no fun though. That was yeah, I mean for it's an incredible I've got the truck to this day. I drove it to the airport this morning. But I also had Okay three quarter ton single cab nineteen ninety four model three quarter ton truck. I had my trailer on and had my Caboa tractor on the
trailer in Fadville, Arkansas. Very hilly. Do you know the story? Have I told it before?
He told me the.
Fade was really hilly, and I was commercial landscaper is my job. It's working by myself. I had backed my trailer way down this steep driveway, and the steep driveway ended on a concrete landing, and on the back side of the concrete landing was a very steep and severe drop off. Like these people had this beautiful view at the back of their house. My truck is up on the main part of the driveway. The trailer is on the concrete pad, and fifteen feet behind the end of
the trailer is the drop off. This I was young and dumb like Dirk was at one time, and I didn't realize that when you're backing up heavy equipment off a trailer on an endcline, that something very special happens. So I'm I had to park break on the truck, and I got on the tractor and start backing the
tractor off. And there comes a point it's all physics, when the weight that's exerted as you back the equipment off the trailer lifts the ball and tongue of the trailer up, taking the pressure off the black wheels of your truck. And I'm on which is holding in the back you know, the truck is is the parking brakes on. And so I'm on the tractor on the trailer. The truck's up above me. Uphill behind me is a drop off.
And I mean that truck starts moving, I mean not just not just like creeping moving, and and and that the the your instinct is to jump off. Well, my instinct was to jump off the trailer and the truck continues to slide, is moving open the door while it's moving, jumping the truck and slammed on the brake and skid to a stop. And the and the tailgate of my trailer was hanging out over the over the over the drop off. The tractor is in gear, still running on
the trailer. Now what I should have done was kept driving the tractor back, because if I had, if I had driven the tractor back even while it was rolling.
You put the weight back on it, it would have just stopped. Like but it was.
It's everything against your instinct and so.
You have to make it worse for it gets better.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, So I jumping the pick up and it just, you know, just slides. And we had flip cell phones at that time. And I don't know how I had a wrecker service or how I got the number. I don't even remember, but I called a wrecker and I mean, I'm just like cramming the brake, pedal in and I'm like, man, how quick can you get here? Like I am on the side of a mountain and if I let my foot off this break this truck, trailer and tractor is going over the edge. How quick
can you get here? And I think my my my energy sped him up a little bit and he was like, man, I can be there in thirty minutes.
Oh.
So I sat there for thirty minutes and this customer's driveway they weren't home, tractor running, hanging off. And when he came, I just I just you know, had the window down. I was like, do what you can do, man, I'm not getting I took my foot.
Off the breaking with slot.
So that was that was, That was the nail.
Nail biters good.
Must have some strong calves.
Yeah, it's like doing three hundred Calfreys.
Oh everybody, thanks for joining. Talk to you soon.
Ride on.
Sealed gray shine like silver in the sun, right.
Right on alone, sweetheart.
We dun beat this dawn, of course, Dad taking a new one and ride. We're done beat this damn Horsiday, So take a new one and ride on. H