Ep. 657: Clay Newcomb’s Parenting Philosophy for Raising Young Hunters

Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Podcast, your guide to the whitetail Woods. Present it by First Light, creating proven versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First Light, Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.

Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Podcast. I'm your host, Mark Kenyon, and this week on the show, we're diving into the wisdom fill parenting philosophy the Klay Newcomb's leaned down as he's introduced his four children to the hunting lifestyle. All right, welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by First Light, and this week we are continuing our series on parenting outdoor kids, and specifically today spending a lot of time talking about introducing your children

It's all hype, man, don't tell anybody, but yeah, it's it's it's it's not hard. I just, like you know, roll into work just whenever I want and don't travel much. It's easy, Mark, This is no big deal.

You know what. You're good at a lot of stuff, Clay, but Lion is not one of them. Hey, what's what's the word on that Country Life? How's stuff going on that so far for Brent and you?

Oh, man, it's it's I think it's going really well.

So at the time we're recording, there's three episodes of this Country Life which have come out, which are the host of that show? Is my good friend your friend too, Mark Brent Reeves. Brent's from Arkansas. Brent's kind of been on the Bear Grease cruise since the beginning, not officially, but he's been involved in my podcast for a while and just a longtime friend. And so he now has a podcast. It's short, it's twenty minutes long. It's a monologue,

So Brent had an episode talking about the different things in his pocket. Right, has that made you at all any more self conscious about what's in your pocket? Or have you have you started thinking about that a little more now that folks are probably asking you about that, you know what? Brent?

He sometimes people in media might like exaggerate the stuff that they do. Like for example, they might talk about all the stuff they carry in their pocket, but really on any given day they might not actually have that stuff. Brent, for real, for the last forty years has literally carried all that stuff in his pocket. Anything you do with him, you can be like, hey, Brent, where's that buckeye, and

But I have been carrying a case case trapper.

With me nice last month or two because someone gave me one, and I've actually really, I really like it.

I've been torn on the knife thing. I've always had this little keychain knife. It literally looks like a key, but it has a little tiny knife that folds out of it. So it's very handy to have. You know, I don't open a package or cut a you know, small piece of rope or something in a pinch. But I've debated bringing an actual, nice, bigger folding knife with me,

What I've what I've learned about carrying this, this pocket knife I've been carrying is it's it's almost like just having something to do with your hands, like I'm holding it right now, not even I think I was holding it before we even started talking about this, Like I just kind of I just kind of fiddle with it all day, and it's I'm just conscious of it, and it's that's it's almost like you just use it, like not as a functional knife, but it's just like something to to fiddle with.

That's that's that's bad. Maybe that's maybe this is not a good crutch, but I don't know.

It could be better than some things I used to. Uh. I used to spin my cell phone as like a fidget thing. I would just spin it in my fingers and that led to me dropping it and having some damage several times. So knife is a better option. Ah On the topic of hand though, other than what's in

No? I No, I don't. I don't know that. Yeah, I don't know that.

It's a it's a it's a categorization that could be labeled expert or not expert.

Because it's such a.

It's such a it's such a complicated thing because we're always well, let me step back. I think it is good for us to talk about this stuff and for every parent to think about it consciously, because anything we don't think about consciously, don't discuss, don't have some philosophy and even more than a plan, it's a philosophy, and that's different like a plan is like we're gonna A plan is more.

External, like we're gonna do this, this, and this.

A philosophy is a is an ideology of why we're doing what we're doing. And so if you don't have a plan and a philosophy, then you you result. You fall back to your default, which every one of us has a default way that we deal with our kids,

And the idea.

Is that you would be able to ethically look back to your parents they did and be like, you know what, I'm gonna do something different. They tried hard, you know most of the time, most in general, most parents are trying pretty hard.

Some aren't.

But and you can say I'm going to do something different than they did, and then I'm going to take the good things and replicate that. But if you're unconscious of that you just can replicate negative patterns, and so yeah, absolutely, I think I think we got to take this serious. And I think there's some kind of tropes out there about how to introduce kids to the outdoors that are just not that productive, And yeah, I want to we can talk about those things for sure.

Yeah, we definitely do it. I love that point you make about how you know, I think parenting can be based on a philosophy, not necessarily like a set of steps or a strategy, but a philosophy that you can always fall back on or or I got to believe

So I can talk pretty freely about this because I've talked very freely about it with my with my dad, who everybody in the Bear Grease world knows because he's

And it wasn't like our dads were jerks.

It's just that's just I mean, like my dad, he worked a regular job and could only hunt on the weekends and didn't hunt very much on Sunday, so he kind of had like one day a week to hunt. He was a very serious bowhunter for what he had and so man, he wasn't gonna let much get in the way of him doing what he needed to do to kill a deer, you know, during the postseason on public land in Arkansas. And so I had to just kind of get with the program. And both of my

Yea.

And so I'm not sure if he'd have done stuff different, if if the results would have been any different, because I have two brothers that don't hunting is not a big part of their lives. They both have hunted, and one of them is kind of getting back into it. But now, my first memory of bow hunting was the first time my dad actually took me out to hunt and I could.

I had a bows in the fourth grade.

It'd been shooting, could pull forty pounds, was legal to hunt. Dad took me out and put me in a tree stand way before daylight, and Mark I got, well, he puts me in the tree stand. It's like, man, I'll be back at ten o'clock and it is black dark.

And how old he's going.

I was in the fourth grade, so I would have been I think, nine years old. And he's not like going like one hundred yards on the ridge. He's getting in this truck and driving, you know, miles to some other place. And and I got scared to death and

Yeah, So, so I love these stories of your childhood with your with your dad. I like to joke about how me and Gary would have got along real well when it came to deer hunting because we were on the same pronom.

Yeah.

Ye, but you told me when I was down there hunting with you guys a couple of years ago and I was talking with your dad, you had told me some of this, and you talked about kind of your dad's attention to detail and obsessiveness with things like scent control and and really having a detailed deer hunting program, and how his obsessiveness on that side of things actually drove you away from that style of hunting and that seriousness.

Well, yeah, so he my dad, you know, his philosophy, just to sum it up, would be to control the things that you can control to the t.

And he grew up in the Yeah.

Yeah, and and and actually that's my philosophy too. It's just it's my emphasis is in a different place. Yeah. And and so he grew up. He in the nineties kind of came of age and became a really good deer hunter for hit, for our area and for what he had and and a lot of that revolved around sink control. And so he just was like hyper meticulous about sink control. And he was kind of a gear guy.

Yard at our lighted outdoor.

Archery range, shooting our bows at like eleven o'clock at night, trying to get dialed in to go hunt the next day. And it's not like we waited till the last minute. It just thirty years ago, bows were just.

Different than they are now.

I mean, you know, you just had to shoot all the time to stay consistent. And anyway, Dad loved tweaking on gear, and so that made me be ultra simplistic in my gear. Like if you sat down and meet with me and start talking about deer hunting, the last thing I'm interested in is gear. People are like, what kind of setup do you have? And I'm just like,

You know.

But but no, I think generationally we we learned and there's a whole lot of stuff that I absolutely are fundamental to who I am and how I bowhunt that came from Gary Nukem, you know.

Yeah. So so to overgeneralize and correct me if I'm overgeneralizing this too much. But if I were to say, what were some of the things that didn't work so well for you? It was maybe, you know, being pushed into your dad's way of doing things too much, to too much of a degree, and maybe sooner than you were ready. Would you say, if you had to kind of really simplify some of the challenges of Gary's approach, that kind of shaped you for better or for worse.

Well, I'm not entirely sure I can I understand fully what you're saying there, I didn't kind of develop my own world until I was grown. Like, I did everything he asked me to do and wanted me to do.

And that's the only reason I.

Was successful when I was young was because I just I went with his plan. But then when I started hunting on my own and moved away, I was like, you know, I could do things a little different.

Yeah, let me rephrase that question, Claire, real quick. If you were to look back on your childhood and the way your dad introduced you to these things, if you had to point your finger at what worked and what didn't work, could you point me at a couple of things on each or one on each side of that.

Well, I don't want to say that what he was doing didn't work. And maybe I'm still understand your question back because his system worked great for him, and it was more just about how we wanted to hunt that was a little different, So I'm still not I mean, like the difference in us today would be primarily the way we handle scent control.

Is is that kind of what you're leaning towards?

More so what worked for you as a kid when you were learning to hunt and learning to be an outdoorsman, and your dad was trying to teach you these things, or whoever else you were hanging out with that was teaching about these things and bringing you in. I'm curious that what were the things that seemed to connect with you, like what got you into the outdoors? What were the things that your dad did that made you be like, man, I do want to be a hunter. Man, I love this.

Perspective, Well, I would say the dominating theme of my childhood with my dad was very positive, I mean, very excited about deer hunting. He was he he he portrayed it to me in a very appealing way. The way he talked about it, the way he dealt with it. It was clear to me that this is something that was highly that he highly valued, and so I wanted to highly value it. And and I would say that's probably the uh. Well, and aside from just the excitement of of.

Killing deer with a bow.

When I was young in in our area, very few kids were. I mean, for real, I was probably the only kid in my grade that was killing deer with a bow consistently in high school and stuff. And oh there was a lot of accolades that came from that and satisfaction.

And it was all just because.

I was I mean, my dad was putting me on deer, you know, and we were easing I mean, we were hunting public land. It wasn't like we're hunting over feet nobody was hunting over feet back.

And so yeah, he did a.

Fantastic job of portraying this lifestyle and just the camaraderie he had with his friends. All that was great. And I can't really point to anything he did wrong other than just I mean, for real, I don't know that he did it wrong.

It just was what he had to deal with.

I remember one time on Saturdays, if we went with him, we hunted pretty far away from our house, and so if you were committed to go, you had to hunt all day. And I remember one day I wanted to come back to some kind of school get together in the afternoon, and so I went with him that morning and then I was like hey, dad, can I go home? Which meant he would have to go home, and he took me home. I remember it was kind of like, what you want to go home? But he accommodated me

So yeah, he.

Did a lot of stuff, right. I don't know if that answers your question, Mark, No, that does?

That does? Is there anything now that you're a dad yourself and you've been one for twenty one years? Is there anything that you can point directly back to your dad as as something that you've carried forward with your own kids. So something your dad did with you that when you became a father, you were like, man, I gotta do the same thing with my boys or my daughters when I'm teaching them to hunt or bringing them outside or whatever it is.

He was.

He was very intentional with teaching us what was going on, Like he wouldn't. I still see, like competent fathers doing this kind of stuff today is just like taking a kid out and just putting him in a tree and letting him hunt without teaching him.

I had friends that I went to school with.

Whose dads did that and they killed deer, you know, with rifles and stuff. And we me and that kid would go out in the woods and they would have no clue really what was going on in deer hunting. And I would be like, man, we got to find some tracks and trails and scrapes and rubs and funnels and pinch points and and and you know, and I would just be like talking a different language because Dad

Yeah. Do you do you feel like, maybe you don't know the answer to this, but do you feel like your father took the same approach with your two brothers and it was just that they were just a different personality types, so they weren't receptive or was there something else that led to them just not connecting with this lifestyle the way it has for you.

Yeah, I think he did. I think he would have had the same approach with them. They just kind of had less interest from the beginning. I feel like they did and he And that kind of goes into one of my points, Mark, is that every kid is different, and so you to give them all a chance, you kind of got to have a different strategy with each

As Bear is.

And I would be a little more accommodating to them. I would not be as a as aggressive in planning with them, you know. And so that goes to that one of the things that I wanted to bring up is just like every kid's different and you got to treat them different.

You know.

Is it a situation in your experience with your kids where you try to introduce them in the same way and then see how they react to it, and then you say, Okay, these two are on board with this, but these two it's it seems like it's going to be different, So I'm going to have to change my

Okay, I think that there's there are eight There are sectors of a child's development up until they're eighteen years old, when the parental influence is different at different times from zero to about eight years old. Mark, I don't I didn't let my kids make very many decisions. I made decisions for them, and I would I would be and this isn't dogmatic. I didn't do this every time, but to generalize, I decided when the kids went hunting with

To eighteen, there's a.

Lot more choice, a lot more choice with them. Son, do you do you want to go deer hunting in the morning? If you do, you know you need to be up, you need to be ready. And so I think our hunting is a great place to to implement some of these just responsibility.

Things that the kids are going to have to deal with in life. So I would.

Say, and then in each in each sector of that, you're evaluating, you know, does this kid enjoy this? Do you think they're gonna grow up and want to do this? And my two boys are pretty different. Bear is just naturally just like just interested wanting to learn. My second son, he he loves to go. He's less interested in the details. And I think he'll come back to hunting and it'll be a big part of his life someday.

I really do.

He's I asked him the day, I said, Shepherd, how many deer have you killed? And he said, he said, he killed eleven deer and he's killed two bears. He's coon hunted with me a lot, but it's not his the driver of his life, you know, And you know you just kind of perceive that. So I'm I treat shepherd different than I do bear.

What about differences between between your boys and your girls? You've got two of each, have you? Is there any noticeable difference in this approach you've taken between the two genders or is it just like child by child They're all different their own ways, regardless of if they're boys or girls.

I would say it leans toward the latter of what you just said. My oldest daughter hunted with me when she was young. She liked turkey hunting. She's killed deer and turkey. But she was just from the very beginning, I just knew she wasn't going to probably be a real active hunter. We could just tell that, you know, she just wasn't that interested in it. My second daughter was very interested in it, and until she was about fifteen, I would say she was She was probably the toughest

I would have taken River.

And and she's still very interested in hunting. She she moved off to go to college, and so she hadn't hunted much the.

Last couple of years.

But I tried to treat them the same for the most part. Unfortunately, as they've gotten older, it is a little different with girls.

And you know, somebody could get mad at me for saying.

This, but.

I'm a little less comfortable with my girls going out on public land. My girl going out on public land by herself doing stuff. I just am It's just the nature of the world we live in. And I've run into that because at times there's been times in the past when Rivers like, hey, I'm going to go out and do this, and I'm like, well, okay, let me think about that River where where I absolutely would let my son do it. And uh, that's just the truth of it, And it's an issue of safety and an

Did it y'all can go.

And and I think that's okay to acknowledge that kind of stuff.

Yeah, is there anything else you found over the years with your two girls? Well, I guess you wouldn't have known until you had boys afterwards. But were there any other things that had to shift with your approach with the girls versus the boys, or when you had when you started going through these experiences with your boys you realized, oh, wow, I can do it totally different now. And that being because your two boys are both younger than your two girls, right, that's.

Right, two older girls and two younger boys.

Yeah, So were there any other things where you realize, like, this does require fundamentally different touch or or set of you know, ideas, or could you apply the same general philosophy across all four?

I think they were the same, Mark, I really do. I I didn't treat the girls much different than the boys.

I really didn't.

I I just just tried to to to teach them, tried to I did everything about the same.

I really did.

Yeah, that's one thing that I don't regret at all. But I I only I only have boys, so I'll never know what that is like or what differences may or may not be there.

Come on, Mark, you're not quitting, honest, Sorry, Clay.

I try not to be a quitter, but this is one phase in life where I am sign sealed and dotted delivered. I'm done.

Okay, Okay. There can be surprises.

I mean, I don't know the details of all the medical procedures, but stuff happens.

Man. Yeah, we'll be having some stern conversations with the doctor if that ends up being the case. Clay, you hit on something a second ago, though, I want to dive into more because it's one of the big questions that I found myself wrestling with just in these first you know, five years of being a dad, and everyone I've talked to so far on this topic I've brought it up to, and that is this idea that you

Yeah, that's a good that's a complex and a good question.

I think it all.

Goes back to these age brackets of kids and how parents interact with the kids during these particular seasons of life.

My kids early on and early on in their life.

I was not full time in the outdoor industry, so it's not like this was my job, but it was very much a lifestyle that I was. I wanted to live and so and Misty wanted to live. I mean, our life revolved around us eating wild game, you know, every day of the year, and being a family that loved nature and interacted with nature. And so my kids kind of I would like to think that they just woke up one day and gained consciousness that not every kid in the world had to do what they did.

But it's just like, yes, what we do, it's like and I.

Made a very the one thing that you know, man, when your kids are as old as mine, Mistery and Mark almost I would say weekly, if not three times a week, talk about the way we raised our kids and things we did right and things that we did wrong. And the one thing that we did right was for a decade plus, anywhere I went unless it just absolutely could not, I couldn't take a kid, which there was certainly hunts.

I didn't take kids on.

But man, if I went to the grocery store, if I went to bid a landscape job, if I went to scout, if I went to do anything, man, I just was dragging those kids with me everywhere I went, not for fun, just because they just needed to be with me.

I wanted to talk to them. I wanted to teach him.

I wanted to just be having be there observing me being a human. And that exposure today spent man that like kids have phones and kids have parents think the trend of the age is to think that kids have all these options and you'll damage them if you don't let them make choices.

And boy, the biggest mistake that I feel like I.

See parents doing is reasoning with a five year old or reasoning with a four year old. You don't reason with them, You interpret life for them and let them know how things are gonna go and and uh, and then as they get older and more mature, you begin to introduce choices and responsibility and all these things. I'm not answering your question directly, but basically, hunting. Hunting is just it's just a platform to teach your kids about

I mean it just life happens, you know.

Just even hey, we're going hunting, Go get the drinks, put them in the truck, and then come back and get those ratchet straps out of the garage and put them in the truck. I mean, just the exercise of having a plan, doing it, acting on it.

There's just lessons all over it, you know.

And then the rare time when you're actually kill an animal, Yeah, that's when you can be strategic about implementing ideology of why we do this and taking care of the meat and this is our food and this is healthy and sustainable and good and this is a celebration and this is you know, this is a pinnacle moment of our life, you know, at an external level.

So yeah, yeah, I want to I want to dive into two parts of what you just said there. But first the I want to explore an example of this whole toughness versus experience or fun versus toughness kind of situation. And I want to see how you deal with this. As an example, Let's say you were out there with one of your boys when they were let's say six or seven. This is that first phase of that parenting

It's totally subjective to what's going on in that kid's life. I when Bear Newcomb was he was probably he was probably eight years old. It was open today, Arkansas bear season. I wanted him to be with me in the tree when I hunted, and we went in and set for I think I'm gonna say six hours. It may have been longer than that, and it rained the last three hours of daylight. And he was the kind of kid that.

Liked that.

He knew it was hard, and he enjoyed the feeling. Like he was tough, and I was feeding him that. You know, I was like, bear, man, I think if we just set it out, I think we got a chance of the bear. And you know, you know I and he could tell that if he set it out, I was gonna like that and he was going to be tough and validated.

And he he bought into that.

And when we sat till dark, and to this day we talk about that because we sat so long in the dark that just waiting for a bear, just like last light that people back at camp came to check on us because they thought, surely they're gonna get down. You know, it's raining. Something's happened. And to the boy bear, the guy's back at camp were just bear.

You sat there the whole time in the rain, goy, you know, And it became probably a really pinnacle moment for him. Yeah, another kid of mine, I absolutely probably wouldn't have done that.

It might have ruined him. It might have just made them get back in the truck and be like this guy, my dad is crazy. This is the last thing I want to do. So it's tough, man, it's tough. You got to feed them just the right amount of toughness, and I think a lot of it would have to do with what you agreed upon before and how you communicated. I mean, sometimes it's like, son, we're going to go out today and if you want to come, I want you to come. But if we go, we're going to

To stick with it.

Or if you just went out and things went really bad really quick, you might just be like, hey, man, let's let's jump in the truck and go home. I mean, your your kid has to trust you that you're not that you're not going to just you know, put them in a really tough situation that they weren't ready for, so that it's such a complex situation mark you understand.

So you're telling me there's no simple step by step handguide I can look at that's gonna give me all the perfect answers for every situation. Cli that is exactly right, Mark, Yeah, that Uh. This is That's why this parenting thing, I think can't be talked about enough because there is no one right answer. There's no clear cut way to do any of this stuff. It all comes down to case by case context. It comes down to your kids and

Mm hmm, Mark, I have I have four things here that I think if I think I can say I'm right now and to make sense in the context of our conversation, I've got kind of some bullet point bullet point statements about introducing kids the outdoors.

Can I run through those?

I would love to hear them?

Okay, Point number one and this would be on a power point if I presented it to a group of people. If you had said, Clay, I need to hear a presentation about how to introduce kids to the outdoors.

What's important? These four things would be on it. Number one. The parent, the adult has.

To be a whole safe person who a kid would want to be around.

In general.

You know, this is like taking it way back, like we could be talking about sports, like how to intro produce your kids to sports, how to introduce your kids to cooking, how to introduce your kids to horseback riding.

And then.

Basically the philosophy that I would have would be that I want to introduce the kids to the excitement of interacting with nature. That's what we're doing, and that would be teaching them about the woods, teaching them about the the trees, the mushrooms, the grass, the barn owls, the foxes, the coyotes, the river systems, the mountains. You know, having an understanding and interpreting that for them. I mean, a kid drives, drives. You drive past a mountain, and a

That's wild.

Like just being excited about it, like interpreting for them when you hear barred out, My goodness, did you hear that barred out? And you know, so that's a philosophy. It's like, I want my kids to to see value and interaction nature. And then you know that comes down to actually taking an animal and taking it home and eating it. But the main thing that I would say is that not every kid is going to be a hunter.

Like, you know, you take.

Ten kids, it's probably about the national percentage of people that our hunters are gonna be hunters.

I mean, you know you do.

And I don't know what that would be. Two or three of them at most would end up having some connection to hunting. Seven of them aren't. But those seven that aren't can at least be like, yeah, my uncle was a hunter.

Yeah, that's really cool. He was a pleasant human to be around.

They they were they they dealt with this thing in a competent, intelligent way, and they wouldn't describe it like that.

But you understand.

So the goal is I just want my kids to have positive impressions of this lifestyle. And that's really meaningful in our broader society, as most people aren't gonna be hunters.

We don't need them to.

Be hunters, but we need and want people to view hunting for what it is, and it's this great platform for conservating wild places and wild animals, and it's not just this barbaric thing that is is dead and dying, you.

Know, yea. So those are those are my four things.

Those are great, Clay. I'm curious how you what your take is on how to handle that last point you brought up, that being the fact that not every child grew up to be a hunter, and you mentioned your oldest daughter is an example of that. I imagine this being a challenge as a parent trying to read that situation, trying to decide or understand, Man, is my kid just not that into it? And should I keep pushing it? Should I keep introducing it? Should I keep offering it?

I think a simple answer to a complex question, as it goes back to those age brackets of parental influence inside of a kid's life. Your five year old is not capable really of deciding whether they're going to be a lifelong hunter or not. A sixteen year old has a much more robust understanding of whether this is something that's going to be a part of their life or not. Not totally, but they've got a much better understanding than

But.

Build it in is just this is well, and I think parents just give kids too much choice. Your kid was put in your family for a reason, and you and your wife get to decide the culture of your family. That's the design of the universe, and you have the right to say this is who we are. And then as they graduate out of that, they get to make choices. So what I'm saying is there's there's a time period when you do push it pretty hard, and then there's

You know. This brings me to another one of my current questions of the topic that I'm thinking a lot about right now with my oldest son, who is just seems to be really really into all this stuff, like he's just eating it up. He's obsessed. He wants to hunt all the time, he wants to fish all the time, he wants to go with me on every hunt, he wants to see it all, do it all. He's really

You know, I think I think it is.

It should just be kind of intuitive how you it was, it was you would scale down your philosophy to the knowledge level of the child, just like you would with anything. Like when you're driving in a car and your four year olds in the back seat and he says, Dad, why do you why are you driving like that? Why do you drive on this side of the road or why did you stop there? And you're like, well, Sun, when you drive and the red light's on, you have

You be like, wow, son, good shot. How did it happen? Where were we at?

And you'd be like, man, this is a beautiful bird. Look at these wings. Can you believe this? This is incredible? And you know, when you're dealing with birds and baby guns, that's a little gray area there, but I think we all did that. And then you say, man, this this bird. You know, we gotta we gotta find a way to a bird's wrong. Example, let's let's use a game they kill a quail and you're like, and it's in season, you'd be like, oh, man, this is beautiful, incredible shot.

Good job. Well we gotta we're gonna eat this, We're gonna use it.

Just bringing it down and yeah, and when the sacredness of law that I think is instilled in a kid very early, and it's totally done by parent describing that, you know, at their level and and and understand that we don't take an animal's life flippantly, but also that it's very normal, you know, to eat stuff has to die.

Yeah, it's uh, I think what you're saying resonates with me. It's it's all about reading your child and where they're at speaking at their their language, at their level, and balancing the the joy of the moment with the seriousness of it. But man, it's it's It does also sometimes seem or at least maybe this isn't for everyone. But I constantly find myself looking back and saying, did I do that right? Am I doing this the right way? Am I? Am I screwing up my kid? Or am

You know?

I'm constantly wrestling with those kinds of things as I'm navigating these waters for the first time, doing the best I can. But there's no report card that you get at the end of the day that says, well, you did this right. You got an A here, you got to be here, and a C there. You know, I don't have that report card. So it's one of those things that you never quite know and you just hope that you're doing it the right way.

Yeah, I think you just got to expose them to it.

I've had somebody ask.

Me that before, like would you let your kids watch you get here, and oh gosh, absolutely. From the very beginning, it's just like kind of a I like, just a common sense approach to parenting. It's that if this is something that's permissible for me to be doing, then it's okay for my kid to be introduced to it at some level, you know. So it's like, absolutely, let them

But the other extreme is that we just bombard them.

With with all this philosophy that they're not ready for.

I mean, sometimes you just gotta let them shoot the bird, you.

Know, yeah, and uh and and and then at a later time it's like, hey, done, we're probably we probably ought to only shoot birds that you know, that we need or that we specific kind of targeting or or you know, not you know, introducing some level of responsibility into the thing, you know, in stewardship.

Yeah, so, uh, what about time away from your kids? You mentioned this a little bit how early on when they were young, you were taking them everywhere with you, but you know, except for certain hunts where they couldn't

Well, I think you've used the key word there, and that is balance. And because there's got to be a balance, Like there's absolutely times when you're gonna go hunting and your kids can't come, and that's okay. That is so introduces boundaries to your kids that are going to be in every other part of their life.

So I think it's okay.

I think it also goes back to family architecture, which family architecture would just be like, what is the design of your family that you are using to live life successfully? And if you're if you're a hunter and your serious deer hunter, and you you and your wife feel like this is an important part of your life and what you're supposed to be doing, then then absolutely I mean, there's gonna be You're gonna you're gonna go to Iowa and hunt for seven days once a year and it's just okay.

And you know, my dad did.

That, and I remember some of my most exciting times of hunting was when he was gone, and I could not wait to hear how it went.

That was a big part.

And I don't know if my dad, I don't know how that happened, but I vividly remember once Dad went to South Texas deer hunting, and the whole week I was just I mean, I was talking to the kids at school, Man, my dad's down in Texas. He might kill the world record down there, I told. I remember thinking that, I mean, because it's like it's possible. Yeah, I mean he's in Texas and uh and so yeah, it's it's balanced and and you and.

I both know it.

There the seasons of life when things are permissible and when they're not. When my kids were young, I was not in the outdoor industry, and it would not have been permissible for me to devote, you know, just an incredible amount of time to being gone, like financially and Leaven Misty with the kids, like there was just a time when that wasn't quite as.

Normal as it would be today.

And now their kids are older, and so I think the balance of life and with your spouse is trying to find what's the correct architecture for our family, you know, because you don't Yeah, I mean, hunting is not is not really that important in the big scheme of things. It's it's you've got to you've got to find a way to balance life.

And it's going to be different for everybody.

I mean, you know, we go to you know, I'm really involved in our church and involved a lot of other men's lives, and it's like I hu more than any of them, and it's because architecture of our family.

It's like it's my job.

And even if it wasn't my job, it was, it's just it's just I built my life this way on purpose. And uh, there's other guys that maybe just hunt one or two weekends a year and that's kind of the architecture of their life. So it's like what's correct for you,

I understand.

I can't go on three big hunts every year, you know what, I'm just gonna go on too. And I think that's the maturity that we got to have as parents, is knowing when those times are and and and when they're not, and just kind of being okay with it. And it's kind of a bummer and it's just life.

Yeah, yeah, so true. And I think a lot of it is just trial and error too, Like we to all of the stuff, right, we don't know, We're not necessarily going to know the right answer to every one of these situations. So you try something, you try the best you can figure and then you got to read it and assess, Okay, you know, how did this last year go? Did I have the balance right? Or was that trip with my boy? Did I push it too far?

Get lost? Because I think I've got a good answer.

I think that I saw, No, my dad would not have been interested in history. I would not have been that interested in history.

Growing up. But I think that I came out of.

I kind of came into adulthood and recognized that I came out of a very cultured place. And by cultured, I mean things were done on purpose, things were this is the way that people thought about this, this is the way people handled that, this is the this is what people valued like And I'm talking about in the hunting space.

And I became curious as.

To why we were the way we were, And I think I just kind of bumped into looking back at some of these guys and being like, oh, Gary nukeom is that way because of this thing way back in American history or the.

History of the South.

And it was really interesting to me because I think we're influenced by a whole bunch of stuff that we're unconscious of. And so you know, just and you've heard me say it, Mark, but a great example is that, you know, Daniel Boone introduced to the world old really the idea of loving and cherishing wilderness and solitude. Before that, in the general, the general philosophy of the world was that the wilderness is where you went to die. The wilderness.

To the past.

Mm hm.

So then part two. My question then is have you tried to help your children make those connections, make those connections during their childhood when you were raising bears, A Hunter, were you bringing these stories up and talking about these things? If so, you know, I'd love to hear more about that.

Or if not, you know, the answer to this mark all day every day brother man. Living with me is like it's like Misty Misty and the kids. They would tell you it's like NonStop Beargrease podcast.

Man.

I talk at them all the time, and I'm joking and kind of making fun of myself because they make fun of me. They kind of roll their eyes sometimes, but I know they're just joking. I think so much of parenthood. I I talked at my kids for years, like if we're riding in the truck and they're not talking and they're eight years old and we traveled a lot,

And and that really was the philosophy that I had. I mean, I and I think Gary Nucom did that to me. Uh, he really did.

Dad loved just he just would talk to me and and and.

Not ask much from me at times.

And I've done that with my kids, and so yeah, they they know about all this.

I think.

I think we've got to interpret for our kids and show our kids what we're passionate about, and we don't have to amend that for them. Like I don't really care if my kids think Daniel Boone is cool. I do, and I'm gonna talk to him about it, and I'm gonna tell them all this stuff.

And and I think that they.

May not care about Boone, but it teaches them how to to be passionate and informed, and they'll take that template for their life and go out and be passionate about something, you know.

Yeah, So so I don't.

I don't tell them what I think they want or need to hear. I just I'm trying to just be who I am and and and and show that to him.

You know. Yeah. That resonates with That resonates with me a lot. And I'm gonna use you next time. My wife rolls her eyes at me, and you know, bemoans the fact that I'm a constant. She calls me a tour guide whenever we go anywhere with kids or even

See that absolutely their ears off.

Man, I'm going to keep on keeping on. So I got one last question for he then, Given your fascination, I think would be fair to say of the history of hunting and the American wilderness and rural America and these different things that you've you've dove into over the course of the years of the Bear Grease podcast and much of our other work, I'm curious if you can point to any one lesson that you have tried to share with your own children that came to you from

Hmm, Man, that is a really specific question. Mark if I.

You know, a lot of my.

Deep dive study of history, to be honest with you, has come in more recent years.

I think that's a tough question.

It's a fair question, because I think I would talk to him about that kind of stuff all the time. I don't know that I've got a real I can't say, like, well, Boone went into Kentucky and did this and did this, and so this is why we're doing this, Like it's not quite that direct, you know, sure.

I think I think maybe in general Boone.

Probably reading Robert Morgan's book Boone ten or twelve years ago, one of the most fascinating things to me was how so much of Boone, who's this American icon was influenced by Native Americans. Boone was Boone because of his interaction and adopting and being taught the ways that Native Americans interacted with the landscape here, and so you know so much of and so I think that brought back into me a deep appreciation for Native American cultures, which I've translated.

That to my kids.

I feel like just when we you know, with all the stone points we find and us just talking about it. So I don't because my original fascination wasn't necessarily with Native Americans. It would have been more with you know, people like Boone or Crockett or whoever.

So may not be exactly what you're looking for, Mark, but Clay, I'm never looking for anything other than the thing that's on the tip of your tongue. That's true to you, and you always you never disappoint You've You've shared a lot of really interesting ideas here, Clay that have helped me personally. I think there's some things here that can help me in my thinking and my practice as a as a father. So I thank you for that, Clay.

Right, Well, you're a great You're I said it the first time you I was on one of your podcasts, Mark, is that you're you're a fantastic interviewer. You asked a lot of really insightful questions and that's meaningful.

So well, thanks, I got one last question for you then on that Oh you've you've said you had one last question like four times. I know that's one of my interviewer tricks to keep dragging you along. Clay, you write that down and try it out next time.

Yeah, yeah, I love it.

Oh. My last question is simply, what is there anything folks should be looking forward to? Can you preview anything that's coming down the line on the Bear Grease podcast or Brent's podcast, anything that folks need to know about the work that you're doing that they can look forward to and that they should come and check out in the coming weeks or months. Yeah.

I don't ever do this. I would never do this.

On a Bear Grease feed, like tell people what I'm working on, but I'll tell you and your people, Mark, all right, when does this come out?

This will come out on May? So this is next week, So May.

Eighteenth, Okay, no problem, we are.

I'm working on a robust series on Davy Krockt, which is it kind of it's funny. It's funny that you brought up what you did. We don't always do these kind of big time iconic folk Key Rose.

You know, one of the main our big historical series that we've done. We did what on Daniel Boone, which was.

Maybe one of our most popular ones we ever did a lot A lot of them are are are lesser known people like Hult Collier, who was African American guy that guided Teddy Roosevelt for the bear that would influence the Teddy Bear. That was one of the most fascinating series we ever did. Hulk Collier was born a slave and ended up guiding the president on two bear hunts.

Uh, Hult Collier.

We did a series on Cumpsa, which was the Shawnee leader who was just lived an incredible life, incredible story. And then, uh, we're now doing this Crockett series. And we don't do always historic stuff. I mean, I know a lot of your people probably aren't. Maybe they're not listening to Bear Grease, but we do. We do stuff on living people. We do basically anything is on the table that is of interest too well to me.

I'm excited about that Crockett series. My son Everett loved your Boone series. And just this morning we had a request. We just got to our place out in Idaho. So we're sitting at the breakfast table and we're looking out over the mountains and my son says, hey, Dad, can we listen to the Davy Crockett song? And so we put on the Ballad of Davy Crockett by Fest Parker, and then and then after that we listened to the Daniel Boone song by fest Parker, so it's fresh on my mind too.

Wow, that's awesome, man.

That's funny that we're going to talk a lot about that song and the Walt Disney stuff that that made that famous Crockett.

Crockett's life is pretty fascinating.

Yeah, I'll be looking forward to that one, and I'm sure my boys will too. So keep up the great work, Clay. You are doing world class stuff. And I know I'm not the only one who appreciates it, but for everyone out there, I will just say one more time, thank you.

All right, appreciate it, Mark, Thanks for the kind words, all.

Right, and that's a wrap. Thank you for listening, Thanks for being here, Thanks for continuing on this journey as we discuss our role as parents and how we can introduce our children to this incredible wild world that we get to enjoy. As I mentioned already, make sure you're checking out everything over in the Bear Grease World, the Bear Grease road Show, the Bear Grease Podcast, this country life.