00:00:05 Speaker 1: And she said, have you ever got a second opinion? And I said, no, I've considered it. At that time, I was trying to get them cut it off. I could get it round, and you cut it off. I cut your leg off. Yeah, it was blue. It wasn't getting circulation. It had staff in it and nobody knew it, and the hardware had the bone locked the wrong direction. My foot was pointing straight to the right. 00:00:24 Speaker 2: In Part one of the Donnie Baker story, we heard the first hand account of the poaching of a two hundred and four inch drop time Missouri whitetail on the Fort Leonardwood Military base in central Missouri. In Part two, we'll hear the rest of the story about the spring of the coiled jaws of justice that finds in punishment. I have no doubt that the severity of it will surprise you. But after that we'll expand our vision to a larger story of the decade following the event. Two thousand and nine to twenty nineteen were a downward cascade, rife with tragedy for Donnie and his family. Unrelated to wildlife, crime and punishment, every headline that involves a human life is easily minimized into a SoundBite or a myopic label absence of context. And don't worry. This isn't a justification of an egregious crime, but a zoom out to a bigger story. Honestly, if this podcast was just about hunting or history, we'd have stopped at episode one when Donnie confessed to the crime, end of story. But as I talked with him and saw his openness regarding his failure, a larger question arose. Why was he so willing to share a story That was a big question that I had and I would be surprised at his answer, and I think you will too. I hope this story helps solidify in our hunting culture a deeper respect for wildlife, wild places, and the law. I have zero tolerance for deliberate law breaking, but this story really isn't about that. It's about the human life behind every headline, and I really doubt that you're gonna want to miss this one. 00:02:19 Speaker 3: We get my truck on sixty three, coming from VISI. I've known the road. Angela hasn't said a word. 00:02:24 Speaker 1: We get almost the vienna and she just looks over at me and says, I'll give my wedding dress money and marry you on the Ballfield and Dixon if you'll go back and get that dough. 00:02:43 Speaker 2: My name is Clay Nukem, and this is the Bear Grease podcast where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search for insight and unlikely places, and where we'll tell the story of Americans who live their. 00:02:57 Speaker 4: Lives close to the land. 00:02:59 Speaker 2: Presented by f h F Gear, American made purpose built hunting and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the place. 00:03:09 Speaker 4: As we explore on the last episode of. 00:03:19 Speaker 1: Bear Grease, through the rest of the summer, seen him, I think six times, always in the same place with that deer done. He lived in a little little block of brush behind the dining facility. I never seen it in a legal hunting area. The first time I seen him, I was one hundred p cent suries two hundred inch deer, which I'd never seen a while deer with two hundred inch and still at that time wanted to kill this deer. Right October fourth of nine, and as I'm driving down Army Street, I looked to my left and he's standing where I've seen him two or three times, and I thought, good grief, So I pulled down to those porta potties, and I thought, right, I thought I could kill it deer right there. So I draw my bow back and he's still just standing there. I mean, he's looking right at me. I know that if I can fall it into his front end, high success rate killing him. And I put that pen right underneath his nose, just right about the top of his white. 00:04:13 Speaker 3: Patch and turn it loose. 00:04:15 Speaker 1: And like I said, it was just kind of I don't know if you ever when you was a kid shot at a bird on a tree, setting in a tree or something, just kind of and then when you do kill, you think, oh, man, that's kind of what I. 00:04:26 Speaker 3: Went through there. 00:04:27 Speaker 1: And immediately I thought there's no way that I'm going to get away with this. 00:04:32 Speaker 5: Good evening. The crime was shocking, the verdict dramatic. The trial of O. J. Simpson is over. He is not guilty. Correspondent Bill Whitaker begins our coverage of the day's events. Here, Simpson, would you please stand and face the jury in a. 00:04:48 Speaker 6: Matter of the people of the State of California versus Oorenthal James Simpson, Case number B A zero nine seven two one one. We the jury and the embuffding title action find the defendant Orenthal Simpson not guilty of a crime of murder in violation of penal cult Section one eighty seven a a felony upon Nicole Brownson. 00:05:15 Speaker 2: As a society, we're very interested in the juncture of where crime and punishment meet. Were interested in the delivery of justice, whether extreme or lenient, were all ears. The oj Simpson verdict in nineteen ninety five was one of the most watched television clips in American history, and at the end of episode one of the Donnie Baker story, Donnie was in a room on Fort Leonard Wood, surrounded by multiple game wardens, a polyograph man, and an expert on determining the time of death who was brought in to analyze a photo of the dead buck that was posted online. In a way, this was the jury who met to deliver Donnie his sentence if he was willing. 00:06:00 Speaker 4: To settle outside of court. 00:06:03 Speaker 2: We ended episode one with Donnie confessing to killing the buck in a contonement area not open to hunting, then sneaking the buck off the base in Mary's County and falsifying that he'd killed the buck in Pulaski County. We're going to go slightly backward to just before the confession. Let's jump right in with Donnie, and very quickly we'll hear what the punishment was. 00:06:29 Speaker 1: Brace yourself right out of the gate. Aaron said, I don't believe you killed that deer anywhere, but right here, you know, just straightforward, which I respect him to be that kind of person. In case he just kept turning none, you're caught. We got pictures of it on Fort Larner. Would they knew exactly how many miles it was from where that deer picture was to where I had claimed to have killed that deer. 00:06:52 Speaker 3: I mean, they had enough evidence. 00:06:53 Speaker 4: And they no way the deer could have traveled that far. 00:06:56 Speaker 1: No, it had to swim the Gasconade River in miles to different county. And I thought, I have to I have to stick it. If somebody had been with me or seeing me, if a car would have pulled in there and seen me eleven or something, I knew i'd have meant. But I don't think you body see anything other than the blood on the tail gate, and it hadn't come up, so I knew that that was or figured that that was in. 00:07:14 Speaker 3: So they write the ticket out. 00:07:16 Speaker 1: They told me they was going to confiscate the deer and I would have to plead it in court, well, going through the gates of Fort Learn with federal installation. When you're in question, you're more guilty than tell you're proven innocent. It's a privilege to work and hunt out there, it's not you know, they don't owe you. So they said, here's the deal. We know you killed that deer here, and we can tell you're. 00:07:34 Speaker 3: Going to fight. 00:07:35 Speaker 1: What our ticket will be. It's one hundred and fourteen dollars falsifying TeleCheck ticket. 00:07:40 Speaker 3: That means that you. 00:07:41 Speaker 1: Didn't do anything wrong other than checking it into the wrong county, which means that we'll confiscate that deer. But Donnie, you can you can go to work tomorrow, you can go hunt out here tomorrow. But we know that deer is illegal, and this is the ticket that we're going to give you and that'll be the end of it. We don't want to fight this forever. I said, So if I played guilty this, it's one hundred and fourteen dollars, you're taking the deer. And they said yeah, And I said, I can hunt fish fort Land Woodn't bow Yes, And I said, I did, and I told them the whole story. The antlers I'd put in my uncle's house. You know, I'd had some people tell me that they'll steal them and everything and people find out where they're at. So, knowing that I was going to be out of town, it's late at night. It's ten thirty before I finally got out of there, and they said, all right, go. 00:08:27 Speaker 3: Get those antlers. And I said, those are. 00:08:29 Speaker 1: In my uncle will be in bed, They're in his basement. And I hadn't he didn't know the real story either. I said, I'm not going to do anything. They said, listen, if you break those antlers or do something with them, we're going to charge you again for whatever. In Casey said, what time do you want to meet? And we set up a date in the early afternoon, and he said that's fine, and he told the other agents. He said, he said he's going to do that, don't worry about it. And Casey showed up and then he just he took the antlers, and I felt like it was a relief, other than having to tell all the people in the area that I'd like to. Of course, news had already traveled in that day almost as fast as the deer. Of course, the stories were just out of control. They told that I'd spotlighted off the roof of the hospital with a rifle, and it was insane the stuff that was told. But behind the scenes, somebody took a picture of that deer and put it on the Internet, and it was called Mary's County Monster, because that's the county that I checked it in. 00:09:22 Speaker 3: It was actually killing Blaska County for learning one. 00:09:25 Speaker 1: And that page had gained a lot of traction, especially since one of the agents put that they'd recovered the deer, what have you. They didn't bash me on there, but everybody else in the world. 00:09:34 Speaker 3: Did you know? 00:09:35 Speaker 1: There was stuff on there saying that I was a prior convicted fella, and people claimed to see me have done stuff that I've never done, which was a lot of noise around the agents and Fort Lender would So a week or so went by. 00:09:49 Speaker 3: I went in one morning. 00:09:50 Speaker 1: When I opened up my email, the lead officer at Fortland woud Bill Force had emailed me the night before and said, hey, when you get in, email me or call me at this number. 00:10:00 Speaker 2: Remember Donnie worked on Fort Leonard Wood as the archery pro at the fort owned bow shop, so he had to go on to the base every day. 00:10:09 Speaker 1: So I called him and so he come out there and I don't want to misspeak of where the paper were come from, but I paid one hundred and fourteen dollars fine, which is the finalization. 00:10:17 Speaker 3: I guess I've admitting the gil. And as soon as I'd done that, the. 00:10:21 Speaker 1: MPs had barred me from Fort Leondarwood for life and my hunting privileges were evoked. And I said, well, Bill, you said that I am. He said, well, this hasn't anything to do with the conservation. 00:10:34 Speaker 3: This is the MPs. 00:10:35 Speaker 1: So I had through Christmas, my job through Christmas, and it's right out of November now, and truthfully, me being a civilian, they didn't want to see me. They didn't care about it. 00:10:46 Speaker 3: Deer. 00:10:46 Speaker 1: You know, if I'd done something enough to getting that much trouble over deer and good luck pretty well. I talked to multiple people, tried to talk to state representatives, and I wasn't trying to get my hunting privileges back at all. I just wanted to keep the job. He's a phenomenal job. I didn't realize that until I realized it's going to be taken away. So I was contacted by somebody in the military and said, you can't lose your job over this because you weren't at work and it didn't put another person's life in danger. So I tried to go that direction and they said, well, no, you don't have to lose your job, but when MP's borrow you from Fort Lenderwood you can't come to work, then you do. 00:11:24 Speaker 2: It's pretty easy to see what happened here, as multiple agencies overlapped in jurisdiction. A person could be torn because it sounds like he was misled to get the confession. But you can't justify a feeling bad for someone being misled when they themselves were the ones who started the line. He fought the law and the law won. But it's just interesting to see how it. 00:11:48 Speaker 4: All went down. 00:11:50 Speaker 2: But what we haven't talked about yet is the giant white mast don in the room. Mastadons are even more glaring than elephants, and that's the one hundred and fourteen dollars. Fine, I'm hearing this story for the first time. As I'm sitting across from Donnie in his home. I figured he was going to tell me they find him twenty grand, took away his truck and put him in jail for thirty days. I had to ask Donnie what he thought about the fine, the punishment that you got being one hundred and fourteen dollars ticket. 00:12:23 Speaker 3: If that's what the world would see. 00:12:24 Speaker 2: They wouldn't see that you lost your job and affected your life and all this stuff down the road. They would see you killed this tutorach deer and got a one hundred and fourteen dollars ticket and would say that it was like massively unjust. I would agree, Why did you get off so easy in terms of actual fines and jail. 00:12:42 Speaker 3: And all that. I think I got off that easy. 00:12:45 Speaker 1: I'm sure that if I'd shot it with again in bo season, or spotlighted and shot it or anything like that, it would have been completely different. 00:12:54 Speaker 2: So you think the fact that you killed it with a bow during an open season in the state like there was some factors. 00:13:00 Speaker 3: That made it. I think that made a huge difference. 00:13:03 Speaker 2: If you heard of a guy killing a tutor ince deer like that, would you want them to get a bigger punishment other than. 00:13:08 Speaker 1: One hundred and fourteen dollars ticket. Oh, if it was somewhere I was hunting, I'd. 00:13:12 Speaker 3: Be frustrated as heck, yeah, no doubt. 00:13:14 Speaker 1: I mean you couldn't say, yeah, if I was hunting a world class deer and somebody shot it. 00:13:20 Speaker 3: Illegally, I would be fit to be tight. 00:13:23 Speaker 1: And then if they got one hundred and fourteen dollars ticket and that was it, I really would have been Matt. 00:13:28 Speaker 2: This took place fourteen years ago, and I'm convinced in modern times the punishment would have been much more severe. In most states today, there is a poacher's trophy fee, where larger animals bring higher fines, often charged by the inch of antler. I had someone in law enforcement contact me, completely unconnected from Donnie's case, just a listener, speculating that they really didn't have that much hard evidence against Donnie and wanted to make it easy for him to confess because they might have a difficult time convicting him in court. Hard evidence could be video of a bloody tailgate as Donnie left the base that night, or an eyewitnessed who saw him load the deer in his truck. To my knowledge, the only evidence they had was the picture of the buck on Fort Leonard Wood, But I'm completely speculating. I don't know what evidence they had, and for transparency's sake, i'll let you know that I did contact the Missouri Department of Conservation hoping to talk with the officers who worked the case, but it just wasn't possible, which I completely respect. I was graciously contacted by a high level official in the department who answered multiple questions for me, and I was very grateful for that. I've always been impressed by the Missouri Department of Conservation. The trend of the hunting world is moving away from culturally glamorizing wildlife violators. I'm not talking about hunting media glad glamorizing them. 00:15:01 Speaker 4: That would be rare. I'm talking about. 00:15:03 Speaker 2: Behind closed doors, around campfires and in family circles. 00:15:08 Speaker 4: I am exposed to a lot. 00:15:10 Speaker 2: Of the hunting community in a ton of different places, and I'm amazed in twenty twenty four what my ears here and how laxed people can be towards adherence to the law and how they handle it even in conversations, and those are the things that build culture, and I hope that in no way the work that I'm doing here could be portrayed as such. And I think it would be a stretch to say it was. I'm telling this story because we can learn a lot from it. I'm interested in human stories that overlap wild places. Some are positive, some are negative. I'm interested too, in the hunting community banding together to preserve wildlife, wild places and our right to hunt, and this demand strict adherence to the law. I'm also for stricter punishment for wildlife violators, especially repeat offenders. Let's get back into our story. Here's more from Donnie on the aftermath of the confession. And remember we're getting to the question of why was Donnie willing to talk to me? 00:16:14 Speaker 1: And people everything you could imagine. I had people come in to work at that time telling me how no good I was, and they hoped that I'd never get back. 00:16:22 Speaker 3: And then other guys come and say, Manny and by shot that deer. You know, So it was all over the place. 00:16:26 Speaker 1: But I'm still watching this page, and that's what that wasn't a good thing for me to do. It started getting depressed already, and I mean I hadn't even lost my job quite yet, but there was a lot of hate out there. I mean, people can really really say some mean stuff. I'm sure you being what you are there. It's amazing What people say, what did you learn from this? Well, it's a I'll always say, and I said before and I'll say after. I really believe that that hunters are the most greedy group of people there is. If it's a goblin turkey, or a good buck, or just even a a good loaded white oak acren tree. I learned not to claim, you know those deer, those those aren't ours, and just to do it. What I learned was and what if I didn't kill that deer like that? What if November first that that buck run a dough but I mean I killed it right, you know, or anybody else? You know, what if a thirteen year old kid killed that deer with both you know, that'd been pretty amazing. Or if nobody killed it? What was that buck bred fifteen dough in his life? You know, good high quality do and what would be there now? 00:17:33 Speaker 3: And it was? 00:17:34 Speaker 1: It was a black guy that I still carry today. I mean, you can talk to three people in Fort Lendwood right now. Somebody tell you some type of story about that deer. 00:17:42 Speaker 3: You know. 00:17:44 Speaker 1: The issue is the main issue is I knew better but not only did I know better. I explained to people that come on Fort Leonard would where you can and can't hunt? I knew and almost still do today. Some of that stuff changed, but I knew to the foot of where you were allowed to hunt. There was no excuse about any of that. I knew for a fact that that deer not only couldn't be killed there, he was going to have to be a quarter of a mile from there before you could hunt him. Right, something about just actually know when he was a two hundred inch deer, and just thinking for some reason that that was going to be my right of passage to be the guy known as a as a good hunter. 00:18:19 Speaker 3: So, I mean, I guess that would just be ego? Is that right? 00:18:22 Speaker 1: It happened, I mean, that's to be the only thing good men. Yeah, had to be me thinking about me, and not that I was not wanting anybody yet. 00:18:30 Speaker 3: Well, I guess I was. 00:18:31 Speaker 1: I was worried that somebody else was gonna kill that deer. Yeah, you know, And and that was a rough way to learn something like that. But I'm one of the least jealous people about deer that I know. You know today, yes, today, At that time, I didn't realize how jealous I was about that until it hit me in the face. 00:18:50 Speaker 2: You know, let's just take a minute and let all that settle in. Donnie paid the fine, lost his job, and his reputation was tarnished by the crime. Donnie's saying that hunters are the most jealous people on planet Earth hurts me down deep in the gizzard. I view the hunting community through rose colored glasses. Sometimes not all are jealous. 00:19:13 Speaker 4: The people can be. 00:19:15 Speaker 2: It's our job in modern times to change that in our culture. In the last episode, we explored what as a society that we expect or demand of people who mess up, and in short, we learned that a sincere apology, rife with remorse and compelling evidence that the person wouldn't do it again, goes a long way justifying actions. Blame shifting or lack of humility are sniffed out quickly like an unseen but potent pheromone. I have another question for Donnie. So in the Hunt, you're familiar enough with the hunting community. We've all heard you've heard stories of guy's killing an animal illegally. Yeah, what's the first thing you think when you hear about a guy killing a deer, And I mean this goes without saying. 00:20:07 Speaker 3: I mean what you did was more than just like. 00:20:09 Speaker 2: It wasn't like you messed up and did something on accident, like this was an egregious thing. 00:20:16 Speaker 3: You made a choice to do. It was blatant. I mean, there was no question. 00:20:19 Speaker 2: So when you hear a story of such and such a guy killing the deer illegally, what do you think? 00:20:28 Speaker 1: I probably look at it a little different than a lot of people. I'm the last one to bash them. I would think there's always two sides to something. And like the buck that I kill, if I wanted to proach it, I could have killed it many times before that. I'd been way better off to have went full out illegal and staged a place, prepared myself to kill it illegal instead of it just happening. But I still still despise somebody killing fifteen turkeys in a season. I'm not gonna lie it makes me mad, or or everybody in their household getting a buck tag and then feel one guy feeling his whole family's deer tax. I'm still a hardcore against that. Noise have been and I'll be vocal about being against killing a bunch of deer a bunch, and I got kids that like to hunt, and nieces and nephews, and I'm against that one hundred percent. But sometimes when when you see where somebody's got a deer removed and they find out that they shot it in national force with rifle out the window, most people would say that that no good. 00:21:25 Speaker 3: Whatever. 00:21:26 Speaker 1: The first thing I think of was was he planning? Did he go out there with intent on driving around killing that deer? Or did it walk across the road and he'd hunted six days and hadn't seen anything and jumped and shot it. Do you think do you think that makes a difference from what I went You mean it being illegal? 00:21:42 Speaker 4: Well, I think. 00:21:43 Speaker 2: Because you're you're I see exactly what you're saying is that intent is important or it's not important, Like if you break the law, you break the law. But intent shows motivation. And what I'm hearing you say is that you didn't really have an intent to kill this deer, just an opportunity happened and somehow you cross that line real quick. Yeah, knowingly though, yeah, no, only I always look at it thinking that he or she go out there with one hundred percent intent of. 00:22:14 Speaker 1: Spotlighting that deer. I feel like that's worse as far as the law is concerned. It isn't illegal, is illegal. Sometimes we can get excited, man, it's something we all love. That's why you're here. We're passionate about hunting and the outdoors, and sometimes sometimes our passion makes us do some stupid stuff. 00:22:35 Speaker 2: Donnie isn't using legal terminology, but he's right. Intent does matter in the law and sentencing, and the research data intent is correlated with recidivism, meaning a person who commits a premeditated crime is more likely to do it again as compared to someone who acted on impulse. 00:22:58 Speaker 4: Now that doesn't give some I want a. 00:23:00 Speaker 2: License or justification to be weak and vulnerable to temptation. You may be able to cheat the law, but you can't cheat the system. Things earned the right way, beget the intangible things that comprise our character. I think there's incredible honor in doing the right thing when nobody's watching. 00:23:21 Speaker 4: Incredible honor. 00:23:28 Speaker 2: Now we're going to transition out of crime and punishment, and I'm going to ask the question I've been wanting answered this whole time. Why are you so open to telling this story to the world. 00:23:41 Speaker 1: Well, a few things that put a I skipped a lot that was pretty financially hard on my family. I had a lot of family step in and then I've been through way worse than that deer. I thought that was as bad as it could get that deer, having this world class deer taken away, just thought that I was as down as. 00:24:00 Speaker 3: A person can get. Right. I lost that John. 00:24:04 Speaker 1: I was known as a as an outlaw, still am a little bit today. 00:24:10 Speaker 2: I was surprised by his answer of why he was willing to talk. He'd been through way worse, he said, But I didn't really understand what he meant by that. Life is calibrated by a perspective, and perspective comes from our past. What we've lived through helps us respond to difficulty. The rest of his story isn't connected to him killing the deer, at least in any rational or natural pathway. But in Donnie's first correspondence with me, he told me his life began to unravel after he killed the buck. But strangely, it seemed that he viewed the unraveling as connected. In a person's life, it's hard to separate out isolated incidents. Events and time congeal into a glob for me, a singular journey, a coherent, unparsable, connected scene with incidents linked by cause and effect. If you do this, then this will happen. We feel safe by having a philosophy that garners guaranteed and predictable flow of events if certain rules are followed. However, the older I've gotten, I've learned that this isn't always true. Life often throws wild cards that are not earned by merit. When my wife and I got married, we jokingly said the mission of our marriage was to answer the question of why do bad things happen to good people. It was a joke, but it revealed a deep held philosophical position of many Americans and probably people across the world. Good things happen to good people, and bad things happen to bad people. 00:25:53 Speaker 4: It's complex because. 00:25:55 Speaker 2: Some things in life do elicit immediate recompense of good or bad fruit. 00:26:00 Speaker 4: That seems just. 00:26:01 Speaker 2: But other times life seems unfair, either in the direction of the prosperity of the wicked or the punishment of the righteous. It's one of the great mysteries of life. These things are on my mind as I hear the rest of Donnie's story on December twenty ninth, two thousand and nine, just two months after his confession, something terrible happened. 00:26:26 Speaker 3: Here's Donnie. 00:26:28 Speaker 1: Twenty ninth of December, A cousin of mine, Luke Fritchie, and my wife, which she was choosing as my fiance at the time, went rabbit hunting up towards Tipton Up and there we hunted the morning. Was on our way back and a guy I know that owns an excavator company called and. 00:26:44 Speaker 3: Said, Hey, are you looking for work? And I said, I definitely am right now. 00:26:48 Speaker 1: I don't know if I'll get back out there, but I need to do something like starting Monday. So I put them dogs up and dropped my wife and my cousin Lucas off. I headed to towards that guy's place, which was in Hey, Missouri, and I hit a slick spot right past the MM Highway on twenty eight. Wasn't running very fast driving an old jeep and lost it will run off in the gravel, and about the time I got it straightened up, I hit an oak tree head on by running forty five mile an hour and not didn't slow down any And when I hit that tree and just the ringing in the car and the steam rolling. I thought, good grief at first, zero pain, and I still had my overalls and hunting boots and stuff on. And it was the actual hood light from the hood being smashed in had come on and the steam rolling from the radiotor. I thought that thing was catching on fire. It looking flames, so I started to get out of it. When I stepped out on the ground, I just fell in the snow and I had a cordion fractured. My femur or butterfly broke a big chunk of it in the middle come out, and it was it was way off to the side of me in those overalls, and I grabbed that leg and slid back over straight. 00:27:55 Speaker 3: But I didn't feel the pain at all. 00:27:58 Speaker 1: Ambulance gets there and the first thing they did was go to cut these new overalls off of me, and I said, don't cut them overalls. So I fought with them for a while. When they went to try to take them off, I said, no, go ahead and cut them. So they trimmed all my overalls and my boots and stuff off of me. They rushed me to Rawla. I lost nine units of that. I guess that bone had cut a major artery in there. I passed out multiple times going to the hospital. They tied something on the end of my foot to keep that bone from moving cutting around there, so it's almost like a kettlebell tight on the end of your toes. With that, that was the most pain I've ever felt my life. Go around a corner that they could swing to one side then the other, and I mean I'd wake back up it. 00:28:36 Speaker 3: I was passing out. So when we get there, it was. 00:28:39 Speaker 1: Emergency surgery and they go in and I guess it was more dangerous than I realized. 00:28:43 Speaker 3: I was just thinking it was a broke leg. Anyway, they set. 00:28:46 Speaker 1: That bone back and it didn't set right. That started a whole new battle. It took thirteen surgeries to get that thing back right, with tearing acl redoing the meniscus, and all my tendons in my navy busted a time or two. How long is this after you were convicted of killing this deer right at the first of November? 00:29:06 Speaker 3: Was when I was just weeks after. Yeah, he killed this deer, yet this terrible car rock. 00:29:11 Speaker 1: Yeah, so I'm getting pretty down and out by now, and here I am in a wheelchair now can't walk. Every time I get a minute alone, I open up that stupid web page and read about how terrible a person I am, and uh, it got me in a dark spot. And did I had good family around me, you know, most of them forgave me, coming in, checking on me and what have you. But it was mentally a very, very tough time. One guy wrote on there that when they put it, I'd been a a I mean, they were putting my life on this on this web page of Mary's County monster couple. One guy on there said he gets everything he deserves. And you know, and those guys, some of them, some of them knew who they were, but some of them didn't know me. They're just just aggravated at me for killing this deer that they probably had a chance of kill her they were watching. 00:29:56 Speaker 3: You know, that deer got a lot of traction. 00:29:59 Speaker 1: You know, if it had been one hundred and ten inch eight point well I wouldn't have done that, but but it wouldn't have got that traction. Everybody in the state was all about that deer and other states. One of my nurses in Columbia knew who I was, said her kid had a picture of me and that deer, you know. And then she didn't know the rest of the story. 00:30:18 Speaker 3: I told her I had family bring We had only wood heat in that house. I had. I had multiple family members bringing loads of wood. 00:30:29 Speaker 5: You know. 00:30:29 Speaker 1: I couldn't cut anything. My dad was trying to work in his old shop, his coldest winter we'd had in a long time. And it was just it just getting me down. I mean it really was. And about six months in I got murcia infection in that bone and all kinds of issues. And that doctor told me he said, probably never walk again without an aid. And I was like, this isn't broken the lake. People break their legs every day, huh. And it was actually set wrong and just by coincidence. August seventh, we had a a softball tournament and a guy I went to school with wife comes walking up to me. 00:31:05 Speaker 3: I didn't know her. 00:31:06 Speaker 1: Her name's Kelly Alexander and she said, how long have you been fighting that leg? And I had been over a year, and she said, have you ever got a second opinion? And I said, no, I've considered it. At that time, I was trying to get him cut it off. I could get a run and you cut it off. 00:31:21 Speaker 3: I backed your leg off. 00:31:22 Speaker 1: Yeah, it was blue, it wasn't getting circulation, it had staff in it and nobody knew it, and the hardware had the bone locked around direction. 00:31:29 Speaker 3: My foot was pointed straight to the right. 00:31:32 Speaker 1: And she said, I worked for a doctor in Columbia orthopedics, and she said, I would love if you'd come have him look at that leg. And like the following Monday, she had me appointment a very hard doctor to get into and I mean, he's super intelligent guy. 00:31:45 Speaker 3: And I brought my paperwork with me. 00:31:48 Speaker 1: Was leaned up against crutches standing there because it hurt bad to sit down and write anywhere. And I'll never forget. They'd done a few X rays and went out and he came back in. He said sit down. I said, oh, I feel bettering. He said, I need you to sit down. That bone's not even touching and he said we're gonna have surgery this afternoon, and he started redoing the leg. I mean, I play a little ball now like Hunds hoar as I want to, and the fixed you he did. Yeah, just just blessing of you know this girl. I didn't even really know. 00:32:14 Speaker 3: Kelly. 00:32:14 Speaker 1: Alexander just said, I know where a good doctor is, you know, And I'm not blaming the first doctor. I think I was bleeding out when they put it together. I'm sure it was. 00:32:24 Speaker 3: A chaotic spot. Yeah, it's just just how it goes. 00:32:28 Speaker 1: But then when I got back on my feet, that started the happening to go start apologizing to people, and that was almost as hard as lying to him, knowing that you've done wrong and having to face them. 00:32:38 Speaker 2: You know, it's hard to imagine in Middle America in modern times, that fixing a broken leg could go so wrong. Did you hear him say that he was trying to get them to cut his leg off? A dark cloud seemed to descend over Donnie's life. He became depressed. Times were hard. It's wild that the boldness and concern of a stranger at a ballgame would change Donnie's life, as this lady helped him get an appointment with the doctor that fixed him the very afternoon of the appointment. But this was just the beginning. This next section will introduce us to a name we've heard a few times, Angela, who was at the time Donnie's fiance. This next story does a great job of painting a picture of their relationship, but don't forget that dark cloud. 00:33:37 Speaker 1: While I was crippled up. We've raised field Trout beagles for a long time UKC Beagles, and we've had a couple of good ones. My wife and I were playing on getting married in August, and she'd saved up money for a dress, and I mean we rubbing pennies raising two boys. It was tough, and she'd saved money for a year for a dress, and we had pretty well everything picked up. Of course, I wasn't helping it all. I'm sitting in a chair with my with my leg all wrapped up. I'm one hundred and thirty pounds. I was two hundred and ten pound, a pretty big guy when I had this accident. She had to carry me to the bathtub and back out. I mean, it was just like take care of a feeld little man. And Angela and my dad were still running kind of in the Points serieses of these UKC hunts. We were going and I would show a dog once in a while, but me and the boys would stay in the clubhouse and hang out. We were at a hunt down South and Amona come walking and she said, did you see this dog tied up out here and I said no, and she said, come look at this dogs. I'd get up and cripple out there, and it was the prettiest biggel I've ever seen, big old bold muscled up, I mean, had more muscle. 00:34:42 Speaker 3: Than being livers in your life. And she said, I want that dog, and I said, we can't afford that dog. There's no telling it. 00:34:48 Speaker 1: So when he gets in and she makes him go out there and show her the dog, and they talk about you. 00:34:53 Speaker 3: My wife's was crazy over beagles. 00:34:55 Speaker 1: Some people. I've heard more than one person say when I die, I wanted to come back as one of Angela Vicker's biggles. I mean, you know, they got dessert and everything. So she told him we were interested in getting that dog, and I had an idea what that dog it costs, and we couldn't afford it no way. A month or so goes by and he calls me at my house. He goes, hey, I'm thinking about selling that dog. 00:35:16 Speaker 3: So we went over there Sunday even and hit a little side beside. 00:35:18 Speaker 1: He got me in, we went out, he cut I brought a couple of dogs with me and he cut them out and there was nothing. 00:35:24 Speaker 3: The dog done that was wrong and had him a huge mouth. 00:35:26 Speaker 1: It sounded like a person screaming what when he ran it, which is kind of something. You want to be able to strike your dog, if it's a good dog, you want it to be distinct from the other one so other people can't strike their dog on yours. We ran for a couple hours and we get back and load everything up, getting ready to leave, and he priced. 00:35:42 Speaker 3: The dog, and I thought, good grief. 00:35:44 Speaker 1: So we get my truck on sixty three coming from Visu and I've done the road. 00:35:48 Speaker 3: Angela has in said a word. 00:35:50 Speaker 1: So we get almost the vienna and she just looks over at me and says, I'll give my wedding dress money and marry you on the ball field and Dixon if you'll go back and get that dog. Turned that truck over, turned around sixty three, went back and bought the dog. And he was a huge blessing, just that himself. So she won Nationals a couple of times with him, multiple state hunts and shows. We just lost him last year. He was fifteen years old. That dog brought us really close. 00:36:17 Speaker 3: Comparing it on when we were young. You know, I had a couple of boys. 00:36:21 Speaker 1: Everything was fine, we loved hunt and fish, but that dog give us something to do big time together. So after him we end up purchasing another pup that turned out to be amazing, and at one time we had the top two dogs in this area points and hunt wise, field trial is what she loved. She loves competition. We played a lot of softball together. She just you could feel trial with the boys, take them with you. We Ohio, Indiana all over. That was something that was such a blessing to us. So, like I said, I thought that that really beat me down. So with the field trial island, Angela and I had done everything together. I still bow hunted a lot, done things like that, but we ran dogs two or three days a week and every weekend for a few years. And then in May May of twenty eleven, we were building this running pin up here and my dad got to have in pain and he had massive heart attack right above the wheelmaker. His heart still works today just over thirty percent. So already that deer that the issues of that deer didn't mean as much. But at the end of twenty fifteen, Angela started having issues with their stomach and not feeling good, losing weight and in March of sixteen, she was diagnosed with stage four cancer. But honestly, I mean it was scary. If you knew her, you'd understand. She was in the middle of CrossFit. They were trying to get her to compete at the time. Strong not female strong strong is anybody her size tough as she could be. I mean she packed water buckets with me. I mean we were just like two buddies. Really, that's what That's what made us close. 00:38:08 Speaker 3: She could be and she was a beautiful person. 00:38:10 Speaker 1: But she could wear car heart jeans and ston't brush pologies like anybody, and which is probably what attracted me her most. You know, she played on my men's softball team, you know, just But in sixteen, twenty sixteen, they give her eighteen months to live with treatment twelve to eighteen months. And honestly, it was scary, but it didn't It just she just wanted them. I thought, man, if he mightn't be, to be her. 00:38:36 Speaker 3: And she took. 00:38:39 Speaker 1: Yeah, she took twenty chemo treatments and forty eight radiation treatments. 00:38:45 Speaker 2: Angela's stage four cancer came as a complete surprise. The dark cloud had materialized overhead again, only in her late twenties. She was a beautiful lady, the picture of health and fitness. It's hard to imagine the shock of such a diagnosis. After she received the maximum amount of radiation and chemotherapy treatments, the doctors sent her home saying there was nothing more they could do and gave her twelve to eighteen months to live. At this point, Donnie and Angela began to research non traditional methods of cancer treatment. I struggled from an editorial perspective whether to include this, as it's just really personal, But in the end, it's Donnie and his family's story that's part of their journey through this dark decade from two thousand and nine to twenty nineteen. And Donnie included this in his story, so I did in this one too. 00:39:44 Speaker 1: So she found a show called Cancer Can Be Killed, and it was about natural you know, and not. He was actually explaining not to blame the doctors. That's Western medicine, how they're taught. But cancer the United States goes round because of cancer all the way to our newspapers and everything all trickled down money from Camp Street, and so we went to Florida. 00:40:07 Speaker 3: She went to Florida for six weeks. 00:40:09 Speaker 1: We didn't tell her doctor because he said, if you go, don't don't come back here because by the time you get back, he'll be out of control. 00:40:16 Speaker 3: And he's good dude. I'm not. 00:40:17 Speaker 1: I'm not saying, but he really believed it would be and we went to She went to Florida for six weeks. 00:40:23 Speaker 3: My sister set up I tenerate for every like five days. 00:40:29 Speaker 1: She would have some family member fly down there to hang out with her for three or four days and come back. Flew the boys myself down there, and I could tell when I got there, Clay, it was like on week four, I believe we hadn't seen her from of. 00:40:39 Speaker 3: Course, the boys were excited to see them. 00:40:43 Speaker 1: She had just settled into this place like she'd lived there a whole life, knew all the side streets, and we went to the beach, but she was laughing, running playing with kids. I could tell something was different. And when we got back, when she got back after six weeks of that, she was cancer free. 00:41:00 Speaker 3: I mean, well, I take that we didn't tell him. 00:41:03 Speaker 1: They went in to do her bi monthly cat scan and the last time she had outspots all in her bone and everything, and it'd spread, and of course she'd lived a long time after they said that she would. And when they got done with the cat scan, they come in they said, something's not rabber. We have to do that again, and she said, how come, he said, I it just it didn't show anything. So they took her back again and cat's canned her again. And when they come back out, he said, whatever you're doing, continue on it. And she was cancer free. It was a very strict diet. She could eat like three things, zero sugar ever again. And it was hard to do, you know, I mean not couldn't eat anything on the road, had to pack your mills for everything, and it was almost unfeasible, it was, it was. And then heat tank every day. You got to get your body cor up to I think over one hundred and three degrees. Cancer can't live it's so high. And it was just and she she stayed on track with that for for a long time. 00:42:01 Speaker 2: Angela would stay cancer free for just under one year, and during that time she had no chemo irradiation and was already alive past the original projected time. The doctors told her she'd live, but the remission didn't last. 00:42:20 Speaker 1: And then August of nineteen it come back, and that time it come back with a vengeance. And I could tell when it come back it was a different thing, and it was stage lived stage four both times. But when it come back, you could see it sapped the power out of her and she fought it a long time. But you know, we had these two boys, and my dad, my sister and mom. Everybody done what they could. But our little town, like a lot of little towns, has drug problems, and it has issues like all towns do, I'm sure, but Clay, this community was unbelievable. How they come together for us when it come back second time. I was still trying to work the boys multiple sports, and my sister stayed with us quite a bit through the night so I could try to sleep at night. I don't know how where she was sleeping that ever, But day after day for months longer than that, for over a year, we had dinner delivered here from just somebody else, I mean, just our community and my family's amazing and uh going through that and uh watching watching how it affected with myself, my dad and sister and my boys, especially that deer kind of started taking a back burner on me. Feeling pity for myself. It just, uh what I thought when I thought I was down and out and everything was gloomy, it was over a deer. And but watching her fight for her life like that made me realize it was just a deer. But that's why I'm open about it. Clay to say, in that second round of cancer, I was playing a lot of ball and stuff when I killed that deer. And I wasn't a drug riddled alcoholic or anything. But I was raised in church and I knew when I was doing right and when I was doing wrong and playing a lot of ball, drying a lot of beer, being routy with kids at home, you know, and doing things that that I shouldn't. 00:44:11 Speaker 5: Uh. 00:44:11 Speaker 1: My wife's faith never wavered one ounce. And as the man of the house, I should be the leader, and I wasn't. 00:44:21 Speaker 3: My wife was. 00:44:23 Speaker 1: And as she faded, I started realizing that's that's what I'm gonna have to be. 00:44:30 Speaker 3: But she could. 00:44:31 Speaker 1: She passed the twenty fifth of May of twenty twenty after a terrible fight, and the last thing she said to me was I'm ready to go home. 00:44:44 Speaker 3: Yeah. It was tough, but the time I had with her, I really cherished. 00:45:01 Speaker 2: I can't thank you enough for listening to Bear Grease. I hope you've enjoyed and learned something from the Donnie Baker story. None of us are without fault, including Donnie, but he's one of us, an American woodsman and hunter, and a derned good one at that. Just the story we chose to tell of his overlap with the wild was one of his worst moments. After episode one, I was concerned that the world would make Donnie pay again for killing that buck, and I compensated for that by asking the listener to be sympathetic. And after the episode, Donnie reported back to me that he'd received almost one hundred percent positive feedback, which I was really glad to hear. But most importantly, I think now he can fully just put all this behind him. I'm grateful for compelling stories, positive and negative, and I look forward to telling many more in twenty twenty four. It means the world to Brent and I that you guys listen to our podcasts, and I really look forward to talking to everybody on the Render next week about this episode two. And Hey, I want to thank you all for the support of the launch of Steve Ranella and I's audio original, The Long Hunters. So far it has been a big success as it stood number one on the Apple Audio Books and reach number four on Audible, which is big for us and Hey. As another announcement, on March ninth, twenty twenty four, if you want to come say hi to Brent and I all day will be at the Black Bear Bonanza in Bentonville, Arkansas. It's an incredible event, big time, big day. Google it and hope to see you there. Have a great week.

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