00:00:14 Speaker 1: My name is Clay Newcomb, and this is a production of the Bear Grease podcast called the Bear Grease Render, where we render down, dive deeper, and look behind the scenes of the actual Bear Grease podcast. Brought to you by Takova's Boots. I'm a cowboy boot man, and I've been wearing Takova's for years. 00:00:33 Speaker 2: They're the most comfortable boot I've ever put on. Good boots for good times. Welcome to the Bear Grease podcast. Again. 00:00:47 Speaker 3: Not Trout Grease this time. 00:00:48 Speaker 2: Not Trout Grease. 00:00:49 Speaker 4: We're going to respect the brand and we're going to keep old Bear Grease. You know, I am a bear hunter now. I think once you kill a bear, you just become a bear hunter. 00:01:01 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:01:01 Speaker 4: I'm a bear hunter, so we can officially do Bear Grease now. We've got my very good friend, Bear Newcomb, who I've known for. 00:01:14 Speaker 2: His entire life. Really? Since day one. Maybe not day one. I don't know that we met on day one, but probably day two. 00:01:20 Speaker 3: Really? You weren't there? 00:01:21 Speaker 4: You weren't there in the delivery room? I wasn't there, but your Aunt Christy was, I think. 00:01:26 Speaker 5: Okay. 00:01:27 Speaker 2: Maybe. So she's known you longer than I have. True day one-er. Yeah. We've got Cricket, the wonder coon dog. 00:01:36 Speaker 3: That's right. 00:01:37 Speaker 4: Over there bedding down in Clay Newcomb's hunting. His deer gear is going to smell like coon dog. 00:01:43 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:01:44 Speaker 4: And we have some very special guests here. Again, me and Bear are good friends who we affectionately refer to as the Kyles. 00:01:53 Speaker 2: We have Mr. Kyle Veit and Mr. Kyle Plunkett. Yes, sir. 00:01:57 Speaker 4: The hosts of the illustrious Ozark podcast. 00:02:02 Speaker 2: Ooh, I like that. Yeah. Yeah. I really enjoy the Ozark podcast. Appreciate it. Thanks for having us. We're excited to be here. We're excited to have you. We've got a pretty great show today. 00:02:12 Speaker 4: We've got some fabulous content, and I'm really excited to talk about this Inuit podcast, or as the locals call it, Inuit. 00:02:22 Speaker 2: Inuit. Yeah. 00:02:24 Speaker 4: So we're going to get into that a little later, but before we get too far. 00:02:29 Speaker 2: In, you guys been doing any deer hunting? Yes. Just a little bit. Bear has probably been doing a lot more than me. I would agree. For a college student. 00:02:40 Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, you know, honestly, I've been in school. Today I was at school. This morning I couldn't hunt. 00:02:45 Speaker 2: Now you're doing school. 00:02:46 Speaker 3: Yeah. That's awesome. And when I felt the fall wind and I was looking at the colors, it just felt wrong to be there on campus. It was just like, man, I need to be in the deer woods right now. What class were you in? Public speaking, geology. 00:03:04 Speaker 2: Anything's better than public speaking. 00:03:05 Speaker 3: And D1 collegiate algebra. 00:03:07 Speaker 4: D1 collegiate algebra. 00:03:09 Speaker 3: Think about that. 00:03:10 Speaker 2: D1 collegiate. What's the D1? 00:03:11 Speaker 3: Just college algebra. I had a D1 school. 00:03:14 Speaker 2: Oh, okay. 00:03:16 Speaker 3: Anyway, I've been deer hunting a lot. Some public land hunting. We had a big archery deer camp this week with some R mutual friends that I met actually through the Kyles. And yeah, I've been on... some deer i've been seeing a lot of deer i haven't seen any big bucks until yesterday morning saw a pretty nice deer from the stand i was sitting just on a bench that i don't understand why deer are there like there's not that many acorns compared to everywhere else there's not a scrape line it's just a trail and there's. 00:03:53 Speaker 4: Like it's real beat down though real beat down. 00:03:55 Speaker 3: But there's probably like five trails that all intersect okay not a pinch point or anything. It's, it's the weirdest thing. It's just a bench. It's exactly what you would look at and be like, this is a good deer spot. And then it's never a good deer spot, you know. 00:04:08 Speaker 2: But this time it is classic. 00:04:10 Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, it's a good deer spot now, but it's proven itself to me to be public. 00:04:14 Speaker 2: Okay. 00:04:15 Speaker 3: It's proven itself to me to be a good deer spot in years past. And I think it's just a transition. They're just walking on this bench. 00:04:22 Speaker 2: Right. 00:04:23 Speaker 3: And, uh, so I hadn't hit it yet this year and I was, I've, Wasn't able to get to the stand until like real late yesterday morning, like right before dark or daylight, sorry. And this spot is only like 300 yards off the road. So I go down, park, get my stand set up real quick. And I am in there like way late, which I hate. Like when I'm in there late, I feel like I just have no chance. Do you feel that way? 00:04:48 Speaker 4: I do, but I don't know that I should feel that way. I was watching a short of this podcast that I really enjoy. called the Ozark podcast. Was that, was it y'all's podcast where he was talking with the Brian Slane and he was like, I never go under the stand before daylight. 00:05:06 Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. But I feel the same way. I feel the same way too. 00:05:09 Speaker 6: I feel like part of it is kind of the ritual of deer hunting where you get there before the sun comes up and you just, you just feel good about it. 00:05:15 Speaker 2: You watch the woods wake up and public land. You feel like you have to beat everybody. 00:05:20 Speaker 3: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, I got in there late and, uh, The whole time, I was just like, man, I don't know if I'm going to see anything. And about 8.30, I hear some crashing behind me, and I look back, and there's a yearling doe running up the mountain. And then I hear, right behind her, big, long grunt. And I was like, oh, boy. So I get my bow out, and this deer steps out, and it was real open. I could see probably 100 yards. It steps out at about 70. And it was a pretty nice mountain 8-point. 00:05:53 Speaker 2: Probably. 00:05:54 Speaker 3: I mean, he wasn't a giant, but he would have been probably 110 inch, 8.3 and a half year old deer maybe, which for me, that's like, that's the biggest buck I've seen out there all year. 00:06:02 Speaker 2: Right. 00:06:03 Speaker 3: I've seen some other bucks kind of close to that, but none as big as this one. And anyway, he was chasing that yearling. And I watched him for probably seven or eight minutes. I was calling at him and actually snort wheezed at him at one point once he got in this thick stuff and he snort wheezed back at me, which was pretty cool. But he just could see all the way to my tree. And he could tell there was no deer. So he would look at it. And whenever he got in this thick stuff and he heard me, he started coming. But then as soon as he got on the edge of that thick stuff and could see, he just went right back to chasing that doe. Yeah, it's kind of weird because I've been hunting spots that have been covered in sign that I've been seeing tons of does at and just not really seeing any bucks. But this spot, I was just like, well, I got to get out somewhere quick. So I'll go to this one right off the road. Haven't been here all year. Sure enough. Big buck. 00:06:51 Speaker 2: That's a good day. 00:06:52 Speaker 3: So it's a good day. 00:06:53 Speaker 2: Anyway. 00:06:54 Speaker 4: Have you guys been hunting at all? 00:06:56 Speaker 2: Not really. 00:06:57 Speaker 6: I've been out two times, and I took my three-year-old daughter with me, and it kind of just ended up turning into, like, we just hung out in the woods. 00:07:06 Speaker 2: A nature walk. 00:07:07 Speaker 6: In the nature walk, and we set a fire, and we started, you know, we made breakfast for dinner, and we just ended up hanging out. 00:07:14 Speaker 2: Yeah. I can't really call it hunting very hard. Right. Um, it's just that season of life, uh, where. Enjoyable nonetheless. Oh, very enjoyable. 00:07:22 Speaker 6: And, and she's really latching onto the outdoors and, and I'm seeing her kind of blossom in that, in that own way. So, um, that's been a lot of fun, but I'm going out this weekend and I was just telling y'all, I'm a big fan of the, of the saying, um, two days in the woods at the right time is better than 10 days at the wrong time. And just like, you know, thinking about years past where I've, burn myself out early season going out when it's hot and it's sticky and there's ticks and mosquitoes. And you're just like, you hunt hard because you're excited about deer season being there. And then by the time the rut hits, you're like, yeah, you've kind of burned your relational equity. 00:07:58 Speaker 2: With your spouse. Yeah. 00:08:01 Speaker 6: You've taken some time off of work. You've like used up some of those brownie points. You're like, man, I can't really hunt that much during the rut. So I am, I'm doing the opposite of that this year. Um, but I'm going out this weekend and, Stuff is heating up around here. I know in the Ozarks, like I've been seeing so much movement. Just yesterday, I had a bunch of deer on camera just going crazy. I had probably four bucks within an hour walk through this one spot. It's not a big spot, but just going crazy, doing what deer do. 00:08:27 Speaker 2: That's awesome. Similar boat, but I've hunted a little bit more. Okay. So we have a new baby. Yeah. So anytime you have a new baby. Yeah. It limits your deer hunting. Yes, it does. Yes, it does. 00:08:38 Speaker 4: Yeah. 00:08:38 Speaker 5: And, uh, especially when, when this baby is coming after a couple other babies, it also require attention. 00:08:43 Speaker 2: Yep. 00:08:44 Speaker 5: You know, you gotta, so I've also taken my daughter to the deer stand and we weren't hunting. We were watching the woods, but it was incredible. But I do have a quick story. If you'll let me, um, there's this little, I say little, like only a couple acres, uh, piece of private that I have permission on. 00:09:03 Speaker 4: And there's a, you know, Literally like a couple acres. 00:09:06 Speaker 2: Like a couple acres. Okay. 00:09:09 Speaker 5: There's like a little driveway that has the tree canopies kind of over it. It's always pretty and whatnot. And every time I'm driving up this driveway, I'm like, you can see deer to left or right, just the drainages. 00:09:21 Speaker 2: And I. 00:09:23 Speaker 5: Was driving up with my family and my wife was like, we're going to see a deer. You're going to wish you had your bow. I was like, what am I going to do out of the minivan with a bow? Like, yeah, I'm going to wish I had it, but what's it going to accomplish? Because I've been telling her, because I have cameras up, like there's a big deer on this property. 00:09:39 Speaker 2: She's like, you're going to see this deer. So we're driving up it. Sure enough, right out the window, big deer. Oh, man. That's the one I showed you that video of. 00:09:48 Speaker 5: And so I kind of knew where he wanted to be, and I'd seen him once in the morning in person and once in the afternoon. 00:09:54 Speaker 2: So I knew how he was using this this little woodlot. 00:09:58 Speaker 5: And so I took like a late start to work the next day, got in there and it is so thick. And the way the terrain is, is kind of, I mean, it's just a drainage, but the way that you're using that terrain, it is so tough to hunt unless you have the perfect wind. And I just happened to have the perfect wind, which is why I took off work. um, to get in there. I ended up hanging in my saddle only five and a half feet up in a little tree that, I mean, no kidding. 00:10:25 Speaker 2: Is this big around? 00:10:26 Speaker 5: This is the only one I could, I could get into that wasn't a giant Oak that was bigger than my straps would be to my sticks. 00:10:33 Speaker 2: Wow. 00:10:33 Speaker 5: And I watched seven different small bucks come up the draw, not win me, come within four or five yards, loop back around, go off into the brush where they are. Never saw me, never smelled. I felt I felt like I knew what I was doing. 00:10:47 Speaker 2: Like a ninja. 00:10:48 Speaker 5: I normally don't feel like, oh, I really know what I'm doing. I feel like I know what I'm doing for the most part, or I get luckier, especially if there's a rifle in my hand. 00:10:55 Speaker 2: It's like, I kind of know what I'm doing. This one, I was like, this is going to happen. 00:10:59 Speaker 5: This deer is going to show up, and it was just little buck after little buck after little buck, and he hadn't showed. So I'm waiting for that win switch to happen, and we're going to go after it again, and I feel pretty good about it. 00:11:10 Speaker 2: That's awesome. 00:11:11 Speaker 3: When did you say that was? 00:11:13 Speaker 2: This would have been Tuesday. Tuesday? 00:11:15 Speaker 5: That's when the east wind started. You get a weird east wind all of a sudden. It's like, I can hunt that spot all of a sudden. 00:11:21 Speaker 3: Yeah, we had the wind switch kind of yesterday out of the north now for the next couple days. 00:11:25 Speaker 6: Yeah, I'd say it dropped a couple degrees today. Yeah, it feels like late fall today. You were in the woods today. I was in the woods today with Mo. With Mo Shepard. 00:11:36 Speaker 4: I've been hunting on some public land on a big wildlife management area. And, you know, I would not consider myself a seasoned deer hunter, but I sure really like it. 00:11:48 Speaker 2: You sure look like one. You look like you know what you're doing. You're also now a bear hunter. I'm a bear hunter. Yep. Fly fisherman. 00:11:56 Speaker 4: But I've done my darndest to try to find some deer, and I have just come up empty. Well, old Moe Shepard, he says, you know, I hunted out there a couple of years ago. I wish I could do, I hunted out there a couple of years ago. 00:12:09 Speaker 2: And he said, I've. 00:12:13 Speaker 4: There's a couple of good spots I think you should look at. So I, of course I went up there and sure enough, I go up there and there's a line of like six scrapes and I found a couple of rubs. And so I set up, I went up there on Monday when that east wind was blowing. And I have not done much deer calling because most of the hunting that I've done has not been in the rut. And, but I took some antlers and had my, Phelps Clay Newcomb Acorn Grunner and I got up there and got settled into my sling and I rattled and then I grunted a couple of times and in my infinite wisdom just assumed that a deer would not come to my calling and I started fiddling with something in my bag and five minutes later I hear. 00:13:13 Speaker 2: And I look over, and I see antlers running away. 00:13:15 Speaker 3: Oh, no. 00:13:17 Speaker 2: I love that assumption. I live with the same. You're like, you know it's not going to work. Well, I snort wheezed. I actually just made it worse by calling. Yeah, exactly. 00:13:24 Speaker 4: I snort wheezed at him, and he slowed down and just kind of walked off. And I was like, oh, my God, I've been looking for a deer all season and finally get one, and I blow it. 00:13:36 Speaker 2: Yeah, that's tough. 00:13:37 Speaker 4: Well, 20 minutes later, sure enough, the same deer. He comes back. And he gets back within about 40 yards and he starts working a scrape and it's, it's a little bit further than I feel comfortable shooting. And there were some, you know, small branches in between. So I didn't take the shot, but I did get to see him, which was awesome. 00:13:58 Speaker 3: That's pretty cool. 00:13:59 Speaker 4: And I put my camera up over there and he, he came back in later on that afternoon. So, and he's a pretty decent, for a public land mountain buck, he's probably 120 plus inches. So I'm going to, I'm going to try to get back out and hunt him again. 00:14:14 Speaker 2: Yeah. That was the Moe Shepard spot. Yep. 00:14:17 Speaker 4: And Moe took me to, Moe took me this morning to one of his spots. Not in that management area and you know, where he grew up hunting and sure enough had a, had a pretty decent little eight point come in this morning. Didn't, He came in in a way that it didn't present me with a good shot, but still, and I saw a spike this morning, so I've. 00:14:39 Speaker 2: Seen two bucks in this morning. 00:14:40 Speaker 3: Moe's getting you on him, sounds like. 00:14:42 Speaker 2: Moe is the man, I'm telling you. Moe knows. Moe knows best. Moe knows bucks. I need a hat right there. Moe knows best. 00:14:47 Speaker 4: You guys are too young to remember Bo knows. Do you know Bo knows? 00:14:51 Speaker 2: Bo knows? No. I don't know Bo knows. 00:14:52 Speaker 4: Oh, man, this was like one of Nike's biggest ad campaigns ever was Bo Jackson. 00:14:57 Speaker 3: Yeah, I watched a documentary on Bo Jackson. 00:14:58 Speaker 2: Bo Jackson was. 00:15:00 Speaker 4: phenomenal athlete and he played great tennis player he played pro basketball no pro. 00:15:06 Speaker 3: Pro he was gonna say wait a minute he. 00:15:08 Speaker 4: Played pro football and pro baseball and was incredible at both and they had this mad campaign where it just said bow nose and then they would like change it basketball football. 00:15:19 Speaker 6: And so oh no's best or mo no's mo no's bucks oh no's turkeys too yes So anyway, are you a, are you a. 00:15:27 Speaker 2: Saddle, saddle guy, hang on guy, climber guy? 00:15:30 Speaker 4: I bought, I always used climbers before and I got a saddle last year. And honestly, the first couple of times I used it, I was like, eh, I don't know that I'm going to like this, but this year I've, I've used it every time and it is just so versatile. I mean, just being able to get up in a tree anywhere you want is just, and a climber you can do most, but it's just, It doesn't really matter if there's branches on the tree or anything. In my opinion, it's not quite as comfortable as a climber or as a lock-on. 00:16:04 Speaker 2: But, I mean, it's pretty versatile. 00:16:07 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:16:08 Speaker 2: Is that what you're doing? 00:16:09 Speaker 3: Yeah. I like a climber more than anything. 00:16:12 Speaker 2: Climbers scare me, too. 00:16:14 Speaker 6: Really? 00:16:14 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:16:15 Speaker 2: You're just worried it's going to slip down the tree? Yeah. 00:16:17 Speaker 3: I just feel like something's going to fail. I kind of have a rule. Like, if it's inside a... 300 yards, I'll use a climber from the road. And if it's deeper than that, I'll use a saddle. But honestly, this year I've been using a saddle more than anything. But it's cost me deer because I'm shooting a 64-inch bow. So if a deer is on my right side, the movement of swinging that bow all the way over. 00:16:39 Speaker 4: And it is so hard to shoot out of a saddle, switch inside that offside. 00:16:44 Speaker 2: It's really hard. 00:16:44 Speaker 3: And if you want to, especially with a track bow, you kind of got to... you got to like twist all the way and like have your feet to where you're like pushing this way on your platform. It's tough, but it's so, like you said, you can just get like anywhere you need to get. Like if there's a deer trail right there, you can pretty much. 00:17:01 Speaker 4: And you can just wear it. Like I just put mine on at the truck and just walk through. 00:17:04 Speaker 3: The woods with it. 00:17:05 Speaker 2: You got saddle guys? Yeah, I like saddles. 00:17:08 Speaker 6: I mean, if I'm, you know, when it's private, like I'm going to the fastest way I can get up a ladder stand, I'm sitting there obviously, but on public, yeah. 00:17:15 Speaker 2: I'm pretty much exclusively a saddle guy. 00:17:18 Speaker 4: What do you guys feel about Like I always think about when I'm hiking in, when I go in, I'm like, I, if I kill a deer, I got to get this deer out of here. It kind of prevents me from going three or four miles in. Cause I don't mind walking into the woods, but I'm like, if I have to drag a deer out two and a half, three miles. 00:17:37 Speaker 2: Oh, I know a good way to save you from that thinking. I can, I can solve this for you. Yeah. You have people who would love to hike three or four miles with you to drag out a deer. It's true. It's true. 00:17:47 Speaker 3: Yeah, my philosophy whenever it comes to eastern hunting, where it's like not going to be that, well, you know, it's probably not going to be like much further than three or four miles. And the biggest thing you're going to be hauling out is a deer. 00:18:01 Speaker 2: Go for it. 00:18:02 Speaker 3: Do what you need to do to kill a deer. You'll always figure out a way to get the deer out. 00:18:05 Speaker 2: I like it. I like that. I like that philosophy. 00:18:07 Speaker 5: There's a couple people, Kyle being one of them, but a few who I know, like if I go after this thing and it works out, and it's going to be a pain. 00:18:15 Speaker 2: Like, I actually think we'd all have a lot of fun. 00:18:17 Speaker 4: I also know people that have mules. 00:18:20 Speaker 2: I also know people who have mules. 00:18:22 Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, the other day I was going into a real deep spot way back in public land, and I called my dad before I went in there, and I was like, hey, if I kill a deer in here, will the. 00:18:32 Speaker 4: Mules be available to me? Well, right now those mules are hunting. 00:18:36 Speaker 2: I know. 00:18:36 Speaker 3: I was going to use them this weekend, and they're gone. 00:18:39 Speaker 2: Yep. It's a nice luxury to have to just order a mule on your hunt. 00:18:43 Speaker 4: It's like an Uber for mules. You should have a mule. 00:18:47 Speaker 3: Out here when I'm ready. 00:18:49 Speaker 2: The mule will be here in 25 minutes. Please don't forget to tip your mule. 00:18:56 Speaker 3: The other day, I was hunting with my buddy Levi. And we went out to a WMA that I'd actually never hunted before. And we were kind of just like... We had like one day... that we were going to hunt it. And so I was like, you know what, let's be aggressive and try to slip hunt them and just find, just see what the deer are doing in the area, see if there are deer in this area. And anyway, we started slip hunting and just kind of walking how deer walk, grunting quite a bit. But we had a little tactic where he would grunt and I would grunt in the front. But I was kind of like the primary buck. 00:19:32 Speaker 2: The dominant buck. 00:19:33 Speaker 3: Yeah, like whoever was in the front was grunting the most. And the one behind was kind of just like adding random grunts in here and there. Anyway, we hit this scrape line and we started following it, walking real slow. And down in this drainage to our right, we hear something walking and, you know, you could tell it was a deer so we both get down and as soon as we get down something behind us snorts at us and I look back there and there's a doe running away and Levi just immediately snorts back at her and then I take my call and I I snort wheeze at the deer down here And in 30 seconds, those deer just started coming straight for us. And they ended up coming out. And it was a nice little probably two-and-a-half-year-old six-point and another little buck. I couldn't really tell what it was. And it came out at 40 yards, just clear as could be, open, calm, broadside. And Levi had his compound, and he can shoot pretty good, but shot right under the deer. 00:20:33 Speaker 6: Oh. 00:20:34 Speaker 5: But it was so– Was it straight on? Like under– walking at you or was it was it. 00:20:39 Speaker 3: Broadside broadside yeah and and he yeah i slip on a lot i love slip hunting i don't kill hardly anything with a bow slip hunting gun hunting it's a different story i probably kill more slip hunting with the gun than tree stand hunting right but i love doing it with a bow just because you learn so much about the deer and you just kind of you have a lot of cool interactions with them that you wouldn't have if you're in a tree stand like whenever you actually get on the ground and you start acting like a deer And deer think that you're a deer until they see you. You just see a lot of cool stuff. And that was a great example of it. But it was a lot of fun going with someone who could shoot out to 40 yards, you know, because then it was like, oh, dang, if we get a deer inside of 40, we can actually shoot it. 00:21:23 Speaker 2: Yeah, that is cool. That's awesome. A lot of fun. 00:21:26 Speaker 3: Yeah, so they're responding to, I mean, it's like prime rut, you know. It's as good as it's going to get all year. So they're out and about. If there was a time to be in the woods, it'd be right now. 00:21:37 Speaker 2: That's the time. 00:21:38 Speaker 3: Yep. 00:21:38 Speaker 2: Yep. 00:21:47 Speaker 4: Well, I just want to let everybody know season 14 of Meat Eater is out. So you're going to want to get on YouTube and you're going to want to watch that because it is good. The first episode is with the world's greatest small game hunter, Kevin Murphy. Yep. But there are some episodes coming out about the Arctic with Steve Rinella. Went to the Arctic and Clay joined an Inuit. 00:22:21 Speaker 3: Yeah, well, he joined Devin Manick, who's the guy who's on this podcast. 00:22:28 Speaker 1: Yep. 00:22:29 Speaker 4: He joined Devin Manick as Devin was hunting a polar bear with a spear. 00:22:34 Speaker 2: That's incredible. 00:22:35 Speaker 4: Yeah, so you're definitely going to want to check that out. It's a pretty cool thing, so check that out. Also, one of the coolest things, my dear friend Clay Newcomb, I don't know if everybody has heard, but he has written a book, American Bear, and that book is going to be available for pre-sale starting November the 9th. And if you pre-order that book, Between November the 9th and December the 9th, not only will you be first in line to get the book, you will get a personally signed postcard from Clay Newcomb, the author of said book. 00:23:19 Speaker 2: No way. 00:23:20 Speaker 4: We're going to send you a postcard that Clay has signed with a message on there. And if you want to buy that for Christmas for your friends that like to hunt, you could stick that card. 00:23:33 Speaker 2: Under the Christmas Tree, signed. 00:23:35 Speaker 4: By a true-to-life celebrity. 00:23:40 Speaker 3: There you go. 00:23:41 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:23:41 Speaker 4: I mean, just a real, I mean, the quintessential celebrity, Clay Newcomb. 00:23:46 Speaker 6: That's all you need to know. He's going to hate that I said that. There's your Christmas gift for everybody. 00:23:51 Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. Everybody in your family. 00:23:53 Speaker 4: So make sure, go out and you can pre-order that book, American Bear, and get a signed card from Clay Newcomb. 00:24:01 Speaker 2: So do it. 00:24:02 Speaker 4: And then the book comes out February the 7th, I think is when it comes out, February the 7th. 00:24:08 Speaker 6: Have y'all both got to read it a little bit behind the scenes? 00:24:12 Speaker 4: I have read some excerpts. 00:24:14 Speaker 2: I'm excited about it. 00:24:15 Speaker 4: I have held an advance copy, but I have not read it. However, for the last three years, I've heard a whole lot about it. So I could probably write the book myself just from the content. 00:24:28 Speaker 3: I'm probably not going to read it. 00:24:30 Speaker 2: I already know. 00:24:31 Speaker 3: You already know what it's all about. 00:24:33 Speaker 4: But I'm, I'm really excited for Clay. It's, it's, I mean, like I said, I've, I've heard a lot about it and it's, it's going to be phenomenal. Like it's really going to be a cool book. I'm excited for it. 00:24:42 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:24:43 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:24:43 Speaker 2: I'll be pre-ordering that for sure. Yeah. 00:24:45 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:24:45 Speaker 2: I will be buying that for Christmas for myself. There you go. And your dad. I'll buy you one. 00:24:50 Speaker 4: And your brother. 00:24:51 Speaker 2: There you go. And I'll buy you. There you go. Just swap. And then we can do dads and brothers and. Give Daniel one. I like it. Oh, producer Dan. There you go. Our producer. I like it. 00:25:01 Speaker 4: By the way, I don't know if you guys know this or not, but our sponsor of the Bear Grease podcast is none other than Toccova's Boots. And for you guys being our guests today, we're going to give you a pair of Toccova's Boots. 00:25:19 Speaker 2: No way. Yes way. Can you believe that? We have to fight over them? One pair? Like I get the right foot, you get the left? Or you can get two rights and just one of you wear that. Okay. 00:25:31 Speaker 4: But no, you guys will each get a pair of boots. Awesome. And, you know, Toccova's is our official partner for Western boots and for work boots. So if you guys are interested and, you know, if you need a good pair of work boots, they also have work boots. 00:25:44 Speaker 2: Oh, you can go either way? 00:25:45 Speaker 4: Yeah. 00:25:45 Speaker 3: All right. 00:25:46 Speaker 2: Great to know. Well, thank you guys. I appreciate that. 00:25:48 Speaker 4: We'll be expecting to see you sporting those around. Also, if you're interested, we have a Bear Grease brand. We can even brand your boots with Bear Grease. 00:26:01 Speaker 2: No way. It's got a Bear Grease logo. Oh, I definitely want to do that. Where do you have them? 00:26:05 Speaker 3: Oh, my Nike Blazers are branded, as a matter of fact. 00:26:09 Speaker 2: No way. Oh, that's right. I forgot. 00:26:12 Speaker 3: They didn't brand too well on that fake leather. 00:26:15 Speaker 2: See, I got one right here. That's really cool. I'm definitely doing that. And it doesn't have to be, you know, it can be on the shank. So I just, I roll up with the boots. Roll up with the boots. And you'll brand them. We'll come back and get the brand here. Yep. Okay. Yep. So we got to come back. Yep. Absolutely. That's way cool. Yeah, we're doing that. Well, thank you so much. That's awesome. Absolutely. Thank you, Toccova's. Excited to be in the hot seat. They take really, really, yep. 00:26:36 Speaker 4: You guys are, you're in the, you're in, Kyle Plunkett is in the Toccova's hot seat and Kyle Veit is in the The auxiliary Takova's hot seat. 00:26:46 Speaker 2: The overflow. Yeah. 00:26:48 Speaker 4: The Takova's hot seat here. We got some cowboy boots on it. 00:26:51 Speaker 3: Takova's boots on it. 00:26:51 Speaker 2: Takova's cowboy boots on it. We could both sit in the same chair, I guess. That would be awkward. You in the Brent Reeves chair? 00:26:56 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:26:56 Speaker 4: He's in the Brent Reeves chair. Don't let Brent Reeves know. He gets a little testy about it. 00:27:00 Speaker 5: He's going to be upset that bad Kyle is sitting in his chair. 00:27:03 Speaker 2: Yeah. I think he switched, though. 00:27:04 Speaker 6: He texted me the other day, and he was like, I can't remember which one of y'all is evil Kyle, but we were talking about doing an episode with him. 00:27:11 Speaker 2: Later this year. Bad Kyle. Bad Kyle. Good Kyle, bad Kyle. 00:27:13 Speaker 6: He was like, I don't know which one's which, but we're just going to roll with it. Whoever texts me back first. 00:27:19 Speaker 2: I like it. 00:27:19 Speaker 3: What do you got on the table? 00:27:21 Speaker 2: That's right, Barrett. 00:27:22 Speaker 4: Thank you for reminding me. Right outside the Bear Grease studio here, we have, there's a persimmon tree. I'll get a picture of this too. There's a persimmon tree. It's dropped most of its persimmons, I think, by now. And picked up some seeds on my way in. Try to do this every year. And split them open, which is no easy task, by the way. It's really tough to split them. You were working on that for a little bit. But I did get one cracked open. And the, I guess, tradition? Would it be traditionally? 00:28:02 Speaker 2: I don't know. 00:28:03 Speaker 3: Would it be like folklore? 00:28:04 Speaker 2: Folklore, I would say. Or is there some science around it? That I don't know. 00:28:09 Speaker 4: I doubt that. 00:28:11 Speaker 2: Doubt very much. But I feel like if you. 00:28:14 Speaker 5: Have enough folklore backed up by tradition, then there has to be something. There's something scientifically significant about that. 00:28:23 Speaker 2: 100%. I very much agree with that. 00:28:26 Speaker 3: Like two weeks ago, I walked outside at 11 p.m. at night and I looked at the sky and there was a massive, almost rainbow around the moon. It was a lunar halo. 00:28:36 Speaker 1: Yep. 00:28:37 Speaker 2: Whoa. 00:28:38 Speaker 3: I did some researching on it, and the folklore or the common belief is that that means it's going to rain. We've had a really bad drought lately. I go on the weather app, no rain for the next two weeks or something. 00:28:52 Speaker 2: Okay. 00:28:54 Speaker 3: I kid you not. I was in the stand 36 hours later, and it starts raining on me. 00:28:59 Speaker 2: It rained. And it was a pretty good downpour. 00:29:02 Speaker 3: It was like a light sprinkle. 00:29:04 Speaker 2: Okay. 00:29:05 Speaker 3: You know, for like 20 minutes. 00:29:06 Speaker 4: Bear, slide that chair this way just a little bit. It gets in that other shot there. So we never did tell the people what we have here. We have the persimmon seed. And inside the persimmon seed, when you split it open, you'll see, I actually don't know what part of the seed it is, but it will either look like a knife or it will look like a spoon. 00:29:28 Speaker 3: Or a fork. 00:29:29 Speaker 2: Okay, there is a fork. 00:29:30 Speaker 4: I'm looking it up because I know we were talking about it before. Okay, I said fork and the guys looked at me like I was crazy. I thought there was a fork. 00:29:36 Speaker 3: No, there's a fork. 00:29:37 Speaker 2: Tell me what they're supposed to mean. So a knife would indicate a harsh winter. Harsh winter. A fork would indicate a mild winter. 00:29:47 Speaker 3: Okay. 00:29:48 Speaker 2: And a spoon would indicate lots of snow. Okay. Think of the spoon as like a big shovel full of snow. 00:29:55 Speaker 4: So I only cut one open so I couldn't verify. 00:29:59 Speaker 2: Okay. 00:30:00 Speaker 4: But we clearly have a spoon. 00:30:03 Speaker 2: I mean, it is clearly a spoon. 00:30:06 Speaker 3: I like that. 00:30:07 Speaker 4: So winter is my favorite season, and I just absolutely love snow. So this excites me. So wherever you're at, if you've got persimmons, cut a seed open. 00:30:20 Speaker 3: As hard as it is to cut the seed open. 00:30:23 Speaker 2: You think it needs to be verified? 00:30:24 Speaker 1: No. 00:30:24 Speaker 3: I wonder who was cutting open persimmon seeds to start with. 00:30:30 Speaker 4: That's a great question, Barry. Did that say any origin? Did it have an origin story in there? 00:30:35 Speaker 2: Origin of the persimmon seed cutting? Yes. I didn't see that in... And I wonder. 00:30:42 Speaker 6: Oh, there is some science. Now, we're going off of Google here, so take that with a. 00:30:47 Speaker 4: So you can take it to the bank. It says, the science. 00:30:52 Speaker 6: The shape inside the seed is formed by the seed leaf and influenced by the tree's genetics in the summer weather conditions. Drought years tend to produce more knife shapes, while wet summers skew towards spoons. 00:31:04 Speaker 4: Interesting, because we have had a heck of a drought this summer. 00:31:06 Speaker 2: Kind of the opposite of what we're noticing. It's counterintuitive. Yeah. I don't know. I think it's going to snow a bunch. I think you can bank your weather on it a little bit. It wouldn't surprise me. 00:31:16 Speaker 4: I mean, you'd think if you got a dry summer that that moisture's got to come back sooner or later. 00:31:21 Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a law of averages. Yeah. You're going to get that moisture back. Who knows? But clearly, we have a spoon. It's a spoon. 00:31:27 Speaker 6: I will say when it's snowing, that's some of my favorite deer hunting, especially like slip hunting. 00:31:35 Speaker 2: You can be so stealthy and so quiet. 00:31:37 Speaker 6: Last year I got out and I was hunting on this small property, 12-acre property, and I see these deer off in the distance. They don't see me. I get hunkered down. I've got my bow with me, and I see them. They're starting to work this tree line right towards me, and I'm thinking, man, this is going to work out great. I kind of tuck back in the tree line a little bit, I'm sitting there and I'm just waiting. And every minute goes by, they take a step closer. I'm going to take a step closer. And I see this big mature doe go to the front and I start getting excited. Like I'm going to take this doe. And I kind of have to take this doe because if I don't, she's going to see me and then the rest are going to spook. 00:32:14 Speaker 2: So that's kind of what I got. 00:32:16 Speaker 6: And sure enough, you know, I creep in closer and the snow just provides such stealth. It's so quiet and it's beautiful. You can see them really well. You can stay hidden. Um, and this doe walks up to what I judged as 25 yards, um, but, but out in the open of this field. And, uh, and so I, I pull back, she's right where I want her to be broadside and I let it fly. And sure enough, I, I big time, big time, just like straight in the dirt. I think I landed right at her feet. Um, and so I wasn't even close, but I learned. One, the snow is a great advantage, but two, it's really hard to judge distance when you don't have trees. I'm so used to bow hunting with trees, and I've got my anchors and my points, and that's 10 yards, and that's 20 yards. When you're slip hunting and you're in the open, it's so hard to judge the distance, and so that range finder makes a big difference, and I didn't use it. 00:33:13 Speaker 3: Where we're at, it snows. We'll get maybe two good, one good. we usually bank on one good snow a year, sometimes a six inch or some like, you know, some little stuff here and there. But what I like about it, I feel like with anything, any, anything that you're hunting, fishing, if you are the, the predator, anytime there's something different in the, in the animal's usual rhythm, that's a great opportunity to capitalize. I feel like whenever it gets like, we get like these negative one degree days where like, or weeks where it'll be like everything is frozen. Like that's just, you just, you just find the deer doing stuff that they don't usually do. Cause they're, you kind of have a little bit of edge up on them. 00:33:57 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:33:58 Speaker 3: So yeah, I love hunting in the snow or like we were fishing the other day and muddy water, you know, and it was like your odds of catching a bunch of fish all the way down, but your odds of catching a big fish. 00:34:09 Speaker 2: You know, you're absolutely right. 00:34:11 Speaker 4: I have, I have a buddy who was fishing this last spring at Bull Shoals and he said, we were fishing. He's like, the water got real trashy and, and dirty. And he threw on a mega worm. He was fly fishing. He'd like, if, if I'm going to catch one, I'm going to catch one, but it'll probably be decent. And he caught a 27 inch Brown. 00:34:31 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:34:31 Speaker 4: Great, big, huge Brown, big fish. I had to bring up fly fishing since, since I was hosting. 00:34:37 Speaker 2: Is this a room of fly fishermen? 00:34:39 Speaker 1: It is. 00:34:40 Speaker 2: It is. I went last week. 00:34:44 Speaker 4: I'm totally derailing right now. I went last week, my wife and I went with Daniel Roberts and went striper. 00:34:50 Speaker 2: Fishing on the fly. I saw that y'all did that. It was incredible. You caught a nice striper. I caught a probably 16, 17 pound striper on a fly rod. And it was- Daniel Roberts is pretty awesome. 00:35:02 Speaker 4: Yeah, it is super duper fun. I mean, honestly, it's the closest thing to saltwater fly fishing you can get inland. 00:35:11 Speaker 2: You'll catch one fish. I caught two stripers. Okay. 00:35:14 Speaker 4: I caught one big one and then probably like a six pounder. 00:35:18 Speaker 2: Yeah. That's that game out there that he'll warn people. But it was worth it. 00:35:23 Speaker 4: We may not catch a bunch of fish. And we fished maybe four hours. And I caught probably eight other smallmouth and largemouth. So, I mean, it was fun. It was super fun. But you got to be able to cast. I mean, you can't go out there and, you know, cast 20 feet in front of the boat and expect. 00:35:40 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:35:41 Speaker 4: They... They're real spooky, so you got to keep your distance. So anyway, but Dana was great. 00:35:48 Speaker 2: He's the man. Anyway, let's talk about this podcast. Let's do it. The Inuit. 00:35:56 Speaker 4: So Clay, when was it? It was last January. 00:36:00 Speaker 2: It was February. 00:36:02 Speaker 3: It was February when he went up there. 00:36:03 Speaker 4: February when he went up there. Clay, that trip to the Arctic, and he talks about it in the podcast. 00:36:10 Speaker 2: It is. 00:36:11 Speaker 4: It's almost unfathomable for us to understand where the Arctic is because it is so far and so remote. I mean, he mentions, you know, you got to go all the way into Canada. 00:36:26 Speaker 2: Ottawa. To Ottawa. 00:36:30 Speaker 4: And then another, it's another 3,000 miles from there to Arctic Bay. 00:36:36 Speaker 3: I think the way he worded it to me was... If you're in where we're at in Northwest Arkansas, you go to the Canadian border, and then you do that two more times to get up to where he was at. 00:36:49 Speaker 2: That's wild. 00:36:50 Speaker 4: I mean, it's just hard to believe. And then you're still not at the North Pole. The North Pole is still, I can't remember how many more miles, 800 miles? 00:36:58 Speaker 2: Another 1,000 miles. Another 1,000 miles? Yeah. 00:37:01 Speaker 5: Is that just to get to the edge of where humans cross? Potentially could live. 00:37:05 Speaker 3: Right. 00:37:05 Speaker 2: And it's like anything past that. 00:37:07 Speaker 4: I actually didn't know that about the Arctic Circle either. That's the parallel or the latitude where there's 24 hours of daylight. 00:37:16 Speaker 2: And 24 hours of darkness. 00:37:16 Speaker 3: The podcast was like so interesting from all the science and ecological. So much. 00:37:22 Speaker 2: So much. 00:37:23 Speaker 3: Like just the Arctic, just like the way the sun works around it and the way the, it was just the facts were just. 00:37:30 Speaker 6: Yeah. 00:37:31 Speaker 3: There's just too many to absorb them all. 00:37:33 Speaker 2: There was a lot of facts. 00:37:34 Speaker 6: That was one of the things that I was realizing that one, how, how little I knew about the Arctic and the far North and just imagining what life is like there, what goes on there. Just, I don't know hardly anything about it. 00:37:46 Speaker 2: And now I know, now I feel like I know a lot more because of this episode. Yeah. 00:37:50 Speaker 4: Clay talked to, Clay's told me a lot about his trip to the Arctic and it was, it was, um, incredibly impactful to him. 00:37:59 Speaker 2: Um, And I say impactful. It left a mark on him. 00:38:06 Speaker 4: It's almost like when he came back, he was different because it was an experience unlike anything he'd ever had. Being out there when it's 40 and 50 and 60 degrees below zero and you're 40 miles out on a dog sled and there's no, hey, I'm freezing. I'm going to go hop in the car or, hey, I'm freezing. I'm going to go in the building and stand by a fire. and you're on ice, I mean, to say unnerving would be an understatement. You could see the look on his face as he described it. It really gave him an experience that kind of changed the way that he sees that. So it was really interesting to hear him put together this podcast and to know that like when he interviews Devin Manick on the podcast, he's there, he's out on the ice. And so it's not just, I interviewed Devin Manick in this library conference room. 00:39:08 Speaker 2: You know what I mean? 00:39:09 Speaker 4: He's literally sitting in a plywood hut and it's 30 degrees below zero outside. 00:39:16 Speaker 2: And it's pretty wild. It is very wild. 00:39:19 Speaker 6: So I remember him alluding to the kind of the unnerving and almost fear of just the, cold that you cannot escape. And I could see how that would be very unnerving. And I would be worried. I would be like, what if we got into a pickle up here and if I got wet or something happened, how do we. 00:39:41 Speaker 2: Get out of this? 00:39:42 Speaker 6: You can't escape it. You can't go into the hut and sit by a fire. That fear, I could hear that when he was talking about it. 00:39:49 Speaker 2: There's very little room for error, you know? 00:39:59 Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I thought, yeah, some of this stuff was crazy. Like the, one of the most interesting things I thought was about the, the caribou parka or just like animal fur up there is just a much better solution to the cold than our modern synthetics. And it's just like a reminder that I feel like we see all over the place, just like everywhere in the natural world, the more you experience it, but you start to realize that the natural world, it has already developed systems to, to, uh, it's already developed systems to match up to the, to the challenge, you know, like the cold, for example, like the polar bears already designed for that, you know? So like, By taking that bear's hide, you're just utilizing something that the natural world has already engineered for this exact issue. 00:40:53 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:40:53 Speaker 3: But it's just like a reminder that the natural world, it always, it, I mean, it provides what you need, you know? And this was just an interesting, interesting look on it. Cause like, you know, they had modern, like top of the line gear up there. 00:41:09 Speaker 2: Right. 00:41:10 Speaker 3: But still the, caribou parka that's been used for thousands of years was the solution yeah it. 00:41:15 Speaker 5: Stood out to me too because he had mentioned was it two or three days of wearing kind of the best of the best that you can buy yeah you know just you know i'm wearing the best snowsuit or the best camo or the best whatever and like i should be good and how it wasn't cutting it and then when it was the caribou parka with the hair flipped. 00:41:34 Speaker 6: Inside no the hair was on the outside but this oh i think it was a polar bear front to back polar bear pants oh Right? Polar bear pants, caribou parka. 00:41:44 Speaker 2: Is that how it works? It's literally like a shell. Yeah. 00:41:46 Speaker 6: I mean, it has no... And it wasn't too tight. So you wouldn't get too sweaty. That was super interesting. I never thought about that. 00:41:53 Speaker 5: It's kind of like a down jacket, but the air is the space. And just how much better that was. Like, one, I'd like to put that outfit on at some point in my life just to experience. Like, polar bear pants sound awesome. 00:42:03 Speaker 2: Yeah. Two, the fact that it really is that much better. 00:42:07 Speaker 5: And that they could work and run and run the dogs and also sit And not like sweat-free, sweat-free, sweat-free. 00:42:15 Speaker 2: Yeah. Which would be a fear of kind of modern gear, right? Yes. 00:42:20 Speaker 4: Did you guys know anything about the Inuit before this? 00:42:23 Speaker 2: No. Very little. No. 00:42:25 Speaker 4: I didn't really know anything until we did the interview with Frank Tester. And that was eye-opening. I mean, just so much stuff I didn't. 00:42:35 Speaker 2: Have any idea. 00:42:36 Speaker 4: That opening story where Devin Manick is talking about his grandfather. coming across and going to Resolute Bay because they needed supplies was wild. 00:42:50 Speaker 2: I mean. Yeah. 00:42:50 Speaker 3: The dog stuff. 00:42:51 Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. 00:42:53 Speaker 4: And feeding the dogs to the dogs. I mean, that's, that's wild stuff, man. 00:42:58 Speaker 2: Very wild. 00:42:59 Speaker 6: The, uh, the way that, the way that he described a dog dying from exhaustion and like the moments right before where they're running and then they, they have that push of energy and they, they go really, really, really, really hard. 00:43:12 Speaker 2: And then they just collapse. 00:43:14 Speaker 6: It just made me think what's going on physiologically in the dog, what's happening. You would think right before you collapse and die, everything would slow down. 00:43:26 Speaker 2: But that burst of energy, where does that come from? What is that? 00:43:29 Speaker 1: Weird. 00:43:30 Speaker 3: It's like hypothermia. Apparently, people get real warm right before they freeze to death. It's kind of weird. 00:43:38 Speaker 2: And it's wild, isn't it? Yeah. It's a hard way to live. 00:43:42 Speaker 6: That was one thing I think kind of throughout the whole episode, time and time again, just hearing all the facts, the conditions, how, how cold it gets, how remote it is. You know, the, the three months at a time where it's completely night, the three months at a time where it's completely day, it just seems like such a hard place to live. My whole, the whole time I was like, man, I wonder why these people stay here for so long. Like, Obviously, it's their home and there's connection to it, but you would think at some point over periods of time, they would be like, we're not doing this anymore. 00:44:19 Speaker 2: Yeah. We're going to Florida. Right. 00:44:20 Speaker 3: Exactly. We're going to the beach. 00:44:22 Speaker 2: Exactly. 00:44:23 Speaker 6: But they have carved out a life for themselves there and they persist and they keep going. It's really admirable, honestly, knowing how tough it is. 00:44:33 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:44:34 Speaker 4: I didn't know anything about the relocation. before this whole thing came out. 00:44:39 Speaker 5: I'm excited to learn more about that. I know we're kind of waiting on the why and that story, but I didn't know that that happened. 00:44:46 Speaker 2: I didn't either. 00:44:47 Speaker 4: And I've always heard, I've always heard about the, the term Eskimo, um, that, that, uh, you shouldn't say it, but I never knew why. And, uh, that, that it's a slur. I mean, it's basically raw meat eaters, you know. 00:45:01 Speaker 5: I didn't know that that was a slur from other tribes. Um, I guess I was just assuming if it's a slur, it's probably coming from like a Westerner, you know, like the European descended guy. 00:45:15 Speaker 2: Yeah. But yeah, there's other tribes, other First Nations. And he was even, that distinction was interesting. 00:45:20 Speaker 5: And I want to learn more about what is First Nations, what is Aboriginal, what is. 00:45:26 Speaker 2: Inuit, like what, you know. 00:45:27 Speaker 5: But yeah, there's other tribes like racially profiling them. 00:45:32 Speaker 1: Right. 00:45:33 Speaker 5: But it's also, they're making fun of something that they, have to do to survive. And it sounds like they do really well. I mean, to have caribou carcasses on top of your house and that's what you eat off of or in your shed out back because you live. 00:45:43 Speaker 2: In an eternal deep freeze. 00:45:45 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:45:46 Speaker 2: Sounds kind of awesome. 00:45:48 Speaker 5: Like, they're making fun of them. I'm like, that's like actually, it's actually awesome. 00:45:53 Speaker 6: Yeah. 00:45:54 Speaker 3: Yeah, that was something else that struck me. Like, just from hearing my dad's impact on his trip, but also this podcast, it's just like the cultural... the cultural differences are just so eye-opening because like, you know, like in our society, the way that, you know, you just kind of like come out of the womb and you just have like these things that you feel like, these mindsets, thinking systems that you feel like are just like the way that humans think, you know? But then whenever you look at, you know, you isolate a culture like the Inuit, you start to see There's so many, like, people have come to so many different conclusions about how to think and, like, how to speak and how to, just how to operate. Like, I thought the Barry Lopez quote about these men with no pockets and no wheels, like, are, I forgot exactly what it was, but, like, that was such an interesting point. 00:46:52 Speaker 2: Like, pockets. 00:46:54 Speaker 3: Like, that seems like such a, it's just like, yeah, you have pockets on your pants. 00:46:59 Speaker 2: But then. 00:47:00 Speaker 3: you see like these guys don't have pockets on their pants. It's like the simple distinction, but it's like, I don't know. They've just come to a totally different conclusion whenever it comes to clothing than what we've come to, you know? 00:47:13 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:47:13 Speaker 3: It's just like an interesting example of it, but it seems like there's so many different, so many different things inside this podcast. Like the language, like how their language is, is in a way that it describes snow really well. 00:47:28 Speaker 2: Yep. 00:47:28 Speaker 3: You know, like it's not necessarily like a bunch of different words for snow, but like where we would say wet snow, they would have one word for that. So yeah. And that, and how that affects your thinking systems. Like I've heard my dad say after reading that book and some of his research on the, on the actual language of it, the English language is really, is really good at describing material, like very materialistic things. And, uh, other people's accomplishments. You're like, I forgot, yeah, you heard him say that the other day. Like, I forgot what it was, but it kind of was like, oh yeah, wow, that actually shapes our culture a lot. For sure. Just what our language supports, how it requires us to just speak. You just never think about that. You think, well yeah, we just came out, you know, we just speak English and think like humans. 00:48:21 Speaker 2: Everybody speaks the same. 00:48:22 Speaker 5: It may be a different language, but, whereas the Inuit may have, it may not, be a language that's very good for describing other people's accomplishments right but it might be really good. 00:48:33 Speaker 4: At describing scientific things like you might not write a scientific manual in yeah you know they're just not different different things are important to the culture and they they're surrounded by different things like it it doesn't really benefit especially you know here in the south where we just don't have a ton of snow like to your to that example it's like you can kind of describe it. You don't need to describe it any more than, like, that's wet snow and that's dry snow. Where, like, there could be periods in between that where it's a little bit of a slush and, you know, I'm saying there's a word for that, obviously. 00:49:08 Speaker 3: But you know what I mean? 00:49:09 Speaker 2: Like, it's not as useful to us in our everyday life like it would be for them. Yeah, I thought that was interesting. 00:49:16 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:49:16 Speaker 2: Fascinating. 00:49:17 Speaker 3: Yeah, even, like, the whale bones. You know, they touched on the landscape pretty big in this podcast. I thought it was interesting. They don't have any trees up there. And so what they used to frame their houses or their tents was whale bones. And it's just like, that's so wild. And the narwhal... That was fascinating to me. 00:49:42 Speaker 2: Yeah. What a crazy animal. 00:49:43 Speaker 4: They're such an elusive, mysterious animal. I actually didn't even know it was a whale until I heard this. I don't know if you guys knew that. 00:49:52 Speaker 2: I don't know if I've ever thought about it. But it's a whale. Yeah. I probably would have said it was like a seal. 00:49:59 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:50:00 Speaker 2: I just didn't know. But they are a crazy creature. 00:50:04 Speaker 3: I know what you mean. 00:50:05 Speaker 2: They seem like a mythical thing. They really do. The tie to the unicorn to me. Yeah, exactly. Is this a real thing? 00:50:11 Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I bet if you were to describe a unicorn and describe a narwhal to an alien and ask them which was more likely to be real, they would pick a unicorn. 00:50:21 Speaker 2: Yeah, I could see that. Absolutely. 00:50:23 Speaker 3: I thought it was cool, kind of their traditions around the narwhals coming up on those little water pockets. You know, they let the first pod come through and just. 00:50:33 Speaker 4: Like, I don't know why, but I appreciate that. Like, I don't know what makes me appreciate it. I think there's such, and maybe this is a Western thing, there's such a culture of exploitation of goods and services and, you know what I mean, things. that when you see something like a resource like a narwhal where these people are literally dependent on this for their lives and they choose to say, we're going to let this one pass. To me, I think it shows, you know, in Genesis, God told Adam and Eve to have dominion over the creation. And I don't believe that have dominion means they got to do whatever they wanted to. I believe that it was designed in the mind of God to say, treat this like I would. And to me, it says something like it's a point of gratitude and respect to say, we're not going to exploit this. We're going to treat this with respect because we recognize what it provides for us and we're not just going to decimate it. And so I think that would probably be the reason that I appreciate that. But when he described that, I was like, wow, that's really cool. 00:51:54 Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. I'm glad you brought that up, both of you guys. 00:51:56 Speaker 6: I think That's something that we've talked a lot about on our podcast as we've learned about our region, the Ozarks, and have interviewed, you know, in the last four years, 200 different people in a variety of different studies learning about this place. In the same way, what time and time again I have come to appreciate is people who, the difference between people who live with the land and people who live on the land. And I feel like that's kind of an example that Inuits are They're living with the land. 00:52:28 Speaker 2: They're making themselves a part of nature. 00:52:31 Speaker 6: And, you know, like you're just saying, I think of, you know, I believe that we were all created at the same time by God, and we are a part of nature. And it's not like, it's so easy to think that nature is over there, we're over here in town, and we have nothing to do. So, like, nature is a place that I go to. Whereas nature, by design, is all of it. And it's kind of an invitation and an opportunity to step into a mindset of how do I live within a community, not just community of like my neighbors and my friends and the people who I live with, but like a broader community of. 00:53:11 Speaker 2: Living things around you. 00:53:14 Speaker 6: So, you know, thinking about an ecosystem and guys who hunt like us, like we manage land and you can think about how can I be a member of this community and recognize what what a whitetail needs and what a squirrel needs. And as I make my plans for this land and I build a home or I put out stands or I do, you know, a food plot, like how can I be a part of this community to benefit everything? And just stepping into that active role of nature versus kind of removing yourself and being like, that's nature, I'm a human. I think that that was something that got me in that mindset again of just like, walking into that invitation of a broader community than just the people you live around. 00:53:56 Speaker 2: It's like, it's bigger than just people. You're recognizing that you are the creation as well. You know what I mean? Yeah. 00:54:02 Speaker 4: Nature is not a separate creation. And like, we're all made by God. 00:54:07 Speaker 2: Creation with some special designation. 00:54:09 Speaker 4: Right. 00:54:10 Speaker 2: Made in the image of, but then to steward and be a part of. Exactly. Yeah. 00:54:15 Speaker 3: And Frank, he touched on that with the, in the Narwhal section, like how they didn't view nature as the other, Right. You know, how they viewed narwhal as, as just like a, you know, he used the word just like another species. 00:54:29 Speaker 2: Right. 00:54:29 Speaker 3: As the same as like a human as a species. And I definitely feel like, like a big part of, I mean, I hate to keep like saying just like modern society, cause that's kind of a broad term, but just like, but just like the way that I feel like a lot of people think is, or just interact with nature is interacting with it as kind of like a, almost like looking at it from a distance. Whereas, you know, you see in this case, these people are like very involved in it. And, you know, you see that across like all, all sorts of, you know, native history. But it reminded me of something from the E.O. 00:55:10 Speaker 2: Wilson, E.O. 00:55:11 Speaker 3: Wilson's book, Biophilia. Have you ever read that? I've heard of it. He talks about how, you know, like there was a point where, not 80, 90 years ago where women couldn't vote. People of color couldn't vote. And it was just like white men that were determining the entire political, like these massive decisions that affected the entire earth. 00:55:37 Speaker 2: Okay. 00:55:37 Speaker 3: And then you had like these, you know, these movements and now women can vote. People of color can vote. Everyone can vote. 00:55:44 Speaker 2: Right. 00:55:45 Speaker 3: He drew the comparison of that to like animals. Like obviously an animal can't vote. But in that time, women and people of color were not considered when making decisions about the entire globe. That affected them as well. And that's how it is now. That's essentially what he was saying. Now, we're at this point where it's like, yeah, humans can vote. Humans can make all these decisions without the input. 00:56:13 Speaker 2: Of the natural world. 00:56:16 Speaker 3: And it's like, obviously, a polar bear isn't going to you know, isn't going to have any opinion on what happens, but it was just kind of an interesting comparison that he drew of like, whenever we're like what you said, like whenever we're thinking about like developing, like building a home on your property or just doing anything, like instead of thinking like, okay, what's the best way that I can get all the harvestable timber off this property, get all the money out of that. I can't have my house in the best spot on the whole property. 00:56:46 Speaker 2: Open up a view. 00:56:47 Speaker 3: Yeah, and totally disregard everything else that's been living there for such a long time just to kind of, you know, go put your house up there. Like, it's really interesting. 00:56:57 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:56:57 Speaker 5: The other point on the narwhal that I was thinking of is how he had made the mention that science and just people at large knew more about, was it Mercury or Venus or, I don't know, the solar system than they did about the narwhal. At least at the time he was writing the book. Maybe now it's changed a little bit. And that was even making me think about kind of just man's ego in some ways where we do know a whole lot about the solar system or whatever that's just grand and large and out there. But then you'll hear like, there's still thousands of like fish species that get discovered every year. 00:57:34 Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, the bottom of the ocean, we have no idea what goes on down there. 00:57:37 Speaker 2: Yeah, there's bug species all the time they're getting discovered. 00:57:41 Speaker 5: We've interviewed people who have like found Bugs or birds or something that are like, or lizards. 00:57:46 Speaker 2: That's what it is. 00:57:47 Speaker 3: It was a snail. 00:57:48 Speaker 2: Snail. Well, there was the. Snails and salamanders. Yeah. Yeah. In the karst cave system. That had never been found before. Really? In this researcher in Missouri. Modern times. Like new species. All I know is I'd love to have an oral tusk in my house. That would be awesome. 00:58:05 Speaker 3: Yeah. It reminds me of something Gary the Believer Newcomb says about hunting in other states. He says, don't go hunt somewhere else until you're very proficient at hunting your own state. 00:58:15 Speaker 2: You know what's going on. 00:58:16 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:58:17 Speaker 2: But that was just fascinating to me that there is something in kind of mankind as a whole that wants to shoot literally for the stars, but then doesn't know what's happening in their backyard. Yeah. Um, but then there, you have these people who they depend on the narwhal. Yeah. They know so much about that. So like they, they know so much. 00:58:38 Speaker 5: They probably couldn't give you all the, you know, generations back the biological names for all that they know but they know it yeah and um it really is that connectedness to place and heritage and life and all that that i i don't know i kind of like to strive towards i don't know if you're gonna say i'm gonna be the expert on the narwhal but i'd like to be the expert at least in my backyard. 00:58:59 Speaker 4: Yeah yeah that's true that's cool yeah i i think i think it's the same kind of thing that like when i kill a deer and i walk up to it i'm like thank you, Lord. 00:59:11 Speaker 2: And thanks, Mr. Deer. 00:59:12 Speaker 4: You know what I mean? I'm filled with gratitude. 00:59:15 Speaker 2: You know what I mean? Because I know that deer is going to feed my family. You know what I mean? 00:59:19 Speaker 4: They had to have felt the same thing about the narwhal, you know, that there was a real connectedness there. 00:59:24 Speaker 3: Yeah. And to your point, you know, they did touch on that. Like the people's connection to the land going that far back like what do you say like 10 000 years back was how far how many generations there's been living on that land and then they kind of talked about like the effect that that has on the way that they view the land as compared to us kind of having connections like no particular connection you know like i'm an eighth generation arkansan and sometimes that seems like a lot but when you do the math on it that's like 250 years. 00:59:58 Speaker 2: Or something Not 10,000. 01:00:01 Speaker 3: Yeah. And so like, you know, he talked about Barry Lope. I think it was another Barry Lopez quote about having a connection 10,000 years back is difficult for someone who doesn't have that level of connection to the land to understand like that generational thing. And he put it very, he put it really well the way he said it. Cause like, I don't know, you hear stuff like that a lot and it's really hard to wrap your mind. But I remember one, hearing that quote and being like, yeah, that actually makes a lot of sense just of how, like, you know, if you have, if your family and your, your whole, you know, lineage has lived in this one spot for 10,000 years, like that is a lot of history, you know, I don't know. I feel like you could just like actually kind of connect the dots a little bit better knowing that, that your lineage has come from this land, you know, but yeah. And then, you know, It ties into the whole narwhal thing again. That's why they respected the narwhal. That's why they respected this land. That's why they let the first ones swim by whenever they could have killed them and eaten them. Like you said, just to live. 01:01:22 Speaker 4: Interesting statement by Frank Tester. who is a very interesting guy. You know, he was here for a couple of days when we were interviewing him and, uh, that guy's done more things. I mean, Clay really summed it up when he's like, he's always like the most interesting man in the world because you tell a story and not in a, not in a, I'm going to outdo you. 01:01:43 Speaker 2: He'll be like, Oh yeah, that reminds me of when. 01:01:45 Speaker 4: X and his story is like 10 times more, more crazy than your story is. But, um, It was interesting where he talked about, you know, he was talking about them moving there and just the conditions have changed their physiology of the Inuit. Because, you know, when Clay talked about when he was up there with Devin, like they'd be out running sled dogs in a hoodie. 01:02:12 Speaker 2: You know what I mean? 01:02:12 Speaker 4: And here Clay's in his parka and they're just out there in hoodies. I mean, there is literally a physiological development inside of them that they can handle this cold. And honestly, you know, the Inuit relocation happened in the 1950s. And it's really a relatively short amount of time for that to happen. And that just really amazes me. You know, I was out this morning. It was 48 degrees and I was in the trees freezing. 01:02:43 Speaker 2: You know what I mean? 01:02:44 Speaker 4: I'm thinking about those guys running sled dogs in a hoodie, you know, pretty wild. 01:02:49 Speaker 2: You need some polar bear pants. 01:02:51 Speaker 4: I need polar bear pants that I can wear that my saddle. 01:02:56 Speaker 2: Will fit around. 01:02:56 Speaker 3: Oh, yeah, that would be tough. 01:02:59 Speaker 4: Maybe I can take this polar bear hide that Clay Newcomb has and make a pair of pants out of it while he's gone. He'll thank me, I'm sure. 01:03:04 Speaker 2: I bet he would. Did he say if the science was settled on the physiology being different? Yeah, I don't know. 01:03:11 Speaker 4: He said there was some debate around it. 01:03:12 Speaker 2: Yeah, some debate about it. 01:03:13 Speaker 5: At least that was interesting because I feel like there's not much debate for polar bears. people who are, like, specially adapted for different places having some differences. Like, it just seems like what happens within. 01:03:26 Speaker 2: I believe it. Yeah. I just believe it. The fact that, like, maybe their face remains warmer than anybody else's. I'm like, that's so awesome. That's so fascinating. Yeah. 01:03:36 Speaker 3: Yeah, because, you know, it's kind of like the Sherpas and the Himalayans. 01:03:41 Speaker 2: Yes. 01:03:42 Speaker 3: The divers and... Where is it? Is it Papua New Guinea? Papua New Guinea. where they're diving, they can hold their breath. 01:03:48 Speaker 2: They have whole tribes. 01:03:49 Speaker 3: They have like a mammalian dive reflex. 01:03:50 Speaker 2: They just like live pretty much in the water. 01:03:53 Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, it just, yeah, it makes complete sense that people who live up in the cold for a long time, and I mean, you know, they obviously didn't live like in Resolute Bay that far north for the last 10,000 years, but they lived up there in the freezing cold for long enough for their bodies to kind of adapt to that. 01:04:10 Speaker 5: They're the only ones who could be moved there for when they, when Canada needed it. 01:04:16 Speaker 2: That's why they chose him. They didn't pick a whole bunch of families from Arkansas. 01:04:20 Speaker 3: Thankfully. 01:04:21 Speaker 2: We would all die. We would all die. Yeah. 01:04:25 Speaker 6: I wonder, it makes you really, I'm impressed with just what the human body is capable of adapting to. 01:04:33 Speaker 2: It really is. 01:04:34 Speaker 6: And like, would that happen within a lifetime or would that take several generations to develop that? You know, like I think Clay mentioned probably on the podcast, he was like, if I was here for, you know, Five days, a month, two months, five months, five years. 01:04:48 Speaker 2: I would become more accustomed to the cold. Right. And he may be able to get away with running around in a hoodie. 01:04:53 Speaker 4: Right. 01:04:54 Speaker 2: Just running in sleds like that. 01:04:56 Speaker 1: Maybe. 01:04:57 Speaker 2: But maybe not. 01:04:58 Speaker 6: How long would it take for your body to adjust and adapt to that, to where slowly over time you start losing a little bit more heat out of your face versus your back or your chest? 01:05:10 Speaker 2: And how would that even work? 01:05:12 Speaker 4: I don't think those guys naturally have thick facial hair either, which is interesting to me. You would think that would be part of the thing that your body would adapt to. 01:05:22 Speaker 3: You look at the animals up there that are like a muskox. Its solution to the cold was to grow a bunch of hair. 01:05:30 Speaker 2: Pretty fascinating. I could see how having a beard would be a disadvantage with all the ice. On the flip side of that. Bear and I would be okay. 01:05:42 Speaker 3: Yeah, we'd be all right, probably. You'd get a lot. 01:05:44 Speaker 2: You might get some ice back there. 01:05:46 Speaker 3: Oh, yeah. Yeah, bear's... I don't know, man. This is like... This is insulation. 01:05:50 Speaker 2: That's true. 01:05:51 Speaker 4: Bear's mane is pretty... It's getting pretty long, bear. 01:05:55 Speaker 3: Is it? 01:05:56 Speaker 2: Yeah. You haven't noticed? 01:05:58 Speaker 3: Not really. 01:05:59 Speaker 2: You just always catch heat for your hair. 01:06:01 Speaker 3: Yeah. You kind of just... It just comes with the territory. You kind of got to just be prepared. 01:06:06 Speaker 2: I didn't say there's anything wrong with it. It's just long. It is long. Looked like a hippie. 01:06:11 Speaker 3: My dad was here. He'd make fun of me. It kind of is a shame that he's not here because he would have so much. 01:06:18 Speaker 2: Jump all over that. 01:06:19 Speaker 3: Well, no, not the hair thing in particular. 01:06:20 Speaker 2: Well, he would. 01:06:21 Speaker 3: Yeah, he'd be all over that. But just the whole podcast, he would have. 01:06:26 Speaker 2: So much to say. 01:06:26 Speaker 4: Well, I'm kind of glad he isn't here, honestly, for this first episode because he would probably foreshadow too much of the upcoming podcast. 01:06:36 Speaker 2: Episodes. 01:06:37 Speaker 4: I think we're probably going to have two more episodes on the Inuit. That's great. And so I think if he were here, he would be spilling the beans. And I'd be like, Clay, don't save it for the podcast. 01:06:47 Speaker 3: He's a bean spiller. 01:06:48 Speaker 2: Oh, big time. 01:06:49 Speaker 4: When it comes to stories. He calls it foreshadowing. He's a chronic foreshadower. 01:06:54 Speaker 2: It makes him a good storyteller. 01:06:55 Speaker 4: It does make him a good storyteller. I got to give him that. But anything else impactful you guys found on the podcast? 01:07:02 Speaker 2: I'm ready for more. Like, I want to know the why. I want to get into the history. 01:07:09 Speaker 5: For some reason, the idea of caribou carcasses on roofs of people's homes was impactful. 01:07:15 Speaker 2: And I don't know why, but that image is just in my head. 01:07:18 Speaker 4: And Frank Tester is probably one of the most individually knowledgeable guys about the Inuit. You know, there's people that have studied them and stuff. But as far as just, like, personal experience with the Inuit. He has a lot of respect for them, but he, he lived with, basically lived in Resolute Bay for two years and basically worked with them on a lot of social issues, a lot of just civil issues. I said, maybe civil is not the right word, but like, like waste and water and medical care and all that kind of stuff to help provide them with what they, what they needed. So, He's a really interesting guy, and he's going to bring a lot of insight into the culture there. 01:08:07 Speaker 2: You know what we didn't talk about? What was that? The Arctic fox. The Arctic fox. 01:08:11 Speaker 4: One of my favorite fly tying materials. 01:08:14 Speaker 2: Is it really? Oh, yeah. What? Really? 01:08:15 Speaker 3: Do you tie flies with Arctic fox? 01:08:17 Speaker 4: I actually haven't tied any yet, but I've got Arctic fox in like. 01:08:21 Speaker 2: Six different colors. Like for like a scud? No. 01:08:23 Speaker 3: Is it real? No. Yeah. 01:08:25 Speaker 4: It's got long kind of curly, not curly, but almost like crinkled fibers. 01:08:31 Speaker 2: Crimped. That would be good. 01:08:32 Speaker 4: That are about four inches long. And you can tie almost like a clouser style fly with it. And instead of the bucktail being straight, and you can trim it. 01:08:45 Speaker 2: To shape. 01:08:46 Speaker 4: Kind of taper it back. So it's a super cool fly tying material. 01:08:50 Speaker 2: That's way cool. 01:08:51 Speaker 3: It is cool. I have a question that I need to ask my dad who actually ate the caribou. How did they? if he took a hatchet to that, if he had to take a hatchet to it to get the meat off, was it not just like eating an ice cube? 01:09:06 Speaker 2: I thought the same thing. 01:09:07 Speaker 3: Like, how are they eating that? 01:09:09 Speaker 2: I don't know. They just said he shaved it. Which would warm. 01:09:12 Speaker 3: Oh, shave it. 01:09:13 Speaker 2: Yeah. 01:09:13 Speaker 4: Pretty quickly, but it's real thin. 01:09:15 Speaker 2: He shaved it with a hatchet? Yeah. Like, it wasn't a hatchet. He wasn't chopping it. I was thinking like a chunk of meat. 01:09:20 Speaker 3: That's what I was thinking too. 01:09:22 Speaker 2: Not like a stew where it's a chunk of meat, but a shave. That makes sense. That makes more sense. It should warm up pretty quick in your mouth. In your mouth. I bet that's good. I bet it is too. I love raw fish. I love sushi. I love raw meat. Eskimo. Very raw. 01:09:35 Speaker 6: I like a steak really raw. Not super raw, but I don't know. I just feel like that would be good in the teeth. 01:09:41 Speaker 3: You know, another thought. Around here, whenever it's hot and we kill an animal, we're in a rush to get everything skinned up because it's going to spoil. 01:09:48 Speaker 4: Yeah. 01:09:49 Speaker 3: They're kind of in the opposite situation where they got to hurry up and skin it before it freezes. 01:09:54 Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. 01:09:55 Speaker 3: Because skinning a frozen animal would be tough. 01:09:58 Speaker 2: I don't know how you get the hide off. 01:10:00 Speaker 3: Better freezes real quick out there. 01:10:04 Speaker 5: You know the Arctic fox connection and what it's going to bring us into. Or maybe only clay does. 01:10:11 Speaker 2: I don't. Okay. 01:10:12 Speaker 5: I guess it might only be clay. That was where, that was my only, you said, is anything else standing? 01:10:17 Speaker 2: I don't know. Oh, you're asking. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know. I guess only Clay knows. 01:10:21 Speaker 5: But I want to know how that story ties into where we're going to. 01:10:24 Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. He did say something about that at the end. I forgot about that. 01:10:28 Speaker 5: Some of the trapping and why that was cool. He's like, getting to the Arctic Fox then brings us into where we're going for the rest of the stories. 01:10:36 Speaker 2: Yeah, I actually don't know that. I want to know why. 01:10:41 Speaker 4: I haven't heard all the interview with Devin Manick. 01:10:46 Speaker 3: So. 01:10:47 Speaker 2: I'm getting to hear some of this for the first time with everybody. So fun. He was here? No. Like y'all hosted him here? Devin Manick? Uh-huh. No, no. That was when he was out on the ice. Frank Tester was here. You had Frank here. Frank Tester was here. 01:10:59 Speaker 4: Did he take like the equipment? Did it work in those temperatures? He literally just had an H, a little small handheld recorder and a couple of headsets. And I think they had to keep it warm. 01:11:08 Speaker 6: I was about to say, like I could see that stuff not working up there that cold. 01:11:10 Speaker 4: Well, you know, Dirt Myth was his cameraman when he was there. And they, well, it was Dirt and Rick Smith. And Rick Smith. And they actually had to make hot boxes that would keep their cameras warm. 01:11:21 Speaker 2: Yeah. 01:11:23 Speaker 4: Heated through the whole time. Otherwise, they wouldn't work. 01:11:26 Speaker 2: Yeah. 01:11:26 Speaker 3: The batteries would drain like super quick or something. 01:11:29 Speaker 2: That is crazy. That's why you hire a good cameraman. 01:11:31 Speaker 3: Exactly. 01:11:31 Speaker 2: Because you get all the way there and you're like, it won't work. 01:11:33 Speaker 1: Yeah. 01:11:34 Speaker 2: What do we do? That's what would have happened to me and Clay would have been, why didn't you think about this ahead of time? I don't know. Never had to build a camera hot box. 01:11:40 Speaker 3: Yeah. 01:11:41 Speaker 2: Pretty fascinating. Yeah. Yeah. 01:11:44 Speaker 4: So what's coming up on the Ozark podcast? 01:11:48 Speaker 5: Oh, I'm glad you've asked. A couple of cool things that we're excited about. And I'll let Kyle answer it. But the thing that I'm most excited about that's not immediate but is coming is we are finally going to tell some duck hunting stories. 01:12:05 Speaker 2: Oh. And. It's not very Ozark. 01:12:08 Speaker 6: I know. I know. 01:12:09 Speaker 2: But it is. Oh, I'm not going to give away why. There's some foreshadowing. There you go. 01:12:14 Speaker 5: Um, because I know it is, it is not super Ozark. I mean, it's traditionally South Arkansas, Southeast Arkansas, that kind of thing. And you can kill ducks around here. You know that we ended up putting on the same duck days and texting each other pictures, but we never hunt together. 01:12:29 Speaker 2: We're going to have to change that this year. 01:12:30 Speaker 6: Yeah. 01:12:31 Speaker 3: We just need a good freeze. 01:12:33 Speaker 5: So I'm excited for that. We have some, you know, good deer episodes lined up, that kind of thing. But Kyle's kind of our, It's kind of our guest finder, storyline thinker. So I'll let you answer what we're looking forward to. Do some of the curating. 01:12:47 Speaker 2: Oh, wow. You know what I mean? Makes it sound really good. Yeah. That's part of being a storyteller. You've got to sell yourself. That's right. 01:12:56 Speaker 6: So, well, the other day I texted Brent. We've never had Brent on, and he's. 01:13:02 Speaker 2: A great storyteller. Yes, he is. 01:13:04 Speaker 4: He's honestly one of the best storytellers that I know. 01:13:06 Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm, you know, he, he's going to come on here in a couple of weeks. 01:13:11 Speaker 6: And, um, and then we've actually, we've done a lot, uh, on our show talking about, you know, we started with like just a lot of hunting and fishing stuff, but over time we've expanded into more culture and history of the Ozarks and, and learning even kind of like what this episode is about, like how places shape people and cultures. Um, and so we've, we've kind of dived, dove off into some of that. 01:13:34 Speaker 2: Divin. 01:13:35 Speaker 1: Divin. 01:13:36 Speaker 2: Into some of that. Um, In the last couple of years. 01:13:40 Speaker 6: But one thing that we've not done a really good job of is telling some of that history from the perspective of indigenous people. 01:13:49 Speaker 2: Right. 01:13:50 Speaker 6: And so, you know, we've told a lot of like kind of the more the hillbilly European settler story that you would be more familiar with. 01:13:58 Speaker 2: Things that shaped the Ozark image into what it is now. What it is today. 01:14:02 Speaker 6: Less about what was before that. And so that's something that I'm really excited about. And I've got a couple guests lined up that I think will be really, really cool. 01:14:11 Speaker 2: I'm excited for that too. I like it. It's funny. 01:14:15 Speaker 5: Sometimes you'll be doing the history of the White River John Boat or karst topography and why cave systems, whatever. 01:14:25 Speaker 2: And then the next week, It's like, all right, man, how do you kill a big deer? 01:14:28 Speaker 5: It's just all our favorite stuff. 01:14:32 Speaker 2: You'll do that, and it's like, what a weird show. 01:14:34 Speaker 5: And you kind of take a step back, and you're like, but it's all what makes this place special. 01:14:39 Speaker 2: It's all so connected. It's all so connected. In a weird way. Yeah. 01:14:44 Speaker 6: One of the guests that I was just alluding to talking about indigenous people, I actually met on my very first mule ride ever. 01:14:52 Speaker 2: Oh, really? I rode a mule the other day for. 01:14:54 Speaker 3: The first time. 01:14:55 Speaker 2: And did it change your life? And I wanted to tell you guys because I was thinking about you guys. 01:14:59 Speaker 4: I tell you what, just working with Clay and being around these guys, I have turned from an anti- equine guy to man anti-equine before i was because they're i always thought they were unpredictable and like well because i had had heard about so many people having accidents and falling and blah blah blah yeah but i have fallen in love with mules man i am i'm wanting a mule hardcore really so if anybody out there wants to give me a meal just let me know. 01:15:29 Speaker 2: You know we're gonna. 01:15:30 Speaker 4: Ship it too yeah exactly i will give you my mailing address and But they're amazing animals. 01:15:37 Speaker 2: It was very fun. 01:15:38 Speaker 6: Where did you ride? I really enjoyed it up in Missouri on some public land up there. Tons of trails up there. And my next-door neighbor has a couple mules, and I've been bugging him about going to ride. And he's like, I finally texted him and was like, hey, what are you doing this weekend? 01:15:56 Speaker 2: Are you going riding? 01:15:57 Speaker 6: He was like, actually, this is our annual trip up to Missouri with this group of probably 10 people. 01:16:03 Speaker 2: And you're welcome to come. I'll bring Buster for you. Oh, dang. He's got a one-eared mule named Buster. I saw that. And that was the one that I rode. How big is his ear? What happened to it? He had a cancer in his ear when he was a baby. 01:16:16 Speaker 3: Oh, shoot. 01:16:17 Speaker 2: I didn't know that was a thing. And they had to snip it off, lopped it off. They just lopped it off. They couldn't give him a prosthesis or anything? I don't even know. 01:16:25 Speaker 6: Maybe tie a pig ear up there from the hardware store. 01:16:29 Speaker 2: How big was this mule? 01:16:30 Speaker 1: Do you know? 01:16:31 Speaker 2: Is that something you're supposed to know about mules? Kind of. 01:16:34 Speaker 3: A little bit. 01:16:34 Speaker 2: I mean, yeah. In hands. In hands. You know, it would be in hands. 01:16:38 Speaker 6: In hands? 01:16:39 Speaker 2: Yeah. A hand is four inches. Like, is it a 15-hand mule? Yeah, 15 or 15-2, 14-2. Oh, that's how I would measure it? Yeah. I don't know. Just make up a number. It's going to sound like you know what you're talking about. 28. Whoa. That's two mules stacked on top of each other. He was great. We got off to a rocky start, though, I'll be honest. 01:17:00 Speaker 6: I learned after I rode that, so this is a 20, 25-year-old mule. My neighbor, Rob, great guy, was telling me, this mule is bomb-proof. My wife rides him. When we take him to places, kids ride him. You'll be perfectly fine. Well, come to find out, Buster hasn't been ridden in quite. 01:17:20 Speaker 2: A long time. Oh, no. That could mess up a mule. 01:17:23 Speaker 6: And so I was the first one to jump on Buster in a long time. And we did not get along at first. And I was already pretty nervous because I also have heard stories of unpredictability. And I actually have a great aunt who was killed by a mule in the rural Ozarks. Has this story been on the podcast? No, I've never told that story. 01:17:45 Speaker 2: What? And I don't know... Is there anything more Ozark than that? 01:17:49 Speaker 3: Yeah, that's pretty wild. 01:17:50 Speaker 2: Getting killed by a mule. 01:17:51 Speaker 6: I don't know that I could do this story justice, but it's kind of so far long ago that, like, all I know is that my great-great-aunt was killed by a mule because it. 01:18:02 Speaker 6: It whipped and it kicked and it caught her and it broke her neck. And she died like on the spot like that. But that's in my family history. And like you're saying, you're saying there might be a propensity. That's what I was worried about. This was on my mind the whole time leading up to this. And Buster knew he's like, this one's descended from her. 01:18:20 Speaker 3: Yeah. 01:18:21 Speaker 2: This guy. 01:18:21 Speaker 6: So I get up there and I was nervous and I'm sure the mule, I'm sure Buster could tell. 01:18:25 Speaker 2: Oh yeah. 01:18:25 Speaker 6: And, um, and so we go off riding and we get like 200 yards down the trail and my mule Buster just turns around. 01:18:32 Speaker 2: And walks all the way back to camp. 01:18:34 Speaker 3: And I can do nothing. 01:18:36 Speaker 2: I'm like trying to pull him. I'm trying to crawl. I'm like pulling back on him. I'm saying, whoa, he won't. He doesn't care. Oh, that's hilarious. 01:18:43 Speaker 3: He doesn't care. 01:18:44 Speaker 2: I'm done. 01:18:45 Speaker 6: And so we get all the way back to camp and they have to turn around and come back and get me. And after we had that first moment where I was kind of freaking out that he was going to, because I'm pulling on him, trying. 01:18:56 Speaker 2: To stop him. And then I feel like I'm making him angry. Right. 01:18:59 Speaker 6: And now I'm worried that he doesn't want me on him anymore. 01:19:01 Speaker 2: Right. 01:19:02 Speaker 6: And so I'm all in my head. And finally, we kind of had that moment. And I think he was testing me. And I think I kind of passed the test where I didn't freak out too much. It was just enough to where everything settled down. And then we had a great ride. We rode five miles that day up and down. 01:19:19 Speaker 2: Amazing. 01:19:20 Speaker 1: Amazing. 01:19:20 Speaker 2: So much fun. And I can see why y'all love riding the mules. It's cool. 01:19:25 Speaker 6: But the thing that I took away from that was I think that I'm so used to riding four-wheelers, driving the truck, where I have absolute control. And if I want to go right of this tree, I steer to the right. With the mule, I realized that you kind of have to give up some level of control to what the mule wants to do and where it wants to go. 01:19:46 Speaker 4: Yeah, that's where the mule's got you trained. The mule's got you trained. 01:19:51 Speaker 2: Yeah, I realized that where he was the boss. 01:19:54 Speaker 6: He was the boss for sure. 01:19:57 Speaker 4: But it was a lot of fun. 01:19:59 Speaker 3: Right on. 01:20:00 Speaker 2: Right on. Well, that's awesome. 01:20:01 Speaker 4: Bear, anything new and exciting coming up for the Bear Grease channel? 01:20:05 Speaker 3: Well, yes, actually. Y'all all know of the annual deer camp. 01:20:14 Speaker 2: Yes. 01:20:15 Speaker 3: We don't complain about the hunting pressure because we are the hunting pressure. 01:20:18 Speaker 2: That's right. 01:20:19 Speaker 4: And it's a bad day to be a spike in the woods. 01:20:22 Speaker 3: Actually, this year we're saying no spikes. 01:20:24 Speaker 2: Oh, no spikes. Spike free. 01:20:26 Speaker 3: We're moving up. 01:20:27 Speaker 2: Forkies only? 01:20:28 Speaker 3: Forkies, yeah. 01:20:29 Speaker 2: Three points and larger. Yeah, I've got. 01:20:33 Speaker 3: 20 of my buddies from all. 01:20:37 Speaker 2: Over the planet. Did you say 20? 01:20:40 Speaker 3: 20 that are going to be hunting. 10 that are going to... 10 more. 01:20:44 Speaker 2: That are going to be there as well. Wherever Bear Newcomb's going to be there, don't go there. 01:20:47 Speaker 3: I'm going to tell you what. 01:20:48 Speaker 2: 20 that are hunting, 10 more at camp? 01:20:50 Speaker 3: Yeah, 30 at camp. 01:20:53 Speaker 2: What are the 10 at camp going to do? Just cook? Sit around and cook? 01:20:56 Speaker 3: More or less. Some of them are going to be coming, just like tagging along and just like sitting, you know? 01:21:00 Speaker 2: Okay. 01:21:01 Speaker 3: But most of them... Most of them are, a lot of them are from out of state. A lot of them have never hunted before. 01:21:07 Speaker 2: Do you have a safety officer? 01:21:08 Speaker 3: We do, yeah. Dalton Priest, matter of fact. 01:21:11 Speaker 4: Dalton Priest is my brother-in-law. And if you need a safety officer, he's the man to do it. 01:21:16 Speaker 2: He's the guy. 01:21:17 Speaker 3: Yeah, we have a big safety talk because it's dangerous. But what we have, one experienced hunter paired up with one new hunter. 01:21:24 Speaker 2: Okay. 01:21:25 Speaker 3: And then the new hunter is the shooter. And then we have a rule. 01:21:27 Speaker 2: Okay. 01:21:28 Speaker 3: You know, and they can, the pairs can discuss this if they want, but. If a big buck or a bear comes by, you give the gun to the experienced hunter because they might have been hunting for years for this. You don't want to start up new hunters, too. 01:21:42 Speaker 2: That's a great way to do it. 01:21:44 Speaker 3: You don't want to start them off. 01:21:46 Speaker 2: You don't want to spoil them. That's right. 01:21:48 Speaker 6: How do you make that call, though? It's like a big deer walks out and you're like. 01:21:52 Speaker 5: The experienced guy I think gets to make that call. Like, give me that gun. 01:21:56 Speaker 3: We tell all the groups to have the conversation. Some of the guys are like, oh, I don't care. For me, if I'm taking a guy out and we see a big buck, absolutely, he can shoot it. It just depends on the pair. A little bit of a judgment call. 01:22:15 Speaker 2: My cousin tells a story. 01:22:16 Speaker 5: He'll never let me forget it because he's still mad at me where I was taking him deer hunting for the first time, and he fell asleep in the stand. And a couple of deer were walking up, and I didn't wake him up because I was waiting to see how big the buck was going to be. It's like once I judged it wasn't a buck that I wanted, I was kind of like, hey. So he woke up and saw it, and I handed him the gun. I was like, all right, you can shoot it. And he was like, how long has that been there? I was like, 10 minutes. 01:22:40 Speaker 2: It doesn't matter. 01:22:41 Speaker 3: It doesn't matter. 01:22:43 Speaker 2: Yeah. 01:22:44 Speaker 3: You shoot the deer? 01:22:45 Speaker 2: He shot it. 01:22:45 Speaker 3: Right on. 01:22:46 Speaker 2: It was his first buck. He was proud. But I really did wait. 01:22:49 Speaker 4: So the big hunting party will be out there, and viewers will be able to see it. 01:22:54 Speaker 3: Yeah, we're going to have– I'll be filming the whole thing, and then I'm going to get– Instagram Live the whole thing? I'll Instagram Live the whole thing. 01:23:02 Speaker 2: I'll watch you the whole thing. Okay, good. 01:23:05 Speaker 3: And then I'm going to give some cameras to some of my buddies to get them to just capture whatever they're getting into. But, yeah, I think I've got a lot of deer found this year. I don't have any big bucks, but just a bunch of deer. And so, you know, hopefully we can get a few. I think with that many guns in the woods, you know, we're casting a pretty wide net. 01:23:28 Speaker 2: Yeah. Okay, what's your prediction? 01:23:30 Speaker 4: How many deer are these 20 hunters going to take? 01:23:34 Speaker 3: I'm going to go five. 01:23:35 Speaker 2: Five? 01:23:36 Speaker 3: Yeah. 01:23:37 Speaker 2: 25%? No, what is that? Yeah, 25%. 01:23:39 Speaker 3: Our best year we got six. 01:23:41 Speaker 2: Okay. Out of how many hunters? 01:23:44 Speaker 3: Out of 20. We usually have about 20, or at least the last three years we have. So, and I think this year, you know, I can kind of, I'm just feeling it, you know. You just kind of get that feeling when you're seeing a bunch of deer. 01:23:56 Speaker 2: I assume all these hunters are just going to be on the ground. No tree stand sitters? 01:24:00 Speaker 3: There'll be some tree stand sitters. 01:24:02 Speaker 2: Okay. 01:24:02 Speaker 3: I've already got some stands set up. So, it'll be a mix of everything. I'll probably, whoever comes with me, I'll take them slip hunting. Okay. And I just kind of slip hunt and take a new person every day. 01:24:13 Speaker 2: Say three days of hunting? 01:24:14 Speaker 3: Well, yeah. We'll get there Friday night, which you can't hunt anything because it's not rifle. Some of the bow hunters will be hunting Friday, and then Saturday morning, afternoon, Sunday morning. It's like a weekend deal. 01:24:25 Speaker 2: So three main sets. Yeah, three main sets. I'm going to go. You guys are going to do better than you think. I'm going to say eight. I'm going to go seven. Eight. 01:24:33 Speaker 4: Eight. 01:24:33 Speaker 2: New record by a lot. 01:24:35 Speaker 3: Okay, well, keep this in mind. Two years ago, we saw one potential deer, but killed a bear. 01:24:43 Speaker 4: But you are limiting your cut. How many of those deer in the past have been spikes? 01:24:48 Speaker 3: A number. 01:24:49 Speaker 2: Oh, that's a good point. So you're cutting spikes out. I don't know. 01:24:53 Speaker 3: We've probably killed like one spike, but we've killed a lot of like forkies and three boys. 01:24:56 Speaker 5: Is everybody paired up? Like when you say 20 or hunting, is it really only 10? It's like it's 10 groups. 01:25:01 Speaker 3: 10 hunters, three sits. So like that's 30 sits. 01:25:04 Speaker 2: I think I may have overshot on my eight then. 01:25:06 Speaker 3: No, think about it. That's 30 sits with a gun. 01:25:08 Speaker 5: I know, but if you had 20... like individual hunters at a time. 01:25:16 Speaker 2: So you'd say four then. Well, then you're looking at 60 sets. 01:25:20 Speaker 3: Yeah. 01:25:21 Speaker 2: I'm like way more than five. Yeah. But yeah, the pairs change that up for me. Are y'all going to the same spot that you've gone to the last two years? 01:25:28 Speaker 3: We're pretty nomadic. 01:25:30 Speaker 2: Nomadic, okay. 01:25:30 Speaker 3: Yeah, we can't hunker down on one spot too long. 01:25:32 Speaker 2: Okay. 01:25:33 Speaker 6: We shoot all the spikes. I'm going to stick with my seven. I got faith in you. You've done your scouting. You've done your scouting. 01:25:40 Speaker 2: You guys are. 01:25:41 Speaker 3: I like seven. 01:25:42 Speaker 2: Third year into it. Right. Third year into it. Fifth year. See, you guys got experience now. Start going different places and there's only does. Like, what's going on? That'd be fine. Kill all the young bucks. Like, you've killed every yearling spike on the property for five years in a row. That's why we moved. 01:25:58 Speaker 3: Because one year, the year we killed six, I took them right into my honey hole. 01:26:02 Speaker 2: Yeah. Oh, yeah. 01:26:04 Speaker 3: We killed six little bucks. 01:26:05 Speaker 2: All of them were bucks. For real? 01:26:08 Speaker 3: Yeah, so that's whenever I was like, all right, we got to start moving to spots that, like, you know, I don't have. Because, you know, that spot was, like, a spot that, like, I'd hunted all year. I knew right where the deer were. 01:26:18 Speaker 2: Yeah. 01:26:20 Speaker 3: And so I was like, yeah, that might have been too much. So now we just go to spots where, like, you know. Honestly, if we kill a deer, I'm super happy. We've never been skunked. 01:26:31 Speaker 2: Never been skunked. 01:26:32 Speaker 3: Never been skunked. The first year we killed one deer, since then we've always killed multiple deer. 01:26:37 Speaker 4: One of the things I love about this hunting trip is that it's a lot of guys that have never, like, may have never even had access to hunting. 01:26:46 Speaker 2: I mean, just like my son-in-law grew up in Antigua. You know what I mean? In the Caribbean. 01:26:52 Speaker 3: Mm-hmm. 01:26:53 Speaker 4: And he went a couple years ago and killed a little basket rack eight point. It sits on his mantle, you know? 01:26:59 Speaker 2: So cool. I mean, it's just super cool. That is really cool. You know? So well done, Bear. Good job, Bear. 01:27:05 Speaker 3: Thank you. 01:27:05 Speaker 2: Doing your part to keep hunting alive. Drop me the pin. I just might do that. Opening day? 01:27:11 Speaker 3: Yeah, opening day. We'll have lunch and dinner. So if you want to come by, feed you some moose meat or something. 01:27:18 Speaker 2: I get this big one I'm going after, I will drive it down to y'all's camp. 01:27:21 Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure do that. Just for morale, you know. 01:27:25 Speaker 2: I love it. What's the weather supposed to be like this weekend? 01:27:28 Speaker 3: This weekend is pretty good, but it's next weekend that we're. 01:27:31 Speaker 2: Oh, that's right. 01:27:32 Speaker 3: But this weekend it's going to be a little cold front. It's already hit. Well, cool. 01:27:37 Speaker 4: Well, Kyle and Kyle, thank you guys so much for joining us. 01:27:41 Speaker 2: Thanks for having us, man. 01:27:42 Speaker 4: Really appreciate it. Great discussion. Check out the Ozark podcast. These guys do a fantastic job with it. And looking forward to more great content. Don't forget to pre-order your copy of American Bear. 01:27:57 Speaker 2: Get a sign. I want Clay to have to sign 5,000 of these cards. 01:28:03 Speaker 3: His decision. 01:28:04 Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. 01:28:05 Speaker 4: So sign up to pre-order American Bear between November 9th and December 9th, and you'll get the postcard. So I'm excited about that. Check out the Bear Grease channel. for some quality video content. Bear Newcomb does a great job with that. I am Josh Lambridge, Spielmaker. Thanks for watching the Bear Grease Render and listening to the Bear Grease Render and keep the wild places wild because that's where the bears live.