00:00:05 Speaker 1: And what I don't understand, Brent, is tell me why there's not a deer head in there. I mean, this is a rural community, is built out law. There's got to be a deer head in there. On this episode of the Bargarase podcast, Brent Reeves and I are hitting the two lane highways and byways of America in search of something deep in the roots system of American identity and symbolic of a way of life. We're looking for taxidermy in gas stations. Yep, that's right. We're going on a taxidermy road trip. And I've noticed the public display of bucks, bears, and ducks is becoming rarer, and I'm in search of why the American gas station at one time acted as the town square in relational hub of small communities, but things are changing. We'll talk with podcaster JB. Shrieve about how the oil and gas industry has impacted America since World War One, and we'll also talk with an expert on the tangible effects of social capital on communities. But not before we make some incredible stops and see some incredible bucks, and meet some incredible people, get a cold fountain drink and buckle up. Because we're about to roll down the road. I doubt you're gonna want to miss this one. My sixteen year old daughter got this. She's twenty eight. Yeah, she got up that morning putting on makeup. Now, I'm a what are you doing, mom? I've got to look good in my picture when I killed the deer. People don't do that. You just do not get deer like that. And low and behind seventh thirty they know more got out there, got the deer. My name is Clay Nukelem and this is the Bear Grease Podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search for insight and unlikely places, and where we'll tell the story of Americans who lived their lives close to the land. Presented by f HF gear, American made purpose built hunting and fishing gear as designed to be as rugged as the places we explore. We're walking up to Boroughs Country Smoke House, Crystal Springs, Arkansas. We'll see if they have any deer heads or bear skulls in here. Do you reckon they do? I hope they do. We'll see it smells real good. Brent Reeves and I are on a road tripping mission. We've hit the highway in search of dear head beds, bear hides, fish and ducks, and public places. The public display of taxidermy, or p d T as we'll call it, I'm convinced, is a small but important component of rural American culture. You see in the embryonic stages of America. Hunters were the first pop culture heroes, and even going back a step further, Native Americans deeply influenced early Euro American culture, and these people truly revered a good hunter before sports figures, home improvement, instagram influences, and radio stars. Hunters carried the cultural flash that people were drawn to. They had all the adventure, the wild stories, the travel, all the fun, and provided some fundamentals to society, meet and furs. To be a hunter was a noble identity that carried with it an intrinsic set of American values self sufficiency, courage, and independence. Hunters were provideds in that world. The noble head of a buck or the height of a bear displayed in a public space was emblematic of stability and sustenance in a wild place. It was a celebration of wild beauty as well. The arcs and undulations of white tail antlers couldn't be replicated by Michelangelo or the modern world's greatest sculptors. There are finest and most raw expressions of art, and there's no way around it. Antlers on the wall are symbolic of human subjugation and winning in the wilderness. And if you don't like the sound of that, try this one on a parking lot of building a car. Are all signs of man dominating nature to just not as poetic. A deer head is comparatively a really nice gesture. However, the world interprets deer heads in public places. I don't really care. I love them. I always have. When I walk into a business and I see a buck hanging on the wall, I feel a warming sensation in my spirit. I can't explain it, I just always have. I can actually remember stores from my childhood that had big deer but most of them are gone. I feel like the march of time is taking away parts of our culture, and deer heads and gas stations in public places is one of them. They're disappearing. But why, I'm in search of the answer. Remember, we've just walked into a smokehouse. Hunter Roark's family has owned and ran it for the last forty years. Burrol's Country Smokehouse was named after Burl ro Ark, Hunter's grandfather, who passed away a few years ago. He was a well spoken and stately man. He wore a long beard and leather boots up to his knee eats. Talking with him, it was hard to discern if you were talking to a backwoods trapper or a governor. I like these kind of people. I've asked Hunter to tell me about the smokehouse. Well, Burl Smokehouse, We've been here for over forty years, and my grandpa opened it and we've been voted best sandwich in the state back in the nineties. We smoked all of our own meats and cheeses, homemade bread, full of antiques and full of bear hides and elk sheds and yeah, lots of like we got lots of lots of bear pictures on the wall. This is your grandpa and uncle. And do you know anything about this bear over here? Where did that bear come from? Pretty sure that bear came from over around, you know, but we've always called it the Hawkins Lands. Yeah, that's where that one should have came from. Now there's a there's a nice white tail buck hanging out there. You know anything about that, dear? Yeah, dude, Grandpa just bought it. I could make up some story for We walk up to a glass case filled with giant cinnamon rolls and above it are scores of stone, projectile points and framed glass cases. Yeah, I look at this, Brent, describe how big that is? That that's about the size of a grizzly bear Home Paul in Alaska. Yeah, you can feed a small child for a week for this right here. That's what you are famous for, hunt Man. Look at those, the beef jerky and the cinnamon rolls your two best most popular items, you know, Giant cinnamon rolls, bear hide, stone points, and white tails. Man, I love this place and I love America. Could this get any better? Yes it can. We've got a big hook right here. That's a blubber hook for whales whenever they are. It's probably three ft long with a big, big ring on the end of it where it could hang, and it's just a bit. It looks like a huge fishing hook. But yeah, they use it on the boats to pull the whale blubber up into the boat. But yeah, they hook that blubber on that hook and winch it up into the boats. That's the kind of energy I came here for. Brent reeves a blubber hook. That's where you want to eat. That's where you want to get your beef jerk. It looks like a barbelous trout hook from Moby Dick Burrows. Country spoke House is a fair Grease podcast approved business. I love a place that isn't afraid of a little p DT. And we're on the road again. Our pokes are full of goodies, and we're headed east on Highway to seventy towards Kirby, Arkansas, and we coast in on fumes into the Brady Mountain. One stop, we go in to check it out. We're looking for some p DT, the public display of taxidermy. So Brent and I just during the run out of gas and we made it to a gas station over here around Crystal Springs. And I've never been in this gas station, but it looks promising. It's kind a log cabin looking place. I just saw a guy with Nirvana shirt. Let's walk up in here and see if there's any any tax dermy, any fish anything? Oh nice? Oh, look at there a wood duck coming in hot. It's like hot, a little dust on it. It would like us coming in here with the there's a yoke for a mule, like a plow and yolk hanging on the wall. Here's some planners, peanut. Look at that right there, that's a mule deer. That is about a hundred mule deer. That's pretty odd for Arkansas. Some hillbilly from Arkansas drove out west in nineteen sixty in their granddad's Pontiac. Hold that thing back and look there's a big striper. We're over here by Lake Washtall. Hey, this gas station gets an A plus rating from the Burgeras podcast. Yeah you got bait, tackle, taxidermy and fuel happy and slightly surprised to and some PDT. On our first unscripted stop. We're on the road again, and I'll be honest, this trip hasn't been planned blindly. I know about some great gas stations with big deer heads, and we're headed to one now in Kirby. But while en route, we cut through the back roads and I see a country gas station and we pull in. We're in Arkansas, little store. I have no idea if they got any deer heads. In here. It's like a big log. It looks promising. We walk into the tidy, well staffed establishment and buy a drink as our cover, I'll have a great thank you, take care, thank you struck out. So we walked in there, and we uh, we didn't. We didn't want to be rude to these sweet people. So I bought a Mountain dew and Bent bought a s. But there was not a deer head in sight when we walked in there. And what I don't know, a stand Brent is tell me why there's not a deer head in there. I mean, this is a rural community's built on laws. There's got to be a deer head in there. But this is not a bear groose approved business. It's not approved, it's not sanctioned. It's we can't sanction this. I can't. I can't get behind it. Now, fair buckle up. I'm not wishing ill on these people. They had no they had no excuse. Motif it would fit the motif it would there's no excuse. It was just empty walls. Slightly discouraged. We're on the road again. We hit Highways seventy, head through Glenwood into downtown Kirby. I'm looking for a place called dun Laps. There it is Man the dun Lap Store. Three a gallon given it away, No kidding. That's the cheapest gas I've seen in weeks. So this place where in Curby, Arkansas. Here comes an ambulance pull over. So the dun Lap Store is known far and wide for having a bunch of big deer and fish, and I've never been in this store. We're looking for a woman named Sandra. Okay, Oh yeah, hello are you Sandra. I'm Clay. Thank you for for meeting with This is Brent Reeves. Reeves. Dun Laps sits on the southeast corner of the crossing of Highway eighty four and twenty seven. It's the crossroads at the center of town. There are a couple of gas pumps outside, but it feels like you're walking into a small grocery store. They've got some serious p DT. How long have you had this store? This is your businesses not to Ny two September the feet will be thirty years we've been here. Excellent, that's great. Plus, Ernie dune Lap started it in about nineteen thirty thirty six and he had it for fifty plus years. Another man had it for three years, and then we came back from Texas. We had I've worked for Mr Dunlope my whole life here. I had my fifteenth birthday in this store. So every time I go to I went to Henderson State University, and when I go, he'd want me to come back and working the summers. Tell me I picked my hours whatever I wanted to work and all, and so I I just lived here practically. As we talked to Miss Sandra. Directly to our left is a string of big white tail shoulder mounts. I try not to be distracted, maintaining the eye contact that's important when you first meet someone. But I'm ready to talk white tales. Will you give us a tour of your of brand? What kind of what kind of duck is that brands? That another it is? That's a drake Wood duck and he's uh coming in. I don't know. Squirrel, there's a squirrel, right, So it was all this stuff here when you got the store saying no. Ms. Madison Vaughan a young man. He's about twenty two right now. He started taxidermis when he's about sixteen, and so that's when it needs destin. I'm not taking real good care of it. Mad dog taxidermy if you need anything, called Madison's Madison Vaughan is his name. And then we have an elder, Hail Billy Don. How are you? Yeah? So these deer man, there's some big deer. So I'm looking at let me let me count on one, two, three, four or five, six, seven, eight nine ten bucks, Brent, I'm gonna say that deer right there is a hundred probably a hundred sixty seventy in deer, no doubt. Actually you know the score seventy six because it is knows the score. We had a plaque on it up here. This was Severe Counties laden deer. Jimmy Curzy killed it twenty years before that. He got this, dear, very impressed Sandor that you knew the score of that. I've heard it from him and nephew, and he was telling me, I'm pretty sure. I mean, don't I know. It looks every bit of it. It looks every bit, but it is Severe Counties. It's the leading of all time because it won it in twift But he said twenty years before he killed that year at Gilham said he was at home and he drive in and said his neighbors told and said he'd look at it every day and said, this neighbor said you better get that, dear. Somebody's gonna get that dear. So he got it. And can you that thing's a monster. Do you see the devil horns? I've never saw this. Do you see the devil horns on it? I never knew about those. Now, what you're calling devil horn is just split. No down here on the bottom right about his high boss. See where they stick out the little yeah kickers whatever. But okay, like this, Oh, I took her, I took her picture down. Oh my goodness, my sixteen year old daughter got this. She's twenty eighth. Yeah, she will be Dr Carly in December third of this year. She graduates from Dr. Carr Practic in Dallas, Texas. When she was sixteen, she killed this deer. She got up that morning. Her and her brother argued. He said, no, no, you can go, you can go. He was like nine, and she said, no, Carly, you go. He didn't want to get up. He didn't want to get up. So she's up putting on makeup. Now, I'm a what are you? Didn't mom? I've got to look good in my picture. When I killed the deer, I said, honey, people don't do that. You just do not get deer like that. And lo and behind seventh thirty they no more got out there, got the deer. She calls back. I go in and tell her little brother and he and he never does is. He had a melt down, jerk that cover up over his head, had a squall and fit. I said, you get your mother out of that bed, and you got be proud for your sister. I said, she would be proud for you. So when he got to go the next time, he got the squareliest looking little horns. But he was tickled to day and that hanging in the gas station and he was do you know the score of that, dear you, Carly? I do not know me. It's probably half of that one. Well, I'm gonna guess it's a high one point. I am very impressed that she knows all the stories about these dear ms. Sandra doesn't know it, but she's ascended to the ranks of some of the best storytellers of the Beargrease podcast. But she isn't through yet. My brother killed this one, and Carly had got her Sparson and shine he got his. Like A couple of years later, my husband at a day lot till dark all week long, did not see anything. They went to our lace at Pike City Park City ark saw down here long and so my brother watched NASCAR racing all day. Decided then who was gonna run over and hunt kills? This dear calls me and he's a nervous rate. He said, I think it's big. Now I don't know, maybe it don't. Yeah, I think it's big. No, maybe it's not. So he said, you got a flashlight, Kim to get me and my little son, my whole son at that time was about to has a barney flash like that's all we had, and we back it in. He backed up to the tellot's hid it and I said, big my foot, Shane, Yes it was. It was gigantic. The horns were turned and it was standing up. It was great. And my niece wants to come and get that. She's his daughter, has just had a baby, and she wants to put in the nursery. So we might be looking might lose. How could this place get any better? These people want to put this dear head in their kids nursery hashtag winning. And we haven't even mentioned the bear hide hanging on the back wall of this store. I'm very impressed that you know all these stories, stories, and and and I wish we had George mccuardor George mcquarter if you're listening, you better get your deer back up here. We had come on George. We had to hang George's down through where that one's hung down. We had they went through it and then I mean literally, when we hung it down, they still touched the ceiling. That dear was just a freak of nature, and he took it. He won. I think it was a state of Arkansas for and what is it? No typical, but oh it was unbelievable. Before we leave, here's a little bit more about the store. This is such a neat store. So you got you got quite a bit of fishing tackle over here. You got pretty good. I mean it's handcut, revised, handcut. I have some ribs, Yeah, I have ribs. I have everything. We have Deli mead. All your people love our Cajun turkey. We do Deli sandwiches. We run our own hamburger, but hand dipped ospreme. We have hand dipped discres a d plus years. It's been here. Yes, Well, I gotta say, Sandra, when I walk into a gas station like this, absolutely love it because there's just there. Used to these community stores like this were like the hub of the community, which it feels like this still is, but it's kind of rare. And then I display up there there's the gardeners, pictures, there's kids. I'm sure there's no of no relation to yell. They're just part of this community. Well we are. We're all like family. Yeah, everybody's like family. Well, and and then I love coming in here and seeing deer heads where, I mean, I really do. It's just it's just kind of who we are as our Kansas dun Lap store and Miss Sandra are gonna be hard to top. In This place is certainly Bear Grease podcast approved. But our trip isn't over yet. We're just getting started. I want to understand why gas stations like dun Laps are becoming more rare. JB. Shrieved is the host of the End of History podcast. He's an author and just a smart dude. I go to him when I need answers, and I want to learn now about how the ups and downs of the oil and gas industry of affected American culture, specifically mom and pop gas stations. Here's JB. So the US is really an oil economy, like there's probably never been an economy like this in the history of the world. There hasn't, in fact, because the globe went to oil right after World War One and the British changed their navy over from coal to oil. And that's where the story really picks up. As far as when when when oil went mainstream in the global economy, well after World War Two. What happened is the U s comes back and a lot of this stuff had already started to occur in the nineteen twenties, but then the Great Depression hit, World War Two hits, and everything gets put on pause. As far as economic development. We come back from World War Two and everybody's got money in hand. There's this economic boom that's unfolded, and it kept on unfolding until the latter half of the nineteen sixties. In that economic boom, it's really a story of oil at the bottom of everything. You see oil rising and it's easy access oil for the United States, and it really changed the way the US economy works, so that it really changed our society, our culture. Well, in the not in fifties, you get an interstate system built, and so people are driving more in The interstate system came from Dwight Eisenhower came back from Germany. He saw the autobaron, he sees all these things. He's anticipating, you know, we could have World War three, and so they want to build an interstate system that's going to connect all the military bases around the country. That was the original inception, but of course it turned into something that connected trade all over the country, and so people started driving and we became a driving culture that you have the rise of fast food in the not team fifties, you have the rise uh and that's people just eating in their car on their way to in the automobile industry just took off and they were all these lots of different models of cars and it became yeah, and it's like it's not like yeah exactly gas conors. I remember on the movie Back to the Future where at one point they've got a car that's flying or something and he says, don't hit that, it'll just rip into you because it's built like a tank. Cars were built differently back then because they were heavier, we had the oil and it's cheap. It was easy to access, and so who cares about how much it costs to fill it up because it was cheap at that time. So you've got all of this going on. It's changed in the shape of the economy. And one of the big things all these gas stations start to develop as people are traveling across the country with gas guzzlers, so they've got to stop pretty frequently to fill up. Yeah, exactly, and so you can only get the price of gas so cheap. As far as that would there would be price wars throughout the nineteen fifties between these gas companies, the mom and pop shops as well as the big corporations. But they decided, you know, what we're gonna have to do is build some other kind of competitive edge. So if you watch like the Andy Griffiths Show or any show from back there in that time, you see guys come out of the gas station. They're wearing a uniform. They're gonna wash your windows, they're gonna check your oil, they're gonna check your lights, do all this stuff, and don't you dare pump your own gas. We've got that for you. It was this real customer service oriented ideal when you go to the gas station. Now we're seeing why gas stations needed a custom gas purchasing experience. I remember a gas station that was in business in my lifetime in Oklahoma that had a live mountain lion. Not kidding. Now. That gives a man a reason to stop. But you know what else will get me to do it you turn and fill up my tank, dear horns. This idea of the mom and pop like custom gas stations, I don't know how to say it any other way than that, because today I would say most of our gas stations are anything but custom and have like unique signatures of it being like a mom and pop store. Back then, that would have been common, right right, yeah, the mom and pop thing, But also it was it was really built around appealing to the customer to bring them in. So like what you're talking about with these gas stations in the rural areas. Of course, I'm looking at the big landscape, but in the rural areas, they're gonna appeal to the rural community. Right, this is where this is the town square. We want you to stop here, and even the little town I grew up in It wasn't a nice guys station, but I remember guys coming in there and they would measure their big bucks at Don's gas station, right next to the single cafe that was in town there. That was still a thing. It wasn't a nice place to hang out, but that was something that started back in the nineteen fifties with the surge of the oil economy in the US. Remember that, the surge of the oil economy. I asked JB. What broke up the mom and pop gas station craze. So the economy is booming up until the early nineteen seventies and there's this Opeque oil embargo. That's where basically a lot of the Middle East countries got together and they're going to restrict the amount of oil they were releasing to the Western world. With that, all of a sudden, that's when you start seeing gas lines. You start seeing there's a limit to gas. So the price of gases. There were people in lines at gas station trying to fill up, and that was a big thing throughout the nineteen seventies, and so the price of gas suddenly became came higher. When the gas prices went up, you see again changes happen in society. The type of cars we drove started to change. The muscle cars of the nineteen sixties, you still had some of the nineteen seventies, but the smaller vehicles became more prominent because it was more affordable to drive. You got the Pento, You've got the Gremlin, You've got all these little cars. Even the muscle card like the Ford Mustang, like compared to a Charger or a Leman's, the Mustang was a lot smaller, you know, that was the way it was. Lee I Coca pitched that it's gonna be an affordable muscle car. And yet these gas stations they had to find some way of bringing people in, and they started sacrificing the service at the pump stuff, and it was more we're gonna make it as cheap as we can and get you in and out as fast as we can. Because people were tired of waiting in lines. They didn't want to pay more than they had to for gas. And so the guy with a little hat disappeared. That all of that started to fade out, and so you trickle that they valued efficiencies exactly, making it as cheap as you could, and so you trickle that down to the rural community. These and a lot of that. It just became faster people were coming through, and so I would assume that's where a lot of the town square feel that you're talking about in the rural communities didn't disappear completely, but that's really where it started to be hity. Yeah. And when you think about used to go to the gas station and it was kind of a little bit of an event. Man comes out, you might, you might go in the store, and it just it took a long time. Then it became about efficiency and price, not service. And that goes right back to my deer heads. That the reason that these store owners to this day have a deer head and their store is people want to come in and see it. It's something that the community can kind of get around and there's stories about these deer and it it initiates conversation. And it feels like today most of our gas station experiences anyway, it's about efficiency. Yeah, the community get aspect really got lost. And we're talking about gas stations. You can trickle up throughout the whole economy. The pleasant social experience of buying gas was traded for efficiency and cheap prices. Now that sounds like America. And now with prepay fuel, the idea is you don't even have to go into the store, you don't even have to interface with another human to buy gas. I'd be the first to want to pay less for something, but when you really think about it, what did we lose by paying less and what did we gain? Later in this episode, we'll talk with an expert on the idea of social capital, which is basically our networks of relationships. Will learn about the tangible contributions of this thing called social capital. Would it be true this this is anecdotal, but it feels like it would be correct. Is that when it became about price and not service and not a unique experience going to a mom and pop gas station that might have some attractions, then the big corporations, the big franchises were able to win in the gas station war because they can have a thousand x X gas station, and then the mom and pop store got And that's why when you drive around rural Arkansas, Oklahoma, rural anywhere, it's littered with old gas stations. It's like ghost towns. Yeah, I mean, and so am I right? And that that's what happened. It really is because it became more efficient and even regionally, if you go into the Northeastern United States, you're gonna see different chains that dominate in the Northeastern United States. In the Western u s there's different chains than in what we see in the southern US. But those chains took over, and that's really what it is. JB. I want to make an appeal to the people in power that own gas stations in rural America. You know, if you're in an urban place and you don't think your customer base would identify with this, that's okay, But it bothers me to go into a rural gas station and not see a deerhead, JB. Or a fish. Just give me a fish. Is that too much to ask? When it doesn't sing well, I mean even singing fishes a hat tip, we're singing deer go. This is all making sense. It's making me appreciate more of the place that's like dun Laps that are still in business. But now we're on the road again, headed to Dirk's, Arkansas to meet up with Mr Clifton Ward. He's seventy seven years old and he's got a wall full of deer and turkeys hanging in the VP Quick Track gas station the highway beneath. This feels good and I can't wait to see these deer. So we're at the VP gas station and Dirk's Arkansas. We're fixing going here and meet Clifton Ward. Let's do it. You got your money? Brent's been buying me stuff at every gas station? Are you? Are you? Mr? Mr Clifton Clay Nukelen, pleasure to meet Brent Reeves. Thank you for meeting us. So you used to own this gas station? Is that right? We'll be old the answer. Yeah, ninety six told him to ninety six. We'll show us you're dear in here. We walk in the door of a modern gas station. Honestly, it's not one you'd expect to see a bunch of deer heads hanging in. But we are pleasantly surprised. Mr Clifton doesn't own this story anymore, but his deer are still here. The owner. He didn't mind the mountain stand on the wall, and I haven't took him down it's this time. But my wife even didn't when we put him up, But after a while she just couldn't believe at the interest people coming in. Oh my good this, Oh my good, miss. So it became a draw for people to come down here to see these deer and the elk and be bad. I mean, it wasn't drawn. So let's see we got we just walked in here. We got a couple of big elk. We got one to three, four or five, six, seven, eight big deer, two full gobbler amounts, some turkey beards and spurs. Looks good in here. Oh there's another deer over there. So, uh, Clifton, did all these deer come from down here in this part of the world. This one was a Montana deer. Let's rest of them our count I pick out the biggest buck on the wall and ask for the story. Tell me about that, dear, Well, it was way bag. I'm an old school deer hunter now. From little kid up, we hunted, but it was well life back then. No Arterillory till I was growing. You know, there was ten of his kids in the family, the first five of the boys, and I number five. So it was trickled down the line. Four years. Goody actually made be on money and brought your own weapons. So I've still got the first weapon every bought. Mr Clifton hesitates as he looks at the tall time and buck. He stares at it as if he's never seen it before, and then he tells me the tactic he employed to kill it road hung. We really like the road hunt in this country. I used to not not anymore because the way laws chain, but drove went on job side. I was working on him. He was in the clear cut that I was working on. Garry was so unfortunately I got him. I'll take an honest man any day over any other variety of man. And to clarify, there are a lot of clear cuts and pine plantations down here on private land. They used to drive the roads looking for deer and cuts. Honestly, it's not a lot different than glassen for deer out west. Now let me let me. I want to look. I want to describe this, dear. This is probably this is a pretty tight rack, probably fourteen fifteen inch wide deer, but just sky, just huge times. Do you know that any measurements on that, dear, I don't never had a major. I would imagine that dear is in the one seventies, do you uh no, No, Maybe I think he's a low ball on it. I'm an official measure, so that doesn't mean I'm right. Hey, how are you? Man? Well, I was down here at the request of your son to meet this guy right here. Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. It's a small world, and this is the biggest unscripted coincidence of our road trip. Not five seconds after we were guessing the buck score, Jack Johnson walks in. Jack is a veteran official Boone and Crockett and Pope and young Score. And he doesn't even live in Dirk's. He was just randomly passing through. Wild Man. I want to see what Jack thinks this buck scores. Hey, this is a guy we absolutely need to what do you This guy's an official score big time. This is what he's scored, dear for forty years. Guests on this big dear gross score had that measure. He's the one. That's what I told Mr Clifton, and he shook his head. Hey, his his guest counts, man counts. We both agreed the buck would easily gross in the one seventies. That's a big pine thicke. At Whitetail. Here's Mr Clifton giving us a little more history on deer hunting. He had just brought up one of his old hunting buddies. I always grew up. I grew up with dogs and so I had dogs and he didn't. But we got the dog hunting quite a lot. We did a little dog running. A lot of that goes on in this country. This is part of Arkansas. It's legal run dogs still, he is, Yeah, we've made hunters, but later years trying to do better. Yea quitting dollar running. And I was in the army, of course, unfortunately made back in Vietnam. Okay, But after that I started trying. We had a count started. I said, what was I start buck hunting. I'll try to tell my buddy. And then I told him I still to six point or better. He wouldn't agree to it, and uh, I said, He said, you let us fine go. He's I'll take him. I said, no, come on now. He and I. I turned the dogs loose and they went a different way. He run around picking me up and we cut him off. And it's a big clear cut that you see across. It's in the afternoon sunshine, and it's a buck. It's probably two fifty yards running. Look pretty big. He shoots and mrs I don't miss we'll get over and it's forking one. You broke your own rule first rating out of the box, but but I did. I later went to eight pointer better and put my dogs left him in the pen. I had twelve good running dogs didn't turn him loose, so I started hunting eight pointer better. The idea of regulating the size of the bucks that he killed was revolutionary for the time. Mr Clifton was basically the Mark Kenyon of Howard County, Arkansas in the nineteen seventies. And he's about to give us a tip for our next stop. I love it. Anytime I go into a gas station with the deer horns, I'm like, this is where I want to buy my gas. I was traveling Handler's, Oklahoma one day and Stationers Section. Oh yeah, I had to had to miss that place, Antlers Aler's, Oklahoma. Somebody told me we needed to go there. I don't have any idea if it's still there anymore. How far is that from here? Do you know? Right at hunter Moms one, we got enough gas to make it. Antlers, Oklahoma and back twice station you can buy after the tip, we're on the road again. And the Dirk's Quick Trip Store is one d Bear Grease Podcast approved and you guessed it. We're headed towards Antler's, Oklahoma, but not without checking out a few gas stations along the way. All Right, we've driven to Hayworth, Oklahoma, from from Dirk's. We're in Oklahoma now. We were told that there were some big Bucks at a gas station Hayworth. Let's go see if we can find it. Hey, are you buying drinks this time? And it's probably my turn in I've been buying him every time we walk into a small, promising looking rural gas station. How are you good? Is this is this your store? Who's that? Oh? We were told you had some big deer down here? Are these your deer? Are they really? You killed him? Bingo? There at least five deer on the wall, and the one in the middle is a big main frame ten point. What do you think, Brent? That one in the middle, that one? Do you know? What's that? Dear? Score? Big mainframe ten point? We had never had him scored. The one on this end was rough fast, It was like one fifty something fantastic Bucks. And the one in the middle was way bigger than the one that they thought scored one fifty it's probably a hundred and sixty five inch deer. We approve of the PDT of this store and we're on the road again. And as we roll through Idablle, Oklahoma and route to Antlers, we see a big, beautiful gas station with a marketing campaign giving a significant and odd nod to the wild. We pull in with our fingers crossed. We're in a place called gas Squatch. They have about a forty ft sign out front, a big sasquatch sign. That's a beautiful gas station would shake shingles huge place. There's not a dear head in here. It's gonna be upsetting. Let me say that again. These boys have a forty foot big foot as their sign on the highway. We walk through big glass doors and are hit in the face with extremely cold air. There are sasquatches everywhere, there's sas I do give them credit for the big sasquatch over there. Him not a deer head insight, though, is there? Brother? I see a car in here, Well, you're gonna give him a small amount of credit. They do have a pretty nice selection of antique cars in the gas stations, actually a very nice selection. But you know what that doesn't count for it doesn't count for deer head. It ain't This place is not sanctioned. This place it's cute. God a that is a sweet trans am. I don't know this place is cool. It is not Bargeras podcast to prove they've done a nice job. We wish him the best. But you know what, you should have had a dear head in here. It could have been one if they had one deer head hanging right up there. Even the buffalo. I'm gonna take a picture of this for Gary nucom and says cougar on the car. Gas squatch is a nice place, and I'm sure somebody in Idabelle, Oklahoma would be glad to display their buck in this store. Maybe somebody can make this happen. But regardless, we're on the road again. Within a few miles though, we do a U turn when we see a gas station called Hanks. It's got a buck on the sign. We walk inside. We are pumped because we can see bucks from the road. So there's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, dear seven freedom mounts one just buck mount How big is that shoulder? Man? That that dear I'm guessing don't forget that crazy looking bobcat. Oh yeah, we gotta. I don't know about everybody else, but rat's hand. Oklahoma at one time was home to some big deer. I'll see that. Are a lot of deceased deer here. Yeah. One of the ladies in the station shows us stacks of pictures of deer from years past. Tell me what city we're Reptan Oklahoma, Rettan, Oklahoma. And so this gas station used to be, uh, the check station, and then did Oklahoma start? And so it kind of it kind of killed the vibe at the gas station. Pictures here from two thousand to yah, we got two thousand two. Actually they go back and thinking for the nineteen nineties. I'd say I'd say we have several hundred white tail photos here, easily going all the way back twenty five plus years. I've always loved gas stations with deer photos, and we're looking at a few two hundred inch deer in these polaroids. I love it. But it's time to head out. Hey, thank you guys, We've we've done what we came to do. Tell tell the who now, who's dear are these? Tell him? Tell him that we approved this gas station. There's two random people, but probably always asked about him. And I'm like, I'm you're just gonna have to come back and talk to the man that owns the place, because I don't really know much about deer or hunting them. But yeah, we got a lot of people that come in here and they'll just walk around and look at these and look at the pictures. Yeah, just like you did. All right, thank you. We're on the road again and we're almost to Antler's, Oklahoma. We've been told there's something here we've got to see. But on our way, our travel is halted in sobriety and we pull off on the side of the road and Brent teaches me something. So we're running down the road over here, and we came upon a funeral procession on the beautiful Friday afternoon. We've pulled off the road. I noticed you took your hat off. Yep, that's well, that's just a sign of respect for the family they mourning the loss. And I have never seen it done any other way. Really, Now, see what you did there instructed me a little bit. I wouldn't have instinctively taken my hat off when I pulled over on the side of the road. Well, it's a sign of respect. You know, you take your hat off when you walk into somebody's house, when you're meeting a lady, you know, you stand up, shake somebody's hand. There's little things, you know. It tells people what kind of folks you are, where you come from. After the last car with their lights on passes, we're on the road again and we pull into the big parking lot of the Chuck Tall Travel Plaza in antlers. We walk in in our mouths drop bingo. Oh my, what do we have here? Mr Branton? We have got a humongous bu that is by far the biggest book we've seen all day. Yeah, that's bigger than Miss Sanders. Right there, that's a Boon and Crockett. That is a net typical gotta be hundred and eighty five hundred ninety inch deer. Holy cal The deer has a Choc Tall Plaza polo shirt over a live mount with its own name tag. What's his name called? He's called Howard Bucks. But that's a real that's not a replica. I'm looking at those antlers. That is a main frame six by six. Wow, way to go, Choc Tap Plasma. I really wasn't expecting it because this this is not a mom and cop place. This is like a big This is like mechanical sliding motion sensor doors, CAO very busy place. Christmas in Yeah, and they have the one of the finest typical white tails seen a long time. It's it's huge. Here take my picture by this, dear. After making a bit of a spectacle, we head back towards Arkansas with our spirits full. This has been an incredible road trip. The one on one interactions that we've had with people about these deer heads is notable. Misty nuke my wife, is doing her doctoral thesis research on the idea of social capital. I want to get some insight from her because I feel like this whole deer head in the gas station thing is part of a bigger equation. Here's Misty ms Nukem talk to me about how social capital relates to us losing our town square mom and pop gas stations that always include a good deer head or two. Okay, Well, first, I think it's important to understand what social capital is. So social capital would be like the connections that people have and the networks of connections that people have that provide value in a community in the same way that human capital. Think about having people that can can work at a factory. That factory might be more likely to locate in a certain area if it has people who will work for the ways that factory plays. That's a value in a commodity in that community. Social capital it relates to the connectivity of the people inside of a community, and that also provides huge value. And economists have taken to there's a lot of research out there that has emerged in the late nineties and onward that looks at the social capital and says, well, does it actually provide any economic benefits because a lot of times we judge whether something is valuable or not in terms of economic economic contribution. It provides to community. So and it does. And it provides value to two kids, it provides value to to the economic welfare. I've studied how how that's connected to academic achievement inside of communities, and so so there's all these different ways that just the presence of certain things and and and certain opportunities for people to connect can build a community and can increase the not just the sense of identity that people in that community have, but identity is a huge part of it, but also can actually provide tangible benefits in terms of So so you're saying, the more places that a community has where people can actually often physically connect, like at a at a gas station, yes there are that community is going to be stronger financially, academically, as opposed to a community that for whatever reason didn't have that social capital, didn't have those meeting places, didn't have that sense of community. It become more alienated, it would become more isolated, and trust social trust would diminish in that community. And when that when that is lost or when it diminishes to a certain point, then there's a lot of things that become harder for that community. So it's not necess sairly a one to one correlation, but there there is a strong correlation between tangible impact. A guy named Robert Putman wrote a book in the mid nineties called Bowling Alone. He was looking at this concept of social capital and he used bowling and bowling alleys as a as like a way to actually look at And there used to be people who would gather on Thursday nights and they would they would bowl together and have being part of a league connected them to a community and connected them to people. Yet those sweet bowling shirts probably it's really half of the half of the there's been bowling alleys have been known to house a few good deer heads. Yeah, you you probably should have done I should have done that. You might have even found more. But so that the and his idea was that people are bowling alone now like the league's have diminished. There used to be Thursday night bowling and people would go and that provided a source of meaning and a point of connectivity where they were actually, you know, building a sense of identity. But it also provided connections for those people that might help them get better jobs, that might help their kids. It's not us about identity, but that is a piece of it. It also provided that community a sense of trust, like, well, I know Bill down you know for the bowling alley. We play against each other on Thursday nights, and so so you know, I I trust him, and I know his son's a good kids. So I'm going to hire on my job. But it also says, well, because I care about Bill, I also care about his son. And when I see him driving too fast on the road, I'm gonna call Bill and tell him, and that's gonna keep his his child safer. And so these connections you have provide benefits not just in allowing you to network, but also but they do allow you to network, but they also provide benefits and building a sense of community trust and a sense of community awareness. And yeah, I mean I could go on and know him, but those those things. Strong communities, strong families actually contribute to child welfare in a number of ways. And you can look at future outcomes for kids and see, even if the child themselves had a rough home life, being in a community that had really solid homes is one of the major predictor of that child's future success. Bowl and alone and gas stations without deer heads are negative social indicators. Who knew. Well, we're on the road again, headed home, but we see a store I just can't pass by, So we pull in. All right, this place is Brittingham Grocery, Oklahoma. Yeah, I see they got a buck over there. Yeah, they got a nice But I greet the owner of the store as I walk in. He's a kind man and very interested in what we're doing. I tell him my hypothesis that taxidermy in gas stations seems to be going out of style and that we're trying to change that. And I asked him about the deer hanging in the store. Now this is this is your business. So you're a gas station, and so tell me what you know about that, dear. Well, we had a good customer who lives a few blocks away from here. His name is Zack Morgan. He killed this deer about I guess four years ago, and then he he just right and he just donated or put it up there. You know, Zach knew what. Zach knew what was going on. He's like, if I kill a big deer, now are we in? Are we in britting Ham, Oklahoma? No, you are in the Moyers, Oklahoma, bretting him. Is the name used to be or still you can call it the name of the store? Tell me your name. I'm sorry I didn't Shaquille. And so when he brought the deer to you, what did you think? You were like, that's that's normal, this is good. What did you think cool? I mean we have seen other people too. I mean like one time we had so many fishes here, big fish people brought and they hanged there, and I guess for some reason he needed it back and he took it away, and probably that's what it is. Yeah, I guess. Yeah, people do bring you know, those horns also sometimes and they left it. We had few. I don't know where they add now. But if you had fuel before, would you consider putting more in here? Do you think you need some more? Yeah? If anybody brings it, welcome to bring it in. Yeah, let's go. Let's go analyze this dear brand. So there's one big, heavy horned eight. I mean like a tall racked, very heavy all the way up. Yeah, the times are thick like bananas. The right eye guard it looks like it's about eight inches. I would easily say that's a mid one forties, maybe even point. Yeah. I agree, he's hun sure, big wind, big win. This is a Bar Grease Podcast approved business. Good job, Mr. We're on the road again and we're headed home. We've met some incredible people and have seen some great gas station bucks. I've always loved a good gas station, and it hurts me when I don't see a buck on the wall in a place that I know should have one. It just seems negligent to me personally. I think it's a public validation of a way of life that I love. But on a broader scale, a big buck on the wall is a celebration of conservation and wild places. It's a public tribute to the American model of wildlife conservation. These beasts are so common they're hanging in common places, not just in museums. At one time, it was believed American big game was going to go completely extinct, and they began to collect antlers and horns so that future generations would be able to see the animals that used to live here. I also believe that a big buck in a public center is a platform for building community and relationship. When you see a buck on the wall, it should initiate curiosity, conversation, and intrigue. I rarely walk past a mounted buck without taking a genuine gander and sending a conscious thought. War is the circumstances of the hunt, the person that killed it, in the wild place from which the beast was hun. In some small way, maybe it gives us a platform to build social capital with those in our community. I also learned that our lives are impacted by unseen forces like the oil industry, and it impacts us in odd ways bigger than just how much we pay for our fuel. Our society is changing, but the things we truly value, we will find ways to hold onto them. And hey, here's an idea. If you've got a relationship with a gas station, lend them one of your dear heads. You'll probably find that most store owners are like Mr Shakil and happy to display above. Long live the PDT and long live the Beast. Thanks so much for listening to bar Grease. I look forward to talking about all this stuff on the bar Grease Render next week. Be sure to check out all the Burgrease merchandise on the Meat eater dot com and check out first Lights new waterfowl apparel line. See you next week.

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