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The MeatEater Podcast
Ep. 288: Viscera and Bones
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2h02m
Steven Rinella talks with Ted Franklin Belue, Phil Taylor, Corinne Schneider, and Janis Putelis.
Topics discussed: Jani's trouble with pant zippers; majoring in Boone and minoring in Kenton; dropping out of school to play the banjo; Ted being an extra in Last of the Mohicans; fashion forward longhunters; Boone's "tick licker"; the difference between a long rifle and a musket; making your own powder with your urine; the importance of basic diplomacy and not reveling in war; the first long hunt in Kentucky; a skeleton in a sycamore; alot of mythology; how Boone sang to his dogs; the two mysteries; hybrid accounts, footnotes, and a second West; the strange fate of Boone's remains and when bones and viscera are in different places; women civilizing men; Finding Daniel Boone, The Long Hunt, The Hunters of Kentucky, and the rest of Belue's books; and more.
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00:00:08
Speaker 1: This is me eat your podcast, coming at you shirtless, severely bug bitten and in my case, underwear listening podcast. He can't predict anything presented by first, like creating proven versatile hunting apparel from Marino bass layers to technical outerwear for every hunt. First like go farther, stay longer, Yan, He's having some trouble with the zipp around his shorts. I was wondering if you'd like to talk about this on the Era. The zipper on his shorts does not provide enough opening. Yes, now someone might see where I might be going with this, and I'm not. It's it's not. What can't come out is that he can't get his hand in there. Yeah, chase his hand and he tries to get his hand in there and it pops the button. Very disappointed. He's returning these short m hmm. I've had I had a pair of jeans that were like a low rise I think I didn't notice when my bottom they were like a low rise cut, which means that they still got to have the cross in the same place. But because the waist up like a lower as neck tattoo. No no, no, you don't have a butterfly tattooed back there. But buyer, beware of short zippers. I might be revealing too much here. Am I the only person that when they need to unzip, they also unbuttoned? No, my six year old does that. Not only does he do that, he drops him down to the to the back of his knees. Okay, I don't do that. See, thank you. But yet I don't know. You might be younger. You are younger, but you might be used to this different style of pants than I am. That just always have short zippers, and thus you're used to just always unbuttoning. Yanni was raised during an era of generous zippers, big long zippers. What what what? What's happened? Then? People got tight? People got tight? Well, I'll say what's happened in this country? People got tight with zipper material. Phil joined today by historian Ted Blue Daniel Boone his story like the first frontier historian, former professor in the history department of Franklin University. That's because you retired, not because you got fired or anything. Right now, it's a Murray State University. Why does it say Franklin Universe? Because I Franklin is my middle name. Your middle name, I knew that that was my fault. And I don't have my own university. I'm working on that, you know, like a universe. Thinking about the zipper issue, I'm thinking, you know, Daniel Boone had a loincloth and uh sash. You don't have you just go from the side you don't. It works better. I would have. I would have probably dribbled on it. Did me. I was probably sleep his name his middle name, Ted Franklin Blue. Thank you, Murray State Universe. Yeah, they'll appreciate that better. Back home we started on school. I didn't roll, man, I'd do a double major. Well, thank you you and major major and Boone and Kenton, Daniel Boone and the miner and Simon Kenton and a banjo player. Did I mention that already? Yeah? I did that for several years. I mean I still pick, but yeah. I dropped out of college actually to to play banjo. It was all I had, a free, free riot, it was all paid for, but I said, no, I want to play, and so that's what I did for two or three years. Yeah. And um Done in Florida, you know, kind of a no name, but we played the same Southeastern circuit. Does um Bill Monroe and Luster Flat and Ralph Stanley. Ralph people saw the movie Oh Brother, Where art thou? He's saying, oh Dad, he's saying that, and uh, Ricky Skaggs and Um Keith Whiley We're playing with Ralph denn and Marty Stewart was about thirteen or fourteen, was playing with Um Luster Flat, and Vince Skill was in high school. He was playing with the blue Grass Alliance. And then there was me who nobody knew and still can't get my name right seven years later. So I want to know if they was it still paid for when you went back three years later? It was not. I moved to Kentucky to play in a band and and that didn't work out so well. Then I was kind of reduced to Wendy's and painting gutters. And then I ran trap lines for four years and I was thinking about going down to the Gulf and maybe work on some or breakdown there, like commercial diving type stuff. And my wife said, why don't you go back to school. And she's always been kind of the brain to the blue outfit, and I us a lot safer, Plus I can be on land, and that's what I did. Yes, you were you on a full ride Bangel scholarship. And now my my father was a veteran of World War two and he had the g I bal he passed on when I was a boy and uh transferred, Yeah right, yeah, it's a good gig. And then he was a a male man, and so you also had civil service benefits. And so as long as I stayed in and didn't drop out for more than one year, I was it was paid for. But I dropped out and staid, I want to play banjo. That's where the that's where the money is. Did you go on to so? Did you you go on? You went on to get like a doctorate? No? I never did. I I went back. I actually majored in wildlife biology, but I couldn't pass chemistry. My actual interest then and largely still are we're theology. I wanted to study particularly bullshark behavior and uh, either that or herpetology, and study particularly Eastern I'm in backs and deal with habitite issues with the quotalist adamant aias the Eastern diamond back. And but I but I loved history, and so when I realized that that was not gonna happen, because I couldn't pass chemistry. I just sat down one day with the curriculum guying, I go, what do I like? And I know, what can I do? And so I went to history and they were having had American Indian studies. They had the American West, and I said, I love this stuff. And I was in Kentucky, and um, when I was a boy, I was really hung up on Daniel Boone. I mean Mania and third fourth, fifth grade. I mean I literally told my parents in fourth grade, and my sister will be hearing this, she can probably confirm it. I said, I'm I'm not going to study any more m math and sentis DIAGRAMM and I just want to study Earl Scruggs on the banjo and Daniel Boone. And that didn't go over well, But that's what you did. Yeah, pretty much. I kind of went to a mountain Man period and I like John Wayne and the Alamo. By yeah, it's pretty much Boone. And then uh and by junior high, you know, I start seeing cheerleaders and stuff and I said, this board of life than Daniel Boone and uh, but cheerly, yeah, not me personally. Yeah, it wasn't. Yeah, it wasn't me personally, but uh but yeah kind of kind of. And and then we moved to Kentucky, Like I said, my wife and I her name is Levina, which by the way, was also the name of one of Boone's daughters. Oh that's cool, Yeah it is. It's really kind of unusual. And when I got back to Kentucky, Um, I happen to go by one time there was a flintlock shooting exhibition and uh, I said, wow, and it it really struck a nerve. And then I read Alan Eckert's book The Frontiersman about that's a tremendous book. I mean, uh, Simon Kenton and too Kumpsa and it it just all of a sudden, I was dreaming as a kid again about you know, Torch Cavin's and um a phrase ballhead work clubs and flint locks and powder horns. Taking note of that word club hanging over your head. Yeah it was yeah that one. Wow, Yeah it was that was that specifically for me? Or do you steal that from bagore gifted? That was from West study. Here's Steve used this instead of a bow? Hey, uh, but you were actually I want to we gotta hit a couple of things. But I want to talk about one other thing. You were an extra and last of the Mohicans. How long did you hang around there? I did that. It was almost eight weeks. It was just under eight weeks. I kept waiting to get killed in the massacre scene because I had it all all ready to go with this buddy of mine from Sky to Oklahoma. He's a Shawnee and I go like, Wow, I'm gonna get killed by a real Shawnee. And uh that it didn't happen because up with the last scene with the big massacre, that it kept raining and that valley was inundated. So I had to come back and to Murray State and teach world sieve no one ever killed you. No, No, I got killed a bunch. I made three hundred bucks one time, getting one night, I made three hundred bucks and six hours getting killed. But you know there was cannon shredding, and you you had these kind of like minor bumps that for guy. You had this the real stunt men, and then they had the people that weren't that bright. They would be willing to do stuff for more money. That's kind of the category I was in. And so you had your you had your own personal get up on no. No, well, no, I had whatever they had. You know, I would typically you didn't bring your own period dress. They gave you the dress I wanted to, but no, I would be a British red Coat for a while with the brown best busket. Then they you could have paid me enough to do that. Then they switch off and they said, okay, be a French guy for a while, and so you you put on the French marine outfit and uh, you get the Charlotteville musket. Then they switched your back and a lot of it was hurry up in a way. But yeah, it was a fascinating thing. I mean, I knew that I would never have an experience like that again. And um, I mean you can't just go anywhere and see a or full scale reproduction of Fort William Henry. Uh seventeen fifty seven. And the first night on the set where we really got past the exercises because we the first week was calisthenics. Captain Dale die he wrote, he co wrote um top Gun and Platoon. He trained all those guys. He was twenty one year marine vet. He's like, all right, yeah, he just worst profanity in the world. Quite colorful. But you know, once we got past the week of training with him, Um got out there in the first night, you know, take one and you would have the pyrotechnics going off. I fire a cannon of a French marine. I took my coat off so my mom could maybe see me, and uh, hey mom, and so um, you know they had eighteen hundred Indians just come up out of the shadows and you just get chill bumps and the pyrotechnics are going. You go like, you'll never see anything like that. And so did you die with dignity or were you like uh most of the time there, sometimes I was indignant because I realized how little I was getting paid for this, and so you know, I call back and try to live again down you know. Plus I had a French name Balloo. And um, so you got killed by shrapnel? Did you get knife or anything like that? Every it's nothing cool right there, but no, mainly and it left me with really bad tenitis. I mean, I my ears are still popping because the pyrotechnics. Yeah, but they gave us a little ear plugs and so that we're like that was close enough for the period period of boom. Yeah, I don't think that the Greeks. I think the Greek's had it down, you know, because it's sponges. Uh, Okay, we'll get back to Daniel Boone. We're gonna get into Daniel Boone hardcore big time. I hope we do. Know What's what's interesting to me and this is why I'm fascinated. Boone has been dead two hundred and one years this year. Yeah, and so why are we talking about last year and anniversary was death? Well? I had a book come out then, and it came out the same day that he died, September twenty and I was like, but what was going on then? COVID? So what? And it was about the tidle of it, you know, his where's Daniel Boone Buried? I mean that's not actually the title. I can't remember his last day, Daniel Boone, his last days in Missouri and the strange fate of his remains because there's a lot of controversy about where was he buried? So I said, well, this is great, it will be the two anniversary and it will come out and and uh COVID did it come out? Yeah, September twenty six didn't sell like hotcakes thirty five cents of stack. What do you mean that's how hotcakes sell. It's a Southern joke. They don't say that in Michigan. I guess it sell like hotcake thirty five cents of stack. It's a bluegrass joke. Uh okay, but yeah, we're north of that. We don't get blue grass claim get joke. Oh, after Yanni presented to us, So if you go back in a couple of episodes, Yanni presented to us about him being out with this with Bart George doing mountain lion research and they're practicing all that. Like I'm telling you this because you don't know this. They're they're testing. I'm interested, though, Well get them out. Let's get a mountain lion hanging around. Boots Son Daniel Morgan had a real bad experience with a bound lion. So yeah, I love bound lions. So you tuned in. Yeah, let's say you get a mountain lion hanging around and they want to find a way to haze it. They want to like get it so it's not habituated to humans, spook it off. What they're what they're working on is a going uh put a collar on the line. And they approach it with sounds. They actually played this podcast to the mountain Lion to see at what point like the zipper part a little but a real short as for something so checks out. You gotta follow. What I'm saying is I'm gonna tell you something complicated. They play this podcast to a mountainline just blasting it is not I'm not and they and they got a radio. They already got a collared they got a radio Colorado, so they can tell at what point it's spooks from human voices, at what point it's runs off. Then they go in right away and re catch it with dogs and harass it a little bit. Then you're going in the future and see, like, did that experience of human voices cause it to want to keep its distance? The fact that you're playing human voices and then harassing it with dogs. Can you can you sort of like train the cat two move away and not want to be around human voices. Jim Halfminger wrote in about how if you played the show open where you can hear tree falling, that he feels that that would speak particularly well to the mountain lion, who's not gonna like that sound up in a tree Well, the thing is is that when they hear our podcast, it is, uh, the mounta lion is still on the ground, It's not when it's up on a limb, right, But even then, you know, mountain lions spend a lot of time in the woods almost all the time, and so I guess it depends on what habitat they live in. But even then, the sound of a falling tree might be alarming to a mountain lion. But you say they calculated that then, and they only play they skip ahead, Yeah, I think yeah. Bart mentioned something about that. Yanni suggests that they don't even play the ads to them because they don't want to like encourage consumerism. Yeah in mountain lions cougars. Yeah, alright. He also sent in a sign that he took a picture of. Do you want to read the sign? But I don't really understand the sign. It's a real sign British Columbia British Columbia Parks. Looks like they put it up. It's a it's a warning sign and it says very large letters cougar in area, then a little bit smaller letters, please stay on trails, travel in small groups, and do not capitalize, do not allow men under thirty to travel alone. It's a statement ahead. Yeah, if you're a young female, have at it. And I guess even said like under four team, but like what, maybe there's a particular disposition generally about or or irresponsible. Maybe I think that's that's trying to protect men under thirty from themselves, Yeah, from poor destision making. That's a weird like, are you guys missing the joke here? Cougar is another name for like an older woman who we're holy cow, Phil, God, Bills, smart, Hello, fingering. Now it's probably upside down of the stupid ass jokes. I don't realize they're jokes. Jim, really screw this O God, don't send subtle jokes, man, I like, like you're dead. That's good, Phil, I mean I don't think it's that good. I think it's just this is mostly embarrassing for you guys, very embarrassing cow man. Yeah, I know I need again. This comes back to the difference in age. Difference in ages here because I used to partake in cougar jokes, but it's been twenty years. Yeah, I mean yeah, it's it's outdated for sure. Oh yeah, I'm so um. That shows how woke. I am. There you go. You've moved past it. So you're saying cougars don't even exist anymore. I mean people probably still use the term, but I mean it's not in the main. I mean there's a whole show called cougar Town that was like the peak of it. Older women exactly. No, it's about Courtney Cox looking for men under thirty. Um. But now, oh man, dude, that is probably the most embarrassing thing. Yeah. I got half mine to edit that whole thing out and make it that I got the joke. Okay, hey, you know what, let me let me do uh oh, let me say this. Okay, you patch this in and I'm gonna say, oh, Yanni, you obviously don't get the joke older women. Okay, put that prowling, prowling for younger, for young There you go, put that all in. Patch that together. Yeah, we're losing Ted, Ted's Ted's losses. Well we're gonna we're I'm good, We're gonna come find him in a minute. We had a correction to dude, we're talking about sex and chicks, chickens, sexing, baby sexing baby chickens, and I was saying that with the increased popularity of backyard poultry raising, of which you needs a participant. UM people go out and they buy birds, and then then they are often surprised. They buy chickens to lay eggs, and they're often surprised to find that that one day it wakes up in the morning and goes right. And I was talking about how UM I felt that there was some issue where it was extremely difficult. Two sex chicks ends, young chicks, young chickens right, and a guy, a poultry guy from a poultry grower in Delaware, says it's really not that commercial poultry grower check this out. He says male chicks have of even feather follicles at the edges of their wings, whereas females will have notably long and short feather follicles. He says this strategy is pretty spot on. There's also vent sexon which Branch showed us with ducks, where you squeeze the feces out of the chick, which opens up the chicks anal vent called the cloaca, slightly allowing the chicken sex or to see if the chick has a small bump, which would indicate that the chicks a male. Now you can if you want to sex a duck, you can open that cloaca up and it looks like a little worm in there, like an inside outworm or worm, like a little wormy structure in there. And that when engorged with blood a second time, and gorge has been used in reference on this show and this year. Yeah, and gorged with blood, you can tell that it's a male or female. You know that, Johnnie, I did not. Why would you m Are there certain duck species that the males and females look the same from the outside, or kill an immature immature? Do you know about this? You know, I don't, But I was just thinking that it's hard to sex beaver too, you know, I think the the organs or internal we actually rehab one can be done when you skin them, you know right off? Yeah, yeah, I mean, but yeah, but that's kind of intrusive, you know, put them up on the It often leads to lead to we rehab one for six or seven months, and it got to be kind of onerous, and we did. Boy, girl, you took care of a baby beaver? We did? I know? At that time, I was teaching at Murray State and some I went into class one day and it was a big box in their cardboard box and I I go, what's this and they said it's a beaver. I thought it was a joke, like, oh, okay, sure, I'm game. I put up and it really was. It was a kid beaver. And um, there had been some frat guys out there, uh, I think blowing up dens or something. I'm not sure. I don't you know. And so there was just one kit that had survived all of that. And these sorority girls, I don't know if they were a O pie maybe Alpha gams try sig I'm not sure. But anyway, the thrority girls not important? Is that relevant? No, give him a shout out? Anyway, that they brought the baby beaver, and I went, what am I gonna do? And so I write it. I would think I would lecturing that day, I'll Mesopotamia. And every time I had paused talking about ARROGANTSHA would go and I'd go and they go, uh. And so I said, okay, we're gonna take it home. So we took it home and we bottle raised it. It's kind of like, um, remember the the guy Archibald what was his name? He thought he wasn't. He passed himself off as an Indian. He called himself Gray Owl. The only archballd I knows Ruttledge And so, yeah, we rehab this beaver for a while, but you know he had an understanding landlord. But you know, after a while, you gotta start replacing doors and we start, you know, replacing table legs, and so the beaver chew that stuff up. Yeah yeah, I mean the teeth they grow all the time. That they got to. But but we never I knew it was a boy or girl. That's the point you back to the relevant. We didn't know if it was a boy or girl, so we just called it baby baby beaver. Then he got to be less of baby and um, so it was pretty good and speckled where with baking over the top with no he just kidding you turned loose. We found a beaver rehab her up in northern part of Kentucky and took it up there, and um, hopefully it stayed out of you know, three conno bears. M hmm. Beaver always shine. Speaking of beavers, we had another craction. Some people like real riled out that I screwed this up. So I was saying, how sni airs used to be snares and they got rebranded as caval restraints. I was wrong, Uh, A cabor restraint has a relaxing lock on it. I thought like a relaxing lock was a snare with the like what kind of locked the relaxing lock on a snare was like, no, very big difference, very big difference. A few people out there who carry tons about snares. A snare is a when when they're using the term snare, they're using talking about a dispatch or kill type trap. A caval restraint because because the mechanism never relaxed, and every time it moves, it just cinches, and you'd rig it up so that you'd rig it up, you know, so that there's like entanglements. You know, you might like rig it to a tree to wrap around the tree and tighten up and kill it. But they're saying a restraint is rigged different, different lock. You don't have, you don't have any kind of impediments around it that might cause it to get tangled up, and just rigged very much to keep the thing alive. Caboris ranks, folks. I thought it was interesting that the one guy wrote in from somewhere in the desert southwest as a trapper, and he said that it's very important for them to use them, not because they like, you know, for some sort of animal welfare, but because in their conditions, if they use a kill snare, that can lose that animal in the matter of hours. But if it's kept alive, then they can dispatch it. And when when I said, when I say lose the animal, like, they would lose the hide because of the hot conditions. So they use that type of snare so that preserves the hide. You want something else, that guy said, He said, I would be lying if I said I wasn't a little disappointed that a fellow trapper wouldn't know the difference. But we will forgive you on this one. Can't uh here, here's a good story Krim was telling me about. Someone sent this to us. There's a guy in May. This is this is this is a real conundrum. I don't have I don't have an opinion. Real conundrum. A guy in Maine builds a house float Basically, it's like a shed on a raft. I mean, it's pretty sweet looking, like you could sleep in it. You can. He builds like a raft, puts a shed on it. In southeast Alaska, they're everywhere. Well, this is not there, though, but this is where it gets rich. Builds a raft, builds a shed on it so you can hang out and sleep in there, puts a little upper deck on there with a cable like railing for like a deck, brings it out to the local lake and says, hey, you're allowed to take a boat wherever you want an anchor it, and just moves into it, much to the consternation of people that live around the lake. Other houses on the lake don't seem to bother them, but they are very perturbed that this guy is living on their leg in his raft shed. His argument is that show me where I'm not allowed to anchor a boat anywhere I want. It's public water. I don't have an opinion about it. Yeah, kind of rooting for the guy. Two. But then he says one person says how he docked up a few hundred feet for their house and spent the whole summer partying. Someone claimed he had like people in and out that day, and he said he had never had more than I think a couple. And he said anyone on the lake is welcome to come out bring their kids and jump off the roof. It's open to anyone to party. They say he can have as many as sixteen boats tied up to it at once. But I don't know what the hell kind of boats they're talking about. He says that's not true. Anyways, they're going after they're trying to pass the ordinance. Now about mooring, I don't have an opinion about it. Now, I grew up on a little lake. If some yeah, if somebody an if someone, it's okay. But if all of a sudden there was a hundred, I'd say, as long as the guy doesn't have a stereo going like twelve hours a day. But if there's all of sudden, you can't go. You can't go water ski because there's too many float houses. Oh sure, you think this guy will attract like a bunch more people like it'll catch you think about it. You can't afford the house that's on the shore because it's a million bucks, But you can build yourself a little house float for I don't know, k I'm guessing you could do pretty good. Karn likes the Oh he's got it on pontoon floats dead. I think it's I think it's pretty cool. Alright, it's like Ted Kazinski. It's like Ted Kazinski's place on floats. That's a it's a real conundrum. May they did the mask of they socially distant? I do not know. They don't get into that level detail. And they don't get into waste disposal. M Ellsworth, Maine. I'm sure he's got a composting to If you live near Ellsworth, Maine, I would I would go out and party with this gentleman. Quietly party with this gentleman so he doesn't get in more trouble. He's got kids out there with them. If I was living out there, I might think about quickly building one myself, getting it out there, because then you'd be grandfathered in. Get out there now. Yeah, once they make those those rules, you know nobody else you'll have one of the two because you have a wood stove, and oh yeah, it'd be great. Idea. Let me get you there. Another correction, but I don't feel like getting into by why to talk about the nature of the correction. So this whole dog, like this whole german. If you've been listening to the show, this whole like people just a bicker in about attributes of obscured German hunting dog breeds. Oh my god, they wear me out, man. Yeah, there's basically between Uh, German wire hair pointers and a dog is called a jow hour. I believe it's how you pronounce it. It's like, well, actually the draw th hour has thirteen beard hairs upon birth, and the German wire hair ranges from nine to eleven beard hairs. This is like, oh my god, it never ends, man, dog, I have not. Our our next door neighbors had aim, remember, and it it held all the time. Whenever there'd be a cyrene in Orlando, there would be a lot of syrens and my dog would go. My father would go out and his underwear and it's pretty the hose across the lugust from my hedge and try to quiet that dog now. And uh. The lady her name was Irene will lead the last name anonymous. But but but she saw my dad out there and his undershort spraying the hose and didn't realize that that was my dad. And so she called my mom and said, Mara, I don't want to scare you, but there's a man outside and there's underpants and she goes, thank you, Irene, Frank get in here so now, But it's a wimer rammer. Are they bird dogs? I believe so well. I mean it's like Ronnie does have Ronnie baby does have one in his in his correction, which which you just have to explain it next time you're on Ronnie. But he does have one thing they never do. See. He's back to this sharpness and hardness test. There's some debate amongst the German hunting dog community about whether this is fact or fiction about making your dog duke it out with various small mammals, various midsized mammals. Ranny points out that the sharpness these are sharpness tests or hardness tests. You never do it on a test day. It's separate from a test day. He goes down to say this, the fox part is in the test, did danielle Oh, here's the other update the dog. You know, Daniel is donating the dog to our auction house oddities which started this whole. That dog is now pregnant. What do you call it when you're pregnant and they put that little wand over your belly. Sot the mother of the puppy that was gonna be auctioned off for the puppy that was gonna be auctioned off as already pregnant. No, no, no, no no, the dog that will burd the puppy that we will auction off in the auction house of oddities. The way you just said, it can't sound like a puppy was was pregnant? No Irish Irish puppy was that old joke Irish twins? Anyhow? Uh? What was I getting? That? The dog's pregnant, the puppy is on its way. There's at least five of them in there. They did a ultrasound on the dog, and that guy is talking about all this German dog stuff, which I like. But Ronnie goes on to say this, here's the test that they do that involves a dead fox. Okay, get yourself dead fox, tie it to a chord, give that cord to a judge. The judge then drags the fox two. You can tell where talking about European stuff because it's a meters not yards. Drags a fox two and leaves it behind a rail or a crawl of sorts. Okay, drag the dead fox all around, put it in a crowd. The dog gets there by nose, which Ronnie says is not a big deal. But what is a big deal is the dog has to jump into the corral, gray the dead fox out of there, jump out and return it to their owner handler. That test is referred to as the fox in a box. And he goes on to say true ship. There so no doubt. Someone right in to tell us how that's not actually true, And I think maybe we need to That sounds like some doctors ship. Actually that should be another shirt. We should make shirt foxing socks in a box. Do the the macro fructification T shirts coming along nicely? It's gonna be like a hundred What are you waving off? Ted? Again is wondering what we're talking about. It doesn't matter because because that's the last thing and now we're getting back in. But I'm saying I was just like waving him off, as in like the macto, I can't pronounce it. Well, I've got a question, Steve, because you're you've been saying it more correctly. Are we getting the Do the T shirts have the incorrect to word on it macro fructation or do they have the real one, which was macro fruit? What would be a better What would be a better? Better T shirt would be the email chain of people arguing about this. Okay, I eventually what was the consensus. My role here, my role here at the company allows me to have final say on on certain things, and I and and uh and one of those things was what this T shirt would say on it. I felt that I was so close to right that I wanted to have the right word. So the shirt is a collection of beautiful mushrooms, a sketch of a collection of beautiful mushrooms. And it says simply macro fructification, not macro fructation. Because the problem is it's so my bad word, my wrong word was so close to the right word that it's not really like, not that funny anymore. And even agreed, he's like then it just as confusing. It's only like a hundred of these shirts. We're gonna sell them. They'll be gone in an instant. We'll need to do has been has it been designed yet? Designs sharp looking shirts? Okay, I was going to make a suggestion, there's that's too bad. We need we'll need to make more. I think the demands it's a hundred forty four because they sell them by the dozens. Apparently eggs traps and apparently T shirts are sold by the dozen. Well, we get more in if they get sold out quickly. No, it's a one off. What's what's the price on these? A few hundred bucks of hocks? You know what? I feel like there's a lot of demand for and we should do again since we're on it. No tell me T shirts is a block T shirt rip off? A hundred forty? Were those buggers Fox in the Box is going to it would be Ronnie flip blocks. See now just to clear up now, now we're back to talking to you. Yeah, great, it's uh. I'm glad I came up from Kentucky to hear about all this. It's uh. But that that's that's that's good because I've never been to Montana. I've never been this close to Canada, you know, like I wanted to thing maybe has some Neil Young angst or something. And yeah, I know you're saying Darryl Hannah, maybe you know she'd been to Canada' bet with. I've seen Gordon Lightfoot twice live. Really Yeah, he had a great guitarist back in the sixties, Red Shake, great acoustic guitars. He did, like if you could read my mind the guitar parts read Steve, I'm reading your mind. Tell us what a long hunter was. Yeah, a long hunter was a professional hunter that across the Alleghenis, across the Blue Ridge. They came from western Virginia, western North Carolina, eastern Tennessee. They supplanted the Indian in the deer skin trade. And it could be either seasonal your hunt deer, or it could be year round. You can also, like Boon did, by the second and third frost, you start trapping beaver and then as the season rolls around again, you kind of switch off and by April May you're you're killing deer again. But yeah, it was a They're kind of like the fore runners to the mountain men. But of course the mountain men there. Number one quarry is what the Rocky Mountain trappers wanted what and for the long hunter, the number one quarry was the deer. Yeah, white tailed deer. And uh. And in both case his fashion drove it and uh and it was male fashion and male fashion, male fashion, I mean women, you know, you know they had some deer skin dresses, I guess and whatever and uh, but yeah, it was it was breaches, saddles, shoes, gloves, the fancy yellow pumps she wanted to wear. We went ballroom dancing, and uh, they were taking out deer literally by that they were making shoes. They were making like pump shoes with deer hide. Yeah, typically died yellow. Ye. It was a huge It was a huge industry in London. You know, London was was actually the one of the global centers of white tailed deer processing. And yeah, and and there was a number it was a cottage industry. There was a number of tanneries of course in the American colonies as well. And it was kind of ad hoc. It wasn't as well. Awkrutizes out a word as like the Hudson's Bay Company which begins in sixteen seventy and that really is uh well smoothly oiled. And you know, you had a kind of a pack order of who's gonna control it. You had particulous record keeping. Yeah, and maybe they even had like it was unionized like gilded and you even had laws as far as like high requirements. You had weight requirements, religious requirements. You could union it was like in your contract you had to pause every hour and smoke your pipe. It would be fine and let the boyage. You're singing in the Creative Boi. And you know you had really like those French Canadian beaver trappers. The guys had like had like in their contracts. Man, every hour we can we can stop and sing our chances And I don't know what they're saying. How used to you know Alotta? Oh yeah, I'll tell you exactly what they used to sing. I grew up in Michigan, man, we studied all this stuff. Yeah it paddle your canoe along. We studied this stuff in the core SI and uh yeah. But but you never had anything like that with with the Mountain I accuse me with with the with the Long Hunters and um, and there was never any like with the Rocky Mountain papers. You know, you would have your Manuel Liza's and your John jacob as stores and people that really hit the Jackpott and became and you never really quite had that with the Long Hunters. But ultimately there's that that's an interesting point you're bringing up that um not only it's like so decentralized, but like America's first millionaire was a guy that got involved in the beaver trade. But I never thought about that that with all this like in that boon era of the white tail hunters, didn't they weren't like producing millionaires at least not at least not ones. We know that that's true. Well, what was he the first millionaire? I thought it was George Washington, but he did it on the land. No, I thought ast was America's first million crank can find out for us when you get off at Astor Place in New York the subway station Aster Place subway station, there's beavers in the tile work. Wow. Yeah, yeah, there's beavers in the tile work of the subway station New York, at Astroplace. I spent so much time in that subway station. Well you're looking the wrong way. Yeah, you're facing out watching the rats fund in the little track area. That's what I like, standing and watch those rats are in around. Well, that was that was the big money area era area. You know, you had the you had the Dutch there, and um, you know, the beaver and the Bible it just kind of are really critically important to the settlement of America, particularly the beaver in that area. And so yeah, what was the air like, what were the years when the long hunters like Boone were most active in their hunting. Yeah, it's really short. You really could kind of sandwich it in between between the like the very end of the Prince and Indian War seventeen sixty two, seventeen sixty three, right in there to about the very beginning the first s of the American Revolution. If you're gonna put that in movie terms, think like from the last the Mohicans to the Patriot Like right in there you have the long hunter period and the real heyday really is quite brief, and it's fairly well defined from about seventeen sixty nine about seventeen seventy two seventy three. So I mean it's a tiny span. Now you always had market hunters four years. Yeah, well, I mean that you know, when you start drawing delinea delineations like that, you're gonna get people that know it's not right. You always had market hunters and market hunting. I mean that that goes back a long way. But as far as like the classic period of seventeen sixty eight sixty nine, that's when you had the big furb gads coming in that that weren't boom wasn't necessarily part of that boon hunted far more solitary, which is brother's brother in law, you know, Kith and ken. I kind of thank a few neighbors for camp tenders. But you had guys like James Knox coming up from the New River Valley of uh, Virginia and not comes in with twenty two twenty three men and uh you know they engaged in deer shooting, like twenty three guys going hunt white tails. Yeah, and they're each bringing in and these are pack horsemen. These aren't guys coming in a little backpacks. They're not out there just trekking around. They're coming in, uh, bringing in each two to three two to three uh pack horses, each with all their traps and so forth. And these are hand forged double long spring traps. And that's the difference to in the the Indian method. The Indians are hunting the fur bearers, you know, they're gigging them, they're shooting them. Well, uh, whites were trapping them. And this is when you really have the development of like the long spring traff the double long spring traf um. But their hand Fortunately before you have you know, like Oneida and Victory of those kind of folks. So they were equally trappers as much as they were hunters. They could be you know, I think Boone and people tend to overlook this. I think Boone was addicted to beaver trapping, and I throughout his live almost at the very end, he would still go out there and trap beaver. Yeah, trap beaver and otter in wintertime and you know, beaver. Again, it was the fashion that drove it, and particularly in Europe, because the European beaver was pretty well trapped out by the sixteen hundreds, and so you know, wanting to wear a a beaver fur felt hat. You can even read about him in Chaucer and Shakespeare, and so it was really a cultural thing. So that really drove the beaver industry. Of course, by that's if you talk about the Rocky mountain travers, that's when you have the fashion switched to silk and that ends that. But but that's really a a thriving dynamo during Boone's period as well, the beaver for felt hat and and then the deer skins, and so yeah, you could be seasonal, just go for the deer. Typically it would be about from April through about the second or third frost. They wanted the deer skins. I'm talking about the actual skin when the skin was thin because the tanning processes of the day, Uh, you know, they weren't using big chemical tanning vats. They if you've got the skins um tan, and you could they had three different levels of skin uh gradation. You could get them grained. That meant that they were fully processed tand ready to go. And that could be either if you got them through the Indian trade a brain tan or through the White trade typically an oak tand of some type. Or they were even using a salt alum or you could get them half dressed. Uh. That meant that you and this is what Boone and those guys are doing. The long hunters were half dressing the skins, meaning that they would go out. You know, they shoot the deer. They deherent like with the courrier and eye for a what do they call them drawn eye? Drawn eye? Yeah, and and uh and then they whip it over a steaking board until you break down the epidermal era. And then you would get about fifty and you could fall them up and you put them in a bear skin. And so they were typically wrapped in bundles of fifty and like when the long hunters would go out, they go out oftentimes in a team like locks I said, he go on guys. That's a lot of guys with horses. And they would have a big base camp where they meet about every two weeks, and then they would establish small what would refer to as out camps. We would think of been a little satellite camps. Uh and even boom when they first go to Kentucky the first time they had a base camp, and then they would have about six or eight satellite camps and you would team up would be you know, Steve and you honest. They go out and hopefully they don't get mad about something. They hunt and do their thing, and then every two weeks they bring them back to the camp and they would wrap them up in um year excuse me. They would wrap them up in bear hides, and they would put them up on scaffolds. You know, typically log scaffolds about eight twelve feet off all the ground because of what keeps stuff out of them. Yeah, like what bears bears wolves right, and a lot of times too, they would put um dried buffalo hides. They would stretch those over the top, like a hairy piece of plywood or something, because that would be part of it. You would you know, tilt and kind of deflected the ray. But it would also keep the buzzers out because the buzzers would land in and they would claw into them as well. So yeah, it was all kind of uh, I mean, it was. It was. It was a hazardous underfry enterprise. It was. It was extremely hard. It was arduous. You know, people tend to look at these folks like, you know, like that like the Daniel day Lewis type or something that you know that these are hard working guys. It's there's a lot of ways to die out there. The business itself is very very hard. You can lose your profits either through you know, rain, maybe a bear claws into it. Um things are stolen, like by the Indians, and that happened to Boone several times, you know, particularly like in his first big long hunt to Kentucky in seventeen sixty nine to seventeen seventy one, Boon's robbed two three times by Indians. He goes back after be on the trail literally from May of seventeen sixty nine to May of seventeen seventy one, he goes back to the Yadkin Valley through Rebecca and goes, well, we're broker than when I left. Yeah, he had two small fortunes stolen from him on that trip, right, Yeah, But he had seen Kentucky, and he knew the way in, and he had explored it more than any white man in the settlements. And so that's kind of paves away, you know, whether providentially or by chance or however people want to interpret that for Boon, what you know, he becomes the great uh Icon, the first true frontier hero. Can you explain real quick? Just to back up a little bit when you talk about that short period, that short heyday of long hunters. So these are like hunters that would do these months long, maybe years long trips over the Appalachians. What do you say from your where you're from? Do you go Apple Achians? I Appalachian? Uh? That's New Orleans and New Orleans. I mean it depends on where you're Probably Appellatian to fine Blue Ridge. We probably over the Blue Ridge. Yes, that's moral timy, very so it's a very fine. It's very short period. What was it about the French and Indian War that allowed it to open up? Was it we that we that the American colonists had uh displaced the French out of those areas, and that's what allowed the long hunters to start hunting in there. Well it ended, That's what happened. I mean, you know you have the bridge, like the blood bath ended. Yeah. By by seventeen sixty two, seventeen sixty three, you um have the end of the French and Indian War and you have relative of peace that's uh established and the British established the Treaty of seventeen sixty three, which ostensibly is to keep the colonists out from the west. Nobody paid much attention to that, but you had the Peace of Paris, uh and done in London in Paris that and that ended the Seven Years War, and so it was wide open. So relative peace was established with the with the the Indians, particularly the Algonquins that inhabited the land west of the Blue Ridge. But also the French agreed to not you know that that their land, I mean usurped. You know, the British gained a huge amount of territory. They gained Louisiana. You know, at least the Spanish yet and the British were possessors now of the Ohio Valley. The Ohio Valley was was like the big plum. You know. You had the French coming in from the west, and then you had the British who had established colonies along the tide water and uh, everybody's kind of fighting for the lakes. And so once that period it's settled, and then it's open and you can get in there without worrying so much about an arrow in the back. Those wars, like both the revel both the American Revolution and the French Indian War, we're like, we're horribly bloody on the frontier. Yeah, and I mean just the like the atrocities you read about that aren't widely known. Oh man, it's brutally well. Just take the American Revolution for example. Most people think, and you whether you're listening to a television broadcast or you're reading a book that go, well, you know, Corn Wallace surrender to uh George Washington in October one, that's the end of the American Revolution. Well, it was in the east, but it certainly was not out west, you know, and by out west, I mean Kentucky. Kentucky that was you know, the Far West, and so that war continued, the American revel Ousian for another year and a half. And um, it's far more catches catch can You don't have manual of arms training. Uh, you're training meaning you're getting behind trees. You're fighting Indian style. Uh, there's no rules of war, there's no real rules of engagement. You have Indian allies that are both coming out of the Great Lakes, that are being still supplied by the bridge up there in Detroit and so forth. And you have now a lot of French partisans that are that are part of that as well. And you even had some ranger units from the British Butler's Rangers. I mean, these guys were tough. They were kind of like the British equivalent of the American and earlier counterpart Rodgers Rangers. So yeah, it was bloody, it was brutal and um and and but it was just how life was it. It's inconceivable to most of us today. And that's the thing. If you read the first biography of Boone um John Philson's book, Uh, Presidents State of Kentucky. Um, it's got a biographical account of Boone and one thing about it is how incredibly dark and brooding and bloody it really was. Uh yeah, and I were talking about We talked about this a couple of times. The you see him when you watch the old Frontiers and movies, are watching Boone stuff. You know, he'll take his rifle out and split a bullet on a hatchet whatnot? Right like what he called he called his gun tick liquor right because he could shoot a tick off. I've done I've done that. You can do that. It's not a it's not an impossible fee and I've done it. But how accurate could these guys have really been? Because think about all the inconsistencies. The powder is inconsistent, like these guys are making their own powder or buying it. You're not measuring grains because it's different combustibilities. Like how good could they have been? There are there any real like are there any real assessments of how good they were with these rifles? Like how far could they shoot a deer? Well, probably the most famous long shot and it wasn't a deer, it was a British officer. It was sure shot Timothy Murphy who shot a British officer at about two d twenty five yards. Um. They were just sitting out there on the horses and uh American Revolution and Murphy came out there and kind of like maybe lick the front site like the old Sergeant Albert New York movie. I don't know, and uh put his gun in a in a cock of a tree and leveled down and these British was like, what's he gonna do? And he killed him and then he killed the guy next to him. That's around two twenty yards. UH. Typically most folks aren't shooting at that kind of uh range. But these men really knew their guns. I mean they lived with their guns. This was this is a drill bit, this was a hammer. This was their tool not only of their occupation like in the case of Boone, but it was a survival to well that you had to know your gun to stay alive. And there's one account of a rare war officer, Daniel Broadhead, who encounters a number of Samuel Brady's men. Brady was a scalp. Little is really written about him. He's, in his own way, kind of an unresolved Indian hater. His family was killed by Indians. He had these UH men with him like Lewis Wetzel, who were just really dangerous and scary. But Broadhead comes across Brady's men and they challenge them to a shooting match. And broadhead Men's are all using muskets, and Brady's men's are using long rivals and they put a keg out there about seventy or eighty yards. Can you tell us the difference between a long rifle and sure a musket is a smooth boar there it's like a shotgun like a tube, and a rifle has rifling in the barrel like they're you know, they're grooves and lands. And that was actually done uh by the Germans and around fifteen fifteen sixty, and it was really incidental that had nothing to do with accuracy in the very beginning that that had. It was it was kind of a a fix on how do we fire these guns and keep the black powder from smudging the barrel afterwards? Because black powder, once you fire it, it's high grovescopic that absorbs moisture, and so if you shoot it a few times, particularly with the smooth board, you know, it can really clunk up a barrel because you know, there's no place for the fouling to go the soot, and so that the Germans just cut grooves in the barrel, straight grooves and to keep them so the fouling could go into the grooves. And so that they did that and they were like, wow, these sure shoot a lot better. And then they spiraled a few of them, and they're like, wow, they really shoot better. And so accidentally they figured out from rife that's where rifling came from. So I rifling. That's one of the things I heard ill of it's true or not, is that the spiraling came from just wanting to increase the how much groove you could have, that you could have more surface area of groove by cutting spirals, and and there therefore house more burnt powder. And then they hit on that idea that the bullet was spinning nights and shooting acker. I don't even know where the hell I read that. Yeah, that that maybe it will be. I mean, I know, guys even now that that really like straight rifled guns, you know, straight they're called straight rifles. That they'll have their barrels uh rifled, but instead of grooving them, they'll have them cut straight. But it doesn't throw a spin on it. Well, but you have kind of maybe you could eed to say the best of both worlds or maybe the worst of both worlds. I mean, it's still functions very much like a rifle. If you want to use it for turkey hunting or something as a smooth board, you can do that, uh smooth for me. Straight rifles, straight rifling typically doesn't get shot out as readily as a a spiral group rifle. If you're shooting it. You can't take a spiral group rifle and you shot in it, you know, you're not gonna put buckshot in it or they had swan shot they called it, or you know, number six or something. But a a straight rifle you can shoot shot. You can any any starry shot, number eight, buckshot double all the way up to you know. So, yeah, that's so maybe the smooth bar was a little bit more versatile at that time. Yeah, that's a real estute comment, because yeah, they were. They were much more for a survival weapon. That's what you wanted, you know, because you can shoot shot round ball up to that very side the caliber. And by the way, um, a lot of these frontiersmen, they were riflemen. But when it came time for you know we're talking. You're talking about how bloody the Red War was in the West, and how bloody the the F and I War was. Frinch An Indian War was a lot of times when you got into woodland fighting, lie that they left their wifles back home. They got the smooth boars. At the Battle of Blue licks Um August seventeen, Boone's son was killed at his second one of the second sons, Yeah, the second Yeah, the firstborn son, James, was killed when he was sixteen by Indians in the the Powell's Valley area seventeen seventy three. That's that's man. We should get to that story later on. It's a heartbreaking story. Man tortured to death, fingernails all pulled out, killed and then when Boone went back to find his body, he goes back. Yeah, well it sure, he goes back to what happened. He goes back and they found the body. You know, initially they did find the body that there was they knew where it was. There was four or five others killed and they buried him. But Boone did go back later to rebury him and trying to identify his boy and the wolves that Dug had dug the bodies up right, and he recognized some wisps of hair right that were his son, his hair right, and he had brought a blanket cradled the body for a while, and then he heard some people, He heard Indians, some Indians coming, and slipped off into the night. And he said it was the darkest day of his life, the most melancholy day. Yeah, and I'm get getting chill. Buff's talking about that, right, And again, that kind of thing just seems unfathomable to us. I mean, I might add, not only are you dealing with the native intrusion, but you know, he's right in the middle of a number of imperial wars and they're being uh uh, they're allied with these imperial powers and they're being armed, and so yeah, it was just a tough time. Boon goes back and he buries his son, and comes a thunderstorm and he's out there and he hears a wolf's howling. It's the thunderstorm, and he just cradled his son's corpse, and uh, the Indians are creeping up on him. And he gets in a canoe and kind of paddles with his hands and kind of quietly gets on down the creek and and um, man, it's just to escape another another close call. I don't know any one hunter, any one front Tirasman in the history of the American Frontier that was captured more times by Daniel Boone, by captured by Indians, and more times than Daniel Boone. Yeah, I mean he was. He was getting routinely captured, and I think it yeah, you know, yeah, he was Boon was. He had a really interesting um attitude among Native people. And it goes back absolutely to his upbringing and uh and his relationship with his mother and his relationship with his grandfather. But can you go back to that shootout first, the guys that are gonna have the shooting tournament, tells his name? Sure, sure shot? No, he was, Yeah, that's search shot. Timothy Murphy was the guy that shot the the British officer, and you know, maybe it was just his time to go. I don't know how you look at that, but but yeah, the two the two groups that ran into each other. Yeah, that's exactly it was. It was it was Daniel Broadhead. I believe he was an American Red War officer. I know, I'm going to get all kind of people correcting me later on some of this stuff. But but he sees, uh, Samuel Brady's contingent of spies, they call him they were Scalts, but we call him scal They were spies, spies for the British. No, no, no, no, these are American guys. I mean, yeah, I mean these guys are dangerous. I mean, you know you've heard of Rogers Rangers. Yeah, these guys were like Rogers Rangers, but much more free wheeling. And they had a number of people that really had been dead as against Indians, and so yeah, they put small rum kegs out there. You know, it's about, you know, about the size of the conference wise with maybe a softball sixty or seventy yards, and they're and they're hidding at uh in some cases a hundred times out of a hundred and and Broadhead had his musketeers. They had a few riflemen come out there and throw down on it. Not on one of them hit it. Yeah, so I mean that, you know, that's not perfect, but I mean that does give you an idea. They took a a piece of paper, kind of a precious commodity, and that they and put that out at about forty or fifty yards and the same kind of thing. Everyone of Brady's men either hit it square. I think they all hit a square. I think one guy Nick did it. I think they were thirteen of them. They all hit a square. One guy Nick did a piece of paper about the size of we might say a silver dollar out there about five or sixty yards. And again they brought ever broadheads man and not note them hit it. So which was the crew of guys that were the spies that were out just like roaming around exact and revenge. Ah, that's uh, Samuel Brady's men they called Brady's Rangers. I mean they were they were rough characters. Matt my goodness, yeah, and uh like like Louis what's all? I mean, what's all one of these kind of guy is that In some ways it's um like the Greek sort of raised to the pantheon of heroes. In some ways maybe not. Maybe he's like the anti hero. His family was killed by Indians, he was captured himself as boyd and wounded, and I had part of his breastbone shut off. He's about twelve or thirteen years old, and whatsel grew his hair along it came down about to his calves. Really yeah, and uh he would tie it up in long braids, long queues, and he would shake him at the Indians. Leah, Yeah, they had that music then. And um and unlike Princess Leiah, he did have his ears pierce. Maybe she did too, but he had silk red tassels in his ears. And but he would talk. He would just tell him, he's like, come come collect these and and there would be four or five Indians and and Westll would take him on, just him. He would just charge right into him, four or five and he'd shoot and take out one. I know this is insensitive to a lot of people. I'm not condoning any of this time. You know, it's a different time for a different era. I don't know, you know, mentality wise, judgment wise, we can't relate to what these people thought, how they dealt with these issues two years ago. I mean, whether it's imperial forces in your world, native allied forces, whatever. And so he would take out one, well, of course they they run after him, right, and uh, he would spit a ball down the barrel. He really had mastered the art of reloading on the run. And uh probably had an enlarge touch hole he would pour. The touch hole is the part of the gun in the breach where the you know, when you have a flint lock and the lock clashes and it hits the frison, the flint hits the prison and the flame jets through the touch hole. So he probably had an a large touch hole. So you would lose the pan up until you you butt the gun on the ground. The butt well that once you've got it loaded, you just butt the ground. It's to self primes. You spit the ball down without all the powder that he poured in there would pour out and get into the and get into the pan. Yeah, and see he's loading straight from the horn, like from the John like in the John Wayne movies. I mean, nobody loaded straight from the horn unless you just had to. But poor bartender, Oh, that's an important I think to because everybody thinks that that you just free poured from the horn. So how did they measure it? Yeah? Okay, typically with the care intending of an American long rifle. Uh later becomes noticed that American long the care care intending. Okay, yeah, yeah, it's just basically how to deal with a long rival. And I would encourage listeners to go out and buy a flintlock. I got one. I get I tried to shoot some deer with it, but some would always go wrong every time I shot at I don't know anything about your flintlock. I didn't say that tryday but neither. But uh, anybody that's ever shot one can say the same thing. But yeah, get a good one. But yeah, I learned how to to operate that gun, you know, because the first thing you do, you just go buy a good flintlock, and then you'll go like, I gotta shoot it. And then you go like, well, how am I going to carry my powder? Well? How do you carry your powder? Listen? Man, we were idiots. We went to go to the Pennsylvania's flintlocks. He's now, my buddies do it a lot. I didn't, So like, I get one. How do you carry the powder carrying the powder horn? Okay? So you do? You did? Okay? Okay? That yeah, I mean days people should people should do that. That will put them in touch with their forebears. They'll put them in touch with our subjects. But no, no, that's not I'm lying to you. I poured it into h I had a powder horn, But I wanted to pouring it into those little like looks like a little old style film canister. Poured it pre measured. Yeah, some people used to keep seeds in those do A lot of deer had close calls on that trip. Man, they don't even realize. Well, anyway, back to the care and tending of an American calls Part two, the American long rifle or hair in tending. Yeah, I mean you you have a powder horn suspended on whatever side is most comfortably if your left hand or right handed. I have it on the right, you know, in the curl of the horn and all that. And yeah, you have a on you're shooting pouch scrap. You'll have a little piece of an antler, you know it's a holid out deer time that will be of a certain number of grains of powder. That's how they measured it. Yeah, and so you yeah, oh yeah, you you measured the powder. You you measured the powder. You pour that down the moment that you know how they would plug the horn with a piece of deer antler or like a wooden plug. Would that be the measure or the measure hangs No, no, no, no, you typically yeah, they did they use something they'd hand carved something. A fiddle peg was roll real popular fiddle peg is kind of like ready to go, just kind of whittle it down. But yeah, you you take the horn and you pour into a measure and you already know because these guys live by their guns. Okay. And if any any of your listeners can do the same thing, because they'll figure this out too. You know, you have say like a like I've got my rifle is sixty calibers. I shoot about sixty seventy grains of powder. Okay, So I have a little deer antler this holid out there, and I pour to the top and I'll dump that down the barrel. Then you take a whatever sides ball you're using. You know, typically you're going to be undersized by ten thousands, twelve thousands, fifteen thousands to me people that have shot these guns. You've got that all figured out. And you have a patch of linen usually and you have it um oil with bear fat bear bears like makes about the best loop or or whale. It's hard to get whale these days. Yeah, you just can't run down like you know, bass pro shop, I needs burn whale oil like work, I get that and so and then yeah, then you have it all, Dad, You got a private You still now use bear grease as a lubricant. Yeah, always where do you do? You get that at Sportsman's or from black bears? Get that from the elusive? Yeah, I have friends that hunt black bears and you asked them to if you know any really like any hardcore North Carolinias that live, like in the area that we're talking about, they do about four or five things really well. They hunt bears, They make moonshine, They produce a little North Carolinians and they play music and they make moonshine. Already I already said that that sounds likely to do it. Yeah you should, Yeah, you should go down there. Yeah, and they always have that kind of stuff and uh so yeah, it's just the best lubricant. So you have a grease patuln in your ball. Yeah, we'll be careful with that one. And uh yeah, yeah, it takes leads a shoot of flintlock. I got it, I got it. Oh yeah, okay, boom okay, and uh yeah, so yeah, but but you don't pour from the horn, and you know, if it was a clutch situation, yeah, but I mean you might have a spark down there in the breach, and if you're pouring from the directly from the horn, then you might have a two pound grenade right bite your head. Yeah, like you know, like John Wayne Ali Moan movies, that looks you know that you did it. Now, So you're saying like, if there's something smoldering in there, yeah, and you like that, and that powder falls down and ignites up the barrel and then ignites that handful of that Yeah, and I think that's maybe whatever happened like the guy that invented black powder, because we don't know who he was, but I I was wondered, how do you invent this? You know, the same dynasty of China. You know, you have some guy and he goes like, okay, I'm gonna take uh seventy five parts of potassium no I trade, which they got that under outhouses and they went into the soil and then then uh cent of willow ash and then tent percent of sulfur and then you you know, you start you get a mortar and pestle goal, Let's see what this does. Man. You know, like he's spread over seventeen provinces or something. And I know when Boone was when Boone would make his own powder, they would, uh, there was some part of it, like they like to take the willow ash and they wetted it with their own piss. Do you ever read that all the qualities of your own yurine were good? The way Boone did it and a lot of folks did it. I mean, you know, we call the substance saltpeter for reasons we won't maybe get into that. But they dug the spoil up under what we would refer to today as an outhouse in bat caves. Yeah, that's right. What's that called guano? And but they yeah, and then you would get the dirt, soil, whatever, and you would like take, um, take like a saw horse and inverted at the same basic idea, just full it with hey, Philip Hay and it's just pour the mixture of the earth, guando, you know whatever. They know. Typically you're digging under the old house back in Kentucky, and um, you mix it with water, you pour it through there, and then you take the liqueur that is distilled from that and you boil that a little bit an hour or so, and then let us sit and the as evaporage. You'll have these crystals that's potassium nitrate, saltpeter, and so you would take that and then he would take typically willow ash to use other kinds of ash and um and then sulfur would sometimes kind of get hard to get, but yeah, you would mix that together. Um, you grind the ingredients separately, but then you would mix it together. And then typically they would use a human urine because it had a higher oxygen content. It would flash quicker. They determined that. I don't know how they determine that, and so yeah, that was but it was arduous, it was complicated, and very few people knew how to do it. And if you how to do it on the frontier, then you were quite a commodity. It's like blacksmithing. Again, that goes over our head. Most of us aren't blacksmiths. But Boone was also a very good blacksmith, so was his brother Squire, and Squire was also a great silver smith and um, so yeah Boone but just a hunter and a trapper and had those talents. He had other talents as well, like just geared towards frontier living, not the least of which we were kind of getting into earlier his dealing with the American Indians. You know, how he how he managed to get out of some of these scrapes. How he learned his protocol diplomacy dealing with these folks. How did he learn that? Several ways? Uh, it goes back to his childhood. Um. First of all, Boone was a Quaker, as his family were. They his grandfather, George, came to America from England, made that transatlantic journey like a lot of folks did. And uh, he was a Quaker you know end as they called him, Society of Friends and lived in around present day Birdsboro, Pennsylvania. Donated a couple of acres to the Quakers there and both the little church building. I've been in that same church building a couple of times. The original pews, they are all still there that the Boone family sat, No, no I sat on. Everyone. Just catch that vibe if I could. And uh. And so Boone and his family were Quakers. Of course they are Pacifists, that the whole different kind of matter. But they had a number of Delaware converts, so you know, Indians were nothing unusually Boon. He worshiped with him in church. His grandfather also had a trading post, George Boone, and he was the Delaware hunters would come in and of course, you know they're bringing in lush, be repelleds otter pels, perfectly processed deer hyde, beautifully tanned, you know, brained hand. And Boone intuitively is picking up on this and he's there's the Delaware closely related culturally and linguistic lee as Algonquin speakers to the Shawnee. So the Shawnee would be coming in there, and you know he's learning bits and pieces of the language, you know, the Patois, but he's also learning, maybe more importantly, how do you deal with these people? And uh? And he would carry this information throughout his life. He would he would tell his sons, you know, when you greet an Indian, be friendly, be frank, and give them gifts, even if I mean literally, if you even if you can't afford it, you give them if it has to be the shirt off your back, you know, if you have some boheit. You know, t was a big deal part of the China trade, coming out of other parts as well, like India, Pakistan. So forth, give them some tea, uh, give them some beads, share something with them, compliment them, never lived, don't ever beat him in a shooting contest, you know, give them some sugar. And this kind of diplomacy always served him well and and it serves his son's well. And and Boond understood when he was in Kentucky that first hunt, that first long hunt, and you know, he's out there literally from about May to the December, and they lay in hundreds of deer skins and quite a few fur bearers, primarily beever, the Shawnee swooped down on him, Captain will Emery, who would later capture Boone five years later, the loyal Blue Licks, the Salt Boilers, and they take everything. And Boone understood, you know, we would look upon it as theft from the India perspective. They're taking what's rightfully. There's you know, Boon was there breaking all manner of law, you know. And Uh, but this kind of diplomacy would serve him well, it would serve his son's well, even his grandson, Alfred Gallatin Boone, Uh was a mountain man, full fledged. And he's out there in the famous Rendezvous of eighteen thirty two. He's out there with Bridger and all these guys, but they were just Indian treaties that some people just couldn't clinch. And so they would bring an Alpert Gallatin Boone and and just the name Boone to the Indians out west like where we are, would resonate with them because they understood that that that meant, you know, fair dealings, that uh he would be treated properly. And um, you know when we were talking earlier about Samuel Brady and those guys, and these are men of blood. You know Ken he's a scalp taker at scalf hunter and Simon Kent, Simon Ken, Yeah, Boone, that was never Boom. You know, Boone did not rebel in war, He didn't glory in war. He was certainly a warrior when he needed to be. But he understood not only maybe basic Indian language. I think actually he spoke Gonkland, Delaware, Shawnee probably pretty well. And he understood pipe ceremonies and so forth, but he understood just the basic diplomacy gift giving. You know, you give somebody a gift, we think, okay, anniversary, whatever, give a gift, um for the for for Native people, giving a gift, uh met burnishing that friendship It's like a chain and if you let the chain get rusty, that's not good. But you give a gift that kind of brings back to the glow, solidifies the relationship. Can you tell the story real quick of when when Boone went on his first long hunt to Kentucky He went with a couple of guys but wound up being alone for a year or close to it. And one of those guys, they never knew what happened to him, and you wound up they found a skeleton like years later inside a hollow tree, Like, what the hell? How did that work out? Well, it didn't work out for him too well, But you know what happened was Boone begins his first actual Kentucky long hunt and May of seventeen sixty nine, he's led to Kentucky by John Finley, who he had met in seventeen fifty five during General Edward Braddock's ill fated death March. Boone met Braddock. Boon was twenty one years old, Finley was about twelve thirteen years older. Boone witnessed that whole slaughter from from afar right at Braddock. Oh yeah, I mean that's yeah, I mean, that's that's a whole different kind of episode. I don't know if you want to segue into that much, but yeah, I mean that's Braddock. That was at the height of the French and that was before that was that's the first salvo of the French Indian War. Is Braddocks trying to build a road, and in some ways it's a miraculous near miraculous engineering feet. He builds a road from uh Maryland getting close to President Day Pittsburgh, you know, a hundred and ten miles. He's blasting routs. I mean, but yeah, they're they're trying to build a road to Port Decayne at the headwaters of the Ohio. You know, you have the Allegheny to the north, the Monongahela to the south, you have the Ohio River. There's the French for right there. And so yeah, Raddox men marching and Boon's part of that expedition. He's a wagon are He's part of the North Carolina militia and uh he sees the blood bath that ensues and Buon escapes. He cuts the traces on his horse and takes off, and he learned several things. One you know, you man deal of oars training, does not work in woodland situation too. He learns the arrogance of not using native scouts, don't you know, the arrogance of not reliant upon native intelligence like for recon and and military ops. Yeah, so that's where Boone meets Finley. Yeah, and he decided to go on a big old hunt trip. Yeah. So Fainly Fainly comes back, you know, years later, So let's let's do this and Boon. By this time, he's got several eight kids. Uh, he's already four or thirty five years old. They've adopted another four from his uh, one of his brothers who dies, and um, he needs a hunt Boon at a thirty four, he's already been professionally hunting since he's sixteen, and so he goes into You can have a question about that because you're talking about it's such a hard life. It's such a hard way to actually even make any money. There were there no other options, Like what had he not gone long hunting, he could have stayed back and just continue to be a blacksmith and farm and made a living in a farmer. Yeah, he was a very poor farmer. He didn't he didn't do well at it. And as far as making living on Blacksmith and yeah, maybe he could have done that, but why do you do what you do? It was a reason because there was a reason, just because like this is all that I have. It's not because i'm really uh, my personality dictates that I go on these adventures. I think if you look at his history here or that's a great question, if you look at his earliest history, we just he was drawn to the hunt. It's a different topic from when we're trying to talk about the first long Hunt. But if you look at at his life, even when he goes to Missouri, you know, in Sev's sixty five years old at a time when most people say, well, I'm going to kick back and boon fellas a toolip poplar about sixty ft long, they hollow it out into a giant dug out. He puts his wife and some of the children on that grandkids and send done down the Ohio. Imagine doing that nowadays. And then he and his uh it's one of his sons, Nathan and some others uh, they walked to Missouri and he begins, he starts life all over and he basically is why you know Missouri uh is Kentucky of old. You know, it's got lots of game, lots of land. The Indians are still wild and Boone's gets he gets captured now by os Age and other groups. But in the in the first long hunt into Kentucky. Yeah, the A Boon is there with his brother in law, John Stewart, that's who you're talking about, the guy in the log, and uh, Boone's brother squire. We'll join him in about five or six months. He comes from North Carolina. He's got to get the corn hung and you've got to get the hog slaughtered and so forth. But then he joined him and they have three neighbors that are helping them. But yeah, the the Indians swooped down and Calp's Shoulder captured these men and confiscate everything. Um. And then later Buddha's honey with Stewart, and Stewart doesn't come back, you know, doesn't come back to camp at No, he just doesn't come back to camp. And uh and so Boon there had been some flooding, lots lots of water and said, well, you know it's high water, you can't get back to camp, and so um several days elapse, Boon goes out looks for him. He finds a tree that carved with Stewart's name and initials, and he says, well, okay, he's been here, but it's kind of cryptic. He can't really figure out what's happened, and he never what happened. And so when this happens, the camp tenders they said, I've had enough and they go and uh Fiddley leaves. They go like between getting captured by by Indians and losing everything, and then Stewart disappeared. Um, and so it is five years later, like you say, when they're blazing the trail to the Wilderness Road, that someone one of the axe men hack into a large hall of sycamore and they find a skeleton. What are the odds man? Yeah, well again it's it's it's a yeah, it's an interesting time. It's a dark, it's incredibly violent. It's incredibly beautiful in its own way. I mean, you know, the game is like the Serengetti. It's just it's got that romantic side to it, but it's just incredibly violent. And you hack into a tree and you find a skeleton. They called Boon because he was the leader of the Axe team. Without that hole. It was just made by this axe. Where was the next closest hole in this tree for the body to get there? They feel that he crawled in there wounded yea, because he had broken bones. Yeah, so there was like a hole at the base of the tree. These are immense trees. You can read about the trees in that day. Uh. And this is what was so appealing about Kentucky. Kentucky was like this big park land. I mean, don't forget the geographic zone of Kentucky today that was in Kentucky. Kentucky then would be like just draw a triangle like Kentucky Louisville eastward over to like Lexington, Frankfort, that area, and then down to about present day Barria. That's like the blue grass that was Kentucky. And he had giant deciduous trees, tulip poppers. I mean, you would have five or six men that would camp in a tree over a season. They would camp in the tree some in some cases they can I mean in the hollow tree. In some cases you could even get the horse and there. Yeah, there's a huge and and because of the native practices of you know, now we're learning how valid this is. But they have practices that they had gone on for hundreds of years of burning u the grasses, you know, seasonally torturing them to get rid of what we would say a secondary growth and get rid of pest. And you can see for a long ways and like alpor enemies, I mean, there's a lot of reasons why they would torch um the prairie of the savannah periodically. What it did is it is it cleared out the secondary growth and then you had these large deciduous trees that would grow and grow and grow. And so when they would describe Kentucky, you can read John Pilson's book on Kentucky that came out in seventeen for the Discovery Settlement in president State of Kentucky by John Filson, and he described Kentucky like a vast meadow land. And the word Kentucky. Uh. They think there's different interpretations. You know, you have people that think that your aquoi and it means dark and bloody ground. But the Algonquin translation is um the great meadow land. And so you had these immense hollow trees, the soil was loose. Again, it means nothing for us to say you could get there on the first day and plow. You know, we don't think like that. I think, do I have my cell phone charged up? But yeah, you could get there the first day and you could actually plow because of the the openness of the land, the soil fertility, the loosest of the soil. So they find his body in one of these immense trees. But yeah, used like that. The chances of that, Oh, if I could have that body in it, I'd put that right in my living room. Man, the trigger of the body that they want to solve. I want to slve that chunk and have it sitting in my living room, right in the center of the living room. There was John Stewart and and and Boone was very close to broken up bones right, it was one. It was the the upper left arm. It was like between so like the shoulder of the Delatoy to about the elbow there was a broken bone and it was just alert and from lead and so as obviously it was a broken Uh. He got shot. He got shot and Boone their rise. It was probably getting cold or he was being chased or something, and he crawled inside the tree and uh and died there, very sad, lonesome forsaken death. Oh it's haunting man. And the fact they found it, well, and you can give him the fact that Boone was there when they found it. Yeah, and how did he identify him? How would he how would he know this is Jon Stewart right, I don't know. Yeah, he had his powder horn and had his name carved in it. Yeah, and Boone said, you know there he thought that he could kind of look see some look on the skull and maybe resemblances. I don't know how valid that is, but that that that is one account. But you know the powder horn had his name on it, and it was just you said earlier that he had carved um the guy that was dead, that he had carved his name in a in a tree. Was that a common practice? Yeah? These guys are just kind of like I was here, kind of marking. Yeah. I mean I think even now, you know, if people want to leave there there, they're John Doe. And it was common with with the American Indians as well. Uh, trees that were along well established buffalo paths. The Buffalo paths were like the great interstate system. You know, we had this idea that they just walked out into the wildernessn't like North and they think somehow knew that. Well, now they didn't know that. I mean, they could, you know, infer it figure things out. They were very good at what they did. But the Buffalo trails, you know, the Buffalo east of the Mississippi had been there for several hundred years, and so they had their vast avenues. Some were lead traces, lead met they went someplace. Some just kind of petered out, like you know, you get the wizard that you walk down a path, sometimes it goes somewhere a lot of times it doesn't. But along those trails there would be trees, and they would oftentimes bark who was there. Indians oftentime would leave cryptic uh and animalistic markings of their own devising. Uh. When Boon made camps in Kentucky his first hunt, Boon would made decoy camps because he knew how the Indians made their camps, and so he would make a camp that looks like an Indian camp, like a shawn E camp. But he would camp and cane brakes, and they would come by and lee marks like come visit us, man, how's it going, you know? And uh, yeah, uh you really? You kind of mentioned this that you get this idea of some guy going through the woods a little backpack. But these guys when they struck out, yeah, that had a big footprint. Yeah, pack horsemen. The dogs. Can you talking about the dogs a little bit? Yeah? I mean they had real distinctive dogre, some of which are we kind of had their descendants today, like like what we would call it a plothound, and the good cat dogs, you know count I mean panther you know, and uh like black and tans. Probably the most common LEAs seen dog would have been the mountain curve, like a yellow mountain curve or brindle mountain curve. You know, good catchdogs, good hold dogs. And a lot of people had bulldogs like the American bulldogs. Uh. Dr Thomas Walker who came to Kentucky. You know, Boom was not there's a lot of mythology about him. He wasn't the first guy into Kentucky. You know, long hunters in command of bring civilization. That's the last thing they wanted, you know, they weren't trying to make the land free for God and country, hearth and home again, that's be like the last thing they want there. They didn't identify as Americans that none of that was you know they were these are just guys that are that are making a living. But you know that the first guy that really comes in and leaves a wonderful journal as Dr Thomas Walker in seventeen fifty and Walker had developed his own kind of a foxhound beagle looking how and we call them that a Walker hounds. You know, I'm sure you've heard of those, and that's yeah, that's another type that they had. And the spaniels. Spaniels were popular. I thought a Bond had a spaniel. He wasn't a long hunter, but that time period close and how and how did they use them? Like they had them around obviously, but like in the notes it says it wasn't just for hunting. Yeah, well, I mean think of yourself and kind of an aboriginal fashion. You know they're gonna keep you warm. Yeah, get him in there, like if you're in that hollalog, that hollow tree, you know they're gonna keep you warm. You know, the term three Dog night, not the band, but you know that's the whole idea was. Yeah, that's how cold it was. And um, you know definitely that they can kind of be a liability. They bark, you know, and you know they give your give you away. But they're they far more than um pay for themselves advantage wise, because they can warn you, you know. You know, whenever they worked both ways. Whenever the Indians were sneaking up on the white camps, they had to be aware of the white hunter dog. Whenever the white hunters were steaking up on the Indian camps, they had to be aware of the Indian dogs. So yeah, I mean, they can they keep your company. You know, Boot loved his dogs. Just coupal accounts of Boon singing to his dogs. Yeah, in one like overheard by somebody. Yeah, that's a great that's a great story. Can I tell that one? Yeah? Sure. We were talking about these long Hunter guys that came out, you know, and the most famous brigades were led by James Knox, who did real well the Docks later and also well Long Hunty. He did well enough Long Honey, but he became a military figure, and um, you know, Boom was still out there scraping by. Uh sometimes Boon did far better surveying, but that had a kind of a shelf life too. Knox Docks did well, and he would bring in his brigades. And one of the guys that came in with an Ox is this Germantic guy, Casper Mansker. How's that grab you? Casper Mansker, Casper Mansker, and they would come in. Sometimes they go through the Cumberland Gap oot is what it was called. It was later you know Thomas Walker. We mentioned him a Walker name at the Cumberland Gap for the Duke of Cumberland, you know, the slaughterer of the of the Highlanders at the Battle of Colodin. But um, sometimes they would go in through Cumberland Gap. But sometimes they would come you know, from eastern Tennessee, western North Carolina just cut straight to French liqu French Lick today is known as what no no Idea Music City USA, Nashville, n Yeah, I mean that was the band that you talked about a teeming area for you know, that was like an area massive licks off the Cumberland River, lots of buffalo, lots of all of that, and you know, like right there where the football you know, where the stadium is for the Titans and everything. I mean that was like major hunting area. But yeah, Mansker was with the Knox and they hunt French lick Uh and they go straight up to kentuck Uh, up towards the Green River and they're in there and they they hear the sound. It's kind of like part singing, part whistling and laughter. And they're going, what is that? That's not like any species were familiar with. I'm sure they said that two species is a big word in the long hunter vocabulary. And uh until they put the guns on full cock and they're sneaking through the cane brake and the sumac and they're like, and they're hearing the sound is getting louder and louder. And they peeked through the sumac and it's Colonel Daniel Boone. He's laying on a deer skin right in the middle of in Indian country, just singing too high Heaven. He's just happy to be there. Man, don't you love it? That's a great story. And then there are accounts of him singing to his dogs, you know, and speaking of Mask or those guys by the way with um Knox. You know they kill so many bear again we yeah, well, I mean they yeah, they'd hunt them down, but but you know, whether they use dogs or yeah, but they had dogs in those parties. But they killed a lot of bear. You know, you you could process the meat, but mainly they wanted the bear for what they could render them into. Boon gotten that business selling barrels of bear fat. Yeah, you can get about forty pounds per bear. And they got they killed so many bear and they had so much rendered fat that they just got a small bat toe. And they when they that, they filled up the bat toe with bear fat and they took it down, uh, down in Mississippi, and they you know, they get down their path Memphis and they get on down their past. Yeah, and nashes when they sold their bad to a full of bear fat down there. And Masker bought a wedding dress for his bride to be off bear fat. I remember when his father in law stood it like him. I remember reading one time that Boone process Boon shot uh thirteen black bears in a day one time hunt with his dogs. Wow, wow, no kidding. Yeah, Well, your Sandy Creek, you would appreciate this because I know you had a some some grizzly run in. He had a grizzly run in in Missouri when he was about seventy two. Um, there was he just kind of had that moment that I've ever had. But you guys could probably be tell us about what you just since there's something there and you start hearing the breath and uh, he looked and there was a grizzly ride on him. He was checking his bear traps out there on the excume. He's trying to check in his beaver traps or the effort of Missouri. And he just jumped into a tilt popular pete role and just shoveled off there into the Missouri and h and he said later he thought he was getting little too old for this. I want to get into the two things that Boon people talk about now, the two mysteries. I think I know what's coming. Okay, I want to end on the unknown. And yeah, and I don't know. You've played in both of these fields. You've written about both these issues. The first one is did Daniel Boone make it to the Rocky Mountains? Yeah, that's the It's kind of like Grace. It works in the Bible. I can kind of argue both ways. But there's two accounts of Boone that have him fairly close to the Yellowstone. Okay and um, they were written by both of these written by children of those two have claimed to have gone with Boone, and uh, they're written about seventy or eighty years after the account and and one of the cases especially, the details are really great. I mean they're really tribal specific, like the like the who's on the who was on the trip, and that they had mcin all boats and they were attacked by snake Indians and kind of how that went down, and um, yeah, it might have happened. I tend two remain neutral on that because what happened since those two accounts that were written a long time after the alleged event, was that you've had other stories about people that actually did go up that contemporaneous with Boon, like this hunter friend of Boone, who name was Michael Stoner. His son George Stoner wrote about that, and George Stoner says in his father's account, he said, Daniel Boone did not go on this expedition. I've got the exact quote, in fact, I published it. But other writers have taken part of Stoner's account and left out that part that Daniel Boone did not go, and they incorporated it with these other accounts that have Boon there and have created, for lack of a better term, hybrid accounts, and then those get republished and republished by consensus historians and people like, well there you go. And so I remained neutral on that. You know, I want him, I want that moment, you know, I want that image of Boons in the Yellowstone to make it to the Second West. Yeah, I mean, you know, don't you. Yeah, I mean I'm rooting for him. Yeah, I mean it's like, you know where Boone lived in Missouri, this little tiny Traffords village. It's kind of a my opinion, kind of like them missing link in the Western Fur Trade los Errette and it's um Lewis and Clark go through there on both legs with their journey eighteen o three eighteen o five, right of that time period, and zebuelon Pike is there, you know, as Boone there too. Well see there's no mention of Boone. But that's kind of like my point about this Rocky Mountain thing. You know, you want that, you want that to happen. He would have been Robin elbows at those yeah, I mean, you know, like, who's the big artist back in that time period, Alfred Jacob Miller, you know, you want that that oil image of Boone and Lewis and Clark and you know, like like symbolic who you're passing the Yeah, fasten the torch, you know, and you want that image. I do you know, Carl Bobber, the artists or somebody painting Boone out there and uh the Yellowstone, you know. But but the dates are inconsistent. Uh, these hybrid accounts have proliferated and have a period in you know, books that are out there, and you know, they may have other evidence that I don't have. I'm not gonna discount that, but I do look at a lot of footnotes and I see a lot of the accounts out there about Boone being in the Rockies. And if you'll start examining footnotes, you'll see that a lot of these stories have nothing to do with Boone. It's the same way with the other mystery that I think that you're going to bring up. Yeah, here's the next mystery. Okay, the legend has this a fraternity issue? Legend has it? No, no, no, no, I don't know. That's a great mystery. But we're gonn get a different miss as not even legend has it when the facts are this Boon dies in Missouri. Oh, that one gets buried. Okay, Later, even though he swore off Kentucky, said he never go back to Kentucky. Later they come and dig them up and haul um over and rebury him in Kentucky and make like a little mausoleum for him there in Kentucky, or like a what do you call it? What's word? I'm looking for him? Yeah, yeah, the little vault. Yeah. But then later some people come out and say, I tricked you. That wasn't Boone. He's still in Missouri. Yeah. I just wrote a book that addresses every bit of that. I don't know if I'm allowed to talk about my books. Yeah. Well that's the last thing you're gonna do. After you answer this question. You can tell people what books you wrote. If you want to go visit Boone's grave, Yeah, do you head to Missouri or do you head to Kentucky. I had the Kentucky because what was left of Daniel Boone and what was left of his wife, Rebecca, and people tend to leave her out. And by the way, we really ought to talk about women on the frontier. Sometime uh was exhumed and taken to Kentucky. Daniel Boon died in Rebecca died seven years before. Just imagine this. You go out on that little Noel out there and you said, I want to be buried right there. I don't want to be back into Kentucky because they treated me really bad on land deals. And you know Boot always said, give him the choice between going back to Kentucky and laying his head on a chopping block. He'd have no hesitation to lay his head on the shopping block. Really, yeah, he didn't want to go back to Kentucky. You know you had asked earlier about you know, why did didn't Boot like Kentucky? Bood love Kentucky. He didn't love what had happened to it. He didn't love what had happened to him there. But yeah, his remains were exhumed, and if you read the accounts very carefully, it's very clear that they came and they dug up what they could find. You know, we're not talking about the greatest embalming methods in twenty you know. And you know they get and they put what's left of the Boone's in small pine box is that are like wide enough for a pelvis and long enough for long bones, fevers and stuff, and kind of high enough for skulls. And they're in small little boxes and they take these back to Kentucky and they inter them in September eight Nobody when Moon was buried, and for forty years, maybe fifty between forty five years after he was buried, nobody ever said anything about he may be in the wrong grave, or they might have got the wrong bones or something like that. None of that ever happened. It happens. You know, by about eight nine, Missourians, Uh, they want the boone's back. They realized kind of like what they've done. And I just had to tell you the Missourians really got um kind of craft on by the Kentuckians. You know, they could you know, the Kentucky has wanted to build a really and they did. They wanted a fancy cemetery with the state capital, and so they organized a corporation, the Frankfort Cemetery Company into and they they wanted a garden cemetery. Garden cemeteries were really big in Europe. They were big in America, like in Mount Auburn in Boston. You know, but we got to have famous people, Well who do we get you know, you had to have a famous person to make Yeah, well, people would come in and they would stroll around, and there was an idea that it's kind of like spiritualism, which I know you've heard of. They think that you're you're not only communing with each other, but you're communing with the dead. And and this is a garden cemetery um had they would actually import in trees and shrubs and landscaping. Um. It was a whole novel kind of thing. You know that the cemeteries that they had then, like in Frankfort, you know you had a future church cemeteries with the leaning crosses and some mold farm cemeteries or dogs were digging up bones and dragging them around. And so they really wanted a suitable cemetery for Frankfort. And so to make this go you had to have somebody famous. And so who but you know, the the first family of pioneering in Kentucky, Daniel and Rebecca Boon. And so, yeah, the way that the needle is threaded a lot of times these days people will say I've had a number of Missourians who, at least up to this time of this recording, has accepted me as a friend and as a brother. There's still tension between Missouri and Kentucky about this politically and um. But they'll say, well, yeah, the Kentuckians came about what bones they could get, but we have his viscera, we have his heart, we have his skin. And they start really like kind of threading that kind of needle, like he's mainly here in the soil, but they have some bones. So you know your original question, where should we go to visit them? Well, by that interpretation, you go bote to the little cimitar ary that David Bryan Cemetery in present day Morrisesville, Missouri, and then you go to frankfurt Um. But I don't think we make those exceptions about other people. I can you know, if you bring it back war veterans like from I don't know where, you you know, Vietnam or IWA, GiMA or something, they don't go like, well, you know, we have a little bit I mean more about Arlington, but the bulk of mem still over and you incorporated into the minerals of the soil. Yeah, I mean that's so, but I understand that, and uh, you know, both places have their validity and Uh, you know, it really is a shame. But you know, Frankfort, Kentucky, if we're at me, like, where would I go and say this is what was left to the man, This is where I would go. Is there anything that we left out that you wish we'd have talked about today about old dB? Yeah? I think I think Boone fundamentally was a very good man. I think at a time when America could use heroes that that Boon in his own way kind of helps filled that niche. He certainly had his flaws, and we really have trouble relating to this time period. I mean that there's only very few times in Boone's lifetime, very few years where he's not living in an era of a named war. I mean he's born in seventeen thirty four. You know, by seventeen forty four you have King George's War, which is in uh New York. It's an Arcadia, it's spilling into the Caribbean, but that will help precipitate the French and Indian War, and he lives through that. And then you have this really very brief bloody epoch, uh, Lord Dunbore's War of just death up and down the Frontier. Boon lives through that. You have the American Revolution. Uh, then you have the War of eighteen twelve, and and Boons seventy two years old, and he's still participating locally in Missouri in the War of eighteen twelve. He's helping guard for its and man palisades and so forth. It's just this, it's just a different time. It's just a different era, and we can't go back and judge people by those kinds of standards. I mean, they're not hunting um two uh, some kind of a recreational thing. I mean it was extraordinarily hard and frankly put. You know, the frontier wasn't tamed literally until the women came out there. You know, it's the women that basically civilized the men. I mean the women did everything that the men did. Like Rebecca Boon. I mean she shoots the flintlock, she's skinned the deer, she managed the palisades, she molds bullets. She's willingly takes her pewter, which is precious items they didn't have very much, and takes the pewter and molds that down and use that for bullets. Um. The women would go out in teams while the men are gone long hunting or while the men are off skirmishing, the women go out in teams and plow. You know, one group would plow wow. Another group would out be out there with their guns and there must gets, and they're sometimes pitchforks and axes, whatever they had, and they would guard the women that were plowing, and after an hour or so they would switch. And so it's when the women get out there. You know. I really am a firm believer without being too cliche, that behind successful men there are important, powerful women. And this is certainly the case of Daniel Boone. Um. You know, he was married to Rebecca for fifty six years. She bears ten children and one dies soon after birth. They adopt four more from Boone's brother Israel. Then they adopt six more from Rebecca's sister who dies. You know, but they're really typical of the American pioneer. You know. The American long hunter is the first real American fist in the wilderness. John Stewart is the first American blood, true American blood that's slained in the first salvos of the American Revolution before it really happens. Uh, these guys with the driving force that helped found this country. And you know Boone was never a war monger. You know, you had those kind of people just like you had um and in the ancient world, whether you're talking about Achilles or Napoleon or Patent or so forth, that's not Boone. Um. You know, he didn't brandish his patriotism. But they founded this country. And um enough camp he said, they were the first and my apologies to Tom Broke, all the first great generation and they should be be given their due. He's been on the show. Indeed, we were talking earlier about Samuel Brady and Lou Whistle and these guys that turned into rabbit Indian haters. Boone had every reason to be that, yet he was not. That He had his firstborn son, James is killed by Indians, second born son Israel, killed by Indians, brother in law John Stewart, killed by Indians, brother ned Edward. They called it killed by Indie ends and yet Boone never reverted to that level of savagery. Part of this is his upbringing. He was raised a Quaker. He really saw value in other cultures and he learned from Indians. His learning from Indian tail to hunt that only made him successful as as a hunter, but also just reveals a mindset of his true humanity. And this is a pattern that he'll have throughout his life. And in many ways that you know, we were flawed characters. We all have, I do tremendous feet of clay. But but there's a lot about Boon that is very, very admirable. He never resourced to like the racial the racial hating. You had men in his day that literally would drag Indian corpses up to the fort, like Hugh mc garry would do this and chop them up and feed them to the dogs because they were so embittered because of death in their own family. And this the idea that somehow this gives them a personal revenge. And Boone saw this. You know, how would I react to seeing that? I don't know? And how do you living that and not revert to some level of savagery like that yourself. This is what's so interesting about Boone. You know, you had men that and this is one reason why people feared the forest. I mean the term savage. We would oftentimes just apply this to Indians, and they didn't just apply to Indians. You know, the beast were savage. The forests were savage, the people within the forest were savage. They feared that because it was seen as like this dark, malevolent forest that you would revert to. Boone never does. Now he stays this kind of figure of great humanity. And even today, you know, why are we talking about him two one years after his death? I think for these kind of reasons. His resonance is still there. And then you have the just the notion of going over the next hill and seeing what's over there, and that it really is. You know that that heart that was beating under that buckskin coat, that's the heart of every American. That's something deep and precious on our own. Psyche, I think, Yeah, you got a new book come out recently. We're gonna plux books before we end here. Okay, I'll tell you my favorite book. You tell me you're tell me your new book. My new book is called Finding Daniel Boone, His Last Days in Missouri and the Strange Fate of his remains. And it covers every shred of where Boone is, you know, the history of this entire episode, all the different stories and legend. It has the only forensic evidence that was ever done on the on the Boone's Skull Cast, but it's it also incorporates a lot of information about Boone's last days in Missouri, like the area that he lived in and uh La Cherette, Missouri. It talks a lot about his hunting and trapping. His last was kind of adventures, and it's done in a kind of a narrative combination of first person and third person, kind of like Tony Horwitz. I don't know if you like, you know, Ian Frasier, those kind of guys. I love their writing. And um yeah, that one just came out. That's available from the History Press and I'm looking at it on Amazon right now. I brought your coffee. Oh sweet, I need to hit order. So I'll tell you how I found you, how I became a fan of your books. Your book The Long Hunt, Death of the Buffalo East of the Mississippi, which is a good ass book. Then my personal favorite, which I read after that, was just The Hunters of Kentucky and it tells the stories, methodologies, everything of the Long Hunters. Yeah, yeah, The Hunters that Kentucky a narrative history of America's first Far West. Great book. Thank you, Yeah, you put it on a like top ten list in TWI or something that one of my friends sent me. The link probably sold the Piss album too, didn't we like hotcakes? Yeah? Five cents of stacks. I'm looking at it right now, paperback. Well, I would encourage folks to us. If they don't mind to support my work, I will say, um, you know my books are available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble, from local indies and so forth. I try to support them. The new book out on on Boone, on Finding Daniel Boone. That's the only real glimpse of Boone's um Missouri years. I would like to do a much larger work. It actually wasn't much larger work, but I had to scale it way back. If you want to dig in though on some of the subject we've covered most extensively here, Uh The Hunters of Kentucky narrative history of America's first far As the West, phenomenal book. Thank you, Yeah, I got it. I got a phone call one day. It was March sixth this year, and uh it was from Russia Western Writers of America. And I didn't I let it record because I didn't know what it was. But I did it. Three part trilogy on Daniel Boone's This Whole Rocky Mountain Story and for Muzzleloader Magazine. I write for Muzzleloader Magazine magazine for a black Powder Affecianados and um Unknown to Be. This three part article from Muzzleloader had been submitted to Western Writers of America and it actually won UM Best Short Nonfiction. So I went out to Colorado and yeah, I got a relationship. Man, I mean, I got ah, it's pretty cool. Yeah, and so um yeah, so that's great your work was your work was honored. Yeah. I thought it was a prank phone call at first, because I have a lot of friends that would and stuff like that. I had that half a one time I was in college. So I call him, said, yeah, Glenn Campbell wants you to play with him, And I said really. I started jumping up and down, and I think it was a girl from the door of the next over. I just played with Glenn Campbell on a golf course and so I thought he was calling me back. I never got the call. That's great to have. Uh, that's great that you're work was recognized. I'm a big fan of the books. I love the books. Oh, people go out and get some check them. Out. Yeah, And before we wrap up, as this episode airs, Clay Nucombe is all it's in the middle of a multi part series on Bargrease about Daniel Bood. So if you're if you're interested, go read Ted's books and listen to bar Grease. Thank you for having me. It's been a real honor and I really really do appreciate it. And I'll point out the folks real quick. Did uh Clay Newcomb Beargrease podcast is doing right now. He's doing a couple of pieces on Boone, focusing on the Cumberland Gap and what else is he focusing on? Phil Oh, he's he's diving into everything. I think it's gonna be a three episode series, but he's he's also tackling kind of um Like Ted brought up how we needed heroes at that time, He's diving into kind of Boone's effect on pop culture and how we see ourselves as Americans and kind of a societal impact and stuff like that. Fascinating character man. All right, Ted Franklin Blue, check out his books. Thank you much, appreciate it, appreciate you coming on. Thank you very much. I mean, you know, for for a Kentucky boy by way of Florida. He is. It's a big deal, and and I really sure enough, I really appreciate it. I wish you're corporate, if he didn't have short writ up. But you can't have everything. S
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