00:00:04 Speaker 1: Smell us. 00:00:05 Speaker 2: Welcome to Meet Eater Trivia Podcast. 00:00:25 Speaker 3: Welcome everybody to Meet Eater Radio Live. Welcome to Meet Eater Radio Live. I'm your host. 00:00:34 Speaker 2: Today, Clay Newcombe, straight out of Arkansas, and I'm pretty sure this will this will rank up there with the top Meet Eat Radio lives maybe of all time because of my co hosts, Brent Reeves and Tony Peterson. 00:00:51 Speaker 3: Great to see you boys. 00:00:54 Speaker 4: Brent, It's great to be here. 00:00:55 Speaker 3: Are you happy to be here? Why are you here? Why am I here? 00:00:58 Speaker 4: Because our boss told us to come here. Right. 00:01:01 Speaker 2: So we're in Bozeman this week, and Tony's and Bozeman. We're we're like that, we're a little bit of the of the what do you call it? When you know, we're like the extensions of media that live out in the real world out there. 00:01:13 Speaker 4: Yeah, we live in Fort Arkansas. 00:01:16 Speaker 5: You live in We are definitely a touch point to real people where we live and what we do. 00:01:21 Speaker 3: Tell us, where do you live, Tony? 00:01:22 Speaker 5: I live in just central Minnesota, Central Minnesota, far cry from Bozeman. 00:01:27 Speaker 2: Did you know that bears in Minnesota have the largest in the expanding ranges between the eastern deciduous forests and the and the and the Great Plains. Minnesota black bears have the largest documented home ranges of any bears in North America. 00:01:43 Speaker 4: Black bears, I. 00:01:44 Speaker 2: Don't know that, but I believe that there's some there's some boers that have four hundred square mile home ranges. 00:01:49 Speaker 4: Holy cow. 00:01:50 Speaker 5: Yeah, I'll tell you what I live. I live in the suburbs just north of the cities. When everybody started getting ring cameras and all these next door Facebook things pages and stuff like that, the amount of awareness of black bear's just general population stuff went through the roof crazy. 00:02:07 Speaker 4: They're everywhere crazy. 00:02:09 Speaker 2: Well, I'm going to give you a chance in just a second to introduce yourself with Brent. But on today's show, we are in Montana and we're gonna interview a Tennessee wildlife biologist who's been diagnosed with Alpha gal which is a major deal, really interesting tick boar and illness. And we're gonna take you way back to a throwback Thursday, one of the Meat Eater Live favorites. We've got some great photos from Tony, Brent and I that have never been shown before, never will be shown again. We'll be deleted off the Internet after this. These are these kind of photos, folks, We're gonna show those. Then we're going to go back to talk with the director of the Public Timber Project, Each Stewart, And finally we're going to wrap up with a multiary trail camera contest, velvet contest, and. 00:03:00 Speaker 4: Also we'll be talking to Ronnie Cohen, who is. 00:03:03 Speaker 3: Yeah Tennessee Wildlife Biologists. 00:03:05 Speaker 4: Oh is that you? You did that? Yeah? 00:03:06 Speaker 3: I said that like about ten seconds. 00:03:08 Speaker 4: Oh that's an echo. I wasn't listening. 00:03:11 Speaker 2: Yeah, so, uh so that's gonna be great. And then we're gonna go back and get some listener questions. So we really appreciate everybody signing on and we're going to uh, we're gonna, we're gonna we're gonna talk to everybody online. It's really cool to have everybody there. So Brent Reeves, sir man, what have you been doing? What's what are you excited about? 00:03:31 Speaker 4: I'm excited. 00:03:32 Speaker 6: I'm getting ready for a big hunt in Northern Canada and Manitoba in September. Just finished the project just about a month ago in Kansas on some decoy decoy dog stuff with coats. Now getting ready to go on this this moose hunt. Absolute dream hunt for me archery moose hunt, but I'm may I may take a have a rifle and backup. We get to the ninth ending and we ain't got any meat in the freezer because I am counting on. 00:04:03 Speaker 4: I had a piece of moose steak that you cooked from one of the ones that you killed, and it's fabulous. So the ultimate goal is to fill the freezer. Second goal would be to do it with. 00:04:15 Speaker 2: Archery, Tony, I'll tell you what I told Brent, and don't I really don't want to influence him in any unnatural way. But I've decided on the big, big hunts in wild country that I've never been in that are kind of like these once in a lifetime, once in three decade type trips to take a bow, which a bow is what I've gravitated towards since I was a kid. That's what I typically want to do is bow hunt, and I have taken a bow on some of those trips, and I find that rather enjoying this wild country that I'm in for ten days of my life, I'm thinking about the limiting factor of that hunt, which is trying to get within forty yards of that animal and kill it with a boat rather than enjoined being there. So the I get, the more I'm kind of like less interested in the weapon on a hunt like that. Now, if I'm hunting somewhere else, I might be like I'm taking a bow. Do you understand what I'm saying? 00:05:10 Speaker 4: I absolutely understand what you're saying. 00:05:12 Speaker 3: What do you think? 00:05:13 Speaker 5: It's just different strokes man, Like I wouldn't people ask me about moose hunting all the time. I wouldn't moose hunt with anything other than a bow, just like for me personally, that's what I'd want to do. But I get I absolutely get what you would do. Or you have that backup rifle with you. And to your point, Clay, I find myself even though like I just I just love bow hunting more than anything. But I find myself more and more where I'm like, I just want to be someplace really special, Like I don't care about going here because I can kill a big one here or whatever. It's like I want to be in those places before I get too old. And so you know, the weapon choice for me is like it's just kind of setting stone. 00:05:52 Speaker 4: I don't know why. 00:05:53 Speaker 5: I'm just that's just the way I am. But the important thing. It's the same thing as you're talking about, Like, I want that experience. I want to be in those places. Yeah, yep, it's. 00:06:02 Speaker 4: A big part of it. I'm just looking forward to. 00:06:04 Speaker 6: I'm going with some good folks, Craig McCarthy North Mountain Adventures and there. I mean those folks. I killed a bear with them last year, a big old chocolate bear. And they're just good folks. They actually came down went coon hunting with us, whole family. Just good folks, good folks. Where you went with me? What's up where you. 00:06:23 Speaker 4: Went with me? Down that? They came right right right doctor Camp. Yeah m hm. 00:06:28 Speaker 2: So that's the hunt you're excited about, Tony, what's the what's the hunt this fall. 00:06:32 Speaker 4: You're excited about. 00:06:34 Speaker 5: Honestly, this is going to be a little crazy, but I picked up permission to bear hunt in Minnesota in this on this property. It's only an hour from my house, so the lightest lift to get there that I've ever had for a bear hunt, you know, for a do it yourself deal. And I'm not going to hunt them, but my daughters. You know, one of my daughters shot one in Wisconsin last year. One of them hunted Wisconsin didn't get one, and so this is a no quota zone. We won't have big bears, but we should have some to work with. And I'm like, weirdly excited about that because both of my daughters are just geeked up to hunt bears, probably because they know I'm gonna pull them out of school the first week of school or first two. You know they're gonna get some vacation time early for this. But that one has kind of caught me off guard because bears haven't always been my thing, but when my daughters want to hunt them in it's fun. 00:07:18 Speaker 3: Yeah, that's cool. You always say that. 00:07:20 Speaker 2: It always surprises me because you're known as the whitetail guy, so I always think you're gonna be like, oh this tag that I got here there, And like almost every year I talk to you, you tell me something about a bear and I'm like, I mean, I want to hear some comments. Do you think Tony's feeding me what I want to hear? Is he feeding Klay Nukem wan Clay Nukem wants to hear or is he being honest with the world. I want to hear the comments there. How authentic that was? I think he's telling the truth. 00:07:48 Speaker 5: Well, I mean, when you do what we do for a job, and like, I love the whitetail hunts. I have a I'm going to go try to decoy one in late October in western North Dakota, which is a place I just love to hunt. 00:08:00 Speaker 4: Yeah, and so I'm excited about that. 00:08:03 Speaker 5: But we sort of take whitetail hunts for granted because we do a lot of them, and that's just like such an omnipresent part of your life. So anything that I can deviate, that's just different, right if I can deviate outside of it. And I just I feel like I learn a lot when I bear hunt, because I'm not very good at the same thing with duck hunting. When I go duck hunting, I'm like, I'm not very good at this, and I just. 00:08:19 Speaker 4: Enjoy it, but because I'm figuring the novelty of it. 00:08:23 Speaker 3: Yeah. So I was with Brenton Tony all week. 00:08:26 Speaker 2: We're here at the at the the Meat Eater Go to market meeting for the For the year or so, we've been seeing all the new first light products that are coming out. FHF gear products, Dave Smith decoy stuff, FELP stuff, we've been seeing all that. And I heard Brent the other day casually talking to Tony, who he's known for like a very long time, and Brent was like, Hey, how's Wisconsin And Tony's like, I don't know, I don't live in Wisconsin, but Minnesota is great. 00:08:56 Speaker 4: It's not even close. And not even close. 00:08:59 Speaker 3: That's pretty much what happened. No, well, you got the state mixed up. Okay. People do this with with us in the South. 00:09:05 Speaker 2: They're like, yeah, you're from Mississippi, right, And I'm like, no, I'm not from Mississippi, and I'm like Arkansas and they go, oh yeah, I mean it's kind of the same. How many of you online do that between the Great Lake States and the Southern States? Like if you just kind of get it right that Tony's from somewhere up there, it's okay. And you know how many like which one do you get more confused with? 00:09:32 Speaker 3: Because I probably would have done the same thing, Tony. They're kind of all the same. 00:09:36 Speaker 5: So I'm from Minnesota and we have Steve from Michigan, Mark from Michigan. 00:09:40 Speaker 4: We have a lot of lot of dudes here from Michigan. 00:09:42 Speaker 5: People Michigan and Minnesota but I don't take offense to that. 00:09:47 Speaker 4: I don't care at all. 00:09:47 Speaker 5: But I wondered if somebody says, oh, you're from Mississippi, does that like make your blood boiler? 00:09:53 Speaker 2: Are you like, say, hey, listen, the states like Arkansas and Mississippi, they're at the bottom of the pile for every single thing built into our culture as an insecurity complex. I mean, it's like a it's like a it's like a sociological thing. 00:10:07 Speaker 3: We're built with it. 00:10:08 Speaker 2: That's why we're so passionate about the razorbacks. It's like the only thing we've got. So if you try to staple me to another state, I'm. 00:10:15 Speaker 3: Like, dude, the only thing I got is this state. That's all I got going for me. 00:10:21 Speaker 5: How how much do you too think that you've personally elevated Arkansas just being from there? 00:10:27 Speaker 6: The governor probably has a worn out for our wrist. Probably, I don't know. I think we've probably we brought some eyes on Arkansas. We had a matter of fact, we had some guy contact that sent us an email that because of the stuff he was listening to on Bear Greece in this country Life, they were moving to Arkansas. 00:10:45 Speaker 3: I don't say that's so terrible. 00:10:48 Speaker 4: I seen him an email said, don't do that. We were lying. Don't come. Did you ask him if he's heard of Bozeman? 00:10:54 Speaker 3: You should move. Bozman's a great town. 00:10:56 Speaker 4: It is. 00:10:59 Speaker 2: All right, Well, I can't wait to see you guys photos. 00:11:03 Speaker 4: It's great. Is that next? 00:11:05 Speaker 3: No, it's not. 00:11:06 Speaker 2: But we are going to interview Ronnie Cohen Calwenh Ronnie is. 00:11:14 Speaker 3: I'll let him introduce hisself. 00:11:16 Speaker 2: But Ronnie is in Tennessee and we're going to talk with him about what he does, but specifically about alpha gal which is a tick born illness, which for years I've always told my kids. I was like, I'm more afraid of ticks than I am snakes. You know, when I was a kid, it was the snakes that our moms were scared of. Today it's the ticks because they're way more consequential. 00:11:44 Speaker 3: Really. But if we can get Ronnie up, Hey, Ronny, can. 00:11:49 Speaker 7: You hear us, yes, sir? 00:11:51 Speaker 8: Can you hear me? 00:11:52 Speaker 4: Yes? 00:11:54 Speaker 3: Man? 00:11:54 Speaker 2: Look at where you're tell us where you're standing. What do you got out in front of you there, Ronnie? 00:11:59 Speaker 9: Yeah, So I'm at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Who we're here at our ut gardens. It's a demonstration garden. We have native plant species ornamentals. That's very popular, and we do a lot of andrology hung tree stands out here. I do a lot of hunter advocacy and hunting skills education. And I'm standing behind Smoky four here. He is our school mascot. And I have a freezer queen here to my right that we teach shot placement. And we do a little bit of waterfowl stuff too in Tennessee. 00:12:27 Speaker 8: So I bought some teaching aids oh Man. 00:12:30 Speaker 2: So the blue tick, though, is a permanent Is that a permanent statue there? 00:12:36 Speaker 9: Yes, sir, Okay, sir. We have statues of Smoky all around the campus. This happens to be Smoky for we're all the way up to the young teens. Here are our official real mascot, the Smoky Dog. I think we're on twelve or thirteen. We've had several, but he is our official mascot here at the university. 00:12:56 Speaker 8: I love it, man. 00:12:57 Speaker 2: Every time I see that blue tick come out, I get fire it up. If I if I had a team other than the Razorbacks, it would be the Tennessee Balls. 00:13:06 Speaker 3: I mean, I appreciate that it's true. It's true. 00:13:09 Speaker 2: I was I tailgated there last year at one of the big games with Brent. 00:13:13 Speaker 4: Yep, there's a lot of In fact, we saw Ronnie there. 00:13:16 Speaker 3: Oh, that's right, we met Ronnie. Yeah. 00:13:18 Speaker 6: I actually coon hunting with Ronnie and he can't here, and some of his friends came down hunted with me and Michael at at the Duck Camp and that's that's when Ronnie told me about contracting Alpha Gal. And it's it's interesting too because of his job. He's a wildlife biologist and he's with the Extension Service and they do a lot of educational stuff with kids there in Tendnessee and Ronnie's always out in the field teaching stuff to kids and stuff, and he's having to deal with this Alpha Gal and I thought it'd be interesting to have Ronnie on here to talk about how it's changed his life. 00:13:55 Speaker 3: Yeah, how did you How long have you had it? Ronnie? 00:13:58 Speaker 8: I'm sorry, what was that? 00:14:00 Speaker 3: How long have you had Alpha Gal? 00:14:02 Speaker 8: Yeah? 00:14:03 Speaker 9: I've had Alpha Gal for about two and a half close to three years now, and I've contracted it what I suspect to be. During early arter season, pulled a bunch of ticks off of me, and it's the lone star tick that messes you up there down here in South and I suspected it came from that area because I was getting a bunch of ticks on me. But Brin's right, I'm out in the field a lot. I'm an outdoor recreation specialist, so I'm in the woods a lot. And you know, if you recreate the South, you come in contact the picks all the time? 00:14:34 Speaker 3: Was the tick? 00:14:35 Speaker 2: I've always heard that it's got to be on you for like over eight hours before you can get any kind of infection from the tick. 00:14:44 Speaker 3: Is that true? 00:14:46 Speaker 9: I'm not sure that's what I've heard too. I don't specialize in ticks or anything. Unfortunately, I just contracted this allergys. 00:14:53 Speaker 8: But yeah, I have. 00:14:54 Speaker 9: Heard that too, And you know, I tried to take here of that and pull them off. But you know, it's real easy to get those picks that you can't see, and they're not always real detectable. So yeah, if that is true, that that makes you feel a little bit. 00:15:08 Speaker 2: Better that what is what's the internet say? Oh look, yeah, Brent's gonna look at that. Well, tell us, tell us what alpha gal is for somebody that might not know and how it's affected you, Ronnie. 00:15:22 Speaker 9: Yeah, so alpha gal is an allergen to a carbohydrate in a million meat. There's a lot of misinformation out there that I have found because it's such a new thing. 00:15:32 Speaker 4: Uh. 00:15:32 Speaker 8: Some people call it just a. 00:15:33 Speaker 9: Red meat alergism, but actually alpha gala is an allergen to alma million meat. 00:15:37 Speaker 8: So anything with fur or gives milk, you can't eat meat from it. 00:15:42 Speaker 9: So one night I had a really bad reaction. I don't know how to explain it other than having lizard skin. Woked up in a cold sweat and couldn't hardly breathe and didn't know what was going on through the cold shower. I took some ben a drill and ben a drill puts me to sleep, so I was able to get through that. I knew I needed help. Went to the doctor and they got me into an allergist, and by the time I got to see a specialist, I had my second reaction. It was very similar, but with some bad stomach issues. And eventually got into the allergists and they were asking questions and. 00:16:17 Speaker 8: He would say, you know, have you heard of Africa? 00:16:20 Speaker 9: And I said, yeah, I'm a wildlife biologist, and I do a lot in the outdoors. I've heard of that, but I eat red meat every day and I don't think that's it. He said, well, we're going to test you anyways, and they did an official blood panel and at that particular clinic, they said that I had the highest levels of that allergism that they've ever seen. I was living in Florida at the time, but coming back up here in Tennessee and recreating, and so that was really kind of life changing for me being a biologist, and every meal that I eate had some kind of meat in it. 00:16:50 Speaker 8: So it's really life changing and. 00:16:53 Speaker 9: Really hard to kind of mold around that, and it changed how I hunted and and everything after finding that news out. 00:16:59 Speaker 2: How do you eat now, Ronnie? Like you can eat? You can eat chicken, birds, fish. Is that the kind of protein you can eat? 00:17:08 Speaker 8: Yeah? 00:17:08 Speaker 9: So poultry, seafood, and fish. You know, I eat a lot of And I tell my life if they ever get over this on the root fried chicken sandwiches again because he's here on the road, that's about the only fast food you have. But luckily, you know, poultry is pretty good. I do like seafood, but I do miss red and meat and pork, and I'm just about giving up breakfast because it's hard to have a good breakfast without sausage and bacon. So when I do a protein bar now and out the door. 00:17:35 Speaker 3: Will you ever shed the allergy? 00:17:37 Speaker 2: Because I've heard of it kind of going up and going down inside of people. 00:17:43 Speaker 3: Do you think you'll ever shed it? 00:17:46 Speaker 6: Yeah? 00:17:47 Speaker 9: I have heard of people getting over it and the allergies that I see here in Tennessee. They claim that you can build a torrance to it, just like any allergyen that sometimes it leaves, but other individuals have it for the rest of their life. That really depends on the person, and I think they need to do some more research on it. But yeah, it can it can come and go, and uh, there's different avenues. There's no medicine for it that I'm aware of. There's some holistic approaches with acupuncturing things that I have not tried. Some people squear by it, but I have not been told how that affects the allergy to the sugar molecule. But uh, you know, it's a big deal to me because I'm in the deer woods. I target deer species a lot in my hunting, and when I would harvest a deer, just the raw blood would bother me. 00:18:32 Speaker 3: You know, a deer hunting at all? Are you deer hunting at all now? 00:18:36 Speaker 9: So yeah, i still deer hunt, and I deer hunt with friends, and so if I do harvest one, and I've got some really good friends. When I harvest one, they help me with it. And it uh for some reason, the are the raw blood breaks me out and Alpha Gael what's strange about it affects people differently in their sensitivity. 00:18:52 Speaker 8: So some folks can't even stand the smell of it. I'm I don't have that bad. 00:18:58 Speaker 9: Of a reaction to it, but the raw blood wants us been feel dressed and hanged. I can cut the meat, I can work it, I can fabricate it. I was a butcher in college, so we grew up doing our own meat, our own processing. I can still do that part of it. But getting out of the woods. The first season after I had Alpha Gal, I harvested a nice buck and just you know, moving the horns, taking pictures of Griffin Grim's, I'd get the blood on them. It would cause a lot of gets in a lot of rotation, and so my friends helped me out. But still, you know, it's it's had to change the way I hunt, and luckily my good friends turned me on to birds. I went on my first duck hunt a couple of years ago and Arkansas, fell in love with it, came back, bought a dog, a shotgun, and a new habit, and so I've kind of changed. I grew up on the side of a mountain here in East Tennessee, so that so the duck hunt was totally new. And making a long story short, in my job, I get new people into hunting, and I grew up hunting as long as I was old enough to toe the firearm. 00:20:04 Speaker 8: So me having to. 00:20:05 Speaker 9: Transition to another discipline, if you call it, really opened my eyes what it needs to take to learn a new skills. So even that you know, someone's very experienced big game hunting for whitetail deer in Tennessee, transitioning the waterfowl, it was a whole new ball game, and my responsibility is getting other folks into it. So it actually I think gave me a good perspective of how to do. 00:20:28 Speaker 6: So, yeah, hey, Ronnie, I got a question and I did a podcast on about TIX several episodes ago, and we talked about alpha gal and Rocky Mountain spotted fever and the ones that are predominantly in the US. But I had some folks contact me and reach out about acupuncture treatment for alpha gal being a successful treatment. What's your experience with that and have you discussed that with anybody there, with your physician or anything. 00:20:58 Speaker 9: Yeah, are, Yeah, my wife has was the first person brought that to my attention. I know people personally have done it, and they swear by it and they really believe it, and uh, you know, I'm not a doctor. I don't judge them, but it seems like to help it. I do know that they really think it helps them. I've looked into further research and there's not a lot out there, but I do know that it goes in and out of remission or can as far as an allergyen goes through, just through what I have seen, So I don't know if they're experiencing just you know, a delayed response, or if it's actually working. But my friends that have done it, they go and they get acupunctury, they get a series of needles in their ear and they have to walk around for a couple of days with those needles in their ear, they come back and take it out. 00:21:44 Speaker 8: But I don't know how that affects. 00:21:45 Speaker 3: The sugar out to eat red meat. Rodnie, I don't know. 00:21:50 Speaker 9: I don't know if that's the answer, but I do know those folks to truly believe it, and so I'm not going to say it don't work. 00:21:55 Speaker 8: It's just I don't know how it works, and I haven't done that. 00:21:58 Speaker 3: So last question here from Tony Ronnie. 00:22:02 Speaker 5: So, Ronnie, I've lived in tick territory my whole life. I'm just curious after you got diagnosed with this and it sort of changed the arc of your life and you know, just your time in the outdoors, did you kind of not take texas seriously before? And are you pretty pretty vigilant about treatments, paying attention like how has how has your preventative you know kind of mindset, How has that changed ever since your diagnosis? 00:22:25 Speaker 3: Oh? 00:22:25 Speaker 9: Absolutely, So I always thought I took ticks seriously. You know, we were concerned about Rocky Mountain spot fever and lime disease and things like that, and I would use your sprays and your deets, and really where I hunted at particularly worried about tiggers more than we did tick. We've got a bad batch of them down here too. But or I was pretty serious, But since I've caught this, I've been real serious because Aler just says a great way to get over this is to keep the ticks off of you, which is a tall shore if you recreate in the outdoors. So, uh, you know, I have a pretty intensive plan where I dipped my clothes and that breath or bar ether and however you pronounce it, and then I spray deep and even you know this is not maybe not the best advice, but you know, even putting around your ankles on bare skin, I don't know what they say about that, but it has helped me tremendously and shut a lot of that down where you put it on contact points around your ankles, around your waist, use the products available out there, because. 00:23:22 Speaker 8: I obvisually want to get over this. 00:23:25 Speaker 9: So I'm trying to take the doctor's orders and try to keep those ticks off of me. But we also, you know now that I bird hunt a lot, I take care of my dog too and make sure that he's got a lot of the tick protection too, because another great way is to them bringing into your house, bringing into your kennels and things. So my hunting companions like my lad my bird dog, I always take care of that too, and try to keep it out of the home and just real cautious of it because if you're in shade, you know you're you're probably more likely to get it. And the bad thing about that spotted tick, the lone start tick, it's from my knowledge, if they sense your carbon dioxide and they actually hunt you. It's not like a deer tick that kind of hangs out and grabs on to you when you. 00:24:07 Speaker 4: Walk by it. 00:24:08 Speaker 8: Those ticks actively crawl and hunt you. So right, and keeping those things off. 00:24:12 Speaker 2: Hey man, we're rooting for you, and uh, I think you're gonna kick it. Man, I mark my words, two and a half years, you're gonna be good to go. 00:24:21 Speaker 9: I appreciate that, but I'm still keeping out there recreating and just making them positive and getting more people in the outdoors. And if you don't care, I'd like to tell a little bit about what we're doing with Hunter Advocacy before we go, just real quickly that you know, we focused on the positives with Hunter Advocacy. We talk about that tick protection, but we also try to bring everybody into it for hunter advocacy. Part of my job here at UT is, you know, teaching these new hunters and kids how to get into outdoor recreation. So we talk about those dangers of the ticks and the bugs, but we also bring it back into the culture where they have a lot of fun and the importance of conservation. 00:25:00 Speaker 4: Thank you. Awesome work, Ronnie. 00:25:02 Speaker 3: Awesome work, Thank you, Ronnie. 00:25:04 Speaker 4: Thanks buddy. 00:25:04 Speaker 3: Appreciate it. Man, all right, man' that's scary stuff. It really is real. It can change your life, does dang ticks. 00:25:14 Speaker 2: I had er lichyosis one time, and the best way I describe it to people is it's what it feels like when you die. Yeah, I mean, like, that's the sickest I've ever been was with lichyosis, which is also a tick board illness that's more concentrated over in our part of the world. 00:25:29 Speaker 4: Our dogs get it. We get it. 00:25:34 Speaker 2: Now it's time for listener feedback. I see a lot of listener feedback up here, Phil. What do you have for us? What are some highlight comments? Questions directed to the team. 00:25:43 Speaker 4: What do we got? 00:25:44 Speaker 8: Yeah? 00:25:44 Speaker 7: I get them in Now we'll do this again. At the end of the show. But first we have a question from Adam Clay and Brann What can you tell us about this year's squirrel Cookoff? And will you guys be there? 00:25:53 Speaker 4: Ah? 00:25:54 Speaker 6: Absolutely, we'll be there and it will be bigger and it's like the World's Fair. It gets bigger and better every year. 00:26:00 Speaker 2: September thirteenth, Springdale, Arkansas. It's a free event. 00:26:04 Speaker 3: It's the World Championship Squirrel Cookoff. And yeah, Brent and I will be there. 00:26:07 Speaker 4: We'll be there. We wouldn't miss it. It's like Christmas, it's like red neck Christmas. 00:26:11 Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a It's a really neat event because the highlight of the event is that there'll be forty teams cooking gourmet squirrel and they feed it to the public. 00:26:21 Speaker 4: So come hungry, leave fool. 00:26:23 Speaker 3: Yep, it's really great. Yeah, I hope to see you there. What else we got, Phil. 00:26:29 Speaker 7: Freddy Rick, He asked this question every single week even if we don't. But since we don't have a meat Eater menu segment today, I will ask the crew. Well, first, Freddy Rick says, I'm cooking a pronghorn neck right now to make barbacoa. What if the guy's been cooking lately. 00:26:41 Speaker 4: With the game, I've been cooking fried fish, and a lot of it fried fish. 00:26:46 Speaker 5: I I've been so what I like to do is take my backstraps out hole in the fall and then in the summer grill a whole backstrap for the family. And since we had a bunch of redfish from Louisiana last year, I've been doing surf turf. Even though I can't eat the fish, my wife and kids love it, and so we've been We've been going pretty simple, but it's so good. 00:27:08 Speaker 3: I've been doing bear smash burgers. 00:27:12 Speaker 2: I've developed quite a reputation around our house for making some mean black bear smash burgers. And so I've got the patty like hanging out a half inch outside the bun and cook him on the grill. I don't cook him on like a griddle, like on a fire grill, but press them down real thin. 00:27:32 Speaker 3: And so been hitting a lot of those this summer. 00:27:34 Speaker 2: And I'm on my annual water melon I try to for sixty days straight from July and August, full month often bleeds into September, eat watermelon every single day. 00:27:50 Speaker 4: That's good. 00:27:50 Speaker 2: But I've actually I just realized in Montana. I haven't done that, but thanks Freddy. 00:27:56 Speaker 3: Thanks Freddy. What else we got, Phil. 00:27:58 Speaker 7: Yeah, Tony, I think we might have gotten something like this the last time you were a part of the show. But Alan, it says Tony best advice for getting your daughter into hunting. My daughter is four years old and this will be her first season getting into the woods with me, And I think this can extend to Brent and Clay as well, who are also fathers of daughters. 00:28:14 Speaker 5: You know, I would say four years old. One thing that we do with kids a lot that I think we get wrong is we take them the first time, like on a hunt, where we're like, we're going to try to be the most successful as possible, even if your daughter's just observing because at force she's probably not going to be shooting anything. But so for my daughters, it was a big deal to go out and set a blind with me. Something simple, you know, eat some candy, talk about the deer tracks, just sort of get them involved so they have that connection to it. When I'm going to take them back there on some nice September evening or something, when the conditions are going to be right and they're actually going to sit with me, and so it's just like, you know, it's kind of like training a puppy, right, Like you have like a short attention span to get this thing to stick, and you want them, you want to leave them wanting more. So you make it special. Right, you stop at dairy queen, you get blizzards on the way home, whatever. But it's always like this just tight window thing. You get in something cool, do something that's tied to the next thing, right, Or you walk them into the woods and you're like, we're gonna go look for some berries or something, and oh, by the way, here's this little brook trout stream that we're gonna come back to next week. And it's just this connection to nature instead of just just going in and being like this is how I'm gonna kill a deer and you're gonna watch it, which, you know, whatever might work for some kids, but for girls, I think, especially like daughters, just that overall connection and like the recurring like we did this, now this, we did this, now this, and just and plus that's just a good excuse to get. 00:29:37 Speaker 4: Out there more. 00:29:38 Speaker 8: You know. 00:29:38 Speaker 6: Bailey's introduction was with with my coon dog Whalen, when we got Whalen. He was nine or ten months old. This was twenty twenty. So Bailey was like in this second grade, first second grade, I think, and we just we'd take an evening. We were all learning together and we were just walking and talking only coon Hunt when not coon Hu with when Bailey went with me, the only time I ever remember talking about glitter, hair bows, anything along that line. But we made it fun and we just had fun out there, and the best part about it was just being with her, just walking out there and showing her the things that I was interested. 00:30:15 Speaker 7: Speaking of Bailey, I think she might have hijacked your wife's YouTube account. She says, it's your favorite daughter with four hours. She says, comments, Yeah, hey Bailey, their their old way to Hello Bay. 00:30:31 Speaker 3: And Alexis b Reeves. 00:30:36 Speaker 2: You know, I think I think getting kids in Tony's advice was so good. But to me another point is involve them in the in the family culture inside of it. Like if it's just this isolated incident like that, you just their whole life is not connected to nature, then all of a sudden one day it is. You know, I think the the and I had I had, I'd say I had over all success with my kids and and the goal which was not to make them hunters, but to make them appreciate hunting and wildlife conservation and wild places. And just I think with with my son who really stuck with hunting, and it was that involvement in the culture, like he saw that his granddad did it and I did it, and we eat this meat and this is this is part of just like what makes our family kind of who we are in a way, you know, So bring them in, bring them into the culture. 00:31:29 Speaker 5: I want to touch on one more thing about that, even with four year olds, make them do just like a little bit of work so they have a buy in like this, like when you see a lot of parenting these days, we're doing an awful lot of stuff for our kids and like prioritizing their schedules and their lives. But even like when my daughters were little, like that, if I made them carry a trail camera or something like do something so I'm like, honey, you got to lug this into the woods and then when we need it, we'll set it up together. And they there's just a different level of buy in for them, Like they feel different about it because they did a little bit of work, So like barbaiting with my daughters when they were young, which horrified my wife. But I'd be like, you're carrying a little bucket a trail mix and gummies or whatever, and you're going to be a part of this too, you know, And I think there's just like a I think there's a little bit different impact there. 00:32:18 Speaker 2: Yeah, Phil, do we have one more hot, hot question. 00:32:22 Speaker 7: Or we have a ton of hot questions. 00:32:25 Speaker 3: We'll try to move a little faster. 00:32:27 Speaker 7: Sure, Mitchell says, question for Tony, is it plausible to train my lab GSP mix to both hunt grouse and track deer? I realized the season can overlap it. Is there a risk of confusing her? 00:32:37 Speaker 4: That's a great question. 00:32:39 Speaker 5: Dual purpose dogs used to be can my dog duck hunt or you know, waterfall hunt? Can my dog upland hunt? And then somewhere along the line, guys like Tom Doc and a few other people started training for shad antlers, and so then people would be like, well, if I trained my dogs for shad antlers, is it going to run off and forget about the roosters and look for antlers? It's like, that's not how it works. When you when you look at a long enough timeline. With training a dog, we we way underutilize them. Like a good sporting dog, a good working dog can handle a lot of tasks. So if you if you take that dog and you train it to blood trail, to which are you know, tracking dog? 00:33:17 Speaker 4: Essentially they're not really blood trailing. 00:33:19 Speaker 5: That dog's not going to get distracted when it's time to go point some grouse. 00:33:22 Speaker 4: It's just not. 00:33:23 Speaker 5: But it's also an amazing off season thing you can train for because a lot of bird hunting, you can train for parts of bird hunting, right, especially especially if you have a retriever, you know, where you can do a lot of long distance work and marks and all that stuff, but you can't you can't do the hunt, you know, like you just mostly can't. But with shed antlers, with blood tracking or game trailing dogs, you can set that up all off season long, and people kind of we look at that and go, well, that's a that's a really good skill I want my dog to have, right my buddies, you know, gut shoot on elk or whatever. I want to be able to bring my dog go out there and find it. But it's also as a dog owner just gonna help you level up that relationship because now you have another reason to work with them and read them and for them to read you, and now you have another way for them to solve problems with you and just level up. Like I encourage people to do whatever whatever they can train their dog like in this kind of arena. 00:34:24 Speaker 4: Add on that skill set, work on it. Good good stuff. 00:34:27 Speaker 3: Yeah, that's good. 00:34:29 Speaker 2: When Brent thinks about a dual purpose dog, he thinks about his dog that will tree coons and possums. That's a deep inside coon hunter joke. The worst thing possible that a dog could coon dog can do would be. 00:34:45 Speaker 7: Let us know the check If you appreciated that joke has a. 00:34:49 Speaker 3: I can joke with the brand because he's got a top notch walker dog. 00:34:52 Speaker 4: Jealous. 00:34:53 Speaker 3: Hey, I see two questions. 00:34:54 Speaker 7: Oh yeah, I was gonna we have another round of these at the end, and I was going to hit you up with a bunch of these claim if you want to tackle it, now's let's do it. 00:35:01 Speaker 2: Well, let's go, let's move on. I'll tell you what. Let's move on. Let's come back to some of those. I saw a question about my book, which I would like to respond to. I saw a question about the Bargreas Hall of Fame yep, which I would like to I would like to address. But now it's time for Throwback Thursday. Cannot wait back on. 00:35:20 Speaker 9: A Thursday morn, Stephen Brodie, take me back to nineteen seventy four. 00:35:27 Speaker 1: Row back. 00:35:29 Speaker 2: I can't believe this the top show. 00:35:37 Speaker 3: All right, throw back on Thursday. 00:35:39 Speaker 2: We're gonna We're gonna put up a photo that Brent Reeves has sent in. 00:35:43 Speaker 3: And Brent's gonna tell us about this picture. 00:35:48 Speaker 4: That right there. 00:35:49 Speaker 6: Wow, is my great grandfather love It Reeves. That is on our old home place in Cleveland County. That would be in the mid fifties, right there when deer a photo when deer were scarce, and that could be the cover of a book. 00:36:05 Speaker 4: Few and far between. And if you look in the background. 00:36:08 Speaker 3: Back there, there's that possum trend. 00:36:11 Speaker 4: There's a coon dog laying back there. 00:36:14 Speaker 6: Now, my grandfather was a if you'll see the the overalls and the pocket watch there, And I would give anything if I could have one thing out of that photograph. 00:36:27 Speaker 4: It wouldn't be the antlers and the watch would be number two. 00:36:30 Speaker 6: But my first item that I would love to have is that hat that he's wearing, right, But he was a farmer and a woodsman, and he is the guy that introduced case knives into our family. That's the guy that started it all. And that that would be. 00:36:47 Speaker 4: Bailey's great great grandfather. And there's six generally. 00:36:54 Speaker 3: Did you know him? 00:36:55 Speaker 6: No, he died in nineteen sixty four, I think, or maybe sixty three, but. 00:37:02 Speaker 4: Just a few years. 00:37:03 Speaker 3: So that's your dad's dad. 00:37:05 Speaker 4: That's my dad's grandfather. 00:37:06 Speaker 3: Oh, it's your great grandfather. I got it, ye man, that that for real. 00:37:11 Speaker 2: When I saw that picture, it looks like one of those photos that you know, you you you got off the internet because it's so cool, you know, But it's like, that's really I love that photo. 00:37:21 Speaker 6: Yeah, it's it's a great photo. It's an absolute treasure in our family. 00:37:25 Speaker 3: So those those deer horns aren't a round. 00:37:27 Speaker 4: No no idea. 00:37:28 Speaker 6: I'm sure they went with the rest of that deer that didn't get eating. Right then, it wasn't a it wasn't a thing keeping antlers back then. Probably the biggest uh trophy of the deal was absolutely encountering a deer. 00:37:43 Speaker 3: And I'm probably using those walkers to run them weren't they. 00:37:46 Speaker 6: That or I figure that they were probably squirrel hunting and the deer came through because he wasn't leaving the house to go deer hunting back then, because he's got a squirrel vest on. Ye, And that's how I assume that deer got got brought to the table. 00:38:00 Speaker 4: I don't know. That's cool. That's a cool photo. 00:38:03 Speaker 2: Yeah, back when when, I mean the traditional way to hunt deer, and a lot of places in the country, but specifically the South, was using dogs to run them. 00:38:12 Speaker 4: Yep. 00:38:12 Speaker 3: Because there were so few, so few deer, you just had to. 00:38:15 Speaker 2: Get them up and moving, you know. Aund And so a deer and a dog just went together. Today it's not not as popular. 00:38:23 Speaker 3: Good job, Brent, good photo. Good photo. 00:38:26 Speaker 2: Let's throw Tony's photo up there for throwback Thursday. Let us know what you think in the comments. 00:38:33 Speaker 4: Look at that one. So this fish, you guys, do you guys have small eat and this big right? 00:38:44 Speaker 5: So clay, you guys know this right, somebody shoots a bear. Everybody says they're three hundred pounds. You're like, they're one hundred and seventy five pounds. You know, somebody shoots a giant you're like maybe, right, you see a picture of it. You kind of know in the in the beast world where I live, like to truly break the six pound mark is like, you're just not going to do it very often, even if you fish a lot smallies or large mouth, right, m hm. So that's my little girl when she was I think she was six, and we went out to this rock pile at sunrise, and we like to throw top waters, right, and so I had her she wasn't throwing a bait caster yet, but I had her with a seven foot you know, medium heavy rod braided line so you could we use a lot of wopper ploppers, you know, streamline. 00:39:27 Speaker 4: Pretty heavy top water that you can throw a mile. 00:39:30 Speaker 5: And so we pull up to this rock pile and you know, she casts out there, casts it far, and that that wopper popper hits the water and she reels like half a turn and this fish hits and you know, I just I heard a blow up and she set the hook. You know, she's tiny, and that fish came straight up like they always do small mouth, and I saw it come up and in my head, I just go, she will never get this fish. 00:39:55 Speaker 4: Like I didn't go for the net. 00:39:57 Speaker 5: You know, I'm cheering her on, but I'm like, there's no way this fish is isn't going to throw this in the amount of time it's going to take her to get it back in. And she leaned into that fish and fought it and fought it and fought it, and finally got it up by the boat, got it to where she could kind of work it around. I had a net with me. I netted that fish, and you know, I don't mount fish, right, Like I'm that's that stage is kind of gone for a lot of people. And it's the first time I'll never forget I had the impulse. I looked into that net and I was like, I'm throwing this sucker in the freezer and we're going to mount it. But so before I get judged on this, got it into the boat, measured it. It was just broke twenty two inches, which is a crazy mark, right, Like when you actually start measuring big smallies twenties and twenty ones, they're big fish, right, But that twenty two inch mark up up where we live is just no joke, right. 00:40:48 Speaker 3: It's almost two foot long. 00:40:49 Speaker 5: Right, And so we got really nice pictures of it and then like, we gotta let this fish go, you know, and she didn't. You know, she wasn't like we got to keep it and stuff at whatever, like that's not her thing. But it was like one of those things when she let it go. I'm like, you, you have no idea how many of you caught that big I have caught two for sure in my life that broke. I caught one that was twenty two and I caught one that was twenty three with ten billion hours of effort. 00:41:20 Speaker 4: Yeah right. I wasn't in first grade. 00:41:24 Speaker 5: Right, And so that was just one of those things where I was like, this is just such a beautiful fish. And you know, when you look at the studies of how how old a fish that that could be where we live a couple hours south of there, they did a pretty good study on smallmuff a long time ago and to get to fourteen inches, which on the river where that fish or where they were studying those fish was a keeper the slot whatever it was seven I think it was seven years old, seven years and so you think about a fish that's a couple hours north, short growing season, hitting twenty two inches, you know, I mean, you're like that fish might have been out there for fifteen years, I don't know, but a long time, and I just think that's cool as hell. Yeah, that that is really cool. Now, can't could you have gotten a replicam. 00:42:12 Speaker 4: Out of that fish? 00:42:13 Speaker 5: We could have, you know, I mean it's like it's just not into that, right, you get when you get really we catch a lot of big fish, and we had really nice pictures of it. 00:42:22 Speaker 4: It was just this cool moment. 00:42:23 Speaker 5: And so yeah, maybe I should have measured the girth and done the whole thing I did. 00:42:27 Speaker 4: I just didn't. 00:42:28 Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, in the South, we have or at least in where I'm from, we have small mouth in creeks and rivers, not as much in the lakes like people's largemouth bass fish and the lakes. But you would go to the creeks and rivers in the mountains to catch small mouth and they, you know, a big one. I don't really know length. Barry would know length pretty good, but you know, like a two or three pounder would be a nice creek fish. 00:42:56 Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, I mean that's I'm sure down where you live that's connected to water town picture and rocks. 00:43:01 Speaker 4: Yeah, if you. 00:43:02 Speaker 5: Don't have rocks, you know, the boulders. You just don't have a lot of smallies. 00:43:06 Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, cool, great photo, great photo. All right, let's go to my This is the final photo in our Thursday throwback Thursday. 00:43:18 Speaker 3: All right. 00:43:22 Speaker 2: In the in the front of the fore wheeler, there is my youngest son, Shepherd Nukeomb crying wearing his cowboy boots. That's Bear John Newcomb in the middle there who I think a lot of people know Bear. 00:43:36 Speaker 3: And uh, if you'll notice that is a live coyote tied. 00:43:41 Speaker 4: To the back of the of the four wheeler. 00:43:45 Speaker 2: And that day, it was in late summer, and we'd gone to this place that we were going to deer hunt from some private land and it took the boys and we'd hung a stand and it was it was a funny moment because I literally remember like wanting to make the trip fun for the boys. And I told them, I said, y'all stay here at this four wheeler. 00:44:14 Speaker 3: I'll be back. 00:44:15 Speaker 2: And I really didn't know what I was looking for, but I knew I was going to find something and bring it back to them. 00:44:23 Speaker 3: I'm not kidding. 00:44:25 Speaker 2: And I took off and they're little guys and they're throwing rocks and wrestling there around the four wheeler on a little road, and I go off in the woods and I don't walk fifty yards and I see a litter of coyot pups get up in front of me and flush like a covey of quail, and they take off running and I take off running after them. And basically it was like a cheetah chasing a herd of gazelle. 00:44:47 Speaker 8: You know. 00:44:47 Speaker 3: One would split. 00:44:48 Speaker 2: Off to the right and I'd stick with the two, and then one split off to the left, and I just picked the one. 00:44:54 Speaker 3: And I could run as. 00:44:55 Speaker 2: Fast as that cayo pup, but I couldn't catch it, and it he took a turn and started going down this real rocky drainage, and I remember it just like it was yesterday. I'm running so fast, is as fast as I can run downhill, running on this boulder patch, and I start to feel my chest and head lean out in front of my face, and I know I'm toast, and I just say, I just just go straight down, just fly through the air land on the rocks. Figure I'm all busted up. And also Tony figured that the coyote has gotten away because he was like eight feet in front of me, both of us running full speed. I bite the dust and when I stand up, I see him. 00:45:44 Speaker 3: I saw him duck into a little hole like he gave up the chase. 00:45:49 Speaker 2: Immediately when I bit the dust. And so I jump up and he's under this rock. And I flip over the rock, thinking Mama cayote might be in there. I didn't know, and there's that pup curled up on the ground. I reached and just grabbed him by the nape of the neck, grab him up like. 00:46:06 Speaker 3: This and he just goes limp. 00:46:08 Speaker 2: And I walked back to Baron Shepherd and boys, I'm telling you, I was a hero of the year when I walked back up and I had that kayo pup by the nape of the neck and said, boys, look what I caught. And I had a little rope and tied him to the to the to the to the back of the vehicle there and took him home and we kept him for about a week. And I also at that time it was legal in Arkansas to have deer, and we we were raising the deer at that time too, And I kept the deer and the coyote in the same little kennel. And then the coyote. Is everybody interested? I hope the story's not going too long. The kyote started, I thought, well, I'm going to raise this kyote. We're gonving pat kyote. And it started getting mean and biting me, and so I knew I had to get rid of it. 00:46:57 Speaker 3: But it and this, this is true. 00:47:00 Speaker 2: I was worried about the legal ramifications of killing a coyote out of season. I mean it was on a deer hunting property, like we're trying to get rid of coyotes. So you thought I might have just exterminated the coyote, but I actually took it out into another place and turned it loose. 00:47:17 Speaker 4: Why did you take it back where you caught it? 00:47:19 Speaker 3: Because it's where a deer hunt Tony he put on the story of the coyote. Why we called him Wiley? 00:47:27 Speaker 4: Very original, very original? 00:47:29 Speaker 3: All right? All right? 00:47:31 Speaker 2: What is success Throwback Thursday? Great photos, guys. We're now going to go on to interview number two. We're going to be interviewing a guy that Brent knows. His name is Each Stewart from Arkansas. Brent, I'm gonna let you take it over. 00:47:50 Speaker 4: My buddy. Each. 00:47:51 Speaker 6: He is the director of the Public Timber Project there in Arkansas. He's a dedicated lifelong duck hunter water fowler, good friend of mine, and I want to get him on here and talk about the stuff that he's doing. 00:48:07 Speaker 4: Each. Can you hear us, buddy, gotcha? 00:48:10 Speaker 1: Can y'all hear me? 00:48:11 Speaker 4: I got you? Man? 00:48:12 Speaker 1: Each tell us about Thanks for having me. 00:48:14 Speaker 4: You're very welcome. 00:48:16 Speaker 6: We're pleased that you hear tell us about the project you got going, what the name of it is, what's your role in it is, and what the plan is for Arkansas. 00:48:29 Speaker 1: All right, well, thanks for thanks again. My name's Eah Stewart. I guess I'm I'm the president of the Public Timber Project, and in reality, I'm just one of the fellaws that's started it, but one of us had to fall on the grenade and call ourselves the president. We formed ourselves as a form profit here in Arkansas, so we had to get organized on paper at least at the very beginning. But in reality, the Public Timber Project is a grassroots movement for public land duck hunters all across the country. Of course, our focus was on issues that we were seeing in Arkansas and our public lands, so we're more of a social experiment and a movement than we are on profit. And at the end of this I'll ask folks to if you want to support us, support us by following us reaping out. We don't really need your money right now. The only expenses we have is on ball caps and trash bags. But I'll step back a little bit and talk a little bit about why we started in the first place. And for folks that don't duck commers that aren't from the South, that aren't aware, you know, in the duck hunting world, hunting ducks and flat under sort of the holy grail of duck hunting. If you haven't seen ducks finish through the canopy of the trees and land at your feet in the woods, man, you ain't lived. And there's only so many places we can do that. Arkansas happens to be one of the states that has more public land available for folks to carry on this tradition than any other state in the US, But most of the states in the South have public lands, state and federal where folks can go and hunt this way, and it's an old way of hunting. It's an old tradition. This is duck hunting. Flooded timber in the South. It's part of our culture, it's part of our identity. It's who we are. A lot of us included. I'd rather rather skunked in the woods than shoot a limit on a rice field, because it's something about being. 00:50:30 Speaker 4: In the woods. 00:50:31 Speaker 1: It's the way we hunt. It's our history, our tradition. Like I said, this is culture for us down here. And things are changing and not all further better. On our public lands there in Arkansas. We've got a lot of management issues. Don't necessarily get into but we've got a lot of challenges. I'll leave it at that. And one of the things that's come about in the last few years, the way the state and the Feds are modified and changing how they're managing these places is that fewer and fewer places are holding water. So all these flooded timber areas in the South that we duck hunt, these are forests. That's forest management. These are forests that floods seasonally. As the Mississippi comes up in the winter and all the rivers in Arkansas and all the southern states flood up with water. These forests get water on them, and the water comes up and it lets the ducks come in there. It gives them safety, shelter, food. They feed on acorns and all the other food in these areas. And so if you have less and less water on our public lands, then the places that we do have water, what we're seeing is a huge concentration of hunters in these few areas. And probably nowhere is this more the Black River here in Arkansas. And I hate to mention the Black Rivers so much because folks that locals up there, that live and hunt up there, they don't really want everyone knowing about the Black River. But the word is out on the Black River. I think they ain't no secret man. It's all over the internet and YouTube. So just to kind of paint a little bit of a picture on why the public timber project exists. Last season on duck Opener at Ashball Boat Ramp, which is one of the three probably busiest boat ramps on the Black River, we had a thousand trucks and boat trailers lined up at the boat ramp. That line it stretched out a mile and a half from the boat ramp and fellas were in line for up to a week before opening morning. That's a thousand trucks and trailers at one boat ramp, there's no trash services, there's no porta potties, and the impact this has happened on this area, it's an consequence of our current management, if that makes sense. We're really impacting this these areas in a way that we're causing damage to some of these areas. So we're seeing changes like that happening in duck hunting in Arkansas and the South. We're seeing a lot of areas that we used to hunt that aren't holding water and aren't holding ducks, and we're seeing this huge concentration of hunters on fewer and fewer public land areas that have water and have birds. Okay, we're seeing some other big changes on public lands down here with duck hunting that it's sort of all this stuff fits in together. Probably one of the biggest ones concerned about is the changing demographic of the public land duck hunter in the South, in particular in Arkansas. Now, when we all grew up, if you duck hunted in Arkansas at all, on you hunted public if you weren't you weren't a rich man, if you were a poor kid like I was, and you hunted the ramp because you couldn't afford membership at a private club. You were going to run into a whole litany of fellas at the boat ramp, and there was going to be plenty of old timers there that had been doing it their whole lives, that had a thing or two to teach the rest of us. Well, because of this increase of pressure that we're seeing, we've run off all our old timers. You just don't sing no more out of the boat ram. So what we have is basically a angry mob of twenty three year olds that are being mentored by YouTube. And if you want to I love it, I watch y'all. Well, if you were to talk to my dad, who's still duck hunts with me seventy eight years old, he tell you that there ain't a show on YouTube that ain't tree popping dirks. So the point being that these young fellas are getting into duck hunting. They're not being taken out by their dads and their uncles and their granddads. They're learning everything they can from YouTube and our opinion that we're making the wrong folks famous in duck hunting, and we've got some just bad examples out there, and we're seeing our culture shift. We're seeing traditions and the ways we used to hunt things that got passed down from generation the generation is we're seeing it and road and change and all but disappeared from the landscape when we go duck hunting. And so as a response to that, like every other duck camp in Arkansas in the South, you know, we sit around and we complain about all the problems. 00:55:19 Speaker 4: Of duck hunting. 00:55:21 Speaker 1: Yes, at our camp, we decided we wanted to do something about it. And uh, you said, preach, ain't preaching really talk cheat everybody in duck hunts preaching about duck hunt. So we thought from the beginning, hey, if we're going to change things for the better, it needs to be through action and not just So last fall we started doing cleanups here in Arkansas, and we started off down on the White River Clarendon at a boat ramp that's probably one of the most trash places that you could launch a boat to go hunt ducks or get a real busy boat ramp. We did a clean up, not really, we didn't everybody show up, but we thought this is a good place to start. We just need to start showing up organized duck hunters and get folks to come out of the woodwork, show up to our cleanups, get involved in a positive way, making a difference in our woods. And the next cleanup we did, we had a cople people show up, and the next one we had a couple more folks show up, and it slowly started building and we realized early on that these cleanup projects, that these boat ramps were working. The other thing that happened is we had a lot of duck hunters reaching out to us across the South and all of Minnesota, Cannon, all over the place that started finding out about us on social media do and they wanted to get involved, but they couldn't make it to any of our organized cleanups, and so we started our hat campaign, which is basically, duck hunters, clean up your local area. There's publicans that you love that that's where you hunt, make ownership, clean them, up, them up, be a good role model, Send us the picture, and we want to fill social media with positive images coming from the duck hunting community as opposed to the fist fights and duck holes and the horse races to get to your spot. There's far too much negative press. We're our own worst enemies. Out there. We're painting a picture to the ag FC and to all the land management ag. 00:57:31 Speaker 2: Got to interrupt you just for a second, man, this this is incredible. I'm enthralled for just for sake of time, man, how can we help you? 00:57:40 Speaker 8: Where? 00:57:41 Speaker 3: Where can people get involved? 00:57:43 Speaker 1: Thanks for really being because I could talk for an hour you did. The first thing is, uh, find us out on social media on Instagram at the Public Timber Project. Okay, the Public Timber Project there, okay, the Public Temper Project. You can find us on Facebook and YouTube and TikTok under the same name. We've got some short films coming out. We've got a full length film coming out later this duck season. We post our and all of our contacting on there. Anybody's in the ball involved, message me on Instagram, and me or Blakely somebody else will reach back to you. 00:58:22 Speaker 3: Okay, awesome, take there. 00:58:25 Speaker 2: Hey, thank you each, Really appreciate you coming on today, Really appreciate it. Love it excellent, all right, man, take care, take care. 00:58:39 Speaker 4: Wow. 00:58:40 Speaker 2: I had no idea there'd be a thousand thousand boats lined up at. 00:58:43 Speaker 4: All, And that's just one access, you know. That's incredible. That's one access. 00:58:47 Speaker 6: I remember twenty five years ago, my brother and I would go to a public access on a Tuesday hunting public ground and be the only folks in the parking lot. 00:58:57 Speaker 4: Times have changed, the good old days. 00:58:59 Speaker 3: Ye wow wow, All right, each Stewart. 00:59:03 Speaker 2: All right, we're moving right along to our Multari trail camera contest. And it's on this our friends at Moultrie our sponsoring a contest where we're gonna be giving away a camera and we're gonna look at. 00:59:20 Speaker 3: Some some photos. 00:59:22 Speaker 2: What do you think do you think we should look up the photos first, just to get some some some good vibes going and then talk about the Edge three. 00:59:30 Speaker 3: What do you want to do, Tony? 00:59:32 Speaker 4: We kind of need to move it. 00:59:33 Speaker 3: Along here, love it. 00:59:34 Speaker 2: Let's let's let's put up the trail camera images. The winner will receive two Edge two First Light Specter Camo Edition Moultrie cameras with a tin watt solar pack bundle with it and a two hundred and fifty dollars gift card from the Meat to the Medat store, a two hundred and fifty dollars gift card. 00:59:55 Speaker 3: To first Light. 00:59:55 Speaker 2: This is a huge price and a case in a case knife. Brent Reeves signature mini trapper. Hey, that may be the biggest thing there. Yeah, this is a huge prize that's going now, Phil, it's going to one of these. 01:00:09 Speaker 7: He's going to one of these. And here sound is gonna work. We have four entries. You guys are more than welcome to uh you know, add as much commentary and your opinions as you'd like. But the winner will be selected by the live chat. I will put up a poll. Okay, so if you look at all after you look at all the pictures, the live chat will vote for a couple of minutes, and whoever has the most votes will win. 01:00:29 Speaker 2: That crazy Okay, So we're gonna need everybody's help. Phil, show us the first picture, first trail camera photo in our contest, Lamb, we've got a big woods timber velvet buck and the the the the What we were trying to do here is get people to show us velvet bucks. I don't know if I mentioned that every Trail Comera, every trail camera contest has a theme. This month's theme for the Multie Trail Cram contest is velvet buck. So that is a beautiful image right there, A big old buck. 01:01:06 Speaker 4: I see white oak trees, mm hmmm. I see some are trees. 01:01:10 Speaker 3: I like that, kicker. 01:01:12 Speaker 4: I was wondering if we were working with a river bottom situation. 01:01:15 Speaker 2: Here looks that looks like a southern river bottom buck to me. All right, so we got the we're gonna call that the big buck from Andrew. 01:01:24 Speaker 7: And this is from Andrew. Number one, okay, that's number one. 01:01:28 Speaker 6: Number two air bar is that that's. 01:01:33 Speaker 2: A mule deer jumping a a little a little little drawl there, got a little buddy behind him. 01:01:40 Speaker 3: Yeah, I see a little buck back there. 01:01:42 Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I see it back there. 01:01:44 Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a that's a classic. 01:01:46 Speaker 4: That's action photo. I like that. 01:01:49 Speaker 3: I like that all right. 01:01:50 Speaker 7: Number that that's from I like hunting. 01:01:52 Speaker 4: Okay. 01:01:53 Speaker 7: Number three is from Sea Nutson or C. K Nutson. 01:01:57 Speaker 3: Wow, the albino buck. That's impressive, right, even the velvet's white. 01:02:02 Speaker 4: Check that out. 01:02:03 Speaker 3: That's impressive. I'd like to know the history of that. 01:02:06 Speaker 2: That story looks like last looks like a twenty twenty four photo. It appears to be a northern photo by the spruce. 01:02:15 Speaker 4: Or I was gonna guess Wisconsin. 01:02:18 Speaker 2: They have a lot of white deer up there. Yeah, that's that's impressive. I mean you, I'll probably never get a trail career picture of a white deer. 01:02:26 Speaker 6: So that one's in Missouri, not far from where we Turkeynda. 01:02:30 Speaker 3: Oh is that right? Interesting? 01:02:33 Speaker 2: Okay, last photo in the trail camera contest this month, we've got have shed velvet buck. 01:02:42 Speaker 4: That's it. 01:02:43 Speaker 2: Those are always really cool because that happens really quick. There's just this very short window of time, like hours, yes, in their years buck shedding his velvet. 01:02:52 Speaker 5: I watched a bachelor group when I was hunting in North Dakota one time, going and bedding a little drainage, and the buck that I wanted to shoot in the group was velvet when he went to bed and when I watched him get out and come start walking toward my stand, he had shed it completely. 01:03:06 Speaker 3: Really, did you kill it? 01:03:07 Speaker 4: I didn't kill him, but I killed his buddy. 01:03:10 Speaker 5: He ran right on through. He had a destination to go to. I couldn't stop him, but I took a consolation prize. I was pretty happy, and he was in full velvet. 01:03:18 Speaker 3: Okay, so we're. 01:03:19 Speaker 7: Gonna need everybody a recap here and then we'll start the pull here. Ever one the. 01:03:23 Speaker 3: First one is the big buck. 01:03:25 Speaker 2: I feel like for pure aesthetics of lighting, imagery, beauty. 01:03:31 Speaker 3: That's hard to beat. Go to the next one. 01:03:33 Speaker 4: Also a recent photo? 01:03:34 Speaker 3: Was it recent? 01:03:35 Speaker 4: Yeah? 01:03:35 Speaker 2: Here we got the action photo. This is our action photo. Okay, so there's something cool about okay. 01:03:41 Speaker 4: Yeah. 01:03:41 Speaker 3: And then we got the. 01:03:44 Speaker 2: Once a once in a lifetime kind of kind of photo, you know, pretty impressive big buck too. Usually, you know, if it's some little scrapper, I'd be like, that's cool. That's a big old buck too, right, That's that's impressive. And then we got the uh, we got the nighttime shedding velvet buck. 01:04:01 Speaker 7: All right, starting the poll right now? 01:04:03 Speaker 3: Should we discuss what we think? 01:04:05 Speaker 7: Phil, just keep talking. 01:04:06 Speaker 3: I'm well, go ahead, what do y'all think? Which one you least impressed with? Which one you're voting for? Let's make it quick. 01:04:11 Speaker 6: They're all impressive. I have at least experience with Muley's, so that didn't really. I mean, I like the photo because of the action. But the big one, the big one is standing in that wide oak bottom that. 01:04:25 Speaker 4: That grab right there. Yeah, that and. 01:04:27 Speaker 6: It's like a three day old photograph. 01:04:30 Speaker 4: That's cool. That's that's right where I'm at too. 01:04:34 Speaker 5: When I look at that picture, I mean, obviously it's a beautiful deer, beautiful deer, but where it's at, I mean, that's the kind of stuff I just love to hunt. I look at that picture, and that picture brings me into a place where I would see a deer like that. 01:04:46 Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm gonna have to go with the team here. I would be voting for Andrew's big Buck number one, but I think you can make a case for the albino buck. 01:04:57 Speaker 8: It is. 01:04:58 Speaker 7: The pull is very tight right now. So if you haven't voted yet, get in there and let your voice be heard. 01:05:04 Speaker 2: Andrew, if you're out there, what are the chances that Brent, Brent can come hunt that buck with you? 01:05:12 Speaker 4: I'll film you with my shotgun. 01:05:14 Speaker 3: Now you can film Brent. All right? Four photos big Buck Muley, believe. 01:05:22 Speaker 7: You, guys, I mean yet, ten more seconds on the clock here, and those ten seconds can make it different. That's how close? 01:05:28 Speaker 4: This close? 01:05:30 Speaker 2: And the winner of this gets a huge prize package, two Moultary Cameras, Meet Eater gift card, two to fifty dollars gift card, two hundred and fifty dollars First Light gift card, and Britt Reeves case knife signature Mini trapper, huge, prize package huge. 01:05:50 Speaker 7: I think I actually I might have a drum roll here. I don't have a drummer, but I do have a winner. Sound whoever wins, I'm sorry. 01:05:57 Speaker 2: I think the big Buck's gonna win. I think the fact that all three of us would have picked that one. 01:06:01 Speaker 7: I have ended the poll. 01:06:03 Speaker 3: Poll has ended. 01:06:04 Speaker 7: So in last place, with only three percent of the vote, was the number four from Marrik Kessler shedding uzing. 01:06:15 Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, thanks for the submission, Eric. 01:06:19 Speaker 7: And then in third place with twenty seven percent of the vote was your guy's favorite, Angrey Molino's. 01:06:27 Speaker 3: Wow. 01:06:29 Speaker 7: And so in second place with thirty two percent of the vote, we had the flying Buck from I Like Hunting, which means the albino buck from Chad Nutson. You're the winner. 01:06:45 Speaker 2: Congratulations, Chad, congratulations. I'd like to know if that's a deer that you had access to, what happened to it? 01:06:53 Speaker 3: Did somebody get that deer? 01:06:54 Speaker 4: Did he? 01:06:55 Speaker 3: Is he still out there? That's pretty cool? 01:06:57 Speaker 2: Well man, congratulations, And man, you got a lot of decisions to make about what to do with those gift cards, and you know where Brent's gonna hunt up there with, so congratulations, Tony tell us about the Moultrie Edge. 01:07:15 Speaker 5: So I got a Moultrie Edge three right here in this fancy box. We learned all about these dudes yesterday. So I mean, this is this isn't my world. But some some of the listeners here Southern guys running feeders. 01:07:27 Speaker 4: They have Moultrie Connect. 01:07:29 Speaker 5: You can basically manage and monitor your feeders and it's a whole system. It's a totally way more efficient way to live in that world, which isn't my world. What is my world is trying to find big Bucks on a natural pattern. And you know, I know AI is sort of a buzzword out there right now. Anybody who plays in the stock market or messes around Wall Street bets you're seeing Nvidia and you're seeing Palenteer in these companies that are they're doing a lot with AI or you hear hear about a lot. Well, Moultrie has Moultrie AI coming out on this Edge three. And one of the things this can do is help you filter through to only get videos of Bucks sent to your sent right to your apps, set right to your phone, instead of getting notifications for all the other critters, doze whatever. If you want to select it down pretty far. You can you can kind of customize it too. If you want to get just photos of non target animals or photos of all animals, but also get videos sent to you of bucks. You can do that too. And I keep thinking about this. I'm heading back down to Nebraska where I'm hunting with Steve this fall. I have a whole bunch of cameras down on this ranch that we're hunting. It's a brand new property to us, working cattle ranch, and so I put up cameras and in some spots I'm getting cattle, I'm getting beavers, I'm getting geese, I'm getting lots of raccoons, non target animals. And so when I go back down there, I'm going to swap out some of those cameras with these edge threes because I'm filtering. 01:08:59 Speaker 2: Through don't want to get notifications about cows. Right that when it sends out a picture to you, it's using battery life, So the moultra AI when you program it, and some of these guys that are putting cameras over feeders are potentially getting hundreds of pictures of a. 01:09:15 Speaker 5: Day, right well, right, And when you put up a camera in a pasture, that doesn't have cows in, and they put it in cows. You get hundreds of pictures a day too, So it's and this is you know, I like pictures of deer, I like pictures of all animals, but this is like our rut hunt. So I'm kind of just trying to key in on the bucks. The other thing I'll say about this quick. This isn't new to the Edge three, but it is a feature of it. A lot of cameras for for a while had like a live aim feature they had. They had some kind of you know, viewing window, LCD screen, whatever, so you could set it up and point in the right direction. Because I do a lot of public land hunting, I'll put them up high, uh in this situation, because we knew cows were going to get rotated through there, and I didn't want them to mess with the cameras. 01:09:57 Speaker 4: You're mounting them higher and pointing them down. 01:10:00 Speaker 5: And so there's a live aim feature on here that you can go to your phone and see exactly what you're seeing. So I can I can customize that and set it up exactly the way I want to, so I know when I walk away, I'm not waiting for that test picture or anything like that. I'm like, Okay, I know this is going to be aimed exactly how I want it to be. 01:10:18 Speaker 3: Yeah, Man, the multies. 01:10:20 Speaker 2: I'll tell you one of the things I was most impressed about was the price point on those things. I don't know exactly what that's going to be, but I mean this is not this is like under one hundred and forty cameras one hundred and fifty dollars camera. Yeah, so I mean that's pretty inexpensive. 01:10:37 Speaker 3: And they and they the. 01:10:39 Speaker 2: Some of the other cameras are less cheaper than. 01:10:42 Speaker 4: That, right and it. 01:10:43 Speaker 5: And the last thing I'll say about this too is you know, it wasn't that long ago in cellular cameras where we had to select a Verizon, select a carrier right and at and T whatever. Now you can connect to all major carriers with this sover whatever company has the best reception wherever you're gonna go. 01:11:01 Speaker 4: So in the white tail world, maybe not that big. 01:11:03 Speaker 5: Of a deal in a lot of places, but if you're trying to monitor a water hole or a wallow for ELK or you know, some of the western applications and just someplace, you know how it is like some places you go where for whatever reason, your buddy's got Verizon, he's got awesome coverage, and you have AT and T and it sucks. It's kind of nice to not have to worry about that anymore. It'll pick the best one and use it. 01:11:22 Speaker 2: Yep, yeahep excellent, excellent, excellent. We're moving on to the end of our show here, guys. We appreciate everybody being here commenting. We're gonna take a last round here of listener feedback. 01:11:36 Speaker 7: Phil, Yeah, I got it here. Let's go ahead and talk about your book, Clay. Where's where's the question? It was somewhere If you just want to start talking. 01:11:43 Speaker 3: About Yeah, I had somebody ask about the book. 01:11:45 Speaker 7: We go let's promote or Hey, Clay, how's your book coming along? I'm really looking forward to. 01:11:48 Speaker 3: Hey man, that. 01:11:48 Speaker 4: Guy right there is the most He may be the most lower listener ever. 01:11:53 Speaker 7: I see him every he lives in Hungary. Clay, how you watch the show? He's here every single week. He's got great questions, he's got a bear grease out. It's a big fan. 01:12:01 Speaker 2: Ah man. The book is going incredible. It's it's changing my life. It really is just the discipline involved in the level of research. We do a lot of research on bear grease, but I've never had to research stuff like like we are for this book. And we're still a long long ways from from Clay's book coming out in Tony. But uh, I'm I'd say I've got We've got a third of the book in a format right now that I would feel comfortable, you know, sending to share. 01:12:32 Speaker 4: Can you share the target date with it? 01:12:34 Speaker 2: Or is that still though it's it's not really got you. Yeah, But the book is about the American black bear. It's the it's the it is the the bio of the American black bear, told like it's never been told before. Guaranteed, book has never been written like this before. It's going to blow your mind. 01:12:52 Speaker 1: Uh. 01:12:52 Speaker 7: From Freddy Rick, another food centric question, he says he doesn't have much access to squirrels here in Nevada. Do you guy, do you think I could replace them with jack rabbit for recipes that call for squirrels. 01:13:03 Speaker 6: Yeah, I ain't never had a jack rabbit. But if they, if they taste anything, I mean here, what you're going to do with a squirrel is what I'm gonna do with a cottontail. And that's frame powder is behind with buttermilk and flour. And though we meant some hot grease. 01:13:20 Speaker 2: M I don't have a lot of experience with Jack Rabbits. I heard bad things about him though. 01:13:24 Speaker 7: Yeah, Steve, Steve was talking crap about him the other day. 01:13:26 Speaker 5: I think I think frying them would be the best bet. Yeah, And I don't know if you're going to pull it off or not. 01:13:31 Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't know. I ain't never had one, but good idea. 01:13:35 Speaker 7: It's good. And talk about the Hall of Fame question Tigers Tiger's Fan sixty eight eighty four. 01:13:41 Speaker 2: If you're not familiar with the Bear Grease podcast, we have an official Bear Grease Hall of Fame which typically goes to There are I believe there are nine or ten members that people that have been inducted into the Hall of Fame. There's currently three living people in the Bear Grease Hall of Fame. Some of the more famous candidates would be Daniel Boone, to Cumpsa Osceola, Davy Crockett. Some of the less well known people would be the living plot Bear Hunter in East Tennessee, Roy Clark, Warner Glenn's in the Hall of Fame, Lawrence James Lawrence, my buddy mentor backwoodsman from Arkansas. So a lot of variety in the Burgers Hall of Fame. There's one woman in the Burgers Hall of Fame, Granny Henderson Eva Henderson. 01:14:30 Speaker 3: Bart Martyr of the Buffalo River. 01:14:33 Speaker 2: And man, you can't make this happen, Tiger, It's got to happen on its own, brother. I mean, we may go for a decade without a Hall of Famer. This is not staged, so we're just waiting for We're just waiting for the next legend to pop up. 01:14:51 Speaker 3: So good question. Though. 01:14:52 Speaker 2: Appreciate you paying attention. Brother, you're talking like huk Holgan. 01:15:01 Speaker 3: I really appreciate what you're doing out there. 01:15:04 Speaker 7: Let's do one more for Tony Jacob says, how old is too old to train a dog to blood trail? I'm color blind and having a dog has helped me find too deer. My lab is eight years old and I'd love to have her help me. 01:15:15 Speaker 5: Well, old dogs can learn new tricks, and I think I don't think there is an age where you can't teach them stuff. It changes how you train them a little bit, you know. But teach that dog to blood trail. I mean, you're not going to take anything away from that dog, and it will. 01:15:34 Speaker 4: Learn what to do. 01:15:35 Speaker 5: I mean, the first dog that I trained to shed hunt was a Golden Retriever. I had several dogs ago, and I think she was five or six, probably five when I started teaching her. And it wasn't any different than taking an eight week old pup and being like, you know, here's what we're starting with. We're stringing together these behaviors the daisy chain them together until you finally have that skill set. Then you work on that. So train that eight year old lab. That lab will love it, and we'll help you find some dear. 01:16:02 Speaker 3: Excellent, great, excellent, let's call it. 01:16:06 Speaker 7: Let's call it there, guys. 01:16:07 Speaker 2: Well, hey, thanks everybody for joining Meat Eater Radio Live. I'm certain that this is probably one of. 01:16:14 Speaker 4: The best ever one you got my vote. 01:16:18 Speaker 2: Yeah, let's vote on just razio if you think this is probably the best ever media radio live. Oh, phild we got accounts producer here. Hey, everybody, thank you so much. I can't wait to tune in next week. And uh, you know what, keep. 01:16:37 Speaker 3: The wild places wild because that's where the bears live. 01:16:41 Speaker 4: Case Pocket now