00:00:00 Speaker 1: Oh hey, everybody, Episode one oh three coming at you from Bozeman, Montana. We got a lot of get to real quick. It's gonna be a different show, the different type of show this time. Phil, you just got finished editing the Charles Rodney Rabbit Hunt and what what can you tell people about it. You're gonna be in the in the field with Ben and Charles. You're gonna feel You're gonna smell the grass. They're gonna smell the shotgun shells. Yep, the gun passes Phil describing hunting. You're gonna smell rabbit for on your why would you? And you'll feel the fleas all over your body after you put a rabbit to your face. So this is that's what this podcast is. I went hunting, as those of you that follow me on social media will know, with Charles Rodney last week around this time in um Maryland, and we had a great time. We hunted for a full day. Do we we put it all in one day. We've shot eight we shot ten rabbits. We ate crab cakes and fried oysters and um fried rabbit legs at the end of the day. So it's like a full Maryland. Charles rod In the immersive experience. And while I was out there, I carried a little recorder and I put it in everybody's faces and we talked. So hopefully you'll get to hear Charles doing his his calls to his beagles, who get to hear gunshots. You'll get to hear the dogs going nuts. You could hear us chasing rabbits and yelling at each other and try to get everything coordinated. So I figured it would be a good way to um just really hear what that hunts like, because it is. It is an audio experience like none other if you're there, so hopefully it is for you, So you're gonna hear that. And then I sat down with Charles and his buddy Jeffrey to recap the hunt and talked about Charles's life now. Charles talks about his dress. He dresses to the nines and it's one of the most His wife would take me through his house when I go to visit, and they'd show me his outfits and it is unbelievable. So I try to find if he's nice, if Charles is nice enough and humble enough to give us some photos of him and his Sunday best. I would love to share those with you because his church outfits are absolutely amazing and he cares a lot about fashion, and so he talks about that in this episode. So that's what you're gonna hear. But last episode, we promised you that we would announce the winner of the Turkey Call Contest from episode one hundred. I want to do one a week so we can get these out to you. But congratulations to A B. Rich on last week's epic victory in the draw Phil contest. Phil, you're still riding high? Yeah it was, I mean so many entries. A B should feel proud. Any of the finalists should feel proud. Um and I still have a lot hanging on the wall in my desk because true, and you should all feel proud. Everybody out there that Drew Phil should feel except for the one that you wanted to win. Who was that? Dave Campbell. Dave Campbell Campbell feel proud. Dave Campbell a legend. I In fact, I had somebody on the Instagram said I'm also did my name is also Dave Campbell? And I laughed throughout this type thing like, well wasn't you? But anyway, Dave Campbell is is the man Um. I hope he wins another one of our contest. But this Turkey Call content is important for a lot of reasons. Turkey season is coming up. But before we get that, you know what I forgot? I Phil got sick. I did sick. So wait, are you trying to reprimand me by being punished? It's hard for the breathing, it's hard for me to punish. You didn't infect me, which is good. I don't even think I infected anyone in this office. And I probably came back a day earlier than I should have because I needed to get your podcast out there. Well yeah, a little peek behind the curtain, as it would be. Um. I was in Maryland, Honey with Charles Roddy and in the podcast was supposed to come out. And Phil called me and he sounded awful, I mean awful, and he had what you have? Flu What what letter flew b C? I mean it was B b Um, he had influenza B and I just felt I felt terrosed. Just take a couple of days off, you know, because Phil works for me, right, Phil, specifically specifically for me. Your name is on my I signed it. Uh So, I said, Phil, you know, take a couple of days off. THHD can wait. But I what I didn't realize is how many of you actually listened to the show and would be upset by the delay. Um, but thank you for both your patients, dear listener, and and for caring about Phil because he was in a bad way. Weren't you, Phil? Yeah, I did not feel good. A lot of people were concerned semi messages, concerned about the coronavirus that you might have it. No, No, it's not in the office yet. Like pretty much half the office was gone with the flu. The entire our entire editorial team except for like me and one other guy or was out last week with the flu. And I did get a lot of you sent your well wishes on Instagram, via message or stories. I appreciated it. Thank you. It really lifted Phil up. He wouldn't be here today without that spiritual uplift. No, I would have quit. He would have quit. Um. But anyway, I have nothing I was gonna be mean to you at all about this, Phil, I'm not gonna pap your fault. Apologize to the listeners for having to wait to two more days for the show. As as a positive you get two podcasts and like what five days. Yeah, we're making up for making up for uh, And you get Charles Rodney, which is the gift of a lifetime. He is a legend, and so we're gonna pay you back with that. But for we go to Charles Rodney. We had a contest to do a turkey call with your mouth or just whatever God gave you. You could have used anything, but your mouth was probably the easiest way to go. Sure, I feel I would have been impressed by other body parts, That's what I would have been. Yeah, I thought maybe we'd get one we didn't know before before. I say, we're unlike the Phil drawing cuts, I'm not gonna play you like ten different ones. We're not gonna We're just gonna The winner was so far in ahead of the other ones in my mind, in my mind that this one was no contest, but they were. There were hundreds of really good turkey calls. So what I'm gonna do and I was just trying to make sure Phil could help me with this. I'm gonna go home on my computer and I'm gonna make I'm gonna string all of them together that I can and make some sort of like Turkey call uh chorus that really gets everybody excited for Turkey Season. I think they called it a medley, a medley, different things strung together medley. So I'm gonna string things together into a medley of your Turkey calls, and I'm gonna roll it out on next week's show as we get hyped up for Turkey Season. So all of you that did not win, we're still gonna help you out and use your content because we have yet again hundreds of people and his contest and to um to let everybody know what to go back to episode one hundred, what you're gonna win? What are you gonna win? Your THHC hat Barry Gilbert never got one? You will? Yeah, you got one up on b G and well the for the winner, I'll ask you if you want us to sign it. I feel like that's silly, but Phil and I will sign it if you If you want, Phil signatures just PTE filled the engineer. We'll sign that if you want, or we'll just leave it just blank, which is probably a better way to go. Um. We're gonna give you a meet your cookbook signed by the crew. We'll give you a t HC. Yetti Tumbler as well for winning this one. So the winner you still got that drum roll cute up there films here it comes. The winner is Greg Morse m O R s E. He wrote in with a great email but also a great video. So I'm gonna play it for you, Dow and talk you through since you won't be able to see it. This is a video. Now. About fifty of our entries were audio and were video, so it's great to see that all of you have beards. Is not surprised me, not surprised me at all. Ever, all the listeners look the same, which is what I thought it's gonna be the case. So it's good to see you all and see you know kind of where you're at in life, what you're listening to, where you're listening to T A C. So we appreciate that. But here he goes Greg Morris with his winning entry. It's a poor to practice your turkey calls every day. But first he's pulling. He's opening a drawer, pulling out Oh some active scrape, do you attracting? He's got candles lit in his bathroom with a rest in peace squeakers framed portrait. How he's put He's put on his his scrape flower first thing in the morning, because that's usually out. He's wearing a robe. Make sure to have a glass of water. He drinks a glass of water. They zoom into a picture of Fabio that says filled the engineer not far off? Nope, yeah, beautiful. Then he stares into my eyes and they cut to some little dog. What kind of dog does that feel? The hell kind of dog? Would ask me what is that thing? What is that thing? And a creepy little dog staring at us at the end, poor dog. So Greg, congratulations. I would just like say, congratulations whoever you roped in to film you? Yeah, somebody filing, your partner, your friend, I don't know who, but props to them. Yeah, we'll give you another. Yeah. Listen, I'm not much of a turkey hunter yet, but I know that that gobble. I mean, how how would you rate that? I would give the gobble zero? Oh me too, Okay, I just wanted to be sure a zero out of ten, but I would give the whole production. So for those of you who actually are are talented um and sent in and like to apologize, apologize to here on behalf of th HC. Is not about being talented, as you can well, as the host could tell you a few talents. I can vouch for that. It's about talking shit. And this guy pulled it off. Now I'll post the video so you can all see it. But really, what got me I'm gonna be this. I was gonna be completely honest here. What got me Phil was rest in peace squeakers in his bathroom with candles lit around. There was production value and then like the zoom, huh that went to squeakers because I often think about squeakers. He would sit Squeakers would sit on my shoulder and eat lettuce. So you've shared You've talked about squeakers several times on the podcast now and the only memory you bring up the squeakers sitting on your shoulder. He would, I would? What else does he do? One time? That's pretty really fat because he ate a lot less so much less, so much less. He's like a vegetarian. Uh, but he would. I I took, I scraped off I had a teenage mutant Ninja turtles car and I scraped off all the stickers and I put paper on there and I wrote squeakers mobile and I would put him in in the little car and push him around. Now he would try to jump out the window every time, terrified, terrified, terrified. But that's that's squeakers for you. And so that's what originally drew me in. But the rest of it was just great. The dog zoom at the end, the bathrobe, the production value, the creativity that Greg used here one him the day. So Greg, congratulations, Uh do some kind of applause film there we go. Um, that's it man, that's number two contest number two. Next week we gotta doozy for you. Uh, it is gonna be you. Guys wrote some poetic reviews that were amazing and we're going to try to do them justice on next week's program, So stay tuned for that in the winner of that contest. But now, and to take you to something totally unrelated, we're going to the field in Maryland to hang out with Charles Rodney for Dave Rabbit Hunting. Enjoy a buck shot, rattle up, whoazo, they didn't go. This is Blue, This is Hank the Best, and this is Sam. Hey everybody, and welcome to another episode of The Hunting Collective. I've been O'Brien and I'm out hunting in the field right now with Charles Roddy and walking through an open field and the eastern shore of Maryland behind some six beagles looking for rabbits. You hear Charles in the background imploring his dogs to find him. We might have one right here. That's a pretty looking thicket right there. How many We got three rabbits, Charles. We've been hunting for about an hour and a half. We got three, so that ain't bad. So you're gonna hear the sounds of sights and sounds of rabbit hunting from the fields, so stay tuned. We're going after him. We got one up, We got one up. Ye, you got him. I got a dead rabbit, dead rabbit. Yeah, it's shooting right here. Dead rabbit. Come on, boys, come only get him. Come on. I saw a leaf move and I look and I saw him move again, but he went back in. It was the dog, So I did that. And then all of a sudden the third time he come on all of day and you shot him right here, didn't you, sir? They say, we need you give me a dead rabbit. You want a pitch of him. Jeffrey bring him up hair so we can get a picture. Yeah, he was sitting right on the edge. So I was just interviewing Charles a little bit filming on my phone, and a rabbit jump pretty much right from out under Charles's feet. Didn't he two feet away while we were talking? You just never know he was sitting here. I was just telling being what kind of cover we need in this one sitting in the open. Once you started making some noise with the shots and the dogs running, these rabbits gets spooked up, so they could be sitting anywhere. This must be the motel for rabbits. Yeah, we could just we could have somebody to stand here and block Charles. What kind of uh bark are you listening for? These dogs? A certain type of bark, certain type of expression. I'm kind of looking for a continuous bark, kind of a little bit more exciting. When the scent get real hot, they get more excited. All of them are not barking now, So that means that that rabbit could have gotten up earlier. It could have been an older scent that still can they can still smell. So I'm looking for an intense close barking when you get up and they get hot on him, they get real excited. Cold trail now a little bit cool. Yeah, it's they're on cold trail. But that rabbit got up earlier. I'm gonna call him back this way so we can go on that side of the creek brush. Yeah yeah, come on there, Yeah, come on there, Yeah, come on, Hank, come on, blue Rattler. Let's Sam Nick, come on, balls out buck shot Yeah yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, come on, come on there. Yeah yeah, yeah, it's right here, hunting, Phil. This is your grandfather's place, your family's place. But as you were a kid, this is where your grandfather lived, and you spent a lot of time kicking rabbits out of the brush out here, didn't You did not like this, But we did. We killed a few rabbits. We were saying earlier. You know what I mean. Four We were talking last night over some bud lights that, uh, there's rabbit hunting, then there's rabbit hunt with Charles Rodney. Wholly different, wholly different experience, hotly different experience when you're running with him. And how many dogs we have, Charles, how many we have out here? Dogs? Six dogs? Yeah, this is a completely different program. He's right in here. You got the top bend cum boys there see him. I took two shots at him. I was behind and though he's in here. Yes, got him, Dad rabbit. He must have been wounded. God, yeah, where was he here? Boys? Hey, boys, come out here, boys, you missed it? See you? Mr Who slim right? Give me your boys here, boys, come to your boys. Stop. He just stopped. He could jump right out from under my feet and ran right through some brush. Come here, letting me know that my shot was only for a warning. Rabbit. Good boys, good boys, good shooting rabbing number four on the ground. Yeah, that guy, he jumped right from under my feet. Come on, I chased him. He came, He came pretty fast. He ran here, stopped, and then took off again. He jumped right under here, and I smoked him. My shot was only for appearances, Charles, I basically shot a I shot a bush. I don't know. It was a good rookie bush. It's one of the better looking bush I've ever shot. Boone and Crockett bush. All right, Charles, gil, do you give us a hunt update. How are we doing? How do you feel like we're doing? I think we're doing pretty good. We got three right quick. It slowed down a little bit and we had our best run of the day. A long circlear eggshall route. And he was about dirty yards from where he got up. And all the time rabbits make that circle and they go back to where they get up. This one was heading back that way. But brother Field who made one shot and the death they call him one shot? Whon yea for a good reason. Now we're getting it, Charles. Why is there something like the deep like the sound that the dogs respond to or is it loud and assertive? What's it? Is there a type of tone they lo better than another? No, they know which dog a true bark. They know each other's bark. Two of them dogs rattling bozo. When they get understand they got the who who? They got that deep voice? But they know when needs when each voice is true and that rabbit is rolling. And because as you know, a couple of times and one dog might give one or two little barks, they don't go to it. But when they give a certain bark, they notice sing is hot in this up and it's time to join in. Well, what about you when you're commanding him? Do you use a deep voice? I just use whatever voice I feel it's necessary. Now, when I'm just telling to get in I'll just tell him find them, get in there. But if I see the rabbit like that and calling them where Jeffrey just calling? Yeah, I need to call him with yeah, yeah, yeah, I got fast like that fast. And sometimes I run a little bit. They see me running, they run And when I get close to where the city is, I point down and they put their nose down and they picked it up. See Blue picked it up. Frut. Yeah, but when I went down the hill, Blue was on the on the rabbit. Well, here's Charles Rodney, who how he's hunted this far many times? Right? He couldn't count that he's hunted this far many times. And if you're active, right, and you're seeing the landscape every couple of times a year at the same time of year, right, the same seasonality, he could probably call out every little corner of this and what's changed. He's like, this used to be. But you know some of other areas. Have you got the thick where this has lost it? It's got enough? But yeah, I mean, who else would notice that a little intricate detail like that used to be a lot thicker? Now, Charles Rodney, tell me you tell everybody out there about that shot. I just made, like, what kind of sporting man of mine? Well, folks, I'm gonna give it to the man from Montana. He was standing there. The dogs was pushing. They pushed him in the briars in the bottom. Jeffer and I were standing. He turned, he went back in some weeds, some brown weeds which makes it hard to see, and I could see Ben and he moved over about oh about maybe ten ft. He said, I'm gonna cover this area. And the dogs was pushing him straight and he peeled off one shot head shot, cut, cut the head right in half. Good shot, good safe shot. So we ended that long. It was a long chase. They jumped him on the other side of a of a what do we call a sloop way. It kind of the land, kind of slopes with some water running in it, a deep ravine with water, and they ran him around and around and he went in the weeds and that's where we killed. Dogs stayed on him. In about three deer got up in front of the dogs. These dogs do not chase deer. They will not, they said, right on that rabbit. They went back that rabbit must across this road three or four times. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, come on, she going up here, you go here, you go here, couple of them grabbing number six, raping number six, Charles. That's it, tell us a story. You got he got us, escape, kicked him up, he ran, We shot, We thought we had him. He got up, ran in some high brown grass and made a turn to come back, and I was waiting on him, and the dog pushed him hard and fast and put him on a nice size, big raby. When we go number sick, Charles, we wrap up the morning hunt. What do you think? I think this was an excellent hunt. We got eight eight rabbits. Uh. We had some real nice long runs through thick briars, up and down hill, in a gully and uh in a little bit of water and marsh. The dogs come back all money, but they still they still gave that extra and uh, it's warm and they'll hunt some more. So I think eight is excellent. I do. I'm a little tired after that last run there. Yeah, that last run worked us. We had to make some long shots, but he wouldn't quit. He ran but two back broke legs. He ran under some cut timbers on the ground and the dog pull him up. Oh that was good. Well, we're done in the field for this morning. So next time you're gonna hear from us, probably we're gonna be in the kitchen, maybe cooking, drinking, podcasting. So we'll see you right in a minute. Charles Rodney just back in from a rabbit. Hu, aren't we yes, sir? Those Uh everything went right, well, everything did. The weather was nice. Uh, great hunters and the dogs did their jobs, and we harvested some rabbits. Ten rabbits. Ten rabbits. Yeah, rabbits one day, eight this morning and uh too late this afternoon, like after four o'clock. Yeah. You normally hunt the afternoon for rabbits very seldom, very seldom. Maybe once a year. Uh, somebody might say, hey, let's go in the later afternoon, and they can only go. All of my hunts are in the mornings, eight between eight and nine o'clock. Well, we had a hell of a morning, and then we took a break, had a burger, crab cake, fried oysters, stuffed ourselves full of food, and did some filming, and then went and shot two more rabbits. Put a little period of sentence and the dogs were arrested while we were out feeding all faces. The dogs were napped so they were fresh. I was surprised that they had that much enthusiasm to go into bushes. They act as though they had been sleeping for a week. They got after once once. But they're good dogs there they they they are treated well with with all of their medicines, and they eat good food and they get good care. So they're full of energy and they and basically they're they're very good dogs, good bloodlines. So so I have good dogs. If those who don't know you have. We had had six beagles right today. It was six males and their names were you got them all rememorized. Oh, I got the two best dogs, Hank and Rattler. Then I have Blue and Bozo and Sam and Buckshot. So six six we got Jeffrey with its say hey Jeffrey, Hey there are I'm doing great? Uh couldn't be really doing better if I tried. And you're one of like Charles has an odd way of bringing people into his orbit, into his rabbit hunting universe. If you if it were like the just the person that he is and the way that he does this like, there's a lot of people that know Charles, a lot of people that would like to know Charles. I'm sure. So could you tell us how you came to know the rabbit Man? Yeah? Yeah, I was here for a Congressional Caucus meeting and one of the individuals there told me, because they knew I hunted a lot, they asked me if I wanted to attend the UH Congressional Sportsman Foundation banquet luncheon auction that they had. So I did, and during that time, Charles and I kind of saw each other from a fall and just kind of migrated over towards each other just to meet, and just so happened. I Um. He was telling me where he's from and a little bit about his background, and I made the statement and I said, well, I'm from Tennessee. You probably don't know the city, but it's called Muffisboro, Tennessee. And he looked at men. He said really, he said, I know Muffisborough. He said, my daughter and son in law live in Muffisboro. And so that's where uh it started. And from then on I become friends with his UH daughter son in law, and Charles and I have stayed in contact. As a matter of fact, since that time, I've tried to make my way to Maryland every year since that time to hunt with him, and I really really respect. You know, some people can talk to you and they kind of tell you about their background and you kind of believe half of it. But with Charles, you believe that plus more. I've rabbit hunted all my life, but beating Charles. Number one thing he'll He'll always say is let's be safe. The second thing is let's have a good time. And uh, it's the memory that he has from the hunts is just amazing. Charles, What's up with that? How did you? Where did you get this memory? Do you always have this memory of other things in life? Charles can remember every rabbit that he's ever shot at. I was not even not a joke. Oh. I always had a great memory, even as a child. And I can remember hunts. I can remember people. I can remember the shots. I write articles and I can fifteen twenty rabbits, and I can say who shot the first one, the second one, how it happened, how many shots. I remember it even though we're hunting and we're going through the process. But I've always had this memory even as a kid. I wrote an autobiography three or maybe five years ago. I remembered things prior to kindergarten. Now we're talking. I'm seventy years old, so we're talking four and five years oh. And I gave a copy to a friend of mine who's now about eighty nine. He said, I've read a lot of things in my time. And he's a retired school teacher, and he said, but I never heard of nobody remembering stuff from kindergarten. And I have that knack. And when things go on in the family, they asked me, do you remember such and such and such and such. I said, yeah, yeah, I remember, and I can repeat things back, and I write. I write these stories, and I write a lot of little comments. I write a Christmas a letter to the family. It's it's not a Christmas celetta anymore. It's it. I didn't write one last year, but I'm gonna write something this summer. And it was six pages of activities and things and people and so forth. So from yeah, just from that year. And I have the memory about the hunt the weather. And one guy said, man, you remember everything before we even had the last cup of coffee, and that's just the way it goes. So and so if somebody is hunting with me and I write about the story and they said I didn't miss that many I said, believe me, if I write it, you did miss it. So that's true. The first time I hunted with you was here at the sact same property, and then he sent me a magazine. I was probably better beagling yes with see, I remember that. See I'm learning um with all the details. And I was like, I didn't see this guy writing anything down. I thought, there's no way you could remember in this final detail without writing it down. You had it all like play by play of the entire hunt laid out. Boom boom, boom boom. I think I think you asked me, do I take notes in the fielding? How are you gonna take notes with a shotgun in your hand, calling commands to the dogs, watching for the rabbits. That's maybe you were going off behind the bushes it take notes with a tape of the note? What I do? I remember it, and then when I get home, I make some cryptic notes one or two words on a tablet, maybe within a da too. And then later on I come back and I feel it in and then I describe. I describe what the weather was like, what the cover was like, what the terrain was like, who what gun somebody was carrying, and so forth, and what the dogs did on the first rabbit and so forth and tail we ended well well, hopefully if we do this right after, people will just have listened to parts of our hunt. They'll hear the dogs, they'll hear shotguns. Are you know a bit of an audio experience of kind of what we went through today, And what they'll also here is you're yelling and screaming like a mad person at your dogs. And you probably describe that on the show before. But for those who are uneducated, you should probably stop and go back and listen to the other two Charles Rodney podcasts from the Hunting Collective and then maybe the best of volume one where you were also there. Any of those you go listen to, So stop right, We'll wait for you to do that, and we'll come back in a second and we're back. Um, now, you know all about Charles Rodney, so I don't have how to tell you anything. You know he hunts with beagles, and you know that he he has specific things that he says to them to get them acting the way he wants that wants them to act. So people have heard that. Now, tell how did you develop that was the first time you started using those sounds. Well, when you when you have beagles and you raise beagles, and you run beagles, and you train beagles and you hunt with beagles, there is a command between the owner um and the dogs. They understand that language. And different different owners, different owner of beagles who are hunting use different commands when you're calling them and when you're telling them to get in the grass and you're telling them to go in the briars and to get in the briars, they understand it. And they are bred to do this. This is what they live for, to go into bushes and the chase rabbits. So I give them the command. I said, come on there, get in there, find them, jump in there. Come on, and I'll call one by name, Come on, Hank Rattler, come on Blue, get in there, find him, find him. And they're searching. They're searching. They're searching, and they're going under under briars, over tree logs, and and when one of them hit that right scent, the others know that the scent is true and the chase is on. And then if we see a rabbit, or we shoot at a rabbit and we miss him, uh, I call him over. And you gotta call him with a with a straight voice, with a cadence, with intensity in your voice, because they're in excitement. Because if you just call him, say here, come here, they're not gonna come. But if you call him in the excitement, say come on here, there gonna watch him, watch him. He's over here, come on, get him up, get him up, find him, find him. He's over here, come on, come on. And they're rushing through the brush and they come over and they hit that scent and the chase is back on. Now. Of course, when you're hunting and we shoot the rabbit, we yelled dead rabbit, they understand that too. They followed the scent line to the down rabbit. You let him sniff the rabbit. They see the rabbit, they get they sometimes they pick it up, or a couple of them try to bite it. A couple of them just look at it, and they know the hunt for that rabbit is over and they've scored a touchdown and it's time now to go and score another touchdown. I was gonna was gonna say it's time how to do a celebration dance. Yeah, well the celebration or scoring a touchdown, because if they don't see that rabbit down, they think it's still up and they continue to search. So that's why I tell the hunters, when you shoot a rabbit, let him lay down until they come or pick it up and hold it and shake it over there over their faces, uh a little bit, and they see it and then they know it's down and they move on and they continue to search the brush, and you get up the next one and the next one and repeat the process. So we did wait ten times today. So Jeffrey, we gotta go back to you because you're a rabbit hunter. We're talking about today, like I wonder how many rabbit hunters are out there, Well, you gotta be. You gotta separate two periods of time prior to Charles Rodney being known and then post Charles Rodney, because there's been I'm aware of a rise and rabbit hunting since Charles Rodney had been has been on the podcasts. It's a do you know about this? I've heard people say that and you know, there are probably numbers and a lot of people. There's a line graph somewhere there. There's probably a line graph somewhere, and a lot of people thank me. They say, uh, we want to thank you for what you're doing for rabbit hunting. Well, it didn't start out that week. I'm just a passionate guy who loves rabbit hunting. It's all I hunt, Okay, I I talk rabbit hunting all the time, and so this is what I do, and to promote rabbit hunting. I did not go out with the intentions of promoting rabbit hunting, but it came. It came to me. I started right and I started meeting people, meeting people like Phil Hoon and Jeff Crane and a whole bunch of other people who invited me into their world. And then they introduced me to other people, and these other people who are avid hunters themselves and outdoor people and in many other capacity and they want to hunt. So now the promotion is on about rabbit hunting. And those who come to rabbit hunting said, man, I hadn't noticed stuff was this much fun. I've hunted all over the world, and but they've hunting all sorts of big animals, dear elk moves, uh, caribou, and a lot of waterfowl hunters. One guy told me, he said, you have to tell me how to shoot down. I'm always shooting in the air because he's shooting at pheasants and birds. So he said, Uh, you gotta tell him what to look. I said, well, it's just like a duck coming in you. You you gotta watch him running, you lead him and so forth, and know your target. Don't shoot in the grass, shot heads off, rabbits don't. Yeah, you gotta lead him. You gotta lead him. Those those guys today, uh left just the ears on him. So it was not my intention to promote rabbit hunting, but I enjoy promoting it. If if somebody want to call me the unofficial ambassador of rabbit rabbit hunting, that is fine. I'm just doing what I'm passionate about in the promotion of it. It enhances the conservation and enhancement of getting more people out in the field, and that's just great. I know. I love it. Well, Jeffrey, you're one of those people, right, and you just describe meeting Charles and being a rabbit hunter yourself but you know, how did you come to rabbit hunting, because there's not I mean when we think of hunting culture, being a rabbit hunter per se, just saying that's what I am is not something that you hear A lot of people say. My dad, uh started us. My brother and I who was My brother was a year older than than I was. My dad started us in the tenth grade. He bought us a gun and basically kind of took us out with him. He always hunted and had beagles, and he took us out with him, and that's how we basically got started. And uh, even after he passed, we did a little bit of hunting. But hunting and rabbit hunting in Tennessee has really gone down a lot, not just with the building, but you just don't have people to trap the predators like you do uh here, and I see there's being a big difference. So when I went to Mississippi in two thousand and ten, I did some rabbit hunting as well. But again it's going down. But when I met Charles who was like, you mean, you guys have that many rabbits. You have rabbits there in Maryland. And when I asked people and tell people in tenn and see, Hey, I'm going to Maryland and hunt. They said, they still hunt now until the see they do have a lot of field trials, but those are in controlled environments control pins, but here it's just a lot different. On the way here, I was, I had my bags and I had my my gun case and all my bags, and some some guys stopped me, where are you going? What are you? What are you going home from? He just assumed I had been hunting in Montana, So no, I live here. I'm going to hunt rabbits. He's gonna go like you get on a plane to go hunt rabbits. And I said yeah, And he looked down at the tag on my bag. He was Baltimore, because you're going to Baltimore to hunt rabbits. Yeah, I said, yeah. Decided I just want to leave it at that. I don't want to give him any more details. I wanted him to walk away confused, like what Baltimore for? Rap? I hope you didn't give him my phone? Not you want to know a man a rabbit man. This is the guy. But it is it is interesting how those two things come together. And like I said, Charles, there's so many people. You've told stories that lunch today about guys you met just randomly tell sorry about that year old guy you're telling me about it lunch. It's just another example somebody that's kind of like coming to your orbit and then they get attracted to you, like like gravity. People people come to me and they're asking me, and they heard about me, and they they want to meet me. And folks want to go rabbit hunting. And I said, well, my wife always say I'll remember you one person. You can only spread yourself so thin. And I turned people down. And just eight or nine days ago, five people contacted me who I met, some I new, and a couple of new guys I met, and they want to go rabbit honey. Well, a couple of them. I told him, I can't do anything this year. The season and my schedule is filled, so a couple of guys it will be maybe next year and so forth. But people are asking. And I do charity auctions for a variety of sportsmen's group and in each of those group, I don't charge. In each of those groups, I hunt with many members of those groups, and some new people always approached me. Now a lot of those guys are just talkers. Some of them have never called me, and a lot of them do call me. And most of these people have either land, they owned the lease, or they have access to properties. But you asked me about a nine year old man that I met four years ago. I was coming from running my dogs and I told my wife I would always see this house on the side of this road with a big field of green's colored green kale rape, turn of sweet potatoes throughout the year, and I never stopped. So I tell I'm gonna be a little bit longer because I'm going to knock on the door. And I went snocked on the door, and this man came out. We stood on the porch. I asked him who on the property. He said, I do. He's everything's fifty cents a pound. Their bags over the pick. I won't know to know, sir. I don't want any greens. I just stopped to see who owned them. I'm gonna come back in a week with some other people who want something. So he said, what are you doing. I said, I'm running dogs, beagles. He said to any good. I said, yes, sir. He said he chases there. I said, no, sir. In ten minutes we've never seen each other before. I was sixty six at the time and he was ninety one at the time. He said, I'm ninety one, and if the good Lords say the same, come this fall. I want to go rabbit hunt with you. Now. We just met in ten minutes and we talked and I said, well, I said, his name is Guy Hole. I said, Mr Hall, you know we need some land to go hunting on. That's the only thing. He said, don't worry about the land. I got plenty of land. So December I called him and he said, give me two days notice, we'll go. So I said, Mr Hall, you know those guys are hunting deer and they don't like us in there with those dogs with the deer. He said, Charles, it's my land. We can hunt whatever we want to, when we want to. All I could say was yes, sir. And when I left, I said to myself, none but Jesus put us together on that particular day, and today we are friends. He made ninety two on the twenty second, and I turned seventy on the eleventh of February. He's he's on the twenty second of February, and I turned seventy on the February eleven and last year, this man still raised a big garden. He raised four hundred and fifty bushels of three varieties of sweet potatoes, and he still plows them. I went over and help him pick potatoes. We should we should pause there for just a moment to appreciate the fact. If you're out there and me, I'm thirty four, I'm like, shit, I don't think I did that much work all year last year, let alone in one season to pick that many potato. You won over and helped him pick. I help him pick. He has grandson's great grandson. The neighbors, their friends, there's a whole bunch of people looked in on him as a fellow with a construction business, and they were not working that day building. So he and one of his workers came over and they picked potatoes, and I picked potatoes, and and he sells them all twenty dollars a bushel. He sells them all. This man is active. He still drives, He still go to church every Sunday. He goes bird hunting on on one of to preserve. He is just a walking legend, a miracle, and he's super super nice man. And I wrote a story about him with his pitching Better Beagling about two years ago. Go pick up better Beagling by the way. Um, it's just like I said, another example, it's the Church of Rabbit Hunting. That's what I That's what we always say here we are, so we gotta tell the stories about today because that's really everybody's already kind of heard some of the sounds and from being out in the field and doing what we do. Of course, if I do it right, and um, I think that each rabbit, like we tell you shoot it, you shoot it a rabbit, right, um, and you tell the story of immediately after that happens. Right, you shoot the rabbit, then you replay the events immediately and then you remember it for the next thirty probably years. But but we shot ten rabbits today, Um, you got The most memorable one was probably the one that me, you and I bust like thirty of m oh trying to get so you want to tell people storry about. That was like maybe the fifth rabbit we killed or something. I think that was the number eight one. We were we were we were quitting, we were quitting, and this rabbit we were in in the middle of this little wooded area kind of like a little bottom like it. It kind of got a little high top on both side, and in the bottom there's a lot of vines and bushes and stuff. And always sell the fellas to kick those little piles, little piles of leaves or twigs or branches because rabbits. So I walked over and I stepped on, and this rabbit took off. I thought one of the guys from you saying Boat or Bob, he's the guys who were known as the world fastest human being took off. Well. I threw one at him, and he ran, and the dogs got on him, and one dog saw him and he ran down, and he came back among some twigs, and I saw him in the distance twice, and I put two on him, and I thought I had him, so I let up, and he was still running. He ran, and that's where my twelve gage mother be ben Ben shot. He said he killed a tree anymore, And the rabbits stopped going up an incline, and I threw another one on him, and I said, he's hurt. But he was still running and the dogs were on him. They were on that scent hot. He ran across a little dirt road and down another little bottom, and Ben saw him standing on top of some little, little small trees that was stacked up, and he couldn't run any further, so he went between the trees and the dogs ran over the and I had him. When we picked him up boat back legs were broken and this rabbit was running on just on the two fronts. So we we we left some lead in the field. But when your hunt with me, there are no scared shells. That's right, we didn't. I were going to leave him in the pocket. I knew I was going to hit that tree, but I figured why not that he's gonna be fine. There are no scared shells. They make plenty, plenty more, and we'll keep the shell business people in business. Thanks Federal Premium sponsoring our program. We keep you in business because we were gonna shoot. Now, Jeffrey, you had you and I both made miraculous head shots. I wouldn't say miraculous because we knew what we were doing. Both of us knew exactly what we were doing at the time, but you could describe we had I think the one that you shot in that last hedgerow. You know, we know that Charles will remember, But was that the one that was had escaped our grasp and was running up and down the did we think he was? I think at the end we had like three dad had escaped and one had gone down and Charles had made a long shot at him, and we thought they were going down the hill. But just so happened, one came back and I saw him going in. So I hollered, did Charles to hey, we think we saw a rabbit here. He said, okay, hold on for a second. And when he came back, he brought the Charles brought the dolls back up. He put the dogs exactly where I told him that the rabbit had gone in. Well, just so happened. Not only did one rabbit came out come out, two rabbits came out, And that's when one went up the hill a little bit and Charles got on he got the dogs on him, and as he was coming back down, he basically almost stopped. And that's why I shot him right and just clean head, clean off. And that's as we were eating rabbits and you you're cleaning them, I mean, that's the shot you want. Because we had a lot of broken legs. We had a lot of you know, if you want a lot of rabbit meat, you can't be although I was slinging a twelve gage at him. But when we clean, when we clean, all of the rabbits um. Only a few had pellets in the in the stomach, going the bodies. Most of them were clean shots. There were very few pellets in the rabbit and I'd say nine of the meat was hardly untouched. Some of the rabbits died from just one or two pellets. So we did some clean shooting today. Yep. And that's what I said before before we started, like, well, we gotta get a bunch of stuff done. Content, We gotta make content. But ten rabbits would be great. And we ended up with ten damn rabbits. Exactly what, And that's a good day of shooting. We only hunted for like five hours. That's that's good. We we got three up early and then we had a dry spell where we didn't hit anything for a while all and then later on the next five were running and we had some good long runs. There's there's some water in a section with a with a nice little ditch full of water, maybe about twelve feet wide, and they crossed it a couple of times, and they went in some bottom because we could tell because the dogs came back all muddy, and they stuck. They stuck with them and they ran them. And then plus today a number of deer got up in front of the dogs. These dogs don't run deer. Uh. You can put them in the pin with a with a deer and they won't bother it. And they stayed true on the rabbit scent. They had a couple of long runs, very long runs twice in a circle that when I shot in the head, they crossed must across the road four times at least, you know, because we had a kind of a brushy bottom. And then it came up into a grassy, kind of crp looking field, and this rabbit kept darting down into the bottom into the brush, and then he dart back into the field and he'd serpentine and you go back in and and I positioned myself where I thought the dogs are gonna push him to and he came right out perfect, and he kind of came too close, so I had to pause and let him run a little bit so hot, and so I didn't use the twelve cage too, dismember him right there. But those dogs work hard. Oh yeah, they're gonna rest good tonight there. Right now. I carried either outside sleeping, but they got back on. It was we went to lunch and they took a nice little nap or cs to there, and then we got back in there, right back on it. Man. The our last hour of light today, we got on just one I guess you gotta hedgerow er fence row that's probably ten twelve ft wide. It's all brush briar patch basically, and we what do we run three rabbits out of here at least? And got two out of there. We shot a lot times, and if it was if we still had more light, we could have flushed back because it was getting dark and we needed to come in and clean up the rabbits and do some other little chores. But we could have found that other one. They would have They would have found him. If I would have called some cadence and called him over, they would have found him and we would have got him up. Because they hunt with that intensity. They aim to please. They do that. They do they to please you guys, and you guys have like the specific dialect the way of talking, like the tonality that like the sounds to make to make them excited, to get them back in the game, because they're just like us. Sometimes they get to they get to be a little bit lack a days cool, you're not seeing any rabbits. Here's execut through the brush gets a little boring. The next thing you know, Charles comes up and gives you give me one of your patented yips ape ape come on in once. They once they get that that next rabbit, they have been re energized and they want to find another one. But when we went through that dry spell after we killed the first three, they look kind of lack of days ago. They were hustling. They wasn't finding anything. So it's lack in any any part of life. If if you keep doing something and you're not successful atty, maybe get a little frustrated. And they always tell you keep trying, keep trying. It's going to change. And a little while later they had a rabbit up and they were re energized. And then the next thing you know, we got five more rabbits. Saying they had some long runs up and down. I was saying earlier, you could be a motivational. You're like, go to people's offices when they're having a bad like right after lunch when they're kind of lagging, and just give them just go to wake now, wakeme U, wakeme on. Yeah, that's right, because I think I can make some money doing this. I do. I do think you could. I'd pay you to come then just hang out with me every once in a while. You see me fading, you see me maybe not hitting that email right away, just give me a me a little yipee. Give me. What would you do if I was I was just I'm just working, you will become from a lack of days the co worker to one of the best employees. I'm just thinking, maybe this is a circuit you go on. You'd like just get in the room with a thousand people and just yell at a walk around, put a couple on a leash, those hard hand ones. I can always put the garment col on to shock him anyway. But that's true. I mean, like there's a there's a those dogs have they're in sync with you in a way. And and Jeffrey to Jeffrey has I was talking with the other guy that was something with us. Who's whose house and property. This is Phil. I was like, I can't make that noise. I can't. You know. Jeffrey comes in and he has a certain tone that those dogs they click with and they go right to and I'm sure that's just learned and I'm I was like, come over here, dogs. They won't respond to that. And I think it says as Charles mentioned earlier, I think you have to get very intense because that's the moment that you're just not saying, come here, come here. You You have to get loud and get intense, and that excites the dog so that gets them to come in towards you. When you gotta when you call him, you gotta use enthusiasm, okay to call him. Hunting with a fella in Virginia about three years ago. Never met this man before. He came with a friend and he's a hunter. He hunts all sorts of things and we killed six rabbit that they on. The six rabbit rabbit. He saw the rabbit get up in front of him and he called the dogs and they responded. It wasn't these dogs. There was another group of dog. Hank was the only one in that group at that time, and he called them and they came over and they got on the scent and his name was Justin. I said, Justin, we just met this morning. I did get them dogs to come over and respond to you like that, he said, I was paying attention to you on the mother rabbits and I did just what you did. I see, well it worked and we just met maybe three hours early. So there you go. There you learn by watching. I definitely my my my instincts always is just because other times I've hunted behind dogs, you know, hunted behind dogs for mountain lions or bears. One time, Um, you want to be on the dogs. If you can't, you got collars on them and you're tracking them so you can be as close to them as possible when they get on them, either tree or bear or treat or whatever. So that's my natural instinct is to get on those dogs and get right on them and follow them and see what they're seeing. But that's not exactly how it works, right. I mean, you can you're doing that, but you're those rabbits are gonna circle back or they're gonna go on a different path. And if you're right with the dogs, you're probably not right with the rabbit, because that damn rabbit, as we saw today, is a couple hundred yards ahead of you doing something different. Rabbit. That rabbit is running on a straight away. One of the rabbits that we lost, he was at least fifty two hundred yards in front of the dogs, and he circled around us, and he ran through some water and mud, and they tracked him and then they lost him. They don't usually lose him, but this rabbit is one deserve to live. So you have to pay attention. You gotta be attentive, and you gotta let the dogs do their work because that's what they trained for. And you gotta stand still and not talking and not talking on the cell phone. Next year, I think I'm gonna burn cell phones from my hunts all I mean. But yeah, that's fine. I was just on my cell phone just when you were talking. We're talking to me. I was trying to well, we're not in the field, you know. But that's for you. You go around on the street and yellow people for using their phone. Usually usually when the cell phone ring or somebody's on the phone. It's when that rabbit is right near them. They haven't They have a way about him. I was doing. I don't know what. I wasn't on my phone, but I was kneeling down doing something, looking at something, looking at praying for a rabbit. I don't know what I was doing, but it wasn't productive. I was thinking about something other than rabbit hunting. And I was like digging in the dirs, I don't know, like a little kid. And I look up and there's like, there's a rabbit. I think I could have been doing a million things. That's how they do it. Man. What's what was the saying that, uh, a good rabbit will make it? What's a bad hunter looked good on rabbit? A rabbit will make the best hunter and the best shot look bad on your best date. Pay attention. He doesn't have those big guys and those big long ears for nothing. He can see that orange. He can see when you move, and he can hear you. If I can hear you from fifty feet away talking, that rabbit can hear you at a hundred yards and he will not come in your direction. He will go in another direction. It's called survival. And then he's using his stealth, his speed, and his camouflage because everything else is brown in the field and he's blending in and he'll run right by you. So you have to pay attention that you do. Now, we didn't take a quick break from rabbit hunt to talk about pies, because you make good pies and you gotta kind of you have secrets for pies just to describe people. This is your hidden talent. Well, I got a lot of talents. Okay, I make, I make, I make. My wife said it's to die for a lemon meringue pie, and they just had I made one on and we brought it over for us to eat, and I try and get it right. A lot of people, mainly a lot of the church members want the pies. They love the pies. They fight over the pies, but the little ottle ladies and they'll pay me for them, and they get to argon who gets the last slice and so forth. So uh, it's something I do bake, I cook so uh. I enjoy making them. And they're very easy to make, so I make them. I don't charge anybody. From a couple of people say well, you make one for my birthday? How much you charge? I said, well, when did your birthday or something? And I'll make it and give it to him. Yeah, I mean, and they enjoyed. And that was Charles talks pies. We're gonna get back to rabbit hunting now, that's our new segment. Charles talks about pie. That was great. You did a great job. Thank you. Now back to rabbits now, rabbits um, you learn a lot I think about rabbits. Jeffrey, You've you've been hanging out with old Charles. Here you sumer standing here to what Friday? You got a couple more days to hunt? Describe kind of what you grew up rabbit hunting, what you learn from from hanging around Charles. Well, I thought I knew everything before until I met Charles. I As as I mentioned earlier, the most most important thing that he always stressed, and it wasn't stressed as much when I was growing up, was definitely safety. And my father always made sure that we were safe. But one thing I recognized when I started hunting with Charles was that anytime someone goes hunting with him for the first time, he's going to make sure that you know the safety rules, not only safety for the people that you're hunting with, but for the dogs that are out there as well. The other thing is as um is that the enjoyment of hunting and you're out to have fun. It's not all about the number of rabbits that you shoot. It's about out there, the camaraderie and having fun. And the other thing that I've noticed and learned from him is that whenever you go on someone's property, you respect that person's property, whether it's on private land or whether it's on public land. And that's what I've really cherish and and and really respect about him, because he's going to make sure that you respect that person's property. And that's that's the most important thing, because that's how you get invites back to properties to hunt and to continue that the key, Yeah, the key to access. And you drove, you drove all the way up here from Tennessee. Yeah, you're staying for a week. Your wife must be nice, she said, go ahead, go adventures. Yeah, because it's not, like he said, it's not a normal it's not a normal thing, even within the hunting world, to be doing for seven days. Um, could you ever sit down and think why, I mean, other than your dad taking me down, there are some other thing that gets you. I've in September I retired, so now I've got a lot more time that I can hunt, that I can spend time kind of doing what I want to do, more family time. And so hunting is a passion. So I figured, if I'm gonna do it, might as well go where the rabbits are to the got him? You got him. I don't know how many you guys are gonna kill between now on Friday, but I'm worried for the rabbits because you're coming. We're gonna try. You can hunt every day, No, No, we just have a couple of hunts. Uh left, We're not doing anything tomorrow or wandsy. We're gonna hunt Thursday on a nice piece of property, and I may go on Friday with a person who want me to take him and a friend and Jeffrey. We'll go and then we'll come back a little bit of short hunt because he's gonna leave in the afternoon. So we got at least two days, maybe three. Nothing wrong with that. No, So you here's another thing. We take a break from rabbit. Honey. When I was over at your house, what last year maybe uh, you showed me you had like a book there basically of your entire life. You've written an autobiography right when you mentioned it earlier. You've written an autobiography. You have all these stories from when you were a little kid in this book, all these photos. It's in a binder, isn't it. If I remember correctly, it's We didn't publish it. We had it printed and it's it's it's with that glued back binding. But it's very thorough and firm, and it's your life. Yeah, And we distributed to a few friends and family members at the time. And why, why what struck you to write that? Just all the remembrance of your life or just a lot of memories I had, and I thought about it for teen years before I wrote it. And I would write notes on various pieces of paper, one word, two words, a sentence here, and I had a sack of papers staple together. And I told my wife, she said, when you're gonna write this? So I said, after hunting season. And so in the year two thousand thirteen, after hunting season, which in the last day in February in March, on my early rises or every day, I would type for one to three hours, and I had all of my thoughts and on paper, and the rest just float out of my head, and I made up certain table of contents and I would just write about that, whether it was one page or ten pages. And then in there I put a lot of rabbit stories. I put the letters that I had been had written at that time to the family, which came from about they're in there. I gave testimony to a number of people who had passed. They always asked me to come and say a few words, so I wrote those in. And at a high school reunion they would ask me to give a various talks, so I put those in there, and some letters to the class me. So that combined with all of those things that combined autobiography. Then I had pages of pictures a lot of people and when I was a kid, when my brothers and sis I'm the youngest of seven, and aunts and uncles and grandmother and so forth. Had all of those in there, and I labeled them so people know who they are and so forth. So that's what I did, and it only took me a couple of months or so to do it, one to three hours a day. And then I didn't let my wife read it until I finished, and I said, read it. Their errors in there, and she read it, and then I went back and I saw the correct it. Then we had our Auto, who is a good attitor, edited and we got it printed at a local print shop and we were printed about thirty five copies and we handed out There are some stories in there. I remember talking to your wife, Judy about this. There's some stories in there from when you were growing up in Louisiana. Right, you pick one to tell. I mean, what's the one that sticks to mind that kind of defines your early life there in Louisiana. Well, you know, uh, I grew up on a on a farm, and we were share croppers. And many of the people at that time will share croppers, and so you help. A share cropper is a person who lives on somebody's land. You use their land, and they get a a fort of whatever proceeds you make you pay. They let you use the land, they get a fort. You buy the seed, you buy the fertilizer that you harvest it. And then we were harvest and cotton and sugar cane primarily. So when it went to the gin mill for the cotton and to the sugar refinery for the sugar cane, they automatically took a fourth out and they sent three fords of a check to my dad and a ford to the landowner. Okay, it was just it was. It was meager, meager living in so forth. So you you scraped out a living and I and there were a lot of people who lived that way. I mean the community was made up at that time of mainly black and white people. And you had to equal as as many doing it, and so forth. Small forms, small form. Now none of them exists anymore. Those farms are still there, but there's one or two people who Harvard sugar cane. When you go back, none but sugar cane, sugar cane equipment, sugar cane trucks and so forth, and that's what they plant in that it grows well in that region. But growing up was interesting. We had a lot of fun. We did a lot of fun things. We made games, we we made toys, We made all kinds of little bows and arrow We made a little thing that we call it a pop gun. It would shoot china berries. You folks never heard of china, but it's a little ball thing that grow on the tree and you take a you take a eldberry branch and you cut it and you let it dry and you bore it out. It's already bored. And then you take an old broomstick and you make a plunger and you you lubricated and your plunge it and you put them china berries in there and you push it hard and it pops. I wonder, and then we made We made a pop gun, sling shots and all of those things. We we we trapped birds, We did stuff and uh learn and how to make wine with cherries when we were small and get drunk and sleep all day. So you know, wait what we made wine? We learned how to make wine with wild barry, wild cherries. Washo was our alcohol in it was alcohol. Oh we will eat nine and sleep off. The different than me is a more modern person. We had. We had time because we didn't have summer jobs. There were none of the facilities for you to have any of the things that the kids have today that they abusing. We had none of that. So we we we worked in the fields in the springtime, we worked in the fields and the fall and in the summer months stuff was growing and we had a lot of time. So we we we we fished. There was a river nearby. We fished, and so forth. People came to visit, and my dad grew a big vegetable garden, big vegetable garden than we can use. So everything was kinned, the old mason jars, and the rest we gave away. And I didn't like that because I had to go pick for all of these people. And now I find myself doing the same thing. I grow a garden, I give people a cousin, one of my wife's cousin, and I we find these people like Mr Hole, he sells everything for fifty cents a pound, and I'll take fifty dollars and I'll fill up the back of the truck and I'll give all these greens to people, and so forth. Then I find some other friends who grow college and kill for the deer. The deer don't come and eat them because the deer like turnips. And I go and pick and we give it away, and I give away all a rabbit. So I'm doing the same thing my dad did, and I'm giving it away. But it brings joy to people. That brings happiness to people and makes them feel good, and it makes me feel and I don't accept a penny for none of it. It's the church a real well, He's like, that's more like a church of Charles Rodney because it's not all rabbit honey related. No wanted you to get your first dog to go to go hunt. Do you have a dog before you had a dog for hunting? Do you have a dog as a kid. We had a We had a couple of dogs. We had a dog that lived to be about fourteen. His name was Spot. Now I'm gonna tell you about Spot. Spot is in the autobiography. Spot was an unusual dog. When I tell the story that my kids and my wife, they said, you're lying. No dog could do this. Spot could do anything. Spot could hunt, He could guard the yard. He could come in the house because we had the old screen door. He'd open a door and he was honest. You could leave food on the table. Spot would never jump on the table and take what he was And when we had chickens and ducks in the when Mama wanted to kill a chicken or a duck and we couldn't catch it, we would tell Spot. We'd point to the chicken, get that on that spot. It'd be fifty chickens out. The Spot would go and catch just that one and bring it back, and I tell this story that when when I'm stretching it, now all of what I just told you the truth. But when I stretch it, okay, now now it's now. When I stretch it, I tell people I used to read the comics and when I finished with the comics, I put the comic paper on the flooring. Spot would read the comics too. He could read. And I told somebody, I told somebody when it was a whole bunch of us young guys. We had a lot of cousins and we would play ball, and when we would be short of one person, Spot played second base. Did you give him an catch it with his mouth? But he couldn't bet, so somebody had the bat short, arms short. I don't know what to believe. I just want to believe it all because but we like dog name Spot, and he did. He was a good dog and he lived to be fourteen. But he was he was a very good dog, and he's been a good hunt dog and good duck dog. Well he could he would get one or two rabbits and that was it. But he wasn't. He was He was mixed bagle with something else. At a fellow gave my older brother. And when my brother went off to the seminary to study for to be a priest, he left him for me to watch. So I watched him until he passed away. Well, you got there's like a juxtposition because I know, Jeffrey, you have kids and now you're retired and you've got time to do this kind of same thing. For for you, Charles, there's there's a way that you were raised and then the kind of the way you raised your kids, right, And then for for you especially are you have your children, have any children, Jeffrey, My oldest daughter has twin boys, all right, perfect? Um, you could see like the generations, right, you can see you can both of you guys have a generational view of life. How you were, how you were with your kids, and how our kids are with their own kids. You know, like either of you can answer the question, but like, what's the difference between you know, for you, Charles, what's the difference between growing up as a sharecropper's son in Louisiana and how your kids grew up and how your kids are raising their kids. Well, my wife and I we try to instill good, good family values in them. In in we lived the proper life of good values. We are. She grew up Catholic. I grew up Catholic. We went to Catholic schools. So we got that value from our parents and from the nuns who taught us. She went to uh all the way to Catholic high school with the nuns in Maryland, and I went to Catholic elementary in Louisiana. Uh. We were not allowed when I was growing up to go to the high school, the Catholic high school because of race. So our kids went to Catholic elementary, Catholic high schools, and they got that training, and then they got that training from us and they in't still those same values in their kids. And we have three children and each of them have three two children. Wow, what are the what's the difference in that generation that you see? You know from where you were now and even even as hunting goes through your kids to your kids hunt, No, they don't hunt. Do you think that is? Well? When they were growing up, I took a hiatus from hunting. That's why I said early in the podcast, I hunted for sixty years, but UH, actually forty some years because I took a hiatus for about fifteen years when they went elementary in high school to raise them, and I didn't hunt. And then as they went through high school and in college, I started back and then I hunted. So no, they they didn't hunt. I offered my son this year just so uh, last week, that he should come up this way he lives in Atlanta, near Atlanta, and try his hand at rabbit honey, and he said he would. Now, my children don't want their kids to be around guns, and I accept that. I respect that. But I told him, who's a better teacher for them than me? Because I'm insured that they're safe. And they just said, notice that you can take them fishing, and you can take them planting flowers and planting vegetables and do other things, but not that. So I respect that. How about you, Jeffrey have all I have all girls girls. Yeah, my girls love to do uh, clay target shooting. I do some clay target shooting. They like to do that. But as far as the hunting and the skinning and the killing of the animals, nah, understandable. Yeah, that's understandable. I wonder that. I mean, my kids aren't old enough to make decisions like that. Although my son every time we talk since I told him I was coming rabbit hunting, asked where the rabbits are and what we're when we're gonna eat them. So I got that going for it, but I don't know what that's going to turn into. But for now, we're looking good, really positive signs. Although, like I said, you respect what they want to do and it doesn't really matter if they follow you into this or not. You can still relate to him, I imagine, you know. And and Charles, your wife, Judy is is as good as they come, so I know that helps. We gotta have her on next time. Did she come on? You think she she will if you ask. I mean, she likes you and feel a whole lot. I like her, and I wish you would just start calling me up just her tonight. I'm serious, I said, Ben said, if you ever want to talk, you can call him anytimes, anything about anything. Yeah, she's not she's not an outdoor person, but she said, I know more about rabbit hunting because she's my editor of my stories and I've probably written a hundred stories in three or four different magazine. But she ed, it's for me and she'll change the title. She picks the titles. She said, your title is not good enough for the articles, so she'll pick the title. And she said, this is not flowing right. I don't understand it. So she knows, she said, I'll tell people I know more about rabbit rabbit hunting than ever going in the field. So she's not an outdoor person and she's a great cook. Yes, yeah, Grated. Everything we need to get your We need to. I feel like the after this conversation, the fascination with your book, it's gonna start to rise, and we got to think about are you on board with trying to get that out of the public we need to get Maybe we'll spruce it up a little bit. But well, a number of people have asked me who've seen it, and asked me, magnificent. It's like a hundred page of life and then the rest includes the stories, the rabbit hunting stories to let us to the family and uh, the speeches and the talks, uh and all of that, and maybe people don't see enough of that. Uh. It all comes from the heart and the pictures and people can reminisce. And I thought about asking somebody about maybe splitting it and publishing it because I think when we put the rabbit hunting stories in, there is probably maybe fifty of twentysome stories. But now I have over a hundred and that they've all been published and so forth, So I don't know, you know, it was never intended to be something to publish. But a lot of people say, well, you're you're sharing something that people may enjoy. You're sharing your story, right, we all have stories. You guys are both African American men from different parts of the country. They've been rabbit hunt your whole life, and now you're sitting around this table together. You know. So that when when I was when I was thinking about writing the story, I was still working and I retired in two thousand three, and I would write notes to myself. I had a kind of a halfway cushy job. I was on my way out, so I wasn't trying to sweat, you know, and so forth. So I would write all these notes and I would go home, and then I started writing names of people who visited us in the house we were. We lived along this little road into the little town five miles out, and we were like the first house of relatives that you would see going into town. And then when people would leave, we would be the last one. So a lot of people stopped. They stop on their way to town, go and visit somebody. Some of these people were related some of these people but not related. They were just family friends and so forth who had moved to Baton Rouge thirty miles away, or the New Orleans or the Houston or someplace else, and they would stop. Some of these people we saw off the them. They came on such days as He's Sunday to visit. Some came for All Saints Day in November, the first, which is a big thing in Louisiana, where they cleaned the graveyards and people come back and put flowers on the graves of the deceased one. Some came when when the figs made, we had fig trees. Some came in the sweet corn me, some came in the pecans me. Some came when the garden stuff made, when the Irish potato, when the sweep did. They knew when all this and they had come, and it makes me go get this stuff. And I go get it and bring it and pile it up and give it to these people. And I couldn't accept any money. So we saw all these people. So in the story, I listed all of the names of all of these people that I remember who came by, and many of them had nicknames and so forth, and some of them did various Oh I remember plenty of them, all of them. And uh they had they had uh let me, let me, let me just think that a lot of these people were friends of my dad. You know. They had Mr Paul Jean Pierre, he came by, and they had Mr Isaac Harrison, and he had a nickname. They called him pine top or ze I. He had yellow eyes like a cat, they said. They said he could see things in the dark, and he was good at cheating at cards. And I put all of this in there. And they had this man who a lot of these guys couldn't read all right, So they came to our house because my mother wrote for them and so forth. And they had this man, Mr. Chuka Nam. You know, how do you get these names? I don't know. And then they had another man called cousin Charlie. He would come and his wife would go into town with her sons and they would drop him off and he would come there to hear my dad and my uncle tell stories about when they were growing up in the thirties, in the twin is, in the thirties, and he would laugh. Five minutes Dad, he would start telling stories, and this man would start crying. Tears would just run down his face. And so for then we had all a relatives king over a different time, different ones. Uh. They had a lot of them at that time my age, and we would see some of these people often. So it was fun. And I wrote I listed all of their names in alphabetic Calorida and so. And I think out of the group of maybe a hundred or so names, that's probably only about two or three living. All these people. Well, these people were older, they were much older. Well, I wonder if a man with your storytelling abilities and your charisma was blessed with the memory you were blessed with for a reason. And when I remember when I was looking at that book, I was like, there's something serendipitous here, like what you can review the fact you can remember a hundred how old were you and you remember these names? They're in this time? Uh you mean when they were coming around, When these people were coming around, I was anywhere from five years old and I left there when I was twenty two, but I would go back and visit. After I got married, would go back once a year and visit. Mom had passed. Dad was still living, and a lot of these people were still living and so forth. So they would come around and I would see him, and I would always make it a point to go and talk to him. I was the favorite of so many of uh the female cousins. Great aunt Teresa and her her sisters uh uh A really was one of my favorite. And they just they just loved me because I would do things for them. And and even when they were old people, they still asked about they were. They were just hearts of gold, okay, And they wouldn't ask for anybody else, but they would ask for me because I was close to all him. I got close to all of them, and I'm that way with people. Now you are You are that way, Jeffrey can say. You can attest to that the collision of I mean everything you everything you say to me about pies and the church ladies, and I have a fan club at church and I have all these old ladies that, Oh damnit, Jeffrey, I've almost forgot this. I don't know if you've ever seen this, have you seen Charles the suits that Charles wears. Have you seen the suits you take? Because I could do it, but I'd rather you describe this and seeing him suits. Has he seen him? I don't know, because Judy would take you back there and should be like, look at these suits he's did. To me, he's a He is a classy dresser that I haven't seen too many people other than special occasions, who's able to match this man when it comes to fashion and clothes. And I think will tell you that whenever he goes to church, people still ask him as long as he's been going there, where'd you get that from? Who gave you that? Where'd you buy that? You know? He is a classy talking about three piece pin stripe. You go use a cane when you go I have can I have cats? And shoes the match? Yeah, the shoes I have. I was always taught when you start dressing your dress from your feet up, your shoes have to be polished and they gotta look right. That's the first thing, because you're looking down and then you look up, and I feel when you're going out of the house, you need to look your best, particular when you're going to church. You need to look your best, Okay, don't play. I'm yeah. So that's that's my feeling. It's my second passion fashion. Yeah, I just I joyed. I dress and people say, don't you feel over addressed? And said, no, don't you feel unaddressed dressed? I dressed for me. Okay, I dressed for me. And and the past the pastor said that coach you have on is bright. If the lights go out in church, we can just the sun hit you in it a light up. What's the color pallet? Because you have like plata purple woman. When I was in there, well, I have I have red, shades of red. I have a mustard yellow, I have purple, I have lime green, I have peach. And this is like it's not top at like Fedora or top hat goes. I have hats both summer and winter. And I followed the seasons for the hats. What's the summer had looked like? Some hat? I have straws. I have straw Cowboy hats I have because I have cowboy boots. I have straw U big brim, small brim, uh snap brim that snaps in the front. You can shape in any kind of where you want to have felt hats that you can shape any kind of way, different sizes. I like the larger brim the three inch brim um, and I have felt cowboy hats. Now you wear hats, I followed the season. The season is you don't put a straw hat on your head until after Memorial Day and you stop at labor d and then you wear the felts the other time. That's like the fall fall the wind had some fall is the same the felts. The felt. You don't want to wear a felt in July zero feather in these hats? Oh yeah, I got matching felt. You gotta you gotta step it right. You don't half steps the man. That's it's unbelievable. My wife said, people should see me in another light. The church people see me dressed up, but they never see me with work clothes on or with hunting clothes on. I can see the cover of the next better Beagling magazine. Half of you with rabbit hunting, half of you is in your church attack. So she keeps saying, you need to you need to share yourself with the people. I say, these people don't need to notice none of their business. She said, yeah, but they see you in one light, and they they judge you another way, and so forth. So well, for everybody listening, I'll try to get you. I'll talk to you. I'm gonna talk to Judy about this and get her to send me some pictures of you and your in your your holiday attire and your church attire so people can see it one thing. And that's the only place I go. Now. When I was working, I love to dress and to work I used to dress. Yeah, I worked. I manage a human resource office and I would dress every day with a suit and tie. And I had and our son who went to Catholic high school. They have to wear a coat and tie, so he would use some of mine outfits. He was that size in and when he went to college three days which made me feel good. Three days out of the week, he would wear a suit and tie and college and they didn't have to you know, you don't have to dress in college, but he would dress. And when now he's a manager of a large copy of company in Atlanta, and he gets dress to the tea. So it makes me feel good. So that apple didn't fall far from the tree. That's a good place for the apple fall too. I think that um at some level, it seems to me like you're you got your passions right, you know, and you take those things to the nth degree. Because rabbit you don't just go rabbit hunting. Because we were Phil and I earlier, we're talking about you know, as a kid, you rabbit hunt, but you just go kick bushes. You don't get a six pack of dogs and the running round and do what you do? Is it? What what you do is a different type of type of hunting. Now, Jeffrey said that your dad had beagles, so there was a similar type of honey. It was similar. But one thing that I've I've learned from Charles is that you've got to put time into your your beagles. And you could tell the difference. My dad had beagles, but my dad worked so much that he didn't He was in maintenance at staff for chemical and he didn't really have the time. The time that he would run his beagles would basically be during the season. The time between there they were kind of idle, you know. We would let him out in the back we had woods behind our house to kind of run or whatever on their own. But I've seen just a different demeanor and a training system with Charles. Charles has got a regiment of how he trains his beagles year round unless it's just so too hot to run them. So that's been the difference of not only his beagles, but other people's beagles that I that I see in the difference of them. It's the amount of time that you spent with those. They were running hard today. They weren't time. They were back at it after a little bit of rest. Mean, I thought they might be sluggish, but they were on it. Well, they're healthy and they eat good and they they get taken care of with good medicine. So they're healthy. And when you have healthy dogs, they'll and you you work them. Like Jeffrey said, they will please you. What they do. It's a it's a weird, you know, weirdly symbiotic relationship that's there. Like the emotions that they show and that you show in the field. It's strangely in in sync. It's a number of people asked me, they said, well, how do you get these dogs to listen to you? And how you get them to do this and to do that? I said, I spend time with them. I spent a lot of money on gas going up and down the road. The season ends on Saturday to twenty nine, and maybe about two weeks later, I'm gonna go somewhere and run not trained, they already trained and run and usually just run one or two rabbits and then for about an hour hour and a half and I come home. But it gets them going. And I'll do this and tell about the middle of me until it started getting hot, the bugs out, the snakes out, the ticks out, and so forth. So then I'll start back around the middle of September when they start to get cool in the morning, and I'll go and run them in the morning and get them in shape and get the enthusiasm going in and so forth. And if somebody has developed a bad habits, I can detect that and I can I got time to correct it before the season. I know a bunch of guys with dogs who don't take the time, and it shows when they go to hunt these dogs. These dogs are not listen name, They're all over the place. They don't call when they come. They don't pack together because they're a team. You need to work them so they can pack together. And they're no good. If one is here, one is over there. You've got the wrong combination of dogs, the wrong speed. One is right in front of you, one is fifty yards in front of you, and two is a hundred yards away. You want them all together. And it's called making the right choices when you're matching your dogs up and you don't just take anything any dog and you don't buy. You buy from reputable people. And when you buy from quality people, and I've said this before, you will get quality dogs. And you work them, you spend time so they know your scent, your smell, your voice, your tone, and so forth, and they prove And many people ask me, how do you get them to that? See, we work together in a go. It shows, it shows. Now before we end this whole thing, I remember last time, maybe last time you were on, we ended with you making a plea, well not a plea, but you just a bit of a sermon about why people should should go rabbit hunt. So we can maybe do that again, or you could do or you could do why people why should people dressed nicely, or why they should take up baking, or why maybe they should write down their experiences or many of the other things that you do. But I think maybe in general will let you and Jeffrey kind of say what you go first? What is it? You guys are kind of like you're both retired, you're this is the but this is the thing you choose to do. So convince people to to take up rabbit hunting. It's best you can. I would say, it's it's a great way to get out and enjoy nature. Uh, it's a good way of networking. A lot of people golf, a lot of people uh do other type sports once they retire. But this is a great sport. And trust me, it's a sport. It's not just something that you can just go out and within a week or so you're good at it. No, I mean as as as you've seen today. I mean we do it a lot, and we still miss and we still uh make mistakes. But it's a good way to get out to enjoy nature and to network with people, different people every time you go out. Take it away, Charles, Well, a couple of things. We are conservationists. Rabbit hunters, deer hunters, goose hunters. We are conservationists. So when I say that we when you have too many of certain animals, you know, disease can take place and we conserve. We try to keep the predators away so the rabbit population increase, and then we hunt the rabbits and everything we hunt we eat or somebody eat. So we work with the land on us and we work with the farmers to let us use their land, respect their land, and hopefully they leave some cover so that we can hunt. It is a great way to meet people. I meet people all the time who want to talk about rabbit hunting, who want to go rabbit hunting, who wants a rabbit, And they said, well, we'll just sell me a rabbit. I don't sell rabbits. It's illegal. I'll give you a rabbit, and I have a freezer just for that. So you meet people, you and it's good exercise. Okay, we must. We must have walked a couple of miles today. It's it's it's it's great exercise. Uh. It's a it's a camarader it's a friendship. It's it's learning about so much, learning about nature, protecting nature. Uh. Just and enjoying yourself, enjoying yourself. And of course you help the industry because you buy hunting license, you buy clothes, you buy guns, and you buy all of these things that keeps other people employed. So it's a it's a fun field thing that I enjoy, and I only hunt rabbit because that's what I enjoy. I tried three or four other things and it doesn't It did not work. So we talked about turkeys earlier. I said, turkeys, Charles, he said, it doesn't work. It doesn't work. I tried. I tried it and it and it doesn't. It didn't work for me. And on my card it says rabbit hunting is the only game in town for me. So I'm not criticizing anybody else about that. So it's it's fun. Now. Let me just close in answering some of your other things. Why should you dress folks? I like, I'm not afraid of color us, but I do have the additional blues and the blacks and the grays. But my sister told me many years ago, you need to step it out because Washington, d C. Is a conservative town where you wear black, blues and grays. And I stepped it up and I went way out of the box. And I like colors. I'm not afraid of colors. I'm not afraid canes. I have those two I have those. I have to when I match, I matched from head to toe. I've seen I've seen it. Uh, But I like dressing, and I think it puts a quality in the person. You take time to look at yourself. Many people don't look at themselves before they walk out of the house. So it makes you feel good. It makes me feel good when I'm dressed, and I enjoyed it. I don't criticize anybody for what what they don't do, or what they're not capable of doing. This is me and I figured after the kids were grown up and gone and so forth, I could afford these things. So I I enjoy him to the tea, and I'm gonna continue and join him. And I told somebody, I said, when I'm a hundred and fifteen, I'm gonna be the only old man sitting on the porch at the nursing home with cowboy boots and a purple jacket telling stories to all of the nurses. So and I think you should learn how to cook, because one day you're gonna be living by yourself and you're gonna go hungry, and you need to learn how to cook. And you can't eat that stuff from the fast food every day. So learn how to cook, go in the woods, trap kill fish, and eat some of the stuff that God provided in nature provided. I thank you there it is. It's beautiful. It's beautiful, beautiful. I'll do it. I'll do whatever you want. Um. I will say that wh find uh in life And I found it with a lot of things in my own life that people that have extraordinary passions become extraordinary people. And those people like you, Charles bring they have like an orbit about them. They have this thing that attracts other people, whether it's with a similar passion or just with a similar disposition. You attract people that think the same way or want to think the same way. And then then through that you you're able to inspire people. So that's how I think about you, man. And it's obvious Jeffrey sitting here because you got sucked. He got sucked into your orbit to getting the gravitational pool of Charles Rode. He brought him here at this table. So I think, uh, I hope you can keep doing that for many years to come. I think you'll make it to who who the hell knows how long? Probably you said Jeffrey said he's gotta go home. It was your grandmother's hundred and third birthday, birthday, and she's doing good. I could see you. I could see you want to go that far. I'm gonna try. I can see you making it. I'll try. I see you and Judy being bacon pies and one oh three. I'll be old and too. I'll come over. Yeah, come on, you'll be dressed nice. I'm gonna try. All right, boys, thank you so much. Enjoyed it. Hell of a rabbit hunt. Uh let's go to sleep as past your bedtime. Yeah, thank you, thank you, appreciate you. All right, thank you. That's it. That's all another episode in the books. Congrats again to our friend Greg Morse on this turkey call. Yeah, but that's awful. It's real bad, real bad. But sometimes sometimes even though you have zero turkey calling talent, you're aativity wins the day. So congratulation to Gregg on winning a t HC Eddi Tumbler t HC hat an assigned media cookbook from all of us here at th HC. Next week is a big one. It's a big one. Film you ready, I have We're gonna fill this room with very capable individuals from the mediator crew, and we have six of the best poems. It's not even poems, just poetic reviews, is what we're gonna call him. We asked you, guys an episode on hundred, we said you could win the Yanni Patelis find them and grind him giveaway, which is a pair of Vortex ten by forty two binos and a Western meat grinder for writing a rhymed review on one of wherever you listen on one of those platforms to give us a five surview and writer rhyming accompaniment. And boy, did you come through? Holy sh it, did you come through? Have you read any of these yet? Phil? I've read a couple and they're mostly rude to me. But that's fine that you and and me, Joe Fernado, Jamie. So like last Friday, we were up there all day reading these things. I want to take it seriously because a lot of you took it seriously all day reading these things, laughing our asses off all day. Um. And so we're gonna we have some of our best, our most favorite Mediata crew members are gonna come in here and do dramatic readings of these poems, including Phil and myself, and it's gonna be a good time. So that's next week, So you're gonna find out if you won the Yanni Patelis find him and grind him to giveaway next week. And we're also gonna have who else we got. We got Rob Greenfield, right, that's right, Rob Greenfield. He's a dude who lived who lived for a year without consuming any industrialized food, which is pretty cool. It was kind of an environmental activist. Are really really good dude, um, and it has a lot to say about a lot of things. So you'll enjoy that and much more. Next week, we're gonna start off with our really hype for turkey season. While Phil Phil knows where he's gonna go now in Texas. He knows the dates he's got to take his hunter safety course, don't you, Phil. That's right, I do. I'm excited though. It's gonna eating close and so we're gonna do another in the Field podcast with Phil hunting turkeys. It's gonna be great. We're gonna bring a Morrise's Gobble's gonna bring that right in. Yeah, just hold up a big boom box. You're staying out someone else's house that you want to John Cusack style. Yep, John Cusack style. See Phil's here for that. It's nice to have a cinephile about help us out. Thanks Phil, But that's it. So thank you to Charles Rodney, Thank you to Jeffrey. Thank you to Phil Houon and his family for letting us hunt his place on Marylyn's Easter Shore. That was a fantastic day. I'm glad to bring that to you. We're gonna do a lot more in the field recordings, uh in the future. I really enjoyed recording it and bring it to you. I know, Phil really enjoyed editing it here on a Monday morning to get it to you on a Tuesday. So we're gonna keep doing it, right Phil, Yeah, HC. Don't forget Fills back. He's better than ever. He's not sick anymore. So we're never gonna miss again, aren't we, Phil? Never? Sir? Never? All right by. The Hunting Collective with Ben O'Brien is a part of the Meat Eater podcast network. It is produced by Kren Schneider and engineered by Phil Taylor. You can find it on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, the meat eater dot Com, or anywhere. Podcasts are downloadable wherever you listen, leave a five star review, and subscribe

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