00:00:05 Speaker 1: Welcome to this country Life. 00:00:06 Speaker 2: I'm your host, Brent Reeves from coon hunting to trot lining and just general country living. 00:00:12 Speaker 1: I want you to stay a. 00:00:13 Speaker 2: While as I share my experiences in life lessons. This Country Life is presented by Case Knives on Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you the best outdoor podcast the airwaves have to offer. All right, friends, grab a chair or drop that tailgate. 00:00:31 Speaker 1: I've got some stories to share. 00:00:38 Speaker 2: North Carolina a place in Alabama. I know North Carolina ain't in Alabama, but a new friend of mine was paying his respects to both places, which will become more apparent. 00:00:51 Speaker 1: Before I'm done today. 00:00:53 Speaker 2: There's no opening story because this story is the whole show, and I think you'll enjoy it. I did so without further ado. 00:01:03 Speaker 1: Here we go. 00:01:10 Speaker 2: It was a funny little song about a lady dropping an apple watch in a public access toilet near a boat ramp in Michigan that first made me aware of Reed Bargaineer. Reed is a security software guy by trade who, as a child, was forced to learn the piano by his mother. I hated piano lessons, he told me. He added to the contrary that hear and how beautiful the music was that his mother, Miss Karen, filled their home with and what that instrument was capable of producing by someone who knew how to play. It was the only thing that kept him from resisting the lessons more than he did so, like a lot of the seemingly born but innocuous things our parents insist we do as children, bolstered by that painfully prophetic you'll be glad you did it. Someday, she was right and it paid dividends in the long run. Stephen Nelle had talked about the woman falling into the public access outhouse on the Meat Eater podcast in Red, being a faithful listener, had written a little ditty about the woman falling in the duty and her subsequent rescue. Now I started following at Reed's piano news on Instagram from that very moment, and aside from his humorous, taking unique way of expressing his observations, I also saw this guy is really good. Artistically gifted. People can be perceived as being a little different by those of us who are so blessed. 00:02:47 Speaker 1: Now I found that belief validated. 00:02:48 Speaker 2: After spending a few days with Red last week chasing turkeys in his home state of Alabama. He's different alright, but in a good way. Playing the piano and write in original two are just two of the things he's good at. But I'm getting ahead of myself more on the other ones in a minute. In February of last year, we connected through social media and I learned he listened to This Country Life. I've been following his content since he made his appearance on Meat Eater a few months prior, after Steve heard his song about the unfortunate lady who went headfirst into the chamber pot. Now, I always think it's somewhat surreal to discover the many talented folks that find amusement in this weekly struggle of mine. In the wide variety of those who do general conversations back and forth through the winter about each other's content, turned into a genuine invitation to be his guest and come turkey hunting with him in the spring on his family's land near Fort Deposit, Alabama. Now I've said before that I always hesitate when asked what my favorite type of hunting is, But after a couple of mental hurdles of decision, I settled on spring turkey hunting always, And it's not even close, just because the scenario I just laid out. I get to share it with others who feel just like I do. It doesn't take a long, detailed conversation with someone to get a good feel of how genuine they are about things. And I could tell that Reed was a turkey hunter who in his early forties had come to the realization of sharing the experience was better than keeping it to yourself. Like I always say, sharing a burden will lighten the load, and sharing a joy will amplify it. It was with that in mind that I accepted his invitation and scheduled to meet hum at his friend's family's old home place, ten minutes from Reed's family's ancestral land and the place we'd be chasing turkeys. 00:04:47 Speaker 1: I arrived in the. 00:04:48 Speaker 2: Middle of the afternoon to an old farmhouse that was painted white, its tin roofs shaded by hardwoods, surrounded by a manicured yard. 00:04:56 Speaker 1: The front porch was adorned with. 00:04:58 Speaker 2: Rocking chairs and a swing where I imagine generations. 00:05:01 Speaker 1: Of folks that sat in the cool. 00:05:03 Speaker 2: Of the evenings when the work was finished, passing the time and enjoying each other's company until time to go to bed. Long before all the distractions that keep a person's attention elsewhere. Today, even in a room full of family and friends, Reed was out back stoking a fire in a large pit with stove wood that was producing the coals that would cook our supper. 00:05:26 Speaker 1: Later that evening, I. 00:05:28 Speaker 2: Shook his hand and we started talking. As I remember, it wasn't initially about turkey hunt. There was plenty of time to talk about that later. I wanted to know about Reed and get to know who he was. Away from that piano, we shared a lot in common. We have better wives and kids than we deserve, are blessed with giving friends and careers that allow us opportunities to share adventures such as the one we were about to undertake. The old house we stayed at belonged to a friend of Reed that was built in nineteen o two. There had been an addition in the last few years to allow for a more comfortable stay when family and hunters gathered, but the addition, while very modern, held on to the simplistic nature of an old farmhouse. I felt at home before I ever walked through the door. Old deer, waterfowl, coon and bobcat mounts decorated the walls of the sitting room. In the kitchen, the vibe felt as good as when your grandma hugged you, and the wood floor creaked just enough when you walked in the original part of the home to remind you that several grandmas had occupied this space. Just inside the front door, on the walls, the four year hung old pictures and mementos of the legacy of the family that owned this house and the land it sat on, one such item being the original land grant document, dated February first, eighteen twenty two and designed by then President James Monroe. A historically important reverence that I would see on the land we were to hunt the following morning, land adjacent to the small community of Fort Deposit that has had bargaineers roaming on it since eighteen nineteen, land that three years prior, Old Hickory himself, the future president, but then General Andrew Jackson ordered constructed and sequestered provisions for supplying troops during the Creek Indian War. A depository Fort a very descriptive term from which the town would eventually draw its name. The land itself was a bit of a novelty to me. I wasn't expecting a diverse topography. The terrain fluctuated from bottomland to rolling hills, and some of them as steep as any hills I'd climbed in the Washittall Mountains or the Ozarks, but not as tall, but definitely just as steep. The first morning, I followed Rid away from the truck and we climbed and stood atop Gills Hill, a steep grated knob that tired four hundred and seventy feet above sea level, which coincidentally lay less than one hundred and ten miles due south. 00:08:13 Speaker 1: From where we were waiting to hear a turkey gobble. 00:08:16 Speaker 2: Redbirds started singing, and after I caught my breath, I out and a gobbler nearly cut me off. We were way too close to him. His gobble initially sounded like a jake to me. It was like only the back half of a normal gobble, but I think it was because I scared him more than anything else. Eventually he let out a couple more gobbles, but he went silent after he flew down. Luckily, we had two others that were in a goblin contest a little over a quarter of a mile away. It was a steep grade down to where they were, and we would need to pick a path and head that way, gambling that we'd chosen wisely to try and get ahead of them, And once they picked their main course to travel, by eight thirty that morning, we figured we had them scoped out and made a move trying to get to a spot to. 00:09:09 Speaker 1: Cut them off. And they never gobbled again, no worries. 00:09:15 Speaker 2: We gave them plenty of time to respond, and when they didn't, we lit a shuck for the north end of the property, a place Red said was the location turkeys sometimes wound up during the middle of the morning. Making our way down the long ridge, we stopped to listen and for Red to share memories of certain places or events that had taken place there during his lifetime of making tracks on this part of the planet. Eventually we found our way to the edge of a big open field at the bottom of several ridges. I'm not sure I could have taken a pencil and a piece of paper and drawn a more turkey looking place. I called loudly and bound A turkey gobbled back about three hundred. 00:09:56 Speaker 1: And fifty yards away. 00:09:59 Speaker 2: Now we moved as close as we couldn't set up, he answered, and twice got a little closer, and eventually we realized there were two gobblers answered us, but neither ever got within sight. We stayed for nearly another hour after the last goble and decided to head into Ford Deposit for a bite to eat. Driving past a house, Reed saw an elderly couple standing on the carport. That's one of my grandfather's good friends. You have to meet him. Read back to side by side down the street and we pulled into the yard. There I met mister lee Ernest Steiner and his wife, Miss Minnie. The connection between all three of them was immediate and heartfelt. Reid would tell me later that he stops some visits with them at their house when he sees them out and about when he's down at the family land from his home in Birmingham. 00:10:57 Speaker 1: Reed's father does the same. 00:11:00 Speaker 2: Mister Steiner was nearly ninety according to Reid, and while we visited, I learned from him that he'd lost the sight in one of his eyes and some of the use of his right arm due to a stroke. But he never stopped smiling while we talked or when he looked at Reed. He may have had some trouble communicating words as a result of his condition, but his tired old liae spoke volumes when he talked read about reading his Bible and saying, without any trouble at all, that Reed had finally grown up big enough to eat. 00:11:33 Speaker 1: A whole chicken by itself, a. 00:11:35 Speaker 2: Comment Miss Minnie and I both found pretty funny. Our visit done or sandwich is eating. We drove back to the property that afternoon with the game plan that we wouldn't pressure anything. We'd make a drive down through the access road that bordered the eastern edge, and if we could strike a gobbler from the road, we'd dive in after him. Long story short, It didn't happen, but it was only the first day. I should point out that we did see a gobble across the road in front of us on the way in that afternoon, but the terrain wasn't optimal for us to get in front of him without him seeing this. No pressure, it's only the first day. Remember me saying that artistic folks are usually good at more than one thing. 00:12:16 Speaker 1: Well, Reed is also quite a shift. 00:12:19 Speaker 2: In fact, he told me he'd liked to go to Jesse Griffiths's new school a traditional cookery. Now, I think you might teach Jesse a thing or two. Who knows, I know he turned the fire up on that pork shot we had for supper that night and the duck we had the following night. That boy can cook, Jesse. You got to save that boy spot. 00:12:40 Speaker 1: Now. 00:12:40 Speaker 2: That night, after supper, we made our plans for the next day. We would start out between the two sets of turkeys we heard that morning, the two that were in a goblin contest to daylight, and the two that we got on later in the day. We laid out almost four miles of tracks on Alabama that day, and in the morning we'd cut that in half by starting in the sweet spot right between them both. Now I finished up our plan that night with of course, neither group will gobble in the morning, and the whole day will start off like this one, with us not knowing. 00:13:12 Speaker 1: Which way to go or what to do. 00:13:14 Speaker 2: We laughed and laughed until the next morning, when that was exactly what happened. Over four miles later, we were back at the truck, having only heard the faintest of gobbles that was in another zip code from ours, and on our way out for a bite to eat, both of us whooped as pups let's stop where we saw that turkey in the road yesterday, just stopped there reading I'm gonna call and see what happens. 00:13:41 Speaker 1: He pulled over, and. 00:13:42 Speaker 2: I jumped out of the truck and sent a series of yeps down through the woods. 00:13:46 Speaker 1: God Turkey answered I. 00:13:50 Speaker 2: Reid looked over at me and smiling and said, we're back in. I looked at my watch. It was ten twenty. He was less than three hundred yards away. I would have bet my paycheck that Turkey was as good as dead. I'm glad I didn't, because, as far as I know, and I talked to Reed today, that joker is still amongst the living. I had him within one hundred yards two different times, but I never have laid my peepers on him. 00:14:17 Speaker 1: He could have been invisible for all I know. 00:14:20 Speaker 2: We walked out of the woods, scratching our heads, wondering how we've messed that up. We replayed step by step every move we made an outside of chunk of a grenade at him. I wouldn't have done anything any different. It just wasn't meant to be. That Evening, Read's oldest son, Barnes, rode in with Reed's father, doctor Paul Bargaineer. We planned to divide up the next morning into two teams going in different directions, doubling our chances of slinging some lead. Doctor Bargineer and I would hunt the south end, and Reading Barnes would take care of the norse. Unfortunately, Barnes took sick during the night and didn't make our morning formation at five am the next day, so while he stayed in bed, we struck out for one last strikeout, and that's just what we did. We struck out. We heard three turkeys that morning, but they were so far off and only gobbled a few times, making it really difficult to come up with a workable plan of attack. Before we left the woods, we tallied up another four miles of hiking through the mountains of Lounges County, Alabama. Now what we did do was stop along the way at different places to listen to turkey stories, mostly told Reed's father, a dentist by trade for the past forty one years. This spot right here is called North Carolina because it reminds me of a place I saw there once. It's my most favorite place on the planet. I've caught a lot of turkeys up right here, I could have killed a lot more than I have. Sometimes I just let him go. I'd rather see you get one than me. I just enjoy working this land for the betterment of turkeys and for my children and grandchildren. 00:16:10 Speaker 1: Which in turn is good for everything. That's what he said. 00:16:17 Speaker 2: He looked at that place he called North Carolina not like it was a member of his family. Now he looked at it like he was a member of its family. And I truly think he believes it. I certainly do. After watching him talk about it and share his experiences with me, Red asked me the next day when he'd stop wondering why we didn't call that turkey in that we let get away from us. I was driving down the road headed home when he asked at that exact same time, I was wondering the same thing. Now, had we got him, it would have been a great story of how we'd caught him off guard and tricked him during the middle of the day when they're supposed to be a lot easier to trick. And after a while it would just turned into a turkey that we killed in Alabama. But now we had a shared experience of highs and lows in the two hours, we each moved around that turkey, calling chessboard, attack and counterattack, stick and move, bob and weave, with eventually both of us walking out with a story to telling. By us, I mean read me and the turkey. I asked Reid, why didn't he just load up on that fire lane and walked straight to us? But you know what, that gobbler was probably wondering the same thing about the hen he was answering. So I didn't bring a turkey home, but I didn't come home without something. I made some new friends, I saw the sight of some early American history. I was welcome to a place revered by those who shared it with me, a place that sits at the epicenter of a tumultuous times at the beginning of Alabama statehood two hundred and six years ago, when it was the jumping off point for conflict with Native Americans, and a place around the time of my birth in the mid sixties that would have had read and I questioned for stopping to visit with people that the bargaineers considered family, who didn't look like we did on the outside, but are indistinguishable on the inside. And that's where it counts the most. Thank you so much for listening to us here on the Bear Grease Channel. Claive Bow and I appreciate it very much. And good luck chasing those turkeys until next week. This is Brent Reeves signing off. Y'all be careful