00:00:05 Speaker 1: Welcome to This Country Life. I'm your host, Brent Reeves from coon hunting to trotlining and just in general country living. I want you to stay a while as I share my experiences in life lessons. This Country Life is presented by Case Knives from the store More Studio on Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you the best outdoor podcast that airways have to offer. All right, friends, grab a chair or drop that tailgate. I've got some stores to share expectations and reality. I've been traveling a lot lately and had the great fortune to meet and interact with families from Tennessee to Pennsylvania and several other states as well. The common thread among the majority of them was the eagerness of their youngests to continue with mom and dad and the outdoors, or the eagerness of mom and dad to get them out there. We're going to talk about that this week, but first I'm going to tell you this story. Kyle Langford is a police officer with the WYE Dot Nation Police Department in Miama, Oklahoma. Now it's spelled like it should be pronounced Miami. But if you call it Miami and you're referring to the city in Oklahoma, and not the one in Florida. The Oakis are quick to correct you. Now, Kyle has been in law enforcement for over a dozen years, and a decade of it was been in patrol. Now he's a resource officer at the local school and has been for a couple of years. This story is about a hunt with his father and brother when he was a kid, and now he passed that tradition down to his children. I've talked enough about what we're going to hear, so let's just get in there and it out. With Kyle's words in my voice, here we go. As far back as I can remember, I can still hear the stories from my dad and uncle Jerry about hunt and deer camps and trips to Colorado and funny pranks. The stories they told captured my imagination with adventure and camaraderie, and I remember wanting nothing more than to have stories like those of my own someday. Growing up. A couple times a season, my dad would take my younger brother and me along with him, and back then deer hunting was tough, and taking two small kids, well, that made it even tougher. There was no such thing as a ladder stand or pop up blind for us, and if there was, we had never heard of it. Dad's only option was to rake the leaves away from the base of a big tree, and there in the dirt we would wait like a litter of raccoons. I don't remember seeing any deer on those hunts, but I wouldn't trade them for a boon and crocketd sized buck today. A few years later, the year before I was able to hunt on my own, I remember sitting with my dad and seeing two doors. They were about seventy yards away through the timber, and just seeing them was the most amazing thing ever. I'd gone deer hunting with Dad for years, and I'd seen deer from the car, but I'd never seen one while hunting. I was blown away. The next summer, I took my hundred safety course and my uncle was gracious enough to let me borrow a spare of thirty thirty. That fall. With a tag in my pocket, I was on the road to adventure. Borrowed Marling. Thirty thirty had a fixed four pyroscope, shoot through bases and white stitching with a leather sling. It wasn't mine, but I'll never forget holding it. Looking back, it was more empowering than sitting behind the wheel of my first with a rifle season approaching. I got it just in time to sight it in and become familiar with it before opening weekend, and on opening day. I remember getting dressed by the fireplace. A dim brass lamp lit the room as I pulled on stretched out long underwear, overly thick wool socks, and zipped up a pair of old, faded camel coveralls that were a couple sizes too big and likely twice my age, or an orange sock cap, and even older orange vests with string ties in the corners that had been broken and retied at least a dozen times. In that same room, Dad kept our guns in a locking cabinet under the staircase next to the fireplace, like it was yesterday. I can still smell the wood, smoke and hoppies when he opened the door and passed out guns. Early in the morning, we left the house and Dad sixty three Chevrolet half ton pick up. It was a fifteen mile drive from our house to our hunting spot. When we parked the truck, it was about twenty degrees and there was a light dusting A fresh snow. Stepping out of the truck, I clipped on my camel fanny pack. Inside it was a grut call, some fresh earth scented wafers, and a buck Model one nineteen. I threw my rifle over my shoulder and took a deep breath of the cold, crisp morning air. We climbed to the top of a big, hardwood ridge. My dad my brother walked me to an oak tree I had never seen before. My dad helped me kick the snow and leaves away from the base of the tree and wished me good luck before he and my brother walked into the darkness with the only flashlight we had as the sun came up that day, it was hard to describe the feeling I had. I was actually hunting. I'd been trusted to carry a rifle and possibly even to take the life of a deer. It was freedom and a responsibility I had never experience before. I wanted that morning last wherever. We hunted that evening and went to church the next morning. We were back in the woods on Sunday evening and I didn't see a single deer that weekend. It wasn't uncommon back then, and it didn't bother me anyway. I was just excited to be in the woods. The following Thursday, after school was out, I returned to my oak tree. I hadn't been there long when I heard something scanning the hillside. I saw a movement and quickly made out the brown color of a deer under a big white oak. She was walking slowly toward me, eating acres. I waited for a good angle. I cocked the hammer, I took aim and pulled the trigger. In a matter of moments, I was standing over my first deer. She was all of fifty five pounds, and she wasn't a she at all. It was a button buzzy. But I was so excited I could hardly contained myself. And with light fading, no flashlighting, dead deer on the ground, I went to find my dad and my brother. When I reached the top of the ridge where Dad had dropped me off, I waited what felt like an eternity before I saw his flashlight cutting through the woods. That he didn't come down the ridge toward me. It was as if he had forgotten. Now he and my brother were headed toward the truck. I ran toward him, yelling loud enough to be heard over the crunching leaves, and they finally stopped and yelled back. I hollered that I killed a deer, and he yelled back in surprise. He didn't even know I had shot. Over the next fifteen years I continued to hunt with my dad, uncle Jerry, my cousins, and my brother. We all hunted owner near that public land in McDonald County for the better part of a decade. We had an annual deer cam. We played poker, and we ate a lot of fried backstraps from gravy, and on a good year, half of us would kill us my old foget horn or a six point, and if we were lucky, someone would drag in out one hundred inch eight point. Those are the most fun years of hunting of my life, and for better or worse, it seems the culture of dear hunting has now mess with success in different ways than it did back then. So thankful for the years I spent hunting on that public land with old hand me down equipment, and for the time together with friends and family. I have no doubt those experiences shape me into the outdoorsman I am today. I'm forty years old, Now my wife and I have a nineteen year old daughter, a sixteen year old son, and an eleven year old daughter. Sometimes question the way I raised my kids, not only in the outdoors, been in all walks of life. Have I held their hands and spoon fed them too much? Have I catered to them to ensure instant success, keeping them comfortable them and bought them two nice of equipment and clothing. Today, my eleven year old Angley Pearl has killed three bucks hers, all bigger than anything I had killed by the time I was twice her age. My son Hagen has a quiver for his bowth that costs more than my entire archery set up when I was sixteen, and my nineteen year old Katie May just killed her fifth buck two days ago. As we sat in our heated shooting house. She squeezed off the suppressed rifle and within forty five minutes we were headed back home with a nice buck in the bed of the truck. I'd like to think of today's world, I'm doing the right thing to make sure my kids have good and fun experiences in the outdoors. My goal is for them to want to continue being outdoorsmen and women for the rest of their lives and to someday pass on to their kids what my dad and uncle passed on to me Off and wonder if I made it a little too easy on by not challenging them the way I was challenged. Will they grow up and perceive the outdoors the way I do? Is it selfish for me to even want that? Maybe I should let them struggle a little more. Maybe I should drop them off on the side of a big oak ridge and walk out of sight for a while. Maybe I should just be happy that they're enjoining the outdoors and sharing time with me, doing things that I once did with my dad. Truth is, today's world, with social media, instant gratification, and busy lives, none of us really know the right answers. Only only time will tell. One thing I do know is this, I'm going to keep taking them hunting for as long as they'll let me, and someday I hope they can remember their first hunt as positively with as much detail as I remember mine. And according to Miami Tribe native Kyle Langford, that's just how that happened. Well, Kyle, you bring us some interesting things to think about, and I think we all to talk about expectations and reality. Now I'm probably going to get some heat for some of the stuff I'm fixing and say, but this is just my opinion. Y'all don't have to agree with it anymore than I have to agree with yours. Some of you will and some of you won't. And I absolutely couldn't care less which side of the fence you're on, mainly because I seldom see a fence these days. I haven't always thought this way. I readily admit there was a time when I had near views on just about everything. But maturity and experience have changed or adjusted the way you see things. I think that's the way it's supposed to work. You form an opinion based on what you know to be true through your observations or information provided to you by trusted sources, and when you learn better, you adjust your opinions to coincide with the facts presented. And the theme and purpose of today's episode is weighing our expectations against reality. And I pose this in regard to how we interact with our kids while hunting fishing. I've heard people say that kids these days just don't know what it's like to be wet and cold like we did back in the good old days. Well, kids have hunting clothes made for them now, where back in my day they didn't. Mama had my feet stuffed and three pairs of socks and jobbed inside bread socks before putting on my shoes or boots and heading out into the cold and wet. Well. I'm not about doing things for Bailey. My grandkids are any young and I happen to be hunting and fishing with, But I do want to make it enjoyable for them. And just because things can be more comfortable for kids these days, does that mean there's any less impactful. I don't think so. It's important for me to remember that my first experiences with outdoor sports aren't theirs. If I project what I remember feeling or how I think they should feel about a particular activity, I'm setting myself up for disappointment and adding unnecessary pressure to them. Let them enjoy or dislike based on their own experiences. It's just as hard to get a child to like something they have no interest in as it is for me. We all have an idea that everyone, especially the little ones that we introduced to the things we all love, should feel as passionate about them as we do. That's why we want to share them with them in the first place. It's been my observation that the real reason the little ones want to be there isn't for the particular activity, it's because we're there. During the COVID lockdown, which started when Whaling was a half year old and Bailey was seven, there were very few times initially when I left the house to take him out, that she wasn't with me. She was just as excited to put on her rubber boots and ride with me and Whaling into the woods as she was going to the park to play. It wasn't the activity we were going to do together, it was just and activity that we were doing together. Of course, she's grown older now her attention has been directed elsewhere as she's matured and discovered that other activities she finds they may be more interested in coon hunting with her daddy. It's hard to believe for a thirteen year old girl as that is. But did I judge as the success of what we were doing and how much she enjoyed it by how much I enjoy it now and how I remember enjoying it with my dad nope, but I did with my on a decade earlier, and when his attention turned elsewhere, I incorrectly took it as an affront to me instead of seeing it for what it was. It was merely a different interest by a different person, raised in a different environment, with different social pressures, and at a different time. I remember feeling almost heartbroken that his interests weren't a line like mine were. We hunted a lot together when he really didn't have much choice about going, and may have not expressed the fact that maybe he really didn't want to go, maybe he wanted to do something else, or maybe I put too much pressure on him to have the same love for something that I did, and I pushed him in the other direction. Can I go back that far and my memory banking accurately relived the emotions and adrenaline filled moments of my life. I like to think I can about some things, but I I can assure you that how I feel about killing that squirrel on my first solo hunt that I talked about last week, well that's only sweetened with time, the reason being the totality of the circumstances that surrounded it, The distance not only in decades, but the physical distance from that spot where it occurred and where I set now unable to return to that location or see those things again that I saw there fifty years ago, and that only happens with the passage of time. I value that memory because I know I can never go back there physically, and can only wax as poetic as I can about that time from long ago. No one else should be expected to feel the same value I do, Even though they may see that there's some real value in it, the true investment is mine alone, just as their initial experiences will dictate the importance of where they place that activity in their own lives. There's nothing enjoyable about doing something you don't want to do, or be in somewhere that you don't want to be. I think the best thing that we can do is to expose the outdoors to the young ones while making it as comfortable as possible, with no other expectations, but allowing them to make up their own minds. Then when they're older, they can make the decisions with our guidance as to the level of difficulty and commitment that they want to make for themselves. Hope in our hearts that reality lives up to our expectations, but seldom is that ever the case. But I love for Bailey to march in this office right now and say, Dad, I want a new pair of hip boots and want of mister Michael's lives. Well, you bet I will. Is she going to do that? Probably not. But if you ask her if she had fun when she used to follow me in that old hound around in the woods, I bet she'd say yes. She'll remember it as a time when she wanted to go along with me instead of being forced to do so that's the difference, and how we approach those first outings will set the president on how many will fall. I thank you all so much for listening. And hey, check out the new Bear Greece YouTube channel, which is really the old Bear Hunting Magazine YouTube channel. It ain't hard to find and there's very little math involved of any There's gonna be a lot of good stuff on there, and I think you really enjoy it. For my very own boy wonder Bear job. Until next week, this is Brent Reeves signing off. Y'all be careful